Otherworldly Discipline: A Witch's Lesson (4 page)

SLAP. His first stroke
landed
square in the middle, and her body went completely rigid when he’d done it, making only a gasp. He forced himself not to let his hand linger
across her hot skin and
began to spank her sharply and rapidly
.

It seemed like she was determined not to cry or squeal, but those plans went to hell after the first minute. She suddenly began to give a panicked sort of squirm and then gasped in a cry, letting out an,
Oooh
-
h-h
! noise. “Stop! Stop!” she finally said, every word getting louder and louder. “You’re hurting me! Stop it! It HURTS!”

“It’s supposed to hurt,” he growled, continuing on.

“Stop it! You’re insane! I’ll tell…. I’ll call…” Her words died out as she seemed to figure out that there was nobody in authority over Ashcroft that she could possibly know of—indeed, the only ones in the universe above him
were
the collective Wizard’s Circle and God, himself. He could hear her tongue lag as she comprehended how at his mercy she was.

“I’ll kill you!” she said, and when he spanked harder in response, she gave a sob and said, “You’re killing me
!”

After that her words became more or less nonsensical. Mostly just shrill cries resulting from every flash of pain she encountered from his hand. Once she began to really cry in a more quieted fashion, the spanks slowed down until they came to a complete stop.

He finally let his hand rest upon her bottom—the heat of her reddened skin could be felt through the thin dark cloth of her panties. She hung wearily over his lap, sniffling and squirming resignedly. “So do I have your attention?”

For the first time probably since he met her, he knew that he actually did have her undivided attention.

When Charlotte was five, she was in love with Ben Harper; a blonde-haired boy who seemed to lord over the local sandbox. To show him how much she cared for him, she poured sand over his head repeatedly until he was coughing it up and crawled, screaming and crying, to his mother. He never returned to the sandbox again, and by the time they started first grade, it was clear he’d never give her a second chance.

Her foster parents had decreed that the start of her love-life was ominous, at best. They were very astute, and
very
correct.

But she couldn’t help herself. Every time she saw a boy she liked growing up, she would scramble to sabotage the relationship before it had enough solid grounding to survive her. She knew she didn’t go out of her way to do it—it just happened. There was some horrible, rotten piece of her that seemed to come out around men, as if it was simply her nature to sting everyone in her path with uncalled-for retaliation.

She had poured proverbial sand over Ashcroft’s head, and she knew it. She was only waiting for the moment that he would crawl, sputtering and a shell of himself, away from her. After all, that was the general pattern.

Instead, he did something she did not expect: Ashcroft poured the sand right back onto her.

She didn’t much care for it.

While her friends were buying things they were planning to put in their college dorms, she was getting everything she owned into a couple of suitcases to get sent to Cambridge… And not for the college. No, she didn’t have the luxury to sit around wondering what she was going to do with the rest of her life. She didn’t get to choose her major, it was chosen for her.

Her life had been chosen for her at birth: to
ally herself with
Ashcroft Medwin, the
famously good
Archivist Wizard, to be his apprentice, and to possess as much knowledge of the Byndian Craft as she could get out of him.

She had a feeling by the time they brought her to England, and then into the Otherworld to sign the contract under Ashcroft, that she was going to be hosed. She knew quite well that if she didn’t sign her name to the
(admittedly non-lethal)
apprenticeship contract, her foster mother, Peggy, was going to cry her eyes out… Peggy was supposedly her mother’s best friend, and she was always wailing that she’d ‘failed’ Charlotte’s mother in raising her.

Ah, a witch’s guilt and a mother’s love. That’s what led to this.

Although, when she’d first met
Ashcroft
,
Charlotte was actually excited… And then she realized that he was doomed before she even wanted him to be. She wondered if she’d ever blushed so hard as the first time he looked at her, riveting his eyes on her like she was the most appallingly curious thing he had ever seen.

Because of the way her parents revered Ashcroft as a living-legend, she had already built the imagery of Ashcroft being an old wizard with a long white beard and a pointy hat, just like a human girl might imagine a wizard to be. But in actuality, Ashcroft looked more like a warrior with his brawny arms and strong chest and shoulders… And she had a thing for strong-looking guys.

He looked like he wasn’t too old, either. Oh, well—older than
her
. He looked like he was a hard thirty
,
and of course he did. He was an immortal wizard
,
after all. They stopped aging after they ‘reached immortality’, when their appearance stopped in time.
Charlotte knew she would stop aging, too, when she reached her own age of immortality.

Her parents had tried to assure her that Ashcroft would be hard to look at because of the dark gashes on his face.  And
the dark, visible gashes were certainly there, looking
like he had been in a very serious fight with a very wild animal before he’d reached his immortality and could not heal from the scars. But they weren’t as bad as she’d imagined
,
either. They were just as interesting as the sun wrinkles around the corners of his eyes or the way it looked like he had worked hard in the elements as a mortal.  The tan in his skin only made his light grey eyes seem even smokier.

She
had
distantly wondered how their relationship could come undone, but the answer to her question had appeared with
clarity
after the first week of her apprenticeship.

They couldn’t be more different. Ashcroft was a tutor
,
a scholar, despite his
rough,
roguish looks. There were supposedly many types of sorcerers, and he was an Archivist—a race of wizards who got their powers through grueling study and practice.

And she was his worst nightmare. She was a slacker born from a race of wizards that were
powerful, but also
carefree and
nonchalant
, and she was raised by herb-wizards
;
a race who had about as much desire to be in control of her
(or of anyone)
as her pet goldfish had. Ashcroft was a rude awakening for her—he liked being in control of everything and everyone, and was.

Which was too bad, because she also liked to be in control. She was used to it
;
she certainly ruled her
foster
parents’ roost.

He probably was ready to throw something at her head by their third meeting. Still, not all was lost on her. She REALIZED that he
had been
attempt
ed
patience with her. It merely backfired when Moriarty, Ashcroft’s steward, would escort her—“for her safety”— through the Otherworld entrance and would say some cutting remark about how she looked, how she dressed or wore her hair, how she walked, talked, ate, drank, acted,
or
didn’t act…

By the time she got to Ashcroft she was a time-bomb set to go off at the smallest huff of angry air unable to get stifled from Ashcroft’s tongue.

She’d never thought it would get this far, though… She never thought she would have run away, but that end seemed to build on itself, as well. Ashcroft had worn thin on patience
that had never seemed to work on her
.

And now she’d just gotten spanked, hard, by the tall, strong wizard like she was a naughty five-year-old. She had for a brief, shining moment, thought she was just going to suffer through it like a big girl and not give him the satisfaction of hearing her cry.

And then she realized that big girls weren’t ever spanked at all, and that just made her want to cry even more. There was no keeping it in
,
anyway. Her bottom was well-roasted, aching and burning still even though the spanking was over.

The worst part was, now that Ashcroft rested his hand on her most tender flesh, she realized once again—for she had thought about it immediately when he first tossed her over his knee, before all the pain—that she was very underdressed for this sort of thing. Actually, she wondered if she had ever been more embarrassed. How much could he see? Far too much—far, far too much of that area of her body that she had never been particularly fond of.

“I hope you’ve learned a good bit about yourself when you were gone, Charlotte,” he lectured. “Hopefully you realize how fortunate you’ve been.”

She had learned that… But when she came back into her apartment after a week when all her money had been spent on hotels and room service, only to find her stuff gone and her credit cards canceled, she had definitely had a rude awakening. She’d been miserable.

But she wasn’t about to crawl back to Ashcroft. Moriarty was right about that.

“But your leniency has been cut to a close. You will live here, since you’ve proved you can’t handle the freed
om of living by yourself on
Earthside. You’ve proved that you can’t be trusted. Maybe one day you can earn back some of my trust.”

“You can’t keep me prisoner!” she gasped, unable to even comprehend what it would be like living here. Ashcroft himself might have been none
-
too
-
hard on the eyes, but the Otherworld was quite eerie, and Ashcroft’s tower was doubly so. It was dark and castle-like. She was used to carpets and drywall… Not stones and tall ceilings with
dark oak
rafters…

Not to mention she had to live with Ashcroft when they had yet to survive four hours together. He would be moved to murder her within the week.

“Oh, yes I can,” he argued above her head, his fingers seemed to grip uncomfortably into her swollen flesh. “I can do exactly that. You signed a contract—saying that you will live wherever I allow you to. And when you live here, there will be rules,
and they will be followed
or else there
will
be discipline.”

She felt her throat tighten. More discipline
?
Why? Did this time go amazingly well? She certainly didn’t think so. Her throat hurt from crying, she was still panting with exhaustion, her nerves were still rattled… And, of course, her ass was on fire! “Please, Ashcroft. Don’t—no more of this. I can’t take any more,” she assured, her words stumbling out of her mouth with choking sobs.

She had heard that many men couldn’t stand to hear women cry. Ashcroft apparently wasn’t one of those
men
, because he continued on without even faltering from his stern tone. “Rule one; as always—and please don’t take this lightly—don’t leave the property alone. Remember how I said the Otherworld is dangerous? Well, it still is. Even when you live here, don’t become complacent.”

That rule wasn’t new. Moriarty waited for her in the mornings by the Otherworld entrance until she rolled in every day so that he could escort her to the tower, gripping the sword he
nearly
always carried on his side. In the afternoons when she wanted to go back to her Cambridge apartment, Moriarty would have to escort her to her car. He never even acted very grudgingly towards this responsibility, even though Moriarty was normally full of piss and vinegar. Even he didn’t want Charlotte to walk alone, despite the fact that Charlotte had never seen anything dangerous on the way there or back all summer.

She didn’t argue, knowing she’d get nowhere.

“Two—y
ou will speak to me and to others more respectfully. Sometimes the things that come out
of your mouth are so crude they coul
d make a sailor blush. It makes me shudder to think what you might say one day to the Wizard’s Circle if you don’t try to reign yourself in now
!”

She gritted her teeth. How did he want her to talk? Like she was in the Regency Era? Certainly that was the last time he’d felt comfortable traveling outside the Otherworld. She could just imagine it. ‘
Good afternoon, Mr. Medwin, I hope you can join me for a jolly cup of tea out on the balcony. Such a lov-e-ly day it ‘tis!’

Urgh. Besides, the Wizard’s Circle’s opinion or approval she couldn’t care less about. They were nothing but a bureaucratic, small, opinioned federation of wizardry with far too much power. Hearing about them merely gave her the willies.

“Also,” he continued
,
“
y
ou will not talk over me, and you will not talk back to me.”