She never had been lectured before. This was a good one. She frowned, feeling quite chided, although the blush he was sending to her cheeks from his obvious concern to her was actually quite nice. “I might have reacted poorly. But my feelings were hurt,” she admitted.
“I’m sorry, Alice. But that certainly wasn’t my intention. Surely, I will be hurting your feeligns unintentionally in the future as well, and I would appreciate it if you didn’t go frolicking about at dusk in the Otherworld without even leaving a note as to where you thought you were going,” he snapped, sounding completely exasperated. She made him emit something sounded like a cough, a grunt, and a sigh. “I’m just getting angrier every moment. And sick, because you have no idea what nearly happened to you!”
“Gory death?” she guessed, feeling like a well lectured child. She felt a protective squeeze on the back of her thigh where is hand was holding her in place. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how dangerous it was,” she told him.
Moriarty locked his jaw and was silent as the trudged on towards the tower in the distance.
* * *
Moriarty wasted no time in finding Ashcroft, who surprisingly was in the middle of having what sounded like pretty graphic, violent sex with Charlotte. The man was understandably vexed when he answered the door to find him there, but he immediately dropped his surly attitude as soon as Moriarty said what happened, and even more so when Moriarty was halfway through the name of “Lachlan”, which caused Ashcroft to turn back into the room, grab his shirt, for he wasn’t wearing one, and then was close behind Moriarty all the way up to his bedroom, where he had put Alice.
Alice had quickly washed up, and now her hair was wet, efficiently rid of the black demon blood that had covered her and her coat, and she met them in her towel.
When he had carried her back to the tower, Moriarty had felt sickened to his stomach. Not because she had just foolishly left him during dusk either, but because he found it impossible not to consider what had nearly happened to Alice. The sensation he had felt was like having his stomach stretched, maybe because it had spent so much time in his throat as he’d rushed to track down where she had gone.
And certainly he was upset with her. But seeing her now, in nothing but a towel, unable to even make eye contact with him because of her obvious remorse, he felt nothing but absolute adoration and concern.
He was pleased by the way Ashcroft looked at her thoroughly without him having to demand it, making sure she hadn’t come to harm, making sure not to touch her in any way that would make Moriarty or Alice uncomfortable. But the man couldn’t hide his confusion—he wore it like a mask on his face, obvious to all.
“She is certainly an odd nymph. I understand why Lachlan couldn’t place what she was,” Ashcroft finally said, his voice in a hum. “Do you have any idea as to who your sire was, Alice?” he asked her.
* * *
Alice couldn’t help but be intimidated by the wizard from the moment he had stepped into the room, and wondered how it was possible that Moriarty wasn’t intimidated, although she did realize that he called him ‘Master’, a term for which she had never heard outside of books. She wondered if Moriarty was Ashcroft’s slave for a moment until Ashcroft seemed to bend to Moriarty’s obvious concern by overlooking her arms and legs and face, looking for bruises or signs that might give him clues as to the night’s mysteries.
It was clear that if Ashcroft ever was Moriarty’s true ‘master’, he was not so anymore. The way Ashcroft talked over her head towards Moriarty was emblematic of a close friendship. But Ashcroft wasn’t very personable. He wasn’t smooth or soft-spoken, and she didn’t care for his choice of words, which stung her. “I’m not a horse, you know,” Alice said peevishly. “I wouldn’t call him my ‘sire’. And no. Nobody knows. I’d never had a private conversation with my mother, though I do know that he never made even the slightest attempt to rescue her or to see me.”
Ashcroft frowned. “That wouldn’t be unusual. Not many men would want to face an angry hive. I don’t know if even I could make it out alive if outnumbered enough.” Suddenly he reached up and cut off a lock of her hair with his knife.
She gasped and grasped the lock with her fingers. “Hey!” she protested. “What was that for? You just can’t cut my hair!”
Still, Ashcroft offered no apology. “It couldn’t be helped. I need it for an experiment I’ll be doing. But if I had to say what you are, I’d say you are a witch. I just wouldn’t know what sort.”
“What sort?” she echoed, seeming horrified by this announcement. “There are sorts? How would that be possible?”
“How isn’t it possible?”Ashcroft replied. “Your parents both had to be immortals. And how they met, I do not know. But I do know that there are very few accidental births. You were a planned child from a planned relationship, Alice. Let’s just see what the plan was and why and by whom.”
This was quite a realization, one that made her close her mouth in disdain and wonder if she had ever gotten such an undeserved, warming compliment. Though she was certain Ashcroft didn’t mean it that way, that he said it much more like clinical fact. But that made it sound even better. She had never thought before that she might not be a mistake…
Ashcroft gave her a comforting pinch on the chin and then straightened his shoulders and turned to Moriarty. “She’s quite fine from her encounter, Moriarty. You don’t have to hover like she’s on her death bed. Probably a good talking-to about traveling outside by one’s self is in order, especially without saying where she’d gone to. The night could have gone very differently.”
She stuck out her bottom lip with concern over the statement. She was sure, unless she’d misheard, Ashcroft just advised Moriarty to scold her, or worse.
“You don’t have to talk about me like I’m not sitting right here,” Alice pouted, her cheeks flushing.
Ashcroft looked down at her. “Alice, you should thank your lucky stars that you have a Huxian on your side and who was able to find where you’d gone to so quickly. That’s all I have to say.” He cleared his throat. “Get a good sleep, both of you. I will see you in the morning.” He bowed his head and quickly made his exit.
Alice slowly looked back up at Moriarty now that they were alone, and felt pinched up with anxiety over the expression on his face. Alice had realized, with dread, that he wasn’t a good actor. His role-play was far under acted. He looked like a man who was just holding himself back from spanking the daylights out of her. His exasperation and frustration was palatable.
But she found out that she wasn’t worried about getting a spanking. She was worrying that he was too upset to do it—and too upset to want to have anything to do with her at all. He had to think she had been too stupid to want to be with. She had run away to spare him… But she had completely messed up her endgame, and perhaps it wasn’t her decision or one she should have made for him.
It was so… so honey nymph to be so narcissistic. She hated herself for it. She hated that side of her. How had she been so thoughtless? So childish? She was beginning to feel sick to her stomach about it. Had she ruined everything with Moriarty by assuming he didn’t want her?
She clung her towel closer to her chest and pulled up her legs to the bed she sat on. “Are you going to spank me?” she asked, and amazed herself by hearing a threat of hopefulness pollute her words.
* * *
He was so angry with her that her cuteness was almost lost on him. Almost. Her words fell off her tongue too innocently to be ignored. She looked so divinely remorseful.
He huffed, eyeing her wearily. “Do you have any idea how much you frightened me?” he asked her, tugging his blood soaked shirt off and throwing it into a basket on the other side of the room. He reached into his dresser for another, his eyes never leaving her.
She shook her head in response. Of course she couldn’t have any idea how much, because she obviously didn’t know how he felt about her.
He tugged on a fresh shirt with quick, jerky
movements. “I like you so much that it scares me half to death, Alice,” he admitted, turning towards her. “I’m sorry I left earlier, but that’s why. I didn’t want to have sex with you if it didn’t mean anything. And I didn’t want it to mean something, either. I didn’t know what to do with myself. And so I did nothing.”
“You don’t want me?” she asked, her green eyes shimmering at him.
He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “No, I want you. Very much.” He suddenly threw his arms down with a firm, frustrated jerk. “And you have no idea how extremely strange that is to me. I’ve never had a woman of my own—and I’m nearly eight-hundred, Alice.” Her eyes widened with surprise. “That’s a long time to be a bachelor! I thought I was quite happy being one. But when I took you out of the hotel room, do you know what I thought? I realized I was happy, and it wasn’t because I was a bachelor. Because you were mine, and I had an excuse to call you mine. When you were suddenly better—I realized that I didn’t have that excuse any longer…”
She averted her eyes coyly for a moment, although she was hanging on his every word.
“Do you… do you understand what I’m trying to say?” he finally asked, looking surrendered.
“You’ve never been in a monogamous relationship,” she simplified. She stepped up onto her feet and walked up towards him and slung her arms around him. “I’ve never been in a relationship at all, so this will be new to me, too! But I really want one with you… I just thought you didn’t want anything to do with me at all! That’s why I left; so you wouldn’t have to be mean.” She squinted. “Maybe that was stupid, but I had good intentions.”
Silly, silly intentions. He wrapped his arms around her and allowed himself, for a very fulfilling moment, to realize that her feelings were mutual—she did like him. Still, this moment felt tainted by his all-encompassing worry of what he’d rescued her from. “Alice?” he said, kissing her forehead, remembering how close he was to not having this moment, from completely losing her.
She looked up at him, her long lashes fluttering, and then she nuzzled into his chest. “Mmm?” she asked dreamily.
“That was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard,” he told her flatly, and her eyes went back up to his face, shiny with fear and confusion. “Even if there weren’t monsters—what were you going to do in the dark? In the snow? Freeze to death? Did you think I’ve nursed you for the last month so you could go out and freeze yourself to death?” He pulled her away from his chest and gave her a good shake.
“I said it was probably stupid!” she defended, looking shocked, the blush back on her face.
“Probably?” He found himself beginning to massage his temples. “Alice, go into the bathroom and get the wooden hairbrush from the drawer.”
“W-why?” she asked, looking like a hunted deer.
“Because I’m going to give you a good spanking with it, is why.”
No one in history had ever looked so stunned and confused as Alice had at that moment. “But… But why? I thought we were just having a moment!”
“We were having a moment, and then I remembered that if I hadn’t had an epiphany as quick as I’d had it, you’d be currently getting chewed on. Hairbrush, now,” he ordered, pointing into the bathroom. “I’m not playing games here,” he added, when she hadn’t moved yet. “I’m trying to teach you how to stay alive. Unless you can claim you had it in you to fight about a dozen more of those things?”
She shook her head.
“Well, do you know how to make a fire out in the snow?”
She shook her head again, her shoulders slumping.
“Get that damn hairbrush,” he ordered, rolling up his sleeves. Finally, she disappeared into the bathroom, her cheeks bright pink.
Alice returned just as he was pulling a chair into the middle of the floor, turning the hairbrush around in her hands. “I don’t quite understand why you can’t use your hand!” she finally protested. “I admit I probably earned… you know—punishment—but this will hurt!”
“I do hope so,” he said, snapping his fingers and holding out his hand.
“Don’t you at least want to make up first?” she asked, extending her bottom lip with disappointment. “Kiss?”
Of course he wanted to kiss her—but he knew once he started, there would be no way he’d be able to stop. And she seemed to know it, too, because she pouted more visibly when he arched a dubious eyebrow at her. He snapped his fingers again, and with a groan, she slapped the brush into his empty hand.
He took her arm, ripped her towel down and had her step out of it, trying to ignore hoe she shimmered in the lantern light of the room, and escorted her over his knee. As he adjusted his knee to put her bottom up higher, like a target, she was already trying to put a hand back to cover her bottom. “I think we should put in some ground rules. A safe word?” she squeaked pleadingly.
“There are no safe words, Alice. This is punishment,” he informed sternly.
“I have a low pain tolerance!” she reminded, squirming desperately. “Your play spanking really stung!”
“Not enough. You’re not going to like this like you liked that,” he assured, pinning her hands to the small of her back and adjusted her so that her bottom was a little higher.
Her bottom was just as pretty as he remembered it. Golden skinned, heart shaped, and naughty. This wasn’t going to be too much of a chore at all.
Or so he thought, until he brought the hairbrush down on that beautiful bottom and she showed him all the fight that she should have saved for the demons earlier on. She was an absolute wildcat! “No!” she screamed on the very first smack, trying to squirm forward off his lap.
He had to adjust again and clamp his thigh down on her kicking legs and then brought the back of the hairbrush down again and again, fast and hard.
She cried like a wounded animal.
“Alice! Settle down, we’ve barely started!” he snapped firmly.
“It hurts! It hurts! Don’t! Please stop!” she responded, her voice already choking into sobs.
He clenched his jaw. SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!
Her bottom was turning a delightful shade of red, but she was already sobbing. His heart wrenched for her. Which was ridiculous! She was the one out making foolish decisions, trying to get herself killed in more ways than one! “See here,” he said, continuing to smack her bottom with the hairbrush with resolve. “You’re going to get every damn smack you deserve, and not one less.”
“I’m sorry!” she cried, sniffling pathetically.
“I know, Darling,” he told her tenderly, and brushed the knuckles of his fingers over her bottom. “We’re not going to be in this position again, are we? Certainly not for the same thing.”
“No!” she promised whole-heartedly, curling her toes.
“Good girl,” he told her, but then continued to spank her.
Although he always respected husbands who took their wives in hand, he had never realized the cliché, ‘This hurts me more than you’ until that very moment. It was hurting him to watch her cry so miserably. Still—he had seen it to be too effectual for other men, and couldn’t stop prematurely. SLAP! SLAP! The spanks cracked through the room, even over her shrill cries.
Until finally he put down the hairbrush, sighing. “It’s over, my angel,” he put his hand over her hot flesh, blushed to a deep red. He was absolutely sure that it would take time for her to forgive him. After all; it seemed to be her first discipline spanking, and she was from the modern world where she couldn’t have been used to spanking as something for a girl to worry about.
But, not ceasing her crying, she surprised him by scrambling off his lap and then climbing back into it, throwing her arms around his neck and burying her face into his chest as she cried out the remainder of her tears. “I really am sorry!” she choked out as he softly smiled and rested his cheek against the top of her hair, wrapping his arms around her as if to keep her naked body warm with his arms. “I didn’t mean to worry you, o
r to have you come get me. I just… I didn’t want to be rejected. I should be used to it by now, but I’m not.”
He could go to sleep forever in her golden curls, he was thinking, spinning his fingers around her tresses. He really wondered if he could reject her if he tried—if Ashcroft had advised him to break all ties. If Moriarty didn’t decide to try to marry the girl… What would he have done when he came into the room, if she had still been there when he’d come in?
He would have become ensnared instantly. He knew it. He had too many of these warm, tender little feelings lately. When Alice was around, he was drowning in those warm little feelings. Like right now; he could have held her and comforted her forever.
“Alice,” he told her. “I could no more reject my own heart. I’m more worried about you losing your affection for me. I’m supposedly hard to get on with.”
“I’ve never imagined someone so easy to love,” she told him softly. “I’m completely taken.” They held each other for a very long time. “Although it seems I’ll forever have your handprints on my poor bottom,” she added with a dramatic pout.
He chuckled. “Forever and ever,” he agreed, and kissed the top of her head.
Chapter Twelve
Although it was getting late, and Charlotte was certain she’d never felt so sore, inside or out, in her entire life, she wouldn’t leave him by himself in the study. It was dark, and she wanted his company, and she knew for certain that he preferred having her company, as well. He was always thrilled especially when she looked curiously over his shoulders, or asked him a simple question.
To whatever she agreed to with Lachlan more than a month ago, she found that she wished his side of the bargain had never been completed. She wished she hadn’t taken so much of Ashcroft’s knowledge. Not that he didn’t seem to know more than what he had written down; he certainly did. In his long years, he had learned so much that she realized even the books that filled the walls floor to ceiling couldn’t hold all he knew.
Otherworldly Discipline: A Witch's Lesson Page 21
