She drew in a shuddering breath. “I'm a coward—that's all. I already knew you'd be pissed and I was delaying the inevitable.”
“And why lie?”
It was clear that the lie had offended him deeply. She had no idea how he knew with such certainly that she had lied. One of his mysterious vampire senses, she imagined. And it had been such a small lie, really. More of an exaggeration than a true lie. What difference would it have made if he'd heard from her fifteen minutes earlier than when she got home?
She shook her head miserably. “I was just ashamed, that's all.”
His face softened at that. He picked her up and repositioned her so that she was lying over both his knees, her hands catching her weight on the floor. He adjusted her so that her butt was perfectly angled and then began again to spank her upturned bottom.
She welcomed the pain. She breathed it in, submitted to it, knowing this would be her salvation. She cried and cried.
He stopped and rubbed again, then rolled her up to sitting on his lap, cradled in his arms. She sobbed into his chest. When she started to regain her composure, she looked up into his face. “Are you still angry?”
He blinked at her for a moment. “I'm working it out,” he said, and somewhere in his face she thought she saw the faintest ghost of that humor he usually had when he spanked her.
After a moment of comforting her, he placed her on her feet and told her to go and stand in the corner again. She obeyed him, leaning her full weight against the wall, freely rubbing her blazing cheeks because Dom had never instituted a “no rubbing” rule.
She had no concept of time. She was still sniffling when Dom called her back, his belt doubled in his hand. She felt a fresh spike of fear and her mind rebelled, certain that she couldn't take any more, but she submitted when Dom guided her to sitting on the bed, then lifted her two ankles high in the air. He had never used the diaper position before, and the exposure was almost too much. Her flesh was pulled taut, providing less padding than usual, and there was no way to hide her face from him. Worst of all her pussy felt exposed and vulnerable to his punishment. He lifted the belt and brought it down smartly. Her bottom jerked up in response and she gasped at the sting of it. He gave her another stroke, and then another, whipping her presented sit spots and the backs of her thighs again and again. She turned her head from side to side, wanting to hide her face from him. When she did sneak a glance at his face she thought she saw pain there, which somehow increased her anguish. Her bottom was ablaze and she could not help but struggle against his immovable hold on her ankles. He did not admonish her to hold still as he sometimes did. He must have known how much agony she was in.
It went on for what seemed like forever. She was sobbing so hard she couldn't even track the blistering strokes. She didn't know whether he gave her thirty or fifty or one hundred, but she lost herself in the pain, floating out to some disconnected place where she found release. She hardly noticed when it was over and he was carrying her to the head of the bed and tucking her in. She settled down to the warm feeling of him stroking her hair and rubbing her back.
“I love you from here to the ends of the earth,” he told her.
She felt an explosion of warmth and love inside her. She took his hand and pressed it to her lips, her face still wet with tears. “I'm sorry, Dom,” she sniffed. “Please forgive me.”
“Of course I forgive you, piccolina.”
* * *
Dom woke in the afternoon to the sound of suckling. Kate's back was pressed against him as she lay on her side nursing Luci. He wrapped an arm around her and kissed her neck. Luci's eyes were closed and she looked as if she were simply nursing in her sleep. He could watch his wife nursing his baby all night—it was truly a divine sight to him. Kate stealthily detached her nipple from the sleeping babe's mouth and rolled to face him.
“Have you been in bed this whole time?”
She shook her head. “I just came back to put Luci down.”
“Have you eaten?” Since her pregnancy, it had become a habit of his to take her to task over her eating. A breastfeeding mother needs 500 extra calories a day and Kate often forgot to feed herself when she was busy attending to Luci. She was an amazing mother, despite the hiccup the night before, which he guessed was a result of denying her own needs for too long.
“Yes sir,” she said with a smile.
He grinned. The “sir” thing was new. “Actually, when I was still mortal, I was referred to as my lord,” he said. “That was how my first wife always referred to me when she was in trouble. Stella too, for that matter.” He and Stella had been a couple 300 years ago.
“Is that what you want me to call you?” she purred, getting to her hands and knees and crawling down to pleasure him. “My lord Count?”
He groaned as she took him into her mouth. “Actually no. I think it's cute when you call me 'sir'.”
He watched her as she worked to pleasure him, her soft curls falling down around her fairy-like face. Her platinum hair was streaked with blue this month, and despite the fact that he was anciently old-fashioned in every other way, her ever-changing rockabilly style only enhanced her appeal for him.
Her naturally small breasts were two sizes bigger now that she was breastfeeding and they swayed and bounced under her thin shirt with her movement up and down his
