Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Johanna
Getting ready for bed, Johanna tried not to feel put out that she had not seen her husband since this morning.
After all, he was a duke. He was a busy and important man.
The fact that he was also a very affectionate, amiable, cheerful sort of man did not change the fact that he had a multitude of responsibilities, and her presence in his life was both entirely new and in some ways unexpected.
He’d been around the house the past several days already.
Yet she also could not deny that her heart jumped and her pulse raced with happiness when there was a knock on the adjoining door between their rooms before it quickly opened as Nettie was finishing up with her hair.
Seated in front of the vanity, Johanna looked into the mirror and saw her husband appear over Nettie’s shoulder.
He was not wearing a dressing gown. Instead, he was in nothing but his linen shirt, which gaped open at the neck with the top button undone. Seeing him only partly dressed made the heat in her cheeks rise, and Nettie blushed as well, quickly averting her gaze as she dropped into a curtsy.
“Your Grace.”
“That will be all, Nettie,” he said, coming up behind them and holding his hand out for the hairbrush Nettie was holding. She dropped it immediately into his hand and scampered for the door before Johanna could say a word.
“Was she finished?” Johanna asked him, amused as the door closed behind the retreating maid.
“It does not matter; I am happy to do it for you,” he said, stepping into the place where Nettie had been before. “I am sorry I missed supper. There was some rather important business my friends and I needed to attend to today.”
“That is alright.” Though she wondered what the business was, she was not sure it was her place to ask him if he was not offering the information.
Especially right now, as he was so intently focused on her hair.
She did not want to trouble him as he tilted his head this way and that, before finally laying the brush against her silky strands.
The sensation of the brush moving over her hair had abruptly changed in a manner she could not quite define.
When Nettie had been brushing her hair, it had been easy for Johanna’s mind to wander.
Now that it was her husband doing so, she found herself acutely focused on the feel of the bristles moving through her hair, the long strokes tugging gently on the strands.
She could feel them all the way down her neck and through the rest of her body.
Meeting his gaze in the mirror, she felt her blush creeping up her entire body and into her cheeks.
As intimate as the many things they’d already done had been, there was something even more so about having him perform such a mundane, daily task—yet again, a task which no man had ever done for her. Not even her father.
“I hope everything is well,” she said finally, giving him the opening to talk about his business if he so desired.
“Well enough. Did you miss me today?” he asked in a low voice, his gaze steady on hers even as he continued to pull the brush through the long, pale wealth of her hair, the edges of his lips curved up in a smile. The change of subject did not bother her, though she remained curious.
Still, she could not help but take a jab at him since he had disappeared for the entire day after their wedding.
Johanna widened her eyes at him with an acutely innocent expression on her face.
“Oh, were you not about?” She kept her tone light and teasing, as if she had not noticed.
There was a long pause. She worried she’d overstepped and was about to apologize when the smile on his face broadened into a wide grin. His chuckle started low and turned into laughter after a few seconds, allowing Johanna the freedom to giggle as well.
“I did not realize you were so cheeky,” he said, wagging the brush he was holding at her in the mirror. “You’d best be careful, or I will use this on more than your hair.”
“What do you mean?” Her giggles stopped with her confusion. “Where?” What else could he use a hairbrush on other than hair?
The brush, which he’d been about to use on her hair again, hovered just above it as his head jerked up to look at her in the mirror.
“I ah, meant on your bottom.”
“My bottom?” Now she was even more confused. There was no hair on her bottom. It would have made more sense if he had said ‘on her womanhood’, though the hair there did not need brushing.
“To spank you,” he clarified.
“I do not know what that means,” she confessed. She’d never heard the word before.
“Ah, well, it means I would smack the hairbrush against your bottom.”
“And that is enjoyable?”
“Well, no, it would be meant to be punishment for being cheeky.” He lifted the brush and inspected it while Johanna turned the notion over in her mind, uncertain how she felt about it.
“Probably not with the brush, to be fair, that would be rather harsh for just being cheeky. But I was not intending to, anyway. I was just teasing.”
“So, it would hurt.”
“Yes. And no. Some women rather enjoy it.” He shrugged and started brushing her hair again, leaving her feeling aroused and confused at the same time. “I know Gregory and Nathanial have both spanked their wives, and they seem to have no complaints.”
“Tiffany and Kalina?” Johanna was rather aghast; she could not imagine either Gregory or Nathanial hurting either of them. Perhaps it did not hurt very much. Though she was uncertain how it could hurt, yet a woman could still enjoy it. “Have you ever been spanked?”
“No. My father used to belt me,” he said matter-of-factly. “But he did not think spankings were harsh enough discipline for a boy. It hurt like the dickens. When I was very young, I would scream the house down, but eventually, I learned to be quiet. Do not worry, I would never use a belt on you.”
Johanna’s stomach had flipped over for another reason entirely now as her heart went out to the young boy that he’d been, and anger roused in her breast at his father.
“You mean your father used to hit you with a belt until you screamed when you were naughty?” The very idea made her clench her fingers in her lap. How dare a man do that to a young boy? She could not imagine allowing anyone to do such a thing to Micah.
“Naughty, did not complete my lessons, did something wrong…” The way Matthew said it sent chills up her spine, as if he had accepted that it was his due that his father hurt him.
“Eventually, I found my coin when I was in secondary school, and that helped a lot. That or he’d given up on me, by then; I could never decide which. ”
“Is that… do you plan to do that to our children?”
“Oh, no.” Matthew shook his head. “It was not effective at all, I don’t think.
And I rather hated my father, and I do not want our children to hate me.
I do not think my father liked me very much; he just needed an heir, and I had a lot to learn to be the heir he wanted.
I do not have those same expectations of my heir.
I do things very differently from my father, and so far, all has gone well.
” Now he sounded positively cheerful, and it was all Johanna could do not to shake her head in wonder.
Her parents had never used any kind of punishment that had hurt her, Rose, or any of her younger siblings.
Johanna had never even heard of such a thing.
Some of the women who visited her mother for potions talked of terrible things, but nothing like hitting a child for being naughty.
Nor had they spoken of being spanked as punishment. Or because they enjoyed it.
It was all very confusing.
The one thing she did feel very sure of was that her husband would not hurt her. And that it was a miracle he was as warm and cheerful as he was.
“Do you want to spank me?” she asked.
The brush stroke paused, and he looked up at her in the mirror again.
“Do you want me to?” He sounded more curious than eager, but to be fair, that was how Johanna was feeling as well.
“I do not know. I want to know how it feels. How you felt.”
“I never want you to know how I felt.” He shook his head. “It is very different, what my father did to me and what Gregory does with Tiffany or Nathanial with Kalina. It would be very different with you and me.”
“Do all husbands spank their wives?”
“I do not know. It’s hardly proper to go round asking them.” Matthew chuckled at the thought, which made Johanna smile, too. There was nothing she could do about how his father had treated him as a child, but at least she could make him smile now.
Staring at him in the mirror as he refocused his attention on her hair, she considered his words.
She wanted to know something of what he’d been through.
She was also curious as to his very confident statement about Tiffany and Kalina, though, apparently, the topic was not a common one among gentlemen.
The dukes were very close, though, in their friendships.
They must be comfortable talking about subjects that were not for lesser acquaintances.
“There,” he said with some satisfaction. “That is done.”
Grinning widely, he moved around the side of her chair to place the hairbrush on her vanity and held out his hand to help her to her feet.
Putting her hand in his, she let him pull her to standing, their bodies now nearly flush against each other with just their hands between them. She tilted her head back to look up at him.
“Matthew,” she said, only a little breathless. “I would like you to spank me.”
Matthew
Of all the things he thought his wife might request on the second night of their marriage, a spanking was not one of them.
“I… are you sure?”
She tilted her head, looking up at him with a serious expression, though he would swear mischief was dancing in her violet eyes.
The filmy nightrail she was wearing beneath the thin silk of her peignoir did little to hide her body from him, and his cock was already as hard as a rock.
He very much wanted to strip her down… and now he very much wanted to give her a spanking.
But he could not quite believe she wanted him to give her one.
“Well,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I was very cheeky. I am not normally cheeky.”
“That is true.” But he rather liked that she was cheeky with him. It made him feel like she was comfortable with him in a manner she was not with others. “I would prefer to give you a nice spanking, though.”
“What is a nice spanking?”
The earnestness with which she asked was adorable.
He found her na?ve curiosity to be utterly entrancing.
Most young ladies her age had been trained on what was and was not socially acceptable, what they could and could not say.
Johanna’s family must have been very on the outside of social events, even at home, for some time because she was far too inquisitive for Society.
“One that is for fun, not for punishment. It… hurts less.” Matthew had been rather appalled when he’d first realized that he was aroused by spanking a woman, though he’d also quickly learned that there were varying degrees to which a woman liked being spanked.
He was not a very good disciplinarian, but he enjoyed a nice pink bottom as much as the next man.
Though he did not think he could ever use a belt on a woman, he had no objections to a flogger, a good, sturdy hairbrush, or a paddle, though one lover had told him he wielded such things far too lightly.
“Then that is what I want,” Johanna said, nodding her head firmly.
The mischief was still dancing in her eyes, though she seemed nervy as well.
Matthew grinned and slid one arm around her waist to pull her more firmly against him, their hands trapped between them, so he could lower his lips to hers with a kiss.
“As you wish,” he replied softly, just before their lips met.
It only took a moment of kissing her before he slid his hand out from between them, so he could hold her in both arms. One hand splayed out across her back, while the other skimmed over the back of her silken robe to curve over her buttocks.
She shuddered against him, sliding her hands up to wind them about his neck as she pressed closer to him, the hard ridge of his cock digging into her soft belly.
With a groan, Matthew hoisted her up against him, making her squeak in surprise as she wrapped her legs around him. Holding her buttocks with both hands, he held her in front of him as he pivoted and began carrying her to the adjoining door between their rooms.
“Where are we going?” she asked, even though the answer was somewhat obvious.
“My room. If I am going to spank you, I certainly do not want one of your sisters coming in during the middle of it. Or interrupting our morning tomorrow.” He grinned, pressing a kiss to her throat as he moved them through the doors and into his space.
Besides, if he was honest, he wanted her in his bed. Though hers was very nice, there was something nicely proprietary about having her in his space rather than hers. Very primeval and whatnot.
She shuddered against him, and he gave her buttocks a good squeeze as he kicked the door shut behind him.