Free To Tame A Countess (Properly Spanked Book 2) by Annabel Joseph Page B

his hands, but he wasn’t finished with her yet. He traced a fingertip across the fading switch marks on the backs of her thighs. Her trembling turned into a shudder.
    “Be still,” he said. “I am…checking the marks.”
    Yes, he’d put marks on his wife before she was even his wife. He had her over his lap now, her bottom bared for his own desirous enjoyment. He moved his fingers up the back of her leg, to the alluring curves of her rounded cheeks. He ran his thumb up over one of them, marveling at her smooth skin, stained pink by two solid spanks. He could feel her breathing change when he did it. Ah, God, she was so sensitive.
    The things he could do with that sensitivity… He couldn’t wait to exploit it, expand it. Revel in it. He ached to slide his palm down between her legs, and thrust fingers into her tight, virginal opening. He wondered if she was wet. He was dying to know, but he wouldn’t allow himself to touch her right this moment, because if he found her ready, he’d take her to the floor of the coach and show her the world was an even scarier place than she already believed.
    And he didn’t want to do that yet.
    Soon, but not yet, because she was afraid. Not only afraid of being married, which she admitted, but afraid of him. He could see it in her eyes, in the way she held her body, that he frightened her. Of course, this both dismayed and excited him, because he was both a civilized man and a beast. Sometimes he would let the beast out to play with her, and she would enjoy it for all that. But tonight, their wedding night, in this carriage with her shaking in terror, he would be the civilized man no matter the beastly thoughts crowding his head.
    He gave her tantalizing backside one last caress, and pulled her skirts down. “Sit up now, and behave. No more grousing about being a married lady. We’ve a nice, relaxing honeymoon to enjoy, and you’ll be pleased to know it won’t involve anyone else in society. Only you, and me.”
    “Oh,” she said, smoothing down her skirts with palpable relief. “That’s good to know. And as you’ve said, there are plenty of beds.”
    Lord save him from innocents. He stifled a sigh. Lady Baxter apparently hadn’t offered his bride any parting words of marital advice. “I perceive you are not very knowledgeable in the affairs of men and women,” he said.
    If she smoothed her gown anymore, she would wear a hole in it. “I only know they should not be in bed together.”
    He raised a brow. “Ever?”
    “It’s best that way, yes. I understand that gentlemen sometimes entertain…wild humors.”
    “Wild humors? My goodness.” He nearly laughed at this revelation, but she looked so serious he composed his expression. “Tell me about these wild humors. Do all gentlemen have them, or only certain types?”
    She looked at him warily, as if he mocked, but he was taking this conversation very seriously. “I don’t know,” she said, biting her lip. “I only know that women and men are not supposed to go to bed together because…”
    “Because why?” He was almost afraid to ask. “Because a man might be seized by wild humors?”
    She swallowed hard. “I don’t wish to speak of it.”
    “Because you’re afraid, which I find very vexing.”
    “I’m not afraid. It’s only that… My mother always told me men were not to be trusted. That they could be aggressive, and harm you.”
    His eyes narrowed. “Some can, I suppose. But it’s hardly an intrinsic male trait. Have I harmed you yet?”
    “You spanked me just now,” she pointed out. “And before, in the woods, you used a switch on me, and that really hurt.”
    “Yes, and I stopped after five middling strokes, because you were teetering on the edge of utter disintegration. At any rate, you needed to be punished because you’d done a bad thing, and you felt terrible about it. There are logical, practical reasons behind the act of corporal punishment. Sometimes a man’s got to dole out a