Otherworldly Discipline: A Witch's Lesson (13 page)

Her feet stopped moving because they knew better than her brain did that it was going to happen whether she stopped on the stair or not. She slowly turned to look at him approach.

Yep. He was horrifyingly pissed.

His steel-grey eyes settled upon her, which made her heart race even more than the small stripped stick in his hand. “Ashcroft, I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry I said all those things. I don’t know what’s come over me. It was stupid.” She bit her lip.

She’d certainly learned how to apologize over the last three weeks, and she was even sincere. Ashcroft didn’t look like he believed her, because his expression didn’t soften at all. And then the strangest thing happened.

The butterflies that were once present in her stomach out of fear before a spanking seemed like every single butterfly became wanton, because she began to tingle with need for him, her face flushed even more. This was all very odd, because a spanking was the last thing she wanted.

Wasn’t it? Of course, all this confusion wasn’t helped by the simple fact that Ashcroft was so utterly masculine when he was angry with her. And now, he was surely going to have her take off her clothing, touch her and maybe, if she was very lucky, even touch her gently afterwards.

Damn it. She had to stop pissing off her crushes.

Crush?
Oh, Lord,
she thought.
I still like Ashcroft… Really, really like him.
She swallowed.
Is that an actual stick? I knew it! I knew one day he’d come to kill me!
She backed up against the banister as his body approached hers, stooping over her.

She held her breath, but then he grabbed her hand and pulled her firmly behind him the rest of the way to her room. “Please, you’re right—I do need to go to bed early! I have trouble sleeping here! I’m just grumpy!” she cried. “I didn’t mean it!”

He propelled her into her room and closed the door behind him. “Damn,” he hissed, looking her up and down, probably realizing that he wasn’t going to be able to immediately start spanking her. “I’ll get Naomi or another servant to help you undress.”

“No! Please!” She grabbed at him, slinging her arms around him, trying to keep him away from opening the door. “Don’t! Don’t!”

“Can you undress yourself?” the disdain in his voice was palatable.

She reached around her back carefully, struggling to put her fingers on the buttons, but then an absolutely scandalous idea popped into her head. One which, since she was so desperate, she didn’t even hesitate to act on. Innocently as possible, she said, “You can help me undress, can’t you?” She watched him take a step back, looking like she had just asked him to deflower her. “Please—don’t bring the staff into it. I can barely look them in the eye as it is.”

“If you didn’t have such a sharp tongue, Charlotte, there wouldn’t have ever been a reason for you to feel embarrassment,” he reminded tersely, turning back towards the door.

“Please?” She turned and showed him her back, as if she’d already won the argument. He heaved a heavy sigh, and then she heard him put the stick down and he came up behind her to unbutton her.

His large fingers were clumsy with her small buttons, and he grumbled in her ear, “Moriarty cho
o
se
s
the most impossible dresses imaginable.”

She pulled her braid towards the front to give him better access to her back, and so he could gaze at her long neck. She didn’t know how to tease him, but she would certainly try anyway, particularly if it would soften his resolve to punish her. She nearly couldn’t wait for him to see her lingerie.

“Do you think we can just make up?” she asked him quietly, feeling the cloth ply away from her shoulders as he continued to unbutton her. She turned her head around to him.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see his eyelids grow heavy. His fingers slipped on a button and his fingers brushed over the smooth skin of her back. His fingers were so rough, so calloused, yet she loved the feeling him feeling her. “Charlotte,” he lectured, “you need to learn how to behave better.”

“I promise I’ll really try to behave better,” she was quick to reply with certainty, slowly moving back into his hands.

She heard him breath
e
heavily for a moment before he took a breath. “Stop squirming,” he told her with frustration.

“You’re going to have to undo my waist belt, too,” she informed, swallowing as she put her hands back and guided him towards the triple-clasped piece of leather.

He began to mutter something in a different language, one she didn’t know, in a low voice until he said, “…complicated.” With a couple of jerks, he was able to unhook her, and the dress poured down around her feet.

She slowly turned around, trying not to cover herself up out of habit, revealing her thin white chemise topping her panties, the garter belt holding up her white stockings. She was the one that was in her underwear, but the way he looked at her made her wonder if she had ever been so aroused. She blushed and bit her lip. “I promise I’ll be a good girl from now on. I’ll be nice, Ashcroft—I promise to be different.”

*
*
*

Ashcroft stopped breathing, because breathing was just making his erection worse. Her sweet scent would drug him, and then he would be lost. He wasn’t even afraid of pinning the girl down and taking her. No, this time he was afraid of shamefully cumming in his own trews.

He tried to think about how angry he was earlier, how crude her comments were, how much she tried to embarrass him and shame him with words. But he couldn’t. All he saw was this ripe young vixen in front of him promising to be a good girl, standing in underthings he had never seen before, but he knew the image of them would be blazed against his eyelids that evening.

Think of anything else. Anything else at all. Get a hold of yourself, man!
he chided himself.
But it was difficult when all he wanted to do was push her against the bed, rip off her panties, and explain to her that she’d been a naughty girl—one that needed to be fucked mercilessly, and then spanked bright pink, and then fucked again.

“Go stand in the corner,” he ordered her huskily, the words sounding choked even in his own ears.

She looked over at the corner like he had ordered her to stand on the edge of a cliff. She looked back at him desperately, “Ashcroft…” she began to whine. “C’mon, I said I was sorry.”

“Corner. Now,” he snarled in a way that hastened her to obey. She looked up over at him once she was there, looking very sorry for herself already. “Nose towards the wall. Stay there.”

He opened the door adjoining their rooms and walked inside in a rush, pressing his body against the door when he’d made it. He looked up at the ceiling. “
Lord,
” he gasped, pained. He trudged over to a bowl full of cold water in his bathroom and splashed it onto his face. He looked at himself in the mirror. He looked haggard.

How was he supposed to go out and give that silk-clad little bottom a spanking? And idea that would have him ready to pop even if Charlotte was fully clothed and not teasing him—and she
was
teasing. Even if she didn’t mean to. Or maybe she did mean to?

No, she was innocent. She had to be. He didn’t know if her coming onto him was wishful thinking or a nightmare. He didn’t want to be looked down upon or teased by the Wizard’s Circle, the members of whom would gladly make a snide response about how he wasn’t able to control himself with his own apprentice, or worse.

As soon as he started having his way with her, she was no longer a sulky student who he was trying to keep in to focus on her studies. No; the circumstances would suddenly change. How could he force her to stay there and have sex with her? What would that make her? His sex slave? That was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Even if it would feel
right. It was still wrong—he needed no moral compass to understand that much.

He used magic to make the water nearly freezing, and splashed a second round of it on his face before he walked back towards Charlotte’s room. She was leaning against the corner, looking tired.

“Charlotte, bend over the bed,” he ordered her, pointing towards her four-poster. He picked up the switch again and tested it against his thigh. It was going to sting, but it wasn’t thick enough to do much bruising.

Charlotte turned slowly around, giving him a sad puppy-dog look. He shook his head firmly. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not the one who let my words get away from me.” He pointed again towards the bed. “Must I count to five?”

“The only reason I said those things is because you know how to push my buttons!” she complained, putting her hands on her scantily-clad hips. “You antagonize me! And now you want to beat me with a stick
over it? Aren’t we overdoing it?”

“Five… Four…” But she just glared at him, never moving. He tried to strengthen his resolve as his count wore out, “Three… Two… One.” Damn. He stomped over to her, and she did take a step back, her lips parted, but she didn’t rush to the bed, either. He grabbed her upper arm and pulled her over to the bed and bent her over it, pinning her
uncomfortably
down as he quickly delivered a series of strikes over her bottom.

He listened to her gasp, before she released an angry shriek. He switched quickly, letting the switch make a constant whirling sound as it fled through the air until it met her panties with a ‘crack!’ But she struggled enough that he found himself grunting in conquest. Not enough energy, my ass. He whipped the switch down awkwardly, and it broke in half amongst her shrill cry.

He had barely just started, really. He hadn’t switched her more than fifteen times or so. She squirmed under his grasp and he gritted his teeth and her sat on the bed and hauled her over his lap, pinning her down like he’d done the first evening in the study. “You can struggle all you’d like. It’s not going to get you anywhere,” he promised with resolve, and started to spank her with his hand.

He spanked until she tired and just started to cry. She had finally been defeated, and was accepting his punishment without a fuss, just with a sad whimper, repeating that she was sorry and that she would be good.

He slowed down his spanks then, and the most gut-wrenching thing happened. She moaned.

It was defiantly a moan, because she stopped it short, as if she had exposed something to him she meant not to.

He rested his hand on her bottom for a moment, feeling the heat, and she rose up to meet his touch, even though only moments ago it had been so punishing. Now it was only punishing for
him
. He stifled a curse, too weak to keep his fingers from traveling down her well-spanked thigh.

She whimpered in response, but she didn’t try to pull away from him. He grazed the hem of her panties on the inside of her thigh, and they were soaked with her desire.

This was not good at all. His heart pounding in his chest, he shoved her off his lap and quickly stood up.

He had to get out of here. He needed a woman. He was not himself. He had no control. He’d been half a breath away from full-out fondling her.

She crawled up the bed wearily until she was kneeling on the comforter, looking shocked from being shoved. “What’s wrong? What did I do?” she asked, her voice shaking, wiping the hot tears off her face.

“Nothing,” he said shortly, and swallowed. He stomped brusquely to the door. “I’m sorry. I have to go.” He grabbed the handle and realized his hand was shaking.

“Go? Where are you going?” she asked, confused.

“Out.” He opened the door and disappeared out from it. He fled down the stairs, looking into the dining room off the foyer. “Moriarty, we’re going out. Now. Let’s go.”

Moriarty pushed away from the table and walked over to grab his coat. “Where? Now?”

“Earthside. Must go to Earthside,” he clarified, tugging on his own coat.

“Oh.” He looked Ashcroft over. He couldn’t help but grin mischievously as he grabbed his own coat off the peg. “Spanking go that well, then?”

“Shut up.” They both took off their sword sheathes, dropping them beneath the coat rack, and picked up daggers
which
they slipped
into their coats.

“I’ve been in a similar situation.”

“I said shut up.” They both walked into the garden, but Moriarty was musing, seeming excited about going out on a non-regular night.

“I haven’t given a minx a good solid spanking in a while myself—you know, for play. Not too many women will let you do it anymore—they’re so picky about that sort of thing, but it can really—”

“It was
not
that sort of spanking, I assure you. She deserved it—she’s a brat.”

“All women deserve it. But it’s a horse of a different color when we like giving them what they deserve, isn’t it?” At Ashcroft’s scowl, Moriarty laughed. “Well, welcome to the club, then.”

“In all your centuries you never
did
learn how to shut up, did you?” Ashcroft sighed.

“I’m just observing the fact that…”

“Well, observe me up a woman I can actually do something with. Charlotte’s still off-limits,” Ashcroft stated in a huff.