I am the king's wife and this court reads me like a document. Every hand in that hall waits for a crack to open.
The ward's guardianship depends on Reid's favor, and his favor is the only ground I stand on.

He does not discuss a mistake. He names the hour and expects me at the annex door.
Last week a filing went out under the wrong seal and he raised my skirts at the desk. Measured strokes on bare skin.
He said what I was while he did it. I could not look at the clerks the next morning.

That is the shame of it. Not the strokes. That I stood in the corridor afterward with my ears ringing and wished for more.
He turns that key and every rule I live by goes somewhere else.

The council pressed him again today, so tonight will be heavier.
Skirts up. Strokes counted on bare skin. Every name he chooses for me. Then the desk, and his claim on it.
The guardianship is one rumor from a rival's hands, the court listens through that wall, and I go to the annex early.
What is a consort who waits at a locked door? What am I if he stops naming the hour?

A full-length royal spanking degradation erotic novel featuring a king's wife with a ward to protect and the monarch who corrects her.