Chapter 4
Titus maintained a patient silence as he once again watched the emotions flitter across Pru’s expressive face. Indignation at the thought of allowing anyone to spank her. A brief glimmer of hope that if she did as he asked, it might, just might, succeed in helping her to get past the pain of grief and guilt that consumed her day and night.
It had taken Titus several days of visiting Gentleman Jim’s boxing saloon, often choosing his opponents at random from the other gentlemen in attendance when none of the other Sinners were present, before he realized he was not exercising but deliberately punishing himself for not being able to save the lives of Worthington or Priscilla Germaine.
He’d now had three days to consider Pru’s sharpness and coldness of manner, and the reason for it. He had no doubt Pru’s parents and other relatives had been gentle and understanding with her after Priscilla died, as Titus had been at the wedding and then again when he called at Germaine House the following day. None of that gentle understanding had helped to alleviate the guilt roiling within her.
Pru was not angry at him or anyone else, but with herself. A sharpness and anger forged from the same guilt as Titus’s, and for the same reason.
Allowing his sparring opponents to pummel him into semiconsciousness had helped to ease his own feelings of inadequacy for several hours a day at least, so perhaps punishing Pru with a sound spanking would assist her in the same way?
That was his reasoning, anyway.
Along with the knowledge he would also enjoy the palm of his hand making contact with Pru’s plump backside.
“Well?” he prompted again at her continued silence.
She glanced toward the window overlooking the garden at the back of the house. “What if someone should see?”
He gave a hard grin. “That will only add to the…danger of your situation.”
She seemed to shake off the last of her hesitation as she stepped forward and bent over the table, her face turned to the side as she gazed at him with apprehension.
“Skirt up, drawers down,” Titus ordered briskly as he moved to stand behind her so that she would not see the effect her submissive posture was having upon him. His cock was so hard, it was a physical ache, his balls drawn up tight beneath, his sac full of heat.
What he wouldn’t give to now instruct Pru to part her legs before releasing his throbbing cock from his pantaloons and sliding it between her nether lips and into her hot, sweet pussy. He closed his eyes briefly to block the image he had of then pounding into Pru so hard and so fast, she was rhythmically pushed forward across the table every time he thrust to the hilt inside her.
However willingly she had acquiesced to his demand, Titus could not let his desire get the better of him and take her innocence in that brutal, savage way.
“Titus…?” She voiced her uncertainty at his delay.
The use of his given name caused him to draw in a sharp breath. That edge of nervousness in Pru’s tone had the opposite effect, Titus felt sure, to what she had intended.
If he showed so much as a flicker of weakness in his resolve to spank her, then he had no doubt it would only put more distance between them. That Pru would become even more withdrawn and set apart from her family and friends than she already was. Pru needed this physical chastisement, and he needed to be the one to give it to her.
“I said skirt up and drawers down,” he repeated harshly.
With only the briefest of hesitations Pru’s hands moved slowly to her sides to lift and then bunch up the skirt of her gown to her waist, revealing she wore white cotton drawers beneath.
“Pull them down,” he growled.
“I do not see—”
“You will feel the pain more on your bare flesh.”
Pru released a shaky breath before lifting high enough so that she might undo the tie at the front of her drawers, then tug them downward.
“That is far enough,” Titus muttered hoarsely, his gaze riveted on the erotic sight of Pru’s drawers resting inches below the swell of her bare ass cheeks. Such delicious and plump mounds, they made his mouth water to taste them. “Bend forward again, then grasp the opposite edge of the table with your hands before pulling yourself farther forward until only your toes touch the floor.”
What on earth was he doing, Titus agonized, as again, after the briefest hesitation, Pru obeyed his instruction.
Fulfilling his darkest fantasies, he acknowledged self-disgustedly.
But he defied any man, gentleman or otherwise, not to do so when faced with the complete supplication of the woman he had desired for several months now.
This new position allowed him to see Pru’s pretty and swollen nether lips peeping out between her slightly parted thighs. Wet as well as swollen, Titus realized as he spied the unmistakable gleam of that slickness on those plump lips and breathed in the heady aroma of her arousal.
Proving Pru was no longer dismayed by the baring of her bottom but was as aroused as he was by both his instructions and her own physical vulnerability to those commands.
The evidence of her arousal was unmistakable.
He hoped it would become more so.
Pru gave a lusty cry, followed by a low groan, at the feel of the first slap of Titus’s palm on her bared flesh. Not because he had hurt her, but initially from the pure shock of being struck at all, and then the unexpected pleasure that rolled through her before settling hot and urgent at her core.
“Quiet,” Titus growled as he quickly moved to turn the key in the lock of the library door. “I doubt you want an audience any more than I do,” he added grimly as he returned to land another, harder blow to her already stinging flesh.
Pru caught her bottom lip between her teeth to stop herself from crying out a second time. Titus was right. It would be utterly humiliating for anyone else to even guess what was occurring in the library at Romney House.
She should not be allowing this, of course. Knew that, if she wished it, with one word from her, Titus would stop. But something inside her knew that he was right, that it wasn’t enough she could once again feel emotions, that she had a need for this physical chastisement too.
Nor, Pru acknowledged with a groan, did she want the pleasure to stop…
It seemed Titus had no intention of stopping as he rained smack after smack on her rapidly heating flesh, first one cheek and then the other, until Pru lost count of the number and the whole of her bottom was an inferno of burning flesh. That same heat had caused her to become slick between her thighs and the bud above swollen and throbbing with need.
Pru was not innocent of the pleasures of her own body, knew that stroking that nubbin when alone in her bed at night at the same time as she tweaked and pulled on her nipples would result in a release that caused her body to tremble and shake and juices to flow from her channel. She would sometimes then scoop up some of that slickness on her fingers and rub her nubbin harder and faster until she climaxed a second time.
She now wanted, needed Titus to give her that same release. To have his fingers stroking and pressing against her nubbin until she shattered and gasped in climax.
“Please,” she groaned.
Those smacks instantly ceased and were replaced seconds later with the caress of the heated and slightly roughened palm of Titus’s hand as he touched and soothed her stinging flesh.
“Titus, please,” Pru groaned again, completely beyond shame as she pushed her bottom up and into those too-gentle caresses.
Titus’s hand stilled as he studied the woman lying prostrate across the table. Pru’s face was flushed, her eyes a fevered glitter as she looked at him beseechingly. The skin of her bottom felt hot, the slickness between her thighs now so copious, her earthy and womanly aroma flooded his senses. The wriggling of her bottom against his caressing palm appeared to be of need rather than protest or evasion of him administering any more smacks.
“Please what?” he prompted gruffly, needing to know exactly what it was Pru wanted from him. He wanted no misunderstandings, no accusations later, if he took this to where he wished to go.
“Just please,” she pleaded.
“I need the words, Pru,” he encouraged huskily.
“I… I… I cannot!” she choked emotionally.
“Then let me help you. Do you want my fingers here?” He caressed a sensual path to where her pussy lips were slick and hot between her thighs.
“God, yes!” She trembled and groaned as Titus’s fingers stroked along that wetness.
“Here.” He moved his fingers farther forward, seeking out the pulsing and swollen nubbin beneath its protective hood, her skin wet and hot.
“Yes!”
He proceeded to stoke and caress that sensitive nubbin for several minutes, until Pru was writhing and thrusting her hips rhythmically back against the wetness of his fingers. “You have known this pleasure before,” he accused darkly, his fingers stilling against that burgeoning flesh. “Answer me, Pru!”
“I… Only from touching myself,” she admitted breathlessly. “And only when the need for release became too great.”
“Who taught you such things?”
“I…”
“Do not lie to me,” he warned.
“My mother told us—”
“Your mother?”
Pru nodded. “She did not want Cilla and me to be a pair of ninny heads when it came to—to the marriage bed. She explained a woman has needs. Ones that some gentlemen are not even aware of or do not wish to acknowledge in a wife.”
“That is unfortunately true.”
“My mother told us she was sure that neither of us would choose to marry such an unworthy gentleman. And in the meantime, there is no shame in pleasuring our own body in order to learn what we like and do not like when we—when we feel the need.”
“There is no shame in it,” he agreed huskily. “Is your need great now?”
“Yes!” Pru squirmed as she tried to find the purchase to rub her clit against his now unmoving fingers.
“No.” Titus gave her ass another slap, deliberately harder than any of the others he had administered. “I shall decide when you are to have your pleasure. Nor will you touch yourself in this intimate way again, but wait until we are together, and I will satisfy your needs. Do you understand me?” Ridiculous of him to feel jealous of Pru’s own fingers, but he did. He most assuredly did.
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
“Yes, I understand I must not touch myself but wait for you to satisfy my needs,” she repeated desperately.
“Good.” Titus resumed stroking her clit, interspersed now with a light pinching that caused Pru to groan and writhe as he pressed the length of his cloth-covered cock against the burning flesh of her bottom.
It was only seconds before he felt her nubbin stiffen and then Pru’s body began to quake and tremble as she attained her release. He continued to stroke her through that climax, his fingers slick with the release of her juices. Then, unable to stop himself, he rubbed and pinched her flesh into another climax immediately after, and then another, each becoming more powerful than the last.
“No more,” Pru finally groaned weakly.
“Did you not give me permission to give you pleasure?”
“Yes.”
“Only me?”
“Only you,” she choked.
“Good girl.” He had to stop this, Titus admonished. He had to. He had already gone beyond the purpose of the initial spanking. Far beyond, he acknowledged self-disgustedly as he removed his hand from between Pru’s thighs and stepped back. “You may straighten your clothing now.” His voice sounded harsh in the silence of the room.
Titus turned his back on her as he strode over to the window, aware of the rustling of clothing behind him as he took out his handkerchief and wiped Pru’s sticky juices from his fingers. An exercise which did nothing to take away the addictive aroma of her release, a sweet floral aroma mixed with that earthier musk. His cock was so engorged and throbbing, it was tenting the front of his pantaloons, and he longed for privacy in which he might relieve that painful ache. It was—
He turned abruptly at the sound of Pru’s sobs. Her clothes were as they had been when she entered the library almost an hour ago, but Pru herself was still bent over and lying prostrate across the table, tears raining unchecked down her cheeks.
Because he had not given her leave to rise?
Two long strides brought him back to Pru’s side to gently help her to straighten. He took her in his arms as she began to sob in earnest.
Which had been the whole purpose of his unorthodox behavior.
Not enjoying spanking Pru.
Not pleasuring her.
Not demanding that only he was allowed to pleasure her.
Not the need he now felt for his own physical release.
This was about Pru. For Pru. The tears she now cried were the catharsis that would, he believed, with time, aid in her full emotional recovery.
Titus bent slightly so he could put one of his arms under Pru’s knees and the other about her shoulders, before lifting her and carrying her over to the chaise in front of the window. He settled her comfortably on his lap, cradling her in his arms as he patiently waited for her tears to abate.
Pru cried until there were no more tears left inside her. Hard, body-racking sobs, with her face buried against Romney’s throat, her arms clinging about his neck.
Her copious tears had dampened his neckcloth and shirtfront by the time she came back to herself enough to recall all that had come before those tears began to fall so readily.
Titus taking exception to her continued rudeness toward him.
His demand she prostrate herself over the table and bare her bottom to him.
Those hard and punishing slaps administered to her bared flesh.
Titus’s fingers exploring and stroking between her thighs.
The pleasure of having those fingers on her nubbin and bringing her to climax after climax.
Titus had not done those things to her but for her, Pru realized in a daze. To shake her, once and for all, kicking and screaming if necessary, from that well of numbed and helpless despair she had been lost in for so very long.
Except she had not kicked and screamed in anger or torment, but in pleasure.
Pleasure Titus had given her as unselfishly as he had the pain, all to help her break through the numbness she felt at the loss of her beloved twin.
She moistened her lips before speaking. “I believe I should thank you once again.”
These were the last words, the very last, Titus had expected Pru to say to him once she recovered from his having spanked and then pleasured her. “You are not angry with me?”
“Well, I would not go so far as to say that.” Dry humor could be heard in her voice. “But let us say I am less angry with you than I was.”
Titus pulled back slightly so he could look at Pru. Her eyes looked sore from crying so many tears, her nose was slightly reddened, her cheeks flushed, and her lips puffy. In normal circumstances, he would have offered her his handkerchief to dry her cheeks, but decided he had better not as he had last used it to wipe her pleasure juices from his fingers.
“Less angry enough to listen to what I wished to tell you the last time we met, and which you said you have now come to hear?” he prompted huskily.
Pru tensed. Listening to what Titus had to say about the accident was the reason she had come to see him today. The… The other had merely been a digression from that purpose.
Merely?
There was nothing slight or meaningless about the intimacies she and Titus had just shared.
And Pru did not feel in the least embarrassed by them.
Instead, she now felt completely freed from the numbing guilt she had been living with for so long. The guilt of living while her sister died.
How could Pru not feel that way when she was totally aware of the sting and heat of her bottom cheeks and between her thighs still throbbed from her many releases? The former, she realized, was almost as pleasurable as the latter.
“Yes.” She rose to her feet before turning to face him. “Yes, I am now ready to hear whatever it is you wish to tell me.”
Titus was not sure he wished to tell Pru any of these things, only knew that he should. Because, despite what Stonewell may feel to the contrary, Titus believed Pru had a right to know the real reason Priscilla had died.