Otherworldly Discipline: A Witch's Lesson (7 page)

Still, Ashcroft knew
better
than anybody that he didn’t know everything. Archivists did not create their own spells, after all. One of these days Moriarty was going to come in with something he didn’t know how to fix, and he would not have the power to improvise.

And Charlotte—Lord,
Charlotte!
—hadn’t even come into her immortality yet. She was too young. She was just as easy to kill as any human, and he feared when looking at her that she was weak and small even by human standards. A demon would have made easy work out of her.

She had to be smarter. She had to stay safe… She had to make better decisions!

Didn’t she realize her value was immeasurable?

Finally, taking a deep breath, he entered the room. There were a couple of female servants in the room with her, one who was finishing buttoning the back of her dress. “You should have knocked!” Naomi, the head housekeeper, chided him. “You could have walked in on her with naught but her skin!”

He was ashamed
of
himself that when he filled with immediate regret, it wasn’t because he’d forgotten his manners. His regret was because he’d been so close at seeing Charlotte naked and had missed the opportunity.

Charlotte turned around from the mirror and looked at him
, and Ashcroft inwardly groaned about how
Moriarty was right. He did like her. How could he not with the way she looked at him now? Wide-eyed, her head hung nervously, her toes pigeoned…

And she finally looked like an enchantress. No men’s trousers like she normally wore and no scandalously short skirt…. No, the dress that the servants had found for her hung to the middle of her calf, ruffling out from the tiny waist and the low-cut breast. The dress looked just as complicated as anything he’d ever seen, which wasn’t too good of a style for a spanking. She also wore black shoes and leggings, and her colors were browns and golden colors of the fall leaves outside. Her long hair was auburn again now, and was braided elaborately down the side of her face, covering one of her ears and falling to her waist.

“I’m glad you
a
re here,” he told the servants. “I need you to prepare her for punishment.”

Charlotte’s head snapped up from where it hung, her lips parted. She was so startled by his order to the servants, and so humiliated, that her whole body seemed to jerk in response.

“But we just done dressin
’
her!” Naomi complained.

“Yes, Naomi, my timing’s altogether poor,” Ashcroft agreed, opening a door to his chambers which adjoined Charlotte’s. He realized, upon opening the door, that he hadn’t gone into his room all evening. “I am
terribly
sorry about that.”

Last night, he had been so aroused that he was afraid that if he got too close to his bedroom, he’d walk into the wrong door and crawl into bed with her. The idea had been so damned agreeable that it had frightened him.

“Ah…A-A-Ashcroft, wait!” Charlotte whined, her voice rattled. She attempted to follow him, but Naomi tugged her back.

“Come now, let’s get you out of this dress so it don’t wrinkle up,” Ashcroft could hear the servant instruct her in the other room. He found himself very glad that he’d gotten Naomi from the employ of a nearby Lord, one with a very horrible, rotten wife and several horrible, rotten daughters that would occasionally push the Lord far enough in front of company that he would order them ‘brought up and prepared for punishment’ many a time. “Come on, stop fussin’!” he heard Naomi chide.

Ashcroft pulled an extremely old belt out of a closet that he hadn’t seen for nearly a whole century already. He came back through the door to find Naomi laying out Charlotte’s dress gently over the chair before she followed the other servant out of the door. This left only Charlotte, who now stood only in a white cotton shift that hung only down to mid-thigh
and left
her arms bare.

He could see her body’s silhouette through the shift, and Charlotte seemed to suspect as much because she put a hand over her groin and one over her breast.

Hard again
, a
lready. Damn her!

“Is… Is Moriarty okay?” she asked in a small, little-girl’s voice.

‘
Don’t soften in your resolve just because she’s so pathetically remorseful. She nearly died. Moriarty nearly died. What she did was inexcusable
!
’
he thought to himself with tenacity.

“Moriarty will be fine, fortunately,” he told her, although he was exasperated as he said it. He watched her let out a relieved sigh, and continued, “And you’re lucky to be fine, as well. What was my first rule, Charlotte?”

She chewed on her lip and said, “Well, if you look at it from my point of view—”

“
Charlotte
,” he reproached firmly.

“I’m sorry,” she offered, and truly seemed to have meant it. But her eyes glazed with fear and embarrassment. “I really am.”

“So am I. I
a
m very sorry indeed that that happened. What was the first rule?”

She let out a short sigh and recited, “Not to leave the property alone.”

“Good,” he rumbled, walking towards her and
then
guiding her by the arm towards her bed. “You
can listen and learn. You’re just disobedient—that I can fix. I can
no
t fix
stupidity
.”

“
Duh,
I’m not stupid!” she assured, blushing deeply. “But, please
—Look
… Just try to understand, I—”

Ashcroft pushed her down so she was seated by the edge of the bed and he knelt down in front of her. He put the belt next to her on the bed, which her eyes fixated on even as he grabbed her foot and placed it on his bent knee, reached into his pocket and pulled out an open
braced cuff of dragon crystal. He clasped it around her ankle by a jewel before she could even react to the cuff’s coldness.

“What is this?” she demanded, sounding alarmed.

“If I can
no
t
trust you to stay, then
I’m afraid I’ll
just
have to
force you to,” he replied, and tugged at the band, watching it as it stretched under his skilled fingers as if it was a band of elastic, trying to situate it so that it wasn’t tight around Charlotte’s skin. He wanted her to be able to get her stockings under it, but not be able to pull it past her heel.

She yanked her foot away from his grasp and tried to pull it off. She couldn’t—the metal was solid as a diamond under her fingers. She tried to unsnap the jeweled clasp, but it wouldn’t unclasp for her. “What is it?” she repeated.

“Dragon crystal. It’s impossible for the imprisoned to snap off of themselves by anyone but the master of the crystal’s partner.” He plucked at a chain around his neck until a small chuck of flattened crystal—no bigger than a locket—was visible. And then he dropped it back under his shirt.

“So you ARE keeping me prisoner!” she charged, her lips pursing together, her blue eyes searing into him.

He hated that look—that look of betrayal. But it didn’t make him feel as guilty as he knew she hoped it would. It angered him. She was the one that betrayed him.  Lots of young Archivists would have killed to be his assistant. And she couldn’t find one ounce of gratitude to him for taking her under his wing and helping her to continue
the education of her
race. “That
i
s one way to look at it. And I
would
save the attitude and the look on your face. You’re lucky Moriarty was there to save you.”

She lifted her chin. “I shouldn’t have been in the Otherworld in the first place,” she argued. “What kind of person stays here when they could just leave?”

“One who promised me she’d obey my rules,” he replied, looking over her body as if studying it.  He felt himself biting back the primal urge to dominate her—to mount her.

“Promised under duress,” she argued.

He needed to spank her, not touch her, and get the hell out of the room. He couldn’t think at all rationally around her. He couldn’t even argue—his tongue was tied. But he glared darkly at her so not to show it. He pointed at the bed, “I’m sick of bantering. You nearly got yourself killed. Now bend over the edge.”

Her face suddenly went blank—void of all emotion—and then she scooted back up the bed. “Look, isn’t this ankle-thingy bad enough?”

“No.”

“Ashcroft—this spanking stuff can’t fly. I’m nineteen years old, and—”

“Do you want it on the bare bottom, then?” he asked, raising an eyebrow, something in him was screaming for her to say ‘no’ and begging for her to say ‘yes’.

She quickly shook her head and looked towards the door then back to him. “Ashcroft—it’s eight o’clock in the morning. And I’m sore from last night! Don’t you think—”

“Now, Charlotte.”

“But the servants know,” she whined, but she slid off the bed and stood in front of him. “They’ll be able to hear, and they’ll know!”

He turned her around and pushed her down so that she bent over the bed, her body in a perfect “L”, her bottom sticking out to meet him. He grabbed a hold of his belt. Her toes dug into the rug underneath her, her hands gripping the comforter under her body. “P-p-please, Ashcroft. Give me a break!” she pleaded, trying to crane her neck around to look at him. “I
’
m really, really sorry, and I promise I’ll make it up to Moriarty!”

He didn’t answer, and in truth, he was barely listening. Through her shift he could see the rounded curve of her bottom, admiring how her soft legs draped out of the fabric.

“I’ll do anything if you don’t spank me again. Anything!” she continued, her voice turning squeaky as he tested the belt against his own thigh, checking for pliancy before he placed a strong, pinning hand
against
the small of her back.

“Anything except
behave. Didn’t I tell you that there would be discipline if you did
not
follow my rules?” Then, with a firm flick of his wrist, he let the belt slap against her shift.
Her skin
might as well have been bare from the slapping sound that it made.

Charlotte’s body froze at the pain, not moving until he delivered t
w
o more swats in quick succession. And then she began to heartily struggle, trying to drag her body away from his pinning hand to escape further up the bed.

Of course, he didn’t let her move; he merely used more of his strength to pin her. She wasn’t strong—she was very slight, and when she realized there was no escape she let out a desperate, bellowing cry.

SWAP! SWAP! SWAP!

She put her hands in back of her, trying to shield herself, and he adjusted to pin
ne
d her hands to her back. “Ashcroft! Please! Please!” she begged, running in place against the floor. Once he had her where he wanted her—completely immovable—he continued.

SWAP! SWAP! SWAP!

She seemed like she was trying to hold back her cries, releasing only sharp howls. A couple of swipes to the backs of her bare thighs made her scream. “I’ll do anything!” she repeated to him. “Just stop!”

“This is nothing compared to what could have happened!” he assured. “
You would
barely serve as an appetizer to all sorts of things beyond your reckoning. Do you need to continue to have close calls or will you just
heed me
?” he lectured, and meant it. The times were certainly over when she looked upon his advice as ‘optional’.

SWAP! SWAP! SWAP!

“I’m so sor-rrry!”

“You simply don’t know your value. You are not just some hum-dum human with no purpose, and you’d be getting a hiding even if you were because you’re completely disrespectful and downright naughty. Instead, you have a type of power that nobody else possesses in all the worlds, in the whole universe! And you were just going to throw it to the winds by letting something kill you off!” Somehow, reminding himself of that was only getting him angrier.

SWAP! SWAP! SWAP! “I didn’t mean to!” she promised. “It just happened!”

“No, it was completely avoidable—” SWAP! SWAP! “—if you’d just do what I tell you to do and stop acting like you know better!” SWAP! SWAP! SWAP!

Finally, she seemed to reach a breaking point where she began to sob into the bedspread. “Have we learned a lesson?” he asked, knowing how pedantic he sounded, but awaiting an answer anyway. “Will we follow the rules?” SWAP!

“Yes!” she promised, and continued sobbing.

“And what will happen if we do not?” SWAP!

“S-sp-spanking!”

He watched her sob in silence for a long moment, and finally began to sympathize for her like she was a very-punished child. Although she wasn’t—she was very much a woman—one with red, angry welts on her thighs; he had been thorough. He imagined her bottom must have been a flaming, hot red underneath her shift, and wished that they were familiar in a way that he could lift it up and see.