The preacher's chance to sample Lori-Anne #Taboo2sday

The whole story so far can be found here.

That Sunday, as Joe had promised, he brought Lori-Anne to church to get her baptized. The preacher at Joe's church was a very open-minded and liberal clergyman in certain ways, but also very conservative in others. He made it clear to Joe that he would have to examine Lori-Anne very carefully, and in private, before he would consent to baptize her.

Joe was a little taken aback, since he tended to get his own way in every situation, but he knew to be humble before the Lord. He also had a feeling he knew why Reverend White really wanted to get Lori-Anne alone before the baptism.

The preacher himself confirmed that suspicion almost immediately. "As you know, Joe, I understand completely about what we can just call Lori-Anne's biological realities. We discussed that thoroughly two years ago, when I first got to town, if you'll recall."

"And I'm very grateful for your understanding of my preferences, reverend," Joe said, nodding."I think the time has probably come, now that you've found a sweet little thing like Lori-Anne, to tell you that I share those preferences, and that before I baptize her I'd like to take her into my study and get a nice, thorough, sampling of the bridal charms."

Taboo ahoy!

Her first porn homework assignment

The mainspring of the plot of An Indecent Awakening is the idea of using a naughty porn-watching habit in the service of erotic self-knowledge. Here's a sample:

“Now we’re almost done for today, porn-girl,” Ben said in his didactic tone. “I’m going to give you your homework assignment.”

“P-please…” Stacy stammered, as the finger began to invade her most private place, but Ben simply pushed steadily against the little hole’s resistance.

“Your assignment has three parts, Stacy. The first is to think about what I’m doing right now.” He pushed even more firmly with the fingertip, and overcame the tightness of Stacy’s anus.

“Oh, God,” she whispered.

“At least three times a day,” Ben continued, “maybe when you pee, you’ll put your own hand here, touch your little asshole, and say, ‘This belongs to Ben, because I am his porn-girl.’” He pushed his finger into her bottom to the second knuckle as he gave the assignment, making Stacy whimper.

“N-no… please, sir…” she sobbed.

“Say, it Stacy. Repeat after me: ‘This belongs to Ben, because I am his porn-girl.’” He moved the finger gently in and out. “You don’t even have to put your own finger inside yet. That will happen next week. All you have to do is touch your little anus and say the words.”

“This belongs…” Stacy whispered.

“This belongs to Ben,” he supplied. He pushed the finger into her further than it had yet gone. Stacy cried out.

“This belongs to Ben, because…” she said in a desperate voice. “Because I’m his porn-girl.”

“There we go,” Ben said encouragingly. “Three times a day. Do you understand?”

Stacy nodded into the couch.

“The second part of your assignment is to watch the video that’s on your laptop called Polly Gets Caught. Do you remember that one?”

“Yes,” she admitted, though he could hear the reluctance in her voice—and he could certainly understand the reluctance given what Polly suffered in the video: things that Stacy undoubtedly, and accurately, imagined would now befall her.


“You may not touch yourself while you watch the video. You’re going to make a video of yourself watching it, for me, so I can be sure you stayed on the path of virtue. That’s the third part of your assignment. In the video, you’re going to be naked.”

Click here to buy the book on Amazon!

Is An Indecent Awakening the dirtiest book I've ever written? Answer to win five Emily Tilton books!

An awesome contest, to get you to think about buying this filthy book! Here's the blurb:

When tall, handsome Ben Weathers catches eighteen-year-old Stacy Miller watching porn and touching herself, the shy girl is utterly mortified. But Ben feels no hesitation in informing her that he thinks he's the right man to punish her thoroughly for her disgraceful behavior, and Stacy soon finds herself over his knee for a painful and humiliating bare-bottom spanking.

Ben doesn't stop there, though. Seeing the way Stacy responds to his dominance, he decides to enlist the help of her naughty viewing habits in training her to please a man. From that point, he oversees her erotic education: she will visit his home twice a week, where she will submit to him completely. Though each meeting with Ben is more shameful and indecent than the last, Stacy soon realizes that Ben has begun to teach her to embrace her true erotic self and to find pleasures she never imagined. Week after week she returns to Ben's house for more.

When Ben decides that it's time for him and his friends to give Stacy her final lesson, though, will she turn her back on her indecent awakening?

Publisher’s Note: An Indecent Awakening is an erotic novel that includes spankings, sexual scenes including a threesome, anal play, exhibitionism, elements of BDSM, and more. If such material offends you, please don’t buy this book.

If you're intrigued and perhaps even, um, excited, click here to buy the book on Amazon!

The contest part is short and sweet. I thought it might be fun to get people talking about dirty books in general and my dirty books in particular, so…

To get a chance to win five free Emily Tilton books, all you have to do is fill out this form (click here)  and then comment on this post with your answer to one of these two questions: 1) "How dirty is An Indecent Awakening?" or 2) "What's the dirtiest book you've ever read, and why?"

I'll randomly choose one commenter to win five free books, two to win three free books, and three to win one free book! Tons of blazing hot books and tons of lucky winners!

The contest will close for entries at 11:59pm Eastern US time on Friday, 3 April. I'll announce the winners on Saturday, 4 April, and notify them via email.

What happens when a girl gets caught watching porn? An Indecent Awakening

Just out!

When tall, handsome Ben Weathers catches eighteen-year-old Stacy Miller watching porn and touching herself, the shy girl is utterly mortified. But Ben feels no hesitation in informing Stacy that he thinks he’s the right man to punish her thoroughly for her disgraceful behavior, and she soon finds herself over his knee for a painful and humiliating bare-bottom spanking. 

Ben doesn’t stop there, though. Seeing the way Stacy responds to his dominance, he decides to enlist the help of her naughty viewing habits in training her to please a man. From that point, he oversees her erotic education: she will visit his home twice a week, where she will submit to him completely. Though each meeting with Ben is more shameful and indecent than the last, Stacy soon realizes that Ben has begun to teach her to embrace her true erotic self and to find pleasures she never imagined. Week after week she returns to Ben’s house for more. 

When Ben decides that it’s time for him and his friends to give Stacy her final lesson, though, will she turn her back on her indecent awakening? 


Publisher’s Note: An Indecent Awakening is an erotic novel that includes spankings, sexual scenes including a threesome, anal play, exhibitionism, elements of BDSM, and more. If such material offends you, please don’t buy this book.

Click here to buy the book on Amazon!

The dirtiest book I've ever written #SatSpanks

To call this book "the dirtiest book I've ever written" is saying a great deal, as you may know if you've read, say, EXPLORATIONS. For thematic reasons, as you'll probably be able to see just in this snippet, I feel comfortable making the assertion.

As he drove home, Ben considered the shape of the lesson-plan he would design for Stacy.

First of all, Stacy would go over Ben's knee, like it or not, for a long hard spanking: he owed that to Jeff Miller, didn't he? No father deserved a daughter who played with herself while watching porn, and it would be better for Ben to take care of it himself, to spare Jeff the embarrassment and trouble.

Afterwards, of course, though perhaps Jeff wouldn't approve of this next step quite as much as he might approve of Ben spanking his lustful daughter, Ben would lay down the law. He would start Stacy on what he called "the path of virtue," and he would require certain naughty things of her. Once she had accepted his "invitation" to undergo training at his house, and become familiar with how things would work, Ben would make her do several things with which she would clearly be familiar, from her porn-watching. Stacy would obey him, and please him: she would embark on the special course of study Ben proposed, because she wouldn't want either to be spanked again or to have her viewing habits shared with her parents.

Click here to buy it on Amazon! Here's the blurb:

When tall, handsome Ben Weathers catches eighteen-year-old Stacy Miller watching porn and touching herself, the shy girl is utterly mortified. But Ben feels no hesitation in informing her that he thinks he's the right man to punish her thoroughly for her disgraceful behavior, and Stacy soon finds herself over his knee for a painful and humiliating bare-bottom spanking.

Ben doesn't stop there, though. Seeing the way Stacy responds to his dominance, he decides to enlist the help of her naughty viewing habits in training her to please a man. From that point, he oversees her erotic education: she will visit his home twice a week, where she will submit to him completely. Though each meeting with Ben is more shameful and indecent than the last, Stacy soon realizes that Ben has begun to teach her to embrace her true erotic self and to find pleasures she never imagined. Week after week she returns to Ben's house for more.

When Ben decides that it's time for him and his friends to give Stacy her final lesson, though, will she turn her back on her indecent awakening?


Publisher’s Note: An Indecent Awakening is an erotic novel that includes spankings, sexual scenes including a threesome, anal play, exhibitionism, elements of BDSM, and more. If such material offends you, please don’t buy this book.

Read all the Saturday Spankings!

Riding St. George: EXPLORATIONS files

I'm re-running the stories that serve as deep background for EXPLORATIONS. The story continues from this post. It's worth noting that I've actually developed quite a bit in my thinking about domestic discipline since I originally wrote this post. My current thinking is probably best expressed in Old-Fashioned Values, but I think this post from the files is of historical interest, though perhaps only to me.

_____

He sat down next to me on the bench, and took me into his arms.

"You're an asshole," I said, quietly and precisely, fighting his embrace half-heartedly, but allowing him to gather me in and put my head on his chest, my cheek against the wool of his pea-coat (it must have been December?).

"I know," he replied. "I called my Dad and said he should be ashamed of himself for giving us oil stock."

"No."

"Yes."

"Ohmygodfuckyou," I said, and burst into tears again. "I love you so much."

See, the problem with being alive is that before you're married, he'll make that gesture, but life wears you down, and in the same situation today he'd without doubt tell me to get over it. The nice thing, such as it is, is that I would, probably after not speaking to him for two days. This kind of thing actually makes me wonder again about the couples who are really living a domestic-discipline lifestyle--especially the ones who apparently aren't doing it for religious reasons, where you can imagine saying to yourself "My husband is being an asshole, but if I tell him so I'll go to Hell, so I'll just let him keep being an asshole."

When religion isn't involved, though, if I understand how it's supposed to work, and how the psychological benefits are supposed to accrue to me if I embrace my womanliness by letting my man make all my important decisions (sorry, but, for me, personally, frankly, no-go, in any non-erotic context), then in this situation with the oil stock, if I had protested against my man's accepting the stock, let alone told him that he and his parents could go fuck themselves, I would have received one of those "punishment spankings" that are so delicious to contemplate erotically and, to me, so repugnant ethically.

Charles would have grabbed me, and dragged me to my room, and taken off his belt, and ripped down my jeans--maybe thrown me over the edge of the bed. (See Emily's First Caning for one of my elaborations of this theme.) He would have held me down and beaten me as hard as he could--even if I'd used our safeword--while I kicked and screamed and tried to get away, until he saw the resistance go out of me, and I was (magically, I guess) saying "I'm sorry, Sir; I was wrong; I see now, because you've hit my ass over and over with your belt, demonstrating your strength and my weakness, your masculinity and my femininity, your headship of me, that oil companies are good." (Or, rather, I guess I'm supposed to be saying something like "Even though I think oil companies are bad, you are a man and I am a woman and you make decisions and I abide by them, and because I swore at you I deserve to be beaten, and I am ever so grateful to you that you have deigned to beat me with your sacred belt and that now, like the guys in the DD stories, you are going to use me roughly--but lovingly--to console me for being a weak woman who needs beating to stay in line." Actually, the using part I could enjoy.)

But how could that be a way to live ethically for me, given that I believe my mind is as good as Charles' mind, and my values are as important as his values, and have to be so?

Anyway, there on the bench I looked into his eyes. "You are going to spank me so hard tonight," I said, just as precisely as I had spoken when I said that he and his parents could go fuck themselves, back in the apartment, "that I'm not going to be able to get out of bed tomorrow." Notice the crucial difference, reader: I was asking for the spanking after the fight was over, as a way of reframing it erotically. That made it possible for Charles to respond the way he did, reinforcing both our erotic complementarity and our ethical equality.

He had to reframe it because this moment was in some sense the real crucible of our union. It was the worst instance of trying to top from the bottom of which I've ever been guilty, I think, though there are many to choose from. It was in its own way like that stupid moment at the end of the terrible film version of Histoire d'O when O brands Sir Stephen. Yuck.

He looked calmly back into my eyes. "No," he said, "I'm not. Tonight you and I are going to make love."

"You can't be serious," I said.

"I'm serious."

"What? Missionary position?" (we had very, very rarely fucked in missionary position to that point; there are definitely ways to make it a D/s sort of position, of course--we just hadn't yet started exploring them, and I associated missionary position with my sex life before Charles, when I was waiting for my top.)

He nodded. "But. . ." he said gravely, "more importantly, you're going to ride St. George."

I gave a bark of laughter. I hadn't known his Victorian reading was as extensive as mine. Suddenly I realized I was extremely warm between my thighs. "That's the kinkiest thing I think you've ever suggested," I said, as evenly as I could.My punishment was not to get a punishment, but instead, literally, to start learning to bottom from the top.

Visually inspired: Houses of Parliament

(See here for an explanation of this series and here for an index to it.)

Shannon couldn't bear to look at the MP to whom the Lord Chancellor had given her. But she complied with his command nevertheless, taking down the left shoulder strap of the lacy black bra.

"You are being punished," the Lord Chancellor had said. "John is well known as a very thorough spanker, and so I have asked him to take you to his discipline room in Southwark for the afternoon. You will wear the black set, under a long coat. As soon as you step into the cab, you will remove the coat, and John will tell you what to do from there."

"Look at you, you naughty girl," John Embers, MP, said. "In your wicked black things here in a respectable cab."

Shannon still couldn't look at him, but she felt her body responding as the elegantly dressed gentleman continued, "Shall I tell you what will happen to you when we reach my discipline room? You are going to climb the stairs dressed just as you are now, with me behind you so I can watch your backside move in those wonderful knickers. Then I am going to lead you to the spanking bench, and strap you to it.

"And then, I am afraid, it will be the cane for you. The Lord Chancellor was very specific on that point--he said that you require the strictest discipline, and I can see from the way you have shamelessly exposed yourself right here in front of me, in a cab, your legs spread to show me all your charms, that the Lord Chancellor, as in everything else, is correct in his judgment of your lewdness, and its need for chastisement."

Back to the highlands! — what Emily is up to

Just started this one! Here's the very beginning. Tentative title: Emily Tilton's New Highlander Book. Heh.

______

The problem, thought Lady Alice Lourcy, daughter of the Earl of Mercester, betrothed to wed the Lord of Lormoran, is not that Lord Sperry is a loathsome man. 

Roderick Sperry, Lord of Lormoran certainly was a loathsome man. Alice had begun to understand, however, that His Lordship's loathsomeness did not in fact represent the most important impediment to her happiness. 

The problem, she thought, is that he is adept at concealing it. 

None of the stories Alice had heard — of seduction and even rape, of murder, of pillage on a grand scale — came with the slightest proof. Indeed, Alice herself might not have credited them had she not seen the charming Lord Sperry at his exercise late one night in the park of her father's castle at Mowton, her childhood home. 

Now, as she rode North to the Scottish borderlands, to be wed to him despite all her protestations, she shuddered as she remembered the sight of him crouched over a scullery maid, whom he had bent across a marble bench. She could only make out indistinctly what he did, but it seemed so violent, with his hips pounding into the girl's little bottom, that Alice had almost screamed, but something about the way the maid cried out, as if her seducer's motions were not entirely unwelcome, made Alice hold her tongue.

Her daughter's good fortune #Taboo2sday

The whole story so far can be found here. We're continuing with a letter Kay, Lori-Anne's future sister-in-law, is writing to Lori-Anne's mother, Mrs. Cohen.

-----

In fact, Mrs. Cohen, you'll probably be quite surprised to learn that your daughter received a whipping just tonight, for the disrespect she showed her fiancé while she and I were out shopping for her wedding gown this afternoon. I witnessed the whipping myself, and I can report that my brother knows how to tan a hide so that a girl learns her lesson. Lori-Anne is standing right across the room from me right now, with her nose to the corner, and her backside is covered with a mess of pretty red streaks. I don't think she'll be sassing anyone again soon, and so you can expect her to be on her best behavior when she sees you at the wedding.

Just so's you understand how it is, Mrs. Cohen, Lori-Anne has learned to take my brother's manhood deep down her throat, but she'll be a virgin on her wedding-night, and entitled to wear that white gown. Don't worry your pretty head about your daughter's lack of "real" lady bits, because that's just how Joe likes her: he often tells me that the thought of using what Lori-Anne does have just like a traditional bridegroom does with a traditional bride, all night long, thrills him even more when he thinks of what a special kind of love he and your sweet daughter have.

Well, I'd better go, Mrs. Cohen. Joe wants me to help Lori-Anne get ready to please him with her mouth. I can't wait to meet you and congratulate you on your daughter's good fortune!

Very truly yours,
Kay Weston

How can you resist more taboo?  

Exclusive rights — Her Shameful Audition

This one's especially for anyone who liked the tease I posted Saturday… We pick up right where that snippet left off.

“Lots of spanking?” Kirsten asked, and then, instead of answering immediately with words, Michael moved his hand boldly to her bottom.

“Yes,” he said. “Lots.” Kirsten drew a very sharp breath. Did he really have his hand there, cupping her little backside? Was he telling her about consequences like that? His hand felt so possessive, so commanding, that it seemed to rob her of her ability to think straight.

“I—” Kirsten said, but then they heard voices coming up the steps.

Before she could say anything, Michael said, “Once they go by, we’ll go back down. I’ll make sure they don’t see your face, okay?”

“Okay,” Kirsten said quietly. The eroticism of the moment evaporated, but it felt to her like it had gone gently and transformed into this man she had just met that afternoon taking as much care of her as any old friend or family member. Or lover. Kirsten nestled her face in Michael’s chest and just enjoyed the feeling of his arms around her, and the left hand that he hadn’t moved from her rear end. She smiled as she wondered what he was experiencing, having his hand there, on the person of the girl from the movies.

The voices, a man’s and a woman’s, stopped at the top of the steps, when they realized that another couple had preceded them into the small space of the lookout. “It’s alright,” Michael said. “We’re just going.” He turned Kirsten so that she faced away from the interlopers, keeping his right arm around her shoulders and relinquishing—with reluctance Kirsten hoped—his possessive grip on her bottom. Would he spank her? Her heart fluttered just thinking about the question.

Michael shepherded her to the top of the stairs and let her descend in front of him. They were both silent on the way down. When they reached the street, Michael took her hand, and Kirsten realized suddenly that all the forwardness she had worked so hard at—inviting herself on his walk, inviting him into her house, taking his hand, putting her own hand on his chest—had amounted to a kind of plea for him to turn it around.

Yes, I’m Kirsten August, movie star, she had tried to say with those actions, but you can touch me. Please touch me. And adore me, yes, but… But what? What had been missing, always, when a man got close, even that sandy night in Jordan when she had been sure that Jack Quentin would deflower her by morning? But spank me, too? She shook her head, trying to figure out why she had responded the way she had: to Michael, to his screenplay, to his hand on her ass.

But take my hand. Kirsten could definitely settle on that much, for now. Take my hand as if I belong to you, and put your hand on my ass and hold me there, to let me know that you would like to have exclusive rights to it.

Click here to buy the book on Amazon!

The amazing Morganna Williams answers Emily's questions

I'm absolutely delighted to have Morganna Williams, who exploded onto the spanking-fic scene with The Commander's Mate in September, over to answer my questions and share her new book, His Girl His Rules!

Why do you write?

I write because I have to. All of these stories are rolling around in my head and they need to come out. I started out just writing shorts and gradually moved on to novellas and novels. In a way I was writing before I started putting the words to paper. I used to entertain myself as a kid by running dialogue and scenarios with made up characters in my head. Of course they were often silly but even then it wasn’t unusual for a spanking to occur. 

What's your desert-island fantasy? (If you were marooned on a desert-island with only a single fantasy to get off to for the rest of your life, what would you choose?)

Hmmmm...that’s a very interesting question. I have one that I always come back to; A man tied to a bed and his lover who is usually submissive teasing him to the brink again and again while he orders her to untie him and threatens to make her pay for her actions. Finally, she straddles him and rides him a bit but finds she needs him taking her hard and fast so she unties him, expecting he’ll immediately finish what she started. Of course he immediately turns her over his knee and spanks her with his hand until her bottom is scarlet. Then urges her onto her hands and knee, she goes eagerly but then is dismayed to look over her shoulder and find a hairbrush in his hand which he uses very generously before taking her hard from behind. He of course wrings multiple orgams from her until she’s promising to be good and begging to rest. I actually wrote a short story along these lines. :-)

Do you think of BDSM and/or spankophilia as a practice or as an orientation, or as something else, and what does your answer mean to you? 

I feel like I was born a spanko. When I was five and out to dinner with my parents and my father’s boss and his wife. I asked the wife if her husband spanked her. My mother of course nearly died and told me “We don’t ask people such personal questions young lady!” Thankfully my father didn’t hear. The funniest part though is that the lady actually answered me and I’ve never forgotten it. She said, “He tries dear, it doesn’t really hurt but I pretend it does.” Since adults spanking adults was never discussed in my home and I was spanked only a couple of times that I remember I feel its safe to say I was born spanko. BDSM is just a natural progression from there. Anyway, those are my thoughts.

Who's a favorite character from your own work, and why?

I think my favorite is Shannon. I have another book coming out soon featuring her and her relationship with Landon. It’s kind of set up like a spanking situational comedy with each chapter being an episode. You will see Shannon is a bit of a mess but she is also a lot like me. I have the tendency to not always think before I act and don’t pay near enough attention to life’s little details like speed limits, tires, due dates...etc. Its not intentional but I tend to get caught up in the moment sometimes. I’m better than I used to be but I still have what I like to call “Situations” I’ve always thought situation prone sounded much nicer than accident prone or disaster waiting to happen. 

Who's a favorite character from someone else's work (erotic or non-erotic) and why?

I think Holly Golightly from Breakfast At Tiffany’s. Something about her deep sadness covered by the bright exterior calls to me. I want her to be happy. Of course she ended up with George so how could she not be?

Thank you so much for having me as a guest on your blog today Emily. Here is an excerpt from my new book His Girl, His Rules. I hope you like it! In this scene Glory just threw a little hissy fit at dinner with Gabriel and decided to leave without him; lets see how it works out for her:

Excerpt

Grabbing her purse, Glory walked swiftly away from Gabriel and out the front door of the restaurant. She smiled thinly at the valet and asked him to call her a cab.

“That won’t be necessary,” Gabriel told him from behind her as she felt his hand close on her arm.

Glaring up at him in outrage, she tried in vain to tug her arm from his hold. “Let me go this instant!”

He tugged her up against him and leaned down to whisper in her ear, “I suggest you lose the attitude fast, young lady, or you’ll feel the flat of my hand right here and now. Are you going to behave yourself or give this young man a free show?”

Glory felt her face heat up as she glanced nervously at the valet, who was watching them curiously. “I’m sorry; I won’t need that cab after all.”

“Good decision, sweetness,” Gabriel said as he planted a hand in the small of her back and urged her into the parking lot. As he helped her into the car, Gabriel pulled her skirt up in back until her bare bottom was exposed.

“What are you doing?” she asked in alarm.

“I want your bare bottom sitting directly on the seat,” he told her as he rolled the back of her skirt up until he could tuck the whole thing into her waistband.

Glory was scandalized; the front of her was completely covered, but anyone looking into the car would be able to see a large portion of bare hip on both sides where the skirt tucked behind her waist. “I can’t ride all the way home like this!”

She moved around, achingly aware of the coolness of the leather seat beneath her and shocked by the escalating level of her own arousal. What was wrong with her?

Gabriel leaned in to loom over her seat, seeming to surround her with his body heat as he captured her eyes with his stern gaze. “You can and will ride home exactly like this with your bare bottom right there on that seat. I want to be able to look over and see that you’re doing exactly as I instructed. Hopefully, by the time we get back to your house you’ll be in the right frame of mind to apologize for your childish behavior.”

Glory felt embarrassed tears begin to well up and she sniffed them back stubbornly. How had they gone from such a nice evening to this so fast?

Blurb

Though Glory Walters writes erotic novels about firm-handed men who know how to deal with feisty women, she’s ashamed to admit she’s never experienced anything of the sort herself. But then she meets Gabriel—Sergeant Gabriel to the men he leads on the local SWAT team, but Master Gabriel to her—and suddenly the scenes in her books don’t seem so far-fetched anymore.

Gabriel has just been going through the motions in life since his wife’s death four years ago, but almost from the moment he sets eyes on her, he wants Glory as his own. Despite never having been taken in hand before, she responds beautifully to a good, hard, bare-bottom spanking, and his dominant lovemaking leaves her breathless. But when Glory foolishly puts herself in extreme danger, she soon discovers that naughty girls who take risks with their safety get their bottoms thoroughly punished… inside and out.

Publisher’s Note: His Girl, His Rules is an erotic novel that contains spankings, sexual scenes, anal play, elements of BDSM, and more. If such material offends you, please don’t buy this book.

Click here to buy the book on Amazon!

Three straight days #SatSpanks

A very teasing little excerpt, this week! Kirsten, my heroine, is asking Michael about the screenplay that's partly based on her own misfortune.

“When he spanks her,” Kirsten said, summoning all her courage, “what happens afterward?” Suddenly she became conscious of the way that his left hand seemed to encompass the whole of the small of her back, pulling her tummy in against his hips. Could she feel something hard there, up against her?

“Kinky sex,” Michael said. “Best sex of their life. Three straight days of it.”

“Three?” Kirsten whispered.

“Three,” Michael affirmed.

Click here to buy the book on Amazon! Read all the Saturday Spankings!

The crux of the matter, in a D/s fight: EXPLORATIONS files

I'm re-running the stories that serve as deep background for EXPLORATIONS. The story continues from this post.

-----
The absolute core of the problem was that I was worried that maybe I didn't even know whether when he said "Of course I don't think of you that way" (in response to me screaming "That's right--that's right--I'm a hysterical female tree-hugger--there's no reason to care that our world is going to Hell in a handbasket you privileged fuck! You just want me to forget about my ethics and take whatever you and your family are kind enough to give me!") he was lying, or, maybe worse, telling the truth but unable to realize that subconsciously he did think of me as a subservient wife, and the whole fucking me in the ass when I demanded that he fuck me in the ass thing was a sham to cover over an icky traditional man from an icky traditional family.

Even worse than that, I wasn't able to articulate the above at all. I was just screaming at Charles, for about five minutes, and then, which is the worst possible sign with me, I got very quiet, and very precise, and I left. I didn't start crying until I had reached my favorite spot on the Green, a bench near Center Church, where some of my ancestors are buried. (So I've got a Mulan thing, so what?) Then I just gave myself over to the sobs.

So you're probably thinking, if you've seen the Steve Martin/Diane Keaton re-make of Father of the Bride, that this is like the blender, and it totally is, I guess, except for the anal-submission, which Kimberly Williams' character just doesn't look like she's into (you never know, though; I often wonder whether anyone can tell just by looking at me that I'm what Charles, when he wants to make me weak in the knees, calls an "ass-wife" [see Emily's Dark Gift]; that's also what the Roissy triskelion ring is for in Story of O of course--so if a ring is needed to indicate a sub who's any master's to use, can it be obvious?).

Yes, it was a typical pre-marital "How do you see me, really?" fight. But I had by that point given Charles everything to an extent that I think most people who say they've given their spouse or their prospective spouse "everything" can't even dream about. You can see it in conventional terms of a modern young woman coming to terms with the patriarchal traditions of marriage, but it was more complicated for me because I had sought in Charles a partner who, precisely, would play out the D/s side of those traditions with me in the bedroom (well, and the living-room, and the library, and any dungeon he might build, and, if he felt like ordering me to my knees in a darkened movie theatre. . . you get the idea). My erotic life revolved around the sexual side of exactly the traditions whose political and social side I had suddenly come up against, so when I thought about Charles' family controlling my financial existence I couldn't be sure that my incurable, panty-moistening yearning to be over his knee learning how to be a good wife for him had blinded me to my less stimulating but more important ethical need--indeed, duty--to be a virtuous, free woman.

Here's what I'm proud of. I didn't let the sex--the unbelievable, life-altering, dream-fulfilling sex--matter, in the end. I suppose I'm being cliché there, and I should hedge and make you think better of my powers as a narrator by admitting that the actual sex rarely rose to that height. Angles are uncompromising, and in the moment you generally have less than a minute to get an angle right before one of you, or both of you, have become so anxious, or so angry, that your chances at something really wonderful are gone for the night. But the play, and, more, the feeling that I had someone to play with--well, that's the life-altering part, and I had it, and have it, with Charles.

Visually inspired: the seatless ones

(See here for an explanation of this series and here for an index to it.)

"You know the panties I mean, Jennifer. The seatless ones. The ones I bought for you and put out on the dresser this morning."

Jennifer blushed crimson.

"You're going to put them on under your dress, and go to the living-room, and get over the coffee-table. You're going to pull your dress up just enough so that when you look back at the mirror, you can see yourself in the panties, and think about what's going to happen when I get home. Then you're going to wait, just like that, until I arrive."

"Wh-what's going to happen then, Wes?"

"I think you mean 'Sir'."

Jennifer swallowed hard. "What's going to happen then, Sir?" she whispered into the phone.

"I'm going to spank you, for spending so much on the credit card. I'm going to spank you right on that delicious bottom of yours, so nicely exposed in those special panties. I'm going to use my hand, and then my belt. And then. . ."

"Yes, Sir?" Jennifer could barely breathe, thinking about it.

"Then I'm going to show you why I really bought those panties for you."

A deal with the devil, for a voluptuous schoolmistress: what Emily is up to

This one got way out of control very quickly, and became much grander than I'd intended. Unlike Trained at the Castle, though, the process of wild elaboration for Miss Halton's Preparatory Academy for Girls has flowed almost seamlessly, perhaps because my mind seems to live in the Victorian period most of the time anyway.

This excerpt will seem fairly mysterious, perhaps, but I imagine you'll be able to discern the outline of what I'm hoping will prove a fascinating, and very hot, story.

The vexation rose in Clarissa's mind, as it always did, at the recollection of the bargain with the devil she had made when the duke chartered the school. To recall, at the same time, the striking irony that Mrs. Fayerweather, too, must think she had bargained with the forces of Hell in the very same transaction did not ease the smart.

The conflict Anne must surely feel now, having had her visit from the duke, would only grow this evening and night, at the castle, even as her understanding increased. Clarissa told herself that she must allow the girl to make her own decision. Clarissa's own heart lay with the minority of the girls who, like Sarah and Esther, resisted the siren song of false modesty that Ursula Gregory and Joan Porter sang, in perfect concert with their doyenne, the only truly wicked woman at Miss Halton's Academy, as far as Clarissa was concerned: All you must do, to win your way back into society, is pretend that you do not crave the shameful things in which you must take part tonight. Nevertheless, even Clarissa could not deny that for girls like Ursula, the idea that they would become the apparently respectable wife of a man who demanded only that they never give a sign of being his filthy little whore, and wink at his fucking whomever else he pleased, made much the fairest prospect of happiness.

Without that sort of gentleman caller, Miss Halton's Academy would not have constituted a viable proposition: Clarissa knew it well. Men like Esther's Mr. Adams, and perhaps also — Clarissa fervently hoped — Sarah's Mr. Westenra, who interested themselves in a different sort of life to the one envisioned by most, did not exist in enough profusion to render her school useful to society on their own. Nor were there enough Lord Lerners, whose grandeur made the prospect of serving as his special chambermaid attractive to some of the girls in the respectable set.

No, one needed many of the more ordinary sort of gentleman, who, flattered by the duke's friendship and overwhelmed by the voluptuous glamour of a party at the castle, came to call upon the Ursulas and Joans, and then took them away to be married. These men fretted themselves not at all that the duke, as well as his other friends, had fucked their blushing brides. Rather, these ordinary gentlemen were happy to receive a wife from the Miss Halton's school: a young woman who could pretend to recovered modesty while serving her husband's lusts in her boudoir — not that the future homes of such girls as Ursula and Joan would have a room so denominated!

Clarissa served herself from the sideboard, and then sat in state at the head of the table, wishing she could hear Sarah and Anne conversing. On either side of her, though, sat Ursula and Joan, as the dormitory captains always did. If only Clarissa could at least choose the captains! But that privilege also Mrs. Fayerweather reserved for herself: by it she made certain that the charade of respectability remained in place, for the right of the captains to punish the girls in their dormitories delivered the message very effectively that despite the voluptuousness that constituted a very great part of the school's practices, the girls were to understand those lewd practices — the naked inspection, the display of their cunnies to the warders, the lascivious uniforms — as intended to teach them to value their modesty more highly than they had, hitherto.

When she had finished her cold mutton, Clarissa rose from the table, and the girls rose with her. "Time to dress, girls," she said. She took the list of gowns from her reticule, and offered it to Joan. "Miss Porter will assign gowns, and I will approve her selections."

"What color will you wear tonight, miss?" asked Sarah from the end of the table. Joan looked disapprovingly at the speaker, but Clarissa smiled.

"Red, tonight, Miss Crawley. I have a new gown from Paris."

Even Joan could not resist the charm of that revelation. "Truly?" she said, turning to Clarissa, and the schoolmistress saw for a moment the same innocent girl who had ridden here to Panton in the carriage with her from London, almost a year before, after a near seduction by a wool-merchant had reached embarrassingly public proportions.

I'm guessing Miss Halton's will appear at the end of April.

Kay writes to Lori-Anne's mama #TabooTuesday

The whole story so far can be found here.


And so Kay took it upon herself to write a note to Lori-Anne's mama, when she had discussed the matter with Joe. Joe had invited Kay to watch him punish Lori-Anne, and so they drafted the note together sitting on the couch while Lori-Anne wept with her nose to the corner of the living room and her bare bottom showing a mess of angry red welts from Joe's broad leather belt.

Dear Mrs. Cohen, the note went, My name is Kay Weston, and I'm going to be your daughter Lori-Anne's sister-in-law in just a few weeks. I know you're scratching your head, thinking I must have the wrong Mrs. Cohen, but it's time you knew that your "son" "Wesley" is really a daughter, named Lori-Anne. I'm happy to say that my brother Joe has taken Lori-Anne in hand, and is providing her with the discipline she so richly needs. I'm also happy to say that this Sunday Lori-Anne will be baptized into the true faith, so you needn't worry at all about the state of her soul. Finally, I'm thrilled to say that on Saturday the 25th, Joe will make an honest woman of your daughter, and that the party to which Lori-Anne invited you is actually her wedding to my brother! I know you'll be as thrilled as I am by the transformation Joe has brought about in your daughter: when I first met Lori-Anne, she was a willful, vain creature who didn't know how to please a man properly, but Joe has cured her of those unsubmissive ways.

Don't stop your taboo journey there!

Any similarity to persons living is, well, definitely present: Her Shameful Audition

I ripped this one from the headlines, Law and Order style. A part of me feels guilty about that, just like my character Michael Rollins does here. Another part of me knows that we have to express ourselves creatively, whether on the page or in the bedroom.

“Ooo,” Kirsten said, flashing the smile again. Michael had to tell himself to keep talking, so distracting was the sheer wattage of a Kirsten August smile. “I’m nothing but open-minded. I think that’s what the guy on the internet called me. I mean, the one guy who said I…”

For a moment Michael thought she might start to cry again, but she shook her head, and rolled her eyes.

“It wasn’t only one guy,” Michael said gently. “There were a lot of us.” A lot of us who jerked off in defense of your right to take masturbating selfies. Jesus, how was he going to avoid lying about this?

Kirsten’s eyes seemed to flash at that. “Us,” she said. “I’m going to take that as a compliment. I mean, I should, shouldn’t I?”

“Yes,” Michael said, because there was nothing else for him to say.

“But we’re not talking about any photo or photos that Michael Rollins, a 57th AD of whom I’ve never heard, may or may not have seen, are we?” Something in her tone seemed to indicate that she had chosen grim amusement over righteous fury, and Michael wondered, with a thrill of strange radiant hope, whether she had made that decision specifically in relation to him.

“No,” he said.

“We’re talking about your screenplay. Which is about love.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “So. I’m open-minded. What’s it about.”

Michael had no chance at all of softening the blow any further now, he realized. She had said she would be open-minded, and though he had planned to hem and haw a little bit more, preparing the ground about kinkiness and even BDSM specifically, he knew he couldn’t do that now. He had to answer her question—a question so pointed she had phrased it as a declaration.

He nodded sharply and said softly, so as not to be heard at other tables, but also without hesitation, “Kinky sex.”

Kirsten’s eyes widened, and she blushed again, much, much more deeply. Michael’s traitorous cock, God help him, stirred in his jeans, at the thought that Kirsten August was thinking about kink because he had put the idea in her head. What was she thinking? Why had she blushed?

“Um,” Kirsten said. “Um, well. It, um, can’t really just be about that, can it? I mean, yes, that would make it… unusual, but…”

She hadn’t called him a creep. She hadn’t stood up and walked away, or (probably more appropriate because it was her table, after all) told him to fuck off.

On the other hand, she did seem not to be particularly happy about the way she had reacted when he had, without meaning to, caught her completely off guard with his unexpected two-word response. To try to interpret this blush would possibly get him in much worse trouble even than he might have gotten into if he had tried to figure out the last one.

Just tell her the plot. You can be general about the plot, right?

“Well,” he said, looking away, toward the gleaming copper of the espresso machine, trying to pretend he hadn’t seen her turn crimson, “Girl meets boy. Girl is a rising politician. Girl does something embarrassing, and feels so guilty about it…”

“What?” Kirsten interrupted. “What does she do?”

Michael thought his heart would pound through his ribcage. “She’s trying to send a naughty picture to her husband, but she sends it to her opponent in her congressional race by mistake.”

Michael looked at her. She had set her mouth into a thin line. She seemed to be considering very minutely whether to say something. For a long, long moment, their eyes seemed locked in a single gaze, until Michael began to feel strangely light-headed, as if the two of them existed somewhere outside the real world and he was rising into the air with her, still looking straight into her ice-blue eyes.

Finally, she said, to his astonishment, “Fuck it. I’m just going to ask. Is this screenplay by any chance inspired in some way by recent events that ruined an actress’s life—never mind who the actress is?”

Michael realized he’d been holding his breath. He let it out in a sustained exhalation as he felt his face get hot. Part of him wanted to look away, but he knew he owed it to Kirsten to own up to what he had done in using her life, in a way, without her permission. More, he owed it to himself to be honest, he realized, though he knew it would end this magical moment in which he had actually become intimate with the girl he had idolized and lusted after from an impossible distance for so very long.

“Yes,” he said.

“Thank you for being honest, at least,” she said. “You’ll forgive me for saying that although part of me is…”

Michael knew exactly what she had been about to say. She was going to say “You’ll forgive me for saying that although part of me is flattered, the rest of me would like you to fuck off and die, dude who thinks it’s okay to be inspired by horrific events that I’ve had to live for the past three months.”

But then something seemed to change in her face: to grow softer. “No, fuck it,” she continued, cutting herself off. “No. No. I want to hear more about the screenplay. I want you to tell me the whole plot right now.”

“What?” Michael asked, feeling his eyebrows rise practically into his scalp.

“You heard me, Michael Rollins, who I’ve never heard of. I’m thinking your congress-girl gets punished, and I want to hear about it.”

Click here to buy the book on Amazon!

To spank a movie star #SatSpanks

My new book Her Shameful Audition is about the reigning Academy-Award-winning best actress and the man who takes her in hand.

It may or may not have been connected that after breaking up with Heather, he fell asleep thinking about spanking Kirsten August. Well, fell asleep after jerking off, thinking about spanking Kirsten August.

Her character in The Haunted Air refused to see that her premonition of the plane-crash hadn't caused the plane to crash. She kept blaming herself, breaking down in an elevator before finding the strength to carry on (this was the scene that all the critics called "Oscar-worthy," and it was indeed extremely moving). In Michael's imagination, he entered the elevator, and pushed the emergency stop. Then he told Kirsten to bend over and touch her toes, and he pulled her skirt up, and her panties down (in a previous scene, a bedroom scene, she had been wearing some very lacy pink ones). Then he spanked her bare bottom very hard, telling her that she must not blame herself: to submit to a higher power would make her stronger in the end.

Cick here to buy the book on Amazon! Here's the blurb:

After a particularly shameful photo of twenty-three-year-old movie star Kirsten August is leaked online, her fall from grace is swift and she is soon without a job and feeling hopeless. When handsome, confident screenwriter Michael Rollins finds her crying in a local coffee shop and offers to cheer her up, Kirsten agrees to give him a chance.

Upon learning that Michael is working on a screenplay about romance and kinky sex, Kirsten presses him for details. It turns out that the screenplay mirrors her own situation in many ways, which upsets Kirsten at first, until she considers that this may be the only role she is offered for a while and if she plays the part well she might earn back some respect in the industry.

But when she asks to try out for the role, she is shocked to discover what Michael has planned for the audition: he will have her recreate the moment she took the fateful selfie, and then he will give her the bare bottom spanking she deserves. Kirsten quickly realizes that if she accepts this part, she won’t just be submitting to her director’s instructions while the cameras are rolling. Though she blushes to admit it, the thought of being stripped bare, punished thoroughly, and dominated completely excites her deeply, but is she truly ready to put herself in Michael’s hands so that he can train her to be his?


Publisher’s Note: Her Shameful Audition is an erotic romance novel that includes spankings, sexual scenes, anal play, elements of BDSM, and more. If such material offends you, please don’t buy this book.

Read all the Saturday Spankings!

New release! Her Shameful Audition: a hacked selfie leads to movie star D/s

I'm very proud of this book, because I think I managed to capture something important about how we kinksters/spankos sometimes relate to the movie stars we adore from afar.

After a particularly shameful photo of twenty-three-year-old movie star Kirsten August is leaked online, her fall from grace is swift and she is soon without a job and feeling hopeless. When handsome, confident screenwriter Michael Rollins finds her crying in a local coffee shop and offers to cheer her up, Kirsten agrees to give him a chance. 

Upon learning that Michael is working on a screenplay about romance and kinky sex, Kirsten presses him for details. It turns out that the screenplay mirrors her own situation in many ways, which upsets Kirsten at first, until she considers that this may be the only role she is offered for a while and if she plays the part well she might earn back some respect in the industry. 

But when she asks to try out for the role, she is shocked to discover what Michael has planned for the audition: he will have her recreate the moment she took the fateful selfie, and then he will give her the bare bottom spanking she deserves. Kirsten quickly realizes that if she accepts this part, she won’t just be submitting to her director’s instructions while the cameras are rolling. Though she blushes to admit it, the thought of being stripped bare, punished thoroughly, and dominated completely excites her deeply, but is she truly ready to put herself in Michael’s hands so that he can train her to be his? 


Publisher’s Note: Her Shameful Audition is an erotic romance novel that includes spankings, sexual scenes, anal play, elements of BDSM, and more. If such material offends you, please don’t buy this book.

Click here to buy the book on Amazon!

Fighting, D/s style: EXPLORATIONS files

I'm re-running the stories that serve as deep background for EXPLORATIONS. The story continues from this post.

-----
To be sure, even for two 25 year olds as erotically compatible as we were, the course of true love never did run smooth. If I'm going to get to the bottom (heh) of this thing I call love, I can't leave the fights out of it.

Ten years later, it's impossible to remember what our actual first fight was about, but I'll pretend that it was the one about the trust-fund, since that's the one that's stuck in my memory as the first moment (and, of course, there have been many — we wouldn't be a real couple if there hadn't) I thought I might have made a mistake in pursuing my erotic satisfaction at practically all cost.

Like I've said, Charles' family is wealthier than mine. They're not crazy-rich by Greenwich or New York standards, but they're crazy-rich by practically any other standard. That is, no helicopters, but a couple boats, one of them reasonably big. No house in Palm Beach, but houses on the Vineyard and in Vermont.

So their money is "tied up" as the phrase goes, in various places. Now that Charles was getting married, in a practically medieval fashion it was time for some of that money to be settled (no, they didn't use that Victorian word, but that was what it was) on me and our children. The easiest way to do such things is always through transfer of stock. It was unfortunately going to be oil stock, and when I saw that, I went ballistic.

I shouldn't have, obviously. This was one hundred percent about me and zero percent about Charles' parents. More on that shortly.

Charles, through no fault of his own, fell into a trap I had unconsciously set for him, and refused to trouble his parents with my ethical difficulty with owning oil stock. "We can talk about this later, can't we?" was all I could get out of him, which wasn't, from my perspective, even "We'll sell it after the wedding, and put it somewhere else" but rather "Shut up, you hysterical tree-hugger."

So. The real story was that I started off ashamed — medievally, atavistically, an occupational hazard of people in whom the humanistic love of the past has been inculcated — that my own family wasn't rich enough that I didn't need any money settled on me and my children by my bridegroom's parents. Then I had an overly strong reaction to the oil stock because (I think) I had just read a story about drilling in the Arctic (note that even after all this time I refuse to call it an "over-reaction," which is a key term from the screaming match Charles and I quickly devolved into: Charles: "Sweetheart, I think you're over-reacting"; Emily: "You're a fucking asshole!" Okay, I was the one screaming.).

But the above doesn't even get at what I finally realized long, long hours later, after I had nearly destroyed the best thing I have ever had in my life or, I think, will ever have, was the real root cause of the fight: my worry — no, my terror — that my anal-submissive orientation had overwhelmed my ethics; that if I actually let Charles and his parents take care of me that way the D/s wouldn't be play, any longer, and I would be trapped in a traditional marriage, through my own fault, with a guy whose understanding of marriage really did involve the husband being the head of the wife.

(Probably worth noting that I can't even type that phrase, which I absolutely refuse to believe Paul of Tarsus wrote, without feeling sick to my stomach. Also worth noting that when I read it in one of those Christian Domestic-Discipline stories that are kicking around the 'net these days in blogs and ebooks, in the context of some wife getting a spanking from her pastor husband, it never fails to get me hot, nevertheless. Humankind, fucked by fiction, I sometimes think. Also, I would never judge a DD (Domestic-Discipline) couple who have made the choice for the husband to be the "Head of Household" and the wife to be the "Taken-in-Hand" partner, for religious or erotic or psychological reasons, so long as it wasn't because they thought the Bible were telling them to do it that way. As you know if you've been reading, I'm very religious, but I'm definitely not fundamentalist, and I don't do anything, or believe anything, just because the Bible tells me so. I honor DD couples who have made the free, reasoned choice of DD more highly than I can express, for their courage in living their true selves in the face of a world that on the one (fundamentalist) hand sends what seem to me false messages of support and on the other (secular) hand finds their choice baffling.)

BDSM is full of paradoxes that I think affect all its practitioners, from the little kid playing spanking games with her friends to the silver-haired Dom with the riding-crop: how can being bound make me feel free? how can being spanked make me feel grown-up? above all, how can being hurt make me feel so fucking good? I have my own paradox, too, though, that I'm not sure afflicts anyone else: how can a woman who believes so strongly in equality long, with an existential longing, to be subjected in the private sphere to a man's will? To be humiliated, to be pissed on, to have her ass made to undergo such shocking trials as befit the disobedient chattel that a man, frustrated, must bring under his righteous domination?

Naught to do but keep exploring. More on the fight in my next post.

Visually inspired: breakfast

(See here for an explanation of this series and here for an index to it.)

The most humiliating part of the ritual that led up to a spanking for Jennifer was the household duties she was made to perform in the special punishment-uniform Leo had given her.

Early that morning, she had told Leo to go fuck himself when he told her she needed to get out of bed--though she, just the night before, had begged him to help her get up earlier. He had immediately said, "Get into your punishment-uniform, Jennifer. You're going to get a spanking after breakfast."

With her face glowing red, Jennifer had had to get out of bed, and take off her nightgown, and put on the lacy blue lingerie, and the black stockings, and the heels, while Leo watched.

Then he had said, "Go make breakfast, now, please. Before you do, please get the spanking chair and put it in the living-room, so you'll be able to see it from the breakfast table."

Standing in the kitchen, at the counter, cracking eggs, dressed only in the sexy things Leo liked to see her in when he punished her, she knew that his eyes were on her, and above all on the shapely bottom he loved to spank until it was bright red, while Jennifer cried, "I'm sorry, sir!"

Somehow, the beautiful lingerie, which would have made her feel so sexy and desirable if she wore it for him to come to bed on a Saturday night, where he might rip it off her and fuck her senseless, felt shameful here in the kitchen. The thought of the spanking made her shift from foot to foot, as the warmth grew between her thighs.

She heard Leo come up behind her, and gasped when he rested his palm upon the bottom from which he would soon strip the lacy panties. "What kind of naughty slut makes breakfast in her punishment-uniform?" he asked.

What's hotter than a Victorian schoolroom? — what Emily is up to

I just started this one. Faithful readers should probably think of it as what happens when Sunset Harbor meets Innocence Examined.

Anne sat, very grateful for the concealment of the desk, though it could not conceal from her the slickness of her thighs from her private part's strange excitement. Miss Halton stood, and walked around to the front of her desk. Anne noticed for the first time just how severe was the contrast between the schoolmistress' ordinary grey gown and her pupils' odd state of undress.

"Now," Miss Halton said, "who can tell me what Cassandra should have done, when Apollo came into her window?"

Ursula put up her hand immediately, as did Sarah. Two other girls, both from Dormitory A, also raised theirs, though with more hesitation. 

"Miss Holmes?" said Miss Halton.

One of the Dormitory A girls, a willowy young woman with very fair hair, stood up at her seat and said, "She should have cried out for her governess, miss."

"A very fine answer, Miss Holmes," Miss Halton said, nodding. "Miss Crawley, what is your opinion on the matter?"

Miss Holmes sat, and Sarah rose. "Miss," she said, "should we consider the gods to be a kind of noblemen?"

Miss Halton seemed to want to suppress a smile. "I am not sure we can say for certain, Miss Crawley, but I find your line of thought very interesting. If we were to say that Apollo could be considered a nobleman, what should Cassandra have done?"

"Miss, may I ask another question?"

"Certainly, Miss Crawley."

"Was Cassandra a good girl?"

Now Miss Halton could not conceal her smile.

But Ursula spoke before Miss Halton could respond. "Miss, what does that have to do with the matter? Mrs. Fayerweather would say that if Cassandra was indeed a virgin, as the story tells us, she would be bound by her honor to resist, even if he were a nobleman. Georgina is correct." She nodded firmly in Miss Holmes' direction, then turned back to Miss Halton. "Isn't she, miss?"

Did Anne hear a note of threat in Ursula's interruption, as if she were threatening to report Miss Halton to Mrs. Fayerweather?

* * *

Oh, how Sarah despised Ursula Gregory! She looked daggers at the tall, blonde girl, and Ursula, far above sticking her tongue out at Sarah, merely narrowed her eyes in return. Standing, trying to give the answer that she thought would please dear Miss Halton so much, Sarah felt as if she had been surrounded by an enemy who had suddenly sprung upon her.

But "Ursula Gregory," Miss Halton said, "you know I do not tolerate disrespect in this classroom. You shall not interrupt a classmate again, if I have anything to say about it. Come up here this instant to be caned."

Sarah's eyes went wide in startled joy. Could Miss Halton really have said it?

"B-but, miss —"


"But me no buts, Miss Gregory. You heard what I said. Over my desk, with your impudent bottom to the class, so that I can demonstrate just where interruption will lead the next girl, too, who dares to engage in it."