by Unknown
“Clarissa…” he said again. This time, though, it sounded more like sympathy, or reassurance. “You will enjoy my lessons. I swear it.”
She blinked back her tears. She wouldn’t cry, she wouldn’t! Terrified as she was, there was one small part of her that believed him, that needed desperately to trust that he’d told her the truth.
That he helped women, not hurt them.
He leaned over the table, and retrieved her untouched glass of wine. “Here,” he said, placing it near her hand. “Drink this if you think it will help.”
She grabbed for the goblet and downed the contents in three deep swallows.
And then his hand came out again, silently insistent. Patiently waiting for her consent.
She couldn’t look at him as she put her hand in his.
“Good girl,” he approved, pulling her gently to her feet.
She was immediately reminded that the bedspread had fallen from her shoulders earlier, and that she was nearly naked in this thin slip of a nightgown. But he ignored her state of undress as he turned and led her across the room to the bed. Oh God, the lessons would be in bed! How was she ever going to deal with this?
“Wait here,” he ordered quietly, then went about the room dousing the gas lights. He took two thick, pillared candles from the fireplace mantel, placed one on each side of the bed’s headboard, and lit them with a match he took from his pocket.
The room was now bathed in shadow, the candles throwing only enough light to illuminate the wide bed.
Clarissa watched as he retrieved the small strongbox from the floor next to his dinner chair and brought it across the room to lay it on the dressing table next to the bed. She swallowed hard. The tools of his trade were in there, the weapons he would use on her.
“I want you to lie down on the bed,” he ordered in his smooth, rich voice.
Outright panic gripped her at those bald words. “I can’t do this,”
she gasped. “I can’t!”
He caught her chin in his hand and forced her to look up at him.
His eyes were calm, his face relaxed. He certainly didn’t look like a sadistic monster. Still, she could literally taste her own fear.
“You can do it, and you will,” he assured her quietly. “I won’t hurt you.”
She was paralyzed, yet she knew she had to make a choice.
“Either you trust me, or you trust your future to him,” The Disciplinarian said, as if he had read her mind.
Clarissa’s knees almost buckled at that. She swallowed hard, but she knew her answer. She sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Good girl,” The Disciplinarian approved.
He was silent for a long moment, which gave Clarissa time to catch her breath and come to terms with the decision she had just made. She had yielded to him, placed herself in his power. When she finally found the courage to look up at him, he was watching her carefully.
“Move to the center of the bed and lie on your back.”
There it was again, that seductive command-that-must-be-
obeyed. She wondered briefly whether his success as The Disciplinarian had as much to do with women falling under the spell of his lush voice as with his actual instructions.
She scooted to the center of the bed and lay on her back, rigid.
She heard a creak of metal and turned her head to see The Disciplinarian opening the lid of his strongbox to draw something out.
In the shadows she couldn’t quite make out what it was. Then he turned toward her, and the mattress sagged as he sat at the edge of the bed.
He held a silk scarf in his hands.
“I’m going to blindfold you,” he said quietly. “Not to make you terrified of what I’m about to do, but in order to take away your sight so that your sense of touch becomes primary. Touch is a very potent aphrodisiac.”
“Aphro—what?”
“Trust me,” he said instead. “Lift your head.”
Her mouth went dry, but she did as he ordered. He wrapped the black silk around her eyes and tied it behind her head, shutting out everything in the room, even the smallest trace of light.
“Now,” he instructed. “Spread your arms out on the bed, shoulder height, palms up.”
Amazing how her sense of hearing suddenly seemed more acute now that she couldn’t see. And how his voice took on an even deeper, richer resonance.
She did as he asked.
“Good. Now spread your legs as wide as you can.”
“What?” She tried to sit up at that, but before she could move, his hands were on her shoulders, his mouth next to her ear.
“Calm, Clarissa, be calm. If you give me control, I promise I will give you a pleasure you’ve never experienced. If it would help, I can tie you to the bed to give you no choice in this, but I think you are strong enough, and courageous enough, to trust me. Are you?”
The challenge was there. She had agreed to these lessons, and now he was daring her to go wherever he led her in them. Perhaps she should ask him to tie her down, maybe knowing she had no choice would free her from her instinct to fight him at every turn.
No. He had given her freedom of choice, knowing how impor-
tant it was, and how little of it she had.
She spread her legs.
He was silent for an endless minute, and she would have given anything to see the look on his face. Surprise? Triumph?
She felt him rise from the bed. A moment later, the squeak of the strongbox told her he was taking something else from it. What weapon would it be this time?
No, that wasn’t fair. A silk scarf wasn’t exactly a weapon, unless you considered that it would allow you to assault the other senses.
“Clarissa.” He was back by the side of her bed. “I want you to relax, to let go of everything except your sense of touch. Concentrate, and tell me how this feels.”
She waited with bated breath, arms outstretched, legs spread-eagle, entirely vulnerable to whatever he had planned for her. And to her great surprise, she felt something soft brush against her cheek.
She jerked her head to the side. “What is it?”
“You tell me,” he challenged quietly. “Describe it.”
It felt soft, wide, round almost, with—
“Out loud,” he ordered.
“Smooth, caressing. A feather maybe, but it’s too big, too wide, and it has, um, tendrils, I think. I can feel something trailing behind as you’re running it down my face.”
“Good,” he approved. “Did you know that the skin is the largest organ of the human body?”
“I didn’t know skin was considered an organ,” she admitted.
“The biggest sensory organ we have,” he said, running whatever it was down past her jaw and along the side of her neck. She gasped at the feather light touch, and actually shivered.
“You have a lovely neck, Clarissa. A graceful, white, swan’s neck.”
“Charles thinks my neck is too long,” she said, almost under her breath.
“Did you know the neck is one of a woman’s erogenous zones?”
he said, ignoring her comment.
She tried to frown, but the movement of the feather, or whatever it was, felt too good against her skin. “I don’t understand your words. Aphrodisiac? Erogenous zones?”
“Pleasure points,” he explained. “Sensitive spots. Some women are very sensitive along their neck.” He dragged the feather slowly down to the hollow near her collarbone. “And here as well. How does this feel?”
It felt incredible. With only her sense of touch to rely on, her nerve endings were focused with rapt concentration on the soft brush of his strokes.
“Talk to me, Clarissa.”
How to put the intense sensation into words? “It feels… nice,”
she said lamely.
The feather moved from her collarbone to trail slowly along the outside of her arm. It stopped to flutter over her palm.
“And this?” Back and forth, back and forth, The Disciplinaria
n dragged the feather across her outstretched palm.
She was tempted to close her fingers around it to finally determine what this strange weapon was, but its soft, rhythmic motion was making her palm tingle, and she was afraid to do anything that might ruin the heightened sensation.
“Good,” she said, again at a loss for a better word.
“Hmm,” The Disciplinarian murmured low. “Obviously your
palm is a pleasure point. How about here?”
He dragged the feather to the inside of her wrist.
Oh yes, that was good, too, but not quite as pleasurable as her palm. He seemed to know it, and moved slowly on.
“Here?”
She gave a small gasp as the feather fluttered along the inside of her elbow. She’d never known she was so sensitive there. The subtle pressure of The Disciplinarian’s motion made her want to squirm, but only because she wanted something more…more pressure, more friction, more attention there. She made a frustrated little sound.
“Another pleasure point,” The Disciplinarian said, and Clarissa could hear the interest in his deep, rich voice. “You are a very sensual woman, Clarissa. Tactile. Physical. It is a beautiful quality.”
His voice rolled over her like a soft caress. She felt languid, yet at the same time finely-tuned, her senses heightened, waiting for whatever he’d do next.
And what he did next was scandalous in the extreme.
She felt the path of the feather as it made its way from the inside of her elbow to glide along her upper arm. He never slowed the route of his weapon as it left her arm to run up the swell of her breast. She sucked in a breath as he circled the soft mound, rising higher and higher to the very crest. Then the feather ran across the thin silk of her nightgown to her other breast, and he began a slow, back and forth motion from one to the other, varying his pressure, dragging the feather harder, then softer, over both her nipples, making them rise to attention.
“Beautiful,” he breathed.
Her hands fisted, and her breathing came in deep gasps, but she didn’t ask him to stop. The rise and fall of her chest strained the silk against her sensitive buds and increased the luscious friction.
“How does that feel?” he asked.
How did it feel? It was indecent, immoral, wicked, and she never wanted it to end. But she couldn’t trust herself to say any of that to him, could only pant helplessly at the exquisite sensation.
Too soon the feather left her breasts to run slowly down the outside of her torso, past her waist, and along the outside of her leg, which was bare where it peeked out from the side slit of her nightgown. With her legs spread-eagled, his feather had no trouble rounding the sole of her foot and beginning a path up the inside of her calf. Luckily, the gown covered her there, but dear Lord, he was going to go all the way up!
She gasped. “Please…”
But the feather never paused, and before she’d finished speaking, it had traced a path up her inner thigh and reached its goal: her very woman’s center.
Clarissa could barely breathe, paralyzed with thoughts of what he was going to do now. He too, seemed to hesitate, but a moment later the feather began a slow caress against her, stroking its softness against her own softness, up and down the length of her from the top of her tight curls all the way down between her legs to where her bottom made contact with the bed. The feather was separated from her skin by only the thinnest layer of silk, and up and down it went, setting a rhythm that seemed to call to something deep inside of her. She couldn’t, she wouldn’t respond, damn it, but her traitorous body seemed to have a mind of its own as it arched for more contact with The Disciplinarian’s seductive weapon.
She heard him suck in a breath. “My God, Clarissa. You humble a man with your uninhibited responses.”
But instead of giving her what she wanted, what her body was clamoring for, he drew the feather away.
With the sensual spell broken, shame hit her like a fist. What a wanton she’d been! What liberties she’d allowed him! She should be disgusted with herself.
Yet she couldn’t be, because she’d never, ever felt this way before.
Decadent. Dissolute. Debauched. And still wanting more.
“Clarissa…” he breathed. “Slide your hands up above your
head.”
He didn’t sound disgusted with her. In fact, she could swear that his own breathing had quickened. What did he intend with this new decree? She hesitated, and then slowly slid her arms along the mattress, up and over her head.
He gripped both wrists tightly with one hand and pinned them down against the bed. “Good,” he said, low. “Now, tell me. Did you enjoy what I just did to you? How did it feel? Be honest.”
She swallowed. She didn’t like being vulnerable, not physically or emotionally. She usually hid herself behind a wall of indifference; it was how she’d protected herself from Charles these last two years. “It felt incredible,” she heard herself admit.
“Good,” he said again, “because now we’re going to start your next lesson. I’m going to retrace the path I just took… this time with my fingers.”
He had her wrists firmly locked above her head in a powerful grip, and this time she actually did cede control to him, offering only a token struggle. How scandalously helpless it made her feel, to be entirely at his mercy!
“Relax,” he instructed. “Concentrate on how this feels.”
His fingertips began their journey along the side of her face, caressing her cheek. His fingers were feather light, almost as ephem-eral as his previous weapon had been, but she was keenly aware that he was touching her, feeling her, his skin against her skin in intimate contact.
Shocking. Shockingly powerful. And shockingly pleasurable.
The pads of his fingertips glided down her neck, and she
couldn’t stop her quick intake of breath. The feeling was multiplied four-fold, since each of his individual fingers seemed eager to trace its mark on her.
It was worse when he reached the hollow of her neck. The sensitive indentation by her collarbone was the target of all his digits, and he lingered there in particular with his index finger, setting a slow, deliberate rhythm, seemingly intent on driving her to distraction.
When she began to squirm from the sheer pleasure of it, he ran his fingertips slowly up her arm to where he held her wrists captive. He raked his fingernails lightly over the palms of her hands.
She gasped at the sensation and opened her hands wide, offering him more area, tacitly pleading for him to continue. Little shivers of delight radiated out from her palm and ran down along her arms and even farther down her body.
He indulged her for a delicious minute, then his fingers glided down along her forearm to the inside of her elbow and she thought she’d come up off the bed when he stroked her there. Back and forth he grazed her sensitive skin, and she could swear she almost felt his mouth on her, his hot breath, or maybe it was just because he was breathing so heavily.
And so was she.
His fingers moved on deliberately along her upper arm and
stopped when they made contact with the neckline of her gown.
But only for a moment. Then his bold hand slid across the silk to the base of her breast.
She gasped sharply, but that only served to make her breasts strain against the thin material. It seemed to be the only impetus he needed. She felt one finger start to circle her as the feather had, beginning at the base but going slowly higher, boldly tracing her soft mound until he reached the crest.
And paused.
Her breath was coming in short pants now, waiting for his next move, wanting it and fearing it at the same time.
She felt his fingertip settle on her nipple and was shocked to feel that she was already fully erect and straining for his touch. He slowly dragged the tips of his four fingers over the sensitive bud.
She had to grind her teeth to keep from screaming out her pleasure, but she couldn’t seem to control her body, which writhed and
bucked under his hands.
“Don’t stop yourself, Clarissa,” he said, his voice sounding oddly strained. “Tell me how this feels.”
“No… no,” she moaned, too mortified to admit the sinful sensations, head thrashing between her upstretched arms.
His hand abruptly left her breast and she did cry out then, and it was from the loss of his touch. But his roaming fingers were already busy working their way down her side, to slide scandalously along the outside of her naked thigh, down her calf, around the sole of her foot, to begin the journey up the inside of her leg.
Good God, he really was going to retrace the path of the feather!
She considered fighting him then, clamping her legs together to deny him access, but his hand was already at her knee, halfway to its goal. Time seemed to stop for her at that moment as several things became clear. Here in the dark, in this unknown place, where this stranger was taking such scandalous liberties with her body, she suddenly wanted to experience everything he offered.
She’d felt nothing but pleasure at his hands, a pleasure she knew she’d never feel with Charles. Since her husband was the one who’d turned her over to this man, a stranger she would never see again in her life, surely no one could blame her if she took what pleasure she could here, to keep with her through all the long, cold nights to come.
She let out a long breath.
“Yes. That’s it, Clarissa,” The Disciplinarian approved. “Let go of everything else and just feel.”
What she felt when his hot hand came to rest on her soft curls was simply indescribable, almost beyond her capacity to absorb it. Her body was alive, every inch of skin conditioned by this man over the last few minutes to be receptive to his touch. Eager for it.
Straining for it. When his hand began to move, she cried out at the sheer intensity of it and spread her legs wider.
“My God, Clarissa…” She heard his deep voice hitch in his
throat.
He anchored the heel of his palm in her curls and dragged his four fingers along the length of her, stroking her with a curling rhythm over and over, driving her wild, pulling up a handful of silk with his every motion. Her cries of pleasure matched the movement of his fingers, five strokes, six strokes, until suddenly he paused.
