A Janus Caning Story. More stories are available here.

Executive Encounter

by Richard Watson

GLANCING at his watch, Brent Matthews suddenly realised how drained he was. It was well past six o’clock and there was no certainty that the negotiations would finish that evening. It had been three gruelling days so far, and yesterday alone had involved some twelve hours of talks. On flying over from New York, Brent had estimated it would take two days at the most to wrap up the biggest syndication deal of his career. He had been wrong.

What he hadn’t fully considered was his counterpart across the table in the plush boardroom high above the City of London. In Cynthia Ward, Brent had met his match — and then some! She looked to be in her late thirties at the most, but Brent knew she must be over 40 to be Finance Director of a major British multinational. This woman had broken the mould, so he’d been told — and this week he had learned why. The hard way!

Even in her dark smartly-tailored business suit and white silk blouse, Cynthia was stunning. Her shoulder-length auburn hair and creamy complexion, her slender but full-breasted figure and her pert nose and sensual mouth all attracted attention. But it was her sparkling green eyes, which seemed to show such eagerness to engage in corporate combat, that unsettled Brent the most — to such an extent that at first he scarcely noticed the rest of her undoubted physical assets in the thrust and parry of their exchanges.

The bank’s London branch had warned him that she would be stubborn and meticulous. Even in fatigue, Brent could only gaze at his opponent with a respect almost bordering on awe. He knew, however, that he could concede no more in the proposal. It was an eight-figure long-term capital financing plan to bring this conglomerate into new Asian markets, ones they clearly desired. Given the prospect of his employer being the lead bank, with all the fees involved and the pure prestige of simply landing this huge corporate fish, Brent saw his personal goal of moving up from Senior Vice President to Executive VP as almost assured — if, of course, he could close this deal. But all his cards had been played; he simply awaited the response and expected a delay.

‘I think we have a feasible arrangement now, Mr Matthews,’ said Cynthia Ward at last. ‘The refinancing clauses look quite suitable to me, and the front-end fees have been reduced to what our projections allowed for. I’m confident now in taking this to our board if you want to revise all the points we’ve discussed in the draft.’

Brent could feel the relief spread throughout his body at her words. He wanted to savour the moment, yet not show it. Still, he had given up quite a bit; she’d been superb in her persistence. He quickly promised to fine-tune the draft tomorrow and leave a copy on Friday.

Only then, as they walked out of the conference-room, did Brent feel relaxed enough to look at Cynthia as something other than a skilled negotiator. Tall and spare, with a dusting of white in his neat dark hair, Brent knew that he looked distinguished and passably handsome. Since his traumatic divorce two years before, he had had little time or inclination to consider feminine company. Cynthia Ward, however, was in a league of her own. ‘Well, with that done,’ he ventured, ‘can I buy you dinner tonight? To celebrate, of sorts.’

She paused, regarding him shrewdly. ‘It’s tempting, I’ll admit,’ she demurred. ‘But I have a good two hours of work still to clear off my desk, I’m afraid.’

‘At least a drink then, after,’ Brent persisted. ‘You can’t just go straight home after a day like this. My hotel bar would be a good choice.’

She took just a second to seemingly mull it over in her mind. ‘Fine,’ she said, ‘if that suits you, Mr Matthews. But I won’t be there till nine at the earliest.’ Then she was gone.

Brent felt that one advantage of a five-star West End hotel was an elegant bar which offered a discreet and intimate setting. But it was closer to ten o’clock than nine before Cynthia Ward finally walked in. Watching her approach the table, he suddenly became fully conscious of just how exciting this woman also was from the neck down. Even her executive style of dress could not conceal her voluptuous shape. Cynthia was buxom by nature, but with a rather slim waist — due in part, no doubt, to a disciplined fitness programme. Her long shapely legs flowed into full hips, which swayed most enticingly as she trod towards him on high heels.

She sank gracefully into the chair opposite, taking up the same respective position to him that she had adopted during the past three days. But this was relaxation. Feeling satisfied that the arduous negotations were behind them, Brent hoped to ease the conversation into more personal matters. They quickly settled into a first-name basis. He realised that she fascinated him, perhaps because he had never before seen quite this unique combination of beauty, elegance and determination all embodied in the one woman. Having steered deliberately clear of romantic involvements these past two years, Brent was surprised at the keenness of the curiosity he felt about this poised executive.

He was on his second Scotch, while Cynthia was sipping a Campari and soda, when he chose to enquire why such an attractive lady as she had opted for a rigorous career instead of marriage.

Those green eyes searched his as if to calculate the direction this thrust of his might take them. They seemed to read a great deal about him all at once — a facet of her brilliance he had already noted. ‘I tend to seek intensity in life,’ she replied. ‘I’ve had some exciting relationships with men and was engaged once, but I ended it when I realised that marriage wouldn’t succeed in the long term. And my work has continued to challenge me — more than the recent men in my life.’ She looked at him keenly and smiled. ‘Though there have been moments.’

Brent became aware that Cynthia’s directness extended beyond board-rooms and into personal conversations. It was a revelation about her which he could not have known before and, while normally cautious, he felt that an opportunity had arisen to be bold himself.

‘I can’t imagine you being the type of person married only to your job,’ he challenged. ‘Haven’t you found excitement and fulfilment in sex, if not lasting love?’

Her smile was both subtle and coy. ‘Good sex has been the second most intense experience I’ve had in my life,’ she responded enigmatically.

Brent could only guess at her meaning, but felt that he knew Cynthia Ward well enough by now. ‘And the first, I presume,’ he declared confidently, ‘is closing a hard-fought deal for the corporation.’

‘No, that’s third.’

For a moment, Brent was nonplussed. Her eyes were still fixed on his, the smile was still there and her chin was tilted a little in challenge. He surmised that Cynthia was leading him into something — something he would be delighted to learn. ‘All right then,’ he asked, nettled yet intrigued. ‘What experience ranks first on your “intensity” scale?’

‘Being caned,’ she said simply.

Brent thought that he must have misheard. He swallowed some Scotch to cover his surprise and felt sure that her prompt response had definitely not been mere ad lib. ‘Well, not exactly what I had expected to hear,’ he managed at last. ‘I hope you’ll expand on that, please.’

She gave a soft laugh and tilted her head to brush back the rich auburn hair from her brow. ‘You must have learned by now that I don’t deal in the “expected”,’ she teased. ‘Though your look of shock was certainly that. With you being American, I wasn’t sure you’d know what a caning is.’

‘Well,’ Brent rallied, ‘I’ve dealt with Brits long enough to know most of the cultural traditions over here, but…’

Cynthia’s smile was amused. ‘But I expect that you yourself had one of those soft American upbringings,’ she goaded, green eyes sparkling. ‘Why, I doubt if you were even spanked.’

‘You make me somehow feel ashamed to admit you’re right,’ said Brent. ‘I suppose my youth reflected a “progressive” approach.’ He looked guardedly at this magnetically attractive woman who held such power to surprise. It was as if she divined his fascination at the extraordinary images she was inspiring in his normally pragmatic mind. ‘But you have to provide some background of sorts,’ he prompted.

Cynthia relaxed a little and he suddenly realised how tense she had been up to that point. ‘I rather thought you’d want to know more. And that means I’ll have a second drink.’

Brent’s mind spun with anticipation as the waiter served his guest. He had no idea where all this would lead, but was sure she had more in mind than idle chatter.

‘To begin with,’ Cynthia said, ‘I was an only child. My parents were as loving and giving as possible. My father was a respected teacher in a well-regarded public school. But while I was well cared for, both my parents greatly feared a spoilt daughter. My late teens were in the mid-to-late Sixties, and some parental attitudes were slower to change over here than in your country. So, while my home was very loving, it was also a strict one — and in those days that meant there was a cane on hand. Even though up till the age of eighteen it had never been used on me, and I think I regarded it rather as a bluff. An ultimate sanction that would never be used.’

She paused, but only briefly. Brent’s focus was now total. ‘Please go on,’ he said. ‘You know you’ve got my undivided attention.’ He realised that his mouth was open and promptly closed it. ‘You were eighteen?’

Cynthia nodded. ‘By that age, my independent streak was in full force. And at times my nature was virtually rebellious, especially when it came to curfews and dating restrictions. One night over dinner I argued for an end to such limits — given that, at eighteen, I was an adult. When Mummy stressed again that I was subject to their rules as long as I was living under their roof, I lost control and foolishly used the word “bitch”. Quite naturally, Daddy then stepped in and said such disrespect required severe correction in the one way I’d be sure to remember.’

Brent stared, his drink forgotten. ‘You mean he was going to cane you? At that age?’ She nodded again. ‘Why didn’t you tell him to go to hell?’

‘Judgement had already been passed,’ she said simply. ‘It would have been even more foolish to argue.’

‘That doesn’t sound like the Cynthia Ward I know,’ he observed.

‘Oh, I can assure you she exists.’ Cynthia sipped her drink and continued, ‘It wasn’t only the sting that made the caning so dreadful, and therefore effective. It was the formality, the ritual of sorts. I had to report upstairs to my parents’ bedroom after a nail-biting period of waiting. A sturdy wooden stool had been brought in and placed in the centre of the room. The cane was discreetly kept in my mother’s wardrobe. My father ordered me to take it out and bring it to him. The shame was all the greater, given my own image of self importance at the time.’

‘I can well imagine that,’ Brent responded with an unfamiliar feeling of being slightly out of his depth. In the subdued light of the bar her face looked softly radiant, the green eyes glowing with reminiscence. For a moment she looked no older than 18, her auburn hair shining.

‘Perhaps the worst part was the loss of dignity,’ Cynthia was saying. ‘Again, it made the punishment all the more effective. The only concession was that I was already over the stool before Mummy took down my knickers.’

Brent caught his breath. ‘You mean you got it on the b-bare…?’

‘Bare bottom. Yes, quite right. And I was a big girl, remember. Even so, in those times it wasn’t quite the extraordinary event it would be today.’

‘It’s still hard to imagine,’ said Brent, swallowing hard, although his mind was vividly creating just such an image. It made his brain spin.

‘Also,’ her honeyed English voice purred on, ‘when Daddy caned me, he expected a contrite attitude. I always addressed him as “Sir” when being disciplined or reprimanded. That one and only caning was twelve strokes — pure agony I can promise you. But I endured it and all was forgiven. I assure you it was dreadful then; but now, almost 25 years later, the event still comes back to me with a poignancy I cannot ignore.’ She looked directly at him. ‘Still, I expect it makes little sense to you. Does it?’

Brent gulped more whisky and returned Cynthia’s gaze. Frankly, he was unsure how to react to this dynamic businesswoman’s extraordinary admission, though the excitement which was rising in him seemed more intoxicating than the spirit itself. ‘Why me, and why now?’ Brent replied carefully, setting down his glass. ‘I somehow get the impression you don’t tell this story on a er… daily basis.’

‘I’ll answer that, I promise.’ She sat forward, her bosom straining against the silk blouse. ‘But first you need a bit more background. Daddy died some ten years ago of a heart attack. It was only last year that Mummy passed away. At first, I planned to sell the old family house in Hampstead, but then I decided to move into it myself. The house has so many happy memories for me, you see — that caning being a rare exception. Anyway, just a few months ago I was rummaging through the attic, sorting items out, and I came upon… upon that very same cane…’

Cynthia paused, watching him. Gauging his reaction.

‘Go on,’ said Brent. ‘You can’t stop now!’

She took a breath, then continued a little more quickly. ‘I was surprised at first, but my mother was never very good at throwing old things away. Just holding that cane in my hand brought all the sensations flooding back. It certainly hadn’t been used since that last night with me over the stool. Oh, and the stool is still there in the house as well.’ Again Cynthia paused, then went on, ‘So… how shall I put it? The rediscovery of the cane has led to, shall we say, certain urges. A need of sorts, to re-explore, even relive, the past. Do you understand?’

‘I think so,’ said Brent as evenly as he could. ‘And a certain banker from New York seems to fit into these recent urges?’

She smiled, her green eyes shining. ‘A clever deduction! It simply fits! You’re discreet, I’m sure of that. And I’ve come to know you just well enough. You have an air of authority, Brent. You can command a situation, you’re principled. All traits much like my father’s — and that’s a compliment, believe me.’

‘I take it as such.’ He inclines his head coolly, though his heart was thumping.

‘So, Brent,’ she pursued, moving astutely in as he had seen her do when firming a deal. ‘Are you adventurous — and perhaps a bit theatrical? Or at least able to assume a well-crafted role?’

‘I can act,’ Brent admitted. ‘But this part would seem to call for a script.’

‘Indeed it does.’ Her smile had gone, she was all business again — but her face was transfigured by an excitement he hadn’t seen before. ‘Your flight back is on Friday, I know, with tomorrow working out of your hotel room. Assuming I can entice you into visiting Hampstead tomorrow night, you’ll be receiving a letter in your room during the course of the day. I’m sure you’ll be able to proceed easily enough from there once you’ve read it carefully through.’

With that she stood up, bestowed a lingering look on him, then walked from the bar. He watched her as she went, and very much liked what he saw.

* * *

Brent lay awake most of the night trying to convince himself that the conversation over drinks had really occurred. He realised that his initial physical attraction to Cynthia Ward had already become something more. Her desire to re-enact a youthful caning had at first seemed strange to him, to say the least. But as he considered it further, the unforgettable intensity of such an experience was perhaps understandable. No matter what, he himself now shared her ‘sense of adventure’ — and seeing her over that stool with bottom bared would be more than enough reward for any histrionics he might be called upon to indulge in.

The promised letter was delivered to Brent’s hotel room early the next day. The very thickness of the envelope made it clear that Cynthia either required very little sleep or else had written it out in advance of telling her story. Even for her, though, the latter seemed unlikely.

Common sense told Brent to finish his writing of a draft memorandum before reading the letter, but temptation won over logic. Opening the envelope, he found a twelve-page missive typed with single spacing. No detail was omitted of what was expected of him. He read it through twice, the second time concentrating fully on each sentence. Each nuance of position, attitude and action was fully explained. To his surprise, Brent felt confident that he could portray the role she sought from him. Indeed, the very thought of it filled him with extraordinary excitement. He was to be, in fantasy, more of a ‘father figure’ than a re-creation of her father. But her instructions on certain aspects were most explicit:

To be of value, the correction itself simply has to be thorough. Any reluctance on your part to be vigorous with the strokes will only disappoint Thus, do not stint in your full use of the cane. Only if you hear me say ‘carrots’, as a codeword of sorts, should you let up. But that is highly unlikely.

Brent found it difficult to concentrate on his work throughout the afternoon. The invitation to visit the Hampstead house was for 9pm. Just prior to calling for a taxi, he read the letter carefully through for a third time. Yes, he reaffirmed to himself, he could play the part called for, and indeed had begun to relish it.

Cynthia greeted him warmly at the door and offered him a very dry sherry, which he accepted, in the spacious lounge with its view of the Heath. At first, no mention was made of the evening’s theme as they eased into a relaxed conversation. This seeming insouciance, and the allure of her appearance, only added to Brent’s anticipation. Her cream-coloured high-neck silk blouse with Wedgwood cameo brooch was both elegant and traditional, her bosom swelling ripely inside it; while her tight fawn skirt erotically emphasised the fullness of the curves below her slim waist. Regardless of the role to which she was shortly to return after such a long hiatus, Cynthia Ward’s attire proclaimed that this was indeed a mature and exquisite woman.

Finally, after finishing her second glass of sherry, she looked up and said, with a tight little smile that did not quite reach her eyes, ‘Shall we proceed?’

Brent knew from the instructions in her letter that once he entered the master bedroom the scene was to begin. He felt keyed-up, keen and on his mettle and, while not having exactly memorised a set of lines, was confident of his own part in the exhilarating scenario that beckoned.

Cynthia had, of course — as the setting required — gone into the bedroom first. When Brent trod firmly up the stairs and opened the door into the large chamber, he might have stepped back in time almost 25 years. In the centre of the room, with ample space around it, stood a tall wooden stool with a faded padded seat. A short distance away, leaning against a large traditional wardrobe, was the cane itself — some three feet in length, with a crook handle. The flexible, mahogany-brown implement was thin and slightly bent — due, no doubt, to its usage in times gone by. And seated demurely on the pink silk coverlet of the double-bed was a beautiful female whose facial expression very much reflected that of a contrite young woman biting her lip in an agony of apprehension.

‘Well, young lady,’ he began sternly, following the guidelines of his brief. ‘Have you thought matters over?’

‘Yes, Sir.’ Her voice was low, quavering slightly. Her troubled green eyes blinked unhappily up at his tall, dominating figure, then fixed their gaze on her hands where they twisted anxiously together in her lap.

‘And…?’

‘I’m very sorry for what I said. I shouldn’t have been so disrespectful to Mother. I know better than that, and it was very wrong of me.’

While intent on sticking to his role, Brent was stunned by what he was seeing and hearing. Here was Cynthia Ward, financial whizz of one of Britain’s leading multinationals, who for three days had superbly negotiated the most complex financing facility he had ever seen, now fully convincing him that she was an 18-year-old girl who had just earned herself a sound caning. Brent’s thoughts quickly reverted back to the text of her letter.

Lecture me firmly. Make me feel I deserve every bit of punishment you intend to administer. Leave no doubt as to your resolve to be severe with me.

Brent looked down at the quailing form on the bed, her beautiful features half-obscured by a tumble of auburn hair. Suddenly a sense of power flowed into him, bracing his spine and squaring his stance.

‘You may think you are too old for the cane, Cynthia,’ he snapped. ‘But you’re not. Such outbursts have convinced me that a stinging bottom is the best remedy for your tantrums. You still need parental control, my girl, and I’ll not shrink from my duty.’ Yes indeed, thought Brent, feeling a build-up of righteous anger tempered with a deep concern akin to love: perhaps the theatre was truly my first calling.

‘I’m r-really sorry. I am, Sir.’ Her lashes were wet and her eyes wide with entreaty and shining with unshed tears. ‘P-please don’t cane me, Sir.’

‘I’m sorry, Cynthia, you know the penalty. Skirts up and over the stool, please.’

‘No! Please not!’

‘Over the stool, girl!’ Brent thundered. ‘At once! Don’t you dare contradict me!’

Shivering and sniffling, Cynthia stood up from the bed and approached the stool. Then, with her back turned towards Brent, she raised the close-fitting skirt to waist level, draped her body slowly across the padded top, and braced herself bravely. As Brent’s gaze absorbed the magnificent sight now on display, her writing again came strongly to his mind.

I’ll be wearing navy blue knickers, or panties to you, which represent the time-period. Naturally, it will be your task to take them down.

The plain and sensible undergarment referred to, stretched thinly and tightly over the full, creamy mounds of her buttocks, added just the retrospective touch that helped Brent feel as though it were indeed a quarter of a century ago. He no longer had any problem in seeing Cynthia as the deserving young recipient of his disciplinary efforts, and found total identification with his part in the proceedings.

‘Raise your hips, Cynthia,’ he commanded. ‘I wish to remove your knickers.’

‘N-no…’

‘At once!’

She hastily obeyed, easing her hips off the stool whilst he grasped the waistband. He did not rush, noting with pleasure how the dark blue fabric stretched almost to splitting across the plump cushions of her bottom. Hardly daring to breathe, he peeled the panties down, exposing to his rapt gaze the deeply-cleft bareness of those sumptuous buttocks. He slowly pulled the garment down the long graceful legs and dropped it on the bed.

Then Brent stepped back to fully enjoy what now lay bared and yielding before him. Cynthia Ward had a bottom which combined femininity, maturity and fitness. Its curves were ample, yet firm — as befitted a woman whose subtly advancing years only enhanced her physical charms. Yet any thoughts Brent might have had about other ways of enjoying those ripe hind-quarters straining urgently up towards him across the stool were quickly put aside once he glanced at the cane, which still leaned against the wardrobe like the star of the show awaiting its entrance on to the stage.

Brent crossed to it and picked up the weathered implement carefully, as though it were an antique. While it was the first true punishment-cane his American eyes had ever seen, its capacity to correct was obvious. He flexed it springily between his hands as he walked back to take up his position beside the stool — knowing that Cynthia, draped over it with her auburn hair dangling to the carpet and her buttocks bare and ready, was extremely aware of his every measured step.
He paused to wonder about what was going through her mind at that moment and became aware of the tiny keening noises she was making deep in her throat — the sole manifestation of her extreme excitement and apprehension. Brent tapped the cane gently across the smooth, flawless globes which awaited his efforts. Her thighs parted slightly, giving him just a hint of her inner charms, while the pale, silky bottom-cheeks were themselves relaxed, almost placid, as if to show their meek acceptance of the chastisement to come. Again, a passage from her letter flashed through his mind:

Tell me in advance that I’m to receive a dozen and make me count after each one. Maintaining my composure is essential, and don’t hesitate to question me during the caning.

‘You’re to have twelve strokes, Cynthia,’ said Brent firmly, taking a strong grip on the cane, ‘and I expect you to take them in good form. You are to count the number after each. Is that understood?’

‘Yes, Sir,’ she sibilantly whispered.

Could he really do it, Brent wondered. Could he bring himself to inflict such pain on a woman he found so appealing? The hesitation was brief — the answer was ‘yes’. He raised the rod and let it quiver above his shoulder, then brought it swiftly down across the summits of his inviting target with a resonant crack that made him jump. Under the impact, her bottom-flesh seemed to collapse for an instant then spring back into shape. A white line appeared, quickly turning pink. Cynthia’s gasp was loud — an indrawn shriek as she fiercely sucked in air. Then there was a pause and she counted, ‘One, Sir.’

Brent watched the muscles of her voluptuous rear twitch and jerk in response to the solid cane-stroke; but, with supreme self-control, her buttocks resumed their relaxed state as if to say that they were ready again. Encouraged by the success of the first stroke he aimed the second a little higher, and the rattan landed almost at the top of the deep separating crevice between the majestic pillows of flesh. The response was the same, with an inward cry and a wild contraction of buttock-muscles followed by, ‘Two, Sir,’ as her bottom settled again over the stool-top.

Brent warmed to his role. Repositioning his feet in a firmer stance, he pulled back the ancient cane and aimed for the area just above the sulcus — the delightful crease on a woman’s body where the undercheek of her bottom merges into the top of her thigh. His aim was accurate. Cynthia’s gasp was louder this time as the rod hissed through the air and impacted with an authoritative sssswhack on that tenderest of places. Her grip on the stool’s lowest rung was like a vice and Brent saw how her face contorted for just an instant as she internalised the sting before she expelled the words, ‘Three, Sir,’ in a quavering groan which seemed to indicate that she could scarcely take any more.

Perhaps that was the key, thought Brent. She wanted to be tested to the limit, to prove to herself that she could endure a vigorous physical chastisement. Anything less than a true caning, therefore, would have no meaning for her. It was to be the real thing, or nothing.

Brent resumed his task with even greater firmness of purpose, applying the cane with unflinching force and steadily increasing skill. The fourth well-swung stroke met the upper slopes of her buttocks between the first two glowing lines with an echoing crack that made her shriek out loud. His pace was deliberate. The fifth and sixth strokes were aimed lower, just above the rosy track which marked the third. Cynthia’s shrill cries and panting gasps reflected an accumulation of pain as she writhed across the stool with her auburn hair flicking and tossing, legs jerking and kicking and the luscious hummocks of her bottom clenching and bouncing to the cane’s lively tattoo, which stained it with hot tramline flushes and sunset streaks. Cynthia was indeed being tested.

Brent paused after six — the halfway mark — and regarded the slumped figure of the dynamic businesswoman. He was puffing slightly as if from a hard-won point at squash. More words from her letter came to him:

A standard caning was always six. But disrespect meant extra strokes. I need to be reminded of that.

Brent strode to the front of her and cupped Cynthia’s chin in his hand, tilting her head to look into her face. Her cheeks were flushed, her full lips slack. Her eyes glistened with moisture and seemed scarcely to see him. Had this gone too far? No, he decided, that must be her decision. ‘I think, young lady,’ he said with curt authority, ‘you’re learning your lesson. Am I right?’ She nodded meekly. ‘But we’re clearly not finished yet,’ he added firmly. ‘Six more to go.’

Returning to his position at the left of her bending body, Brent observed with awe the extent to which Cynthia’s robustly beautiful buttocks were now showing the effects of the chastisement. Inflamed as it was, her bottom had resumed its relaxed condition over the stool, as if again to signify her determination to absorb the full dosage she had earned by her disgraceful behaviour. Two more crisp strokes, delivered with judicious severity, cracked against the sizzling hemispheres and sprang away, eliciting urgent grunts from Cynthia’s throat.

It was after the ninth stroke that she burst into tears — a soft, almost controlled crying, but still quite audible and suggestive of release rather than torment.

Don’t be disturbed if I sob at some point. Tears are a catharsis, of course, and the inner sensations I seek will only be enhanced by crying.

As he paused to watch her shaking body, Brent wondered if he himself could have taken what he was inflicting. His respect for this woman, already high, had increased with the stinging hurt of each succeeding whack. He was aware that she could end this at any moment, but knew that she would not. Furthermore, the marks of the chastisement had begun to overlap and her hips jerked up in reflex as he administered the tenth and eleventh resonant strokes of the old family cane on its grown-up daughter’s incandescent derriere. The sight of that gorgeous bottom delighted and excited him as it bumped and wriggled frantically over the stool-top.

Make me wait for the last stroke. My nerves will be well stretched by then. And, of course, make it a good one.

Brent selected the ripely-curved crown of Cynthia’s buttocks for the finale. The previous eleven strokes had shown that he was a natural, and accurate, wielder of the rod. His aim was precise, the cane swooping eagerly in to bisect the firm, well-sprung flesh with an excruciating thwack.

‘Aaaghh!’ was the sound she made — a gasp, grunt and sigh all in one. She exhaled noisily, then sucked in air. Her pause was unusually long, and then she said at last, ‘Number twelve, Sir,’ and slumped inertly across the stool.

For a moment Brent studied her twitching, utterly vanquished figure with some concern as she lay there — and then her final written instruction flashed through his mind:

Once finished with the caning, leave the bedroom quickly and without comment. Please give me some ten minutes to compose myself, and then return.

Brent quietly left the chamber and clicked the door shut. Down in the lounge again he poured himself a drink and reflected on his feelings. He was exhilarated. Elated. He drank the whisky in one gulp, and wondered at his trembling. The experience had been, quite simply, stupendous and his brain reeled at the wonder of it.

The event had affected him even more than he had anticipated. Cynthia’s body was truly stunning, and a part of him had hated causing her such evident pain. Yet, Brent realised, she was right: there had been such a compulsion, an intensity, almost a beauty to the entire proceedings, from the preliminary formal lecture through the solemn disrobement and total yielding-up of all dignity, to the fierce sting of the cane on her naked buttocks. Her fortitude had amazed him. And he knew that he had succeeded in fulfilling the role she had set for him. But what was next, Brent wondered. How was it all going to end? Indeed, was it already finished? Alas, he knew that that was for her to decide.

The ten minutes over, Brent retraced his steps up the stairs and reopened the bedroom door to find the mature, elegant Cynthia Ward now completely nude and recumbent on her large bed. The tall, shapely body appeared flawlessly ideal in shape and proportion as she rested on her stomach, the milky skin of her back and legs now interrupted by the scarlet hues of her plushly plump bottom-cheeks which displayed the dozen angry-looking lines so recently drawn by the ancient family cane.

As Brent stepped across to the bed Cynthia looked up and offered a soft smile. Her warmth towards him was evident. ‘I even found some of Mummy’s old lotion,’ she murmured coyly. ‘I told you she never threw anything away. I remember how comforting she was with it, as all was forgiven by the time she came to use it. I’m sure you’ll be just as gentle in applying it.’

Brent took the old bottle with the faded label and poured cream into his hand. Then he rubbed the soothing coolness slowly into those sore, so beautiful bottom-cheeks. Even though the softest touch of his fingers on the cane-marks brought a wince from her, Cynthia’s sighs and moans and little wriggles made it clear that his efforts at comforting were every bit as good as his new-found skill in punishing.

Brent wanted to know so much more about her. She had given him a peek into her complex and private world, but he knew that it was not yet the right moment to question her more deeply. Even so, his practical curiosity remained — and Brent was, foremost, a practical man.

‘How long will these marks last?’ he asked. ‘It looks to me like it could be ages.’

Cynthia grimaced prettily, picked up a hand-mirror from her bedside table and craned her head round to view her reflected bottom. ‘You didn’t disappoint me,’ she remarked with satisfaction. ‘Judging from some of these stripes on the right, I’d say as long as three or four weeks.’ She turned towards him, and her smile now had an impish quality. ‘That ought to time out just about right for your return to London for the signing of the agreement.’ Her green eyes glittered, smouldered. Her lips pursed sulkily, hungrily. A tongue, strawberry pink, played over white, even teeth. ‘Oughtn’t it?’ she murmured.

Brent was taken fully by surprise. But before he could consider an appropriate response, her arms were around him and he found himself being drawn down on to the bed beside her in an embrace of such wonderful warmth that he pulled back his head and gazed at her in astonishment, still not quite sure.

She smiled again. ‘Oh, come now, Mr New York banker,’ breathed Cynthia Ward. ‘Do I have to put everything in writing?’

Brent laughed to himself as she reached over to turn out the light.

A Whipping Story from Janus 68. More stories are available here.

The New Riding Whip
by Michael Burntwood

HER upper body was pressed against the steering-wheel, and her dazzlingly pretty face gaped aghast through the windscreen. She had hit something! After several stunned seconds she straightened up in the driver’s seat, suddenly pale beneath the suntan which still lingered from those fragrant weeks in the Greek islands. Strands of golden hair obscured her wide, vividly blue eyes, for her head had jerked forward at the collision. Shakily, feeling faint, she pushed the hair back from her flawless forehead and opened the door of the brand-new Jaguar. Stepping out on long, lissome legs she stretched her lithe young body and smoothed the rucked-up skirt over her slender hips. Then, with tingling nerves and a sick feeling of dread, Alicia Thornfield walked to the front of the gleaming vehicle to inspect the damage.

The wheelbarrow she had driven into lay crushed and splintered on the broad gravel driveway, but this was not what the girl was staring at. The offside wing of the Jaguar was shockingly defaced by dents and scratches, and the headlamp and the blinker were smashed! The awful sight made her inhale deeply, pushing her tip-tilted breasts against the sheer silk fabric of her blouse.

Desperately she turned and looked around for someone to blame for this disaster, for the fool who had put the wheelbarrow there, right where it shouldn’t be, in the middle of the drive into which she had just turned the car. In the distance she observed Rogerson, the gardener, hurrying towards her shaking his grey-haired head; and even then the mettlesome young woman’s full red lips curled with distaste to see how his startled gaze roamed over her bare legs beneath the tight skirt.

‘You damn well ought to know better than to leave your stupid barrow here!’ Alicia shouted, stamping her foot in fury and fright. Even to the unimaginative gardener she looked petite and doll-like, almost unreal in her perfection of feminine shapeliness. It could have been that French actress, Bardot – re-formed and scarcely 21 again – raging at him beside his employer’s distressingly damaged vehicle. The agile figure was daintily trim, little-waisted, with breasts like apples quivering under translucent silk, the trim thighs succulent – her legs smooth, sun-browned stems more lovely than the loveliest bloom in the orchid-house from where he had hurried on hearing the distant crump. To the gardener, she looked rather like a flower herself.

But the aloofly alluring nymphet face, achingly pretty, was red and twisted now as she screeched at him, scattering the soft, honey-gold hair about that perfect head.

‘You silly old bastard, I’ve a sodding good mind to… to…’

‘Ooh, dear,’ said Rogerson, dragging to a stop. ‘Ooh, my, Miss Alicia. Your stepdad won’t be too happy when he sees what you’ve done to his new car!’

‘What I’ve done, I’ve done?’ the girl wailed. ‘How was I supposed to know that bloody wheelbarrow was here? It was your fault. I was looking at the rose-bushes when I drove in.’

‘With respect, Miss,’ ventured Rogerson, ‘Sir Robert told me to leave it here when he called me to the orchid-house. And anyway, there’s plenty of room on either side. If you’d been lookin’ where you should’ve been…’

‘Shut up!’ she shrilled. ‘Fix it, do something useful! Before he sees it, too!’

The gardener shook his head, well used – as were the other servants – to the stormy temper of this spoiled, succulent slip of a girl; a temper remarkably similar to that of Sir Robert, her stepfather, with whom he had just been discussing orchids. Uncomfortably similar, the man thought, and almost smiled.

‘Ain’t nothing I can fix, Miss,’ said Rogerson. ‘That’ll need a crash repair job down the garage.’

‘Oh, you’re absolutely hopeless!’ Abruptly the girl swung round on her heels, and the man caught his breath at the sudden sight of her tightly-compacted little rump wiggling roundly beneath the clinging skirt as she hurried up the broad stone stairs to the entrance-door of the stately, ivy-smothered house.

As Alicia hastened to the temporary sanctuary of her room, cold spurts of dread pulsed through her, which quickly heated to panic that made her heart bump. She had borrowed her stepfather’s car on one of those reckless impulses of hers, believing him to be away. Certainly he would never have allowed her. After all, she had a car of her own – but it was a lot more fun to drive a brand-new Jaguar than a three-year-old VW Golf. And, damn it, he’d obviously come back while she was out on the road and, assuming his car to be in the garage, was pottering about with his wretched orchids! Now Rogerson would blurt it all out. It was only a question of time. She decided to escape on her horse, Athos, for a few hours until her stepfather’s anticipated wrath had cooled. Just in case, dreadfully, he took it into his head (and hand!) to do to her again what he’d done last week or so when she’d broken one of his ugly antique vases in an outburst of pique! The very thought of that made the girl squirm.

In her bedroom Alicia hastily stripped off her day-clothes and scrabbled in the cupboard for her riding-gear. As she leaned forward to work her ankles into the narrow jodhpurs she paused, catching sight of her bent-over bottom in the cheval-glass mirror. The plumply-curved mounds, scarcely covered by the flimsy lace panties, were still marked with two pale pink stripes on the silky skin where the buttocks swelled out from the tops of her pretty thighs. Marks from that excruciating caning he had dared to give her last week! Faintly swollen, slightly raised, they tingled as her fingers touched them. This ghostly tingling returned the girl to her urgent need for haste, and she quickly straightened, hauling up the skin-tight breeches…

‘How could that wretched girl run straight into a barrow when there’s room for at least ten cars?’ Sir Robert was exclaiming, dangerously red in the face as he surveyed the crushed wing of his coveted Jaguar. At six-feet-three and shaking with rage, he made a daunting sight. Some thirty years ago he had boxed for the University and rowed stroke in their best ‘eight’. Now in his fifties, a handsome-featured man who had not only retained the hair on his head but most of its sable colouring, he stood straight and powerful, protesting his ill-fortune in an operatic baritone. Ordering the gardener to arrange for the car to be mended at the garage in the village, he stalked off towards the house, determined to have a serious chat with his seemingly incorrigible stepdaughter.

He strode into the spacious hallway and paused, breathing harshly in an effort to control his fury as his hot glare settled on the umbrella-stand, which bristled with brollies and sticks. From it he selected a smart new lady’s riding-whip, which he angrily swished through the air. Then he walked through to his private study at the back of the house, thwacking the thin crop against the palm of his hand with a thoughtful but determined expression. Picking up the internal telephone he rang the housekeeper, Mrs White, and asked her to tell his stepdaughter to come down immediately.

Mrs White smiled grimly as she walked up the stairs and along the corridor to the room at the corner of the building. At her approach the door flew open and Miss Alicia dashed out, dressed for riding in those skin-tight breeches which hugged across her eye-catching buttocks and so tantalised the male staff. The young mistress was also wearing a white blouse, and calf-length boots on which she wobbled away towards the back stairs, clearly anxious not to be seen.

‘Miss Alicia!’ the housekeeper called. The girl froze in her tracks, and when she turned her face was flushed and her lovely blue eyes looked feverish. ‘Sir Robert would like you down in his study, please.’

‘I-I have to take Athos out for his daily exercise,’ the girl replied as nonchalantly as she could. ‘Tell him you haven’t seen me, okay?’

‘Your stepfather knows you’re in, and was most insistent that you come down at once,’ intoned the housekeeper with a somewhat malicious smile: like most of the domestic staff, she had more than once been on the receiving end of this beautiful, willowy girl’s temper. ‘By the way,’ the woman added, ‘I noticed that Sir Robert took your new riding-whip from the hall stand. It’s in his study with him. I expect you’ll need it later, when you go riding.’ With that Mrs White swung round and clomped away, scarcely concealing her excitement and pleasure at what might well soon be happening to that spoiled, slender young beauty within a very short space of time.

As Alicia retraced her steps miserably towards the main stairs, unconsciously she let her hands smooth over her narrow hips and backwards across her pert, pouting seat. Through the drum-taut fabric of her breeches she felt again the still-swollen stripes across her compact bottom. This wasn’t her lucky week at all. She had got the cane only a few days before, despite her age of almost 21. Now it looked horribly as if she might be in for a taste of her own riding-whip! In a helpless gesture of defiance she tilted her dainty chin and pulled back her shoulders, strangely satisfied at how the buttoned-up blouse tightened across her proudly high-nippled breasts.

Alicia was all too aware of her stepfather’s rages. Since her mother had passed away almost three years ago, she had lived alone with him and three servants in this old mansion from which he controlled his companies. All through her teens, Alicia had been high-spirited, but it wasn’t until after her mother died that her stepfather began to treat her more like an irresponsible girl than a young lady. She did concede, however, that the physical punishments he had begun to mete out were usually her own fault. Alicia appreciated the continuing luxury of living in this large house with servants, and hadn’t made any serious efforts to get a job. After a year at university she had become tired of studies, and defiantly stayed at home. Her stepfather wanted her to accept work in one of his companies, but she had declined; and, after several vain attempts at persuasion, he had become angry and informed her that as long as she was living under his roof without contributing to her own upkeep, she was to obey him and accept his discipline. Meekly, yet sullenly, Alicia had agreed to his terms.

As the girl moved with increasing trepidation towards the combined library and study where Sir Robert worked when at home, the breeches seemed to cling extra tightly to her hips and thighs. Alicia liked them like that, enjoying clothes which presented her figure to advantage. At the door she paused, breathed deeply, yet again, and raised her knuckles to knock. Then she lowered them, and realised she was trembling.

On the other side of the stout mahogany door the incensed step-parent paced impatiently about as he waited for his errant young charge to appear. His gaze wandered around the room with its well-stocked bookcases and fine old oak panelling, finally coming to rest on the supple riding-whip he had placed prominently on the large, leather-topped desk. For a moment he mentally pictured Alicia’s girlishly sleek-skinned flanks, and experienced a somewhat guilty, steadily-rising excitement. The whip had been a gift to the girl when he had bought Athos for her; and he had always thought how exhilarating it would be to use it on Alicia’s truly attractive bottom. Her bare bottom as naked as that of her horse! Sir Robert squared his heavy shoulder and couldn’t suppress a sigh, very much aware of the particular quality of pleasure such thoughts gave him. It was a heady feeling akin to the intoxication afforded by champagne, only more so!

Last time, some ten days ago, he had made her bend over this same writing-desk. Alicia had been wearing a ridiculously brief skirt, which he considered frankly indecent. Furious as Sir Robert had already been on account of the girl’s clumsiness, the riveting sight of those round, packed-to-bursting rumps and silky thigh-backs had flooded the man’s senses with a great glow of well-being; of supreme anticipation! He had turned up her skirt and uncovered a pair of deliciously-shaped buttocks encased in pink nylon knickers with a pattern of small flowers and a lace edging. He had been in something of a daze as he picked up the cane and delivered ten crisp whacks across that gorgeous rear, remembering only that the girl had complained with sharp aaaooauuuches and oowwws, though probably more loudly than she had reason to, for in his rapt condition he had not hit hard.

After the caning Alicia hadn’t wept much, but had snifflingly promised him to behave better in future. In the intervening days, however, Sir Robert had found himself secretly hoping that his beautiful 20-year-old stepdaughter would revert to her true nature. And now, sure enough, with this inexcusable ‘borrowing’ and damaging of his Jaguar, the wilful girl had played straight into his more-than-willing hands.

Now he began to positively savour the imminent encounter. As Alicia had protested at how, during her caning, the desk-edge had bit into her hips at the front, he now decided to have the girl lying across the arm support of the leather-clad sofa. Thus she would have her hips raised higher, which would prevent her from attempting to stand up between the strokes to rub her bottom as she had tried to do before.

At the uncharacteristically timid rap on the door the big man stiffened more tensely in his brown gardening tweeds, and ran a finger round the inside of his collar.

‘Come!’ he barked.

The door crept open and Alicia stepped into the study. In her riding-habit, with well-polished riding-boots, her slender figure was indeed a fetching sight to behold. He always enjoyed seeing her in that costume, with white blouse buttoned demurely to the neck, and tight khaki breeches snugly contouring her buttocks, thighs and hips. On horseback, with helmet and jacket on too, she always caught the eyes of the spectators. On this occasion, though, he was to be the sole spectator; and he intended it to be a spectacle very much worth the watching. Sir Robert’s heavily handsome features hardened, and his eyes were like flints. The only gestures which betrayed the excitement he felt were the way his fingers pushed through his white-flecked hair and his firm, grave mouth twitched at the corners.

‘Shut the door, Alicia,’ he said quietly. Blushing, and in increasing dread, the girl obeyed. She took a few steps forward and then her eyes grew round on seeing her own flexible plaited riding-whip on the desk over which she had sprawled that last dreadful time.

‘I-I’m sorry about the car, honestly I am,’ she said. Her voice trembled. Demurely she held her eyes downcast, then dared a glance at him from beneath long eyelashes.

‘Being “sorry” simply isn’t enough, Alicia,’ her stepfather rapped. ‘You blithely take my new car without permission – that, in itself, would have been offence enough to justify how I now intend to deal with you.’ His voice grew in force and pitch, so that each word made the girl flinch as if from a slap. ‘But you then, through sheer wanton recklessness, drive it into a barrow and have the gall to try and put the blame on the gardener!’

Feeling increasingly apprehensive, panting with growing agitation, Alicia was shifting her weight and fidgeting as she tried to find a way out of this appalling scrape. She had a genuinely guilty look on her face now, and did her best to avoid his angry glare. But her flinching gaze only settled again on the riding-whip.

‘Look at me, young lady,’ he rasped. ‘Raise your head and look me in my eyes when I’m talking to you!’

Alicia’s neat white teeth showed as she bit at her lower lip and glanced up at him from under wet, trembling lashes. Tears had appeared in her large blue eyes. ‘Please, father, I’ve said I’m sorry,’ the girl implored. ‘It will hurt so much!’ Desperately, Alicia tried another tack. ‘Look, I’m almost 21 now! I-I’ll pay for the damage somehow, but please don’t use that on me. I’m a grown woman now, I’m…’

Sir Robert towered above her as she wheedled and wept. The very sight of that graceful young woman with the honey-gold hair, enchanting face and wringing hands might have melted the heart of a less imaginative man. But Alicia’s stepfather’s imagination was too strong to deny his heated mental images the fulfilment of reality. He swelled his great chest, lifted his strong-jawed head higher, and picked up the girl’s own riding-whip.

‘Alicia,’ he intoned gravely, tapping his broad palm with the springy shaft, ‘I have already told you that you have no one to blame but yourself for the predicament you are in – and you will pay in the manner I have chosen.’ She gasped as he moved around the desk towards her. ‘Get over there to the sofa,’ he instructed, almost softly now. ‘I want you across the arm support with your feet to the floor.’

Instinctively, Alicia turned to obey. With hands clasped to the seat of her smartly-tailored breeches she moved most unwillingly to the sofa, daring to hope that he would at least let her keep her breeches on. She had used that new leather switch quite often enough lately when riding Athos. It stung even him, so she was well aware of its whipping quality. The trim young woman stopped close to the arm support and cast a pleading glance back at her stepfather, searching for words that might stop this happening. None came.

‘Take your breeches down,’ came the command.

‘No, please!” Alicia’s voice grew shrill as her hands flew to the waistband of her pants – not to release it but to hold them in position.

‘Take them down, or I shall do it for you!’ His voice was implacable, and she could hear him breathing harshly.

‘Oh. No. No-o. Please, stepfather, let me keep them on!’

‘Do as I tell you, Alicia,’ he ordered, and the young lady knew there was nothing else for her but to obey. Wretchedly she fumbled with the buttons, five on each side of the drum-tight breeches. She undid them slowly, clumsily, fingers trembling, till the side-splits fell open. Yet still she held her breeches up. When Alicia glanced imploringly at him, she saw him taking the leather whip from the table, and quickly averted her eyes. Glowering, yet inwardly elated, Sir Robert stepped up behind his quavering stepdaughter, thwacking his palm with unmistakable intention.

‘Let them down to your knees,’ he ordered, noting with further quiet pleasure the hem of her blouse and a nylon garment in green and white through the slit-opening. Defiantly, desperately, Alicia continued to hold her breeches up.

‘Please, father,’ she begged, ‘i-it will hurt too much. You know I’m still sore…’ The girl increased her sobbing, frantic to be spared this punishment which she had dreaded from the moment the car had hit the wheelbarrow. Her face was red and swollen from the tears, and she felt utterly ashamed. Yet, in an act of obstinacy which marked her character, she continued to tug up the breeches as high as she could. And, because she was at the same time bending slightly forward, the fabric stretched very tightly around her protruding, deliciously apple-shaped behind. It was an enticement impossible to resist. Sir Robert raised the switch and let it swish through the air to land with a dull swat right across where the cloth was the most taut.

Alicia let out a shrill yelp. The smart was perfectly atrocious. She felt it penetrate in stinging waves even through her breeches, and at once she jumped to the side, half-turning her back away from him.

‘Are you ready to obey me now?’ asked Sir Robert harshly, raising the whip again. The lovely girl whimpered, hesitating only a moment more before she pushed the breeches down, unveiling a pair of the flimsiest green-and-white chequered knickers with a narrow lace edging around the thighs. Then she turned with a deep sigh, face glittering with tears as she looked beseechingly at her stepfather, the khaki riding-breeches wrinkled around her knees in a most humiliating manner. ‘And the knickers, please.’

This time the proud girl gaped. ‘No!’ she exclaimed. ‘You can’t mean…?’

‘But I do mean, Alicia,’ the big man retorted, feeling the glowing within him enhance to a quiet radiance. ‘You will pull your knickers down so that your buttocks are entirely bare.’ As if to underline his instruction, he lightly tapped the bare skin of her thighs below the knicker-legs. ‘Now!’

Slowly, as if resigned at last to her fate, Alicia put her thumbs inside the elastic round her waist and sobbingly stooped to pull the scant protection down. With the globes of her buttocks thus starkly bared, and desperately shy in case he might see her exposed front, she quickly bent over the leather chair-arm and stretched herself out on her tummy, legs slightly apart and dangling down, hiding her face in her open hands.

Seeing his stepdaughter bent submissively across the sofa with her bare bottom uppermost, Sir Robert yielded to an irresistible temptation to examine more closely Alicia’s enticingly attractive buttocks. So gorgeously curved they were, with flinching muscles in the springy flesh. It was a perfect bottom, like some succulent peach, pushed high by the arching of its owner’s supple spine to receive its well-deserved chastisement.

‘It’s your flagrant disobedience which has merited this thrashing,’ Sir Robert now summarised in low, even tones. ‘You must learn responsibility for your actions, Alicia.’ He stood to one side of her prostrate body, noting with great satisfaction how her buttock-muscles tensed and jumped under the silken flesh. Flexing the riding-whip, he raised his arm. ‘As you soon will be 21,’ he told her, ‘I have decided to be more strict with you than before. On the last occasion you received ten. Today it will have to be fifteen.’

‘Please,’ she gasped. ‘Please, you can’t. I-I still have marks from the cane; you know my skin is so sensitive… Aaaaowwwch!’ Alicia had hardly finished her protest when a hissing in the air was followed by a crisp smack and her complaining shriek of pain from the ferocious sting the riding-whip caused as it smote smartly across her naked, flinching bottom. The thin, flexible leather at once recoiled and landed again below its first mark, though not quite so hard as the initial blow. Involuntarily the girl stretched her body rigidly and her arms shot forward as her feet lifted from the floor. For several seconds she lay stiffly horizontal, whimpering as she fought to absorb the pain.

‘Put your feet down, Alicia,’ he told her sharply. ‘I want your bottom bent tightly over.’

In a mist of anguish and embarrassment Alicia did as bidden, thrusting her knuckles into her mouth as if biting them would prevent her from yelling out for the next stroke, and the next.

As Sir Robert swung back the riding-crop, warming to his enviable task, the oppressive weight of day-to-day business problems seemed to lift from him, to be replaced by a heady sensation of glorious release. The sound the crop made as it whipped through the air, the feel of its meaty impact on those so-sweet pillows of flesh, were like elixir to his soul.

Whiissh- SPLACK!

‘Uuuhuuu,’ the girl sobbed, wriggling her so very vulnerable bottom in a rage of pain and humiliation. Through the raspings her body made as it bucked and threshed against the leather chair-arm she remembered something her stepfather had said when he had beaten her before, that she ought to be grateful as long as she could atone for her transgressions in this way, because the alternative might one day be prison and public disgrace…

Sswiish-whack! Even as she cried out, she shuddered at the thought of being locked away in a shabby cell. Instead, it seemed, her own elegant, expensive riding-whip was scoring another burning mark diagonally across her left buttock, and the last inches of the switch etched a far more painful stripe across the back of her right thigh.

‘Aaaghh, please – please NO!’

Ssswiiish! That smack came too soon after its predecessor. Alicia had scarcely time to release the shrill yelp which accompanied it, before the doubled smart in her bottom forced her to emit a shrieking, gasping, unintelligible croak.

For a few moments Sir Robert paused to allow his quailing stepdaughter to catch her breath. The man’s eyes glowed with the pleasure of a connoisseur being richly satisfied as he surveyed those round, ripe rumps now striped and crimsoning. He was in heaven! Sucking in air he again poised his hand high above the seductive target and brought the riding-whip whistling down.

Ssssplaatt! A new stripe burned across the resilient girl-flesh just below the crown of her rippling cheeks, and again Alicia emitted a cry of anguish. And then, like before, while she was squeezing her thighs hard and clenching her buttocks, she received another screeching stroke immediately after, lower down in the tender bottom-skin near the tops of her shuddering legs. Alicia gave a gurgling cry and squirmed violently, wrenching her semi-nude body and removing her scorching buttocks from the target area.

Sir Robert paused as the following stroke was about to descend, then bent and grasped Alicia’s left arm and forced her back into position over the padded leather support while the miserable girl pleaded and wept.

‘P-p-please, stepfather – please, no more. I c-can’t take it…’ Alicia blubbered.

There are eight more to come, Alicia,’ he told her harshly. ‘You’re old enough to be brave and take the punishment you’ve earned, without making so much fuss! If you turn your bottom again I will add more strokes!’ For a few moments Sir Robert let his stepdaughter rest. She had never in her life been thrashed so severely, but the lesson would be salutary. In the brief break, as her sniffles subsided and her sweet young body settled, he savoured anew the uniquely intoxicating sights and sounds of the whipping, the girl’s mews and groans, and the feel of the pliant riding-switch so light and lively in his grip.

Stretched across the arm of the sofa, Alicia welcomed the pause. She tried to relax and make her body go limp, pressing her knuckles to her lips as she waited for the thrashing to resume, very much aware of her stepfather standing close behind and breathing hard as he regarded her red-striped, twitching, wincing bottom. Then he again, slowly, raised the switch – aiming at the pinkened tenderness where Alicia’s thighs swelled lusciously into the half-globes of her pertly provocative, temptingly-patterned behind.

Hwissh-thwack! The riding-whip sped down and struck accurately across the creases which marked the undercurves, forcing fresh shrillness from the girl’s lips; and while her buttocks were still trembling from the impact the switch fell once more, a little higher up, flattening the flesh and making her whole bottom wobble.

Alicia gasped and cried, raising her hips as if to meet the next stroke on its journey down, but her stepfather deliberately waited until she was again lying prone with her belly pressed to the chair-arm before he swept the whip down. The stroke made its authoritative crisp report and a new red mark showed how the whip had hit across both her thighs immediately below the clenched buttocks.

Wailing and blubbering as she was, Alicia was by now doing her best to prepare herself for the pain each time the springy whip bit into her smarting flesh, and the sheer physical tension caused the muscles of her crimsoned bottom to move in flinching and twitching movements by themselves. She began to feel a sense of pride in not crying out when the riding-whip struck into her flesh.

The next followed almost at once and hit right across the tops of her bare half-moons; and this time only a stifled moan left her mouth, though she could not prevent her hips from jerking up and down. Alicia further began to find that the pang of the smacks was not unendurable – or so she was able to convince herself. There was of course no question about the fact that he was punishing her most severely, and she had to weep because the tears helped to alleviate the stinging pain and made it possible for her to submit. The repeated twinges which shot through her bottom when the riding-whip landed to decorate her skin with still another red-glowing stripe, caused her to blubber – though much more quietly now, and this blubbering helped her to keep the position in which her stepfather wanted her.

Sir Robert had been counting the strokes in his head, but now he started to grunt them out loud. When Alicia heard ‘Twelve’, she began to feel relieved. And then, at last, she heard him counting ‘Fourteen’ and ‘Fifteen’. For at least a minute afterwards, as she continued to lie across the leather chair-arm feeling her bottom throbbing hot and sore, tears coursed down Alicia’s pretty cheeks, and all that could be heard was the gradual slowing of his grunting breaths and her own soft snifflings.

At length Sir Robert put the riding-whip back on his desk, almost with reverence, and for a while he stood back and examined, with silent admiration and a profound satisfaction, Alicia’s red-patterned, comely young bottom. The fawn jodhpurs had slipped down round her ankles and the green-and-white knickers were wrinkled below her knees. There were stripes all over her shapely posteriors, and also a few long red marks across the backs of her thighs.

‘All right, Alicia,’ he said, his voice a little tired now after the elation he had experienced. ‘You can get up now. I hope that you will always remember this lesson. It wasn’t really to use it like this that I bought this riding-whip for you.’

Alicia struggled to regain her feet and composure, pushing herself exhaustedly up from the sofa-arm. For a moment she held both hands to her face to wipe off her tears, before realising that she was displaying herself to him in front. She quickly stooped and pulled up her knickers, yet scarcely seemed to care that the breeches were still round her feet.

‘Yes, stepfather,’ the girl sniffled. ‘I will try to behave, honestly I will.’ She looked down meekly then added, almost saucily: ‘I-I’m so sore now, I don’t know if I’ll be able to take Athos out for his exercise today.’

Sir Robert smiled, then frowned with some effort at the tearful girl who looked so vulnerable and charming in her white blouse and skimpy panties with the rest of her clothing down around her legs. A far cry from the normal, proud and bossy Alicia.

‘But you had better,’ he admonished her. ‘That horse needs his run, and a sore bottom doesn’t hurt a great deal more because you are sitting on it. Pull up your breeches now, then go and wash your face and get along to the stables. You know you like riding Athos.’

Alicia couldn’t resist a furtive rub at her bottom-cheeks before bending and tugging the jodhpurs back up her legs, fingers fumbling as she re-fastened the five buttons at each side. The breeches felt even tighter now, perhaps because she was more sensitive where they fitted closest! At least, she sighed, her punishment was over.

Half an hour later the girl hurried away to the stables feeling very much better. Her stepfather had appeared to be in an excellent mood and had patted her – still somewhat painfully – on her behind when she had come back to fetch her riding-whip from his study. Indeed, so relaxed did he seem, Sir Robert hadn’t even forbidden her to use her own car or to visit her friend after dinner.

In the cobbled yard that smelled of horses and hay the groom, Hubert, helped her to saddle Athos – who still was too young to stand still when the leather encumbrance was put on his back. After Alicia had checked the length of the stirrups, she led the fretful stallion out into the field and climbed somewhat stiffly into the saddle while Hubert held him.

‘Be careful now, Miss Alicia,’ cautioned Hubert, patting the horse’s flank. ‘Athos isn’t too safe yet. Remember what your stepfather often says, that if you have to use the riding-whip, then do it gently and with very light taps.’

The old groom simply could not understand, and nor would Alicia have been able to explain to him, why she allowed her horse to race away in such an uncontrollable manner. Nor why as Athos surged into a gallop with almost slack reins and his shapely rider bumped up and down in the saddle, shrill little squeals could be heard from Alicia all the way into the distance.

A Spanking Story from Janus 54. More stories can be viewed here.

The Perfectionists. Part I.
by Stephen Sims

THE CHAPEL looked gaunt and grey against the pale-blue evening sky. Erected during sterner Victorian days, it had for many years served as a religious centre; and if its function then had been a meeting-house for those seeking spiritual elevation, it was certainly no less so now. The great difference was in the methods practised therein to uplift and purify the adherents of the moral ethical group known as the Perfectionists, to whom it now belonged.

The chapel stood about a mile outside town, perched high on a rocky spur overlooking vistas of lovely English countryside, flanked by fields and woodland, so that its interior was perennially washed through with the pure scents of nature.

The Perfectionist sisterhood fluctuated between thirty and forty devotees, though there were signs that these numbers were beginning to increase. Each adherent was unwed, led a normal everyday life as regards work, home and social relations – and none was more than 25 years old. On the weekly communal evening when they all gathered hip-to-hip on the pews in the tiny hall, the light striking through the colour-stained panes fell on faces fresh and devout – some pretty, some plain, and several of startling beauty. And every girl was comely and healthy, attractive to the male and eminently marriageable.

Over this purity-aspiring sorority one man ministered: an exceptional man known solely by the devotional appellation of Magister. It was one of life’s ironies that he might have been fashioned from a woman’s ideal of how a charismatic spiritual mentor might appear: earthy yet mystical, evangelically fervent in the ways of Perfectionist enlightenment, he was tall and broad with rugged features, and an unflinching gaze that had a way of coaxing a female’s darkest secrets out into the light.

On this particular non-communal evening in mid-week only five young ladies were at the chapel – four of them to attend contrition, an intensely personal affair where each in turn gave an agonising self-appraisal of her falls from grace during the past few days, and submitted herself to whatever form of atonement the Magister deemed appropriate. For the fifth girl, named Melissande, it was her first visit. 19 years old and painfully shy, she was constantly plagued by feelings of inadequacy and imperfection – and, having heard vague stories of the ‘self-improvement’ sisterhood in the old chapel, had plucked up the courage to come along on the off-chance.

Melissande was training as a classical dancer. The routines were mentally and physically punishing, and her whippet-lithe body was extremely supple from stretching and leaping, driven by the hectoring voice of Madame. She stood five feet five, willowy and swan-graceful, with a slender waist and small but perfectly rounded breasts. Her legs were springy and swift, the hips of that nubile breadth between girlish cuteness and womanly voluptuousness. She approached the chapel with trepidation up the steep rocky slope from the road, and entered the little slate-roofed porch. On the weathered oak door was a silver plate so highly polished that her reflected face stared anxiously back at her – the elfin features, oval and pale, dominated by beautiful green-flecked eyes framed by long thick lashes. She might have been a child’s vision of a very pretty fairy with her high forehead and swept-back chestnut hair, the tip-tilted nose and pertly pointed chin – though the wide mouth and innocently sensuous lips belonged more to lusty male fantasy than fairy-tale.

Rat-tat-tat. Melissande gnawed those pretty lips as she swung the heavy antique knocker. Having no idea what to expect, she was completely unprepared for the splendour of the man who, after a few tense moments, pulled open the door and stood filling its frame, a smile of peace-filled welcome on the arrestingly handsome face. The white robe he wore seemed to give off a shimmering aura against the gloom behind him; and his hair, thickly flowing and as startlingly white as his gown, appeared to radiate an effulgence emanating from within the powerful leonine head, as though a light were glowing there. In her awe, Melissande judged this towering Being to be no more than 35 years old, though the expression in his deep-set eyes beneath the imposing brow belonged to someone of infinitely maturer age. He exuded a pristine freshness, animal vitality and sheer unadulterated goodness which permeated the young girl’s bones like some heavenly balm – and made her certain, in those first moments of seeing him, that here was one who would irrevocably change her life’s course forever, to the good. It was a golden moment.

But the nerve-wracked Melissande was able to answer his smile with little more than an awkward facial contortion. She licked her lips and blurted out: ‘I… want to be a Perfectionist! M-my name is Melissande.’ His fathomless gaze brought more words up, like bile. ‘I’m hopeless, you see,’ she found herself saying. ‘I-I need some sort of extra discipline in my life. I’m unhappy with myself! C-can you help?’ She at once felt confused and foolish, until it seemed that the man absorbed her quailing figure with a penetrating gaze which read to the depths of her being. It was a magical, all-seeing, consuming look such as the wizard Merlin might have cast on her, stripping her soul. Weirdly, it brought her peace.

‘You’re welcome, Melissande,’ he said at length in warm vibrant tones. ‘I am the Magister. Please come in.’ The girl stepped across the threshold and followed him in through a small congregational hall with polished pews and a raised altar stone. She was puzzled to hear subdued sobs and mutterings and, looking around, glimpsed two girlish figures crouched before the eastward window murmuring fervently and clearly moved by some powerful emotion. Melissande would have been alarmed to know that beneath the grey gowns they wore both girls were naked, and that their tender hides still smouldered with the embers of a righteous scourging.

‘This way, please.’ He held open a door, and the dancer was ushered into a cosy inner sanctum where two other young females were perched on chairs sipping tea from a bone china service and nibbling petits-four. A plush carpet cloaked the floor, there was a pleasing smell of pine polish and expensive perfume. The furniture was austere but comfortable. ‘Won’t you sit down?’ invited the Magister in deep tones.

‘Thank you.’ Melissande lowered herself on to a Queen Anne chair and accepted a cup of tea. She felt unpleasantly nervous again, hating the shyness that made an ordeal of every social situation. The man turned graciously to the other two ladies and introduced them as Anita and Gail. Two pairs of eyes inspected the new arrival who sat awkwardly twisting her hands; quickly took in the elfin prettiness, the straight-backed poise, the flinching ocean-deep eyes.

‘And what do you do in life, Melissande?’ asked Anita conversationally in soft, highly-cultured tones. The enquirer was vividly attractive with a carefully disordered mass of butter-coloured hair and sky-blue eyes pellucid with intelligence.

‘I-I’m training as a classical dancer,’ mumbled Melissande meekly, annoyed with herself for blushing but sensing the contempt of the one called Gail who, after her initial scrutiny, had turned away as though it were beneath her dignity to show favour to a mere beginner. The Magister’s shrewd glance, observing this and much more, remained impassive. Gail was aggressively appealing in a sultry way, her buxom figure hardly disguised by the trendy shapelessness of her dress, the out-thrust bodice swollen by full heavy breasts. Her wavy hair was long and coal-black, her feline features plump and restless, with an autocratic glare in dark ovoid eyes which betrayed a fascinating dash of oriental somewhere in her ancestry.

The Magister’s voice purred into the mounting silence. ‘Anita is a solicitor, soon to be called to the Bar,’ he informed Melissande. ‘And Gail is a gifted fashion designer who runs her own business. The two in the chapel completing their weekly penance are Michele and Tracey. One is an unemployed social worker, the other a bank teller.’

Melissande was becoming increasingly affected by a curious thrilling tension in the atmosphere. Her mouth felt dry, and she sipped more tea. ‘Penance?’ she echoed, unable to restrain her surprise at the word.

‘Of course you know very little about us,’ said the Magister. ‘The Perfectionists ask nothing of you that you are not prepared to give,’ he went on. ‘You are at all times free to go. The motivation for seeking to achieve a perfect nature and forming thereby the nucleus of an ideal society must come from you. It is your will. Nothing is imposed unless you yourself invite it.’ The strong gaze settled on Anita, who reacted in apparent agitation; then his eyes returned to the new girl. ‘In a moment,’ he informed her quietly, ‘I will take Anita for her contrition and atonement. If you wish, Melissande, I will then take you.’

At this, Gail bridled, her mouth hardening into a line. When the young dancer looked startled he added, ‘I do realise that this is merely an exploratory visit on your part, but making contrition is the best possible way to experience at first hand how we function.’

‘Well…’ she faltered, ‘I-I’m not sure if I –’

The Magister frowned. ‘There is no provision for negative thoughts in the Perfectionist code,’ he observed with steely gentleness, then turned to address them all. ‘You are the mothers of the next generation,’ he declared, ‘the guides and inspirers of your children’s earliest attitudes. As such, you form the spearhead of our earnest crusade to raise humanity from the pit of moral poverty, cowardly violence, selfish greed and spiritual degeneration into which it has allowed itself to sink. Unless you are all willing to accept the painful consequences of your laxities and base human solecisms now, you cannot help to uplift and purify the vital, coming generation to whom you collectively hold the key!’ The burning gaze fell once more on the statuesque solicitor, and his voice sank to a murmur. ‘Are you ready, Anita?’

The blonde girl stood up, and Melissande was able to fully appreciate her beauty. It seemed preposterous that this vibrant young woman could be a solicitor – a profession she had always associated with pedantic pin-striped men with joyless faces. As Anita walked to the door her hips swayed, consciously or unconsciously seductive, and her sharp yet slumbrous blue eyes smouldered with strange excitement. Her face, a little too round for classical beauty, was enticingly watchable, the full lips constantly mobile as if seeking phantom kisses. Anita exuded sex-appeal, and as she vanished from the room behind the Magister, Melissande couldn’t help wondering how the male in the man could fail to be aroused by her.

After the door had closed a silence grew between the aloof fashion designer and the shy young dancer. ‘Er, excuse me,’ ventured Melissande after some while. ‘Wh-what did he mean by “painful consequences”?’

Gail was a busy, talented lady. Her drive for success was rooted in a need for self-perfection. In her view the road to this did not lie in consorting with less elevated mortals such as this hesitant slip of a thing. Fixing the dancer with a brief look in which pity and scorn were intermixed, she snapped: ‘I expect you’ll find out soon enough. Now if you’ll forgive me I must prepare.’ At this, Gail turned snootily away and closed her eyes in dramatically devout contemplation, ignoring the girl completely.

Being so obviously snubbed, Melissande felt terrible. Several times she thought she would get up and go, yet some instinct held her there. She was imprisoned by her own self-conscious thoughts. The antique long-case clock tocked on, the tea grew cold.

Some 25 minutes later the door opened and Anita stumbled in, ashen-faced, her clothing disordered as if it had been removed and replaced in great haste. Without a word or a look she collected her bag and hurriedly left the building, clearly in great distress.

‘Melissande?’ The Magister was there, his voice a polite query with no hint of compulsion or threat. What on earth was the matter with Anita? Painful consequences? Gail was glaring, greatly indignant not to have been given priority.

Uncomfortably aware of the other’s resentment, Melissande stood up apprehensively and left the room. She followed the dazzling-robed figure along a passage and down a flight of stone steps. At the bottom of these he opened another door and led the mystified girl into a basement room illuminated by many candles and scented with joss-sticks. Melissande stopped, and stared. Dominating this room was a magnificent confessional box, ornately carved and of great antiquity, its two sections enclosed by faded velvet curtains; and so strongly did this imposing structure take the girl’s attention that she barely noticed another piece of seasoned carpentry standing in a nearby corner. This resembled a hurdle on trestled legs, with a leather padded cross-beam some three feet high. Just as Melissande’s bemused eyes found it the Magister said in his calm voice, ‘Do you still wish to take contrition?’

The girl hesitated, then nodded with a tight little smile on her pretty elfin features, her chestnut hair burnished by the strange wavering light. From the gravity of his expression she knew that whatever the ritual entailed was extremely serious, and that this man was utterly sincere. She could not deny that she found his presence disturbingly attractive, and perhaps for this reason was able to allow curiosity to overcome her extreme diffidence. Yet her vital being seemed to be held in his inner magnetic embrace, his eyes penetrating her soul.

He indicated an alcove, which she entered. On a hook inside hung a grey gown of the kind the weeping girls in the chapel had been wearing. Remembering this, Melissande fingered the fabric doubtfully.

‘All who make contrition must humbly wear the gown,’ came his voice. ‘The clothes associated with your everyday life must not be worn, so kindly remove them.’

‘Ev-everything?’ she faltered.

‘As you were when you came into the world, so must you be beneath the gown.’ Melissande swallowed hard. It was, she thought, a little odd, but scarcely different from changing for dancing. The girl stripped swiftly and pulled on the gown. It hung loosely, bringing up goose-bumps on the nude flesh beneath. In a way, it was a little exciting. Self-consciously she stepped back into the room.

‘Go into the Contrition Box and kneel beside the speaking grille,’ the Magister now instructed. And so she did, easing somewhat warily into the curtained gloom and sinking to her knees. She could smell Anita’s perfume. That glamorous creature had so recently knelt here, as naked under the gown as she. What had been said or done to upset her so profoundly?

The Magister’s voice was suddenly strong and clear in Melissande’s ear. ‘You are here,’ it said, ‘to come to terms with the frailties of your flesh and try to transcend them. As womankind you must know how prone you are to waywardness and temptation, to evil thoughts and malicious cruelty, deceit and foulness of mind.’ At first the girl found it hard not to giggle, but unpalatable though his words were they held a chilling truth which killed her smile. ‘Open your soul to me, Melissande,’ coaxed the throbbing tones. ‘Begin by saying what has truly dissatisfied you about yourself during the past few days.’

For a while Melissande had no idea what to say. And then, from some previously unknown mental reservoir, the words began to trickle, then rush as though a dam had been breached by a silver sword of light: an admission of laziness at ballet training, her hurtful rudeness to a friend, malevolent thoughts towards those who sought to improve her, little lies she had told to avoid trouble. None of the offences was serious, yet collectively they were a source of not-inconsiderable guilt to the highly sensitive girl, a guilt which Melissande needed deeply to have assuaged. Merely declaring them like this, however, seemed scarcely enough; and when she had finished she continued to kneel without hope – for now, the girl felt sure, this quasi-priest would intone a few meaningless words of absolution and she would go home and forget the whole idea.

She heard him leave his side of the Contrition Box. ‘Come out here, please,’ he said. Melissande did so, and watched the Magister cross the room and select what looked like a scrap of cloth from a cupboard. ‘Do you wish to receive atonement?’ he now asked gravely, returning to her.

The girl gulped. Atonement? She supposed it would be a mild telling-off. All right, best to get the charade over with. She gave a weak smile, and nodded.

‘Very well. Put these on, please.’ The girl took the piece of lightweight fabric he handed her, and not till she had returned to the sanctuary of the alcove did she discover it to be a tissue-thin pair of thigh-length Victorian drawers, flimsily silken and virtually transparent with age and wear. She lifted the gown and pulled the drawers up her legs with some difficulty, for they were extremely tight. She was mystified as to their purpose, for it wasn’t cold in there. Once she had smoothed them into place the old-fashioned garment felt slinkily cool against her intimate zones, and from the manner in which it sleekly hugged her hips and thighs and clung with embarrassingly thrilling snugness to the inward curves of her buttocks, she imagined that these drawers had been especially tailored to fit her bottom like a second skin.

Rather flushed now, and slightly alarmed, Melissande hastily pulled the gown back in place and represented herself. The Magister at once took her hand and led her to the corner where the hurdle contraption stood. The young dancer stared in puzzlement at it. She could feel the power and heat of his hand spreading tingles through her. Then he released her. ‘As this is your first atonement,’ he explained, ‘I will allow you to wear the drawers. Having identified a few of your more negative traits and destructive behaviour patterns, I have decided that six strokes will serve on this occasion.’

‘I b-beg your pardon?’ stammered the girl. ‘S-strokes?’

The Magister frowned, and surveyed the slight, trembling figure thoughtfully. Barefoot in the gown, the large soulful eyes a-glitter with flames, her deliciously pretty face a mask of girlish alarm, the new girl looked waif-like and vulnerable. ‘Have you ever been chastised before?’ he asked softly.

‘Chastised?’ she whispered in horror. ‘Surely you don’t mean…?’ Blood rushed to her cheeks, then drained to paleness. ‘Well no,’ she gasped. ‘No-one ever.’ Indignation flared, lifting her graceful head. ‘Certainly not!’

‘Do you wish in your heart to become a Perfectionist, Melissande?’ he asked, not unkindly.

‘Not if it means that,’ the girl declared firmly. ‘I had no idea…’

‘Then you may leave,’ he told her calmly. She knew she should run. Run now. Quickly. And yet she hesitated. The Magister’s eyes held hers, hypnotic as whirlpools in whose depths smiled incredibly beautiful things beyond immediate comprehension. Melissande was breathing hard as thought struggled with thought. No-one had ever laid hand on her. It was inconceivable that a complete stranger should do so now. And yet…

‘I don’t want to leave,’ she whispered.

‘Then raise your gown to the waist,’ came the instruction, gentle yet unopposable, ‘and bend forward across the beam with your head well down.’

Melissande could scarcely believe it was happening. Thrills squirmed in her bowels, it was like a dream. The decision had been hers entirely. This was unthinkable! Cheeks flaming she lifted the gown up her slender, exquisite legs, all the way up, disclosing more and more of the naked dancer’s limbs, up and up to where the agile thighs swelled to the girlish hips, the tightly-clenched posteriors in their flimsy dressing so exposed, so exposed! Delirious with embarrassment she stood up on the little step and stretched obediently forward across the padded beam with a weird sigh, gripping the lower struts on its further side. The position was insufferably humiliating – her face, close to the floor, staring briefly at her shins before the gown rustled down the steep slope of her back to blot them from sight, the tight-packed mounds of her pert young bottom forming the topmost apex. Never had she been more conscious of her arse, not even when catching boy dancers watching her sinuous body at the training bar.

‘Don’t hurt me,’ she pleaded in a tiny voice.

For a moment the Magister surveyed the ripe hillocks so snugly encased in the whipping drawers; then went to a marble-topped table on which lay a fine-bristled ceremonial brush known as an aspergillum. This he dipped into a silver chalice of purest spring water and returned to the girl, who was now making little entreatying moans from her abjectly doubled-over position. ‘Before the atonement I will anoint you,’ he announced devoutly, spreading a hand on the tissue-thin silk and reverently cupping each buttock in turn.

‘This crude area of your body,’ he intoned, ‘through which purification’s flames will blaze, is the very obverse of higher thought and spiritual enhancement. It bears the brunt of the physical shocks necessary to attain Perfection – and as such, in the Perfectionist creed, represents the gates to the soul.’ So saying, the Magister flicked water with the aspergillum on to the flesh-hugging drawers, and Melissande shuddered wildly at the cool kissing licks of the bristles which dampened the cloth so that it sucked each individual bottom-cheek and showed clearly the pinkly pretty virgin buttocks through the wet silk.

Then, with an air of firm duty, the Magister picked up an oval-bladed paddle, clamped his other hand on the small of the girl’s back, and swung the wooden surface sharply against the straining target with a loud whap. The blow wasn’t hard, but Melissande screamed! Never could she have imagined such pain! It sprang into and possessed each tender nether-cheek like jets of flame. The paddle drew back and smacked in again, appearing to bounce off the springy cushions of caressable flesh. The girl called out hoarsely, inarticulately. Crack! The paddle impacted for a third time on the wet, drum-taut cloth which scarcely protected her bottom, and Melissande loosed a shriek. SMACK! The blade landed harder this time, firm and square across its daintily quivering target, and the dancer screeched through lips slack from shock, her pretty head jerking from side to side as she kicked her feet in spasmic convulsion.

But the remorseless paddle swung back yet again, hissed through the incense-scented air and splatted emphatically against the meatier zone at the girl’s thigh-tops with an almighty spank, igniting fresh fields of fiery sensation. Her anguished howl seemed to make the candle-flames shiver. ‘N-No more! No!’ she wailed. The Magister cocked his arm judiciously for the final stroke, a righteous zeal burnishing his eyes, for he sensed that this doe-like creature could be brought in time to the highest levels of enlightenment. She was pleading with shrill little bleats as the Magister ran a testing hand over the smarting target; then dampened the diaphanous membrane once more, almost lovingly, with the aspergillum, and swiped a final blast across the girlish bottom that had never in its life before been so used.

He had to help the young dancer from the whipping-beam and pull her gown back into place. She was shaking violently, her cheeks and eyes as soaked and heated as the flesh inside the drawers. He felt greatly encouraged by her utterly chastened expression.

‘Come with me.’ Melissande limped in the Magister’s wake, hanging her head. He led her out of the Contrition Room to a little side-chapel with velvet hangings, where he set her on her knees. ‘I want you to remain here and ponder on the reasons for your chastisement,’ he told her, ‘and on how your entire mode of thought and self-conduct can be radically altered to enhance your life and the lives of those around you. You are here to be transformed to purity, ecstasy and light. Believe me, Melissande, this goal is attainable.’

At the doorway he paused, and added mysteriously, ‘If I should call, come at once.’ Then he left the chastised girl to her penance, and returned to summon the impatiently waiting Gail.

Minutes later the buxom fashion designer stepped into the Contrition Box and knelt devoutly, having shed her day-clothes and donned the penitential gown. When the deep voice invited her to speak, her words came gratefully, pregnant with self-dismay.

‘Oh, Magister,’ Gail moaned dramatically, ‘I try so hard to rise above the faults which hold me back. But this week I slipped from the high standards you have helped me to expect of myself. Please punish me as I deserve, drive these weaknesses from me!’ Gail proceeded to unburden herself of a catalogue of failings such as letting down a colleague, using another’s design idea and claiming it as her own, negative thoughts, lack of charity, vulgar extravagance.

When she had completed her contrition a heavy silence grew. A stern, sombre silence in which guilt crawled into every crevice of her soul. She heard him leave the box and cross to the punishment cupboard. Then he spoke.

‘Come out!’ His voice had a quality like thunder, and the shapely woman shivered. She wanted to feel his powerful presence dominating her, his hard hands holding her down, flailing her flesh. She stepped from the box and quailed before him. Her sensual olive-toned features and black eyes with their oriental slant appeared like an ivory carving in the candle-light, the lips parted to show pearly glints. She was panting slightly in suppressed excitement, her large breasts billowing against the cloak, nipples stiffly defined. Her insides seemed to melt when she saw the leather tawse he had selected – and gave a little yelp as he grasped a shoulder and shoved her stumbling into the middle of the room.

‘What keeps you grounded, Gail,’ he declared coldly, ‘is pride – misplaced pride.’

This she had not expected. ‘Pride?’ queried the designer, puzzled. ‘I’m sure I can’t think what you mean!’

‘It surrounds you with disharmony,’ said the Magister tartly. ‘As long as your offensive attitude towards those you consider “beneath” you is maintained, you cannot ever hope to achieve Perfection.’

Gail was nettled. ‘In my business,’ she expostulated, ‘you need to be tough to succeed! The weak and the meek get flattened. If I’m proud, I’ve earned that feeling by guts and damned hard work! It’s against my nature to be crawling and humble to wimps and idiots, so don’t ask it of me!’

His measured words came back at her, crisp and chill. ‘Until you are able to embrace humility and humiliation,’ he intoned, his steady gaze challenging her autocratic glare, ‘you will remain the brittle, cramped-minded hoyden that you are.’

‘What?’ Gail was gaping in shock.

‘Yes!’ he rapped. ‘You are an over-proud, haughty young madam – and the first part of your atonement will stress the need to expel this distorting imperfection from your nature, for with humility and loss of face begins the true quiet strength and inner light which will lead you the way to Perfection.’ The man raised his voice in command. ‘Bend over and touch your toes!’

Gail’s eyes had hardened to match his own. No-one, not even he, had ever dared speak to her like this. She was extremely angry. ‘No,’ she snorted. ‘No, I won’t. Not this time!’

The Magister stepped forward till he towered above her. ‘Then, for your own good,’ he said earnestly, ‘I must make you.’

Astounded, she protested: ‘It’s against Perfectionist principles to impose against will!’

‘But not,’ returned the man, ‘against our principles to save when there is a chance of salvation. Bend over!’ The young woman cried out as he seized her in a powerful grip and forced her to double forward at the waist till her head was level with her knees. Amid a storm of shrieks and struggles his strength prevailed: in a moment he had gathered up the gown and flung it up over Gail’s bare back to expose two large, smoothly naked buttocks, soft and invitingly rounded, the pale light quivering on the lush cushions of pliant flesh.

With an expression of unrelenting sternness the Magister drew back a well-muscled arm and slashed the leather down on the twin-globed target with the deeply-cleft divide. Gail exhaled a groan at the full-blooded impact, and tried to heave her body upright.

‘Down!’ he roared. The man’s power and will were unopposable. The tawse sang again through the air and struck home, imprinting a second burning double oblong on the ivory skin. Then up and down, biting and retreating, smacking and thwacking against the rosy moons with fierce gusto; and when the stalwart woman began to buckle at the knees he wrapped an arm around her middle to hold her tormented body steady.

Crack, crack, thrash. The volatile leather spat and sang ceaselessly as Gail gasped out shrill cries, all anger blasted from her system by the first few searing strokes, the split-tailed demon of pain beating a tempestuous rhythm on the broad womanly bottom – till Gail began to screech and squeal in what sounded suspiciously like pleasure.

The Magister stopped the beating. The full-seated buttocks were blushing angrily, and he kept her bending while he tested each with his broad palms, expertly fingering the raised weals caused by the tawse. All was well, he decided – this lusty young female could certainly take more.

‘Now,’ he declared, ‘your real punishment this evening will be for something you neglected to mention in the Contrition Box.’

Gail’s voice sounded strangled as she laboured to catch her breath. ‘I’m sure I admitted everything of importance, Magister,’ she protested.

‘No you did not,’ he retorted. ‘As I think you well know.’ He had brought forward a low padded stool some two feet high and three feet square. ‘Take off your gown completely,’ he commanded, ‘and resume a standing posture.’ Gail did so, breathing rapidly as she straightened up to stand naked in the restless light, her magnificently spheroid breasts swinging free, nipples jutting like bullets, the supremely globulous bottom-cheeks raging with ecstatic fires. Pointing at the low stool the Magister now growled impassively: ‘Lie on your back on there, and raise both legs in the air.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Do as I say!’ he thundered. During the tawsing Gail’s defiance had collapsed, and so she lay back in trepidation, feeling her spine and shoulders sink against the chill leather as she lifted her legs in an ungainly manner. When she was in position the Magister strode to the door, opened it and called out loudly: ‘Melissande!’

And, with a horror no chastisement could inspire, Gail knew what was about to happen. She tried to struggle up off the stool, but his warning glare froze her there. ‘No, Magister,’ she pleaded, ‘I couldn’t bear it. Not the new girl! She – she’s a neophyte…’

The Magister nodded sagely. ‘Had you been contrite about your disgracefully overbearing attitude towards this hesitant girl a little earlier, you would have been spared this,’ he bit out. ‘But perhaps at the hands of a neophyte you will at last begin to learn the virtues of humility. And Melissande may benefit by learning what it is like to be totally positive.’

Melissande’s penance was interrupted by the man’s call. She had heard the noises of Gail’s chastisement, the frighteningly rapid cracks and strange cries. Her nerves jumped with dreadful thrills as she rose and returned, still gowned and barefoot, to the room of candle-flame and shadows. As the dancing girl entered she was amazed and nonplussed to see the haughty fashion lady sprawled stark naked on her back on a stool, the darkly intriguing features contorted, the black hair brushing the floor just beneath her head. The Magister took a long cane from a selection hanging in the tall cupboard, and Melissande could only stare in astonishment as he handed the implement to her.

‘Now, Melissande,’ he said evenly, ‘this woman, your sister Perfectionist, requires to be soundly chastised. By you, a neophyte.’

‘M-me?’ The girl was astounded.

The Magister nodded gravely. ‘As always here, the punishment will be with love, never rancour. Stand forward, please.’

The young dancer gripped the cane in a dainty fist and trod trimly up to the stool, staring down in fascination at the fashion designer, observing in a daze the mortified tears squeezing from the tight-shut lids. ‘No… no-o-o.’ Gail was whimpering so heart-rendingly that Melissande made to query the extraordinary request. But when the Magister took up a stance immediately behind Gail, grasped her ankles one in each hand and heaved her legs up over her head to hold them there in the most appallingly abasing position for any woman, Melissande had no further doubts of what he required her to do.

The dancer licked her lips and turned her wide pretty eyes on the upthrust moons so temptingly – yes, temptingly, she breathlessly realised – presented. Every vestige of the snooty designer’s dignity had been taken from her. The great breasts shivered like two cream blancmanges where she lay on her back, the sturdy legs pointing tensely ceilingwards, her feminine sensibilities burning in shock at such humiliating exposure. Melissande’s own pert bottom-cheeks still smarted from the paddling they had received, and she was surprised at how far from unpleasant the sensation was. The delicious tingling warmth that had stolen over her body filled her with a curiously suspended rapture. Experimentally the girl flicked the thin cane, which swished and quivered in a way that brought chok¬ing thrills to her throat.

‘Proceed with the caning,’ came the commanding voice, and Melissande hesitated no more. Raising the cane above the full, lush buttocks she brought it somewhat tentatively down to strike with a swish and splat across the inverted buttocks, ‘Harder, much harder – but remember, with love,’ instructed the Magister, locking the squirming ankles in the vice of his arms. And Melissande did. Bracing her frail-seeming shoulders the pretty dancing-girl swung back a graceful arm and swept the cane against the springy globes with a vigorous thwack. A bright line at once flamed across the curved cushions of flesh, and Gail gave a yowl like a cat that has had its tail stepped on. The girl hesitated, alarmed at the mark and the terrible cry. ‘Again!’ commanded the Magister. ‘It is for the good. And harder – as hard as you will!’

In a haze of duty and pleasure in which his voice became a clarion call of all that was right and true and good, Melissande obeyed. Lifting the cane, feeling it quiver and wobble, she swung it sharply against the upraised rude arse with its livid mark; and she shrilled in sheer startlement as the stick struck home with a jarring, slicing, meaty judder which seemed to fill her veins with light. A hoarse shout exploded from Gail as a second crimson streak flared across her bare bottom.

The young dancer looked enchantingly spritely and sweetly beautiful in the intimate cosy light, her eyes pools of startled innocence as she wondered if she should slop – for the young woman she was, incredibly, thrashing with a cane was in evident distress. Yet Melissande’s deeper instincts informed her that, with the Magister’s saintly presence seeming to bless her every breath and movement, she was merely the instrument of a greater good, and that beyond this ephemeral pain and abasement lay a scarce-to-be-dreamed-of joy.

Gail was in a nightmare of embarrassment, appalled at being chastised by anyone but her revered Magister. Yet the girl seemed to have become infused with his spirit, magnificently clean and uplifting. Wielded by her dainty hand the cane took on life of its own, the candle-light catching its supple shaft as it sped up and down, cracking, snapping, biting, scorching, searing the helplessly upthrust buttocks. Again and again the cane swished through the air and struck in with solid thwacks; and through the inverted arch of her upstretched legs Gail saw, in a sparkling nimbus of hot salt tears, that her nimble and lovely chastiser seemed to be dancing, shifting as if choreographed from angle to angle to deliver a full-weighted blow on every square centimetre of the blazing, curvaceous targets. And then it seemed, as the searing concussions continued in a thrashing, hypnotic rhythm, that the girl was a conductor conducting a symphony of slashing, cleansing pain. God, the little bitch was strong!

Gail was roaring-crying now, and Melissande’s eyes were glittering intently in the smoky radiance as the cane she wielded beat out a crimson network on the fleshy globes. Swish-crack, swish-thud, swish-splat: the cane’s staccato voice snapped remorsely on, slowing as the energy drained from Melissande’s arm.

‘Enough!’ called the Magister, and the young dancer stood weakly back, breathing deeply. In a daze of self-amazement she watched the man release Gail’s ankles. At once the fashion designer squirmed over and lay across the stool on her stomach, hiding her face in shame. The Magister was satisfied. He knew how difficult this particular atonement had been for the proud, talented lady – but he also knew that she was able to take a great deal of punishment, and that this evening’s work would undoubtedly serve to lift her a little higher up the long ladder to Perfection. He went to the punishment cupboard and brought out a tube of some substance which he handed to the new girl with an infinitely gentle smile, then left the two alone.

The tube contained a salve, and Melissande realised at once what it was for. Gail still knelt in unspeakable humiliation across the stool, her roasting buttocks thrust out as though seeking forgiveness. The dancing-girl squeezed out some salve and applied it with cool palms and fingers to the twin tumuli of lividly-marked buttock-flesh, tenderly caressing, easing the agony from the heart of each soft buttock till Gail’s sobs ceased, and moans of relief began.

At last the fashion designer steeled herself to turn and look at her chastiser. Their eyes shyly met. ‘Thank you,’ she said to Melissande, and managed a remorseful smile. Then she took the hand which had wielded the cane with such zest, and kissed it with extraordinary tenderness. ‘Thank you, Melissande dear,’ whispered Gail. ‘Thank you for caning my bottom so thoroughly. I’m sorry for being so sniffy with you.’ Again she smiled. ‘It used to be a fault of mine.’

‘It’s strange,’ came Melissande’s sweetly piping tones, ‘but while I was thrashing you I was filled with love for you. And I don’t feel hesitant any more, or shy. He’s a wonderful person, almost unearthly.’ The girl blushed prettily. ‘He made me wear some very tight Victorian panties and bend across that beam. He spanked my bottom with a paddle. I’d never been smacked before. It still hurts. Look…’ Melissande turned her back, bent forward and lifted the gown to exhibit her own reddened buttocks.

‘You poor thing,’ said Gail. She got up and sat gingerly on the stool. ‘Come across my knees,’ she murmured, ‘and let me soothe that darling bottom of yours like you’ve soothed mine.’ Melissande did so with a sigh of pleasure, and allowed Gail to work the salve gently into the springy globes in sisterly comfort. It seemed hardly more than a formality, for the sweet little rump was scarcely marked; but from the way the pretty dancer began to writhe her stomach against the other’s lap with weird little grunts she was evidently deriving much soul-benefit from the contact – so much so that the happy Gail felt obliged to give the girl a couple of salutary slaps to quiet her.

It was dark when Melissande left the Perfectionist chapel. A full moon washed the roads and fields with silver radiance. Never before had she felt so complete and alive. Guilt and inadequacy had melted away, and it felt as though her spirit had been swept by a cleansing wind. Something rather special had happened to Gail too, because when they had parted with warm embraces, the fashion designer had been radiant.

But what about Anita? mused the girl as she cycled back into town. After that golden young woman’s traumatic session with the Magister she had left in a rush, desperately distressed. What atonement had been given or promised? Or had she left for ever? Somehow, Melissande thought not, and that the statuesque solicitor lady had only just begun the punishment which her un-Perfectionist behaviour had provoked.

Melissande’s bottom throbbed and tingled on the hard saddle. Yes, she would go back – for the doors to a new life had opened and let her in. The way, she knew, would be hard: there would be pain and penance, self-denial, tears. But above and beyond it all there shone like a beacon a haven of joy and light, the ultimate state of spiritual rapture any human can aspire to: Perfection.

Sweetly, Melissande began to sing.

(- with thanks to Emmanuelle)

To read Part 2 of ‘The Perfectionists’ click on the highlighted link.

A Spanking and Caning Story from Janus. To see more stories click here.

The Provider. Part II

HAD STEPHEN been aware of just how deeply Harriet’s humiliation had gone on account of her punishment in front of the giggly Yorkshire lass, he would not have slept so easily that night. When bedtime came, Harriet denied him the comforts of her body and elected to sleep alone on the couch, simmering with a strange quiet rage which Stephen dismissed as a sulk.

But for Harriet sleep was impossible. In the dark early hours she slipped on pants and top, stole to the cupboard where Stephen kept his implements and took something from it. Then she crept to the spare room, opened the door and darted inside.

Stacey was dreamfully asleep when Harriet flipped on the light and rushed to her bedside, snatching up the watch from the chair. The Yorkshire girl woke with a start, and saw Harriet shaking the watch in her face.

‘You bitch!’ she spat. ‘This is mine. And how dare you laugh at me this afternoon!’

‘Laff? It were only a whacked arse. And if yer think I’m after your bloke, I’d rather do handstands in hot milk.’

‘A whacked arse?’ echoed Harriet venomously. ‘Oh is that all it was.’ She scowled, and raised the implement she had brought in with her – a heavy black strap. ‘I’ll give you whacked arse!’

Stacey’s sleepy eyes widened. ‘Will yer?’ she goaded mischievously. ‘With that?’ In a surge of movement she knelt up on the bed and turned her back. Then, still saucily smiling, she flipped up her short nightdress to expose a bare, lushly rounded little bottom. ‘Go on then,’ she invited. ‘Give this a few whacks if it mecks yer feel better.’

Harriet breathed hard, eyes fixed on that taunting rear. She drew herself haughtily upright. ‘Bend over, then,’ she hissed.

‘Be my guest,’ Stacey chirped, and got into position. Harriet simply could not comprehend how the northern girl could treat it as a joke. She had been abused and humiliated in front of this woman this very afternoon, and still she was laughing. ‘It’s wailing for yer,’ came the slightly muffled voice from the bed. ‘Coom and get it!’

Harriet stared at Stacey’s bottom straining up towards her, open and inviting. She stepped up beside the blonde, put a hand on her back as Stephen had done with her, lifted the tawse high and brought it down.

The twin-tailed leather slapped full across both bottom-cheeks with a loud clap. Harriet jumped, it must have hurt like mad. Yet Stacey merely gave a slight murmur and wiggled her hips invitingly.

Harriet was suddenly furious. She swung the strap higher and brought it whistling down with all her strength. This time the sound was like a gunshot. Stacey’s bottom crimsoned where the strap had struck, and she gave a loud oof! ‘That’s more like it,’ she murmured, but the frantic clenching and unclenching of her buttocks belied her casualness.

‘Get flat on the bed, face down,’ snarled Harriet. She was shaking with tension and her heart was pounding. Stacey seemed only too happy to oblige, making encouraging noises as the other girl positioned her. Then she turned her head and grinned.

Whack. The strap flew down, hit and swung, struck in again with biting force. Stacey’s face was intent now, eyes shut, the smile changed to a grimace.

‘Not so funny now, is it!’ grunted Harriet, warming to her work. Whap-whap-whap. Her arm became a blur as she struck and swung, struck and swung, seeing the compact globes shudder and wobble, growing redder and hotter at every stroke.

Stacey was surprised. Bugger it, the girl was stronger than she’d thought. Harriet was angry, wanting to cry, outraged, with years of problems boiling up and out as the tawse struck and struck. Stacey’s bottom felt on fire, a hard keen sensation between freezing and boiling, yet she knew it would quieten to a rampant smouldering once this sensitive, doting, sad-faced biddy had finished releasing her pent-up resentment.

Thwack! Thwack! This was better than screaming or breaking windows, castrating her man or crying blind vengeance to an unheeding world. This was a warm, receptive bottom brave enough to physically take on all of Harriet’s emotional hurt. And as the minutes passed in a noisy melody of slaps and grunts and oofs and sighs, it almost seemed to Harriet that she was starting to love this bottom, especially when Stacey began to jerk it up and down to meet each stroke, as if answering a lover’s thrusts.

The last two strokes came furiously down across the backs of Stacey’s thighs. The pain was excruciating. For the first time she shrieked out loud, then sank her head forward, gasping. Harriet sat weakly on the bed and gazed at her with a small strange smile. In time, Stacey turned her head and they looked at each other. There was pain in her eyes, her bottom hurt. Gently, tentatively, Harriet’s hand reached out and rested on the other girl’s buttocks, feeling the heat inside them.

At the intimate contact, Stacey sighed. The hand was welcome. Sensing this, Harriet began to stroke the rosy globes, and new sensations began in her.

Stacey lay prone, watching, watching. Slowly, Harriet began to unbutton her cardigan. There was the ghost of a smile from Stacey now.

‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘Yes…’

The two young women continued raptly to watch each other as Harriet pulled off the cardigan. Her nipples had already stiffened, and her breathing was ragged. Quietly she sat back on the bed, still looking, and felt the warmth between them start to spread.

A Spanking and Caning Story from Janus 94. More stories are available here.

The Provider. Part I

STEPHEN MORLEY laughed. Thinner after the illness and acrimony which had attended his divorce, he was putting his life together again. The stockbroker-belt house had gone with his increasingly neurotic and intractable wife. Good riddance to both! Stephen was free now, newly installed in a large flat on the smarter outskirts of town.

Laughter had become a rarity over the past few months, and Stacey Gibson provided a wonderfully refreshing tonic. Having arrived in London from her native Yorkshire only a couple of weeks before, she had had trouble finding accommodation until Stephen invited her to use his spare room for as long as it took, and the happy-go-lucky Leeds girl’s smiling face and cheery conversation were ample recompense.

It was Harriet who was the problem.

Stephen knew it had started with that bloody watch, the cheap old thing he had given to Stacey for no other reason than the girl needed to know the time for some appointment or other. But Harriet had behaved almost as badly as his ex-wife would have done, blowing the incident up out of all proportion and insisting that she was his woman and that any gifts should come to her and not ‘some common tart who can’t even speak properly’.

All that had been quite bad enough, but when Harriet not only took it upon herself, during Stephen’s absence, to take the watch from Stacey as though it were rightfully hers, and then peremptorily order her out of the flat, Stephen knew that something fairly drastic would need to be done.

And he knew precisely how drastic that something might well need to be.

They heard the front door slam as Harriet came in, and both fell silent as the pretty brunette entered the room. So quiet had it become, they might have fancied they could hear the ticking of the disputed watch on Harriet’s wrist.

She scowled at Stacey. ‘Not gone yet?’ she said in snooty Oxbridge tones. Stephen sat up straighten, and glared. He had found this girl a good job in his chartered surveyor’s partnership, and they had been living here together for almost three months. Harriet’s declarations that she loved him had a hint of desperation about them – as if, so it seemed to Stephen, her impassioned avowals were the only currency in which she felt she could repay him for his kindness. Yet this dark-haired girl with her serious demeanour and aching jealousy really was in love with him, he was sure.

‘How dare you take the watch I gave to Stacey!’ said Stephen in angry response. ‘How dare you tell her to leave.’ Bloody heck, the northern girl thought. She shivered with strangely pleasant thrills, feeling incredibly smug at the sight of the much better brought-up girl in trouble on her account. Her host was on his feet in front of the sullen brunette. ‘This is my flat, young lady, and I decide who goes and who stays!’

Harriet merely looked defiant. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘You will return Stacey’s watch to her, and apologise.’

Stacey stared in fascination as the other girl struggled for an appropriate response, but the words which finally blurted forth were those of a teenager rather than an adult woman. ‘Won’t!’ she said. ‘That tart gets nothing from me. This is our place, Stephen – can’t you see she’s after you?’

‘You wicked girl!’ he exclaimed. Entirely unfazed by the insults, Stacey was enjoying the drama. She smiled openly at Harriet, like the cat that got the cream. ‘You will do as I say,’ said Stephen icily, ‘or else submit to a punishment you will never forget!’

Harriet gasped. Never, she thought, and certainly not in front of this air-headed bimbo from the back of beyond with the boobs and bum. She knew well enough what Stephen meant when he talked about punishment, and she was damned if…

‘The alternative is to collect your things and get out of this flat for good. I will not have that kind of behaviour under my roof. Do I make myself understood, Harriet?’ There was neither reply nor movement. ‘Very well,’ he went on. ‘Take off your top.’

‘What?’

‘As you have presumably elected to stay, and refuse to apologise, I’m assuming you’ve decided to accept the good hiding I intend to give you. Take off your top!’ Stephen sat down and surveyed Harriet coldly. The silence was terrible. Then the girl’s will seemed to collapse. Slowly, miserably, she drew the knitted top up over her head and cast it aside.

‘And now the skirt.’

Harriet wriggled out of the tight skirt and stood wretchedly before them, unaware of how fetching she looked in her scant bra and panties, suspenders and stockings. As she crossed her arms defensively in front of her body, the wristwatch was prominent.

‘If you persist in behaving like a spoilt, sullen brat,’ Stephen went on, ‘you must expect to be treated like one. Take off your knickers and bra and come over here.’

‘You c-can’t, Stephen!’ Harriet’s face, pale before, flushed red. But his grim expression sent its own message back. Her fingers fumbled to release the bra and peel it off, and Stacey’s eyes shone as she watched the other girl’s breasts spill free.

‘The panties too. Now!’

Blushing with shame, the proud young woman stooped and eased the panties down. Then, naked save for her stockings, shoes and suspenders, she stood in acute humiliation before them.

‘And now the watch!’

Harriet pulled the watch from her wrist and held it sulkily out. With a pert little ‘Thank you,’ the Yorkshire girl took it. She stifled a giggle, and that sound made Harriet feel awful.

Stephen removed his jacket, then patted his knees meaningly. ‘Come on, over you go!’

‘No, Stephen – please no… Not in front of her,’ she faltered. But, again, his glare brooked no opposition. As Harriet lowered herself across his thighs, she had never known such appalling indignity. She felt that tart’s eyes on her. Glancing resentfully at her, she was met by a smile of triumph. His hand stroked her bottom, and she flinched.

Stephen loosened his tie and exchanged a smiling glance with the raptly-watching Stacey. Then he raised his hand and brought it down. Hard.

A tremendous clap blasted into Harriet’s senses as Stephen’s palm struck fire into her naked rear, but before the pain abated another shattering smack pancaked her buttocks and refilled them with even brighter heat. Harriet squealed and squirmed as stinging smarts ignited the soft cheeks. God, she was being spanked. Spanked. And that little bitch was watching it happen, and enjoying every second.

Spank-spank-smack. Stephen was in his element, and Stacey knew it. She could see how he exulted in the swaying weight thrusting against his thighs while his hand rose and fell, Harriet’s grunts and gasps accompanying the staccato smacks of hard flesh striking soft. Still eagerly gazing, Stacey squirmed round in her chair as if to get closer to the punished girl and relish even more intimately the meaty slaps as the other’s buttocks bounced and trembled. It was sexy for her then to feel her own bottom tingle with ghostly responses as she pressed it back against the cushion with little sensuous pushes. She started to giggle.

‘No, Stephen! No! N-n-n-no…’ Harriet’s words were scarcely intelligible, forced through clenched teeth, her sensitive features contorted. She felt his hand clamping her waist while she jerked and twisted under the torrent of stinging smacks. And as Harriet squirmed, exposing herself unavoidably to both Stephen and the cheap little squirt who had caused all this trouble, she wanted to scream and cry at the injustice of it all.

For four or five minutes the air was loud with pleas and squeals and noisy slaps as Stephen spanked on. The sight of Harriet’s naked arse squirming and bucking across his lap was making Stacey uncomfortably excited. She found herself wriggling even closer, enthralled at how the other girl’s buttocks shuddered and rippled, reddened like ripened peaches, pushed up and down and from side to side as though in the throes of orgasm. Stacey’s eyes saucered in response to an anguished yelp when an especially heavy spank landed, and although enjoying Harriet’s discomfiture as much as Stephen appeared to be, in an odd kind of way she wanted to comfort the poor, humiliated, punished thing.

Stephen gave a last hefty smack. Harriet’s burning buttocks wobbled, settled to stillness, clenched in anticipation once again… then relaxed when no more came. She was gasping and swallowing hard as she rose to her knees, her bottom seething with prickling sparks as she rubbed and squeezed, gripping each flesh-padded mound and soothing them with cooling fingers.

‘Stand up, Harriet! Face the curtain and hang your head, you wicked girl!’

Oh hell, oh hell. This was worse than anything she could have imagined. Surely it was over now? Surprisingly, Harriet had not cried, though her eyes felt hot and stinging. She stood as instructed, her legs trembling in nervous reaction. Still stroking and soothing at her throbbing bottom, she felt there could surely be no greater misery than this.

But she was wrong. ‘Fetch the cane would you, Stacey?’ Stephen was pointing to a cupboard across the room, and the breezy Yorkshire girl was happy enough to do his bidding. She returned with a beaming smile, carrying a slender crook-handled rod which quivered to the touch.

‘We’ll have you on the chair over here.’ Harriet sucked in breath. We – oh, how could he! ‘Come along, kneel up. I haven’t finished with you yet!’

The attractive brunette shuffled miserably to the chair which was still warm from where Stacey had been sitting. She knelt on the seat and bent across its back. ‘Push that bottom up and out!’ Stephen ordered.

As Harriet strove to obey, arching her spine so that her buttocks were lewdly out-thrust, Stacey scrambled on to the other chair and watched avidly. Fixing her gaze on the reddened buttocks, she waited entranced while Stephen tapped the trembling flesh with the cane and, planting his left hand in the small of Harriet’s back, raised the cane and brought it sharply down.

Thwack. The stick struck across the crown of the twin-peaked target, leaving a line of fire. Harriet clawed at the chairback, panting hard as she struggled to absorb the pain. The cane soared and hovered, swooped and struck.

Harriet heard Stacey giggle. The indignity of this even overtook the pain that lanced her buttocks. Just you wait, she thought bitterly, I’ll get my own back, somehow…

‘Aaaagh-ohhh!’ The cane scored another crimson track immediately below the first, favouring the right buttock yet igniting the left one too with its fiery kiss. Kneeling on the adjacent chairseat, Stacey jigged and fidgeted with excited fascination.

Whop! Harriet shrieked as the third searing stroke landed, driving more burning hurt into her tightly-bent bottom. Her body spasmed, her head jerked upwards and she glimpsed the grinning Stacey. Damn the bitch!

‘Hold still! Face the front!’ Pleading whimpers came from Harriet. The cane-shaft rose and quivered, swung swiftly in. This time it struck the rounded surfaces with a sound like a snapping twig, then recoiled as if eager to repeat the activity. Which it did, hard and true, striking up into the softer undercheeks of the girl’s tormented bottom and driving out a wail.

‘One more. Stay down!’ The watching Stacey squirmed on her heels with voyeuristic delight, feeling her own buttocks tingling more strongly in perverted inverse sympathy with the other’s. Stephen measured his distance, took aim, and swung the cane for the final time. The shaft created a brief groove in the burning softnesses and leaped away, leaving the flesh to spring back into shape, each bottom-cheek marked with a sixth scorching line.

It was over.

Stacey sniggered wickedly.

‘Stand up, Harriet.’

Slowly, painfully, the girl did so. She sniffled, but controlled her tears, eyes still averted. Her bottom throbbed and stung as if it had been attacked by a swarm of furious hornets. At last Harriet lifted her head and looked directly at the pertly smiling Yorkshire girl. ‘All right,’ she said in a muted voice. ‘I’m sorry, Stacey – okay?’

At that, Stephen was content. Justice had been done, and peace restored. As he gazed in satisfaction at the evidently contrite young woman he had so soundly spanked and caned, Stephen felt that harmony and a sense of order had finally returned to his life.

To read Part 2 of ‘The Provider’ click on the highlighted link.