“Master?” Confusion swirled around her as Stone removed himself from her proximity. Determined to set things right between them before she took one step more, she shed her dressing gown, revealing her womanly curves to his gaze, and sank to her knees before him. “Please, Master. Remind me who I belong to. Help me to never forget again.” She had doubted him, and in her mind, it might be the greatest transgression of her entire trouble-pocked existence.

As she knelt at his feet, naked and exposed, she realized exactly how strong her feelings for her husband ran. Fear of his rejection warred with her desire to feel his hands on her body. To be reminded that he was the one person she could rely upon no matter how awful things seemed.

“I fear I misunderstood your previous request, pet.” He knelt down in front of her, tipped her chin up so their gazes met. “Exactly how should I best remind you who you belong to?”

Theo trembled with excitement and need. He was not lost to her. Together, they would forge ahead anew. “Twenty spanks. Please, Master.”

“And then, pet?” He raised one brow in punctuation.

Dismayed at his question, she thought about what should come after her discipline. “Whatever pleases you, Master.”

He hesitated and then nodded. “If that is what you wish, pet.”

“Thank you, Master.” She returned her gaze to the floor as he rose to loom over her.

“Then we shall begin with your discipline. I want you to be clear that this is discipline at your request to remind you who you belong to. This is not punishment, for you have done nothing wrong. Are we clear, pet?”

“Yes, Master.” She waited, desperate to feel his palm warming her bottom, reminding her that she was his, and in truth he was hers. Perhaps that was more of what she had forgotten in her despair—that as much as he was her master and she his pet, he was also her husband. Her lover. Simply hers.

“Come with me.” He motioned for her to rise with the curl of his finger, and she answered his call. He led her toward the bed she had lain in for the last few days. “Bend over the edge of the bed, like a good girl.” He helped her assume the position. “If we were home, I would strap you to our bench and use a flogger to remind you of our bond. Instead, I have but my hand to help you remember to whom you belong, and that I belong to you as well.”

Theo bent over the mattress, her feet on the floor as she waited for him to commence the spanking. His hand smoothed over her bare bottom, rubbing and warming the cool skin. Then his touch disappeared, only to return with a sudden crack of sound.

“One, Master.” She counted the way he’d taught her. Thought about all they had shared and explored and knew herself to be a fool for having believed what that woman had wanted her to see.

His hand landed on the other cheek. “Two, Master.”

Then they started coming in quick succession. Before she realized it, she was at ten. Her bum stung with a reassuring warmth that had her thighs pressed together, and an ache building in her pussy that only Stone could relieve.

He paused the spankings and wedged his hand between the very thighs she’d just been thinking about. “I see my pet’s pussy is quite wet.” Using his finger, he traced her soaked slit, teasing her sensitive flesh.

“Yes, Master.” She forced the words past her teeth as she resisted the urge to push back against his touch.

“Soon, pet. First, we must finish this business between us.” And then his palm landed again, this time aiming more toward the cuff of her backside and in toward her quim.

She continued to count with each blow until her backside was inflamed from his reminder. Her core dripped with need as her bare skin rubbed against the starchy fabric of the bedspread. A simple reminder of who was in control. “Twenty, Master.”

Her frame shook with relief that the spankings were over, but the need for release overtook her. The pulsing between her legs had grown almost unbearable as she waited for whatever he decided would come next.

“Stand, pet.” He helped her follow his direction. “Show me your bottom. I wish to see my handiwork.”

She turned so that he could see what she assumed was her beet-red bottom. It certainly felt like it must be such a color.

He ran his hand over the tender skin, stirring the flames again. “Tell me, pet, to whom do you belong?”

“You, Master.” She felt the truth of the words all the way to her toes and back again.

He continued to stroke the heated flesh. “Very good, pet. Now, this one may be harder. To whom do I belong?”

A new and different warmth ignited in her belly, right where she imagined the babe hovered. “Me, Master. You belong to me.” She could not hide her smile as she said the words aloud and relished them.

He chuckled behind her. “I should have known you’d be a quick study. Indeed, you belong to me, and I belong to you, pet. What we share here in the bedroom, and even beyond in the public areas of the house, will not survive if you do not believe the truth of that. Do you understand, pet?” He turned her around so they were face-to-face.

“I do now, Master.” Her heart skipped a beat as she looked into his gaze. She could have sworn that she saw something there that she had not seen before. Could he love her? Despite all their challenges, could he love her as much as she had come to love him? Just as she was on the verge of blurting out the words, he interrupted her declaration and took her mouth in a plundering, soul-stealing kiss that left her clinging to him as though he were the only thing keeping her anchored to the ground.

And then she was no longer anchored, but floated in his arms as he carried her to the head of the bed they had shared their first night at Hawksbury. There, he gently laid her out and stepped back. His coat came off first, then his vest. Next came his necktie, and Theo watched in disappointment as he tossed it aside. She did enjoy having him bind her hands as he did what he would with her body. But it seemed he had other ideas for their unplanned morning of reconciliation. In short order, he hauled his boots off using the jack by the bed, then dropped his trousers and shirt on the floor and crawled naked into bed.

Equally naked, they came together and kissed. She drove her tongue past his teeth and stroked the inner walls of his mouth in a brazen exploration that had her pulse racing again as easily as a feather catching the breeze. His hands roamed over her, exploring her dips and curves and even tracing over the small, firm mound that was yet her own secret. One she fully intended to share in time—but not yet.

---

Stone couldn’t believe he’d almost misunderstood her earlier demand. Contrition had addled his wits and made him miss her clear cues. His poor pet had been driven to strip naked and kneel before him to make her point. And what a glorious sight she made kneeling in the morning sunshine, her golden hair aglow like a nimbus as she waited for his command. His cock bobbed between his legs as need speared through him once again. Spanking her had taken all his restraint. He’d wanted to strip naked and plunge into her hot pussy by the tenth blow. By twenty, he was damn near ready to explode in his pants.

But now the field was wide open, and they could do as they pleased. And he had a personal favorite in mind to help repair the rift in their dynamic. He broke their kiss and rolled onto his back. “Come, pet. Straddle my face and let me feast on you while you suck my cock.”

Her blue eyes darkened and her nipples pebbled into small berries. With a nod, she scrambled over to him, swung a leg over his head, and lowered her glistening core to his lips. He slid his tongue out to trace the trail of moisture and moaned at the sweetness of her desire. Hungry for more of his wife, he wrapped his hands around her thighs and pulled her lower until he could see nothing but the red expanse of her arse as he sank his tongue into her.

“Oh, Master.” She gasped, and then her weight shifted forward and her warm, wet mouth engulfed his cock—or as much of it as she could manage. As he drove into her quim, she worked up and down his length to where her fist gripped him at the root. But then, as he swore she’d reached her hand, she swallowed deeply, moved her fist, and took more of him into the tightness of her throat. Unable to control his need, he bucked his hips, shoving deeper. Theo choked a bit, pulled back, and then repeated the effort.

With each swallow and suck, he filled her in a way he’d never done before, and his inner beast surged to the fore, demanding to claim her once more. To plant his seed in her belly and make a child as the ultimate show of his manhood, of his claim on his woman.

And with that notion buzzing in his head, he flicked her clit a few times before shifting her off his face. He sat up as she did, his mouth wet from her juices. He laid her back on the bed, tossed her legs over his shoulders, and plowed into her tight channel with a driving need to fill her. Pelvis to pelvis, he ground against her, wishing he could find a way to be one with her, to fill her completely.

“Master?”

He groaned as she wriggled her hips. “Yes, pet?”

“Is that…” She licked her cock-swollen lips. “Is that me on your mouth?”

Fuck, is she trying to kill me? “Yes, pet.” He ran his tongue over his lower lip and tasted her sweetness once more. “I still have your juices on my lips.”

Then she reached and traced his upper lip, scooping up whatever moisture remained, and carried her finger to her own lips. As she sucked her finger into her mouth, he lost all control.

“Bloody hell, woman.” He pounded into her, shuttling his cock in and out of her soaked pussy as she pinched and played with her own nipples.

And then her pussy clamped down on him hard, and she cried out, “Master!”

The tight clutching rhythm of her cunny pushed him over the edge and had him shooting his seed deep into womb. He continued shoving deep inside her, letting the zinging pleasure of release rip from his balls to his cock and out through his extremities as he found a level of release he’d never before experienced. Pleasure born of love and the unhindered sharing of two souls.

It had turned him into a bloody poet.

Spent, he slumped forward onto his wife’s breast and lay there, helpless as a newborn babe. But the pillar of strength beneath him held him and stroked his hair as though she never wanted him to leave. And he sincerely hoped that was the case, because she would be stuck with him forever. He needed to sort out how to tell her, how to give her the property next to her orphanage and make her understand. Because a simple declaration of love would not suffice to express the magnitude of what he felt for this woman. He would sort it all out when he got back to London, right after he stopped whoever was after him. For the moment, sleep was required, so he closed his eyes as he lay there still joined with his wife and napped.