03

Chapter 2: Mr. Collins' punishment

"I think, Mr. Collins, that you know what you did that merits reproof today," Charlotte said ominously, entering his room.

Mr. Collins sat, trembling in anticipation as she crossed to him.

"Please, what did I do, dear Charlotte?" he asked plaintively.

"You kept Lady Catherine waiting for her dinner, lingering in the foyer to admire the ornaments," she reminded him, staring down at him reprovingly.

"But she so liked it when I admired them the other day," he whined.

"She was giving you a tour then, not hungry for her dinner," she said icily. "But you cannot mind the differences in circumstances that make a compliment pleasing in one circumstance and a burden in another."

"I am so sorry, Charlotte," he said. "Pray, do not punish me, I will not do it again."

She sighed. "If only I believed you could change without punishment, Mr. Collins, I would not be obliged to punish you. But we both know that you will not improve without stern rebuke. Is that not true? Do not you need punishment?"

"Yes, I need for you to punish me," he said tremblingly.

She sat and gestured to her lap. He lowered his pants and climbed upon her lap, anticipation already throwing quivers of feeling into his cock.

The first slap came as a shock, welcome as it was painful. Then she rained down a furious storm of blows upon his buttocks, heating them with her anger.

"To keep a lady, and your patroness, waiting on your pleasure while you exposed your greed, was shameful," she explained, slapping the reddened flesh in emphasis.

He nodded, then at her increased slaps found his voice to agree. "Yes, forgive me, I was very wrong to keep her standing. Please, forgive me."

"How can I possibly forgive you?" she asked imperiously, slapping his buttocks further. "You are incorrigible. To commit yet more awkwardnesses, and those as offenses against your own patroness. It is unforgivable." She furiously spanked his already sore flesh, wakening welts that had been sleeping since his previous week's punishment.

His hands sought to cover his buttocks and she wrenched them away, thrusting them back to their places by his head.

"Contain yourself, Mr. Collins. Receive your punishment with dignity fit for a man rather than a naughty little boy!"

Collins sobbed in pain and humiliation, his cock rubbing against her night dress as his buttocks danced in anticipation of the next strike. He clenched his hands, willing them to remain and not cover his flesh from her blows.

She slapped slowly but steadily, each blow acting as wind on a fire, tormenting his flesh, sending quivers of sensation through him to his throbbing cock.

Tears streamed from his eyes to wet the coverlet as the weeping tip of his cock dampened her night dress, but there was no ceasing in the hail of blows that fell upon his sore cheeks.

"Have you learned your lesson, Mr. Collins?" she asked, pausing to pinch the reddest parts of his tormented flesh.

He was so caught up in the pain and pleasure that he did not respond.

"You have not learned your lesson, naughty boy," she said, slapping the tender bottom of his cheeks, then scratching lines from the thigh across the reddened surface to his waist.

Helplessly, he rubbed his cock against the fine fabric of her night dress, the feeling uniting with the fire in his buttocks until it erupted through his cock.

He clung to her for a moment in shock, then she pushed him off her. He tumbled to the floor, gasping in spent pleasure.

She stood, looking at him contemptuously.

"You have again failed to learn your lesson, Mr. Collins," she said, nudging him with her foot as he lay on the floor. "If your conduct does not improve, I shall be forced to punish you again."

She scarce heard his promises to do better as she left.

Chapter 3: Before Elizabeth

Charlotte closed her husband's bedroom door firmly behind her and advanced on him with an angry look.

'What do you think you are about, Mr. Collins, to make such an awkward show before my friend?" she asked, contempt drilling from her words.

Mr. Collins squirmed where he sat on the edge of the bed. "Was I so bad as all that, dear Charlotte?" he said, ingratiatingly.

"You were the very picture of awkwardness," she said, standing over him. "When you had her standing about for minute on end, having had no tea offered her, while you spoke of shelves and curtains, I was ashamed of you. This merits the most severe reproof." She gestured at her lap, and quickly he lowered his trousers and flung herself over her knee.

Her hand came down swift and hard.

"You probably believed that if you were bad enough, that I would withhold punishment to punish you further still," she said, punctuating her phrases with painful slaps that sent him squirming. "But you will never be so bad that I will not punish you, to drive the willful badness from you and make you at last a decently intelligent, graceful man."

By this time, his buttocks were red and inflamed with her strikes and he near danced in pain and ecstasy as the blows became yet more painful.

Charlotte paused to scrape her fingertips over the reddened flesh, Collins sobbing with pleasure as his cock throbbed against her thigh.

"I'm not sure this punishment is enough to correct your terrible awkwardness," she said, after a few more smacks showed welts where her nails had dragged and his moans turned to whimpers. "Perhaps if Miss Bennet saw you punished thus, you would be humbled sufficiently to take your lesson."

This marked a furious array of slaps. Soon he was writhing, tears flowing freely down his face, and losing control, erupted onto Charlotte's lap. She pushed him to the floor and looked at him in disgust.

"You remain quite unteachable," she said, standing over him once more. "Next time I shall have to think of something to finally seize your wits and bring them to attention."

Collins crawled to her feet and begged for mercy, but she kicked him away and strode to the door, leaving him to find his way to bed.

Elizabeth seated herself across from her friend, who sat at her sewing in the morning room, intent at her task.

Suppressing a sigh, she took up her book. Charlotte had been so distant since she had come into Kent. The confidence between them had been broken by Charlotte accepting him, and naught she could do would rekindle it.

Charlotte stared at her stitches, fearing that any word she said might let loose a confession that she could not make.

"The light here is good for sewing," Elizabeth observed, the silence having tried her long enough.

"It is," Charlotte agreed, eager to have a neutral topic introduced. "I always sit here of the morning, while Mr. Collins is in his garden or working on his sermons." She willed her friend to understand, that she did not feel of Mr. Collins as a wife ought, that her sympathies were with Elizabeth in her judgment of her husband as an awkward ass.

Some part of her felt that Lizzy would approve of the punishment of Mr. Collins, but knew not how to speak of such a matter to her, scarce she knew how to think of it, herself. She had eagerly grasped at his punishments as an alternative to the nuptial bed, but now that the pattern was established, she accomplished it in a mix of outlet for her contempt and a desire to maintain this strange power over him. It was so at odds with every other thing about her life that she could scarce think of it but in the evenings when she had taught him to await his punishment.

Elizabeth stared at her friend, sensing something of the conflict in the woman, unsure of how to proceed.

"You seem very comfortable, my dear Charlotte," she offered.

Charlotte smiled, but the moment froze under her hesitation.