An Unacceptable Arrangement (14 page)

Once her husband was fully erect, he rose and
led her to their bed and settled her over the pillow. She wasn’t
afraid this time, she figured it couldn’t be any worse than the
enema but she was wrong. Her husband carefully greased her bottom
and then inserted the plug moving it in and out repeatedly.
Cassandra groaned. “That isn’t necessary my Lord, I am quite ready
for you.”

“Perhaps, perhaps,” her husband murmured as
he continued to impale her with the plug. “Relax my love and go
with the feeling, it might end up being quite nice.”

Cassandra doubted that. The entire experience
seemed like nothing short of an ordeal but she was willing to try
it if it pleased her husband. She sighed and wriggled about getting
as comfortable as possible as her husband withdrew the plug and
then pressed up against her. Couldn’t this happen in the dark? Why
did their trysts always happen in bright light, she wondered? Her
husband had several dozen candles lit and it was still light
outside. Even when the sun went down, the room would still stay
brightly lit.

Her eyes widened as her husband began to
press inside of her. “Ouuuw, owwww,” Cassandra moaned, tensing and
squeezing her eyes closed.

“Relax, wife, and bear down. Open yourself to
me.” Cassandra did as instructed, now glad that she’d been cleansed
and there would be no accidents. She bore down and felt it, felt
the head slip inside of her and slowly advance. Cassandra felt
pinned like a butterfly to a mat and dared not move.

“Just breathe,” her husband reminded her as
she felt his greased pole slide inch by inch slowly inside of her.
She grunted in the lower registers of her voice. She felt violated
in a way she never had before. She broke out in a sheen of sweat
that quickly cooled in the evening air. She felt a wave of nausea
and for a moment she wanted to... to vomit...

“Eureka!” her husband crowed.

“Are... are... you... fully inside?” she
tremulously asked.

“I am fully seated, my dear, and it is
glorious! You feel like velvet and you are gripping me so very
hard,” her husband enthused. He began to pump and she held herself
as still as possible, afraid to move even a muscle. It hurt at
first, her opening burned and the pressure was most uncomfortable
but then it began to feel... it began to feel most... stimulating.
She began to move back against him. She wanted him to take her
harder.

She breathed the word, “Harder, harder,” as
she pressed back against him.

This seemed to stimulate her husband greatly.
As she urged him to pump harder, he bucked up against her a few
more times and then cried out, louder than she’d ever heard him
before. The servants in the kitchen below probably heard. Her
husband groaned and collapsed over her. Cassandra smiled, enjoying
the feeling of her husband’s body covering hers. She loved it,
loved it all. The way he pressed into her, manfully directing the
action, the pleasure they brought one another. She felt her love
for him soar within her. Her husband had clearly enjoyed himself
and she hadn’t minded his attentions in that area. She would
definitely be willing to do it again.

Cassandra had not
left the house without her husband since their marriage. But she
was becoming restless and decided to go to her favorite bookstore,
as it was within walking distance. She had once browsed through a
book there about some of the famous people buried in various
graveyards around Great Britain. It had pictures of some of the
graveyards and the statuary was most beautiful. If the book was
still there, she wanted to get it for her husband in preparation
for their upcoming little trip. It was Liesl’s day off and the
German tutor was not coming, so it was a perfect day to go
shopping.

But she suddenly recalled that she had no
money. How was she to buy the book? She could put it on account;
most shop owners were willing to do that but then her husband would
have to settle the account and he might not be able to afford to do
something he hadn’t budgeted for. She lay in bed thinking over the
matter and then remembered her jewelry. She would sell a piece. Any
one item would probably cover the cost of the book and keep her in
spending money for a while.

After breakfast, once Frederic had left for
work, she went through her jewelry. There were many nice pieces but
the string of pearls struck her as possibly the most valuable. They
were a very rare set, perfectly matched. She’d received it for her
sixteenth birthday and had loved how it gleamed against her pale
skin. Cassandra sighed; now was not the time for sentimentality.
She put the pearls in their velvet bag and dropped them in the
little purse attached to her wrist. She walked out the front door
and headed toward the shops. Down the block from the bookstore was
a jewelry dealer and she went inside.

Soon she was walking down the street with a
hundred pounds in her wrist bag. She didn’t know if she’d gotten a
fair price but the jeweler seemed honorable and knew of her family.
When she’d looked at the pearls for sale, the amount she’d gotten
had seemed fair. She smiled, she had more than enough for the book
and would have enough left over to put aside for their trip. If
they should come up short of funds, she’d be able to help out.

She tried to envision Frederic’s face as he
fumbled to pay the hotel bill, just as he’d fumbled at the altar
when asked to produce wedding rings. She’d open her bag and produce
the needed funds. No, that might embarrass him. Instead, she would
slip the cash into his hand and therefore solve the problem. When
her husband asked where she’d gotten the money, she’d say she’d
brought it with her from home, as if it had been hers all along...
which it had... in a way. The pearls had been hers all along.

The bookseller remembered her from her forays
into his shop before her marriage. He knew just the book she was
describing and produced it immediately. He even had his shop girl
wrap it for her. Cassandra browsed through the shop, she could lose
herself for hours in a bookstore. There were many interesting books
she’d like to read but now was not the time for extravagance. She
promised herself that each time she sold a piece of jewelry, she’d
buy a new book. Their library would grow, slowly but surely.

After she left the bookstore she ran in to
some friends of her mother’s. They were sweet, elderly ladies who
were delighted to see her and insisted she join them for tea in a
quaint little café on the corner. As she started the walk home, she
realized she’d been away from home longer than she’d planned to be
but didn’t think she’d be missed. She was quite surprised when
their footman pulled up alongside her with the carriage.

“Why hello, Wolfgang!” she exclaimed as he
doffed his hat to her. He opened the door and lowered the steps and
gestured for her to climb inside. She really preferred to walk, it
was such a nice spring day and she tried to explain that to him but
he shook his head vehemently and in a string of German words, with
the occasional English word thrown in, he insisted she climb into
the carriage and so to placate him she did. Within a couple of
minutes, they were pulling into the portico and her husband came
out of the side door, looking very angry indeed. The butler was
behind him, looking most unhappy.

Wolfgang’s mouth was compressed into a tight
line as he helped her from the carriage. He actually looked sorry
for her. Frederic grabbed her by the upper arm. “Where have you
been?” he thundered. Cassandra couldn’t understand where his anger
was coming from. She’d never seen him angry before; he was always
so calm and collected.

Before she could answer, he pointed for her
to go inside. Her cheeks flamed with embarrassment as she ducked
her head and walked past Wolfgang and Helmut up the steps and into
the house. Her husband pointed up the stairs and she knew where
they were headed – to his study. Once they’d crossed the threshold
and he’d shut the door, he surprised her by pulling her to him and
embracing her firmly and then swatting her on the bottom! He pulled
away and held her by the upper arms.

“Where did you disappear to?” he yelled.

“Why Frederic, I just went shopping. We live
so close to the shops that I walked. It was such a lovely day and
I... I bought you this.” Frederic knocked the package out of her
hands and it fell to the floor unopened.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone you were going?”
he yelled.

“I didn’t think it mattered. Am I not allowed
to go out?”

“Yes, of course you are allowed to go out.”
Frederic ran his hands through his hair and sat on the edge of his
desk. How to explain to her that he had enemies? His principality
was a very important piece of real estate between two warring
factions. That’s why Wolfgang and Helmut were both trained in
security. But since she did not know his true title, she would not
understand why they were in danger.

“It is not safe to go out alone.” Perhaps she
would just take his word for it but that was not the case.

“I don’t understand, darling. We live in a
very nice part of town, near the best shops. Why would anyone wish
to harm me?“

“You are very naïve, Cassandra. You must
trust me about this. Promise me that you will not go out
unaccompanied. You must take Wolfgang; that’s what he’s for. He
will stay by your side and carry your packages. Wouldn’t that be
nice?” he asked, pleading with her to understand.

“But if it’s just my girlfriends and I, he
would get bored.”

“He’s a servant darling, trained in security.
He would be vigilant, not bored. Consider him to be a sort of a
bodyguard.”

“Well, I still don’t understand. I think this
entire matter is silly. I have no intention of always being
chaperoned as if I were a child. ” Cassandra felt it just wasn’t
fair. Her husband went out on his own all the time. He just wanted
to spy on her. Frederic said no more but stood and took her by the
hand and led her to his desk. He ordered her to bend over it and
hold on to the far edge. Cassandra turned to him and then saw it –
her husband was holding the tan strap in his hand, the one that
usually hung on the side of his desk. She shrieked and covered her
flanks.

“No Frederic, please. Please don’t punish me.
I didn’t know,” she begged. First, to be yelled at in front of the
servants and now this - punished in the middle of the day when the
servants were about? Why she would never survive the shame!

“Are you refusing to obey, little one? Would
you prefer to choose a cane?” He gestured to the collection on the
wall.

Cassandra felt tears spring to her eyes. It
was all so unfair! Her husband didn’t care about her safety, he
just wanted to control her every movement. She didn’t like living
like this.

“Undo your drawers, wife and take your place
over the desk,” he ordered in a low, dangerous voice. She paused
for a moment looking at him as beseechingly as she could, but he
was implacable. There was no mercy in his eyes, none at all. She
slowly lifted her skirts and then reached underneath and undid her
drawers. They slithered to the ground.

Frederic was watching her, not moving a
muscle, expecting her to obey. She stepped forward; out of her
drawers and lifted her skirts all around, knowing that he required
this. She laid herself over the desk, the edge pressing into her
upper thighs. Tears came to her eyes as Frederic bent and removed
her stockings and then tied each ankle to the legs of the desk. She
whimpered; this position gave her too wide of a spread for the
strap. She was afraid of where the wicked edge would go. There was
no way to protect the area between her legs in this shameful
position. She was crying openly now, dreading this second
correction from her husband.

Her husband came around to the front of the
desk and grabbed her wrists, tying them together with his tie and
then affixing the ends to the center drawer knob. He moved behind
her and grabbed the back of her skirts, flinging them over her
head. Cassandra’s heart sank as she realized that now she was
nothing to him, just a bared bottom awaiting chastisement.

“I am applying this strap firmly to your
impudent backside to drive home the message that you are to never,
ever go out unaccompanied. Do you understand?”

Cassandra sighed. Her voice came out from
under her voluminous skirts, muffled, “Yes, Sir. I understand.”
Cassandra had been tawsed before. It had been a favorite punishment
implement of her Scottish nanny. Her father also had frequently
used the strap or his belt; her wedding eve birching had been an
anomaly. But she was unprepared for the fire that the slender tan
strap ignited. She shrieked as he struck. She knew she was in for
it now; her bottoms would be tanned like a piece of hide. As the
strap fell, its straight edge cunningly worked its way into the
crack between her cheeks. There was an entire series of blows
during which the wicked edge kissed her nether lips repeatedly.
These blows caused her to squirm as much as she was able and sing
out louder. Her little cunny felt like it was on fire! She felt her
skin begin to plump and swell wherever it had been kissed by the
strap.

And Frederic was just getting started. He
began to strike in earnest and as was his way he struck quickly,
thoroughly covering her bottom and everything in between. Then he
started down her thighs. Cassandra screeched at this. Her thighs
were now on fire! She was screeching at the top of her lungs, no
longer caring who could hear.

“Please Sir, please... please stop! Owww,
Owwww, yeowwww, oh God, please – my Lord, not so hard!
Yeooowwwwww!” He didn’t stop until she was on fire from her waist
down to the back of her knees. Cassandra continued to react to the
falling strap, swinging her cheeks back and forth and showing her
husband everything that lay between. Between the tremendous thwacks
of the strap on bare skin and Cassandra’s screeches and howls, she
was certain that the entire household must have been alerted that
the Lady of the Manor had once again needed to be corrected.