by Emily Tilton
Her pretty blue eyes widened. In them he thought he could see, very distinctly, that she had just remembered what Eric had said about spanking her right here in the president’s office if necessary. Her chest heaved rather distractingly in the lovely lace-accented bodice, with a panicky little breath, and she swallowed hard. Eric’s own need to be in the limousine, alone with his bride, kissing her and perhaps getting rather fresh with those sweet breasts, swelled, quite literally.
He felt glad, at least, that Mrs. Lowry had gotten some of what she had hoped to get from the exchange—perhaps they could get away even quicker now.
And Lily did turn to the older woman in the business suit and say, “Yes, thank you, Mrs. Lowry. I appreciate it, too.”
“Oh, not to mention it. Why don’t I start with you, Mrs. Burton.”
Lily bit her lip and her brow creased—whether at the notion she would have to go first or at her new name, Eric couldn’t tell.
“A little bird told me,” Mrs. Lowry said, “that you used a naughty word this morning, Mrs. Burton, and that you’re going to have a bare-bottom spanking for it tonight, before bed. How do you feel about that, you bad girl?”
Every ounce of good will he had tried to maintain to this point for Mrs. Lowry evaporated in an instant. He looked at Lily’s bright red face, at the tears that had come immediately to her eyes, and thanked heaven for his convictions and his instincts. He didn’t care if it meant sacrificing his opportunities in the administration or the subsidized honeymoon: he knew exactly what he had to do.
“That’s it, Mrs. Lowry,” he said. He put his arm around Lily’s waist and drew her away from the odious woman, putting both their backs to her and not caring at all what venomous expression might occupy her face.
He looked over at the president, who had been talking genially with the doctors. “Thank you, Mr. President,” he said. “Lily and I will be going now.”
Eric saw the president’s eyes go to Mrs. Lowry, watched him frown. “But…” Wanamaker began.
Then Lily surprised him very greatly. She said, “Thank you so much, Mr. President. It was an honor to meet you.” It almost sounded like she had a giggle in her voice, as if Eric’s saving her from Mrs. Lowry had lifted her spirits.
“You’re welcome,” the president called, but Eric had already escorted his bride nearly to the door.
Chapter Ten
“I don’t think I was supposed to wear the wedding dress into the limo, to go away,” Lily confided to her new husband as they crossed the state chamber.
“Do you want me to take it off you right here?” the commander asked, not slackening their pace as he drew her onward toward the big doors that led to the vestibule, and from there outside. She could hear the humor in his voice—the commander’s voice. Eric. She should probably start thinking of him as Eric, shouldn’t she? Her husband.
To her own amazement, Lily giggled. The way he had ordered her to say thank you to that awful Mrs. Lowry, and the rage and fear she had felt as she remembered that she had better do it because otherwise she didn’t doubt that he would spank her right there in the president’s office, had somehow disappeared entirely. It had transformed itself into shame so great the tears had sprung into her eyes and she had felt faint when Mrs. Lowry had asked about the spanking for saying fuck, but then the next instant, it had become true gratitude to her new husband, when Eric abruptly told Mrs. Lowry that the horrible interview had come to an end before it had even begun.
“No, sir,” she said. She didn’t have any conscious idea why she had called him sir, and she thought it must have been intended lightly, even humorously, but it didn’t come out that way: it came out as if Lily had just acknowledged her husband’s right to be called sir, if he decided his young bride should address him respectfully that way.
They had reached the vestibule, where two security guards stood on the other side, looking a little curiously at them through the glass of the doors. Lily had tried desperately to hold up her train so as not to ruin it on the stone floor of the state chamber, across which so many shoes passed every day. She felt sure she had already done irreparable damage to the awful thing they had made her put on, so very different from anything she had ever allowed herself to picture herself in, for getting married or for anything else, since she had forced herself to give up all those princess fantasies at thirteen or fourteen. Nevertheless something in her—maybe the same thing that had said sir, she thought with an inward shudder—didn’t want to see the snowy purity of the beautiful gown ruined.
Eric stopped, and turned her to face him. Lily shot a look toward the other end of the hall, where it looked like the rest of the strange little wedding party had just started to emerge from the Lacquer Room. Had she really just been married to Commander Eric Burton by the president of Meliora, in his state office? Was she really Mrs. Burton, now? She felt the heat creep into her cheeks.
“Don’t worry, honey,” Eric said. “I might have just burnt a bridge or two, but they don’t have any power over you, now.”
She looked up into his handsome face, feeling her eyes go wide. “They don’t,” she said softly.
His brow clouded a little. “They don’t,” he repeated, “but, yes, I do.”
Suddenly he stooped, and she looked down in startlement to see that he was taking hold of the faille at the bottom of her wedding gown. She gasped when she heard the rip in the fabric, and saw the rent he opened with his thumbs and the obvious strength of his hands. Two seconds later, several feet of synth-silk lay on the stone floor, forever severed from the beautiful, awful wedding gown.
“Will you have to pay for it?” Lily asked fearfully.
“Probably,” Eric agreed, standing up and wearing a smile that Lily tried and failed to find anything other than winning. “But I think they were going to put the dress on my bill anyway, and the government promised that all the wedding expenses would be paid. Do you want to drop your veil, too?”
Lily frowned, surprised again that he seemed genuinely to care about her opinion. I can’t get fooled, the sensible part of her whispered. He’s just pretending to care about me.
Trying to sound like she knew he didn’t really intend to let her make any real decision, she said, “Oh, I’ll keep it,” but found she had put more feeling in her words than she intended. She did want to keep her veil, put it away in a drawer, and look at it sometimes.
Why? asked the sensible part. She refused to let the rest of her answer back. The ‘sensible’ part had gotten her into this mess, hadn’t it?
“Alright,” Eric said, and then he put Lily’s arm through his and guided her past the doors and into the crowded vestibule. To Lily’s astonishment it appeared that members of the media had gathered there, and actual camera flashes began to go off. Clearly Mrs. Lowry had planned a little scene to take place here at their final sendoff.
“Commander Burton,” someone shouted. “Where’s the president?”
Someone else said, clearly trying to get her clever question answered, “How do you plan to keep the peace at home with your criminal bride, commander?” Lily’s face got hotter than a blazing fire at that, and she felt her brow pucker.
“I’m sure the rest of the wedding party will be along in a moment,” said Eric calmly and without slackening their pace, though now they had to press through a crowd.
“Mrs. Burton! What happened to your dress?”
“Lily! How do you feel about punishment marriage? Do you think you’ll be disciplined tonight?”
Eric kept her arm linked with his, and used his right hand to press hers reassuringly. It only took a minute or two to reach the limousine where a driver waited in a military uniform. The man saluted, and Lily, who had never been one for authority even before she stupidly decided to hack the marriage database, had never thought she could be as happy to see a salute as she felt then.
Eric returned the salute, and the driver opened the door for Lily. Gratefully, she climbed inside, her mind and heart a welter of th
oughts and emotions she didn’t think she would ever be able to pick apart, let alone describe in words.
* * *
The drive up into the mountains seemed a journey also out of the reality she had thought she knew. As soon as the driver pulled away from the curb, Eric drew her close to him, even though she stiffened when he put his arm around her. Thinking about everything her new husband had said about the consequences for her of reluctance when it came to physical love, and frankly unable to deny that her bridegroom had a swoony sort of good looks that even Lily couldn’t deny despite having always studiously maintained to herself and others that she felt disdain for Prince-Charming types, she tried not to pull away.
She tried to steel herself for what she must now undergo, perhaps even in the limo, since the dominant men of her fearful imagination didn’t hesitate to undress girls and have them in cars or practically anywhere else. The panel dividing the passenger compartment from the driver seemed to shut out all possible sight of the happy couple in the rearview mirror, and a little display said that the audio to the driver was off. At least when Eric found he couldn’t keep himself from starting to violate his young bride right away, on the two-hour trip to the mountain resort he had chosen, Lily wouldn’t have to endure the humiliation of the driver knowing all about it, too.
But Eric only said, “Shh,” and held Lily next to him. He didn’t even try to kiss her, let alone pull up her dress or put his hand down into her bodice to fondle her breasts, Lily had half expected he would tell her to take her dress off so that he could see the lingerie he had picked out—the lacy white thong that felt so funny on her newly hairless privates, the lacy bra, the suspender belt and stockings that seemed in the mirror to frame the places where her officer husband would command his pleasure, when for the first time he entered his young bride.
He remained silent for a long time after that, and then he did something astonishing. As if it were the most natural thing in the world to take a girl you had met the day before into the mountains, in order to spank her and to deflower her with your hard cock as the first act of a torrid honeymoon drama of sex and discipline, he asked about her parents.
“They live in the East, right?”
Lily, taken aback, said after a moment’s confused hesitation, “That’s right. In Brightway. They… the people at the bureau… Mrs. Smith, I guess I mean… they let me call them this morning.”
“Were they happy for you?”
Lily blushed a little as she went from her mental preparation for allowing Eric to have his way right here in the limo to thinking about her nice, aging parents who had never—Lily thought—understood their daughter very well.
“Actually, yes. They… well, they almost said they’d told me so, but they didn’t go all the way there, and they just said that I…” Lily hesitated, suddenly not sure whether she might displease her husband with the next thing she had thought to say. The feeling of stopping herself that way seemed to her an entirely new way of thinking about the words that emerged from her mouth, and, rather to her surprise, she didn’t find it unpleasant.
“What, honey?” Eric prompted.
“Well, they said I should bring you to Brightway to meet them as soon as you could.” She looked up from the strong hand that held hers, on her white-faille-covered knee, into his eyes, and found them so kind she almost felt like she wanted to be kissed. Or maybe she felt like she wanted to know how bad it would be when he made her kiss him.
Eric smiled. “That will be fine. I can’t wait to meet them.”
“Really?” Lily asked, a little astonished.
“Really,” Eric confirmed. And then he did kiss her. Lily decided that she really didn’t want a spanking for not letting her husband kiss her, so she kissed him back, to see what it felt like. It felt like she probably would enjoy more kissing, and Eric gave it to her.
He kissed her and asked her questions, and told her things about his own life, for the rest of the trip. He did put his left hand gently inside her gown, eventually, and Lily sighed at the way it felt to have his hand there, molding the sensitive flesh and using his fingertips to make her nipples hard. She was sure he would make her take off her gown, or maybe rip it off her, then, but he didn’t, and seemed content merely to caress her, until she thought her answers to his questions must have stopped making any sense at all.
When they reached the resort, in a mountain valley through which a crystalline river ran beneath tall peaks that Eric said they would hike, “…once we’re ready to leave our lodge,” the driver brought them straight to a little house with a steep roof that Lily thought must be that very lodge, up a road that wound steeply through a number of such buildings perched on the mountainside.
The place where I will lose my virginity. The place where my husband will spank me and fuck me, because I belong to him now, even though I didn’t choose him. She got out of the limo on trembling legs, and watched numbly as the driver took several suitcases from the trunk.
Eric said, as if he had followed her gaze and understood it, “They gave you a lot of things for the honeymoon—mostly hiking stuff, but also some everyday clothes like dresses and underwear.”
Lily remembered what he had said about wearing skirts, and felt herself blushing again. The strange magic of the ride up into the mountains, with all the kissing and the talking, seemed to dissipate, and she looked at the man who would now, so soon, enjoy her just as he liked, for as long as he liked and then, afterwards, whenever he liked, with alarm. He seemed to sense the change in her, but this time Eric’s response, though not cruel, had less tenderness in it.
“Go inside, Lily, and take off your dress. Then wait in the bedroom. I’m sure you haven’t forgotten you have a spanking coming, before I teach you to please me.”
Chapter Eleven
Eric surveyed the luggage the lieutenant had placed neatly in the little lodge’s cozy living room. He saw a fire had been laid; the days were usually sunny and warm this time of year in the mountains, but the nights got cold, and Eric loved a good fire. An image came to him of having Lily atop a blanket in front of a blazing hearth, and he smiled. He felt sure he could realize that vision soon enough even for his impatient libido.
But first things first. He opened the French doors and stepped out into the deck, which faced south and had a view of the whole of Star Valley. To his right the sun’s last rays filled the valley with a magical glow, and he had the urge to call Lily out here to see it. He considered for a moment.
What does first things first really mean? The sun was about to set on their wedding day. Once it had gone down, it would not come back up again.
Eric went back through the living room, knocked on the bedroom door, and opened it to find Lily with a woeful expression standing by the bed in her sexy lingerie. The sight almost changed Eric’s mind again, as his palm itched to begin the spanking his bride had earned with her naughty language and his knee, too, seemed to itch to have Lily over it, her thong-clad bottom the highest part of her.
“Honey, I think you’ll probably find a bathrobe in the closet. Put it on and come out to the porch for a moment.”
“But…” Lily said, frowning. “But I thought…” Eric wondered if in her face he could detect a sort of confused, ambivalent arousal he hadn’t really expected, as if waiting there in her bridal lingerie had stirred thoughts of her first sexual submission to her husband with which Lily had trouble coming to terms.
“I know, honey. You want to get your punishment over with, and we will. But the sun’s about to set, and I want you to see it.” He smiled, and Lily managed a tentative smile back.
She didn’t move, though. Eric could almost read her disarranged thoughts: his virgin bride had certainly never worn lingerie before, and he could tell that it made her body’s movements seem not really to belong to her anymore, as they had that morning before Mrs. Smith had dressed her for her wedding.
If she went to the closet, she wouldn’t be able to avoid that feeling. She might well
catch in the mirror a glimpse of herself in her lacy underthings, the framing suspender belt, and the skimpy thong. Lily’s intellect was so strong, Eric thought, that perhaps she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep from looking at that mirror over the dresser, and would know from the way she had turned her eyes there—even more than she did from her sexy appearance in the lingerie—that Eric would soon claim her, just as he had decreed she be dressed this way.
He went to the closet himself, feeling Lily’s troubled gaze on the back of his uniform jacket as an almost physical thing. The door disclosed two luxurious, fluffy white bathrobes, one large enough for him and the other small enough for his bride. He took the smaller one from its hanger and turned around to see that Lily had remained motionless except that her hands, which at his entry into the room had hovered in front of her tummy as if she couldn’t figure out where to put them, had gone to cover herself in the classic gesture: left forearm across her lace-covered breasts, right hand before her lace-covered pussy. Her sweet blush, which had been absent when he came in, had pinkened her cheeks.
Eric smiled. Did the idea that he would put the bathrobe on her, to cover her up, make the idea of the lingerie more shameful? He loved the sheer complexity of Lily’s reactions to him, the way this strange concept of the punishment marriage seemed to answer their deepest needs—needs so fundamental that neither new spouse cared to name them.
One facet of Eric’s need made him peremptory, now. He held the bathrobe up in front of him and spread it open for Lily to slip into, but he said in a firm voice, “Put your hands at your sides, Lily. You’re not to cover yourself in front of me. If it helps, remember that I saw everything you’ve got yesterday morning.”
Lily took a gasping little breath through her nose, and a crease broke out on her brow. Her hands trembled as she moved them down to hang beside her hips. Eric suddenly remembered the defiant way she had undressed in the custody room just the night before, and he thought he could see in his new wife’s expression that she struggled now to regain that defiance, but without the same success.
