Page 29 of Her Shameful Wedding Night (Corporate Correction)

On the other hand, that train of thought made Bradley reflect in another direction, too, as he dressed in his tuxedo at eleven a.m., after going for a five-mile run with John and Tony. Perhaps the traditional marriage program envisioned a husband who asserted his right, and even his duty, to punish his wife for no reason at all other than to ensure she understood the nature of their marriage.

Maybe a bridegroom who signed up for this subsidy, supported by the authority of the state and the power of the megacorps who served as government executors these days, had an obligation to put his bride over his knee or over a whipping stool once a week. Maybe Zoe needed that, to get used to her new life of submission to her husband.

John and Tony had taken up residence in Bradley’s living room as they waited for their turns in the shower, and had a college football game on at high volume. The sound of the crowd’s reaction to a touchdown, or maybe to an interception, floated into the bedroom as Bradley worked the first of the black studs into the placket of the tuxedo shirt, looking at himself in the mirror to make sure he had lined up the correct buttonholes.

Maybe a man with a bride like Zoe should arrange things so that she got regular lessons in submission—lessons of the most shameful kind. What happened today at the reception might have come about as a condition imposed by the government and by a corporation, but Bradley had gotten the strong sense from Davies that the semi-public paddling of a young wife—and even the sharing of her beautiful body—represented acceptable parts of a ‘traditional’ marriage in general.

As he put on his cufflinks his cock swelled in his black tuxedo pants at a dark thought he would never have imagined he might entertain as a real possibility: a monthly party of his friends where Zoe, the only woman present, would serve drinks to the guests, naked. After the drinks, blushing, she would go over the stool and have a whipping for any infractions, or for no misbehavior at all—solely so that she might learn a lesson in submission. Then, still over the stool, she would be enjoyed by the guests as Bradley watched, approving of how they taught her to accept her place as his treasured possession, more valuable to him the more she pleased the cocks he allowed to fuck her.

Zoe’s own response as he had forced her to the edge of orgasm, bent over her childhood bed with dress up and panties down, had made him think such ideas might not seem as fantastic and repugnant to her as he would have assumed only a few days before. He had felt for himself the need in her body, so evident on his slippery fingers, when he had told her that John and Tony would watch her paddling and even when he had hinted at the sharing to follow.

He had not the slightest doubt now, as he adjusted the green cummerbund that matched the bridesmaids’ dresses, that she would show up at the altar in white and ready for their unique kind of marriage. On the phone with Davies, he had felt far from certain of that, but the memory of the night of Zoe’s defloration and the way she had begun to respond to his mastery had made him willing to try. The little scene in her childhood bedroom had confirmed the program officer’s wisdom—that Bradley should regard the matter as being up to him, in every way.

He could walk away from the settlement, and Selecta. He could marry Zoe and fight on, perhaps winning the case eventually. Those possibilities Davies himself had offered, but Bradley’s mind had explored additional ones, in the intervening hours. He could reject Selecta’s offer and the state marriage program—but still paddle Zoe at the reception in front of his groomsmen, and share her mouth and pussy with them. He could follow through on his promise to fuck Zoe’s bottom, right there in front of John and Tony. He could share that newly deflowered anus with them, his best friends, and kiss Zoe tenderly as she took another man’s hardness in her little bottom.

It would be up to him.

Another swell of crowd noise from the TV in the living room recalled Bradley to himself. He had paused in the middle of adjusting the green bow tie, lost in these thoughts, his cock like an iron bar between his thighs. He looked down at his dresser, where sat the overnight envelope that held the white leather paddle: silk-wrapped wooden handle and an oval surface six inches long ready to correct a bride’s misbehavior with suitable severity.

Up to me, and up to Zoe.Even if she showed up, and even if she said I do, Bradley meant to ensure at each step of this suddenly twisted way that the needs of the girl he adored were being met. If he had learned one thing over the last few days, he had learned that he could figure out when his girl would benefit from his discipline and his dominance, usually without her saying a thing.

If Zoe wanted to marry him, but the shameful condition proposed by Selecta and the state simply didn’t work for her—whether right now, as she got into her wedding lingerie and her white gown at her childhood home across town, or later, when he brought her to the room where he intended to punish her and to share her—he would go on loving her. He would go on being her bridegroom and her husband.

Somehow the possibility that Zoe might decide she couldn’t submit as fully as Bradley’s darkest fantasies, and the demands of a megacorp, imagined, made his cock even harder. He frowned at himself in the mirror for a moment, wondering why, and then he looked down again at the envelope. With a little smile on his face, he pulled the paddle out, and looked again at it, thinking about how Zoe had moaned when she had heard that a paddle would arrive for her, on her wedding day, to spank her bare bottom for breaking her husband’s rules.

He thrust the paddle into the inside breast pocket of his tuxedo jacket, surprised how well it fit, with only an inch or so of the handle protruding.Every bridegroom should have one, he thought, his smile broadening.

As he went out to let John have his turn, he realized why the thought of giving Zoe the chance to back out of the shameful demands placed upon her aroused him even more. When his beautiful bride submitted nonetheless to her paddling and her gangbanging, she would demonstrate all the more clearly how deeply she needed their traditional marriage.

* * *

When the organ beganto play the wedding march and Zoe appeared next to her father, framed in the church door, Bradley couldn’t see the expression on her face at first, thanks to her veil. As she came closer, down the short aisle of the little church, though, he could see that she had a tiny smile on her face, as well as a deep blush.

He could hardly believe how aroused the sight of that blush got him, glimpsed through the white lace of the veil. He smiled back at her, watching her own expression lighten as their eyes met, but then he found he had to look away for a moment and focus on the late afternoon light streaming in through the stained glass, so full of inappropriate images had his mind suddenly grown.

When he looked back, his thoughts refocused on the solemn idea of wedding his life to Zoe’s forever, he saw a momentary cloud—perhaps at his having broken their mutual gaze—pass away, and then her father had put his bride’s hand in his own. Mr. Ralston went to sit next to his wife in the front pew, then, and Bradley felt his brow furrow: hadn’t they practiced it at the rehearsal with Zoe’s dad lifting her veil and kissing her on the cheek before he left her with her bridegroom?

Then he saw in his lovely bride’s eyes exactly what the divergence from the agreed-upon program meant, as she smiled up at him. He couldn’t keep his own smile from broadening even further, though the dominant thoughts also threatened to take hold again, as she whispered, too softly for anyone else to hear over the final organ chords, “You’re going to lift my veil, sir.”

Bradley did lift it, only a few minutes later, right before he kissed her, and then the organ played again and they were walking down the aisle, man and wife. Zoe clung to his arm as if she were simultaneously pleading with him to treat her mercifully and reassuring him that she had decided that whatever her fears, it all seemed worth it to her.

Across the town square they walked, then, with their attendants behind them, from the church to the historical society. While they got arranged for the photographer in front of the beautiful old house, they had time to kiss several more times, and less chastely than they had done before the altar.

Zoe had time to say, very softly, after one of those kisses, “I’m yours, babe... I mean, sir.” Her face had gone red again, before she said, in an even lower whisper, “All yours.”

Bradley had time to say to the groomsmen, “Guys, remember that at the end of the reception, I need your help with the thing we talked about,” and to see Zoe’s blush deepen still further.

Then the pictures got taken, and they greeted their guests in a reception line perfectly placed so that the guests had to give their congratulations quickly if they wanted to make it inside to the food.

All through dinner, especially when someone chimed a knife against a glass to elicit a marital kiss that Bradley and Zoe had not the slightest reluctance to provide, their eyes sought out one another’s faces. Each time, Bradley found his gaze narrowing slightly, as if to ensure that Zoe hadn’t forgotten what would soon happen, and each time Zoe chewed on her lower lip as a crease appeared on her brow. It almost seemed to him that Selecta and the state marriage program had found a way to put the traditional apprehension back into the wedding night, in a world where a bride nearly always arrived at the altar with a good deal more experience than a Victorian would have thought proper.

When they danced, though, to romantic old big-band music, he could feel Zoe melting into him, trusting him. With each song and each passing hour, the paddle seemed a more urgent presence in his pocket.

At nine, the cake cut and eaten, and all the rounds made to thank each guest for coming, Bradley bent to say into Zoe’s ear, “Time to go to the library.”

She swallowed hard, looking a final plea into his eyes, but he raised his eyebrows to indicate that any reluctance would only earn a sterner lesson in wifely obedience. Then she gave a little nod, her cheeks pink, and turned to let Cindy and Kim know that she would change into her traveling dress in a little while, and she would have Bradley come get them. He saw them smile knowingly—as it must have seemed to them—at the idea of bride and groom having a few minutes by themselves in the little library.

When he led Zoe into the room, though, he found that John and Tony had arranged it just as he had instructed them, and that they waited with their jackets off to do what Bradley had informed them they might have to do. When Zoe saw that the groomsmen had placed a cushion on top of the library’s little reading table, and cleared the space around it, in fact, she did draw back even as Bradley closed the door behind them.

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