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“Perhaps, you should have clarified what you meant,” William said smoothly. “I told you to count. If you had obeyed me, we would have already made significant progress in your lesson. But alas.”

Slap!The crack of his hand against her right buttock was so loud that it seemed to echo throughout the entire room. Catherine had the horrifying thought that one of the servants might hear, and wetness dripped between her thighs.

“What if someone hears?” she asked.

“A man has a right to discipline his wife,” he replied, “especially if she has been wicked, as you have. Now,count.”

His hand struck her again, and her back arched. The muscles in her stomach tightened, and her inner walls gave an insistent, little pulse of need. “One!” she gasped.

With his left hand, he gathered up her hair and pulled hard, forcing her head back. He struck again on the other side, and Catherine whined deep in her throat. “Two!”

Her husband administered his correction again and again, while Catherine counted each strike. With every crack of his palm against her rear, jolts of pain and pleasure collided in her body. The inside of her thighs was wet with her arousal, and she burned with want for release of the tightness curling inside her.

After eleven strikes, he adjusted his grip on her. “See? You can be a good wife and accept your correction with grace,” he murmured, kissing her neck and causing gooseflesh to rise along her skin. “I am sorry that it hurts so much, but I have to be certain that you remember the lesson. I know you can endure it, my good girl.”

She groaned, just as he struck the crease where her left thigh met her buttock. Catherine jerked as the stinging pain spread through her. “Twelve!”

He struck her right thigh next. “Thirteen!”

Catherine was heady from the stinging and burning from his strikes and from her core. She squeezed her eyes shut, as her core throbbed with need. William spanked her again, harder. A ragged cry tore from her. “Please!” she begged. “Please!”

“Ispleasea number?”

Catherine swallowed hard, her mind racing as she tried to remember the count. “Fourteen,” she rasped. “Fourteen.”

His final strike came lightning-quick, and she arched her back as the slap tingled through her thigh. When he was done, she lay limply over his thigh. She was hot all over, and her core throbbed painfully with need. Catherine pushed her thighs together, desperately trying to relieve the ache.

“Please,” she whispered. “Please.”

Catherine felt as though she was out of her own body. She squirmed in his grasp, trying to force his leg to rub against that delicate bundle of nerves at the apex of her thighs. Her breath came in hot pants for air, and when William stroked her warm buttocks, she nearly came undone.

Catherine’s eyes stung, tears forming from the frustration of being unable to relieve the feeling between her thighs. “Dear God,please.”

“Please?” he asked. “What is it that you want?”

“I—I do not…” she trailed off, unable to put the words together to ask.

William chuckled, and when she looked over her shoulder, he shook his head in a look of mock pity. “Perhaps, it is this.”

He rubbed his finger through the dampness of her arousal and sank the digit inside her. Catherine’s walls clenched around him, and she wailed with need. She shifted her hips back, trying to urge him deeper. William pumped his finger in and out. Catherine struggled and twisted in his grasp, trying to meet his every thrust, but the position made it impossible.

“Oh, please!” she gasped. “Please, let me have my release! Please!”

“As you wish.”

He increased his speed, and Catherine bucked helplessly against his finger. The tightness and ache inside her grew, and her thighs quivered. Her body moved of its own accord without her having any conscious thought, and at last, she reached that glorious sensation of release.

White light dotted her vision, as the waves of pleasure thundered through her. She tossed her head back and screamed. When the crisis passed, she gasped for air and lay limply over his thigh, her chest heaving.

Idly, she noticed that her breasts had nearly freed themselves of her stays. Her hard, pink nipples rose impertinently over the bodice of her gown.

“I am not finished with you yet,” William growled.

He took her by the waist and pulled her onto the bed. She landed on her back and lay there, gasping for air. He grasped her thighs and placed a gentle kiss on her stomach, his eyes never leaving her face. Catherine inhaled sharply, as his lips moved down to the inside of her thigh. His teeth scraped against her skin, and she braced herself as he bit down.

A dull, throbbing sensation bloomed across her thigh. He soon turned his administrations to her other leg, and that familiar heat built inside Catherine once again. William trailed kisses and bites up her legs, slowly making his way to her center.

“Oh, what are you doing there?” she exclaimed.