Claiming Their Maiden Read Online Free Page B

and there, mostly
    located near the old castles.” He paused and continued stroking her bottom. She hated to admit it,
    but it felt rather nice. She much preferred his tenderness to his harshness, though she still wished
    to escape.
    “Well, if you must know, I prayed in the forest for my life, and for my freedom . To say
    the Goddess answers prayers is ridiculous if you think about it. Why should she answer yours
    and not mine?”
    He squeezed her mounds, pulling at each cheek as he did so, parting her until air rushed
    against her cleft, down to her bottom hole and her sex. “Don’t be foolish, sweetling.” Humor
    colored his voice. “Isn’t it obvious?”
    “What?” she asked, frustrated.
    “My brother and I are the answer to your prayers; you just don’t know it yet.”
    She scoffed and lifted her head, wishing her hands were free so she could wipe the
    lingering moisture from her face. “I guess it’s true what they say about the Banded Men?”
    “What’s that?”
    “That what they have in strength of body, they lack tenfold in strength of mind. Brutes
    without brains.”
    “You’re lucky I’m the one punishing you right now,” he said. “I’m much calmer than
    Trent. He’d take a cane to you for saying something like that.”
    Her blood ran cold at the mention of a cane. She’d never been caned before, but she’d
    witnessed a man caning his wife once. Amelia had been asleep in a small storage building behind
    a house when a terrible scream jolted her awake. Curious, she’d crept up to a lighted window to
    peer inside. The scene she’d witnessed left a deep impression on her, so deep she’d sworn to
    never take a husband, should the chance present itself.
    A young woman she recognized as Carla, a new bride, was bent over a desk, her skirts
    thrown up, and her drawers parted at the slit. A large man, her husband, wielded a cane against
    her bottom, pausing after each stroke to wait for his wife to resume her position, because nearly
    every blow caused her to spring up on her toes and howl. Amelia winced as she recalled the
    sound of the thin implement slicing through the air to crash against soft flesh. Dark pink weals
    were raised on Carla’s bottom, and she was sobbing into her hands, begging her husband to be
    lenient. She kept apologizing, over and over again, but try as she might, Amelia couldn’t figure
    out what poor Carla had done to incite her husband’s wrath.
    She’d left the window before the punishment ended and found another storage building to
    sleep in that night, but Carla’s screams had haunted her long after. Amelia had seen the woman
    in the village three days later, looking content with her husband by her side, and she wondered
    how the two could appear so happy after such an incident. This curiosity had prompted Amelia
    to spy on the couple at night a few times as they sat on their front porch. All those times, they’d

    appeared happy, deeply in love, and Amelia had come to the conclusion that they were both
    crazy. It was the only explanation.
    Would Gavin tell Trent about her brutes without brains comment? She peered over her
    shoulder and gave her captor a pleading look. “Please don’t tell Trent I said that. I won’t say
    anything like that again.”
    His eyes softened. “You will need to watch your tongue around my brother. His temper is
    much hotter than mine. But don’t worry, sweetling. I won’t tell him. Consider it our little secret.”
    “Thank you. And I understand.” She decided to press on, now that she was making some
    progress with Gavin. “Is my spanking over, then?” A girl could hope.
    He grinned and patted her backside, and the simple contact of his hand on her punished
    area caused her to gasp. “Did you think I bared your bottom just to look at you?”
    She turned around, too shamed to hold his gaze for a second longer.
    His hand cracked down on her unprotected skin, and before the shock of the first blow
    faded, his hand came down