The Lord's Right (11 page)

He was still lecturing, and she was
trying not to listen. “On the contrary, as my wife I will hold you
to an even higher standard. You wear my name. You are my countess,
and in good time you will bear my children. I will be much stricter
with you now that I am your husband.”

Amber couldn’t stop thinking of the
fact that he would obviously rather have married that simpering
child who prostrated herself at his feet and whined, and her heart
ached. Now she was tied, for all eternity, to a man who didn’t want
her.

And she was only just discovering that
she did want him, in fact, she was terribly afraid that she loved
him, and that was the last thing she needed to know about herself.
It had never happened before, and Amber had always considered
herself immune.

Until him. Until a strong, autocratic,
disciplinary, no nonsense man had literally ridden into her life
and turned it upside down.

She ended up upside down in more ways
than one when he’d tugged her close enough to catch her. He sat
down on the edge of the bed and threw her over his lap with very
little ceremony. In fact, he’d positioned her so far over his legs
that she’d had to put her arms over her head to stop the top of her
noggin from connecting with the cold marble floor, and Piers
decided that he liked this position for her immediately, because it
removed the problem of what to do with those wandering hands. Now
they were busy trying to keep her balanced, and keep her head from
crashing down onto the floor, while he could deal with the business
end of things relatively unencumbered.

Piers drew a deep breath, his broad
hand resting on her plump little bottom, covering most of it
nicely. He wasn’t going to use any implements tonight, unless she
did something untoward. As unsentimental as he considered himself,
this was still his wedding night, and it meant something—if not to
him, than at least to his new bride. He wanted to keep things on as
intimate a level as was possible, and actually spanking her with
his hand was just about as intimate as a spanking got, as far as he
was concerned.

He lifted his hand to deliver the
first swat, only to hear his wife say, “Stop, please, I need to ask
you something!”

“
A question that should
stop me from correcting my woman? It had better be a very important
question, or I’m going to think that you’re trying to delay your
punishment, and I’m not likely to be very happy with that idea,” he
warned, patting her nates in a manner that was already much too
hard for Amber’s comfort, and the spanking hadn’t even
begun.

Trying to control her breathing, and
not pleased that she was nervous enough to be nearly panting, and
now worried that he wasn’t going to consider that this was a
particularly important reason to stop her correction, Amber never
the less plowed on. “I need to know what I should call
you.”

Piers’ eyebrows rose. “What you should
call me?”

“
Yes. What’s the correct
mode of address? What do Norman wives call their husbands? First
name? Last name? Sir?”

He was laughing at her again, and she
could hardly bear it, but she kept her emotions under tight check,
not wanting to give him any more ammunition against her. “I don’t
care what any other wife in this or any other realm calls her
husband. The question is, what do I want you to call me.” Piers
pretended to be giving the notion serious thought, then asked her
something that astounded her. “Did you think I hadn’t noticed that
you’ve never called me ‘my lord’?”

It was something she’d promised
herself, when they lost the war, that she wouldn’t do. In truth,
she never expected her childish, personal vow to be put to the
test; certainly not to the extent that it had been recently. He’d
never made any prior objection, or called her to account for not
using a mode of address that was deferential enough.

But he came up with it now?

“
I hadn’t realized,” she
answered, and his response was a swift round of smacks that had her
trying to dance away from first contact, but the precariousness of
her position, as well as his strategically placed arm that held her
not too tight, not too loosely, prevented such a possible
escape.

“
Amber.” Just her name,
delivered in a sober, somber tone that had her reconsidering more
than her physical position. “I would suggest that you endeavor
never to lie to me again, because I will know it, and the next time
you do it, my response won’t be so soft on you.”

That was soft? She thought, wishing
with all her heart that she could reach back and rub her bum, even
just one gentle swipe would help. But she knew better than to think
that that was going to happen.

“
So that is what you will
call me,” Piers decreed, applying several vicious swats to the
vulnerable under curve of her bottom, which was extremely
accessible this way. “Is that understood?”

Amber could barely reply. It was as if
she had a choice when she opened her mouth: she could either wail
or scream, but she wasn’t at all sure she could control either
enough to answer him coherently. And that only resulted in another
round of swats to the exact same two tender spots as
before.

Finally, at the end of a barely
suppressed sob, she was able to say, “Yes!” before he began
again.

To her utter dismay, that didn’t end
the intolerable cracking against the wobbly baby flesh of the
tender underside of her cheeks. “Yes, what, Amber?” he asked,
obviously unhappy at having to prompt her.

But she was that far gone so as to be
unable to remember that she should have ended her response by
addressing him in the manner he was just requesting. “Yes, my
lord,” she breathed, collapsing over his lap, not bothering to
worry about whether or not her head was concussed against the
floor. Amber would have sworn she could hear the sizzling of her
own flesh.

“
Good. Now we can get on
with your punishment for not obeying me immediately when I held my
hand out to you.”

Despite the unfavorable comparisons
she would have made within her own head between herself and the
mousy Josette, she would have wailed at that pronouncement, but he
didn’t give her a chance. Instead, he pulled her back up with one
easy movement, then had her on her back on the edge of the bed,
stripped naked before she could lodge a protest, with her legs held
well back over her midsection, as if he was going to put a nappy on
her rather than punish her.

But she was very wrong about that. He
definitely punished her, and she knew, from the first stroke, that
she never wanted him to put her in this position again.

Piers used his own weight to keep her
legs well back, which exposed her bottom to his seeking palm, but
it also exposed other, even more vulnerable and sensitive areas to
that punitive hand, and he wasn’t being particularly careful as to
exactly where it landed. Indeed, it seemed as if he was
deliberately targeting her more sensitive areas at times, although
it wasn’t as if he neglected her rump, either.

When he finally stopped, he informed
her that she was wearing the brand of his hand in various degrees
of carmine red all over her backside, which was exactly what she
could expect—and worse—if she didn’t obey him instantly.

“
Tomorrow morning, we’ll
talk about some new rules for you.” As he spoke, he arranged her,
as if she was some tableau he was setting up to paint.

Amber didn’t like the sound of that,
but she wisely held her tongue. She would have thought that, with
her elevated position as wife and countess, that she would have
fewer rules, rather than more. Apparently, her husband didn’t
agree.

And she didn’t think she was very
excited about the idea of finding out exactly what those rules
might be. She was very afraid that they were going to curb the
majority of the freedoms she currently enjoyed.

When he’d finished, she was lying on
her back in the middle of the fur covers, completely naked. He had
arranged some furs under each leg, and then cocked each to the
side, so that they were spread but supported and, he hoped,
relatively comfortable. Amber was mortified by this position, but
knew that if she moved, she risked another punishment.

As it was, she couldn’t keep one of
her hands from drifting down to try to cover that which he had so
completely exposed. He hadn’t told her not to, so she wasn’t
technically disobeying. But she knew it wasn’t something he would
want her to do.

Piers was beside himself with desire.
It was all he could do not to fall on her and ravish her, hard and
quick, and purely for his own pleasure. But he wanted more from her
than that, more, he knew, than he could ever have expected from
that simpering fool downstairs. Still, he would have chafed at
being required to marry anyone.

To have her at his mercy like this,
spread before him like the buffet King William had compared her to
… But then he looked up and saw the fear in her eyes that she was
bravely trying to ignore and felt a twinge in his heart. That
wasn’t something he was accustomed to, and he did his best to
ignore it, although it did prompt him to press the chalice to her
lips again and encourage her to drink deeply.

She nearly drained it all, but he
saved the last swallow for himself.

When it was gone, he returned to the
end of the bed and mounted it, crawling towards her like a great
beast to settle between those beautiful legs, simply staring down
at her in wonder. He’d seen his share of quims, but none of them
had truly belonged to him. None of them would be producing his
children or sharing his life. This woman would be with him until he
drew his last breath, and, if he let himself think of it, there
wasn’t a better woman for him in the world.

But right now, he could smell her.
She’d not had time to bathe just before the ceremony, as he had,
what with all the women cackling about her, most of who only
indulged in an annual bath themselves. But she had been bathing
when King William happened upon them, and now she simply smelled of
the essence of herself, mixed with the flowers and lotions the
women had used on her.

She smelled wonderfully enticing,
deeply earthy and sensual. He wanted to eat her up, and that was
exactly what he intended to do.

Amber could feel his breath on the
essence of her. She wasn’t sure if that was one of the effects of
the drink or if it was merely that she felt unbearably exposed. She
could feel that she was wet, the way he liked her to be wet, but
that way was almost as embarrassing to her as if she had lost
control of her bladder. It came as the result of her punishments,
and wasn’t something she could control. It made her feel an ache
that only he could fulfill, and he’d only done it that once. She
wasn’t at all sure she wanted him to do it again, and she wasn’t
even sure if that was what he intended to do from his current
position.

She hated not knowing what was
happening. It was an unusual position for her. She had always been
the one who was in charge at home—well, besides Da, but she ran the
house. She was the one people came to about how to do things. She
knew everything.

Here, now, she knew nothing of what
was to come. Some form of pain and pleasure, she was sure, but that
was about it. Nothing she could say yes or no to. He was in
complete control of everything about her, even more so, it seemed,
than when she was his servant. Being his wife made her even more
chattel than being his servant, and he had legal access to do with
as he pleased to her body.

And she knew that was exactly what he
intended. To do what he pleased.

Her bottom throbbed, even against the
softness of the furs beneath her. And he was going to be even
stricter on her now that she was his wife?

It didn’t bear thinking of, and that
was good, because he chose that moment to descend upon her, using
his broad shoulders to block any attempt she might make to close
her legs against him.

“
You are mine even more
completely now, wife,” Piers said. “I can, in good conscience,
claim that which I hadn’t before, because I own it in exchange for
my name and my position. I warn you not to be cavalier with
either.”

Amber had no idea what he was talking
about, except that he was warning her not to besmirch his name or
his title, and she had no intentions of doing either.

But she was entirely unprepared for
what he did next. The entirety of that part of herself that only he
had touched was enveloped in his mouth, and she felt the broad,
insistent flat of his tongue dragging itself over that kernel of
need that only he seemed to be able to stir to life within
her.

Her bottom was nearly entirely
forgotten in that instant. There was only his skilled mouth and her
eager, mindless body. His first assault tore a tortured groan from
her before he came up for air, and he counted that as much a
victory as he would have any long, bloody battle fought with swords
and knives.

She was a proud one, his wife, used to
doing what she wanted and having her own way—in some ways, she was
as brave and loyal as any man he’d ever known. If she’d been a man,
he would have been proud to count her among his friends. But as a
woman such as she was, he liked that he could wrest that control
from her at whim, whether it was a throaty scream from one too many
overlapping applications of his palm to her bottom, or a groan such
as that one, torn from the back of her throat because of the
pleasure only he stirred within her.