Few of us have not read or heard of the increasing number of "discipline groups" that nourish behind locked doors, stimulating sexual appetites and often triggering sexual climaxes through the medium of corporal punishment.
Imagine, as has Chaucer Cartwright, an entire society which has structured its family, neighborhood, community and state laws to provide corporal punishment, public and private, for all human failures-from simple family discourtesies, through traffic violations, to incivility toward a superior!
In this place, referred to only as "the Territory" and never delineated geographically or politically, there is a pecking order within the family group which involves "both cane and pecker," as Alec Reddick might readily admit.
There is a modification, in the Territory, of what we know as disciplinary sex. Certainly algolagnia is involved in both cases, for definite sexual pleasure is derived from the infliction and the suffering of pain. In the Territory, however, it is always the more specific mastigothymia which applies, for whipping is the only accepted method of inflicting the pain. More importantly, the punishment often exceeds the point of sexual stimulation for the victim. As a result, many if not most of the females in the Territory have more tingles in their behinds than in their befores.
In this very definite patriarchy there are gradations of punishment. Therefore canes and other implements of selected materials are graded by their pain potential. The implication is that a proper choice of implement can achieve a controlled punishment, if the wielder knows his own strength and the resiliency and pain threshold of the victim.
One comes to realize that there is a very exacting art to the application of the cane, but that there is no guarantee of artistry in any particular whipping. Indeed, all too many of the hair-trigger cane wielders lack either the expertise or the wisdom of judgment to control their punishment within the limits our heroine deems proper.
The moment we discover that traffic officers in the Territory deliver on-the-spot punishment, we suspect that this is a society in which male authority blossoms and thrives. For not only is Papa the executioner for punitive paddling in the family unit, but all females, child and adult alike, are accountable to authorized whipsters in schools and other civil institutions. And the men are required only to pay fines for their transgressions-unless they wish to save money, in which case they can offer their wives as whipping surrogates!
Which male among us has not at some time deplored the Momism which offers him only a choice of bachelorhood or the tension-shortened life of the provider who has less than a full vote in family elections? There may be food for thought in the literature of those historical societies which believed that since it was Papa who paid the bills, Papa must govern the family unit and mete out punishment as he saw fit.
And, considering the pendulum effect observed throughout history, we may well extrapolate that the days of Momism in our society are limited. From today's extreme permissiveness toward both children and wives, whither can we go but toward strict paternal discipline?
In this magnificent erotic novel, has created an unusual fantasy. He takes us into a shockingly believable society which is isolated by normal immigration controls, but armed with citizenship requirements that should make a female immigrant think twice before signing her papers ... or thrice, as did our heroine.
Cartwright's voyage into this land includes a fantasy within a fantasy, but the manner in which he handles both confirms his right to such literary license, and provides extra thrills and thought-food for the reader.
Whatever one's reaction to "the Territory" and its inhabitants, it can hardly be one of indifference. The male reader may rejoice in the vicarious thrills provided by this highly sexual patriarchy, deriving compensation for the real society in which he now lives, where he is, at best, limited in the exercise of the authority he feels God intended him to have.
And female readers will include many, according to the consensus of contemporary psychologists, who are no more enthusiastic about Momism than the average male. These may also enjoy many a delicious shudder or two as they journey through "the Territory."
-Martin Weidemann, Ph.D.
CHAPTER ONE
Thwikk!
The good-looking American woman paused in the upstairs corridor of the big colonial house. It was early afternoon, and Africa slept. The dry rapping sound behind the closed door had drawn her short. There was something categoric in the sound. The door was that of her niece's bedroom.
Thwww-lllk!
There it was again. This time it was followed, after an interval, by a moan. "Ow!"
Her heart beat a little faster. Unmistakable. Once more she heard the muffled snap, like a twig bent in two, and at the sounds of subsequent movement she went on. She was sitting reading an old copy of The Tattler in the chintzy living room when her sister came down a minute later.
Cynthia Reddick strode down the stairs into the room in a bleached settler's shirt and fitting chino slacks. Her jodhpur boots clomped on the floor as she crossed to a table and poured herself a drink. It was foaming beer. At thirty-two she looked in the flower of her blonde beauty, thought Joanna summing up the strong back down which the nearly white braid hung. The hips were firm and well defined. Cynthia patted them as she drank.
Until arriving in the Territory two days before, Joanna had actually only seen her junior sister on one occasion since her marriage to Alec Reddick. That once had been an unsuccessful visit to New Hampshire, during which Cynthia had first counseled the divorce which Joanna was now consummating. Despite her own three years in advance, her sister, she could not help thinking, looked somehow much more stable and, yes, mature. Cynthia's hair had bleached in the sun-Joanna's was close to jet black-and she had put on weight in the chest. Moreover, as was again apparent when she turned, Cynthia didn't wear bras. Joanna felt a faint embarrassment as she saw her sister run a palm over one of those shamelessly thrusting mounds, crowned with a medallion of rubbery nipple that prodded like a thumb at the slightly sweaty shirt.
"I enjoyed that," Cynthia Reddick said.
"What? The beer?"
"No. The dire execution, I fear."
"Meaning?" Joanna asked noncommittally, yet with beating heart.
"I had to cane Pam."
"Good grief! What for?"
"Dirty nails at lunch. Didn't you notice?"
"But, gracious, isn't that rather," she faltered, "severe?"
Still feeling her nipple, Cynthia gave her sister a long and level stare. "Darling, if you're going to stay with us out here, to get over this emotional tangle you're in, you'll have to accept from the start that we do have a rather special society here. These days we're rather proud of it. We have certain customs, however."
"Of course. I'd heard."
"One of them is corporal discipline. We believe in it. I won't ask you to understand it all right away, but I do suggest you scrap any of Reddick's psychology stuff about raising one's hand against poor defenseless children and the like. I gave Pamela four cuts with a very whippy cane across her bent and delectable bottom. It'll make her think twice about failing to wash her hands before lunch again. Hence, it's in her interest, isn't it?"
"But ... didn't it hurt?"
Cynthia laughed outright. Froth clung in a strand to her curved upper lip. "I have that general impression, yes. I also have an idea that the next four are going to, even more."
"The next!"
"Yes, you see, I found that with all the excitement of your arrival and everything, milady hadn't waxed her cane. She's supposed to do that every night. So there's nothing for it but another dose." She rubbed her chino-shod rump with a grin. "Oh my aching back." Then she glanced at her watch. "Just as soon as time is up she'll be down to request it. Pam knows I hate to be kept waiting."
"But...." Joanna stammered weakly. "I mean, isn't it a bit ... Mother never...."
"Darn right. We didn't get it enough. Oh come on, Jo, I'm not going to hang, draw and quarter the kid. Look. Since you're planning to stay with us, it might be as well if you came and watched." There was a pause. "That magazine's upside down in your lap anyhow."
Flushing, Joanna was about to straighten it when footsteps sounded on the stairs and Pamela Reddick hove into view.
She was thirteen, and, thanks to Territory conditioning and life, well grown for her years. "Unlucky thirteen," she liked to call it, after a beating. Her fair hair was cut short and she had a chubby body of whose hinder parts Joanna had, since arrival, found herself somehow continually conscious of. Most of the day the girl seemed to wear, as now, the brief tunic affair of her school, the skirt of which emphasized her behind. She had taken an immediate shine to her new-found aunt and, foot trailing on the last step, she looked the epitome of healthy girlhood.
Except for an apprehension behind her clear blue eyes.
"I'm ready, Mother."
Cynthia Reddick drained her beer. "For what."
"To be punished."
"Oh come, Pamela. Mrs. Swanne's interested. Tell your aunt exactly what is to happen to you."
Expressionlessly the girl said, "I'm going to be chastised for an Omission."
"Pamela. Please." She turned to Joanna. "This is important. Her imagination has to be involved."
The girl frowned. "I mean I'm going to have to bend over and be beaten across the bottom with a cane."
"You can do better than that."
She took a breath. Looking straight ahead, she tried again-"When I've been a naughty girl I have to bend over so's to tighten my butt for the beating. My buttocks are then bared and across their naked, stretched surfaces, I get a good cutting with the cane."
"Yes, that's better. Caned across the buttocks. Hard. Did those last four hurt?"
"Very much, Mother."
"The next will more. You don't feel any injustice about being punished in this way, Pam?"
"Injustice?" The girl looked puzzled. " 'Course not."
"Fine. I'll be right up. As your aunt is going to watch you swished, try to put up a decent show." At this information the girl's foot trailed again on a stair, but she went up without a further word.
Cynthia Reddick flexed her arm. "I really must remember to follow through this time."
"I must say you...." Joanna began with a confused and nervous laugh, but let it die. "Well, don't you think we should ... go up?"
"A little suspense never did a sinner any harm."
When some minutes later they entered the girl's prim and tidy bedroom they found her sitting on her bed, twisting a length of string. She stood up as soon as they came in. A cane lay across a table at the side. It looked long, lean, and very yellow, Joanna remarking that it had no handle, rather a knob at the gripping end. She found it strangely fascinating and embarrassing.
But Cynthia, ignoring her daughter, drew Joanna to the wide windows, which opened on the upstairs veranda and a view of the estate and the mountains beyond. She could see Alec's offices to the left, the swimming pool, tennis court-on which she had already played with Pamela-and the stables. A few Negroes slapped contentedly about the courtyard to the right. The sun poured down.
"The cane, Mother," said a voice behind them. Cynthia, however, continued to talk until she slowly shed her pale shirt. Then she turned and faced the girl.
What a pair, thought Joanna with a jolt. Her sister's breasts were thick through and firm, tremendous outward-thrusting mounds with hard, wrinkleless brown nipples and huge aureoles. They might have been in milk so tensely did they swing. Pamela, whose eyes were on a level with their long slopes, seemed to regard them with awe. She looked extremely frightened.
"This is a number one, or classroom, cane," Cynthia said, taking it and flexing it across her thighs in front. "Ours are all graded. This is light but stingy, especially at the tip." With a smile she raised it and bent it across her inflated chest, then thrashed it through the air twice, wickedly. Joanna felt her mouth go dry. "Perfectly designed for connecting with what portion of the anatomy of naughty girls, Pamela?"
"The buttocks, Mother."
"The bent buttocks, please." Pensively she sucked a second on the holding knob. Her eyes met Joanna's, who quickly dropped hers. Cynthia laughed. "It is phallic, at that. Pammie, have you ever frigged your clit with this?"
Joanna caught her breath.
"No, Mother."
"Sure?"
"No, Mother."
"No, you're not sure, or no, you have never...."
"I've never masturbated with the cane handle," said the girl hurriedly, staring at the floor.
"Well, dear, as your aunt has never seen you punished before, I'll offer you a deal. Four on the bare or you can keep your teddies up for six." She turned to Joanna. "Quite a poser, actually. On the skin I can see the marks and place 'em accordingly. On her knicks I might space them out more. That is, unless I chalk the cane first."
"Will you, Mother?"
"Unnecessary. You're going to have a warm enough tail as it is, anyway."
"Then," came out after a frown at the floor, "I'd rather keep my things on."
"Vanity, vanity," laughed Cynthia in reply. "Six of the worst it is. Bend over and let me get at you. Let's have that bottom stuck up tight."
Without further ado the girl went to a table and stretched across it, arms in front of her, legs together. Her mother peeled up her skirt and drew tight the soft navy panties.
These, Joanna soon saw, biting her lip, would afford little or no protection. They defined the sturdy cheeks closely, and indeed, a dull weal of dark red led eloquently out from the right.
"Push it back and spread them out. Come on, you know what I mean. Don't be so bashful, Pam. I'm sure your aunt knows how a woman's made ... behind."
The girl arched her back. At the base of the cheeks the slit fruit of a pulpy vulva pushed at the material. Joanna thought it seemed moist there.
"Oh good heavens," said Cynthia, striding forward and feeling. "I do believe you're all wet." She rolled her eyes expressively at Joanna. "She's incorrigible. But we'll soon stop that monkey business."
With the concentration of a golfer she addressed her target; the measuring stroke wobbled the buttocks slightly. She took a pace back, and swung.
Phhhfwckk!
The swing was slower than Joanna expected but the cruel crack with which it was completed on impact evinced how wristily, expertly, and thoroughly painfully it had been driven home. Her own fists bunched. There was a soft gasp but whether it was her own or the girl's she could not truly say.
The second cut clung a second to the flesh before it bounced back elastically-there was even a sense of dust drawn up.
"Ow!" The girl shuffled her feet.
There was a longer pause before the third one, which fairly splattered into the cringing fat.
"Hou!"
"Brace your knees back."
"S-sorry, Mother."
Joanna was amazed at the girl's stoicism as much as anything. The fourth and fifth whipped round the bent buttocks regularly. The legs rubbed, the cheeks clenched, but otherwise she controlled herself. She let out a stifled pant "Oooo-uuuuuuuh!"
"And one makes-six!" said Cynthia cheerfully, belting into the bottom twice as hard.
The girl squawked, rose on tiptoe, but remained where she was, wringing her hands together with a contorted face.
"She has to stay down," Cynthia explained pleasantly, "until Permission. Pain from a cane mounts. It's worse several seconds later. All right, dear, all over."
Joanna had been looking at her sister and the sight that greeted her at the table's edge all but took her breath away. Pamela was arched erect, speechlessly kneading her bottoms, her face red and twisted. She arched her back in some crescendo of pain.
"May I go to the bathroom, please, Mother."
"No, let's see you enjoy yourself here for a moment."
Miserably the girl turned from them, still clasping herself behind and now hopping in pain. It was clear it had anything but subsided. Indeed, with pounding pulses, Joanna saw one spasm squeeze the young body almost uncontrollably, tears squirting from her eyes.
"Come on, hands at your sides."
For a second it seemed that the girl wasn't going to be able to obey. She looked hopelessly at her mother.
"Take your hands away from your posterior portions, Pam, or I shall order you back to that table, take down your pants and give you three as hard as I can."
The girl clutched desperately at her thighs.
"That's better. We believe in control in the Territory. All right, get along with you then."
There was a rush, a slammed door, and the sound of water running.
As Cynthia slipped into her shirt, Joanna saw that her chest was sweating.
"Well? What did you think? like to try some?"
"I thought it was extremely severe," she answered in as level a tone as she could summon.
"Nonsense, she'll be as right as rain in a jiffy." Tossing the cane on the bed she stood up straight. "However, ten strokes across a fairly small fanny tend to hurt. I think you'll find Miss Negligent more careful in future. If she has more than a dozen in a day she gets a black mark."
"What's that?"
The blonde goddess pointed to a chart over the bed. Joanna noticed two black stars, like asterisks, and writing next to them.
"Blacks are paid off the first Saturday each month. Each one involves three strokes. Er, with the birch."
"Oh no."
"Listen, darling." Cynthia came close, her hands on Joanna's ample hips. "We want you to like it here. Relax, Alec and I have promised to do everything we can to see you through this time. But you have to accept us as we are. We're an open, frank and free society. No hang-ups." Her hands slipped lower, cupping the slabby seat in its trim skirt. "You've got a lovely bottom, Jo. It'd be a heavenly one to beat."
"What!"
"Oh come on, don't pretend. Admit it excited you too."
"Did it you?" she answered unhappily, turning her face.
"Not during, of course, I was simply doing my dity then. Justice. But before, and after-that's what we call our moment of honey. Oh God, there's nothing like it on earth. And I have an idea you know that, Jo. I have a strong suspicion I'm not the only one standing here with a wet snatch."
"Cynthia. Please!"
"like to let me feel?"
"No."
The younger woman smiled wryly. "Well, I don't mind telling you that I'm sopping. And I'm going to my room to enjoy myself."
"What!"
"Toss myself off, silly. Unfortunately Alec isn't around with the necessary length of gristle, but I do have an admirable vibrator. Lend it to you any time."
"And you ... oh!" Joanna hid her head in her hands. "And Pam ... what about her? If you caught her masturbating you'd probably whip the daylights out of her at this rate."
Cynthia exploded into laughter. "Are you kidding? Masturbating? Pammie? What in heaven's name do you think she's doing now?"
CHAPTER TWO
By the time Pamela Reddick came down an hour later Joanna Swanne had had three cold Tuborgs, and listened to her sister Cynthia expounding The Territory. It was a very special place, with a certain "scene", a way of life all its own.
She herself, as she listened, felt weepy and hot and wet. She realized she too had perspired freely in that swift upstairs moment. Perhaps it was her state-they had said she would be unstable for a while-but while Cynthia chatted on, she suffered a profound and soul-searching fantasy in which she felt herself breaking down, suddenly bursting into tears, turning to her sister and shouting: All right, then, I confess it. I practically came up there just now, so bend me over and give me six of the best or the worst or whatever you like-whatever you do, beat me hard. Please!
"What?"
Pamela came down. The girl had put on tennis things, a short crisp pleated skirt and clean sneaks, and she went cheerfully, if somewhat shyly, up to her mother and kissed her cheek.
"Thanks, Mumsie."
"No hard feelings?"
"Except where they hurt most!"
They laughed and hugged. Joanna looked on, trying to swallow. It seemed inconceivable that this happy, insouciant teener had just been writhing under the flailing of a long, glistening willow wand. There was a trace of redness round the eyes, that was all.
Cynthia read her thoughts. "Hardly the picture of oppressed childhood, would you say, Jo?"
"I must say," she stammered awkwardly in reply, "she does seem awfully phlegmatic about it all."
Pamela laughed. "I didn't feel ... phel-mag-tic ... whatever you said ... at the time, Auntie."
"No resentment?" Cynthia asked.
" 'Course not, Mother." The girl frowned. "That second dose really brought me to my senses."
Cynthia slipped a hand in the girl's white panties. "Still beating warm, eh?"
"And tingling, Mummy."
They grinned together with complicity.
"Darling, do you think you would ... since your aunt has never seen...."
"Oh, sure."
She turned, flipped up her skirt behind, drew down her tennis panties, and bent. Joanna saw a strong series of red lines drawn, as if with a ruler, across the boyish buttocks. These parallel stripes darkened into angry ridges on the right, where several had overlapped. The whole bottom seemed covered. She stared, aghast yet attracted-fascinated by her own fascination.
"Blue, black, purple, yellow, green," chanted Cynthia, observing her closely, "they'll turn all colors of the rainbow, in fact. Pam was right to keep on clothes. I could have placed much better. Also, I was long."
"Long?"
"Yes. These strokes, here," she pointed, "lapped too far over on the right. We call that hitting long. The tip should ideally fall well into the right side of the buttock, but not round the hip."
"It stung like billyho, all the same, Mother."
"Why don't you write a letter to the New Statesman about it, dear." Cynthia patted the outstretched flesh. "Now run along, you young monkey."
"You find this method effective?" Joanna asked as the girl adjusted her dress.
It was Pamela who answered-"All I know is, I don't want any more like that in a hurry."
"Juvenile delinquency is unknown in The Territory," Cynthia said dryly. "So is adult-delinquency, come to that."
The girl snuggled up to Joanna. "Auntie Jo, do you think ... I mean, I was hoping you might give me another lesson perhaps?"
"Well, yes," Joanna answered, "if you're sure you feel like it."
"Oh I always play better after a few stripes across the fanny," was the answer, accompanied by a squirm. "Thanks a heap. I'll get my racquet and be out on the court." She darted off merrily.
"Playing with you," Cynthia said, "is going to bring her game up a lot. You still play darn well, Jo."
Joanna stood up slowly and straightened her skirt. "Just now ... what did you mean by that word?"
"What word?"
"Experience."
"Exactly what I said."
"You mean?"
"Absolutely. I get it myself. Bare ass and all."
"You ... like it."
"I hate it."
"Then why ... ? "
Cynthia shrugged almost pityingly. "Oh Jo, it's nothing I can explain. It's a ... thing. It's The Territory. Currently we have no complaints. To feel totally subject to someone, to obey rules and regulations under penalty, you don't know how wonderful that is for a woman. How exciting. Incidentally it makes sex about eight hundred times more sensational. You feel well and truly fucked if you get it up you after a hiding. Here," she ended, reaching for the side of her slacks, "do you want me to prove it to you?"
But Joanna was already taking the stairs two at a time. "Have to change," she called back hastily, and there was a catch in her voice as she did so.
CHAPTER THREE
Confirmation came soon. These were moody, confused days for Joanna, who spent them in her room, reading, or discovering the grounds with Pam. Twice she went out horseback-riding with the teener, who made no further allusion to her correction, nor did another occur. Joanna began to think, it had all been a bad dream. Or did she mean a good dream?
She got to know the large house and its dusky help, with the aide of the colored giantess, Bella, who ran the staff of pretty girls who mopped and dusted in aprons and who always seemed to be in fits of giggles.
Alex Reddick himself was busy on the estate-there was hop-picking on, it seemed-and he rose early, to return later for his "sundowner" and dinner. She was grateful to be alone. Then came the reminder. Several reminders, in fact. The first was at the tennis club.
This was a cheerful, if modest, establishment some five miles of bush away and Joanna, who had been told to take as much physical exercise as possible these days, was delighted to be taken there, introduced around, and made a member. It was, in a sense, her first tentative affiliation with The Territory. The place was pleasantly informal and she quickly found herself one of the best lady players, with a number of games on her hands. It was returning to the changing room from one of these that it happened.
Two ladies were inside, one showering, another drying off. She knew neither. Suddenly she heard:
"I say! Who gave you those? Pete?"
The woman addressed had just come out of the shower and was toweling herself briskly. She was a compact brunette with her black muff clipped close in front and across her tough, lithe buttocks, just above the tan line, several lurid weals. In answer she looked over one shoulder with a grin-"And how!"
"Old tried-and-true?"
"Alas, he prefers a perfectly horrible and quite hideous-looking little leather thong."
"Um. Thought so." The other bent to examine-professionally, Joanna reflected, her heart starting to hammer. "Hide for hide, eh? Broke skin on the right, I see."
"I'll say."
"Well, mine still holds to hickory, dammit." She gave a hearty laugh and moved into the main room. "Those look to me as if they might have hurt."
"They did. And they're going to even more tonight, 'cos I'm due for four more carbon copies. I forgot His Highness' Scotch, in town."
"Good night!"
"It was, actually. He made it up to me rather nicely, after."
"Don't they all? It's at the time it...."
Joanna dashed for the shower. Lustily and long she let the hot drops hit her throbbing breasts and by the time she had finished the two had left. But another had entered and was changing into tennis "togs". A friendly redhead with a perfect body, she too-Joanna saw-had had a recent tanning.
"I'm Sally Benson," she said, advancing with a smile. "I don't think we've met. You're the Red-dicks' house guest, aren't you?"
"Jo Swanne."
'"I've heard about your game. I'm Club Treasurer. Delighted to welcome you and my first advice, if I may, Jo, is to shave some of that fuck off in front. You'll find it much cooler as a result." Pensively she ran two fingers through the flossy dark red tendrils at her own parted crotch. "The only reason I keep mine so long is that my husband-likes it that way. Shaving makes it prickle so." She grinned.
"I don't have that problem, thanks. I'm in the midst of a divorce."
"Oh, sorry to hear that. Though in my case it's not that he worries about his prick, and God knows there's enough of that. It's when he starts trying to get his balls and all up there at once...."
Joanna gulped and turned to dress. She was still rankly unused to this frankness about sex within The Territory. Two nights later she learned even more about the different attitudes.
They were all going out to another settler's house for a late dinner. Joanna had changed into a short linen sheath and was reading to Pamela on the sofa out of Henry James-the girl's favorite reading, it seemed. She was intellectually far ahead of her years. Alex Reddick, looking very tanned and terrific in a blazer and white turtle neck, had been pacing the hall impatiently, when Pamela's eyes started to stray.
" 'Thus Kate used her body because it was the very form of her will....' "
"Cynth! Are you ever coming?" came Alec's angry shout. "We're ten minutes late as it is."
" 'Milly resorts to her spirit....' "
Pamela gripped her wrist. Alec Reddick had just passed across the end of the room by the stairs and he was carrying a long, golden cane. Joanna continued reading, or tried to. It quivered like a fish in her vision. The grip on her wrist tightened. Cynthia was coming down the stairs.
She had on a short dress of smoky pink with dark tan stockings. In her heels she looked almost as tall as her husband.
"I'm ready, dear." Her eyes followed anxiously along the passage where he had vanished, into his den. Her face changed. "Alec, please...."
"This is the third time you've...."
Joanna saw Cynthia disappear worriedly toward him, there came sounds of an altercation, a door opening, the man's final-"Come in here."
Pamela stretched and pressed beside her. She felt her own hand clasped in the teener's now. Suddenly the whole house seemed enveloped in a silence like thick fog.
"Mummy's going to get ... it," said the girl softly, looking very directly at Joanna.
She shut the book. Awkwardly, in a hushed voice, she asked, "By 'it' you mean ... ? "
"A thrashing with the cane."
"How ... can you be so sure?"
"I know. Listen."
The silence seemed to last forever. Suddenly it was broken by the sound of brusquely drawn curtains. But this whirring of air, this beating of big wings, was completed by the same snapping of the dry twig she had heard upstairs her third day, and it struck into her soul now as it had then.
"One," said the girl staring at her steadily.
Thwhhlcck!
"Two."
Joanna groaned and sat back, closing her eyes. She heard what she knew she heard-bare female flesh cut into four, five, six times by hard whippy wood. There was a lava inside her. She felt herself tottering. After a long pause there were two more sharp strokes, a stifled cry, a man's placid growl. She realized that in some manner she seemed to be practically sitting on Pamela's right hand which had insinuated itself under her, under her skirt hiked against crushing ... she stood up hotly.
Alec Reddick came along, whistling. "All ready? Let's go."
He led the way out to the car. At the turn by the stairs Joanna nearly bumped into Cynthia and gasped. It was one thing to see a teenager like Pam in the extremities of corporal correction; it was another to see a grown woman, her hands clasped under her skirt behind, gasping with twisted face, half-doubled.
"Bad luck, Mumsie!" said the girl.
"Cynthia," she began with shock.
"Oh it's all right. I just need a moment."
"But isn't there anything I can ... ? "
"Alas, no. You go out to the car. I thoroughly deserved it. It was just those last two that hurt so bloody much. I got them for moving and they happened to be rather low."
It was dark outside. Alec's main car was an old Lagonda, very upright and distinguished. Pamela and Joanna got in the back. Cynthia, still squirming, sat beside her husband in front. Joanna could only see their outlines, almost one-dimensional, against the lights on the bush road ahead.
After they had gone some miles Cynthia gave a tired "Phew!" Turning to Alec she said softly, "Golly, you do know how to belt it in, don't you. If only...." She snuggled to him and kissed his cheek. He muttered something tender in reply. She bent forward, over his lap. "Darling ... you really can't go to the party in this state." Alec changed gear hastily as the sound of a ripped zip came to Joanna's beating ears. "Alec, dear! That's lascivious carriage."
He looked dead ahead as she bent over him. Pamela leant forward.
"No," came her mother's voice, "sit back, Pam. You've seen your paternal prick often enough, my dear. And before too long you'll be getting one up you with regularity, I don't doubt."
Her head vanished from view and Alec gave a murmured, "Christ!"
Joanna was scarlet. She tried to shut out the sucking sounds that ensued but though the car picked up speed she was unable (unwilling?) to do so.
Beside her Pamela said excitedly, "Do you like the taste of it, Auntie Jo? I love it. So salty." She rubbed her hands between her thighs, rocking forward on the seat. "Dad does a terrific lot. I mean, it's fantastic. If Mumsie doesn't catch it all quick, it'll be spraying over the windshield, you know. And all thick and gooey, like porridge."
Alec groaned again, sat up straight-"Yes, that's it!" Joanna closed her eyes, half fainting with emotion. When she opened them what seemed like an age later she saw Cynthia's turned-back face. It was smiling, and satisfied, like a cat after cream.
"Anyone want a rather spermy kiss?"
And Pamela bent forward with a "Goody!"
And after that it was only two evenings later that she was in the living-room with her sister and niece when Alec came in for his sundowner. Both mother and daughter stood up promptly and Joanna, after a second, followed suit. For a moment the man's eyes flickered on her as she rose, but Joanna felt a strange relief at accepting, almost despite herself, this first of The Territory customs-that of women rising when a man entered, just as they followed behind out of a door. Cynthia went to make some stingers. She had on an abbreviated shantung mini and looked very cool and beautiful.
Joanna looked at Alec. He was, indeed, the typical Territory settler, lean and rangy, with brown hair and a deep tan. His bush shirt and slacks were stained with both hops and sweat, for he had come straight to the estate office from the fields, where he worked long hours beside the coloreds. He threw Joanna a nod and, accepting his ice-dewy glass, gave Pamela an affectionate twinkle. . "Sorry I'm a trifle late but I had to straighten out my staff."
Cynthia paused. "Mrs. M.? You don't mean?"
" 'Fraid so." He turned to Joanna. "Mrs. Morrison. She comes to clear up my paper work twice a week. Accounts, letters, the like. I hate all that. But I found she'd got awfully behind."
"I could make a pun out of that," said Cynthia. "But I won't."
"Besides, there were several errors." He sighed and drank thirstily. "I'm afraid there was nothing for it."
"Gosh," gasped Pamela, her blue eyes sparkling, "how many lashes did you give her, Daddy."
"Eight."
"Bare ass?"
"Bare ass. I fear I hit her ... rather hard."
"Golly! Was it a number two?"
"Curiosity killed the cat," he replied to his daughter's fervid insistence, laughing. "Yes, if you must know, Miss Inquisitive, it was a number two, bending over tight. I can't recall when I've had such a satisfactory feeling with a two."
"Poor Margot. She hates the cane." Cynthia mixed herself another stinger. "Don't we all."
"Do you mean to say," said Joanna, who felt she knew them better now, "that this ... your secretary ... and you just...."
"Asked her to come through to have a drink, as a matter-of-fact," he answered nonchalantly, "and meet you, Jo. You'll like Mrs. M. Heart of gold. She's recovering right now."
"Won't she want to go straight home, dear?" asked his wife.
"Dunno. Up to her. I don't think she's going to relish sitting behind the wheel of that sports car of hers with what I just gave her underneath, and a drink might help set her up."
"But," Joanna started again.
Cynthia said soothingly, "Not to worry, Jo. All secretaries and office staff get c.p. here, it's understood."
"CP.? "
"Corporal punishment. Even in Shaftesbury, our capital."
"Especially Shaftesbury," said her husband. "Margot's husband made a point of it when I took her for this part-time work. He'd like her to be whipped even more. Yes," he mused a moment over his glass, "she has a nice relaxed buttock."
"But where?" Joanna persisted hopelessly. She felt she was sinking into some glutinous quagmire of emotion.
"What do you mean where? On the backside, of course."
"No, I meant-where did this take place?"
Cynthia supplied the missing information. "Oh, Alec has the usual punishment room off his office. Out of the west wing. I'll show it to you one day. I don't go there as a rule without wanting to run as fast as possible in the opposite direction."
At that moment there were steps and the woman with the "nice relaxed buttock" came in. A well-set figure of about forty, Mrs. Morrison had on a neat fitting flannel two-piece and sensible low brogues. Her hair was drawn back in a bun, her face un-made-up but for lavish eye shadow, and altogether-to Joanna, watching agog-she looked the classic picture of a competent Wall Street secretary. She was introduced and Cynthia mixed more drinks. Margot Morrison chose a Daiquiri. They stood chatting and smiling. It could have been any New England evening. Then Pamela said suggestively, "Won't you sit down, Mrs. Morrison?"
She paused before replying, "Thanks, I'd rather stand."
Pamela giggled, but her mother frowned disapproval at her.
The small talk continued and Joanna's eyes slipped to the woman's back. The skirt fitted snugly over a sloping behind and it was altogether impossible to believe that this mature woman had just bent over and bared herself like a schoolgirl ... for eight cuts with the cane.
"I really ought to be running," the woman was saying.
"One more," Cynthia suggested. "It'll help."
As she mixed it Alec said slowly, "I'm sorry if that was a bit severe." He rubbed his chin ruefully. "Hit harder than I'd intended, actually."
"That's quite all right, Mr. Reddick," the woman returned seriously. "It was an excellent caning. I felt punished right through. All over."
"I hope he didn't cut you quite in two," Cynthia said.
"Umm. It felt like it after the fourth. I haven't had such a thorough beating for a long time. And Ben doesn't let me off lightly, either."
"You took it very well," said Alec.
"Did you blub?" asked Pamela impetuously. She was growing even more excited on the sofa.
"Pamela!" her mother scolded again.
"I'm afraid I wobbled pretty badly at the end."
"Can I see?" piped the girlish voice. "Oh, do let me see...."
"Don't be so cheeky!"
Husband and wife exchanged looks and their offspring sat up as if stung by a wasp, her face falling.
"A complete lack of respect," said Alec Reddick sternly. A slim maid was moving through the room in her satin uniform. "Lina, bring me a cane, would you."
"A number two, sah?" the girl asked without expression.
"Father, per-lease!"
"Yes, a number two."
"Very good, sah. Nummer two, 'tis." She went off, smiling. "I'm sorry."
"You'll apologize to Mrs. Morrison...."
"I'm very sorry, Mrs. Morrison."
"After six of the best."
"You don't have to do this for me, Mr. Red-dick," said the secretary, but she said it with a brightening of her eyes.
"You will also write out a hundred times, T must not be cheeky to my elders and betters.' You will further give yourself another black, for impertinence."
"That's the stuff." Cynthia took Joanna's arm and pressed it close. "Quite a transformation, eh."
For the girl had stood with all color drained from her face. She shuffled forward to a low coffee table in front of the sofa to which Cynthia now drew her sister. "Ringside seat, come on." They sat down together and Margot Morrison smiled and said, "I still think I'll stand, thanks."
The maid came with the cane, handed it to her employer and went out. Pamela's eyes followed its springy gait with wretched eyes.
"Dad. That's a number three, I'm sure it is."
"Take down your panties and roll up your skirt."
The girl did as bid. The navy panties lay in wrinkles round her ankles and the skirt was slowly rolled up and fucked into the broad leather belt. The girlish buttocks jutted chubbily, a compact little pair with, Joanna noted, faint brownish-blue lines discernible from the earlier caning.
"You're about to be beaten for being cheeky. Have you anything to say."
"No, Father."
"Bend over."
The girl placed her palms on the low table. A tap of the stick indicated that she should put her feet back a pace, so that she inclined in an inverted V.
"That's an excellent position, Alec," Cynthia commented, tucking her right arm round Joanna. The hips were well bent, raised high, but still wobbled at the measuring tap.
"Would you prefer to give her them yourself, Mrs. Morrison?"
"I'd much rather watch you, Mr. Reddick. I know exactly how she feels. And I haven't seen Pam catch it for quite a while."
"She has a nice whippable little bottom," said Cynthia, "which is just about to be whipped."
The phone rang.
Alec crossed to answer it, holding the cane, which he prodded at his boot. "Hello ... yes ... Bill? Oh sure ... thirty-three and a half, okay ... look, I'm just in the middle of caning a cheeky daughter...." He laughed. "Yes, six. I'll call you back."
Too hard! was what Joanna wanted to shout as the stick hissed and spat into the bare puppy-fat before her.
The girl gasped at once. There was a pause as the raw red line bisected her skin and grew darker at the right. Again it whistled in-"Ooo-oh oh!"
She rested on her hands, her bottom cringing in from the pain. This was twice as bad as before.
"Give her plenty of time, Alec," said his wife.
The third cut up in a long slash that dug into the under-bottom.
"Wheeew! God!"
This time he accorded a long interval. The three watched her panting like a runner.
"You're in form tonight, Mr. Reddick," murmured Margot Morrison.
"It's an excellent technique, Alec."
"Keep your behind still and brace your knees."
After the fourth had sunk in, a stifled whine escaped the girl, mounting to a cry. She rested one knee on the table and then rose, albeit in a composed fashion, holding her striped bottoms up and rolling them in her fingers.
"Please, Dad. I can't stand it like that."
"Two extra for rising during correction."
Joanna clenched her knees. The flushed face trembled at its edges, and the teener began to cry. She herself became aware that Cynthia's finger was absently, yet expertly, rubbing her right nipple, which had hardened demandingly.
"Better bend over soon, old thing."
Mrs. Morrison joined in the kindly advice. "Best to get it over with, m'dear."
Pamela Reddick's face made a picture as she wrestled with herself. In an obvious effort of will she hobbled knicker-fettered feet to where her father stood, pointing with the shivery stick.
"It's so ... beastly like that, Dad. You don't know how it half hurts that way."
"Four more."
Looking back dejectedly, the girl tried to bend, and only did so halfway. With a laugh her mother rose and doubled over instead.
"like this, darling. Feet well back. Rest your whole weight on your hands. So's he can cut right up into you."
The miniskirt slid up the golden thighs of the tall woman as she bent there a moment, the division of her deep soft cheeks visible. Joanna's breath came fast. Things were happening to her. The elastic stick rippled with light, seemed to be absolutely asking to thrash into that mature buttock before it. Suddenly she knew that it would be very exciting indeed to see Cynthia caned.
"That really is a good position," said Margot Morrison appreciatively. "With the weight forward like that, you can't jink about."
Cynthia resumed her seat on the sofa with a smile and whispered in her sister's burning ear-"I know just what you're thinking. A nice juicy stroke just across ... where I'm juiciest...."'
"Cynthia, please ... please take your hand away from there."
"I knew it. And I'm sopping, too," came the heated whisper back. "I always am, watching. You needn't think Mrs. Morrison isn't ready to come, either."
"Dad, please," the girl begged, "let me off the extra, at least."
"Hurry up and bend over."
WHHHHHHHHHCK!
"Eeeeuuu!"
Joanna gasped at the intensity of the slap. The plump cheeks swayed as the streak rose angrily across them. Alex Reddick took his time and cut again.
"Aaaahh-auuuu!"
"Good stroke," said Margot Morrison. "That was a lovely one."
The first of the extra was even stiffer. With clenched teeth the girl absorbed it bravely, her knees writhing.
"Self-control is the essence of all character," Cynthia said sententiously into Joanna's ear.
The last was a full-blooded Swipe that wrapped round the hotly wealed hips and jacked the young culprit erect, speechless. She stood fighting to find breath, then, with a wail, toppled onto the table where she doubled, hands under her.
"A ... aaaah ... houh!"
Cynthia's legs straightened slowly. "That was one beauty."
"Mine were all like that," said Margot Morrison with feeling.
"Now get up and apologize," instructed Alec Reddick.
Flooded with pain, the girl wrestled to respond. "Say you're sorry."
Clasping a buttock in each hand she got finally to her feet and stretched a stiff curtsy in the direction of the Reddicks' smiling secretary.
"I'm ever so ... s-s-sorry, Mrs. Morrison."
"And I must say you look it, dear."
"Show your bottom."
"It looks very sorry, too."
"Now go upstairs and stay in your room."
"Poor kid." Margot Morrison smiled shyly. "After all, she did ask. And since it was a pretty strict one, I don't really mind."
Without ado she turned, tucked up her neat pencil skirt, slipped thumbs in a white spandex panty-girdle. Even through this the weals were visible, but when she had eased it to her knees and bent over, Joanna gaped in awe. Each weal across the white bottom, a trifle flabby though shapely at the base, was heavy and sullen in appearance. The caning had covered the lower buttocks.
"Ouch!" said Cynthia, in the silence.
Alec prodded. "That's what I call a sound caning."
"I found it effective." Mrs. Morrison pulled up her girdle and adjusted her skirt with a smile. It was a smile of pride, Joanna saw, and oddly enough she could understand it. "I certainly knew I'd been beaten this evening."
"Th-thank you," said the girl, who proceeded to trail forlornly upstairs. She still rubbed behind gently.
"I hope Ben won't think I've hit too hard," Alec said when they were alone.
"Alas no," the secretary laughed. "I fear he'll appreciate them all too well."
"I know just how," Cynthia put in with a grin. "It ought to make for a damn good fuck."
Smoothing her skirt, Mrs. Morrison blushed prettily. "It almost certainly will. After eight like that I must admit...."
"That a little consolation helps? Just don't serve dinner in a transparent shortie gown."
"I've spoiled more roasts."
"I know it. All that bending over the oven."
They shared a moment of mirth before the secretary excused herself-"I do have to run, or I'll only be getting another." She rolled her eyes expressively.
"More than those I'd not like to get," Cynthia said, seeing her out.
When she came back, she slung an arm around her husband and kissed his cheek.
"Well, you brute, Pam's nice and warm and I must say-So am I! You were an absolute devil as usual, darling, and of course I loved you for it. Really must try that position myself."
"The trick is to cut up."
"Under the, ah, underneath."
Joanna stood nervously, not knowing what to do with her hands. Alec smiled.
"Well, now you know some of our Territory terrors, Jo. I suppose you imagine us a bunch of sadists."
"That's a dirty word around here," Cynthia said. "Seriously. Not allowed to be used."
"Right. Chastisement of our kind has nothing to do with popular conceptions so current in your country." He was still holding the cane and now he studied its soulless length an instant. "Matter entirely of justice. I felt nothing during that correction, beyond the duty of having to inflict pain."
"You certainly did that," said Joanna.
"It was fun-watching," Cynthia added.
"It's only afterwards, now," he said, patting the stony outline under his flies, "that I have a hard-on."
"About which we have to do something, fairly soon," said his wife.
"Truly," he persisted. "What did you feel, Jo?"
"I don't ... know," she mumbled, red-faced.
"She felt excited," said Cynthia.
"That's hopeful," he said. "Show her your marks, dear. From the other night."
"Certainly."
"It ... isn't necessary," Joanna protested. "Assume the position, dear." Cynthia slipped down her panties, lifted her skirt and bent with liquid ease to touch her toes, her large breasts hanging. In contrast with her gracefully slender thighs, her rear was well-fleshed above the firmly sliced cunt that pouted invitingly back. These lines were less livid but they spoke of but one thing-punishment. "Oh," said Joanna.
"I wear the pants in this household," he said, smiling.
"That's because mine are mostly down," said his upended wife.
"And you'd hate to show them in their present state, I'll bet. No, I fear I'm just a typical Territory wife-beater."
"And I love the monster for it."
"Pete Salmon has this custom. Every time his kid daughter gets it, he gives it to his wife as well. Instituted it a year ago, and evidently the idea works wonders."
Cynthia stood up sharply. "I think it's about time to attend to that hose Jike object in the front of your trousers, dear."
"But doesn't it hurt?' Joanna objected, lost.
"I'll say. At the time I hate it. After, I wouldn't want it any other way. If you'd care to watch while Alec puts this young crowbar...."
Her voice ended in some whispered susurration again and Joanna, glancing, saw it. Released from the confines of his clothes, the man's member stood up like iron, a straining soldier with a scarlet head that looked as if it wished to rip every quim in sight to shreds.
"Christ! That's a good one, darling."
Joanna saw her sister's hand grasp the pedestal as if testing its solidity, her greedy squeeze oozing a bubble of sperm from the distended eye of the sulkylooking organ. Then she had fled the room with a choking sob. What in God's name was happening to her here? Why, ever since she'd arrived....
Slamming the door of her bedroom behind her, she found Edna working there. This was the charming, coffee-colored maid the Reddicks had lent her for her stay. About seventeen years old and slight in build, the girl was said to be "in training" to domestic service from the fields and, like all house staff, wore a uniform of a tiny black satin skirt, smaller lawn apron in front, and an even smaller cap, above.
"Wuz jus' tidying up, Miz Swanne. I put your laundry over there."
She indicated a pile of perfectly washed and ironed underclothes on the dressing table. In her high heels, black stockings, and minute micro-skirt, the maid was a delicious morsel of femininity. Joanna studied her, disturbed, as she moved about. She remembered what Cynthia had told her-she wasn't to let Edna get "slack", in case of trouble to "give her a sound tanning ... she expects it." She had already discovered the canes in the cupboard and the curious tailed straps. But for a second all she could see in her mind's eye was Alec's muscular monster. She could feel its veined shaft pressing at her bottom....
The girl was bending over, straightening the bed. Under the tight satin skirt her suspender snaps were visible. The lithe fanny moved in an agile arch. Standing up, she caught Joanna's eyes upon her.
"If there's anything else you want, Miz Swanne?"
"I don't think so, thanks, Edna."
Why was it she could not keep her eyes off the bulge of bottom as the girl turned and walked to the cupboard? Edna extracted one of the canes.
"I'll replace this for you tomorrow, Madam. There's a slight crack in the tip."
A slit like an eye in the head of a....
"Very well," she said. Her throat was dry.
"It's the tip that hurts so, Mistress."
"I imagine it does."
The girl still hesitated. "I polished the other two for you, Ma'am. They's nice an' shiny now. Was I to polish the bit of board, too?"
"What do you mean?"
"Paddle, ain't it?"
"It doesn't matter."
The girl dropped her eyes. Finally she got out, with obvious effort, "Ma'am, Bella she tole me to say ... 'case you might not, being new here an' all ... you can cane my behind whenever you desire to, Miz."
The rod would be hard, thrusting and throbbing, up Cynthia's wet....
Suddenly, in a daze of heat, she heard herself saying, "Very well then, Edna, since it's expected of me. We might as well start off on the right foot. Stand out over there and touch your toes."
"T-take my clothes off, Mistress?"
"That won't be necessary," Joanna said, accepting the limber stick. "I'm going to give you six and from now on you can look forward to a second helping whenever I find anything wrong."
She cut as she knew she could, whipping into the insolent rounds as hard as Alec had hit Pamela. When she went into the bathroom after it was over, Edna was on her knees, moaning and clasping.
Joanna was shuddering all over. In the bathroom she stripped completely and looked at her back. Her powerful bottom, with its ample overhang, confronted her head-on, like an accusation. The sight made her quake inside. Yes, my beauties, she wanted to say, you're going to get it soon enough....
The girl had got up when she returned with the towel. This she tossed on the bed.
"I want you to shave my bush," she said, lying back and extending her legs. Already the outburst had relieved her intensely. "Not all off, but a little."
"Yes, Ma'am," said the maid, as she went dutifully into the bathroom.
Joanna swam on emotion, writhing and grinding her hips. When Edna returned with the old-fashioned brush and bowl of soap she glanced down at her swollen and saturated sex and wanted to laugh, crazily, hysterically-a new kind of instant lather, indeed!
"Oh God," she goaned without shame as the soft brush softly stroked her parted lips, "ye-ess ... deep . . .up ... unhhh ... ooooogh."
CHAPTER FOUR
The snickering lisp threaded through her dreams.
It was a dream, a deep one.
Buck-naked, she was bent over while a grinning colored thrashed her ass with a thin cane. Alec Reddick looked on, chuckling ... thwlckk!
Sweating, she squirmed on the sheets. It was a week later and Joanna lay soaked with perspiration under the mosquito netting over her bed. The windows of her room were opened to the veranda, but Territory nights were close this time of year, and her sheets had become no more than gluey bonds. She sat up quickly at the third quick snip, rubbing at her eyes.
Thwip! Four ... and a caught cry. A man's growl.
She bit her lip.
Silence seeped through the sleeping house.
Her heart was pounding. It had been a week in which almost nothing had happened and she had begun to forget the shadows that moved through The Territory. Now it was happening again. It was all coming together again. She knew it in her blood, like some inward consummation.
Along the balcony, which ran this side of the house connecting the bedrooms, there was a light. The sleeping house faced the watchful pine barren.
Slipping out of bed in her sodden shortie she went to the full-length windows and stood behind the muslin there. It was as she thought ... as she knew. The light came from Alec and Cynthia's room.
There were voices, running water, a protest. She was about to turn back when suddenly her sister strode out in the softly illumined night clad in a diaphanous pink nightgown of near knee length. This she held bunched up behind as her hands massaged her bottom. Her great chest rose and fell.
"You needn't have...." was all Joanna heard when Alec Reddick came out, smiling. He was naked, holding in his right hand a cane and in his left his prodigiously engorged cock, which he rubbed lazily.
"Please, Alec, please ... you know I hate it like that...."
Slowly he turned her, and slowly, consentingly, she let him do so, bending over the ironwork balustrade with her legs apart.
"Please, darling, not out here ... we'll be seen, they'll see us ... ow!"
Once, twice, thrice he cut her buttocks with calculated care, the cane circling her hips with fiery red, his prick bobbing as he hit. She mewled with pain, rising and holding her cheeks. For a second she gazed at the steadily swaying beasthood before her, then she pursed her lips, spat on its swollen head and bathed his glans with saliva. After which she turned, grasped the balustrade firmly in her hands, and bent, her legs parted widely.
"Please ... only the head ... I can't take any more than an inch...."
She was in profile to Joanna, but even thus, seen through milky muslin, the expectantly clenched teeth of her face could be seen as she awaited her husband's assault. This was not long in coming. Alec drew near, parted the offered butt with his ringers and nuzzled his slippery cock between the cheeks.
"Arch ... back," he grunted, guiding his pole at the center.
Cynthia hissed, half crouching, then her head came back with a cry as the stiff member sank into the lush tallow of her bowels.
"Aaaah ... no more ... that's enough ... please, darling...."
The man eased forward, then withdrew. Joanna saw for a second the slimy length of gnarled cock, before he thrust hard forward into her. Cynthia twisted, tried to turn as he began pumping rhythmically, driving her into the balustrade.
Faint, frightened, yet very awed, Joanna turned on tiptoe to her room.
She was first down to breakfast. Alec took his early in the estate office at one side of the house. Pam descended next, kissed her aunt, asked for another tennis lesson, and some high-diving practice in the pool. Then she helped herself liberally to cereals, saying, "Mumsie got it again last night."
Joanna restricted herself to an automatic, "Oh?" and continued with her eggs and bacon. The girl had been subdued for a day after her paternal caning but soon became her spirited self, once insisting on showing her aunt her "marks" in the poolside changing room.
With a sidelong glance she added, "I hear you gave Edna a great good going-over."
"If I did she deserved it," Joanna said primly, but with an odd flush of pride.
"She showed me her sitty-billies and you could have put a ruler over most of them."
"That's enough. Now you get on with your breakfast, Pam."
Bandbox neat in a fitting white sharkskin suit-they were going into Shaftesbury that morning-Cynthia sailed in and kissed them both. Then she too tucked away a hearty meal. Pam's eyes quickened as her mother sat, but she risked no cute comments this time, Joanna observed.
Shaftesbury was the capital of The Territory, a pleasant, sprawling, tropical town. Joanna had arrived at its bush airport and been there for shopping once since. The Reddicks stocked up from its stores each week and today Cynthia had a list as long as her arm. The three of them had been invited out to the Bensons that same evening.
As her sister pushed the Lagonda down the divided throughway, Joanna could not shake off the darkly obsessive thing that inhabited her mind, filling her thinking as completely as Alec had stuffed ... stop! This groomed vision of womanhood beside her had just....
"Pammy mentioned," she started nervously, "I mean, did you get 'it' again last night, Cynth?"
"As if you didn't know." Cynthia shot her a wry smile.
"But for Pete's sake what was it for."
"Oh, stepping out of line," came the offhanded reply. "I deserved it and I got it, that's all. There's nothing very complicated about it." After a minute she put in, "I can't say it's my favorite way of making love, but Alec-likes it sometimes. I know women here who love it."
"Love what?"
"Being buggered. Weren't you? Didn't Tom."
"Of course not," she answered, indignantly. "All right, don't get annoyed. Look, there goes another."
"Gladiator Guard."
"Right."
A strong colored woman had just cut by on a colossal BSA. She was dressed in tight, white cotton breeches, black leather boots and tunic top. She was part of the Gladiators' highway patrol. To get into them, you had to be over six foot, it seemed. Cynthia had explained earlier how these policewomen punished corporally, carrying at their belts thin leather switches, one of which could now be seen whipping back over the pillion of the specimen in front. In The Territory traffic rules were strictly observed.
"Oh, don't forget. Whenever you come to town, for Christ's sake watch the parking rules. Only in the white spaces, or else. That's provided you really want to go through with this Immigration Visa bit you told us about last night, Jo."
"I do."
"Well, they don't mess with paperwork here. You simply find a note inviting you into the nearest Guard House promptly. A perfectly horrible time ensues, over a trestle. They use a penal cane in there."
"What's that!"
"Much longer and heavier. After six you feel as if your backside were peeling off. Anything more is murder. It's years since I got a Guarder, thank God, but I recall I spent the rest of the day in bed. No, it's quite different punishment from anything you've soon so far. Different in kind, not only degree."
"This-only applies to women?"
"You guessed it, dear. The men merely pay a fine, though a whacking one, I agree."
"But not so bad as the beating?"
"Right again. They can offer their ladies for that, in lieu. We're the privileged here. Grin and bare it, as they say." She added quietly, "But you don't have to worry, so long as you're only a visitor."
Something condescending in her tone caused Joanna to retort hotly, "You know I want to be more."
"I wonder."
"I know."
By the time they had completed their purchases, the stores were already closing. They decided to have a beer and a sandwich before setting out on the scalding, two-hour drive back. "Alec's not in to lunch today, so it won't matter us being late," Cynthia explained.
Cynthia gave a vigorous wiggle on the Lagonda's sunbaked seat and Joanna found her tongue unlocked-to one purpose.
"About that whipping you got last night...."
Cynthia chuckled as she drove off. "Across the nekkid fanny."
"Weren't you even wearing a nightie?"
"So you saw too, did you? No. somehow he felt that I didn't require that. It was lifted. Looking pretty, as usual, but being useless."
"But ... didn't it hurt?"
"I thought so."
"More than those paddlings we had?"
Cynthia frowned. "You mean, by the sorority? Initiation? What years ago it seems. You know, there was a story told about you, Jo, when I got there and they rushed me for Sigma Chi. I never did know whether it was true and I guess I just never had the guts to ask you outright. Then our ways parted."
Joanna sat brooding. "You mean ... that I got a real shellacking."
"Um-mn. But that the Senior who did the damage apologized and asked you back to her room after...."
"Yes, it was hell night for me, all right." Joanna dropped her head into her hands at the memory. "Oh Cynth, I feel so ashamed."
"You needn't, here. Frankly, I wonder if this silly guilt isn't the root of all your troubles with Tom. Out here we have no such complexes and hang-ups, thanks. The Indians may have reservations," she concluded with an attempt at humor, "we have none. And then the story went that this girl let you whale into her and that you and she used to meet once a year and give each other this terrific hiding."
Joanna chewed a knuckle. Perverts, they'd been called.
"And that you continued it for a time after school."
They had. The Women's Republican Club in Albany, a small hotel in Boston ... two club ladies walking out of the revolving doors with hot bottoms under their dutiful creaseless skirts....
"Do you think it ... horribly odd?"
"Of course not, Jo. If you wanted to, that is."
"It was always ... a sensation of release. Tom would have never understood."
"Well, we do here. Haven't you noticed? There's a special intensity of existence here. Hell, directly I saw you again at the airport I couldn't help thinking what a perfect bottom you had for beating."
"Heavens!" Joanna laughed. "In what way?"
"Oh, simply spankable. Can't describe it in words. One knows."
"Oh dear."
"And then I saw you on the diving board the other day. You're still nice and springy behind. Frankly, I'd like to see you caned."
"You would?"
"Sure. I'd like to do it too, but first I'd like to watch. I fantasied that it was you instead of Pam the other day."
"Cynthia!"
"Come on. Admit you enjoyed seeing me cooling off my can on the veranda last night. Did you go back in and play marbles?"
"Please." She dropped her eyes.
"I hope one day you'll be my guest. Only, not too soon. Oh, come on," she said suddenly, "you know you gave Edna a beauty of a beating the other day. I was delighted when I heard, and so was Alec. That girl needs lots of attention. But if you're planning to stay on out here with us, as you say, Jo, you're going to have to realize a lot of things. We have a very privileged community this day and age. We plan to keep it that way. We happen to have evolved a harmonious relationship with our coloreds, to whom we deeded a lot of land lately, as you may have read. We simply bring our young up to know they're lucky. Punishment unites us all."
Hitting the throughway they drove in silence awhile. Inside the car the heat mounted, despite open windows, and Joanna found herself mopping her face with a Kleenex.
"This whipping you had last night, Cynth. Was it ... I mean did you ... ? "
"Oh, all right." With a laugh Cynthia cut the Lagonda to the right and parked in a widened section, under overarching beeches. "We're not supposed to stop here, but just for a second."
Turning, she sat up on the seat, leaning over its back. She lifted up her skirt and pulled down the elasticized panties to which her stockings were tethered tautly. The silky ovals were threaded with long weals, less violent than Margot Morrison's perhaps, but painful-looking all the same, especially on the right where more than one met in an inky contusion.
"I see," said Joanna dumbly.
"Love pats only, dear."
"May I touch?"
"Okay, but make it snappy."
Wondering fingers traced the stripes. They were real. It had happened.
'"That's enough." She pulled up her things and slid in position behind the wheel. As she started the engine there came a prowling growl from behind and her face paled beneath its tan.
"Christ, no!"
With a contemptuous gesture a patrolwoman pulled in ahead, antenna snapping from her bike. "God! That's torn it."
Joanna's stomach turned. Her sister looked seriously scared. The Gladiator Guard stationed her cycle securely on twin stiff legs and strolled toward them, easing off her helmet and letting loose, as she did so, a mane of tawny hair. It cascaded down her jacketed back. She was immense, mulatto, and uninterested in expression.
"Please, officer, I," Cynthia began as the huge woman sauntered abreast.
"Let's see them."
The woman seemed in her twenties as she stood examining the papers Cynthia passed out. Beside the aggressive thrust of her profiled buttocks in the tight white breeches, the black eel of a leathern quirt dangled like a deadly snake. A meter of trimmed rawhide, it was clipped to the belt and looked well used.
"Please. I only stopped a minute."
"That's what they all say, sister." She was consulting a book. "First offense this month?"
"First offense this year. Please. I had to ... go."
The Gladiator guffawed. "That's another excuse they all have. Care to show me the turds? Well, I'm afraid you're going to have to learn to hold it better, Mrs. Reddick." She shut the book with a snap. "Friend with you?"
"My sister. She's visiting The Territory. From America."
It made no impression. "Is that right? Then maybe she'll appreciate a little lesson in our justice. I'm giving you four for Illegal Parking. Get out and get 'em off."
"Four!" came Cynthia's desperate croak. "I thought it was only three first time in a month."
"Law's been changed. Only applies to under thirties now. Under thirties and over sixties. You're in the age group, missus." She unclipped her switch and smacked the back of one boot with it, hard. "Four it is, sweetheart. Slap across that nice fat butt of yours. Step lively now."
With an expression of woeful dismay the blonde got out of her car and started fumbling under her skirt.
"Everything off. Skirt as well."
"Everything?"
"I want you buck naked, baby. Mos' 'specially that handsome heinie of your'n."
Tall as Cynthia was, the Guard towered over her. With a chuckle, she cut the air with her quirt and dust spouted. Joanna saw that the tail was a braided thong and she saw too that Cynthia could scarcely keep her eyes off it. She began to feel queasy and sick.
"Don't you people ever let anyone off?" Cynthia mumbled. She was nearly nude now and, though a car sped by, it did not stop. Heads turned and there were male smiles; that was all.
Finally she stood bare, her great breasts swinging outward, the darkish down at her center curling under her crotch as she paced first on one foot, then the other.
"Stand still."
"I can't. This tarmac's hot."
"Not as hot as that tookie's going to be in a second. You've got a great pair of knockers, kid. What's the magic measurement?"
"Forty-one."
"Not bad at all. Now turn round and let's see it."
Cynthia's hips seemed slim in clothes, since they fell straight, with the fat padded high, below the waist. Yet they were deep and soft and long, tender-looking in the fold which only slightly extended the vertical plus sign either way.
"Who gave you those?"
"My husband."
"Bully for him. I like my meat tenderized. Did you get it up you after."
"Yes."
The Guard chuckled richly again. "Tell you what I'll do, Mrs. Reddick. You squat down-yes, right here-and if you can produce two turds for me, two nice hot smoking turds, I'll let you off, understand."
Joanna blinked, breathless. After a second's pause, however, Cynthia squatted in the dust by the edge of the road, hugging her knees. She frowned in concentration, straining, dog-like.
"Shit," said the Gladiator Guard. "Come on."
She strained again. But to no avail. A scummy string made her stand up abruptly-"I can't."
"So you were back-scuttled after your little beating, were you?"
"Yes."
"And you lied about wanting to go."
"No. I wanted to go. But I can't now. I'm too frightened."
"Do forty squat-bends. Loosen your butt muscles up."
"Can I do them at the side? This tarmac's scalding."
"I'll make you sit on it if you ain't careful."
When she had completed the exercises under the eye of the switch-swinging Guard, she was made to touch her toes as many times. Several more cars passed by, but none stopped, and then there came another ascending low and a second patrolwoman drove up, gunned her cycle, cut, and got off it with a wide grin, shedding both gauntlets and helmet. She had long fair hair and was completely white.
"Having trouble-or just plain fun?"
"Ain't that one cute can?" said the first, "And all marked up for me already."
"What's the damage?"
"Four. Parking."
"You ought to get four nice marks across that pair." She yanked Cynthia forward by her bush. "Over here, Fat Ass," she ordered.
Could this conceivably be happening? Joanna asked herself, dazed with the heavy sunbeams pouring down. A thirtyish housewife, a mother and club member, hauled along an open civilized highway, to be whipped naked by an immense black woman. It was worse than any dream, much. But her curiosity held her riveted, to see if Cynthia's virtual terror was justified....
"In the sun, Lou."
"Cunt up, huh."
The two Guards went into action, working efficiently and fast. The first pushed her vast bike into a patch of light, anchored it firm with extra struts, and made some adjustments to the rear wheel. Then she peeled off her leather top, revealing a massive chest slung in the hammock of a white aertex bra.
"That's quite a nice thatch, all things considered."
"Yeah. Set good and low, too. Ought to get a good exposure when she's bent."
Watching riveted in the furnace of the Lagonda, Joanna understood, her face nearly in tears as the second of the pair extracted a wide black leather belt from a saddle bag, strapped it round her waist and forced her wrists into cuffs sewn into it in back. With her shoulders drawn tight, her breasts juddered, streaked with runnels of sweat from the exercises and with dust from the passing cars.
Slowly, lethargically, with an indolent smile, the first Guard drew the cruel quirt behind her in the roadway and hewed it into the drum of the pillion, which it lashed with a pronounced thud, indenting the leather there. Cynthia seemed unable to move and her legs shook. The power of her fear struck Joanna with its ineluctable logic, its tremendous excitement. This big woman, that lean leather ... then the first Guard was making a sarcastic bow.
"Won' you step fo'ward, Mrs. Reddick? I'd like for to take the skin off your seat an itty bit."
The second slammed her over the saddle. With arms tethered behind, no complicated securing was entailed. Cynthia knelt on twin struts for the purpose to which she was fastened with straps. Two rings in the front of her belt were clicked into place either side of the riding saddle. Her body bucked with a cry. "Ouch!"
"What's wrong now?"
"The gas tank's scalding."
"Too bad."
She cambered wretchedly, raising her hanging breasts off the metal. The arching increased as the pillion was tilted till her whole pelvic area was thrust out on display. The tan of her legs finished high and between it the silken purse of her sex pouted back, slit and squeezed, clearly veined and hairy. Cynthia threw back the bleached vision of her face.
"Please, officer. Give them fast."
"For Illegal Parking, four."
"Real hard, Lou. This is one sweet butt."
Cynthia turned back her head and tried to cringe as the long switch flailed overhead and then whipped with venom across the stretched center of the hips. Joanna even heard the vigorous grunt as the Guard struck. The tail clung there, biting, then dropped to leave a vivid line. Cynthia sucked in breath with a jerk. It looked like an inconceivably painful stroke.
"One," said the second Guard.
There was a pause, then the leather ripped into the skin an inch lower, eating into the thickly fatted flesh either side of the cunt and welting the bruises from the last beating. Cynthia gasped loudly, clenched in a spasm, jerking the bike. But she seemed intent on not giving her tormentors the satisfaction of a cry.
"Two."
These were experts, Joanna saw, as Cynthia's leg muscles relaxed and she slumped back limp and the second Guard urged, "Now, Lou, quick."
The third agonizing slice cut in.
"Aaaaa ... noooooo!"
She spasmed back this time, tensely, spreading widely, her vulval lips contracting, and a thin bubble of dribble forming at her anus and bursting as she squirmed forward, gargling.
"Amazing how they do wriggle," said the first.
"You'd almost say they like it. One more time, Lou. Jus' the same. Right behind the you-know-what."
The switch whickered sickeningly in again. Once more the fleshy hips tried to rear and Cynthia emitted a strangled, animal cry.
"Four."
"Enjoy your ride, lady?" said the Guard who had done the whipping. She was already donning her tunic in a business-like manner. "Nex' time it's six. I can make six with this baby real pleasant."
Released, Cynthia writhed, doubled for a minute, her hands still strapped behind her.
Suddenly Joanna saw her jerk straight.
"No! No! You don't have to do that. Please!"
"Right up, baby. All the way."
Her legs threshed, she rose to tiptoe a moment as the second guard appeared to goose her behind. Then her wrists were unstrapped, the belt taken off, and she was urgently massaging her scored behind, face twisted.
"Help you to go in earnest, honey. Give you practise in holding it, too. Now get your clothes on. Real neat."
Knowing that Cynthia would be in no mood to drive, Joanna had shifted behind the wheel. The big guard, who had given the beating, lolled in at the window.
"How you like our methods, ma'am? They sure get results. There's one dame don't park on a throughway in a hurry."
Joanna found a trembling voice. "I thought ... it was much too severe."
The Guard simply shook her head. "Nah. Let her off too light. Now with six you can work 'em.
And eight. Oh boy. I've had 'em crawling over the road for five minutes after eight." She stifled a yawn with a ham-like hand, already regauntleted. "Young and old, big and small, they all get it. Guess you get to find one beating looks like another."
"Not that one, officer."
"Funny thing. There was this little ole lady ten days ago. Doing a few miles over, at night. I tell you, when I saw who it was I din't rightly want to do it. Speeding's six. But I had to make the charge. So there she stood, flush in the heads, while I fixed the bike for her. This short white hair, all trim and neat, but with the kin' of can I jus' knew this stinger would whup right through it. And then you know what?"
"What?" Joanna echoed sullenly.
"She lost her water."
"She what?"
"Piddled on the pavement. Jus' like a kid. She didn't look that frightened, but there it was. So I rubbed her nose in it a bit and said that's three for soiling a public highway and then I put her to it and she spread beautiful. I must say I laid on. She took it terrific, a real lady. After the six I asked would she like a rest, before the three, see-'cos I aimed to make them cutters-and she say, 'Put them across me, officer, let's get it over with.' An' I tell you those las' three were real...uh, sign here, would you, lady."
Dressed once more, Cynthia had got back in the car, and signed the Guard's book before Joanna, to an ironic salute from the second one, drove off down the right hand lane.
"JesusBloodyFuckingChrist, that hurt." She twisted actively on the seat.
Joanna was dry-throated. The two Gladiators duly overtook them, their spraddled breeches thrust aggressively back, one gauntlet waving sarcastically as they passed. She climbed to a few miles below the limit and held the car steady there.
"What was it ... what she did to you afterwards?"
"It was totally unnecessary."
"But, what?"
"If you must know she put one of their blasted punishment suppositories up me. We can't leave this highway at limit speed for half an hour. I suppose I can hold it, somehow. Gee, it was a good big thick one, too. Seemed to slide up under my ribs." She writhed one nyloned leg against the next. "They always manage to make it degrading, and coarse. It's their bit. I told you it was another kind of punishment, not just a matter of degree. Christ, but that switch can half take the starch out of you. The trainer's made of sinews."
"Trainer?"
"Tail, dearie." Suddenly she arched with a gasp. "Hell, it's beginning to take effect. I suppose you can't go any faster, Jo. But you can't, can you? Not unless you want six with that brute."
"I'm willing to risk it, Cynth."
"I wouldn't ... I may just be able to ... ungh! God. Mavis has a place ... just off ... take the right at the next clover-leaf." She doubled with a wince, and an accompanying grimace of disgust. "I can't ... it's coming down ... sorry, Jo. Don't mind me if I do this. But it's the only way to beat it. And no pun intended."
Joanna stared straight ahead, her mind in tumult. Her foot eased down a fraction on the gas pedal. Cynthia moaned and squirmed.
"Uh-uhh ... it's too much for me ... I can't ... I've got to go ... there's a shopping bag in back ... oh mercy me!"
Grabbing a handful of Kleenex from a side pocket, she climbed heavily over the seat to the back. Joanna heard her gaspingly emptying a paper bag of its contents. She heard the "adjusting" of clothes, and cut back, compassionately, on the speed. Pink in the cheeks herself, she stole a surreptitious glance in the rearview mirror.
Cynthia's face was tense as she squatted on the seat, gripping the front for balance. Joanna shot her eyes away. There was an intense poignant silence, finally broken by a little grunting whine and a papery thump. Another pause and Cynthia groaned, "I knew these things gave bulk, but this is ... aaah....crazy."
There was again the sound of a potato being dropped into a bag. Then Cynthia said, "Christ, not another!"
Then there were adjustments, rustlings. "I think I'll stay back here for the moment, darling. I guess that's what they call beating the shit out of you, huh?"
Soon she pulled off the auto route onto a leafy lane where, after some miles, Cynthia directed her up a gravel drive to a typical white frame house, similar to their own. She flung open the door and led the way to the steps, insouciantly swinging a paper shopping bag. It made a thud when she dropped it in a trash can. Cynthia commented wryly. "We'll just put this here, shall we."
When she walked up the steps, Joanna noticed that a line of red had seeped through the material on her sister's right hip. She followed her dully into an empty, well-groomed drawing room. She felt she was entering another world.
There was no one there. Cynthia had gone on ahead. Joanna picked at some periodicals when a jingling made her turn. A charming woman of about thirty was coming forward in a light tropical dress. Her pure little-girl face was smiling shyly and she was walking in mincing steps since her ankles were fettered with a golden chain.
"I'm Mavis Smith-Peters," she said wistfully. "I'm sorry I can't shake hands with you properly, but you see how it is."
Her hands remained at waist level. She had on, Joanna saw, a wide leather belt of the type Cynthia had had strapped on her by the Guard, and through a golden ring in front of this a similar narrow chain kept her cuffed wrists closely confined.
"I'm in Restraint for today," she said, smiling sweetly as if that explained everything.
CHAPTER FIVE
"If you don't mind," said Cynthia Reddick, strolling in cool as a cucumber minutes later, "mine's a large Scotch and soda. The things that go on in a Lagonda."
"Help yourself, darling," said Mavis Smith-Peters. "Jo?"
"Thanks. I could do with one, too, a double."
"Mavis?"
"Yes ... but." The smaller woman rolled her eyes, and from the drinks cabinet Cynthia smiled sympathetically.
"That's right. Not supposed to assist anyone in Restraint. Under penalty, that is."
Joanna gratefully took her glass. Her senses were still swimming. She had sat and swapped small-talk with this lovely, soft-haired, small-shouldered woman who had her wrists and ankles fettered like ... like a prisoner.
"Those bitches can really make you feel beaten, you know," Cynthia said, joining them. "Really lay it on."
"That's true," said their hostess sympathetically, "but they can also take it, too."
"Right," said Cynthia, moving her jaw. "Gee, gritting one's teeth makes the muscles ache. Mavis means this special training school. It's, well, Spartan. We got Bella from the Guard."
"Several of them go into service later," said Mavis, chinking her wrist chain. "You ever seen a Gladiator flogging, Cynth?"
"No, but I'd love to."
"Love to?" Joanna echoed.
"Oh sure," came the answer, after a long swallow of Scotch, "they must be tremendously exciting."
"They get their backs scratched," said Mavis with a smile.
"There's this great gleaming triangle, you see, and a big sweaty Gladiator's back hanging from it like a side of beef and a Corporal cutting in...."
"And behind her there's another whose duty is to give the whipper two with a switch, then and there, if the stroke isn't deemed hard enough by the officer in charge."
"Alec tells me that's become somewhat of a formality by now. Though every so often there'll be a couple ... just for show. It's tough to get into a Glad flogging."
"I've seen the usual parade punishments, though."
"Aren't they something? I saw a meaty giantess getting six across her breeches and she didn't so much as shiver her butt throughout. Oh they're trained, all right. Amazing. What is your Restraint for, Mavie?"
"Too many martinis before dinner, actually."
"Ah, me. They do make the punishment fit the crime. Any thing ... er, accompanying?"
"Yes. Six at noon."
"Dear, dear."
"Only it was a little more."
"Do you mean to say," Joanna burbled, her tongue now loosened by the drink, "you have to be like this ... all the day? I mean, what do you do for ... ? "
The other two exchanged glances and a communal chuckle. It was explained by the Victorianly demure dame, chained on (if not to) the sofa that there were set times for physical needs, when she could apply to her head maid, also an ex-Gladiator, Ida.
It transpired that her husband Simon was a businessman in Shaftesbury, who liked to supervise his wife's corrections personally. As a consequence the following scene had-as recounted to a goggling Joanna-taken place at the stroke of noon. Her wrists released for the purpose, Mrs. Smith-Peters had picked up the receiver of the telephone in her husband's study, or den.
"Put me on to Mr. Smith-Peters, would you please."
"Who shall I say is calling?"
"This is his wife."
"Very well, Madam. Kindly hold the line."
"Mavis? Hallo. What can I do for ... oh yes, it's just twelve, isn't it. Fine. Where are you now."
"In your den, Simon. As you told me."
"Good. Is your bottom bare."
"It is."
"Is Ida there."
"Yes."
"Put her on, would you."
"Ida. My husband would like to speak with you."
"Yes, Mr. Peters?"
"Just wanted to say, make these six stiff ones.
Right up and down. She marks easily as you know, but don't let that give you pause. I do have a luncheon appointment but take your time. Space it out over two minutes. Three a minute, or four and two ... you know. I want to see her really contrite tonight. All right, give me her now, would you. Dear? That you? So you're standing with your legs facing the side of my desk, that right?"
"Yes, that's right, Simon. The desk's been cleared."
"Fine. And you're well and truly stripped behind?"
"Completely."
"Skirt tucked into your belt."
"Yes."
"Been figged."
"Yes."
"First-class. Right up."
"Right up."
"Excellent. I want this to be a memorable experience. What's it for."
"Getting up late."
"Lean forward on the desk, still holding the receiver so that I can hear you. Right down with your heinie shoved back. In position? Tight? Fine. Now-feeling sorry for yourself?"
"Very, Simon."
"Look at the cane and say a prayer."
"Please God make this punishment severe so that I may be fully cured of my fault."
(Joanna shuddered when she heard this part.)
"Tell Ida to get cracking. And I mean cracking. Count the cuts."
"You may proceed, Ida, when you wish."
"Vair good, Miz Peters."
Zzzhh-upp "One!"
"Hell, I hardly heard that at all. It can't have hurt a bit. Tell her to start again, and this time hold the instrument away from you as she hits."
"Simon?"
"Go on."
"Mr. Peters would like you to give me that stroke again, Ida."
"You seem to be panting nicely now. Beginning to hurt?"
"Intensely, Simon."
Zzzzzzhhhhlpp!
"Ouw ... foo-uuu...."
"I didn't hear that count."
"FOUR!"
"You'll have to take that one over."
"Please, Simon."
"Let's have some better enunciation now."
"Please, it hurts ... a very great deal."
"Well you shouldn't be so lazy. Three more and tell Ida to make these low."
"I'm to have that stripe over, Ida, if you please. And Mr. Peters suggests you strike ... low down."
"Right in the fold."
"In the sulcus, Ida."
"Yes indeed, Ma'am."
Zzzhhhwitttl "FOWR!"
"Nice long pause for it to sink in. That one hurt?"
"Oh. Oh. Oh."
"Silly girl, aren't you!"
ZZZZHWTTT!
"Fiiiii-yeeeve!"
"Press back with your knees, please, Ma'am."
"Oooo-uuuh!"
"Hey, you don't have to deafen me, darling. Really, you sound like a grampus in labor."
"Ouwhh."
"ZZWHTCK! "Ho Auh ... six!"
"Sounded as if that one belted home okay. Well thanks, Mavis. Hope it did you a world of good. Better than a mid-morning martini any time. Bye now."
The three women were standing, waiting for Cynthia to finish her third and final Scotch.
"The brute! I bet he was beating himself off all the time. That or having his secretary do the honors. The only thing I don't get, darling, is about the martinis. Was it for that, or getting up late out of bed?"
Mavis Smith-Peters smiled softly. "One and the same in a way. I over-imbibed. I overslept."
"May we peek?"
The fettered hands moved expressively. "Not much I can do about it, I fear."
"There isn't, is there? And since I showed you mine in the bathroom just now."
In a trice Cynthia had the thin skirt tucked high. The woman was not wearing panties or stockings and Joanna found herself confronting yet another well-wealed bottom. Despite her slender shoulders, Mavis had a sloping figure which filled a pair of richly flesh buttocks that thrust out staunchly from the thighs. Even though these stood plumply together, a strong clump of soft dry fur thrust back through them from in front. The weals seemed punctuated by small blotches, deeper in hue and tender-looking. Cynthia touched one apprisingly.
"Simon-likes to use a malacca. Notched, you know. Some thinks it hurts a little more."
"I do," said Mavis. She shivered as Cynthia parted the heavy cheeks and exposed the crinkled amber of the anus. Set in the shadowy valley it was a demure dimple, sweetly vulnerable and yet chaste in appearance. It touched Joanna sharply and suddenly she knew she would very much like to see this woman well beaten.
"Oooh, you were figged, weren't you?" Cynthia was saying. "Any rate, you don't have to wear a saddle strap."
"What's that?" Joanna asked.
"Goes between the legs. Horribly tight and most discouraging. Let's take a look at the view from in front. Oh boy, what wouldn't that naughty little juicer do for a length of greasy gristle right now. Mind if I pay homage, Mave? I owe you hospitality."
So saying, her great plait swinging like a club, Cynthia dropped to her knees in front of her hostess. Weakly, dazed in confusion and excitement, Joanna sat on the sofa behind the woman, whose whipped behind was on a level with her eyes and whose faintly downed surfaces began to undulate and buck as Cynthia went to work.
The dead silence of the room was broken only by a sluicing lapping, as of some dog, and quick hisses of breath from the moving woman. Mavis planted her feet as far as the short chain would allow them apart and her bottom, bucking, now thrust the strong fuck surrounding her sex at Joanna, emphasizing its animality.
And when Mavis turned her face with an effort at apologetic smile, Joanna was gripped by it, so rosy and excited did it look, so tense and shiny was the skin. There was such a total carnality in the eyes, they might have been those of some mystic or saint.
"I hope you aren't shocked, Mrs. Swanne." Suddenly she arched, head ducked down, belly retracted. "Oh Cynth, that's ... oh you're practically skinning it like that ... darling, someone is shortly going to get a. . .mouthful." There was a pause and Cynthia's long, well manicured fingers grabbed around her ass-cheeks. Mavis said in a mournful tone, "I'm afraid I go rather a lot ... after a caning ... uuaaaa!" She pumped ecstatically, and went on doing so for some time.
When Cynthia stood up she was licking her lips like a cat after cream. A runnel smeared her chin.
"Not bad as a whisky chaser, but you certainly were copious. Now we absolutely have to run."
"You might pull my skirt down, if you're leaving," Mavis said equably.
"You look sweet with it up like that, my dear."
"Please, Cynth."
As they walked out, laughing, Joanna gave a last glance back. Mavis Smith-Peters was swearing softly and plucking vainly at the material in front with her fingers. A typical hostess, Joanna thought wildly, looking her last at the chains, the ruby face, and the pronounced white dew on the thickly furred and fatted quim in front.
"That was a positively Wordsworthian torrent. I thought it would never stop." Cynthia eased herself gently onto the seat. "As the only one in the vicinity with a virgin can I propose you drive." Joanna thought over the remark all the way back.
The house seemed hung in somnolence when they arrived. She herself took her packages to her room upstairs. She had found some splendid shoes and had also bought a boutique pool dress, a short white terry to show off her new tan. She changed to a sweater and trim bermuda shorts. She ran down the stairs and into the dining-room to join Cynthia in coffee and cake, but the sight that met her brought her to a jolting halt in the doorway. Her stomach flopped and fear clutched her spine.
Alec Reddick had come in for lunch and was finishing a cigar over some brandy at the far end of the table. To one side of it, standing with her hands beside her like some soldier of penitent schoolgirl, Cynthia was staring straight ahead.
"What?"
"You were both very late," Alec said to her explanatorily. "Cynthia forgot I had a guest for lunch. I'm going to have to give her the cane."
"B-b-but ... we ... she couldn't help...."
"Cynthia has told me you stopped off at Mavis'. And what went on there. She had to call to stop."
"That's not so," Joanna answered hectically, she felt she was sinking into some new morass of loss of self. "She'd just been brutally thrashed by a highway Guard, and then given a ... she had to stop!"
"It's no use, Jo," Cynthia said in a low tone, still staring ahead of her, white-faced.
"Yes, she told me about that," Alec went on laconically. "Turn round and show your bottom, dear."
Cynthia did as bid. The stain on her skirt had enlarged. When she exposed her welted bottom Alec merely nodded.
"I think it'll hurt her quite a bit over those."
"But you can't ... it isn't fair ... it was as much my fault," Joanna responded wretchedly while Cynthia pulled down her skirt again. "Anyway you only just caned her last night.
"That was nothing. This six is going to sting. Isn't it, Cynth?" he asked cheerfully.
"Yes," she said hollowly.
"Six of the very best. Nice and low."
Joanna made a final effort. "Please. It's not fair."
The chuckle came from both of them.
Cynthia said, "You don't understand the Territory, Jo. This has to happen. Irrespective of the state of my ass." In a lower tone she added, "God is always right."
"You weren't being sassy, were you, Cynth?" the man said to that.
"No!" she protested quickly. "I'm sorry if...."
"I might as well give you a couple extra just in case you were."
Cynthia's face fell. Alec stood up and stretched his lean, muscular body in a yawn.
"I'll send for you in twenty minutes. Eight strokes with a strong cane." He sauntered out and left them.
In the horrified hush of Joanna's silence Cynthia dropped a rueful, "See? You're beginning to understand about justice now, Jo."
"like learning from behind," she tried to quip awkwardly. "Seriously. I got you into that pickle."
"Pickle is right," Cynthia said, rubbing her rump.
"Then I deserve a ... just as much as...."
She broke off on a gulp. A maid had come in. Expressionlessly the girl asked, "You wish for yo' coffee befo' your whipping, Mistress, or after?"
"Bring it up to my room afterwards, would you, Sheila. With a couple of aspirins, please."
Cynthia began to trail upstairs. Joanna followed her hopelessly. A prick of tears stung her eyes.
"Please, Cynth. I deserve it too."
At the door to her own room they paused. Cynthia gave her a long and solemn look. "You can't fool around with this, you know."
Joanna's rib cage pounded. She opened the door to the shuttered room. Cynthia went in.
"What's this doing here? We don't use them here."
On the mirrored closet dressing-table lay the hard flat sorority paddle Joanna had brought with her. She flushed as Cynthia picked it up.
"Oh, I guess," she stumbled. She would never admit she'd been taking practice swings against a pillow. "Edna waxed it, I think. Maybe she left it out."
"An impact instrument. I'd forgotten. How many did it used to be."
"Fifteen."
"First offense only. Hell night. Remember."
"Twenty."
"On each side. I'm not sure you should get any deeper into this thing," Cynthia said thoughtfully. "I hope you'll keep beating Edna nice and hard "but I don't know if you realize what the Territory really means."
"The shadows," whispered Joanna in the darkened room, as the memories flooded back. Summoned at night. Sickness and ceremony. In front of the whole sorority, the five frosh standing and then those sudden words, Assume the position. The senior with the paddle, a look of dislike in her open, sandy face-Grab pooch, pledge ... The most frightening experience Joanna had ever known, yet the most conscious. A brand in her mind she would never eradicate. As Cynthia stared at her she knew she knew. They were both living with all their senses. She herself was very near tears, too.
In a slow, moody, almost gloomy voice Cynthia said, "After I've been really well tanned, you know, after I've been birched, for instance, Alec sometimes makes me go a couple of days in clothing so tight I can scarcely take a breath. There's this continual feeling of material on the skin. No respite, you know."
Joanna's heart was hammering. She was drifting at the shadow-line of consummation. She had no will to shun it, it was totally terrible and adorable.
"I have to have it too, Cynthia," she whispered miserably. "Don't you see. If you do."
"You sure you really and truly want to go through with this feeling that you have?"
"Yes, yes."
"With us, it's more like a religion."
"Tell me what I have to do," she begged.
Cynthia's huge breasts juddered richly. The right one bounced as she swung. Her palm cracked flat on Joanna's cheek and the brunette staggered.
"Oh, now." She held her swinging head. "You didn't have to do that."
"I'm sorry but I want you to snap out of this, Jo. There is no possibility of playing around."
"I know that, Cynth."
"Then know this. Our first rule. It always has to be rather worse than expected. Remember surfing? The first thing was fear, then a desire to overcome that fear. Then it all turned to an exhilarating emotion as the big one began to work for you. From Alec you'll never get less than six with a number two. I'm expected to stay bent over properly for as many as twelve, and get extra if I don't. I rarely can. I've often had twice nine. Very few of us, you see, could possibly take eighteen, so it's ordered in two doses, with an interval. A group of girls got twice nine's at a party at the Danforth's, just before you came. I saw it. Highly discouraging."
But Joanna had turned off her tear-driven face and escaped the room. Bolting down the staircase she half-ran along the gallery to the wing where Alec Reddick had his office. And the Punishment Room.
CHAPTER SIX
"Are you quite certain you want to go through with this, Joanna?"
Alec Reddick tipped the wicker chair behind the paper-strewn desk in his office and looked at her standing before him-in control of her faculties now and standing as she knew you were expected to stand, hands at her sides, looking over his head.
"Quite sure, sir," she said.
"I won't let you off lightly, you know. In fact, since I'm not sure if you realise quite what you're doing, I shall make it highly unpleasant. If you're doing this out of curiosity, or for a thrill, you'll be cured, I believe."
"If Cynthia is to be punished, I should be," she said.
"Very well. It's your choice." He tapped his teeth a second. "Turn around and take down your things and let's see your bottom."
This was her first test, she knew. Turning, flushing, fingers hooked in the waistband of her snug tartan bermudas, she seemed to hear the heavy beat of a drum. Her pulse was beating heavily behind her eyes. She slipped her shorts and panties to her ankles and stood before him, her senses suddenly heightened and refined.
"Lean forward with your hands on your knees."
"Yes."
"In this room you call me sir."
"Yes, sir."
There was the scrape of his chair as he rose and came behind her. He rolled the still slack fat at the base of her right cheek between finger and thumb. Then he joggled her flesh in his fingers, parting her but not touching the slotted fruit between her legs.
"Um," he said, returning to his desk, "you have quite muscular thighs, but that ass of yours is going to feel it, I fear. Do up your clothes. Now then, is it truly your wish to be subject to our discipline while you stay with us in The Territory?"
"It is. Sir."
"Absolutely certain?"
"Yes. Sir."
"Very well." He drew forward a ledger and began writing it. Punishment Book, her inner self told her. "I shall give you six. Go upstairs to your room. I will deal with Cynthia first, and then you will be sent for."
She paused. In an abstract, remote voice she could barely recognize as her own she said, "I think I should have the same as Cynthia."
He shook his head. "You weren't lippy. Don't worry. I'll see to it that you have plenty with a sixer."
Up in her room, Cynthia had her skirt up, her panties down and was sitting on a long marble coffee table.
"I'm going to get it too," Joanna said faintly.
"Oh you are a fool," her sister replied, but she did so with a quick, grateful, almost shy smile, rising at once and embracing Joanna warmly. "Well done."
"But what are you doing?" she asked with a smile.
"Sitting on something cold sometimes helps beforehand, but not much. Anyway he generally feels first. Any attempt at anesthetizing is highly discouraged. Oh darling, I do hope you won't regret it."
A smile of triumph flew over her face. "I won't," she answered.
"Then I'll tell you what you have to do. Isn't this apprehension ghastly? And delicious? Who was it said he hoped the suspense would go on because it was so dreadful?"
"Oscar Wilde." Again they seized each other in exultance, their fingers wandering wildly.
Ten minutes later, back in her own room, she saw the elegant figure of the slim maid walking down the corridor through the crack of her ajar door. There was a tap on Cynthia's door. "Mistuh Reddick like see you, Ma'am." Cynthia started walking down the passage, biting her lower lip and frowning. Joanna fled to her balcony.
From here, after a second, she could see Cynthia walking along the covered way to the left, along to Alec's office-where she disappeared under the tiled overhang. Joanna felt a deep heat in her head. She moved about aimlessly, her hands roving over her bottom, which felt suddenly twice as heavy. Once she stared at her profile in the mirror-yes, her cheeks looked swollen and sorry already. How big her bottom looked, how taut and foolish and ready, ripe for the crack of the cane.
What you need, my beauties, she hissed to herself, is a damn fine hiding. And you're going to get one, too.
Out on the balcony again, the wait seemed eternal. Was Cynthia never going to reappear? Then suddenly she did, walking quickly toward the house this time, her head dropped, her arms folded tightly across her heavy breasts. She stopped at a wood support, held onto it for a moment, writhing, then continued On her way so hurriedly that the urgent rap on Joanna's own door came before she was ready. Cynthia was running down to her room, holding herself, when Joanna came out and started navigating the staircase down.
As she passed through the living-room a pair of quick blue eyes looked up from behind a magazine. Pamela was sitting there, reading ... knowing. She would have to negotiate Pamela later.
She knocked on the door in a state of trance, hearing his "Come in" as if from some immense distance.
"You are about to be beaten for being late. Do you have anything to say."
"No, sir."'
"Do you wish to appeal."
"No."
She gave her ritual answers fatally, from her depths. The sense of ceremony was exact as he bent his head and again inscribed her punishment in his book.
"Very well. You will receive six strokes with the cane. Go through and I'll deal with you in a minute."
As if some burden had been lifted from her, in a total surrender of her will, she walked to the far end of the room, where there was a door, which she opened, closing it behind her. It gave onto a large, bare expanse of polished wood, resembling a small gymnasium-in fact, Alec used it as a keep-fit room. There were bars, a leather horse, stools and weights, but chiefly her eyes were drawn to the impedimenta hanging on the walls, the straps, well oiled and used-looking, and the rack of canes, one above the other. Chiefly, also, her eyes were held to the short, hip-high structure riveted to the flooring by one wall. That'll keep you nice and tight, she told herself grimly. She was already quivering all over, and perspiring.
It was very simple really, resembling some iron towel rack or such-like. Cynthia had explained it perfectly. The top bar, adjustable, was about on the level of your, well, your lap and you duly bent over it; not before, however, you had stepped between the two ankle-level bars at the bottom. One of these could be opened and closed like a gate and made it impossible to kick back, or forward for that matter! So standing, two further simple bars pressed horizontally at the front of the legs, one at the shins beneath the knees, one at the thighs above them. The culprit's legs were braced ineluctably back, tight. So long as she was holding onto the lower bar in front with her hands she could not reasonably move her parted, tightened ass.
"Shoes off," said a voice. Alec had come in. She shucked them, seeing with a sudden flutter that he had donned tennis sneaks and rolled his right sleeve up high. He went to a wall, selected his instrument, swished it through the air a couple of times, and came forward thoughtfully.
Just like a doctor, she told herself, feeling with sudden panic a desire to pee. She thought of the Gladiator's story, what would happen if she ... the sensation increased dreadfully....
"Stand there," he said, pointing with the cane-tip, "and take down your clothes. Right down, if you please. Now bend over and grip the lower bar."
He did not seem surprised that she knew how to do so at once, but he spent some time positioning her to his satisfaction.
"Get a really good hold of it. I think you know it's two extra every time you leave go of the bar."
"Yes, sir. Thank you."
"Three if you rise before Permission."
His thumb prodded her inspectively. Bent as she was, she felt all buttock. The bars did not merely brace back her knees, they seemed to bend her legs in a bow so that all her weight fell forward, on her hands in front. Her cunt pouched back at the division of her legs and hips, but Cynthia said the cane never hit in there, at least not hard. The hips were always sufficiently curved enough to ... she stared miserably at the peurile wrinkles in her panties at her ankles. Would Alec be able to see the sodden patch in their center?
"Head down."
Ah yes, to draw the flesh up fully at her seat.
The cold cane touched her, measuring.
"This is Canadian acajou. Whippy, but not too."
After tucking her sweater needlessly high, he turned and went from her-perhaps to get some other frightful thing, she thought, when with a thudding rush he bounded athletically at her and into her. The limb stirred the air with a breathless whirr, a strangely peevish sound, and the cane thrashed full across her seat with its now characteristic rap. Her head came back at the shock, but she thought, I can take it. Then the true wave flamed up her skin. She contrived a grunting pant.
Whrrrr-upp!
The second whipped into her after a pause. It was agony. The tip seemed to burrow and she felt herself give an instinctive buttocky wriggle to throw it off. Two.
Hold on, she told herself desperately, hold on.
She did so until the fourth had splatted powerfully, with a ringing echo, round her hips. She tried to stamp, emitted a short, shaming fart. Alec stood behind her calmly. It was like being struck by the sun.
"Aiieeee!"
"Relax," he said. "It'll hurt you less that way. You're trying to fight it."
"I'm s-sorry ... I've never been caned like this ... before."
"Always co-operate with the cane." His fingertips touched her scorching weals. "I'm going to give you these last two hard. Concentrate on your posture, please."
There was that savage swaying in the air again and a fiery razor sliced across her skin-Phhhrr-ruppp!
"Ow!" she cried.
The last followed crisply on top of it.
"Don't get up until I tell you."
It was the hardest thing Joanna had ever done. The pain became an unspeakable flame, drenching her impossibly. She hung over, mouth open, drooling.
"Ooooh....auuuuu....aaaaah!"
"All right."
She arched erect, hissing, clutching her buttocks and, feet still fettered in the system of bars, sat down heavily on the floor behind her, on her hands.
She looked up at him miserably, beaten, fearful, her cunt lips shimmering as if in the heat waves from her tortured flesh. She saw him reflectively stroke the ascending chord at the center of his being and then he ordered, "Get up and put your clothes on. Let that be a lesson to you."
She stumbled to obey, surprised at her own alacrity. Her body was all instinct and every inch seemed to be suffering. Cynthia said the worst was fifteen, twenty, thirty seconds after-depending on how hard you'd been hit.
"Hurry up and pull yourself together."
She hastened past him, head lowered and holding her engorged, still smarting buttocks, to which the clothes seem to cling closely. Nor was she able, strive as she might, to tear her hands away as she traversed the long living room to the stairs. Pam's eyes were on her all the way.
Up in her room, however, a sense of aching pride came to her as the pain subsided somewhat. It was still all shuttered and dark but, yes, she had come through! She had "taken" it. It with the capital letter. Swiftly she tore the clothes off her sweating body and looked at her behind in the mirror. The parallel weals ran true across her, darkly livid on the right, hot and hard to the touch; she had been caned in earnest. A sense of immense relaxation, almost approaching gratitude, ran through her skin. Then the door opened gently and Cynthia was at her side. Cynthia, clad only in a robe, kissed her. Then she dropped her robe and the two sisters were naked in each other's arms, side by side in front of the mirror, staring into it like two damned souls. It was the younger who spoke first.
"I say. You did catch it, didn't you!"
"I'm afraid I did." Joanna gave a little tearful laugh. With a thrill of abandon she suddenly thought, I'll have something to show them at the tennis club now! "I only got six. I should have had eight."
"Wasn't it enough?"
"Plenty. But ... let's see yours."
Cynthia turned with a smile. Joanna caught her breath. The eight inky weals had been well spaced, but three, at least, had coagulated to a plummy ridge on the right. Joanna touched the spot wonderingly.
"It must have been terrible ... there."
"It's absolute agony where the tip hits in, isn't it!"
They laughed like accomplices, hugging each other for a second again, then Cynthia said, "Look. Lie down and let me rub in some cold cream for you."
Joanna lay on her belly on the bed with an "Ouf!" of contentment. Her bottom was now more of a boiling glow than a burn.
"Part your legs, honey."
Cynthia knelt on the bed behind her. The first generous dollop of cream from the jar felt gloriously cool to Joanna.
"Ooooh, baby!"
A shock ran down her body as Cynthia massaged the cream in the scalding skin of her buttocks. Her palms were strong. Joanna was closed within a spell. Her hips began to buck as Cynthia's strong thumbs ran up the now slippery insides of her thighs and cheeks; she felt the touch of one of Cynthia's pendulous bubs higher up her back, like a slab of liquid marble.
"Feel good, Jo."
"Yes, yessss...."
Cynthia's whole hands seemed to close over the ridged buttocks now as she ran them up and down, up and down. Joanna moaned. There was a volted flame, a pure unconscious ecstasy, moving upwards and upwards within her. The thumbs were running up the buttery insides of her....
"Cynth, I'm afraid I...."
"Relax, darling, enjoy it."
"You won't mind ... " She broke off, arching with a groan as the rubbery thumbs suddenly and insinuatingly ran up the wet walls of her already clenching cunt. "Baby ... I'm bursting!"
"You won't die," said Cynthia from behind her, deep in the swirling water that was rushing on, engulfing Joanna in its total incredible ecstasy.
Then suddenly another voice burst from her lips, "Give ... let ... spend ... come ... cream ... stuff!" She ceased to breathe in the convulsion of pure bliss that lit her entrails, stiffening her to stone on the bed and filling her with a million spuriously spurting quims in the depths of each of which a live fish wriggled.
"Unnnnggggh!" She slumped exhausted.
Cynthia giggled. "What did I tell you, angel? It's twice as good after a beating. You must have been coming for at least a minute then."
"I've never known," she gasped, stranded, "such satisfaction ... fulfillment."
"And with a man it's twice as good," said Cynthia cheerfully. "But lacking one, just roll over and let's get to work, shall we." I always said sixty-nine was a suggestive year."
Joanna was saturated in the contact. The rough tuft of heather protecting Cynthia's cunt was on her chin, the well-wealed buttocks opened before her face, offering their oyster. Suddenly she felt a tough tongue stuck in her like a dart.
"Suck," said Cynthia simply, parting her thighs even further. Joanna's face was smeared with beard, her nose was lost in a slimy dew as the raw nubble was rubbed demandingly up and down her features.
"Suck, Mrs. Swanne," said Cynthia, and all at once hissed. "Christ ... yeees ... there! Darling, deep ... yes, I'd say ... you were deep ... in The Territory ... noooow!"
CHAPTER SEVEN
After dinner they danced. The Bensons' house was shaped like a ship, an old windjammer sailing nowhere under the stars, in the middle of the barren. Joanna thought it somewhat absurd when the Lagonda first drew up on front of the place, but it was certainly luxuriously set out, and most comfortable. It was explained to her that Roy Benson was a retired skipper of the merchant marine, a real salt with an honest-to-goodness peg leg ("And not there only," Cynthia had counseled Joanna, as they'd gone in.).
Already there were several present she knew-mostly from the tennis club, but also Mavis (now unchained), Margot Morrison and her husband, and others. At dinner she found herself next to some delightful people called the Danforths, who played polo. And after dinner a band struck up, just beneath the prow.
The "powder" place was Sally Benson's cabin down below, and Joanna was coming out of its commodious and elegant bathroom when the redheaded Club Treasurer actually bumped into her. Bumped into her bumps, as Joanna put it to herself, recoiling with a hand on her rear and a blushing, "Oh!"
"Darling. I'm so sorry." Sally Benson's amused eyes held hers a moment. "I didn't know."
Joanna pinkened further. But she knew it to be a blush of pride. With a smile she nodded, "Yes, actually I caught it rather badly this afternoon."
"Truly? You? I ... didn't know. I mean that you'd joined us that far." She rested two fingers on Joanna's right cheek and felt through the thin material of her short black cocktail dress. "Um. Alec?"
"Yes. Six." She added brightly, "Quite tight."
"The brute." She slapped her backside eloquently. "Of course, we get the rope's end here."
"I wondered what that was," Joanna stammered. "I mean, hanging up in there."
"In the bathroom? Oh, that's only a small one. Usually they're worse than that, and the thoughtful fellow soaks it in water first, to add to the weight, and the end is bound with twine and toughened with tar. We never get less than a dozen." Her face changed. "For my daughter Do it's one thing. But I'm past the age when I find it a joke."
A slender brunette was doing her eyes at a mirror. Joanna recognized Peggy Walker, an excellent tennis player. The girl threw back a laugh. "Honest, Sal, I don't know how you manage it."
"Alas, there's not much choice. A 'rump and dozen,' as Roy calls it, may be all right for the girl. Youngsters need thorough frightening at least once a month, we find, but although I don't get it as often as some, the very sight of that length of cord is positively petrifying."
"I thought I saw...." Joanna mumbled.
"At the tennis club? That was long after."
"What you saw," said Peggy Walker, working in her eye shadow, "was one of the best beaten bottoms in The Territory. Sally is right. Roy doesn't spare her. I've seen one. She's spliced to the rigging or whatever and then he lams into her with this wet rope till her sit-upon looks like cooked beef, really. Ugh."
"How's your average, Peg?" the hostess asked.
"Miserable, as usual. And I'm due for six after breakfast tomorrow with the switch. You don't happen to have a tube of Nupercaine handy, do you?"
"Outlawed in The Territory," laughed Sally Benson.
"On pain of ... pain," came back Peggy Walker crisply.
"Seriously," Joanna put in, "I thought we had a singles date, at the club at ten."
"Oh that's all right," said the other, standing up and running a hand over her lame pants, "I always play better after a beating."
Pam had said that....
She added, "You may see some decoration 'verso' in the changing room, after, but exercise helps take the pain away."
"What's being figged?" Joanna asked on an impulse.
They both looked at her.
"So you know about that already," said Sally Benson with a smile. "You've really come a long way in the time, Jo. Figging is inserting a ginger suppository up the anus."
"It can be ginger or some other compulsive substance," put in tiny Peggy Walker, still ruminatively rubbing her perfectly shaped posteriors. "They do it to show horses."
"And women," said Sally Benson. With horses it makes them keep their tails up. For us, it has the effect of making you want to spread your cheeks. The damn thing melts, and burns, and makes you push out, as if you were going to ... well ... go. Used on a tight ass."
Used, thought Joanna with a throb of affinity, on Mavis Smith-Peters' closely cheeked ass.
"Used on 'clenchers', " said Peggy Walker primly. "It doesn't do to clench."
"You'd be good to beat, Jo," Sally said solemnly, as the three of them passed out towards the steps. Band music could be heard upstairs.
Joanna paused. "What do you mean by that?"
But Peggy nodded, too. "One knows. It's a fact. Sal's right. I'd love to see you caned, Jo, and you can bet your bottom dollar with no pun intended that every man here would, too."
"Goodness!"
But she mounted the steps with a curious smile, glowing with pleasure. She had indeed come a long way from that airport at Shaftesbury, let alone New Hampshire.
Cynthia brushed past her on the arm of a bronzed young man. "Alec was looking for you, darling. On the upper poop or forward fo'casle or something." She appeared to have had a bit to drink and after what she'd been through in the day, Joanna didn't blame her. She walked out to a deck slung under the stars, suddenly exultant.
Alec wasn't there, but a voice said at once, "Care to dance?"
She turned and saw the tall, almost sad-looking man with the full dark hair brushed wavily back off a lined, teak-tanned forehead who had been staring at her all evening.
"I'm Edward Arborough," he said.
He was quite the best-looking man she had ever seen.
He danced perfectly, threading her through the couples with consummate skill. He was a man-she instinctively sensed-who looked after a woman. He seemed in his mid-forties, evidently single, but with almost a foreign or Latin look. They exchanged small talk awhile, then they danced in silence. Joanna felt her whole body respond, as it never had with Tom.
"I hear you're thinking of staying on in The Territory, Mrs. Swanne. Immigrating, I mean."
"Who told you that?" she laughed.
"Oh, Alec. Said that when your divorce was through, you'd be ... wanting to join us. Personally I don't believe it."
"You don't?"
He shook his head. "Immigrations here are virtually non-existent. Perhaps two or three a year, and those mostly coloreds. It's really ... far too tough."
Her chin came up. "Meaning-you don't think I could take it, Mr. Arborough?"
He looked down at her in a strange way, casually compelling, affectionately-like someone indulging a child, though with a contemptuous curl of his lower lip at the same time. "I don't think you could," he said.
"Oh!" she said, offended. She remembered how his eyes had flickered over her, tawnily, when she had asked for a cushion at her seat in the dining room. She was about to retort hotly when there was a tap on her partner's shoulder.
"Sorry, but you can't monopolize her all night, y'know."
The man's handsome face receded, rather saturnine, and Joanna found herself led off in the arms of the one who, a few hours previously, had bent her over and caned her naked rear. It was strange sensation, piquantly thrilling. Alec Reddick danced cheek to cheek in silence for a while.
She said in his ear. "Thank you for not giving me those extra two for being ... impudent. I don't think I could have taken any more."
"Eight hurts far more than six, and twelve more than four extra to eight. You'd be surprised."
"Not now I wouldn't. Bryyh!" She gave a shudder in his arms, realizing, as she did so, how very close he was holding her. "Those last two really stung."
He shook his head. "Long."
"Long? What do you mean, Alec?"
"I cut long both times. Ideally you should use the tip to maximum effect. When the tip falls too far over it's called 'long'. It hurts the hip on the right, but would hurt more on the great old gluteus maximus. To cut short is the reverse; the tip falls on the center of the right cheek and is deprived of that little extra bit of whip, so important, imparted by the natural curve of the flesh."
"How very scientific!" She remembered now. Just what Cynthia had said.
"One day I must introduce you to 'Benjy'. "
"What on earth's that?"
"Benjy is thrashing an individual cheek-the left if you're a right-hander, like me. The tip whips inside the chosen side."
"Ouch!"
"Yes it can be quite effective, but you know, if you want to see a really thorough caning you should go to the Punishment Shed at six o'clock. Mr. Johns takes care of that. It's punishment worthy of the name."
A small rank of, mostly, coloreds lined up in their field clothes outside one of the barns-all women, all frightened, as a swarthy overseer grinned and took practice swings with his cane nearby. Joanna had seen it once, riding back to the main house.
"Can ... anyone go and watch?" she asked hotly.
"Absolutely," he said with a sympathetic squeeze. "Mr. Johns would be delighted to have you. And I thing you'd realize that what I gave you and Cynth today is child's play in comparison. They use a penal cane."
A tall girl glided by, dancing. She had on a sailor's blouse and tight white sailor's pants.
"That's their daughter Dorothy," said Alec Reddick in her ear. "He makes her wear naval rig all the time. Just been raised to the rank of midshipman or something Perhaps I should say midshipwoman. I'll ask Roy to let you watch one some day. Never less than twelve with a rope."
"I've heard," Joanna said dryly.
"Poor old Do doesn't take her eyes off the ground for two days after one of those." Chuckled in her hair. "Jo, you really are a luscious body. Tom was a damn fool to lose you. Divorces are unknown here."
She laughed shortly.
He went on, "No, but you are good at beating."
"What does that mean? Good at," she asked him. It was a strange kind of desirability this new-found lure of hers.
"It's just that you have a perfect Sitzplatz to whip into. I can't explain it. It's purely esthetic. You probably know it yourself. You have a good solid bottom in the prime of condition...."
She laughed awkwardly. "A little too much of it, I fear."
He corrected her with a well nigh academic precision. "Size is not an issue. You spread well, your thighs are broad and strong, your cunt is well recessed, you show much less cunt than Cynthia, for example."
I'm glad to hear it, she thought inwardly.
Aloud she said, not without a trace of indignation in her tone, "Well, you certainly didn't spare Cynth. You wealed her well and truly."
"I have a feeling Cynth is working up to a big let-down shortly. That remark about God, for instance. Every now and then, as with our young, we have to administer what we call a 'straightener'. Brings 'em to their senses. Clears the air and clears theirs heads, too."
"Highly therapeutic," she sneered.
But he answered earnestly, "I mean it. A good beating stimulates the circulation, and the peristalsis, too."
"I'll let you know about that, Tomorrow," she answered, blushing. "It's not my favorite topic."
"Anyway," she heard, "Cynthia's now been drinking too much and she knows I don't like that. Drunkenness is actually a crime in The Territory."
"Mr. Arborough doesn't think I have the guts to make it," she retorted. "He thinks I'm just going through a gesture."
Alec Reddick thrust her away and looked down at her.
"Quite seriously, Jo, you really want to stay here with us? You really want to put your application forms in?"
"Tomorrow," she answered at once.
He shook his head. "I admire you, but I wouldn't want to be in your place. If you're accepted for absorption by the authorities, it'll mean a special program. You have to go to a Gladiator camp. Complete degradation and vilification, as well as mere punishment. You have to lose your whole previous personality, in toto. You become a thing, an it. Are you really willing?"
"With all my heart," she said. Alec Reddick squeezed her again. There were tears in her eyes as she spoke.
The dance was ending. Alec said, "There's one thing. If you want to go through with this, I mean."
"What? Tell me."
"Should Roy invite you...."
"To dance?" She laughed. "You mean, he can dance with that peg-leg?"
"He can even thrash you with it, too," Alec said, still staring at her solemnly. "But what I meant was ... we have a custom ... droit de seigneur, kind of...."
"I think I'm getting you," she said. "Eskimo hospitality in reverse."
He smiled as he led her to the side. "Sort of. It's a host's tradition. Only one woman a night, however."
"Lucky host," she said, and-with all the other women, she noticed-she waited for Alec to sit down first, then did so herself, albeit a little gingerly.
The evening proceeded, as such evenings did, pleasantly and convivially. Joanna drank more and more. It seemed to have little effect. She was high enough inside. The band redoubled its efforts. Occasional cabin doors could be found locked, from time to time, and couples were missing, only to emerge later looking very satisfied. She herself was standing on the bridge, by the immense, polished and utterly useless wheel there, when a woman said, "What's that?" '
A maid in black satin was walking along the deck beneath them carrying in her hands a jar of water and what seemed to be a child's coloring set, of paints.
Dorothy Benson leant to look, in her sailor outfit, Without expression she said, "They asked Daddy if they could play darts. It's in the playroom, I think. They drew lots for who it was to be."
"Oh, mother," said the woman who had asked the question, "who's the lucky loser?"
"Mrs. Danforth, I think," said the girl.
"Poor Tess. You feel that for a week."
"There's four of them. I think it's a Calcutta."
"Oh, mother and oh, brother," moaned the woman.
"What, what?" said Joanna to the woman nearest to her.
This was demure Mavis Smith-Peters, now released from "Restraint". She beamed, blushing
"Would you like to watch?"
"What, darts?" asked Joanna.
"I'm keeping out of harm's way, thanks," said the other woman.
"The target, or board," Mavis Smith-Peters explained sweetly, "is human."
"Human female," said the woman dryly, "in case you hadn't guessed."
"My husband is taking part, actually," said Mavis, "let me show you, darling."
Following her willowy spine down the gangway Joanna found her eyes caught by the manner in which the pale silk moved over the softly sumptuous posterior. The other turned with a smile.
"I hear you got it for being with me. I am so sorry."
"Oh that's all right," Joanna said, a little awkwardly. "It was unpleasant for a minute or so, but that's all."
"I hear you took it terribly well."
"Who said?"
"I heard. Well, if it's any comfort to you I got another six myself when Simon came home." She drew Joanna down yet another flight of steps into the bowels of the ship, or "hold". She smiled up sweetly again. "However, I'd rather have both punishments over again rather than what Tessa's going to get in here."
She opened a door onto what indeed resembled some happy "rumpus" room. There were some men and women taking drinks at a table one side, and four of the former had, Joanna saw, removed their smoking jackets. But Mavis drew her forward to a low dais one end.
Tessa Danforth was already in position when
Joanna entered. The mulatto maid, a switch clipped to her broad black belt, was putting a last few finishing touches to her "target" from the paints tray.
On the dais had been fixed a board like a door. It was, Joanna learnt, a door. To this thick board Tessa had been fixed. Facing it, her feet-slightly parted-went through apertures made in the base. Her arms went through holes higher up, being secured the other side. Her chin rested on the top. She had dark liquid eyes, boy's-cut thin blonde hair, and, rather like Mavis, an ordinary sloping back which widened to surprisingly heavy, tender-looking buttocks. She was naked but for high-heeled shoes and long, self-supporting black nylons. And she was crying. On closer inspection, Joanna found her to be quivering all over. For at first all she could look at was the woman's lurid behind. Each bottom-cheek had been painted to resemble a target, complete with bull's-eye in its center. Holding the fatty flesh still, the maid was perfecting an outer ring. The cheeks were firmly divided by a narrow, yet strong, leather strap which buckled to the waist belt in back. This latter was especially broad. "Protects the kidneys, you see," Mavis explained, reading Joanna's mind. "But take a look at the darts before they begin."
Before moving away Joanna approached the woman. She felt she had to "see" her. Tears were rolling down Tessa Danforth's anxious, attentive face as Joanna said, "I think we met at dinner."
"Please get them to loosen this saddle strap," came the begging whisper back. "It's cutting me in two."
The darts were at the side. They were not shafted with wood, but gold, heavy feathered things soaking in an antiseptic solution. Joanna took another rapid drink.
"Everybody ready? Have you placed your bets? Anyone bid me another hundred more for Peter? He's got an eye like a hawk."
In the absence of her husband, Roy, Sally Benson was merrily conducting the proceedings. The four participants had all been bought, one of them indeed being Steve Danforth, the "target's" spouse. They drew forward to a line three yards before the dais, preparing their gleaming weapons. The other spectators grouped themselves about, laughing and drinking. Mavis led Joanna to the side for a better view. It had been decided that Steve, as husband, should throw first.
"Four players, three darts each, that's twelve each side," Mavis murmured to her. "Poor Tessa. But it's exciting all the same, isn't it."
"Terribly," admitted Joanna. "I hope it doesn't show." She looked around for Edward Arborough, but he wasn't there. Mavis Smith-Peters giggled.
"I'm afraid my underwear is in a most unseemly state."
"She looks so beautifully frightened."
"She is. Those darts hurt. You watch."
"Get her tight," snapped Steve Danforth, preparing to throw his first.
The maid put a nyloned knee in the middle of the naked back and heaved the saddle strap a notch tighter. Tessa Danforth gasped, "Please!" The straps were tautened on her legs and arms and waist, in particular one thin one just under the buttocks. These were held out helplessly resplendent, a perfect pair bisected by the strap and unamenable to much control, it was evident, thanks to the stricture of the belt around the upper hips and waist. She turned her tear-streaked face, seemed to try to turn into the board, and then the thrower made a feathering motion, there was a whirring of air, completed by a cry.
"Damn!" said Steve Danforth.
The dart had struck true but bounced back and fallen on the floor, leaving a strident scratch.
"They have to stick in to count," Mavis explained contentedly.
He made no mistake the next time, throwing so hard that the spike buried itself in the upper flesh with an eloquent thukk! Tessa screamed. But he hadn't scored. The dart stood out above the target's ring.
The third, however, whistled home and buried itself like a bird's beak on the inside of the cheek close to the bull's eye. Tessa screamed again. There was applause. Steve Danforth went forward to inspect his handiwork, while the maid wrote his score on a slate.
"One inner," he pronounced disgustedly. "She moved."
When he withdrew the two barbs blood oozed. The maid wiped it off solicitously.
The next to throw was Ben Morrison, husband of Alec Reddick's secretary. He thumped three darts home accurately, and was awarded two "in-ners" and an "outer". The third player was a man Joanna did not know. Again his first bounced off, to the accompaniment of a scream.
"She's clenching," said Steve Danforth angrily, to the maid, "give her a couple, please."
"On the thighs, sir?"
"Yes, low down."
"Please," came the begging cry, "I didn't mean to ... I won't do it again ... I can't help it when I hear ... auuu!"
The switch sliced her twice mid-thigh.
"Give her a couple more," said her husband, "she scarcely felt those."
"Noooo-auuueee!"
"That's better," he said, when his order had been effected. "Now let them hang, light of my life. If you stiffen up again while a throw's in the air, I'll ask Roy to baste you with that rope of his. Okay, Pete."
The fourth and last participant was a Tennis Club enthusiast, Peter Salmon. He readied with an underhand action.
"Wildly inaccurate," said Mavis' voice in her ear, "but horribly hard."
Indeed, the first dart whunked into the woodwork wide of the painted hips altogether, but it did so with such velocity it produced a startled hush. Tessa gave an anguished wail, and seemed to try to climb up the board to which she was fastened.
Whukkkk!
The second buried itself to the hilt in her right thigh. She didn't scream. She squealed.
"Sights up, old chap. Trajectory excellent."
He cupped and swung his arm. This time she seemed to know the barb was going to skewer her truly for she fought in her bonds, squirming and wailing, "No, no, no!"
The dart flashed home full in the center of her bottom, scoring a bull's-eye with such force the metal appeared to impale her against the board for a moment.
"Aaauurrrghh!"
There was prolonged clapping. This time the dart was pulled out with difficulty
"Bravo, Pete. You have first throw t'other side."
"Noooo ... nooo!"
"I find these cries distracting. They put me off," said Peter Salmon, readying his darts.
"I agree," said the woman's husband at once, commiseratingly. "They're entirely unnecessary. Next time we'll have a single target of the pair, with her bunghole as bull's-eye. Sally, do you have a brank's?"
"I think so," said Sally Benson, like some society hostess asked for a copy of Who's Who?
"What's that?" inquired Joanna.
"Scold's bridle. Roy has some museum pieces. There." The maid was already advancing with a steel contraption, which she fastened over Tessa Danforth's pleading face. "The beer-can opener device beneath the chin," Mavis continued comfortably, "is, well, a beer-can opener. Modern addition. It scratches awfully if you open your mouth, either to cry out or relieve the pressure of that nice steel hit that's going in now."
"Good gracious," said Joanna. She had been aware of someone pushing up at her behind, from the door, and turned. Roy Benson, grinning and red-faced, was there. She felt a flicker of fear. "I hope I'm not responsible for obstructing your view, Captain Benson."
He put an arm round her waist. In the chunky curve of her right cheek she felt his stony erection. It was immense; it seemed to go on forever.
"I'm afraid you're responsible for that," he muttered, nudging into her. "Frankly, I wasn't watching the spectacle. I've been looking all evening atthese." So saying he handled her buttocks in his gnarled hands. He was terrifically, absurdly strong, for when Joanna tried to turn she found herself gripped, literally, from behind. "Ouch, that hurts."
"I suppose you couldn't do anything about this ... object."
Excitement rippled up her spine. "I might," she said noncommittally. He led her out, tapping away with his wooden leg, on down the passage to a door, which he shut behind her on a half-lit room. He had his clothes off in seconds, while she watched. He was possibly fifty, but in first-class shape, his belly on his backbone, and hard as nails. And between the harness of his artificial limb and the other stood a cock which caught her breath. His sky-high prick bobbed before her startled eyes, plum-colored at its crest and salivating semen in a first anticipatory wink. At that moment she thought she had never seen anything so ... so gluttonous in her life. Her fingers trembled with her under things.
"Pardon the pud," said the old salt, rubbing one grizzled temple, "but frankly I've been dying to get this into you since I first set eyes on you, Mrs. Swanne. Two minutes ago Alec told me you're now his ward, and so are joining The Territory."
'That's right."
"I could ask for Cynthia, if you know what I mean, an' ... "
"I'm perfectly familiar with the droit de Territory, Captain Benson," she said, staring at the monster in some respect. She raised the hem of her skirt reverentially.
He limped forward a pace and his swinging piston clubbed her face. She felt its solid weight.
"Would you like to be buggered, Mrs. Swanne?"
"Not with that," she said decidedly.
"Think you could melt it down in your mouth?"
"At the moment it doesn't much look as if anything could melt down that." She gave it a testing, and only half-playful, slap. It swung back at her angrily.
"In The Territory it's all or nothing, Ma'am."
"It's not all that, not in my throat, sir. I'm no sword swallower, thanks."
Captain Benson scratched his chin. "Of course, if Cynthia refused, I'd recommend to Alec a nice thrashing."
Joanna sat up straight on the bed. "I'd rather you didn't do that," she said. She began taking off her clothes. "Shove it into me from in front, and I'll do my best to take it."
She lay on her back with her knees drawn up and let him ease the prodigy into her. It sank in, inch by thudding inch. The prick seemed to lift her, physically, as he rammed.
"Please, I'm dry," she gasped, staring at the straining ceiling.
"All passionate women reckon to be," he said, "but you won't be soon."
She squirmed away as he impaled her. "Good God, there can't be any more ... please ... you're splitting me ... I can't uhh! Oh! Unh-oh! For Christ's sake, Captain, please, spit it out ... cream ... come ... I can't stand another centimeter ... I swear you're ... AAAAAHHH!"
When it was over she seemed to lie in a molten mass at his feet. He had dressed and was unhooking something from the wall.
"Thank you, Ma'am. I'd like to go through you again."
"The expression is apposite," she panted.
"Only next time it'll be up the butt. Unless," and he tapped her to his knees with his peg-leg, "you'd prefer this up there, instead."
"At least it wouldn't go off like a fire hydrant inside me."
"And now, if you don't mind, I'll just give ye a couple of swats to remember me by."
She darted at the words. But he seized her hair and seized her hands. His hands were fantastically strong. It was painful the mere way he held her, kneeling, her legs apart. She whimpered in anticipation, bracing on her knees, trying to tuck her cunt in under her. Then the hard rope welted her buttocks. She gave a bucking grunt and her head went back with a speechless exhalation, "Haaahh!"
It was a lightning flash of unspeakable pain that unleashed a blaze beneath her. He cut her again and this time she gave a gulping yelp, half-jumping from his grasp. She was squirming like a stranded fish on the floor when his peg-leg tip-tapped out the door, leaving it lightly ajar. It seemed to be minutes before she could bring this monstrous fire under control, and her spasmic squirms seemed to pump his gism from her depths. It clammied on her thigh.
She looked up. Someone was staring at her disorder through the crack of the door. She saw a man's form and the amber eyes of Edward Ar-borough.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Territory nights could be almost cold. Alec drove Joanna home alone in the Lagonda. Cynthia had expressed a whiskey-vague desire to stay at the Bensons a little longer. Some swain would restore her to order and return her, so Alec smilingly informed the handsome brunette beside him. They themselves had left late enough. Dawn was already whitening the edges of the sky. Cool fog of the first of day drifted off the barren ahead, smoky in the glare of their headlights.
"Not a bad party," Alec pronounced at one point.
"I got some of that Territory hospitality you talked about," she said, curling into her seat. "Right up the twat." As she said the words she realized she spoke them with ease; there was a new relationship between herself and Alec now. He merely grinned.
"Also," she added, "two belts with that frightful rope of his, after."
"They say it bruises," he said.
"All I know is, my little tricot pants seem twice as tight. I feel as though I'd been visited by Zeus."
"You're one of us now," he said.
"That's it," she laughed gaily. "My real name's Semele. Screwed by lightning. What a way to go."
"You are of the species," he replied.
"Meaning?" she asked with curiosity.
Alec said, "Oh you know how it is. In your country it's all breasts. They're all very well, and Cynthia's are quite splendid even, but essentially the female bosom serves a function, that of feeding infants."
She sighed voluptuously. "What wouldn't I give for someone to suck my nips right now. A real strong baby. They're both so tense they feel like bursting." She drew her left bub out and peeked at it. Surely it too looked twice the size. Perhaps she was a goddess, after all. But Alec was continuing, eyes ahead.
"You take the backside...."
"What Shakespeare called 'the afternoon of the body.'"
"Bless Shakespeare."
"Amen. But that's different. Its only function in both sexes is as padding to sit on. Monkeys blush with their backsides, did you know?"
"Well, so did I, this afternoon," Joanna affirmed.
"Thus a woman's bottom is non-functional. You might say it's entirely devoted to adornment. Function always makes a compromise with beauty. So why, dear Joanna, were you provided with such unnecessarily magnificent-one might say, impatient-buttocks?"
She laughed in answer. They were approaching the estate gates. It was almost light but she could feel the headlamps prying through her frock as she got out and went forward and opened the lock for him. He parked the car and together they walked into the silent house.
Outside the door to her room, she turned.
"Thanks, Alec," she said a trifle unsteadily. "This has been the most incredible day of my life." She gazed at him. "Unforgettable. I never thought it could happen. I'm very grateful."
"Even though I gave you six of the best?"
"Just because you gave me six of the best. You brought my being awake. And," she added with a smile, "I still insist I should have had eight."
"You'll get what you get," he said. "And one day you'll ask me to give you a hiding. Beg me to. Cynthia does when she's gone too long without. The only thing is, she doesn't often go too long without."
They were speaking in lowered voices.
"I'm asking you to now," she said. "I should have had those extra two."
"You're really game, aren't you, Jo?" He put his head back on the wall and regarded her with a smile. "And I must say I'm not satisfied."
"I can see that," she said, and she could, despite the half-light they were standing in. "And if you call being satisfied having a steel-hard length of gristle explode inside you after a couple of thrusts, I'm not either."
He chuckled. "It'd have to be four."
She frowned. "Four?" Always worse than expected, just as Cynthia had said.
"Yes, because, you see, your canes up here are the light kind, and two on top of six is much worse than a couple cold."
"I'm warm," said Joanna.
He said, "Tell you what, I'll have you decide."
"Me?"
"Yes. Depending on your answer to this question-do you want me to punish Cynthia for having had too much to drink tonight?"
She breathed deeply, and gave a blink. "Yes," she said, avoiding his eyes.
"You win," he said won a laugh. "That's the Territory answer." And she knew it was, as he led her in. "Take everything off except your stockings and shoes and stand out there." He went to the closet while she obeyed. This time she did so without reserve, almost in haste, preparing herself for the yellowy limb he flexed as he watched her. He had not put on the light and the first broadening of white in the sky beyond her veranda gently lit the chamber. She tugged up her high, self-support nylons and faced him, feeling, as she had said, as if her skin were too taut on her body.
"I want them nice and relaxed for this kind of cane," he told her. "Stand facing the windows, with your arms above your head. Keep them there." He wobbled her underbuttocks with the stick. The wood felt cold and she shivered.
"Must it be four?"
"At least," he said. "Oh Jo, you have a great pair. What massive solidity. Healthy strength. Young and springy, yet close-cheeked and firm at the base. For such small knees, these are phenomenal."
"I'm glad you like them, sir."
But he had vanished into the bathroom, only to reappear a second later with a piece of wet soap which he stuffed into her mouth.
"Bite on that. If you cry, you'll wake up Pam. She can hear the cut of a cane in her deepest dreams. If you let it drop you'll have extra. I've made Cynth take ten with a soft peach between her teeth and given her five more when she dropped it, too. Control, lots of self-control, that's our motto in The Territory."
Then the air thrummed in the silent room and the cane thrashed across her seat with its characteristic snap. She jerked but took it. The second hit her where the rope had fallen and she staggered a step with a gurgling moan. But these were lighter strokes than she had had, though stingy. Twice more he cut her, then let her go. The soap fell with a thud and she was hopping and prancing about, gripping her scalded bottoms.
"Whew! Ou! God, that cane is snippy...."
She arched, gasping, thought that she had mastered the pain, only to feel the final wave drench up her, irresistibly. Her eyes squeezed shut, she dropped to her knees, kneading her cheeks.
"That did hurt," she got out, finally.
But when she opened her eyes there, in the half-light before her face, moved the unwieldly pole of a prick, the second she had seen so that day. Alec had stripped, and stood astride and erect, waiting. Joanna knew then she had been finally transformed. The sight seemed perfectly appropriate, to both the scene and mood, from the hairy wad of balls to the sullen fish-head that stared at her so accusingly.
"More Eskimo hospitality?" she murmured. "What would Cynthia say?"
"I'm afraid it'll be a soapy kiss."
She teethed the red and rubbery corona, then swallowed all she could and sucked the stem. It leapt and she tasted a salty ooze. After a minute she heard him breathing harshly. She released the bounding animal.
"Alec. Please. Finish me off. I wasn't fucked, I was stuck."
She was unprepared, even in her passion, for the violence with which he grasped her short black hair and swung her to the bed. It struck the back of her legs and she sprawled on her back, her calves dangling over the end. There was froth on her cropped but hairy crotch and, grasping her smarting butt, he easily slid his greasy pole between her pouting lips. Then he jammed home, driving the breath from her body. Her head went back, the tendons of her inner thighs stood out as she kinked up her hips to meet his thrusts. It was a long slobbery fuck and she felt herself spewing at least twice as his corona roughed her clitoris. It was pure and utter bliss, five times what she had felt with Cynthia earlier, un-like anything she had ever known before. There was just enough pain left in her buttocks to make it exquisite. Then she pumped again, swearing, and he had to ram her limp for a minute. He was kneeling on the bed, one hand under each ass-cheek, and then a finger was on the ringlet of her anus.
"Noooo-uuuu!" she wailed, twisting.
He laughed. "Thought that'd bring you to life. It's twice as good after a beating, confess it now."
"What they used to say ... in the sorority," she whimpered, "a clean ass and a dirty mind ... oh Alec, give ... jam ... sock it ... stuff...."
She felt totally wedged with prick. And when it swelled inside her she could almost hear it snorting. Then her senses went blue-black. His gism seemed to stream through her veins and ears as she experienced the longest most racking come she had ever known.
What happened then was not too clear. But it seemed to be much lighter when she returned from the bathroom, steady and sated, wrapped in her toweling robe against the chill of the morning.
"Alec? Where are you?"
He was leaning against the rail of her veranda, a glass of Scotch in one hand and a towel wrapped round his bony hips. He was listening. There was the sound of an approaching car.
"Alec, that was a fantastic fuck."
He smiled and made a mock-bow. "You were lubed, ready. But now you know what it's like to be within The Territory."
"And to have , " she said. "Thanks."
He said solemnly, "There's no turning back for you now."
She went and got a drink. They stood together, sipping. A car came up to the front of the house, stopped, there were voices, the slam of a door, the car drove off.
"Cynth?"
He nodded. "Ask her to come in here, would you?"
"You're not going to let her off?"
He stared at her. "Hey! Joanna! Surely you know by now that no one is ever let off."
Cynthia stopped on the stairs when Joanna appeared. They exchanged a long baleful gaze and Cynthia seemed visibly to pale at her sister's beckoning finger. It was as if she knew already about Joanna's complicity in the affair. Nor did she show the slightest surprise at Joanna's or her husband's attire, as she stood before him on the veranda.
"Remarkable how quickly you can sober, dear."
She said at once, "I'm sorry if I appeared inebriated, Alec."
"Drunk in public," he murmured absently. "You know house rules."
"I'm sorry." Her eyes strayed to, and held, Joanna's.
"That's a word. A wave of sound, a vibration of the ether. There is little meaning to a word unless it has some physical reality." He moved past her and pressed a bell push in one wall.
"Please, Alec," she said with a catch in her voice. "I've been whipped enough today."
"Yesterday," he corrected. "And alcohol sends up the pain threshold. I'm sure you won't feel a thing."
A maid knocked and came in. A tall, sturdy, very dark girl, she had on sandals and what seemed to be a hastily donned white housecoat, or duster.
"Is Bella up, Sheila?" Alec inquired with a frown.
"Yess'r. She up."
"Tell her I want to see her here, please." The maid was turning when he said, "Were you on night duty, Sheila?"
"Yess'r."
"Then why aren't you still in uniform?"
The girl looked sheepish. "Because ... you see, suh ... I was jus' going off and I thought it would be all right...."
Alec glanced at his watch. "Night duty lasts till six. It isn't six yet. Tell Bella I want to see her and tell her I want you to have a dozen, before you go off. What's more, you're to get six when you come on duty for the rest of the week."
The girl trailed unhappily off. In the silence that ensued Alec said, "You have your sister to thank for this, my dear."
"I'm grateful to Joanna," Cynthia said expressionlessly. She stood in the center of the room now, almost where Joanna had just been beaten. She looked dead ahead.
Bella came in. She was a magnificently built ebony of six foot' four, her height emphasized by her creaking high-heeled thigh boots. The rest of her uniform was a fitting black leather tunic, the skirt short and pleated. A Gladiator's switch dangled from her belt. Alec went straight to the point.
"Bella, good morning. Chastisement is required. Have we got anyone around here who could give Mrs. Reddick a beating?"
A slow smile stole over the Negress' features. "Sho' have, Mr. Reddick, suh."
"Fine. The offense is drunk in public. I suggest you sober her first. You know, a nice strong clyster of hot oil up the...."
"And an emetic, after?"
"Good idea. Then it's ten with the tawse. Give them all across the buttocks, please. You'll find them well marked and accordingly responsive."
"Very good, suh."
The immense woman approached her mistress.
"Thumb cuffs," Alec explained to Joanna as Cynthia's hands were secured behind her back by the simple expedient of two thimble-sized manacles around each thumb, attached by a tiny chain. Then Bella took from her well-provided belt a strap hanging from a key chain. It went round Cynthia's neck. She was led from the room like a dog, and when she had gone Alec's manhood was manifest once more. He helped himself to another drink from her tray. They sat and chatted quietly.
"Of course, I didn't really want her beaten," Joanna said with a shiver, wrapping the robe round her more tightly.
"Which is to say, of course you did."
Joanna thought. "Her expression was exciting, wasn't it?"
"Before, and after," he agreed. "Before, a joy proposed. Behind, a dream. How was it the poet put it?"
"But ... a clyster. What's that? Isn't it some kind of enema, or something?"
"It certainly is. Bella isn't gentle. Poor Cynth is probably retching her insides out at this moment."
"Will she hate me for it?"
"Absolutely not. She'd do the same for you."
"Do you want me to tidy up that pole for you again?"
"It mightn't be a bad idea."
"Promise it won't spit in my eyes?"
"It's tough on the tonsils, but I'll do my level best." Ten minutes later it was almost day, and the dry crack seemed to ring through the rafters of the old colonial house.
"Quick!"
He took her wrist and together they padded barefoot down the passage to the far wing, where the balcony surround overlooked the kitchen and servants' quarters. Here there was a small grassy court, surrounded on three sides and usually hung with washing. Joanna had seen it once, and wondered what the worn pole in the center was. Now she knew.
"Eight more," Alec said as a second slap greeted their arrival, overhead.
The space was empty but for the maid Sheila, in uniform now, waiting disconsolately to one side.
At the post in the center had been strapped Cynthia. She was naked, her braid undone and her long fair hair drawn over her left shoulder, soaking wet. Her whole body was wet. She gripped the square post with her legs and knees and arms, her arms being secured to it at wrists and elbows, her waist being belted to it, and her legs strapped tightly at ankles and at knees. But her richly wealed buttocks humped awkwardly out, as if wishing to expose themselves for punishment, and Joanna saw that a small leather pad had been run up the post under her frontal pelvis. The division of her cheeks was emphasized by the strap that had been drawn through them from in front and buckled to the belt in back. Her mouth was wide open and straining. Cynthia was bitted like a horse, the steel links fastened at her neck behind.
Alec Reddick read her thoughts. "The post's a copy of one in Brixton, last century. Several of us have them. It's a satisfactory model."
I'll say, thought Joanna. She was dry-throated again.
"Why the gag?"
"I don't want to wake everyone up."
"That ... whip!"
"The tawse. Scottish. Tails hardened in the fire. Bella's good with the tawse."
It was a broad leather strap, thick and heavy in appearance and perhaps three feet in length. The striking end had been slit into tails and Bella, holding its shiny wooden handle, was preparing another stroke from her side.
Cynthia seemed aware of this intent. Her muscles tightened and she threw back her contorted face, pressing herself into the post. But the belt held her firmly at the pad and she could not reduce the fleshy width of her cheeks an iota, skin now streaked with two awesome blood-blue weals, black at the right. She tried to draw herself on tip-toe as the strap whacked resonantly around her again. Bella grunted as she struck. She was a true ex-Gladiator and enjoyed her work, it was obvious. Cynthia gave a gargling moan. The blow seemed to stun her against the post. It had clearly carried considerably weight. A new welt sprang up.
"That made her jump," Alec laughed down to his chief maid from their vantage point. "Give her lots of time."
Bella signaled the maid. Sheila came forward with a bucket and sloshed it over her mistress. The streaming buttocks were almost limp when the strap slapped into them again.
Joanna knew she was coming after the seventh blow. It was incredible, and ridiculous, and of course utterly impossible, but it happened. She gritted her teeth. Then her quim quaked and sent a short, sharp orgasm flooding through her nerve centers. She was aware of wet flesh whacked methodically, meatily, then of Alec saying as he took her arm, "Well, she needed a good hiding. And in half an hour she'll be up to a fuck. I don't doubt."
CHAPTER NINE
The hot days passed. They went by remarkably quickly, a pleasant succession of indolent mornings helping Cynthia run the house, afternoons dozing after lunch, then playing tennis at the club, or on their own court with Pam, alternatively swimming or riding. There were several parties in the evening. She had put in her papers at the proper office in Shaftesbury and was now classed as a "voluntary resident," subject to all Territory laws and distinctions. At last she felt she belonged. She was caught in all the ardor of this spell.
Cynthia was subdued after her "little leathering," as Alec called it to his friends, and it was instructive to Joanna to watch with what alacrity she got up whenever a man entered the room, or performed some ordered chore. There was fear in her eyes for a week. Joanna marveled at all this and even apologized to her sister for "getting her into it."
Cynthia had answered with sincerity, "Oh rubbish, Jo. You enjoyed seeing my backside basted and I'd have liked to see yours get the same, too. I know perfectly well what went on between you and Alec and I only hope he poked you properly."
"He did," said Joanna, remembering.
"If I showed any jealousy-which, incidentally, I don't feel-what I took at the post t'other morn would be but child's play. It was pure, undiluted agony but I know in my heart it did me a world of good." She hesitated an instant. "Edward Arborough seemed taken with you, Jo."
"With me, or with my...."
They smiled. They were friends in a new sense, now.
Pamela was caned, and caned again, all in a day. Cynthia was spared, though one strange morning Joanna found her in a tiny girl's play dress of cotton voile with ruffled rompers, that showed beneath the hem. It was some sort of penance, and she had to wear it for two days.
Another week passed and Joanna began to fall wholeheartedly into the swing of Territory existence. Then one day, returning from the Tennis Club, she forgot to pick up some jerry-cans of gasoline Alec had ordered from a nearby road station. She was caned at once, in the hot, sullen and overlarge Punishment Room. Eight cuts across the naked buttocks and, as Alec had predicted, eight hurt twice as much as six. But by now Joanna acknowledged the omission within herself, it was simply a matter of summoning up physical courage for the occasion, and she was proud to be able to take the score without undue flinching. Afterwards, she stared at her dark weals in her bedroom mirror with a nod of inner recognition. Then she sent for Edna to bathe them in witch hazel. That evening, as was the family's custom, she sat for dinner on the child's high chair reserved for anyone who had suffered corporal correction during the day. like little Pamela she too had, moreover, first to raise her skirt before seating her striped bottom on the roughly serrated surface.
A day later she was introduced to her first "Restraint".
It came, as she had been warned much Territory punishment did, as a result of another correction. The cane brought on the cane, as they liked to say. She was alone in the house one afternoon when Alec, taking a moment off for tennis, couldn't find his racquet. She had borrowed it without asking him and, despite her apologies, was sent up to her room immediately. All too soon a maid knocked at the door.
"Mr. Reddick, he wish to see yo' in his study, Miz Swanne. An', " the liquid eyes lowered, " 'e say, you take off your panties underneat' yo' slacks first, please, Ma'am."
She had on tightly stretched pale gray bell bottoms and as she walked into his "den" a minute later they felt very close to her bottom, indeed. A man sat in a leather chair in one corner, also in tennis attire, and holding his racquet. Amber eyes flickered over her. It was Edward Arborough.
Joanna drew up short.
"I believe you met Teddy," Alec said cheerfully enough, flexing a long cane of a smoky color in his hands, "the other evening at the Bensons."
"Mr. Arborough saw quite a lot of me there, I think," said Joanna flushing. Again the man's presence oddly disquieted her. She stared at his cold features, with their pliant mouth and sharp scrutiny; the muscles stood out on his forearms and the sight of his broad hands sent a tingling up her flesh.
"We were going to play a set of tennis. This will warm me up nicely. My service arm."
"You don't propose to ... to see me here," Joanna said, darkening, "in front of this gentlemen?"
"It won't be the first time he's seen a grown woman whipped. Somehow I don't believe Ted will object to watching another. I'm going to give you six with this excellent cane. As Cynthia may have told you, it's made of ivory, and hurts. You see, I don't propose to ask you to bare your person."
"It won't be possible," she whispered, after a moment.
There was a deathly silence.
Then Alec said softly, "It's not as easy as that. You can't turn back now, Joanna." He added with a grin, "At least not that way." Barely audibly she mumbled, "Please punish me in private. If you must."
He glanced nonchalantly at the wafer of gold on his lean tanned wrist.
"I'm giving you one minute-sixty seconds-to bend over that desk with your feet together and your arms stretched out in front of you."
She moved instinctively at his command, stopped, then started again and, crimsoning, placed herself as he had bid. He at once pulled tight on her waistband, hauling the skintight slacks painfully up her crotch. At least, she thought in her misery, he will not see my face. She was close to crying already.
"And they say," came Alec's voice from behind her, "that the human primate does not signal sexually by the rear. What an idea. Ted old chap, did you know that theory that the female developed big breasts as a compensatory frontal signal ... for the vertical primate, I mean?"
"This one isn't vertical," came the reply.
"Being fearful means being non-agressive. Would you call that a fearful can, Ted?"
"I would," said Edward Arborough emphatically.
"Stick yourself back. Come on."
Then there was silence. It was snapped by the wiry rap of the cane. He did not strike hard. Yet she was amazed at how painful it was. The lean bone was so stiff it seemed to slice right through her fat. Her cheeks writhed helplessly together and she gasped for breath at the second.
"Lower," came Edward Arborough's growl then. The third was twice as bad.
Her clenched hand hit the desk. Tears of vexation-she had so wanted to show she could swallow her dose-poured from her eyes with a kind of rage. The fourth made her leap and writhe, catching her breath with a sharp sob.
"Lower still. The top of the legs, man."
"Get right over," came Alec's voice, "and stick out your seat."
But, bracing her muscles, the pain was beating her. She chewed on a knuckle not to cry out. The cold cruelty of the tough cut across her tenderest flesh undid her. She reached back and held her fire-hot cheeks.
"Take your hands away."
She turned back her face, her mouth trembling with pain, and suddenly met, through wet fringed lashes, the fierce gaze of inner laughter of Edward Arborough. She knew she loved him wrathfully, then. Her hips seemed to blunder against the desk, their sullen outlines ripe for the rod. The fifth struck in like stone. Again she reached behind, and was reprimanded. When all six slices were over she writhed like an adolescent, rubbing her weals. Cynthia's warning about the ivory cane had been exact. A bell was pushed and Bella came.
"Mrs. Swanne's having difficulty with her hands. Put her in Restraint for the rest of the day, would you, Bella. A chain saddle and, yes, the bit."
Up in her room she was stripped. A small fetter-chain similar to that worn by Mavis Smith-Peters secured her ankles. A wide leather belt was fastened tightly about her waist. From a ring in front another slender chain was led between her legs, threading through her cunt lips in front, and drawn between another ring behind; it then went up her spine to be taken through another ring, this at the back of her head, secured to a bit in her mouth. The chain then went straight down, at extreme tension, to connect with her manacled wrists behind. If she moved her wrists down, to relieve this tension, she yanked back her head and incidentally tautened the already unbearable pressure at her center. She had on high-heeled shoes and a short skirt-a sarong or cummerbund would have been a better term-was placed round her cut buttocks. She felt fat, hot, heavy, cumbersome, and helpless.
"Count yourself lucky," growled Bella behind her, tightening the chain another notch, " 'e don' order me to give you a charge, a shot, as well. 'Lec-tricity. You feel dat through yo' bones. Now walk. Get walking downstairs, Ma'am."
It was an ordeal. Each pace made her gasp. She stepped precisely, like a racehorse, trying not to move her hips, which caused the dreadful chain to chafe. Down in the living-room she was left alone, staring at the ceiling, her mouth parted by the bit, to Bella's comforting words, "An' you don' pee. See. I fetch you once and you pee in the yard, through that there chain. Got it, Ma'am?"
She tried to nod her head. Left to herself, she sank gently to the sofa. But the bending movement caused the chain to tighten at her cunt, and she fairly hissed with pain. Somehow she made it. She sat there, as though on hot bricks, feeling the total helplessness steal through her and reduce her to a thing. Her consciousness was outside herself, somewhere beyond this frightened, fettered dummy that was Joanna Swanne. When the men came ir from tennis she rose at once, as though she literally didn't exist.
Alec took a gin and tonic and explored her firm bare breasts, but Edward Arborough raised the flap of skirt behind and tutted, professionally.
"Too high, I told you too high. With a buttock like this you have to come low, Alec. Right in the sulcus, if possible."
She flamed her shame, but could not move. Her ankel-chain chinked protestingly when Alec twisted one nipple, but that was all. He checked to see that the corners of her lips had been Vaselined, for the bit.
"She's thick through and a good fuck," was what he said meditatively.
The men left her. Cynthia came back from buying some school things for Pam in "Essbury", and commiserated, though without too much conviction.
"Poor sweet. You really were walloped, weren't you. But this position's excellent for the neck muscles."
At six in the evening she was led off on the leash to urinate in the courtyard where she and Alec had watched Cynthia get hers. Then before dinner she was released in her room by Edna. She lay on the floor, gasping and holding her cunt, as soon as the chains were taken off her, but by the time she soaked in her hot tub she was coming in gushes, uncontrollably. She folt again that loss of will and the total relaxation of her soul that following it. That Saturday Pamela was birched. It was by far the most exciting punishment Joanna had yet seen.
Riding together, Cynthia had explained:
"Pammie goes to Brankhurst School, and will till she's eighteen. Believe me, what we give her here at home in the way of any c.p. is practically a rest cure compared to what the junior kids get there. Yes," she said, nodding solemnly in the saddle, "I think I can say that at Brankhurst they get beaten very soundly."
"The cane?"
"And the birch."
"I've never seen the birch."
"You will, Pam's first Saturday pay-off." She turned her big dazed eyes on her sister. "You never tried a birch, with your friend?"
"Never," said Joanna with a laugh. She found she could talk about this experience freely now. "We paddled the daylights out of each other's fannies, but never that."
"It really has great charm. The birch gives terrific cutaneous sting, but it doesn't bruise and you can go a number of cuts. I don't think they ever order less than two dozen at Brankhurst these days."
"Golly," said Joanna.
"It's mostly the senior girls who get it, and often in public. But the Duty cane is what they all dread wholeheartedly."
"What's that?"
"The Duty mistress of the day holds a punishment period at nine each night and any girl whose name's on the list gets a juicy six from a tough cane. Second appearance same week merits nine, and a third twelve-but frankly I don't think any girl comes up three times. You should see the face of a girl who's had even one Duty that week. It's comic. And the canings are really Edwardian. If the girl doesn't remain bending over and holding the bar...."
"like here."
"Exactly," said Cynthia smiling. "She goes to the end of the line and returns for the extra strokes she missed plus a new six, this time fastened over a punishment desk. With a niner that might mean going to bed with eighteen cuts across your fanny."
"Ouch," said Joanna, feeling a queer quaking in her cunt as she moved on the stirrups. "Eight is bad enough."
"All in all, they prepare them for life very thoroughly at Brankhurst, we find," Cynthia said dryly. "We let Pam run loose here, in comparison, but once a month we frighten her. You'll see."
"You were right about that ivory cane Alec keeps in his den," Joanna said. "It really is a beast."
"Isn't it, though? So you got it in front of Edward?"
"Yes."
"That man wants to beat your bottom," said Cynthia after a moment.
"I know," said Joanna, and she did. It was in his pallid eyes, in every aspect of his being. Suddenly she heard herself saying, "I wouldn't let him get so much as a gasp out of me."
Cynthia smiled to herself. "You have got it badly, dear," she finally said, then her bay broke into a canter.
It began at breakfast. Pamela's usually placid face was troubled and her spoon made a heavy clatter in her plate of cereals and Joanna was about to address her. Cynthia caught Joanna's eye and cautioned her.
"No one talks to Pam today. Not till noon, that is. Saturday the second. She pays off her blacks today."
"Oh. How many does she have?" Joanna asked, after a moment. "Five."
"Thus ensuring Her Highness, if I am not mistaken, of fifteen cuts." Joanna arched her brows. How different, how altogether other, was her mood this time to what it had been when she'd seen Alec cane the teener in the living room in front of Mrs. Morrison.
"Perfect arithmetic," came Cynthia's smiling response. "And as there are five limbs in each rod she may find the infliction somewhat stimulating, er, from the rear. Bella put the birches up last night. They're toughly budded. It's a wood that absorbs water, you see, and they're steeping in a pickle of vinegar and brine right now. But what's wrong, Pam dear? Don't you want your cereal?"
"I'm not very hungry, Mummy."
"Eat it up at once. You'll need all your strength. Your father says I can do the honors today and I mean to give you them as sharp as I can. Wet.'"
"Across the buttocks, of course," suddenly put in Joanna, on an impulse.
"The naked buttocks."
"Bent."
Together they burst into giggles. But Pamela's spoon moved slowly. There was a tear at the edge of one eye.
Joanna joined the Reddicks in the big, bare Punishment Room shortly before noon. The system of bars over which she had bent twice was now freshly polished at one end. Today, a short low bench, padded in leather, appeared to have been bolted to the floor in the center. It reminded her, at first sight, somewhat of the kind of stool a shoe salesman sat on back home, with panels for the feet sloping down. It was copiously supplied with straps.
Alec and Cynthia were laughing excitedly together. She had on a tight-fitting pair of white silk pants and a matching shirt. She looked radiant, her stiff braid catching the light, her eyes shiny, and her nipples quite flagrant under the thin material. Alec was casually clad and toyed asbsently with a cane.
"Cynth was saying that she guarantees to make our Pamela squeal, and I said we'd make it a bet. If she wins I give you three with the stick, Jo, and if she loses I give her three."
"Some bet!" protested Joanna. "Thank you so much."
"Oh, come on, Jo," said her sister. "Look. Let me show you the rods."
From a vase near the bench she extracted an endless birch. To Joanna, who had had some vague imagination of a broom, the dripping twigs, secured at one end into a sort of handle by waxen twine, looked full of menace. Cynthia cut the air and made her blink.
"That's more like a whip," she said respectfully.
"Five lovely licky whips," said Cynthia, testing their resiliency again. "Christ, how I hate the birch."
"Seriously," said Alec, "give her these hard and low. Joanna, you may think we're being unduly severe on our young, but I assure you it's for her good."
"Cruel to be kind," said Joanna, smiling thinly. She too found it hard to take her eyes off the springy motion of the twigs.
Alec Reddick tapped his wife's protuberant rump with the end of his stick and the fatty cheeks wobbled to the touch.
"I'll make those three hurt, if you don't lay on," he said gently.
"You always make them hurt," she said. "Or perhaps," she added, "I should say you always make them hard." She saw the pole-like shape stiffened in his slacks. And suddenly Joanna knew she wanted to see Cynthia whipped in earnest one day.
There came a knock at the door.
Pamela entered in her navy tunic, her hair held neatly back with a tortoise-shell slide. She carried in one hand the chart Joanna had seen in her bedroom, the one marking her "blacks". She looked quite sick with fear as she approached and dropped a semi-curtsy.
"I beg permission to be corrected for my faults," she said in a low voice.
Alec snapped, "Read them out."
The girl looked at her board. Without expression she recited:
"On the 4th. Untidy Dress at breakfast. One Demerit. On the 8th. Impertinence...."
"Explain."
"I was cheeky to mother. After lunch."
He nodded grimly and the girl continued. When the litany had ended she handed him the chart. Her chest was heaving.
Alec studied the chart gloomily in silence for a while, prodding at the floor with his stick. Finally he said, "What you need, young girl, is a damn good hiding to cure you of these habits. You will receive three strokes of the birch rod across your bare buttocks for each Demerit. And if you continue this way I'm going to put them up to four. Proceed."
The girl's eyes went desperately to her mother.
Once again Cynthia slowly shucked her shirt, her immense dark-tipped breasts jutting forward aggressively. She flexed her right arm reflectively. "Strip," she said.
Pamela took off her clothes, folding them neatly on a pile on the floor.
"Now come here and get it."
Standing trembling in front of the birch bench the girl made a curiously sensuous sight, her cunt a mere slice in the pad of fat at the junction of her straight, slim, rounded thighs.
"I'm going to thrash you hard and tight. If you try to clench or squeeze it'll only hurt you more. Keep your buttocks relaxed and concentrate on some good resolutions for the future."
Contemptuously, she yanked at a pink-lobed ear and Pamela went sprawling over the bench. To this she was soon rigidly secured. The strap at her waist had cuffs in back to which her wrists were brought. Her knees were strapped, as were her lower thighs. Belly horizontal on the bench her legs sloped a little down the planes to which they were fastened, hardly parted, the anus no more than a dimpled darkening in the valley between the chubby humps.
Cynthia jellied these blubbery and already shivering rounds in her hands, then dampened them with a sponge. Did it really hurt twice as much wet? Joanna wondered, watching the tenseness in the girlish face as she stared apprehensively ahead.
"For Untidy Dress," said Alec quietly. "Three."
Cynthia appeared to have donned a golf glove, to give additional impact, no doubt. She stood well to one side, feet spraddled and flexing her knees. She was frowning in concentration as she prepared to begin.
"Do you wish to appeal?" he asked in the same voice.
"No," came the answer. Pamela squeezed her eyes shut. Zzzzsch!
The long twigs whirred actively, completing their whip with a venomous biting and burying into the young flesh.
"Ugh!"
The tails clawed up thin vivid weals. "One," said Alec calmly.
Twice more the extraordinarily leathery limbs wrapped round the buttocks, and twice more the girl gasped out in pain.
"For Impertinence," said Alec placidly, consulting the chart, where he was ticking off mark by mark, "three strokes. Do you wish to appeal?"
"Nunno," came back the chattering reply.
She had opened her eyes and was helplessly gazing back, striving to draw herself in as the twigs once more approached. Cynthia swung as if her big breasts were loaded, as well as her glove.
Zzzz-schlk!
"Oh-uuuuungh!"
After the sixth she was sponged again. Splinters of twig were spitting at Joanna's feet with every stripe. Blood-dark weals on the right began to thicken. At the ninth the bench fairly bounded, and Joanna felt a sudden demanding spasm deep within her. This was getting exciting, indeed. She glanced at Alec's frankly swollen manhood.
Cynthia said, "She's clenching," and tossed aside her rod. Sweat streaked her turgid breasts, whose nipples were plum-like studs. "I can't get at her like that."
In a quick gasp Pamela pleaded, "I can't help it, Mother. It cuts in so."
"I told you to relax. If you insist on squeezing like this...."
Joanna was agog. Cynthia had gone to a closet. "Please, please...." The girl's voice was nearly frantic.
Alec smiled across. "Amazing how she does dislike the plug. All the young ones do."
"Please ... please!"
"If you're not damn careful, Miss Mischief, I'll see that you get another three for Unnecessary Repetition." Cynthia had come back with something Joanna could not quite discern in her left hand and perched on the forefinger of her gloved right what appeared to be a dollop of dark pomade. "You've got six more coming and I want you to feel 'em right inside those cute little cheeks of yours, my dear."
"Oh mother, oh please, I can't...."
"Don't be monotonous, dear. Count yourself lucky to have the mayonnaise first."
Quickly she greased the anal valley and then the gloved finger thrust in knuckle-deep, peremptorily. Pamela jerked, gasping, her face a mask of distaste as if she had just swallowed a pint of castor oil.
Cynthia soon found the saddle strap attached to the belt in front, drew it through the trembling legs and slid on, via a ring at its base, the palpable and evidently so unpleasant "plug". Joanna watched with rapt attention. It appeared to be a short rubber cylinder, widening at its base, which was at least two inches. The wet rose dimpled deeply as Cynthia moved it home, and Pamela panted protestingly.
"Please, Mother, oh really please. It always makes me ... want to go."
"It makes you feel you want to go, but you can't. You just wait till you're well and truly buggered, my girl. There!"
"NOOOOH!"
There was a rubbery pucker of slick membrane as the sphincter swallowed its vessel and a tight circlet of paler tissue gripped the red plug tightly. It was held home snugly as the saddle strap was fastened to the belt in back.
"Now try to squeeze," said Cynthia, choosing a new birch from the vase.
Pamela was weeping softly. There was a gust of air from her lungs as the limbs lashed her, but she still did not cry out. It was as if she could not, rather than would not. She absorbed the three stoically but with such expressions of agony that Joanna knew any outward movement gave her considerable discomfort-within. Mouth wide, she took the last three in the same manner, even though one of them made a distinct rap as the wood contacted the ring at the base of the plug. When the twigs lapped round her raw right flank she gave a whimpery whine, but that was all. Cynthia unplugged her with a pop.
"Let that be a lesson to you, minx. Next time you try those tricks, I'll put some caustic on this persuader, and you'll really want to spread."
Pamela reclined on her side on the floor, moaning and holding her wet streaked flanks. All spirit had been taken out of her, it was clear.
"Pull yourself together and put on your things."
With quivering lips she kissed the drippy twigs, thanked for correction, and gradually dressed. Making for the door she emitted a short, hard fart, and sobbed again.
When she had gone Cynthia stood erect.
"Well?"
She was Amazonian and superb, bare-chested, her colossal breasts rivuleted with sweat, head thrown back, challenging.
"I win."
"Oh no, you don't," Joanna came in quickly. "I didn't hear her cry out."
"I did."
"She didn't."
"She did, too. I know Pam and she never yells. That's the closest she ever comes."
"That wasn't a squeal, it was a whine," objected Joanna.
As if by common consent they turned to Alec. He was grinning from ear to ear.
"This seems to be a judgment of Solomon," he said at last. "I hate to decide these things. So tiring. But look, why don't you two ladies get your glad rags off and I'll settle it with a little contest. Each gives the other three and only the loser gets the three from me. How's that?"
Eyeing his cane Joanna said, "That's not fair. It means we both get something." She was beginning to feel anger adding to her excitement. Alec merely went to the side, however, and Cynthia started peeling. "Nobody gets nothing," said Joanna, furiously following suit.
They faced each other, hot and naked. Joanna, gazing at the parted quim of Cynthia's succulent quim, suddenly said in a hoarse voice, "If the loser gets the cuts, who gets the nine inches of prick?"
"It's nine and a half," Cynthia said dryly.
Alec was laughing. "You're right, Jo," he said, "the winner."
He brought two brimming glasses of water.
"Who's first?"
"For a drink?" said Joanna. "I don't feel thirsty."
"Here, take these."
She held the glasses stupidly, one in each hand. "Now turn round," he instructed her, "and face that wall. If you spill so much as a drop while Cynthia canes you, you lose. And vice versa when you give it her. If you both spill, I'll think of something else."
"Mayn't I take a sip?"
"No," said Cynthia, picking up the cane.
Joanna stood with her feet together. She was feeling so electrically excited she was almost wanting the stroke. All the same the touch of the trembling wood made her shiver.
"Lean forward," said Cynthia.
"Is that fair?" she asked.
"I think so," Alec answered calmly. "She wants to cut under you."
"That was what I was afraid she wanted."
She held the glasses vice-like, with the tension of a strong-wristed athlete. She tried to tuck something of her buttocks under her, but it wasn't much use. Cynthia came with a run, giving a full-blooded swipe across the lower curves. It was intensely painful but somehow Joanna knew she could bear it in this mood. And she bore the next two like it.
"Damn!" said Cynthia, tossing aside her stick.
Joanna turned. She was blinking, but managed to smile. She held out the glasses hospitably.
"Now let's see if my forehand's on today."
It was. Cynthia gave a choking stumble at the first, an anguished cry at the second, and shouted "Damn and bloody blast!" at the third, which followed up swiftly. Water had slopped from the tumbler in her right hand. She set them down and turned.
"Okay, let's get it over with. She wins."
"She certainly does," said Alec, smiling. "I'm really ashamed of you, Cynth. And as a reward I'm going to show Jo something you really don't like."
Cynthia's face changed. "No," she said quickly.
"You see, Jo, she said she didn't like the birch...."
"No!" said Cynthia, pleading this time. "But it's the birch on a certain portion of her...."
"No, Alec, please! Please, please, please."
"Who's being repetitious now? Go and lie down on the bench. On your back. "Alec, I beg of you...."
Joanna stared at her. She had turned nearly white. Her expression was as solemn as it had been that afternoon she had advanced to the motor-cycle on the scalding asphalt. Just so she turned and walked now.
She was strapped as had her daughter been, only backwards. Her face turned distractedly, her unfettered feet stirred, but it was her huge, thick, dull breasts that were suddenly the center of the room. They confronted the ceiling achingly. There was absolutely no doubt now where she was to be punished, somehow; they even looked bruised already.
Joanna approached her head. Heat was naming behind her eyes.
"I didn't mean this to happen, darling. Really."
"Oh God, oh God."
Alec was standing on the far side, a long way off, it seemed, holding a new, dripping rod of twigs in his hand.
"Please ... Alec ... make them quick."
"They'll be quick," he said. "You'll hardly feel them."
"Three?"
"More if you close your eyes."
Zzzzzsch!
The limbs lashed. Cynthia screamed. "YEOWW!"
"That's what I call a squeal now," said Alec, smiling at Joanna. And he cut again.
Cynthia yelled and writhed as if on coals.
Joanna's eyes were glazed. The thick tits were streaked with red, as if a fiery knife had drawn the weals there. As usual, he read her thoughts.
"It's odd. The birch never cuts a nipple. Strange. Come to think of it, hold them up for me by the nips, would you, Jo, and I'll give her the last one under them."
"NOOOOOO!"
When it was done, Joanna bent to kiss her bitten lips.
But, though squirming, Cynthia replied with surprising control, "No, no ... I'm foaming down there ... for Chris' sake, Jo...."
Joanna knelt. The moment her tongue ran up the appetizing groove and met the urgent oyster of her being, or well-being, Cynthia started to gush and come and groan.
"Suck, damn you ... lick...."
The oily marble moved like an eel in Joanna's mouth and the final creaming spasm seemed to go on forever. Then she stood up dizzy and met his prick head-on.
Or so it seemed.
Alec had stripped and his veined erection glared at her possessively.
"The winner always gets her prize," he said, "from the rear. The mammal's mount."
Joanna was bursting. Bursting and blazing. As in a dazing furnace, she straddled the bench at
Cynthia's head, one leg either side, bent over with her hands grasping the wood. Cynthia stared up, smiling softly now, at the lewd weals she had drawn on the proud posteriors and the again vigorously hairy bush about the puffy purse of her sister's lower lips.
"Lucky winner," she murmured contentedly. "Mind you don't dribble."
"You practically spouted."
"Always do after I've had it on the breasts."
Alec said, "I see a quim."
"So do I," said Cynthia decidedly. "Pouchy, perfect, and pouting for prick. A dripping delight."
She put out her tongue and Joanna bent her knees to let her lick it.
"Already oiled, I fear," she gasped, her eyes on the thin, tender-looking traces that streamed, so symmetrically, it seemed, across Cynthia's stirring breasts. Having sucked the haggy seam, Cynthia then licked the puce nozzle that was already demandingly bumping into the back of her sister's thighs and buttocks.
"You lucky, lucky girl. At least save a drop for me, Alec, you brute. You know how I love sauce."
Joanna saw the twitching tree trunk of the male organ with a superb sense of fresh fright. There was still a slight ache in her whipped bottom, and her breasts, as he grabbed them, pulsed with that unspeakable union of terror and delight she had only experienced within The Territory. The ruby monster nodded, nuzzled, then screwed into her with weight.
"Unnk!" she grunted, fisting her hands. It rammed up her belly, quickly and livingly. She climbed to a back-arching, whimpering peak of ecstasy at once. "Gooood, Alec!"
Then the squelchy piston began regularly reaming her, she saw her hands beat on the bench as if belonging to someone else, her body was making mashing movements independent of her will and self, she was converted to a single straining center of sensation. The animal within her seemed to swell to twice its size and she felt wholly plugged by its coursing girth, mounting and mounting, until she was drenched at last with glutinous gism, spilling back over its own beasthood and finally spitting, suddenly extracted, as if gleefully, straight into Cynthia's quivering right nostril.
"Damn and blast," she snorted disgustedly, "I've had it everywhere else, but never up the nose."
CHAPTER TEN
A sense of green under over-arching beeches, peaceful, like lying in a still pool, grateful and contented.
The two women, each lovely in her own way, lay back against the bole of the tree. Their horses grazed nearby. Joanna was in riding breeches, and boots, while Cynthia wore her usual bleached settler's shirt and chino slacks.
"So that's that." Joanna tore the letter in two, slowly and self-sufficiently. "It's over. Done with."
"And you're glad, darling, aren't you?"
She nodded. "Tom never meant much to me. Not to my deepest self, the substance of my being. He would never have learnt to understand...."
"The shadows?" Cynthia supplied.
Joanna smiled. "If I'd ever told him, he'd have thought me kinky, queer, or a pervert."
"Oh that."
"All the usual miseries."
They stayed in silence for a while. Then Joanna said, "Why do I feel so wonderful here, so right? It's like being unclosed, open."
"Beautiful and pure and clean. I know." Cynthia nodded her flaxen head over a blade of grass. "The Territory is a perfect abstraction-at least I think so. Soulless. Breathless. A singleness of force and quality. It's ... utterly romantic."
"It's all I've ever dreamed of," Joanna said, "and to think I've only been here these few weeks. It's uncanny. You were dead right, Cynth. There is a special intensity of existence here."
"That moment of honey. There was such a nice one last time poor Pammie was birched, wasn't there?"
"But not only that." She rose to her feet, recipient, relaxed, as if the blood beating through her veins could be felt in the leaves above. "It's," she got out suddenly, "like the house of my soul, full of subtleties, and sweet corners," yes and, she added with a grin, "shadows."
Cynthia got up, too. She looked solemnly into her sister's tranquil eyes.
"You've made the first step, Jo, and I'm glad. But I really wonder if you'll want to stay, and immigrate, and go through it. The special Gladiator Camp is tough."
Joanna's chin came up. "I'm game."
But Cynthia shook her head. "You've only touched on justice yet. You wait till you've had your first Guarder, or a real Gladiator beating. And been degraded and soiled, and ... ugh!"
"I've seen what goes on in your Punishment Shed," retorted Joanna warmly. She had; on the beaten earth sat a trestle like a saw-horse, one end lower than the other. The desperate victims, one after another, strapped across it, legs parted, while the grinning Mr. Johns, his ebony torso sweating, had hewn into their stretched and meaty backsides six, eight, once nine times with a fiendish "Penal" cane-long, leathery, elastic. ("Useful for training polo ponies with, too," Cynthia had commented.) The several culprits groaning and stiff-legged, holding their buttocks. The coloreds managed their own discipline effectively. At least three of those Joanna had seen had been young wives "sent up" by their husbands for laziness. They left the shed with weals as thick as fingers and a dread of the stick in their souls. "I think I know," she added proudly.
"You haven't had a Guarder," said Cynthia ominously.
Joanna strolled over to her horse with the fragments of the torn letter from her lawyer in one hand. It announced the finality of her divorce and, after an inspective sniff or two, the mare ate it eagerly. She cantered back in silence to the stables, and in the house poured herself a foaming glass of beer. She felt hot and heavy now, the material of her breeches close on the egg-like globes of her rump.
Looking at the local paper, she was aware of Cynthia phoning. Pamela had come in from the pool, her costume wet and fucked behind.
"Have a good ride, Auntie Jo?" she inquired, rubbing one ear with a towel.
"Yes, thanks," Joanna murmured through the beer.
Pam looked none the worse for her straightener, of which all marks had disappeared, and she had not, in fact, been punished corporally, to Joanna's knowledge, for some time. She had had to wear a backboard for an afternoon, for slouching, but that was all.
Suddenly she was aware that the teener was listening. There was a strange, sly concupiscence in her gaze, and Joanna came slowly erect.
"Yes, Alec, okay," she heard, "I'll put it to her ... but can't I have eight?. . .I mean, it isn't the same as you ... all right, I'll tell her...."
A second later Cynthia returned. She was pensively unbuttoning her shirt. Pamela was as alert as a rapier on guard.
"Jo, that was Alec. Evidently you forgot to leave that duplicate key in the car. His glove compartment is locked and he's swearing like a trooper."
"Oh damn, I did," said Joanna as casually as she could.
Cynthia waited. Then she said, "He really was most annoyed. He plans to give you ten when he comes back tonight."
"Ten!"
"Or you can take six from me now. With the switch."
Joanna said nothing. She took a deep gulp of icy beer. Then, "Which switch?" she asked.
"You know perfectly well. My riding switch."
Cynthia's tone had altered. She was staring at her sister in a hostile way. Joanna responded to it. She felt big and sullen, yet trembling in every fiber.
"All right," she said. "There's not much alternative, is there?"
Cynthia took off her shirt, exposing her now healed and heavy breasts. She poured herself a glass of brimming beer.
"Come on, get it over with, " Joanna said.
"A little suspense never did a sinner any harm," came the answer. "Remember. And now turn and tell Pamela what's going to happen to von "
"That's not necessary," she snapped.
"I have the power to give you extra strokes," said Cynthia, smiling and testing the bulging biceps of her tan right arm, "up to twelve. Now go ahead."
Joanna shuddered.
"Look her in the face."
Pamela's eyes were shell-like in their pure blue, but it was an aggressive gaze also. Joanna knew the girl was enjoying this immensely. She resolved to give them no satisfaction at all.
"For a forgetful Omission I am going to get six strokes of the switch across my ... naked buttocks."
"Fat, bare butt." the child snapped.
"Fat, bare butt," said Joanna, after a moment.
"Satisfied, Pam?" said her mother.
"I'd really like to hear her punish herself verbally a bit more, Mummie."
"Again, Joanna."
She sighed. "For being a silly idiot my worthless person is going to be bent over, its stupid fat butt cheeks bared and spread apart and then whipped six times as hard as possible with a riding switch, until, until," she stumbled, flushing deeply, "until I wish I hadn't been born a woman."
"Much better, dear. First I'm going to change into a pair of sneaks, but I'll be with you directly. Pam, you can take your aunt into the den, bend her over the desk, and get her ready."
"Cynthia!" Joanna exclaimed, crimson. "You're not going to...."
"Strip her butt."
"Please. That isn't necessary."
"For your soul it is, darling, for your soul it positively is."
Before she knew it, Joanna was following the neat navy tunic and seriously bowed head of her niece into Alec Reddick's study. Her legs moved of their own.
"Stand there," came her piping tone. Once more Joanna stood at the end of the gleaming desk, which the girl now dutifully divested of its objects. Then she came behind her aunt and started unbuttoning the breeches.
"I can do that," Joanna said swiftly.
"Please take your hands away, Auntie," came the reply. For some reason Joanna did. A moment later her cord breeches were hanging in sloppy, awkward folds at the top of her boots. A moment after that they had been joined by her panties. Only a small tail of sweaty shirt, stuck between her buttocks, remained.
"Now bend forward with your arms in front of you," came the childish voice, sternly. With a contemptuous twitch the tail of the shirt was tucked up Joanna's back. "Now stick out your bottom, tight." Despite herself Joanna made a move. "Arch it up, Auntie," she was told. "Turn your toes in, to spread your flabby cheeks. Push out your ass. Go on, Auntie Jo, just as if ... you wanted to ... go." Joanna was in trembling tears. The voice went on. Pamela was exciting herself; there was the rustle of girlish garments, then, tensely, "Press your thighs together, Auntie Jo, your cunny is showing." I
Joanna stood up. "Listen, Pamela, you were told to position me, not to torment me. I co-operated with what you said, but the time hasn't come for you to punish me, yet. And the next time I cane you, my girl, I'm going to take the skin off your seat. Slowly."
"What's this? Angry words?"
Cynthia appeared, her breasts swinging, carrying her worn hide quirt in one hand.
"She wouldn't stick it up properly," said the girl in a sulky tone.
"Then let's give her a couple extra, shall we?" Cynthia said brightly.
"That's unfair," said Joanna, feeling tears in her eyes again.
"And one makes three. Bend over, stretch out your hands and Pamela will hold them."
"Please, Mumsie. Can't I see ... from behind?
"No. Hold her over hard, dear."
Small hot hands held her hands. Joanna could feel their intense, burning excitement. She pressed her thighs together, trying to minimize her vulva. Then she sank her head between her arms. She would not let it show, she would not let it....
"Aaah!"
A flame of lightning burned her flesh. Her hands leapt like fishes in her niece's. The beating proceeded slowly, methodically and-Joanna knewas hard as possible. After the first gasp she controlled herself stoically. Just a hot oil burn, no more than a hot oil burn-wasn't that what she'd always said to herself in the-oow!-Women's Republican Club in ...
"Hou!"
"Getting to you now?"
"You might at least," she gasped out, half erect after the appalling sting of the sixth stroke, "hit me on the bottom. That last was on my legs."
"Right in the fold, dear, right in the fold."
"Hit me higher and I'll take it. Please."
"Come on, get over." A yank on Joanna's hands.
"And you'd better tuck in your cunt for these three because they're going to be hard. They're for not playing the game. When you're under correction, you never question ... anyone ... understand!"
The rushing air was completed by a meaty thump.
Suddenly Joanna knew the pain was too much. She was not going to be able to take it without a cry. The agony caught her sickeningly and her face was now staring straight into Pamela's. The girl's eyes were fixed on hers, her face flushed and taut, isolated from her. It was as if it had no soul at all. It was-pure of being. So must her own have been, watching Pamela birched that Saturday at noon, absolute and utter, as if some other self had asserted itself within.
Whhhruppl
"Aieee!" A strange, violent squeal escaped her and then a squall of shaming tears. The last cut belted into limp buttocks, beaten in every sense. As she stood up, speechlessly clasping her behind, she saw a flash of white, even teeth; the childish hands that had left her own gave a sudden, happy clap.
"Say thank you for your punishment nicely," counseled Cynthia calmly.
Her body burnt like fire. She turned and said her words, then clutched clumsily at clothes to cover her beaten flesh.
It was an hour before she recovered. She lay on her bed in an agony of inflamed bliss. At last she put on her tightest fitting tennis clothes, her socks and sneaks, and went downstairs to the living room. Only Pamela was there.
There was a moment's suspense. Then Joanna walked firmly over to the sofa and with merry eyes bent down and kissed the pure round forehead, just where it met the sleek blonde hair. The girl turned an open, glowing face.
"Feel like a spot of tennis, Pammie?"
"Do I!" She leapt up at once.
Joanna stood there, smiling. She was aware that her whole body had filled out recently and was defined, firm and superb in the tight white tunic, her buttocks darkly wealed, all flushed and hot.
"I always play better for a few belts across the backside," she said.
"Oh Auntie Jo!" Pamela grabbed her and hugged her.
"I'm sorry I said what I said."
"What?" There was a girlish frown. "About wanting to take the skin off my seat?" She shook her head, as if not understanding. "Oh no, Auntie, that was wonderful, and I hope you will. What you said then ... well, it helped me on ... during, I mean."
"And you making me chastise myself verbally was just right too, Pam. Thank you for it."
She pecked again at the forehead, and the girl darted off to change.
"Bet I get two games a set today, Auntie," she called on her way up the stairs, two at a time.
The days passed calmly after that. Fused, inseparable. They swam, they even rowed in a lake belonging to the Benson's ("He should have moored his house in it," Cynthia remarked). Joanna's skin felt new, her life enriched.
She was not chastised again. She stretched her limbs in the sun, feeling a new freedom, now that the divorce was final. Occasional letters came through, but very late and she soon lost all desire to even open them. Out there (as they called it) was another world. Only they knew.
But in her heart she knew, too. She knew that she had to be whipped, and whipped again. It would come, like a chaos, an exultation of thunder, relentless and demanding. She both feared it and did not fear it. It had to happen, that was all. The God of The Territory was the lion, not the lamb. And each week now, each few days, some odd chord would be struck at this expectant darkness inside her, where she knew the lion of her life was lurking, ready.
It might be seeing some woman of great dignity and self-possession at a party, eloquently plumping down a cushion before gingerly lowering herself to a seat; seeing a maid going more mournfully than usual about her duties, one hand gently rubbing her behind; catching sight, at the pool, of one of Pamela's friends behind, blue weals painted either side of her brief bikini bottom. In the trembling, sacrificial heat of the afternoon's siesta period the silence would be broken by thin, lisping snips, regular, even religious in their rhetoric. Joanna would count them as she lay on her bed, knowing that back in the servants' court Bella was beating a maid for some peccadillo. These sounds were so many symbols ... four, five, six ... a hidden metonymy of her soul.
Once she was playing bridge in the open club room at the Tennis Club; there had been stirrings overhead; a committee meeting or something, she was told.
"I believe they're going to seed Peg," remarked her partner. "Two clubs."
Joanna had observed Sally Benson, the Treasurer, go up, but didn't get the message. She inquired. It seemed that scores were settled once a month-and by scores were meant scores. Delinquencies of dues, any discourtesies. It seemed that Peggy Walker had twice booked a court and forgotten to cancel. All hands paused on the green baize as the slender brunette, in abbreviated tennis attire, was led through the room by the Club Secretary. She went up the wooden stairs, and someone said, "I suggest we pass, for a moment."
There was dead silence, then the boards creaked overhead and deep on the drum of her ear Joanna heard ... it.
"Two," said her partner dreamily, "three, four, five, and one makes set."
There was another silence, a commotion on the stairs and Peg Walker came into view, her face flushed and twisted, rubbing her diminutive posterior.
"Bad luck, Peg," said one.
"Christ! That woman can hit!"
She walked rapidly away in the direction of the changing-rooms with her panties in one hand, rubbing lustily at a bare, striped, jouncy can.
Once, delivering something from Alec to Simon Smith-Peters in town, Joanna had been asked to wait a moment. The moment was stretched and at the end of it a pert secretary emerged, a folder in one hand, but the other at her rear. By such tokens did she know. Yet she was unready for the worst, when it happened.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The great gaunt Guard House was of old brown brick. Ye Olde Brythyshe Shytte color, she thought as she approached it that late Wednesday afternoon. It had a blank penal desolation that spoke volumes to her dying soul. She had parked the Lagonda near the market-place of trodden earth, to make a few last purchases in this colorful area in the middle of Shaftesbury. When she'd returned to it ... it was not there. It was--according to a grinning mulatto Gladiator Guard (surely it was the one called Lou?)-probably well parked in the yard of the nearest precinct house, for this was a tow-away zone. Joanna could recover it on application, and after having received a warm behind.
All the same she gulped, staring at the stupidly reiterated brickwork, the spiked gaffs and bits of glass shining in the late sun; the place didn't have to be so purely ugly, did it? And who would want to get in there? A grille clashed at her ring and she stepped inside the raw barrack, identified herself to another beefy Gladiator, and was sent directly to a squat building at one side.
She entered a grim, bare room with the same ugly, dead look to it. It was empty. To one side, on a shallow wooden dais, sat a Gladiator Guard, chewing gum and apparently reading an American comic, her gleaming boots on the table before her. She beckoned uninterestedly.
Joanna explained her mission, sick to her soul. The Gladiator noted her identification papers, writing laboriously in a book before her. Finally she looked up.
"Take this," she said, handing Joanna a printed slip, "and sit down over there. You won't have long to wait."
"You," she hesitated, "do have my car here, then?"
"In the pound. You get the keys afterwards, when you bring this back, signed by the officer."
It was like some gruesome dream coming true. "Then," Joanna continued sickly, "I have to pay some ... penalty, first?"
The Guard showed a flicker of interest. "You'll probably get eight, if that's what you mean. Idryss is the overseer on duty today and he ought to make you jump. He-likes to hit a good fat ass."
"But ... I'm only an immigrant."
The Guard frowned at her papers. "Grade 'B' immigrant, that's right. Subject to all our laws and regulations. Of course, if you want to refuse correction, you will be deported under the law...."
And never allowed to reenter, Joanna added mentally.
She sat on a hard bench by the wall. She had on a close-fitting navy acrylic knit and a briefly belted shirt dress. The printed slip had her name, address, date and time of offense; the dotted line under "Punishment," as that for the ordering officer, were left blank.
Her throat was dry. She crossed and uncrossed her legs. What happened if someone "appealed" in
The Territory, she wondered? It sent her to shuddering inner laughter. Then suddenly, somewhere, a steel door crashed open, a woman's stiletto steps came tapping down a corridor. Joanna's mouth dropped wide.
A petite blonde in a shantung mini came (staggered would have been a better term, in Joanna's estimation) into the room, making inarticulate moans. She held to a wall for support a second, and then Joanna heard, "Up there." The Guard nodded peremptorily, and Joanna was walking up the corridor on jelly legs.
The door was closed. She knocked and was bidden to enter. The sight she met surprised her. A low-ceilinged, bureaucratic office was divided in two by a screen. She found herself in the first part, a sort of ante-room in which a typist, not a Guard, rattled away at an old Remington. She looked up as Joanna entered, beckoned, took her slip, entered the details in a ledger, and put another official form in her platen.
"Take off all your clothes," she said expressionlessly.
"All of them?"
The girl turned. She was quite young. As if surprised, she said, "Yes, that's right."
The horrible thing was beginning. She remembered what Alec had promised her. Her skin, as she stripped, felt hot, thick. She tried to swallow. At last she was naked, reduced without her heels. The flagging of the office floor felt cold. The typist got up and approached with a tape measure; she took elaborate measures of Joanna's hips, entering each on her typed form-width, length from sulcus to coccyx, even each individual cheek was measured from the anal opening to the crotch in front. Finally she handed Joanna her form, as well as her original slip, and pointed. Joanna advanced to another worn table. Behind this one sat a man.
He was middle-aged, mustached and wore a dark blue uniform, without cap or hat. He too shared the universal boredom apparent in these offices. Behind him there was a barred window, but it only gave, Joanna was thankful to see, on another gray brick wall. He perused the slips in silence a long time, stroking his black mustache while nearby the typewriter clicked merrily away. At last he picked up an old-fashioned pen. "Ten strokes," he said.
Joanna's heart gave a desperate lurch. "Ten!"
Cynthia had told her that even six ...
The officer on duty looked up. "Dimensions are taken into account. You will receive ten strokes with the cane for Illegal Parking."
"But, but," she spoke in sheer despair, "it's ... the first time ... my first offense ... please."
"You won't die," said the officer bleakly.
Joanna wished she could as the secretary came forward at this point and led her into a square stone room, whose door, as they entered, was at least a foot thick. There were no windows at all.
"Wait in here," said the girl. "If you want to urinate use that pail." She went out.
The room itself was almost insupportable, thought Joanna, feeling a panic quaking in her every limb. Punishment was intentional throughout it. She herself was confronting the same kind of splayed saw-horse trestle she had seen in the Punishment Shed on the estate, with the exception that the head of this was lower, it was supplied with more straps, and there was a padded portion where the victim bent over it. It looked worn and slightly soiled. Perhaps it was still warm from the last victim ... then the rack of canes caught her eyes.
They were ghastly, gaunt and gleaming, and of a prodigious length. They were supposed to be sized, to make them stiffer, harder on the skin. Just then a shadow slipped into the room. In an athletic, animal motion he turned her to the wall. Joanna gave a sob as he touched her. She did not have to be told this was the man who would administer her punishment.
He was stripped to the waist and below that he was wearing black stockingette tights. He made no sound at all when he moved, a short bald man with waxen skin and hairy forearms, the strength of whose hands became apparent as he squeezed and kneaded her bottoms, like a butcher inspecting meat. Joanna groaned and gasped.
Was he Spanish, Mexican, she wondered? There was an utter repellent grossness about him, yet such a latent savage ferocity about his cold, foreign touch that her soul gave a fervent prayer for strength. What mercy could she expect from this thick-thighed monster?
He never spoke. He pointed to the trestle and she bent over it, shuddering. In a trice she was trussed like a turkey. The girls in the Punishment Shed were strapped, but not in a manner like this, which reduced her body not merely to submissive passivity, but to absolute nonentity. She was secured at ankles, knees, thighs, waist, under the armpits, elbows and wrists. Her legs were parted in an inverted V, her crotch on the leather pad, still wet, her torso straining downward and arms thrust out sideways along the forward legs of the horse, which were parted even further than the rear. Then a saddle strap was drawn tightly up between her legs and buckled to the belt in back. She let out a stifled "Ow!" as she realized this seemed to have notching within. All the straps were brutally tight and it was not that she could not move, she couldn't even vibrate. She felt utterly parted and devoted to the torture to come. Only her head could turn, on the axis of her neck at the end of the trestle, but at first she saw only the feet of the officer as he came in, slamming the great door behind him.
"Congratulations, Idryss," he said, stationing himself to Joanna's right and looking across at the overseer, who was now flexing a monstrous rod, "I don't know when I can recall such an early effect on you, though I admit it's a superlative buttock."
Glancing to her left, Joanna saw the nervous, eager trembling of the cane-tip on the floor. The dark, liquid, formless eyes of the overseer gleamed in their deep holes and then, suddenly, she saw along his thigh the muscular arm of his erect organ. It was immense, a visual blow itself. She groaned inwardly. It had risen to its fullest extent under the stockingette, threatening and trembling in eager readiness.
"Well, we'll be merciful," said the officer as he reached into a bucket. Between Joanna's jaws he placed what seemed like a length of wet rope, the sort of thing she had seen on a ship. She remembered: it helped to bite on something. She bit and the officer clenched her head down on it hard so that the rope clamped into her teeth. It was sudden, there was an acrid taste, and then Joanna remembered what the girl had said about the bucket. She tried to spit in disgust, but the lump of rope, extending either side her mouth, seemed lodged there of itself, an effective and efficient gag.
"Ten of the best, Idryss," instructed the officer, standing back. "Lower quarter. Imagine you're hitting," he added on a chuckle, "one of those horsehair cushions you practice on. This pair is really ripe for a whipping."
There was a thrill in the air behind her, then a profound fleshy thump, echoed by her instinctive grunt. She gave a cramp-like jerk at the stroke, then gradually its intensity began to burrow through her. She felt herself striving to crawl along the central strut of the trestle, as her sinews knotted without effect.
"Uingh!"
The enormity of not being able to move terrified her. It was awful. She tried to muster her forces, felt the sudden thud of the second, slamming her with fire and twisting her like something on a spit. That was it-a thing! She realised, she knew. Why, she could not even cry. Her head bobbed back and forth like some frenzied chicken's, she saw everything with the acute clarity of such moments, the studs on the forward legs of the trestle, the officer's scuffed boots, her senses reached some new plane of vitality, as she sought to fight this searing pain.
Three fell, and four. The fifth made the whole trestle seem to bound. By straining she could see him waiting. She shared a strange kinship with her tormentor. Those parted buttocks, arcing up as if to be hit even harder, belonged to someone else, a woman apart, bound in the highest ecstasy of hell itself.
"Yeeeeeeeh!" Six.
Unspeakable agony. She snorted. Snot spat on the stone beneath. Her convulsive responses were driving the saddle strap into her. Her sphincter opened and shut.
"Good," said the officer at the seventh.
The man was hitting her almost horizontally now, great powerful thuds that drove her forward with grunts. She couldn't seem to breathe. Her mind was going dull, blunted. Her buttocks felt swollen and, in one place, wet.
Then she heard chuckling. The officer was saying, "Perhaps that will teach you where to park in Essbury, Ma'am." He had left the room. The door had slammed. It was over.
Was it over?
Her being felt totally, wholly crushed. Blank. It was not over.
And then she was trying in desperate earnest to spit out the gag. The saddle strap had been undone. But the others held her firm. Idryss was standing behind her parted butt and beyond him the club of his cock was rampant and threatening. Then it was nubbing her softly curved ass.
Noooooo! she screamed.
But the scream only emerged as a gargle.
The head was a purple duck-egg.
Idryss spat. She felt his wet rough thumb widen her anus and tried to buck and rear and clench her ass-hole. If only she could scream ... surely someone would come. Surely they were not allowed to do this, even in The Territory.
Two thumbs were either side the entrance now almost popping it open. The great smooth knot of his cock dimpled it deeply a second, she felt the straps at her shoulders bite in as she lurched forward, and then it was within her. It slid an inch, stopped, gave a jump to its master's appreciative grunt, slid in further still.
No more, no more! Her mind screamed a protest.
There could not possibly be any more....
Idryss slid his pole up her rectum peacefully, patiently, laughing softly each time he rammed it home. She felt choked, engorged, steaming and stuffed. Her toes beat a tattoo, her fingernails dug in her palms, the whole length of her body seemed impaled on prick. Then suddenly it began to swell and pump within her.
At that moment she screamed. She could simply bear no more. Her effort widened her jaws to distention and the rope gag spat out with a plop on the floor. At that moment she started vomiting. The retches came from the depths of her belly, the man's pitiless palms pinched up her hanging breasts to increase her convulsions, and as he pumped his gism deep into her entrails Joanna was monumentally sick on the Guard Room floor. She had had oysters for lunch.
Finally, she was aware of cold water being tossed on her from another bucket. But no, it was simply for him to sweep up her vomit and wash it down some drain. Only then did he condescend to untie her. When he had gone Joanna rested on all fours so long that the secretary looked in and, in a discontented voice, inquired, "Anything wrong?"
CHAPTER TWELVE
The office was easier to navigate since there was no one in it any longer. The secretary gave her the slip, It now had on it, "Ten strokes," and the signature of the officer.
"You don't happen to have any brandy handy, do you?" Joanna asked, gasping.
"Certainly."
A bottle of Hennessy's was produced from a filing cabinet and Joanna took a swig. Then three swigs. Long ones.
"Here. Let me put something on those."
Joanna said, "Thanks." But when the secretary had painted the weals with substance from a bottle she jumped. "Ouch, that stings."
"Yes, it's pimentade," said the secretary casually, replacing the bottle next to the Hennessy's in her files.
"Cauterizes. No infection. But it burns." She sat down indifferently to her work. Joanna drew on her clothes very cautiously.
"He broke the skin on the right," she said sullenly.
"Um. Idryss always does an excellent job. You'll have a sore bottom for a few days, I'm afraid, Mrs. Swanne. But it will be a good reminder."
Joanna wondered if the girl knew about the other thing. What if she reported the man? She yearned to speak about it to someone.
"I don't think I'm coming to Essbury, as you call it, again. Ever. I don't want another beating like that."
The secretary looked up politely. "Oh yes. I have to caution you. The same offense within a month will be fifteen."
"And after that?"
"Eighteen, though in two doses with an interval of twenty minutes in the Recovery Room. The lady before you had fifteen.'"
"You know it all, don't you?"
"All the rules, yes. Justice must be done, you know."
Joanna walked out, stiff-legged. A new Guard had come on duty on the dais. She handed in her signed slip and received her car keys. The place was empty.
The Guard, a tall, slim, cream-skinned Gladiator, smiled and said, "Enjoy your trip?"
"He needn't have buggered me," Joanna said in a surly tone, after a moment. She regretted it as soon as she had said it.
The Gladiator smiled even more sweetly. "If you're dissatisfied, I can always send you back for more."
"I'm sorry," Joanna stumbled quickly, "I didn't mean...." The girl was unclipping the switch at her waistband. Joanna paled. Her buttocks felt leaden and livid. Even the touch of her garments on them seemed to hurt. "Please, I didn't...."
"Just in case you might have been thinking about being insolent."
"Please...."
"Hold out your hand."
Joanna extended her right. The girl steadied it and extended it on the table. She did not get up. But she brought the whickering switch nicking into the open palm six excruciating times. The tip caught the pad of the thumb each time. Joanna had no idea the hand could be so sensitive and hopped, blowing on her palm and gasping when it was over.
"Now the left," said the still smiling girl.
Joanna's left hand was whipped six times. Once she moved, in her pain, and the tip scored her wrist. She took the cut over.
"Now the right again," said the girl.
"Please," begged Joanna, "please."'
Already the palm was hot and puffy. But the next six on each hand was worse.
"Feeling better?" said the girl as Joanna danced, her hands thrust under her armpits. "Stop hugging yourself for a second, and answer me."
"Yes," said Joanna.
"Good," said the Gladiator Guard, "but we might as well just make sure, mightn't we. Hold out that lovely right hand once again, would you."
Sitting in the travel agency ten minutes later Joanna found she could not write a check. She had to promise payment through the Reddicks. There was a night plane for Cairo in two days' time and she booked a seat on it.
Driving the Lagonda, she was a mass of pain. This had not been shadowy; it had been hard, stark reality. She peered into the quickening twilight. She had been rebuffed, rebuffed by the Territory. Beaten and buggered like, like ... an animal, a thing. The steering wheel even hurt her hands. while as for her bottom ... there was a wetness on her right cheek which she might, any other day, have told herself was perspiration.
Meadows stretched under a pale sky. This was not a part of the throughway she remembered. Darkness fell quickly in this part of the world. It would take her at least another hour to reach the estate. There was nobody else on the road at all, it seemed.
She shifted uneasily in her seat. She was going to have to go, she realized. That brute had filled her full of his beastly filth, pumped it into her deep, it was imperative that she get off the road and relieve herself somewhere. But this was The Territory. She didn't want to risk another shellacking like that. Surely it was somewhere along here that they'd taken that turn-off for the Smith-Peters the day Cynthia had got hers on the roadway.
Joanna peered. This was strange. She hadn't remembered hedgerows. Then suddenly she saw it, with a sigh of relief. She really would have to go quite soon. The lights were on at the cheerful house when she pulled up and got out some minutes later. She was preparing an abrupt, "May I use your john?" when she realized it wasn't the same house at all.
There had been a similar line of trees, a sweep of gravel drive, but this was an elegant little eighteenth-century mansion, the sort of place an aristocrat might have bought for himself in Buckinghamshire or Normandy, centuries ago. Urns flanked the formal steps, and coming down them was a man flanked, in turn, by two elegant setter dogs, a man in white flannels and a turtleneck sweater. That man was Edward Arborough.
He was smiling at her from the entrance.
Joanna was dumfounded.
"I'm sorry," she stammered, "there's some mistake. I thought Mavis Smith-Peters...."
Two lines pleated his teak-tanned brow. "But they live nowhere near here, Joanna."
He waved her in. She entered the marble hallway in confusion. His tawny eyes dropped to her dress, behind. The house inside was elegance personified.
"You've been whipped again?" he asked, smiling.
She felt her dress. "Does it show?" She smiled ruefully. "Look. Do you think I could use your ... toilet? It's rather urgent that I do."
Edward Abroborough moved to a bell-pull. It hung on striped silk and he tugged it gently. An immaculate French maid appeared immediately.
The man nodded and, as if understanding at once, the girl led Joanna off. They went up padded staircases, up, up-surely needlessly high-to an area of attics, where the rooms might have belonged to servants, in the old days. In a long low-ceilinged bare room glowed the embers of a log fire. A woman in riding dress of the old school, complete with black habit, was stretching out her legs to the last of the flames. She did not turn as Joanna entered, nor was her face discernible in the half-light.
"If you care to take off your clothes," the maid was saying.
"Why? What for?"
"I can see to your dress, Madam. Behind."
"Oh, all right."
They were speaking in lowered tones. Still the woman at the far end, in front of the fire, didn't turn. She appeared to be moving her jaws.
Joanna found herself naked. Why had she taken off all her clothes like this? It was true her panties were badly stained, however.
"If you'd step in here," said the maid solicitously. She indicated what to Joanna seemed to be an improvised shower area, raised and curtained. The maid drew back the curtains and, yes, there was steel overhead, taps, water escapes. Presumably Edward Arborough had been thinking of turning the attic up here in some sort of self-sufficient apartment. Joanna stepped into the bath-like affair.
"What are you doing?" she asked suddenly. For the maid had bent and attached her two feet, wide apart, to rings fitted in the flooring of the bath, or shower. It had happened before Joanna had realized.
"Mr. Arborough will be up in a moment, Madam."
Joanna resisted with her hands but with her feet secured apart it wasn't easy. In a second her wrists were handcuffed and drawn high over her head to another fixture in a bar above. The maid went away.
"Hey!" she shouted, realizing. "Let me down. Let me out of this."
She began sobbing.
"You!" she cried desperately.
"Me?" The woman in front of the fire turned. "You wouldn't mean me by any chance, would you?"
She got up and strolled over and suddenly Joanna saw that it was Sally Benson; she heaved a sigh of relief.
"You wouldn't like a sandwich, would you?" said Sally, standing behind Joanna with an unfinished one in her hand.
"Look, Sally, I don't know what Edward thinks he's doing, but for God's sake let me down. There's been some mistake."
"There was no mistake about the way you've just been beaten, darling. That's a really well caned ass. Did it hurt very much?"
"Agony. Now, Sally, please...."
"Hm. I've always wanted to see you whipped. So has Teddy Arborough."
"Well, he did, once. Listen, I've got to go. After that brute beat me he buggered me. I don't know if that's usual in this dump, but it's what happened to me and unless I ... pretty soon...."
"Good Lord, darling, I do believe I can see some good old gism drooling out of your behind, too. How very impolite. Do you think it would taste nice on my salami?"
"Sally! Please."
"You've come a long way, Jo, in The Territory since first I saw you at the Tennis Club."
"Well, I'm leaving it the day after tomorrow...."
"Even though Edward Arborough wants to marry you?"
"Sally ... please ... I'm going to...."
"Let fly," said Sally Benson calmly, and Joanna did. She hung in tears when it was over.
She was aware of Sally picking up some instrument. The instrument was a hose. The offending matter was swilled off down the drain and then Joanna felt the full blast of the icy jet on her back and loins. She gasped as it struck her. But she gasped more loudly when a stiff-bristled brush was rubbed down her skin, all over. Sally might have been swabbing down some chopping board.
"Ouh! Ow! Not there!" Joanna cried as she approached her well-wealed buttocks.
"A skinned hare, that's what you're going to look like, on the right cheek at least," were the comforting words that were returned her. "Heavens, how lovely and pink and rosy and excited you look from behind, my dear. Now let's try in front. I'm sure your nips are in shape for a little...."
"Good Lord, what a row," said Edward Arborough calmly, as he came in. A porcelain lamp lit overhead. "Spare my eardrums, dear. You know how sensitive they are."
He was dressed like some hussar of old. Released, Joanna stood before him, dripping and penitent and wet, aware only of her body. The handcuffs still held her arms behind her back.
"You kneel," said Sally Benson tenderly, "when your lord and master enters."
Joanna knelt.
A thin whip was coiled over Edward's right shoulder. She knew only one thing. She couldn't stand another touch on her right buttock.
She knelt.
As in a dream, Sally Benson bent her curled red head and spat into Joanna's face. Joanna did not move. Sally collected her saliva and spat again. A gob hit the right eyeball, but Joanna only blinked.
"A slave must know her place. Lick my shoes, Joanna."
Joanna licked her shoes. The boots were imperiously high-heeled, the soles caked in straw and muck.
"I've just been cleaning out the stables, dear, so get a good taste. Come on, we want to see real slave slobber there, get to work."
"Good," said Edward Arborough tenderly, "very good."
When Joanna straightened, Sally spat. This time she spat on the boarding of the floor.
"Lick it up," she said politely.
Joanna stiffened. Her gorge rose. They were pushing her too far.
"You'll beg to before we're finished with you," said Sally Benson calmly.
She went to the fireplace again and picked up a cigarette. "Watch," she commanded. Still kneeling, Joanna watched, her arms behind her.
Edward Arborough uncoiled his whip. There was a feathering motion of his right arm, a sibilance of air overhead, and a sudden, popping snap. The cigarette in Sally Benson's mouth was alight, and she drew on it gratefully.
"Thanks, old timer," she said.
Joanna shivered. She stood up.
"This has gone far enough. I don't know what you two are trying to prove...."
The air whispered behind her and there came a crack like a pistol shot. She jumped. But the whip-tip had merely smacked the air inches to her right. Edward snapped the snake-like thing again, inches from her left.
Joanna hesitated fractionally, then ran. There was another snide murmur in the air and suddenly she realized that she was being held at the waist, as if by a dancer. She froze as she realized it was the whip. It curled itself gracefully round her waist, once, twice, thrice, and then as she stared, sickened and disbelieving, the braided tail ripped a furrow by her navel. Before the true pain came she had time to stare at the theatrically scarlet dye that encarmined her there, and then she was running again. This time she was screaming.
Edward wrapped the whip round her left ankle. Joanna experienced another mighty jerk and, upended, went crashing to the floor. She lay on her belly, panting and terrified, until the whip flecked at the flesh of her bare right bottom. Before she realized what had happened it had bit at her left. With a yell she shot her hands back. Only to catch them off in terror as the tail fell across her right, bloodying the knuckles. She fell back breathless, gaping in panic. As if hypnotized, she saw the whip curl again, tried to squirm to avoid it, only to find it following her. The tail plucked agonizingly across her back, jerking her onto her belly.
In that position he flecked her twice again. Crazed with pain (all she knew was that she couldn't feel another!), she rolled over and tried to crawl away. The whip slashed down a thigh.
"Nooooo!" she screamed.
"We thought you'd see reason, and realize your true position eventually," Sally said in a comforting tone of voice, when Joanna was once more installed, kneeling, before her. And she spat hard on the floor.
"Lick it up."
This time Joanna panted to obey, her tongue rasping the worn boards. She was frenzied with fear.
"Maybe you would like the last of this sandwich, after all," said Sally Benson in the same kindly tone, "only flavored first."
She reached under her apron in front, and rubbed there a moment. When she produced the remains of the sandwich a second later, Joanna though she was going to be given it to eat, and held her mouth wide open, ready. Instead, Sally Benson put it lethargically into her own mouth and chewed, reflectively. After which she spat it on the floor.
This time Joanna didn't have to be told. She threw herself on the gobby morsels, as if famished.
"Nice," said Edward Arborough, "very nice."
"Mustn't litter, must we," said Sally Benson, thoughtfully. "You know, there's one thing. I've always wanted to see Joanna whipped. I mean really punished, as she will be in one of those Gladiator Camps if she elects to stay, but then of course she isn't going to stay, is she?"
Joanna gave a massive shudder. "Please, please."
"She was apparently buggered."
"A tight circlet, I don't doubt," said Edward Arborough ironically.
"A very viscous flower, Teddy dear. An anxious moment, no doubt. Why don't you plumb the depths?"
"Please," said Joanna, "please."
"Is it married?" asked Sally, musing.
"Evidently not. It got a divorce."
"Would it like to sit on the bar for a while, maybe, while that thin rail of yours digs into its well-fashioned quim?"
"Or some electrical treatment, perhaps?"
"Impalement on that nice fat dildo of yours, Edward, with the pencil spurs to dig in if it doesn't keep erect. I tell you what, my dear."
"What?"
"Let's see how well it can do a slave kiss, shall we?"
"Good idea."
This time the whip shivered lazily over her spine, seemed to hang there a second, while she waited its bite in helpless despair and abandon, then it dug like an asp, plucking up the very base of her flaccid right cheek. She screamed and twisted.
"Very musical," pronounced Sally Benson. "Now give me the slave kiss, if you please."
Joanna stumbled on her knees to obey as if her life depended on it. She thrust her head under the apron in front. The whip sang again.
"EEEEE!"
"Idiot! The slave kiss, moron." Sally Benson showed her back. Suddenly Joanna saw that under the black apron skirt she wore no usual breeches. She glued her cheeks to the two warm, overhanging cheeks before her, gathering her saliva as she did so. "The tongue right up or we'll ... yes, that's very good indeed ... make it stiff and push!"
Joanna's breath rushed harshly through flared nostrils, as if mad, beside herself. Mouth open, she heard her own snuffling and breathing and then, as if from an eon away, a dulcet voice declaiming, "You've heard of a brown nose, my dear. Well now, let's see one."
How it ended, she never knew. She had sucked his smug cock, or had she? She was driving hell for leather along the last of the deserted throughway (let them try and punish her now!) and when she reached the estate she was unconscious, oblivious and blank.
Putting the car away in the garage, she came to herself. Had she indeed been mad? What horrible thing had ever possessed her, then? This night, as' she walked to the main house, was common and ordinary. So what was this life that she felt? Was she alive?
Cynthia and Alec were having a pre-dinner drink in the living-room.
Joanna said, "I got a Guarder. Do you mind if I take a stiff one?"
She went to the drinks tray.
"Bad luck, you," said Cynthia. She was her usual warm self.
Joanna wanted to reach out yearningly, absolutely.
Carrying the glass to her lips she said, "Yes, and that wasn't the worst of it all. After I'd been beaten, and, and buggered, I stopped off on the road to ... relieve myself at Mavis' place. But I must have mistaken the route, 'cos I never did find it, though I'm sure I took the right turning, and I ended up at Edward Arborough's."
"Well?" she said, in the aware silence that ensued.
"But," said Alec in a gentle voice, "Teddy lives nowhere in that direction at all. You must have made a mistake, Joanna."
"No mistake," she said grimly. "He whipped me all too well."
One hand went to the spot on her belly where the whip had woven round. She rubbed it ruminatively. All at once she realized there was no weal there at all. At the same moment she knew that her skirt still hung moist on her buttocks on the right. So the maid ... she looked down quickly at her left ankle, where he had wrapped his whip like ... there was no sign there at all!
Hastily she added, "Look, you. Don't try to give me that. I tell you Sally Benson was with him. She even egged him on."
Both of them stared at her steadily.
"Darling," said Cynthia in a consoling tone of voice at last, "Roy and Sally were killed in an auto accident this morning. She could hardly ... I mean, you must have been dreaming...."
"Announcing the departure of Flight 023 for Nairobi, Cairo, Athens, Rome...."
"Goodbye, love," said Cynthia pushing up her peerless face for the ritual airport peck. Joanna kissed it passionately.
"I hate to say," said Alec, holding out his hand.
She managed a "brave" smile. "You knew best," she admitted. "Goodbye, you both, and bless you. Thank you-God bless you-for everything you have done to me."
Her heart was gone, she had no more spirit. She turned miserably to the tote-bag she had brought with her on arrival. A few settlers were seeing their relatives off, dressed in bush shirts and shorts against the heat. Joanna's feet faltered. There was no turning back. At least not now. Nothing had been solved, after all.
"Goodbye, good people," was what she said.
She stumbled from them, in the silly line that led to an airport official. A tall woman dressed in boots and tight white breeches. Suddenly, preparing her papers, Joanna recognized her. And she knew Joanna.
"How you like your beating, Mrs. Swanne?" she said good-naturedly.
"I never knew it could hurt so much on the hands," said Joanna, smiling bravely.
Then she was crossing the scalding tarmac. Perhaps she had received a compass. Now she could find her way. The road to the great mass of metal called an airplane was narrow and winding, it led through dark meadows, and past soulful lakes. But it would rise to high summits at last, for every pleasure, as St. Peter knew, was answered by its pain.
Perhaps that was why, counting her blessings, she was suddenly turning, running for all she was worth, as it from the devil of orthodoxy herself, pelting down the melting tarmac, past the slackly lounging officials, the gunless girls in their tight white breeches, into the hot little oven of the tiny Shaftesbury airport, crying, "Please, please."
Alec and Cynthia had already gone, but there was another figure standing there, seasoned and tanned, his tawny eyes a-flicker, his mouth querulously sarcastic. She knew he had come to see her off.
She flung herself into the arms of Edward Arborough.
