The Lord's Right
Authors: Carolyn Faulkner
Tags: #spanking, #dominance and submission, #over the knee, #alpha male, #spanking romance, #spanking story, #carolyn faulkner, #medieval maidens
The Lord’s Right
By
Carolyn Faulkner
Copyright
201
5 Blushing Books and
Carolyn Faulkner
Published by
Blushing Books at Smashwords
Smashwords
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Faulkner, Carolyn
The Lord’s Right
eBook ISBN:
978-1-62750-602-1
Cover Design by ABCD
Graphics & Design
This book is intended for
adults
only
. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this
book are fantasies only, intended for adults. Nothing in this book
should be interpreted as Blushing Books' or the author's advocating
any non-consensual spanking activity or the spanking of
minors.
Thwack!
She knew better than to move while her
father punished her. She was eighteen, an old maid, and this was
hardly the first time she’d been bent over the old stump in the
back with father’s hopelessly worn, but unfortunately wide belt
finding its way unerringly across the swollen hillocks of her
backside again and again.
It seemed she never learned, and there
was no hope in sight that she’d ever leave his house—not that there
was much of a salvation there, either. It wasn’t as if her husband
wasn’t going to punish her just as her father had all her life. It
would just probably be trading one man’s belt for
another’s.
She groaned out loud with the next cut
across the backs of her thighs. She was unable to stop herself from
pulling against the leather straps he’d planted in the other side
of the trunk just for her, since she tended to reach back and get
her hands strapped.
“
Da?”
Amber closed her eyes and gritted her
teeth, recognizing Faine’s high-pitched voice behind her. She knew
her face matched the angry red of her bottom and was glad the
little girl couldn’t see her. It was embarrassing to be as old as
she was and have her little sister see her being punished like
this, but her father wasn’t about to ease up disciplining his
daughters if they lived under his roof, and it seemed that she was
going to be bent over this stump until the day she died.
“
Yes, Pixie?” He never
missed a beat of Amber’s punishment; indeed, it seemed that he put
more of his shoulder into it now that he had an
audience.
“
Starr says she needs you
and to come right away, please.”
If anyone in their family could get
away with trying to order their father around—even somewhat
sounding like it—it was Faine. She was the apple of his eye. Lawson
and Twyla Cooper had had six children all together, but only three
of them had made it through infancy. There had been two boys
amongst the lost babies, and those were the children Lawson mourned
the most. There would be no boys to carry on his name.
Amber was grown and should have been
married with babes of her own at her more than generous breasts,
but that wasn’t looking probable, considering that she seemed to be
more of a boy than a girl in a lot of ways, for which Lawson only
blamed himself. He’d allowed her to spend more time with him than
he should have, instead of requiring that she stay home with her
mother and learn the more wifely arts—which she would do, but
didn’t enjoy—he’d allowed her to tag along with him, with the
result that she could ride, fish, and hunt better than most of the
boys—or men—in the nearby village of Sunder.
As a result, she chafed against the
more stifled environment females endured, including cooking,
cleaning and seeing to the little ones. Her reputation as a hoyden
had preceded her, and no man in the area would have her. Who wanted
to marry a woman who could show you up on horseback, and, almost
worse than that, wasn’t afraid to do it?
No man had ever offered for her, and
Lawson had long since stopped expecting anyone to. His attempts to
tame her had always failed. She might conform for a short time,
long enough for her bottom to stop smarting, but within days she
was back at it again, and he hadn’t the heart—or the strength—to
beat her constantly.
He’d decided, long since, that he had
to pick his battles with his headstrong eldest.
If only she’d been a boy; she would
have made a magnificent son.
Lawson drew a long, deep breath, and
laid the last, fiery stripe across the rounded crest of the ruins
of her bottom. It was one of the worst punishments he’d ever given
her, but then, she didn’t usually risk her life.
As many heartaches as she caused, as
much as he wished she were different and easier, he knew he
couldn’t stand to lose her, and he knew he had to impress on her
the fact that she couldn’t keep harassing the Normans.
They’d lost the war, and she just had
to come to grips with that fact. Annoying them would only make
things worse. Rumor was that they were going to be gifted with an
overlord shortly, and there was a large concentration of Norman
soldiers not far from the small village. Everyone knew where they
were, and everyone with any sense was giving them a wide berth.
Someone, however, had loosed all their horses, scattering them to
the winds, and had made off with several skins of wine as well as
other foodstuffs. Stirrups had been cut, and general mischief had
been made.
Lawson walked up behind his daughter
as she straightened her tunics and refused to face him. He knew she
was probably not crying, but she never came to him for succor,
whether it was after a spanking or for a bump or a skinned knee
when she was a child. She’d never gone to Twyla, either,
preferring, instead to run into the forest to cry alone. “You’ve
got to stop doing this, Amber. I know my strap won’t be enough to
convince you and I don’t know what else to do to get through that
stubborn head of yours. But you’re going to get yourself killed or
worse, if you keep teasing the Normans.”
It was as close to tears as Lawson
himself ever got. Although Faine was his favorite, Amber was his
firstborn, and at least as close to his heart, despite her annoying
streak. And yet, he knew that his words fell on deaf ears. She
turned and smiled at him, that fey smile his wife used to give him,
before she died of childbirth fever after giving him the
bright-eyed gift that was Faine.
“
I’ll be fine, Da. Really.
I didn’t do anything so horrible. I just wanted to let them know
that we weren’t going to make it easy on them.”
“
We lost, Amber. We’re the
ones who are supposed to do as they say, not the other way around.”
Being told what to do was never something that Amber was
particularly good at. She’d always balked at it, and she’d earned
more trips over his lap—or the stump—than any three of his
children, and any five of his neighbors’ young ones, combined
because of it.
Still he reckoned he couldn’t complain
too much. She had a gift, that one. She had the touch—her mother’s
gift—with animals, plants, and even some people. Plus, she had the
luck of the Irish, or something like it. Someone, perhaps Twyla,
had to be looking out for her, or she would have been dead several
times over by now.
But the Normans would have absolutely
no compunction about killing her. None at all, regardless of
whether or not they knew she was a woman. He knew that she
sometimes disguised herself as a boy when she went on her little
raids. They’d string her up sooner than question her, especially if
the men that were in the area now had been sent ahead to secure
things for the man who would become their overlord.
Lawson had heard rumors of the soldier
who had been chosen, and he hadn’t liked anything he’d
heard.
But there she stood; smiling
beatifically at him, as if she thought nothing and no one could
possibly harm her when she should have known better. He didn’t
think he’d ever felt quite so helpless to prevent a terrible
tragedy, except when Twyla’d lay dying. He knew as soon as he
turned his back that she’d be off again to do whatever she wanted,
and that there was nothing he could do to prevent it. He thoroughly
expected that, one day, she’d go off into those woods and he’d
never see her again.
She needed a man, a strong one, to
take her in hand and tame her. None of the men in the village—or in
any of the surrounding villages, for that matter—were up to the
task, in body or spirit. All he could do was pray that God wouldn’t
see fit to take yet another member of his family away from
him.
“
Och, Da, there’s no fun
in that, then, is there?” She popped a kiss on his cheek and ambled
towards the woods, where he’d known she would head. At least Amber
never held a grudge, against him, anyway. It was as if she
understood that his discipline was the price she paid for doing
exactly as she pleased while living under his roof.
Granted, she did make sure that the
other girls kept the house running efficiently, and she had been
the one to do that herself until Starr had become old enough to
take over the reins. There was some friction between Starr and
Amber, as Amber was the oldest and Starr couldn’t be married off
until Amber was safely wed, which didn’t look like it was ever
going to happen. Starr had had her eye on the son of the village
smithy, who had his eye right back on her, but also on any other
eligible girl in the area, and Starr had become less and less
eligible as time had worn on and her elder sister had become longer
and longer in the tooth.
She wandered into the woods, rubbing
her bottom absently as she made her way. Amber didn’t have to think
much about where she was going; she’d grown up here and the woods
were her sanctuary. Her mother, along with showing her how to coax
the best out of plants and beasts, had enchanted her with stories
about woodland faeries and sprites and elves and such during her
childhood, and she’d believed every single word, so much so that
she’d spent a lot of her time—well, as much as she’d been allotted
in between chores—looking for the little buggers, so far without
success. But the forest had befriended her, nonetheless, providing
a kind of solace that human kind could not. She had all kinds of
hidey-holes and treasure troves hidden everywhere, that at first,
when she was a child, contained childish trophies and special
items. Now they contained potions and herbs, as well as emergency
food, weapons, wine and water enough to sustain her and her family
for a while, just in case. She’d rigged several simple shelters
that were hidden to the naked eye, as well as constructing several
traps that kept the family supplied with meat.
The chances were good that her
trapping days were going to be limited shortly, because the lord of
whatever manor they constructed certainly wasn’t going to allow her
to poach on his territory, but she was going to keep it up until
someone told her to stop, ignoring the fact that she might not be
told so much as simply be hung if she was caught. She’d already
curbed her usual forays for deer, which had severely limited the
family’s diet. Amber had heard the rumors and had seen for herself
that King William’s handpicked men were about, looking for a place
to build a castle fortress for their new overlord, who sounded like
a downright dreadful man, from what she’d heard about
him.