STORY EXCERPT

Heath was standing at the side of one of the roan geldings, running a currycomb over the powerful animal as it munched on oats. The sight itself would not have been so jarring to her senses had he not already removed his coat, waistcoat, and shirt. Naked from the waist up, his body gleamed in the lamplight with a touch of perspiration. For the first time in her life, Celeste realized that a man’s body could be beautiful. As Heath raised the currycomb and brought it down over the animal’s neck and shoulder, she watched the rippling interplay of muscles just beneath the surface of the stable master’s pale skin. The power, only hinted at when he wore clothes, was now revealed in all its primal, masculine glory. Heath McCord, she realized, was the epitome of unrefined, primitive power, and for a moment, she felt fear, knowing he was a man capable of great violence if sufficiently provoked.

A small voice of reason whispered, He protects women. He doesn’t hurt them.

But then another fear, one too nebulous for Celeste to grasp entirely, came to life within her breast. What was she afraid of? Herself? Her body’s reaction to seeing him naked from the waist up? She suspected this might be so, though since no man had ever drawn such an amorous, sexual response from her body before, she was sailing in uncharted waters. She was experiencing something shockingly important and unprecedented—she just didn’t know what it was. And then, startlingly, for the first time in her life, she was intensely aware of looking at a man and feeling her clitoris tingle because of it.

Heath finished combing the horse and led it into a stall. It wasn’t until he closed the gate and turned back toward her that he noticed he was not alone, and he reacted with a start.

“I’m sorry!” Celeste said quickly. “I just came in and…um…” She couldn’t tell him she’d spent the past couple of minutes visually caressing him. Women of her standing in society simply didn’t say such things aloud. They might think them, naturally, but they never admitted to it. It just wouldn’t be right. Especially not with the hired help. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Heath’s blue eyes were wary as he replied, “Did I forget to do something for you, Lady Fallon?”

She heard the censure in his tone and in his careful choice of proper nouns. For trespassing into his masculine world of the stable, he demoted her from Lady Celeste to Lady Fallon. She was beginning to understand just what stock she placed on Heath’s opinion.

“No,” she said after a moment’s pause. Facing her, the naked splendor of his chest, shoulders, and abdomen touched her senses in ways she had never previously thought possible. She felt her labia swell and begin to get slick with her own cream. “No, you’ve fulfilled all of your duties admirably.” Her tongue made a futile attempt to moisten her lips. “In fact, so admirably I thought a little reward was called for.”

When she saw the right side of his mouth quirk upward in a characteristic half smile and saw the dimple form in his cheek, she felt a sudden surge of confidence. Her behavior still baffled her, but when she saw not merely pleasure but appreciation shine in his eyes, she knew she had made the right decision in coming to the stable.

“I brought you something,” she said, stepping forward, extending the whiskey bottle in offering.

“Before I accept, m’lady, decency dictates that I at least put my shirt back on.” Heath’s grin broadened. “I didn’t expect to see you, and it’s been a muggy day, so I didn’t see the harm in taking off my new livery. I want it to look nice so you won’t be embarrassed being seen with me.”

“Completely understandable.” But as she watched Heath step over to the railing where he had deposited his clothing, a small, impish voice inside her head whispered frantically, Tell him you don’t mind! Tell him he doesn’t have to put his shirt back on! The tingling in her pussy became a bit more insistent. Her body’s reaction was unprecedented. Her nipples felt tight, and she was afraid their aroused state would be visible.

As Heath pulled the high-collared, white cotton shirt over his head, she once again watched the sensual, leonine rippling of muscles moving beneath skin. And when his shirt was properly arranged once more, though not tucked into his trousers, she was consciously aware of being far more at ease and much less discomfited by her proximity to him. Her clitoris, however, remained as acutely aware of its surroundings as a gazelle surrounded by a pride of lions.

“I’m honored, Lady Celeste,” Heath said, a grin bordering on wicked playing with his mouth as he strode forward. “I can see by the label the whiskey’s from Ireland. And though the Irish and I have skinned up a few knuckles in the past, that’s not a good reason to say everything and everyone from the country is without value.”

She handed him the bottle and was delighted by his enthusiastic appreciation of her gift. He held the bottle in both hands, at arm’s length, as one might a newborn child for a more objective perspective.

“Have you ever had it before?”

Heath shook his head. “No, but I’ve heard of it. It’s supposed to be the finest of the fine.” He looked at her, and his eyebrows lifted comically. “Too good for the likes of me.”

“Why don’t you get a glass and give it a try?” She was delighted now that she had acted rashly and left her home to deliver a gift immediately, despite the lateness of the hour. It wouldn’t be the last bottle of Irish whiskey he would receive as a gift from the unlikely source of Lady Celeste Fallon.

“One glass, or two?”

ADULT EXCERPT

Celeste closed her eyes and, for a moment, consciously forced her thoughts to be composed and rational. She was laid out over an incredibly powerful man’s lap, and her skirt was being lifted up her legs with taunting lethargy, creeping up the backs of her legs inch by inch. Her face was very close to the floor, and when she turned her head, she could see chair legs and table legs a few feet away. She could hear Laine splashing at the washbasin, but she couldn’t see him. With her head and shoulders almost pointing straight down, her breasts threatened to tumble out over the top of her straining neckline.

“Paradise!” Heath said suddenly, joy ringing in his tone as Celeste’s buttocks were exposed.

Oh, God! This isn’t going to stop! Celeste thought as she simultaneously heard Heath’s declaration and felt her dress and petticoat raise above her hips. The garments were bundled together and shoved beneath her bound wrists.

“Take a look, Laine. See these stockings? Pure silk. Only real ladies can afford pure silk.”

His tone was both appreciative and yet mocking. This was an experienced man enjoying himself, but willing to take the time to teach a lesson to a man less experienced than himself. Delicate fingertips glided up the back of her left thigh, and the touch sent a tremor through Celeste. Then a large, warm hand cupped her right buttock, squeezed, and then did the same to the left.

“Ninety-nine out of a hundred men go their whole lives without ever seeing as perfect a woman’s ass as this. Take your time and look, Laine. Memorize how she looks, because if you’re looking at Lady Celeste, then you’re looking at one of God’s perfect works of art in human form.”

A hundred emotions warred within her. She felt humiliated and abused—and how could she not, being bound up with strips of leather and tossed over a man’s lap like a misbehaving child about to get her comeuppance? But she could also visualize herself in her evening gown, her décolletage nearly insufficient to hold the weight of her breasts in her upside-down position. And there was the sure knowledge that both Heath and Laine were looking at her bottom, the cheeks of her ass thrust up high and naked, on display for their perusal and amusement.

But a little voice whispered in her head, Wouldn’t it have been ten thousand times worse if he had insulted your ass instead of singing its praises? Admit it, you would give up chocolate for the season just to hear him say those words again!

She squeezed her eyes shut. Yes, it was true. She would give up chocolate for the entire season if only to hear those words of praise and adoration again.

“And Laine, this beautiful ass, these beautiful, pale cheeks, need a good spanking. A spanking severe enough that these white ass cheeks turn pink. And, my good young man, that’s just what they’re going to get.”

Celeste’s reverie was cut short with those words. She arched her back, trying to see over her shoulder. Heath pushed her head and shoulders down with his left hand.

“Fight me and you’ll only make it worse for yourself,” he said in a low tone.

But worse might be better for me, a devilish voice whispered inside her traitorous mind. Worse might be magnificent!

A hand grabbed her wrists and pushed them toward her shoulders, causing her to slide a bit on his lap, her face coming even closer to the floor. And a moment later, without time to anticipate, the stinging slap of a broad-palmed, callused workingman’s hand came down hard on her left cheek.

“Ouch!” she gasped. “Heath, you hurt me!”

“That’s the point, m’lady.”

His palm came down on her right cheek next, as hard as the first time, but perhaps not. It was the shock of the first slap, she decided, more than the sting, to which she reacted. However it was, Heath held her securely, her buttocks up high as his right hand came down with slow precision, heating her ass more and more with each spank.

She didn’t want it to be true. She didn’t want to believe this humiliation, this punishment, could have elements of eroticism to it…but it did. Even though her ass stung and throbbed, she found herself anticipating the next slap. And as erotic to her senses as the actual sting of Heath’s big palm against the delicate skin of her bottom was the sound of him spanking her and her own helpless whimpers sounding more and more like pleasure and less and less like pain.

Each time she received a spank, she squirmed on his lap, and she became distinctly, mouthwateringly aware of the long, thick, ever-growing column of hard cock pressing against her stomach.

And then the spanking stopped. Without forewarning, it just stopped. She was so disoriented by a lust her traitorous body was enjoying that when Heath stopped his assault on her buns, she almost asked him, in a complaining way, why the punishment had ended. After all, she hadn’t asked him to stop, and if she was to judge by the rigidity of the erection digging into her stomach, Heath certainly didn’t want to stop. So then, why?

Extraordinary lust, she was beginning to understand, could make the concepts of logic and reason merely words without meanings. The nerve endings in her pussy seemed particularly heightened to the potential for pleasure.

A thick fingertip touched lightly at the juncture of her slit. The digit moved up and down her length, caressing featherlightly, experimentally. Celeste’s clitoris pulsed with an empty hunger.

“She’s wet,” Heath explained. “Look how easy she lets me in.”

The single finger pushed into her pussy, and the friction was so stimulating she bit her lower lip to keep from sighing. The conflicting sensations of her buns stinging from the spanking, and her pussy tingling from a single finger easing between passion-swollen labia, made her bones melt.

“Get the oil.”