by Emily Tilton
Eric lifted his chin. “What’s standard for girls like Miss James?” He glanced at Lily and watched her eyes shift back and forth between himself and the doctor.
“They’re generally not permitted clothing. The evidence suggests it helps prepare them for their new lives. And I’d actually suggest that you keep Lily naked at home for the first few weeks after you’re married. She can put on lingerie when it’s time for coitus, of course, as you choose. But enforced nudity in the home has proven a very effective way to train young brides to their household role.”
Eric felt a smile break out on his face. He turned to Lily, whose color had of course not abated in the slightest.
“What do you think, Miss James? I can’t say the thought of having you doing your chores naked displeases me.”
Lily’s face crumpled. “Please…”
“What about letting Miss James wear her bra and panties while she makes up her mind?” Eric asked Dr. Fredrickson. A glance at Lily showed him that she had no idea how to feel about this intermediate, but still terribly embarrassing, provision. Indeed, Eric didn’t feel sure that for a girl like Lily underwear might not be more embarrassing than sheer nudity.
“It sounds like a fine solution, Commander. Lily, I’ll release your restraints now, and you may put on your underwear. Then an orderly will come to show you to your custody room.”
Chapter Seven
Lily still had no doubt she would accept the ‘proposal,’ but the idea just seemed to get harder and harder to swallow. Maybe literally. Ugh.
She paced the five meter by five meter cell they called a custody room, in her unsexy gray bra and panties, hoping they were watching her: the doctors and… the commander. Two hours had gone by since they had given her a tasteless dinner of what had seemed like meat-substitute-substitute.
Hard to swallow. Definitely literally. Didn’t he as much as say so? Not in so many words, because he seems to think he’s some kind of ‘gentleman,’ but apparently it’s the kind who thinks a man can tell his reluctant wife to suck his cock, or she’ll get the belt, lying naked over her bed, until she does.
Damn her body for responding that way when the doctor touched her, when the ‘gentleman’ commander said those outrageous things. Lily sat on the bed, thinking now, for reasons she couldn’t completely fathom, about just taking the underwear off.
Defiance: it would defy them. If Commander Burton thought he could show pity, somehow, by letting Lily keep her underwear on, and that would endear him to her, he could just go fuck himself. Himself, rather than the nubile bride he apparently had no qualms about appropriating and using for his sexual enjoyment.
The girl he apparently had no qualms about keeping naked in his house, to teach her her fucking role, as asshole Dr. Fredrickson had ‘recommended.’ Ugh. Ugh.
The girl who would go over her husband’s knee if she said fucking or asshole, despite the ultimate irony that the ‘gentleman’ who had asked her to marry him planned to fuck her in her asshole. Lily could undergo it, apparently; she just couldn’t talk about it.
Stupid body. What the fuck are you doing?
She stood up, pushing the very possibility that her panties had just gotten damp far back in her mind. She stripped those panties off, refusing to acknowledge the warmth in her cheeks as she resolutely resisted the idiotic urge to touch the gusset and feel for any moisture there, which she could tell was the kind of thing her ‘gentleman’ bridegroom would do, just for his fleeting mirth. She unhooked her bra and dropped it, with the panties, onto the bed.
“Is this what you want to see?” she asked, looking at the mirror on the wall opposite the bed, which probably had the video camera behind it.
At the sight of her naked body, though, the warmth in her cheeks became a blazing fire, and she found herself covering her breasts with her left arm and her pussy with her right hand. Fuck. Lily hadn’t taken off her underwear because her bridegroom had told her to, but because she had decided to do it. Deliberately, she put her hands at her sides again, and looked at herself: the girl the commander had asked to be his wife.
An image came into her mind that she thought should have disgusted her: Lily James, playing with herself in front of this mirror. Lily James, moving that right hand back to her pussy, but keeping it there, rubbing, pressing. Caressing her most intimate charms, while she—naughtiest of naughty girls—watched herself engaged in the self-indulgence, staged for her own eyes and the eyes of the doctors and the bridegroom. Left hand toying with her little nipples, weighing her breasts, squeezing them. Right hand pressing down and in, between her thighs, desperate to touch the tiny flower where the commander had promised to put his cock whether Lily liked it or not.
Fuck.
“Fuck you, Commander Burton. I’ll marry you.”
She didn’t know what she expected to happen, but a few seconds later a speaker hidden somewhere in the ceiling said, in the commander’s voice, “Put your underwear back on, Lily. You’ll get your spanking for that bad language before we go to bed tomorrow night. It’s not a bad thing for a bride to be punished on her wedding night, as far as I’m concerned. It puts her in the proper frame of mind. That shouldn’t make her feel any less ashamed of herself for making her husband take the trouble to teach her a lesson, though, when his mind is on enjoying her body for the first time. Get into bed, now. You’ll need your rest.”
As Lily complied with the commands of the man she guessed was now her fiancé, she tried to figure out why she hadn’t said fuck you again to the mirror, to demonstrate that the threat—the promise, it seemed—of a wedding-night spanking didn’t mean anything to her. She tried to deny that she knew the answer, and again succeeded, though perhaps the success had a more fleeting quality this time.
Stupid body. Fuck.
* * *
Marriage on Meliora represented a purely civil matter, though religious celebrations sometimes accompanied it. As an officer of the colonial peacekeeping force, Eric told her, he had the privilege of being married in the state house.
“I’ve accepted the president’s offer to officiate, in his state chambers,” he told her when the female orderly brought her, dressed in her jeans and t-shirt (though someone seemed to have laundered them) over new white underwear. The orderly, a gruff but not unpleasant middle-aged woman dressed in hospital scrubs, had led her to a bathroom where she had showered, to find when she emerged that this new underwear had been laid out on the counter, along with her clothes.
“The president?” Lily asked, confused and a little alarmed.
Eric chuckled, and Lily almost felt angry with him for being so handsome. “We’re not friends or anything, but he sent me a letter when I took the job here, inviting me to apply for this program—the disciplinary marriage program, I mean. I think they’re trying to increase public confidence in the system, recruit better men for the program—that kind of thing.”
Lily felt her brow furrow. “And they think having the president officiate at the forced wedding of a criminal…”
“To an officer of the peacekeeping force,” he supplied, apparently not taking offense at the way she had characterized their coming union. “Think about it.”
Lily did, and didn’t like the conclusion to which she came. “What if I f—”
She saw a warning glint in Eric’s eye, and rather to her surprise she stopped herself from saying fuck again.
“Couldn’t I mess that all up, though? What if you have to drag me kicking and screaming to the altar?”
“I’d better not have to do that, honey,” he replied in a low voice that seemed to rumble all through Lily’s body. She felt her heart quail as she thought of the bed, and the belt—and the other things he had refused to name—that would greet her continued disobedience.
But, very annoyed at being called honey, she pushed that all away and persisted; she would not give in, even if sometimes she might need to pretend she had yielded. “But what if I did? What if I started screaming right there? Right
in the president’s office?”
Eric spoke in the same low, warning tone that had no anger in it, but only a calm promise of inexorable consequences. “I don’t know what the president would think of it, and frankly I don’t care. But let me be sure you understand, honey, that people don’t call this a punishment marriage for nothing. If you decide to make a fuss in the president’s office, your wedding dress will come up and your panties will go down no matter how many people are watching, and you’ll get spanked right there on the spot. Seeing as you already have a punishment coming for your foul mouth, before bed, I can’t see how a sensible girl like you would want another spanking today, but if you’re expecting me to hesitate to bare your bottom in public and give you what you deserve, you need to revise those expectations very quickly.”
Lily’s mouth had dropped open. She really had no idea whether the thought of wearing a wedding dress at all had made her face hot, or the thought of having it summarily raised—and her white panties lowered—for old-fashioned naughty-girl discipline in front of the president of Meliora.
Both, of course. Fuck.
“I’m going to go make some preparations,” he said. “We’ll have a few days’ honeymoon at a lodge up in the mountains, so you’ve got that to look forward to. We’ll leave right after the ceremony.”
“The mountains?” Lily had never been, but she had kind of always wanted to go.
“My favorite place in the world,” Eric said simply.
His demeanor didn’t change much, but it seemed to Lily that he had suddenly addressed her not as a naughty girl always on the verge of some willful infraction and its humiliating consequences, but as an adult and even an equal. He hadn’t said it in so many words, but the quietly hopeful expression on her fiancé’s face seemed to declare that he didn’t want to take his reluctant bride to the mountains for the selfish reason that he liked them, but rather so that he could show Lily why he loved the mountains so much.
Part of her felt betrayed. Yes, betrayed: how dare this ‘gentleman’ make her feel anything but anger and defiance toward him? Worse, how dare her own mind have the temerity to perceive anything worthy or admirable in this man?
She looked at him silently, trying hard to glare but conscious that the expression had lost several drops of venom since the last time she had turned it on him.
Eric’s lips twitched, as if he had successfully, but barely, suppressed a smile. He spoke in an equable voice that seemed to take Lily’s consent in the plans he outlined as the most minor of matters, if it might be called a matter at all. “Mrs. Smith here will take you to the little bridal boutique they have next door. I’ve picked out some special things to go under your dress, but you may choose the dress itself. You’ll get dressed, with her help, and then Dr. Thayer and Dr. Fredrickson will bring you to the state house. I’ll see you there.”
Mrs. Smith? He must mean the orderly. How did he know her name? Lily felt yet another blush rise to her face, but this one seemed somehow more authentic than the others: this gentleman commander had thought to inquire about the name of the orderly, while Lily had almost certainly been told it and then forgotten it. She had always liked to think herself a kind, caring person, and although she thought she could excuse herself under the circumstances for not remembering the name of the woman whose most important duty must be to make sure Lily didn’t try to run away, it rankled that this forced fiancé of hers knew it, and had politely used it.
She glanced over at Mrs. Smith, who had turned a smile—the first one Lily thought she’d seen on the woman’s face, though the orderly’s expression had not been mean or angry, but merely neutral—on Eric. Lily recognized the unpleasant feeling that arose when she had her opinion of something—an idea, a place, a person—cast into doubt. For a moment, bizarrely, she felt an urge either to thank Mrs. Smith for all her help or to tell her to fuck off.
“You’ve asked that Lily have the full waxing, correct, Commander?” asked Mrs. Smith.
For a moment Lily didn’t know what the woman could possibly mean. Her eyebrows?
Then she remembered what Dr. Fredrickson had said about her pubic hair, and she instantly decided that despite the smile that seemed to say that Commander Eric Burton was a good man and would make what the world considered a good husband, she definitely wanted to tell Mrs. Smith to fuck off.
“That’s right, Mrs. Smith. I want her as smooth as a peach down there.”
Oh, no. How could Lily have considered softening her attitude toward this man? She would scream in the president’s office and she would get that spanking. She would register her protest of this stupidity: the algorithm and its idiocy—everything about this bunch of assholes they called a Socionomic Bureau.
Then he turned to her, and she could tell somehow that he had read her thoughts, or enough of them to throw her straight back into confusion.
“Lily, I know this will be difficult for you. I don’t have any doubt, though, that you’ll get used to being my good girl before too long.” He put out his hands to her. “Give me your hands, please. I’m going to kiss you now, for the first time.”
As she put her own hands out automatically, a part of her mind said, Or what? You’ll spank me until I turn my face up for my first romantic kiss?
But the rest of her mind… it didn’t yell at that rebellious part to shut up, but somehow it overwhelmed that defiant voice with its sheer will to silence, and her mind managed to think nothing at all about the way her tummy fluttered, her knees got trembly, and she felt terribly warm down where he had just said she must be bare for him. She turned her face up, and he kissed her gently and chastely, but also for several long seconds that only made the flutter worse.
“I’ll see you this afternoon,” he said, when he had broken the kiss at last. Then he turned away and left Lily with her hands still raised and the ghost of his fingers’ pressure still upon them.
Chapter Eight
Luke stood with Dr. Thayer in the same lobby four hours later, as Rebecca Smith, now herself festively dressed to go to a wedding, escorted the bride from the examination room that had served as a makeshift dressing room for the donning of Lily’s bridal apparel. The bureau’s bridal store, which Luke found it hard not to call the ‘punishment’ store, had no simple gowns like the one Lily James had almost certainly searched for when Rebecca brought her there. Dr. Thayer—with Luke’s full approval—stocked only the lovely, timeless fashions inherited more or less from Earth’s Victorian period.
Lily’s gown had a great deal of lace, therefore, and seemed to embrace the attractive young woman in a sea of pure white, cascading down in waves of faille to a train that stretched three feet behind her. Rebecca had set the long veil with its beautiful lace border, the blusher raised to show Lily’s angry eyes, in the girl’s hair cleverly, so as to suggest that Lily’s short hair was longer than it actually was. Despite that expression of defiance, Luke felt that he wouldn’t hesitate to marry the girl if he stood in Commander Burton’s enviable position.
Rebecca led the bride in, holding her by the hand, but as soon as Lily caught sight of Luke, she came striding across the lobby with her skirts in her hands.
“What the…” she began, and stopped herself. Luke suppressed a smile; he liked to think that the curbing of the girl’s tongue owed some of its success to him, though of course he acknowledged Burton’s mastery as the main source. “You’re the doctor, Dr. Fredrickson, so I’m sure you can tell me why a girl who’s being forced into a marriage against her will should have to wear this kind of gown. Why let me choose at all, if you’re not going to let me wear something I actually like?”
Dr. Thayer laughed. “You look lovely, Miss James. You really shouldn’t fuss.”
But Luke wanted to provide the explanation she demanded. Even if she was a criminal and getting the consequences she deserved, Lily James’ intellect deserved at least to know the reasons for the bureau’s policies. Among other things, like satisfying Luke’s sense of fairness, that knowle
dge would in the long run make it easier for her to accept her need for submission.
“Lily,” he said, watching the color mount in her face at his use of her first name, which undoubtedly returned her in her mind to her examination the previous morning, “marriages under disciplinary circumstances require a girl to change her way of thinking and embrace an older idea of what it means to marry, and to have a husband who has taken her in hand. Now that such things as synth-silk and custom textiles have made gowns like the one you’re wearing extremely inexpensive to produce, the bureau can easily ensure that every girl who has to go through this process can have a little help, just through wearing the traditional clothing of a bride.”
Did her mind go to the naughty, though snowy white, lacy lingerie Burton had selected for her, which she must now wear under the beautiful faille gown, over the vulva—though barely covering the labia—and between the buttocks Rebecca had waxed? Her nose wrinkled as if with tears she fought back, and pink spots appeared on her cheeks.
“Isn’t the stuff… underneath… enough?” she asked in a softer voice that had less anger than pleading in it.
Luke smiled gently. “No, Lily. Today your life is going to change on the inside and on the outside. Remember that being Mrs. Burton means that you will go out on the arm of a handsome officer. Once he’s trained you to be an obedient wife, you may appear in public once or twice a week, in fashionable clothing and at fashionable parties. Today at the state house is just the beginning.”
Lily’s eyes went wide; she hadn’t considered this part of the punishment match—and why should she have, since her own life had to this point involved nothing like it? The gamma male she had chosen wouldn’t have taken her to fashionable parties, obviously, and her attempt to match herself with a man like that told a very important tale: Lily had foreseen a life outside society—a life of jeans and t-shirts.