A Spanking… And A Broken Promise?
Not long ago I enjoyed reading the erotic romance Their Treasured Bride by Vanessa Vale. Through a complex set of circumstances, our heroine finds herself quite suddenly married to not one, but two burly cowboys, who enthusiastically intend to share their new bride’s bodily delights between them. But our girl has trauma; she spent a lot of time in a brutal English boarding school, and it’s left her very repressed and uptight. After unpacking her trauma a little bit, they try to reassure her:
“I swear, Rebecca Montgomery McPherson MacDonald, that I willna raise my hand to you in anger. I will nae touch ye in any way that brings ye harm. Only pleasure.” Dash lifted his hand to my cheek and with his thumb, brushed my cheek and pulled me down toward him and kissed me. It was soft and gentle and without any tongue, for which I was surprised and oddly disappointed. He released me and turned me toward Connor.
“No one will raise a hand or a switch or a ruler or a cane to ye again,” Connor growled. “Tis our job to protect ye and take away yer problems.
Not a lot of wiggle room in that promise: “No one will raise a hand… to ye again.”
Yeah, about that:
“Ah, lass, dinna fight us. Dinna fight the your body’s reactions to our touch,” Connor told me as he stroked a hand over my forehead, pushing my hair back from my face.
I opened my eyes and looked down at them. “I…can’t. I can’t like it” Dash frowned and held me in place.
“Why ever not?” he asked. “There’s no shame in finding pleasure in your husbands’ touch.”
I nodded fervently. “Yes. Yes, there is.”
“We’re nae back to the thinking of England, are we?”
“I’m not supposed to like it,” I countered.
Dash’s eyebrows arched up beneath his hair. “Yes, ye are. They were lying to ye.”
“Aren’t ye also supposed to do yer husbands’ bidding?” Connor asked, continuing to stroke the side of my face.
I couldn’t help but nod, for that was what I’d been trained to be: biddable.
“Then ye must do as we say,” Dash told me. “And we are telling you—”
“Giving ye permission,” Connor cut in.
Dash nodded. “—to like it.”
“In fact, if ye dinna let go and give in to us, then you will be disobedient and then I’ll have to take ye over my knee.”
My mouth fell open at his words and I felt a moment of stark fear. “You said you wouldn’t beat me,” I whispered.
Connor slowly shook his head and his eyes stayed heated, not angry. “Beat ye? Never, but dinna think I willna turn ye over my knee for a spanking if ye deserve it.”
Now, I like a good spanking at least as well as the next guy, but this sort of guardhouse lawyering doesn’t set well with me, especially among men who are proud of their honor and prickly about being called on it. At another point in the story, this is them getting all stormy about their honor:
“Ye are safe here, lass.”
“I do not know you, even if you are my husband, and do not know if your words hold truth.”
Mr. McPherson slowly stood at my words, uncoiling to his full height to stand shoulder to shoulder with Connor. “Aye, tis true ye dinna know me, Connor or anyone else here at Bridgewater. We are an honorable group. Connor and I will always tell ye the truth, always do what is in yer best interest whether ye like it or nae. We are honorable men and ye will nae question that again.”
I felt my cheeks flush at the reprimand.
So, how does it go? They’ve threatened her with a spanking in breach of their promise. Do they actually do it? In the end, she gets just one good smack:
I heard her mumble something into the cushion of the couch.
“I have to wonder then, do ye have a headache or are ye lying about that as well.”
She mumbled some more.
Connor spanked her once on the arse, nae too hard, but a bright pink handprint appeared quickly enough.
“You spanked me!” she cried, her head coming up, her hair falling free of the pins.
“Aye, and if ye dinna answer our questions, I will do it again.”
She turned to look at us over her shoulder, her eyes all but brimming with anger and fire. “I do not have a headache.”
I smoothed a hand over the heated spot on her arse and she flinched.
So there you go. “We are honorable men” and “No one will raise a hand to ye” but then a spanking threat and a raised hand followed by a good smack. In the grand scheme of the plot, it’s not very significant; it’s a happily-ever-after story and these men truly cherish her from the first page to the last. I just found it jarring. What do you think? Am I reading too closely?
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I agree with your assessment. Spanking someone definitely counts as raising your hand to them. And if they claim to be men of their word, they can’t just ignore their promise. Even if there hadn’t been that last smack, they shouldn’t have threatened to spank her (or, preferably, they shouldn’t have made their promise – I think we can all agree that more books should include spanking sections).
Raising one’s hand, even if it never lands, is a threat. They’ve broken their promise.
Consent matters. I can enjoy non-consensual spanking stories that don’t pretend they’re anything else. But don’t tell me you value consent when your actions say otherwise.
This story starts by *saying* one thing, but the actions say different. No. I’m not okay with lying.
That’s just it! I’m fine with fantasy non-consent, but this “false pretense of security” bullshit doesn’t fly with me. Especially not in a story where the psychodynamics are all geared are the upright character of the men who are posed as solid, reliable, dominate-while-cherishing, trustworthy fellows.