Under His Watch (6 page)

“Alright,” he said, not letting go of her, “we’ll have a little pause here, honey.”

Then, without even realizing that he probably shouldn’t, he rubbed her bottom—maybe just because that was always what he had done with Laura. Instantly Charity cried out with unambiguous pleasure, and for a wonderful, terrible moment, she spread her thighs, giving Ryan the incredibly arousing sight of her clearly wet pussy, its coral lips seeming to beckon his eyes inward. Then—just as suddenly, and with an embarrassed whimper—she closed her legs again. Ryan took his hand away at the sound and the sight, feeling a little thunderstruck.

He swallowed hard and searched his mind desperately for something reasonably professional to say. He found nothing, but he felt he had to say something. “I think I need to spank you even harder, honey.”

He couldn’t have stopped himself; he started to spank her little bottom again. The pink had faded a shade or two, and now he spanked so hard that the color of her punished skin got almost to red in no time.

Charity sobbed now, as if her heart would break, and her bottom-cheeks clenched and unclenched uncontrollably. She was whispering something, as if she was just saying it to herself, and it took Ryan a few moments to realize what she whispered. “Thank you, sir… thank you, sir.”

They were spinning. Maybe the situation wasn’t out of control, but it was certainly going in unpredictable directions. Unpredictable and unexpected. But maybe wonderful, too.

“Stand up now, and go to the bed,” Ryan said. “I want you to put two pillows under your hips to get your rear end nice and high for the belt. You’re going to stay there for a while before I whip you, to think about how your life changed today, and to remember the new rules.”

“Yes, sir,” Charity said meekly, as he helped her to her feet. Still seated in the kitchen chair, Ryan enfolded her in his arms with a quick hug before she could move away. Her body yielded to him instantly, and she made a little cooing sound and even snuggled into his chest a bit, surprising him with the implied submission.

He let the hug go on longer than he had intended, and he stroked her back and said, “You did very well, honey.”

“Thank you, sir.” She made another little dove sound, and that noise somehow forced him to stroke her hair, and to wage war on the urge to kiss her.

“Alright,” he finally said, opening his arms, “pillows on the bed, and your butt over them. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

She nodded, her eyes bright with tears, and went to obey him while he stood up and left the room. He put his hand down to his thigh, feeling something a little odd, and realized that Charity had left a big, round, wet spot on his jeans the size of an old-fashioned silver dollar.

What the heck was he supposed to do about this? Bodyguards falling in love, or even just in lust, with their charges was a time-honored dynamic and, if the affair was discreet and the bodyguard didn’t let it get in the way of protecting his charge, didn’t really present a problem. But would Ryan Bedford and Charity Phillips falling in lust, or even in love, be a good idea from their individual perspectives? A Navy SEAL and an Ivy-educated philanthropist?

Oddly, he remembered the book about Alexander the Great, and then the way Charity’s eyes had shone when she was persuading him to care about the Temple of Apollo in Alexandropolis. Yes, it very well might be a good idea. They each had something the other needed: he had discipline and she had inspiration.

He stood in the bathroom, not really needing to relieve himself but in desperate search of an excuse to take a few minutes to think things through. So if an affair were an advisable thing, relatively speaking, what now? He had the naked object of his desire over pillows on her bed, waiting for discipline, clearly aroused by him and by his disciplinary ways.

Should he pretend the arousal didn’t exist, simply punish her, and put off the seduction and the conversation about dominance-and-submission and what it meant to him, to tomorrow? Next week? Later tonight, after dinner? His mind whirled with the possible scenarios.

But putting it off at all—denying their arousal—seemed to him to run the risk of dishonoring her response to his discipline—as if he wanted her to understand that he didn’t care about the erotic effect he had on her, when in fact he cared very, very much. No, for reasons of both their needs, and for reasons of whatever romance might now happen between them, Ryan had to take charge not only disciplinarily but also erotically, when he returned to Charity’s room.

He splashed cold water on his face, then looked at himself in the mirror and smiled. Whatever happened, he felt capable of handling it. Maybe SEAL training didn’t teach you anything specific about how to act in the bedroom—but it sure as heck didn’t hurt your confidence there.

Chapter Seven

Her heart thudding in her chest, Charity waited in her room. Had she just done something incredibly stupid or something incredibly clever, grabbing the black lace panties from the back of the drawer and putting them on, before she got over the pillows? She had just felt that she
couldn’t
pretend that she didn’t want so much more than a belt-whipping—that she didn’t want Ryan Bedford’s cock inside her.

She had felt it, while he spanked her, there inside his jeans. Charity was sure she had felt it—its wicked hardness pushing against her tummy while he spanked her.

She had to tell him, somehow, that she wanted more, but she didn’t think she could ever
say
anything of the kind. What words could she even use? “Master, please teach me to worship your body”? “Sir, let me kneel before you and suck your cock”? The very idea that words in the English language could be placed next to one another to make those lewd sentences seemed brand new to Charity. The fantasies that lurked at the edges of her mind had never clamored so loudly for expression as they did right now, and so she had never before had to imagine
saying
anything.

But… the panties. Didn’t the panties say that she wanted to give him that part of her body; that she hoped he would like to have it, touch it, and use it for his pleasure? Couldn’t the tiny lace panties speak louder than words, that way, with Charity’s face turned toward the covers in shame, knowing that she had disobeyed him by putting them on, but hoping that perhaps that kind of disobedience wouldn’t get her in trouble, when he saw how sexy her ass looked in them—how deserving of so much more than a whipping?

Not that she didn’t hope he would punish her for putting on the naughty panties, because sometime over the last few hours Charity had discovered that being punished by the former Navy SEAL who kept her safe had major attractions she hadn’t considered. It made her feel little, loved, and, well, highly fuckable.

Now, as she waited, she had a terrible struggle she hadn’t anticipated. For she had instantly soaked through the cotton gusset inside the lace, and now, feeling how damp her pretty lingerie had become, she had to fight, second by second, the nearly uncontrollable urge to touch herself.

Or maybe she should touch herself? Maybe she wanted to be whipped for…

She heard the door open. She heard his footfalls as he entered, and she heard him close the door behind him.

“Charity,” he said, “I’m not going to ask you why you’re wearing panties when I told you to be naked. I think I can guess.”

Charity wanted to say, “Really?” but she didn’t trust her voice to come out as anything but a squeak.

“Honey, do you know about safewords?”

Charity felt her brow furrow, and she turned her face to look at him, standing just inside the doorway. The only light was from a lamp on her dresser; their negotiations had begun around five, and dusk had overtaken the interior window of her room, unnoticed—by Charity at least—in the intensity of the last hours. In the semi-darkness, Ryan seemed to loom even more than he had in the bright light of the kitchen.

What the hell was he talking about?

“About what? Like a safe-house, or something?”

Ryan laughed, but the laugh made Charity feel warm inside, because it was a kind sound, and even in the dim light she could see he had a kind smile on his face to go with it.

“Nope,” he said, but not really in negation; really, he seemed like a teacher, somehow, about to start into a very complicated, but also a very important lesson. And the way his eyes narrowed seem to tell Charity the lesson Ryan planned must be one he felt passionately about. Without at that moment understanding exactly why, her arousal, which had vanished for a moment when he had seemed to hesitate, in order to ask the strange question, returned full force. The idea that Ryan would now start
teaching
her things… lessons… was that the thing that made her tingle inside the lacy panties?

“Things are going to get intense here, I’m thinking,” Ryan continued. Now his voice did seem very didactic, and that only increased Charity’s need for him. ‘Intense’: that word, all by itself, seemed to set her pussy aflame. “If anything happens that makes you want to slow down, you say ‘yellow.’ If anything happens that makes you want to stop, you say ‘red.’ If I say ‘color,’ you tell me where you are—green, yellow, or red. Does that make sense?”

Oh, God. How could
that
make her so much wetter? Without even knowing what the things were that might happen, Charity could tell that they could well be what she had been looking for all her erotic life. The feelings coursing through her body were like nothing she had ever felt when hooking up with a guy; it was as if the two things weren’t even in the same realm of human experience. Was
this
sex? Or was
that
sex, and this was… just… what she desperately needed?

“Yes,” Charity whimpered.

“Color?” Ryan said, walking toward her.

“Green, sir,” Charity replied in a whisper, adding the ‘sir’ almost unconsciously.

“Thank you for calling me by my proper title when I am enjoying you, Charity,” he said softly.

At the mere words, Charity whimpered wordlessly. ‘Enjoying her’—that was just… it. That was what she wanted: this enormous warrior must enjoy her, master her, teach her to please him. As he moved to stand behind her, looking down at her bottom where it lay over the pillows, she chewed on the inside of her cheek, unable to tell whether it was the fear or the arousal that made her do it.

“Now get your face back to the covers, so I can deal at my leisure with this backside you so naughtily covered up.”

What? The thought sent another wave of warmth into her pussy. Charity would not be allowed to look; she was not permitted to see what happened to her naughty bottom. Her bottom—that part of her that Ryan Bedford had claimed special rights over the previous night, when he had given her the very first spanking of her life. Her cheeks hot, she turned her face downward, burying her mouth and nose in the top sheet, where the pillows would be if they weren’t raising her bottom for whipping and… dealing with.

“Color?”

Charity had become so lost in her shameful thoughts that she didn’t hear the question at first.

“Color, Charity?” Ryan asked a little more urgently.

“Oh! Green, sir!” Her voice sounded muffled to her own ears, lost in the sheets.

“It’s alright to get lost that way,” Ryan said. “It’s going to happen a lot, hopefully because of how good you’re feeling, and how little you want to return to the real world. But I’ll stop the scene until you answer me, okay?”

“Okay, sir.”

Then the tone of his voice changed dramatically, and he said in the manner of a disappointed guardian, “If I’m not mistaken, Charity Phillips, I specified that your backside was to be naked for your belt-whipping. Am I mistaken about that?”

“No, sir,” Charity whispered.

“What, Charity?”

“No, sir,” she said, so that her voice would rise up out of the sheets. How could Ryan do that with his voice alone? Her pussy’s wetness felt like it would gush out the sides of her little panties.

“And somehow, you managed not only to disobey me by putting on underwear, but to put on a sort of underwear that seems to me reason not just to give you your belt-whipping, but to take you in hand much more thoroughly than I thought I would have to do.”

Then he put his hand there, and Charity gasped, because the
way
he put his hand there, with his middle finger probing in between her thighs, a little roughly, to find out the secrets of her arousal, said that he knew how to touch a naughty girl like Charity. He took her literally in hand—he claimed her bottom and her pussy, telling her that they belonged to him now.

“As I suspected,” Ryan said. “You’re so wet you soaked through these shameful panties, Charity. Just as you left a wet spot on my jeans when I spanked you.”

“Oh, God,” Charity cried at the terrible thought. “Oh—I’m… I’m sorry, sir.” The image of that wet spot on Ryan’s jeans seemed to burn its way into her mind with shame and arousal so great she didn’t think she had ever felt the like. Instinctively, then, without meaning to do it in the slightest, she tried to move back against his hand, pleading with her body for him to command her pussy—to take control of it and enjoy it.

“You don’t have to feel so very ashamed of your arousal, Charity,” Ryan murmured then, sitting down on the bed and letting her rub herself lewdly against his hand. Charity gasped, and bounced herself gently up and down, moaning at the feeling, loving the humiliation of being permitted to put on such a wicked display for her protector.

“You’re a young woman who has clearly never had a man take her in hand the way she needs,” Ryan continued. He took away his hand, and Charity gave a forlorn cry. “It’s only right that you should become so aroused now that I’m finally here.”

“Yes, sir,” Charity whispered, because she felt she had to tell him exactly how correct his notion of her needs was.

Now Ryan put his mouth right to Charity’s ear, so that she could feel the razor stubble on his cheek. At the same time, he returned the terrible, lovely hand to her pussy, but this time he did so very roughly, forcing her thighs apart before Charity could even open them herself as she had been longing to do. “But,” he murmured, “now that I’m taking you in hand, Charity, you must learn that your arousal belongs to me.”