“I disagree.” She frowned. “Nor do I see how that equates with my demanding your attention specifically?”
He gave a pitying shake of his head. “There is only you and me here. Who else’s attention could it be?”
Her cheeks burned with humiliation. “I— You— That is utterly ridiculous!”
“It is unacceptable but understandable,” Alex soothed. “You have been alone for a long time. These past three years because of my lack of a presence as your guardian, I admit. Although your father must also have been absent for long periods of time before his death?”
“He was in the army, so of course, he was away a lot.”
He nodded. “My own neglect was less acceptable. My only excuse, and it is not really a valid one,” he acknowledged with a grimace, “was I had absolutely no idea how to be the guardian of a fifteen-year-old girl. But that is about to change,” he added in a hard voice.
“In what way?” Amanda prompted guardedly.
“In the way that I intend to take my duties as your guardian much more seriously in future.” He leaned against the side of his desk. “That being so, I have had time to give more thought to this situation since last night, and it now seems to me that you have two choices of punishment rather than one.”
She gave a pained frown. “I do not see why I need to be punished when all I did was alert you to the fact that someone entered the house while you were out last night.”
“Someone who conveniently broke the vase outside your bedchamber,” he mocked. “As I was saying,” he sobered, “you have two choices in your punishment for having lied to me. Firstly, you can choose not to attend the Stamford ball tonight.”
“How can you be so cruel as to even suggest that?” she choked, her feeling of disappointment immense. “I have had a gown made especially for the occasion. The Prince Regent is expecting to meet me there.” Amanda had been looking forward to this evening.
Alex shrugged. “He will understand when I tell him the reason you were unable to attend after all.”
“I do not understand!” It was totally unfair when all Amanda had done was tell Alex the truth—
“Or you can do as I suggested last night,” Alex continued, “and once again bend over my desk while I spank your arse for the second time in a week.”
Amanda stilled. Whatever Alex did or did not believe, there had been someone in the house last night, and that someone was also responsible for breaking the vase outside her bedchamber, not her.
But the thought of having Alex spank her again now took precedence over everything else. Even her indignation at being unjustly accused of lying.
Amanda’s whole body had been tingling with anticipation of that spanking by the time she returned to her bedchamber the previous night—or, as it had actually been, the early hours of this morning.
She had briefly considered dealing with that arousal herself, as she had last time, but her other emotions were in too much turmoil for her to be able to relax and enjoy that pleasure.
But that tingling of awareness had now returned to her breasts and between her thighs, a sensual ache that this time demanded satisfaction. “My bare arse,” she reminded as she looked at Alex from beneath lowered lashes.
Why did Alex always have the feeling that it was his ward who controlled these conversations and situations rather than himself?
Possibly because it was!
He had been more than a little worse for wear from brandy consumption the night before when he made that threat to her. Eyeing the elegantly but alluringly clad ladies parading about the public salons at Club Venus had stirred his passions. He would never have made such an inappropriate suggestion to his ward if he had not already been affected by those things.
But to back down now would be to completely nullify his assertion that he intended to pay more attention to his role as Amanda’s guardian in future. He knew that if he said he was going to do something, then he had to do it or lose all authority over her.
That being so, if he had threatened to spank Amanda bare-arsed, and if she chose that punishment—and it looked as if she was leaning in that direction rather than missing out on this evening’s ball—then that was what he would have to do.
“Well, which is it to be?” he challenged.
Amanda made no reply as she rose to her feet before lifting her skirts and unfastening and pulling her drawers down to just above her knees, then draping herself across the polished top of Alex’s desk.
From where Alex stood beside the desk, he could clearly see the bare globes of Amanda’s arse. Round and fleshy orbs, and utterly tempting.
“This is your choice?” he rasped.
“Yes.”
A woman’s musk now permeated the room, along with the smell of fresh-cut flowers. Amanda’s unique perfume. It invaded Alex’s senses, making him feel lightheaded as the blood drained rapidly from his brain and stormed into his now rigidly hard cock. A pulsing throb that demanded attention.
Alex had never needed to exercise restraint when it came to women. Married or otherwise, most, if not all, had always fallen at his feet, ready to worship his cock if he showed the slightest interest in them.
But this was his ward, damn it. The young woman for whom he was responsible. The one woman he should not, could not, allow himself to desire.
Easier said than done when Amanda was bent over his desk with her bare arse in the air presented for his chastisement!
Perhaps just this once, he could relent in punishing her without it seeming like weakness. Because if he put his hands on that warm flesh, he was going to—
“Well?” She turned to look at him.
Alex’s mouth tightened at the defiant challenge in her tone. “I have changed my mind.”
“You have?” she taunted.
He nodded abruptly. “Instead of bending over the desk, you will place yourself across my thighs. That way, I will have better leverage and placement of those smacks.” He moved to lock the study door before sitting in the chair she had recently vacated, at which point, he had an even clearer view of the cheeks of her bottom and the forbidden hole hidden in the darker cleft between them. “Now,” he barked when she stayed exactly where she was.
Amanda slowly straightened. Surely Alex could not be serious about this? She had truly believed if she were to challenge him that he would relent in regard to the spanking. It seemed Alex was a man of his word.
“Leave them where they are,” he instructed as she would have pulled up her drawers. “Those too,” he rasped before the skirts of her gown could fall about her knees. “Walk over here to me exactly as you are.”
Her cheeks burned as she turned to face him and saw he was sprawled in the chair fully dressed, legs splayed slightly apart. Amanda quickly looked away so as not to be caught staring at the fullness of his balls and the bulge of his cock pressing against his pantaloons.
He felt no such qualms himself as he openly watched her efforts to stumble across the room to where he sat.
“I cannot walk like this,” she protested when her drawers gathered above her knees allowed her to take only little steps, all while her newly shaved mound was completely bared to Alex’s hooded gaze.
Amanda had spoken to an initially embarrassed Emma about the practice, and it seemed that, in what was the French fashion, most young women of Society, married or otherwise, now preferred to remove their pubic hair. Amanda could now understand why; she found it extremely sensual to feel her bare mound brushing against her drawers as she walked. The drawers which were now down about her knees as she stumbled toward Alex.
“This was your choice,” he reminded her without sympathy.
Yes, it had been, but by asking her to place herself across his thighs, Alex was making it far more intimate than on the previous occasion he had spanked her.
She would be able to feel the muscled heat of his thighs beneath her abdomen.
To hear as he breathed in and out.
Know every intimate touc
h of his hands, the heat of one through the material of the back of her gown as he held her in place, the bareness of skin against skin as his other hand struck blow after blow against her bare bottom cheeks.
Recalling her response the last time Alex spanked her, he would be able to smell the evidence of her arousal as between her thighs first became damp and then damper still. Perhaps even feel that release soaking into his pantaloons as her pussy became wetter and wetter with the landing of each blow.
Her humiliation would be complete.
Which was, perhaps, his intention.
Chapter 6
Dear God, Amanda’s mound was as bare and smooth as it must have been on the day she was born.
Alex had seen enough naked women this past year to know that it had become the fashion, but there was something about seeing Amanda this way which he found totally shocking.
How could he even hope to continue thinking of her as an innocent when the removal of those auburn curls allowed him to see the delicate folds of her cunny and the swollen red bud of her erect clitoris poking out from amongst those folds?
Alex’s mouth watered with the desire to taste the pretty pink petals of her cunny lips, and to lick and suck that engorged clit until it swelled and pulsed against his tongue as she reached her release. He—
Bloody fucking hell!
This was Amanda. His ward. Scandalous enough that his thoughtless words last night had forced him to make her bare herself to him in this way, without actually acknowledging the desire he felt to touch her with his hands and mouth.
Except Alex knew he did desire her.
That he had done so since the moment she invaded his bedchamber five days ago.
He now ached to taste the delights of her bared cunny.
And the full swell of her breasts.
Because Amanda, although young, had beauty and fire enough to challenge any man of any age into trying to resist her.
Yet resist her Alex must.
“Over my knee,” he instructed in a harsh voice he almost didn’t recognize as being his own.
Dear God, it was worse, much worse, once Amanda had draped herself decorously across his parted thighs, supporting her torso with her palms flat on the carpet, her bared bottom now completely on display mere inches away.
Ready to be spanked.
Caressed.
Stroked.
That dark and secret opening between those cheeks begging to be penetrated with first fingers and then cock.
Alex shocked himself with the force of his desire to do all those things. He had never once been tempted… Never even thought of doing that with another woman.
But Amanda had the most perfect bottom he had ever seen. Plump and round, the skin smooth and unblemished, glimpses of that tiny bottom hole holding his fascinated gaze captive. The aroma of her musk was also stronger, as if she—
“Are you aroused?” he demanded to know.
She glanced back at him, her cheeks a fiery red. “I am extremely cross at the injustice of this, if that is what you are referring to!”
“It was not.” Alex scowled darkly.
She turned away. “Then I have no idea what you are talking about.”
His eyes narrowed with suspicion. “No?”
She gave a toss of her head. “As I have said, I fail to see why I need to be punished at all, let alone in this humiliating fashion,” she complained. “When the house is broken into again, you will know I was telling the truth all along, and then you will owe me an apology for doubting— Oh!” she broke off with a groan that sounded to Alex as a mixture of shock and pleasure as he landed the first blow against one of her creamy bottom cheeks.
A soft and warm bottom cheek he would far rather be caressing than spanking.
“I gave you ten spanks the first time. Today, you shall receive fifteen,” he snapped instead. “For the next transgression, it will be twenty, then twenty-five, and so on. You will count them. Out loud,” he added at her silence.
“You, my lord, may go to hell,” she told him in a voice of insincere sweetness.
Alex tensed. “I beg your pardon?”
She turned to glare at him with those beautiful pale eyes. “I believe you heard me the first time. Otherwise, you would not be glowering at me in that unattractive manner.”
Unattractive!
It took great effort for Alex to hold back his laughter. Only Amanda could cast aspersions on the way he looked when she was prostrate across his thighs with her bare arse in the air and her drawers about her knees.
Her body jerked as he landed another blow on her other bottom cheek. “I suggest you start counting soon.” He struck those warming cheeks one after the other in quick succession. “The number will not start to lessen until you do.”
“You are a bully and a tyrant— One!” she cried out through gritted teeth as Alex landed a harder blow.
“Better,” he drawled, smiling as Amanda now obediently called out the correct number with each smack he delivered.
It was as if Alex was not quite himself as he set a rhythm of left cheek, right cheek. Repeat. Amanda’s body jolted against him with the landing of each blow, jiggling her breasts so that they almost escaped the low neckline of her gown and wafting her floral musk into the small confines of the room.
Alex began to feel light-headed, his cock engorged and throbbing as he took in breath after breath of that heady musk. His gaze was transfixed on Amanda’s rapidly reddening bottom, her skin hot and silky soft beneath the heat of his palm.
Amanda had ceased struggling after the eighth smack was delivered, her voice becoming huskier and huskier as she continued to count.
“Fifteen.”
Alex landed another blow, this time to the back of her thighs just beneath her bottom cheeks.
“Sixteen.”
He placed another in exactly the same spot.
“Seventeen.”
Then another.
“Eighteen.”
What was he doing? This was supposed to have stopped at fifteen.
“Nineteen.”
It seemed he couldn’t stop.
Damn it, he did not want to stop, was enjoying the feel of Amanda’s flesh against his hand too much.
“Twenty.” The sob of pain could now be heard in Amanda’s voice.
Yet she made no effort to stop him either, verbally or physically. And that musk… It was so heavy in the air now, it held Alex completely in its thrall, seeming to cling to his nose and lips so that he could almost taste it on his tongue.
He wanted to taste it. To bury his face between Amanda’s parted thighs, his mouth possessing her cunny lips as his tongue lapped up and greedily consumed those aromatic juices.
Alex heard Amanda give a throaty gasp as his fingers dug into the burning globes of her bottom.
He could not do this. Must not. It would be a violation of the trust—
“Alex?”
He had to force himself to look away from staring at his fingers digging into her reddened flesh, blinking and forcing himself to focus on her burning face cheeks as she turned toward him.
“Touch me between my thighs,” she encouraged urgently.
“I… What… No!” Alex made the verbal protest and yet his hand remained exactly where it was.
Amanda groaned as Alex’s fingers now kneaded and caressed the throb of her bottom. “Please,” she sobbed. “Oh please, Alex! I want… I have to… I need you to touch me so I can come!” She was now so wet, the juices had slicked her inner thighs and had almost certainly, as she had suspected, dampened Alex’s pantaloons.
Those long fingers gripped her bottom tighter still. “How do you know about…? Who told you how to…? That blasted school!” he accused with heat. “That bloody woman Marchment told you about that too, didn’t she?”
Amanda was beyond caring how she knew, only grateful that she did. Otherwise, she would have no idea how to ease the throb of need in her core that had deepened each time Alex spanked her. �
�Please, Alex, I ache for release!”
“You have climaxed in that way before?”
“Yes.”
“How? When?”
“My fingers. And whenever I needed to.” As she needed to now.
“How the fuck did the woman teach you to do that?” He scowled darkly. “My God, did the bloody woman line you all up sans your drawers and instruct you on how to— Never mind,” he bit out harshly. “It is as well the influence of this Marchment woman is now out of your life for good.”
As Amanda had found herself missing her teacher and mentor these past five days, she could not agree with Alex’s statement.
For so long, she wanted nothing more than to leave the school, to see more of the world than those four walls, comfortable as they were. But since coming to London, and close as she might have become to Emma Stirling, Amanda had still felt the absence of the other girls, as well as Sophia Marchment and the teachers. Not surprising when those other students, the headmistress, and teachers had been her only family for these past three years.
“No! Please,” Amanda now groaned as Alex tipped her up until she stood back on her feet, allowing her gown to fall down and cover the wetness of her pussy and inner thighs, removing the possibility of Alex touching the needy throb of her clit and giving her the stimulation that would allow her to come.
Alex hardened his heart—in keeping with his steel-hard cock—to the appeal in Amanda’s tear-wet eyes as he rose abruptly to his feet. “Go to your room.”
“I—”
“Nor are you allowed to touch yourself once you are safely in your bedchamber,” he stated firmly.
“But—”
“You will do as I say,” he snapped.
“Not as you do?” she accused heatedly. “You are just like all the other gentlemen,” she scorned, her cheeks fiery red as she lifted her skirts to pull up and refasten her drawers before once against dropping her skirts to cover her legs and thighs. “Selfish to the core.” Her hands were clenched at her sides. “As long as you can take your release, why should you care whether or not the lady feels any pleasure in the act!”
Alex could feel a nerve pulsing in his clenched jaw. “You have absolutely no idea what sort of lover I am.”
Obsession (Regency Lovers 2) Page 5