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especially if she gave him the children he wanted, she would do as she was told, and would have no rights beyond those which he decided to grant her.
    That, of course, was as it should be. And he knew that he couldn’t go soft on her now, couldn’t give in to the lust that was raging through him as her supple body draped over his thighs. He needed to let her know just how things were going to go within their relationship – he was her husband, and was going to give the orders, and she was his wife, and she was going to carry them out, or rue the day she didn’t!
    He flattened his palm consciously and brought it crashing down onto those fleshy mounds, which automatically cringed away from his assault.
    “No! Stop this immediately!”
    Wolf couldn’t get over her audacity. Few men, much less women, dared to give him orders, and the little chit even sounded like she really expected that he was going to obey her! Well, she was going to get a little taste of who was going to be doing the obeying.
    His hand cracked sharply down onto her flesh, until her bottom was a mass of angry red handprints. And then he went to work on the backs of her legs. She had commenced screaming from the very first swat, and had become successively more shrill thereafter. Luckily for him – and most definitely not for her – the little cottage she occupied was well on the outskirts of town, and there wasn’t anyone around to hear her angry screams.
    Hannah was truly outraged, and the angrier she got, the worse the spanks seemed to hurt. And none of her flailing, which she knew only served to wiggle her bottom in front of him in a most unseemly fashion, did her any good whatsoever. He was too blasted big, and too blasted strong for her own good. “Let go of me, you bloody oaf!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, but that only got her a lecture on a lady’s use of proper language.
    Wolf grimly accented the important words with blistering swats. “I will not have my wife sounding like a sailor, or a fishwife! You will conduct yourself at all times with the comportment expected of a duchess, if I have to beat you every single time you misspeak for the rest of your life.” It was almost worse to be lectured in that low, throbbing baritone of his. Unlike Hannah, he was completely dispassionate about it, and from her short acquaintance with him she was quite sure that he meant what he said.
    He certainly meant to teach her a lesson this time.
    Wolf spanked her until his arm was starting to get sore, and his hand felt like it was going to fall off. But he’d accomplished several goals. She wasn’t screaming any more, and she most certainly wasn’t swearing. He set her on her feet in front of him, saying in his usual command voice, “Stay.”
    She stood. And she stayed. Hanna was seething with anger, her bottom throbbing even worse in this position, when the blood kind of pooled back there, she guessed, not wanting to think about such a torrid subject, but forced to by her complete discomfort. She dashed away the tears he’d inspired with such depressing ease, not wanting to show that weakness, not wanting to give him any part of herself whatsoever.
    At least when he’d stood her up, her skirts and petticoats had fallen to cover her shameful nudity, although her drawers were Lord knew where. She’d kicked and arched and flexed so much that they’d long since been thrown off with complete – and thoroughly embarrassing – abandon. She looked around a bit, and saw them hanging off the corner of her night table.
    Just when she thought she couldn’t possibly be any more humiliated.
     

 
     
    Chapter Three
     
     
    Hannah tried to move over a little, keeping her eyes on him the whole time, hoping to just snag them and throw them under the bed, somehow.
    But he – who wasn’t paying the least attention to her and was fussing with something about his uniform – seemed to have eyes in the sides of his head, and immediately chastised her