worse. Now to business.” His voice was lowered, his gaze anxious.
With swift movements, he fixed the gag in place and buckled the straps behind my hair. Instantly I felt humiliated and ashamed. But my anger was quickly turning into white heat as a steady pulse started to throb somewhere down below.
He knows how much I love this…
Arousal, laced with fear, flared through me as his dark look swept over me.
“Stand up.” He made no move to help as I struggled to my feet.
“Strip.”
I did it, fumbling with ribbons and laces, taking an age to achieve what my maid would have managed in mere minutes. He watched in silence. Under his smoldering study I grew nervous, finding the bows at my neck knotted so tightly that I gave up.
With an impatient sigh, he wrenched at the ribbon, snapping it apart. As he did it he murmured softly in my ear, “You try to prolong this, ma’am? You earn extra. I’m in no mood to be crossed.”
At last it was done. My garments lay in a frilly heap, my naked self cruelly exposed in the cold light from the grill. His look grew darker.
I whimpered in protest as lust mingled with fear.
A strange look came over his face.
“You find this too harsh? I know, my love. But it’s a vital lesson, and one you must learn if you’re to get through the Season alive. For now, you must simply submit. Understood?”
I nodded, tears squeezing out. As I bowed my head to hear him pronounce my fate, I cursed my rash decision to conceal where I’d been. Today, for some reason, he took this badly. Did London put him out of sorts? Or was it my being here?
My mind raced.
My lordly husband had unusual tastes and a checkered past. This was his first London Season with a wife in tow. Was I de trop ?
“Hold up your breasts.” His command made me jump. Now I saw my fate in his hands. He passed the long, thin lashes of a flogger through his fine fingers.
With one final, piteous look, I closed my eyes and waited.
The whip trailed over my quivering skin, teasing my nipples with a long, sinuous stroke that sent a shaft of flame straight to my groin.
“Open your eyes. I want you to watch.”
As I did so, I saw he’d lifted a piece of dark velvet from a large picture frame propped against one wall. It held a mirror showing me naked, gagged and ready for punishment, breasts pink, swelling with wicked excitement and growing rosier by the minute, my eyes large and bright with unshed tears.
“Seeing yourself enhances the effect.”
His voice made me tremble. His mouth curved into a cruel smile, making his reflection even more striking. He surveyed me from the looking glass, elegant and urbane, his handsome face edged with daylight, his lithe figure clearly aroused.
I felt an answering throb somewhere deep below, where my tiny place was starting to pulse.
I don’t care what he says. We’re at play.
The thought sent eager heat rippling through me, raising my nubs to hard, jutting points.
I saw a flash from his eyes, then without warning the first blow landed, a sharp snap of lashes that seemed to cover every angle of my curved, swollen breasts.
“One. Hold them up again. Pinch them a little.”
I did it, pleading with my eyes, still forbidden to speak. I felt my belly grow tense with arousal. Glancing down, I saw, his trousers bulged with all I needed, all it would take to turn this torment into bliss.
Worse, I sensed he found it hard to contain himself. His urge to confine me burned hotter than his own need for release. The strain was starting to show.
“Two.”
This time the blow landed from the other side. His eyes gleamed as he struck again, this time full across my bosom. I blinked furiously to clear away the tears welling up as he lashed twice more at my smarting breasts. But for once, it seemed, my distress had no power to move him.
Now he began to fondle them, his hand cool on my punished globes, his fingers cruelly tight on my pebble-hard nipples. In the mirror I could see the bulge of