Nola (9 page)

"And," she
continued in a sly drawl, "
because
you intrigued me."

He perked up -
in several ways - at that remark. "I intrigued you?"

Nola
reconsidered what she'd said a bit. "Okay. You annoyed me.
Severely."

"Oh."

"You still do,
but it's pretty much the same thing. I've never instantly disliked anyone or
any thing
as much as I disliked you."

Brandon wasn't
at all sure what to make of that, but it had the ring of truth to it. He liked
that she wasn't pulling her punches - that she generally hadn't since he'd met
her, except under duress in their bed. She hadn't knuckled under to him, and he
was glad for that. He had to admit - to himself - that she intrigued him, too.
Her originality and the fact that she wasn't afraid to fly in the face of
convention drew him like a lodestone, but it was her personality and her
intelligence that kept him around, that had him proposing after an indecently
short acquaintance.

His hands came
to rest on her flat belly, and he had to wonder if the usual wagging tails
might have something to wag about - if she was already pregnant. He found
himself looking forward to the idea. He'd already made up his mind that he was
going to be a different type of father from how Geoffrey had been with him -
very distant, doing the socially accepted thing and leaving him to a succession
of stricter nannies to
raise
. Brandon wanted to know
his children. He was nearing forty and it had only been since Nola had come
into the house that he'd actually gotten to know his father.

She'd been so
good for him in so many ways... and he knew he hadn't been nearly as good for
her - despite the monetary gains her family had reaped. She was thinner than
she'd been when she came to him, and that night she'd been so closed and tight
- so different from her usual demeanor, that it was a rude wakeup call for him.

This was the
person he'd chosen to link his life to until he died. There was no backing out;
there would never be any hint of divorce. He had to make the best of it,
regardless of the fact that he'd probably botched it royally and she probably
hated his guts by now. He didn't want her to slip away from him, didn't want
her to be as miserable as she'd looked.

He would always
spank her - there was no question there. He firmly believed that a husband had
a right - no, a duty - to make sure that his wife had no doubt as to who was in
charge of the relationship. He had consciously been very harsh with her at
first, because he'd wanted to establish that he wasn't going to put up with any
sort of rebellion from her.

But now he had
to wonder if that was too much - if he'd tried a bit too hard as he was
sometimes
wont
too
do. And
the last thing he wanted to do was break her will. It was that strong, stubborn
will that had set her apart from the crowd of simpering chits that were thrown
at him so regularly, and he didn't want to lose that, just curb it some.

Chapter
Six

He'd spanked her
yesterday morning for her misbehavior with the Reverend, even though he really
didn't want to. She seemed to be coming out of her blue mood, and he hadn't
wanted to ruin that, but he also didn't want her to get the idea that she could
just ignore his carefully explained rules without any sort of consequence. But
it had been a different punishment from the usual. He'd paid much more
attention to her responses than his own inherent interest in punishing her,
which had been a definite factor in his previous sternness.

He kept her over
his lap - he'd always favored that position because of its intimacy, but then
lately he'd taken to using his belt on her, and that wasn't always conducive to
being so close to her. He loved using her own hairbrush on her - that was
incredibly intimate to him, and he knew she absolutely hated it. She'd had the
audacity to try to switch brushes to a much lighter, smaller one when she
realized his preference for that implement, but he'd made her produce the
older, much bigger and heavier one and then had given her a very severe
spanking with it for trying to outwit him.

Brandon had held
her far wrist with his left hand, simply looping his middle and thumb around
it, holding loosely, knowing she was essentially reduced to ineffective batting
at him and a lot of leg thrashing.

Unfortunately,
her disobedience was so blatant that he really couldn't let her off easy with
this one, and the implement he'd chosen reflected that. He held the deceptively
small, yet almost indecently lethal rod in his hand. It was like a small cane,
only about twelve or so inches long, thin but not really whippy. It didn't bend
on the down stroke and it didn't yield when it met flesh.

It was going to
raise some angry ridges on that beautiful bottom of hers.

She was naked
over his lap, yet he was completely dressed. Brandon had always believed that
enforced nudity reinforced submission in a most tangible manner.

He grimaced as
he adjusted himself,
then
finally spoke. He could feel
the fine tremor he knew she was trying desperately to suppress, and had to
really push himself forward to do this. He was going to have to strike a
delicate balance, in more ways than one. "You're being spanked because I had
told you not to get into it with the Reverend, and yet that was exactly what
you did. I will not have you disobeying me deliberately like that, Nola."

Keeping his
lecture short and sweet, Brandon decided the best thing to do was to get it
over with, and with that he delivered twenty very hard blows to her wiggling,
squirming bottom. With each successive crack of that small but wicked baton, he
saw how it became harder and harder for her to remain still, and, indeed, near
the end, it was almost impossible for him to keep her over his lap. He finally
had to lower his leg over the backs of her calves and clamp down hard in order
to deliver the last five strokes.

Nola had been
beside herself. He'd spanked her before - he'd strapped her before. But this
was so unbelievably painful - each stripe she'd earned and he'd applied burned
as if he'd laid a line of fire across her bottom instead of some sort of small,
completely unforgiving stick. She knew she would never be able to look at a
conductor's baton at the same way again at the symphony.

And, as usual,
nothing she did - no kicking, no twisting, no wiggling - gave her any sort of a
respite from the almost metronomic fall of that blasted hand and its instrument
of pure, unadulterated pain. The only thing that gave her relief was when he
threw the thing away from them, so that it literally crashed and split against
the far wall, lying there broken.

Suddenly she was
in his arms. He'd never really give her comfort after a spanking - besides in
its most basic form. He'd never held her
much,
they'd
never indulged in pillow talk or just
lain
in each
others
arms. But this time, it was different. He was
different, and his arms felt wonderful around her. He cradled her across his
lap rather than over it, and held her tight against him, making sure that her
bottom didn't touch the rough fabric of his jeans.

She hadn't cried
until then. She was able to scream and moan and thrash, but Nola hadn't allowed
herself to cry. It was a symptom of how she'd been feeling days ago, after
she'd earned this spanking, and she'd stood in front of him holding his belt.
She hadn't usually been able to suppress the tears, but it had worked this
time.

Until
he'd cradled her in his arms.
That was her true undoing, and it
opened the floodgates much more than he probably bargained for, but he'd held
her through the whole storm, rocking just slightly, purely out of instinct.

Here in the tub
with her, now, though, all he could think about was how good her body felt
beneath his hands, how well her breasts fit into his palms, and how easily he
could reach down between those slender legs.

His soapy
fingers made their way down there to that bubbly thatch and well between it,
nudging her legs apart, and bringing his own legs up to bracket hers. He leaned
slowly forward, pressing his mouth into that lavender scented mass of hair,
whispering, "Slide your legs over mine, Nola. I want to pleasure you."

She hesitated,
and there had been a time when he would have turned her over and swatted her
bottom - or much worse - for that, but he was trying to learn a somewhat
different way to handle her, hopefully to the benefit of the both of them, so
he resisted that impulse and simply lay there, waiting for her to obey him.

It didn't take
her much longer, probably because his thick middle finger had already claimed
that hidden territory and had her moaning from its first long, slow rub of that
already stiffened bud. He loved the way she looked when she'd finished doing as
he'd bidden, lying back against his chest and abdomen, splayed quite obscenely,
giving him completely unrestricted access to every luscious inch of her.

He could feel
her shivering, though, and reached for the faucet to add more hot water. Then
he asked suddenly as soon as the thought popped into his brain, "Are you
afraid?"

She bit her lip,
obviously not wanting to admit the truth to him.

Brandon didn't
push. He reached up and helped her settle her head against his shoulder, and
nibbled down her neck, making her shiver even worse. "There's nothing to be
afraid of, Nola. I'm just going to use my fingers to make you feel good." He
kissed her then, slow and deep, with their tongues dancing excitedly together
as his fingers had their way with her, using the slickness of her body as well
as the soapy water to rub gently over the top and around the sides, then back
over the top of her small bit, feeling her shudders growing exponentially worse
as she moaned into his mouth.

It was one of
the most
exiting
things he'd ever done, and he wanted
more.

His free hand
roamed up to her breast, cupping and squeezing it just slightly, gently, then
expertly finding that peaked nipple and pinching it, just until her moans
reached a fever pitch. He wished he'd had that dildo by their bath side, and
made a mental note to get another and keep it in the cabinet close to the tub.
But for now, he simply rubbed and plucked and tweaked and flicked her until he
felt every muscle in her body tighten in what seemed like an almost painful
manner, and then she exploded in his arms, his mouth still over hers, drinking
in every one of her pleasured cries and not letting her go until every last
ounce of ecstasy had been squeezed from her body.

She collapsed
back against him, panting in a very unladylike fashion. If they hadn't been
surrounded by water, she was quite sure that she would have been sweating
profusely, too. He did it to her every single time - he always knew exactly what
to do to her, how to touch her, what to say to her, even when and how to spank
her,
dammit
, to bring her to these unbelievable
heights and then hurl her over the precipice and into a free fall of ultimate,
unimaginable bliss.

Yet this time,
she didn't feel used or forced, as she usually did. He was acting very
differently with her, even in this way. His arms were around her, holding her
tight, even though she could feel that his as yet unfulfilled needs met or
exceeded her own.

That
thick length of him pressed up against her bottom, almost cradling her itself,
practically supporting her bottom.
She certainly knew how strong and
unyielding it was while it was inside her, and she knew that he deserved the
same release he had given her.

So, in an
unusual move for her - the first time she'd really taken the initiative between
them intimately at all, she turned over onto her stomach, still lying stretched
out on top of him. Then, holding his clearly startled black eyes as she reached
down and touched him voluntarily, guiding him inside her.

She'd been on
top of him before, always at his behest, and had been completely mortified by
the position and the easy access it gave him to her breasts. It had seemed
somehow wrong. But this time, she was feeling a bit of her own power, and she
realized she liked the idea of surprising him, as well as pleasuring him.

He slid up into
her with the usual embarrassing ease, his way slickened considerably by her own
recent delight, although he always stretched her, always dragged against all of
those already sensitized nerves, and she couldn't hold back a guttural moan as
he took matters into his own hands and forced her legs just the slightest bit
apart, and her weight drove him deeply up inside her, all at once.

"I love it when
you moan like that," he confessed with a big unapologetic grin.

She'd only ever
considered how humiliated all of those noises her body insisted on making while
he was molesting her. It had never come to her that he might enjoy hearing
them, or that she might be able to gain some leverage over him if she could
make him like other things she did.

He was still
grinning at her. "Your face is so red you look like you're going to explode."

The openness on
that very red face disappeared as
quick
as the wind.
"I'm sorry. It's very... it's always been hard for me."