Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 73013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
I wanted to tear the shirt off over my head so I could confront him with an angry glare at the liberty he had just taken, in saying that he liked seeing my bra. I wanted to keep the shirt there so I wouldn’t have to see my husband’s face as he contemplated my unclothed body.
The wild idea came into my mind, that if I were blindfolded, I wouldn’t have to look at Rick, and I to my dismay I pictured it: my husband taking my top, rolling it up, covering my eyes with it and tying it behind my head. So that he could see, but I couldn’t—so that he could look at my lingerie, at my breasts, even at the embarrassing place between my thighs, without me having any idea what he had decided to examine… to inspect… to… to possess… with his roaming eyes.
I let out a sob of helpless need at Rick’s appreciative words, at the thought of the blindfold, at my own helplessness to push back my shameful reaction to this whole terrible scene. I ripped my top off and tried to look my husband in the face, but I found I couldn’t raise my eyes above his belt buckle. The sight of that silver fastening, with its stark contrast against the black leather of his jeans belt, made me whimper again, and I held the pink shirt in a crumpled ball in front of my chest, trying to ward off Rick’s lustful gaze as much as the whipping he had promised.
“Drop the shirt and take off your jeans, now,” Rick said.
I managed to raise my eyes at last, and I looked into his face. The expression there made me swallow very hard. For the first time I saw my husband’s sexual hunger unleashed. I saw the resolution in his dark eyes, to take this terrible step, using his firm hand to bring his wayward bride into line. His absolute confidence in his decision to discipline me the old-fashioned way showed so clearly in that look that my fingers let go of the top in sheer panic. My belly seemed to fill with fear of what my husband would do to my backside if I failed any further to obey him.
As the shirt fell to the soft piled carpet of the bedroom, I kept looking at Rick, with my hands still in front of me. To my astonishment and dismay, I felt the resistance—the brattiness—rise in me again. Despite all my fear, I couldn’t obey Rick. I couldn’t start pulling down my pants as he had commanded without something more. For reasons that I could never have described in any coherent way, it seemed I needed to know, over and over, that my husband intended to make me comply with his instructions. Even the awful soreness he had already created in my backside and the thought of the additional lesson he meant to teach me couldn’t stop that impulse to test him, to push the limits.
Shockingly, I saw Rick smile. A confusion of thoughts, emotions, and sensations seemed to tear through my whole body. That smile, not a broad grin or even a patronizing smile of satisfaction as much as an almost conspiratorial smile of fellowship… it said that he and I were in this together. It made love well up in me, and—both worse and better—gratitude, too.
I had no intention of ever showing him, let alone telling him, about that shameful gratitude. It made the logical part of my mind seethe that he could smile that way, as if a king and his concubine could somehow live on an equal footing of power… or as if an old-fashioned, dominant husband and his old-fashioned, submissive bride could be in their marriage together when he expected to put her over his knee for correction whenever he decided she needed it.
I almost said something… something like another Forget it or even something like When this week is over, I never want to see you again. Deep down, though—because of everything that had happened to us in the past twenty-four hours, everything I had done and every step Rick had taken to try to keep us together—I could recognize that bratty voice. More, I felt myself starting to trust that my husband knew how to take care of me.
As if to give me the ultimate confirmation of that trust, in the form of a terrible paradox, I watched Rick’s hands drop to his belt buckle and start to unfasten it.
“Oh, no!” I cried, the words emerging from my mouth without any thought preceding them. “Please… sir. Not… not yet?”
I listened to myself, barely comprehending what I could even mean. All that mattered, though, was that Rick stopped unbuckling his belt, though he left his hands there, in that terrible significant spot on his looming, muscular body. I raised my eyes again to see that the smile had departed, replaced with the stern look I had already come to know so well.