“Breathe through the blows. I know it hurts, but this is to teach you a lesson.”
“I know, but it’s so hard. Ten! Eleven!” she cried.
She was really having trouble, and he’d only raised a few light welts.
“I think it might be better if I tied you,
Cait
.
For your own good.”
She shuddered, sobbing into the wall. “Yes, please.”
He removed a thick leather lace from one of his vests. He took
Cait’s
trembling fists in his hands, circling them. He bound her tightly enough to hold her but not so tightly that the blood couldn’t reach her fingers. She looked down at his careful ministrations as if they were happening to someone else. He wanted to meet her eyes, to let her know that everything would be okay. It was best if she was tied now, though, because he was going to hit her much harder before the end.
He guided her farther down the wall where a sturdy bolt protruded from the stone.
“Reach up.” The leather lace stretched to fit over the top of the bolt perfectly. He pulled at the bonds to be certain they’d hold. They did. With her arms stretched above her, nearly on tiptoe, she was held fast with no recourse to pull away.
Without a word, he resumed her punishment.
“Twelve!” she sobbed.
She arched and pulled at the bonds. Her distress was gorgeous. The sight of her tense back, her shapely buttocks clenching for the next blow was almost more than he could take.
“Thirteen! Fourteen!
Fifteen!”
By sixteen she was beginning to scream the numbers through bitter tears, and by twenty she was a very, very punished girl. He had been harsh with her. It was a punishment she wouldn’t soon forget. But he wasn’t quite ready to release her. He looked at her straining wrists held by the bonds, the red welts rising on her buttocks. No, not yet.
“Caitlyn.”
He stood right behind her and breathed her name in her ear. She whimpered, turning her head away. “That’s all. It’s finished.” He rubbed her back, testing her arms and shoulders for trembling or fatigue. “Now I want to have you just like this, against the wall, tied up so you can’t get away.”
She shivered, leaning back to him as much as she could.
“That’s what I want,
Cait
. Do your arms hurt?”
“No,” she whispered after a moment, so softly he could barely hear.
He shed his clothes like wildfire. His cock was bursting with need. His hands shook as he threw open the chest to find the lubricant that helped him breach her. He smeared it on his fingers and spread her buttocks open, the lovely bottom he’d wanted to possess all night long. She flinched from his rough handling of her fresh welts. He bit her shoulder.
“I want you. Open for me.”
He spread one hand on the front of her hips, using the other to press his cock to her hole. She leaned back against him but he pushed her forward against the wall and drove into her, barely giving her the time she needed to adjust to his thick girth.
But she didn’t fight him. No, she was far too well trained for that now. She yielded to his invasion, sighing and shuddering in his arms. He reached between her legs when he was fully seated, running his hand down her front to press her hard onto his cock. At the same time he caressed and pinched the hidden fold of flesh that made her moan and clench around him. Within moments she was thrashing and pulling at her bonds in the throes of orgasm. The feel of her lithe body bucking against him triggered some animal impulse of his own. He pounded into her and found his own release. He waited, still deep inside her, as the orgasm rolled through him in aftershocks. His hands grasped her trapped wrists. His cock twitched in her tight ass. Her chest rose and fell in soft gasps as he nuzzled her nape.
“
Mmm
, I have you. You’re mine. You’re my good girl, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she breathed on a long sigh. “Yes.”
Chapter Nine
Oh, yes, she was most certainly his good girl, he thought to himself as he released her bonds. He caught her before she slipped to the floor.
“Come and lie down on the bed.” He carried her when her legs wouldn’t cooperate. “Lie down on your tummy. It will hurt less.”
He rubbed her back, looking down at her striped bottom. Yes, she would sit with difficulty for a while, but he’d drawn no blood, and none of the welts were garish. Out of guilt, though, he would let her rest.
“
Cait
, you did very well.” He lay down next to her, pulling her against his body. “I know that wasn’t easy to take.”
“It was easier after you tied me,” she said after a moment. She slid him a look.
Is it all right that I sort of liked that part of it?
her
guilty expression seemed to say.
Oh, yes, that’s perfect
, he thought, smiling back at her.
That means we’ll do it again soon.
She frowned then, suddenly troubled. She whispered, “I really try to be good.”
“I know.” He kissed her cheek, her lips,
her
pert nose.
“Do you think
...
Why do you think
...
Why haven’t I grown a baby yet? Is it because I’m too bad?”
His brows drew together in a frown. “Who told you about growing babies?”
“Henna.
She said when you planted your seeds inside me, a baby would grow. But you’ve been planting and planting your seeds and no baby is growing. My waist is as flat as it ever was.”
“Do you want a baby so badly?” he muttered. “Sometimes they just don’t come, no matter how you wish for them.”
“I’ve hoped for a baby. They’re so sweet and soft.”
His frown deepened. “Babies are a lot of work.”
“I’m good at hard work. And I try to be good—”
“It has nothing to do with being good or bad. You’re a very, very good wife. I’m sure you’d be a wonderful mother. But there’s more to it than that. Sometimes babies...babies are more than you bargained for.”
She looked at him sympathetically. “I know you lost your first wife in childbirth. Did you love her very much?”
“Oh
Cait
.”
He sighed. What else was there to say? How could he explain if she asked too much?
“I don’t think I would die, Duncan. I’m not scared. Henna always says my hips are made for bearing children. I bet I could have lots and lots.”
You’re not scared,
Cait
, but I am. I don’t want lots and lots. I just want you.
He brushed her hair back from her face, watching the jet black curls fall across his fingers. Would a baby of theirs be white blond like him, or have her hair, dark as night?
“You know,” he said, “babies grow when they’re ready, not before. Perhaps
some day
we’ll have a baby, but it has nothing to do with how good you are, or how loving, or how kind. You’re all of those things,
Cait
, but it won’t make a baby come.”
“It won’t? Oh. So I just have to wait?”
“Yes, honey, that’s what you have to do. I’m sorry. Perhaps...” He thought for a moment. “If you wanted, you could play with some of the little babies in town.”
“They don’t like me. They cry when I hold them, and the older babies run away. That’s why I need my own baby, because it would love me.”
“I love you,
Cait
. Isn’t that enough?”
At the sharp edge in his voice, she looked up at him, mistaking his self-hatred for anger at her.
“Yes,” she said quickly. “Of course it is. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I can’t wait patiently.”
He sighed. The world suddenly seemed to him a very bleak place. “Well, go to sleep. It’s been a long day for both of us.”
Ever obedient,
Cait
closed her eyes as he covered her up and drew her into his arms. She slept almost immediately, the deep sleep of the innocent, but he was up a long while thinking about what an awful villain he was.
* * * * *
Cait
stayed late in her room the next day, partly because her sore bottom made it painful to walk, but more than that, she was despondent about the whole issue of having a baby.
When she’d talked to Henna, she’d made it sound as if a baby would soon be on the way. Duncan made it sound as if it was a remote possibility. It must be difficult indeed to grow a baby if all the seed he’d poured into her hadn’t resulted in one yet.
She was still brooding when Henna bustled in with a tray of lunch.
“Dear girl, what ails
ya
today?
Ya
look so sad.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,”
Cait
murmured. “I’m just tired.”
“Tired?” asked Henna, perking up.
“And sick?
Are
ya
feeling ill at ease when you eat? In the mornings, is your stomach ailing you?”
“No, not really.
Why?”
Henna shrugged. “It could be that you’re growing a baby. Have your courses come on you this month?”
“Yes, last week.”
“Oh.” Her face fell. “Then you couldn’t be with child, I’m afraid. That’s how you know for sure. Your courses stop.”
“No. They’ve been coming right as rain.”
“Well, now...I don’t know why... Are you still...you and the earl...?”
Cait
nodded emphatically.
“That’s strange. Well, don’t you lose
hope.
”
“Duncan told me babies come when they’re ready. It doesn’t depend how good or bad you are.”
“No, it doesn’t depend on that, lass. Duncan’s right. If it did, there would be a lot less babies born into this world. If only good people could have ’
em
.”
Cait
frowned. “If that was true, I wouldn’t ever have been born at all, because my father is awfully bad.”
“Is he now?” chuckled Henna.
“Your father the king?”
“He’s a king, but he was very bad to me. I don’t like him.”
“And what of your mother, child?
What kind of woman was she?”
“A liar and a slut.”
Henna gaped,
then
quickly composed herself. “Oh, I’m sure that’s not true.”
Cait
shrugged. “My father said so.”
“And you don’t know anything else about her? Your nurse never said anything about your ma?”
“No, ma’am.”
“You never asked? You were never curious?”
“I think she probably had very black hair,”
Cait
offered mournfully.
“Oh, dearest,” Henna said, leaning down to peck her on the cheek. “You rest now if you’re tired. Don’t let Henna upset you about where you’ve come from. What’s important is that you’re happy now. You are happy now, lass, aren’t
ya
?”