Man and Wife: A Sweet Historical Love Story Read online

  "I am being spanked because I disobeyed my husband by not coming to him when he told me to," she choked out between sobs.

  Con laid his hand on the hot flesh he'd been tending to. "Good girl. Now we can begin the actual spanking."

  He knew what he'd said was going to outrage her, but he also knew that the spanking itself was going to outweigh her anger, and it did. He didn't take it easy on her, even knowing—without having asked—that she had likely never been punished like this. Her father had as much as admitted that much to him, voicing his regret at not having been stricter with her.

  Con wasn't going to make his father-in-law's mistake. He wasn't ever going to go easy on her. When she did something that warranted punishment, he was going to well and truly punish her, as a deterrent to doing it again.

  However, he'd never counted on how hard it was going to be to do this for her and to her. Yes, his body found it undeniably arousing to punish her—there was no disguising that, and he had enjoyed indulging in bed games like this with other women.

  But none of them were his wife.

  He had draped her over the very part of him that had the most vested interest in her, and her parts were agonizingly close to his as she began that natural dance of avoidance that every woman would do when called to account by the person in her life to whom she was responsible.

  She hadn't had that in her life until now, but he was going to be it.

  He hadn't expected to have to harden that budding part of him that had quite tender feelings for her—to have to steel it against the sharp yelps she emitted whenever his palm connected with skin that he knew had never felt anything like what he was doing to her. She had probably rarely experienced any form of pain at all.

  But he did it. He forced himself to ignore her increasingly pitiful sobs in favor of trusting in himself, relying on his own judgment as to when she had learned her lesson. She was so lost in the pain that she had left off begging him to stop and promising to be good in the future, as he'd rained down smacks that left enormous, bright red handprints in stark contrast to the otherwise lily-white skin that surrounded them. He let a few land on the backs of her thighs and those elicited the loudest protests from her by far, unexpected as they were and dealt to a canvas that was much less able to handle the correction. But they certainly had their place.

  After applying the last full power spank, he stopped. He didn't rub, didn't really even comfort her, but simply rested his hand over the bottom it had just chastised and waited for her to calm down.

  It took longer than he thought it might—she was quite beside herself with what he recognized as a potent mixture of both agony and anger that had both become quite prominent, especially at the end.

  When all he could hear from beneath the curtain of hair that had come undone from what had been—moments ago—its meticulous coif was stuttering sobs, then he lifted her off his lap and turned with her to lay her onto her bottom beside him, on the inside of the bed. He stretched his length out beside her and created a natural barrier should she take it into that pretty head of hers to try to bolt.

  Mari tried to raise her butt off the bed while doing her best to gather her scattered wits about her and get away from him, all at the same time. But none of that was going to happen, she discovered quickly and with a growing sense of dread. She censored her own attempts to lift her hips—she was still bare there, and she knew what she was trying to do had to appear to be absolutely obscene, so she did her best to keep her flesh hovering an inch or so above the bedcovers, with only moderate success.

  Trying to get by him from this position—indeed from any position—was going to be impossible—he was too big. She could barely see over where he was lying on his side up against her.

  So she changed tactics and began to try to pull her skirts down—which he blocked with one big hand on them—or her bloomers up. But as she reached a hand down for them, her breath sizzling in as her bum came more in contact with the bed, he said but one horribly resolute word in a tone she was becoming depressingly familiar with.

  "No."

  Mari paused in the act, not wanting to believe what she'd just heard. But if she stayed still for a while, would that negate his order, she wondered hopefully.

  "Put your arm…" he had been going to say down, but that wasn't really where he wanted it. "Put your arm under me." Con lifted himself enough that she could easily slide that near arm beneath him, and the softness of the bed would keep his considerable weight from hurting her.

  She did as she was told—at about the slowest pace a human could manage to do anything, a stalling measure, which he would come to correct in time—but she did it, and that was the main thing.

  "Good girl."

  Why did hearing that from him—especially when it was contrasted against the fact that she could still feel the flesh that was pressed into the mattress throbbing and aching in time with her pulse—spark a feeling of pride in parts of her she had never intended he would have any influence over? Her brain, her tummy—which was full to the brim with butterflies about what was about to happen, Danvers not withstanding—and even her chest a bit, although she refused to acknowledge that it was her heart that was beaming just a bit at his praise, as it had at no one else's in her life up to this point.

  Just as if she had put her arm under him, he insinuated his much bigger one under her head, creating a pillow—if a hard, muscled one. Then he said something she never would have expected in a thousand years.

  "Give me your hand."

  Without thinking, she held it up in front of them, bringing out that half smile that always seemed to be lurking on his face when they were together.

  "No, Mari, my dear. I want you to put your hand in mine where it's just past your ear there."

  "But…" she murmured as she worked out the reality of the fact that she would then be, essentially defenseless against him.

  As if she wasn't, whether he was holding her hand or not.

  She realized baldly that she didn't have much choice. She had no illusions about the idea that if she decided to scream, no one on this ship was going to come running to help her. And doing so would probably only end up with her being spanked again, and she wasn't at all sure that she could stand that, frankly. Either their nannies or their parents had punished most of her friends, but hers had never allowed anyone to touch either of their children like that in any way, and she could certainly see why. It was no easier to deal with as an adult, she was rapidly discovering.

  Con expected a struggle. He expected her to try to escape, to fight him again. He did not expect that she would simply lie there and look up at him with those huge, frightened eyes.

  But her hand was creeping towards its goal, going slowly as if she thought that he was miraculously going to change his mind and let her up and tell her he was just kidding and then Evan would appear in the doorway to take his place…

  Her stupid, childish daydreams of being rescued were shattered when strong, thick fingers wrapped around her wrist and she knew—with a sickening tightening of her tummy—that nothing like that was going to happen.

  And what Danvers had begun to tell her that he might want to do to her didn't sound like much fun, either. Frankly, of the two sets of advice she'd gotten, she thought her mother's was the more practical. It was almost worse to have even an inkling about what he was going to do. At least Mother had given her some suggestions about what to think about while he was doing it.

  Although Mari wasn't at all sure that her husband was going to be the type who was just going to be content with doing something to her, rather than expecting her to join in.

  She shuddered delicately, something that Con noticed, prompting him to ask, "Did your mother tell you anything about what goes on between a husband and a wife?" he asked. "Perhaps something to the effect of 'pretend you're somewhere else until it's over' or something like that?"

  "Something like that," she whispered, no longer looking up at him.

  "W
ell, I'm not going to allow that."

  Her eyes flew to his, then away again at that statement, not that she really knew what it meant for her.

  But she was about to find out as he leaned over her and kissed her in a way that made goose flesh rise on her arms. She knew better than to try to clamp down on his tongue when it entered her mouth, but she didn't expect to come to enjoy the way it explored and probed as his free hand buried itself in hair that was a terrible mess. Making her feel momentarily self-conscious until he pulled back a bit and began to kiss her more teasingly, nibbling at her lips, tracing them with just the tip of his tongue—which actually tickled and had her almost giggling. But then he was kissing her again, and she forgot to be amused, she forgot to be angry at the turn her life had taken, she even forgot to be scared of what was going to happen.

  This time, when he moved a bit away from her, he pressed the tip of his nose to the tip of hers and said, "You are a fast learner, Duchess. I'm going to have to keep an even closer eye on you than I thought, I can see. You're going to have me undone before we're started at this rate."

  Mari wasn't sure whether that was a compliment or not, so she didn't say anything, wishing with a start that, when his head descended again, her hands were free to bury themselves in his hair.

  Con wasn't what was considered to be typically beautiful nowadays, and he was the exact opposite of Evan, who was the epitome of an example of male beauty. He wasn't slim and elegant. He was a mountain of a man. No matter how nattily he was dressed, there really was no way to hide that or the rough edges he really shouldn't have had, considering the way he was raised, but then he didn't seem to care much about any of that, either. She had the idea that he wasn't much of a slave to any time of fashion, but rather was someone who made his own fashions. Not many sons of dukes actually worked for a living, but he did, and he'd been a huge success at it, adding a highly profitable ship building empire to his family's already expansive financial portfolio.

  Not for him a useless, ill-spent life of gaming, women and drink such as her brother indulged in.

  He was also not fair or blonde, which seemed to be all the rage nowadays, but possessed a full head of dark brown—essentially black—hair that had what he considered to be an annoying tendency to curl at the ends and a streak of red that ran through it, courtesy of his redheaded Irish grandmother on his father's side. He wore a scrupulously trimmed Van Dyke, which Mari would like him to be rid of, if he asked, because it lent him somewhat of an unapologetically devilish air.

  And, she was finding, it tickled her nose when he kissed her.

  But she could still see the hints that the jaw beneath it could cut glass, the lips that were framed by it were much too full and sensual for him to be considered good looking, and his eyes sparkled with intelligence, wit, and, sometimes, even whimsy, as she had learned earlier. He was one of the most eligible bachelors in the country—rich, propertied and with an impeccable background.

  And she was his. He had chosen—he had even paid for the privilege—of marrying her, something that was essentially unheard of. Young men like him tended to come from aging, poor but aristocratic families who were on the lookout for rich young ladies from families that had more money than blue blood whom they could marry and thus prop up the family's failing fortunes.

  His family's fortunes were doing amazingly well, in no small part, thanks to him, so he could have married any woman he wanted.

  And he wanted her.

  Not for the first time, Mari wondered why. But then Con's free hand found its way from the neutral spot it had been occupying on her shoulder to trail slowly down over her collarbone to begin ascending the delicate slope of her left breast, all while he stared down at her watchfully, as if he expected her to scream bloody murder.

  That was where Danvers' advice came in handy. She had mentioned that he might want to touch her there, and Mari was glad she now knew about it or he might well have been right to expect histrionics.

  No one had ever touched her there. Not even her doctor, who hadn't been allowed to see her naked, even when she was a child.

  Five fingertips quickly found a firm peak she hadn't been aware of possessing until they closed around it at first and then brushed firmly over the tip of it, the fabric of the top of her dress preventing him from touching it directly.

  But that didn't stop her from whimpering in a manner that she didn't recognize—that she didn't want to recognize—as her own, especially when Con pursed them together to pluck at that same peak.

  Mari arched her back involuntarily on a highly indecent moan that she immediately tried to smother.

  "No, Mari. If it feels good, I want to hear it. That's what this is all about."

  That's what this is all about? she wondered to herself, but had to doubt him. If that was true, why hadn't anyone else mentioned that to her? Why did everyone tell her, instead, that it was going to hurt?

  She was more confused than ever, and he could read that on her face. Con had no doubt that whatever pearls of wisdom her mother had imparted to her were vague at best, frightening at worst. She'd probably heard things that were half-truths from her friends, but nothing too detailed, since they had no experience, either, and were merely gleaning things from their older sisters, who had married and joined the conspiracy of silence that surrounded their country's upper-crust innocents, as happened with every generation for some reason.

  Well, he didn't want her just lying there, thinking something awful was going to happen, or that he was going to deliberately hurt her or that she had to try to distract herself from something that could, if she'd let it and as he intended it—be a beautiful thing between them.

  So he made up his mind to tell her exactly what to expect, so that she would know the truth, and there would be no more boogeyman for her to be afraid of.

  Chapter 4

  "I know it's not considered proper for two people to talk about such things, but I'm your husband, and I don't want you to be afraid of what's going to happen between us. There's no need of it, and in this case, ignorance is not bliss, but a little bit of knowledge can definitely lead to it."

  As he spoke, he continued to hold her as he had, touching her gently in apropos places as he did so. "If a couple is very lucky, there is more than just a physical connection between them. There's love. But in our case, I think that might take a bit to develop, which is fine. My parents didn't love each other when they got married, but they certainly did by the time I came along. The physical connection between man and wife is a big one, though, because that's an important way of expressing how we feel about each other—and it's also how you—we'll—produce the requisite heir and a spare."

  As much as she found his little speech to be horribly awkward, she also knew it was wonderful of him to attempt to explain such things to her. She couldn't imagine that Evan would ever do such a thing—he was much too staunch and proper.

  And she liked the idea that he had said, "they," would produce the heir and a spare, not just her, even though she knew everyone else would fault her and her alone if she failed. It was nice of him—again—to accept essentially any part of the responsibility for said heirs.

  "It's the physical side of things that gets everyone all bogged down, when it's the most natural thing in the world. We complement each other, you and I, and that is by design. You're soft—" that hand was back at her breasts again, and Mari was no more successful at curbing her responses to him than she had been before—perhaps even worse since she knew it felt amazing to have him touch her this way, "—where I'm hard."

  She held her breath as his hand left her breast and wandered down, over her ribcage, pausing for a moment at her waist as he kissed her again, then making the climb over her skirts to take part in holding them back, away from the apex of her thighs which had remained uncovered from the time he had spanked her.

  "Here again," he said, his hand moving to cup her there very gently and carefully. "You're soft." He let the hand he had been ho
lding by her ear go and brought it, instead, down to the front of his pants, and for the first time, she noticed a considerable bulge there, which he curled her hand around with a ragged sigh. "And I'm very, very hard."

  This was the point at which Con wondered if he would actually survive telling her about this. He felt like he was with his first woman—his heart was pounding, he felt a bit faint, and he thought he was going to explode if he said one more word. Perhaps this was why no one told young women what to expect.

  Bless her, she was curious about him, and took to cupping him and exploring him as if it was something she did every day, much too much so, such that he had to remove her hand from him, or he'd never get through the explanation without actually demonstrating it to her rather than talking about it.

  She struggled a bit when he again took possession of her wrist, but when his hand made its way to the knee that was closest to him and began to move it away from its companion, that was when she really balked.

  Squirming and twisting, panting with her efforts in a most unladylike way, Mari did her best to keep her legs together, and he understood why. It had been drilled into her since birth that a lady always kept her legs together.

  But he wasn't going to let her parents or society's norms dictate what she could and couldn't do.

  That was his job, as her husband.

  So he stopped trying to force her legs apart and simply said, "Mari, I intend to touch you between your legs, and I want you to open them for me now. I promise you two things about this, because I recognize that this is very hard for you to do. One, is that if I think what I'm going to do might hurt you—here and now or at any time—I'll tell you, unless—like a spanking—it's kind of self evident that it will. And two, if I think it'll feel good to you; I'll tell you that, too." Then he tilted her face to his, bringing his lips so close to hers that they almost touched but not quite. "And I will never lie to you—about this or anything else. Listen to me carefully and think about what I'm saying. Once you've spread your legs, I will make you feel very, very good."