Rebellious Bride (15 page)

It was the
middle of the afternoon before Abigail made her way to the mill. Aaron hadn’t come
home at the dinner hour. She was sure he hadn’t just so she’d have to brood by
herself over her impending punishment. She marveled at how her husband could be
so wise and honest and at the same time understanding, in his own way. And how
resolved. He’d placed the question of her discipline in her own hands, making
it one she’d have to ask for.

As Abigail
approached the mill, she trembled knowing how fierce her punishment was likely
to be. Her whole body tingled, but especially her bottom, as if her bottom
cheeks were already rosy red and hot for the paddle that she held in her hands.
Yes, she’d chosen the paddle deliberately, because she liked its sting least of
all. If this was to be a payment on her account of misdeeds, she wanted it to
be a big one.

Inside the
mill, the sounds of the machinery filled her ears, so as she approached Aaron
at his work, they couldn’t think of conversing about anything without shouting.
She was glad that Aaron’s two employees didn’t take much notice of her, though
she imagined that from the corners of their eyes, they could see what was about
to take place. Replacing words with a simple sign language, Abigail watched as
Aaron motioned her to his office at the other end of the mill. When he didn’t
follow her immediately, she sat down in a chair and waited for him, noting how
each instant that passed fueled the ever-present agitation in the pit of her
stomach. When Aaron finally came through the door, she could hardly speak for
her nervousness.

“So, is there
something you want?” Aaron asked, when he closed the office door behind him,
and the sound of the mill was slightly muted.

“Yes, well. .
. .” she tried.

“And what is
it?” he asked as if he had no idea.

“You’re going
to make me say it?” she wondered aloud.

“I’m going to
make you very conscious of this one, Abigail
McPhearson
Barrow. So tell, what is it you want?”

“I want to
make amends to you. I don’t want
anymore
lies, ever.
I hate this, I hated it when it was happening. But I guess I just didn’t
realize how understanding you might be. I want to make it right. And I promise
it’s not going to happen again.”

Aaron looked
at her as if he didn’t believe her.

“Aaron, I know
my lies were foolish.”

“And
dangerous,” he added.

“And
dangerous. I know that I often behave like a kid, and well,” she hedged. “I
don’t want to be a kid anymore.”

“Humph.” Aaron
mulled over her confession with a calculated interest.

“I am
sincere,” Abigail said, her words taking a pleading tone. “And … I think
that I need this,” she said handing him the wooden paddle.

“Just once?”

“No,” she
hesitated. “But I’ll let you be the judge of that.”

Aaron took a
deep breath as he took the paddle from his wife’s hand.

“You know, I
actually think you’re sincere this time,” he said. “But I don’t have any
illusions about your future behavior. You’re going to have to prove your
trustworthiness to me. Trust between us took a big step backward this week.”

“I know,” she
agreed.

Aaron stood in
front of her, leaning back against the edge of his desk looking down into her
soulful eyes. She could almost hear his thoughts, though she waited anxiously
for him to speak.

“Well,
Abigail, what I’m going to do is blister your bottom with this today.” He
smacked the paddle on his hand so she could hear the noxious sound. “And,” he
continued, “once a week for at least the next four weeks.”

Abigail’s eyes
widened hearing her sentence, but she said nothing.

“And,
in-between your sessions over my lap, you’re going to pay with a bit of hard
labor right here in the mill. You and Darcy both, once she gets well. You’re
both going to pay me back and then some, for the money you took and the worry
you caused.”

“I guess we
deserve that,” Abigail admitted.

“You know you
do.”

“And are you
going to paddle Darcy too.”

“What do you
think?”

“I think she needs
it,” Abigail answered.

“Well then,
don’t worry, she’ll get her due, though it’s you I’m most concerned about. It’s
you that I love with all my heart.”

Such a strange
mix of messages, the affection from his heart, the sternness of his resolve,
the dedication to their relationship, and the ruthlessness of the sentence
passed for her crimes. Did she deserve it all, the love and the punishment? She
wasn’t sure, but she’d take it all to make right what she’d managed to mess up
so well.

With the
confession over and the sentence passed, Aaron reached for his wife and pulled
her to her feet. Sitting, his broad lap was ready and waiting for her
submitting body.

“Just for good
measure, to start this right, let’s remove the dress. It’ll be out of the way.”

In the mill,
with squealing sound of sawing boards the only accompaniment to the scene,
Abigail obeyed her husband, removing her dress and placing it on her husband’s
desk. She stood before him with just a simple shift and her stockings, feeling
much like the child she’d always been. Rebellious, that’s how she’d always
lived her life, and so there had been many scenes just like this between father
and daughter, and now husband and wife. Abigail shivered to her core, knowing
that while she dreaded the next awful minutes, there was a rightness to the
scenario. It always set thing straight. Even though now, Aaron was asking
her—and she was asking herself—to give up the lies, the childish pranks and the
behaviors that made her little more than an unruly adolescent. She really hoped
that this chastisement would be the last real one she’d ever have.

“Come here,”
Aaron motioned her to his side.

She walked on
tiptoe in fear, how many times she’d gone through this, the same trepidation
always made her weak. At her husband’s side, she was over his knee a second
later, his firm warm hand pulling the shift up over her behind exposing the
target of his designs.

He waited for
at least a minute, perhaps deliberately to make the moment more impossible to
deal with. Though Abigail said nothing. By the time the first smack landed,
she’d been lulled into a little mindless reverie, and the impact woke her
instantly with the sound, the sting, and the howl that issued from her lips.

Another smack
followed the first, another and another, until in a very few minutes time the
sting was an appalling burn. Efficiently, Aaron leveled the paddle, first on
the center of her cheeks. When it was clear that she was hurting badly in those
two places, he moved the smacks around, making sure to cover every inch of her
once lily-white skin.

“Oh, my god,
Aaron, I can’t stand anymore,” she finally wailed.

The punishment
had been at least ten minutes long, though she had no way of really knowing.
Aaron paused for an instant hearing his wife’s complaint.

“Can’t stand
anymore? You want to quit now?” he asked.

“Yes, yes, oh
yes,” she gasped, hoping that he was finished.

“Sure, I’ll
stop now,” he said, “but it just adds up, my darling. What you don’t get today,
you’ll next time.”

“Oh, no, you
mean you’ll just make the next one longer?” she asked.

“I certainly
do. But it’s up to you.”

“Oh, please, I
don’t know.” She was crying hard, afraid to go on and afraid to stop, and it
was all her choice. “Okay, go on,” she finally said as she gritted her teeth
and clenched her bottom cheeks.

Aaron resumed
the spanking, starting up again where he’d left off, the wooden paddle landing
strike after strike against punished red flesh. She cried, she kicked, though
it didn’t matter. The loathsome paddle landed like a rain of fire until it
seemed that she was beyond pain, and her cries became sobs and her body was
much too weary to take anymore.

In the quiet
that followed, Aaron let his wife rest against his lap. He ignored the
temptation to fondle the fiery hot orbs. It would be a delicious treat for them
both to take her tingling body to the brink of an erotic moment. But she
wouldn’t learn her lesson that way, and he had to divorce himself from the
tremendous desire. That would wait for another time.

“All right,”
he said sternly. He pushed her a bit off his lap, until she got the message and
struggled her way to her feet. “Now, until the burns fades, you’ll stand in the
corner,” he said. “Hold your shift in front of you. Over your bottom so I can
seen when the red is gone.”

Abigail,
having thought that the worst of the horror was over, looked at her husband in
disbelief. “But what if someone comes in?” she protested.

“Then someone
will see,” he said plainly.

“Aaron, you
can’t. What if …”

“Perhaps you’d
like a taste of a birch rod?” he said. “I suppose that could be substituted for
a little humiliation.”

“Oh, never!”
she gasped, the very thought of the birch on top of her already wounded bottom
made her quake to her core.

“Act like a
child, I’ll deal with you like a child. We’ll see if you really want to change
your behavior, my rebellious one.”

Abigail could
see the beauty of her punishment. By the time the four weeks were over, there
was little doubt that her punished bottom would be whispered about all over the
mill, by employees and customers too. Aaron would have been paid back for his
losses, and she’d have such a dose of punishment so that she would forever
remember the consequences of her bad behavior.

Taking her
place in the corner, holding her shift in her hands, Abigail’s heart pounded
hard as the minutes of the clocked ticked by, and she waited for someone to see
her like this. She hoped against hope that no one would discover the awesome
scene. But, much to Abigail’s chagrin, there was a knock on the door just as
she thought Aaron would let her go for the afternoon. Her husband, proving it
was no empty threat to show her off like this, beckoned the man to enter.

From the
moment he walked in the door, Abigail was certain that whoever it was stared at
her the whole time he was inside the office. Thankfully, she wouldn’t know,
since she kept her head tucked in the corner, too mortified to meet the man
eye-to-eye.

The only
mention of her penitent state was Aaron’s casually rendered, “a little domestic
discipline,” a comment that made Abigail shiver all the more with
embarrassment.

“Good idea,”
the man replied. “Let me know if the treatment works, my own wife could stand a
good going over once and a while.”

To that, Aaron
answered with a confident. “It’ll work, trust me, it’ll work.”

a

The weeks that
followed were often grim and at other times filled with wild wonderful moments
for Abigail and her husband. Mostly however, Abigail would remember the grim
times.

Darcy, once
she was well—which only took a few days—joined Abigail in “hard labor” at the
mill, scrubbing floors and windows, hauling small loads of lumber—all these
tasks on top of the ones that Abigail always did to tend to her home. There
didn’t seem to be any time to rest. Abigail figured her husband’s harsh sentence
was intended to keep the two “out of trouble.” And his plan seemed to work.
They were too exhausted every evening to think of anything but a warm meal and
sleep.

In addition to
the work, every Friday for four weeks—not counting Abigail’s first rude paddling—Aaron
brought the two brats into his office individually and gave them “what for”.
Darcy always went first, Aaron making the shameless young woman raise her skirt
or lower her britches, depending on what she wore, and then bend over the edge
of his desk to receive her punishment. He usually began with a leather strap or
his belt and then finished her off with a dozen good hearty whacks of the wood
paddle. Though she was a stubborn woman, determined not to flinch, Aaron always
continued until the woman “broke”, her bottom usually a roughed-up rash of
crimson and the pain so intense she’d cry out for mercy. Oddly, Darcy accepted
the punishment as justified, and didn’t try to bolt or weasel out of it. Aaron
began to believe that she truly considered Abigail’s plight her own. As long as
Abby was being punished, she would stay and take hers until it was finished.

Each Friday,
Abigail heard Darcy’s woes from outside the office while she waited in a chair
by the door. She would see her friend leave with a chagrined smile. Though she
never said a word, but Abby could tell the young woman was suffering by the way
she gingerly walked from the building. There was no sass or impudence in her,
but a measure of vexation, as the independent and spirited tomboy found herself
confronted by a formidable opponent in Aaron Barrow.

Unlike her
friend, Abigail was always punished over Aaron’s lap. While in the past that
hadn’t been the case—when going over a table or the back of chair seemed to fit
Aaron’s sense of justice just as well—it seemed important this time that his
wife have the intimate experience of being held closing to him while he
administered her discipline. Such a design did nothing to soften the punishment
sessions however. Abigail found that Aaron could be as ruthless with her in his
lap as he could be at some distance. And being over his lap was more personal.
Since he took her bad behavior as a personal attack against him, he wanted her
to feel that way about it too.