Chapter 32

Grace

Until that moment, I hadn't understood about talking dirty. When Jake had degraded Shelly, talking about her pussy and her ass as if they belonged to him, and he could treat those most private parts of her however he liked, it had troubled me almost as much as it had turned me on. In Cal's soft but oh-so demanding voice, the words that did the same to my own body's intimate places made me clench so hard I cried out, and I knew why. It still troubled me, and I felt sure it would take a good long time to get used to it, but I understood.

I wanted my sweet virgin pussy to belong to him. I needed it to be no more than a mere possession that the man who took me in hand could play with… train… thrust into as hard as he chose just to make himself feel good. He could call it whatever he wanted, because he owned it.

With a gasping moan as the need surged inside I shuffled my bare feet apart. I felt Cal's left hand come down on my back.

"Arch this," he told me. "Push out your bottom."

I closed my eyes. Blood flooded into my cheeks. I bent my back, lifting myself on my elbows and proffering my backside to my future husband.

All of it. The thrill that went through me as his words echoed in my head mixed arousal and terror so thoroughly that I couldn't have said which I felt more of.

"Good girl," Cal said.

Oh, God. A little whine emerged from my throat. Need got the upper hand for just a moment.

"Six hard swats for disrespect," he announced.

Oh, God. The breath puffed in and out through my nostrils. Fear blew past sexiness at the finish line.

I opened my eyes and blinked. The finish line. I had… I had, well, made it. I had gotten to the finish line myself, hadn't I? As bizarre an ending as I could ever have imagined, and not really an ending but rather a beginning, but…

A surge of happiness radiated through me, taking me out of the terrifying scene just for a moment and telling me that really, as painful as I knew my lesson would be, I should feel grateful.

Then Cal spread his left hand wider on my naked back, holding me firmly in place, and I felt the puff of air from the paddle. I had enough time to wonder how I could have lost my mind so thoroughly as to feel gratitude before the sharp crack of the wooden blade across both my butt cheeks rang out in the bedroom.

The sensation differed enormously from Jake's family strap, except in the way it seemed to start with a small sting and then build to aching, fiery agony. I let out a grunt, and then, as it hurt more and more, a mewling whine. My bottom squirmed, hips bucking under Cal's hand, as I tried to soothe the pain away a little. My face burned as I pictured how lewd the movement must be, how clearly I must be showing my shaven pussy and even the tiny button of my anus to my accepted suitor.

"Count them, Grace," I heard his deep voice say from somewhere else. It sounded so calm that it seemed to restrain me the same way his strong hand on my back did. My body seemed to be trying to move in every direction, writhing and wriggling, but Cal's body kept me effortlessly in place. And his voice sounded to me like an extension of his body, rumbly and massive, coming from his impossibly muscled shoulders and core.

I shuddered so violently he had to press down hard on my back to keep me where I belonged. I choked out a sob as the idea reverberated through me—where I belonged.

"One," I moaned. I felt his hand move, very slightly, and I knew exactly what it meant, a wordless command—or really much more like a hint, the kind of hint a kind teacher tries to give you when you haven't quite gotten the answer correct. I had the answer, though, as humiliating as it felt, and I sobbed it out: "One, sir."

"Good girl," Cal repeated, and he rubbed my back, that enormous hand moving up to my shoulders and kneading me lightly between them, then a little more firmly.

"That isn't fair," I gasped. "Sir… it… oh, God."

The simple act of soothing care had transmitted itself all over my deeply conflicted body, from my skin to my muscles to my nervous system, and straight down between my legs so that I had to squirm again, this time less with agony than with the other kind of heat, the mortifying kind.

Where I belong. Bent over Cal's bed. Stark naked. At my future husband's disposal.

He moved that caring hand back down to the small of my back, and he exerted a little more pressure. I realized suddenly that it represented his signal to me that another swat from the paddle lay in my immediate future. I felt conflict rend my mind and my heart—the defiant part of me, though in retreat, demanded that I see the warning as Cal cruelly making the punishment worse by forcing me to anticipate each terrible impact of the wooden blade on my poor bare bottom. Another, more reasonable part, the place from which the warmth in my chest rose as I thought about my accepted suitor calling me a good girl, told me that he did it as a kindness, to help me prepare myself, so as to get through it more easily.

Whatever Cal's intent, knowing that he had raised his arm and would soon bring the paddle down again made me cry out in fear and tense my backside.

"It'll hurt less if you relax your cheeks and your thighs," he said.

Blood rushed to my face. Obviously he meant to help me get through it—just as the affectionate voice inside me had tried to tell me. But the idea that he had the dominant self-assurance and the patronizing superiority to give me advice about what to do with my ass when he paddled it… that made me blush furiously.

How do I have any modesty left? I wondered desperately. Then I showed myself just how much of it seemed to have survived, and seemed likely to survive no matter how much humiliation Cal decided to bestow on me, to train me as his blushing bride. I tried to follow his suggestion, and relax my butt muscles and my thigh muscles, and I realized how submissive it must look to him, and my blush got even hotter.

"That's it," Cal told me. "Good girl."

No back rub this time.

This time the hand pressed more firmly, and moved a little in a way that must have come from Cal shifting his weight. Then the puff of air, and the gunshot crack of the paddle, and the pain, lower down, building and building until I was squirming and bucking against the strong hand's hold. I wailed, and I tried to throw myself forward out of sheer instinct, but Cal shifted his grip and held me up.

"Count, darlin'," he said, his tone a little impatient.

"Two, sir," I sobbed. "Oh, God… oh, please… Cal… sir."

But I felt the pressure that meant another swat would soon be on its way. I tensed despite myself. I cried out, "Wait… oh…"

Cal didn't pause again, though. He brought the paddle down hard across my thighs, and I screamed as the agony in my backside seemed to double. I writhed harder, so that he had to step closer and hold me against him. I felt the hardness of his muscles through the denim of his jeans, the leather of his belt, the soft fabric of his Oxford shirt, and the contrast with my nudity sent a terrible jolt of arousal to my pussy even amidst the suffering of my ass.

That happened at the same time the pain had started to fade slightly, so that an overwhelming ambiguity of sensations seemed to come in successive waves through my limbs, in my core, above all in the sensitive places to which Cal had devoted his disciplinary attention.

"Count," he told me.

"No… please…" I sobbed. "Please, sir… no more."

"Count it or the next one won't count at all, Grace Franklin."

Just the sound of my last name made me whimper with fear. How could anyone be so easygoing and yet so severe, so dominant?

"Th-th-three, sir," I stammered, my voice chopped into pieces by the sheer amount of fiery agony radiating from my punished backside.

He kept holding me against him, his clothed body against my bare one, so that I could feel him shift his weight much more fully.

"Oh… no… no… no…" I whispered, and the final no ended in a strangled scream after the next stroke of the paddle rang out in my stern suitor's bedroom.

With a deep, wrenching wail I cried out, "Four, sir," and then the same strange relaxation that had happened when he had spanked me over his knee happened again. I felt my body give in to his.

I felt him feel it, too. My mind had gone all the way into the far distance, to become the observer who could somehow appreciate both being and not being Grace Franklin, the bad girl in training to be an obedient bride.

From that perspective I could notice how my cheeks blushed fiercely at the idea that Cal knew he had broken me to his will. The independent core of my mind refused to fade away completely.

At the same time, though, I felt—much more thoroughly—a strange but very real comfort in it. I knew that Cal knew that from this moment on, tonight at least, I would give myself to him, body and soul. He had taken me in hand, so terribly literally.

The paddle rose again, and I arched my back to push out my butt and raise it for the next swat, the next part of my severe-but-necessary lesson from my future husband. It came down, just as hard as the last one, but the relaxation of my muscles did seem to make it less painful. My body jerked at the impact and the fiery agony, and I let out a piteous cry. But I said what I had to say immediately.

"Five, sir," I moaned.

Cal's left hand shifted again, going first to the middle of my back. He stepped back a little too, leaving me freer from his restraining grip. I whimpered, not really wanting to feel separated from him like that.

But an instant later the whimper had built itself into a cry of surging pleasure mingled with desperate need. Cal's hand had gone swiftly and urgently, but also very gently, down between my thighs.

"Ask me for your last swat, darlin'," he murmured into my ear before I even knew he had bent down and brought his face close to mine.

Oh, but I can't… sir, I… how could I…

"Oh, God," I gasped, my body seeming to take on an entirely separate consciousness as it responded helplessly to its master's soothing touch. "Oh, God… please… I'm…"

I'm what? Oh, my God, I'm going to come… I'm going to… My hips jerked in a desperate rhythm, matching the cadence of Cal's miraculous fingers, the pulses of friction that could somehow make me forget how much my ass hurt from the horrible paddle. I sobbed at each jerk, every one of them anticipating the beat, trying without success to make him go faster, make him rub harder.

"I'll make it easier for you, Grace," he said from somewhere, but I only understood the words when he followed through on what turned out to be a terrible threat.

He took his hand away.