My Naughty Minette (Properly Spanked Book 3) Read online

  Minette closed her eyes. Firmly applied? He did everything firmly when it came to her bottom, spankings most of all.

  “Ouch! Oh, no,” she cried as he landed the first stinging blow. “Oh, please, that hurts!”

  A second awful stroke followed on the heels of the first. Thank goodness he’d placed a hand at her back to hold her down, or she’d have fallen right off the chair into a pleading heap. This new paddle was much more painful than the last one. So much for her and her schemes. She pledged, as she always did in this position, that she would never, ever behave poorly again.

  “Oh. Oww...” She wiggled her bottom after the third stroke, though she dared not reach back to rub it. She thought ruefully of her childhood spankings, which her brother had doled out on a regular, and deserved, basis. She’d thought marriage would mean the end of discipline, but she realized now that was not to be. Because you’re a hopelessly naughty woman... She bit her lip for the fourth stroke, then the fifth brought a loud cry to her lips.

  “We’re halfway there,” August said, relaxing his hold on her back.

  “My bottom’s on fire.” She reached to rub it but he made a quelling sound.

  “Leave your hands where they are.”

  “I’m trying,” she said. “But you’re hurting me very much. I wish you would touch me and stroke me instead.”

  He moved behind her and nudged her legs wider with the paddle, then eased the smooth side of it between her legs. The sensation was scandalously arousing. “Stroke you like this, you mean?”

  It felt so wonderful she couldn’t speak to respond. He turned the paddle the other way and slid the fine beveled edge just between her pussy’s folds. She feared that she bucked against the thing in a very lewd way. “You do like to be stroked,” he said in a low voice. “We’d better finish your punishment quickly, before you come off without permission.”

  “Please, no more,” she begged. He’d awakened a heated, aching pulse in her center, and when he brought the paddle down on her arse—whack!—the need didn’t go away, only built in magnitude.

  “It hurts. Oh, it hurts,” she said in her most pitiful voice, but he gave her the rest of the strokes, hard and stinging as ever. By the end, her parted legs trembled with the effort of holding still.

  “There. Your punishment is over. For now.” His voice was soft, rough, virile as he smoothed a hand over her burning cheeks. He slid the paddle between her legs again, so she felt hot pain and blissful pleasure in equal measure. He tapped it against her pussy, then eased it back and forth. “Tell me, Minette. This has your initials on it, but who does this paddle belong to?”

  “You, my lord.” She used the formal title of address because it felt right to do it. He was her lord in this, her unchallenged master when it came to marital discipline. She could feel increasing wetness where he pressed the paddle against her quim.

  “It is my paddle, isn’t it? For punishing you when you need it. You are not allowed to touch it, do you understand? Unless I’ve instructed you to bring it to me, for your own correction.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “God forbid it should end up in any more fires.” She squirmed and gasped as he poked the tip of it right against her most sensitive place. “Have you learned your lesson, my dear?”

  “Yes. Yes!”

  “Don’t move. Stay just as you are.” He put the paddle down atop his wooden chest and began to disrobe. His clothes joined hers in a pile on the floor, then he returned to stand behind her, his stiff shaft jutting out. Her palms sweated against the seat cushion, but she didn’t dare move them, or straighten. She flinched as his hands closed on her sore backside and squeezed until she whimpered.

  “Your bottom’s scarlet,” he said. He sounded more excited than concerned.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “It’s throbbing terribly. I suppose it’s what I deserved.”

  He responded to this admission with a few more stinging spanks delivered to each cheek. She pressed forward against the chair, making complaining sounds, but in truth, she felt more wanton than ever.

  “How naughty you are, that I must spank you to make you behave,” he said. This time when he smacked her bottom, she rose up on her toes and made a sound that was not at all polite.

  “I suppose it must be very frustrating to you,” she said, arching her hips against his.

  He squeezed her shoulders and then reached beneath her to pinch her nipples. She cried out, trying to pull away, but he trapped her, clutching her against his chest. “Open your legs,” he commanded. “Give me your pussy, naughty girl, or I’ll spank you again.”

  She obeyed as well as she could. Her wits had rather left her, gone fluttery at his lascivious words, delivered in a curt, stern tone. She didn’t like to be spanked, but she rather enjoyed the aftermath, when he handled her like this. When she was positioned to his liking, he thrust inside her, all the way to the hilt. His size still shocked her, but it was a good kind of shock that brought pleasure and made her squeeze around him with her sensitive walls. “Ohhh...” she sighed. “How perfect you feel inside me.”

  He made a breathless sort of sound and withdrew, and plunged in again. She loved being taken like this, without couth, without civilized tenderness. She loved the heat of him against her back and the feel of his straining muscles as he covered her. She braced herself against the chair and moved with the rhythm of his thrusts. Every so often he delivered more smarting spanks to her bottom.

  Yes, it was their house now, and their bedrooms, their place to play, and make love, and get spanked in this erotically charged manner. I’ll not take any more of his things, she promised herself silently. I’ll be a perfect wife.

  Or an almost perfect wife.

  Or...a sometimes perfect but really mostly mischievous and irritating wife.

  Oh well. She was sure she’d get many more spankings, but she would have August’s care and protection too, and his magnificent passion. It was everything she’d wished for her entire life.

  She stilled her hips as the waves of pleasure crested within her. Behind her, August pounded against her sore, tender arse cheeks, as her pussy contracted in release around his rock hard shaft. Midway through her climax, he grasped her waist and pumped into her, filling her with his seed.

  Perhaps they would make a baby this day. Perhaps they had already made a baby and she didn’t yet know. She only knew that she wouldn’t trade this gorgeous closeness for anything. His arms came around her and he pressed kisses against her cheek, her nape, her shoulder. “I love you,” he whispered.

  “Even when I’m naughty?”

  “Especially when you’re naughty,” he said, laughing softly. “I adore you, my beautiful, naughty Minette.”

  *** *** ***

  August made his way to Minette’s sitting room that night after dinner, with a tissue-wrapped bundle tucked beneath his arm. He knocked and pushed open the door, and located his wife at her writing desk. She looked up from her correspondence with a smile.

  “August, you’ve come!”

  She said the same thing every night, silly creature. Of course he’d come. If she ever locked him out, he’d break down the door to get to her. He looked forward with voracious longing to this private time with her, when he could bask in the warmth of her company. He lived for her smile, and her pleased adulation. She’d come to mean so much to him, in fact, that he’d developed a terror of losing her regard. Ridiculous, to fear such a thing when she’d adored him for years now, but the idea haunted him, unmanned him, disturbed his dreams.

  “Good evening, darling. Are you at your letters?”

  “Yes. Auntie Overbrook has written, and Josephine and Warren, and Aurelia, who says baby Felicity has dark hair just like her father, and that she doesn’t cry too much, and nurses like a monster. Those were her words exactly, nurses like a monster, and how they made me laugh. I’m so happy for them. Isn’t it delightful?”

  “It is delightful.” Minette’s smile was contagious, like her eb
ullient moods.

  She came from behind the desk as he walked to meet her. When she was close enough, he caught her in an embrace. Her sweet scent and closeness recalled that afternoon’s dalliance and their playful bath afterward. It was all he could do not to tackle her to the floor.

  No. You must control yourself. For a few more moments at least.

  “What have you there?” she asked as they parted. “Is it a present for me?”

  “Yes.”

  She clapped her hands as he led her to the settee before the fire. “How exciting. What is it for? The holidays have gone, and it’s not my birthday.”

  “It’s for your un-birthday then. Do you remember the talented carpenter whom I referenced earlier today?”

  He smiled as she fidgeted on the cushion. “Your devilish carpenter, you mean, who has made it difficult for me to sit?”

  “The very same. I asked him to make this for you too, and I think it turned out very fine.”

  He set the gift in her lap. She untied the bow and parted the wrappings, revealing an intricately carved and painted figure.

  “My swan!” she exclaimed. “It’s exactly like the one I shattered.”

  “Not exactly.” He took it from her and knocked it with his knuckles. “You see, it’s not breakable. It’s carved of hardwood and will last forever, if you keep it from harm’s way.”

  “If I don’t fling it to the floor in a temper, you mean?” She tried to smile but her lips went wobbly. She bowed her head and ran her fingers over the swan’s etched feathers and gold-leaf paint. “This is so very lovely. It’s the grandest gift I’ve ever gotten.”

  “Even better than the first swan?” he asked lightly.

  “Yes, much better.” She cradled the figure in her hands and lifted it to her cheek. “It’s better because we’re better now, aren’t we?”

  Oh, my darling. You don’t even know. He gazed at her, this blonde, be-curled angel who had changed him so thoroughly. “I’ve never been happier in my life. I’m so happy that it frightens me.” He nudged the swan away and kissed her cheek, and then tasted her lips. “You’re my own special swan,” he said when he released her. “A little cantankerous at times, but still very pretty.”

  “What? Cantankerous?” Minette turned on him in feigned temper, pushing at his chest.

  “Oh yes, swans can be violent,” he said, capturing her hands. “Who told me that?” As she grappled with him, he pushed her back and kissed her. The swan fell from her hand and landed with a thunk against the floor. Both of them turned to look down at it.

  “You see,” he said. “Unbreakable.” He kissed her once more and let her up to retrieve her gift, which was perfectly in order.

  “I don’t know where you’ve found this carpenter.” She inspected the carving by the flickering of the fire. “There’s such skilled detail. It’s beautifully proportioned. He must be a master at his craft.”

  “He’s very good, and very expensive. Fortunately, I’ve made a pretty penny from the music you made me publish. Perhaps it was a good idea after all.”

  Minette grinned at him. “Are you saying I was right? You’re admitting, for once, that I had an intelligent, reasonable, and useful idea which was better than your idea?”

  “Yes, little swanbrains. This once.”

  She attacked him again in her playful, ticklish manner, but he set her away and gave her bottom a swat. “Go finish your letters before you get me too worked up to control myself. Once I take you to bed, you won’t be getting up for some time afterward.”

  Her impish grin widened. “Do you promise?”

  “Letters,” he insisted, ignoring her seductive gaze and the growing pressure in his breeches. He’d swept her away from her correspondence last night and didn’t want to do it again.

  He sat back on the settee and crossed his legs at the ankles, and let the glow of the fire relax him as he watched his wife. She looked so attractive when she was at work, whether it was writing letters or stitching handkerchiefs, or guiding conversations, or seeing to guests.

  Or applying herself to tasks in the bedroom...

  “August?”

  “Yes, darling?” He pulled his coat down over the bulging evidence of his arousal as she frowned at the pages in her hand.

  “I’m a bit concerned about my brother. He doesn’t seem himself in this letter.” She looked up, her expression clouded with worry. “I think we ought to go to Oxfordshire for Josephine’s lying-in.”

  “Hmm. Do you?” August thought the last thing Warren probably wanted was for him to show up just as Josephine was about to have their child.

  “I know you and Warren aren’t on the best terms these days but... I don’t know.” She looked down at the letter again. “He seems rather at ends. I mean, he doesn’t say so, but this letter sounds not at all like him.”

  “I suppose you know him best.” He stood and crossed to Minette. “Why don’t you write and tell him we’ll be coming? If you like, we can leave at the weekend.”

  “May we?” She gave him one of her shining smiles. He’d face any amount of Warren’s displeasure to make his wife happy.

  “Yes, indeed, if you wish. Arlington’s been making noises about escaping town and going to the country. Perhaps we could travel together.”

  Minette clapped her hands. “What a capital idea. I know Warren will love to see all of us, and Josephine will be happy to have me around to help with the new baby. Oh, I can barely wait to see them, and the baby, of course. I’ll want to be one of the first to hold their child. It only makes sense, doesn’t it, since I’ll be the auntie?”

  She spun off into ecstasies, making plans of what to take and when to go, and all the wonderful things they would do once they arrived. August was a bit less excited. He and Warren hadn’t parted on pleasant terms last time they were together.

  But for Minette’s happiness, he would travel to Oxfordshire and put up with any amount of his former friend’s scorn.

  Chapter Seventeen: Love

  August sat as still as he could while Minette slumbered against his shoulder. He envied her facility to fall asleep in carriages; he had never been able to do it. Arlington sprawled across from them, his hat resting beside him on the bench. A rut in the road shook him awake, though Minette didn’t stir. The disheveled duke seemed confused for a moment, his blond hair mussed where he’d lain upon it. “Where are we?”

  August shrugged. “Somewhere near Maidenhead, I suppose.”

  Arlington ran his fingers through his disorderly mop and straightened his coat, and soon assumed his more typical refined air. His gaze fell on Minette. “Look at her. How does she do it?”

  “I wish I knew. Put her in a soft, comfortable bed and she’ll sleepwalk all over creation, but put her in a carriage and she’s out for hours.”

  “Still walks about at night, does she?”

  “No, actually. Not for weeks now.” As soon as he said it, images of their nighttime activities crowded his mind, and a flush rose in his cheeks. His friend stifled a grin.

  “I’m glad things are better. Minette seems happy.”

  “Our marriage is much improved.” Much improved. What an inadequate description. He wondered if the depth of his feelings showed in his face. Probably so, judging from Arlington’s smile. It was not the thing in London society to be enamored of one’s wife. How they had teased Townsend when he fell for Aurelia, and then mocked Warren when he lost his mind over Josephine. Now August was the hapless husband caught in his wife’s spell, hanging on her every word and living for her attention.

  “Say, when are you going to marry that Welsh lass?” August asked, to wipe the teasing smirk off his friend’s face.

  “She’s not a Welsh ‘lass,’” Arlington replied with satisfying irritation. “She’s a Welsh baron’s daughter, whom the king is forcing me to marry.”

  “The king can’t make you marry anyone,” August said, to annoy his friend further.

  Arlington shot him a withering look. “W
arren can’t make you marry anyone either, but we all know how that turned out.”

  August laughed for a point scored. “So have you learned anything else about this lady you’re to marry?”

  “I learned she’s the youngest of eight, with seven older brothers. Imagine my delight.”

  “One hopes her brothers are not the protective sort.”

  “And she speaks the King’s English, although I suppose I could make my authority clear to her without language, if need be.”

  August arched a brow at this assertion. “With a few sound spankings, perhaps?”

  “Yes, if necessary. If I have to marry some Welsh aristocrat’s daughter against my will, you can be damned sure I won’t put up with any nonsense from her.”

  “With all those older brothers, she’s bound to be a hellion.” It was fun for August to tease Arlington for once, rather than the other way around. “Perhaps she’ll come to the altar in war paint.”

  “The Welsh don’t wear war paint anymore. They haven’t for several centuries. Honestly, try reading a book some time, rather than sitting at the pianoforte all day.”

  “What’s your hellion’s name?” August asked.

  His friend sighed. “Guinevere.”

  August tried—and failed—not to laugh. He clapped a hand over his mouth as Minette stirred beside him.

  “What’s so funny?” Arlington snapped. “It’s a perfectly proper Welsh name.”

  “And I suppose you’re to be Arthur in this tale, rather than Arlington.”

  “My given name is Aidan,” Arlington sniffed. “And I’ll thank you not to mock my future wife’s name. We’re to be married this October.” He waved a hand. “I suppose I’ll ride to the border and fetch her like some marauding knight.”

  “Like King Arthur?”

  “It’s wonderful that you find it funny.”

  August grinned at his friend. “In truth, I wish you the best. Marriage isn’t as awful as we imagined it to be when we were wild, young rogues. Somehow Townsend and Warren and I managed to flounder our way to marital contentment.”