He dragged her into a small clearing, then plunked himself down atop a fallen tree trunk and hauled her, head down, across his lap. He raised her skirts full over her waist and gripped her bottom, causing Elizabeth to freeze, her mind falling blank.
She blinked as he pressed down on the small of her back and something hard pressed up against her belly. Then he struck her buttock with his palm, making her exclaim in shock, “What are you?—?”
He struck again, her other cheek, his slap stinging, though he struck her through her drawers. Realizing, at last, what he was about, she began to squirm against his hold, desperate to escape the blows he now rained down in ever more heavy-handed smacks.
“Let me go!” she cried in horror. “You are … You arehurtingme!”
Only the Baron did not heed her pleas. He continued to spank her, his blows harsh enough to start tears in her eyes.
And then, just as suddenly, he stopped to catch his breath.
Elizabeth remained over his lap, stunned, as his hand briefly, gently rubbed her smarting cheeks. Before he viciously tore her drawers in two, exposing flesh.
She thrashed with all her might to escape the Baron’s clutches, but he held firm, the bulge in his pants pressing more deeply into her belly. This time he kneaded her blazing buttocks with a more controlled, rhythmic grip.
“I told you not to cross me, Lizzie.” His voice brooked no argument. “I warned you I would punish disobedience, yet you flaunted it in my face.” His hand still kneaded and stroked, eliciting an altogether different, strange feeling in her gut. “Had you but heeded my words and obeyed me, I should not have needed to punish you as I just did. And will again, if you continue to challenge my authority.”
She bit her tongue, debating furiously how to argue her way out of this, fuming that any man should treat her like some misbehaving child. She was suddenly afraid he might do worse, alone with her in these woods.
“I know what you are thinking.” His voice sounded off, gruff. “You think I am no better than a beast, to strike a woman’s arse, then stroke her blushing cheeks.” His touch, if possible, only intensified her body’s inexplicable, irrational response. A moan escaped her lips, the sound embarrassingly wanton, needy almost. He pressed his hips harder into her belly. “But there are men and women aplenty in this world, Lizzie, lords and ladies finer than yourself even, who have paid me to strike them thus, begged me to beat their backsides raw, whip them naked and trussed, desperate for debasement.”
She shuddered.
“I have seen the depravity of men, women, and children, Elizabeth, and nothing, I tell younothingshocks me anymore. So if you think you can control me, tease or manipulate me into indulging your whims and becoming your puppet, you’ve another think coming.” He inhaled a slow breath. “Do you understand me now, Miss Winthrop?”
She remained silent, her heart pounding in her ears, with fear, rage, and?—
“Do you?” his hand urged, slipping between her legs to tease her aching center, wet enough he slid his finger inside again, forcing a different, more shameful moan from her lips. It wasimpossible she should now feel pleasure. Impossible! But she ground against his hand, despite her fear and loathing. Despite all better sense.
“Good girl,” he crooned, making her abhor how her flesh craved the unseemly pleasure he now offered. His hand worked her deeper, stoking her inner fire, building sensations perilously, embarrassingly close, far too?—
“Beg me, Lizzie,” he whispered in her ear, so near she felt the heat of his words while his hand kept her unbearably close to climax. “Beg for your release and just maybe”—his finger caressed her into fresh agony—“I will grant it.”
Elizabeth wept, a cry rent from her throat which tore through her chest as she pleaded for release, reduced to utter, sodding servitude. Suffused with shame, she begged him for relief.
And in his wicked mercy, the Baron granted her explosive wish, right before he spanked her again, that much harder.
When it was over, her body shook, her thoughts an utter mess. The Baron merely gathered her sobbing person to his chest and kissed the top of her head.
Elizabeth cried herself silly on his lapels, weeping less for what her betrothed had just done and more for all she’d endured for years: her father’s incessant lies, her mother and stepmother’s deaths, the constant stream of moneylenders she’d been forced to deflect, marriage suits she’d fought to reject—all of it done to protect and shield Annabelle. Every past grief now came rushing back, flooding her with feelings so acute a knot of pain burst in a torrent of emotion she’d kept dammed up for years.
A wall inside her had just crumbled, and with it, a slew of old fears. All this had been accomplished with but a few harsh strokes of the Baron’s steady hand, the irony of it not lost on her otherwise confused, conflicted mind. Elizabeth’s soul felt undeniably lighter, as if emptied of a vast and weighty fog.
She lifted her head from his tear-dampened waistcoat to say “Thank you” to the man who’d just handily spanked her bum. “I believe I may have … needed that,” she clarified, exhausted.
“Hmm.” He stroked her hair, which had escaped its pins. “Perhaps y’ did, miss.” His voice sounded different, softer. “I am sorry I hurt you, Lizzie.”
“I am sorry I goaded you, sir.”
“Hmm,” he mused again.
“Mmm,” she hummed in response.
They remained this way a while longer, each lost in thought as he continued to pet her. Somewhere deep inside, she did not want the moment to end.
“Elizabeth.” He broke the spell. “Do you feel well enough now to?—?”
“Yes, I am better.” She righted herself on his lap, careful of her bottom, then stared up at him, close enough to notice his features had softened, relaxed. “My spectacles though. They must have fallen when you?—”
