Queenie swallowed, not daring to broach any argument. She had argued in the beginning of her marriage; she had fought against and defied Jack as much as she could. But now, she didn’t dare. She knew what defiance would get her. She nodded and turned away from the door to collect her daughters.
When Queenie was gone, Jack turned to his daughter, who was already choking with sobs. For a quick moment, Thorton saw pity flash across Jack’s face, but the man quickly replaced it with resolve. “Get out of your veil and dress,” he demanded. “Fold them up neatly. When I come back, I want you only in your underthings. You know the drill, Kella.”
“Daddy, please don’t do this! Don’t be angry with me,” she begged, not even looking him in the eye.
If it was possible to get out of a punishment from Jack, surely this would have been the time. Thorton had no idea what Kella had done, still deeply wanted to see her finally “getting it”, but even he was feeling sympathy pangs because of how completely forlorn she was.
Jack sighed deeply and opened his arms to her. “Come here,” he offered, and Kella quickly walked into her father’s open arms and accepted an embrace. Kella sobbed anew into her father’s chest, her whole body wracked by sobs.
He kissed her forehead.
“I’m sorry!” she croaked.
“I have to punish you, Kella. I can’t believe that you’d just—” He sighed again. “I know you’re disappointed. But I promise—in just a few months you’ll have a husband who will worship you, love you, be destined for you. You’ll forget all this then.”
“I know… I know I need to be punished… but I love him! And I thought maybe we were destined to be together! We got on so well!”
“Kella, that’s not for you to decide. You know it isn’t. It’s not how things are done. Where would we be if everyone just got to choose their mates based on a passing fancy? On lust? Hennar isn’t ready for a mate yet, Sweetheart. It worked out better this way. He’s just started his apprenticeship. He won’t be ready to choose a mate for years …”
Thorton’s mouth hung open. It was all too clear now. Kella had tried to touch Hennar Kolsco… She’d always fancied him, certainly. Kolsco was a second-cousin who they'd met at several family functions and he worked at the library where Kella frequented. But Kolsco was only a couple years older, and if Kolsco had ever showed Kella any endearing affection, Thorton had never witnessed it.
What a horrible move! Thorton thought Kolsco was a little too clean-nosed himself, but obviously he was the type that, if an unmarried woman “attempted” him, he would do the honorable thing and inform her father so that she wouldn’t attempt another male… Thorton couldn’t get over the shock. It was so bold of Kella. She must have been absolutely confident that they were a match.
“I’ve never wanted anything so much…” Kella cried. “I’m so humiliated!”
“You’re not the first girl who’s attempted,” Jack comforted, rubbing her back tenderly with his hand. He was trying his best to remain firm. He didn’t have to try with Thorton—Thorton was sure he hadn’t gotten one ounce of sympathy from Jack in his life. “But there are consequences. You knew there would be.”
Kella pulled slowly apart from her father and put her hand under her shimmery veil just to wipe a tear from her eye. “Please, I learned my lesson already…” she begged.
“But your sisters haven’t. I want to nip this sort of thing in the bud. It’s unacceptable, Kella. You knew it was. You have to reap what you sow. I love you, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to let you off in this…”
She nodded. “Yes, Daddy,” she sniffed.
Jack gave Kella an adoring pinch under the chin and a forgiving smile and then left the room.
Graham and Thorton pulled back and sat on the servant stairs, silently waiting. Thorton had no idea what Jack left to go get or to go do, but it seemed to take a while before he returned, right about the same time that Graham’s four younger sisters started to slowly flood into the room. Ages four to fourteen, Kella and Graham’s sisters came into the room in a group, and announced themselves by gasping in surprise.
Sure, Thorton and Graham exchanged a sheepish expression, one that said, “Oh, we’re really too old to be looking in on a sibling’s punishment with this sort of satisfaction,” but they wandered back towards their viewing spot nonetheless.
Since Kella went through puberty, and became a ‘woman’ she'd put on her veil, gloves, and long-sleeves like all other unmarried women wore who were at risk to be mated prematurely. Thorton had seen Kella without her veil since then on only a small handful of occasions, and that’s only when she was eating particularly messy foods. The veil wasn’t distracting; unmarried woman’s veils never hid their face, just glossed across it with a shimmery wave. But without it, Thorton felt like he was peeping at her nakedness. Though she wasn’t naked—she still had her under slip and undershirt on. But the skin on her arms, neck, face, and her hair was now visible without any protection.
Thorton found himself blushing on her behalf.
“Daddy, we’re not in trouble, are we? I was a good girl today, I promise!” the four-year-old, Jinga, immediately announced, stepping back in horror, reaching back to cover her bottom with her hands. She had never been old enough to witness one of her sisters’ punishments before. It wasn’t extremely uncommon for Jack to chastise one of his daughters in front of the others, so they could all learn from each other’s mistakes, but Kella had certainly never been the main participant. It seemed much more likely that all the other girls were in trouble rather than Kella being the one who would be spanked.
Jack’s smile betrayed that he observed how cute his youngest was. “You’re right, Jinga. You’re a good girl. Go sit down, please.” He turned towards his other daughters, who were standing tall and straight, prepared to accept his orders. “That goes for the rest of you, as well.” He pointed towards a padded bench, which the girls all slowly walked to, cautious not to make any noise or to look their father too closely in the eye.
“Jack?” Queenie said from the doorway. “What’s this about?”
“Kella has taken it upon herself to try to choose her mate,” Jack announced. Everyone in the room gasped again, including Graham’s mother, who put her hand over her mouth in shock.
“I was also quite shocked,” Jack added in a grumble. “Kella knows full well that that’s an offense against our people, our god, and our traditions. Matches get made when they’re meant to, and the damn festival’s only three months away from now. But she did it anyway. Luckily, the man was honorable and had chosen to contact me rather than take advantage of her when the match didn’t turn out as Kella hoped. It could have been worse, much worse.”
If Kella had been a man, the potential penalty for attempting a woman was also far, far worse. A father could opt to have a man castrated from touching his daughter prematurely. But once that barrier was crossed, some men would touch the girl further. Sometimes, if they felt they would be blamed anyway, would still have sexual relations with the girl, being ‘damned anyway’. That wasn’t unheard of. There was definitely something honorable in admitting to a girl’s father that mating had even been attempted, even if the man was not responsible, even if it was done by accident.
“Kella is a good girl, and yet she did this unspeakable act. That makes me fear for all my daughters. I want you to understand that this is not acceptable. You will wait until your time, and not one second too soon. Is that perfectly clear to you all?” he asked in a firm tone.
“What about Graham?” Jinga asked nervously.
Jack sat in the chair that he had pulled out to the center of the room. “Honey, if Graham touched a girl before his time I would be the last person he’d have to worry about, and he knows it. Even Thorton knows that much.”
Even Thorton? Thorton looked over at Graham, who only met him with a shrug that seemed to say, “Why are you surprised? You know you’re the ‘bad kid’.”
“It was horrible of me, Daddy
. I’m so sorry,” murmured Kella miserably.
“I’m sorry, too, Kella. Please bring me the paddle I brought in,” Jack told her, gesturing to the desk next to Kella with a nod of his chin.
There was a leather paddle that was practically a family heirloom. Thorton had personally outgrown it when he was nine, the age when Graham and Thorton had graduated to the strop and the belt, but Thorton knew that the leather paddle was still commonly used on the girls… even Jack’s wife, Aunt Queenie.
That’s not the paddle that Kella had clasped in her hands like it was a snake willing to bite her. The paddle that she held in her hands was wood. Thorton knew that paddle, too, but he hadn’t seen it in years. It belonged to his mother—who was never strong enough to really put it to very firm use, but before his father’s death, it had been his own father's instrument of choice to use with his wife. On the once-in-a-blue-moon occasions that Thorton’s mother would spank him as a child, the paddle would come out. The last time she had strength enough to take him in hand, however, he had been seven.
It seemed odd to see it in the hand of Jack, and ominous. Even Thorton remembered his tiny, frail little mother packing a wallop with that thing!
For once in his life, he didn’t envy Kella one jot.
“Please, Daddy. Not this,” Thorton could hear Kella beg, but she was so quiet she was barely audible.
“I’m only going to teach this lesson once, Kella,” Jack warned. He looked up at the other girls, who shifted nervously in their seats. “Aren’t I, girls?”
Quickly, he was answered with a chorus of, “Yes, Daddy.”
He grunted and grabbed Kella’s hand and flipped the girl over his thighs and clamped an arm around her. Thorton could see all the girls purse their lips with nervousness as they watched their sister, who had forever been their ‘example’ of how to be, actually go into this position.
Jack didn’t spank with the paddle right away. He had flipped Kella’s skirts up, revealing her panty-covered bottom, and quickly peppered it with a volley of firm spanks with only the palm of his hand. The exposed skin of her bottom was immediately turning pink, and she gritted her teeth together to try to keep from crying out in front of her sisters. She ground her toes into the floor under her, trying not to struggle against her father’s hold.
Such a moment was never to be so eloquent. It didn’t last long before a sob escaped through her trembling lips, a choked, “No-o! Oh-owe!” But Jack’s spanks didn’t lighten up. If anything, they came down quicker and harder, one after the other. “No, no, no, no….” Her voice was a whisper at first, and then became louder. “No, no!” She started to struggle. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
Thorton and Graham slowly eased their hands around their ears as they watched, unblinking. She was beginning to shriek. Surely the servants could even hear, at this point, what was going on. Maybe even the neighbors. Maybe the entire planet… And the paddle hadn’t even been used yet.
Girl spankings were so much different than what Jack would give to Thorton. There was no ‘warm up’ like this. There was no process. Lately, Thorton would end up saying something that would have Jack whip his belt off mid-sentence, and that was that. Maybe it was better that way. At least he didn’t wail like that. He couldn’t—Graham would never let him live it down.
Surprisingly, just when they couldn’t think the spanking could get any worse or that Kella could get any louder, Jack grabbed hold of her panties and ripped them down to mid-thigh. Kella’s whole body seemed to flush bright pink in misery.
It became suddenly awkward to even watch. Not too awkward though; it was simultaneously impossible to look away. “I should go in there…” Graham told Thorton, worried.
“He’s barely touching her! She’s hardly pink!” Thorton hissed, grabbing Graham’s upper arm. Besides, the last thing Kella surely wanted was her younger brother to go in there and admit to witnessing her punishment. “She’s not used to feeling pain,” Thorton reminded. “Any pain!”
Graham must have agreed because he stopped, sighed, and looked back into the room.
The four-year-old was sobbing now, unable to bottle up her feelings about watching her sister get punished. The other three girls, and the mother, merely gazed on like they were watching a cruiser crash.
Finally, Jack reached over to the nearest table by him and grabbed the paddle into his hand again. “I don’t enjoy punishing you,” he promised his daughter. “I don’t like punishing any of my daughters. You’re all my babies—my reason for living! I don’t want anything to happen to you. I don’t want you to embarrass me and yourselves like this again.”
The cracking noise the paddle made on Kella’s deep pink, squirming bottom, was so sickening that Graham and Thorton put their hands over their ears again before Kella’s inevitable scream in response.
Kella’s spanking was beginning to seem less and less satisfying. She deserved it, certainly. What she did was unspeakable, but watching it seemed like a punishment in itself now. Still, as painful as it was to even watch Kella howl as the paddle left her flesh a dark, angry red, Thorton and Graham couldn’t pull their eyes away any more than Graham’s other sisters could.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! Thorton found himself flinching with every smack of the paddle, and Kella’s yelps and screams and pleas were audible enough even through his palms, which stayed pressed tightly against his ears.
It didn’t go on forever, maybe only twenty smacks with the paddle, but it felt like it lasted years before Jack set the wooden paddle back down. Kella was still yelping, still hollering, the pain still as real and unavoidable as ever.
Jack put his hand on the small of her back and shushed and calmed her until her shrieks morphed slowly into heavy sobs. “It’s over,” Jack announced. Eventually, he helped her off of his lap and she adjusted her panties and her skirts. “After you dress, Kella, I want you to go up to your room and stay there for the rest of the evening,” he told her. “No supper, no games. I want you to think about what you’ve done today.”
Kella nodded, too embarrassed and miserable to even reply with words, but it was now Jinga that needed comforting. Queenie had lifted the little girl into her arms, but she shifted the child over to Jack as soon as he approached.
“Oh, what’s with these tears, Sweetheart?” he cooed at Jinga, like it was some big mystery and she had just started to cry without reason. He continued to carry Jinga on his hip and cooed, comforted and rocked her as he, Queenie, and his other daughters left the room so Kella could collect herself and re-dress in peace.
Thorton and Graham quietly retreated and walked back to their room, tired of watching Kella move so gingerly. She wouldn’t sit down again for three days afterward.
Thorton was quick to stick his hands in his pockets casually when he and Graham re-entered their bedroom. “Wow. So, at least Uncle Jack’s just not strict with me. Sheesh!”
Graham sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah,” he agreed, then quieted for a second as he went deep into thought. “I just can’t get why Kella would want to take a risk like that. I mean… She knows better! I nearly swallowed my tongue when I’d heard! She must have really been in love, you know?”
“Maybe. But I tell you what—I wouldn’t ever attempt a woman who’s attempted another guy,” Thorton divulged. “I mean, could you imagine? Your wife ever being touched by another?” He gave a dramatic shudder. “If it was my daughter, I would have topped that, Kella or no!”
* * *
It was strange to think on that memory now, but Thorton had done a lot of thinking about it since then. Even Perfect Kella could slip up because of a love-fancy.
Fifteen years later, Thorton was finally beginning to see what she might have been thinking. Penny… Penny was gorgeous. But so, so used. So touched.
But then, he hadn't met her father yet. He didn't seem to be anywhere; nobody had mentioned him yet. Penny was alone except for two dim-witted brothers. Of course, she had no choice but to repeat the same mistak
e over and over. She certainly hadn't had a guardian like Jack around to teach her any lessons. Thorton knew that Penny's father wasn't dead—Ellie had talked enough of the family to keep him sure of that, but come to think of it, Ellie had admitted that her family had as much use for girls as they had for a hole in the head. Possibly, Penny was what happened. Could Penny have been neglected? How was that possible? As naughty as she was, Penny was still enchanting!
She was absolutely a vision whenever she looked up at him with those shimmery, impossibly blue eyes and flicked that gorgeous, fiery red hair over her shoulder.
She was every bit as much in need of a spanking as Kella had been. The only difference was that Thorton was imagining doing it himself… and liking it.
* * *
Looking up at the very, very tall man before her, Penny found herself squinting, wondering how Ellie could have been silent about him. He was even more unusual than Thorton, and not just because of his height. There was something off about him that she couldn’t put her finger on. Maybe it was because his height was made that much more obvious because he was slimmer and not as muscular as Thorton was. Maybe it was a strange tint of purple in his brown hair that was only visible when the light hit it just right. Maybe it was simply because he didn’t smile like Thorton.
And unlike before, Graham was happy now. It was apparent. His eyes were twinkling, but his mouth stayed in a firm line, even as Graham pushed Thorton back and closed his hand around hers.
Graham's hand felt like he had been baking out in the sun all day. It had a heavy, dry warmth. His skin was odd feeling, too. She wanted to say his hands were calloused and smooth at the same time… His skin had a certain amount of thickness to it that she was unused to; like polished leather.
He didn’t shake her hand, just squeezed it and held onto it, as if he wasn’t clear on the proper procedure. “You are absolutely lovely,” he finally said over the music. “Ellie told me you were pretty, but she hadn’t said how absolutely beautiful you are. Thorton, wouldn’t you say she reminds you of a fireflower?”
Learning to Blush: Swarii Brides, Book Two Page 9
