.

I’m dressed in a simple black dress, suggesting penitence, I hope.

      Smiling slightly, he escorts me into a cozy, masculine study smelling of lavender polish and leather upholstery. There’s a large wing chair by the fireplace and a cluttered antique desk against the window.

      “Please sit down, Emma.” Nick sinks into his imposing, high-backed throne and gestures to a plain wooden chair a little way distant. Linking his fingers in his lap, he observes me as I perch on the hard surface and arrange my knees as gracefully as I can.

      “Well, Emma, we’ve got ourselves a situation, haven’t we?”

      “You’re going to sack me, aren’t you?”

      “No, nothing like that.” His voice is quiet, but his fingers twist a little as if he’s edgy beneath the calm veneer. He reaches for a glass of red wine from the small table beside his chair and takes a measured sip, all the time studying me, his eyes dark and assessing. “You’re an asset to Bray, Emma. We don’t want to lose you.” He set his glass aside, “But on the other hand—” He pauses again, his fingers fisted against his chin in a pensive attitude. “We can’t let this incident go unmarked, can we? You need to understand that you can’t get away with pilfering.”

      I suspect this is almost a royal “we” rather than company-speak.

      “And h…how can we do that?”

      I’ve known since yesterday where this might be going, but it still makes me shake and stammer.

      “A misdemeanor deserves discipline, Emma. Don’t you think so?”

      “Er…yes.”

      “Good, then we understand each other?” His blond eyebrows quirk in amusement, even though his face is otherwise solemn.

      I nod. Indeed we do.

      “Very well then, Emma, I’d like you to stand up, take off your panties and give them to me.”

      My mouth opens but emits no sound. I feel myself blushing again.

      “Emma?”

      My juddering knees make me awkward and clumsy as I struggle to obey, and somehow my simple white knickers hook themselves around my ankles like a lasso. But just as I stumble, Nick’s there, supporting me, strong hand beneath my elbow. He steadies me and then resumes his position in the wing chair, gesturing with his long fingers for my panties.

      My naked bottom trembling beneath my skirt, I watch him peruse my knickers with disturbing intensity. Turning them this way and that, he assesses my response to him from their state. Then, apparently satisfied, he folds them and places them on the smooth leather arm of his chair, an accusing talisman.

      Reaching for his glass, he sips again, making me wait. “Now raise your skirt and turn around, very slowly.”

      Desire surges through me in a high wave, but I manage to obey. His eyes flick briefly to my crotch, but as I begin my slow revolution, they lock with mine just before I turn away. I still seem to see them in the polished, oak-paneled wall.

      “Why did you steal the magazine?” His voice is deceptively mild.

      “I don’t know…” I’m a liar. I did it to bring myself to this place and this moment.

      “You took my property, Emma, and now you owe me something.”

      I can’t speak. I can barely breathe.

      “Are you going to be a good girl for me, Emma?” I hear him rise from his chair and cross to the desk.

      I still can’t utter a word. I feel like a shaken bottle of champagne, ready to pop.

      “Emma?” He’s close to now me. Very close.

      “Yes!”

      “Yes what?”

      “Yes, I’ll be good. I’m sorry, really, I’m sorry.” Another lie.

      “I’m glad to hear it.” I heard a whistling swish, something cleaving the air experimentally at high speed. Is it a crop or a ruler? I didn’t get a good look at the desk. “And you know this is for your own good.”

      Hell, yes!

      “Now, Emma, I want you to lean forward, elbows on your chair, face on your elbows, and then push your bottom up and towards me.”

      Quivering, I obey him, loving the blatant presentation. When he nudges my feet apart with the toe of his shoe, my knees wobble, but I brace up, imagining him studying my pussy.

      “This will hurt.”

      As the blow falls, all notions of being good fly out the window. A white slice of pain slashes one bottom cheek, and my stiff legs almost buckle from its ferocity.

      How can it hurt so much? It only feels like a ruler…

      The sensation explodes anew; the same, stunning streak, bisecting my other cheek, balancing the stinging and the hotness.

      “Oh, please,” I whimper, reaching around behind me even though it’s a cardinal sin.

      “Emma!”

      Snatching back my fingers, I berate myself for a poor performance. Just two smart strikes and I’m a cringing, sniveling mess. I’m letting my beautiful Nick down, just when I wanted to impress him. Summoning my pitiful fortitude, I bury my head, dish my back, and once again offer up my bottom to his mercies.

      The blows resume with a rigorous regularity, each one finding a new area of my bare flesh with the bright burn of heat. I feel the lines forming in serried rows, an arcane branded grid. My bottom must be turning pink upon pink, stripes of crimson crisscrossing over rose.

      Tears drip from my eyes and run into my hair, but I contain my blubbering. I won’t disappoint my handsome god again.

      Three swift whacks fall on each cheek. Six strikes, each landed with perfect precision. At the end of my tether, I silently beg for it to stop, but simultaneously pray for it to carry on. Nick fills my mind and my heart, a prince of chilly elegance, yet incandescent with the splendid fire of discipline.

      “Just a little more…” His voice whispers in my ear while his fingertips whisper, too, tracing my stripes, delicate yet infinitely painful.

      “You’ve got to help me now.” The words seem almost to be inside me. “Reach around, Emma. Pull apart your cheeks with your fingers. I want to smack you there.”

      Oh God, can I bear it?

      Grimly I hitch forward on the chair, resting on my chest and shoulder to free my hands to the task.

      “Be careful, Emma. Keep your fingers still,” he warns as my hands tremble on my own fiery flesh.

      Again comes the awe-inspiring whistle of the ruler, and I steel myself. But it’s only a sighting swish.

      Let it be over and let it be soon.

      Finally they come—three fast cuts, exquisite and shocking, and delivered at a sly oblique angle across the vent of my behind.

      I howl and collapse, tumbling to my knees in a heap. At last it’s over.

      I hear footsteps, the clink of a bottle against a glass, the creak of leather upholstery. My prince is taking his refreshment after his labors.

      “Come here.”

      Sobbing, I attempt to straighten up—only to crumple again and then half crawl toward the wing chair.

      “There, there,” he croons as I reach the blessed haven between his long outstretched thighs and kneel on the carpet before him.

      My bottom is a swollen blazing mass, and I have to lean against his body…and against something hard that bulges beneath the denim of his jeans.

      I don’t deserve it, and I might not get it, but he knows what I’m thinking.

      “Maybe