Her Shameful Lesson (Shamefully Courted) Read online

  Carly’s whole body had trembled, but Jim’s understanding had made her smile. Something else in his voice and in his words, though, made her cheeks blush even hotter—while at the same moment the mortifying thing every New Modesty girl learned about in wellness class happened, a bit, down below.

  She had felt it when Jim kissed her, and a little more when he had put his hand gently on her chest, lightly touching the modestly sized mounds of her breasts through her shirt and her bra. She had sometimes felt it a little just at the sight of Jim with his shirt off at the pool, but seeing him almost naked in bed, and hearing him say I want to take my time had had an effect on her that made her want to run forward even as it made her want to step back.

  When a New Modesty girl became a bride, Carly had known, the time had come for her to do as her husband said—particularly, the wellness instructor had said, in the bedroom. She had known that Jim, too, had attended an orientation about New Modesty marriage, and it had seemed clear that he understood that it would take time to accustom her to her duties in the marital bed.

  She had managed to keep moving forward, and Jim had enfolded her in his arms. He had finally fallen asleep that way, after kissing her and murmuring how lucky he was and how much he loved her, but Carly had taken a very long time despite the lateness of the hour.

  Just before he had fallen asleep, Jim’s huge left hand had found its way underneath her nightgown, and come to rest on her bottom.

  “Hmm,” he had said, as he had given her a gentle squeeze, there, that had sent the blood rushing to her face.

  She hadn’t been sure if he had even been awake at that moment. His closed eyes and his high forehead had seemed to frown a little in the moonlight. Carly had known in that moment that her husband had not expected to find his bride in little-girl panties on her wedding night.

  She had slipped out of bed and taken them off in the bathroom, though it felt very strange not to wear underwear to bed—especially with the Brazilian wax she had gotten two days before her wedding, recommended and subsidized by the New Modesty Authority. When Jim had raised her nightgown in the morning, after kissing her softly awake, she had seen his eyes flick downward and widen a little at the sight of her bare, virgin pussy.

  Sitting in the uncomfortable chair at the police station, she couldn’t help squirming a little at the memory—how she had made sure Jim couldn’t actually take his time, whispering to him to “Do it, please,” and saying “I love you so much” and “That feels so good,” over and over.

  Yes, it had actually felt good after the little bit of discomfort. The lube recommended by the New Modesty Authority, which she had applied after excusing herself for just a moment, right after Jim had raised her nightgown, had ensured that the discomfort of her defloration wasn’t even all that great. In the month since then, the lube had let her treat sex as not much more than a twice-a-week nuisance, after doing it every morning on their honeymoon, of course.

  Every night after dinner, on their honeymoon and then afterward, in their little house, Carly had pretended to fall asleep after dinner. Lying in bed alone she always saw, to her distress, the little frown on Jim’s face, and felt his hand on her bottom in the blue panties.

  She fell into a restless sleep each night in the midst of that embarrassing memory. She awoke every morning with the disconcerting feeling that if her husband had really wanted to take his time—no, if he had insisted on it, and had told her for example that she had better go change into the sort of underwear a man deserves to see when he lifts his wife’s skirt, because he would take his time with her now… Carly Gradin would have had to say no.

  She looked over at her husband, and saw his grave, still quite confused face, and swallowed hard. Her heart began to pound at the sudden suspicion that maybe Jim would have to take his time with her after all—though in a way that made her tummy flip over just thinking about.

  “You don’t necessarily have to charge her, then?” Jim asked. He still didn’t understand the way Carly had apparently acted, or was acting now, but at least it seemed like they could keep her from having to go to court over what must, at some basic level, only represent a misunderstanding.

  “We don’t,” the chief confirmed. “Here in Little Bend the merchants agree, when they decide to press charges, to my discretion as to how to handle the matter.”

  Jim glanced over at Carly. The pinkness in her adorable face seemed to come and go with each passing moment. He wished he had some idea what thoughts or feelings exactly lay behind each surge of color: of course she felt embarrassed to have been brought in handcuffs to the police station, as any young woman would… but there seemed something more there, something about the provocative panties she had apparently stuffed under her shirt.

  “What does that mean?” Carly asked the chief softly. She had lowered her eyes to her newly freed hands, now, which rested in her lap. Her blush seemed to have settled back into a slight hint of rosiness, and she looked so lovely to Jim and so forlorn that he wanted to scoop her up and take her home immediately, tell the chief he didn’t believe any of it, and the store owner would see them in court.

  Not only did he know that from a legal perspective that wouldn’t work—might land both of them in jail, in fact—but the memory of the conniving look in Carly’s eyes came back to him. Even more distractingly, he saw the evidence bag again out of the corner of his eye, and the urgently arousing image of what Carly might look like wearing them, rose up before his mind’s eye.

  Jim thrust that thought away. The thumb of his left hand rubbed against his fingers without his even willing the movement, as the memory of their wedding night came back to him. The reason his wife’s actions in the intimates store made so little sense to him—he understood now that the whole situation with Carly’s arrest had begun to make itself clear—lay in that moment.

  Jim had sown his wild oats for a few years before he had met her, twenty-five to her twenty-one. He liked dominant sex, and he liked some of the spicier sorts of pleasure—different positions, oral sex, and especially anal. The New Modesty orientation had seemed to make clear that he should expect Carly to know her marital duties in that area, but it seemed she hadn’t gotten the memo.

  He remembered what the instructor had said about the ‘marriage academy’ program offered at the New Modesty Authority, but he hadn’t even thought about looking into it online. Matters of the bedroom should stay between a husband and a wife, he had always believed.

  It didn’t matter, he told himself. He had fallen head over heels the first time she had accepted his invitation to join him at his table in the café. Her dreams of entrepreneurship fit with his own of making his carpentry into a full-service remodeling business. Their ideas about family and home just fit together, both of them far away from their coastal parents and siblings, who had gotten along fine at the wedding.

  The twice-weekly morning sex, thrusting hard into his bride’s smooth, submissive pussy as he watched the pleasure in her closed-eyes, lip-bitten, kitten face, her knees dutifully raised to receive her husband’s hardness… it would be enough. When he asked, holding her afterward, “Did you come, sweetheart?” she always said, “Mm-hmm,” kissed him, and snuggled into his chest more tightly for the two minutes before she hopped out of bed to make breakfast. Knowing she had felt the same release he did, inside the velvet depths of the pussy he had deflowered, made him so happy that he didn’t think he could ever ask for more.

  The chief spoke not to Carly but to Jim, as he replied to her question.

  “It means that you have a choice. Mrs. Williams can do fifty hours of community service or you can promise to discipline her for what she did, Mr. Williams. In either case the charges will be dropped.”

  Chapter 3

  Carly had to bite her lip to keep herself from emitting a cry of mortified dismay. She didn’t want to look at Jim, really, out of abject fear at what his face might tell her, but her mind had a much more urgent need that overrode the anxiety: she needed
to know immediately whether Jim had understood the chief’s words the same way she had. Of course they would choose the community service, but the very mention of discipline made her cheeks hot.

  She had gone to New Modesty College here in Little Bend. She knew precisely what ‘discipline’ always meant at New Modesty Central. On her application, she had even had to check a box, and add her initials as confirmation.

  I understand that I am choosing to apply to a school where disciplinary matters are handled by college faculty with corporal punishment applied to the clothed or, in serious cases, bare skin of students’ buttocks and thighs. I understand that faculty are encouraged to use their bare hands, a paddle, a strap, or a punishment cane, as they see fit, to correct students’ faults in attitude, behavior, and academic performance.

  She could always just drop out, she had thought as she initialed on the little line, her cheeks burning. In fact, one of her friends had dropped out, when told she would receive a caning for being found in her room with an unregistered boyfriend. Another friend had received the paddle in front of her English class for shopping on her laptop during lecture.

  Carly, though certainly no angel, had managed to get away with peccadilloes like tequila shots and the occasional missed homework through a mixture of charm and intelligence. People seemed to think that girls at NM college got whipped on a daily basis, but in the course of her two years there, after transferring from a regular community college the way most NM students did, Carly had heard about something like a half-dozen public discipline sessions in class, and an equal number of private ones in a professor’s office. The only one she knew of in any detail was her friend’s—the others represented unconfirmed rumors, really.

  She herself had never even been present for a public one, and never known a professor even to hint within her earshot that she or another girl might have to visit his or her office for a meeting with the punishment strap. Carly had chosen NM college because she thought of herself as a traditionalist. She had decided to settle in Little Bend because of Jim, a man she felt certain would never hurt her.

  Now, in the police station, she wondered for the very first time whether not hurting her actually meant—as she had lightly told herself from time to time in their early married life—not doing what New Modesty husbands had a legal right to do. She swallowed hard as she saw that Jim had in his eyes the same expression he had worn only once so far in her presence: when Carly had broken the clothes dryer by putting too many wet towels in it even after Jim had warned her not to.

  Her tummy had flipped over then, just as it flipped over now. She had thought for an instant that Jim might be remembering something he had heard in New Modesty orientation, and she had almost turned to try to run away. But the severe look in her husband’s eyes had faded, and Carly had stood her ground, convincing herself that he must not in fact have thought of the awful possibility that had flashed through her own mind.

  The hard expression on Jim’s face did not fade this time. He had turned from the chief to look right at her, and Carly felt torn down the middle, in heart and mind. Half of her wanted to beg for mercy—get on her knees in front of Jim and the police chief and promise never to do it again, and could it please just be the community service or maybe… a spanking over her panties?

  The other half, though, stood aghast, mentally at least. The part of her that had come halfway across the country to get a mostly free education, and had chosen Jim Williams because he seemed both strong and gentle, couldn’t believe that the thought of pleading would occur to Carly Gradin. She felt her eyes narrow, and she saw the answering frown on her husband’s face, and yet Carly knew she couldn’t give in—she would find the way out of it, the same way she had found an escape from thinking too hard or too often about what happened in their bedroom.

  She knew the way out of it already, in fact—and it would get her out of the community service, too. Jim would make the promise, and then they would go home, and she would persuade him not to go through with what he had told the police. Problem solved, and Carly would never go near that stupid store again.

  Jim, to her great relief, seemed to have thought of exactly the same thing, despite his stern expression. He turned back to the chief and said, “I’ll handle this at home. What do I have to sign?”

  The chief looked over at the officer who had arrested Carly. “Seems like we’re all set here, Phil,” he said.

  “Glad to hear it,” he responded. “Sorry I had to cuff you, Mrs. Williams.”

  Carly looked up at the policeman, feeling resentment come into her face.

  “Carly,” she heard Jim say in a voice she didn’t think she’d ever heard come out of his mouth. “What do you say?”

  Carly’s heart raced for a moment, but she decided she’d misheard—misheard her husband’s tone, anyway. Still, she wanted it all over with.

  “That’s alright, Officer,” she said, forcing a smile onto her face. “You were just doing your job.”

  The officer left, and when Carly turned back to the chief, she saw that he had taken a file folder from one of his desk drawers. He opened it, turned it around, and pushed it across his blotter so that Jim could read it. Carly felt a jolt of hot mortification and reflexive anger when she saw why the chief hadn’t put the document in front of both of them: at the bottom the only signature line had beneath it the designation: Husband/Head-of-Household.

  Jim knew, just from looking at Carly’s expression, that she thought he wouldn’t actually punish her. For the past minute or so he had been experiencing flashbacks to New Modesty orientation, as several of the things the instructor of that session had mentioned seemed to come true, one after the other. The look on Carly’s face, though, brought back the most vivid memory of all.

  Hank, the orientation instructor, had said, “For some of you guys, the first time it happens, you’ll hardly even notice how quickly your wife shifts from being scared she’s going to get what she’s earned to thinking she can get out of it. One minute you’ll think you’ve got the situation under control, and all you’ll have to do is put her over your knee with her panties down—won’t even have to spank her very long or very hard—and the next you’re wondering how she got you to back down.”

  Jim remembered the way Hank had looked each of the six grooms-to-be in the eye for a moment, one eyebrow ironically raised, as if to say, I know you don’t believe me now, but just wait.

  Then the instructor had continued. “That’s when you have to remain firm, even though you love her more than anything. Because you love her more than anything.”

  Another of the guys at the session had raised his hand.

  “I get what you’re saying, Hank,” he had said, his voice troubled, “but I guess I’m not sure how I’ll be able to go through with it. We’re talking about a grown woman, who should be able to think things through, right? How can it make sense to take a paddle to her bare backside instead of talking to her?”

  Hank had nodded seriously. “That’s a fair point, I know—probably from all y’all’s perspective.”

  He had looked around, and they had nearly all nodded, including Jim.

  “First of all,” the instructor had continued, “you’re definitely going to talk to her. Before, during, and after—depending on your discipline style, of course… some husbands spank their wives in silence, after making it clear why she’s going over the pillows or the whipping stool or his knee, and then soothe her afterward. Others like to give a lesson in words at the same time they’re giving one with their belt. That’s up to you. Anyway, the point is that your wives wouldn’t be here in Little Bend as New Modesty girls if the authority hadn’t determined that they can benefit from old-fashioned, loving family discipline—talking by itself won’t help her anywhere near as much as the kind of conversation that you back up with a trip over your knee.”

  Jim had frowned, he remembered, but then Hank had looked around again, catching each man’s eye once more, before continuing.

&nb
sp; “Second, though, and even more important: your wife is going to give you clear signs—if you know how to look for them anyway—that she needs your firm hand, or even your belt, applied vigorously to her bare butt. Those signs aren’t the same for every girl, so I can’t really tell you what to look for, except to say that she’ll always be looking for your reaction, and a lot of the time, if she thinks you’re going to back down, you’ll catch a hint—maybe just a tiny glint, but it will be there—of disappointment.”

  Jim had looked around the room, reassured to see that the other five husbands-to-be seemed as mystified as he felt. Disappointment? Seriously?

  Now, looking from Carly to the chief of police to the lacy panties in the evidence bag, he remembered a final moment from that class, one that he realized he had repressed until now, maybe because it had seemed so outlandish. Hank had finished that part of the program with a final admonition.

  “Don’t discount how important a role the beginning of her sex life is going to play in your disciplinary dynamic, guys. And I promise you that if you fail to discipline your girl properly for denying you any part of your conjugal rights, you’ll find yourself back here at the authority office, looking for advice—or worse.”

  Hank had raised his hands in a gesture of reassurance.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see you guys again—but in better circumstances than having to get your marriage back on track because you forgot that in Little Bend you’re entitled to a blowjob from your bride. Remember what I said about the New Modesty Marriage Academy program. There are resources online that you may find very helpful, even if you don’t bring your girl in for a training class.”