by Emily Tilton
“I love you so much, Zoe,” he said.
“I love you too,” she said, debating with herself for a moment whether to say the final word that sounded in her head, and then at last whispering it, “sir.”
The monosyllable seemed to make him hold her tighter for a moment. Then he said, “Can we go up to your room for a minute?”
The crease in Zoe’s forehead returned as she tried to puzzle out the reason for the request. Bradley didn’t seem unhappy with her, and he hadn’t told her she had to go up to her room with him, the way he might have if he intended to spank her. Did he want to fool around? She would, she thought, definitely be into it—with her door locked, of course—but the expression her bridegroom’s face seemed too serious for that.
“Okay,” she said, and turned toward the staircase, putting her hand behind her for Bradley to take, as a sort of comfort in her confusion. His grip seemed surprisingly strong, as if he knew Zoe needed his hand to steady her.
“Not too much canoodling,” her mom called from the kitchen as they went by, but Zoe could tell she was happy to see the affectionate couple. Zoe hadn’t given her parents any trouble growing up, really—but she knew her parents had worried she might squander her talents in aimless small-town life. Bradley, she felt sure, represented a very welcome steadying force from her mom’s perspective.
You have no idea, Zoe thought, swallowing hard as she climbed the stairs. Though a spanking didn’t seem in the cards, she almost let go of Bradley’s hand so that she could put it defensively over her bottom.
“What’s up?” she asked as she closed the door behind them and turned the lock, making absolutely sure she had done it correctly and feeling a blush come into her cheeks at the memory of the church bathroom.
Bradley’s face had gone very serious, now—so serious that Zoe’s eyes opened very wide.
“That call was from Jake Davies,” he said. “He’s the guy at the state house who’s in charge of our case in the subsidy program.”
“Okay,” Zoe said slowly, very confused now.
“It’s complicated, and unfortunately pretty sinister,” Bradley continued, “but what he told me amounts to a promise from Selecta to settle the case if certain conditions are met.”
Now Zoe shook her head, frowning. “But what... That’s good news, right?”
Bradley nodded. “Yes. But the conditions... they have to do with tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Zoe asked, feeling like she could do nothing more than clutch at the threads of the conversation.
Her husband-to-be looked at her very seriously for a moment, his eyes narrowing slightly. The sight of his face like that, so intent upon hers, made Zoe’s heart jump. Suddenly she didn’t feel very sure that she wasn’t about to get a spanking.
What Bradley said then didn’t help with that particular anxiety.
“Come here, babe. I want you to bend over the bed. I’m going to raise your dress and take your panties down.”
“What?” Zoe hissed, doing everything in her power to hide the sheer ambivalence of her reaction both in body and in soul. “You can’t, Bradley. Not here. Not tonight.”
His eyes narrowed a little more. He seemed to have studied her for some specific response to his words, and to have found it—in the hot blush of her cheeks or perhaps the desperate working of her forehead.
“We went over this last night, Zoe,” he said, the authority suddenly coming back into his voice in full force. “I can, and I will. I’m not going to punish you tonight. That will happen tomorrow, if you consent.”
“Consent?” Zoe whispered, her blood suddenly cooling, for reasons she didn’t quite understand, and didn’t want to.
“Let me be clear,” Bradley said slowly. “By consent I mean, if you decide you still want to marry me after I do what I’m about to do and say what I’m about to say. Once you have decided to join me at the altar, your punishment and the other things that will happen at the reception—and then what will happen when we get to the hotel for our real wedding night—all of that will happen whether you like it or not, since you will be my wife, then.”
Zoe’s eyes went very wide. “At the reception?” she whispered. “My punishment at the reception?”
“Come here, Zo,” Bradley said. “Bend over the bed.”
Zoe saw it, now: the way he had set it up for her.
“What if... I don’t?” she said, feeling her brow furrow so deeply it hurt.
Bradley’s face softened, and sympathy came into his hazel eyes. He didn’t say anything.
If I don’t go over there, and bend over my childhood bed, with the pink comforter, then Selecta doesn’t settle the case. If I don’t bend over, so that he can raise my dress and lower my panties, then we don’t get married. Was it true?
Zoe felt her lips part as she realized she didn’t want to know the answer. Her hands balled into little fists, unclenched, closed again. She took a step forward, toward the bed, on wobbly knees, then another. Bradley moved back a little to let her go to the place at the foot where she needed to stand, where she needed to obey him.
As she bent and put her hands on the comforter, she remembered the way she had done the very same thing in his room, at his apartment, the night before. Had he given her such a similar instruction so that she would recall the moment she had offered herself, at his command, clad only in her lacy white panties? The same sort of panties she would be wearing, tomorrow, under her wedding dress... and of course at the reception?
A shiver traveled through her whole body, then, at the thought of what Bradley had said, about the reception, just a few moments ago, and how her posture now indicated that being punished there represented an actual possibility, rather than an absurdity. She started at the feeling of his hand brushing her thigh as he began to raise the hem of the blue dress she had raised herself, in the church bathroom. A wave of heat rushed to her face.
He brought his mouth close to her ear as he pulled the dress up, rolled its skirt so it would stay in place.
“The paddle isn’t going to feel as nice as your fingers did, is it, Zoe?”
She bit her lip. A little whining noise rose in her throat.
“Yes, Zo. They’re overnighting a white leather paddle, to match your dress.”
“Oh, God,” she whispered. “Babe... sir... please, no.” Her voice sounded to her own ears like she had fallen into a trance.
Bradley’s fingers traced the waistband of the black bikini panties now.
“You can’t,” she tried again. “Not... not there.”
He took hold of the panties, at the back, and yanked them down. Zoe gave a little gasp, and then another, suppressing the cry she wanted to make as her husband-to-be thrust his hand between her thighs, his middle two fingers sliding with ease into her pussy, where he had opened her only the previous night.
“Yes,” he said, softly but with steel in his voice, “there. In the library. Not in front of everyone, but in front of John and Tony.”
Every fiber of Zoe’s body seemed to react to his words, so shamefully she wished she could sink into the floor. Her head went back, a moan coming from deep in her chest, and then a cry as she felt Bradley put his hand inside her dress and inside the bra she had worn in obedience to Nurse Carter.
Worse, she pushed back against him as if desperate to have him inside her, even in this humiliating way. Bent over to present her backside for his use—whatever use he wanted to put her to—she told him with her arched back and bent knees that Zoe Ralston needed to be made into Mrs. Bradley Corvan. She needed to be trained to take his cock exactly as he wanted to give it to her.
If he decided that having his friends watch her get punished for playing with herself would help her learn her lesson... if he decided that his friends should help him train her to the cock, by...
He took hold of her right nipple, inside the sensible black bra that matched the panties he had pulled down, between two fingertips. He pinched there, while his hand down below possessed h
er, two fingers deep inside and thrusting now like a pale imitation of his hard penis.
The worst happened, then: Zoe’s pussy clenched so hard on his fingers that she heard him exclaim softly, half in surprise and half in amusement, “That’s it. You need this, don’t you, naughty girl?”
“Yes, sir,” Zoe sobbed. “Please... please, don’t paddle me tomorrow.”
“You have a decision to make, don’t you?” Bradley murmured. “I can help, but not the way you want. If you show up at the altar, you’re going to have a paddling at the reception, with my best man and my groomsman there to see it. What’s going to happen after that will be up to me, so unless you want to belong to your husband in every way... every way... a girl can belong to a man, you should tell your parents that you discovered I’m cheating on you, or I’m a criminal, or something like that.”
He had kept his hands moving, both of them firmly, on her breasts and between her legs, while he spoke, and it made concentration difficult.
“Oh, God,” Zoe sobbed. “Please... please, fuck me, sir.”
“No, Zo. Not tonight. You played with yourself without asking, didn’t you? I can’t reward you for that.”
Suddenly his hand left her pussy, and she felt him twine his fingers in her hair, turning Zoe’s face to his so he could kiss her softly and deeply. She moaned into his mouth, her bottom moving shamefully though his caress had deserted her.
For a moment she wondered if he really meant her not to feel pleasure, really meant to judge her like some prudish hellfire preacher for touching herself. Then she heard his words again: without asking... every way a girl can belong to a man. She shuddered, and kissed him back, yielding her lips to his.
Every way. Her pussy belonged to him. If she touched it without permission, she would be paddled and she would receive the fucking she needed only when he decided to give it to her.
Every way.
If he should decide that that fucking should be in front of his friends; if he decided they should have a turn...
Every way.
Chapter Sixteen
Bradley hadn’t asked Davies how the program officer knew Zoe had done something that warranted a punishment at her wedding reception. He didn’t think the state had any way of surveilling church bathrooms, but you never knew, these days. As times got tougher and the megacorps tightened their grip—while at the same time technology only seemed to get scarier—he supposed he wouldn’t put it past a state program to spy on a naughty girl at her wedding rehearsal, in order to make sure her bridegroom had a good reason to bare her bottom and teach her a lesson.
On the other hand, that train of thought made Bradley reflect in another direction, too, as he dressed in his tuxedo at eleven a.m., after going for a five-mile run with John and Tony. Perhaps the traditional marriage program envisioned a husband who asserted his right, and even his duty, to punish his wife for no reason at all other than to ensure she understood the nature of their marriage.
Maybe a bridegroom who signed up for this subsidy, supported by the authority of the state and the power of the megacorps who served as government executors these days, had an obligation to put his bride over his knee or over a whipping stool once a week. Maybe Zoe needed that, to get used to her new life of submission to her husband.
John and Tony had taken up residence in Bradley’s living room as they waited for their turns in the shower, and had a college football game on at high volume. The sound of the crowd’s reaction to a touchdown, or maybe to an interception, floated into the bedroom as Bradley worked the first of the black studs into the placket of the tuxedo shirt, looking at himself in the mirror to make sure he had lined up the correct buttonholes.
Maybe a man with a bride like Zoe should arrange things so that she got regular lessons in submission—lessons of the most shameful kind. What happened today at the reception might have come about as a condition imposed by the government and by a corporation, but Bradley had gotten the strong sense from Davies that the semi-public paddling of a young wife—and even the sharing of her beautiful body—represented acceptable parts of a ‘traditional’ marriage in general.
As he put on his cufflinks his cock swelled in his black tuxedo pants at a dark thought he would never have imagined he might entertain as a real possibility: a monthly party of his friends where Zoe, the only woman present, would serve drinks to the guests, naked. After the drinks, blushing, she would go over the stool and have a whipping for any infractions, or for no misbehavior at all—solely so that she might learn a lesson in submission. Then, still over the stool, she would be enjoyed by the guests as Bradley watched, approving of how they taught her to accept her place as his treasured possession, more valuable to him the more she pleased the cocks he allowed to fuck her.
Zoe’s own response as he had forced her to the edge of orgasm, bent over her childhood bed with dress up and panties down, had made him think such ideas might not seem as fantastic and repugnant to her as he would have assumed only a few days before. He had felt for himself the need in her body, so evident on his slippery fingers, when he had told her that John and Tony would watch her paddling and even when he had hinted at the sharing to follow.
He had not the slightest doubt now, as he adjusted the green cummerbund that matched the bridesmaids’ dresses, that she would show up at the altar in white and ready for their unique kind of marriage. On the phone with Davies, he had felt far from certain of that, but the memory of the night of Zoe’s defloration and the way she had begun to respond to his mastery had made him willing to try. The little scene in her childhood bedroom had confirmed the program officer’s wisdom—that Bradley should regard the matter as being up to him, in every way.
He could walk away from the settlement, and Selecta. He could marry Zoe and fight on, perhaps winning the case eventually. Those possibilities Davies himself had offered, but Bradley’s mind had explored additional ones, in the intervening hours. He could reject Selecta’s offer and the state marriage program—but still paddle Zoe at the reception in front of his groomsmen, and share her mouth and pussy with them. He could follow through on his promise to fuck Zoe’s bottom, right there in front of John and Tony. He could share that newly deflowered anus with them, his best friends, and kiss Zoe tenderly as she took another man’s hardness in her little bottom.
It would be up to him.
Another swell of crowd noise from the TV in the living room recalled Bradley to himself. He had paused in the middle of adjusting the green bow tie, lost in these thoughts, his cock like an iron bar between his thighs. He looked down at his dresser, where sat the overnight envelope that held the white leather paddle: silk-wrapped wooden handle and an oval surface six inches long ready to correct a bride’s misbehavior with suitable severity.
Up to me, and up to Zoe. Even if she showed up, and even if she said I do, Bradley meant to ensure at each step of this suddenly twisted way that the needs of the girl he adored were being met. If he had learned one thing over the last few days, he had learned that he could figure out when his girl would benefit from his discipline and his dominance, usually without her saying a thing.
If Zoe wanted to marry him, but the shameful condition proposed by Selecta and the state simply didn’t work for her—whether right now, as she got into her wedding lingerie and her white gown at her childhood home across town, or later, when he brought her to the room where he intended to punish her and to share her—he would go on loving her. He would go on being her bridegroom and her husband.
Somehow the possibility that Zoe might decide she couldn’t submit as fully as Bradley’s darkest fantasies, and the demands of a megacorp, imagined, made his cock even harder. He frowned at himself in the mirror for a moment, wondering why, and then he looked down again at the envelope. With a little smile on his face, he pulled the paddle out, and looked again at it, thinking about how Zoe had moaned when she had heard that a paddle would arrive for her, on her wedding day, to spank her bare bottom for breaking her husband’s
rules.
He thrust the paddle into the inside breast pocket of his tuxedo jacket, surprised how well it fit, with only an inch or so of the handle protruding. Every bridegroom should have one, he thought, his smile broadening.
As he went out to let John have his turn, he realized why the thought of giving Zoe the chance to back out of the shameful demands placed upon her aroused him even more. When his beautiful bride submitted nonetheless to her paddling and her gangbanging, she would demonstrate all the more clearly how deeply she needed their traditional marriage.
* * *
When the organ began to play the wedding march and Zoe appeared next to her father, framed in the church door, Bradley couldn’t see the expression on her face at first, thanks to her veil. As she came closer, down the short aisle of the little church, though, he could see that she had a tiny smile on her face, as well as a deep blush.
He could hardly believe how aroused the sight of that blush got him, glimpsed through the white lace of the veil. He smiled back at her, watching her own expression lighten as their eyes met, but then he found he had to look away for a moment and focus on the late afternoon light streaming in through the stained glass, so full of inappropriate images had his mind suddenly grown.
When he looked back, his thoughts refocused on the solemn idea of wedding his life to Zoe’s forever, he saw a momentary cloud—perhaps at his having broken their mutual gaze—pass away, and then her father had put his bride’s hand in his own. Mr. Ralston went to sit next to his wife in the front pew, then, and Bradley felt his brow furrow: hadn’t they practiced it at the rehearsal with Zoe’s dad lifting her veil and kissing her on the cheek before he left her with her bridegroom?
Then he saw in his lovely bride’s eyes exactly what the divergence from the agreed-upon program meant, as she smiled up at him. He couldn’t keep his own smile from broadening even further, though the dominant thoughts also threatened to take hold again, as she whispered, too softly for anyone else to hear over the final organ chords, “You’re going to lift my veil, sir.”