Chapter 8
CHAPTER 8
Francisco
Wolf whines, wanting to go after her, but I give him a firm no.
I give my dear wife two hours to cool off.
She’s right, of course. I should have told her the full extent of my demands in the bedroom. I should have been crystal clear about the way I would take and own and use her body.
I should have outlined, in black and white, what that would mean in practical terms. It means she is never to close her thighs to me. It means she can cry and shake and beg, but she can never walk away. It means I’ll order her lady’s maid to lick her pretty little pussy until she comes.
Why didn’t I tell her those things?
Why didn’t I sit her down, look her in the eye, and recite the list?
Probably because I knew it would scare her away. It would terrify a woman like Isabella, already so innocent and cloistered. Even her party days with champagne and dancing didn’t prepare her for me. Nothing could have prepared her for me.
There was evidence enough of that in her eyes. All that pretty shock and horrified desire. I would have liked to take her chin in my hand and watch the expressions roll over her face.
Not on the first day.
She needs this time to let her new reality settle in. Of course, she won’t leave. Not with the infusion of cash her father is probably already squandering.
Isabella needs time to adjust. She felt pleasure from Lila’s attentions last night. The sounds she made testified to it. A little humiliation will go far with her.
Patience is the highest of all virtues in this particular moment. I exercise it for most of the afternoon before I dismiss my staff and go looking for my wife.
It was three years ago when I saw her at the club. Isabella was with her friends, the five of them drawn in a tight circle to dance for a bachelorette party. They took turns fending off guys and replaying their excitement again and again. Isabella played her part to perfection, the way she did for our wedding and for the wedding night.
Her body was utterly tantalizing. Every movement drew me in. The sway of her hips. The fall of her hair. I wanted to know how she looked on her knees. Wanted to see her that way in the middle of a crowd.
My imagination was interrupted at the moment she made a graceful exit.
She gathered up her purse from their booth and moved away from her friends with promises to return quickly and a relieved set to her shoulders.
I waited fifteen minutes before I followed her. An absurdly long time, looking back. Patience was a virtue then, too. Because Isabella was too absorbed in the music to notice me when I finally found her hiding place.
An unused private room. Hard bass vibrated through the room from the main club, but Isabella seemed oblivious. She sat at a piano we kept around from when the club had live music. The song she played was slow and haunting. Lonely. A poignant counterpoint to the frantic copulation of pop music out there. My cock was already hard from the sight of her dancing. The music did something else entirely. A knowing snapped into place. I would have her as my bride. I would do whatever maneuvering it took to make that happen. She would be mine.
Now she is.
I let Wolf out to roam the grounds outside and start my search in the quiet places in the chateau. Isabella is not in her room, or the sitting room, or the library. She is not in her walk-in closet or even mine. I need music. That’s where she’ll go.
I’m right.
I find her in the ballroom, where a grand piano sits draped in heavy linen when it’s not in use. The fabric has been pulled away and neatly folded. It sits beside her on the bench as she plays. It’s a different song than the one from the club but just as haunting. She scrambles to her feet when I come in, eyes fiery. “Go away.”
“We should talk.”
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
I step farther into the ballroom, crossing the parquet flooring that has been worn by a thousand feet and then shined to faultlessness, worn and shined. “We’re going to talk anyway, my dear wife. You’ll use your words instead of sharing your feelings with the piano.”
“Or else what?” Her blue eyes flash like a stormy sky. A dimple appears in the center of her chin to highlight her determination. “You’ll use corporal punishment? You’ll spank me?”
My hand itches to do it. Aches to do it. Isabella is the picture of heated frustration. She’s pink-cheeked and angry and pushing. These moments are opportunities to demonstrate her role. To demonstrate mine. My wife will not be a whirlwind who flies through the house every time she disagrees with me. She won’t refuse to talk to me when she does. I won’t have it.
This, despite how hard I am. I never wanted the kind of relationship my parents had. There was too much acid. Too much acrimony. Emotions ran far too high to be controlled or managed. In my own life I insist on control. And I will have it here, too.
“Calm down.” I keep my tone level. Isabella won’t force me to match her in this. I feel a pull at the center of me that keeps my back straight and my eyes on hers, unwavering.
“So you’ll actually spank me.” She folds her arms over her chest, and the corner of her mouth turns up. “You’ll punish me. Your hand. My ass.”
“It’s tiresome to repeat myself this often, so I’ll say it a final time. If you refuse to discuss this rationally with me, then I’ll use other methods to convince you.”
A punishment won’t change her mind… at first. It’s a heightening of the emotions already in play. For the person who is submitting to the punishment, this presents itself as pain that builds to release, followed by clarity. Isabella needs this as much as anyone I’ve ever seen.
“Well, I won’t be calm. Why should I be calm? You lied to me.” She stabs a finger in my direction. “You purposely hid things from me so I wouldn’t understand. You’re a liar. You’re an asshole, exactly like my brother said.”
That amuses me. “Your brother warned you about me.”
“He said people talk about you. That you’re controlling. That you’re a freak.”
“Is that so?” It’s oddly endearing to me that he tried to warn his sister. If only her father had been as concerned with her welfare as he was about his hotel.
She lifts her chin. “And he was right.”
Isabella’s eyes widen as I stalk toward her at the piano. There’s fear in those eyes, of course, but other things, too. A quicksilver flash of relief and desire. I cage one hand around the back of her neck and turn her when I’m seated on the stool. Then I bend her over my lap. Isabella struggles within my grip. “You’re not doing this. You’re not going to do this.”
I pause, leaning back enough to let her escape if she really tries. “Do you want me to stop, Isabella? Or should I call you Isa the way your family does? If you really want me to stop, say the words.”
“Bastard,” she says. Her hips buck unconsciously against my leg. I consider telling her, but I don’t want her to notice that she’s enjoying it. Not quite yet. “Asshole. Freak.”
“And apparently you knew that before you married me, so what are you so shocked about?” I flip her dress up to expose the curve of her ass. Isabella wears no panties, no thong, nothing. She won’t be wearing them in my house unless I give her express permission.
That will come later, when she’s trained.
Now she’s as wild as an unbroken horse, swearing extensively. I’d be impressed if I weren’t so irritated. This is not the Isabella I agreed to marry, and now we’ll spend valuable time making her into that woman.
“Now you tell me what happens next,” I say, still giving her enough room to escape if she chooses. “Am I going to spank you? Or are you going to walk away from our contract?”
She shivers, and I know it’s not entirely fear. It’s curiosity. Arousal. “I hate you.”
That’s answer enough. “Every time you speak you earn five more.”
The first five swats are hard enough to stun her. Isabella reaches for her ass with one hand with a shocked gasp. I pin her arm behind her back. She had her chance to walk away. She didn’t want it. “If you can’t keep your hands still, I’ll tie them,” I inform her. “Trying to cover yourself is a good way to get hurt.”
“I’m already hurt.”
I cut her off with another series of hard spanks. I had intended to go easy on her for her first punishment, but no. That won’t get her attention. “You’re hurting in the moment, but there won’t be lasting harm. No, you’re simply being punished. You disobeyed my commands, and these are the consequences.”
This time, I give her ten. By the last one Isabella is panting over my lap and crying out with every contact. I rub a palm over her pink flesh. “That’s enough,” she breathes. “You did it. You punished me. You spanked me.”
I cover her mouth with my free hand. “I love your voice, my dear wife. Except when I’ve expressly forbidden you from speaking.”
Another ten.
It’s hurting her more now. Her cries are turning to whimpers interrupted with sharp gasps that make my cock throb. And between Isabella’s legs, she’s slicking up. I haven’t touched her there yet. I don’t need to. I can scent her arousal, and it makes me want to bury my face between her legs and lick her until pleasure becomes its own punishment.
Instead I keep spanking her in a relentless rhythm that turns her bottom a darker shade of pink and then a deep red. Isabella lasts longer than I expected before she gives in. It’s a subtle thing, with a woman like her. A delicate curving of her body over my lap. Her surrender isn’t some big, showy display. It’s a tiny surrender in her posture. She stops trying to get up, stops trying to pull her wrist out of my hand, and lays herself over my knees like she should have done all this time.
Five more, and she offers her ass up to my hand.
Isabella’s crying now, red-cheeked and quiet. A softer man would stop. Would soothe her burning flesh with his hand and murmur that she had done well. Her punishment has not made me feel particularly soft or gentle. It’s made me want more from her.
I take more.
Ten more stinging slaps across her ass, as hard as all the others. Isabella sobs through them, her hips rocking against my leg. When I’m finished, I pull her off my lap and stand her abruptly in the middle of the pantry.
God, she’s beautiful like this, with tears on her cheeks and humiliation pink on her cheekbones and her hands stoically at her sides.
“We can discuss it,” I offer. “Or I can bend you over my lap again. I’d accept either outcome.”
“You weren’t honest,” she whispers. “Sir.”
“No,” I admit. “I wasn’t. A lie of omission is still a lie, and I omitted plenty.”
“That’s a terrible apology.”
“Probably because I’m not sorry. It made you my wife. If you had run scared, I never would have gotten to fuck you. To spank you. To hold you.” There is one more thing I need to do before we leave this ballroom. Isabella wants it. She doesn’t know what it is, not yet, but I can see from the trembling knees and the errant tears still sliding down her cheeks that no one has ever needed this ritual, this closure, more than Isabella does now.
I stand up and fold her in my arms.
The tension in her body doesn’t last. She sags against my chest and takes big, deep breaths while I rub her back. I do not tell her she’s done well, because she fought like a hellcat.
“I’m not sorry,” I murmur into her hair. “I want you too badly for that.”