Cait and the Devil (13 page)

“Or are you crying, Caitlyn?”

“I’m crying just a little. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay. You’re allowed to cry.” He spanked her again then, a few blows on each cheek, warming her up. Then he stood to pick up his leather belt from the floor.

“Brace yourself, Caitlyn. Don’t move.”

He gave her a few blows with his belt, nothing too hard. While she jerked a little, again, she didn’t move and didn’t break the pose. He could hear her mewling behind her hands. He knelt beside her again, rubbing the small of her back.

“Are you being punished, Caitlyn?”

“No,” she sobbed.

“Why am I doing this? Do you remember?”

“Because you love to.
And because you love me to obey you.”

He leaned to kiss her reddened, trembling buttocks, first one and then the other.

“Yes, darling.
How quickly you learn. I am very, very proud of you.”

* * * * *

In the darkness,
Cait
snuggled closer to the shelter of his chest. She’d long since stopped crying, but her eyes still felt hot and dry. She didn’t know why she’d cried so hard. Nothing he’d done had really hurt, not overly. Not the way it had hurt when he’d spanked her in the orchard.

She supposed she cried because it was a strange and confusing
idea, that
he wanted to hurt her because that’s what he loved to do. And it was just as strange and confusing that she wanted to do whatever he asked of her, no matter how painful, only because he asked. She was desperate to please him because she loved him, and he had told her that he loved her.
He loved her.
For that alone she would do anything,
anything
in her power to make him glad.

“It is hard work, isn’t it?” he’d whispered to her afterward as she’d cried in his embrace. “I warned you it wouldn’t be easy.”

It was hard work but she was determined to please him. It had hurt when he’d worked one finger up into her nether hole, even using the slippery cream he’d produced from a small jar. But she had knelt still and obeyed him even as her face flamed red and her knees trembled with fear.

Someday
, he told her,
you’ll love the way this feels. You only need to get used to it. We’ll practice a little every day, and then one day, you’ll be ready to have my cock inside this place...

No
, she wanted to say. No, how could that be, when even his finger had to struggle to get inside?

You must learn to relax. Relax and trust me. It will come, Caitlyn. It will come.

She would learn. She would learn whatever he wanted her to, whatever it was that wives had to do. She would do anything for this man she loved. And she’d get used to this idea of love hurting at the same time love made her want to die from the pleasure and the thrill.

Chapter Eight

Caitlyn was happy to bid farewell to the earl’s father in the morning. She couldn’t help but sidle behind Duncan as Douglas took his leave, swinging up on his horse with one last glare at her. She knew Duncan didn’t like her to cower, but the looks his father gave her made her stomach clench. She couldn’t imagine what she’d ever done to make him despise her.
But no matter, because Duncan loved her.
He told her so.

Every night now, he showed her how much he loved her. Every night now, she fidgeted over dinner waiting for him to put down his cup and look down at her with his deep grey eyes.

“Finished?” he would ask her quietly. She would nod.
Oh, yes, finished. Yes.

He might as well not have asked
Finished?
but
instead,
Are you ready?
Because that was what she heard when he looked down at her at the end of their meal.
Are you ready to come to the bedroom with me? Are you ready to bare yourself to my eyes? Are you ready to do whatever I ask?

Yes, she was always ready.
Always.
He would help her from her chair and the feel of his hot, firm hands on her flesh at last, after a whole day of wanting him, was almost enough to make her eyes close with desire. She thought she would shame herself one day in front of everyone, unable to resist falling to her knees right then and there.

For his part, he would only smile down at her.

He
knew
.

They would hurry up to his bedroom. Sometimes, out of the eyesight of others, they ran, pulling each other along. Sometimes he’d sweep her up in his arms and carry her. Once he tossed her over his shoulder to carry her like a sack, and she’d shrieked with laughter.

The idea that he might drop her never came to mind. She only clung to him, howling with laughter until he told her, chuckling, to hush. She would do anything for him, and trust him to do anything to her. She knew that he would never hurt her, not in any way she didn’t wish to be hurt. Sometimes the things he did were difficult to bear, but she was happy to bear them for him.

Obedience remained the currency between them, every bit as much as laughter and desire and love. In fact, it seemed that the love and desire came directly from the obedience, because the more obedient she was, the more loving he became. The more she learned and understood of him, the closer she felt to him as a wife. She remembered Henna’s words to her the first night she’d arrived at Inverness.
It takes time for a marriage to take shape.
Time and patience and understanding.
And respect.
Truer words had never been spoken. That’s why everyone loved Henna, because she was so wise.

It wasn’t always easy being obedient. Sometimes she made choices that resulted in being spanked across his lap, or even being stood against the wall to bear strokes from his belt. It angered him most of all if she showed reticence or shame. Sometimes she couldn’t help it. Sometimes the things he did to her, the things he demanded of her were so intimate she couldn’t hide her unease. But she was learning every night, and she tried hard always to get better. It got easier and more pleasurable with every passing day.

It always began the same, that wonderful moment when they found themselves alone together in his room. He would lock the door and turn to her, watching intently as she took off her clothes and laid them across the chest.

Then he would indicate exactly what he wished of
her,
tell her very explicitly what to do. Sometimes he would motion her to the bed, order her to lie back and part her legs. Or he might have her lie on her stomach, or kneel and part her legs, and then he would pleasure her with his hands and his mouth. Other times he would snap his fingers and indicate that she was to kneel and take his member in her hands, and kiss and suck him until he released in her mouth. Many times he ordered her to assume his favorite position, kneeling down with her head on the floor, her legs spread wide in vulnerable offering to him.

She would shiver and shudder when he made her wait in that position. And he did, almost always, make her wait, so that when he finally came near and knelt behind her, put his hands on her or pressed his cock to her, she felt something akin to relief. He would use the slippery, scented cream to pry her open between her buttocks in her most private place. She quaked from the terrible intimacy of it, but she soon learned that to cry or balk displeased him and resulted in punishment.

“I’m not hurting you,” he would say quietly in warning. “You’re hurting your own self. Just do as I say.”

And she’d try.

He had teased and trained her over days and weeks, preparing her to take his cock. He let her know the day it would happen, the day he couldn’t wait any longer. She sat beside him at dinner that night in tense anticipation. But it had not been so bad. He had been patient and gentle and encouraging and slow. Every time she knelt for him now and leaned forward submissively, and felt him kneel behind her, she remembered how that first time had felt. The hardest part had been letting the large head of his cock in for the first time. It had been terribly painful and frightening. She had tensed and shaken frantically, not believing it could fit.

“No,” he had chided. “Do not do this. We worked a long time for this. Open up for me.”

His voice had the power to make her do anything, so she had opened as well as she could. And wonder of wonders, he’d pushed just the smallest part of himself inside. And from there, it had happened. At first, she’d been startled by the sharp pain and pressure. But then, all unexpected, she felt a strange and intense pleasure, a fullness such as nothing she’d ever felt in her life. A fullness and connectedness, as he’d pushed deeper inside her. By the time he’d seated himself fully she had moaned despite herself.

She
thought,
when he took her so firmly and yet slowly in this intimate way, that he could either pleasure her or kill her at will, whichever he chose. The power belonged to him. In the end, that first time, he had pleasured her, as he did every time he now took her from behind. He’d reached around and stroked and teased her until she’d pleaded for release. Then he’d plunged inside her deep and she’d come helplessly, without restraint.

All these things they did each night, and the untold and creative variations of them he demanded left her feeling very content and well-loved. Then they slept, and she drifted into dreams as he cradled her all night in sleep.

Her days, while not nearly as pleasurable, were not
so
lonely as they’d been before. The smallest children still ran from her, but their mothers smiled and spoke to her sometimes in passing. She grew to know many townspeople by name. She continued on helping Gordon in the garden, and showed some of the older children how to help him too, so the old man’s workload was lifted somewhat from his aching back.

Her guards came to soften towards her. She knew by the day of the week
who
would be with her, and came to know all their names. While they would never address her by name or be overly familiar with her, they did develop an unspoken partnership in crime. They came to understand that, although the earl ordered her to be kept apart from him by day, she desperately wanted to see him. They arranged such “accidents” whenever they safely could. In time, they didn’t tell the earl when she asked to venture farther afield than he allowed, and assisted her in some of her crazier schemes.

But he still punished her over the odd scrape. He did find out, somehow, about her riskier adventures. The day she’d gone
skinnydipping
, he’d come upon her himself. It was a very warm day and her guard had agreed to turn the other way while she took a quick dip in the wooded lake. She made him promise not to look, since she knew she was only to show her body to her husband. She made certain first, of course, that no one else could see where they were.

The water had been so cool and
relaxing,
she’d stayed in far longer than she should. She imagined she was a mermaid like the ones Erma had spun tales about, with long shining blonde hair and a fish tail instead of legs. She dove under the water, swimming across the lake and back, exhilarated by the feeling of the water caressing her skin. When she’d finally returned to the banks to get out and fetch her clothes, she found Duncan with her gown over his arm. His expression wasn’t a happy one.

“Where’s Lonnie?” she asked, looking around for her guard.

“Gone,” he said.
“Sent back to spend the afternoon cleaning the stables.”

Cait
opened and closed her mouth guiltily. “It was my idea.”

“Who gets to see your body, Caitlyn?”

“I made him turn around!”

“Answer me,
Cait
.”

“Only you,” she murmured quietly.

“Only me.
So you know the rule, and yet decided to disrobe and go swimming anyway, just over the rise from a practice field full of sweaty, fighting men.”