“Let me see.” He made a great show of squinting at her handwriting, although she knew it to be perfectly neat and ladylike. “Dear Mama and Papa...” He squeezed her lightly. “An estimable beginning.”
She giggled at his silliness. “It is a very standard beginning, I believe.”
He read on in his deep, rumbling voice. “I was delighted to receive your letter. Everything continues lovely in Berkshire. You would be impressed indeed with Somerton. There are fields and beautiful gardens turning all the colors of autumn, and a great stately home with windows to the loveliest views. You must come and visit when you may. Good lord,” he muttered. “Let us hope they stay too busy.”
“But I would like to see them!”
“So you may return to being their prim, miserable daughter, after all the strides we’ve made? I think not.” He kissed her on the nose, an innocuously tender gesture after the anger in his voice. “You may invite them, of course. But if they come, I’ll find some way to be in London on business.”
“What if they come for weeks?” she asked.
“Then I’ll jump off the north tower,” he said with a sigh. “What else have you written in this pinnacle of a letter? Townsend is well. He stays busy with his duties and takes time to spend with me as well. He is congenial and courteous in all things.” He snorted. “What a bounder, Aurelia. You do not mention here that I spank you nightly, sometimes until you cry.”
“I can add it as a post-script,” she said, pretending to take the letter.
He made a quelling sound and lifted it out of reach. When she resettled against him, he resumed where he had left off. “Kind and patient in all things. Blah blah blah. We had pheasant for dinner last night. It was delicious. Townsend’s cock came with us from London.”
“Cook,” she corrected him.
“Oh, I thought things were finally getting interesting.” He pointed to the word in question. “That looks very much like a c.”
“It is an o,” she said firmly.
He rolled his eyes. “Townsend’s cook came with us from London. It wasn’t a very long ride from his city home, only a day’s journey. His traveling carriage is much like papa’s finest rig, only done in ivory rather than pale blue. I believe the seats are also not quite as wide. This is gripping stuff, my darling. Your parents will love this letter. But why do you only talk about my cook and my carriage,” he asked, peering down at her, “and say nothing about me?”
She pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows. His mouth curved in a smile.
“Give my love to Brendan and Georgina, and be assured...” He paused, his gaze lingering on the page. “Be assured that I am eminently happy here with Townsend. He has proved a respectable sort of husband with a great facility for kindness. He makes me smile every day.” He looked down at her with a glint of something indefinable in his eyes. A muscle ticked in his firm, strong jaw, and his hand moved a little where it rested on her back.
“Will it do?” she asked, feeling shy.
He looked back at the letter. “Well, I think it very poor that there is no mention whatsoever of the grasshopper, or its churlish attempt at escape, or our valiant struggle to recapture it unharmed. But such subversive activities might well send Duchess Lansing into a swoon, or cause her to come charging over here to rescue you, so perhaps you are a good daughter for omitting that tale.”
He lifted her from his lap, and she followed him over to his desk, where he folded the letter and sealed it by imprinting the Townsend crest in wax.
“Very prettily written, my love. Mama and Papa will be in ecstasies when they receive it.” He placed it on the pile with his other correspondence. “Perhaps as a reward, we’ll postpone tonight’s spanking and begin with some fun.” He sat back in the upholstered leather desk chair and pulled her closer. “Let’s practice what you’ve been learning. Kneel down.”
“Here?” She glanced toward the open door.
“Yes, here. No one will enter unless I summon them.”
Aurelia feared she gave him a very ungracious look as she sank to her knees before him.
“No. Stop.” He lifted her up again. “You know that was not fetchingly done. Whether or not you agree with my directions, you must obey me in a respectful way. How should you look? How should you reply when I direct you?”
She bit her lip. “I should say, ‘As you wish, my lord.’”
“With more docility, if you please, or you will have that spanking first after all.”
“As you wish, my lord,” she attempted again, with more sweet submissiveness in her tone.
He nodded, and she reached to unbutton the flap of his breeches. She had become somewhat more comfortable around his large, thick rod. Somewhat.
In truth, her husband lay with her every day, sometimes more than once a day, and they did this too now—every day. She might have complained about so much oral copulation if she didn’t fear what type of copulation he intended to teach her next. He alluded to it, toying occasionally with her bottom hole, making descriptive promises that sounded more like threats. She hoped if she kept him satisfied enough in this way he might postpone or forget completely about the other things he wanted to do to her.
But another part of her knew that would never happen.
She freed the evidence of his virility and dutifully caressed it with her mouth and lips. Grunts and sighs accompanied softly spoken instructions to lick this or pay more attention to that, or suck harder, or pump him faster. Sometimes he held her head and controlled her movements, but other times he was very still and left her on her own to try to please him.
She wondered how long he would take this night, and whether she’d be able to bring him to completion. The last couple times she had, even though it had taken an interminable amount of time, and then he’d spent inside her mouth, which had appalled her. But when he warned her that she must not spit it out, but swallow it down, she had done so because of the sharp insistence in his voice.
He brushed fingers through her hair, gave a soft moan, then called out, “Landon.”
Aurelia froze. Why was he calling one of the footmen? His fingers traced down to cup the back of her neck, preventing her from drawing back the way she wished.
“He won’t be able to see you,” he said beneath his breath. “Continue, please.”
Aurelia felt that she would choke. He held her trapped, his rod nearly to the back of her throat, forcing her to breathe through her nose. But if she choked, surely the servant would hear that. She moved her tongue a little and swallowed, and as she hoped, he loosened his grip.
“Will you deliver this note to the kitchen,” she heard him say, “and have the requested items brought back here at once?”
He cannot see me here crouched under the desk, she thought over and over, to keep the panic at bay. But she thought the servant must sense she was there, because her heart beat so loudly. Townsend’s fingers massaged her neck, urging her to continue what she was supposed to be doing.
And she did, because she had become so very depraved indeed.
“Good girl,” he said once the servant was gone. “Your obedience arouses me, as does your naughty little mouth.” His fingers toyed with her curls. “He didn’t see you, I promise. And I am very, very close.”
As he said it, his cock bucked between her lips. He instructed her to lightly stroke his balls, and when she did, he made such urgent sounds of pleasure that Aurelia strove even harder at her task. When he stiffened, his hands clamped on either side of her head, she prepared herself for his hot liquid seed, and swallowed it without being told.
She looked up at him, blinking. She felt so vulnerable in these moments. She knew she could never live up to the loose women who inhabited his premarital life, but she tried her best. He gazed down at her with a lazy smile and a great sigh of contentment that made her feel like a very talented lady indeed.
“What are you thinking?” she asked as he did up his flap.
His smile widened to a grin. “I’m
thinking that a regimen of spanking and sexual training suits you very well. I’m also thinking that you may wish to rise and compose your appearance before the footman returns with the ginger I ordered for your bottom.”
She gawked at him as he smoothed her disarranged curls and patted her skirts. “You...you sent a servant for ginger?”
“Did you expect me to go fetch it myself from the hothouse? The cook knows precisely how to prepare it to my specifications. At least, when it is to be sent upstairs, since it’s only requested then for one reason. For ladies’ bottoms,” he specified when she continued to gawk in silence. “For your bottom, tonight.”
“I don’t understand the point of this activity,” she said.
“You’ll understand shortly. Ah, here we are.” The servant returned, crossing the library with a covered silver tray. “Leave it there, would you?”
Aurelia breathed a sigh of relief that the footman wasn’t going to take off the silver lid and present the ignoble item to Townsend as she stood there beside him, the obvious recipient. But of a certainty, the servant knew. A deep blush showed about his ears and neck. The household staff were trained to show no interest, judgment, or emotion in matters, but his blush gave everything away.
Townsend dismissed the man, so she was left alone with her husband in the midst of this very alarming situation. She heard the deep click of the library doors as the servant pulled them closed.
He faced her, wearing a piratical smile. “I would like to reassure you this will not be so bad, little grasshopper, but in truth, the entire point is to unsettle you. Come closer and have a look.”
He took the lid off the tray and Aurelia stared down at a very ordinary finger of ginger and a small knife. No, not entirely ordinary. Upon closer inspection she saw the lump of ginger was shaved into a phallic shape with an exaggerated flange at one end. On the whole, it was rather thicker than she would have liked, since he’d already told her where it was going.
“Sometimes I wish I could have married a very boring and continent man,” she said, meaning every word. “Is this absolutely necessary? Why do you find pleasure in tormenting me?”
He picked up the small knife and began to carve shallow ridges into the ginger. “It’s not the tormenting I enjoy, but your reactions to it. Your moaning, your kicking, your pleas for mercy. It gives me a great, delicious feeling of power and sexual arousal. If you could feel what I feel, you wouldn’t question the things I do.” He looked up at her from his curious task. “I wonder what you feel. Is it only pain and dread? Or other feelings? Some of the ladies I frequented in London were happily affected by all the things I do to you.” His voice lowered a bit. “Sometimes you seem more happily affected than you profess to be.”
She could not in a thousand years answer his question, not honestly, at least. Instead, she posed him a question. “What are you doing to that?”
He put down the knife and showed her the bit of ginger, its scent grown stronger in the past few minutes. “I am feathering the flesh, so the effect becomes more potent. Just a bit, you know, since this is your first time. One can employ all sorts of methods to increase the sting.”
She swallowed hard. The sting? Was this to be a sting like the sting when he used a birch rod or strap on her bottom? But this was to be inside her bottom... Her hands crept back to cover her posterior.
“I wonder if my father has perhaps lost interest in monitoring your extramarital peccadillos. If there are ladies who enjoy this, perhaps you would do better going to them. I wouldn’t mind.”
He gave her a look both affectionate and reproachful. “I have no wish to test your father, not when you have proven such an erotic delight.”
An erotic delight. She could hardly fathom it. “You’re only saying that so I don’t run away screaming.”
“If you ran screaming, I would drag you back, as we both know. I am saying it because it’s the truth. I’ve come to prefer tormenting my wife to tormenting hardened working ladies. For one thing, there is some perverse excitement in the way you struggle to comply.” His lips pursed, and his expression sobered. “For another, you have grown more than a little dear to me. You are beautiful and compelling to me in a way the others never were.”
She took in this brash avowal, not knowing whether to smile or dissolve into tears. There was a time she had believed he hated her. Now they got along in a much more congenial way and she was happy for that, but for him to call her beautiful, and profess that she compelled him? She ducked her head, wringing her hands in her skirts. “I can hardly believe you mean what you say.”
“Well, we shall lie that at the Duke and Duchess of Lansing’s feet, for never allowing you to learn how very alluring you are.”
Those words too, she could barely process, but then her husband was in motion, drawing her over his lap and pushing her skirts up and out of the way. He caught one of her arms and held it tight at the small of her back. With his other hand he caressed her bottom cheeks.
“The first thing you must understand about your arsehole, darling, is that for me to put anything inside it, you must let me have my way. You cannot resist and clench the passage shut.”
“I am very sure I can’t help doing that,” she complained from her defenseless position.
“And yet you must learn how. I shall put things inside it on a more regular basis now, in order to prepare you for eventual copulation.”
“Copulation? Who decided copulation there would be a good idea?” Frustration had rather coarse and whining words spilling from her mouth. “Your thing is far too big, and that hole is far too small, and whoever invented this method of sexual congress must have been a dunderhead indeed.”
“Perhaps. A lustful dunderhead who enjoyed tight spaces, as many men do. Calm yourself, little one,” he said, pausing a moment to massage her tense back. “There shall only be ginger for now, until you grow more used to these earthier pleasures.”
Only ginger, she thought. And earthier pleasures? More like an abominable act against nature. She felt him reach to the tray, then felt the cold, wet tip of the ginger fig pressed to her bottom. She braced, but so far, it wasn’t terribly painful or stinging where it touched her.
“I am going to press it inside you now,” he said in the calm, implacable tone he always used for moments like these. “You’ll feel pressure and discomfort, but you’ll receive no injury. The wider edge will keep it from disappearing inside.”
Heavens, she hadn’t even thought of such a thing. Then she was unable to think of anything at all as the thick bit of ginger entered her bottom hole. He had told her not to clench but she found it happening instinctively, from alarm or uneasiness. He held her still as he pressed it deeper and deeper. At last the intrusion stopped.
Aurelia lay limp, afraid to even breathe. There was no sharp pain, only a shameful, stretched awareness that the thing was there where it should not be. And then...she felt the sting.
It was bearable at first. Her husband murmured something that might have been “good girl” or “there now” or some other platitude, and Aurelia realized that the burning was intensifying moment by moment. Her bottom hole, which she had always tried very hard to forget existed, now felt alive with a burning, stinging achiness. She twisted her hips, moaning softly.
“Don’t fight it,” he said. “You shall tolerate this in your bottom for quite some time yet.”
“But why?” she wailed. “Why do you want to do this to me?”
“Because it excites me to a magnificent degree.” Indeed, she could feel him going hard against her side, although he’d just climaxed in her mouth a short time earlier. “Be still,” he chided as her cries of protest mounted and her feet began to kick. “It cannot be that bad.”
“It is that bad! I wonder, husband, if you should like to have a piece of ginger shoved in your bottom.”
He chuckled, rubbing and playing with her bottom cheeks. “Of course I tried it once to see what it felt like. I discovered that I don’t enjoy re
ceiving it very much, but I do so love inflicting it on others, especially kicking, sassy, naughty wives.”
“Oh, it hurts terribly! You must take it out.”
“I seem to remember you saying something to that effect on our wedding night. But it’s not coming out until your spanking is over. In fact, its potency increases over time, which is why a long and arduous spanking is called for when a ginger fig is in place.”
“Ohhh,” she said, letting her head fall down. It was useless to try to fight him. All the boring, respectable husbands in the world, and she ended up with this one. Precisely her luck.
He did embark upon a long and arduous spanking. At the first crisp smack, she clenched her cheeks and let out a wail of fresh agony. Squeezing upon the ginger increased its potency tenfold. As smacks continued to rain down, she found it impossible to control the clenching of her buttocks, and thus she suffered quite a bit, as each time the ginger delivered more sting.
“I surmise you are discovering why ginger is used in conjunction with corporal punishment,” he said. She could hear amusement in his voice, and wanted to slap him for it. “If you do not clench, it will not feel so bad.”
But it felt bad even when she didn’t clench, and how was she to lay limp and let him punish her hindquarters without squeezing them tight against the blows?
“Please, oh please,” she cried. “This is too cruel.”
He stopped, allowing her to catch her breath, but of course, the punishing burn in her bottom continued even when his hand was at rest. She believed it was a half hour or more that he stopped and started in a very long and arduous spanking indeed. Somewhere around the middle there were tears. She wiped them away feeling a very pitiable and abused wife, but they were tears of frustration more than anything else.
Nothing about this was unbearable. That was the worst thing. The pain was constant and consistent but eminently bearable, and then...there was so much more. There was the scent of him, and the faint sounds of his exertion, the leather smell of the library and the occasional hiss from the fire. There was the rosy throbbing in her bottom mimicking too well the hot throbbing between her thighs. Oh, why did he do these things to her? And how was she to survive with any dignity? By the end, she wanted him to force her and possess her, and she couldn’t imagine why except that she was truly lost to the world of iniquitous sin.
Training Lady Townsend Page 14
