by Louisa Trent
Until she felt a hand land on her shoulder.
She shivered then. Not in fear, though. Not in dread. In that same restless excitement.
Is this when he kisses me senseless?
All romance heroines were kissed senseless at some point during the story. What would that feel like, to lose all one’s senses in the press of masculine lips? To be blind, deaf, incapable of touch, smell, taste…
So long as she retained her bodily functions. Piddling while kissing struck her as a nuisance. And not at all romantic.
But no. There was no exchange of kisses, no loss of senses…no kiss. Instead, she received a command.
“Go over there, behind that stone facade,” he said, speaking low.
Dazed by the hypnotic tone of his voice, she went without saying a word. No rebuttal. No argument. No questioning. And not because of their prior agreement. Something inside her wanted to do as he bade her. Something inside her understood instinctively what he wanted and was fully and unashamedly amenable to it.
He said on a hush, “Loosen your coat and raise your skirts.”
Knowing that this must certainly be the very most exciting and adventurous experience of her whole entire life, second to only her prior ravishment, Tegan undid her coat and raised her skirt.
And if she did say so herself, she did so with fearless joie de vivre. An irony there, considering this was a tomb.
“You are naked, young lady.”
“A sore point between us, but nevertheless an important fact to state, but you tossed my only pair of drawers in the fire, sir.”
“You owned only one pair?” he seethed.
“Two, but the other pair were of lesser quality and would not fit in my reticule.”
“Owing to the reams of documentation you carried with you regarding my business practices, I presume.”
Obviously another sore point, for he faced her away and spanked her bare bottom.
He. Spanked. Her. Bare. Bottom.
She had just known this would be the second most exciting experience of her whole entire life, and she had not been mistaken. She, plain and lackluster Tegan Ellis, held this strong, wealthy, tough, tough man’s full attention. Yes, there was an element of trickery at work here. She had been behaving with intentionally cloying, even simpering sweetness, done solely to vex him. That she had succeeded in getting through his guard was eminently satisfying. A country bumpkin like her had provoked this coolly deliberate, controlled businessman to anger. Not so cool now, was he?
Always before, she had operated behind the scenes, never taking the spotlight onto herself. Most people looked right through her.
Sean Griffith did not. She had gotten under his skin. When she spoke, he looked right at her face, into her eyes.
Well, not at the moment, of course. Now, she was quite sure he was looking at something else. Rather thrilling, that, too.
Now, to keep the upper hand and turn his vexation into seduction. Then she could twist him around her little finger and have him do even more than he thought himself willing to do for Central Mine.
With that said, there was a disconcerting quality to her scheme. An ambivalence that left her at sixes and sevens.
First of all, she had never actively set out to seduce anyone. Oh, he said she had seduced him that first time, but despite what he said, she begged to differ. Then, he had been the one to ravish her. Which left her in a quandary. How was a genuine seduction done when precipitated by the woman? Was she up to the task? Did she have the necessary female wiles to accomplish her goal?
Secondarily, no one had ever laid a punitive hand on her before. Certainly not her gentle mother. And the idea that her distracted father would take her over his knee was utterly laughable. She had always had the run of the things: the household, organizing her dear papa’s reform engagements, writing his speeches, directing her own charitable and social activities. No one ever told her what to do. And now this. Orders. Corporal punishment. She hardly knew what to make of his show of male dominance.
Except his loss of control put her very much in charge. In a manner of speaking, she was holding the reins. Pull those leather straps just right, and she could direct this huffing and snorting stallion to go anywhere she pleased.
If this was seduction, she rather liked it. The power was redefining and highly illuminating.
Lamentably, she could not take full advantage of him and the situation. She was feeling too shaky and atremble for a calculated manipulation. Her thighs were slick with her body’s lubrication. Her nipples had gone to sharp points. The spanking had stimulated her far too much to influence the outcome. Half out of her head with yearning, for what only Mrs. Birch would know, she stood there without drawers, her bottom smarting, unable to catch her breath.
“Never go without underpinnings again, unless I order you to do so. Anyone would think you a strumpet.”
“Not to be picky here, sir, about semantics,” she panted, “but it might be construed that I am a strumpet. That is generally considered the meaning of a plaything, after all.”
From behind her came a strangled sound, a sound of outrage, perhaps, and then a shuffling of feet and a creak of shoe leather. Before she could decipher the rest, she found herself sprawled over his lap, in a facedown position, her bare and smarting bottom raised up in the air. Without her awareness of how he had accomplished the trip, he had seated himself on a flat stone tablet of sorts and had dragged her across his knees. And then his hand came down on her naked posterior again.
“This is for going without smallclothes.” Whack! “This is for your endless teasing.” Whack, whack. “This for your inability to behave.” Whack, whack, whack. “This is for your general all-around juvenile brattiness. Behave like a truculent child and be treated the same.” Whackwhackwhackwhack.
She was being spanked, in an Egyptian tomb, no less. The excitement of it all sent a current of shivery need to her privat—er, pussy. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, dear, dear.”
Goodness, but her bottom burned. His whacking palm must have reddened her flesh, a fiery sting similar to that of a sunburn. And to think her buttocks so prominently displayed too! The realization brought a blush to her other cheeks, the ones mentionable in polite conversation. She actually felt his gusty exhales on the fullness of her derriere. He was breathing soooo hard! So very hard. His frightfully quickened respiration actually tickled the crevice between her buttocks. Such naughty intimacy, his harsh breaths slipping inside there! She frantically strove to tighten the region, a determined contraction of her muscles, to keep his vision out.
“Stop that at once,” he rasped and held her cheeks apart as determinedly as she tried to close herself off from him. A contest of wills.
As she considered the horror of horrors of what he could see, another horrendous thought occurred to her.
Dear heavens! What if someone were to come in and see them like this?
Far from horrified, the pulse between her thighs beat stronger. Wetter. She gushed onto the leg of his trouser, a damp puddle confirming her loss of the upper hand.
The reins were slipping through her tightly clenched fingers. Her stallion was rearing up and taking her where he wanted to go, not the other way around.
Or was it really the other way around?
Perhaps, she wanted to go there too.
Whatever the case, in her extreme excitement over the potential for discovery, over the element of threatened danger, she was losing her grip on the situation. Once that happened, once she surrendered to all-consuming pleasure, there went her seduction.
She could hardly help herself. In her agitation, she began to weep. Real tears. Not her former theatrical tears. The tension rising inside her looked for an escape route. “I promise to be good, sir. Please, sir, I do. If you would but let me come upright again,” she wheedled.
“No. Now spread your legs.”
Still weeping, but quietly, she split her thighs a bit. “Like this, sir?”
“Better
,” he grunted and kissed her, a loud and impolite smack of his lips on the fleshiest part of her hindy.
Oh goodness, she was no longer damp. No longer moist. No longer wet or even gushing. Her pussy was puddling onto his trouser leg. Could he tell she had a puddling pussy?
He certainly must be able to tell when he touched her there, at the top.
“Your adorably plump clit,” he pronounced in the quiet of the Egyptian tomb, the inappropriate praise echoing in the emptiness and turning her face hotter than before.
His finger entered her, splaying her body.
“Pretty slit,” he crooned and sent another digit inside her, and then a third to join the two.
Without any knowledge or forethought on her part, her bottom began to pump, up and down, on his lap, inside an Egyptian tomb. “Oh, do not, sir,” she cried. “What if someone were to come?”
“The only one who will come here is you. Now hold still.”
Was he crazed? She could no more hold still than she could fly.
“Mmm,” she murmured, her coat and skirts falling over her head, leaving only her exposed bottom and limbs on view as she rubbed herself against him, no longer caring if she left a stain on his trouser leg.
Something wet was applied to her buttocks. A tongue?
Oh, Lordy, yes, what else but a tongue? He was tonguing her, and then biting her, as he fingered her pussy.
“Now, you are properly primed.” Two hands at her waist, he lifted her onto her feet, facing him. As her skirts began to topple, he barked, “Hold them up to your waist.”
She barely had the strength to do so, but somehow she managed. And with the lower portion of her body bared, his head lowered.
Oh, dear heavens, he was kissing her there now. At the opening between her legs. Her pussy. And he was making sounds of enjoyment while doing so.
Her legs going weak, she grabbed hold of his shoulders for support. She swore it was only for support. She swore it! Just to hold herself upright. But somehow, she pressed downward, her palms pushing heavily.
He fell to his knees on the slate floor of the tomb. Her skirts toppled over his head. Beneath them, he slavishly devoted himself to…to…what?
What on earth was he doing to her?
He was doing something, something staggering, something devilish, something enormously decadent, and oh-so-utterly enjoyable. She felt like an Egyptian goddess, and he was worshipping her.
Two hands at her waist, he held her in place as his tongue and lips suckled and kissed and licked and knew her there at the most private part of herself. And then the same splendid thing that happened in the servants’ quarters when she touched herself happened again. And she was screaming, wailing, squealing, unable to help herself, as her safe and secure knowledge of the world turned upside down.
Chapter Thirteen
Sean licked his lips, sniffed her pussy scent one last time, and came out from under her skirts, which he still held up around her waist. “Take off your clothes.”
She glanced right to left, her face going from flushed to bright rosy pink, as rosy pink as her pretty cunt. “But why, sir?”
“Because I want you naked. Or rather, I want to see you naked.”
“But why here?”
He smiled thinly. “The risk of discovery arouses me.” He retook his position on the rock and spread out his legs. “Go on, Tegan. Do it.”
He waited for her reaction to his directive, which was cruel but necessary, and done for her own good.
Once again, a woman had used him. And while fuming about that state of affairs, his gut-clenching anger was not the instigating force behind his order. She had to understand what becoming his plaything meant. He had to make her understand. All the ramifications. He was a grown man, long past the missionary position in the dark. His tastes had grown jaded through the years, and it took a lot more than sweet kisses to get him off. It was her right to know that about him. Her right to know he practiced exhibitionism, voyeurism, and many more vices than those.
He could achieve that understanding the hard way or the easy way. The hard way was a clean cut with a quick sting of embarrassment. The easy way would save her some pride, but the method would take longer.
Why delay the inevitable loss of her innocence? Why pretend his intention was not to corrupt her?
Shielding her temporarily would do her no favors in the long run. He chose to rip the lamb’s wool away from her eyes in one brutal yank. That was true mercy.
After being with him, every way with him, she would never be able to return to the sheltered girl she had once been. Nor would she grow into the wholesome woman she had been destined to become.
A clean cut with her former life was best. An early understanding of his expectations would allow her to plan accordingly. He was only looking out for her best interests.
But when she rushed to do his bidding, without argument, her swift compliance astonished him.
Evidently, he had some understanding to do too.
He had seriously underestimated her mettle. Reforming Central Mine was no fly-by-night pastime for her. She meant to see this through, to do anything to achieve her goal.
His respect for her tenacity rose along with cock.
Now, what was he supposed to do?
Nothing. Simply allow the scene to play out according to his maneuvering.
She undid the buttons on her coat, one by one, her eyes heavy-lidded, her face aflame. The ugly garment fell to the floor posthaste.
He offered no last-minute reprieve. “Next your gown.”
She wore the same remade dress as the first night. Low-cut, faded, unembellished mourning attire. She looked stunning in its simplicity.
Simply naked, she would look even more stunning.
He needed her total capitulation. He needed to break her prissiness and remake her, as she had remade the gown. He needed that from her. She had tried to use him, and she must never try to use him like that again.
Punishment and prohibition. Provocative and protective. His new mistress inspired all those confusing feelings inside him.
Tears splashing down her blushing cheeks, she pulled the gown over her head, her bare tits bouncing with the effort.
“Petticoat next,” he said, trying for his usual restraint and hopelessly failing, his hot gaze never leaving the uptilted points of her nipples. “Take it off, Tegan. All on your own. No help from me. This is something that you must want to do for me, for my pleasure. From now on, you must do as I say because your obedience pleases me. Especially when it comes to this, to how you will service me, sexually. I require your complete subjugation. Do you understand?”
Her chin wobbling, she nodded and removed her clothing, all on her own. Her last claim to maidenly modesty fell with her hose and slippers.
When she was nude, he said evenly, “Now come here to me, little girl.”
Clearly over her head in this, she took the required two steps that brought her nubile body to his.
He splayed his palm against her belly and then ground the heel of his hand into the slit, his thick prizefighter fingers spread to encompass all her pubic hair. “There are some things I will do to you that may repulse you at first. Eventually, those same things will come to please you. Eventually, you will come to crave them. I require certain acts from you that you know nothing about. But you will perform these acts, regardless. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good girl,” he soothed and fondled her tits. “These are very pretty, you know. I like that your tits are small. And that the nipples are not small. Not small at all. They have a very womanly tone, did you know that?” He pinched one, and she wiggled, a tooth biting into her lower lip. “You like that, do you?”
“Yes, sir.”
She shivered without governance, without discipline, when he snaked his hand around to her back and cupped a bottom cheek, a thumb sinking into the crevice. Of her own accord, she loosened her legs so he could ring the dainty hole with ease.
She was his, to do with as he pleased.
He stopped his ass diddling and spanked her, one bright tap with the flat of his palm on the fetching fullness. “There will be more later. For now, I hear footsteps. Best pick up your coat and button yourself into it before anyone sees you.”
Wild like this, he added to himself. Animalistic like this. Willing to do anything to please me.
One touch of pleasure, and Tegan had turned malleable.
He smiled when she turned around, offering him an unexpected but appreciated view of her spanked, rosy bottom as she bent guilelessly to retrieve her coat. Standing straight once more, she buttoned herself into the ugly garment. He watched, without blinking, totally absorbed in her dressing. Such a mundane task, a woman putting on a coat, and yet he could not bring himself to glance away.
He was just stuffing her rolled petticoats and gown under his arm as two men entered the tomb.
He leaned into her, spoke into her ear. “Smile at the two gentlemen, Tegan.”
She looked up at him, a desperate sort of puppy-dog affection in her eyes. “Pardon?”
“Smile at them, and when you have their attention, I need you to show them a portion of your bare leg. Only up to midthigh. You need not show them anything higher.” He paused. “Unless you procrastinate. Then they get the distinct pleasure of seeing your twat, which is still moist from my mouth and your own juices. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
The two distinguished-looking visitors spoke quietly to themselves. As Tegan moved beside them, however, they turned their attention from the wall painting to her.
Smiling, she released her tight hold on her coat. The unbuttoned lower edge fell open. Her naked leg came into view. In the dark tomb, her skin appeared remarkably pale.
Both gentlemen went still. One said, “How much for the two of us together?”
Sean knew the exact moment the realization of their solicitation struck home. Helpless to know what to do, how to proceed, she turned horror-struck eyes to him. Shame warring with perhaps something else, she whispered, “Sir?”