Her face burned almost as much as her sore bottom, but she dared not move.
She heard the footsteps retreat from where she was tied, and the soft swoosh of a chair as he sat down.
“As I am certain your guardians have advised you, Miss Blanchet, a woman of these times must be feminine, delicate, and demure. You do not have a great abundance of these qualities, but I imagine that you shall learn them quickly. However, if you are to be a suitable companion for my acquaintance, you will need to learn additional traits. You will learn to be submissive, to be mastered, and to please the man who keeps you. Not by playing the piano or singing, as you might have done in your former life, but by submitting your body to his dominance and pleasuring his organ with your orifices.”
As Lina tried to make sense of what he was saying—for the words were all words she recognized, but strung together in such a bizarre context she could make no sense of them—he made a sound like a tssk and rose from the chair.
In a moment, the throbbing skin of her backside was reignited by the warmth of his hand as he cupped an entire cheek. Lina made a weak noise, but dared not to bring further punishment upon herself, as the waves of heat that rolled across her tender skin were almost too much to bear as it was.
She gasped, however, when his finger slipped between her cheeks, swiping right over her dirtiest and most naughty place, before moving down, down, and then...
Her body jerked violently as his thumb pressed on the very center of her private place. A sensation that seemed many times more intense than the cool, funny feeling in her private parts until now, jolted her to life. It was very pleasurable, but also painful, and frightening.
“Aha,” he commented. And nothing more.
He rubbed against this place until she was writhing and squirming, making most unflattering and unladylike noises.
“I... Mr. Blackstone, I... please... I cannot... what... oh! Oh, I cannot—”
“You will be silent,” Blackstone said calmly, hushing her instantly. “Unless you desire to be punished again. Next time I shall use a whip, for I am growing quite tired of your impertinence and you have already displeased me greatly, Miss, Blanchet.”
As he said this, his finger dipped inside of her, and worse yet, her body, now outside of her control, pulsed around it.
“Hmm,” Blackstone commented. “Miss Blanchet,” he mused. “Are you the sort of very naughty girl who enjoys being disciplined?”
“Nnn...n...no, no, good heavens, no,” she stuttered, squirming helplessly, her body bucking against the restraints, mysteriously toward her captor. “I don’t... sir, please, I don’t understand what is happening, oh please. Please, stop... stop...”
But he did not stop. His finger rubbed against that strange part of her body until a screaming ache encompassed her entire lower body. She could feel that liquid was sliding down her thighs, and she wondered what it could be, and burned with shame as it simply poured from inside of her.
And then, just as she thought she could no longer stand it, the fingers were gone.
She panted, and then whimpered. The stimulation that had been so torturous was removed, and yet... she did not feel better.
She let out the deep breath she had been holding and it came out as a sob.
She squirmed in silence, and then shrieked when another hard slap tore across her burning skin. “We shall begin your training tomorrow,” Mr. Blackstone said. “Indicate that you understand by saying yes sir.”
Lina sniffled. She desperately wanted to say something else, but she could almost feel the heat of his hand hovering just above her skin, and the painful spanking was throbbing, stinging, and burning over her buttocks. Her skin was raw, and her body jerked just imagining another slap cutting through the pain with its searing heat.
She wanted to protest, so very much, for Mr. Blackstone did not understand, and it was all very unjust. She did not know what he meant about training, or the very strange things he had described about her pleasing this strange man, but she was certain it was all very naughty and most improper.
“Yes, sir,” she said quietly, giving up. She would make her case tomorrow, or better yet, she would escape. For now, her only goal was to prevent Mr. Blackstone from spanking her again.
“Good. Now, I shall remind you of what we have learned today.”
Smack.
Lina’s breath was caught in her throat for a moment before it left her throat in a humiliating gasp.
“You shall always look where, Miss Blanchet?”
Lina sobbed. “At the floor,” she bawled. Then, heart racing, she added, “Sir.”
Smack.
“And you shall speak when?”
The pain was too much. This last slap was burning on her hot, throbbing skin as though she had touched a poker. “Oh, please stop, please! I shall do whatever you—”
Smack. Smack. Smack.
Lina opened her mouth, but remembered that there was nothing she could do but take her punishment, if she wanted him to stop.
“This is also an important lesson, Miss Blanchet,” he said, putting his hand on her throbbing skin, making it ignite with heat again. “When you are disciplined, you shall accept your punishment, or you shall even thank me for it. But you shall never, ever, complain. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Lina managed to say.
“Shall I spank you again so that you are fully disciplined?”
Lina’s chest rose and fell rapidly, and her throat went dry. She balled her hands into fists, and her body shook as she tried to will herself to ask for her punishment. Between her legs, she could feel the stickiness of whatever it was that was flowing from her naughtiest place.
As she said the words, the thrilling, painful pleasure rolled through her abdomen again, and so when Mr. Blackstone’s hand came down upon her skin a moment later, she screamed, but she could not be sure whether it was from pleasure or pain.
“Yes, sir,” she said, mustering as much volume as she could. “Spank me again.”
Humiliation turned the skin of her face red and hot, and the burn of the spanking that was delivered by Mr. Blackstone came quickly, biting into her flesh and spreading across her bottom, red-hot, then warm, in waves.
Mr. Blackstone had stepped away again, though she could not place where he was in the room. Tears spilled from her eyes and tickled the sides of her face as they coursed over her cheekbones, and, because she was so placed, into her ears.
She sniffled, and waited, for there was nothing else to do. The possibility that Mr. Blackstone might rain down upon her with another succession of slaps lingered in the air, almost like the touch of his hand over her skin. She squirmed, and her face burned each time a wave of the unfamiliar, hot sensation licked at her insides, and made her pulse deep inside, down, between her legs, where she ached.
Oh my, she thought. These were naughty thoughts, and she knew it. She struggled to push them aside in her mind but could not.
At long last, without her hearing a sound as he approached, Mr. Blackstone was next to her. She knew, because she felt his hands as they loosened the straps on her wrists and ankles. But that was all he did, and her skirts were still over her head as she began, tentatively, to twists against the restraints, which started to come loose.
“You will return to your room. I shall call Mongrave to escort you. Miss Blanchet, do not entertain any wild ideas in your mind. You may dislike the predicament in which you find yourself, but I assure you that you have no other choice. The Harlowes, for one, would be impoverished and tossed into the street because of your indiscretions. As would you. If you are obedient and receptive to your training, you will live a life of luxury, and your guardians will remain with what little wealth they have, and a renewed social standing.”
He was suddenly behind her again, and though he did not touch her, she could feel his presence on the surface of her skin. “You have,” he growled, “no choice.”
Lina fought against the urge to correct Mr. Blackst
one, particularly on the issue of her “indiscretion.” She chewed her lip until it nearly bled, and closed her eyes in fury. It would do no good to make her case to Mr. Blackstone now, and there was a terrible truth in his words. She could not inflict suffering on the Harlowes, if only for Anna’s sake.
She had no choice.
The idea slithered through her, and, like the burning of the skin on her bottom, and the sound of Mr. Blackstone’s voice, it was curiously frightening and pleasurable.
His voice was far away, near where the bookshelf that had admitted Dr. Doyle would be, when she heard him next. She wondered how he moved so stealthily; he was an imposing man.
“Free yourself and exit to the hallway when you are composed. Mongrave will escort you to your room. I expect,” he added, a feral purr in his voice, “to hear nothing of disobedience, so much as a breath of it, Miss Blanchet.”
She sniffled. “Yes, sir,” she said, to make certain beyond all doubt that Mr. Blackstone would see no further reason to punish her.
* * *
Her skirts were rough against her tender skin, but she held her head high behind Mr. Mongrave. She did not know if the servants were aware of Mr. Blackstone’s humiliating treatments, but she would not let them have the satisfaction of knowing that her bottom burned so much she could barely walk.
The rotund maid was turning down the sheets of her bed, and patted them with two brisk and professional strokes before looking up at her. Her expression betrayed no emotion whatsoever. “You’ll find in your bathroom the most modern of luxuries, Miss Blanchet. Have you used a hot water faucet before?”
Lina was dumbstruck, which didn’t seem to bother the maid, who walked efficiently around the bed and into the sitting room, which was connected on the far side to a bathroom. Lina followed, not knowing what else to do, and stared emptily as the maid showed her how the contraption worked. It was really quite remarkable: hot water flowed from the tap as though someone had boiled it freshly, but Lina was too stunned by the painful burning of her bottom, the still-stinging humiliation, and the shock of her change of fortune, to register much of what she was saying.
She nodded when the maid asked her if she understood, and the woman scurried away, with Lina standing in front of the bathtub, filling by the second with steaming hot water.
She very nearly let it overflow as she thought of each moment in Mr. Blackstone’s strange chamber. She was filled with fury anew at the wicked lie that Mr. Carrington and Elizabeth, and perhaps even that Dr. Doyle, had perpetuated, and she clenched her fists as she thought about it.
She must find a way to tell Mr. Blackstone the truth.
When she stepped into the bath, it was scalding, and it took some doing to achieve a decent temperature, by turning the taps to various states of open, and draining some of the water. She sighed. In the end it seemed almost simpler to boil the water, though she supposed a servant in the enormous home might see such a task differently. The fire was probably miles away in an estate this size.
Once the water had cooled and she sank into the luxurious bath, she closed her eyes and drifted through the wild events of the day. She did not know what was in store for her. What was a harem, and what did it mean to be part of one? Was that a fate worse than the fate of marrying Mr. Blackstone, a man she did not love? A man who spanked her like a small child, only in a way that... that did what? The feelings snaking through her body were impossible to decipher. They felt so very wrong, and yet the more she tried to direct her thoughts away from them, the more she returned to them, and when she thought of the humiliating scene that Mr. Blackstone had just played out, those wild feelings coursed through her body just as they had before.
At some point, replaying the touch of Mr. Blackstone’s hand on her bottom, caressing the red-hot skin, her fingers wandered to that place she instinctively knew was not to be touched, or talked about. Between the folds of her skin she found a slipperiness. Exploring it, enjoying it, she struck the center of that part, a tiny, hard nub, and the shock that raced through her body made her gasp and sit up straight in the bath.
She was breathless, and ached between her legs.
It was so very, very bad. So scandalous. So naughty.
But why did she feel the way that she did, and why could she not banish Mr. Blackstone—a beast, by all accounts—from her thoughts, or the sensation in her chest that took over when she thought of him.
She wanted very much to hate him, to find a way to escape him. And yet the cold sensation, sinking and rising in her chest, betrayed a very different feeling than the one she attempted to cultivate in her mind.
She fell asleep much, much later than she retired, and Mr. Blackstone haunted her dreams, where she knelt before him and he growled that she would be disciplined and punished, over and over again, while the ache between her legs throbbed away, unsated.
Chapter Fourteen
“Do you not think you have been a bit harsh?”
Rohan Blackstone said nothing as he crossed the library and helped himself to a snifter of Callum Doyle’s very expensive Scotch, brought back with him from a trip to Scotland. Callum could be so mercurial.
“And how is that, Callum? Was it not your suggestion that given the girl’s wanton behavior, she be found unsuitable for our purposes and sent on to Laroui?”
There was no reply from Callum, just a tap on his glass. Rohan turned to face him.
Doyle looked unhappy.
Rohan was not pleased, himself. The girl had seemed a perfect solution to their problems. She was not only acceptable, and in no position to decline their offer, but quite beautiful as well. He had been filled, for perhaps the first time in a great long while, with some optimism.
It had only been because of Doyle’s conviction that her behavior in London made her unacceptable for their purposes, that Rohan had let himself be so convinced.
“Of course,” Doyle said at last, but his voice lacked the conviction it had before.
There was a long silence, as Rohan fumed. No matter how he tried to suppress it, he had developed a fondness for the young girl. Even though he would still be able to enjoy her training, he could not help but feel a vacuum in his chest. The pain of it had caused him, he realized now, to treat her much more harshly than he might have.
He swallowed his drink.
“You are correct,” Rohan said, facing the wall. “I was much more harsh with her than required. A girl of such a temperament must be handled with more delicacy.”
Doyle said nothing.
Rohan turned to him, and anger began to flare inside of him, rising up to his neck and turning into heat beneath his collar.
Callum, accustomed to his friend’s temper, raised a finger in warning. It was Doyle’s duty, in their strange friendship, to rein in the irascible Rohan, to push him back inside of the boundaries of his carefully constructed facade and make sure that he remained there.
Rohan straightened his jacket and waited for Doyle to speak, for he knew that he would.
“It is interesting to me,” he said, much too slowly for Rohan’s patience, “that she was so insistent upon denying her impropriety with that young man.”
Rohan tugged at his shirtsleeves to straighten them and inhaled through his nose to calm his temper, which was yet again flaring.
“Ah,” Doyle said suddenly, shaking his head before taking a final sip of his drink. He seemed to have thought better of his own argument. “Any woman will tell any number of lies to defend her virtue. It serves as proof of nothing.”
Doyle rose, and clapped Rohan on the shoulder, careful to avoid his collarbone, which had never fully healed. “Laroui has already departed, as it is, and he shall be very pleased with your selection. I imagine your debt to him shall be considered paid in full.”
Rohan said nothing and stared at the volumes on his shelves, many of which were titled in French, brought back with him from many years of living in Morocco and France. He narrowed his eyes at the thought of Laroui, who would soon p
ossess the lovely Miss Blanchet, in exchange for keeping Rohan’s secrets to his grave.
He shook himself inwardly and swallowed the last of his drink before turning to pour himself another. Doyle was right; he knew that a woman like Miss Blanchet, who would so easily and wantonly have relations of any kind with a man while engaged, could not be trusted as a bride—especially not for this delicate situation, and all of the secrets within these walls.
“You are right, Callum, as always,” he said. “Good night.”
Callum may or may not have been planning to retire, but he took his cue, gave Rohan a brief nod, and left the room. Rohan fell into the sofa, sipped his drink, and brooded.
He had chosen Carolina Blanchet because he had very few suitable possibilities for a wife, should he wish to marry and live his life as he chose. Which he did. Among those choices there had been few virtuous women, and among those few women, even fewer beautiful women. Her beauty, by itself, might have taken the girl to a modestly decent marriage, but once Rohan saw her for himself he had been overcome by lust. Callum had been in agreement. He was, after all, the one who had scouted her.
When news had reached him of her disappointing and un-virtuous behavior, he had been unnervingly crushed. Before Carolina he had considered taking other women as wives, women who had marred their reputations and would have no choice but to accept the arrangements of his household in exchange for a stable and wealthy existence. He had been unbothered by their behavior. But Carolina, who he had first laid eyes upon in the stormy field, cheeks stained pink with the cold, hair disheveled, temperament defiant and glorious—Carolina’s “betrayal” had struck him deeply.
Callum had advised him to wait, to at least hear Carolina’s version of the story, or perhaps to decide if it mattered, but he had gone wild with jealousy, which had turned to anger, and then, because it was the sort of man he was, he had acted decisively. Cruelly, and—he liked to tell himself, anyway—without remorse. He had sent for Laroui, to whom he owed a great favor, and told him that he had finally located a perfect English rose for Laroui’s collection.
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