by Emily Tilton
Bradley did lift it, only a few minutes later, right before he kissed her, and then the organ played again and they were walking down the aisle, man and wife. Zoe clung to his arm as if she were simultaneously pleading with him to treat her mercifully and reassuring him that she had decided that whatever her fears, it all seemed worth it to her.
Across the town square they walked, then, with their attendants behind them, from the church to the historical society. While they got arranged for the photographer in front of the beautiful old house, they had time to kiss several more times, and less chastely than they had done before the altar.
Zoe had time to say, very softly, after one of those kisses, “I’m yours, babe... I mean, sir.” Her face had gone red again, before she said, in an even lower whisper, “All yours.”
Bradley had time to say to the groomsmen, “Guys, remember that at the end of the reception, I need your help with the thing we talked about,” and to see Zoe’s blush deepen still further.
Then the pictures got taken, and they greeted their guests in a reception line perfectly placed so that the guests had to give their congratulations quickly if they wanted to make it inside to the food.
All through dinner, especially when someone chimed a knife against a glass to elicit a marital kiss that Bradley and Zoe had not the slightest reluctance to provide, their eyes sought out one another’s faces. Each time, Bradley found his gaze narrowing slightly, as if to ensure that Zoe hadn’t forgotten what would soon happen, and each time Zoe chewed on her lower lip as a crease appeared on her brow. It almost seemed to him that Selecta and the state marriage program had found a way to put the traditional apprehension back into the wedding night, in a world where a bride nearly always arrived at the altar with a good deal more experience than a Victorian would have thought proper.
When they danced, though, to romantic old big-band music, he could feel Zoe melting into him, trusting him. With each song and each passing hour, the paddle seemed a more urgent presence in his pocket.
At nine, the cake cut and eaten, and all the rounds made to thank each guest for coming, Bradley bent to say into Zoe’s ear, “Time to go to the library.”
She swallowed hard, looking a final plea into his eyes, but he raised his eyebrows to indicate that any reluctance would only earn a sterner lesson in wifely obedience. Then she gave a little nod, her cheeks pink, and turned to let Cindy and Kim know that she would change into her traveling dress in a little while, and she would have Bradley come get them. He saw them smile knowingly—as it must have seemed to them—at the idea of bride and groom having a few minutes by themselves in the little library.
When he led Zoe into the room, though, he found that John and Tony had arranged it just as he had instructed them, and that they waited with their jackets off to do what Bradley had informed them they might have to do. When Zoe saw that the groomsmen had placed a cushion on top of the library’s little reading table, and cleared the space around it, in fact, she did draw back even as Bradley closed the door behind them.
“Guys,” he said, as his naughty bride looked up at him wildly, “come get her, please, and put her over the table, then lift her gown for me. She has a bare-bottom paddling coming.”
Chapter Seventeen
Zoe’s first thought, despite everything of which she had tried to convince herself, all night and all day, was to run away. She cowered back against the door as John and Tony came for her: kind John, tall and blond, and funny Tony, broad and black-haired. The looks on their faces, over the green bow ties that matched her bridesmaids’ dresses, were serious.
Bradley had told them, she could see, about her. During the photographer’s arranging of the wedding party for shot after shot, hadn’t he said, Remember I need your help with the thing we talked about.
Her lips parted as she raised her hands in front of her beautiful wedding gown, to the scalloped neckline that suited her slim figure so well, above the cascade of white that swept to the floor. Her heart raced.
At least they don’t know what I was thinking about, in the church bathroom. Even Bradley doesn’t know that... how I was thinking about them. About...
Zoe gave an involuntary little cry of alarm as the groomsmen, looking so... well, so official in their tuxedoes, took another step forward.
About this, really. Almost exactly this.
“Please,” Zoe said, looking around the little library desperately for some means of escape.
“Zoe,” Bradley said from behind the advancing figures. “John and Tony know that you broke a rule, and they know that we’ve decided to have a traditional marriage.”
She felt the blood rush to her face. She saw that Bradley had his phone out, and had started making a video of this terribly shameful scene. Zoe’s eyes went wide as she looked at the phone in her new husband’s hand, and then she remembered why and how all this had happened. Once the state had this evidence of their compliance—of the very great extent of their compliance—with the program, the settlement would happen. Zoe had the chance to save her family and her town.
Her eyes went to John’s face, and then Tony’s. They had stopped two or three feet away from her, their hands poised and ready to reach to take hold of her arms.
John had just turned twenty—he would finish college in another state and he meant to come to law school in Bradley’s adopted one. He had a standing invitation to join his big stepbrother’s firm, and Zoe dearly hoped he would take it. He would be a great husband for Cindy.
Tony would never leave his old urban neighborhood, it seemed, now that he had returned there with a law degree. He had decided to take maybe a third of what he could make at a tony firm in order to fight the megacorps in the East the same way Bradley wanted to fight them here in the Midwest.
The men her new husband had chosen as his attendants—the ones he had chosen to help him enforce his rules for his bride—looked down at her. Even Tony, the shortest of the three, had a few inches on Zoe. Bradley had told them that Zoe had done something naughty. She bit her lip as she wondered whether he had informed them for exactly what infraction she was to have her panties lowered on her wedding day.
Zoe’s eyes went back to Bradley, and to the phone in his hand. Was it Selecta’s doing, after all? The state’s? Either way, she didn’t have a choice, did she? She had married him after he had told her that she would get the paddle, with his groomsmen to assist, at her wedding reception.
After he had said that she would belong to him in every possible way, clearly intending her to understand that whatever he meant to do after he punished her would shame her just as much as—if not more than—her bare-bottom paddling in her wedding gown.
After he had made it clear with the knowing fingers on his firm right hand that he could make her come to the sound of the shameful news of what would befall her after the wedding.
Zoe’s eyebrows and forehead worked urgently as she looked at the two formally dressed men waiting to bring her to the reading table for her punishment. In their eyes—John’s icy blue and Tony’s nearly black—she could see, to her mortification, that they knew the secret of her dark needs. Her face burned. Had Bradley told them? Or... and she knew as she framed the idea for herself that it must be the case... could they see it on her face and read it in the very way she held her body, just as Nurse Carter must have done?
Again she looked at Bradley. He met her eyes, and then he shifted his phone from his right to his left hand, still keeping it trained on her, framed between John and Tony. Her eyes went wide as he reached into his jacket, and then she gave a little cry as she understood what he must be fetching out, before she even saw the awful, pretty thing.
A white paddle. A paddle for the bride.
“Bring her to the table, guys,” Bradley said.
“Come on, Zoe,” Tony said in his deep, lightly accented voice. “We know you’ve got this coming, and you do too.”
In a last plea for aid and mercy, she turned to John. His eyes seemed a little mor
e troubled than Tony’s, but he said firmly, “You need to get used to this, it seems like. Are you going to go to the table on your own or do we need to take you there and hold you down?”
Part of Zoe wanted to do this with a little dignity at least, and she almost composed herself to walk the few steps to the place where the cushion awaited her on the polished oak tabletop. Another part simply panicked, though, at the sight of the paddle. She turned, and took hold of the doorknob.
But Tony had her around the shoulders, then.
“Hey!” she cried, as he started to draw her away. The music from the big, echoing reception room had gotten loud and fast. Everyone would be dancing now, or unable to hear what transpired in the library. “Stop!” she yelled again, though, but John had his hand over her mouth, now, as the two groomsmen hauled her across the Persian rug to the table, and bent her over the cushion without, it seemed, the slightest effort.
They made her put her elbows under her, and they held her in place as she kept struggling, feebly, their hands on her back and her arms. Zoe shuddered at the profanation of her lovely white gown, and the terrible violation it symbolized of her special day, the one day when an ordinary girl should be treated like a princess. A thrill of shame and helpless, wanton need went through her at the thought that she had lost that privilege thanks to her lewd misconduct, and she would pay the penalty now at her own wedding reception.
“Pull the dress up,” Bradley said. “Let’s see what she’s got on underneath.”
Zoe turned her face, hot as the sun, back over her shoulder to look at her bridegroom, his phone in one hand and the paddle in the other. Somehow she could be turned on by the urgency of his wish to see the special underwear she had on, the lacy things she had donned to be married in, at the same time she felt the deepest shame that her new husband wanted to show his groomsmen the lewd sight.
“Sir, please...” she started, when she saw the stern look on his face, and then she realized what kind of effect the word might have on John and Tony, who had not yet moved to obey Bradley’s command. John stood at her left and Tony at her right: she craned her neck to get a look as the former’s expression and when she saw it she turned in panic to the other side so that she could take in Tony’s too.
Both of them had heard her call her husband sir, and both of them had received the same impression from it, and—Zoe felt certain—had reached the same conclusion. Bradley had clearly told them that his pretty young bride needed firm discipline, and had acknowledged the fact. Even if she struggled now, and needed to put up a fight before she got what she deserved, here on her wedding day, she knew she had earned this paddling.
The groomsmen’s duty was clear, their faces said. They would help their newly married friend teach his bride the lesson in submission she had coming.
“Oh, no,” Zoe whispered, as they bent a little now, and started to raise her skirt: she felt the air moving on her thighs, over the stockings and the bare skin between their tops and her lacy white panties, with only the suspenders of her garter belt to cover her.
“Let me get a close-up,” Bradley said, as John and Tony piled the fabric on Zoe’s back. She whimpered at the terrible thought of her backside framed so perfectly by the lifted dress, the stockings, the suspenders, and the panties. She felt the lens of Bradley’s phone as if it could actually touch her while it captured the moment of her being revealed so very shamefully to her bridegroom and his friends.
“Look at those naughty panties,” Tony said with a chuckle. “You don’t really have to pull them down, do you? You can already spank her ass without any protection, right?”
Zoe gave a little sob at the humiliation. She had somehow put the thong on without thinking about this moment.
Or did I, really? That idea made it even worse, though! Had she had it in mind, somewhere deep down, that she wanted Bradley’s groomsmen to see what a fine piece of ass their friend owned, now?
“Yeah,” Bradley confirmed, standing up again. “But she learns her lesson better if you pull her panties down. And it makes her easier to fuck, too.”
Zoe cried out at the terrible words, and at how her new husband casually accompanied them by yanking her lacy thong down to the tops of her stockings where the suspenders kept the panties from descending any further.
“Of course I can always just pull them aside when I fuck her,” he continued. “But I like to make sure she understands that I’ll take down her underwear whenever I feel like it, whether to punish her or to put my cock in her.”
“Oh, God,” Zoe heard herself whispering.
On my wedding day. On my wedding day. Each time her mind repeated the words, the shame and the need seemed to grow, together as a single unit. Down where her husband and his friends could see the place that had been covered until a moment before by her panties, scanty as they were, the warmth had increased terribly, too.
“You can see that the nurse shaved her for me, when she had her exam,” Bradley said.
“Is she getting wet thinking about her paddling?” John asked, a little surprise in his tone. “Isn’t that a little pussy juice there, right on the lips?”
Zoe struggled again, then, for the first time in several moments. What else could she do? But the effort she made to distract them from what they had noticed between her legs served her very badly indeed. When she felt John and Tony holding her down over the cushion, keeping her from moving so that Bradley could paddle her, a wave of arousal swept through her body from her clenching pussy to her bucking hips to her nipples hardening into the lace of her bra.
“Look at that,” Tony said, with an admiration in his voice that seemed to indicate he fully grasped just how wanton a bride his friend had married. “Does she get it in the ass, too?”
Zoe bit her lip, and she heard a submissive whine emerge from her throat despite her best effort to contain it.
“Not yet,” Bradley answered shortly. “But she knows she will, tonight.”
Zoe realized then that she had closed her eyes at some point, because now she found herself twisting her face again, side to side, trying to see what John and Tony thought of this news, and what Bradley’s face could tell her about his intentions. Above all, she needed to know that none of them had guessed the vision, the dark fantasy, that had come to her in the church bathroom where she had earned this paddling.
The lust she glimpsed in all their eyes did nothing to reassure her. Nor did Bradley’s next words have any comfort in them.
“John, can you video the paddling for me? Tony can hold her down for it.”
Chapter Eighteen
Bradley handed his phone to his stepbrother and stepped forward with the white paddle raised so that Zoe could see it clearly, as she cast her eyes back behind her, clearly desperate to know what was happening.
“I make her turn her face forward when I’m punishing her,” he told his groomsmen, though. “That helps her learn respect.” He spoke to Zoe, then, meeting her wide eyes with his steady gaze. “Zo, you know the rules. Don’t make this worse.”
Zoe’s face crumpled in a way now familiar to Bradley—the same way that had told him, the very first time he saw it, that his gorgeous bride had a dark, wanton streak so wide they would need a lifetime together if they were to have any hope of exploring it fully. She hesitated, her brows knitted and her lips parted, until he narrowed his eyes and tapped the paddle against her little bottom for the very first time.
She gave a cry of surprise and fear, and she turned her face forward toward a bookshelf full of what looked like the state law code of 1890. Little whining noises came from her turned away face: Bradley saw that she had closed her mouth, now, and her nostrils flared with each breath and each tiny submissive sound.
“I caught her playing with herself yesterday,” he told his groomsmen. “She’s not allowed to do that without permission.”
“This isn’t going to feel as nice as touching your little pussy, now is it?” Tony asked. Zoe’s fearful noise in response was a
little louder than her whimpers, but she didn’t respond directly.
“Answer my friend, Zoe,” Bradley said, giving two more taps with the paddle’s broad, flat face. “You know how important that kind of respect is to me. Is this paddling going to feel as nice as masturbating did?”
Extroverted Tony had obviously taken to the situation like a duck to water. The smile on his broad Mediterranean face told Bradley that his usher would follow his lead wherever the groom wanted to go. Bradley cast a glance over at John, now off to the right and intent on the phone in his hand. A quieter kind of guy, tall John’s serious expression nevertheless told Bradley that his stepbrother, too, had found confirmation in Zoe’s reaction to the beginning of her discipline session that the bride did indeed need a paddling.
“No,” Zoe squeaked.
“I think you mean no, sir, Zo. You’ll call us all sir here, while you’re learning your lesson.”
“Oh, God... Bradley...” Zoe said, turning her face back over her left shoulder.
In her face he could see that she needed one final reassurance that he meant it all in love, just as she meant her consent and submission in love. With the paddle still on her bottom, he bent forward and kissed her deeply. He tapped the paddle on her adorable ass while their lips still moved against each other, and she moaned up into his mouth.
Bradley broke the kiss, and looked at John and Tony, to see affectionate, congratulatory smiles on their faces. Turning back to Zoe, he kissed her more gently, then said, “Eyes forward, Zo.”
Zoe bit her lip and obeyed. She said, looking at the bookshelf, “I’m sorry, Tony, sir. You’re right that my paddling isn’t going to feel as nice.” Her voice sounded quavery, but very distinct.
“Good girl,” Bradley said. “I’m proud of you.”
He tapped the paddle against her backside three times, and then he pulled it back. With his left hand, now, he caressed his lovely wife’s lovely bottom very lightly, so that he could hear her breath catch in her throat at the gentle touch. With that hand, also, he pulled the suspenders of her garter belt aside on both sides, so that they went fully down her flanks and wouldn’t get in the way of the stern message the paddle would impart to her pert young cheeks.