“No, wait!” My squeal comes too late.
He spanks me again and again, this time not on my already tender flesh, but on the fresh skin just below my bottom, which somehow hurts even more than my poor, throbbing cheeks. Tears are dripping down to the carpet all over again and I cry out, squirming and apologizing, kicking, and realizing very quickly that none of it matters.
When he finally stops, I hang over his lap, sniffling as I try to get control of myself again.
“Naughty behavior will be met with discipline,” he reads on calmly. Even his breathing remains calm and even, which is infuriating in its own way. Not that I have the energy left to be angry. “Discipline will include spankings, birchings, figgings, and any other means that the duke feels is merited.”
I do not know what birchings or figgings are and I fervently do not want to find out, so I keep my mouth shut. His fingers arerubbing my bottom and upper thighs now, and when they brush against my pussy I shudder in response as the strange spurt of pleasure that flitters through the throbbing agony of my poor bottom.
Surely that cannot have felt… good?
Not while my arse is on fire.
Yet, it did.
The duke’s fingers dip into my pussy, where it is slick and wet and warm, and I cannot stop the moan that rises to my lips as he touches me. It’s as humiliating as it is arousing.
“Well, Mrs. Fairfax, I think she will do nicely. Take her to my room and prepare her for me while I finish up here.”
I find myself on my feet as quickly as I’d been pulled off of them, my skirts slipping over my burning backside. Staring at the duke with my mouth open, eyes wide, I cannot think of a single thing to say to him although part of me wants to scream.
He is not looking at me though. He is already turning back to the work on his desk.
Mrs. Fairfax’s fingers close around my wrist like a vise.
“Come along, little Betty,” she says smugly. “You do not want me adding to the punishment the duke just administered.”
Because she could. Mrs. Fairfax was now my nanny, according to the contract I’d signed.
My nanny.
What have I gotten myself into?
The question circles through my mind as she pulls me from the room, the throbbing from my bottom and the tightness of my cheeks as the tears dry on them are a stark reminder of why I should not fight her.
Before she pulls me out completely, I glance over my shoulder at the duke.
MyDaddy.
And a shiver goes up my spine.
Chapter Three
Mrs. Fairfax brings me to a huge bedroom. It’s his room. I know the moment I walk in, I do not need to be told.
Everything about it, from the furniture to the very air, is dripping with masculine presence and power. The bed is heavy and dark with four posters jutting into the air, a dark-red canopy draped over the top. Heavy dark-red curtains are tied at each of the posts. The headboard is huge and intricately carved, also made of a dark wood that somehow seems menacing.
Even looking at the bed makes me want to shiver.
My bottom is throbbing and so many questions are crowding my head I feel dizzy. Or maybe the dizziness is from having been over the duke’s lap. From the sudden change in my circumstances.
I have no idea what to expect and it’s making me very nervous.
Daddyis hardly a new word to me. Quite a few of the other women at Madam Atout’s called some of the older gentlemen Daddies. Though, as far as I know, they only did so behind their backs, not to their faces.
If he wants me to call him that, what does it matter to me?
It is certainly no hardship.
