Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
Johanna
Bottom burning, lips swollen, need throbbing within her, the taste of her husband on her tongue, Johanna did not at all feel proper as Matthew led her into the house.
How could she feel proper when they’d engaged in such improper behavior in the carriage?
She desperately hoped the coachman had not heard.
If he had, he did a remarkable job of pretending and keeping a blank expression.
Not that she’d been able to dare more than a quick glance at him as she’d stepped down from the carriage.
It was a relief to have her husband back at her side, leading her up to their home. She was very aware of her skirts brushing against her sore bottom, which made the need between her thighs tingle and throb.
The real punishment might not be the spanking, but the wait for satisfaction.
“Reedy!” Matthew called out to his valet with anticipation and relief threaded through his voice. The man was standing at the top of the stairs, speaking with Nettie, and they both turned to look down at Matthew and Johanna.
From the expressions on their faces, Johanna feared they did not have good news. Reedy was stoic, but Nettie looked sympathetic and a touch worried.
“Your Grace.” Reedy hurried down the stairs, leaving Nettie hovering at the top of them, and quickly bowed. “I ah… unfortunately do not have the news you might wish.”
Johanna could practically feel her husband’s energy fall, from excitement to pure disappointment.
“What? Could the armoire not be moved?” His arm flexed beneath Johanna’s hand, and she put her other hand atop his, hoping to assuage some of the emotions she could sense roiling through him.
“No, Your Grace, I mean yes, the armoire could be moved, but…” Reedy lost some of his blankness as he wrung his hands in front of him. “Your coin was not beneath it.”
“Not… beneath…” Matthew sucked in a large breath, and Johanna felt him list toward her, so he was now almost leaning against her.
Bracing herself against him to help hold him up, she looked up at him, concern threading through her when she saw how very pale his face had gone. “But then, where is it?”
“We do not know, Your Grace. I looked everywhere in your room that I could think of, I swear to you—”
“I need to see for myself.” Matthew began to move, and for a moment Johanna was worried that he would tear himself away from her.
He came to a halt as her hand tugged on his arm, though, rather than continuing onward, and looked at her with an expression she’d never seen before.
A little lost. A little fearful. “Will you come with me?”
“Of course.”
How could she not?
Although he’d seemed to be doing well enough without his coin this evening, clearly, he was not ready to be without it at all.
She wondered if the expectation of having it again once he returned home had been part of what had helped him so much with its absence.
Arm looped through his, she kept up with his rapid pace as he led them to his bedroom, Reedy and Nettie trailing behind them.
The door was open, and there was a small army of footmen inside when they entered.
Some of them were crawling along the floor and checking every inch of the rug that covered the room, one with his head in the armoire—the contents of which had been emptied onto the bed—several searching along the baseboards, and one underneath Matthew’s bed.
It was clear that they were being excessively thorough. Johanna let out a long, slow breath. Surely, so many of them could not have missed a shiny coin on the floor. It appeared as though they were checking every square inch of it. Her heart sank on her husband’s behalf.
To her surprise, he did not seem to sink, though he did put his hand over hers on his arm and press very tightly on it.
Reedy cleared his throat, and everyone in the room looked up, then jumped to their feet, bowing, as they realized the duke and duchess had arrived.
“Any luck?” Reedy asked, sounding as nervous as Matthew was anxious.
All the footmen shook their heads.
“I think it could have fallen through this knothole in the floor, Your Grace,” one of the footmen said, gesturing at the section of the floor that the armoire used to cover.
It had been moved several feet to the side of that spot.
“But we ran downstairs to check and could not find anything, so we came back up to look through the room again.”
“Thank you for your diligence.” Matthew’s voice sounded hollow. He looked at Reedy. “I’ll spend the evening in my wife’s chambers to give them time to set the room back aright. You may stop looking.”
Oh, her poor Matthew.
He sounded so incredibly sad. Resigned. It was like the spark of life had been sucked right out of him, and all Johanna wanted to do was see it returned.
This was such a small thing, compared to the burdens she had been through with her family, yet she could see how deeply it affected him.
He had not had an easy childhood, despite his wealth and status, and that coin had meant something to him during that time.
If she’d had a talisman she could use to help her make decisions, that led her family out of the dire straits they’d been in, she would have been devastated at its loss as well. Even now, she knew she owed her own current good fortune to that coin. Without it, would Matthew have married her?
She did not know.
But she hurt when he hurt.
She loved being married to him. Seeing his smile. Learning from his passion. The way he interacted with her siblings. His protectiveness. His humor. The way he made her feel.
She…
She could not finish that thought right now.
“Come,” she murmured, closing the door to her room behind them and shutting out the noise of the footmen in his.
They could still hear bits and pieces as the armoire was being moved back into place.
Her room was not as small and cozy as the carriage, but at least it gave them a modicum of privacy.
A sense of shutting out the rest of the world, with its weight of decisions, choices, and other people.
She placed her hands on either side of his face, looking up into his eyes.
“It’s just us in here,” she murmured. “What do you want to do? Whatever you say, it will be the right decision.”
Matthew
Looking down into his wife’s violet eyes, Matthew’s emotions bubbled and popped inside him, a simmering stew of confusion. The pure acceptance he saw staring back at him helped to soothe some of the worst of it.
He could tell Johanna what he wanted to do, and she would not judge him for it. He would not be punished. She had already shown that in the carriage.
So, why was it so difficult?
Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes for a moment, focusing on the feeling of her hands gently touching his face.
The careful way she held him. The scent of her perfume, like a field full of posies, rose to meet his nose.
His hands found her hips as he opened his eyes again, looking back down at her. Focusing on her.
“I… want to strip off your dress.” He slid his hands up her sides, cupping just underneath her breasts, watching them rise and fall as he did so.
“Then I want to brush your hair. While you’re completely naked.
Then I want to carry you to your bed and put you on your hands and knees, so I can fuck you from behind while seeing the pretty pink of your bottom. ”
Heat and desire rose in her gaze with every word he spoke. She shivered in place as his hands moved back down her sides and around to her bottom, so he could cup her punished cheeks through her dress on the final word. He pulled her against him, watching as her breath caught in her throat.
Once again, the ability to do what he desired with his wife, without having to flip his coin was…
exciting. Distracting enough to almost make him forget his panic.
Tomorrow, there would be a myriad of decisions he must make, without knowing if they were the correct ones, but tonight, the only person he had to please was his wife.
And she was pleased to do whatever he wished.
“I want that, too,” she whispered.
Lowering his head to her lips, Matthew kissed her.
Claimed her with his mouth. His hands massaged her bottom before rising to the buttons on the back of her dress.
Slowly, he stripped her out of her clothes, just like he’d said he wanted to.
Revealing every inch of her. Giving each inch a kiss as the fabric slipped off her silken skin.
Johanna moaned, nearly making him want to skip over the second part… but he wanted the whole thing.
She sat at her vanity, clothed in nothing but the hair he was brushing, blushing furiously.
He was still fully dressed as he attended her.
Leaning down, Matthew could not help but take a lock of hair between his fingers and use it to brush over her nipples as he gave her another kiss.
Her hand came up to curl around his neck, holding him there as she kissed him back with passionate desperation.
Releasing the lock of hair, he closed his hand around her breast, cupping the soft flesh and pinching her taut nipple between his fingers. She moaned against his lips, her other hand coming up to wrap around his neck as well.
Crouching down, he slid his hands beneath her so he could lift her as he stood back up, holding her tight against him.
These were easy decisions.
They felt right, down to the marrow in his bones.
He could get lost in his wife, without fear, without worry.
Laying her on the bed, she immediately went up onto her knees, her hands going to his cravat and pulling the pin free.
It clattered to the floor a moment later, followed by the fluttering fabric of the cravat itself.
They kissed. Slowly. Passionately. Deliberately.
Her hands moved over him as he stripped off each article of clothing, helping him to divest himself of the coverings until he was completely naked as well.
Matthew climbed onto the bed, running his hands over her bottom, which was barely blushing pink now.
“It appears as though I did not spank you hard enough,” he murmured, smiling with the jest as he cupped her cheeks.
“Perhaps you should try again?” The mischief in her eyes as she looked over her shoulder at him made him chuckle. There was something else there, too, though. Something more than a light jest.
Once again, he felt sure that she was hiding something from him, and that the ‘punishment’ in the carriage had nothing to do with Rose. But this did not seem like the time to question her about it, even if he did not have his coin to tell him not to.
Instead, he lifted his hand and brought it down on her bottom, making her gasp as her head dropped back down in front of her.
Braced on her forearms, her bottom high in the air, it was as though she was bent before him in supplication.
Matthew pressed his thumb against the slickness of her pussy, coating the digit in her wetness.
“Do you know what truly naughty girls get, kitten?” he asked in a low voice, enjoying her little wriggles as he moved his thumb across her sensitive flesh.
“What?”
He shifted his hand up and pressed the tip of his lubricated thumb against the crinkled blossom of her rear entrance. Johanna gasped, tensing, her head starting to come up as her muscles tried to clench together—but could not fully because her legs were so far apart with him kneeling between them.
“Naughty girls get their bottoms punished with more than a spanking.” He pushed his thumb into her bottom at the same time he thrust into her pussy with his cock, making her cry out and rock forward onto her arms. His other hand was curled around her hip, helping to hold her mostly in place as he sank into her with a groan, the warm, wet heat of her body wrapping around his cock.
The tight grip of her bottom squeezed his thumb, and he could feel his cock through the thin lining between her channels.
Gripping her hip tightly with his other hand, he began to ride her, his thumb fully embedded in her bottom all the while.
Johanna
The very perversity of her husband’s thumb in her bottom was enough to make Johanna feel faint.
And what did he mean by punishing her with more than a spanking?
As shameful as the sensations coursing through her were, there was no more than a slight discomfort at her tiny hole being stretched around his thumb. Not at all like a spanking.
His thumb moved in time with his thrusts, his cock sinking into her again and again, stoking the fires of her arousal, and the most incredibly wicked thought occurred to her. Surely, he could not mean that…
That could not possibly fit…
The slight sting of his thumb pushing into her had not felt at all like punishment, but if something so much larger were to thrust into that narrow space…
Now, Johanna really felt like she might faint, yet her passion was climbing higher and higher with every thrust. Picturing him like this, behind her, pushing his cock into her bottom, made her toes curl as desire coursed through her. That could not possibly be what he meant.
And yet she could not get the image out of her head.
Her body clamped down around his thrusting cock. She was already so primed from the spanking and the way he’d touched her as he’d stripped her down. Every part of her was buzzing, her skin tight on her body, the need inside her pulsing as she soared to her pinnacle.
“Matthew!” She cried out his name, her head dropping down as her body clenched around him. She was so hot. So full. So inundated with pleasure, it felt as though she was about to burst.
And burst she did, in spiraling swirls of ecstasy.
Her fingers dug into the sheets beneath her, her toes curling, her head bowing down as the pure sensual rapture went off in a dizzying array of fireworks throughout her body.
Matthew’s thumb slid away, then his hands were gripping her hips, holding her in place as he moved with hard, rough thrusts that sent her soaring ever higher.
Johanna cried out his name again, the intense pleasure overwhelming her senses, until he groaned and embedded himself fully within her, flooding her with his seed.
Panting, she dropped her head to the bedding beneath her, closing her eyes. She felt… good. Better than she had any right to be. Some of the guilt had been soothed.
But not all of it.