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“Don’t worry. I’m not going to break my toy yet.” He kept moving the carved phallus in slow, inexorable thrusts and sat up, finally releasing her wrists from his other hand. “Lie still, Mia. Let your cruel, wicked master violate that tight cunt.” He pushed the toy deeper and flicked her throbbing clit. “He’s going to make you cream on the floor again. Now, be quiet. Don’t want the whole house to find you like this...”

Oh, God. I don’t care. Mia clenched her jaw to keep from crying out, but her hips thrashed, her fingers dug into the carpet. She was going to come, and he was barely touching her. That damn toy. She twisted her hips, but he never let her get the angle she wanted.

“Please,” she breathed.

“Come.”

And she did, clapping her hand over her mouth, sobbing in frustration, then pleasure as the orgasm at last caught her. She lay panting through the aftershocks until Nicholas pulled her up like a doll, maneuvering her dizzy, blindfolded body to a bed. He put her hands on the carved bedpost, but she didn’t recognize anything—the fluting could’ve been any of the four big beds in the estate, and her stepmother had bought furniture Mia hadn’t had the time to study.

He unlaced her dress and then stood back. “Take it off.” Beneath her white muslin dress, she wore a flannel shift and stays she’d ordered to his desires—cut just above her nipples, so he could more easily ravish her. “All of it,” Nicholas clarified. “Blindfolded, naked, and dripping wet. You know how I love you like this.”

She blushed from her cheeks to her toes, but she let the stays fall, and stepped out of her winter petticoats and shift, then put her hands back on the bedpost.

“Good girl,” he whispered, a hand proprietarily sliding over her naked back and sending waves of need through her blood. “My sweet, perfect angel.” He moved in, kissing her shoulder. “I’m going to have to make you cry tonight, aren’t I?”

Her heart sped up. The dirty, terrible truth made her blush harder. That she liked when he made her cry, that she would let him break her skin and bruise her for the rush that came with the pain. Not to mention the way he’d hold her afterward. “A—anything you want.”

“Everything,” Nicholas growled, and his hand came around her throat in a sudden, shocking move. Mia reared back instinctively before she caught herself, but her breath froze in her chest. “That’s right, Mia. Relax. You have a new daddy now, don’t you? And he takes very, very good care of you.”

“I ... My lord?” She squeaked the words through frozen lips. And then his hand tightened.

“No.” He didn’t make her choke. He wasn’t hurting her. But he could. If he pushed a little more, he’d cut off the air. He’d hurt her. He’d... “No, Mia. Not for this game.”

“I ... c—can’t—Oh!” She broke off in a sharp whimper as his hand struck her backside. Once. Then a second and third time in quick succession—light blows, but rapid enough to make her dance from one leg to the other. “P—please...”

“If you want mercy, you know who to ask.” More swats, still slight, but stinging more as he went.

“M—my lord ... please ... n—no...” Oh god, I’m so wet...

“Anything. I. Want.” He punctuated each word with a swat. The last one was hard enough that Mia’s concentration broke, and she let go of the bedpost. “Are you being a bad girl tonight?”

“No. Never. I ... P—please...”

He grabbed her right wrist, spinning her around in another disorienting, blindfolded whirl. Then she got pushed forward and down, forcibly bent over the bed. She felt only cotton or some woven fabric against her breasts—no rich velvet hangings or fur. Had he brought her to an upper servant’s chamber? The room where her stepmother’s lady’s maid had stayed before she left with many of the others? Fevered delirium sparked at the very idea.

“I believe I set the price of misbehaving as twenty lashes with the riding crop?” Nicholas had her arms pinned behind her at her waist, and she felt him pushing her legs apart, splaying her. “Maybe you should keep your toy in your pussy while I whip you, Mia. Would that help you behave?” He bent low. “Or I could put the plug in your tight little ass?” he whispered this against the back of her throat and nipped the nape of her neck hard enough she bit down on the cotton counterpane. A good thing she did, because the next second a riding crop’s cold leather teased her exposed pussy, and Nicholas flipped it between her legs, hard enough to startle her into a moaned protest.

“Just imagine, the whole house will think I’m up here beating you like a common ruffian, and you’ll be dripping and begging me for more. Imagine they all rush up here to free you...”

The riding crop hit her ass so hard she screamed into the mattress, muffling herself as best she could. But then he hit her again. And again. Her whole backside was on fire, and he’d caught her pussy lips...

Another blow lit up her skin to fire and ice. He alternated blows with a rude thrust of the stone phallus into her, making her keep it inside as he struck her again. Tears ran down her cheeks, even as she felt her clit throbbing for his touch. Humiliation burned hotter than the welts rising across her backside.

“Are you ready to behave, Mia?”

No. The darkness welled up at the edge of her vision with the next blow. And she sobbed hysterically as her body clenched down, needy and desperate for more.

“Bad girls go to bed without being fucked. Or petted. They stay in cold, empty beds with their backside burning and think—”

“N—no. No ... d—don’t send me ... I need you...” She gasped the incoherent words out before the next blow could knock her into the stars.

“Three. Two. One—”

“Daddy.” The word burned her lips, made her whole body blush with shame. And then Nicholas’s hand ran along her back.

“You have my attention.”

“I n—need you, Daddy. P—please, l—let me stay with you.” She was going to dissolve into the mattress. The tears almost choked her words entirely.