Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 94181 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 471(@200wpm)___ 377(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94181 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 471(@200wpm)___ 377(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
CHAPTER 11
Anne
“Anne.” Master Paul’s voice, close now. I opened my eyes and found that he’d stepped nearer while they were closed—close enough that if I reached out just a little ways, my fingertips would brush the silk of his robe. His brown eyes held mine with that focused, unhurried attention that felt like being fixed to a board by someone who intended to study me very carefully before deciding what to do.
“Tell me you understand what’s going to happen,” he said.
My mouth opened. My lips were dry. I ran my tongue over the lower one and saw his eyes track the motion with a precision that made my stomach flip.
“You’re going to…” My voice quavered. I cleared my throat and tried again. “You’re going to… um… you know… look at me? In the… the nightgown. And then you’re going to… you’re going to say my… that I need to be…”
I couldn’t finish. The word shaved lodged in my throat like a physical object, too intimate, too real, too much like a concretization of an image I didn’t want to admit lay in the depths of my mind.
“Say it,” he said. Not unkindly, but not gently, either. With the patient, implacable firmness of a man who understood that the words mattered as much as the act; that making me say it was itself a form of preparation, of submission. Master Paul, I realized with a swallow, meant to dismantle, systematically, the wall I’d so clearly built between the girl I pretended to be and the girl I was.
“You’re going to shave me,” I whispered. “My… down… between my legs. You’re going to shave me there. So I can wear the red lingerie. So I’ll feel… I mean… you know… not me, really… the woman I’m… um… you know, playing… she’ll feel…”
“Feel what?” he pressed.
The tears came back. Not the racking sobs from earlier when I’d gotten spanked—these felt quieter, more private, the kind that spill over without permission and run silently down your cheeks while you stand very still and pretend you’re not breaking apart.
“Submissive,” I said. The word came out on a breath, barely voiced, and saying it aloud did something to me that I hadn’t anticipated. The word felt like a physical object, somehow. Speaking it seemed to place its weight on my shoulders. It didn’t feel like it would crush me, or anything, but it definitely felt there.
Like a hand. Like a big, strong hand, pushing gently but steadily. Pushing me toward something I wasn’t ready to name in my head, but that my body had already begun to move toward. A compass needle, swinging toward North, not by choice, but by nature, because of physics.
Master Paul watched the word settle over me. He watched the tears track down my cheeks, watched my thighs press together beneath the pink chiffon, watched me stand there, quivering and wet and stripped of what felt like everything, and then he nodded.
“Good,” he said. “Now let’s rehearse. I’m your accepted suitor. We’ll be married in a month or two, but I’ve decided to claim the rights the New Modesty gives an accepted suitor, to enjoy my fiancée’s body as I like.”
He circled me. Slowly, the way he’d approached me when I first arrived, with a measured but predatory stride that gave my nervous system time to register every footfall. I stood still, my arms at my sides now because crossing them felt childish and pointless when the baby doll nightgown concealed nothing, and I tracked him with my eyes until he moved behind me and I couldn’t see him anymore. Then I tracked him with every other sense I had: the whisper of silk as his robe shifted, the faint creak of the set’s floorboards beneath his weight, the warmth of him when he paused close enough that I could feel his body heat against my bare shoulders.
“Turn around,” he said. “Face the bed.”
I turned, my forehead creasing deeply. The wrought-iron bed frame filled my vision—white sheets, white pillows, the fan-stirred curtains moving in their artificial breeze. Domestic. Intimate. A bedroom that belonged to a soon-to-be-wife who had been told to put on a pink nightgown and wait.
“Hands at your sides,” he said. “Don’t cover yourself. A girl isn’t allowed to hide from her accepted suitor, any more than a bride is allowed to hide from her husband.”
I let my arms hang. My fingers trembled against the chiffon at my thighs.
I felt his hands on my shoulders first. Light, almost impersonal—the touch of a man assessing a garment rather than a body. His fingers traced the spaghetti straps, adjusting one that had slipped slightly toward the edge of my shoulder, settling it back into place with a deftness that made my skin prickle.
Then his hands moved down, following the line of my arms, and I felt his thumbs press briefly against the backs of my elbows before continuing to my wrists, where he held them for a moment—encircling each one completely, his fingers overlapping, demonstrating with casual, devastating clarity how much larger he was than me.