Nola

Carolyn Faulkner

(c) 2007 (c) 2010 by Blushing Books and Carolyn Faulkner

Nola

(c) 2007 (c) 2010 Carolyn Faulkner Blushing Books

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Nola by Carolyn Faulkner
eBook ISBN: 978-1-60968-133-3

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This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as advocating any non-consensual spanking activity or the spanking of minors.

Chapter One

Nola clung to the edge of the bed, as far away from her new husband as she could possibly manage to get without ending up on the floor - not that she objected to sleeping on the floor, but she'd already tried that and had only managed to earn herself another of his monumental spankings instead of any sort of freedom from his nightly pawing of her person.

Her bottom was still throbbing from the one he'd given her this morning for resisting his advances. She snorted softly to herself in her mind. It wasn't as if she'd planted a fist in his face and run out. He was too damned big for that and easily managed to subdue her embarrassingly feeble attempts to escape, growling in that horribly low, almost animalistic way of his, "Didn't I tell you to stay put, little lady?"

If there was anything she hated more than the sarcastic way in which he said those last two words, Nola didn't know what it was. But then he reminded her, rudely: being spanked. She was twenty one years old, long in the tooth to get married by everyone's standards but her own, and much too old to be put over anyone's lap for a paddling.

But that was exactly what her new husband had done, and without so much as a second's hesitation, she found her nose buried in the celery green and cream velvet bedspread that darkened rapidly as he reached over to her nightstand and lifted the heavy mahogany hairbrush off the silver hand mirror and applied it so quickly and liberally to her nearly bare bottom that she had no time to catch her breath between the painful, stinging splats. She had so much hair that her brushes were custom made, wider and heavier than most, solid mahogany through and through, dammit. And her relatively thick flannel nightgowns that covered her neck to toes, weren't permitted in the marriage bed, she'd been boldly informed night before last, when they'd first come together as man and wife.

A first, he had refused to let her wear anything to bed - the past two nights he'd ripped each of her gowns from neck to waist in one brutal motion. The only thing that had saved her was that last night had been chillier than usual, and he couldn't have missed the way she was shivering on her side of the bed, so he'd risen and given her a shirt of his own that ended most obscenely mid thigh. But it was better than nothing.

So the only thing covering - barely - her well rounded bottom was that thinnish dress shirt of his, which was no covering at all, really, especially against the wrath of her brush wielding husband.

She didn't want to cry. She'd promised herself she wouldn't from their wedding night, when he'd first spanked her for resisting him, and she'd been so shocked and amazed and humiliated to find herself over his lap that she had dissolved into tears immediately. It didn't seem to make much of a difference to him one way or the other whether she tried to be stoic or dissolved into a humiliating morass of weeping and wailing - it didn't lengthen or shorten the spanking in the least, regardless of what she did.

But it was damned hard not to cry. The man had to be some sort of deviant expert at spanking women or something, although she certainly had never heard of any such acceptable profession.

He didn't need a profession, anyway. He was Brandon Sawyer, of the Baltimore Sawyers, and his father had parlayed some seed money from his grandfather's gold strike in the mid-eighteen hundreds into enough money that no one in the family would ever have to work for a living again - not that Brandon was a member of the idle rich. He wasn't - not in any way. Under his stern hand, the family fortunes had grown to truly astronomical proportions, and yet he'd completely resisted every single simpering maid that had been dangled beneath his nose - and sometimes even between his sheets, depending on how desperate the poor girl's father was.

He'd turned up his nose at absolutely every female paraded before him - often much less than politely. His father and grandfather despaired of him. He was the last of the line, in his late thirties, and had absolutely no interest in providing them both with the heir they coveted. Hell, he hadn't even had a by-blow bastard whose background they could overlook in favor of the blood ties.

Until he saw Nola.

She wasn't even supposed to be at that ball. The only reason she was there was because she was friends with Wilde Everest, the famously effete author/poet, who begged her to accompany him to the annual New Year's Masquerade Ball thrown by Sawyer's aunt Lydia. This year the ball was to be even more spectacular than usual, since they were saying goodbye to the nineteenth century and hello to the twentieth.

Despite all of the hubbub surrounding the ball - drawing of the possible gowns the hoi polloi would be wearing had appeared in the newspapers, along with bold speculation about who might be escorting who and what the favors for that particular year might be - Wilde, as usual, was whining about having to make an appearance, although if he hadn't been invited he would have been completely crushed. He declared to Nola with a dramatic sweep of his lily white hand that if she didn't accompany him he was going to have a dreadful time and no doubt contract a sick headache from the sheer boredom that would lay him low for nigh onto a month.

Nola had to break into a broad smile as she'd considered her histrionic friend where he perched on the genteelly worn settee in their relatively modest parlor. He looked like a particularly exotic bird taken from the jungles of Africa and set on display in a Woolworth's somewhere. A true gem among rags - the exact opposite of how she felt when she let him drag her to these things.

Nola's family - the Hughes - were made well enough to do by the sweat of her father's brow as he worked in a livery at first, then ended up owning the place and several more like them scattered across the West. But Sawyer money made theirs look like a true pittance, despite the market boom and her father's cautious investing.

But the annual ball on the Vanderbilt estate - complete with a luxuriously appointed, Vanderbilt owned train to carry everyone out from the city to the Hudson Valley - was well out of Nola's social strata. It was out of Wilde's, too, but that was overlooked since he was the darling of New York society, and considered to be a witty and amusing addition to any party by the ladies who set such standards - despite the fact, or maybe because of it, that he rarely accepted any such invitation.

This ball, however, was not to be sniffed at, and he was desperate for Nola to come with him, promising her the world if she'd just agree to appear on his arm for a mere hour of her time - which Nola knew would become no less than eight to ten hours, at least, if she was lucky. Wilde protested too much, however - he adored all of the attention he was going to garner simply by setting foot in the place.

It was very hard for her to turn Wilde down. He was just too much fun, and would pull such faces that he had her giggling until she couldn't breathe for it, so she finally agreed. Her mother, of course, had seen his invitation as much more than it really was, and had gone all out, commissioning a dress from the same dressmaker that Louisa Vanderbilt herself used - supposedly.

All Nola knew was that she was heartily tired of the constant fittings and shopping. She would have much preferred to be out riding or writing, but, as her mother was fond of saying thousands of times a day, neither of those pursuits was going to get her a husband.

Nola had assumed - even as time went on and no one caught her eye - that she would be allowed to make her own choice about whether or not to get married, and she was most distinctly leaning towards "not". Most of the men in her social set were either fops or rakes, and she'd never had a liking for either of those types. In fact, she'd never had much of a liking for any particular man, perhaps because her father was such a thorn in her side.

But apparently she was wrong. Her mother had always harped at her, of course. That was what mothers did. All of her friends' mothers were exactly the same, but of course, all of them were already married, and most had had the coveted grandchildren. Her father - despite how much they clashed on everything else, from women's suffrage to women's rights - had never said a word about her unmarried state.

They had made a grand entrance, having arrived fashionably late and eschewing the free train ride, despite its many temptations. When Wilde had mentioned his distaste for the inevitable crowds, her father had offered his best carriage with four matched, pure white horses, along with the livery and coachmen to staff it to the hilt, as if they were European royalty instead of a raffish writer and the daughter of a man who got his start shoveling shit.

If there was one thing her mother did well, it was show off her daughter. Her gown was of the palest pink satin overlaid with the finest, paler pink lace, making the dress appear almost white with the slightest of blush about it. Its off the shoulder design was paired with white lace gloves, which differed from the current kid fashion but matched the dress nicely. A set of gossamer wings had been attached to the back darts of the dress, and she carried a restrained but elegant pink mask on a long pink holder, approximating some sort of fairy or nymph. She wore only the best jewels her mother owned - soft, pink teardrop sapphires in her ears with an elegantly simple, matching teardrop nestled just above her cleavage.

But it was her hairstyle that caused a murmur to run through the crowd. The luxuriously thick length of her deep russet hair wasn't swept up in the current fashion, but rather its outrageous natural curls were played up and placed enticingly over the bosom the s-shaped bodice created.

Since she had no concerns or worries about attracting a husband at this crowd, and her mother had always considered her hair to be her best asset, they had agreed that her unusual hairstyle - on top of its unusual color - couldn't hurt. And Nola was only too happy not to have the weight of it piled on her head all evening in some intricate - and undoubtedly uncomfortable - do.

Wilde, of course, adored it. He loved anything unusual, anything guaranteed to set society on its ear. He came as Lord Byron, in complete costume - wig, tights, and all. They were a pair, the two of them, and the gasps they generated rippled across the ballroom floor.

Wilde escorted her right out onto the dance floor as the musicians struck up a waltz. He whirled her around the floor for a few minutes before others decided to join in, grinning from ear to ear the entire time.

Nola hit him on the shoulder with her mask. "You're enjoying this entirely too much, you realize."

The grin only got bigger. "Sometimes they need something to set them all on their ears." His eyes met hers. "And you look absolutely ravishing this evening. If I had it in me, I'd propose right now."

Luckily - despite her mother's long held hopes - they both knew he didn't have it in him. Wilde didn't have much use for most people - women especially. And he had a very distinct, very taboo use for most men, although the two of them only spoke about it in the most round about of terms, usually when he'd left a lover, or a lover had left him and he was distraught.

She was in the middle of a giggle when a strange man, who was much too big and physically imposing for polite society, tapped Wilde on the shoulder, then replaced him without so much as a word to the other man, or missing a step of the waltz.

Nola tried to disengage from him, not wanting to continue with this oafish man, who held her with all too much familiarity, especially for someone to whom she'd never been properly introduced.

But he plain and simple wouldn't let her stop - much less go - and Nola wasn't of a mind to want to create a scene that might end up in the gossip section of the papers, ending her mother's life right then and there from the scandal of it. So she went along, praying for the end of the song, and boldly glaring at him for his effrontery.

He merely raised an eyebrow back at her, but said nothing, throughout the entire dance. He didn't try to introduce himself, which would have been the least impolite thing to do. He didn't try to engage her in small talk. They stared at each other until the music stopped, when he turned her loose and stepped back, bowing slightly, then leaving.

Feeling somehow bereft, and not knowing why, Nola found herself being gasped at for the second time in less than ten minutes. She made a beeline for Wilde's side, which was quite unlike her. She wasn't such a vulnerable flower that she felt like she had to cling to her escort the entire evening - that was another reason why Wilde often favored her with invitations.

He had a full cup of liberally spiked punch for her, which she drank gratefully while trying desperately not to reach out and clutch his arm.

Wilde knew her well enough, though, bless his heart, that he reached out and took her hand himself. "My, my, my. I think my little reclusive rose has been singled out of the herd by the tiger. Let's hope he waits a suitable amount of time before going in for the kill."

Nola frowned fiercely at her companion, never more thankful that she didn't have to strain her neck to do it, since he, unlike that loathsome ape who had appropriated her for what should have been their dance. "Would you mind elaborating on that metaphor for those of us who don't usually circulate in these lofty realms?"

Wilde chuckled into his own punch. "You mean you don't recognize him?" Nola shook her head, unable to keep herself for scanning the crowd for his face again, despite how much she'd instantly disliked the man. Tsking loudly, Wilde informed her, "I thought you read the papers? That man is Brandon Sawyer, of the gold mine Sawyers, bachelor at large extraordinaire. And if your mother ever gets wind of the fact that he singled you out for a dance..." he let the sentence trail off dramatically.

"Really? Why?" she asked blithely.

Wilde rolled his eyes. "Because, my dear girl," he loved to use that expression, even though they were born only months apart, "he is the most sought after bachelor in the City. In America. Probably in the entire world. His family has buckets and buckets of money, and he's knocking on forty and has never been married. He never comes to these things - Lord knows why he's here now, probably some sort of family pressure - and if and when he does, he just broods alone in the corner like a big, dark lump, declining any and all invitations for social intercourse."

Gossip was another sideline of Wilde's, and in this case, Nola was only too happy about that particular proclivity. She didn't know what it was about that man, but she did know she had disliked him on sight. And yet she was dying to know everything she could about him, for some strange reason.

"And yet he still gets invited to balls by the Vanderbilts?" she asked, surprised that anyone would bother to extend a second invitation to the likes of him.

She'd never heard Wilde snort. It was kind of cute and made her smile as he answered her. "My love, the Sawyer fortune makes the Vanderbilts look like they just stepped off the boat. Besides, his Aunt Lydia married a Vanderbilt."

Nola's eyes went wide. That was pretty impressive. But then her mouth twisted wryly. "Money might not buy happiness, but apparently it buys a certain amount of acceptance."

"Don't believe it. Money definitely buys happiness - or at least a reasonable imitation thereof." He waggled his eyebrows at her, and she couldn't help but laugh. Wilde was much better at being unrepentantly brash than she was, especially in public - although to her mother's horror, she did her best to be a lot like him.

Although she felt eyes on her occasionally throughout the rest of the dance, there were no further incidences. Nola didn't know very many people who were there - and even fewer men - but she did know some of the women, and Wilde's presence opened a lot of doors for the two of them. They were generally accepted into any clique they approached, and several emissaries from different clutches of women even came to them as they stood talking quietly by an ornately wallpapered wall.

After being introduced to more people than she'd probably ever met in her twenty one years on Earth, and being whirled around the floor several times by various brothers, uncles, and cousins of the friends - new and old - she'd found so far, Nola stepped out onto the veranda, pulling her mother's stole tight around her shoulders, crimping her wings badly, she was sure, but she needed a minute alone. Wilde was surrounded by a group of eager sycophants who were hanging on his every word.

In other words, he was in Heaven.

She was feeling the effects of a little too much punch, and way too many people, despite the size of the room, and loved the blast of cold winter air on her face as she gazed out over what she was sure were gorgeously manicured lawns, barely lit by the pale moonlight.

"You should go inside. It's too cold out here for you."

She whirled around cautiously, so as not to slip in her kid slippers, but couldn't make anyone out. Nola didn't recognize the voice - but she knew it wasn't Wilde. In his current situation with all of those adoring eyes looking up at him, he wouldn't have cared if she'd frozen to death out here.

But she didn't like the idea of some stranger trying to tell her what to do. She had enough of that from her father. "I'm fine, thank you," she replied, her tone as chilly as the air around her.

"I don't believe we've been properly introduced," the masculine voice detached itself from a pitch black corner of the portico, the end of a cheroot flaring for mere seconds before he carelessly flicked it away and confronted her. There was no other way to put it. He planted himself in front of her and grabbed her hand away from where it had been clutching her fur to her bosom and pumped it up and down several times.

It was the stranger who had stolen a dance from her hours before. It was as if he'd been lying in wait for her out here.

"My name is Brandon Sawyer. And you are Nola Hughes."

Obviously, he'd done some intelligence gathering about her, but that didn't impress her in the least. Neither did his manners, or rather the distinct lack thereof. She withdrew her hand from his with an icy stare, saying, a she turned to go back into the ballroom, "We still haven't been properly introduced."

A proper introduction was made by third parties - a mutual acquaintance, often a relative. They most certainly were not made by the individual themselves.

He snorted impolitely, but then she was coming to expect the impolite from him. "Oh, come now, Miss Hughes. Your companion is hardly the height of conformity, and you're standing there wearing a completely scandalous loose hairstyle, and you remain stubbornly unmarried at the age of twenty one. You can hardly comment on convention without looking around for the proverbial bolt of lightening."

Her face got tighter at his words, if that was possible. Brandon wasn't really sure. He didn't know her well enough to judge that - yet.

"Regardless, Mr. Sawyer. I bid you good night." She dropped him the barest of curtsies, and tried to sweep by him, going so far as to lift her skirts to make sure they didn't touch him as she passed.

Brandon wasn't so socially inept that he didn't know when he was being given the cut, but he had a hard time not breaking into a huge grin that this young upstart woman would do such a thing to him. Didn't she know who he was? Could she truly not care that his family was powerful enough to completely crush hers and their upper crust pretensions with a mere flick of their wrists? A word here or there?

As she passed, his hand shot out and grabbed her forearm - an innocuous touch, as touches went, but a definite no-no according to polite society. Bachelor gentlemen didn't touch unmarried women. Of course, they weren't supposed to be out here alone under any circumstances, either, but here they were.

"I will be coming to call some time this week, dependant on my business."

Not "may I come to call" or "I might like to come to call" but he would becoming, and it was quite obvious to Nola that he didn't expect that she would decline the honor.

"I'm afraid I shall not be home," she spit out, trying to reclaim her arm, but failing miserably. Finally, she simply stood stock still, staring at the doors to safety, heartily wishing she'd never come out there.

Partly because he wanted to, partly because he wanted to shock her out of the blase facade that had settled onto her usually expressive face, Brandon used his leverage with her arm to tug her towards him, pulling her off balance, so that she landed flat against his broad chest. Then he stole a kiss as quickly and efficiently as he'd stolen the dance, planting his lips onto hers firmly, not letting her go until he was good and ready to do so, and making sure she realized that she couldn't get away from him until he let her.

Her skirts kept her from being able to kick him, and even stepping on his foot didn't garner so much as a grunt, dammit. There was nothing she could do but bear it. He couldn't keep her out here forever.

She hoped.

But this man was a force of nature, completely unconstrained by convention, and she knew that if she managed to get back to the relative safety of Wilde's side, it would only be because he was feeling somewhat benevolent. And Nola had the distinct impression that he and benevolence had never been fast friends.

And now, days after marrying him, she knew the absolute truth of that thought.

Chapter Two

She didn't know how many swats he applied to her scandalously almost bare bottom, except that it was too many by far for her comfort. When he finally leaned over and replaced the hairbrush on her nightstand, she had long since broken her promise to herself not to cry - it was damned near impossible not to, considering his strength and her hairbrush.

But there was something that was a thousand times worse than being spanked - and that was saying something, as far as she was concerned. Neither her father nor her mother had ever touched her in a disciplinary vein, and yet since being married she'd been spanked more times than she ever wanted to count!

The worse thing, however, was right this minute poking prominently into her stomach. Part of the strange ritual he liked to perform - after rather violently relieving her of her quite proper nightgown - involved touching her. Everywhere, even the most embarrassing an intimate of places. Particularly those places, it seemed. Now, Nola had been hugged and kissed - always on the cheek, of course - all her life. More so by her Mother than her Father, but that was only right. But she'd never been touched anywhere else by anyone else, beyond the occasional handshake or hug and kiss from a female friend. Even doctor's appointments were conducted while completely dressed, and the doctor had certainly never laid hands on her, or he would have been thrashed soundly by her father and subsequently drummed out of the profession.

But her brand new husband had insisted on doing much more than just touching, which he did as if he owned her, making her feel not unlike how a slave on the block must've felt - hefting both of her naked breasts in his hands as she made embarrassingly futile attempts to either escape or relieve his hands from her person. That was, until he gave her a look she was becoming alarmingly familiar with - raised eyebrows nearly hidden in that midnight black hairline, glaring at her fit for the devil himself. "Keep your hands to yourself, woman, or you'll find yourself over my lap."

"Over his lap?" she'd thought to herself. What kind of threat was that?

Of course, she'd been entirely unable to keep her hands from defending her honor - even from her husband - and she'd ended up upended unceremoniously over his lap getting her first spanking and cursing his name and herself at the same time because he was making her realize that she couldn't imagine a worse pain than the one he was creating in her nether parts - at least until the next time he spanked her on an already sore bottom. And it had seemed to her that he was never ever going to stop.

But then he had rolled her onto her back, sliding to her side and managing to keep her in place with one well placed hand splayed on her stomach. "Lie still, Nola," he'd whispered hoarsely, "you're mine, and I'm going to touch you whether you want me to or not. You're my wife, and I can and will do exactly as I please with you, in or out of this bed."

Nola had known that some men felt they owned their wives - that was one of the things she'd been trying to campaign against with her involvement women's suffrage and rights groups. How ironic that she'd ended up under the thumb of a man who thought exactly that.

The touching wasn't the worst of it, though. It was bad and humiliating and embarrassing, but it wasn't the worst. The worst thing was that he made her like it. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing - which didn't surprise Nola in the least - and, although everything about his attitude screamed that he felt he owned her as surely as if he'd bought and paid for her, his fingers and hands - and eventually his lips and mouth - were firm but gentle, especially at first. Almost teasing and tickling in places as he explored every inch of her body - some inches she hadn't much acknowledged owning herself. He'd dug his fingers into her hair, combing it out away from her face, fanning it out on the pillow behind her, then following the contours of her face, her high cheekbones, and down her nose to full, pink lips that were slightly parted with her anxious, quickened breathing.

He didn't linger there, but didn't head for the most usual place, either. Instead, he trailed his fingertips over her collarbone, down over her shoulders, all the way to her fingers, then back up again. To Nola's complete mortification, she shivered, which made her nipples peak proudly, as if they were trying to attract his attention.

Before she knew it, those huge hands were each cupping a more than generous breast. She'd always been somewhat embarrassed by how ample her bosom was, and the way he was massaging and pressing them only made her feel just that much more self conscious. And yet, when his fingers found those pink tips and very gently squeezed them, she couldn't stop herself from catching her breath.

It felt sinfully good! Much too sinfully good, and there didn't seem to be a way to get away from it - or him - either. When she tried, when she shifted her shoulders side to side, he merely held on a little tighter, saying a tone she came to hate, "Ah ah ahhhh, wife. I said no resisting. Apparently that spanking wasn't sufficient to help you remember - " Her husband made to move away from her and, apparently, give her another taste of her own hairbrush - or his broad palm - on her poor rear.

Nola couldn't believe that he'd reduced her to begging with one spanking, but he had. "No, no! I'll be still." Tears flooded her eyes at the prospect of a second spanking, as well as her complete loss of dignity and self respect.

He seemed to consider her earnestness for a moment, then turned back to her, reclaiming those still hardened nubs and pinching them more tightly than he had before, as if to punish her for even considering trying to get away from him.

And Nola - to her complete disgust and mortification - found that she liked it even when he made her hurt like that. She had never experienced the depths of despair before, but her husband seemed to delight in showing them to her. She had always been in control of her own body - well, except once a month since she was eleven or so - and now it was gleefully betraying her, conspiring with that awful, despotic man to make her enjoy being degraded, being treated like a possession and even making her moan in unwanted ecstasy when he deliberately hurt her, pinching and pulling those virgin nipples as she arched her back and begged him not to.

Brandon found himself intrigued by this little chit, much more so than he wanted to be, even though there was absolutely no doubt in his mind as to her innocence. Enough that he'd found himself offering marriage, something that he'd sworn he had absolutely no interest in. But it would get his family off his back to have a wife tucked away somewhere, and keep his inevitable paramours from trying to wangle a proposal out of him. He'd thoroughly expected to do no more than his duty in their marriage bed - to begat the "heir and a spare" as the Brits so succinctly put it, and then be done with her. His parents certainly didn't spend any more time together than they absolutely had to, and he expected his marriage to Nola to run very much along the same lines - separate residences, separate lives, separate loves.

It was the thought of her with another man - of someone else seeing her wide eyed reactions to everything he did, someone besides him cupping those almost overly generous breasts, tweaking her nipples and watching the color rise becomingly in her cheeks. It didn't bear thinking of. He'd never felt in the least jealous of any other man, but this woman was different for some reason, and he didn't like it - not at all - mostly because he couldn't seem to stop the feelings, and that made him crueler than he might have been if she hadn't invoked those emotions in him.

She'd caught his eye - along with everyone else's at that abominable Masquerade Ball. He'd attended, because his father had absolutely insisted, which didn't usually work. But Geoffrey Sawyer hadn't been doing well lately. He'd had a series of heart seizures that had done more than anything else could to pull his stubborn, wayward son into line with what the family wanted him to do.

So he'd gone. He would be damned if he'd dress up as anyone or anything, but he'd gone. Then, not too long after he'd arrived, she'd appeared in the double doors and something in his chest had onto the tops of his boots. He wanted to run up the steps, throw his cape around her and keep her from all of those prying eyes. Most especially, he wanted to do something about her scandalous fall of hair. Women who were of an age to be married - whether they were or not - kept their hair up. The only person who was supposed to see a woman with her hair down was her husband, and yet, there she was, flagrantly flaunting convention and smiling with it, her arm neatly tucked into the curve of that fop Wilde Everest's distinctly limp arm.

He couldn't believe that she was with him. For some strange reason, the idea absolutely incensed him. And Brandon also realized that, probably because he refused to attend these soirees except under penalty of death, he had no idea who the hell it was that he was steaming over.

He sussed out a friend in the crow - not that he had that many - and nearly bowled the poor man over with questions, all the while keeping a watchful eye on that disturbing baggage as Wilde manhandled her about the floor.

Roger Kennedy, however, was used to Brandon's unapologetically brash ways. The two had known each other since they were in short pants, and he was one of the few people who Brandon counted on to tell him the absolute truth, not colored by a desire for matrimony or money.

"Who's that girl?" he asked bluntly, ignoring Roger's silent, raised glass offer of punch.

"What girl?" Roger had somehow managed to affect a bit of a British accent, not that he'd ever been to England, and "girl" came out much more like "gel" than it, by rights, should have.

Brandon knew when someone was being deliberately obtuse and simply glared at the other man.

Roger, who had never in his life known Brandon to inquire after any woman - it was always the other way around. Quite a few women - or mothers of eligible maidens - had come to him as a way to get to Brandon. He intended to savor the power of this moment as long as he could, looping his thumbs into his unfashionably broad lapels; he'd come to this party as a town crier, completely with an extremely loud bell.

"Well, let me see what I can remember about her." He gave Brandon a sidelong glance, and knew that he was closer to a true beating than he'd been in decades. Brandon wasn't the kind of man to be toyed with, although Roger always liked to push him a bit, since no one else seemed willing to. Brandon had been a champion boxer at Exeter Academy, and Roger knew that he'd pursued his physical abilities more so than any other man of quality that Roger'd ever heard of. He might have been long in the tooth to be a bachelor, but he was at the top of his game physically - and, just at his size, Brandon was a force to be reckoned with, forget his ability to beat pretty much anyone to a pulp.

"I believe the woman in question is Nola Hughes, daughter of Ephraim Hughes and Julia Beckham Hughes. Made his money in livery stables, I believe. Not even nouveau riche, really. Merchant class money, at best."

"Good." Brandon was heartily sick of the simpering females that were inevitably paraded before him. It seemed the older he got, the worse that embarrassment became. He'd been taking refuge on the patio - despite the cold - just to get away from the constant stream of giggling females their mothers insisted on throwing at him. He'd only come into the ballroom to try to find his Aunt and bid her good night before he left.

As it was, he knew he wasn't going to leave that quickly now, not with someone that interesting in the offing. Middle class and an original - maybe she'd have the gumption he wanted in a wife. Perhaps she even had a brain - although he knew that some things were too much to ask for nowadays. Women were to become wives and mothers, and few families saw fit to educate them much past their ABC's.

And yet, now, here she was in his bed, fighting herself as he touched her body in any way that pleased him - and pleased her, at least for the moment. She was such a shy, reticent little thing, despite her blatant flaunting of convention, and the dichotomy intrigued him to no end. He'd found he liked forcing her past her natural inhibitions from the very beginning, and the more he did it, the more interesting it became to him. He'd never felt like this about any other woman. It had been two days, and he hadn't let her out of the bedroom, and he didn't intend to for quite some time.

She had been so wonderfully virginal on their wedding night. There was something more there that niggled at him, and he promised himself that he would investigate it as soon as he'd sated himself with her, but he'd been lost from the first moment he'd found her in their bed, apparently completely scandalized that he would come into what she'd thought was her bedroom, and hers alone.

He'd disabused her of that notion quickly, but she'd flown out from under the covers towards the robe that hung over her vanity chair, but he'd caught her wrist and stopped her midway, tugging her back to stand in front of him, and reaching for the neckline of her gown, ripping it to the floor in one ridiculously easy motion.

The look in her eyes at that moment - even just remembering it now made him hard as a spike. Fear, yes, uncertainty, but with a big dose of outrage that was what he'd always felt was missing. This woman wasn't going to just lie back and think of England - or rather the refilling of the family coffers or how to redecorate the bedroom. This woman, beneath the expected apprehension, was bloody well pissed at him.

And he loved it.

Even now, as he cajoled and pressed and twisted and twirled her body into welcoming him completely against her will, he knew that part of the reason her chest was rising and falling so quickly was that, if she could manage it, she'd cold cock him in a second. That was part of the reason there wasn't much in the way of brick a brack around their bed. She was livid - with herself as well as him, but he was the more likely target.

And tonight he was going to give her even more of a reason to be unhappy. Brandon slipped down her body a little, his chest naturally requiring that she spread her legs almost unnaturally wide, which fit his purposes exactly. He stopped when his mouth was level with that most perfect area of hers, staring down at it as his forearms held her legs apart.

"No, no, please!" She was trying to wiggle away, yet not trying to, and he let her struggle for a moment, before catching her tear filled eyes.

Brandon reached into the center of her, tugging those puffy lips apart so that he could deliberately waft his hot breath over her most private place, still watching her as that beautiful blush stained her chest and worked its way up her neck to her face. The random thought that he hoped he was still blushing fifty years from now flitted through his mind, making him frown fiercely.

"Don't look away, or I'll paddle your bottom again, wife," he warned, letting his mouth descend on that delicate area, suckling away at her tellingly prominent bud while he watched her fighting herself and her shame as she kept her eyes locked to his while he defiled her with his mouth.

Her hands were clenched in the bedspread beside her hips - she'd learned in the past two days - the hard way - not to interfere with whatever it was he wanted to do to her. But he found himself unwilling to allow her free range, so he grabbed her right wrist with his left hand, tugging it just the slightest bit, forcing her to offer even more of herself to his eager lips and tongue.

His right hand wasn't idle, either, though. She had amazed him that first night by exactly how virginal she was, and he had stayed away from that particular area since then to give her some time to heal. But he was going to make damned sure that she didn't feel a thing that wasn't specifically designed to make her absolutely crazy with pleasure.

When Brandon pressed just his index finger up inside her, he couldn't quite tell if her arched hips were meant to be an invitation or a method of protest. Either way, it didn't matter. He was going to do what he wanted to do, regardless, and what he wanted to do was pleasure his wife. He'd been very pleasantly surprised by how readily her body had reacted to him, and he intended to indulge himself whenever and wherever he wanted to, especially knowing that she wanted him to - even if she wasn't willing to admit or acknowledge that fact.

His eyes were glued to her face as he entered her carefully, though, looking for any signs of true discomfort. There was a little bit of a twinge around her eyes, but nothing that made him feel the need to stop, and even that tightness disappeared completely when he settled his mouth over her burgeoning clit and began to move that solitary finger in and out of her, all the while holding that wrist - and pretty much Nola herself - completely immobile, completely at what little there was of his mercy.

"No - I don't want this - please - stop!"

Her husband didn't say one word to her desperate, humiliating plea. His mouth was, however, most definitely, sinfully occupied, and there was nothing she could do to get away from it. His abilities - his bald, bold knowledge of her body and the way he used how it continually betrayed her had Nola wishing every time he touched her that she'd never succumbed to Wilde's pleas to go to that blasted ball.

But when he applied himself earnestly to cajoling her fiery pleasure, she thought she had died and gone to Heaven - only Heaven couldn't possibly admit someone as sinful as she was for enjoying what he insisted on doing to her. And she did enjoy it - all too much.

The first time he'd entered her there - not with his finger - she'd screamed. He'd done it all at once, not stopping or waiting or even speaking to her about it. He simply invaded her, painfully, and remained seated within her as she struggled beneath him, trying to get her off and out of her, but that was akin to a mouse trying to move a lion.

At that time, she'd felt very sure that she would never want anyone to touch her down there again. It hurt too much. She felt as if she'd been ripped from stem to stern down there, and was even more ashamed as tears rolled down her face because of it. It wasn't a terribly horrible pain - not nearly as bad as being spanked by him by a long shot - but it was the unexpectedness of it, she supposed, along with the inherent intimacy of the location of the pain that had her gasping and crying with it.

But this time, there was almost no pain - only that God awful pleasure that he delighted in conjuring just to humiliate her. She had been so scared the first time it had happened that she'd screamed, more out of fear than out of the actual ecstasy that had wracked her body. She hadn't had any idea where all of those sensations were going - what it was all building towards - until she'd fallen over the cliff, and had naturally screamed as a result.

Her scream had made her husband break into a huge grin as he labored over her, plunging deeply into her, not deliberately trying to hurt her, but not being all that careful of her, either. He was concentrating on bringing her to the heights of ecstasy, and he knew he'd hurt her, which made it that much more of a challenge to him.

And he'd succeeded.

He'd managed to repeat his success several times since then, despite the fact that she'd let him know it no uncertain terms that she had no interest in reliving the experience ever again.

And that, of course, just made him want to make sure she did.

Every time he wanted her to, without fail, and this time was no exception to his rule.

Nola could feel her control slipping as soon as that hot mouth closed around her, and his broad, flat tongue began to bathe the entire area with his own hot wetness, rubbing over and over every molecule of that area, and she couldn't do a thing to get away from it. That was almost worse than anything else - the complete and utter helplessness that he created - because it amplified those feelings a thousand fold, and she knew it shouldn't.

He was relentless, never coming up for air, never giving her a moment's respite, even when she arched against him violently and groaned through clenched teeth, entirely unwilling to give him the satisfaction of screaming again; groaning was quite bad enough as far as she was concerned. If she could have stopped that, she would, but she truly couldn't. Nola had always considered herself a strong willed woman, but her husband was turning out to be more than a match for her, and she hated him for it.

As her body dissolved into the almost familiar bliss, and he joined them together in that horribly intimate manner she hated to love, she bit her lip as hot wet tears slid into the fine hair at her temples.

Chapter Three

Their honeymoon had officially begun the next day. They were scheduled to do the usual Grand Tour of Europe - Switzerland, Paris, Rome, London as well as other, smaller spots - but Brandon's father had taken sick the night before, so their honeymoon was put on hold. Her husband told her in an extremely matter of fact manner, as if he thought it shouldn't matter to her in the least that they would have to delay the trip, and frankly it didn't.

Her almost complete lack of reaction - although he was certainly happy that she wasn't weeping and wailing all over him - was something of a surprise. He at least thought she'd be in somewhat of a snit or something, that she'd do the de rigueur moaning and complaining that most women would do.

But she didn't. She seemed almost happy not to be going, and that made him even more curious about her. He knew he'd picked someone different - that had been a very deliberate choice on his part. But perhaps he hadn't realized just how different.

She even came with him to see his father, calling him Papa Sawyer, and making him smile, if somewhat weakly. Nola found herself a chair and moved it next to the bed, reaching out to take a hold of the older man's hand. "Is there anything I can get you?"

It was a truly ridiculous question - this was one of the richest men in the country who had servants, doctors and nurses dancing attendance on him every hour of ever day - but again, it was something that not everyone would offer. Geoffrey Sawyer found strength enough to ask her for some cold water, and although his ever present nurse rose to get him some, it was his new daughter in law that went to the trouble of going downstairs to fill a pitcher with water and ice, coming back up quickly and efficiently to pour him a small glass.

Brandon knew that, with that small gesture, she'd weaseled her way into his father's heart. After that, he could barely pry the two of them apart. If his father had been twenty years younger, Brandon might have been worried. But instead, it ended up that she helped him to recover quickly - and more so - than he might have from a small heart attack. Still, he found himself being resentful of the amount of time and attention his new wife was lavishing on his father.

But he was between a rock and hard place - he could hardly forbid his wife from seeing his father, especially when his father's doctor has expressly mentioned how well Geoffrey was responding. As his frustration grew, so did his appetite for his wife, as if he was staking and restaking his claim each evening. She got up when he did and went off to take care of his father, but he insisted that she be home by seven to have dinner with him by eight.

Their somewhat strained dinners together didn't bother him, because directly after dinner he would take her hand and lead her up to their bedroom. Some nights, he played the ladies' maid and undressed her slowly, his big fingers nimbly working the thousands of tiny buttons that her maid, Ruth, usually argued with. But he'd given her a standing order that she wasn't to come to their room again after helping Madame with her dinner ensemble. Neither Ruth nor Nola had been particularly happy with that order, but Nola had reassured the only somewhat older woman the next morning that she was fine with her husband's assistance.

That was somewhat of a lie, of course, but she didn't want Ruth worrying, regardless. She was a married woman, and apparently his nightly - and sometimes, much to her shock and horror, he did it to her during the light of day - pawings were apparently something that married couples did.

But she didn't have anyone she could talk to about what was happening between herself and her husband on a nightly basis - usually multiple times. She certainly couldn't speak of such things to her mother, whose idea of a woman to woman talk the night before her marriage had been assorted tips on how to treat the household staff and several of her father's favorite recipes.

The girlfriends she'd had as an adolescent had all drifted away one by one as they got married and had children and became involved in their own family's lives. The only person she was truly close to was Wilde, and she wouldn't - she couldn't - ask him questions about such an intimate subject.

Could she?

Since the honeymoon had fallen through, she had set a luncheon date with Wilde at a small, intimate cafe they had frequented for years. They knew the proprietor well, and he greeted them by name, tucking them into the small booth they'd always favored and bringing them beignets piled high with powdered sugar and strong, hot cafe au lait.

Wilde looked her boldly up and down. "So. How does married life sit with you, Mrs. Sawyer."

Nola was still very uncomfortable with that name, feeling she'd done nothing to earn it, besides spread her legs every night and scream her husband's name at the most embarrassing of times. "Uh, it's... uh..."

Wilde could read that blush on her face like a book. He and Nola had never discussed sex at all. It would have been completely inappropriate, especially considering his personal preferences, and he knew just how innocent she was, despite how involved in women's causes she was. She'd been completely sheltered from knowing anything about the physical side of being a woman - beyond that a woman was expected to submit to her husband in all things, he was sure.

He raised his eyebrows at her and tried to be as casual as he could in his approach, not knowing exactly how far she would let him get with this. Sitting back against the plush but well worn velvet upholstery of the booth, he filled in words he figured a woman like her might use when thinking about the marital bed. "Embarrassing? Intimate? Awkward?"

Damn Wilde for knowing exactly what she'd been thinking when her answer had trailed off like that. He knew her too blasted well for her own comfort. She shifted her own weight, feeling the stripes of his belt against her backside again as sitting irritated them, even thought there was more than enough padding on the seat. He'd laid it onto her well this morning, and had then kept her on her stomach and violated her from behind!

She'd never even conceived of anything quite like what he'd done to her - or the mortification she'd felt from the fact that he'd tugged her hips back, so that she was on her hands and knees, just so that he could reach around to the front of her and make sure that she had that awful, horribly pleasurable explosion happened to her, whether she wanted it to or not.

"My, my. That's not a very becoming shade of red, Mrs. Sawyer," Wilde couldn't resist needling her.

"Stop calling me that! I don't feel like I'm Mrs. Sawyer. I feel like I'm plain old Nola Hughes, pretending to be someone she's not, pretending to be someone's wife and doing things -"

Wilde said nothing, just tilted his head in invitation for her to continue.

She tried, she really did. But she just couldn't get the words out. It was too shameful. The humiliation was just too incredibly awful.

Finally, her companion took pity on her, of a kind, putting his hand on her forearm and patting it gently. "Let me guess, since I've much more experience in these things - "

Nola scoffed loudly, then reached for a beignet she'd promised herself she wouldn't eat, sinking her teeth into it and feeling the hot pastry and the powdered sugar melting together in her mouth in a manner that was at least as sinful as what she and her husband did between the sheets in the middle of the night.

"You've never been married - how would you know what I'm uncomfortable about?" she asked after swallowing the big bite.

"Surely even you aren't naive enough to think that one has to be married to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh?" His schoolmaster's tsk made her color even worse, but she kept her eyes on her beignet. A sudden thought struck Wilde, although he'd never heard any mention of Brandon Sawyer having a problem with women. "He hasn't... hurt you, has he?"

She wasn't at all sure how to answer that query, then for some reason, she opted for the bald faced truth. "He spanks me."

Both of Wilde's eyebrows headed north at that revelation. But his reaction wasn't at all what she wanted. A huge, somehow self satisfied grin spread over his face. "He does?" There wasn't even the smallest ounce of sympathy in his voice. Absolutely none.

Nola glared at him for all she was worth, but it didn't seem to be doing any good. "You're not supposed to be happy about that, Wilde. You're supposed to want to defend my honor and want to beat him up for it."

"Not if I think it's good for you. I've always thought that your father should have taken you more in hand, Nola. Perhaps your husband is going to do that. I think that could only help you." He was serious for a moment, "But if you're telling me that he takes his fists to you, then we'll definitely have to have a talk."

She squirmed in her seat, realizing she couldn't say that without lying, and she wasn't a liar. She could be an instigator, and sometimes she was a bit too outspoken, but she wasn't a liar. "Well, he hasn't, yet. He's done worse, though!"

"Worse?"

"Yes! He's - he's..." she wanted to tell him, but the words couldn't make it past her lips.

"Made love to you?" Wilde filled in in a bare whisper. "Been free with his hands and... other parts?"

He thought she was going to explode in embarrassment right in front of him, but that was how he knew he'd struck the right chord.

"Worse. Much worse. He makes me..."

Wilde could fill that sentence in with any number of suggestions, but then he thought of what might make a woman like Nola so completely incensed, thinking of how flustered she'd become, and what her new husband might do that would annoy her that much. When it struck him, he just blurted it out. "You like it."

"Oh dear God." The pastry tasted like ash in her mouth as Nola realized that he'd struck on exactly what she'd been struggling to tell him but mortified that he might actually realize it. She buried her face in her hands, wishing desperately that she could disappear.

"I'm right, aren't I?"

Her words were badly muffled by her hands, but he had leaned so far forward that he caught every syllable. "I am so ashamed, Wilde. I - why - I can't stop it! I don't like it - I don't want - "

Wilde was at a loss. That she could have been so completely innocent, and yet, apparently, brought to the heights of ecstasy. Wilde's measurement of the man rose several notches. There were few men of his class that would have bothered to do much beyond essentially breeding with his wife, figuring that she wouldn't have been brought up to be interested in any of the finer points of lovemaking.

He had to admit that he had originally been very prejudiced against Sawyer's play for Nola. He'd seen too many of that type of man - the spoiled only son in a phenomenally rich family. The tendency for abuse was rife in that type of situation, and he had worried that Nola would simply have been another trinket for Sawyer to put in a display case and take out occasionally, when she intrigued him at first, then ignore as the marriage progressed.

As her closest friend - male or not - Wilde had done some digging about the youngest Sawyer, and had been somewhat befuddled by what he'd found. There could be no doubt that the man was a playboy - an impressively discreet playboy, but a playboy none the less. Despite the fact that he was known to be ruthless in his business dealings, despite the fact that he was much less than the unfailingly polite gentleman that upper society required of its scions, Wilde couldn't find anyone to speak a word against him. Although he certainly didn't have to, he got up every morning and went to work at his father's business - almost without fail. He didn't spend money lavishly, yet lived a comfortable lifestyle. He paid his workers well, and didn't take lavish vacations himself, and, it seemed, treated everyone, from his servants to his peers, with the same general disdain.

He'd watched as Sawyer had maneuvered his way into Nola's parents' good graces - not necessarily worrying much about how Nola felt about him, or his suit, but making sure that his parents knew who he was, and how well Nola would be taken care of, doing all of the right things as far as Mr. and Mrs. Hughes were concerned, but not spending too much time or lavishing much attention on Nola at all. From his view, it was almost as if Nola was a guest at her own engagement party. Wilde knew that the decision had been made for her, especially since she hadn't been told until a week before the party that that was what it was for. The invitations had gone out with no hint of an engagement, but Sawyer and the Hughes' had arranged the entire thing, including the small wedding that was performed several months later.

Nola had certainly vented enough to him about it, even going so far as to formulate some sort of escape plan. She railed against the idea of essentially being sold into a marriage by her parents, who, she knew, were looking at the monetary advantages for the family in this merger, as opposed to having much - if any - concern about their daughter's happiness.

Wilde had been of a mind to help her get away, although he knew she'd never do it. As much as she'd tried to avoid her fate - and as much as her parents had indulged her - by getting involved in women's causes, she had been born to be married, essentially. It was something she was expected to do, and, as much as he knew she disliked the idea, attracting the interest of Brandon Sawyer was quite a feather in her cap, although he knew she didn't see it that way.

They had come close to duplicating the usual bent of things, although in a much sped up timeframe. Wilde knew that others would be keeping a close eye on Nola's waistline because of the rushed nature of their courtship, such as it was - and it wasn't much.

They were seen in the park together - properly chaperoned by her mother, of course - and attended two or so balls, although they arrived separately and departed separately. That wasn't all that unusual. But they were almost never seen together in the same spot at any given time. They might as well have been strangers - which was just what they were.

She was invited over to the family home - Serenity - to be checked out by his father and grandfather, but Wilde had had a feeling that as long as she was female and still breathing, she would have passed their muster with no problem at all. They would both be simply overjoyed that Brandon was showing any interest in even a marginally acceptable woman. And Nola was that - her breeding wasn't as impeccable as they might have preferred, but at this point, Wilde figured that neither of them was going to be a chooser. They valued grandchildren - heirs for the family fortune - much more so than they valued a pedigree.

But despite his own impeccable lineage, Brandon Sawyer could just as easily have been a wife beater. Wilde inspected Nola even more carefully for any signs of battery, he reached for her hands and pried them off her face, sighing loudly. "Nola. There's no way you could know this, but honestly, you're the rarest among women - one who responds to her husband in the most basic of ways. You're experiencing something that most women never find in their lives, except outside of the marriage bed."

She raised her tear stained face to him. "I could never do that, Wilde. You know that."

His heart breaking for her, he reached out and cupped her damp cheek. "I know, my dear. I know. But perhaps if you were to think of what happens between you two as something to revel in rather than something to be ashamed of, it would help you come to grips with it." He knew he was really dancing around the topic, but he didn't want to embarrass her any more than she already had been. "Believe me. You know I have a lot of female friends - none as special as you, of course - and I hear such tales of uncaring husbands who simply rut over them and fall asleep. They find no such pleasure as you have."

Nola's face hadn't changed one iota. She still looked shell shocked and mortified to the bone. "I think I'd rather have the kind of husband that just..." she spit the words out as if they were acid, "did his business and left me alone."

She tried to rescue her hands, but he wouldn't let them go. "Think about this, Nola. I beg you. You're going to be with this man for the rest of your life." Her frown at that thought said it all. "You need to try to find some sort of happiness with him, or you're going to spend the next fifty years being miserable, and I couldn't bear that."

Nola had to give him a small smile at that. It was so like Wilde to take a situation - even one as intimate as this - and make it about himself. She snuck a grin at him. "Oh, I'll be sure to fix the situation now, knowing just how horrible it's going to be for you."

Although he knew that nothing had really been resolved, he was glad to see that she was at least attempting to find some humor in the situation - Wilde didn't give a damn that it was at his expense. He did have a lot of female friends - and a lot of male friends and lovers - but none of them held a handle, in spunk and intelligence - to Nola, and he refused to lose her to an unhappy marriage. He'd known too many women who got unhappily married and just... gave up. Some of them even completely succumbed to their unhappiness and committed suicide.

If he had to speak to Sawyer himself, he wasn't about to let that happen to Nola.

As it turned out, he ended up speaking to Sawyer a lot more quickly than he'd expected, because the man himself presented himself in front of them at that moment, when he was still holding her hands and she was looking a bit moist but radiant none the less, glowering down at the two of them.

Francois, recognizing the large, well appointed gentleman who was gracing his establishment, flittered over to ask if there was anything he could get the stranger, but as soon as he saw that face, he backed quietly, immediately, away.

Wilde stood and held out his hand to the other man, saying, "I don't believe we've ever formally met, Sawyer. You cut in on my dance with Nola at the Vanderbilts' Ball the first night you two met, and there wasn't time for introductions."

Prompted by his action, Nola straightened her spine and performed the introductions. "Brandon," her use of his first name sounded rusty even to her own ears. The only time she called him anything was usually in the heat of passion, much to her chagrin. "This is my good friend, Wilde Everest. Wilde, this is my - my husband," both of them noticed her hesitation, and Sawyer's face only got that much darker because of it, "Brandon Sawyer."

Wilde's hand stayed stuck out there, though, and Sawyer made absolutely no move to accept it. Instead, he turned to his wife. "It is not acceptable for you to be here, most especially not with him."

Not about to take such an insult sitting down, Wilde bolted to his feet. "Now you see here, Sawyer - "

The other man didn't so much as spare him a glance. He was too busy laying hands on his wife, having extended his great paw to her imperiously and not gotten any sort of response from her beyond a glare that more than matched his own. So he'd decided to take matters into his own hands, reaching into the booth and bodily lifting her out of it, throwing her over his shoulder and carrying her out of the disreputable establishment like a sack of potatoes.

If he hadn't been so angry at the blatant insult he'd been dealt, Wilde would have laughed himself sick at the sight of his high and mighty friend - one woman in a thousand who was almost disgustingly independent and strong minded - draped over her husband's broad shoulder, but, of course, not taking it in stride in the least, but rather beating on his back for all she was worth.

But then she stopped, mid beating, and tried to look up at him, calling out, "I'm sorry, Wilde. I'll get in touch with you soon." Then he heard her direct a nasty comment towards her husband, "The least you could have done was pay the bill, if you were going to drag me out of there so ignominiously. Wilde isn't made of money like you are."

"Like we are," he heard her husband correct in the expected growl. It surprised and amazed Wilde, that once he got her packed into his carriage, he did sent the driver back in to throw a twenty on the table, even thought the entire bill couldn't have been more than a dollar or so.

He stayed behind, making a mental note to call Nola later and check up on her. That behemoth of a man of hers looked hell bent on some sort of revenge, obviously believing that they were having some sort of tryst, which, for anyone who knew Wilde in the least, was an entirely ridiculous idea.

He took a sip of his now lukewarm tea, his brow furrowing anxiously as he wondered if he was ever going to see his friend again. Judging by her husband's almost violent reaction, the answer was most definitely in doubt.

Chapter Four

Nola, who was none to happy to have been so unceremoniously plucked from her comfy seat to be bumped out to the carriage and then manhandled into it, glared at her husband from as close to the corner of the seat as she could get, even going so far as to gather her skirts up around herself, so that they didn't touch him where he sat in the opposite corner. If he thought he was going to keep her from seeing one of her dearest of friends, then he had another thing coming, and that was exactly what she told him.

He rounded on her, grabbing her close to his side whether she wanted to be there or not. "I'm not asking you, Nola, I'm telling you. I do not want you hanging around another man. It doesn't look good for the family to have you having some tete a tete with a bounder like Everest."

Nola's eyebrow rose. "A bounder? Surely you don't mean that Wilde has any interest in me - or even women in general? Obviously, you don't know the slightest thing about him, or you wouldn't have made a remark like that."

How his naive little wife could have any knowledge of Everest's predilection for boys, he was sure he wouldn't know. He would have bet his life that she had no idea that that kind of choice existed. He was nearly struck speechless, probably for the first time in his life. "How would you know about Everest's preferences?" he asked cautiously.

Nola gave him a speculative look. "I only know that which I see. He has never courted any woman that I know of, although he has quite a few female friends, and at least as many male friends. When he goes out, it's never to see a woman, it's with a male friend. Since he's an artiste, and has no family around him, he has no impetus to get married and have children, and I think that's a good thing for him. And I would prefer never to speculate any further than that, thank you very much."

She wasn't quite sure, because she didn't know him that well, but Nola sensed some sort of softening in him. "Really, Brandon. I'm safer with Wilde than I would be with another woman. He'd defend me with his life." She hadn't added that he'd been called on to do just that several times, when she'd been caught up in an angry mob of men who most definitely didn't want women to get the right to vote.

He hated to admit that she was probably right, but he didn't at all like how it looked when his newlywed wife was out with another man, even in the light of day. And that man had her hand in his - which was more than he had done, beyond the most perfunctory.

Somehow, it had hit him hard when he'd seen the two of them together like that. They obviously cared for each other, and that was more than he and his wife shared. That fact taunted him, as if they were lovers, even though he knew how ridiculous that idea was.

The problem was that he and his wife weren't lovers, either.

Oh, they'd had plenty of sex - thanks to him and his irrepressible appetite for her. Hell, just looking at her all bunched up across the carriage seat from him had made him want to calculate how long they had before they reached Serenity and if it was long enough for him to bury himself deep inside her to feel those incredible, womanly contractions around his manhood...

But he'd settled for hauling her close to him - where he darned well knew she didn't want to go - even though she was spitting fire up at him because of the way he'd dragged her out of the cafe.

As annoying as it was, it was one of the things he'd liked about her from the first few moments after he'd commandeered her on the dance floor. She hadn't acquiesced because of who he was - if she'd even known exactly who he was. He'd had a good notion that if they hadn't been in public, she would have shown him the back of her hand in a heartbeat for his audacity, and the more he'd gotten to know her - such as their whirlwind courtship had been - the more he'd liked the fact that she wasn't a shrinking violet. He was too dominant to enjoy being around a woman who barely said a word or had no gumption. Granted, he thought with quirking lips, he could sometimes due without his outspoken wife being quite as forthright as she was.

Such as the time they'd had their minister and several of the higher ranked people in their church to dinner. The seriousness of his father's illness had necessitated that they move into the family home, and that had only promoted the closeness between his father and his wife. But his father had been on the mend by that point, and had grown ever more enamored of his new daughter in law, so much so that Brandon was thinking that he was going to have to separate the two of them - they were thick as thieves, and he knew that he was suffering in his wife's eyes when she compared him to his paragon of a father, who didn't spank her when she needed it and didn't bring her nightly to a towering crescendo of moans and screams and dastardly pleasure

Their minister - the Reverend Mr. Playfair was definitely of the old school, and Brandon had suggested, perhaps more gently than he should have, that considering his new wife's outlooks on women's rights, that putting the two of them in the same county might not be such a good idea, but Father wouldn't hear of it. Brandon had a sneaking suspicion that the old man was looking forward to the clash of ideas at the dinner table, but Brandon had had a strict talk with his wife before they'd descended the huge mahogany staircase.

And he'd done it as he had her tugged to the edge of their big bed, her legs splayed wide and back, pounding himself into her, watching her breasts bob with every motion, her panting breath coming loudly in the quiet room. She was thrashing her head back and forth uncontrollably, and he knew he was the cause of her complete loss of will. Brandon loved bending her to his own purposes - that was why he'd wanted a strong woman. Making someone who was as completely passive as most of the women he'd met before Nola bend to him didn't mean much. But this woman - she had a head on her shoulders, and an ego and will that were extremely strong.

That made it all the sweeter for him when he drove her past her natural reticence about exploring the pleasures of the flesh and made her come with his mouth or his fingers or his cock.

He'd also deliberately caught her after she'd gotten dressed for dinner, not letting her put him off because she was fully dressed and ready to meet the Revered. Hell, he never let her put him off about anything, especially those things that involved sinking himself into her so deep she nearly convulsed around him with his first thrust.

So she was lying there in what he knew was an incredibly expensive dress - as a part of their engagement, she'd been given free reign to purchase clothing for their honeymoon, and he remembered the bill for this particular dress as being considerably high. Brandon liked to get his money's worth, and she looked particularly fetching with the skirt of the dress hiked up and crumbled over her waist to nearly her heaving bosom. The thought that she was going to be sitting next to the right good Reverend while he was seeping out of her, while her body was still coming down from the screaming orgasm he fully intended to drive her to added an extra element to his already nearly bursting excitement.

She did this to him, every single time he got within a mile of her, and it made him crazy. It seemed no amount of indulging himself with her was going to rid him of this constant need for her - but he still intended to try.

He'd kept his head - which wasn't the easiest thing to do in that position since she incited him to the absolute heights of passion at least as much as he incited her - long enough to lecture her as he'd straightened, holding her in position with just a look by now, admiring the angry red stripes on her bottom left there from her thrashing this morning when she'd tried to get off their bed when he wasn't quite through with her. In fact, he was still wearing the belt with which he'd delivered those angry looking welts.

Brandon reached beneath her and lifted her hips to him, clutching and gripping her bottom, getting his answer about whether or not she was still hurting at his first grasp when she tried unsuccessfully to arch angrily away from him while still thoroughly impaled on his rock hard staff. "Ah ahh ahhhh, little wife. You're not going anywhere."

Nola knew the absolute truth of what he said. She knew from experience that he wasn't going to let her go until he'd wrung every last ounce of ecstasy from her body, regardless of what she wanted - or perhaps in spite of it. The bald faced truth was that he could make her want him - hell, he'd already accomplished it this evening. She'd been wet and ready for him well before he'd tipped her onto the bed when she was nearly finished dressing.

She had always thought that he'd introduced her to the most humiliating - and incredibly, unhappily satisfying - experiences of her life, forcing her to climax in his arms again and again and again with absolutely no care for what she might prefer. But lately he'd added an even more atrocious element: he'd begun pleasuring her directly after and sometimes during a punishment, when he was still wielding some God awful implement he'd come up with - his belt, or her hairbrush - making her scream and cry and weep and wail for very mixed reasons.

Sex wasn't as novel an experience as it had been - especially considering how much of it they had - but he was consciously injecting another element to it - considerable pain in her bottom coupled with absolutely violent pleasure - that had her questioning her sanity.

She couldn't really like what he did to her, could she? She was a strong, intelligent woman with a good head on her shoulders. Lovemaking with her husband - if that was what they did could really be called, she wasn't at all sure - shouldn't make her feel like this, should it? All hot and sweaty and throbbing and yet with distinct undertones of shame and not a small amount of fear, of herself and of him, every single time. All he had to do was enter a room - hell, enter the house and her body went on full alert from stem to stern, her scalp tingling from remembrances of the way he would clench his fingers in her hair or use it to control her, especially from behind - her toes curling within her soft kid boots the moment she heard his voice or smelled his particular cologne.

Now she felt herself completely helpless against his superior strength - as she knew she was - and she knew that if she resisted too much her bottom would only become just that much sorer. She was on her back, facing him - for which she was eternally grateful, she supposed - with her legs spread, receiving her husband in what she was certain was a completely unacceptable fashion or position... Her beautiful blue and gray brocade skirt was in a heap around her waist, and she knew that everyone at the dinner table would know beyond a shadow of a doubt exactly what her husband had been doing to her moments before they went downstairs.

Yet, somehow, the blasted man made her love everything about every single thing he did to her - even the punishments, damn him! She looked forward, all day, to his return, partly because he made her feel so alive. He rarely censured her anywhere but their bedroom, and they - and her father in law - had indulged in some very lively discussions on wide and varied topics, and he didn't seem to discount her opinion because of her sex - or because of their fleshly relationship. He met her points with counterpoints, or nodded his head sagely when he agreed with her.

She was beginning to like him, and that was the last thing she wanted. Nola wanted to nurse a healthy resentment against the man because of the things he made her do in private, and yet he was managing to worm his way into her affections as easily as if he treated her with every deference in their marital bed, which had never been true, even from the beginning.

She longed for something that she feared would never be hers - love, and true affection for and from her husband.

He was saying something about how she should behave this evening, since the Reverend was coming to dinner, and Nola knew she should have been listening, but she just couldn't. He was doing it to her again, as always, not letting her resist him as a proper wife should have resisted her baser responses, lying quietly beneath him while he did... whatever it was that he needed to do, enduring it and surviving it, but most certainly not enjoying it as she did, in the wild, irrepressible manner he encouraged.

Tears - which she hadn't shed in their marriage bed, unless she was being spanked - came unbidden and slid, seemingly unnoticed, into her hair. She closed her eyes and several more escaped, even as her body began to gather and tighten.

"Are you listening to me, Mrs. Sawyer, or do I need to hurt you in order to get you to pay attention to me?" he grumbled, leaning forward, pressing himself even further up inside her as he did so, his thumb and forefinger pinching and pulling her left nipple as he continued to ram himself up inside her.

Nola's eyes flew open. "No, I'm listening."

"What did I just say," came the hoarse, disjointed question.

Her one consolation in their physical relationship was that it seemed that he couldn't remain untouched by it, either.

It was so hard to think when he was doing this to her - the combination of the pain and the pleasure wiped away any semblance of intelligence she'd ever pretended to until it was over. She never seemed to become blase at all about any of this - despite the fact that her body welcomed him wetly every time, it was still always a startling thing to feel him inside her, to feel how he made her stretch for him each and every time, every nerve ending tingling with anticipation of the ecstasy she knew he was going to bring her to.

"You said for me to be quiet and not to argue with the Reverend; that it would be unseemly." Her response was a lot like his - full of heavy breathing and so disjoined it was almost unintelligible, but it was the best she could do, especially when he tugged her nipple out as far as it could go, pinching it as tightly as he could then letting it slip slowly out of the vice like grip of his forefinger and thumb until she screamed with it, then reaching down to grab her hips and pull her hard up against him, arranging her legs over his elbows and leaning his entire considerable weight into her with each thrust.

"And you'd better, or you're not going to sit down comfortably for a week," he barely ground out, unable to keep himself from quickening his invasion, following the dictates of his body rather than his mind yet careful to make sure that she arrived, screaming and moaning and panting at the top of her lungs just before he let himself go.

When he'd guided her down the wide staircase into the huge, paneled receiving room, with its maroon velvet drapes and textured wall paper, tastefully arranged Louis XIV furniture and ornately frescoed ceiling, he was secretly reveling in her rosy cheeks, and the fine, almost imperceptible sheen on her creamy skin. He'd put both of those there. Introductions weren't necessary, since the Reverend had been the one to marry them, so he installed her on a settee and went to get them both an aperitif.

Her behavior was exemplary for the first half hour of the evening. She was much quieter than usual, but he knew that that was because he had hurried her downstairs directly after they'd both climaxed, and she was really still in the midst of her recovery from a monumental orgasm.

Sometimes he caught her shifting in her seat. Louis' furniture was certainly beautiful, but it wasn't made for comfort, especially the comfort of a woman whose privates were quiet possibly still contracting. He was of a mind to pick her up and perch her on his lap, which he knew wouldn't be any more comfortable, but would have been a helluva lot more fun for him, if only in just the "startle and outrage" factor from the Reverend, but she was spared that fate when Beakman came in to announce that dinner was served.

Her behavior at the dinner table, however, was an entirely different matter. It seemed that between the receiving room and the dining room, she recovered enough of herself to engage in a series of escalating arguments with Mr. Playfair, regarding the role of women in society. His little wife - when she forgot what she'd been told expressly not to do - had a mind full of modern ideas, whereas the Reverend had a mind full of musty, but tried and true, platitudes, and neither one of them was going to back down.

"A woman deserves the same exact rights as a man!" Nola proclaimed loudly, banging her hand down next to her plate and causing the expensive imported wine in ornate Waterford glasses to jump. "She should be able to vote, own property, and remain unmarried without fear of the excoriation of the old frumps in society." She was leaning over the table, very near to standing up if it wasn't for her devoted husband's hand on her shoulder, looking directly in the Reverend's eyes as she spoke.

The Reverend was already almost apoplectic from their previous discussions, and he followed suit, his exquisite roast duckling with baby carrots and chives in aspic completely forgotten, so much so that Father had to lean forward and rescue it, lest Mr. Playfair's shirt end up slathered with most of his meal. "It is a woman's lot in life to be submissive to men - first her father, and then her husband. She should be meek and mild and quiet and do her duty by having children. Being a wife and mother is the highest goal a woman should ever aspire to - she was created to be a helpmate, to bear children, and take care of her husband - "

"She can raise the next male generation who will rule the world but she can't be trusted to vote, Reverend?"

The two of them were practically nose to nose over the dinner table, until Brandon forcibly retracted his wife back into her chair, making her land on the hard seat with a bit of an unladylike "oof". She glared at him and he glared right back at her, raising his eyebrow in what should have been enough of a warning, but apparently wasn't. They went at it several times over dinner, and each time, as he reeled his surprisingly rabid wife in, he glanced over at his father, who was doing his best to suppress his out and out glee at the situation, but not managing very well.

His grandfather was doing an even worse job. He was out and out laughing at the both of them. Of course, he was mostly laughing at Nola's outrageous notions, but that was okay. He could be forgiving.

His father, however, shared the same glare he gave Nola, only it worked much better on her - such as it was - than it did on him. He wasn't going to spank his father later. But he was most definitely going to spank his wife.

Nola knew that she was in trouble. She knew it as sure as she knew the next course was going to be fish, and, of course, it was. Salmon, as a matter of fact, with a lovely, light herb sauce, served on a Royal Doulton bone china platter. She sat as prettily - and as comfortably as she could - and enjoyed the meal, deciding - after the fact - that discretion was the better part.

She was in deep, deep trouble. Her husband was sitting next to her, fuming none too quietly, and occasionally reaching beneath the table, where no one could see, and squeezing her thigh without the slightest hint of gentleness. She had to congratulate herself, though. At least the Right Reverent Whatzizname was still alive. Sometimes, when she heard men talk like that, she just wanted to rip their heads off. She knew that wasn't a particularly ladylike or feminine impulse, but it was there in her brain just the same.

It was funny that discourse like that made her so angry, and yet her husband - who was most certainly going to spank her silly as soon as they got back to their bedroom - didn't - much, anyway. At least not to the extent that she truly wanted to kill him.

She'd mellowed towards him to a certain extent. When they were courting - that few short months - she had been relatively neutral towards him. It had appeared that he was her fate, regardless of what she might have wanted, and she knew she was going to do the typical, hypocritical thing and get married to him. She couldn't not do it; her parents were over the moon, and she knew that by doing so that they would be set for the rest of their lives. She had begun to understand those things that other women had already confronted - family obligations.

If there had ever been a time when she was going to kill her husband - so far - it was just after they'd married, and it was entirely due to what he did to her in that big bed he insisted that they share. If he'd been what she thought of as a normal husband - let her have her own room, come to her only occasionally to perform that strange ritual.

And then she had become as addicted to it as he was - and it was all she could do to bear the shame of it. It seemed the more he did it, the more she wanted him to do it.

That was her cross to bear, despite the unenlightening conversation she'd had with Wilde, she didn't really feel any better about what went on between them between the time she retired and dutifully kissed both her father and grandfather in law good night and kissed them good morning the next day. Nola was quite sure the two of them knew - or worse heard - exactly what was happening between herself and her husband every single evening, and sometimes two or three times a night.

Chapter Five

This evening wasn't a lot different from their usual - except that she had to be nice to the Reverend when he left, in hopes that her husband might take pity on her. She snorted a little to herself. Unfortunately that wasn't likely to happen.

The Reverend was not particularly gracious, taking it upon himself to lecture her regarding her place as Brandon's wife. It was actually Alexander who guided him out the door almost forcibly, as he railed and quoted the Bible about what was her place in this world simply because she had the misfortune to be born a woman.

That thought - as well as her contemplation of her own hypocrisy in marrying for anything but love - managed to depress her more thoroughly in a matter of minutes than she had been in her life. She was suddenly crestfallen and almost slumped, kissing her husband's father and his grandfather good evening with what little affection she could muster, and turning to the stairs knowing that he was going to be up there shortly, and she was going to be begging him to stop... and then begging him several minutes later not to.

She was already undressed when Brandon entered the room, sitting with a copy of "Bleak House" by Dickens in her lap, resting against pillows to read. When he came in, she got up, and for the first time in their marriage, she reversed their usual roles, acting as his valet and helping him undress. He eyed her closely, saying flatly, "This isn't going to get you off the hook, you know."

"I know."

She wasn't simpering about, she wasn't sucking up. She was just doing the very wifely thing and helping him get ready for bed. Of course, he slept in the nude so she didn't need to get out a sleeping gown for him, or that might have been laid across the bottom of the bed.

He caught her wrist when she came back from hanging up his pants. "Are you all right?" It was the first time in his life that he'd ever really cared about the response to that question. Really cared. She wasn't acting at all like herself, and he didn't like it. She was so much more subdued than usual. He'd expected to come up here to their bedroom and have to chase her around the room like he'd had to on occasion. But not this time. The change had come over her while they were still downstairs, seeing the Reverend out, and he'd been ranting about what how she should behave as a good wife, and that was pretty much exactly the opposite of how she usually behaved.

Surprised at his question, she snuck a look up at him. "I'm fine."

She was most definitely not fine, and he didn't like her this way at all. Her face was flat, completely lacking in its usual animation. She looked older somehow, and intensively unhappy, and he was amazed to realize that that mattered to him.

Brandon had skated through life, never really being touched by much of anyone else. His mother had died when he was young, and he'd never really worried much about how anyone else was feeling, or what anyone else thought.

But Nola was his wife - the woman he'd be spending the rest of his life with. She would be the mother of his children, and he was beginning to realize that he didn't want her to be miserable with him. He knew he had pretty much wrangled her into the marriage - what woman's family was going to allow her to decline a marriage offer from a man such as him - the one the papers all called the most eligible bachelor in the country.

He'd known that she was a free spirit of sorts - that she had some pretty unusual ideas about woman and men. Brandon was no babe in the woods about women - they'd been throwing themselves at him, or had been thrown at him by their families - since well before he was of age. He'd had Ms. Hughes and her family investigated from top to bottom by the Pinkertons, and also by some connections that were much less above board. It wouldn't do at all for there to be any sort of a scandal in connection with his wife or her family.

And there wasn't - even considering that she'd narrowly escaped arrested at several pro-suffrage rallies.

With the exception of her questionable relationship with Everest, and her questionable thoughts and practices about women's suffrage and some questionable opinions about men and marriage in general, some of which had been even been published in small pamphlets distributed at suffrage rallies - in other words, except for the feelings of the woman herself, Brandon had absolutely no problem with her family at all. They were, essentially, exactly as Roger had portrayed them in his quick summary at the ball when she'd originally attracted him.

And yet, knowing what she thought about marriage and men, he still let the situation pressure her into marrying him. He'd known she wouldn't run, that she wouldn't tell him "no" when he'd asked from one knee, flashing both his mother's huge ten carat diamond and also his grandmother' smaller, more demure one carat. He'd given her both when she said yes. She'd worn his mother's as her engagement ring, but she'd never taken his grandmother's off her right ring finger since then, either.

He'd wanted her. He still did, rabidly. Like an addicted who was constantly low on heroine or morphine. She was his drug. He never tired of her. Hadn't yet, anyway, and he was constantly at her. If she wasn't already pregnant, it wasn't for lack of trying in the least.

He'd never been addicted to anything but making money, and he supposed that wanting and needing her all the time made him harder on her than he should be. He didn't mind needing to make money - there was much more of a concrete result there, and his innate business acumen had never let him down. Figures and numbers and balance sheets didn't lie, didn't play games, and didn't cry at certain times of the month.

But need a woman? No Sir. That just wasn't right. He'd never needed much of anyone in his life, and he certainly didn't want to need this little annoying chit.

She was wandering around the room as if she'd lost her last friend, and it was almost painful to watch. Finally, she came to stand in front of him. "So. Since I definitely disobeyed you about not arguing with our dinner guest," She made it more than obvious by her tone that she was using the term "guest" generously, "I wish you would just spank me and get it over with. I'm tired and I'd like to go to sleep." It was then that he noticed that she was holding one of his belts in her hands - even as they shook slightly. It was one of the ones he'd used most often on her bottom. She would know. If he wasn't already wearing one when he spanked her, and just took it out of his pants loops, then he made her go to his closet and fetch one.

Brandon did his best to hide his surprise. No one had ever - on their own - brought him a belt with which to beat them. It was an interesting feeling. He took the belt from her and inspected it casually, while she began to bunch her skirts up around her waist - like they'd been before he'd brought her down to meet her doom - and lower her bloomers to her ankles.

He stood up, the belt still in his hand, just as she was leaning forward over the edge of the bed, her body tense, obviously waiting for the first blow.

But instead of feeling that first, God awful line of fire across her bottom, she instead felt and hear the coil of the belt hit the bed, then felt him lift her into his arms and carry her into the huge bathroom. When she'd first explored where she'd be sleeping for the rest of her life, Nola had been amazed by the size of the bathroom - it was easily the size of her whole bedroom at home. The fixtures were all gold, and the tub was extra large - it would have to be to accommodate her husband. That was where he put her, into the tub, drawing soothing warm water into it as he sprinkled some of her favorite bath salts in, and settled down next to the tub to dip his big hand, covered with a soft cloth, into the slippery water, and begin to wash her, more gently than he'd ever touched her before.

Brandon didn't really know what he was doing. He didn't have a plan. He was just working purely on instinct. He didn't want to spank her right now, although she'd certainly earned it. She looked to unhappy to let him add to it, and he wanted to have the wife he'd known over these short months back. Her acquiescence in bringing him the belt, her downcast eyes and almost frighteningly blank face had put an edge of fear into his heart that he didn't like in the least.

She seemed to have shut down, and that was the last thing he wanted, and he found it was tugging at his heart much more than he would have ever thought anything could.

He washed her most thoroughly, but in a completely unhurried manner, as if they had all of the time in the world. He added hot water when it started to chill, and wouldn't let her get away with denying him access to her more interesting areas, although his touch wasn't in the least sexual or demanding in any way.

In the end, it was the gentlest, most tender exchange they'd ever had, but Nola only found herself that much more confused by his sudden about face. She'd thoroughly expected to end up sore but satisfied before she fell asleep, and it ended up that she was neither. Brandon gathered her up in to an obscenely large, fluffy bath sheet, drying her off as carefully and with as much attention to detail as he had washed her, not leaving any crooks or crevices even the slightest bit damp, using the lavender powder she favored and applying it liberally all over.

Then, she knew she was dreaming, because he left her for just a second - not even warning her not to move, but trusting she knew what he expected, she supposed - and returned with her last remaining nightgown, the one she'd thought she'd hidden from him, and wore sometimes if she felt poorly during the day when he wasn't around, slipping it over her head, dressing her as if she was a child.

He lifted her again, carrying her to their bed, and tucked her under the covers, following her under them to hold her tight, and settling down as if he was going to go to sleep.

"Uh, I'm not getting spanked then?" she asked, tentatively, not really willing to believe it. He'd never gone back on a punishment before.

"Not tonight, anyway," he answered, kissing her lightly.

"Oh." Nola fidgeted within his arms, trying to feel sleepy, but not quite achieving it yet. Instead, she fussed with the sheet and comforter, and changed positions, and scratched her nose, and accidentally elbowed him in the ribs.

"I take it you're not tired?" he asked wryly, his breath warm at her temple.

"No, I'm tired. I'm just... well... I don't know. You didn't spank me... you're not going to... um...uh... do the other either?"

It took him a long moment to realize what "the other" was. "You mean make love to you?"

He knew even in the darkness that her face was bright red. "Yes." Brandon heard her gulp hard, and had to smile.

"No, I don't think so tonight. I think you need some sleep."

Nola had thought that she could not have been more surprised at his behavior, until the next day, when he spanked her, but much more mildly than usual.

Brandon actually took the entire day off to be with her. He'd never done such a thing in his life, much less for his new wife. But his father thought it was a wonderful idea, and sent them up to his cottage in the Hamptons for a long weekend, and he spent the entire time with her. They rode - well, he began to teach her to ride - and walked in the gardens and talked and he taught her how to play chess, but then she taught him how to play Whist, and then the finally hit on playing poker, and drafted several of their neighbors to do just that - penny ante, of course, but it was still a riotously good time.

Brandon had begun to think that they might have the beginnings of a reasonably good relationship after that weekend. He was still at her every chance he could get - he thought that they had probably christened nearly every bedroom in the forty three room "cottage" - well before the weekend was over. And what was even more interesting to him, though, was the fact that he was finding out that he liked his wife.

She hadn't spent much time around horses, and yet she didn't seem to be particularly afraid of them or learning how to ride either. In fact, when he'd told her that he was going to teach her to ride the next day, she'd gotten up early and gone down to the kitchen to pester Cook for some apples and carrots, with which she proceeded to bribe his carefully selected horseflesh. And she didn't just want to learn how to ride, she wanted to learn how to care for them, too. Usually, he called down to the stables and had his favorite stallion waiting for him. But he certainly knew how to do anything necessary, including mucking out a stable. When he misbehaved, that was one of his father's favorite punishments for him - sending him down to the stables to spotlessly clean out each and every one of the more than twenty stalls.

She was a lot like him in that. If she was interested in something, she wanted to know everything about it. Unfortunately, she was dressed in a blue velvet habit, which weren't conducive to bending over and cleaning out hooves. He ended up having the housekeeper alter a pair of his own Levi jeans, which everyone in the family thought were disreputable on him, and would think were scandalous on her. But he didn't care.

The next day, he showed her the entire routine, let her help him groom their mounts, always watching out for her safety, and then showing her how to put the saddle and bridle on. He used a western saddle himself, since they weren't going to be jumping, so he gave her the one that had been his when he was a child, and it fit just about perfectly. She seemed to enjoy what she was doing, even though when they finally returned to the house, they both pretty much stank of horse and barn.

So they took a bath. Together.

He liked introducing her to new things, and this was one of the best as far as Brandon was concerned. The tub in the master bedroom suite at the cottage was easily big enough for the two of them. He'd made sure that it was going to be hot for them when they got there by sending one of the stable hands ahead of them once they were almost done at the barn, to warn the staff to have everything ready for them.

He hadn't had many friends in his life. He wasn't the personable type. Most people didn't find him very easy to be around - he was too intense. He was very smart in school, but disliked jumping through the hoops necessary to get himself very good grades. He attended Harvard and graduated, but didn't do very well academically there, either. He was too much of an original, and didn't like to be told what to do under any circumstances.

Roger was probably the only person on the planet that he could call more than a business acquaintance. His father and his grandfather were more thorns in his side - and if he was feeling very generous mentors - than anything else. It was nice to have someone to talk to.

As he let his hands roam over her soapy body - with no cloth between his inquisitive fingers and her slick flesh - he wondered what she'd be like in a boardroom, and figured she could be nothing but an asset. He had her tucked in front of him, so that she was sitting in the cradle of his big body, her back to his front as she leaned back. He knew she thought that this was completely opulent and outrageous, and he supposed to a wide eyed recently deflowered virgin, he knew it must seem that way.

But Brandon was used to getting what he wanted - no matter how different it might seem - and he wanted to bathe with his wife tonight, so that was exactly what he did.

She was the absolutely perfect size for him. All in all, he thought, as he leaned his head back on the edge of the tub, but kept his hands very busy and full of various parts of her, he had done a pretty good job in picking her as his wife. He knew he had chosen someone who was going to be a challenge, but that was fine with him. He'd rather have someone interesting, with a mind and a will of her own - as long as she realized that his will trumped hers - than a doormat without an original thought of her own.

And she was absolutely perfect for him physically. She was tiny where he was tall, she was soft and round where he was angled and muscular. His hands naturally drifted up to cup her breasts, massaging them gently, rolling and just slightly pinching her already proud nipples just the way he'd learned she liked, and was rewarded with a squirming woman who sighed and arched and did everything but what she knew would get her into trouble - moving his hands.

His face was right behind hers, his chin resting on her shoulder. "Feels good, doesn't it?"

He was treating her so differently from what he had before that Nola was just the slightest bit suspicious of him, as if she expected the other shoe to drop any time now. But he was right. It felt damned good, and that's exactly what she told him.

He laughed at her language use. She didn't sound like a proper lady, but then he'd married her because that was exactly what she wasn't. A thought struck him, and it was out of his lips before he had a chance to stop it. "Why did you marry me?" He wasn't at all sure that he wanted to hear her answer, but then he couldn't really retract the question once it was out.

Nola was frankly amazed that he'd asked - as amazed as she could be considering how befuddled she was by the things he was doing with his hands. But she answered him truthfully. He wouldn't buy the idea that she was in love with him, anyway. It was absurd. They'd barely known each other when they got married, and she refused to lie to him, regardless. "I married you because you asked."

He didn't say anything, but somehow she sensed that he was a mite disappointed, even though he must've recognized the truth of it.

"And," she continued in a sly drawl, "because you intrigued me."

He perked up - in several ways - at that remark. "I intrigued you?"

Nola reconsidered what she'd said a bit. "Okay. You annoyed me. Severely."

"Oh."

"You still do, but it's pretty much the same thing. I've never instantly disliked anyone or any thing as much as I disliked you."

Brandon wasn't at all sure what to make of that, but it had the ring of truth to it. He liked that she wasn't pulling her punches - that she generally hadn't since he'd met her, except under duress in their bed. She hadn't knuckled under to him, and he was glad for that. He had to admit - to himself - that she intrigued him, too. Her originality and the fact that she wasn't afraid to fly in the face of convention drew him like a lodestone, but it was her personality and her intelligence that kept him around, that had him proposing after an indecently short acquaintance.

His hands came to rest on her flat belly, and he had to wonder if the usual wagging tails might have something to wag about - if she was already pregnant. He found himself looking forward to the idea. He'd already made up his mind that he was going to be a different type of father from how Geoffrey had been with him - very distant, doing the socially accepted thing and leaving him to a succession of stricter nannies to raise. Brandon wanted to know his children. He was nearing forty and it had only been since Nola had come into the house that he'd actually gotten to know his father.

She'd been so good for him in so many ways... and he knew he hadn't been nearly as good for her - despite the monetary gains her family had reaped. She was thinner than she'd been when she came to him, and that night she'd been so closed and tight - so different from her usual demeanor, that it was a rude wakeup call for him.

This was the person he'd chosen to link his life to until he died. There was no backing out; there would never be any hint of divorce. He had to make the best of it, regardless of the fact that he'd probably botched it royally and she probably hated his guts by now. He didn't want her to slip away from him, didn't want her to be as miserable as she'd looked.

He would always spank her - there was no question there. He firmly believed that a husband had a right - no, a duty - to make sure that his wife had no doubt as to who was in charge of the relationship. He had consciously been very harsh with her at first, because he'd wanted to establish that he wasn't going to put up with any sort of rebellion from her.

But now he had to wonder if that was too much - if he'd tried a bit too hard as he was sometimes wont too do. And the last thing he wanted to do was break her will. It was that strong, stubborn will that had set her apart from the crowd of simpering chits that were thrown at him so regularly, and he didn't want to lose that, just curb it some.

Chapter Six

He'd spanked her yesterday morning for her misbehavior with the Reverend, even though he really didn't want to. She seemed to be coming out of her blue mood, and he hadn't wanted to ruin that, but he also didn't want her to get the idea that she could just ignore his carefully explained rules without any sort of consequence. But it had been a different punishment from the usual. He'd paid much more attention to her responses than his own inherent interest in punishing her, which had been a definite factor in his previous sternness.

He kept her over his lap - he'd always favored that position because of its intimacy, but then lately he'd taken to using his belt on her, and that wasn't always conducive to being so close to her. He loved using her own hairbrush on her - that was incredibly intimate to him, and he knew she absolutely hated it. She'd had the audacity to try to switch brushes to a much lighter, smaller one when she realized his preference for that implement, but he'd made her produce the older, much bigger and heavier one and then had given her a very severe spanking with it for trying to outwit him.

Brandon had held her far wrist with his left hand, simply looping his middle and thumb around it, holding loosely, knowing she was essentially reduced to ineffective batting at him and a lot of leg thrashing.

Unfortunately, her disobedience was so blatant that he really couldn't let her off easy with this one, and the implement he'd chosen reflected that. He held the deceptively small, yet almost indecently lethal rod in his hand. It was like a small cane, only about twelve or so inches long, thin but not really whippy. It didn't bend on the down stroke and it didn't yield when it met flesh.

It was going to raise some angry ridges on that beautiful bottom of hers.

She was naked over his lap, yet he was completely dressed. Brandon had always believed that enforced nudity reinforced submission in a most tangible manner.

He grimaced as he adjusted himself, then finally spoke. He could feel the fine tremor he knew she was trying desperately to suppress, and had to really push himself forward to do this. He was going to have to strike a delicate balance, in more ways than one. "You're being spanked because I had told you not to get into it with the Reverend, and yet that was exactly what you did. I will not have you disobeying me deliberately like that, Nola."

Keeping his lecture short and sweet, Brandon decided the best thing to do was to get it over with, and with that he delivered twenty very hard blows to her wiggling, squirming bottom. With each successive crack of that small but wicked baton, he saw how it became harder and harder for her to remain still, and, indeed, near the end, it was almost impossible for him to keep her over his lap. He finally had to lower his leg over the backs of her calves and clamp down hard in order to deliver the last five strokes.

Nola had been beside herself. He'd spanked her before - he'd strapped her before. But this was so unbelievably painful - each stripe she'd earned and he'd applied burned as if he'd laid a line of fire across her bottom instead of some sort of small, completely unforgiving stick. She knew she would never be able to look at a conductor's baton at the same way again at the symphony.

And, as usual, nothing she did - no kicking, no twisting, no wiggling - gave her any sort of a respite from the almost metronomic fall of that blasted hand and its instrument of pure, unadulterated pain. The only thing that gave her relief was when he threw the thing away from them, so that it literally crashed and split against the far wall, lying there broken.

Suddenly she was in his arms. He'd never really give her comfort after a spanking - besides in its most basic form. He'd never held her much, they'd never indulged in pillow talk or just lain in each others arms. But this time, it was different. He was different, and his arms felt wonderful around her. He cradled her across his lap rather than over it, and held her tight against him, making sure that her bottom didn't touch the rough fabric of his jeans.

She hadn't cried until then. She was able to scream and moan and thrash, but Nola hadn't allowed herself to cry. It was a symptom of how she'd been feeling days ago, after she'd earned this spanking, and she'd stood in front of him holding his belt. She hadn't usually been able to suppress the tears, but it had worked this time.

Until he'd cradled her in his arms. That was her true undoing, and it opened the floodgates much more than he probably bargained for, but he'd held her through the whole storm, rocking just slightly, purely out of instinct.

Here in the tub with her, now, though, all he could think about was how good her body felt beneath his hands, how well her breasts fit into his palms, and how easily he could reach down between those slender legs.

His soapy fingers made their way down there to that bubbly thatch and well between it, nudging her legs apart, and bringing his own legs up to bracket hers. He leaned slowly forward, pressing his mouth into that lavender scented mass of hair, whispering, "Slide your legs over mine, Nola. I want to pleasure you."

She hesitated, and there had been a time when he would have turned her over and swatted her bottom - or much worse - for that, but he was trying to learn a somewhat different way to handle her, hopefully to the benefit of the both of them, so he resisted that impulse and simply lay there, waiting for her to obey him.

It didn't take her much longer, probably because his thick middle finger had already claimed that hidden territory and had her moaning from its first long, slow rub of that already stiffened bud. He loved the way she looked when she'd finished doing as he'd bidden, lying back against his chest and abdomen, splayed quite obscenely, giving him completely unrestricted access to every luscious inch of her.

He could feel her shivering, though, and reached for the faucet to add more hot water. Then he asked suddenly as soon as the thought popped into his brain, "Are you afraid?"

She bit her lip, obviously not wanting to admit the truth to him.

Brandon didn't push. He reached up and helped her settle her head against his shoulder, and nibbled down her neck, making her shiver even worse. "There's nothing to be afraid of, Nola. I'm just going to use my fingers to make you feel good." He kissed her then, slow and deep, with their tongues dancing excitedly together as his fingers had their way with her, using the slickness of her body as well as the soapy water to rub gently over the top and around the sides, then back over the top of her small bit, feeling her shudders growing exponentially worse as she moaned into his mouth.

It was one of the most exiting things he'd ever done, and he wanted more.

His free hand roamed up to her breast, cupping and squeezing it just slightly, gently, then expertly finding that peaked nipple and pinching it, just until her moans reached a fever pitch. He wished he'd had that dildo by their bath side, and made a mental note to get another and keep it in the cabinet close to the tub. But for now, he simply rubbed and plucked and tweaked and flicked her until he felt every muscle in her body tighten in what seemed like an almost painful manner, and then she exploded in his arms, his mouth still over hers, drinking in every one of her pleasured cries and not letting her go until every last ounce of ecstasy had been squeezed from her body.

She collapsed back against him, panting in a very unladylike fashion. If they hadn't been surrounded by water, she was quite sure that she would have been sweating profusely, too. He did it to her every single time - he always knew exactly what to do to her, how to touch her, what to say to her, even when and how to spank her, dammit, to bring her to these unbelievable heights and then hurl her over the precipice and into a free fall of ultimate, unimaginable bliss.

Yet this time, she didn't feel used or forced, as she usually did. He was acting very differently with her, even in this way. His arms were around her, holding her tight, even though she could feel that his as yet unfulfilled needs met or exceeded her own.

That thick length of him pressed up against her bottom, almost cradling her itself, practically supporting her bottom. She certainly knew how strong and unyielding it was while it was inside her, and she knew that he deserved the same release he had given her.

So, in an unusual move for her - the first time she'd really taken the initiative between them intimately at all, she turned over onto her stomach, still lying stretched out on top of him. Then, holding his clearly startled black eyes as she reached down and touched him voluntarily, guiding him inside her.

She'd been on top of him before, always at his behest, and had been completely mortified by the position and the easy access it gave him to her breasts. It had seemed somehow wrong. But this time, she was feeling a bit of her own power, and she realized she liked the idea of surprising him, as well as pleasuring him.

He slid up into her with the usual embarrassing ease, his way slickened considerably by her own recent delight, although he always stretched her, always dragged against all of those already sensitized nerves, and she couldn't hold back a guttural moan as he took matters into his own hands and forced her legs just the slightest bit apart, and her weight drove him deeply up inside her, all at once.

"I love it when you moan like that," he confessed with a big unapologetic grin.

She'd only ever considered how humiliated all of those noises her body insisted on making while he was molesting her. It had never come to her that he might enjoy hearing them, or that she might be able to gain some leverage over him if she could make him like other things she did.

He was still grinning at her. "Your face is so red you look like you're going to explode."

The openness on that very red face disappeared as quick as the wind. "I'm sorry. It's very... it's always been hard for me."

Brandon's hand went to her chin and tipped it up automatically. "I know. We'll work on that. But this is what it's supposed to be like between a husband and wife." He wanted to add "who care about each other" but he wasn't at all sure that that would be appropriate quite yet. He knew he was beginning to feel something for her - and although he wasn't at all sure that was really a good thing - but it was undeniable. Only he had no idea if she felt anything for him beyond pure annoyance, and, quite possibly, a healthy hate.

So he wasn't about to stick his neck out, not yet, anyway. Perhaps sometime in the future, if he sensed any sort of softening towards him on her part, but he knew that was likely to take quite a while. But that was alright. She wasn't going anywhere, and neither was he.

"It is?" Nola had had a hard time reconciling her own marriage - which seemed volatile and much too sensually oriented - with her image of her parents' marriage. They most certainly couldn't be doing the same things together that she and her husband were. Why, they hadn't slept in the same bed ever, that Nola knew, and they almost never touched each other. At least, not in front of her.

The visions that danced in her head when she thought about that topic made her want to wash her mind out with soap.

"Yes, it is. Married couples should want to be together, and enjoy each other - in and out of the bedroom. That's a lot better than always being at each other's throats."

"Or over each other's laps," Nola countered pointedly.

His own mental image - of himself over her lap, which completely overwhelmed all of her, not just her lap - had him grinning again, even in the face of her angry glare. "I'm sorry, honey, but I'm always going to spank you when you get out of line, or when you disobey me." Brandon reached around and squeezed a firm buttock, reminding her of the most recent time he'd laid down his law on her rear.

She continued to glare at him, but couldn't hold it when he used both hands to move her up and down on his swollen shaft. Sometimes, Nola thought she couldn't bear the pleasure he brought to her. Quickly, though, she began to move on her own - her body gave her no choice at all.

Brandon was just as happy to occupy himself with other things, most especially her breasts, which bobbed enticingly up and down in front of him. But he didn't get grabby. He wasn't rough or cruel. But he did remember exactly what she liked more than anything, and pinched and twirled those impudent little nipples until they more than matched the rosy red of her face, loving the way she arched and tried to grab his hands away from her, then, seeing how ineffectual her attempts were, her hands settled on his muscular forearms, using him as balance as she rode him in an ever more violent spiral.

Near the end, he let her tender nipples go in favor of claiming her hips again, slamming her down onto him harder than she could herself, watching her avidly as she again climbed to the summit and then let herself go, enjoying the sight of her in such abandon almost as much as he was enjoying their joining.

At the end, he shouted her name once, short and sharp, clutching her to him and emptying himself into her helplessly.

When they returned from their lost weekend, they were both more refreshed and relaxed, and Geoffrey found that he was extremely happy at having interfered in the small way he had, insisting that they spend some time upstate together. They both looked much happier for it, and he figured that the happier they were, the more likely they were to get to producing his first grandchild.

As she had feared, Brandon didn't try to prevent her from seeing Wilde. He just let her know that he preferred if they didn't get together like it was some sort of tete a tete. He encouraged her to invite Wilde over to Serenity, or for the three of them to get together for lunch or dinner, and Nola could not have been more pleasantly surprised. He wanted to get to know Wilde. She was amazed. Unfortunately, Wilde knew her a bit too well, and she wasn't at all sure that that was a good idea. Her bottom might well be the worse for it, especially if he got Wilde talking about some of the things she'd done in regards to her women's groups.

The next few months made her change her mind completely about being married. At first she'd been quite sure she was going to be completely miserable for the rest of her life, and had become somewhat resigned to that idea. But Brandon had been very attentive and much less surly of late, and she was definitely liking this marriage idea - as long as he didn't revert to his former type.

Her life was getting a little bit more back to normal. She was stepping up her involvement in various groups, and had even planned some trips to speak at rallies all around the Northeast, as she had before she'd married.

The problem was, that she had neither consulted nor even told her husband that she'd made those plans. Nola had a justifiable fear that if she did, he'd become the ogre he'd bee when they'd first gotten married. So she simply... avoided telling him until almost the very last minute, when Wilde was to dinner one night, telling amusing anecdotes about his travels in Europe, and he happened to mention her trip to Albany.

Dead silence fell over the table, except for Wilde's sharp yelp as Nola's pointy footed boot connected firmly with his shin.

"Your tripe where?" her husband turned to her with a raised eyebrowed glare that she had come to know and hate.

"Well..."

Brandon's grandfather, Alexander, came to her rescue, sort of. "You must have your dates mixed, Wilde. Why, our dear Nola hasn't so much as hinted that she'd be leaving us to our own devices this weekend. I'm sure you're mistaken."

But Brandon corrected him, gently, if angrily. "No, Father, I don't think he's wrong. Our dear Nola was most definitely going to leave us this weekend to go make sure that the matrons of the Northeast all have the ability to cast their votes, or leave their husbands, or whatever it is that she feels it necessary to leave her family for without a word."

"I was going to tell you!" she whined, throwing her napkin on her plate. "I just hadn't found the right time."

Brandon stood, taking a hold of Nola's wrist firmly and forcing her to rise. He addressed their guest first, however. "Wilde, thank you very much for your company this evening. I hope to see you again soon." He shook hands with the other man, who rose and looked more than a little befuddled, and turned, exiting the room abruptly, tugging his reluctant wife along behind him.

Nola could hear Wilde asking his father and grandfather if they thought she'd be all right, and they were trying to reassure him, but she didn't think they were going to be very successful at it.

Her husband pulled her ahead of him, and followed her up the stairs. Of course, she was no fool, and she was taking them just about as slowly as was humanly possible, at least until he began to apply the flat of his hand to her bottom with each step she took. That made her quicken her steps, but he kept up with her easily, so essentially she received a good warm up spanking before they'd even made it to their room.

When they did finally get there, he turned and closed the door behind them, then just stood there, glaring at her as she bustled about the room getting undressed. "Just when did you intend to tell me about this trip, Nola? As you were waving good bye on the train? Or were you just going to up and disappear for a weekend, and figure that that was perfectly acceptable?"

She didn't want to look at him. She didn't want to look at him. Nola kept repeating that phrase in her mind. Maybe if she didn't look at him, he wouldn't be angry with her, and she wouldn't have inadvertently ruined the fragile truce between him. It seemed to her that she was damned if she did and damned if she didn't, and now she was being called on the carpet because she didn't.

"I was going to tell you. I was just looking for the right time."

He jumped on that immediately. "I don't know that there is a right time to say something like that to your husband. Most couples plan trips together."

She almost looked at him. He almost tripped her up there, but she busied herself rolling down her stockings instead. "It never came to mind that you might want to attend a women's suffrage meeting." Frankly, she thought the idea was patently ridiculous, but if he wanted to come, he certainly could.

"I don't, but that doesn't mean I'm going to let you go alone." He would have gone, if he could have gotten this weekend off. But the truth was that there were some very delicate negotiations going on about an acquisition that he really felt would be an asset to the family company, and he just couldn't spare the time away from work right now, or he would most definitely have accompanied her.

Brandon knew that she was doing all of this. He didn't know if she thought he was completely oblivious to her role in various suffrage groups, or what. But he'd know before he'd married her that she felt very strongly about this cause, strongly enough that she'd darned near ended up in the clink several times, and had actually been beaten up once by members of an angry male mob.

He wasn't about to let his wife face that kind of thing alone. He already had a tail on her whenever she left the house, someone to protect her just in case, but that man had specific orders not to jump in unless she was in imminent danger of being harmed or arrested. He would accompany her on her trips because he would need to for peace of mind, and would hire even more body guards just for that reason, not including the fact that he'd be beside her the entire time, eagle eyed and watchful of any potential harm that might befall her.

Her tone was as icy as he'd ever heard it. "There isn't any 'let' involved, Mr. Sawyer. I'm a woman, not your chattel. I haven't used any of your money for this trip, you don't need to worry. If you like, I could even travel under my maiden name, so that Sawyer Industries aren't connected with my nefarious activities."

So he was Mr. Sawyer again, was he? In the space of five minutes, all of that good will they'd built together had just evaporated apparently. Well, he had to put his foot down. "I'm sorry, Nola, but I don't want you to go on this trip."

"I'm sorry, Brandon, but I'm going on this trip." Somehow, making a declaration like that while naked made it lack a certain conviction. But she slid under the covers and turned out her bedside light, so that he was just standing by the door in the darkness.

She thought she might actually have gotten away with the last word.

She should have known better.

Chapter Seven

He crossed easily to his side of the bed and lit his lamp. Parts of the old house were wired for electricity, and parts weren't, as if his father thought that it was some sort of a fad or something. So their bedside lamps were still kerosene.

"You didn't really think that that was going to be the end of this... discussion, did you?" He asked rhetorically, his eyebrow up.

Nola frowned darkly. "I had hoped."

Brandon arranged himself on the bed, leaning back against a pile of pillows, saying, "Hand me your hairbrush, please, Nola."

The ogre was back. The phrase flitted through her head as she did as she was told, knowing all too well the consequences of not obeying him when he was like this.

He took the big brush from her and used his other hand to tug her over his lap, reaching across her waist to hold her far hip tightly, so that she couldn't go anywhere, or reach back and protect what would very soon be her poor, sore bottom. "Now," he began sternly. "We are going to have a talk, you and I, about making plans to leave your poor husband for a weekend without so much as consulting him." He gave her five hard swats before he continued.

If she hadn't been in this position, she might have smiled at the very idea of him being a "poor" anything, but this was neither the time nor the place.

"I don't have a problem with you supporting your causes. Granted, I wish they were a bit less controversial, but I'm not trying to stop you from doing whatever it is that you do." He gave her ten crisp smacks, landing them up and down her bottom and the tender backs of her thighs, deliberately landing several swats in exactly the same places for effect. "But I am going to insist on accompanying you wherever you go. So if you have any more of these planned, you need to let me know now, and I'll see which ones we can go to." He emphasized the "we" with both his voice, and the hairbrush.

"I've been going alone since I was fourteen!" she wailed, partly in anger and partly in pain.

That got him to stop spanking her. "You're kidding me?"

"No."

She'd never lied to him, so he had to believe her. He snorted incredulously. Their fourteen year old daughter most certainly wasn't going to be going to dangerous rallies, period. End of sentence. He was amazed that her parents had let her go.

In a moment of clarity, he said, "You didn't tell them you were going, did you?"

Her silence was answer enough for him, and he began spanking her in earnest, unable to deal with the idea that she could have been seriously hurt or injured, and her parents wouldn't have even known that she was gone.

"I used to go to stay with a friend who would cover for me. My parents never knew the difference," she confessed.

"You would never have gotten away with that if I'd been your father."

A fact that she was wholly thankful for, Nola thought, but wisely kept to herself. It was hard enough being his wife, and she really hadn't done anything wrong, per se. But, since marrying him, she'd lived her life by his law, and he definitely thought that she'd done something she oughtn't. And although she might deny it in a court of law, she supposed she could see what he meant.

Her bottom had already been hurting from his tender caresses while they were ascending the stairs - the hairbrush was burning holes in her flesh, she was quite sure. And he was continuing to spank her as if he hadn't already given her a good thirty or so swats, decorating her bottom until it felt as if her flesh was so swollen it was going to burst.

Finally, he let her up, tucking her hairbrush into his nightstand this time, and holding her close to him, not letting her slip away, and not even making a move to make love to her, just holding her tight. After a long while, he lifted his head and said, "You're not going to make it to this rally, Nola. I can't do it this weekend, and you're never to schedule one I can't take you to in the future. Is that understood?"

Her response, at first, was a low growl, but then she quickly changed it to an only somewhat whiney "Yes."

Despite the fact that she'd been denied the chance to support her sisters in their fight for the same freedoms that men enjoyed, and she'd intended to spend the weekend in full pout, her husband had other ideas and actually brought her in to the high level meetings he was having with investors and bankers, trying to leverage this buyout.

At first, she went only under protest. He'd practically had to throw her over his shoulder, like he was apt to do at any given moment. But after that first day, when she noticed how ill at ease all the other men were at having a woman in the meeting with them, and knew that she was giving her husband the advantage because of it, she started to pay more attention to what was going on.

Brandon's thought in having her accompany him was several fold. First, if she was with him, she couldn't be getting herself into trouble. Secondly, he liked having her around, thirdly, if she got involved in doing this kind of thing with him, maybe she'd let go of some of her more outspoken ideas, and lastly, she was actually helping him a lot, because her presence was a considerable distraction to the other men. He was making better strides than he'd thought he could because everyone else was fidgeting, worrying about their language, their eyes constantly wandering to his beautiful bride.

She actually helped him get the company he was interested in for much less money than he'd expected to pay, and he took her out to an incredibly extravagant dinner to celebrate, then proposed something more of a partnership in regards to the business.

Nola was surprised and proud that he thought she'd helped him so much just by sitting there, and a warmth suffused her that she hadn't felt in a very long time. "Well, I think I make a better secret weapon, don't you? If I'm always with you, the novelty will wear off."

He had to agree that she was exactly right. But he held his glass up to her regardless, thanking her for all of her help.

Not knowing quite what else to do, Nola drank to herself, the got up the gumption to ask, "Does this mean that I can go to one of my rallies?"

Brandon nodded yes, quickly, before he tried to talk her out of it. "Yes, you can. You just tell me where and when, and we'll go."

It ended up that the next rally was up in Glens Falls, in the beautiful Adirondack Mountains. Once they got up there, he accompanied her everywhere she went, until she collapsed into bed each evening. He actually worried that she was overdoing a bit, but she pushed herself much like he pushed himself in business, and he couldn't quite find it in himself to forbid her from doing what she so obviously loved. He probably felt as much as a fish out of water listening to what he had been surprised to hear was quite vehement diatribe about men and their oppression of women as she had listening to all of the business jargon he'd subjected her to recently, but he just stood as close to her as he could, keeping her within his line of sight as much as possible, and constantly scanning the crowds for possible troublemakers.

Although they were supposed to go back to the city that Sunday, he had a surprise in store for her and had gotten them a gorgeous cottage on Lake George, just north of Glens Falls. It was just off season, just after Labor Day, and still quite warm, and they spent their days swimming, canoeing - badly, in her case - and making love in various locations guaranteed to shock the locals and few remaining tourists.

Nola was sitting in the sunroom of what he euphemistically called a cabin - it was kind of like him calling their house in the Hamptons a cottage. This place was absolutely huge, with tons of gorgeous, pristine lake frontage, a sandy beach, a boat dock and six bedrooms. The room she was sitting in had floor to ceiling windows on three sides, and it had a gorgeous view of the water. She had a cup of chamomile tea at her side, and a book in her lap, and she realized, all of a sudden, that she'd never been happier in her life, and that her improved relationship with her husband was a large part of the reason why.

She liked him. She genuinely liked him. Yes, he could be a pain in the butt. A pain in her butt, most particularly. But he was smart and could be funny when he wanted to be, and he was incredibly good at making her feel incredible when they came together in their big bed. Of course, he was equally good at making her feel atrocious when he decided to spank her, and he'd been a real idiot at the beginning of their marriage.

But things were evening out nicely, she thought, and she was amazed to find that she was actually starting to have tender feelings about him. Perhaps, just perhaps, she was even coming to love him.

Nola was a realist, though. Her husband most certainly wasn't falling in love with her. He wasn't the type. He was a realist, a pragmatist - not likely to believe in something as ephemeral as love in any case. She didn't think he'd ever loved much of anything in his life beyond succeeding in business. Maybe his father and grandfather, but if he did it was a gruff type of love that was never spoken, never communicated among the three of them.

They were all very much alike - the three generations of Sawyers. The son was most like his grandfather, truth be told. Alexander was the weakest of them - which was still damned strong for most men, but he was the most likely to express any sort of feelings at all, whereas it seemed the other two were more likely to carry their feelings about things - anything but work - to their graves.

Nola was finding - finally, after nearly a year of marriage - that she was nowhere near as miserable as she'd been when they'd first gotten married, and that was an incredible relief. Yes, she was spanked, and as much as she wished it never happened, late at night when she was alone with her own thoughts, she had to admit that it did add something to their relationship. A sexual tension that she didn't think would be there if they didn't have a disciplinary type of relationship.

And she knew she wasn't the only woman who got spanked, either. Since she'd been married, several of her old friends, who were already on to having children, having gotten married at a much more respectable age, had gotten back in touch - they'd been invited to the wedding and that was where contact had been reestablished, and several of them had confessed that they, too, were under the rule of their husband's thumb.

It had surprised her just how easily this information was imparted to her. It wasn't as if she'd gone fishing to hear true confessions like that. She hadn't. And she didn't even know any of these women all that well. It seemed that they were quite eager to make these confessions, even though all of the meetings she'd had with each of them had been conducted in public establishments - tea rooms and restaurants.

Nola didn't find herself being quite that forthcoming about her relationship with her husband, but she was absolutely fascinated by what everyone else insisted on telling her. And she knew from dealing with downtrodden women that spanking could have been the very least of their problems - at least no one seemed to be dealing with a husband who truly beat them - including Nola herself.

It was funny. The women who had confessed to her that they were routinely put over their husband's lap were the happiest of the lot of them. The ones whose husbands didn't pay any kind of attention to them whatsoever were the most miserable. That was one thing to be said for living under the threat of male discipline - at least he had to be keeping track of what you were doing.

Nola sniffed. Sometimes, though, that just ended up being annoying.

Her quiet musings were interrupted by a knock at the door, which her husband answered. It was a messenger, and from the looks of it, the news he brought was not good. Nola rose immediately. Brandon was looking distinctly pale.

"What is it?" she put her arms around him as best she could, although he was actually too big for her ever to truly succeed at it.

"Grandfather. He's had some sort of attack, and he's not expected to make it very long. We have to go home."

"Of course!" She hugged him tightly, whispering, "I'm so sorry, Brandon."

He'd never been much of a hugger, but he had to admit that it felt good, coming from her. He drew back, saying, "We'd better get a move on."

The ride back home was accomplished in near silence, with the exception of a few minutes when they were nearly home, and Brandon whispered, "If it had been Father, I would have been more prepared for it. He's been sickly for a while."

"I know, and I'm sorry. Both your grandfather and your father are wonderful people." She had seated herself right next to him for the trip, wanting to offer what little comfort she could, and now she reached over and grabbed his hand tightly.

His wan smile tugged at her heart. "Thank you. They're both completely enamored of you, in case you hadn't guessed."

She grinned slightly. "It's not their opinion I worry about, though."

He tucked that offhand confession into the back off his brain to be explored further when he had a moment.

They made it to Serenity in time to see Alexander, but not to talk to him. The doctor informed them that there wasn't any hope, and that it was just a matter of hours, perhaps a day or so. The family sat vigil by the beloved old man's bedside, and Nola tried to make herself as invisible as possible, making sure they all had whatever they needed, bringing in small snacks and making Geoffrey take frequent breaks, because his health wasn't doing all that well, either.

A lot of the time it was just Brandon and herself by his bedside, and she encouraged him to talk about growing up with Alexander, who had always been a huge influence in his life - almost more so than his father. He mentioned the tree house that they had built together on the grounds, and the time he'd drilled a hole in his bathroom floor because he'd overflowed it playing with his boats in the tub. Nola held his hand throughout, and ran and fetched anything he wanted or needed, but mostly she simply provided unflinching support and companionship, and he couldn't have asked for anything more precious at a time like that.

Alexander Pruitt Sawyer died in the early hours of the third morning after they'd gotten back from Lake George, and all of his surviving family, was around him when he left them for a better place, and then the vigil of sitting with the body until it could be laid to rest began, and Nola took her own turn with it. He was to be buried in a cemetery that was just down the road, next to his beloved wife who had predeceased him by twenty or so years.

Nola did everything she could to relieve her husband and her father in law of having to deal with the minutia. She made as many decisions regarding the funeral arrangements as she could, and only went to them with things she was truly uncertain about. Alexander was an important person, a scion in business and society, and the funeral itself would be attended by various dignitaries and heads of state. Some of what she was doing was definitely out of her league, but she did her best, and the men just seemed to agree to anything she suggested.

When it was all over, it took a long while for the inhabitants of Alexander's house to come to grips with his loss - even at his advanced age, the man, like his grandson, was a force to be reckoned with. Nola could well imagine what he had been like as a young man, knowing Brandon. They were almost frightfully alike - they even looked alike. There was a portrait of Alexander that was done when he was forty or so, and when she'd first come to Serenity she had mistook it for one of Brandon.

Brandon took the loss of his grandfather very hard, and he'd turned to his wife for comfort, which had surprised Nola to no end, although she was very honored by it, too. One night - several months after he'd passed, Brandon had awakened her in the middle of the night and cried. Nola had been watching him closely. He hadn't betrayed any sort of emotion during the entire ritual - not at the wake or the funeral or for several weeks afterwards. He'd spoken fondly of the old man, but had never teared up or choked up while doing so.

But that night he had held onto her so tight and cried his eyes out. And she'd held him through it all, rocking slightly, just hugging and holding him and letting him know that he wasn't alone. They never spoke of it, but he seemed to be more at peace with his loss the next morning, and she knew that his late night breakdown would be a secret she would take to her grave.

Her husband responded to his grandfather's death by throwing himself into work, and she realized quickly that, if she wanted their still somewhat tentative idyll to continue, that she would need to involve herself in the family business even more so than she already had been.

It wasn't Nola's forte - business - but she did find it interesting, so she began to ask him if she could come with him occasionally. She didn't want to impose, so she only did it sporadically at first, but then he began to actually ask her if she was going to accompany him.

They made a fantastic team. Granted, just as in their marriage, he was the one who made the final decisions about things. But she felt free enough with him to speak her mind, and he found that very refreshing. He was surrounded by enough yes men. Granted, they were the cream of the crop of yes men, but he had no delusions that that was exactly what they were.

Nola was a fresh voice, one not guided or blinded by the fact of who he was or what his last name was, and sometimes her observations were dead on, or she brought up things that he hadn't thought of. She had a woman's intuition that everyone around him - and he himself - lacked, and he found himself leaning on her comments, especially after a board meeting where her presence was most definitely resented. That seemed to be where she came into her own that much more. She liked making the men uncomfortable, and she did nothing whatsoever to betray that she was anything more than window decoration for a relatively new husband who was apparently so besotted by his wife that he couldn't even bear to go to work without her.

As she began to make friends with the wives of the men who were in their social set, she was able to garner information that was extremely helpful to their various causes, merely by attending teas and luncheons.

Of course, she also had an agenda of her own, and, as she involved herself in the more usual, charitable causes, she also attempted to recruit for her own - although she didn't find very many converts.

And Brandon actually got called on the carpet by several members of the board, whose wives she had proselytized to, who were none to happy for that fact. Brandon found himself in the unique situation of having to defend his wife's unusual opinions, most of which he didn't agree with, either.

But he did it.

And while he did it, while he was arguing for her cockamamie ideas, he realized something.

He loved her.

There was no way in hell that he would do what he was doing right now for any other reason. No way in hell.

That discovery didn't make him feel any better about what he was having to do at that moment, but he and his wife would be having a discussion about her tendency to try to recruit society ladies to her causes later on that evening and he was quite sure he would end up feeling much better after he'd taken a bit of his time and effort out of her hide.

Their usual dinner table had been reduced by one, and it suffered considerably for the lack of Alexander, with his tendency to tell somewhat ribald stories of his wilder years and consume just a bit too much wine with the rich food.

"A baby, that's what we need. A baby," Geoffrey pronounced, with a sharp eye at what he obviously saw as his recalcitrant son.

"Don't look at me, Father. I'm trying as hard as I can, believe me!" He waggled his eyebrows at his wife.

Nola was going to have absolutely no part of this conversation whatsoever. She was already red enough just being forced to listen to it, much less participating in it. She ignored the men and continued to delicately dissect the perfectly cooked chicken in lemon sauce, until she realized that the conversation had stopped and they were both looking at her expectantly.

Chapter Eight

"Don't look at me!" she crowed, sounding like an echo of her husband.

"Well, I have to look at one or the other of you, and given a choice, I'd certainly rather it be you than my son," Geoffrey neatly put down his son and complimented his daughter in law in one fell swoop.

"Thanks, Father," Brandon commented dryly.

"You're welcome, son." Geoffrey reached over and patted Nola's hand with a sly smile that was very reminiscent of his son. "Even if she does have some pretty absurd ideas about women and their role in society."

He had to go and ruin it. Alexander would have known when to give a compliment and then shut the heck up about it. But not Geoffrey. He was too brash and sometimes downright pushy.

"Yes, well, she and I are going to have a discussion about those very things this evening," Brandon pronounced, and Nola nearly choked on her au gratin potatoes.

"We are?" she asked impolitely, her mouth still full of food.

He gave her that awful look she'd become so familiar with. "Yes, we are. I don't want to get into it here, in front of Father, but I know what you've been doing at your teas and socials, and it's not to continue."

Nola honestly had no idea what he was talking about. Absolutely none at all. "What have I been doing, besides drinking tea and being sociable?" She didn't give him a chance to respond before saying, "And getting information that helps the family business, I might add."

Brandon fairly glared at her, and he hadn't done that in quite a while. But it had lost some - not all, but some - of its heat. She was innocent. She had to be. She couldn't think of a think she'd done that might earn her a "discussion".

"You've been trying to get your women friends - whose husbands are not at all happy with the idea - to join in your crusade for female voting rights, among other things."

Nola was unrepentant. "Well, they're there trying to get me - the family - to contribute all sorts of money and time to their pet causes. Why can't I get them to work on something that really means something to half of the population of this country?"

She had to give it to him. Brandon didn't roll his eyes. But Geoffrey did. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what tripe! Women should be wives and mothers, and that's it. That's their lot in life. They've got it easy. It's the men in the world who have to go out and slay the dragons, and that's why they have the vote. Women don't need it, and it would just be a waste and upset the rightful balance of things." His daughter in law's baleful look did nothing to penetrate his stubborn righteousness.

"Is that what you believe?" Nola asked her husband pointedly, pushing her plate away long before she was finished with dinner.

"No," Brandon answered truthfully, "but I also don't believe that you should be making other women uncomfortable-"

"Am I making them uncomfortable, or their husbands?" she interrupted sagely.

Brandon hated it when she was right. "Regardless, you shouldn't be making anyone uncomfortable, since they're your greatest source of information."

Nola hated it when he was right and she hadn't thought of that. She really liked contributing to the family coffers in any way she could. It was almost as if she had a job, too, although she knew that Brandon would never allow that.

Dinner was over much more quickly than she would have preferred, and although she suggested a friendly game of Whist, neither of the men took her up on it. Instead, she found herself manhandled up the stairs by her husband, who wasn't looking like he was in the mood to be particularly lenient.

Once they were in their room, he loosened his grip, and Nola yanked her arm out of his tight grip to go sit on the end of the bed, her arms folded across her chest and a mutinous expression on her face. "There's no need to spank me just because those women got upset at having their eyes opened to the reality of the plight of women in America society. Just because they all live cushy lives of privilege, doesn't mean everyone does."

Brandon was in the act of getting undressed, but he gave her a questioning look, and she knew exactly what he meant.

"Yes, I know, I'm one of the privileged ones, so this is coming off as somewhat hypocritical, but I haven't always been quite this privileged. And I've certainly worked with enough women who need some sort of a voice in the government of their own country. You men certainly aren't addressing their causes or concerns."

He wasn't at all pleased with being lumped in with the "you men" she hated, but she was probably right. Until he'd met her, he certainly hadn't paid much attention to what happened to any women at all, much less the poor and underprivileged. But she'd opened his eyes to a lot of things, and he was doing his best - which generally meant going with her to rallies and making considerable contributions to her various causes.

Brandon stood directly in front of her and tipped her chin up so that she had to look at him. "I'm not going to argue with you about this. You shouldn't be doing that."

"Well, I didn't know that I shouldn't be doing that," she answered back bravely.

"Well, after you get a spanking, you will, won't you? I spent an hour and a half fielding angry phone calls from outraged husbands and even a few impromptu visitations." Naked, he returned to stand in front of her. "I'm sure you must've gotten some sort of feeling about how well you weren't being received, Nola. And, this is a good lesson for you. Not every husband is as understanding and forward thinking as yours."

Now that had her smiling, despite her fate, especially as he set a knee on the bed and tugged her back onto it with him, leaning down to kiss her lavishly.

"But perhaps, before your punishment, you want ravishing."

"Oh, I definitely want."

They made love, slowly and languorously, taking time to enjoy each other enormously. Their general softening towards each other had only served to heat up their marriage bed. They could barely go a night without reaching for each other and dissolving into this incredible heat they generated when they were in each other's arms.

As the ogre in him had been tamed, Nola found her inhibitions relaxing quite considerably, and he had introduced her to many more things than she could ever have dreamt of doing with a man. But he had become much more encouraging and much less growly as their relationship had progressed, and he had her doing things that made her blush in the light of day - especially when they did them in the light of day, which he adored doing lately.

He'd even taken her while they were at work. She was sitting calmly in a chair in front of his desk, going over the minutes of some of the meetings they had attended previously with the CEO of the next company they were looking at and he suddenly picked up the phone and told his secretary that he didn't want to be disturbed for the next two hours.

And then, in front of God and everyone, in front of the nearly floor to ceiling windows of his huge, imposing office, he proceeded to strip her, kissing each newly exposed area, and managing to shock his bride to her kid shod toes.

"Brandon! We can't do this here - now!"

He looked up from nuzzling her neck. "Yes, we can, and we will."

She knew that tone all too well. It meant there was absolutely no way she was going to get out of it, and her body seemed to adore that prospect; it was already dampening her drawers, which she knew without a doubt that he was going to gloat over when he inevitably discovered it. Until she met him, she'd never been consciously naked during the day - except for baths or while she was getting dressed or undressed. But it was always just a transitional thing that sometimes lasted only a few seconds.

Brandon, however, reveled in keeping her naked, and displaying her with the sun on her creamy skin. And this time was no exception. He didn't try to expose her at all, he didn't command her to stand in front of the windows or anything, but he did make her stand in the middle of the room without stitch on. Of course, he had locked the door - both the one that led directly to the boardroom and the one out to the elevators, but that didn't really settle her mind, and she couldn't help but fidget from one foot to the other, lacing and unlacing her fingers nervously, and trying to resist the urge to cross her hands over her breasts, which she knew from previous experience would earn her a sharp smack on her bottom.

What he did do surprised her even more than what she had imagined. He stood in front of her in all of his company president glory and coaxed her onto her knees, then undid his pants and arranged himself so that his member was inches from her face.

This was something she had only just begun doing for him - at least voluntarily. In coming into her own sexually while under his gentler tutelage, she found that she liked the power she had over him. It was nice to know that he enjoyed it when she touched him at least as much as the reverse, and she had to admit that the rush of power was quite considerable. Brandon wasn't the type of man to let his guard down with anyone - she didn't think that he'd ever even done that with his father. But she knew that when she held him in her mouth, he wasn't thinking about any one or any thing else but what was going on right then and there. He wasn't thinking about the latest merger, he wasn't thinking about stocks, he wasn't thinking about what was for dinner.

He was thinking about how incredible it felt to have her mouth around him - she knew, because that was all she could think of when he took her into his own mouth.

She'd never knelt before him, though - they usually made love on their bed, although they had christened the bathroom quite heavily - and she really wasn't sure about the position, until she began to nibble on him and happened to look up.

He was looking down at her, his expression softer than she'd ever seen it, one hand cupping but not guiding her cheek with the gentlest of touches, and their eyes collided almost violently.

All of a sudden, Brandon had reached down and grabbed the backs of her thighs, lifting her up and settling her onto him in one smooth motion. Nola sank down on that thick, stiff pole of his inch by nerve filled inch, held in place and completely unable to stop the invasion, helpless and invaded and loving every minute of it.

She wasn't even able to lock her ankles round him - her legs were too short and his waist was to thickly muscular. He held her as if she didn't weigh a thing; of course his cock was bearing most of her weight and he wasn't about to complain about that. It wasn't long before Nola found her back up against the expensively paneled wall, her husband driving into her roughly, his hands looped behind her back, his fingers curved over her shoulders, keeping her firmly in place to receive the full force of his thrusts.

Given free reign - such as when they were alone at the Hampton cottage or the cabin at Lake George - Nola found that she was most embarrassingly loud in her pleasure. But she knew that Josh was just outside the door, and she did her best not to make so much as a squeak.

Brandon, however, lived for the way she screamed when she exploded, and even for those small whimpers she made that only he could hear. He adored that she was so vocal, even though he knew it embarrassed the heck out of her - or maybe because it did. He always made sure that she came along on the ride with him, and this time was no different. He wet one of his fingers in his mouth and reached between them to play with that eager button of hers as he rode her, knowing full well how hot being filled and rubbed drove her out of her mind.

He loved watching her struggle not to make too much noise - he loved making it that much harder for her to be so demure. He, for one, didn't give a damn if the whole world heard, much less Josh, who was more than likely too wrapped up in what he was doing to pay any attention.

Brandon had wanted to spend a lot more time letting him pleasure her with that beautiful mouth of hers, but when he'd looked down at her, he just couldn't wait another moment.

It was the exact opposite of how he felt the night he had to punish her for creating such a furor over the suffrage movement amongst their friends. They took more time coming together that evening than they had in the entire time they were married, and for the first time, he would have to say that they had finally, truly made love.

In fact, in the aftermath, when he was just holding her loosely and they were both limp with exhaustion, just as he opened his mouth to tell her that he loved her - even though he was going to be roasting her butt within the next few minutes - he was amazed to hear her soft, whispered confession of exactly the same thing from where she was huddled against him.

"You do?" he asked, elated. "I was just about to say the same thing to you!"

He hugged her tight, kissing her hard, then settling down to snuggle some more. "I'm sorry I was such a bear to you when we first got married."

"I'm sorry you were, too," she shot back unrepentantly.

"Well, I wasn't going to let you run roughshod over me."

Nola snorted loudly. "Like anyone could."

"Yes, well, I wanted to establish early on who was going to be in charge. I didn't want to have to be arguing with you about it."

Her lower lip pouting out impossibly far, she countered, "I never argued, did I?"

"No, because I wouldn't let you." He kissed the top of her head, knowing that he had to do something now that he really didn't want to do. He couldn't imagine a worse time to have to spank a woman than when they had just revealed their love for each other. But that seemed to be exactly what was happening.

"And speaking of not letting you, I'm afraid that you're looking at a spanking for trying to recruit amongst our friends."

"That's not fair!" Nola pouted, knowing it was no use to protest but needing not to go gently into that awful position.

"Go get me the belt, Nola," he proclaimed as he stepped out from under the warmth of the bedclothes to go stand at the end of the bed.

She wanted to say no. She wanted to scream and cry at the indignity of it, and she wanted to run away. But Nola didn't do any of those things. Instead, she did exactly as she was told, went to the closet and and fetched it quickly, meetig him at that awful spot and hading him the belt he favored for use on her bottom.

"You know what to do," was all he said.

He didn't lecture her this time. He'd really already done that, and Brandon hated to repeat himself. Instead, he simply set about welting every inch of her bottom, then just the barest tops of her thighs. He kept the area he struck very tight, so that he couldn't help but hit the same places over and over again, hopefully driving his point home. If she had been just a bit more virulent in her approach, she could have cost the company - and thus the family - an enormous amount of money, considering that the husbands of the wives she saw socially were the men he dealt with in business every single day.

And he wasn't about to stand idly by and let her hurt the family, whether she meant to or not, and he meant this to be a severe lesson that he hoped would make her more careful of just that in the future.

If he had asked, Nola would have told him that he had more than achieved his goal. She had more than learned her lesson when he got through with her. The strap always hurt tremendously when he wielded it, but it seemed that it was a thousand times worse this time, and she wondered if the heights of ecstasy she'd achieved at his hands moments ago had anything to do with it.

But she was certainly going to keep her mouth shut about suffrage around their friends.

Besides, she thought to herself when she got her brain back and he finally put the belt to one side, she'd already reached as many women as she thought she would, so there really wasn't any reason to mention it again.

Women in their - in her - position didn't have much impetus to change things. They were generally well cared for and had everything they wanted - as long as their husbands wanted them to have it. She was somewhat bemused to find herself in very much the same place - and was even more surprised to find how much submitting to her husband excited her in that special way.

She liked to think, though it might well have simply been a benign form of self delusion, that she remained a strong, independent woman, but she realized that her independence had been severely curtailed, although she had to hand it to Brandon for supporting her in her crusade rather than actively trying to squash her interests. Judging by the reaction to her ideas, the majority of men out there would never have allowed her to continue in her pursuits.

Brandon tucked her under the covers then joined her there, hugging her tight as they fell asleep in a big heap. For the first time since they'd gotten married, Nola slept in her husband's arms, knowing that wonderful feeling of loving and being loved, and she knew that there was nothing better in this world.

The very next morning, though, she was unsure of pretty much everything. She awoke with her husband, which had become her custom since she sometimes accompanied him in to work, but her first thought wasn't how much she would have preferred to just sleep the day away, or even what she might want for breakfast.

In fact it was the direct opposite of what she might want for breakfast. Her first thought was that whatever it was that she had eaten last night - that damned lemon chicken she loved so much - had not set well with her at all, and she bolted to the bathroom with her hand over her mouth.

Brandon heard the commotion and followed her in, holding her hair out of the way and holding her forehead while she was wracked with violent spasms. He held her until they passed, then carried her limp body back to lay her down gently on the bed.

Embarrassed at having been so sick for some reason, Nola threw her arm over her face. "I'm sorry. It must've been the chicken, is all I can think."

Brandon looked at her skeptically, a garbage can from the bathroom held at the ready in his hands, just in case she couldn't make it to the toilet. "I had more of it than you did, and I'm fine."

"So, I have some sort of stomach flu," she said petulantly, throwing off the covers.

Brandon replaced them just as quickly, not letting her get out of bed. "If you have a stomach flu, then you're going to stay home. Even if that's not what it is, you're still going to stay home."

"What else could it be?"

He could see by her clear face that she truly didn't have any idea that she might be pregnant and this might be morning sickness, and sat down beside her, crowding her over a bit to take her into his arms. "Well, it could be that you're pregnant."

"I'm pregnant?" she asked, and he had to wonder if she had no idea how that might have happened, either.

"Well, we don't know that. But one of the early signs is often being sick in the mornings."

"Oh."

He kissed her quick on the top of her head, saying, "I'll have the doctor come over this evening. In the mean time, I'll have someone bring up some dry bread or crackers and weak tea. That might help."

Nola didn't have time to ask him how he knew all this about pregnancy and pregnant women, and she wasn't at all sure she wanted to hear the answer anyway.

It turned out that the news was very happy - she was pregnant, as proclaimed by the doctor, with whom she had had a fight about just how intimately he wanted to examine her. Brandon had had to come to the poor man's rescue, because Nola had had him backed into a corner in no time at all for the mere suggestion that he might have to lay hands on her.

He managed to convince her that that was to be expected to a certain extent, especially when one was pregnant, and that it was okay with him, and that he'd be there with her for the whole examination, and he was.

His father was over the moon, and there was a definite feeling amongst the three of them that they had wished that Alexander had been able to be with them for this event.

Brandon had assumed that Nola would want to curtail her usual activities because she was enceinte, but that was far from the truth. She might have been incredibly sick in the mornings - and she was - but she just slyly shifted all of her appointments and meetings to the afternoon. She even continued - or wanted to continue - to come into work with him, although he put the kibosh on that rather quickly, and tried to suggest to her that she might want to slow down, but she wasn't having any of it.

She was still attending rallies - nearby rallies - in her fifth month, when she was quite obviously pregnant. Other ladies of her station didn't set foot outside their houses when they were with child. His wife was off gallivanting hither and yon fighting for women to get the vote.

She was exhausting herself, and he wasn't going to have any more of it. He finally put his foot down - much later than he should have, as far as he - and Geoffrey - were concerned, at dinner the next night, which she was barely able to stay awake for, although she roused herself more than enough to know that she wasn't at all happy with that pronouncement.

And, despite his ban on her extracurricular activities, she had one last rally that she wasn't going to back out of. She just wasn't. She also wasn't going to tell her husband anything about it. It was an afternoon rally, and he wouldn't ever have to know she'd gone.

She thought.

Halfway through, while she was wielding the megaphone and trying to rally the troops to fight for their rights, she found herself air born all of a sudden, and ended up being carried away in his arms. She handed the megaphone off to a friend, but kept distributing pamphlets even as he stalked away, reminding all of the women of the next rally and trying to get them to convince their husbands to vote in the next referendum.

Her husband was shaking his head. "You are one stubborn woman, and you are in deep trouble."

She merely gave him one of her sunniest smiles. "It takes a stubborn person to recognize a stubborn person, and you can't touch me until I'm not pregnant any more. So I have an automatic four month reprieve."

He growled down at her fiercely, but couldn't stop himself from kissing her as he handed her into the carriage. "I love you, Mrs. Sawyer."

Nola leaned against him, more tired than she would ever admit, looking up at him with her heart in her eyes. "I love you, Mr. Sawyer."

The End

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