Otherworldly Discipline: A Witch's Lesson (18 page)

“No more discipline?” she tried, her mood already becoming lighter.

He stifled from laughing out loud. His life would be absolutely miserable if he’d become a non-spanking husband. No—this girl needed spankings, and he needed to err on the side of giving too many than too few. “
My Darling… Please do not
push it,” he told her. “Be realistic. Let
u
s not pretend that you’ll be a perfect angel for the rest of your life. You will need discipline. There will be spankings. There will be sex. You
woul
d be my wife
, and you would have duties and expectations as such
.”

She blushed. “Your lack of faith in me isn’t very romantic,” she informed in a pout.

“I have lots of faith in you, and your naughtiness,” he brushed his hand against her soft cheek. “
I’ve no doubt that you will
make my life interesting.”

“Then I want my freedom,” she told him. “You said you’d remove the cuff this morning.”

“This morning I told you I’d remove it, I did
n
o
t say I’d remove it this morning,” he clarified.

She glared at him. He sighed and pushed her off of his lap and then picked her up and put her back on the side of the table.

She continued to list off what she wanted in quick succession as he kissed her knee and then removed his own dragon-crystal necklace and tossed it upon the table.

“And I want an allowance—a big one. And I can spend it on whatever. Oh—and I want to wear whatever I want, and you can tell Moriarty to screw himself if he says anything. Oh! And I want a wedding ring. But I don’t want it big, I want it intricate. And I want cable—do you know what HBO is? Because I’m going to want it. And—”

“I’m not Santa Clause,” he found himself laughing as he unclasped her dragon crystal anklet.

Beneath her anklet was a pink, healing burn. He narrowed his eyes and ran his finger across it.

“Owe!” she said, kicking his hand away.

He looked up at her. “Did you try running away?” he asked her pointedly.

She shook her head. “No,” she said, and then frowned. “Don’t look at me so accusingly. I’m not the one who kept me prisoner for a month with a thing that could actually hurt me.”

“This looks fresh, Charlotte,” he noted. “When did you get this?”

She blushed. “Yesterday. But I didn’t run away—I was chasing my shawl out of the garden… It blew away.”

He looked up at her sternly. “Just so we
a
re
perfectly
clear, Charlotte; I
a
m removing
your cuff
, but if you run away, I will thrash you so soundly that they
wi
ll hear the sounds of it in the Southern Realm. Do you understand me?”

“So, I’m not actually free,” she stated sadly.

“You
a
re as free as any other wife,” he assured. “Never leave without at least informing me where you
’ve gone off to
. I
will gladly admit that
protective and I worry,” he admitted and tossed the cuff onto the desk. “Now nod like you plan to obey me.”

She nodded.

“Good,” he grunted, adjusting his pants back up to his waist and buttoning them back up. “As for the ring,
I will give you
one
, certainly
. No allowance, my money is your money
, and you’ll learn to wisely manage it
. And as for your changes to this place—if you want even more modern conveniences, then you will have to team together with Moriarty. He
is my steward and
thus in charge of keeping my properties up to date on more modern conveniences,
and I give you free range to make this place your home. And your dress has improved considerably since Moriarty took over. However, when he goes shopping for you, he will take you along
if he must
.”

She pouted again. “I feel like all my demands were conditioned.”

“You need conditions
;
you
a
re nineteen
years old
. I’m not foolish enough to let you free range,” he reminded, tugging on his shirt before he put his hands on her waist and kissed her. “I promise, nobody you
wi
ll ever meet
in
the Otherworld will ever say that you aren’t one of the most spoiled-rotten wives they’ve ever met,” he teased. “Now, put on your clothing. I
have decided to take
you on a date. On the
Earthside
.”

Her face lit up, making him instantly stop regretting that he was giving in. “Really?” She raised an eyebrow. “What about studying?”

“Field trip,” he informed. “We’re discovering the effects of magic outside the classroom.” He grinned slyly.

“Really?” She sounded less than excited about that concept.

“Yes. I heard a lot of this magic happens in something called ‘lingerie shops’…” He smiled mischievously. “I’ve never been to one before, but I would like to see what sort of effects such magical objects have on me. I heard their magic is best possessed by naughty young ladies in need of a good fucking.”

She grinned at his constant swearing, his dirty talk, and then giggled as she walked up to him. “You
’
re the naughty one
!
”
she
assured, bringing herself up on her toes and putting her arms around his neck so that she could kiss his lips. “Always breaking Rule Number Two…”

“Only when it makes you blush.”

“Everything you do makes me blush,” she assured sensually.

“May that never change.”

Alice was already extremely weak and partially mad when she knelt in front of the Queen, the same queen that had put her mother to death just a week before. Alice was fidgety, uneasy. Her eyes were black; the irises had receded into nonexistence. The light of the room hurt her eyes.

“And what do you want, Dirty Blood?” the Nymph Queen asked, gazing down at Alice from her throne with her cold
black
eyes.

Alice had never felt so desperate as she
spoke
, digging her fingernails into the cold marble under her. Still, her heart thudded with fear that the Queen would merely throw her back into the dungeons, where she’d been since the rebellion. “N
…
Nectar, your highness!”

The queen stared at her with her typical skepticism. Alice was used to this look; the
Queen
would constantly give it to her and talk about how she wouldn’t have believed Alice was her mother’s child at all if she hadn’t seen her birth with her own eyes. “And what would you do for your nectar?”

Alice looked up, her mouth open. She had worked so hard in the kitchens. She had done such a good job for so many years. She was almost treated like she wasn’t dirt at the bottom of their shoes, and then her Mother went out and tried to destroy the Queen the moment she’d been released from the dungeons, where she’d been since before Alice was born.

Despite the hardship of only knowing her mother through the bars in the dungeon gate, she had never stopped working. She had never tried to overthrow the queen; she wouldn’t have even talked of such a thing. “I’ve been working in the kitchen since I was only a child!” Alice cried, desperate and hurt. “I do my share!”

“Don’t raise your voice to me,” the Queen demanded, drinking nectar wine from a crystal glass as she watched her.

Alice whimpered and bowed lower. “Please, please I’ll do anything. Anything for nectar…” And she meant it. So far she had watched them kill her mother without making a sound, eager to show her loyalty so that she wouldn’t be forced into nectar sickness.

“Would you
collect
for your hive?”

Alice’s head shot up from the ground, looking at the Queen with horror.
Collect
? But Alice was no collector! Collectors were trained for years—they started their training at older ages. “Collect? Collect, your highness? But I’m a cook! That’s
all
…”

“Yes, but your freakish looks are popular this day and age,” the Queen hummed, but then looked amused at Alice’s continuously shocked expression. “Do you think yourself above such work?” the
Queen
demanded in a crisp drawl.

“No…” Alice replied. But she was terrified of it.

Alice was thirty-year-old virgin who
had
barely
ever
left the Hive. She barely knew anything about men except what she saw in the movies. And collecting was an art of seduction—one she wasn’t schooled in whatsoever. She didn’t know how to kiss properly, let alone know how to get a mortal man in the throes; the point of pleasure they would revel in before release, to take the Nymph’s needle-like bite who would suck all the lust from their body and then bring the liquid lust back to their hive to turn into nectar.

Alice had always believed that collecting
was easily the worst job in the hive, and the most dangerous since many men they would collect from weren’t the noblest sort. But nymphs that collected could fend themselves off of any man. They were warrioresses; strong, fast, and mean when they had to be...

And then they would drain the man dry of
their lusts
. Some took years to get their lust back, some never did again. That had always struck Alice as especially wrong.

Not that she would say anything—she couldn’t. She was living on a queen’s mercy to her mother, who begged the queen to let her live. Half-bloods normally didn’t get the privilege of living
at all
. Alice kept her nose to the ground always, making sure never to give anyone an excuse to find fault in her.

“Then you’ll have no trouble doing it,” the Queen decreed. “You’re lucky we don’t lock you in the dungeons. Half your blood is filthy. The other half is of a traitor.”

The words stung, but Alice couldn’t help but continue to plead, “Please, I can’t. I’m only thirty! I don’t know the first thing—”

The Queen snorted loudly. “Don’t be ridiculous. The man
we will assign you to
will teach you everything you need to know. And when we prepare you,
we
will remind you how to know when he’s in the throes. Do not drink before, nor after. Do not drink immortal blood. Those are the only rules.”

Alice trembled, a tear rolled down her cheek. “Anything else, please,” she begged.

“This is all. But if you stop your wailing, I will let you have the last drink of my cup. If not, I can assume you’re not as desperate as you make yourself out to be.”

Alice scrambled over to the Queen without another pause, crawling across the cold marble, to grab the crystal chalice into her hands and drink the last gulpful.

Her eyes stopped hurting. Her chest stopped hurting. Her heart slowed down in its beating. Normalcy returned. She licked the rim of the glass, trying to get every last drop.

“Mary,” the Queen said, gesturing to a maid at the palace door, who came to attention. “Take young Alice
back
and prepare her for work this evening. Remember that the mortals expect high-quality from our agency, if nothing else.”

“Yes,
Your Highness
,” the maid bowed.

“And Alice?” the Queen added.

Alice looked wearily at the Queen.

“Do not come home without pollinating a man. You will not get another handout.”

Alice put down the glass onto the floor and put her hands over her eyes, unable to believe what was happening. Nothing now could save her from the loss of her innocence.

*
*
*

Alice chewed nervously on her bottom lip and simultaneously played with a lock of her hair by twirling it over her fingers.

Her first collection. Alice had never been so nervous in her entire life.

She was told by Mary that seducing would be easy—they worked in an ‘escort service’ where the men would pay them money to
be seduced… And the hive would just pick a man or two every now and then to pollinate; not that the man would know what’d happened to him, or who was responsible for his impotence.

But Alice knew that she couldn’t really play the role of a high-paid prostitute. She felt more like a clown, wearing high-heels for the first time in her life while trying to look confidently sexy… When she was sure she didn’t have a confident bone in her body.

She got instructions from the prim
and
proper concierge who gave her instructions on where to go, leaning in. “The guest in room 713 hasn’t left his room all day, which is irregular. He stays with us at least part of the night every Friday, and he normally has no need for me to find him company, he does so quite well himself. But today, I warn you—he looked depressed. Disheveled, even.”