My inexperienced fingers couldn’t bring me pleasure as intense as Roscoe and Shane did, and after a while I gave up, frustrated. My body was hot, achy, but I couldn’t find any release. I would have to wait for my men. I couldn’t wait to discover what else they would do to me. Slowly, I drifted off to sleep, the faces of my soon-to-be-husbands on my mind.
5
ROSCOE
Shane and I turned up just in time to see Elise helping Emma cook breakfast. At least, she was trying to help cook, but it looked like she was getting in the way. She certainly didn’t look like she’d spent much time in a kitchen. I cast my mind back to yesterday and the contents of Coleton’s letter. In it, he’d said he needed a woman who could cook for a team. I’d asked her, specifically, if she could cook. She had said yes. But by the look of things, Elise could barely cook for one, let alone for a whole team. Already, she’d burned the eggs and overcooked the biscuits and as I watched, she broke the pancakes when flipping them and spilt the syrup. She couldn’t cook at all!
“I thought you said you could cook?” I tried to keep the annoyance out of my voice, but failed. If there was one thing I couldn’t stand, it was liars. Lies and deceit. All they ever gave anyone was a lifetime of misery.
“I can!” she insisted.
At least she had the good sense to look sheepish when I stared at her hard. Color rose to her face.
“Well I can learn!”
In one stride I was upon her and I caught her stubborn chin in my hand. Tears sparkled in her eyes but I steeled myself. I would not marry a liar. I could not. Not after the childhood I’d had, with lies, deceit, cheating and treachery causing no end of problems. Up until yesterday, I didn’t even want a wife at all. I most certainly did not want one who didn’t tell the truth.
“Coleton would be properly disappointed! You were dishonest.”
She opened her mouth to speak but I pressed my finger against her lips. “No,” I told her. “You lied, and here in Bridgewater, lyin’ brides get spanked.”
Without warning, I wrapped my arm around her waist and tossed her over my shoulder like she was a sack of feed and carted her off outside. I wouldn’t spank her in front of Emma; she didn’t deserve that. I would give her a modicum of privacy, at least.
“I’m sorry!” she cried. “I was desperate! And I will learn, I will! Please!”
I put her on her feet but kept a firm grip on her arm. “Yes you will learn,” I assured her “Shane and I will teach you how to cook, and everything else you need to know to please us. But my mother lied and cheated and my parents were miserable. They were always fighting. I will not tolerate dishonesty from my wife. Or my wife-to-be.”
“I’m sorry!” Her eyes pleaded with me, but this was too important to me to let go. She had to learn, once and for all, that she had to be honest. About everything.
“I’m going to spank you,” I told her firmly. “You will learn, and you will learn well, that I will accept nothing less than complete honesty from you. No matter what it is, you tell the truth and we will sort it out together. If there’s something you can’t do, you say so, and we will teach you. But I don’t want you to ever lie again. About anything. Do you understand me?”
I put a finger under her chin and tilted her face up to look at me. A lone tear trickled down her cheek. But she bravely met my gaze.
“Yes sir,” she whispered.
“Good girl.”
Still holding tightly to her arm, I led her over to the side of the house where a wooden bench sat against the wall. In the afternoons, it would be a good spot to sit in the sun to shell peas. Right now, it would be perfect to perch upon and turn a naughty lady’s bare bottom cherry red.
She lay herself willingly across my thighs, but let out a strangled sob.
“Your tears will not dissuade me,” I growled. “I mean for this to be a lesson you don’t soon forget.”
“I won’t forget, I promise!”
She didn’t move as I lifted up her skirts and petticoats, and parted her drawers, baring her bottom. It was pale and unmarked; the handprints Shane had put there yesterday had faded. That would change in just a moment.
I raised my hand high and brought it down hard, right in the middle of her bottom, my flattened palm large enough to cover most of both cheeks.
Elise stiffened and whimpered, but she didn’t otherwise move, except to cross her legs at the ankles and lift them into the air. I pushed them back down roughly and spanked her again, my hand catching the underside of her bottom, right where she would sit. I intended to leave an ache that would linger and make her journey to town
