Wanda dropped the last clam into her bucket, scuffed her bare toes through the wet sand, and headed daintily across the dry hot drift above the water line to the trees. She felt certain it must be time for her Tie; Dick might be waiting. She herself did not see that time mattered all that much. But Dick was a stickler for such things. As far back as she could remember he had always quoted that "what was worth doing was worth doing well," and taught her the precept that if you let yourself get slack and careless in the little things, you would very soon be getting slack and careless in the big things too! She understood how right he was in this. Dick was always right. He was a dear, and so nice to belong to.
Sure enough, he was waiting. Not exactly tapping his toes in irritation, but when she came into view he glanced at the watch that still kept time for them after all the years. "You've been 'Wanda-tog' again," he accused cheerfully. The pun was a small joke between them, aimed at the teenager's roaming daydreams.
"Oh, darling, I'm sorry!" Wanda stood on tiptoe and mischievously kissed the tip of his nose. "I'll just get these ready and then you can have me."
Dick watched with affection as the lithe slenderness in the tight slip of cotton dealt with her catch and put the pot to simmer on the hot embers of the fire that never quite died. With a grimace of censure at his pretended impatience, she combed her hair and set in it a fresh bloom she had gathered on the way. Without pause she went to the two waiting posts, shrugged the cotton into a small ruffle at her feet, and positioned herself centrally between the upright timbers that had been anchored firmly with rocks and sand; she had never succeeded in even making them shiver, so well had Dick planted them. Dick the staunch and reliable, he did everything so well! Happily, Wanda looked to either side, the loops of strap were just right, she wriggled her hands through them and mockingly stuck out her tongue at the man who watched. She stood with arms fully stretched out at shoulder level while he tugged the leather bands tight and buckled them. Even in this, Dick had been meticulous. He had drilled holes so that the straps passed back and forth within the wood and fastened at the back. This left the loop that confined Wanda's wrists neat and free and untrammeled for its purpose. Dick had taught her that this was the "Esthetics of the Thing." It was most important to him, and it had become most important to her too. She would now be irritated and out of sorts with any Tie that was not neat and tidy and safe.
Wanda watched her master disappear within the house that he had built long ago. It wasn't really a house, but they called it that. Dick would write or sleep while the clams gently cooked and Wanda enjoyed her Tie. Mostly she enjoyed it very much. She might never have done so had it not been for Dick's careful tuition in the art and emotion of submission, but long ago he had guided her into the exciting fun of striving to free herself and finding that she could not, and of the gift of projecting herself into a private world of dreams while she was held by strap or cord or rope or chain, or some of the other simply hilarious confinements he had devised. Her Ties were an intensely private and personal happiness. She could not envision a life without them, they had always been there.
Like the original Eve, Wanda knew not that she was naked. The word had never existed in the quite considerable vocabulary that Dick, a bookish man, had made certain she acquired. She wore the slip, or she did not wear the slip, they were the only states she knew. She herself did not want to bother with the slip, it was a bit of a nuisance and always needed washing. But Dick insisted, just as he insisted that she remove it for the Tie. It was a ritual as immutable as the Tie itself. She looked down at the tiny garment and wondered if she should wash it today or tomorrow. Her eyes then followed her own femaleness up as far as she could view herself, so that she wondered once again if she would like to be a lovely brown all over as were her arms and legs, or whether the tawny gold of the rest of her was truly as beautiful as Dick insisted. That was the only purpose of the slip. It hid her body from the sun enough that her tan was shaded in a way that made a differential between her Tie and the rest of the time. Actually, Wanda was quite pleased with herself.
Dick often called her his "Golden Girl" and told her she was even more beautiful than the island on which they lived.
Wanda was never certain how long her Ties would last. That was what made them good, of course, the delicious suspense. Dick left her fastened as the mood took him, or as the exigencies of her duties might dictate. Wanda always prepared the meals, so she could feel fairly certain of being released in time to perform that function. But sometimes, when in playful spirits, Dick might conclude the preparation of their food and leave her tied. On such occasions he would feed her with a spoon, and there would be no telling at all how long her Tie would last. He did this rarely, but enough to keep her always on the qui vive and aware that her return to freedom lay solely in his hand. It was all the greatest fun and made a tremendous bond for them to share.
The Tie was never used to punish her; that would have spoiled their mystique, they were quite separate from such intent. True, she had to be tied when she was punished, but that was purely coincidental as a practical mechanic of the occasion. She was not punished often, not nearly as often as she wished to be. Her whippings took a great many shapes and forms and covered a surprising range of severities. They had come to be her painful pathway to The Reward. Wanda always thought of The Reward as being in capital letters. She received it after being whipped, and had come to realize how appropriate a time it was.
The weekly "Girls' Penalty," as Dick had taught it, had nothing to do with her other whippings; it had no relation whatsoever to the business of being punished for something she had done or failed to do. Every Friday she was whipped because she was a girl. Men did not get whipped, it was their task to whip the girls. This worked out very well and was sensibly logical. Girls needed to be whipped once a week so that they didn't get too cheeky, or forget to be obedient and pay proper attention to their daily tasks. It had never occurred to Wanda to contest such reasoning, for her its rationale was patently obvious.
Wanda's "Girls' Penalty" every Friday was a ritual. But, unlike most rituals, it had never become mechanical or commonplace. It was always her bottom that received the strokes of whatever instrument Dick might choose. The rest of Wanda's person was reserved for those whippings she provoked by her own behavior, but the other factors varied as much as did her Tie. The "Penalty" was never severe but, at the same time, it was never just a token. It was very real, something to be considered in the functions of her week. Its approach was a subject for amused comment by both of them. Wanda cheerfully tolerated a good deal of teasing about the state of her derriere, and the dark and dreadful hints of what awaited her on Friday. She loved being teased, and adored the man who did the teasing.
Taking the clams into consideration, Wanda guessed she would remain strapped to the twin posts for a couple of hours. She looked along the satiny columns of her arms to the bands about her wrists; they were more than snug, they were tight. But being broad and of leather they did not cut or impede circulation. She tugged experimentally, but neither hand would move; she knew herself quite helpless. This was as it should be! Comfortably enough she settled down to wait. She had long since become inured to the fatigues of the many positions in which Dick placed her. Acceptance defeated them. Some could tire her still, a pleasant weariness, but for most she had adapted postures, within the confining strictures, which enabled her to drift away into a delightful dream world of her own.
It had been Dick, of course, who had explained how the enforced immobility of being bound could free the mind to roam into enchanted lands in ways it would never do when the limbs were free. Wanda fell easily into the habit. She was able to defeat physical discomfort by rejection or by the supple youthfulness of adaptation. The way in which she stood now with arms outstretched would have been tiring to most, but not to her. Instinctively she leaned into or against the bands about her wrists, relaxed without tension, a naiad reaching out to touch the twin pillars between which her nudity was a golden statue.
Musing lazily, Wanda thought, as she often did, of the story of The Swiss Family Robinson, and how they themselves had been as fortunate. For her it was legendary stuff holding a mysticism of other places that were not like the Island at all. The boat that had brought them to the Island had been a cornucopia of treasures that had formed the basis for their more than adequate self-sufficiency. But it was not in their store of tools and cord and clothes and pots that Wanda found the substance of dreams. It was in Dick's tales of the out-beyond and the myriad people to be found there that she discerned strange and disquieting possibilities. She did not really believe in them. She and Dick and the Island were the world, how could there be more? Why would there be? She often teased Dick with her disbelief, so that he would shake his head and say he wished she had the right of it.
When Dick came out of the house he gave her a lazy wave of the hand and went to tend the fire and the simmering pot. Wanda tensed, she would now have to guess whether he was just teasing or if she would now actually have her Tie indefinitely prolonged. If it was she who was to make the supper, the straps on her wrists must soon be loosened.
"Want me to unstrap you?" He made it sound as though he's just remembered.
Wanda pretended a first awareness of immobility. "I really don't mind," she said languidly.
They joined in laughter, each reading the other's mind. Dick always knew what was in hers, but Wanda could not always divine his. He loosened the straps upon her wrists, and watched with affection as she luxuriated in a feline stretch. She kissed him and tweaked his ear on her way to the small waiting tasks.
"I saw another ship today," Dick said absently as they ate.
Dick hated the ships. His feeling for them would have been more understandable to the girl had she ever seen one close. But they had never been more than small blurs on the horizon which she viewed with about the same interest as a distant planet in the heavens. That she and Dick had once come from such a distant phenomenon was much like the fable of being found in a cabbage patch.
"Understand, Golden Girl," he continued soberly, "if you're alone and see anything or anybody come to shore, don't go near, run to me."
"Of course I will, darling." Wanda wished he would not worry about something so nearly impossible. She was glad girls didn't have to worry, it was much nicer. To divert him to a more entertaining subject, she added, nonchalantly: "Tomorrow's Friday."
"The weeks do come 'round, don't they? Let's see your bottom."
She had not replaced her slip. She always hoped he would not insist. With effortless fluidity she turned and displayed her round behind for his inspection.
"O.K. kid. You're a bloomin' miracle. Not a mark."
"You don't try hard enough, darling," she accused. "Sometimes the marks used to last me all week."
He chuckled. "It's not my hand that's lighter. It's just nature at work. That lovely little seat of yours has toughened itself up. I'll have to compensate."
When morning came, Wanda faced the day with her customary tingling of excitement that was part of Friday. Between getting her "Girls' Penalty" in the morning and her Tie in the afternoon it was a very full day, especially if she was allowed to prepare lunch and supper. But even if she was not allowed, she reflected humorously, it could only mean that her female privilege had been extended. On Fridays she never got to go to the beach for a swim or whatever there was to be found there, or to the tiny valley in which she gathered herbs. Friday was fun, but she was glad enough it came but once a week.
They indulged in a palaver as to what would be used on her. The relative merits of what was available were frankly discussed, the pros and cons flitting back and forth as though neither knew Dick had already made his decision. The Island had been generous in its provision of lengths of various canes and sundry withes. It had provided stocks for the whips Dick had fabricated from material on the boat. It had even provided the ultimate weapon by way of a storm which cast ashore a giant sting ray, the slender tail of which put to shame all other instruments by which a weal could be placed on female skin; it was a beautiful, tapering, slim length of wickedness only used when Wanda was to be punished, and that was rarely and with restraint. Both recognized it as something to be feared as well as treasured.
Whilst the Friday "Girls' Penalty" had never been allowed to fall into the rut of the mundane, it had found its way into a zig-zag path, never mentioned but enjoyed. Dick studiously strove to keep their Friday Ritual within Wanda's margin of tolerance. True, he went up and down the scale with cane or whip within that latitude, so she would always be uncertain and know suspense, but he had come to gauge her reactions so well that he easily maintained a teetering balance between play and pain. She, on her part, had long ago evolved a conviction that, no matter how she might squeal while being punished, she must at all cost of fortitude and clenched teeth, maintain a light and impudent insouciance while the strokes lapped across the rotundities of her nether cheeks for the duration of her "Penalty."
On the present occasion, one of the more pliant canes had been chosen as the implement of the day. From this important decision they drifted happily to a choice of the way in which she should be fastened to receive it. This led them to the simplicity of the plank and the rocks. Among the many gifts the surging tides had left upon their shore had been a stout and smoothly planed plank of such a weight and size that, when its ends had been placed upon convenient rocks, it made an ideal seat or bench which they had converted to their special need by affixing at near midway a small curved slab of half-round wood, over which Wanda, with the limber suppleness of youth, had no difficulty in flowing the smooth curves of her loins so that her bottom was well protruded in an esthetic symmetry typical of all their play.
Negligently, Wanda arranged herself. There could be no cheating. Holes had been drilled in appropriate spots to enable loops of cord to entrap each ankle, each thigh below the first curve, and lastly the trim waist. Each was wedged into a tight cinch by sticks inserted beneath and levered as a fulcrum. This neat arrangement left the lissome length of the maiden free above her waist, but totally immobilized below.
This left Wanda the option of resting cheek down or raising herself on her forearms so that she might enjoy a view of what was taking place. True, the latter imposed a drastic curve upon an already well curved spine. But life on The Island had made her far more pliant than the rod about to be used upon her flesh. She raised herself now and looked back over one shoulder.
"Gosh, Dick, I do protrude beautifully, don't I?"
"Nice girls don't admire themselves in public," he admonished. He picked up her discarded slip and shook it at his naked captive. "Soiled again!"
She pouted. "It was getting breakfast. I didn't have time... be a darling and add a bit on 'The Penalty,' please. Don't save it up for my next punishment."
"You know perfectly well that's cheating, so I'll add a bit more this time and also put it on the list. You're quite incorrigible the way you try and twist me."
The naked nymph curved upon her plank stuck out a pink and pointed tongue. "I'll tear the list up," she promised. "I think you add all sorts of things without telling me. I'm far too well behaved to get punished as often as I am."
"What about the things you add yourself?" he jibed slyly. "Think I haven't been able to tell...?"
Wanda blushed. She had thought her forgeries perfect. "I refuse to discuss the matter further," she retorted haughtily, then swiftly turned eyes forward as Dick swung back his arm.
A bright repartee, as though nothing untoward was taking place, was de rigueur. The first stroke was always cringingly awful so that her nerve ends curled and cried their protest, but it also demanded her total nonchalance. "Really, darling, not quite up to form, are you?"
Dick could then have belted her helpless flesh with all his strength and made some sort of comment such as: "Well how's that for size?" Often he wanted to, but he refrained because it would have been outside the margins within which "The Penalty" remained valid. The distinctions were important to them. He knew perfectly well he had severely hurt the tender skin he had just slashed, and that Wanda's airy remark had been sheer bravado. But that was the game... it delighted both of them.
Having surmounted the hurdle of number one, Wanda's courage was equal to raising herself and looking back so that she could witness the rise and fall of number two. The snickering awfulness of the cane's arc was an emotional poignancy that she returned to watch again and again with a fearful fascination. It never seemed quite possible that her bottom lay at the end of the downward slash, but it always did! The pain that irradiated her being at the thud of impact was so exquisite that she would often close her eyes and deeply inhale through flared nostrils as though savouring every nuance of a perfume too precious to lose. But her lips remained tight closed. Now, turning to watch herself receive numbers three and four, she inquired absently: "Darling, for supper, would you like the fish fried or should I do that bouillabaisse thing?"
"Fried, silly girl, you know perfectly well you won't have time for the other." He delivered her number five with commendable restraint.
Wanda had tossed in the bouillabaisse as a diversionary tactic. Had Dick fallen for it she would have gained points, but his failure to succumb to feminine guile in no way dampened her mood. She lay flat, rested her cheek on her hands and said, with utter impertinence, "Wake me when you're finished, darling."
It was, of course, too much! All tolerances have limits, indulgence should extend only so far. Pretending to doze, the naked girl was, inwardly, a seething excitation of suspense. She had lit a fuse. Picking up the gage impudently tossed at his feet, Dick carefully selected the strip of unmarked skin upon the pert derriere, teetered in perfect balance upon his toes, and cut a swift and perfect stroke of pure cruelty.
"I'll leave you for your nap," he told her casually and strolled away.
Wanda was never quite sure why she provoked the occasional agony during her "Girls' Penalty," under circumstances which inhibited normal response. Her code of the stiff upper lip made the stroke, when she achieved it, doubly and trebly hard to bear. If only she could scream and beat her fists, as she would have done during punishment, it would have made it so much easier. But she was testing herself; she knew she was! She was not specifically sure why, but it had to do with Dick. She wanted to match his excellence, to show by means of her "Girls' Penalty," which was a thing exclusively feminine and all her own, that she had the quality to surpass and to transcend. It maintained her Code.
The naked girl upon the plank wondered if Dick knew the supreme heroism it was for her to remain passively limp when the lightning cut her flesh. She was sure he must; he had to know to make such awfulness worthwhile. Had she not inured herself on other occasions to the torture of what she provoked, her listless lack of response would have been miraculous. It was an act bordering on the spiritual mortification of the flesh, a sublimation by pain. She lay quiescently while every nerve and sinew screamed for the relief of sound and motion. Curling and cringing inwardly with the sickening throb of the impact suffusing every scrap of flesh, she thought only of Dick and of her tremendous sense of oneness with the man who was her father and her brother and her love. Wanda did not think of him as such, but so it was.
She had won her victory. It was a glorious feeling when the first bitter wickedness of the pain began to recede and seep away. Its place was taken by jubilation as she counted her small victory. Wanda wanted very much to make lucid to herself the impulses that were increasingly at work within her femininity. All she could think of were the sort of hackney phrase that Dick would use in satire. She contented herself with these. Subduing a giggle, she labeled herself as coming through each tussle with pain as a 'better and stronger girl'. It was not the resounding declaration she desired, but it would have to do.
The welt she had just received would be a 'three-weeker'. Wanda had become expert in estimating the length of time needed for her skin to renew itself after a weal had raised its ridge of tender flesh. She had no intention of further provocation today. The rest of what she had received and what was still to come would be gone in the seven days before her next Friday. But the single wound from which she now recovered would remain as a reminder for a long time, just as certain other portions of her person still bore evidence of punishments long past. Thus was a girl kept forever aware she was a girl. It had a logic as tidy as Dick's mind.
Wanda's "Girls' Penalty" was rarely dispensed in a single installment. True, it was occasionally dealt with in such summary dispatch, but mostly it was spread out. This had the advantage of enabling her to absorb far more strokes and of having time between them in which to reflect on the feminine fact that she was a girl. It all had a delightful logic that left no room for doubts. Tentatively she tried to reach the fastenings that held the lower half of her nakedness rigid and immovable. It was a foregone premise that she would fail, but this never stopped her from trying. How delicious would be the sight of Dick's face if he returned to find the plank bare of its warm and pulsating adornment! The thought justified the try. That effort negatively disposed of, she was bound firmly and tightly without hope of freeing herself, she gave her mind to speculation on the balance of her day.
It was a quite pointless rumination, Dick would always confound her, but it was fun and all she had to do until he returned to whip her further. She guessed she would collect thirty or forty moderate strokes and would then be left to meditate for an hour or two before being released to prepare lunch. Often she could prolong lunch by getting Dick involved in animated conversations, but if he divined her intent she would be hustled off to the twin posts or the tree, or whatever he'd thought of for her period of meditation, and safely installed in her "Tie" for the afternoon. She noticed that Fridays were rarely compassionate; her Tie usually lasted a long, long time. Wanda supposed, quite without cynicism, that Dick planned it so to give her bottom time to recover from the ardours of its morning.
"Tell me, Golden Girl, how was that last one?" Dick was back, flexing the cane while studying her behind.
"One of your better efforts," Wanda conceded. Then lied, "I loved it."
"Want another?"
"Well, perhaps not during my 'Penalty'."
"Must have stung a bit?"
"I suppose it did. I was thinking of something else at the time." They loved their play. They kept no tally of the points, but they were there.- "There's a lovely bit of skin across here." He traced the spot with the tip of his cane. "It's inviting. May I?"
"I'd rather you didn't."
"You don't mean it actually hurts!"
"Of course not, silly, but I do think you should keep such energy for when I've done something wrong. I've been an awfully good girl lately."
He gave her claim consideration. "Soiled slip, tough clams, late breakfast, and, up to now, a good deal of impudence. D'you call that being a good girl?"
She was fallible and female; he would always be able to think of faults. Wanda knew herself vulnerable. "I'm supposed to be getting my "Girls' Penalty," she said with hauteur, "not a lecture."
Dick proceeded to whip her. Wanda thought it a bit unfair that he could always conclude a losing argument with the cane or the whip. But, after all, she was a girl! She had so many advantages it would be unsporting to complain about being whipped. It was a small thing compared to the advantage of being female. She raised herself and looked back critically at the pink stripes she was collecting on her skin. The pain, compared to the one outrageous stroke, had diminished to what she could bear with just a gasp or the hiding of her tell-tale face within the sanctuary of her hands. "That's an awfully good length of cane, darling," she said approvingly.
"It is, isn't it!" Dick agreed. "Let's try it lengthways." He moved from her side to the rear. His next stroke precisely crossed all the others on the bottom cheek he had chosen.
"It does hurt more," Wanda conceded judicially as though passing judgment on a bottom other than her own.
Dick gave her the next on her other cheek. His strokes alternated back and forth on the two sections of her seat. "Not hurting too much?" He asked considerately.
"It does hurt quite a lot, darling," Wanda conceded unwillingly. "Would you like to go and read a book or something? I can wait."
"I don't want to cheat you."
"Honestly, darling, I wouldn't feel cheated, not a bit." Wanda gasped as a vigorous cut crossed others still burning. "Do go and finish your diary while I quietly think what a lucky girl I am."
"Quite sure?"
"Oh yes!" Her affirmative was fervent.
Dick left her. She wondered why it was that her "Girls' Penalty" had latterly seemed a more emotion-charged experience than it had originally been. She felt sure this was true for both of them. It had something to do with her growing up and the formation of the firm cones of her breasts. The growing up process was a mystery to her. Dick had obviously completed it. But how long did it last for a girl, and what was involved? Wanda was conscious of change in herself and in Dick's regard for her. His attention was not less; it was different.
In the luggage frantically tossed in the boat they had found an odd assortment of books. Under Dick's tutelage Wanda had swiftly learned to read and had avidly perused their tiny library again and again. From her reading she had formulated a strange and jumbled vision of the legendary world that Dick insisted was actually 'in being' somewhere beyond the planet's curve. He had worked hard to give her a perspective between Edgar Rice Burroughs, Marcus Aurelius and James A. Michener. But since she had little real belief in the truth of any of it, he shrugged cheerfully enough and left her mind in peace. But often, now, she would recall a situation or a sentence and find it familiar within her widening comprehension.
Whilst the remainder of her "Penalty" licked and slapped away at her tightly fastened bottom, Wanda managed to chat innocently about the small garden she cultivated, and to do a bit of teasing about her Tie. "You never have remembered to hang me up by my thumbs, Dick."
He paused in his attentions to her scarlet seat, and pretended to consider her outrageous reminder. Dick had been amused, and quite satisfied, by Wanda's fertile imaginativeness in devising Ties for herself that ran all the way from the neatly practical to the wildest fantasies of discomfort. He was never quite certain how serious she was in some of her creations for immobility, and she in turn was never sure which of them, if any, he might put into practice. Occasionally he would use one of her more colourful flights of fancy as a punishment, and to keep within bounds her ever bubbling exuberance. It was all in keeping with the game that absorbed so much of their life together.
Thus it was that, after lunch, Wanda stood beneath the Monkey Pod tree that provided shade adjacent to their dwelling, tossed away her slip, and crossed her wrists behind her back.
"This one's your idea, Sweetheart," Dick reminded her dryly as he tied them tight and firm. "You thought of it a long time ago, remember?"
Wanda remembered. Looking down she saw the exposed root and knew what to do. When the knot which robbed her of her hands was tied, she knelt so that each of her ankles rested on the cable like tentacles from the tree. Dick tied them to it about a foot apart. This left the naked girl kneeling on the soft soil beneath the shade of the big old tree, a not too arduous pose for his victim's female slenderness.
But there was more! This extra small refinement was also of her own devising. A stake had been driven in the ground a yard behind her back. It reared its stubby length a bare thirty inches high. From it dangled a cord which Dick attached to that securing her hands. He pulled it to a moderate tension so that her arms were drawn back only a few inches. As a tether it remained relatively loose, yet it would exert upon the captive a coercion not instantly apparent. He stepped back to admire the picture of a sweetly kneeling girl, nodding in approval.
"You look gorgeous," he assured her. "I'm going to leave you, Golden Girl, while I do a bit of work on the boat." He gave her an airy wave of the hand, to which she could not respond, and casually sauntered away.
Left alone, the Golden Girl proceeded to research her own ingenuity. She was always honest in her inventions in that they provided no cunning avenue of escape. But it was new; a girl might as well find out for sure! She began her cautious struggle with the cords.
First, she sat back upon her heels. This had the effect of getting her closer to her tether so that her arms were no longer pulled slightly back; now they were raised. Her wrists crossed higher at her waist. She could not lower questing fingers to the cords on her ankles, nor could she by any contortion she contrived raise them to loosen her tether from the stake. Defeated, she once again raised herself to kneel as she had been when tied. She could do it, but not with ease. The pull on her arms was always there. A few more motions convinced her that she had planned well. She could kneel erect or, still kneeling, she could sit back upon her heels. Her hands and arms would always be subject to the authority of the stake. Wryly, she reflected that each posture would give her a little easement and a little pain. The alternative made it different, but she suspected she would come to wish she had never thought of it.
It was on the following day that Wanda earned a punishment.
She had spent the morning on the beach and had caught several of a kind of fish Dick particularly enjoyed when cooked in a way she herself had experimented with. Enthused by the idea of grilling them beside the surf, she built a fire and, having got it to a fierce flame, dampened it down with fresh fuel while she went in search of sticks on which to impale her catch. She had not hurried. When she returned, a fine column of white smoke was lazily drifting skyward.
Wanda stood askance, horrified by her own carelessness. With bare feet she could not kick the fire asunder, nor had she a pail by which to douse it with water. Quickly her gaze roved in search of any shell or board or flat rock by which she could bury the smoking sin with sand. It was in this moment of ineffectual groping that Dick arrived, running, shouting, but armed with a shovel. When the last wisp of smoke and flame had died beneath his frantic shovels full of sand, they stood and eyed each other in a diffident awkwardness.
The guilty girl knew full well the measure of her fault. She had never fully understood Dick's horror of detection by beings they never saw. But she had been taught that smoke was utterly taboo. It could be the instrument of their discovery. She had accepted it as she had accepted all his instruction. Dick was right. Dick knew so much! She stood before him, ashamed of her disobedience, angry with herself.
"Alright, darling, I have to be punished. Don't feel bad about doing it." She looked at her master and her love, not seeking remission, but desperately wanting forgiveness.
Dick would always forgive his Golden Girl. But he was adamant in his unswerving adherence to the Codes that governed their life together. Wanda had long since divined that, whilst he looked forward to Friday as much as she did, her punishments were something else again. In the act of punishing her, she knew him to be prey to emotions she did not understand. She did not mind. She knew no reason why she should be privy to every thought within his mind in the same way that hers was an open book to him. All was as it should be. When she earned punishment she got it and was glad-not while it was happening, but before and after.
The concern faded from Dick's face. He turned his attention to the matter she had placed on the agenda. He grinned at her commiseratingly. "It was just yesterday you got "The Penalty," he reminded her.
The same thought was in Wanda's mind, but she gave no sign. Instead, she lifted the brief bit of material at her back and twisted to survey as much of her behind as she was able. "It's pretty well faded," she said reassuringly. "There's just that big one, isn't she a beaut'! Besides, since it's a punishment, you don't have to use my bottom at all; there's all the rest of me."
There was indeed! Surveying her loveliness, Dick found himself loathe to place weals upon it. This was a quite new scruple. He had always found an exquisite joy in artistically whipping the slim nudity. The striations he cut upon the youthful flesh were the fulfillment of a dream, the ultimate in human experience.
"Suppose I don't whip you this time, Golden Girl... What say I tie you in one of those fantastic improbabilities you're always thinking up?"
The day before, Wanda would have agreed readily enough. It would be a kind of painful fun. But yesterday had given her a glimpse of a kind of discomfort she had not enjoyed. The hours she had spent kneeling with her ankles bound to the root and her hands tethered to the stake had taxed her to a degree in which her usual meditations had been defeated by her Tie. She had been too clever for her own comfort. She had resolved to be less inventive. Dick's Ties were best.
"That's sweet of you, darling, but no, I'd like to be whipped, please."
"You'd like to be...!" He grinned quizzically.
"Oh, Dick, don't make me ask for these awful things!" She chided cheerfully enough. "Of course I don't WANT to be whipped... I'm just being polite, and I do think it's the best thing for me today."
"You're scared of those things you're always telling me to do to you," he accused, laughing. "Didn't enjoy yesterday, did you!"
Wanda flushed. Trust Dick to know! "Well alright then!" She confessed. "I didn't enjoy it." She took her confession a step further. "I'm scared of some of that nonsense I've told you."
"In that case it's perfect for your punishment."
Was he joking? She could not tell. The whip suddenly seemed an old friend. "I'd sooner be whipped, Dick, if I may."
"If I whip you I'll use the Manta tail."
Wanda hoped he did not see her flinch. As usual, he was going to be a jump ahead of her. They bantered a lot about her punishments as they did about all else, but when it came right down to the act she was not supposed to enjoy it and there was no obligation to remain brightly cheerful while it was done to her. But the Manta tail! Wanda shrugged, it was bound to be used on her sometimes! She had not felt its excoriating impact for a long while and, by their Code, her foolishness merited its kiss. "O.K. Dick." She grinned to show she was not hurt by his choice. "I don't mind a bit." Her disclaimer held truth: if it pleased him to use the Manta tail on her she would bear its bite without complaint.
"Arms up, y'know, Golden Girl."
She flinched again. Of all the many ways in which she could be tied to be whipped he had chosen the one that exposed her nakedness in its utmost vulnerability. Without thought of what was to happen to her, Wanda gaily kissed his chin. "Come along, darling, I'll cook the fish on the fire at the house. Just for you... The way you like them." She took his hand, together they ran lightly toward the path.
The Island provided everything, even to the sturdy horizontal bough, beneath which Wanda would be whipped. She stood there now, trembling with the strange excitement she always knew at such a time. That it was more intense on this occasion she put down to the use of the Manta tail. Without need of being told, she held out her hands, wrist to wrist in the way Dick liked to tie them for this purpose, and watched as he deftly welded them together with the cord, three strands and the cinching loop through the middle. When he threw the rope over the bough she knew herself delivered to her punishment. Up to that point she might have run or struggled, now she could not! As though watching someone else, she saw her hands go up before her face, up and up until she must throw her head well back to see them at their final elevation.
"I won't suspend you this time, Golden Girl."
Sometimes he did. It made a double punishment. It hurt her wrists wickedly, and she was always terribly shamed by the way she kicked and swayed like a pendulum. She supposed that this time he considered the Manta tail enough. He was actually allowing her heels to rest upon the ground. She dutifully pointed this out to him as an omission. "I'll probably wriggle and jump around," she warned.
He laughed delightedly at her honesty. "I want you to, Sweetheart. We might even take time for some lessons in self control."
"Oh Dick!" she exclaimed in feminine protest. "You know perfectly well I can't stand still or behave or anything else when you use the tail. It's just too awful."
"Something for you to aspire to, Sweetheart. Want me to start?"
What a question to ask a girl at such a time! Wanda longed to make a suitable retort. She tugged at her wrists, she was beautifully held. She supposed they might just as well get her agony under way. She looked back at the frightening thing dangling from Dick's hand. "Shouldn't I have a little suspense first, darling?" she asked hopefully.
He laughed at her obvious ruse. He went to the house, and when he returned he held two shells. They were beautiful products of the sea to which he had done something, the purpose of which the naked girl almost instantly divined. They were cones, wrinkled outside but pearly smooth within their interior concavity. Amused by the girl's breathless pleasure, Dick fitted them over the young breasts and fastened them at her back. Her flesh filled them to perfection. Her eyes glowed with pride.
"Darling, you made those for me!"
"About time," he chuckled. "Those two nice things on your chest are demanding attention. He stepped forward and allowed the sweet pursed lips to kiss him ecstatically.
"Oh, Dick, I know you made them so I won't get cut there while I'm being whipped. But they're so lovely! Can I wear them always?"
"No you can't! I don't want them hiding what they cover right now. You can keep them for special occasions."
She looked at him with little girl tenderness. "Darling... it's worth being whipped. Oh, Dick, you're sweet."
He curled the Manta tail neatly round her waist in a scalding band of fire.
Later, much later when she had ceased to leap and plunge and kick, and the speck of blood bedewed the thin belt of scarlet she now wore around her tummy, the punished girl fought down her moans and said apologetically, "I don't remember it being this awful. Oh darling, I'm so sorry."
He struck her again. This time the tip of the tail snapped across one of the protecting shells, leaving a trail of carmine beneath her armpit. Wanda expended in motion and in sound the agony she could not bear. When she stood, trembling but quiescent, Dick said gently, "If you wish, we'll call that enough for today. It's a terrible whip. The marks you have are the best ever."
For a moment she tensed. "It's always five with the Manta tail, isn't it?" she asked quietly.
"It always has been, but there's no rule... "
"We'll make one! It's five. You owe me three more, darling. I can't help the fuss... don't pay any attention to it." There was no doubt whatever in the delinquent's mind. To stop now would be a disgrace. "I'm ready for number three," she said in a small clear voice.
Long after it was all over, after Wanda had stood tied for two hours to allow the pain to seep through her being and away, there came her reward. The black bandage was placed across her eyes so that she was in a world of total darkness. The sea shells were taken from her breasts, and slowly and indefinably the gentle hands led her to a place of glowing lights and sounds and sensations, a place in which she gasped and moaned in ecstasy in much the same manner as she had previously done in pain. It was quite wonderful! It got better every time.
After the supper Dick had prepared while she stood tied in punishment, they sat and talked as the mood took them. The sun was low, so Wanda insisted on remaining nude so she could admire the wounds the manta tail had made across her skin. There were only five of them, but she was inordinately proud of each. In their way they were things of beauty etched upon a perfect medium. Her flesh would bear their fading marks for weeks.
"It's such a good feeling... afterwards, I mean," she said meditatively in recognition of a recurring miracle.
Dick looked across the fire at her with love. This vibrant slip of female was his creation. Her thoughts and values were his. But she intensified and sublimated them beyond his own ability to do. She was adorable, she was youth! She was an unending exploration. "Would you like me to give you five a day?" he asked, curious.
Wanda took his question seriously and gave it thought before she answered. "Yes, I'd like that. I want to extend the way I feel right now on and on and on. I'm so beautifully at peace and all warm and satisfied." She looked earnestly at the man who had whipped her. "How long was I kicking and howling after each cut... two minutes? Something like that. Which means that for only about ten minutes of something quite unbearable I can buy this lovely glow. It's... well, it's sort of cheap, darling. Am I making any sense?"
Dick nodded. Her animation had reached across the embers and touched him. "Carry on, Golden Girl, you make a lot of sense."
Wanda ran a cautious finger the length of a scarlet stripe vivid beneath her arm. She made a small moue of regret. "They're so lovely, aren't they! But if I had dozens and dozens of them they wouldn't be lovely at all. It's like eating too much or running too hard. It's funny, Dick... as though we're not allowed to have all we want... "
"You're not the first to have made the discovery," Dick said dryly.
"There's something else that affects my wish... " She eyed him shyly. "You've only been giving me my reward after I'm punished for the last few months. It's sort of new, and terribly exciting." She looked at him, seeking guidance. "It's so wonderful, I'm afraid I'd ask for the Manta tail anytime just to get my reward. Is that good or bad, darling?"
It was a poser Dick had been expecting. Within the context of their relationship, there could be but one answer. He made it positive. "It's good, Sweetheart!" He laughed at her earnest features. "But you've already said it: 'we enjoy what we can,' there isn't any ad infinitum."
"I want another reward." Her eyes were bright and challenging. "Dick, darling, give me the Manta tail again... now!"
He had half expected it. She was more woman than child. She was vividly healthily alive. Their island was another Eden which knowledge could destroy. He wished to keep her innocent-always if possible, but certainly well beyond her present age. He had wanted her to read the books and to be literate, but their stories plus her own female intuition must inevitably lead her to correct deductions sooner or later. He wanted it later, much later! He was determined that, marooned as they were, his darling child must never become pregnant. "You've done nothing to earn a punishment," he pointed out reasonably. "So, no Manta tail! Don't be greedy."
But his Golden Girl was hot on the trail of speculations on which she had enjoyed much time to dwell. "Why is it, darling, that girls only get their reward after being punished? It's so lovely! Why can't girls have it any time?"
"Because it's a reward, silly. It helps you over the bad spots. You wouldn't want to be punished without it to look forward to."
His specious logic stymied Wanda momentarily, but she returned to the attack. "You can give me a reward, and I can't help knowing how it's done." She enunciated slowly. "I think I'm blindfolded because it's nicer we don't see each other at the time... I read something in one of the books about turning off the light." She paused, marshalling her rationale. "I'm a girl, but I'm quite sure that if you can do something so beautiful to me, it must be possible for me to do something equally gorgeous for you." She paused, this time frankly for effect. "I'm quite sure I've guessed and figured out what I have to do. You haven't told me because you think I'm still awfully young. But look at these... " She teased her nipples with her middle fingers, the others spread wide as in astonishment. "My breasts have grown so much in the last year. And I know what they're for... ! I read that too. I don't know how old I am, but I'm not as young as you think! Oh darling...!"
Dick sat in a quiet reverence, denying nothing. It was Wanda's hour. It had come sooner than he wished.
The Golden Girl got resolutely to her feet. "Darling, please stand up."
Half in amusement, half in awe, Dick obeyed. "Close your eyes please, and don't cheat. Oh please don't! And don't stop me. If you stop me I'll cry and make a fuss and be thoroughly bad so you'll have to punish me... " Wondering in what strange ways the Serpent may have tutored this naked Eve within their garden, Dick did as she had asked.
With a gasp of exultation, the Golden Girl fell to her knees before her master. Small strong eager hands stripped him of the brief cloth he wore about his loins. Two hot and avid lips engulfed their prey, and a worshipful tongue paid tribute to her love.
The man stood, thankful for her innocence.
* * *
Wanda saw it all and, in her wonder, forgot Dick's stern command. The strange bird, that was a light two seater plane, stuttered and coughed its jerky and uncertain flight from out of the horizon, bumped itself upon the sandy beach and sought destruction on the small rocks that littered its path before the death of its momentum brought its wreckage to a halt.
She had been on the beach repairing a net with a view to fishing. But this she abandoned and, with cautious steps ready for flight, approached the apparition. Female curiosity easily defeating fear.
The woman was heavily overdressed in coveralls, against which the mass of her dark hair was in strange contrast. She bad-temperedly kicked open a jammed door and stepped away to make a disgusted appraisal of the wreck. She paid no attention to the approaching girl until Wanda stood but a few feet away. Irritably she turned. "Oh, Hi! Where's the nearest phone?"
Wanda's expression spelt bafflement.
"Oh, damn and blast! You don't speak English!"
"Just as well as you!" Wanda affirmed defiantly. She had not liked the inference and she did not think much of the woman either, even if she was pretty and still young.
"Well, where the hell am I then?"
"You're on our island, that's where you are!" Wanda felt sure her answer would fail to please, but she had no other.
"Doesn't the bloody place have a name?"
"It's Dick's and mine, that's all."
The woman eyed her, puzzled. "Dammit, it's hot!" In a divestment that Wanda watched with interest, she climbed out of the coveralls to reveal a well curved femininity clothed only in halter and shorts.
"Why are your breasts covered with that thing?" Wanda inquired politely. "Were you all ready to be whipped?"
"Look, kid, I'm in no mood for funnies. Where's the cops, the gendarmes, or the chap in charge?"
Wanda had caught sight of a speeding Dick. "He's running down the beach now," she said sternly. "You'd better be more polite to him than you are to me." She seated herself on a rock, expectantly prepared to be edified.
Under the answers Dick was able to provide, the visitor visibly wilted, but managed to convey an unspoken criticism of a man and a girl who had no phone, no plane and no power launch. "You mean I'm stuck on this damn fool island the same as you!" She made it sound quite unbelievable. Then added, as though to reassure herself, "Of course there'll be a search. I left a flight plan. They shouldn't have any trouble... "
"No one ever comes here," Wanda said happily.
She was ignored, but listened, enthralled by the questions and answers. The woman still regarded herself as a girl. Her name was Phyllis; she was twenty-eight years old; she was a journalist. She had been married twice without progeny and was, at the moment, single. The plane was her own in which she had embarked on a series of island hopping for a feature she was writing for a New York paper. She owned a house in the country in England and an apartment overlooking Central Park in New York. She had been advised against her present flight, but had paid no attention and had embarked alone. The span between the islands concerned had been a bare four hundred miles, a mere nothing. She conveyed an impression of being very busy without time to waste on the nonsensical situation in which she found herself.
Wanda could sense Dick's disquiet. She was jealous of the attention he gave the two new breasts and the trim waist beneath the halter, but pleased that he did not like their owner any more than she. Dick himself was cursing inwardly and making rapid computations of probabilities. With this demanding wench nothing would be easy. She could disrupt the delicate balance of Wanda's faiths. She could cause them to be rescued, willy-nilly whether they liked it or not. If she was rescued, it would be hard for them to remain. In any case, he owed it to Wanda to place her back in the world if the chance arose. It was a thing he had thought of often. But if the rescue efforts missed their island or failed to detect the wreck, it meant there would now be two females in his life, one of which would rebel against all he had built with the girl who, as a malleable child, had fallen to his care. The newcomer was no conformist. She might respond only to force.
"You'll be our guest," he said genially. "But I will ask you to respect our way of doing things."
Phyllis Stafford eyed him dubiously. "You want me to sleep with you?" She seemed incapable of charity in thought or speech.
How good it would be to thrash her! Dick was victim to a wave of desire so great it was hard to resist. He had a momentary vision of a naked woman hanging by her wrists. "It's kind of you." He parried coldly, "but thanks, no."
"I'm a lesbian. You may as well know it."
He longed to be brutal, to make her fall to her knees. "Don't apologize," he said dryly. "Not much scope here, I'm afraid."
"I'll take the girl. You can't be using her or she'd be pregnant."
Dick thought of the Manta tail, not five, but twenty-five. It would make her human. "You'll take nothing but what you're given."
Phyllis Stafford waved an apologetic hand. "Sorry, sorry! I'm not my best. That damn motor! It's ruined my schedule."
"You're alive. Isn't that lucky?"
She considered what was obviously a quaint new thought. "I suppose you're right. Could have gone down in the sea. Bloody nuisance though just the sumo fire and keep a round the clock watch."
"You can if you wish, we won't."
She looked at him incredulously. "You don't want to get off this Robinson Crusoe place?"
"Personally, no. But if a chance arises I owe it to Wanda."
"I don't want to go either," said Wanda decisively.
Phyllis Stafford looked from one to the other. "Both of you got it good, eh! Must be something special. Want to let me in on it?"
"She's frightfully rude, darling." Wanda suggested thoughtfully, "Don't you think she ought to be punished? I'd love to watch while you whip her."
The journalist surveyed the younger girl with fresh interest. "She's kooky, isn't she! Said something before... " She flashed a knowing glance at Dick. "You got something good going here, I'll bet."
He had another entrancing vision of this vixen tied down tight on the whipping bench, the cane flexing in his hands, the curves of her seat livid with weals. "So?" He met her insinuation brusquely.
Phyllis Stafford laughed mockingly. "Oh brother! I can guess it all. I really have horsed things up for you."
"Think a bit further," Dick suggested ominously.
"Oh, no you don't! I'll play, but not the way you're thinking."
"What other way is there for a female?"
"Oh, come off it! If the little quail likes her ass whipped, what of it?"
"I wasn't thinking of Wanda."
Phyllis Stafford considered. She believed she had seen and done everything. She was, above all, an opportunist. "Look, keep a smoke fire going 'round the clock and I'll play it your way."
To Dick, the demanding insistence brought back the memories of a life from which he had escaped, and which Wanda had never known. The probing for advantage, the restless pursuit of ends that mattered little or not at all, was like the opening of a door long shut. He could feel the unease, the surge of stress of a world that would press in upon him, and the girl whose life was his, unless he closed the door back tight. He gazed appraisingly at the tense woman who saw him as a useful pawn. She was beautiful, but driven by urgencies that made her less than female. "Don't bargain," he said firmly. "We want no fire and no deals. Do what you please yourself, I won't stop you."
"Oh brother!" Phyllis sighed disgustedly. She looked from the wreckage of her plane to Wanda and to Dick. "Can't bribe you, eh?"
"If I want you, I'll take you."
"Like hell you will!"
Wanda was shocked. "You mustn't talk to Dick like that!" she protested. "It's not right. He's a man."
"I sort of got that impression, honey. So what?"
"You're simply asking to be punished, y'know."
The newcomer laughed sardonically. "What I dropped into! If it's the way I think, it's going to make one hell of a juicy feature."
"If you get to write it." Dick eyed her levelly. "Don't you understand. The first storm will wash your wreck into the sea. Then you'll have vanished just as Wanda and I. This island seems to have no interest to anyone. It's very small and well away from the shipping lanes."
"I'll be picked up within three days," she sneered. "I'm not a nobody."
They fell into a hostile silence. Wanda picked up her net and walked toward the water. "I'll get the fish, darling. You get the fire good and red. I won't be long." She waded into the surf and did not look back.
Dick glanced at the petulant journalist, shrugged and turned to leave.
Phyllis Stafford sulkily followed him up the beach.
* * *
To Wanda, the advent of the woman from the sky was less disturbing than to Dick. Phyllis Stafford's militancy repelled. It confirmed her belief that the rest of the world was disagreeable and best avoided. She was curious, but that curiosity was aimed purely at the newcomer's temperament and how many thrashings it would take Dick to make her reasonably polite. Humorously, she found herself looking forward to these as to an experiment. Throughout the day, she supposed her Master's tolerance for bad temper was designed only to gauge its depth and the best way of dealing with it. Innocently, Wanda was unconcerned with the implications that left Dick's mind in turmoil. She looked and listened and went about her small tasks. It was not until late afternoon that a communion was established, a communion neither had planned.
Dick had gone to the wreck to see if there was anything of value to salvage before the waves took it. The two girls sat, uncertain, busy with their own thoughts until, suddenly, Wanda started up with an exclamation, "It's time for my Tie. Dick's forgotten... "
"You're damn odd wearing a tie, kid." Phyllis was puzzled.
"Not that kind of tie, silly!" The younger girl eyed her companion with concern. "It must be time for yours too. It's been such a mixed-up day."
Phyllis Stafford was intrigued. For her, boredom easily raised its head. She found the child-woman delicious. She had sensed undercurrents. Dick had emanated heavy vibes. "Maybe you'd better show me," she suggested casually.
"The simplest is the two posts." Wanda indicated them with a wave of the hand. "You can have it, if you want. I can use something else."
The visitor transferred her attention to the twin columns. She had scarcely noticed them, but now she observed the looped straps. Memory stirred, but there was nothing conclusive. "A couple of bits of wood." She said without enthusiasm, "What d'you do with 'em?"
"You stand between them, of course!" To Wanda it was obvious, this girl from outer space was stupid.
Interested and amused, Phyllis got to her feet and took the few steps needed to place her in position. "Can't see much point." She observed dryly.
"But you put your hands through the loops," she explained patiently.
Had the straps been hanging limp with obvious intent, Phyllis would have correctly divined their use. But the waiting loop deceived. If a girl was going to stand in just that spot for some absurd reason of her own, why not a bit of strap hanging! It made sense. Amused she thrust her hands within the leather and rested her wrists against the straps as though in support of weariness.
There had been no original guile. But when Wanda saw the languid arms raise to their required position, she became instantly certain of the thing that she must do. No sooner had the exploring wrists fallen into place then she drew tight the buckles.
"Hey, what goes!" The victim was still groping.
"I'll get them nice and tight for you. It's always best when they're tight." Studiously she tugged and completed each buckle.
Phyllis was not alarmed. She was still curious. Her natural unease at her unsought predicament was modified by Wanda's blithe matter-of-fact performance of a routine task. She tried to move her wrists within their confinement, but found herself helpless. "Say, kid, I can't get out of this. What's the big idea?"
"You're not supposed to get out, silly! You know that as well as I do. But it is fun to try." The teenager giggled. "I always try. It gives you a lovely goosey feeling when you find out you're foxed."
"I don't feel goosey," said Phyllis uncertain whether she did or not.
"I'm sorry Dick wasn't here to do it," Wanda apologized. "I know it's supposed to be a man who ties us. He'll tie me when he gets back."
The captive realized herself on the brink of discovery. "Tie you! Why?"
Wanda was impatient with her prisoner's argumentative response to the affairs of every day. "The Tie, silly! Girls always get tied in the afternoon."
Phyllis was unsure. The kid might be prone to practical jokes, and she now the butt of one of them. "O.K. So he ties you up. I'm already tied. What happens then? Where's the percentage?"
"Nothing happens, and there isn't any of... what you said. The Tie is good for us. Weren't you properly brought up?"
Phyllis Stafford had not gotten where she was in the world without perseverance. "You mean this Tie thing is sorta' like push-ups, or a bit of meditation, or saying grace before meals?"
"I don't know any of those things," Wanda said primly. "I don't think you can have been very well trained. You're lucky that airplane thing let you down here. Dick will be able to help you no end."
"You're kidding?"
"No, really! Dick's sweet and terribly patient. But I'm afraid you'll have to be punished an awful lot; you don't seem to want to do anything right."
"Punished!" The captive rolled the word around her tongue as though it was an ulcerated tooth. "What is this punishment thing you keep talking about?"
"Mostly you'll be whipped. But there's other things too... " Phyllis Stafford tensed, disquiet flamed. She became frighteningly aware that if someone wanted to whip her she was beautifully positioned for their purpose. "It's all damn interesting," she acknowledged. "But now you can undo these straps."
It was as though she had not spoken. "There are several kinds of whips," Wanda continued warmly. "And quite a lot of canes for our bottoms. I got the worst whip yesterday. Look!" She slipped out of her tiny sheath and proudly displayed the purple ridges left across her skin by the manta tail.
The journalist's first reaction was enchantment. What a story! What a gold mine this pair would be! She may have scarcely started to tap the lode... ! She found herself breathless at the pure beauty of what was so insouciantly offered for her enlightenment. Her mind also registered the fact that she was looking at the loveliest female figure she had ever seen. A figure bared of all covering-as thoughtlessly as she herself might remove a pair of earrings.
"Die likes me to wear this when I'm walking around in the sun." Wanda explained as she regretfully replaced her bit of cloth. "Oh, I'm terribly sorry!" Her exclamation was contrite. "Here I've left you with those clothes while you're in a Tie. So much has happened, I forgot. Don't worry, I'll have them off you in a jiffy."
"Don't you dare!" The spinsterish flavor of the command annoyed the woman who uttered it. Phyllis Stafford was beginning to feel out of her depth. Her reaction had been instinctive. She was no prude. But to be stripped while helpless... No!
"You are funny." Wanda giggled as she removed the halter from her squirming captive. "Oh, what lovely breasts! They're bigger than mine. And such nipples! I don't see why you want to cover them up."
"I can still kick. You touch my shorts and I'll let you have it!"
Wanda stood and surveyed her captive with disgust. "What a nasty thing to say! I'm only undressing you for the Tie. I'm sure you know you have to be naked, all girls do. I don't see why you'd kick me."
"Touch my shorts and find out."
The younger girl nodded thoughtfully as at an unforeseen but minor hitch. Going to the house, she returned with a whip, a single leather thong, neither the kindest or the most cruel of those used on her. She held it up for Phyllis to get a good look. "Dick ought to use this. It's the men who whip us girls. But I don't suppose it matters if I whip you just once. Shall I give you just one to start... ? So you know how it hurts?"
Phyllis petulantly tugged at the straps round her wrists. "Let me out of this!" she demanded. "Enough's enough."
"You know your Tie lasts longer than this. Dick will unfasten you, not me. I'll probably be tied myself. But you don't want him to find you with clothes. He'll be angry."
"Don't you touch my shorts."
In complete bafflement, Wanda swung back the whip. "No!"
The whip fell, trailing from a ready hand. "Well?"
"Don't whip me. Take the damn shorts if you have to."
A few moments later Phyllis Stafford stood completely nude. She glared defiantly at the girl who had stripped her and who now stood ingenuously marvelling at a pubic area baldly shaved. "Never seen a shaved slit before?" she demanded arrogantly. "A girl could get lost wandering around in that bush you've got between your legs."
Wanda was entranced. She giggled, appreciative of erotic discovery. "But you're all white... ! Your skin, I mean. It's as though you're still wearing something. Your breasts and... down below."
Phyllis eyed her shrewdly. "What's the down below bit? A cunt's a cunt."
The girl with a whip in one hand and the contentious shorts in the other giggled. "Is that what you call it?"
"What else! What d'you call yours?"
"Dick used to call it my thingummy. But since I grew all the hair he calls it my 'Furry Spot' or maybe just my 'Fur'." Wanda wrinkled her nose. "I don't think I like that word... cunt."
"Whether you like it or not, kid, you've got a cunt, and I've got a cunt." She laughed bitterly. "By any other name t'would smell as sweet."
"I think it's nasty. I won't use it unless Dick tells me to." Wanda looked at her whip regretfully. "I guess I'd better not use this on you now. I'd like to, but it's Dick's privilege, not mine. But I won't put it away. He's almost certain to want to whip you when he comes back." She tossed it carelessly beside one of the posts.
Phyllis eyed the cruel thing with distaste. "Look, kid, I'm tired and scared and I've sorta' had enough of fun and games. Please let me loose." Her tone had become conciliatory, almost pleading.
Wanda could not fail to recognize that this girl's reactions in her Tie were very different from her own. She could not understand this. But it changed nothing. "I wish you wouldn't keep asking me to undo the straps. You know I can't. You've only been like that a little while."
"A little while...!" All the outrage Phyllis could muster was in the exclamation. Suddenly, in a burst of fury she went completely wild in a berserk struggle against her bonds. She kicked and heaved and jerked with all her strength, to no avail. The posts did not quiver, the straps merely creaked.
Wanda watched in pure delight. It was a new experience to see another as she herself had often been. She saw the slender wrists striving to turn within the close grip of the leather bands, saw the small clenched fists or the captive fingers searching only air, saw a foot pushed against a post and used as lever to punish a prisoned wrist that found no whit of freedom in the act, saw the lovely breasts judder and sway in tense motion. Even though she did not like Phyllis, she felt immensely grateful for so wonderful a show.
"Giving our guest her Tie, Sweetheart?" Dick's voice held infinite amusement. He had approached unseen.
The bound girl turned to him in thankfulness. "For Pete's sake, get me out of this! The little bitch trapped me." She was panting.
"I expect it's just your daily Tie. Calm down and enjoy it." His voice was soothing. Perhaps, too, it held a trace of mockery.
"Of course it's her Tie. And I didn't trap her," Wanda affirmed vehemently. "She's just awful the things she says. She's had a terrible bringing up."
"Undo these straps on my wrists." Phyllis Stafford was putting the full force of her personality into each word. "This far I'll call it one big joke. Keep me like this any longer and I'll make all the trouble I can for you."
Dick ignored her. "It's time for your Tie, Sweetheart," he said cheerfully to the girl who was his dearest possession. "We'll just make it the little tree today, fetch me the cord."
With a feeling of total unreality, the captive woman watched a laughing girl happily run to the house and return with a length of cord. Wanda then tossed aside her slip and placed her back against the slender trunk of a young tree that flourished but a few yards distant. She crossed her wrists behind the bole and stood passively while Dick bound them tight. When he was done, she struggled a little to demonstrate her impotence, then stood still, laughing at their guest's outraged features. "It's my Tie," she proclaimed as though that explained everything.
As Dick had come up the path, the sight of Wanda's captive had coalesced decision in his mind. Phyllis Stafford's rescue was improbable. Why change a way of life! The woman could conform... Or be made to conform. The tableau Wanda had contrived was fortuitous but timely.
Standing in front of the naked, bound woman who looked up at him with uncharacteristic appeal, he put an end to her dubiety. His sentences were terse and clipped. "The Tie is an Institution with us. You will share it whether you like it or not. Every Friday you will be whipped as Wanda is. You will also be punished for anything I deem a fault. Such things as failure to clean up, insolence, disobedience... anything that disrupts the life of this Island. Force can be used as required."
In an effort to throw him off centre, the captive mocked, "You've been having a good look at my cunt and my tits, like em: "You will wear clothes except on the occasions I have just outlined," Dick continued, ignoring her jibe. "You will have to contain any curiosity you may have in regard to these customs, their origin, or purpose. You will simply conform. I explain or excuse nothing. Understood?"
"Oh, for heaven's sake, man! We're not discussing my constitutional rights. Let me loose and we'll all have a drink. There was a couple of bottles in the plane. Let little Annie Fanny loose too. You've got the poor girl so she doesn't know whether she's bored or punched." Phyllis tugged irritably at her strapped wrists.
Dick picked up the whip.
"Hey! Look now, you're not going to use that on me?"
"You ignore words. What else is there?"
The woman strapped to the posts eyed the whip as Dick drew the thong back and forth through his fingers. She was suddenly very conscious of naked breasts and bare bottom. "Dammit! Don't use that on me, please. I'm not stupid. I have to know that the way I'm fixed you can beat me until I'll say or do anything." Seeing no softening in his level gaze she continued urgently. "Unfasten me. We can go in the house. You can fuck me to a f are-ye-well. I'm not hard to get along with." Striving to gauge his reaction, she tossed in a bonus. "We can leave Fannie with her tree while I show you a few tricks I bet you've never had before."
The first cut bit 'round her hip. It is a cruel place, the tip draws blood. Phyllis Stafford squealed and went into a paroxysm of agonized contortions that hurt her bound wrists but brought her no closer to freedom. "You silly bastard! What'd you do that for?" She glared up angrily. "That hurt like blazes. I can't stand pain. Throw that fool thing away." She sneered, "Or go and use it on smiling Fanny over there, she'd probably enjoy a few licks."
Dick sighed. With the Phyllis Staffords of this world there is but one way! He proceeded to thrash the lovely nakedness conveniently strapped for his attention.
Wanda watched, enthralled. She found herself unconsciously trying to free her tied wrists, a quite hopeless effort, purely instinctive in her wish to dance 'round the writhing nudity and watch and count the crimson weals as they formed on the recalcitrant flesh. But she was close enough for an uninterrupted view of the lash as it sought and found the virgin skin, close enough to see the ridges form and to behold the shocked anguish on female features that could have been beautiful. An anguish melded from incredulity and pain.
Dick used no subtlety, no technique. He gave no pauses and made no comments. He whipped the naked girl steadily with a fierce determination that gave her no respite, no hope, nor chance to speak. She screamed and moaned in a ceaseless cacophony of despair. When her strength began to wane and her cries lessened into whimperings, he stopped and looked at the numberless criss-crossing striations that had fallen upon the helpless flesh wherever chance or the girl's struggles had placed them. He stood silent. Wanda, tied to her tree, was equally mute.
It took a long time for Phyllis to speak. She glistened with sweat, her hair was limp and damp, she half-hung from her tied wrists, leaning forward as though in shame to raise her face. After several minutes when her panting breaths had subsided she forced herself erect, easing the burden on her wrists and lifting her stricken gaze to the man who had whipped her. "Alright," she said thinly in a broken voice, "just tell me. I'll do it."
"You will call me 'Sir.'"
"Yes, Sir."
"You'll accept all the conditions I have told you of?"
"Yes, Sir. I'm sorry I've been... foolish."
The transformation was almost unbelievable. Wanda watched and listened in awe. Dick always knew the right thing to do. Dick was wonderful! Remembering the manta tail, she understood the age old miracle of a whip upon a girl's skin. What she had just beheld told her more confirmingly than ever before how wise it was to whip a girl every Friday. Without that, there was no telling how foolish she might be.
The naked journalist seemed dazed, not physically but in a confrontation with the unbelievable. She leaned back and forth against her prisoned wrists, tossed her hair over her shoulder, and looked at her surroundings with unseeing eyes. She was obviously trying to come to grips with a new reality and to seek expression. "Sir. Can I... can I, say something?" Her eagerness to use the title was pathetic.
"Of course."
Phyllis Stafford shook her head as though to clear it, but it remained bowed in shame. Her words were halting and cautious. "Sir, I've just said something that sounds silly and insincere. I can't tell if it sounded so to you----" Tears came into her voice, "Oh, damn and blast! I can't say it! This isn't me at all. You're not going to listen to me crawl, are you?"
"Happy to," said Dick cheerfully. "You're not crawling, you're just looking at something you haven't seen before."
She raised her head and eyed him doubtfully. "I'll level with you... sir-that 'Sir' doesn't come easy! But right now I'll do or say anything rather than be whipped again. Honest, I will! But it won't be Phyllis Stafford that's doing it. It will be someone else. I'm going to feel contemptible... " She groped around for the words she needed. "I suppose what I'm trying to say is I don't want you to see me as contemptible... "
"We won't. We understand this better than you."
"Just bloody pride; you don't lose it in minutes. Please, don't try and whip it out of me all at once."
"There will be many times. Cheer up, girl, you won't die."
Phyllis was still searching in the ruins. "This title of 'Sir'. I can understand why you want me to use it, and I will! But I don't want to be silly about it. We'll both be demeaned if I overdo it. Maybe if I do you'll think I'm being insolent. It sort of lends itself to insolence... Sir."
Dick was pleased. The fool woman had a bit of sense. She was working her way towards something she must loathe. "Would you prefer to call me 'Master?' " he asked quietly.
She faced him, once more in command of her faculties. "Is that what you will be to me, Sir?"
"Yes."
She considered. "Damn ridiculous, but I find myself preferring 'master' to 'sir.' I must be crazy, but I'll get into less trouble with it. If I get in a couple of 'sirs' with a wrong inflection you'll be whipping me again, won't you?"
"Yes."
"Very well, Master. That's out of the way."
Wanda was enthralled. Being female, she knew Phyllis would very soon regain most of her equilibrium, not all but most. She would have to be whipped again and again to bring her to the point where Wanda was and had always been. It seemed to the girl with her hands tied behind the trunk that to be the Phyllis Stafford of that morning must be a most unsatisfactory condition. No one could love her, she could enjoy nothing. Wanda was still wincing in vicarious agony from the whipping she had witnessed. She had been whipped hard and often, but never like that! She shuddered at the thought of being foolish enough to earn such a thrashing. Besides, what would Dick think of a girl who did?
"I'm going back down to the plane," Dick announced to his two captives. "We'll have supper around the usual time." He turned and strode away.
"Master!" There was a touch of panic in Phyllis Stafford's cry.
"Yes?" He paused, but did not retrace a step.
"Master... I've been punished. Could I be let loose, please?"
"Of course not. You're still in your Tie. It has nothing to do with being whipped." Dick walked off down the path.
The girl whose wrists were strapped to the twin posts examined as much of herself as her bondage permitted. She moved her weight from one foot to the other several times. Then she gave Wanda her full attention. "I'm cut to pieces," she bemoaned.
"Not really. You've got some, the ones with a bit of blood, that will take three weeks to heal, but the rest will surprise you how fast they go. They always surprise me," Wanda assured her brightly.
Phyllis obviously did not believe a word. "How long have we got to stand like this?"
"Well, if Dick lets us loose to get the supper, it won't be more than a couple of hours."
"I can't get loose." Phyllis stated the fact as though still marvelling at the phenomenon. "How about you?"
"The way Dick ties a girl she never gets loose," Wanda said pridefully. "I always try, just for fun, but it's never any good."
"Will I ever get to wear clothes again?" Phyllis looked at her discarded halter and shorts with longing.
"Oh sure. We only have to be naked during the tie or when we are punished. But I hate clothes hanging on me. I'd be naked all the time if Dick would let me."
"You go for the whole scene, don't you? You're quite happy the way you are right now, I can tell."
"But you will be too," Wanda assured her earnestly. "After you've been whipped a few times you'll understand how silly you were and what fun it is to be herewith Dick and me.
"Come off it, kid. Look at me. Call this fun? If I wasn't so scared and mad, I'd cry."
"If you want to cry, you can easily wipe the tears away on your arm. I couldn't, the way I'm tied, but you can."
"Thanks a whole heap! Can't you understand, girl, I'm frightened half out of my skin."
Wanda was concerned. "Oh, but you mustn't be!" she exclaimed with genuine sympathy. "Dick's sweet. You'll love him after you've learned to behave."
"Oh for Pete's sake! You mean when I'm a whipped bitch I'll want to lick my master's hand!"
"You mustn't keep on about being whipped," Wanda reproved. "Only some of it's awful. Fridays are usually fun."
"Bare-assed little masochist!" Phyllis was feeling sorry for herself.
The younger girl's ebullience was an affront to her own distress. "Can't you see what I've lost? I've lost everything. On top of that I'm strapped to these damn posts so all I can do is wiggle my bum, and I've been whipped worse than Captain Bligh ever knew about. And to cap it off I've got to crawl and lick a man's boots. Me! The leading lesbian of the Press!"
"What's a lesbian?"
The exponent of the arts of Sappho was in no mood for niceties. "It means you lick my cunt and I lick yours. It's like you and your whip... Real good fun!" she explained bitterly.
Wanda had been taught no prudery. She examined the information impartially. "I bet that does make us girls go all goosey," she agreed innocently.
"Want to try it sometime?" Phyllis breathlessly eyed her prey.
"Sure, why not? I'll ask Dick."
Phyllis wilted. "Good gosh, girl, no! You tell him that and I'm dead."
"Why?" The girl against the tree was unaware of sin.
It was not an easy question to answer. "Because the lousy men want to keep us girls all for themselves, that's why."
Wanda understood this. She was, in fact, pleased with the thought that Dick wanted to keep her for himself. "I think that's nice," she agreed brightly. "But I don't see why he'd be angry if we licked each others' cunts," she giggled. "Dick doesn't know, but I often use my finger down inside...
There's a little spot, it feels terribly good."
"Look, honey, lay off the asking. Keep mum. He's bound to leave us alone sometimes."
Wanda was shocked. "Oh, but I'd never do a thing like that without his permission! I mean, it wouldn't be right. Besides, when he caught us we'd both get the manta tail for sure. And not just five either."
"What the hell's a manta tail?"
Wanda told her.
"Oh brother! That means I haven't even graduated. What he's just given me could be twice as bad. Those weals on you are shockers. Let's forget I ever said anything." She took another look at her pinioned wrists, then asked disgustedly: "Tell me, bright-eyes, what am I going to have to do to save lover boy lacing into me again with one of his lousy whips?"
"I do think you should try and talk nicely," the younger girl suggested judicially. "You always sound so... so angry, as if everything's our fault."
"C'mon, honey! Whose fault is it I'm tied up like a trussed chicken with enough whip marks on me to give De Sade a wet dream?"
"See, that's what I mean!" Wanda explained. "I don't know anything about a lot of the things you say, but I can tell they're spiteful. You'd better not talk to Dick like that. He'll whip you every time if you do. Just be... well, sort of natural, and call him 'Master' the way you've agreed and do what he tells you."
"You don't call him 'Master.'"
"I will if it would make things easier for you."
"You're head-over-heels in love with him."
Wanda was baffled by the older girl's elusive intractability. "Of course I am," she agreed. "You would be too if you weren't so angry about that silly airplane thing. Why don't you quietly sort of lean into those straps on your wrists and doze or dream or think how lucky we are. I always do, it's lovely."
Phyllis Stafford neither dreamed or dozed, but the conversation languished for lack of rapport. She was furiously angry with the trick fate had played, and genuinely frightened of the casually handsome man with the whip. She deployed her thought to ways of besting him, and was still thus employed when she was released and Wanda flew to her job of the evening meal.
The naked woman stood, rubbing her chafed wrists and marvelling at the perfect red band the straps had imprinted on her skin. It was hard to say they were not decorative. Facing the amused gaze of her master she was uncertain what to do or say. Acting purely on impulse, she raised her hands and offered them and their angry circlets for his inspection.
"Quite beautiful, aren't they?"
Had she expected sympathy? She was not sure. But she felt supremely foolish, a whipped cur seeking a kind word. She noted that the girl busy at the fire had slipped into her tiny garment, and was angry with her own shy awareness of her white breasts and loins. But, at least, she could break the ice of silence. "May I dress, Master?" she asked, hating her new humility.
"You must dress. It's de rigueur."
The act of donning her scanty costume beneath the eyes of this man who owned her was oddly shaming. It placed a salacious emphasis on the past hours. The halter and the shorts did no more than tell her how close now she would always be to nakedness and the hurt or shame that nakedness would imply. Dressed, she felt a need to be involved. "Is there work for me to do, Master?"
Dick showed her. Through the suppertime a polite conversation kept diffidence at bay. But when it came time to seek their beds for the night an awkwardness fell upon the man and the woman, an awkwardness that Wanda did not share.
There was little doubt in Phyllis Stafford's mind that she would share the bed of the man she now called Master, but she did not dare to speak of it. She waited to be disposed of.
Dick was fully aware of what was revolving in the mind of the self-confessed lesbian. That she would "yield him her body as his due he had no doubt. She would expect to share his bed. It would not distress her, neither would it give her joy. She would regard herself as the spoils of war between the sexes. But this was not his plan; he was confronted with a strange concern. "You will use my bed for tonight. I've fixed up something for myself that will pass well enough. We will all be comfortable." He gazed at her levelly, conveying a message.
"Thank you, Master." She still waited, half guessing.
He wanted no preamble, he made no apology. "I don't want you roaming in the night. I will tie you."
It was like a blow. Phyllis was instantly resentful. Forgetting the whip, she was about to let loose a diatribe of protest when Dick's voice saved her.
"I don't mean hog-tied or spreadeagled." He grinned reassuringly at her evident dismay. "I shall tie one ankle in such a way that you cannot free it, that's all."
Phyllis Stafford, Journalist, considered the odds and made one try: "Master, I'll give you my word. Please, I don't want to be tied."
Dick ignored her words as though she had not spoken them. "On the bed, if you please, Miss Stafford. If you wish to remove your shorts you will have to do so now."
She could have killed him! How good to deluge him beneath bitter words of scorn. One day he would pay for this. She would see to it. Angrily she made the few motions needed to strip herself, hoping it would shame him more than her. Without a word she positioned herself upon the bed, ostentatiously sticking one foot over the edge.
There was no mattress, just palm leaves. Dick gently replaced the proffered foot to the centre of the bed. Looping his best piece of rope up through the slats, he circled the angry ankle and returned it down the other side of the sturdy length of wood. Reaching beneath the bed he tied the two ends tight. No matter how she tried, Phyllis Stafford could never reach the knot. He stood erect, pleased at an easy solution.
The woman hobbled to the bed tested her single bond. She could turn her foot as she pleased, but she could not move it from that spot. It would effectively confine her to the bed. Naked and tied before the eyes of a man and a smiling girl, her sense of indignity destroyed caution. "Why don't you put me in irons?" she asked bitterly.
The angry words had no sooner left her lips than she recognized her fault and its certain consequence. She made a gesture of hopelessness and threw prudence to the winds. "Oh shit!" She looked anxiously at the faces smiling at her outburst. "It's no bloody use! I'm not the kind. I'll blow it every time." She looked bleakly at her future. "Can you whip me here on the bed, or do you have to tie me outside?" She looked with withering contempt at Dick, and added a single offensive word, "Master!"
"Oh dear!" said Wanda, genuinely perturbed.
Dick laughed with pure enjoyment at the tied woman's return to honesty. "Don't make a martyr of yourself." He chuckled. "Sure you boobed, but I'll make an allowance. I don't suppose this is easy for you. But you won't get thrashed for every little blooper." He held up an admonitory hand. "But you won't be allowed to get away with any either. That little bit of Stafford satire will cost you five with the cane. Not now, in the morning. On your seat."
Phyllis looked from one to the other, and then to her pinioned foot. Suddenly she went berserk, tugging and jerking and flinging herself from side to side in a futile struggle against the loop of rope that held her to the bed. "Damn you, damn you, oh damn and blast you both! You and your fucking rules! Take your lousy five with the cane and shove 'em up your arse!" She howled in a paroxysm of feminine rage. "I can't play your rotten game, so whip me to death and be done with it." She flung herself face down upon the bed and buried her face in her hands, sobbing. "Go away and let me be. You can cut my skin off tomorrow." She moaned in desolation, her face deep within the pillow.
"It's only five, darling." Wanda consoled gently. "Five's not so bad."
The two of them turned and went toward their beds.
PHYLLIS STAFFORD
I don't suppose I ever put in a lousier night in my life. Figure it for yourself! Whipped, naked, tied... some sort of blasted slave... ! The whole damn bit! When I felt sure they were asleep I went to work on his bit of rope round my ankle; fingers and fingernails, I gave it all I had. But, of course, it was hopeless. I couldn't put a dent in it. I broke all my nails and was still as securely tied at the end of it as I had been at the start. I'd lay in that damn bed with a rope round one ankle and wait for morning so I could get a cane slashed across the bit where I sat down. Holy cow! It just didn't seem real.
Lying on that pathetic makeshift for a bed I had to take a good look at my chances. The hell of it was I didn't know what one of them was! I could figure my chances of rescue as pretty damn small. Not to be written off, but not that good! On the other hand I had these two absolute kooks with their Ties and their whips and their own erotic way of doing things. I figured Dick as having fallen into a pretty good thing with his little quail. He'd raised her just the way he liked. Good gosh! What man wouldn't give his eye teeth for such a chance! Or what woman! I knew I'd love to have that little pullet all to myself. She'd have a warmer ass than she ever dreamed of.
They'd make me conform. No use kidding myself. I couldn't get away, Dick was about three times as strong as I was, and the kid was on his side; for her he could do no wrong. I could easily see what my future was. He'd make me crawl. I'd call him 'Master.' Sooner or later he'd start fucking me. He'd left the kid alone because he didn't want her pregnant, but I was sure that, for me, he couldn't care less. I had about thirty pills; I could almost hear the pitter patter of little feet. I think if I could have gotten my ankle free of that damn bed I'd have killed him. I 'spose that's why he tied me...
I could picture it all. I'd be a good little girl and let myself be tied and caned and maybe fucked for a few days, and then he'd push me too far and I'd blow my top. Then they'd tie me to a tree or something and whip all the skin off my back. When that guy whips a girl he does it for real. That's the way it was going to be. I couldn't see anything else. But, believe it or not, I actually went to sleep.
They're quite unreal the way they go about it all. They were so damn pally at breakfast I almost enjoyed myself. Getting untied from the bed had been quite a ritual. When the rope had fallen from my ankle, I'd had a silly vision of that fool picture about Aphrodite rising from the sea. That's sorta' what I did with both of 'em looking on. A girl goes behind a bush to have a pee here, and I will admit they let me go without one of 'em holding a leash round my neck. I thought of running, but what the hell... II had my leak and went back to breakfast like a good little girl.
Then we went swimming in the surf. It's gorgeous! You could lead the life of Riley here if you didn't know it was forever. Sometimes I managed to forget about those five strokes with a cane I had to get on my backside, but not for long. I knew they were waiting. When we went back from the swim I got them.
"Wouldn't you like to get your five now, darling?" The kid asked as though she was talking about a pay cheque.
"You going to give 'em to me?" I asked, surprised. I'd supposed his Lordship kept all the goodies for himself.
"Oh, could I! Oh darling... I'll ask Dick."
Believe it or not, the bastard let her. I wasn't all that put out, he's quite a chunk of male. Surely she couldn't hurt me as bad as he would! They had quite a conference about how I should be tied. I kept out of it. I didn't want to be tied at all, by that time I was quite willing to touch my toes and try to behave. But they settled on a tree. I had to embrace the damn thing as though I was in love with it, and then they tied my hands together. This left me having a love affair with a youngish palm while they cinched my tummy tight against the bark. My poor rear-end! I was sure it was sticking out like a beacon. I couldn't move it. I was sure it must be a perfect target for that kooky girl.
They discussed ways and means. I swear I can't tell whether they were having fun at my expense or were quite serious as to whether the Wanda dame should flog one cheek of my bottom at a time or just slash right across regardless. Look, I might as well admit right now that I'm not all that naive. I've been around. I've coerced men into taking me where women don't usually get admitted. In Cairo they get up to the damndest things! So I'd known about getting whipped and about being tied. Seems like there's quite a trade in these quaint diversions. I saw a trick-book once in a real high class whore house; the names scared me. And their notions! Poor old Krafft and Ebbing never even got properly started. The Madam offered me a job. If I'd wanted my arse whipped every night I could have made about twice what the President of the U.S.A. gets in the way of salary. I won't pretend I wasn't tempted either.
Look, I'll let you in on my private archives. I'd had a notion about doing a feature, but it got too bloody personal. This Madam I spoke of wasn't a bad type. I made a deal with her for one evening only. She'd bill me as a virgin. So far as my hide went, I was! She told me that half the Johns never bothered to shove anything into a girl's slit. All they wanted was to hear her howl and see the lovely marks they made on her skin with the whip. I figured I could stand it once.
The boy with the bucks turned out to be an elderly coot who looked more like he should be home patting his grandchildren on their curly locks instead of whipping a girl's bottom. But to each his own! I was just plumb curious. I wasn't even scared.
We were introduced down in the lounge. He was so fucking polite and courtly I felt like a Southern belle before the shot at Fort Sumpter. He looked too old to fuck, but that wasn't what I was looking for anyway. It wasn't what he was looking for either.
The House this Madam ran had more rooms than Nixon has excuses. My John took me to one that had more equipment in it than the local Armory. Directly after he shut the door I knew I'd gone back into the dark ages. I couldn't tell what everything was for, but I could guess! It was a Torture Chamber for real.
Well, of course, the first thing to do is to get naked. My John was too polite to use such a word. He called it disrobing. I disrobed. I'd figured on that one. The Madam had given me a few hints. The next thing was I got ushered to a sort of 'X' frame affair. He did it the way the Maitre D does when he gives you the best table in the house. First thing I knew I was strapped to it with leather bands round my wrists, my ankles and my waist. I felt like an oyster out of its shell. I couldn't move. I began to wonder if getting a syndicated feature was worth what might happen.
There's one thing about these old boys, they do it in style. The old bastard had champagne. He held the glass to my lips and we both downed enough that I hoped it would kill any coincidental pain. What a dream that was!
My first sight of the whip made me giggle-you know champagne! My John had stripped, I never found out why. But it seems like nakedness is a first rule in these affairs. You know, you're not dressed properly unless you're naked. He made me kiss it. I did it without a qualm. I really was a sucker. Then he backed off. To see him and his blasted whip I had to look back over one shoulder. Oh sure! I looked...
I've read the porno books. One of the most boring bits is where the innocent virgin keeps going "Oh!" and "Ah!" and very quickly promises her cunt if the guy will lay off whistling the leather across her bum. But dammit, it's like that! I'm not going to try and tell you, but it's plain bloody awful. If you had six cunts you'd give 'em all just to get him to stop whipping you. My John was an expert. He whipped my back, he whipped my bottom, he whipped my thighs. But then he got really down to business and whipped up between my legs.
I went quite insane. I struggled and howled, I screamed and screamed. I promised my John about every erotic delight in the book if only he'd stop whipping me. I expect he'd heard them all before, he just went right on happily slashing away at the lovely bit of female flesh he had purchased for the evening. I cried for help, and tugged away at the straps that fastened me, in a way that must have given him his finest erection in years. When I looked over my shoulder, which I did from time to time, he seemed a very happy man.
Anyway, that's enough. I got whipped, but good! But I do have to admit that the cheque I got when it was all over did make me think about giving up journalism. I was stunned with pain and cash. The Madam wanted me to stay. I've often wondered... ! But what I'm trying to tell you is that when I crashed on that damn island the things I found there weren't entirely beyond my ken. But, as I was telling you, there I was tied to the palm tree awaiting my five, which I was sure could become ten or fifteen if I blinked an eyelash in the wrong direction. I looked over my shoulder. I expect it's a sort of conditioned reflex.
Dick was flexing the cane back and forth in his hands. It was a shocking looking thing with which to whip a girl. He handed it to Wanda, and I could see this was about the happiest moment in her life. Not that she had anything against me, but I suspect the poor kid had been caned and whipped so much she was curious to see what it was like to be on the other end. She took a really wild swing and let me have it.
Right then I wished it was Dick who was giving me the five. He might withhold, but Wanda went all out. By that time I was becoming a bit of an authority on the result from the impact of a cane or thong across a girl's naked body. When she connected with me I forgot everything but how damn much it hurt and what I'd do to avoid it. I really went to town with pleas and howls while she cut my behind to pieces with her beastly cane and paid no heed.
When I'd had my five they went away and left me. My rear was on fire and I was ready to promise anything rather than get any more. I rested my cheek against the palm and wept, just like a bloody kid I cried and cried. I hurt and I couldn't get loose. For all I knew I'd be tied to that tree all day. I saw my halter and shorts laying on the ground, and wondered what was the use of putting them back on. I never really wore them for very long. I tried to rub my cunt against the tree to get a bit of a good feeling going, but it was no go, I was tied far too tight. I just stood there, hurting and scared.
When they let me loose they took me fishing. It was the damndest fun. I enjoyed it immensely. "See what I told you," Wanda said to me seriously. "Five isn't all that bad, is it?"
I wanted to tell her how bad it had been, but kept my trap shut. I'd have to be careful. "I loved every stroke of it," I told her untruthfully so that we both laughed. "How about me giving you five?"
They're absolutely nuts! I'd no sooner said it than the little sexpot calls out to the boss man: "Dick, darling, can Phyllis give me five next time I've been bad?"
He said 'yes' right on the spot. I could tell he was as much in love with her as she was with him. I felt like a yo-yo they were passing back and forth.
"That wasn't what I meant." I told her brazenly. "I mean five right now."
It made her think. She has quite a tolerance for pain, but only so far. I could see she didn't want those five any more than I'd wanted them. But she was a good sport. "Darling, can she give them to me now even though I haven't done anything?" she called to Dick on the other end of the net.
There's no flies on Dick, he knew! But he was a good sport too. "D'you really want her to cane you, Sweetheart?" He grinned at her.
"Yes please." The kid managed to convey the feeling that she was about to get a present.
I felt better. "D'you want to be tied?" I asked.
"Oh yes, you'll have to tie me." She actually giggled. "I'm not all that much of a little heroine. I wiggle terribly."
I could never get used to that Island or those two screwballs; I'd never know where I was. I had an awful feeling they were putting me on and that it would be me again who'd end up on the wrong end of that cane. "Would you tie her, please?" I asked Dick, feeling a fool.
"It was your idea, Miss Stafford. Go ahead."
That formal 'Miss Stafford' thing kept me uneasy. If he liked me, even a little, he'd call me Phyllis. It left me with the feeling that Miss Stafford's hind-end would never be far from getting scorched by his willowy rods. Anyway, there I stood. I'd never tied anyone in my life. When he placed some cords in my hand I wished I'd kept quiet.
Wanda was enjoying the whole thing. "Do you want me straight or bent over, darling?" she asked, just as though she could hardly wait. "It hurts more when I'm bent over," she added helpfully.
She and her 'darlings!' It was natural for her, the kid loved her whole world. I'd fallen in it so she loved me. I tried to stare down her bright excited regard, but no go! I guess I'm a bitch. "I'd like you bent over then, please," I told her with a nice blend of satire and respect.
They'd thought of everything for their Game. It would have been cute and funny if it hadn't hurt. Beaming with pride, the little darling led me to where a tree had been cut off at the right height and a crosspiece laid across the top to make a T.' Wanda bent over the thing so that her patch of black hair rested on the short horizontal. When she went all the way she was draped on that stump as though she was a part of it. That was the moment I saw the straps. By the time I'd buckled them on her wrists, ankles and waist she hadn't a hope of even twitching her cute little derriere. It was sticking up like a round smooth face full of hopeful expectation. Wanda had a gift for smiling at both ends.
It was right there I became erotically excited. That girl was anybody's dream. The way she'd tossed aside her bit of cotton and taken up position to be caned would have given the hots to a marble statue. Now she was perkily looking up at me from upside down as though trusting me to lay it on her good. Trouble was I wanted to eat her, not cane her can. But I'd started something: something I didn't want to do now I had the chance. I felt pretty certain I wouldn't be allowed to give her love taps. When Dick pressed the cane into my hands it was like holding a slender living thing with a vicious temperament. "I can't do it," I said miserably. It was like hearing someone else say the words.
"Why?" His query was pleasantly polite.
"I guess I just don't want to hurt her that much." Sure! It sounded feeble.
"But, darling, I want you to. You'll love it." Wanda was concerned.
"Are you being temperamental?" Dick inquired in a voice I didn't like.
"I... I, don't know," I said lamely. "I'm afraid I asked in fun. I never thought you'd let me do it."
"You are being offered an unusual privilege, Miss Stafford."
Standing there holding that damn cane I felt like fifteen cents, or maybe a plugged nickel. "I know," I agreed wanly. "But could I please be excused?"
"No!" The negative was very emphatic.
I looked unhappily from one to the other. Surely I couldn't be compelled!
"Perhaps you'd prefer to take Wanda's place and receive ten instead of five?" His voice was still softly suave.
I should have seen it coming. But it hit me where I hurt. I was trapped, but good!
"Don't get all upset," Wanda warned encouragingly. "Come on, darling, give them to me and get it over with. I don't want to be upside-down all afternoon. Hit me hard or they won't count."
I'm not going to come out of this story smelling like a rose. Actually I'm just the ordinary modern female bitch, but I suppose that doesn't say much for me either. Holding that cane and looking at the kid's gorgeous nakedness strapped to that thingummy I felt myself slipping to an all time low. Fact was, there was no way I could face ten more of those welts across my rump. I was chicken!
That lousy Island taught me something. Whips and canes and things always hurt. When you speak of getting used to them it isn't the pain you get used to, it's the shock. The awful traumatic shock of something impossible to bear and knowing yourself unable to do a thing about it. Being tied or strapped is pure panic. The way Wanda was fixed would have had me trying to climb the wall. It didn't bother her, she was accustomed to being helpless and waiting for something to happen. Secretly she got a big bang out of the suspense. But I hadn't progressed that far... not then!
I had enough sense to keep quiet. Anything I'd have said would have come out wrong. I hit that glorious girl's lovely little bottom as hard as I could.
Even that didn't turn out well. Phyllis Stafford, the successful columnist, wasn't shit hot when it came to caning a girl's backside.
"I don't think you're standing quite right," Wanda complained regretfully.
"Can't possibly count an effort like that," Dick said briskly. "Here, let me show you."
Sure, sure! It's crazy, I know! But it was exactly like having the golf pro show you how to hold the rotten club. Right on down to where he rubs his erection against you and waits for your reaction. But in this case there wasn't any free lesson for letting him fuck me.
I'd never have believed there was any skill in whipping a girl's bottom displayed in the way Wanda's was. But there is! I learned it. By the time I'd given her the five I knew she was in bad shape. I could sense that if I hadn't been there, if it had been Dick who had caned her, she'd have been crying buckets. But, for me, she held on to all she had and at the finish managed a very wobbly "Thank you, darling, you did wonderfully."
From the stripes across her flesh I was sure I had. I don't suppose the poor child gets time to heal between beatings, but there were my five standing out in proud ridges of flesh that made me curl up inside. But here's the kicker: I curled up in pure lustful joy, no regrets, no shame, no contrition. I'd never felt so worked up in my life, my cunt was on fire. I longed to start all over. When the little sweetheart came out with a bit of pure bravado and pleaded in that unbearably sexy voice, "Just one more, darling, please. Extra, extra hard!", I gave it to her with all the force of my arm and then proceeded to go into orgasm on the spot. I stood there with the cane, clutching my sex, bent and moaning in one of the wildest and prolonged spasms I have ever known.
Wanda was moaning with me, for all I know for the same reason. But when she got herself back to normal she said brightly, "You see, darling, I told you so! Isn't it wonderful?"
"Welcome to the club, Miss Stafford," said Dick. I knew he was laughing.
I blushed like a schoolgirl. I wanted to curl up and hide. It was far worse than being naked. I managed to save myself from total disorganization by getting busy on the job of freeing that poor kid from the thing she was bent over. The first thing she did when she could stand was kiss me and squeeze my arm in sympathy. She'd guessed...
In the telling of this you have to remember that for those two everything was normal, for me it wasn't. I was in a state of constant outrage. Their daily routine was, for me, the most appalling imposition on my freedom and my person. I dared not reveal the successive spasms of revolt they triggered. I was desperately afraid of Dick's whip. Knowing myself, I was quite sure I would pick up quite enough stripes along the way without deliberately indulging in being completely natural.
At this time, too, I was grappling with the matter of speech. Just how subservient and humble could I be without making myself puke? Can a girl like me efface herself by unction! I doubted it, but I had to try. I was quite certain Dick was intending to whip me again quite soon, but he was watching for me to build up enough demerits to make it justifiable. Don't get me wrong. He wasn't being cruel, not by his standards. He believed I really needed to be whipped again as a help to adjusting. It was going to have to be me who did all the adjusting, not them. I wondered if seeing me naked so often had made him desire me. I didn't want him to fuck me, I wanted Wanda. But I very much wanted him to get the urge. Then I'd have a weapon! A girl's cunt is her best friend as well as being her worst enemy.
Wanda tugged on her bit of a dress. I'd kept on my halter and shorts while I'd whipped her. Being all dressed up we needed somewhere to go, so Dick took us on a tour of the island, just for my benefit. It didn't take long. It was a sweet little place that gave me two very clear messages, Dick probably wanted me to get them. One was that no girl would have any luck running away and trying to hide. The other was that no search was likely to bother with so tiny a dot in the ocean. I enjoyed all they showed me, but I was depressed. By the time we got back I felt as though a real ball and chain had been welded on my ankle. I just simply wasn't going anywhere and the sooner I made myself the way Wanda was the better. I groaned at the thought; not that I wouldn't want to be a Wanda, but I had to deal in possibilities. I knew the whip would get me half way there. But the other half... ! It scared me.
I suppose you're chuckling at the thought of what comes next! I was thinking about it but not chuckling. I did not relish being tied again. I was sure I was going to be, along with Wanda. But the Tie I'd had the day before was still vivid in my mind. Those straps fastening my wrists to the posts had infected me with a sort of claustrophobia. There had been something frightening and humiliating in being held so completely helpless by two small scraps of leather. And when a girl's tied she's so beautifully available for the whip.
I was bothered, not only by what I knew was going to happen, but by a nagging insistence that surely there was something I could do about it. The use of force was implicit in Dick's command over me, but I'd given him no cause to use it. Yesterday's session had shattered my confidence. I'd heard myself being humble in a way that had changed something forever. But I was hurting a bit less now. Thoughts of knocking him cold when he wasn't looking began to crowd my mind. With him out of the way I could probably handle the girl. Handling Wanda was something I wanted very much to do.
All very silly! Come right down to it I knew I could not hit Dick on the head with a club, even if I had one. Besides, what would I do with him then? I could pretty well figure that any physical revolt would end in an undignified scuffle and a lot more whip marks on my skin. But how about sticking my feet in and refusing to play? Good old noncooperation. It hadn't worked the day before, so why should it work today:? Summing it up I figured that unless I could get Dick to fuck me I was a girl without much of a future. On the spur of impulse I tried to make a virtue out of my state of mind. I blurted out the whole thing to him, feeling like a penitent little girl about eight years old.
Wanda, of course, was entranced. But Dick listened to me gravely, I don't suppose a word of it was news. "Makes a bit of sense out of fastening your foot to the bed at night," he suggested dryly.
"Yes Master." It did too, dammit! "Do you expect to be punished for this baring of the soul?"
"No Master." I'd have to work like blazes to rationalize this one! "I have told you of thoughts and wishes I can't control. I'm scared of them myself. I don't want to be whipped again like yesterday, but as long as they are there I'm in constant danger." I made my eyes beam their best at him.
He laughed with such enjoyment that I found myself smiling sheepishly. Wanda frankly giggled. When everyone got around to my problem Dick summed it up quite neatly. "We have to get; you out of danger, then," he chuckled. "That means we have to get those thoughts out of your mind. You mustn't feel bad about 'em. Hell, girl, they're natural. That's why you have to be whipped."
My heart dropped with a thump. I'd gone 'round in a circle. "Master, I think I'm hoping you'll just let me stay with you without... without the, the 'you know what'. I'll behave, and you can... well, you can do whatever you like with me... " I trailed off hopefully. In front of Wanda I was damned if I could bring myself to say outright that he could fuck me all he pleased, but surely he could get that message!
He nodded in complete understanding. My heart beat a bit easier. I'd probably get whipped, but not right now. "You've explained a position," he acknowledged. "But think a bit. You dropped in out of the sky. Why should Wanda and I change a lifestyle because of you?"
I thought of chivalry, of noblesse oblige and plain old hospitality. But I couldn't come up with a good answer to his question. Unless I conformed, or was made to conform, to the way they lived I'd be a disturbing factor, a walking reproof. I knew I was sunk.
He laughed at my quandary. He even gently patted my shoulder. "Stop worrying, Miss Stafford. Leave everything to me. You'll surprise yourself."
I knew that leaving everything to him meant I'd be whipped until I grew up. But I felt better. You know, confession is good for the soul! With feminine irrationality I said, "My name's Phyllis, y'know." And, once more, blushed as though I'd lit a fire.
What I had done must have helped, helped me, I mean. Because when the time came I was ready for it, I didn't feel like a victim of the Inquisition. 'Time for our Tie, darling," Wanda announced brightly, as though speaking of a coffee break. She was obviously immensely curious as to how I was going to behave.
I don't suppose I'll ever get used to stripping naked the way I have to in front of Dick. It's not a matter of prudery or modesty or any of that stuff, it's a giving away of a part of yourself, an admission you belong to him and have to do what you're told. But I added my halter and shorts to the little pile on the ground started by Wanda's only trifle. Looking at the pathetic small relics I reflected bitterly on how much of being a woman lay there on the sand.
Dick has the damnedest way of admiring what I uncover. He is quite frank and open about it, he'll even make comments. It's easy to see why Wanda hasn't a single inhibition. It makes me want to use my hands for cover. I have to exert will power to keep 'em away from my tits and twat. I'll be damned if I'll play the shrinking violet. But this time he just spared my treasures a fleeting glance while he fiddled with the cords, the cords that made me cringe just to see.
"Back to back, darlings, if you please."
This had to be a new one. I could see Wanda was intrigued. Obediently we got into position. The feel of that girl's flesh all the way up and down my spine damn near made me come again. He tied us together at the waist, several tight bands that made me gasp and little bright-eyes giggle.
"Wrists crossed in front, Phyllis."
The 'Phyllis' told me I'd been promoted. I crossed my wrists. He corded them tight, the knot where I couldn't see it. While he was fixing Wanda the same way I flexed my arms. They were really tight, but I'd be able to lift the bindings to my teeth...
I need not have worried, the punch line was still to come. It was painfully simple, a cord from my wrists pulled down and back between my legs and up between Wanda's. It circled her wrist tie and came back again. When he cinched it we both yelped.
"A bit of an innovation, darlings," Dick announced. "It's in honour of our guest." He actually pinched my left nipple in a painful and absent-minded sort of way before returning to his main task.
I don't want to be a bore about all these blushes, but I'd never previously experienced a man's thumb and forefinger separating the lips of my cunt so that two strands of cord went right inside me. He didn't honour Wanda with a similar attention, so it was just me who gasped when he reefed the line so blasted tight I could picture my poor little sex neatly cut in two. It hurt like hell. I was sure it was supposed to. Pleased with his work, Dick circled us a couple of times, kissed his little darling, nodded encouragingly to me, and left us alone.
I didn't struggle. You can figure out why. But little Sweetheart came up with her usual happy giggle. "Isn't Dick clever?" she glowed. "He's never done this one before... I'm so glad you came." She tried to wiggle her bottom against mine, just to show how good she felt to be tied to me.
I yelped again from the motion. Instantly she guessed. "Oh, darling, have the cords got inside?"
I admitted my shame.
She giggled commiseratingly. "He's got one up on either side of mine," she confessed. "Poor Dick, he thinks I'm not old enough. I say, darling, can't you get a bit of a good feeling out of it?"
"All I'll get is a longer cunt." I was feeling sorry for myself. Exploring with my fingers told me I'd best leave well enough alone, the cords were in me to stay. If my clit was getting any favourable sensation she sure wasn't passing it on to me! "I'm sorry, sweetheart, but it hurts so much I'm scared to move."
"Don't worry," she promised. "I'm not exactly comfortable either. He's really foxed us. I'll be a good girl."
What a hell of a position it was! Standing there back to back with our crossed wrists just above our cunts. There was just no way we were going to get loose. Even if it didn't hurt so much to try, we couldn't do a thing with our hands. For sure we could not raise them. Wiggle our fingers a bit perhaps, but that only showed us how deeply the cords were embedded in our flesh. It was going to be a bad time for two female crotches, and that's all there was to it.
"In an everyday Tie he doesn't usually make it hurt like this," Wanda confided. "I think Dick's trying to impress you."
"No need for him to hurt you too."
"Oh, I don't mind!" She was instantly eager to absolve me from concern. "We can talk to each other, it's not so bad. Do you want to try sliding down on our heels so we can sit? Or would that make it cut more?"
I was horrified at the thought. It would cut us in two and, once down, we'd never get to our feet again. I felt precarious enough standing as we were. If we lost balance and went over we'd flounder like a couple of fish tossed out of the water. I told her so.
"I expect you're right, darling. Dick thinks of everything," she sighed in pure homage to genius. "Phyllis, I've been thinking about that word you use so easily. I'm sort of scared of it, you know the one?"
"Cunt?"
"That's it. The way we're fixed right now made me remember what you said... how you'd lick mine and I'd lick yours. I'd really like to try, I think we'd love it. I feel beautifully goosey just thinking... Are you sure you don't want me to get Dick's permission?"
"Absolutely! Mention it to him and you'll get me whipped for sure. He might even have a go at you. It's something men won't go for."
"I bet he'd be amused. He'd probably like to watch." I could almost feel her pouting.
"Honey, believe me, he wouldn't be amused."
"You mean we're never going to get to try it?" Wanda sounded heartbroken.
"Can't we get off on our own sometime? Or how about nights? I'm tied to my bed, but you aren't. The rope on my ankle wouldn't stop a thing."
The little darling was curious and intrigued; I could feel her shivering. Imagine how I felt! But she wasn't about to betray her Dick. Everything had to be on the up and up. There we were, tied helplessly back to back and wanting each other so bad it hurt worse than those damn cords. I had the hots for that girl to such a degree I just surrendered. I sighed forlornly and said, "Oh go ahead then, honey, ask him. Maybe you know him better than I do. I'll take a chance on him whipping me. I might as well get it for that as anything else."
If we'd been free, she'd have hugged and kissed me. She was pure delight. Her happiness was infectious, I had something to look forward to as well, if Dick said yes... I tried not to think about the whip. We left it at that. I'd tossed my bread upon the waters... !
It was agony to be welded flesh to flesh to that pulsating girl and to be helpless. I wondered if Dick was a sadist, but I think it was just his idea of an amusing situation. The two cords cutting into our vulvas was his way of exerting a bit of authority. He didn't want the day's Tie to be just a giggle for two girls. I think he saw me as a demoralizing influence, which in fact I was. Wanda and I weren't making motions, but even our breathing imparted sensation. Our behinds were absolutely clamped together by the cinch 'round our tummies. This meeting of our curves had the effect of thrusting our cunts into prominence out front, but there was no erotic wiggling for us. Between the bands 'round our waist and the cords up between our legs we were closer together than any Siamese twins ever managed to be. I was frustrated half out of my mind. "Isn't it lovely being tied together like this?" my fellow captive enthused. "I've never been tied to anyone before."
"Be a lot nicer if we were face to face."
She instantly saw the possibilities. "If we were, could we do things?"
"Depends on how tight lover boy tied us."
"I don't think you should talk about Dick like that."
"Give him a report, honey. I think he wants an excuse to whip me."
"There you go again. It's not so much that he wants to whip you; he wants to help you settle down with us."
"What's he helping you with when he laces into you? Like those five awful stripes you've got now?"
"Just to behave, darling. A girl so easily forgets she's just a girl."
"Horse balls! We're better than men any day!"
The poor girl let out an enchanted, "Oooo!" that was half shock. "You are silly." She chided like a little mother. "How can we be better? We wouldn't be like this if we were. Don't ever let him hear you say that, he'd punish you terribly."
I was sure she was right. But I was getting a bit of a charge out of playing the enfant terrible; it was a diversion in the painful fix we were in, so I tried again. "How about the two of us ganging up on him and tying him up? We could keep him tied and make him do the things we wanted?"
I could feel the ripple of horror go right through the child. Her voice was awed by my temerity, I had uttered blasphemy. "Oh darling! Oh please... Don't say such awful things."
"But supposing we had the chance, would you help me?"
"No, no, no!" She managed to stamp one foot for an emphasis that hurt both our cunts. "You mustn't! I won't listen...!"
"You can't help listening to me, sweetheart, the way your hero has you tied you have no choice. Anyway, I don't see why you and I have to be a pair of slave girls in order to tickle his majesty's ego and give him a stiff prick."
Her muscular indignation was so fervent my cunt wished I'd kept quiet. I don't know about hers. As I've said, Wanda has an amazing tolerance for pain. I wished I could have seen her face, it was probably a real panic. "Ohoooo! what you said!" She considered my genital reference cautiously. "Is that true, darling? Does looking after us girls make that thing between a man's legs stick up hard and rigid the way it often does? You mean whipping us or tying us up makes it do that?"
"Sure, didn't you know?"
"I'd often wondered," she admitted, "but when I ate it with my mouth and tongue it got quite tremendous."
"It will do that too," I admitted dryly.
"Isn't it all simply wonderful?" Bright-eyes mused thoughtfully. "Aren't we terribly lucky?"
I couldn't follow her reasoning, not that it mattered. To Wanda everything was wonderful. I knew I could tell her things, but I wasn't too sure how kindly Dick would take to having innocence stripped from his love. A too knowledgeable little girl would likely earn me a fine old-fashioned flogging. Thoughtlessly I went too far in another direction. "When we jump him and tie him up," I exclaimed in a burst of enthusiasm, "let's milk him all day long with our lips and our fingers until he howls."
I knew right away I'd gone too far. To Wanda her Dick was holy. I felt her lovely slenderness tense against the cords that bound us together, the words that she uttered were broken and disjointed: "Phyllis... Why, oh why? It's awful. You shouldn't...!" All of a sudden I almost jumped out of my skin as she cried at the top of her voice, "Dick. Dick, darling, come here... Quick!"
I won't say he came running, but he came. I could see he was puzzled. His first glance was to the cords. But he could easily tell we were tied as tight as when he'd left us. He gave my female portions a good scrutiny before he went 'round to look at bright-eyes. I knew I was really for it this time. For the thine I'd said, he'd whip me into unconsciousness. I listened, I couldn't see. Every move I made hurt my cunt, even to try and look over my shoulder.
"Trouble, darling?" He was genuinely concerned.
My heart was thumping so loud I was scared he'd hear it. I waited for the accusation, and then the sentence. I could feel the whip.
There was a longer silence than seemed called for. I could feel Wanda's female nakedness strain against the cords that made us one. I no longer cared that her movements hurt my cunt. Any pain I felt now was as nothing to what I knew would soon be inflicted on me. I could think of Dick's rage, I could understand it. He'd cut me to pieces. In a way I deserved it. Wanda was sweet and clean. I shouldn't have pushed her that far.
I waited for the death blow. I had gone past hoping or caring. I was for the high jump for sure. I heard Wanda gulp and swallow. I'll swear I could follow that swallow all the way down, we were cinched that tight! When she spoke the words that were to destroy me I damn near passed out.
"Oh, Dick darling. I'm so glad you came. Could we please have the cord that's up between our legs loosened a bit? It hurts terribly. It hurts a lot more than it's supposed to for just a Tie."
You know about suspended animation, that was me! Not that I was animated, but for moments I stopped everything. I was waiting for Wanda to tell Dick what I'd said. That was the drill, wasn't it? Why else had she called him?
Dick took what his darling said at face value. We probably both of us looked pretty peaked. I expect the cords had disappeared into Wanda's flesh as they had in mine. Actually we were being tortured, in a mild sort of way, I suppose, but still tortured.
"Hurt that bad, sweetheart?" He was all goo.
"Oh, Dick, it's awful."
That was enough for lover boy. First thing I knew, his fingers were busy above my twat. I could have cried out in pure happiness when the cords loosened and the pain dropped about ninety percent. I said a heartfelt "Thank you, Master," and then listened to little darling tell him how sweet he was. I could almost agree with her.
When he had left us alone again there was a long silence that neither of us seemed to want to break. Finally curiosity got the best of me and I asked, quite simply: "Why?"
"I couldn't do it." She sounded close to tears. "Oh, Phyllis, everything's so wrong!" She tugged desperately at her bound wrists so that my own were tugged down in answer to the strain. "The thing you said was awful... terribly wrong. But when it came time I just couldn't tell. I got to thinking of the manta tail and you screaming... " She tugged again and again as though venting all her distress on the cords that made us helpless.
I felt an absolute bitch. The poor kid felt so deeply. The things I'd said now seemed cheap and unkind. Compared to Wanda I felt ashamed of myself. If she'd wanted to say a few words I'd now be one of the sorriest girls in the world. But she had not said them; we were even a helluva lot more comfortable than we'd been before. I was tremendously grateful and utterly shamed before her innocent wish to be kind. I had to choke back an insane notion to shout for Dick and make a full confession, I was that humbled by the sweet kid to whom I was so brutally tied. "Why don't you like being naked?"
Her question caught me unaware. But this, too, would be touchy ground. "Saves a girl's breasts bobbing up and down," I told her lamely.
She thought it over a bit, I suppose I was becoming suspect. "Mine don't bob up and down," she said doubtfully. "But I suppose you're a little older... " She took the thing a step further. "Why do you want to cover your cunt? It doesn't do anything?"
Well! I ask you! If it hadn't been for Dick and his nice little set-up of Codes and behavior I could have given the child the full treatment of birds and bees and the Garden of Eden. But, anyway, how do you go about it with a girl who you're tied to the way I was tied to Wanda? Dick had loosened up a bit on the cords, but our cunts were still compressed by the same ligatures and we still couldn't move much without hurting. I was still groping for an answer when she carried on.
"It's your breasts and your cunt you want to cover. But why, darling? What makes them any different than the rest of a girl?"
Delightful, eh? The innocence, I mean. But, standing there tied to her, I found myself asking whether she didn't have the right of it. Why sneer at innocence, maybe it was just common sense. But, for sure, I was in no shape to give the kid a lecture on the moral mores of the human race. I clutched at a straw. "Darling, if we go around with our breasts and nipples twinkling and our cunts peeping out through our pubic hair we'd have all the men going bonkers. They'd all have an erection all the time. It would make things very difficult when you're all busy making a living."
She had to try and visualize what I was talking about. It certainly was not her Island! "But what about a girl's Tie?" she asked, puzzled. "We don't wear anything then... " Hell! What's the use? I could go on and on. Let's just say that for Phyllis Stafford it was a bloody difficult afternoon.
Bedtime wasn't much better. I was hoping Dick wouldn't tie me, and he was wondering whether he should or he shouldn't. I wished he would let me sleep with one or the other of them; it would have saved a lot of trouble. But we ended up standing beside my bed and looking at the inviting loop of rope I was supposed to stick my ankle into.
"Must I, Master?" I gave it all the poignancy I could dig.
He didn't bother to answer, just made me one of those "be my guest" motions of the arm. He also smiled very charmingly at my girlish modesty about taking off my clothes. I was pretty sure I could have fun with that guy if it wasn't for little bright-eyes busy watching.
I did my strip tease. I made it as erotic as I could, but there's not that much scope with what I had on. If I had to be naked, and if I had to be bound, I wanted to give him as much frustration as possible. We both knew I was watching the bulge beneath the bit of stuff he wore around his loins. Hell, I'd nothing to lose!
"Please don't tie me, Master." In a puckish mood I knelt at his feet and bowed my head in submissive appeal. It's a pose that ought to harden the limpest dink. Or soften the hardest heart.
Dick didn't say a word, just admired me quietly for a few moments and stepped away. Curious, I looked up. He was turning back to me. He had picked up his favourite whip. In panicky haste I leaped to my feet and positioned myself on the bed. I got my foot through that damn loop so quick you'd have thought it the thing I desired most in the world, and at that moment I guess it was! I looked up at my Master in pure fear and trembling.
He didn't whip me. Dick had some sort of tolerance of his own for female frailty, probably just an overflow of his affection for the kid. He just grinned to let me know he was up to my little tricks. Then he got down on his knees and reached under the bed. The loop of rope 'round my ankle suddenly got tight.
In the dark I cried. I was glad they could not see my tears. I was ashamed of them. Me! Weeping like a baby! But I couldn't help it. The rope 'round my ankle had a strange potency in telling me I could never, never be free again. Life on the Island was wonderful for Dick and Wanda, but it sure wasn't much for that one time journalist Phyllis Stafford.
During the next few days I managed not to get whipped. I made enough gaffes and bloopers, but I was very obedient and submissive about the daily Tie, I think it helped. It beats all what a girl can adjust to. I got tied in all sorts of ways and to all sorts of things, always naked, of course! But after the first day Dick tied Wanda and I apart where we couldn't see each other or talk. All alone and tied to my tree or the posts or whatever, I came to realize there was something in what they'd told me about meditation and a chance to think. Whilst I hadn't gotten that far myself, I could understand that, for Wanda who'd been tied as far back as she could remember, it could easily become a restful period each day and something to look forward to. I tried out the languid postures she'd spoken of. Once I snoozed.
I had something to think about. Wanda, I think mischievously, made constant reference to the coming Friday with its gala event: She and I would both get our bottoms caned. This delightful custom was referred to euphemistically as "The Girls' Penalty," or maybe more casually as simply "Friday." For the rest of my life I will be unable to think of Friday without feeling the cut of a cane across my naked rump. Anyway, I didn't relish it. Wanda's assurance that I'd come to love it didn't cut much ice compared with my memory of that awful whipping the first day when I'd been strapped to the twin posts. I was still striped all over the place. I couldn't see how a girl could take that once a week and live, not right then I couldn't.
It was my privilege to be first. Guest of honflur, I suppose. To keep me where he wanted me, Dick had thought up a real honey of a device. The stuff washed up on the beach plus the natural abundance of the Island provided an abundance of bits of wood and sticks and poles and posts. This contraption was simply a couple of poles staked to the ground and pegged together at one end, the other end was open like a pair of jaws. In the middle of each, Dick had managed to carve out a pair of half circles, I was invited to strip and stand where the two poles could be closed together imprisoning my ankles in the two circlets. Since the poles were about ten feet long, a girl fastened in the centre would have no hope of reaching either end to free herself.
Trying to look grateful for what I was about to receive, I stepped into the trap and watched the poles come together and neatly clip my ankles about a foot apart. The circlets were a tight fit. So far as my own efforts were concerned I'd stand there forever. Dolefully I turned and watched Dick position the loose ends and tie them firmly. I was fixed, but good!
Dick gave me a little lecture. Wanda loved it. So did he, the bastard! I gave it my polite attention. For sure, I was going to be extra special polite about then! I felt like something taken from its nice protective shell and laid out in the open. He explained that the virtue of the fix I was in lay in the fact I was almost free. Only my ankles were held. The rest of me could make any motions I wanted to contrive. True, I wouldn't be taking a walk, and I couldn't kick anyone. But apart from those trifles I was a lucky girl.
It transpired that these quaint stocks in which I stood were designed to build character. A girl getting her bottom caned while in their embrace had the choice of making an exhibition of herself, or of displaying the good stuff of which she was made by standing still and smiling while her bottom got soundly tanned. Dick added, as an afterthought, the info' that a girl who made a bit of fuss naturally ended up with a lot of extra marks. Any girl ran the hazard of reaching back her hands to soothe her scorched skin and getting caned across her knuckles in the process. This was why my hands were not tied. I would have to learn to dispose them acceptably while being punished. In short, I was once again being reduced to childhood, but with an adult bottom on which would fall an adult cane. Gosh! Wasn't I a lucky girl!
My final indignity came when that smiling son-of-a-bitch explained that I could take my first slash standing up and the second bending over to touch the pole that was looking after my feet. I'd have to alternate, the onus of keeping track was mine. There was also a nice stable currency with which I could pay for errors or omissions or bad behavior. I could just hold out my hand and get a stinger across the palm. Those two bits of wood that looked as though some farmer had dropped 'em off by accident held more potential for a girl's self control than the Girl Guides and the local Convent put together.
Let me indulge in a pun. My number one stroke left me painfully uncertain. It hurt like Hell, but it wasn't in the same class as those of my first beating. Instinctively my hands flew back to feel my hurt. It was only by my greatest effort of will that I pulled them away in time to save offense. Having done so I was left wondering what to do with them. Silly, I guess, but I couldn't for the life of me think of a good place to put them. I actually wished they were tied and out of the way.
Figure my plight, standing bare-naked and unable to move my feet. I couldn't let my hands just dangle, the tip of the cane might get them. To clasp them in front looked as though I was praying. To join them at the back of my neck, which certainly makes a most attractive pose for a naked girl, would seem as though I was enjoying the whole affair and please hit me harder. The only use I'd have for them was when I bent over to touch the post.
Wanda had taken up a position well in front. The little darling wanted to sustain my morale with her smile of encouragement, and also give me a stern nod of disapproval if I started to do something wrong. The space at my rear was well taken up by my Master with his damn cane. Since he'd be moving from side to side so as to get both my cheeks well beaten he'd need all the space he could get, that and the swing of his arm. It was really beautifully organized.
Suddenly I realized I had to bend over for number two. But when? I didn't want to seem eager. The more time between strokes the better so far as I was concerned. On the other hand if I was dilatory... ! I could see that was another one I wasn't going to win. Gracefully, as though before a camera, I bent forward until the tips of my fingers touched the pole. The cane instantly bit me as if it had been waiting for just that chance.
I think bending over doubles the pain; I thought so then. I made some weird sound I can't describe and snapped upright. My hands flew to my burning seat and were immediately rewarded for their trespass by a slash that managed to catch both sets of knuckles. It was bloody awful I moaned and hugged my injured hands beneath my armpits, which fortunately was an acceptable disposal. Through the pain I wondered desperately if that stroke counted. If it did I was now due to bend over. But I most urgently longed to keep my fingers where they were for a little while and nurse them back from their raging agony. The dilemma was settled for me: the stroke had not counted. It cut me now while I was leaning forward hugging myself.
It was almost a relief. Number three was a repeat of number one. It gave me time to realize that if I kept my hands out of the way I might get through this absurd ordeal credibly. Only half my stripes would verge on the unbearable. Anxiously I bent down and touched the pole with numbed and throbbing fingers, then gasped and moaned as number four striated the stretched skin curved to receive it.
I suppose I have to give the bastard some credit for judgment. After a bad start I found he was caning me in such a way and with the blows so spaced that I was able to cope. My "Girls' Penalty" was following the prescribed course. Not a real flogging, just a sort of gentle reminder. Gentle... Holy cow!
I had no idea how many strokes I was supposed to get. The tempo we had fallen into could very well go on all day. From time to time I looked at Wanda appealingly, but she just gave me her brightest smile as though I was doing fine and just carry on. My bottom was a raging furnace. When the quiet steady succession of blows had reduced me to a fear I wasn't going to be able to take it after all without a scene, they stopped.
"Intermission," my Master announced cheerfully.
The relief was almost worth it. Feeling more than ever like a child I asked plaintively: "Can I rub my bottom now, please?"
They both laughed. I'm sure the request from an adult female must have sounded quaint. But I didn't care. I wanted to rub my wounds in the worst way and be damned to 'em. At that moment I probably looked utterly forlorn.
"Permission granted," Dick managed between chuckles. "Rub as hard and as long as you like."
"It doesn't help half as much as you think it will, darling," Wanda explained regretfully from her long experience.
She was right. You can't rub too hard or it hurts. But there is some strange soothing sensation in simply splaying out your hands to cover as much of your two cheeks as possible and just holding them there. It's actually erotic. Standing there and doing just that, I knew I looked silly, but I didn't give a damn. I found myself wondering if the tremendously compulsive urge came from sensory need or was nature's way of shielding the spot from further damage. But anyway I did it and little by little patted myself back to where I could stand upright and pay polite attention to my company.
Wanda and Dick were squatting on the ground surveying me with tremendous approval. I had to suppose my performance had been satisfactory. Quite casually, as though I was not standing there with locked feet and burning bottom, they drifted into conversation in which I found myself included. Everything was going fine; all was well with the Island. My condition was normal! I longed to know how much more I had to suffer. I wanted to believe my penalty over, but dared not ask. I realized that part of it might be my having to stand as I was a long, long time. I suppose it was my looking a bit dejected that prompted little bright eyes to drop the bomb.
"Dick darling, the poor dear looks a bit down. May I lick her cunt?"
You could have cut the silence with a knife. I'd forgotten my rash weakness in telling the child to go ahead with the devastating request for permission to do the thing I wanted most of all. Now I stood, naked and helpless, delivered to the wrath to come. I could feel my nerves twitching here and there in pure fear.
Dick took it slow and easy, the clever swine! "Why would you want to do that, sweetheart?" he asked in an absent sort of way that gave her no warning of the trap.
"I think it would feel scrumptious. It would cheer her up. 'Cuz you're not through with her yet, are you." She beamed at her deity adoringly. "And then she could do it to me when it's my turn. I think it's a lovely idea. Oh, darling, please...?"
I could tell he was doing some heavy thinking. So was I! I longed to have my feet free and to run... run like hell! He leaned forward and patted her affectionately on the shoulder. "Sweetheart, I've just remembered... be a good girl and trot back to the fire and bank it up. Don't hurry, Phyllis needs a break."
Wanda got the message. She got slowly to her feet, her face stricken. When she turned her eyes to mine they implored forgiveness. I could see she was deathly scared and did not know what to say. This was something new for her. I knew myself the serpent in her Eden, and cursed the heat between my legs that had brought about her misery and the agony that would fall to me. I watched her trudge drearily away. I had never seen her loveliness so desolate.
When we were alone, my Master gave me his full attention. "That came from you, didn't it?"
"Yes."
"Why the Hell couldn't you leave well enough alone, you silly bitch?"
"I'm asking myself the same question." I admitted dolefully and with truth. "Have you really got the hots for the kid that bad?"
"Yes."
He was a bit taken aback by my ready admissions. "Would it help you out if I released you from that thing and gave you the fucking of your life?"
"I think it might help you more than me," I told him, not caring what payment such honesty might earn.
It hit him like a blow. The poor bastard had to be so hungry for a woman that it hurt. He got to his feet, his lips grim. "Wanda will stay away for awhile," he said with certainty.
The moment he separated the poles I ran. I was so damn scared of the punishment I was going to get I wasn't thinking straight. I was going to try and reach the girl before he grabbed me. Wanda would be an ally. She might talk him out of whipping me half to death.
He caught me within ten paces and slapped my face from side to side until I was dizzy and sank to my knees. I heard a broken voice that was my own sob brokenly: "I don't mind. I want you to fuck me. I'm just frightened, that's all." I lay down on my back and opened my legs wide in the oldest invitation in the world and watched Dick toss away his loincloth, saw, too, that which I was about to get. It was very, very ready.
Look, I'm not going to slip you any fine descriptive prose. I wasn't the first girl to be fucked like that. I didn't kid myself I was being all that badly treated. I'd asked him for it, why would I beef! All I'll tell you is that I made one hell of a lot more noise from what he did to me than I ever had from his caning.
He never withdrew. He knew with certainty we were going a second round. With his weight on me alive and pulsing I tried for a female advantage. I stroked his damp hair with one hand and his back with the other while he was ravenously devouring my nipples. "Darling. I'm sorry. Honest I am. Please don't whip me. I'm frightened. I'll be good."
"You are good," he said sardonically, ignoring my plea.
Once more he plunged into the depths. Once more my cries and whimpering rang out to Venus or Aphrodite or whoever it is who hears the agony of a girl in coitus. For a little while I forgot about the whip.
Quite absurdly, Dick brushed the dirt off my naked back with his bit of cloth before he put it back on. I said an embarrassed "Thank you, Master," and awaited instructions. There did not seem to be any. So, to show what a good girl I was prepared to be, I went and fitted my ankles back into the holes in one of the poles. In an absent-minded sort of way Dick locked them in and made the poles secure. Then he went and squatted where he'd been before. He looked at me, frankly enjoying my nudity. I stood erect, making the best of myself. I clasped my errant hands behind my back where they would hide nothing.
"That didn't change anything," he said heavily.
My heart did a nose dive. "I hoped it did," I admitted simply.
"Big disappointment eh?" He sounded amused. "I told you, I'm terribly frightened. I think that whip could kill me."
"Who said anything about a whip?"
It was true, he hadn't said a thing. I felt foolish. "I'm afraid I took it for granted," I saw awkwardly. "I suppose that's an admission of guilt."
"There's lots of ways to punish a girl," he said, continuing to assess me. "How'd you like to hang by your thumbs for twelve hours?"
My stomach curled up. I couldn't even imagine it.
"Or be staked out spreadeagle for a week."
My voice was close to breaking, I could be sure of nothing. "Please, Master, you're not like that. These things are tortures."
He considered, and shrugged. "Not really. They wouldn't even mark you. But they help. After looking at them you can look at the whip and know you'll live."
"You are going to whip me then?"
"Yes."
"Was what I did all that bad?"
"For Wanda, yes. And anyway you've known for a long while you have to be whipped again. It's the only way you'll conform. Mostly you're acting."
Passionately I wished my feet were not anchored. I felt so damn silly standing there talking about my life and looking like a vegetable well rooted in the ground. "Master, since I'm going to be punished anyway I might as well blurt out the whole thing."
"There's degrees of punishment, Phyllis."
I waved that aside and plunged. "Don't you understand what's wrong with the three of us on this Island! It's sex. It's driving us nuts. Wanda reeks of it. I bet you've been in agony this past year or so, scared to stick it into her for fear she gets pregnant. There's such a powerful emanation from that little girl I simply can't bear it. You're going to whip me because I can't bear it. But that won't change anything either. We'll both go on wanting her."
He looked at me disgustedly. "We were doing fine until you showed up."
"You had a marvellous thing going. Not another man in the world had it that good. Even your deviations made rational and immutable. But dammit, can't you understand! You can still have it all. You and Wanda continue as you are with you working out your frustrations by fucking me. What the Hell more d'you want?"
"I don't want you pregnant either."
"No one would have guessed that a few minutes ago," I scoffed. "But I've got some pills, they'll last quite a while. When they're gone I'll have to take my .chances."
He was still looking at my breasts and my cunt and my pinioned feet. "But you're a rebel. You sneer and scoff at the whole edifice Wanda and I have made."
"The edifice you made," I told him. "So, O.K. I'll conform. I'll let you tie me every day and to my bed every night and whip me every Friday. I haven't done that much complaining these last few days, have I? Look at me now! It was me who stepped into these holes where my feet are fixed. You didn't have to ask me. We have to live together, I'm the minority, I'll come to you and do it your way."
"You're just trying to escape being whipped, Phyllis."
I longed to stamp an angry foot. I longed to go and shake my fist in his complacent male face. But I couldn't do a damn thing but stand. I sort of slumped and let him see my defeat. I waved a hopeless hand. "Alright. It doesn't matter. We'll live together and I suppose something will evolve. I'll do what I've just promised." I laughed bitterly, "I've got the time and maybe I'll get to like it the way Wanda does. I'm going to do this whether you whip me or not. You've got this whip idea on the brain. Sure! You're right, I know it'll work. I'll be humble as hell afterwards. So you'd better whip me and get the job out of the way. Maybe we'll both feel better afterwards. I know I will. I'm scared out of my wits all the time now thinking about it."
It was quite an outburst. I braced myself for the cane. I couldn't imagine I hadn't earned it. But instead of a scowl Dick smiled amusedly. "I could almost kid myself you want to be whipped," he said quietly. "Ever consider that possibility?"
Sure I'd considered it. I've said before, I'm no naive kid. The Island was saturated with sex. Its principle codes were deviations. I'd been living with them for a week. I'd been whipped and seen a girl whipped and whipped her myself. Sure I'd consider the possibility that some of the heat in my crotch came from the whip. "O.K." I told him honestly. "The whip has touched me, but I want to whip Wanda. It's that simple."
"You've told me you're a lesbian. So the Wanda thing's understandable. To you she's luscious. Quite sure the whip hasn't touched you? I've been watching, remember."
"It doesn't touch me."
"Remember that Shakespeare line: "Methinks the lady doth protest too much."
I remembered it. Far too often it was valid. Was it so with me! "I'm too confused." I told him. "If I ever get to like being whipped I won't be ashamed of the fact. You'll be the first to know." I roved my mind around for a few moments and added, "Can't you believe I wish I did love being whipped. I'd be in for the greatest joy of my life. But, seriously, you don't help me. You hurt me too much. Far beyond any initial tolerance I might have. Since I have to live with it and with you, why don't you try and help me?"
"This whipping today? How does it affect you?"
"Standing up I can bear it. If you and Wanda helped I might get some of the feelings you think I ought to have. Bending over it's just too damn much. Does Wanda's fire get burning when you give her that Manta tail thing?"
"I gave her five. Later she asked for five more."
"But there's so much difference when a girl asks for it. It's the awful compulsions and the not knowings that defeat me. Look at me now: I stand here naked waiting for you to cane my bottom. Even if I was inclined to get the hots out of it, I'd be defeated by being frightened because I don't know how hard you'll cane me or how long. I'm only a naked girl and the pain drives everything else away, that and the fear. Give me five or give me ten in the right sort of way and maybe I'd respond."
"Ask me to give you five medium strokes."
I wanted so much to belong! "Please give me five medium strokes with the cane, Master."
He came and sucked my nipples, my hands found him everywhere I could reach. He cupped my pubic hair and stroked my waist. In no time he had me moaning. Then he stepped behind me and slashed my bottom with five hard strokes in rapid succession. I looked back over my shoulder and laughed in his face. It was not until the fifth stroke that I screamed.
When it was over I was wet with the sweat of pain or of lust, I don't know which. Both of us were panting. Neither spoke.
"Well?" It was an eternity of silence he had broken. "Please give me five more strokes, Master. But please love me first."
He loved me. I spasmed into orgasm at the fifth cut.
It was me who broke the next long silence. "Did it prove anything, Master, except that you're a damn good lover?"
"It proved something," Dick said with certainty. "But just the same, on Monday you will be whipped properly. You'll have three days to think about it."
"Sadist!"
He just laughed. When Wanda came back she looked at us as though expecting change. She was a sad-looking little girl.
"I'm going to get my whipping on Monday," I told her brightly.
"We've got this one to finish first," Dick said as though it was a mere nothing.
"Please whip me for the rest of my 'Girls' Penalty,' Dick," I requested formally so that Wanda would know everything was O.K.
Her smile was my reward. "I told you that you'd come to like it," she exclaimed delightedly.
The cane found my bottom once again. I bent over and then straightened up. My hands were no longer a problem, they looked after themselves. All I had to do was bend and then stand and keep on doing it. The cane would find me. Dick cut steadily at my bottom, his strokes rhythmic and controlled. As in a slow motion movie I did what I had been told to do. The stocks held my feet immovably. I could not run. All I could do was offer my derriere to the cane.
My "Girls' Penalty" went on and on.
I felt only lust.
* * *
RICHARD CARNABY
Am I a right Royal S.O.B.? I've asked myself that question often enough during the years on the island. Did I pervert Wanda, or did I create in her a female quite unique? If end results mean anything I did a good job. I might not be far out if I said Wanda was the happiest girl in the world. So, O.K., she worships me! I adore her. We're even.
I don't suppose I'd be writing this if that damn plane hadn't flopped on the beach. We needed Phyllis Stafford like we needed a hole in the head. I have to suppose she's an example of what money has done to females: bitchy as all get out, completely selfish. It only took me a day to decide I was going to do her a lot more good than she'd do us. I revised that after awhile. She might have possibilities. Once you've given her a few bad times the human being and the feminine begin to surface. I stopped actively disliking her after the first few days.
As I caned her for the second half of her 'Girls' Penalty' that first Friday, I had to admire, and be a bit excited about the way she was coming along. I suppose we'd both found release in making love, I'd also allowed her to blow off some steam verbally. In a way we had come to an understanding. If she lived up to her rationalizations about our Island Code she might not be a liability after all. She had intelligence. In the end that's everything.
Caning Phyllis was fun. Caning a girl every Friday isn't the kinky quirk it sounds, it actually does them good. If I get an erotic thrill out of doing it, so what? It's a bonus for my time and trouble. The Friday caning is a balance. As a girl's bottom collects her stripes she sheds the flighty notions she's built up during the week. Chivalry has been a curse to the Western world. It's given both sexes all sorts of false premises and no end of headaches. Caning corrects it. Caning a girl's seat makes her twice as female as the bitch who goes around thinking she's as good or better than a man.
Caning a girl on Friday is very different from punishing them. I'll get around to the punishment bit another time. I've had to develop a technique for Friday, and it's not all that easy. There's that rosy round bottom twinkling at me so that the urge to really lace into it is overwhelming, but the idea is to give only enough pain to sharpen awareness and evoke a few gasps. I've found that neat sharp cuts on one cheek at a time gets the best results. If you don't get heavy handed you can whip them quite a long while.
Phyllis Stafford is quite lovely. Different from Wanda, but lovely in her own right. As I caned her now it became evident she was adjusting. The first half of her penalty had been ragged, but now she'd got the hang of it. Her captive feet no longer seemed in rebellion. She was standing or bending with a graceful fluidity that had a rhythm entirely her own. The pink stripes springing to life upon her flesh were periods within the poetry of her motion. I was finding her immensely provocative. I cut at her bottom with a deep joy.
Wanda is sweet. I could see that after her first revulsion she began to take to our island's second female. She could sense the shock of compulsive adjustment that was throwing Phyllis for a loop-not that Phyllis was not loudly vocal about it herself, at the start anyway, before I whipped her, and I'm damn sure she said a helluva lot to the kid that she was scared to say to me. For Wanda, Phyllis was an experience.
Right now Wanda was watching entranced as I gave our new arrival her penalty. Her eyes were bright, and she was breathing rapidly. I remembered the zest with which she had beaten the older girl once before, so I handed her the cane and let her finish off the job. Neither Phyllis or I had any doubt her strokes were sharper than mine had been. The fact that her own Friday whipping was due at any moment did not bother Wanda at all, but then, it never did.
When I unlocked her captive ankles Phyllis managed a quite credible "Thank you Master," and studiously refrained from rubbing her bottom. "May I dress, Master?"
She was playing it safe with the 'Master' bit. She was still on probation. I didn't want the title, but figured it would be good for her to use it a little while yet. I watched with amusement her speed in getting into her two piece. My amusement was more than matched by Wanda's curiosity as to why a girl should be so damn anxious to cover her female assets. I wasn't giving any lectures on the subject. In fact I don't think I could any more. It's a damn fool bit of prudery when you consider what it's all about.
Over lunch Wanda and I worked at conversation. I unbent a bit and told Phyllis straight she'd better join in and say whatever she felt like, so long as it was not condemnatory about us, or moaning about a rescue and a lost career. We wanted her to talk.
"I'm scared to," she admitted. "I'm opinionated. You'll whip me."
"You must talk, darling," Wanda assured her. "But don't be rude to Dick."
"But how will I know the line where lese majeste begins?"
"Tell you what," I suggested big-heartedly. "I won't be the judge, Wanda will. When she figures you're being offensive she'll whip you. I'll stay out of it. How about it, Sweetheart?"
"Oh, Dick, how gorgeous!" The youngster clapped her hands. "You will let me tie you, darling?" she asked her new responsibility.
Phyllis had to laugh at the exuberance. "Of course I will, Honey. It'll be about six times a day, but we'll get used to it." She looked confidingly at me. "Wanda whips me harder than you do."
I felt we'd all got a bit closer together.
I like to keep the kid in suspense about her Friday Penalty. There's a sort of understanding that she won't ask, even if she's bursting with curiosity. She loves the suspense more than I do. When we had finished eating I made the big announcement. "It's the Merry-Go-Round, Sweetheart."
The youngster clapped her hands and danced away, leaving Phyllis and I to follow with the cane and the cord.
"Will I ever get like that, Master?"
I handed her the cane. "It's you who's going to use this. I'm going to watch."
She accepted it, not unwillingly, and giving me a sideways glance. "You're quite sure I'll become an addict, aren't you?"
"Don't worry about it. It'll happen in its own way. And for goodness sake don't think about perversion. I think about eight women out of ten can find glory in the whip if the circumstances are right."
"Not the first time, Master."
"That's only because they're scared."
When we came into view Wanda got out of her slip. Getting rid of it is one of the things she likes best. She waved gaily and got into position.
The Merry-Go-Round is just a name. It enabled me to use another of the lengths of timber the tide rolls in, I pegged it on top of the flat surface of a stump, dead centre. Wanda lays herself on one end, face down as on a table, she stretches her hands forward as far as they will go and they are strapped there; another strap is tightened over the small of her back. Her feet are still on the ground. Since the plank on which she is bound revolves from its axis on the stump, she can kick herself into motion and the whole thing will circle. I stand still and deliver the cane to her bent bottom as she goes by.
It's a kid's notion, but presents her with a nice quandary as to how quickly she wants to push herself around. If she gets tired of pushing and tells me so, I then tie her feet up beneath the plank so that her bottom is nicely draped over the end. That stretches the skin, so she doesn't often choose it. The two of us strapped her down. She was tremendously excited, eyes sparkling.
"Is it you that's going to whip me, darling?" She had seen the cane in Phyllis's hand.
"D'you want me to?" Phyllis was yearning for an affirmative.
"Of course I do, darling! Isn't Dick sweet to us. Would you like me to go 'round and 'round, or would it be nicer if my feet were up? Dick will fix me."
"Which hurts the most, Honey?"
"Feet up. It stretches me."
"I think I'd prefer it though. If you go 'round and 'round you'll be scrambling sideways like a crab."
Wanda grinned at me. "Get my tootsies well up, darling."
I was a little bit cruel, but I know what the kid can stand. I not only tied her feet up all the way, but I put a couple of bands round her thighs. Her bottom became about as available as a bottom can be. It was a fascinatingly dimpled curve. Phyllis Stafford began, experimentally, to cane it.
I sat unobtrusively out of the way. Suddenly I was aware of privilege in watching these two females who, each in her own way, were involved in a tremendously emotional experience. I knew Phyllis was walking steadfastly into a strange land, unsure of what she might discover. I was pretty certain, too, that Wanda would reach a climax within her sex sometime during her caning, her pubis was pressed hard against the wood in an intimate sexual embrace. She was already beholding visions.
But it was Phyllis Stafford that held my main attention. She was testing herself, testing the cane, testing Wanda's gasps and small moans. She varied her strokes, trying all angles, from above and from below or from the side. The pink striations multiplied upon the innocent flesh in their own degree of severity according to the force of the impact Phyllis chose. It was right there my curiosity focused.
Jut as she had discovered grace when her feet had been locked between the poles, so Phyllis found it now. There were no nervous stabbings or awkward stances; her motions flowed. She caned the bent stretched girl's bottom in total absorption with the task. Her eyes were bright, noting each mark she etched upon the taut skin. There was about her an aura of power and force. I knew for sure Phyllis Stafford longed with all her being to slash the round flesh into the ridged weals of agony.
It turned out to be quite a day. We didn't keep Wanda strapped to the Merry-Go-Round any extra time. Free, she was untouched by her Friday. She embraced the girl who had whipped her as though it had been a priceless gift-in a way it was! Then the three of us went down to the beach and got our supper and cooked it. While we were eating Phyllis slipped us another hesitant anecdote.
"I'm getting used to the rules." She smiled companionably. "Hit me hard at the start; I seemed to be on the wrong end of everything. But, as I told you, I've been around, and because of that I have never seen you as a pair of monsters. I've known about the whip for a good many years." She paused as she drifted back in memory. "I can't tell you his name. He's one of those so far up you find it hard to see him as mortal. Being a columnist gets me in where angels fear to tread, and it got me into this party where my eyes almost popped when I saw him. It was a real scoop for me when the host, who owed me a favor, introduced me and I found myself alone with this most distinguished man."
She grinned ruefully. "Nothing's what you expect. He seemed glad of someone to talk to. We gabbed back and forth like a breeze, and it was all good stuff. He was a charming man, beautifully educated, superbly dressed, well along in years, yet quite ageless. We flitted from topic to topic and sharpened our wits on each other. When he said, without any preamble: "I'd like to whip you," I thought I'd caught something out of context. He saw me groping, so he repeated in the pleasantest tone of voice: "I'd like to whip you."
This time there was no use pretending I hadn't heard, looked at him stupidly and asked, "Why?"
"You know why, my dear." He disposed of my question firmly.
I did know why. He had no doubts that I knew. So what was the busy columnist's next move? I was right in there. I might never get this high again. So what to do! Run, temporize, be fluffily feminine? Or meet him on his own level?
"Where do we go?" I asked as casually as my pounding heart would allow.
He had a house; in it was a room! He asked me with a fine courtliness if I would prefer to strip naked myself or have him remove my clothes after I was helpless. I chose the latter. It seemed somehow wrong that I should perform a vulgar strip act before such kind wise eyes. I sensed instantly his pleasure with my choice.
He had leather cuffs, padded with fur. He buckled one 'round each of my wrists, very tight. In each was a ring. It took him no more time than it takes me to tell to have me standing on my toes in the centre of the floor, with my arms stretched up and far apart, suspended from the rings in my wrist cuffs by chains reaching from the ceiling. I was so taut I quivered, probably I was just trembling.
Undressing me was easy. It was an evening "Do." I hadn't a thing on that went over my shoulders, nothing to cut or snip. He did the job with gentleness and reverence... and a skill born of much practice. He placed my clothes neatly on a chair.
I'm not going to say I'm a prude or that I'm not. I don't know what I am. You've found out yourselves I'm embarrassed when my breasts and my vulva are made bare. We needn't ask why. Out in the world most women are the same. I can only tell you for sure it was a frightening and beautifully erotic sensation to be stripped by that man and have him see all my nakedness to do with as he wished. Up to that time I'd never been so helpless in my life. I wasn't scared. I should have been.
He whipped me into unconsciousness. It took a long time and more pain than I believed existed or was possible. With the first stroke I knew I'd been a fool. But at the beginning, my principal concern was my own behavior. I kicked, I twisted, I lifted myself up off the floor by my tied wrists; I screamed and screamed. Even when I was screaming I'd look back over my shoulder at his composed concerned face as he gave all his attention to whipping my naked body. For him it was a total involvement. I couldn't be sure he even heard my screams.
Just as with undressing me, he showed an exquisite skill. He must have whipped a hundred girls. I was willing to believe a thousand. Whenever my agonized contortions exposed a fresh bit of me, his whip found it instantly. I struggled and twisted so much that it was my most intimate parts that got the most attention. He saved my bottom and my back to use when I tired of my gymnastics and stood still or hung from my wrists. I remember vividly how from time to time I'd use all my will to bottle up my screams and replace them with reasoned arguments as to why he should stop whipping me. I couldn't manage any very lengthy rationales, but I crammed as much pith into the choked sentences as I could. I won't repeat 'em. They'd sound silly now, and anyway you've heard some. They're good old tried and true feminine stand-bys. But I don't believe he heard a word of them either. He carried right on whipping the naked young woman who had accepted his honest invitation to be whipped.
The searing excoriations on my skin seemed to me incessant, but actually he whipped me in a very leisurely tempo, vicious and cruel but with finesse. His lash marked me from my neck down to my knees. He even came to the front and whipped my stomach, my cunt got his very best attention. For some reason he left my breasts alone, perhaps to prove he was a gentleman. The pain mounted up and up and up until I was a single screaming agony, and then it quietly released me into a nice warm darkness of insensibility. I suppose I hung by my wrists. I don't even know if he continued whipping me or not.
When I came back into the world I was on a sofa having brandy poured down my throat. When I spluttered back to where my mind was functioning he was quietly discussing a show of Renaissance art a local gallery was featuring. Believe it or not I picked the conversation up myself while he unstrapped the bands from my wrists. I could see the virtue of the fur lining, a hanging girl needs it. We chatted away for quite a while. I dressed with him watching appreciatively. I also drank a great deal of his brandy. He then drove me home. Neither of us mentioned my whipping.
Phyllis Stafford's voice drifted into silence. She grinned apologetically. "Sorry. I got carried away. But the whip... ! It haunts me, doesn't it? A sort of destiny."
"That was a wonderful story," Wanda breathed. "Are there any more?"
"Not tonight, honey. I'm bushed. Mind if I go to bed?"
We escorted her. She forestalled my order. "I'm not complaining anymore, Master. That rope on my ankle doesn't stop me sleeping. Let's make it a permanent arrangement I'll put my foot in it every night without complaining."
Phyllis was feeling her oats. I had been saving a small item for such an occasion. "Remember this morning?" I asked. "You called me Dick in speaking to Wanda?"
She remembered alright. "I hoped you hadn't noticed, Master," she admitted candidly.
"Take off your shorts and touch your toes. Wanda, go and fetch the cane." I gave her no time for diversions.
Wanda trotted off on her errand. Phyllis stood and looked at me, shocked. She was searching for something to say, but couldn't find it. Without a word she stripped her bottom naked and placed her shorts on a rock.
"You'll stay tight and still for three. If you mess it up you'll get six... tied."
"Yes Master." I could have sworn she was relieved. She'd expected worse.
We stood silent and in complete communion until Wanda returned. I was amused to note she had brought me the cruelest cane of all. As though disdaining the incongruity of so isolated a covering of her femaleness, Phyllis Stafford undid her halter and tossed it on top of her shorts. With an almost challenging look at me she turned and bent over, but it was not her toes she touched, she put the palms of her hands upon the ground, With her knees rigid it placed her bottom into an impudent prominence. I knew she was giving me a message, but for the life of me I could not tell what it was.
I caned the stretched taut flesh with three cruel strokes. Wanda gasped in sympathy. When it was done, Phyllis slowly stood erect, only the drawn lines of her features told her agony. Her gaze, meeting mine, was level. "Thank you, Master."
I felt humbled and a bit of a sadist. She was superb! I would have liked to pay some tribute. But what the hell... "May I dress, Master?"
I motioned assent. She put on her two bits and pieces and went to her bed. Without a word or a look she thrust her foot through the loop of rope. I tightened it securely. "Good night, darlings," she said sleepily and turned over on her side.
We were actually happy, all three of us! We shared things and talked and laughed. It was a good couple of days. We enjoyed each other. If, sometimes, we saw the shadow across Phyllis Stafford's face, we did not speak of it. We, too, remembered the whipping she was to receive. We did not speak of it. Why be cruel? There would be no reprieve. It was like the ocean and the Island, it was there.
After breakfast on Monday it was she who broke the taboo. "When am I to be whipped, Master?"
For a crazy moment I wanted to forgive her and call it quits. But that would have been fatal. It would have spoiled her, ruined everything. "After lunch," I told her casually.
"I won't have much appetite."
"You don't have to eat, darling," Wanda assured her. "I know I wouldn't." She turned to me appealingly. "Couldn't you whip her this morning, Dick and save her all that awful waiting?"
"The waiting's good for her."
Wanda was oozing solicitude. She'd had enough punishment whippings to know. "But you're going to use the manta tail... "
"Why not, she's earned it."
Phyllis saw her fellow female's concern. "Don't worry, honey, I expect I'll live."
"But, darling, you've never had it. The manta tail's... " Wanda broke off in confusion, she wasn't helping.
Phyllis managed a real laugh. "I know. The manta tail is the ultimate. It will hurt me worse than all the others. I fully expect that today I'll be whipped insensibly for my second time."
Wanda loves to fish. During the morning she danced away to the beach with her net, leaving Phyllis and I alone. We fell into each other's arms with an intensity of passion I won't try and describe. In a pause between our thrustings she looked up at me with a twisted smile and quoted sardonically: "We who are about to die... " I think we could have made love all day, such was our hunger, or our lust, whichever you want to call it. But we remembered the kid, she might return. Neither of us wanted to shock her into discovery, there are better ways. So we tidied ourselves and talked.
"I thought you were a lesbian!" I jibed at Phyllis.
She grinned ruefully. "I am. I'm as hungry now for Wanda as I've ever been. And she wants me. Can't you tell?"
I nodded soberly. "Yes, it's there alright. Fact is, these damn names don't mean as much as we'd like them to. We love labels. I take it that since I was out in the world lesbianism has become a bit of a fad."
"I am a lesbian! I can't explain you and me... nerves perhaps, anxiety, the need to be held. I loved it. I want you again now. This Island's made me insatiable. I told you, you're a lucky man."
Things were falling beautifully into place. Wanda's youthful loveliness need not be spoiled. Phyllis and I could slake our carnal needs in each other.
She read my thoughts. "You needed me. If my plane hadn't conked out, you'd have had the kid pregnant within a year or two. You couldn't have held out, no man could. Wanda's sending out sex demands by her own wave lengths every moment of the day; she's dynamite now, and she's going to continue to develop. She may have the two of us climbing trees yet."
"You're not exactly without a certain appeal yourself," I told her dryly.
"Thanks." She'd scarcely heard me. She was thinking, hard! Taking a deep breath, she let me have it. "In a little while you're going to whip me because I asked for something. I'm going to take my chances and ask you again. Master, allow Wanda and I to make love. In me she can satisfy a tremendous compulsion she's feeling but can't understand. If you deny her me, then she must turn to you. She's well past the point of being happily neuter."
There are times when a man despairs of men. Women come up with the damnedest logic. Insidious is the word. I always think of poor lovesick Adam and that lousy apple. I'd probably have taken a bite of it myself. "Take you a bit of courage to say that?" I asked sourly.
"Damn right it did! You now have an excuse to whip me today, and Wednesday. And, of course, there's always good old Friday." She gave me a 'let's burn the boats' look. "But what I'm asking you makes sense."
She had me boxed in. I recognized the influence of our coitus, it affects human acts and judgement more than we care to admit. The bond between us was carnal, but it was strong because we both wanted to renew it. Supposing Phyllis and Wanda trotted off to the beach or into the trees ever so often, why should I complain? It would make our lives dovetail in a unique perfection of its own. Was a refusal to say 'yes' anything more than chauvinism? "What you ask robs me of part of my maleness," I told her.
"What you're talking about is pride." Phyllis was angry and disappointed. "For Pete's sake, man! You're fucking me and whipping me to your heart's content; how much more male can you get?"
She was right, but I saw the shadow of fear fall across her eager face. She'd blown her top and forgotten my title and generally told me where to get off. Further punishment was inevitable. Phyllis was honest in her fear and respect for the whip. Being right doesn't help much when you hurt.
"If I give you what you ask, it's from weakness. You'll have twisted me."
"No, no, no!" She made ineffectual thumping motions with her clenched fists as though knocking sense into a male head. "You'll simply have solved a problem and made two girls happy. We'll both love you more, not less."
I looked at her. She was extraordinarily beautiful in her animation. I also looked at my pride; it was a tug of war.
Sensing it, Phyllis reloaded her female artillery. "If you'll let us do... do this it will also give me a chance to break the news about the stork and human coupling... " She grinned in a wry recognition of farce. "Leastways I can fill in with girl talk stuff whatever she hasn't already figured out for herself."
I accepted defeat. I'd have to watch it, or it might become the first of many. With women it's a ceaseless war of attrition. They never tire. As I said, my Island Friday is predicated on a basic fact, an actual need in maintaining the status quo. "Very well then," I agreed, feigning weariness. "What you've said makes sense. You and Wanda can have your sixty-nines. Perhaps, if I ever get accustomed to the idea I'll come and watch."
I knew her jubilant, why not? Her intelligence got us over an awkward moment. She knelt in front of me and bowed her head. "Thank you, Master." The act was without satire or guile. She sat back on her heels and looked up at me open-eyed. "I'll do all I know how to make sure you have no regrets."
"It really means all that to you?"
"Yes, Master. It means that much to all of us." She lowered her eyes, thinking. When she raised them again I saw resolution. "Master, I have earned myself a lot of punishment." She swallowed and essayed a grin. "Please don't feel badly about giving it to me. I'll recognize that I've... well, got it coming. I'll try not to mind."
What the hell! She could have been twisting me, but I didn't think so. I'm only human, and at that moment she seemed the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. "Forget it," I said gruffly. "The slate's wiped clean. We were simply talking."
I could see and feel the tension leave her. She'd been really scared. Just to keep the record straight I reminded her, "That doesn't affect your whipping after lunch."
"Of course not, Master." She almost seemed glad of that too.
I felt tremendously male.
* * *
There is one perfect way to tie a girl who is to be thoroughly whipped, tie her hands together and hang her up by her wrists. But that's a punishment in itself. So let her have her toes to stand on and tie her wrists well apart to something overhead. If you want her immobilized you can stake her ankles down to the ground, but the disability of that is she can't kick. As I said before, I may be an S.O.B. but I dearly love to see all the motions she indulges in once the whip curls 'round. The leg work is fantastic.
We made a solemn constrained little procession as we wended our way to the convenient tree. I couldn't resist giving Phyllis the manta tail and the cords to carry. Her face was really something to watch as she ran through her fingers the cruel wand that would cut her flesh. But she put on a brave smile and only surrendered it when the moment came for her to strip.
"Y'know, it's funny, I can't really believe it's going to happen to me," she said conversationally.
"Nature's anesthetic," I assured her cheerfully.
"But isn't it a really super goosy suspense though?" Wanda giggled.
"It really is," Phyllis agreed thoughtfully. "I'm feeling everything intensely right now. I suppose that's nature too." She turned interested eyes to me. "Do you mind, Master, if I try and feel my way into and through this... what's going to happen? You know our talk; if there's something to be found I want to try and find it."
Hers was a tremendous courage. I wished I hadn't decided on the manta tail, it might defeat her. She had the capacity to reason even as she screamed. The Fridays would be the best for what she was now willing to seek. Today the die was cast. I tossed Wanda a cord and took one myself. "Give us your wrists, please," I asked gently. "We are going to do everything very slowly and very neatly and we will talk as we go along. Along with the whip, I mean, not just the getting ready for it."
Phyllis stood passive while we tightened the bands about her wrists. She moved to where she must stand and raised her arms. Wanda scrambled up and out on the bough and fastened the cords so that the girl to be whipped stood on her toes worshipping the sun. She was breathtaking.
"This is another of those moments, darling. Recognize it?" Wanda was as much aquiver as the bound girl.
Phyllis turned to me. "She's right, Master. May I stay like this a very little while? I want to let the sensation seep in, to stand as I am knowing what is going to be done to me, and not be able to do a thing about it. It is sort of one for the book."
I let her stand and wait for the whip. The two girls were involved in a communion almost psychic, it didn't take much imagination to believe Phyllis was at that moment more vividly perceptive to sensation and atmosphere than ever before in her life. I held the Manta tail for her to see. Her eyes would focus on it and then raise to mine as though the whip and I held the answer to a question. But there was no appeal in them, she made no plea. Phyllis Stafford had become entirely dedicated to the situation in which she was about to play the central role. I had the feeling that if I was to call the whole thing off I would destroy something worthwhile.
When I sauntered back behind her tied nakedness she knew her time had come. She watched me back over her shoulder for a moment and then stared straight ahead, her body taut, still marked from the time before. "I want to really try," she said unsteadily. It sounded like an affirmation of faith.
I was about to draw back the whip when a gasp from Wanda held my hand. "Oh, darling, we've forgotten the shells. Shouldn't she wear them?"
I was thankful the kid had thought of it. Phyllis's breasts are too much of a treasure to muck around with. I let Wanda do the job, and watched amusedly as she worked to compress a lot of breast into a shell more closely designed for her own. She managed it by cinching them on very tightly, the band at the back making an indentation in the skin I was about to whip. Phyllis sounded almost tearful when she said a heartfelt thank you for her twin armor. I made my first blow streak across her back, curl beneath a raised arm, and snap its tip on one of the shells-just as a demonstration.
Phyllis really did try. I gave her lots of time for the gasps, the disbelief, the uncontrollable twistings against her fastened wrists. Actually she did damn well considering it was the Manta tail and I hadn't held my hand. It was the second stroke that did it. As I watched her writhings and heard her scream I could only think of her own description of her whipping by that distinguished old gentleman. She'd about said it all. No use me repeating it now. I did exactly what the old buffer had done, took advantage of her flying legs to reach the spots normally enclosed by prudent thighs.
As her second paroxysm wore itself out, she said in a remarkably clear voice: "It's no good. I'm sorry, but I can't keep on top of it. I'm just going to scream... That's all I can manage."
I curled one across one hip so that it lapped around in front. As she had promised, Phyllis screamed; she screamed quite a long time.
I was half way through with what I intended to give her when it hit me like a blow. The dam-fool inconsistency! We'd all got ourselves so pledged to what was now taking place that I'd overlooked the obvious. I sauntered to the front of the sweat-drenched loveliness that was still tugging at its wrists from the last blow, and waited for it to return to the world where Wanda and I watched. It took a little time, but when Phyllis had arranged her weight on her toes and tossed the hair back over her shoulder, she became conscious of a change and focused her eyes on me questioningly, but without hope. She knew it was not over.
"You're being whipped because of something you wanted to do, something you asked for, right?"
She nodded wearily, her voice had become husky. "Yes, Master." She wanted to be strictly accurate, so added, "And you thought it would be necessary for my adjustment." She shook her head as though to clear it. "Sort of on general principles." There was no humor in her words, but I think we all felt there should have been.
"It's just occurred to me that I've given consent to what you asked for. I cannot therefore punish you for it."
I heard her quick indrawn breath. But she was wary of hope. It was there alright, but Phyllis was not showing it. I might be indulging in a bit of tantalizing cruelty. "It is not for me to say, Master." She was doing everything so right she deserved a medal.
"General principles have been served," I said grandly, and this time with humor. "Your punishment is over. You've had it." I dropped the Manta tail at her feet and stalked majestically back to the house leaving the two girls entirely to themselves. Wanda could do the honors. She might carry on with the whipping, but that I doubted. She would be bursting with curiosity. I settled down with a book I'd read seven times before and left them to their joy.
It was a couple of hours before they showed up. Phyllis carried the Manta tail; the kid had the cords. They glowed with happiness; it radiated from them as something tangible. They clutched as though fearing to lose each other. They were absentmindedly naked.
Both kissed me.
How blessed can a man be!
The next days were so good they have a dream quality in my mind. The girls now had their own secrets and dealt with themselves in their own way. Thus it was that I would suddenly find myself alone with Phyllis so that we could plunge into our almost savage couplings; or that I would inexplicably discover the girls had disappeared for an hour or two on their own. The daily Tie was something to behold. Phyllis was so damn submissive I had an erection all the time. She soon matched Wanda. Except for age the two of them might have been twins. It was the same with Friday.
For the first of hers Phyllis managed to keep up an animated conversation while I whipped her. She did finally fall silent except for a good deal of gasping, but her control was magnificent. I don't suppose I could ever take oath as to how much of her performance was acting and how much for real. So far as I could tell she was utterly and totally sincere. But you know us men! We're a bunch of chumps.
It was wonderful, it was exciting, it was lustily erotic. All three of us knew we were lucky. It's not often in life that happens. I'm not really a snoozer. But on those occasions when I'd been tipped the wink and the girls had gone giggling away to whatever nest they'd made for themselves, I did fall into the habit. Maybe I was totally at peace, or maybe I was exhausted from my gymnastics with Phyllis, but I'd recline with a book and the first thing I knew I'd conked out. I found it pleasant and relaxing. It also left me rested and in good condition to look after my obligations.
One day I was well away in slumberland and dreaming like crazy about the three of us getting into the damndest jackpots that were so good I could hear myself hoping I'd remember 'em when I woke up. Suddenly I did wake up, and I knew right off there was something wrong. You know what it's like, pure instinct. Something woke you, but what! I had a bad feeling about this one. I sat up and looked around: Nothing! I got up and walked around and searched the house, but everything was O.K. The silence was the usual silence of the island. The ghosts had gone by then, so I lay back down and picked up the book.
"Well, Chum, I'm damn glad I found somebody alive." The voice was male. It had a shocking Australian twang. Once more I sat up-startled.
He was about my own age, hard and tough and red-faced, but genial enough. His eyes were darting hither and yon. He seemed faintly suspicious.
"Hell of a 'to-do,' mate," he said disgustedly as he dried his forehead with a tent-sized handkerchief. "Bloody women! Half the country out looking!" He fixed me with a fierce eye. "I'm searching for a girl, chum. Her plane's smashed up on your beach. You seen anything of the silly bitch? Her name's Phyllis Stafford."
* * *
PHYLLIS STAFFORD
The wheel had turned. But I'd never be back to where I started. I don't mean I'm better or worse, but simply that I learned one hell of a lot on that island. The strangest turn of all is that Dick and I have traded places. It's me who's got Wanda.
Dick Carnaby was an officer in the merchant marine. When the smoke had cleared he got a dozen offers. He has to make a living so he took one. That means we'll see him once a month or so. We couldn't find any of Wanda's relatives who were all that keen on doing about her, but I was! I'd have fought tooth and nail for her, but I didn't have to; the sweetheart fell right into my lap. I've got her, but good!
For Dick the loss of the island was heartbreak, and why wouldn't it be! I don't know whether I'm in love with the guy or not. I miss him. But I'm not as lonely; I've got Wanda. I suppose we'll feel our way into things.
Even now after the publicity and all the hassle is done, Wanda is still a glowing bundle of excitement. She cries a lot, half for Dick and half for the island. But that's natural. The rest of the time she sparkles with an immense curiosity and enjoyment. But then, the little darling's got me the same as I've got her.
Not quite the same! Let me get my confession over right now. I realized what fate had given me, so without a blush or a stutter or an explanation I carried on where Dick Carnaby left off. Wanda gets her Tie every day and knows what to expect on Friday. I've added a few refinements of my own which she accepts along with the T.V. The stereo and hot dogs. The island taught me some things about myself I hadn't known.
She's a darling child, but she radiates sex with an unconscious intensity that compels me to watch who I expose to her aura. I feel it all the time. Goodness knows what it might do to others, especially men! But she's mine, and she knows she's mine. I'll never let her forget it. One of the first things I did after the smoke cleared was buy the finest set of handcuffs I could find. I keep them on her most of the time. She adores them. Once when I took them off for some reason or other she put them right back on. She's a honey!
Her total lack of inhibitions makes her a handful. Thus the handcuffs do have a practical application as well as doing something erotic for me. She wants to be naked all the time, mostly I let her so long as she stays in the apartment. But at the start there were a couple of times I was dashing around the building looking for a naked girl.
I own this place. It's quite sizable. So I got in a contractor. I now have a room; it's gorgeous! A barred door and barred windows. Two of the walls are real stone, and in them have been sunk the loveliest collection of rings, as well as a few here and there on the floor and the other walls. There are conveniences in the ceiling too; all I have to do is press a button. But the rest of it's from a Sultan's Palace: masses of deep, deep rugs, cushions large and small, ottomans and hassocks, and a divan or two. Rugs and furs are all over the place and rich coverings over a heavy wooden bench and a few other items best kept out of sight. I chain Brighteyes in there whenever it suits my need. And I lock the door-to keep out any straying guests I might happen to have. If Honeybunch loved her handcuffs, they were as nothing to her joy in what I've named The Harem. She throws her nakedness on the cushions and the rugs in a sensuous orgy of delight. I've told her it's her room, her very own. It's twenty stories up and bright and cheerful and expensively lush. As with the handcuffs, she'll go in there and chain herself to a ring just to revel in the atmosphere.
Chains are her delight, especially her handcuffs. There was nothing like them on the island. The shining chrome is Wanda's idea of jewelry. She persuades me to load her with metal and then poses her chained nakedness before a full length mirror and candidly admires herself for an hour at a time. She's an absolute pet, a gorgeous naked kitten who resolutely refuses ever to grow up. At the moment she is waging a campaign to persuade me to shave her cunt the way I do mine. She is intrigued by my bare slit. But I won't do it. I love her thick bush. Sometimes I actually do have to whip her to stop her pestering; she's quite tenacious over notions.
There is so much she does not understand. She feels sorry for almost everybody. She loves me to take her around town, but can't really understand why she can't be handcuffed. All the clothing baffles her; she thinks people here are a bit screwloose. It's easy to say maybe she isn't that far wrong, but I can't walk a naked girl in handcuffs around Times Square. Anyway, it's no great problem, she'd sooner stay in the apartment neatly attired in chrome steel.
I'm a bit of a bitch, of course. I flaunt her. She's so deep under my skin I can't bear it that others shouldn't know. I want their envy. If I had a Picasso I wouldn't hide it in the storeroom. A T-bone steak tastes twice as good if a starving men watches you eat it. Quite a lot of the girls I know are starving. I put on an afternoon tea for them. Wanda would pass the cups and the plates and the goodies.
If a naked girl is going to play the part of a maid and actually do the job, she can't be loaded too heavily with chains. The only thing that seemed at all practical were the shining things she had come to love on her wrists, and in which she was now able to perform miracles. I had a lovely silver collar for her throat and bands of gleaming silver above each elbow and on her ankles. There was no mistaking what she was. I painted her nipples a screaming scarlet.
We struck a delightful keynote of utter nonchalance. I affected not to notice I had a naked serving wench in handcuffs. Wanda went about serving the tea as though she'd been doing it all her life. The emanations of her sexuality pervaded every corner of the room. If my guests had been men there would have been a lot of bulging flies. When Hetty Strauss was handed her cup with two conical breasts almost sticking in her face she couldn't stand it.
"Phyllis, I've got to have this naked houri."
Wanda had been well briefed. She was in a seventh heaven of excited lubricity. She sank to one knee and looked adoringly up at the spinster with the teacup. "Dear Hetty," she cooed, "would you like to whip me or tongue my cunt?"
You know the one about hearing a pin drop! It was the most pregnant silence I've ever run into. But Hetty's no shrinking violet so she came right back: "I want you to tongue mine, I'll only whip you if you don't make a good job of it."
Poor Hetty! She didn't know Wanda. My little angel instantly went to work with her chained hands. A moment later Hetty's panties were round her ankles and Wanda's face was lost beneath the skirt of my least attractive guest. We could all hear slurping sounds. Wanda was pure mischief.
"Not here!" Hetty was lost. Someone relieved her of her cup. 'Damn you, girl, can't we go to a bedroom! Not here. Not with everyone... " Hetty was lost. Her eyes were staring. Miraculously two small chained hands had found her nipples, a tongue and lips were busily employed. Hetty began to moan; within moments she was lost in a Nirvana of her own. When she had climaxed and Wanda was done with her, she was utterly drained and sat panting, uncaring of all else save the thing done to her. The veins of all of us throbbed to Wanda's sexuality. Wanda herself was calmly dealing with sandwiches and cakes.
Hetty went and laid down. She had no wish to come back from wherever it was Wanda had taken her. Hetty's place was taken by an even more determined young matron with two children. "Me next, Phyllis, please."
Wanda innocently tendered her a plate. "Whose tongue did you have in mind?" she asked huskily, "Or was it the cane you wanted?"
Believe it or not, my guest had her orgasm right there. The rest of us watched, enthralled. Wanda, being the closest, enjoyed the best view. I could see the kid was shockingly excited. So was I! Wanda was pure T.N.T. Someone started to clap, the rest joined in. No one was sure who we were clapping for.
I had to stop it getting out of hand. I was not going to subject my darling to servicing all of them. "You can draw lota," I told them. "The winner has carte blanche."
Wanda glowed. I wanted her myself. But I'd started this affair, I had to follow through. The winner of the draw was a vacuous blonde that everybody liked because she was too dumb to be real competition. Wanda did her kneeling act at her feet. My loins flamed.
"What do you want of me, darling?" To Wanda everyone was darling.
The dippy blonde was feeling her oats; I expect she was also feeling Wanda. "I'd like to cane you first," she said in a Grand Dame fashion that set off a few titters round the room.
"You'd like to whip me!" Wanda made it sound as though she'd been offered Fort Knox.
"Across your ass," said Blondie complacently.
In sprightly fashion Wanda fetched the cane; she also brought a length of cord. Since she was already totally naked there were no other preparations. "I expect you'd like to tie me?" she asked brightly.
My droopy guest accepted both cane and cord. Quite obviously she had no idea what to do with either.
"How would you like to tie me?" Wanda asked helpfully.
"Well... what's the usual?" Droopy asked.
"You can tie me over a chair, or tie my wrists to my ankles. I'm already handcuffed so it makes it easy," Wanda suggested kindly.
"Haven't had much experience," Droopy offered hesitantly. "Perhaps you'd better show me."
Wanda glowed more brightly than ever. I knew what was going to happen.
"Why, of course darling." Wanda sounded as though butter would not melt in her mouth. "Let's use this chair, shall we." She offered an enticing hand, "You just kneel on the seat... " Blondie knelt. She was the only one in the room who hadn't guessed what my little darling was up to. A few moments later she was lost; her wrists were neatly corded over the back, her ankles to the front legs. Her bottom, when it was bared to view, would be in considerable prominence. Wanda stripped it. The handcuffs did not inhibit her at all. She lifted the skirt to exhibit a pair of well fleshed cheeks.
"O.K----O.K.! I get the idea." Blondie had just realized her plight. An enthusiastic round of applause fluttered round the company.
"I'd better show you properly," said Wanda, picking up the cane.
Handcuffs are normally no help to any girl engaged in the task of whipping another; a full swing is scarcely possible. For that reason I did not come to Blondie's rescue. But Wanda's mastery of the confining metal bands was such that, for Blondie's sake, it was just as well she wore them. She managed a quite impressive swish through the air, an equally impressive scarlet line sprang into being on Bondie's butt. The air was electric. Here was something new!
"Thanks. You can let me loose now," said Blondie hopefully. She had done very well with the gasp and moan bit.
Wanda stroked her again. The two pink lines across the exposed behind were immensely appealing. 'Take off the kid's handcuffs and let her do it properly," said a voice from the company; there was responsive applause. Wanda instantly proffered her cane to the enthusiastic voice. It was accepted with alacrity. Blondie looked back over her shoulder in dismay. The cane rose and fell. Ever girl in the room had a few swipes at the protesting damsel on the chair. Wanda stood glowing and radiating female musk.
Wanda's Tea Party was a trivial enough diversion, but it had the strangest aftermath. I'd known Tansey Pepper about a year; she was the secretary of one of the Syndicate executives, poised, competent and probably good in bed. She had to be beautiful or she wouldn't have had the job. Her age was hard to tell, probably somewhere between me and Wanda. She had been one of the guests. I was surprised when she phoned, but what the hell; she might have a worthwhile snippet. I let her come right over. She sat awkwardly; she was nervous, not herself. I gave her a good strong shot and had a smaller one myself. Obviously I was on to something.
"That girl yesterday... could I see her again?" I could tell she'd been rehearsing.
"Wanda! What d'you want to see her for?"
A bit of foot shuffling and a big gulp of the drink. "Is she naked like that all the time?"
"Mostly." I had the feeling she hadn't heard a word I'd said.
"And those handcuffs?"
"Those too."
"You mean... ! She's wearing them right now?"
"At the moment she's chained to the wall." It was Wanda's daily Tie. But I wasn't going to try and explain that.
Tansey was looking at the bottom of an empty glass. She accepted a refill with gratitude. "Phyl, don't think I'm crazy. Help me out. Can I go and look?"
It took me a moment to get the drift. There's a big difference between calling to see someone, and visiting to have a look at 'em. That word 'look' was ambiguous. "If you have a thing about naked girls I'll take my clothes off," I offered with complete sincerity. "I'm quite attractive naked."
"So am I," my visitor said absently, "but, please, don't kid. I want to see that girl. The way you... the way you've just said."
I began to see daylight. I started to bridle. Was this the first of those who'd try to steal Wanda! But I set the fear aside, I couldn't see Tansey in that role. "Come along then," I said cheerfully enough. "You can have your look."
She brought her drink. Her eyes were shining, I had the feeling of something tremendous happening. I suddenly got excited, too; the picture Tansey was about to see might throw her for a loop. Wanda and her room were strong medicine. I'd be patient and enjoy the show. So, just to enter into the spirit of the thing, I put my finger to my lips to enjoin silence and tip-toed my visitor to where I could abruptly place her before the steel bars of the door to Wanda's rococco prison.
If I'd been a movie director I couldn't have staged it better. There was that absolutely Arabian nights dungeon and there against the wall was Wanda, beautifully naked with her thick black thatch in full prominence, and beautifully chained with her arms straight out from her shoulders, the shining metal bands about her wrists briefly linked to rings in the stone. She was dreaming, I knew the pose, her head over on one arm, eyes closed. There was no hint of weariness, simply repose within her chains. She could stand like that for hours and still spark up bright-eyed when you came to tease her or to set her free. I had seen her like this often enough, but each time made me ravenous.
Far away in her reverie she had not heard us. I gently positioned the wide-eyed Tansey against the bars and let her drink it in. I wondered if she realized that what she beheld was almost unique, a once in a lifetime thing. A lot of men would have paid a thousand dollars.
Tansey knew! I had only to watch. Her face was rapt in adoration. She poured the rest of her drink into herself to get rid of it and handed me the empty glass with only the briefest smile of acknowledgement. She gripped the bars with small tense hands as though she herself was the prisoner looking out at a forbidden freedom. I could see her breasts rise and fall at an accelerated tempo. Tansey was looking at a promised land.
I let her look; it went on and on. Sometimes she gave me a small brief smile of apology, then hastily returned to her vision. I was puzzled that she did not ask to enter. Breaking Wanda's daydream was of no consequence, the kid would have been delighted. She was tremendously proud of her room and everything in it, including herself. There was an innocent shadow of Narcissus in her psyche. But Tansey wanted only to look. I think she was relieved that Wanda was unaware. Finally, in obvious reluctance, she turned away, her face softened and beautified by something she had seen. I wondered if I'd missed seeing a vision.
Back in the living room, I sat waiting. I felt like the psychiatrist about to hear the juicy bit at the end of the story. Tansey was going through a good many agonies to give it birth. It finally popped out in her fine clear voice I'd known in the office.
"Phyllis, I want you to take me."
Strange how obtuse one can be, I missed her point. "I've just taken you," I said, feeling lost.
"Oh, Phyl', you know what I mean! Take me-put me in that room with Wanda... please!"
"Wanda's mine," I said firmly. "Nobody's horning in."
"I don't mean that!" she exclaimed, startled. "I want you to strip me and chain me the way Wand's chained. Keep me chained... ! Always."
I should have guessed. Now that I knew, I looked at Tansey with a new awareness and quickened pulse; the heat between my legs began to burn. I had known her as one more beautiful girl, the offices of successful corporations are full of them. But here, now, sitting in my chair in my apartment, offering herself to me as a gift, she became pure female. The office with its desks and phones, its switches and muted words had vanished. In less than a minute Tansey could be naked and on her knees. In sudden vivid interest my mind computed possibilities.
"But your job?"
"I have a girl waiting to take my place."
"Your family?"
"I have no close relatives, the others don't care."
"You've got a boyfriend."
"I am not in love with him. I want to be as you are."
I thought sardonically of Dick. Would Tansey still be lesbian if he picked her up and tossed her on the floor?
"You said 'always', that's a long time."
"I'm giving myself to you," she smiled with a trace of humour. "It wouldn't be real if I asked for myself back in a week or a month or a year."
"Have you done this before?"
"Only in my mind, my private fantasies. It's been there as far back as I can remember; I'm only twenty-three." She paused, considering herself. "If it hadn't been for that party of yours yesterday I wouldn't be here. I've been around, but I suppose not in the right places. It was a revelation. That girl... Wanda; she's so totally explicit I knew for sure it would be silly of me just to go on yearning. Phyllis, please! Chain me in that gorgeous room with her and keep me there." Her face became irradiated with sweetness. "I'm nice to... use. I've discovered that much. You'd like me."
Feast or famine! One more of the eternal plaints. Owning Wanda, why would I want Tansey! But I did! Seeing her struggle with her heart's wish and hearing her simple affirmation of need fanned my inmost fire to a flame that consumed doubt and hesitation. Do you quibble when you win the Irish Sweep, the Kentucky Derby and the Nobel Prize all in a single day! I saw no reason to. But I was in the catbird seat and the things the Island had taught me about myself were suddenly compelling.
"You don't want to be tied so you can't move, and then whipped on your naked skin so that you scream?"
Tansey's features became animatedly alive. "Yes! Oh, yes... please."
You know how it is with conscience, you want to go through the appeasing rituals. "Chained naked to a ring for a week; you'd get bored to tears."
"No!" The single negative held a hundred denials.
I took a deep breath and stepped into the unknown. "I'm not just a lesbian; I'm a sadist too. I think the two interlock a bit. I would be terribly cruel."
"Of course! I don't mind."
"I'm not very cruel to Wanda, but I would be to you. You'd be on the wrong side of a double standard."
Tansey frowned as though I was quibbling with the obvious. "But Wanda and I are quite different types and backgrounds, we ought to be treated differently. Phyl', we'd need perspectives and contrast... " I had another try. "Would you want to see your own blood? Would you wish to watch your flesh pierced for purposed that might please me?"
"If you willed it so, yes I would."
You know the thing about the gift horse! I couldn't go looking into the mouth of this one forever. But I let good old conscience have one last fling. "I won't take you for a week. But come back then with all your affairs in order and disposed of and I'll imprison you for life. From then on your body will never be free of the marks of punishment. Honestly, Tansey, you'd be crazy to return; we both know that, don't we?"
"No, we don't know that," she stated calmly. "You know perfectly well you want me and that I will be here in seven days. Those seven days are for you, not me. I don't need 'em," she glowed reflectively. "But they'll be pleasant enough. I intend to enjoy them. I'll have a lot to think about."
Tansey Pepper kissed me softly, her arms hugging me in a strange gratitude. When she left I wondered irritably how sensible I'd been to let her go.
I did not tell Wanda. I had nurtured a condition in which I retained my private thoughts and personal life. To all intents and purposes we were Mistress and Slave. The words had never been used, but they were implicit in all we did. Loving each other was woven into the same fabric. Wanda questioned nothing, save in curiosity. If I punished her she would weep but not complain. Knowing the child happy I found an immense contentment.
I wondered how Dick would read to Tansey, should she come. He could scarcely fail to be gratified by such a plentitude of female flesh, but he might be angry that I had failed to wait to include him in the decision. Dick Carnaby had not allowed the difference in our incomes and backgrounds to affect our relationship. He did what he pleased with me, more even than he did with Wanda. On his last visit he had thrashed me brutally with the Manta tail because I'd crossed him in a temporary return of the bitchiness I'd displayed on the day of our first meeting. He had hung me naked with my feet off the ground for the whip, and when that was done I spent twenty-four hours chained to a ring in the floor of Wand's room. In the end I was as meek as Wanda. I uttered no word of complaint. I clung to him when he had to go... As I told you: I just don't know about me and Dick!
But it's marvellous!
In considering the enslavement of Tansey I knew it could not fail to be an intensely absorbing experience. In this initial contact in which she had fallen out of the blue into my unsuspecting lap I had played a secondary role, all the conviction had been hers. The lust I now felt for Tansey had been generated by her words, her attitudes and her femaleness. If she showed up at the end of a week, it would be by her decision, not mine. I was curious to see how such a poised and successful young woman out of the executive atmosphere would effect the transition she desired. That she could do so, I had no doubt. Tansey had a quality. Whatever she did she would do well. I found myself becoming excited.
On the day it might happen, I chained Wanda by one ankle to a floor ring. She adored a pile of cushions on which she would fling her nudity in a scramble of arms and legs while she devoured a book. She scarcely noticed my leaving, she was idly flexing her fettered ankle back and forth to hear the music of the links. She failed to note that I did not lock the door. She suspected nothing.
I instantly divined that Tansey was as curious about me as I was about her. She was possessed of an immense serenity. In the act of entering my door she had cast aside a world and a life, but she faced whatever lay ahead with a calm assurance. Somehow she contrived a sweet humility that in no way masked decisiveness. I though of her as a novitiate passing through the gateway of a Convent where she would spend her life. It was sad and beautiful.
I took her to my own room. Since she was going to make herself naked it seemed the most appropriate. But first we sat, I wasn't pushing things. I felt certain she had more to say than I had.
"Phyl,' bear with me a little while. It's a strange and weirdly thrilling time for me, a little frightenly. Her eyes sparkled, her lips slanted in wry humour. "I working to make myself believe that in a few minutes I'll have passed a point of no return. I will, won't I?" The last words were anxious.
"You will." I made my assurance warm and comforting. I didn't want her changing her mind.
"I've been thinking about how I should address you, Phyl'. Sounds silly, but I'm not going to be on your level. This is the last time I'll be talking to you as though I was your equal. I won't be. What title must I use when I speak?"
I hadn't thought of it. Wanda tosses her 'Darlings' around with complete insouciance, and from her they fit. I wouldn't want her to call me anything else. That's what she is to me too. But I now remembered Dick and I. He had made me call him 'Master'. Even with the resentment I had felt for him at the time, it seemed natural enough. The word had come easily to my lips, there had been only a few times I had forced it. I now toyed with its antonym; would I want to be called 'Mistress,?
Tansey came to the rescue. "I've wracked my brains, and all I can come up with is 'Mistress'," she admitted. "In a way I like it, but it's so much in use today for concubines, odalisques, and just plain whores that I think of it in that context."
"Me too. Go on calling me by my name. The chains will hold you just as tight."
Tansey shook her head; she was quite vehement about it. "No. It'll throw us. May I start out by calling you Miss Stafford? You can always make me change if you find it grates on you."
"Try it."
"Miss Stafford, never let me forget what I am. Please name my condition. Am I a captive, a prisoner, a slave? I think that's important too."
The way she had used it made the formal title serve well enough. "You're a captive," I told her. "Slave is like Mistress, it's gotten a bit hackneyed. You'll refer to yourself as my captive and you'll call me Miss Stafford. It'll do for starters."
An awkward silence fell on us. We had reached a brink. Once Tansey had stepped over it I would not be at a loss, but I wanted her to do the stepping. There was still about her the aura of Executive Secretary.
"Miss Stafford, I think this is it." She was flushed, wide eyed, living intensely. "Please tell me once more it will be for real... won't it?"
"For very real. More than you may wish."
"And if I plead or cry, you won't let it change anything?"
"Pleading and tears will be a part of your life from now on. You'll have a human need of them, but they will earn you nothing, except perhaps a whipping."
I could see that Tansey was loath to abandon the moment in which she now had being. She was flushed and breathing quickly, looking inward at herself in farewell. I sensed all she felt, and wondered how well I could do what she was doing, or if I would ever wish to. She stood up as though stepping away from introspection. There was no bravado, no posturing; her smile acknowledged a bond between us. "This is the end of Tansey Pepper," she announced gaily. "I'm going to stop the 'between us girls' talk. Please, Miss Stafford, your captive asks you to make her captivity real." She stood, passive and inviting. My lust for her flared unbearably. But this was not the time... "Strip."
Tansey instantly obeyed. She folded her things neatly and placed them in a drawer I indicated. I suppose both of us wondered if she would ever wear them again, or when. Her body was even better than I had thought.
"Stand before me."
She took the few paces and, seeing the handcuffs I held, meekly offered her hands. "No. Turn round, hands behind." I wondered if the huskiness of my voice told her how I felt.
All her motions were pure melody, Tansey was a natural. She presented me with the ivory planes of her back and the curves of her derriere and two limp hands open for captivity.
"Take a deep breath, darling," I said softly, "here's your point of no return."
She actually obeyed. When I fastened the metal bands tight upon her wrists, she gasped. A quiver of pure sensation was visible as a garment might have been, her nostrils flared, her head reared. I knew for several moments her eyes were closed. She would forever treasure the memory of the bite of steel.
"Forward a few paces, turn and face me."
I draped the whippiest of the riding crops over my knee as I lolled with deliberate negligence in my chair. Her eyes widened when she saw it, her hands busy testing the unfamiliar limbo in which they were held.
"Play with your handcuffs all you want, but stand to attention, stick your breasts out."
Again instant obedience, she was electric with response.
"Stretch your legs far apart."
Deliberately I stared at her cunt, testing her vulnerability to shame. She made it as open to me as she could. There are limits to how far a girl can separate her legs and still stand. Getting the feeling of this new privilege life had placed in my hands, I got up and went and made a manual exploration of Tansey's naked sex. It was a large soft mound thatched with an abundant crop of wiry hair. She uttered no word, staring straight ahead as a soldier on parade. Her nipples needed no teasing, they were already tumescent; I bit each of them hard. She gasped but did not move. Circling her nakedness I was amused at her small clenched fists tautly spreading the single metal link that joined them. I spread apart the twin cheeks of her bottom and tickled the tiny anus twinklingly revealed and was rewarded by one more involuntary gasp. I sauntered back to my chair.
"You may stand at ease."
She brought her legs more comfortably together, her eyes rested on me expectantly.
"Did you feel shame when I handled you?"
"No, Miss Stafford." The voice beautifully modulated.
"I intend to whip you sometime today."
She took it well, a sudden tensing, a widening of the eyes, the captive hands ceased their play against the cuffs. "Very well, Miss Stafford." An intelligent acceptance, no humble thanks.
"Are you afraid?"
A shrug of strained shoulders. "Just nervous, Miss Stafford. It will be my first time."
"It will hurt about ten times worse than you expect."
This time she made a determined twisting protest against her handcuffs, then looked at me levelly. "You see, Miss Stafford, I cannot free my hands. No matter how it hurts, it will happen."
"You are a lesbian, aren't you?"
"Yes, Miss Stafford."
"If I deliver you, chained, to a man who will fuck you, how would you react?"
"Again, Miss Stafford, it would happen. I've been pierced many times. I would sooner be whipped."
Her choice of a word was revealing. 'Pierced!' How well it might describe such couplings as she had known. I wanted to watch Dick make her moan with delight.
"It will be done to you sometimes, perhaps as punishment."
A small inclination of the head was her acceptance. She was bringing few illusions to her new condition. "Could you fight me now?"
Tansey was suddenly animated. "I've been thinking about that, Miss Stafford." She tugged at the handcuffs demonstratively. "It's strange and beautiful. These steel things on my wrists behind my back; they seem so tiny and insignificant, but I've been realizing that I'm almost completely helpless. There's nothing effective I can do." She laughed unaffectedly at her plight. "I could kick if there was anything worthwhile kicking, but I'm certainly not going to kick you. I can imagine what would happen to me if I did. That whip thing you hold; if I had notions of revolt it would drive them right out of my head. I suppose I am afraid of it; it's partly from being naked too. I can see how you can govern me with such a threat."
"You wear handcuffs like that for a week at a time."
"I don't mind! At least I honestly don't think I'd mind. They might be good for me."
"Come."
When I opened the steel barred door, Wanda knelt up among her cushions. As always, she was immensely grateful for attention or diversion. Seeing a naked Tansey, her eyes widened in excitement, but she uttered no word. Wanda was sensitive to impressions, she kept her questions to herself. I chained Tansey by her ankle as I had chained Wanda, inwardly chuckling at the knowledge they might come close but could not touch each other. I went away and left them to their own discoveries.
I had work to do, so it was several hours before I went back to Wanda's room. The two of them were draped on cushions as closely together as they could get, the fetters on their ankles snubbed tight and shining with their own implacable authority over feminine whims.
"Oh, darling, poor Tansey doesn't know anything. She's never heard of a girl's Tie or what happens to us on Fridays!" Wanda was definitely shocked by such omissions in a girl's education.
"We're going to teach her."
"Can I help?"
"I may let her help me with you," I said dryly. "You probably need your Friday more than she will."
"Ooooo! See, I told you! Darling Phyllis is terribly strict. I daren't say 'Boo'," Wanda told her neophyte proudly.
"You're saying it all the time," I reminded her.
"Well, yes. But then, I'm getting whipped all the time too," Wanda agreed. "I've been showing Tansey the marks. She says she's never seen any before. She hasn't any at all."
"She'll have some soon. I'm going to whip her now."
"What's she done that's bad?" Wanda was interested in sin.
"She hasn't done anything; it's just to show her what to expect."
"Mmmmm! Can I whip her too, darling?"
I love the child. I cannot forbear teasing. "Sure, alt you want. But for each one you give her you get one also. I can tie you afterwards."
The captive Tansey listened to our exchange, unsure of its reality. Wanda exuberantly got to her feet and kicked her shackle to make the links swirl and chatter. "I expect I can stand five," she said judicially. "I usually can, and anyway if I'm tied I have to. Save me a bit of space on her for five, darling."
"Miss Stafford, is Wanda serious?"
"Terribly. She adores whipping a girl. She's good at it."
Tansey thoughtfully assimilated Wanda's special status. I could see she was as captivated by the kid as Dick or I. Words were forming on her lips, but she did not utter them. Her new status left her unsure of how far she might intrude on conversation. Demurely she stood and awaited my pleasure.
I unlocked the chain from her ankle and positioned her beneath the trapeze bar. I could feel her trembling. For simple convenience I snapped handcuffs on her ankles joining them so closely she was well-nigh helpless even after I had removed the handcuffs from her wrists. A glance exchanged between us told me she understood: Even in transition from one bondage to another she would be restrained. She was signaling the most vivid vibrations.
There could be no doubting her virgin interest in what was being done to her. It was the first time. Almost eagerly she placed her wrists at each end of the bar and watched me strap them tight. I had to smile at her naive surprise as the bar, with her hands attached, rose before her eyes, lifting her arms until she stood only on her toes. Seeing my smile, she returned it nervously, awkwardly aware of her innocence in the subtleties of this new experience. I removed the handcuffs from her ankles.
"That's so as you can kick, darling," Wanda contributed helpfully.
Once again I knew the urge to eat a tied and naked girl rather than whip her. Tansey was downright sweet standing there on her toes with her hands high and well apart. There was a mystic smile on her face as of an acolyte at her initial rite. Her unblemished skin was an invitation to my whip. Yet it was a sacred moment, with the etching of the first weal upon her flesh nothing for her would ever be the same again. I kissed her. "Frightened?"
She nodded brightly. "Yes, Miss Stafford. More than I thought I'd be. I think it's being so totally naked and the standing on my toes. I've never been this helplessly exposed in my life. I've never done a strip tease on a stage, but I think it would be... well, less cringe-making."
"Sure the whip hasn't anything to do with it?"
Tansey grinned ruefully. "Of course it has, I'm trying not to think of it."
I fetched the whip I intended to use and placed it on a cushion where it screamed for her attention. "I'm going to make you kiss it first," I told her cheerfully. "I told you I'd be cruel."
"What do you keep calling her Miss Stafford for?" Wanda complained. "Her name's Phyllis. 'Miss Stafford' sounds silly." She gave the matter a moment's thought. "If Dick's my Master that makes you Tansey's Mistress. That's what she ought to call you."
"I think she's right... Mistress?" The captive's eyes sought mine.
"Ask me to whip you."
"Please whip me, Mistress." The request was instant. It sounded right. "O.K." I agreed, "I'm your Mistress. How shall I whip you?"
"Hard please, Mistress."
I lifted the whip to Tansey's lips. She kissed it reverently.
Tansey was special! Wanda and I each have our own reactions to being whipped, but for both of us the punishment means a frenetic response in motion and in voice that leaves us shamed afterwards when we remember it. We are always going to be better next time but we never are. We watched, breathless and excited, to see how a girl who had never in her life been whipped would behave.
I think we were both awed. I whipped the virgin white nudity hard. Not all out, nor with the most severe whip, but hard enough that, had it been me on the receiving end, I would have been dancing like a puppet on a string and howling enough to let everyone know I was being hurt. But not so Tansey!
I had to believe that within her own mind she had formed a code. She had sought enslavement clear-eyed and with conviction. She could not avoid uncertainty as to the agonies she might suffer from my caprice, but she could formulate her own image of herself beneath the lash and within the chains. Given enough will power she might treasure that image intact. For her it might mean an infinity of riches that she present me with a naked thrall tailored to her own vision of perfection. She was that kind of girl.
I made her first stroke moderately cruel, it sliced across her back and snapped around her ribs. The instant scarlet reply from her flesh was exquisite, so was Tansey. I circled her silently to assess her baptism. I could tell that the world and Wanda and I had ceased to exist; she had entered the kingdom of agony and was seeking her bearings within the pain. Her eyes were closed, her lips tight shut. Her flaring nostrils inhaled and exhaled breaths so irregular and of such force that they took the place of screams. They conceded nothing, yet touched the heart more deeply than a piercing cry. She did not kick, but undulated against her strapped wrists. It was by her wrists themselves she told most graphically her suffering; they tugged and twisted against their bonds in a quiet intensity of determination to free themselves from a travail too great to bear.
I curled the next one across the twin curves of her bottom and deliberately made it snap over one hip where I know it hurts abominably. But, once again, Tansey expended her hurt within the confines of her mind and her straining nakedness. Her feet refused to leave the floor, and only the almost angry respirations told her anguish. But her wrists... those poor slender wrists within their straps had an eloquence all their own. Tansey was fighting a battle against an antagonist I could not see and did not know.
I whipped Tansey slowly but steadily. As each vivid weal sprang into relief upon her flesh I tensed for her scream, but it did not come. Her body was alive with motion, but I could not say she writhed or contorted; she certainly did not kick. It was as though every muscle and sinew expressed an agony of its own. The effect was exquisitely erotic. Wanda's pubic hair was wet and I could feel my own panties absorbing the juices of a demanding lust. The whipped girl's response to any particularly cruel lash was to change the angle of her head from one raised arm to the other, or to throw it back in homage to the deity of pain.
At one point in the whipping I stopped the blows and went and stood before the tractioned nakedness in curiosity. It took Tansey a long while to open her eyes; the momentum of her anguish carried her on and on through diminishing reactions. When her eyes finally opened to see me watching her she smiled in gladness, a small wan smile, it is true, but still a smile. I saw in it no hint of a belief her whipping was done; her gladness sprang from simple communion. Having expressed it she closed her eyes again and returned whence she came, passive and expectant of the thong.
Wanda was in an agony of her own. She would have loved to stand beside me and to circle the now beautifully striated nakedness. Her eyes were burning with a tremendous excitement, and she was tugging with her foot against the shackle on her ankle. Her chain tether allowed me to approach closely enough for a good enough view of what was taking place, but for Wanda that was not enough. She did not plead for me to free her, she was as subject to Tansey's silence as was I, but I knew her petulant desire to be free of the chain she had stretched to its utmost limit so that her prisoned foot was held back as though striving to catch up with the rest of her. I chuckled inwardly, a bit of restraint did the exuberant child no harm. Silently I resumed my stance and swung the whip.
When I had whipped Tansey enough I had evoked no cry. Even when I stopped, she remained silent with closed eyes. Unless I told her, she could not know I was done with her. I did not speak, but stood with throbbing pulse, drinking in the loveliness of the palpitating captive. I could not fail to see the moisture escaping from her sex lips within the damp thatch of her triangle. Tansey was vividly pulsatingly alive. Reluctantly I turned away and freed the fetter from Wanda's ankle.
I suppose the sounds we made penetrated the consciousness of my prisoner. Opening her eyes she saw what I was doing and sighed in thankfulness. She now knew the limit of her punishment. Wanda did a gleeful dance of liberty and clasped the helpless nudity in eager arms, and with equally eager lips kissed the captive again and again until Tansey was kissing her back hungrily.
"Darling, it's my turn to whip you now!" Wanda made it sound the most joyous event of the day. For her it was!
The captive said nothing, she smiled and offered pouting lips for another caress. She was still half within her own private place.
"Would you like me to whip you up between your legs, darling?" Now the eyes opened wide. For a moment I saw in them a faint tremor of something that may have been shock. But the voice was soft and wistful. "If it would give you pleasure, Wanda, yes, whip me like that."
"Oh, it will give me pleasure, darling, but it will hurt you terribly."
"I don't mind."
"You'll have to spread your legs apart, Tansey dear. It'll make your wrists hurt more."
My captive did not answer with words. Meekly and obediently she separated her feet until she practically hung from her wrists. She did not close her eyes, but kept them fixed on the glowing Wanda with a smile of understanding at the child's joy. I placed the whip in Wanda's hand.
The girlish wrists strapped to the trapeze bar took up their tale of woe; they and their hands were enough to tell the whole awfulness of their owner's whipping. The small fists clenched or spread their fingers wide; there was a continual and fruitless straining to twist within and against the tight bands of leather into which they were buckled. Wanda mischievously and wickedly whipped Tansey's cunt.
I was of a mind to stop her and insist she ply the thong on more conventional bite of the captive's person. After all, this was the first time! I had not set out to break a spirit. But now that Wanda held the whip her victim's eyes were no longer closed, they followed the youngster's every move. I realized there was a deep communion, some sort of intimate knowledge between the two girls. After all, why not? Their roles in life were not dissimilar. They had spent a few hours whispering to each other, chained in their own private prison. They would spend many more. Tansey was almost daring the kid to do her worst.
Wanda knew I had an eye on her. What she did was bad enough, but she refrained from going too far overboard. Tansey's feet were now excruciatingly alive. With each snapping impact of the lash upon the loins so obligingly and wantonly offered, one or the other of them would perform its own dance to acknowledge the cut that the innocent but wealed cunt was unable to attest. At such moments it was again the wrists that took the punishment of the captive's weight. Once she looked up at them in wonder and in anguish as though to offer compassion to suffering separate from her own. Without pity, their captivity held her subject to the lash.
It was only five! When their excoriations had painted their venom on their victim's sex, both girls were panting. Tansey's nakedness was glistening with sweat, her toes seeking stability to close the tortured triangle of her loins and ease the strain upon her tortured wrists. They stood thus for a long time until Wanda dropped the whip and clasped the wet body in her arms and sought the lips that feverishly sought hers. Watching, I knew a pang of jealousy that I would have to keep these two chained apart if I was to preserve the flesh that was mine to enjoy, not theirs to give. Scrutinizing every bit of her, I could make no other judgement than that Tansey was a happy girl. When their passionate kissing began to generate a writhing of their loins I took Wanda by the hand and led her from the room. I, too, shared their hungry ecstasy, but Wanda was mine! She followed happily enough. I could feel her trembling.
We left Tansey hanging by her wrists.
* * *
TANSEY PEPPER
When my mistress led Wanda away I passed through a moment of desolation. I could not follow. The warm wet lips and glowing body had been taken from me. The pungency of female musk, mine and theirs, hung heavy about the spot where I must stand, reminding me vividly of desire and female appetite. But when that absolutely wicked steel barred door clanged shut behind them, I found I was glad to be alone. I wanted to sort out the thing that had just been done to me but, most of all, that which I had done to myself. I hurt; I was supposed to. Unexpectedly now it was my wrists that were bothering me the most, my longing to ease them kept me painfully on my toes. But I was sure this too was deliberate. In choosing Phyllis Stafford I had made no mistake; any girl her captive would never be allowed doubt any more than she would be vouchsafed liberty. I was a prisoner. At the moment I was a naked girl terribly whipped, the prisoner bit seemed almost incidental. In a few fleeting hours freedom had become, for me, an abstract theorem; in the times to come I would know of it only by hearsay from others who enjoyed it.
I felt I should be demanding of my alter-ego: "Fool of a girl! Are you happy now you've got it?", or some other such accusation of stupidity, but it wasn't like that at all. My most urgent thought was of Wanda. I wanted her so terribly it set other needs aside. But I wasn't going to get her, was I? I was so damn helpless I could have cried in vexation. But that was part of it too; I was sexually ablaze because of two girls. For Wanda with lust, for Phyllis because she possessed me. Toward Phyllis Stafford I generated a glowing submission that was a lust of its own. She was a treasure chest of emotions from which would emerge cruelties and joys as her caprice might dictate; I would wear them all as jewels. For her I would blend an adult fear with a schoolgirl adoration.
To be whipped so soon had thrown me a bit. I'd expected to get whipped, but I'd supposed I'd have to break a rule. Yet now that I was covered in stripes and my flesh still throbbingly tender I could see a logic. It was like that first bite of the handcuffs; both had told me my wish was granted. I might not like the reality of my fantasy, but I had been given my wish in a measure overflowing beyond my dreams.
The time Wanda and I had spent together tugging at the ankle chains holding us apart had helped. Without those fervid whisperings I might have broken down while Phyllis was whipping me, but the warm sexuality of the child in chains had told me clearly of the Tightness of my choice. Wanda had never faced a choice or decision. All she had known was an erotically motivated semi-captivity. But she was the happiest and least inhibited girl I had ever met. True, she enjoyed more freedom than Phyllis would give me. But still... !
Why do I possess this compelling need to be slave to a girl? I cannot tell you. All I know is that it has always been there. You do not ask a giraffe why it is a giraffe. Even if it could speak it couldn't tell you any more than I can. Let it rest. That I am a lesbian may have significance, but I doubt it. My adoration of girls and my need to be enslaved by one of them probably gave it birth. What is lesbianism anyway beyond the love two girls can share? I loathe homosexuality in men. I do not believe men can give each other the spiritual sustenance females can share in our whisperings and caresses. For me, lesbianism has no relation to that other ugly word. My mistress's threat to give me to a man is a thing I do not want. But if it happens it will not destroy anything. If my chains allow, I will bathe afterwards and that will be that. I do not think I want a man to whip me. There is an awful fascination in the thought, but I am frightened by it.
I have no faintest wish to reverse what I have done. While I was being whipped I could glimpse such a possibility, but I have been slave for so little time that, even if I knew doubt, it would be absolutely vital for me to stick it out. As yet there is no doubt; I am sticking out nothing. But such reflections are silly. I have relinquished decision. I can look up now at the straps that bind my wrists and know, with an utmost certainty, that I cannot free myself. I will stand here on my toes until my mistress or Wanda releases me. I am quite sure that before it is done, my ankles will be chained; I will be given no chance to make an ass of myself.
I will always remember the handcuffing of my wrists. To make such a conjunction is absurd, but it was gloriously frightening, the thrill of a life! Without experiencing the sensation a girl cannot realize how bereft and helpless she becomes when robbed of her hands. I hadn't a clue, but when I stood there naked with my wrists chained together at the small of my back, I had to face the fact that the girl who had snapped the handcuffs upon me, or for that matter any girl, could handle me with ease, physical resistance would be a farce. A six-year-old child could have put up more of a battle than I was capable of. It was tremendously exciting; it provoked a hundred fantasies.
So now I make an assessment of myself standing here naked with my wrists up in the air and hurting like hell. It's simple. I want to get loose. I want to get my hands back. I want to lower my heels to the ground. But this wish is not significant any more than a wish to scratch my nose or to sneeze. The spot I'm in now is inherent in captivity. I must expect a lot of it. I have been left here like this deliberately to let me know I'm what I am, to give me a chance to think under the stimulus of pain. Above all, to make me thankful and glad when my mistress comes to set me free. At the thought of that moment that must eventually come, my heart leaps in joy.
Now that I am a slave I must learn to think as one. If I do not I will dissolve in tears and panic. I find it impossible not to see myself, frantic and hysterical, pleading and screaming for the return of my freedom. I do not think I will do this, but I cannot be sure. What I have got myself into would be, for most, an intolerable torment; I am only human. Certainly I can be very sure that my mistress has seen this vision too and made up her mind what she would do with me. I would suspect that if my hysteria was genuine I might be coddled for a little while, but a chain would remain heavy on my ankle all the time. Before I came here to yield myself I kept a comforting reserve in my mind that if I was making a terrible mistake, a misjudgment of myself and my capacity, the resulting mental anguish would touch the heart and understanding of she who held me in thrall, so that she would set me free. But now, standing here naked and whipped, I see this dream as false. It won't happen, there will be no freedom for me, ever. The whip has given me a message, and the handcuffs on my wrists, and the chain upon my ankle a while ago. Above all, Wanda has convinced me escape is impossible. It is impossible for two reasons, my chains and Wanda herself. I have a burning lust for the child. She radiates so powerful an aura of sex I am enslaved by it. I long for her. In my longing there is love. At the back of my mind there is the hope my mistress will desire me in the same degree. If she does not desire me in that way now, I will make her. I will! I will! I am a slave.
I do not know how long I stood with my wrists strapped to the whipping bar. It seemed a very long time. When my mistress returned she knew as well as I did my readiness to kiss her feet in return for release. But first she kissed my lips and then chained my ankles, not with handcuffs, but with heavy bands and heavy links which left me conscious of their weight even when I was not testing them. When she lowered the trapeze and unbuckled the straps I instinctively fell to my knees and clutched her thighs in an intensity of longing as a child might seek the solace of its mother. Unthinkingly, I cradled my cheek against the juncture of her thighs. I must have been more lonely than I thought; the warmth and strength of her felt so very good. I was worshipping at the most ancient shrine of all.
My mistress fondled my hair; she pinched my ears and tickled my nose. I vibrated with thankfulness that she wanted to do these things to me. When she raised me to my feet she had to clutch at me as I stumbled, tripping against the unfamiliar shackles on my feet. We held each other for a moment and kissed but she would not allow the kiss to hold. It was she who would decide the length and ardour of our caresses; I could show longing, but that was all.
I had to learn to walk. I could not take a proper step. In a way I was glad the chain joining my ankles was no longer than it was, I had a heavy enough burden of links to carry now. My mistress laughed at my shuffling exploration with shackled feet and the hand I reached out to her for support. "You won't be a runaway slave in those, darling."
I wanted to reach her again. I was in a really shocking state of lubricity. I wanted a girl; my mistress was a girl! But I did not presume; perhaps I would never presume again! I remembered the whip. I could easily believe the reason for my skin being striped with its wounds was to help me remember, to help me become what I must be. Now I would not dare assert myself. Fear and respect would keep me within the pattern of my choice.
"I think you'll like these much better than handcuffs, darling."
I was not so sure. My mistress was holding chains for my wrists. They were as heavy as those upon my ankles and, like them, were beautifully fashioned of a gleaming silver I supposed was steel. I held out my hands and watched them locked upon me. There were only three links, I was not being given much freedom, but infinitely more than when handcuffed behind my back. I wanted to ask if handcuffs were just for convenience on temporary occasions, but did not dare. I was discovering a lot of things I did not dare to do or ask. For a moment the weight of the metal holding my hands in thrall caused my arms to sag. Ashamed, I lifted my chain and bore its weight as though it did not irk. Pride, I suppose. If I must wear chains, I wanted it to be with grace.
My mistress kicked aside some cushions and a small rug. Beneath them was plumbing that, absurdly, made me blush. "When you're chained, you're chained," she said matter-of-factly. "You'll be glad of the facility, there's another on the opposite side." She pushed back the scattered items and laughed at my shamed face. "You could be chained here for a month, y'know," she assured me cheerfully. "I want you to be comfortable; my cruelty's only spasmodic."
Oddly enough, the things she had shown me only added to my sense of imprisonment. With them, a girl could be left chained in this room for life.
But I was not yet secured enough. Now it was a silver collar and a silver chain. I could not restrain a gasp of delight at their perfection. My mistress placed the collar in my hands. "Examine it now, darling. You won't be able to see it when it's 'round your neck."
It was beautiful. Almost I was proud to have it hold my neck in thrall. Its chain was lighter, in keeping with the band itself and in practical recognition of the place on which I must wear it, but it was heavy enough that I could feel its drag as a compulsion when the collar itself was locked upon me. The silver tether running from my neck to the ringbolt in the floor was about eight feet long, but would only give me that latitude if I crawled. Standing, I had far less. It was a strange evocative situation in which to stand. I won't pretend I was anything less than happy.
My mistress selected a hassock and made herself comfortable. "Sit down, darling," she ordered. "When you get used to your chains you'll find you can reach about everything you need."
Awkwardly, I gathered cushions and tried to lounge on them gracefully. Both of us laughed at the result. I could see I was going to have to develop techniques. Chains were an art form I had not yet mastered.
"The collar on your neck would be enough to hold you," my mistress told me companionably. "The rest is to keep you in a proper frame of mind."
"Is that why the door is locked, Mistress?"
"Right! And it's the reason you'll never know how long you're here for. I might leave you chained like that for a couple of weeks, it's bound to happen sometimes." She examined me with satisfaction. "You look very beautiful in chains."
"Thank you, Mistress."
"Any regrets?"
"No, Mistress. Little bits of fear sometimes, but they pass."
She nodded. "You'll always have them, they're a part of it." She grinned reassuringly. "Look, darling, I'll want to talk to you when I'm in the mood, two girls together sort of thing. Don't be scared of me. Talk back, say what you want."
"Could I not earn punishments, Mistress?"
"Yes, you could! It's a hazard of your condition. Adds a bit of drama. You'll never be sure of anything."
I took her at her word. "Where's Wanda, Mistress?"
"Out shopping." My Mistress laughed at the expression on my face. "Surprised! I told you there would be a double standard. Wanda isn't a slave the way you are. I can set her free anytime and she'll bounce right back. If she didn't love this room so much, she'd only have to spend a few hours a day here. But it's her room and she never tires of it."
"Then I'm an interloper?"
"Not really. For Wanda, you'll be a delightful addition to the amenities. It's Wanda who'll look after you half the time. She'll punish you too. In fact, the little darling will amuse herself with you to her heart's content. But don't get ideas, you'll have no more chance of freedom with her than with me.
"I sort of belong to her too?"
"Yes. Does it bother you? It won't do you any good."
I was entranced, but thought it wise to go easy on the enthusiasm. "Mistress, will I have duties, things I must do?"
"It's not practical, honey. I'd make you tend the apartment, but you'd need too much freedom. I'd just as well let you dress and go home."
"I am home, Mistress." I held up my chained hands and admired them.
I could see she was pleased. "You'll be lonely, darling," she mused. "When that kitten, Wanda, leaves a room there's a vacuum. You'll have to count the links of your chains like a Rosary."
"I can see books over there, Mistress."
"O.K. Go and get them."
I almost fell into the trap and tried. My Mistress saw my involuntary motion. We shared our amusement. "My chain won't let me, Mistress. I don't think I can get more than half way."
"Right! The things you may see over there will tantalize you to death. Wanda has orders not to give you any of them. If I catch her doing it I'll whip her hard and make you watch."
Some shape of my captivity began to form. The velvet glove and the hand of iron would both be present. "Will I never read again, Mistress?" I was curious.
"Wanda reads a lot. She loves to read in this room with her ankle chained to a ring; it's her thing-or one of 'em! She's got plenty. Wanda can have almost anything she wants, so she'll be a constant irritant to you who can't have anything at all. I think it's a piquant situation that has possibilities."
"Won't Wanda feel... unkind?"
My Mistress chuckled. "You don't know our Wanda! She's a sympathetic little kitten, and she's a mischievous demon at the same time. Work on her and see how you make out. She knows she'll be whipped if she's too easy with you. That won't necessarily stop her; she's more used to being whipped than you are... yet. Incidentally, if she gets whipped for that reason, so do you. You can watch each other get it. But don't be too scared, the little sweetheart will probably think up a way to get around the rules; she's cute."
"I am scared, Mistress. I'm still living the whipping you've just given me. You were right, it was worse than I ever dreamed."
Her eyes were momentarily somber with memories. "But it passed. You came through it O.K. A girl thinks she's being whipped to death, but she never comes anywhere near dying. It's frightening and it's wonderful."
I caught a glimpse of something I had not guessed. "Mistress, you mean... you mean...?"
"Oh sure! And the hell of it is I'm not the type. But I've been whipped so I thought for sure I was being killed. 'Cut to pieces' is the usual complaint. It's been done to me more than once. I'm not giving you the gory details; you can worm them out of Wanda."
I was a bit stunned. I'd thought me and my fantasy were all alone. But here was a vista of a hidden country in which the whip and the chains were for everyday. Wanda and Phyllis Stafford walked in and out of this delectable land at will. But, looking at my chains, I knew I would walk nowhere. I had become a permanent inhabitant.
"Of course I'll use you for entertainment. In my business I have to quite a bit."
Another small bomb I hadn't expected. "You mean... that Tea Party affair... where I first saw Wanda? I'd have to...!"
"Yes, darling, you'd have to."
"But all those people...!" I could glimpse pitfalls. "Wouldn't some of them feel they had to do something about me? I mean, report it or try and rescue me?"
"Or you might plead with them to give succor to a maiden in distress!" My Mistress laughed delightedly. "Oh sure, the hazard's there. But look at it their way. For a couple of hundred dollars anyone can hire the right girl to put on such a show. For enough cash the little dears become amazingly cooperative. The crowd will be a raffish lot who've seen about everything there is to see. Even the girls have been to North Africa and watched a donkey fuck a woman. They're blase and jaded. They'll sense something fresh and frightened in you. Calling the cops will be the last thing in their minds."
"But if I pick the right one and please...?"
"Covering all the bases, honey? Leading yourself not into temptation?" My Mistress was pleased by my wish to cover avenues of escape.
"Yes I am," I admitted. "I think I'd feel a falsity, sort of insecure. It would be like you leaving the key to these chains here where I could reach it. I'd be wondering if I dared use it."
"Damned perceptive, sweetheart. So I'll try and help. Let me catch a single hint that you're up to tricks and you'll spend the following day hung up by your wrists, toes off the floor, and getting your pretty skin striped with the whip in ways you don't even dream of. There! That make you feel better?"
Oddly enough it did.
* * *
When my Mistress went away leaving me chained amidst the expensive luxury of Wanda's incredible Arabian Nights Room, it took me an hour to make myself believe it had all happened, that this was indeed Tansey Pepper chained by a collar round her neck in a place of pure fantasy.
First of all, I explored my range. The shackles on my wrists and ankles hobbled even a modest crawl. But I was not short of time, so I wriggled this way and that and discovered I could reach everything I had to have for comfort. The place was knee deep in rugs and skins and blankets along with the cushions and other odds and ends a chained girl might sit on. Feeling shockingly exposed I took a better look at the plumbing beneath the rugs. It was beautifully ingenious and more than adequate. I couldn't have a real bath, but all the other possibilities were there.-I supposed I'd get used to the exposure, but after all there was only Wanda!
Almost from the start I found myself looking longingly at the books and magazines and other stuff she had scattered round her special ring in the floor. I deliberately tugged at my chain to prove to myself I couldn't go and pick them up. At the start this was quite unreal. A new captive feels quite sure there has to be a way, there just has to be! But there isn't. Tantalizing is right! But after an hour or so I began to accept the fact of my fetters. They isolated me in a small prison of their own. I found myself concocting an absurd alliteration that fetters infuriate, and shackles shame. I could well see that a mind held in captivity was going to think up a lot of silly notions.
It was evening before Wanda romped in, naked as I was, and well ahead of our Mistress. She danced over to me and kissed as long as she dare, and then stood beside her ring. She was flushed and radiant and alive. She was followed by an amused Phyllis with a tray. It was for me. "You won't be given much to eat, darling. I refuse to have you put on a single ounce." She placed it within my reach and then casually went and chained the ankle Wanda obligingly extended.
"I've had the most gorgeous time," the nymphet exploded after our Mistress had gone and locked us in. "I bought all sorts of things. I was going to buy something for you, but you're not supposed to have things... not yet anyway." She giggled. "But there's not much that's any use to you. You're not allowed to wear clothes or have boxes of chocolates."
"I could read a books," I offered hopefully.
"You know perfectly well I've been forbidden to give you one," she chided, "but there's one here that's really something. I'll bring it over and let you look at the cover and read the blurb."
Before I could stop her she came leaping towards me. When her ankle chain snubbed she fell sprawling, only the cushions and the rugs saved her from hurt. The book went flying.
"Oh, damn and blast!" She sat up, grinning ruefully and rubbing her ankle. "I did that once before with Phyllis. It's awfully easy to forget. Where's that book?"
The book was in plain view, but when I saw it my heart dropped, even Wanda looked perturbed. She stretched her chain and herself to the limit but could come nowhere close.
"How about you, darling?"
I did my captive crawl with even less success. I felt like a puppy straining at the leash from its kennel. As though by mutual instinct we moved towards each other, at the very limit of our restraints we barely managed to touch finger tips.
Wanda backed up and kicked furiously with her captive foot. "She's done it again! I'm so mad! It's on purpose, you know. She wants to keep us for herself. I was going to have a lovely time nibbling your cunt, I know you want me to." She looked angrily around. "I wish I could think of something. Being chained and more or less free I always feel I ought to be able to get these metal things off. But I can't. We didn't have chains on the Island, I was always tied. It's quite different. Chains are nice. A girl can be free the way I am now. I can do anything except go away from this ring. But they absolutely frustrate a girl to death. You know, the 'so near and yet so far' business"
"That book's going to get us both whipped." It was the thing uppermost in my mind. "I sure don't want to get whipped again today."
"If Phyl' finds it, we'll both be whipped." Wanda conceded without much concern. "Don't suppose she'll believe any excuse I can cook up, she always knows when I'm fibbing. But wait a jiffy, there's still hope."
I wanted to laugh, but there was too much at stake. Wanda is a perfect treasure. I wanted to hug her. She prowled around in the radius of her chain and found a rug to suit her purpose. Once more stretching everything to the limit she went fishing. She managed to swing the rug so that its far end fell on top of the errant volume; gently she pulled. The rug slid back, the book stayed where it was.
"This is really a lot of fun," the child said cheerfully, "but usually I'm scared to death, like now. The thing is to keep trying." She threw again and again. "Lucky it isn't you who has to do this. All that hardware you're wearing would make it a real pain."
She managed it finally. I felt like cheering. As yet, my captivity had never been a bore. Wanda petulantly tossed the book back within acceptable limits." 'Spose we might as well go to sleep." She yawned unconcernedly. "Good-night, darling. I'd love to nibble you, I'd make you feel all gorgeous. Wait till I tell Phyl' what I think of chaining us apart! But never mind. She's bound to leave me loose sometime so I can get at you."
I had my doubts.
For twelve days the collar was not taken from my neck. I Knew the full depth of captivity and often loneliness, once or twice panic. I was so terribly chained, I could do nothing. My Mistress spent only a little time with me each day. Neither of us spoke of my prisonment on the ring. My Mistress knew I wanted to speak but did not dare. As the number of my days lengthened, my Mistress's amusement grew. Often I was afraid.
Wanda came and went in an endless exuberance. Without her daily presence I think I might have gone a bit hairy. There was something claustrophobic in the weight and implacability of all those chains that were fastened on me. They were always there. I could never be unaware of them. My Mistress kept her threat about the books; I was not given any. When I was left alone I had to live within my mind or try to sleep. There are limitations to both.
With Wanda they have these quaint rituals that are absolutely sacred, sort of sacred cows. They call 'em The Tie and 'Friday.' Every day the kid gets tied helpless in some way or other for anything from a couple of hours to all day; that's The Tie. Every Friday, whether she's misbehaved or not, she gets her bottom caned. The child herself is convinced this has to be, it's immutable. She enters into the spirit of both with an absolute assurance that it's right and proper that she should. I can almost share their belief in what these notions do for a girl. You know: character building and keeping us in our place. Who am I to sneer! Look at me! Anyway, I'm in on these whether I like it or not. While Wanda's tied tight to a pillar or hogtied on the floor or standing in the stocks, my wrist chains are unlocked and my hands are tied behind my back with cord. If I've been the least bit lippy I also have a strap buckled tight round my elbows so as to draw them together; it's awful! I have to stay like that for however long Wanda has to put up with hers. We talk and even manage a laugh or two. But I don't know how the kid managed to survive when she was left all alone.
Wanda takes Friday in her stride, but I don't. I hope I'll get used to it. Maybe a girl's bottom toughens up with use. We get strapped to a bench with our bottoms sticking well up. I don't even have to be unchained. Phyllis pulls the bench over especially for me. When we are strapped tight she canes our bottoms for as long as she feels like it. Not as hard as she could, I suppose, but it hurts like hell. I feel a bit of injustice, but I can see their point. Getting that every week is going to keep me remembering. Wanda says it's to remember you're a girl. But with me it's to remember I'm a slave. I suppose there's a difference. I manage not to scream or moan. Wanda gasps and giggles and even talks a bit. She tells me she screams terribly when she's whipped for punishment.
Quite early, the day after I was chained, Wanda and I had a quaint interlude. We got measured.
She was a sad severe little woman that our Mistress ushered into our presence. You could easily imagine she'd spent her life with a sewing machine. She didn't seem to notice anything out of the way in our condition or in Wanda's room; presumably she dealt in oddballs and the theatre. She went about measuring us with quick sure movements of the tape in all the usual places and some where I'd never been measured before. She took a lot of time and trouble. When they were gone I pounced on Wanda, but the kid didn't know any more than I did. She was intrigued, imagining all sorts of delights. She preferred nudity, for her clothes were an amusing 'dressing up'. Having enjoyed them she wanted to take them off. In this case I had to make my own guess: It would be one our Mistress's entertainments. Wanda and I would be dressed up in some bizarre and incredible garb, and no doubt during the evening would be stripped bare of it.
In one way my guess wasn't too far wrong, but in another it was out a mile. That's the way it is for a girl who's a slave. The one who owns you is always two jumps ahead. Our Mistress made the great revelation on the second Friday after we'd both been caned. I was alone in Wanda's room and still running my fingers soothingly across the flaming cheeks of my bottom when Phyllis appeared with the box. "A pleasant surprise for you," she said archly. "You won't mind if I blindfold you."
If I had minded it would not have made any difference. I did not say this. I'd already drawn a few stripes with the cane for remarks judged impudent. I'd had to bend over and touch my toes. They had hurt like blazes, so I was cautious. I stood passively while I was put into darkness and waited for the gown of the century, or maybe rubber or latex.
There were strange sounds, not the kind you associate with the world of fashion. Suddenly I gasped at the cold touch of metal over my shoulders and upon my breasts; something cold and hard and strangely flexible was being fastened on me. Moments later there were similar sensations round my hips and upon my loins. When the blindfold was whisked away I found myself clothed in a brief two-piece of panties and bra' made of gleaming steel mesh.
They were beautiful. I longed for a mirror. But I could see the reflection of their loveliness in my Mistress's eyes. They were artistry in metal, so perfectly fashioned as to cling like a second skin, but so tight that each tiny link made its own indentation in my flesh. They were heavy and immovable; there was no slack. They covered my vulva and my breasts, little else. I gasped in pleasure and explored them avidly with my chained hands. They were exquisitely symbolic. What more fitting garment for a girl in chains!
"For the entertainments, Mistress?" I asked breathlessly.
"Save you a bit of embarrassment, honey. No tits in the drinks and not much for the men to put their hands on. Admire them for awhile. I'm going to give Wanda hers."
Admire them I did. I was inordinately proud of my adornments. Slave girls receive few gifts, and being naked have little need of them. But this silver mesh intimately embedding itself into me wherever it touched was something utterly unique. It was exotic and erotic with a touch of cruelty. A girl so clothed would never forget she had them on, they had that in common with the chains. I wondered how often we would be allowed to wear them.
When Wanda waltzed in with shining eyes, my Mistress blew me a kiss as she closed and locked the door that made the two of us secure. For a moment she surveyed us, then disappeared.
"Oh, darling, aren't they simply too, too gorgeous!"
Wanda danced here and there between the cushions to try out the feel of her metal garb. In complete motion the links held firm as though painted on her flesh. The child was quite free, there was not a restraint on her. Phyllis had locked the door and gone; could this mean... !
"I'm free, I'm free!" the nymphet chanted as she danced. "No chain on my ankle!" She flung herself upon me and found my lips. We kissed wetly and hungrily. The feel of her fanned desire into a bright flame within my being. I cursed the chains that joined my hands, they prevented me throwing my arms about her as I had a great need to do, but she was alive enough for both of us. I was engulfed in arms and legs and lips. I sighed in glory.
The sudden thought must have hit us both at the same time. We tensed and separated. Wanda whirled about, presenting me with her back. "Take them off me, darling," she demanded in a voice in which there was the hint of tears.
At the back of each garment there was a small flat oblong metal lock; the links were either a part of it or their terminals entered it by tongues or prongs thrust into slots. There was a keyhole, but no key. Despairingly I tugged and pulled and twisted. "It's no go," I told her sadly. "They're locked on us. We can't get them off."
Slowly Wanda turned. She was crying. She engulfed me in her arms and bore me back upon the rug. We kissed and used our hands, but our kisses were sad, they were of love, the other was denied us.
Finally she knelt beside me, her fingers busy at the metal on her hips.
"The lousy thing's a chastity belt," she declared vehemently. "Oh, what a rotten trick to play on us! I bet Phyl's laughing her head off."
We surveyed each other dolefully, two maidens utterly forlorn. The absurdity of our plight got the better of us, we broke down into giggles and laughter. It was ridiculous, but it was comic. Never had two damsels bent on illicit lust been more neatly foiled.
"She's even covered our nipples and our breasts," Wanda wailed. "There's nothing to nibble on at all."
She pushed me down. Separating my legs she busied herself trying to insert fingers beneath the mesh upon my sex. But the little woman with her tape had known her job too well. Wanda's frantic efforts accomplished no more than to rob me of a few pubic hairs and make me say "Ouch!" Any virginity we might possess was absolutely safe.
"Looking for something, darlings?" Our Mistress's voice was brimming with laughter. She had sneaked in unobserved.
Wanda reared, her face flushed with indignation. "Darling, why are you so mean to us? All I want to do is nibble Tansey's cunt. Why can't I?"
"Because it's my cunt, sweetheart."
"But you never use it."
"I might want to. At any time."
"Well, it's there. I'm not going to wear it out. It could probably do with a bit of use." Wanda's voice was unusually petulant.
"Honey, don't take on so. I got these things for quite another reason than stopping you two feeding on each other. Tonight's a tryout. I take it you've both found yourselves safe and securely protected?"
"They're works of art," I interjected, hoping to ward off words best left unsaid. "With these on a girl would be safe on an aircraft carrier with a thousand sailors a month at sea."
"Let me bite Tansey's cunt," Wanda demanded doggedly.
"Honey, don't push."
"You're mean not to let me."
"Wanda! You'll be whipped in the morning." Phyllis was angry.
Wanda tensed, she bit her lips. I could see she was vexed at her own foolishness. I could sense, too, she was no more anxious for the whip than I. She stood, flushed and irresolute, close to tears. But she did not beg. At a nod from our Mistress she marched angrily to her ring and thrust forward a hostile foot on which Phyllis firmly clamped the metal band. No word was said.
I could have wept myself. She was such a lovable child. It was partly because of me she would be punished. I looked appealing at my Mistress. "Please don't whip her. I should have stopped the things she said. The fault's part mine."
My Mistress laughed. "Going to do the nobility act and offer your own skin?"
"If you will accept it in place of hers."
"Well, I won't. Tomorrow I'll cure that cute little pout she's wearing. Her 'Friday' evidently wasn't enough for Miss Sexy."
I dared not argue. I felt a great tenderness for the hurt proud child who was trying not to cry, but it was a moment when my slavery rested heavily. I could do nothing except get myself whipped too.
"The mesh won't do you much good now, I'll take it off." My Mistress was obviously miffed over the turn things had taken. I suspected she was feeling as sorry for Wanda as I was. But, having issued a judgement, she would stand by it. A key turned in my locks, the heavy metal fell away; I was once more nude. She did the same for the stiff rebellious figure of the child. Without a word she left and locked the door.
What was there to say! Fortunately the moment was eased for us as we beheld on each other the imprint of the belt and bra. It was as though we were still wearing the lovely things. They had been so tight upon us they had left their mark. It would soon recede, but it was as though we wore brief pink coverings for our most female secrets. Inevitably we laughed, the tension was gone. Wanda became her ebullient self. "Gosh, I was an idiot, wasn't I!"
"Will it be very bad?"
"'Bout like yours was, I expect."
"But that's awful! You don't deserve... "
"I do, y'know. I'm not supposed to shoot off like that. I don't know what made me make such a blooper. Don't worry. That whipping of yours wasn't as bad as you thought it was. I doubt if I'll get much less." She gave me an explanatory grin. "You see, the punishment ones have to make us really want to do better. Wouldn't do much good otherwise, would they!"
"Sweetheart, I'm so damn sorry." I wanted to hug her.
"I was going to say the same thing, darling. 'Cuz I know you're feeling bad about me getting whipped. Don't worry. I'll be O.K. 'Tisn't my first time, y'know."
And that's the way we left it for the night.
But I could not sleep. I wanted that kid so bad it hurt. Fact is, I was horny as all get out. Between them Wanda and my Mistress affected me as an aphrodisiac. They reeked of sex, they exuded desire as a thing almost tangible. In innocent unconsciousness Wanda emanated waves of sexuality that kept me with a wet pussy all the time she was in the room. My Mistress felt it too. I could tell. But she herself bombarded me with sensuality. I wondered if I had that effect on them. When the three of us were together the atmosphere was heavy with musk. It left me with an aching hunger and a fire burning in my crotch, a fire that did not seem to have much hope of being quenched. I knew my Mistress was conscious of my agony and was deliberately keeping me starved. I thought it likely to be a part of my indoctrination as had been the whip and the chains still heavy upon me. I hoped this was all; I could see my frustration driving me to a vocal outburst such as Wanda's and earning me some awful punishment. I slept and dreamt turgidly of Wanda on whose ankle there was no chain.
In the morning it was all very cut and dry and without fuss. Wanda and I did not speak of what would happen. Evidently the cheerful nymphet had some store of resignation on which to draw when the inevitable hovered in view. There were only a few odd times I caught a bleakness in her eyes as she let herself see and feel, the rest of the time we talked as we always did when chained to our rings. Once we crawled to the limit of our chain and contrived the brief touch of our fingers and the exchange of a wry grin acknowledging our helplessness.
When our Mistress came with the whip I knelt beside my ring and watched. Nothing was said. It was as though the occasion demanded a ritualistic silence. Immediately the shackle was unlocked from her ankle Wanda strode quickly to stand beneath the trapeze bar I remembered so bitterly; she looked up at it to gauge her position with precision; her manner was absorbed and preoccupied as though her thoughts were elsewhere. When the hateful thing was lowered she placed her wrists within the straps, and watched the buckles pulled tight to render her helpless. It was not until she stood on her toes, her arms and body stretched taut, that she managed speech.
"I'm sorry, Phyl'. I didn't mean to be beastly."
"It's O.K. sweetheart."
"Darling... my apology, it's not to get me off anything, don't let it."
"I won't, honey. You'll get it all."
"Kiss me, Phyl', please! I'll kiss the whip too." Was there humor in the poignant words?
It was all very normal for them, I could tell. Their lips met in a lingering heat, and then the lovely child kissed the awful thing that would weal her skin. As she did so her eyes lovingly sought those of the woman who held it. I ardently wished I was not chained, I too wanted to kiss such courage.
Wanda had promised screams, she delivered them. They were as uninhibited as her laughter or her tears. She was being unbearingly hurt, so she screamed. She screamed, not for dramatic effect, but because they were natural and eased her pain. Because they were hers they held an awful beauty.
I knelt with the rivulet of tears streaking my cheeks. How well I knew myself a slave. I could do nothing but watch and know that sooner or later I myself would stand again as the darling child stood now. My fists were clenched against the chain that joined them.
Phyllis Stafford whipped Wanda with the same thorough competence with which she dealt with her career. She was a woman with a tremendous store of warmth for others, which she set aside when there was a job to do. Whatever she was engaged in got her whole hearted attention. Wanda was getting it now, her youthful curves tearing at her bonds and writhing in a sensuous frenzy, her feet plunging and kicking as though they fought a tangible enemy. But in all her gasps and her moans there was never a plea that her punishment should stop. The livid weals mounted, one upon the other on her skin.
She stood there, still strapped, panting and wet, after our Mistress had gone. The cones of her breasts were rising and falling with the depth of her breathing, twin protests against her pain, her legs still flexing and seeking something they could not find. My tears now were of frustration that I could neither hold or free her or even touch my lips to hers. I found myself on my feet striving to work away my futility by chain rattling steps this way and that so that the collar round my neck snubbed me again and again with its brutal message of my impotence. I was learning with a vengeance what it was to be a slave! Tansey Pepper was gone, as was my will, decision and freedom.
Well, I'd damn well asked for it!
Everything is wonderful and frightening and sometimes beautiful. It was past noon of the twelfth day when my Mistress unlocked the collar from my neck and let it fall tinkling to the floor. Next my wrists were freed, but their heavy manacles were instantly replaced by glinting handcuffs, feather-light by contrast. My heart soared. When the massive irons were removed from my ankles I sank to my knees and kissed the hands by which I had been freed. I was trembling.
"How 'bout soaking in the tub, honey."
I let her lead me. I was floating on weightless clouds. Right then it seemed the strangest and most wonderful sensation of my life, the metal that held my wrists so close was fantastic jewelry. I loved it.
"I'm going to play Lady's Maid, sweetheart. You'll find there's a few bits you can't reach with your hands fixed, and it's quite impossible to towel yourself afterwards. I know, I've tried."
It was heavenly, all of it! Especially her hands on me. I longed to make love. She did too; I could tell. But for some reason I was still interdict. I refused to let it mar by joy. But being toweled by her knowing hands almost drove me into orgasm; she knew and laughed delightedly at my blush. "Let's make you really feminine, darling, just for the hell of it."
Seated before the huge mirror in My Mistress's bedroom the two of us worked with tremendous absorption at just me. My hair, my eyes, my lips, nothing was forgotten. I became increasingly proud and excited by the reflection in the glass. "Shouldn't my nipples be painted with something bright?" I asked breathlessly.
"Bit of a waste with these."
I gasped as the chill metal of the silver mesh hugged my breasts. "Push your nips around, honey, and get them comfy, I'm going to make these tight."
I did what I could. She was right about being tight. After the click of the lock each breath I took drove my breasts surging against and into the links of the mesh. It wasn't exactly painful, but I sure knew I was wearing a chain mail bra. It was the same with my pussy, the steel cupped, covered and held it with finality. When I stepped around the room I sure knew my virtue was in safe keeping. But it felt good, snug and tight and of my Mistress. So were the handcuffs, pure thistledown. I felt just as much a slave, but a tremendously happy and excited slave.
"This way, darling. You look good enough to eat."
My heart leaped in hope, especially when we went to one of the spare bedrooms; like all of them it was large and bright and expensive. But it wasn't that-not what I wanted, I mean. My Mistress unlocked one cuff and snapped it round the bedpost, leaving me standing with one single wrist captive, the rest of me free. Pulling at the cuff that held me I knew I wasn't going anywhere.
My Mistress did not pause. Going to a drawer, she extracted there from a slender riding crop which she placed in stark prominence on the dresser, well out-of my reach. She then held up two keys. "Your clothes and your handcuffs, darling."
I watched, still trembling with hope and apprehension, while she took a magazine from a shelf, slipped the keys inside, and replaced it at the bottom of a pile. "You and I know where they are, darling. No one else. You don't have to tell a soul."
I stood, helpless, yet free. Certainly infinitely more free than I had been for a long time. My Mistress placed her hands on my shoulders. "You're beautiful, almost too beautiful." She said it wistfully as though from some inward knowledge in much the same way that an old and withered woman will say it to a child. She pulled me to her and kissed me again and again. My fettered hands reached for her but could hold nothing. A girl can do a lot in handcuffs but not the things she most wants to do. My one free hand was not enough to hold her. She broke away laughing. "I told you I could be a bitch, darling." A moment later she was gone. She left the door ajar, probably to tantalize.
I stood at the end corner of the bed. The steel band was tight around my right wrist. An exploration of the bedpost to which I was chained soon showed me I would not get free of it. It was solid as the Washington monument. So there I stood, a nearly naked girl chained by her wrist to a bed post, and over on the dresser a whip. It was a piquant stage setting, a real teaser. The only thing I could think about was the surety that something was about to happen... happen to me!
He lounged in, bored, but curious. Maybe thirty-five, tough and cynical and damn good-looking, the kind of looks that go with money. Seeing me he grinned, not at all surprised. I could believe that, to this man, naked girls were commonplace. He said, "Hi, kid," then looked me over and added casually, "You've got a nice ass."
I'm a lesbian. It always infuriates me when a male manages to make me notice him, it's a sort of betrayal.
"O.K. They're damned effective, but toss 'em away. I'm not going to screw you any way but naked."
Damned generous of him! The lordly male bastard! If I got a chance I'd kick him in the testicles. For the moment I held my end up by rattling my handcuff at him.
He was instantly intrigued. Some of his boredom slipped away. "W-e-l-l...!" He drew out the exclamation pleasurably. "Not a willing victim, eh?"
"Go to hell!" Not original, but I had to say something.
"What? No plea for release?" He was going to enjoy me.
"What would I want to be released for?"
He considered my question. "I take it you're not a damsel in distress, sweetpea?"
"I wasn't until you walked in. And my name's not Sweetpea."
His interest perked up another couple of notches. My dialogue was taking me in the wrong direction, but it felt so good to be rude.
"How come you're handcuffed?"
"None of your business."
He assimilated this without visible offense, his eyes roved. My heart thumped shockingly when he went and picked up that awful riding crop. "Think this might make it my business, sweetpea?" he inquired blandly.
I devoutly wished I was chained back in Wanda's room. Phyllis was right, she could be a bitch! "Yes, it will make me beg, if that's what you want," I told him bitterly.
"Hadn't really thought of begging," he conceded mildly. "Figured I might just screw you for awhile, 'fore and 'aft."
The crass and complacent male! How I hated them! I felt like those damsels in the legends who were chained securely for the attention of the local dragon. "Go ahead and screw me then," I said disgustedly. "I can't stop you; and incidentally, I'm not a virgin. I hope that's a big disappointment."
He enjoyed every word I said. I wasn't going to be able to talk my way out of this one. He came and examined my locked wrist. "Who's got the key?"
"You know as well as I do." I could smell his maleness, he was that close. I stepped back a pace, it was as far as I could go. It left me with my arm stretched out.
"You aiming to go some place, sweetpea?"
"Damn you, screw me and get it over with."
"Damned awkward with your hand up there."
"That's not my fault. You don't think I chained myself, do you?"
"Well, anyway, take off that avant garde two-piece you're wearing. I've a notion it's hiding something good."
"Just my breasts and vagina. Were you expecting something else?"
"Don't get too cute, sweetpea." He flexed the riding crop thoughtfully. It was wickedly limber. He saw me looking at it and laughed. "You don't really want this, do you?"
"I can't get these things off, I've only got one hand."
"O.K. Turn 'round."
I chuckled inwardly. He was in for a shock; but I'd have an angry man on my hands, and he had a whip! I positioned myself obligingly to be undressed. Strong ruthless fingers tugged at me.
"Hell, these bloody things are locked on you!"
"You mean you can't undo them?" I asked innocently.
"You know damn well I can't."
"How should I know?" I exclaimed indignantly. "Someone else put them on me."
I turned back so that we again faced each other. He eyed me pensively, more intrigued than angry. "Dear sweet Phyllis Stafford," he said thoughtfully. "She said it would be different; it is." Once more his eyes searched the room, he probably expected to find keys hanging somewhere. "With the right tools I could have you out of the whole thing, handcuffs and all, in no time. But I'm not going to find a man size bolt cutter in a lady's bedroom."
"If you did find one, would you free me and take me away, away from this building?" I asked tentatively, but hastily added, "After you'd screwed me, of course."
"You been kidnapped?" He eyed me with fresh interest.
My mistress had put me in a pretty pickle. I wondered if she was listening outside the door. I could feel myself sliding into a spot in which anything I did or said would be wrong. I couldn't keep my eyes from straying to that blasted whip. "No I have not been kidnapped!" I said tartly. "But, regardless of that, would you take me?"
"Sweetpea, you know damn well I wouldn't. Always leave the furniture the way you find it. That's a rule."
"Alright, you've had a good look at me, so why don't you go? I'll even give you a genuine good-bye kiss if that'll soothe your male ego."
The wise eyes surveying me were wickedly shrewd, they made me doubly conscious of my nudity and helplessness. I was totally vulnerable. All my lesbian sensitivities recoiled from the thought of him using my body as he would wish to do for the afternoon. I remembered his " 'Fore and 'aft." The 'aft' bit was something new I could do without. If I could exhaust his interest with words or some lesser capitulation, I had better try.
"Spunky little trick, aren't you?" he chuckled. "Getting yourself closer to this all the time." He bent the length of the crop double for my inspection. I was scared, why wouldn't I be?! "You shouldn't use that thing on me." I protested, striving toward a bit of logic. "I didn't engineer this silly spot we are both of us in."
T think you know more than you're telling. Five or six with this and you'd be real helpful." He raised a quizzical eyebrow. "It had to be sitting on that dresser for a reason, wouldn't you agree, sweetpea?"
"Oh, please, no! Don't whip me, it won't prove anything." I could feel his quiet reasoning surrounding me, cutting off escape.
"Honey, of course it'll prove something! Even if you didn't talk-and you will-I'll enjoy slicing a few marks on that soft skin of yours."
I'd guessed it anyway. Everybody loves whipping a girl. But they like an excuse, it salves their conscience. I found myself pulling at my handcuffed wrist. "Look," I said desperately, "I think I can kneel. My hand will be up in the air, but that won't matter. If you come close I'll give you a blow job. Will that prove I'm not cheating?"
He was vastly entertained. "You're quite something, kid." His mind was obviously busy with assessments.
"I've never done it," I admitted. "But I know what it's called. I don't suppose it takes all that much skill."
He did not answer me at once, just pensively looked, stripping me of both covering and pretense. "Not a bad offer, sweetpea. But that comes last. We do the other first."
I squirmed against my tethered wrist. One by one he was closing my escape routes. The horror I had just offered him was, for me, a tremendous and humiliating surrender. In him it had evoked no more than amusement, perhaps suspicion. I may have made a tactical error.
"Know what I've figured out, kid?" he mused aloud, "I think the keys we need are right here in this room, and you know where." The grin he gave me was almost benign. "Figure it my way, sweetpea: add you and Phyllis together, then add those handcuffs and that trick suit you're wearing, and then for a clincher toss in this lovely whip. You know what it adds up to, don't you?"
His addition was perfect. If it hadn't been for seeing the whip bending in his hands I might have kept my features innocently composed; but with it staring at me or me at it, I'm sure my face betrayed all I had striven to hide.
His long drawn-out sigh was not one of regret. It held all the sensual anticipation of a satyr. "In what position do you want to stand for it, sweetpea?" His whip now swung idly from a single hand.
The moment was upon me. I wanted time to think, but I had no time. Miserably, I turned to the high bedpost to which my wrist was shackled and, gripping it with both hands, laid my forehead against the wood. I had bluffed it this far. Perhaps after a little agony he might relent! I waited, tense and hopeless.
His first blow cut across the cheeks of my bottom. The mesh chastity belt gave no protection. Its stricture came from between my legs and rose up within the cleft to lock itself with the band around my waist. The ensemble had been designed to leave the wearer's seat bare and available. I curled up with the sickening pain. It is bad enough to be whipped by a girl. But by a man! All my femininity rose up in futile revolt. I held tight to the bedpost.
He whipped me hard and with little pause; he had a purpose. I managed not to scream, but I could hear small animal noises coming from my lips. I tried to keep still, but it was not easy. I found a strange and unexpected comfort in the bedpost. I gripped it with all my strength, my forehead sought it harder and harder until it hurt. The slender withe cut me everywhere.
I gave up at the seventh lash. If he knew compassion it would have surfaced by now. "They are in the magazine at the bottom of the pile," I told him, not weakly, but with anger and disgust.
He was jubilant with male egotism.
"Could have saved your hide, sweetpea."
"I'm sure you enjoyed every stripe," I said bitterly and without caution.
With the keys still in his hands, he paused. Reading the message in his eyes I cringed and cursed my sarcasm. "How many did you get, honey?" he inquired pleasantly.
"Seven."
Without waiting to be told, I turned back to the post and sought its comfort. The whip sliced me three more times bitterly, cruelly, and without mercy. I could not hold back the tears that measured their injustice.
"Makes an even ten, sweetpea," he said comfortably. "Teach you not to get uppity with me. Or would you like to drop another sarcasm or two?"
"No. Thank you." I hated the whole thing, including myself.
He unlocked the handcuff from the bedpost and immediately snapped it 'round my one free wrist. "Won't stop you doing what I want you to," he leered, "but might deter any declarations of independence you have in mind."
I wasn't chained to anything. I could run! But he killed the idea as soon as it was born. "There's ten more waiting for you, kid, any time you give me trouble. I'd love to give 'em to you."
I daren't chance it. He'd catch me before I could reach the door. Thought of ten more lashes with that beastly thing set me trembling. "The missionary position to start?" I asked politely.
He fucked me again and again. I'll use the filthy word; it aptly describes a filthy act. I spread myself for him, and even put a couple of pillows underneath without being told. But after his second orgasm he whispered in my ear, "You want the whip again, honeybunch?"
"No!"
"Stop closing the door then. You're managing a mental blackout. There's no spring in your ass." I gave him that concession too.
After he's extracted from my flesh the response that means so damn much to men, he had the effrontery to chain my wrist to the bedpost again and take a nap. I had to stand there and keep quiet. When that was over he was obviously invigorated and announced the main event.
"Ever had it up your ass, sweetpea?"
I threw away all my pride. I begged.
He listened thoughtfully to what I had to say, then made his casual suggestion. "You're damn good under the whip, kid. Would you sooner I did that?"
If he hadn't whipped me already I might have said yes. But now I couldn't. I just did not want my skin cut anymore. "If you'll push me into whatever position you want, I'll try and behave and make it good for you." I don't suppose any maiden's defeat had ever been more total.
It was no worse than I expected.
He had another snooze after that. I wept quietly, using my one free hand to dry my tears. I felt lonely and bereft and abandoned. I knew that had the sleeping figure on the bed been female, I might have been happy. But a man... ! Ugh! I cringed at the sight of him and at the knowledge of "act three" coming up.
"If it's your first time, sweetpea, you'll get a real charge out of it," he assured me blandly.
I knew all too well the charge I was going to get. "I understand I have to swallow it all to gain approval," I said acidly, coming dangerously close to sarcasm.
"And lick it clean afterwards, honey. Be sure about that."
He stood, making no move. I looked at him, distrait. "Aren't you going to wash?"
He slapped his thigh and roared with laughter. "Hell, girl, that's the reason it comes last. Wouldn't want it unfavoured, would you? Or were you thinking of some peanut butter?"
I wanted to puke in his face. I could feel my gorge rising. But I choked it back down. Just one more river to cross and I might be home free. Best not spoil things or earn myself more stripes with the bitter words upon my tongue. At least the secretions I would have to savour were my own. "How do you want me?" I asked helpfully. I recalled hearing it spoken of as a term whores used upon their clients.
"You got me going with that thought of yours," he admitted. "And you don't need more than one hand. I'll stand right close."
Miserably I knelt before him, my chained hand held up and away. I edged close into position and used my one free hand to guide his redolent penis into my waiting mouth. I sucked and tongued lustily.
When he went he left me handcuffed as he had found me. The silver mesh and the whip lay scattered on the floor. I stood there, desolate and soiled, even to the final insult of a fifty dollar bill pushed roughly between the lips of my cunt.
* * *
NARRATIVE
It was like owning a Cezanne and a Van Gogh and having the cognoscenti in your drawing room to pay tribute to your taste and fortune. Phyllis Stafford glowed with pride in her two silver maidens as they glided among her guests, proffering their trays and their smiles. The silver mesh was a delight upon their flesh, their whip marks an exciting contrast on satin skin. Each wore chains upon her wrists; chains to match the closely woven links of their brief costumes. The silver bands upon the slender wrists were joined by eight inches of chain, enough to allow them ease and grace in what they must do, yet mark them captive.
Each of the girls knew their own excitement. To Wanda all things were gorgeous and exciting. But for Tansey it was a new chapter. After her time in chains this hum of conversation, the smoke of good cigars, the eroticism of perfume, and the admiring and speculative glances of all the men and most of the women was heady stuff. She and a giggling Wanda had stolen a drink or two. This, coupled with what was for them an almost total absence of restraint left Tansey floating on a euphoric cloud in which anything could happen. If vagrant thoughts of escape flitted through her mind, she dismissed them. Her wrists were chained, and almost certainly Phyllis Stafford was equal to contingencies. The comments were diverting.
"That thing on your what'sit is actually a Chastity Belt."
"Surely you've got the key to those chains on your wrists?"
"How much do you charge for an evening?"
"Is that true, you're really a prisoner?"
"Did she buy you or something?"
"Those whip marks are real, aren't they? Did they hurt?"
"Do you like being whipped? Or has she got something on your' "Are you kinky, or just need the cash?"
A dark-eyed sultry girl cornered Tansey and said bluntly: "If you like being whipped you must come to me. I've got a lot more time than Phyl', and I've got better premises. I've got a post I'll tie you to. You'd love it." She imparted an intense stare and drifted away.
But the thing that maintained a tingling excitement in each girl's breast was her knowledge of The Prize. Later there would be a draw. The winner could take a choice of either one of them and subject them to whatever delights Wanda's room could provide or their own ingenuity devise. The winning slip got its owner an hour's privacy with a captive girl. It added a fillip to the evening for everyone. For Tansey it added much, much more.
"To them that hath shall be given," quoted the middle-aged man as he accepted the glass from Wanda's tray. "You know the 'Smoke a Smeaton and Smile!' ad. That's her, Connie Smeaton, richest girl in town. Her old man died last year." He gave an alcoholic chuckle. "From what I've heard, that pretty little sidekick of yours may be in for a rough time." He winked broadly. "If I'd have won the toss I'd have picked you."
Wanda was glad he had not drawn first prize. She had a feeling that, with him, she would not want to be it. The word 'nasty' came to her mind. She gave him her politest smile and turned an anxious eye to where the Smeaton millions was leading Tansey from the room. The Smeaton hand was very firmly on the slave girl's arm. A round of congratulatory applause followed them out. Wanda sought her Mistress.
"Phyl' darling, there's a man here who says that girl who won the prize will be really cruel to Tansey."
A slight frown crossed Phyllis Stafford's features. She shrugged regretfully. "Just the luck of the draw, sweetheart. There's others here I'd sooner see win, but Connie won't kill her, y'know."
With that, Wanda had to be content.
"I think I'll bastinado the soles of your feet, Tansey," Connie Smeaton suggested thoughtfully.
Tansey's indrawn breath was very real. "That's where you beat the bottom of my feet with a cane, isn't it?" She was uncertain what right of appeal or protest she might have probably none since she would be closeted alone with this girl who had won her.
"That's right," Connie approved warmly. "Ever had it?"
"No. Isn't it a bit severe? A sort of ultimate punishment?"
"Mmmmm! I suppose it is. You're bound to run into it sometime though."
Tansey wasn't sure. She felt an impulse to run back and throw herself on Phyllis's mercy. But the hand that had gripped her arm had now slid down and gripped the chain between her wrists. The metal bands could hurt terribly. In a scuffle she was half beaten at the start. "Please don't hurt me so I can't walk," she pleaded.
Connie Seaton did a surprising thing. She turned her captive about and roundly kissed her. The dark eyes glowed, the voice was warm. "Poor Pet! I'm not going to beat your feet. I was testing. You came through pretty good. I like you, you grab me."
Tansey was overwhelmed, instinctively she fell to her knees in gratitude. Her hands were still held in the other girl's firm grip, but she used her forehead to seek the comfort of physical contact.
"You poor kid! You really are a slave. I'd wondered; but you're for real." Connie's voice was eager and excited. "You're a prisoner, you can't get away."
"No, Mistress, I cannot get away."
The dark eyes looking down at the kneeling girl were intent, shining. "Is it by your own wish?"
"Yes, Mistress."
To Tansey it all happened very quickly. When she swung from the trapeze bar, her toes an inch above the floor, it had happened as in a dream. She had been passively obedient, Connie Smeaton had done the rest. Done it with sure and certain motions that spoke of long practice.
Tansey had never before been fully suspended. She instantly realized it as having a quality of awfulness of its own. Kicking her legs made it hurt more. Once again it was her wrists that took her punishment. She hung naked and motionless helplessly awaiting what might befall; her eyes were on the whip in the hands of the girl whose captive she now was.
"I'll love whipping you. You're an absolute Pet." Connie swung the whip and slashed it round the taut waist. "You mark beautifully, you're a darling."
Tansey was in a welter of emotions. Connie Smeaton would be cruel and ruthless and exact her pound of flesh, but she had felt a bond. There had passed between the two girls a message of kinship. Striving for silence against her pain, she heard words beyond belief.
"Tansey, come home with me."
She sought the dark and enigmatic eyes, they glowed. "I can't, I belong to Phyllis."
"Right now you belong to me. I have you for an hour. In less than that I'll have you safe."
"Will you love me?" Suddenly it was all important.
"You poor Pet! Of course I'll love you. I'll love you and whip you alternately until you're my slave and no one else's."
"I don't know... I don't know!" Anguished, Tansey was lost. "Don't ask me. I'm a slave. Treat me as a slave," she moaned as she had never done beneath the whip.
It was a dream, it had to be! Connie Smeaton was not a girl, she was a force, a power. She was decision! A free and bewildered slave girl stood mute and awestricken while a cord tugged down her chained wrists, sped beneath and upon her sex within its mesh and up behind to make a circle round her waist. Tansey was helpless, her hands were low against her tummy, she could not raise them.
"Just in case you get notions, Pet. You can't do much, don't try. Come on."
There was a blanket and a cloak, swift sorties down empty halls and passages, an elevator to themselves to the basement and the car. There was an exhilarating drive through familiar streets, and a big, big house. By the time they left the automobile they had exchanged enough ardent glances to ensure the mesh upon the captive sex was more than damp.
Tansey thought she had been spreadeagled on the bed for perhaps thirty minutes before Connie appeared with the horrendous implement that caused her to surge against the cords that held her fast and widen her eyes in terror.
"Hush, Pet, don't take on so. These things will cut anything. Hold still."
Tansey strained to watch. She was scared. It had happened too fast. What would her Mistress say at the destruction of the lovely metal things locked upon the body of her slave! The cold steel inserted itself upon her flesh, Connie Smeaton heaved and thrust. There came a snap and then another. The Chastity Belt protected her no more. In a few moments her breasts were also free, their nipples betraying her excitement. The lovely mesh was cast aside with the brutal tool that had sundered them. "You're too gorgeous for words!" the bright eyed captor breathed as she tossed the clothes from her body with careless haste. "Two wet cunts and four hard tits." Connie laughed joyfully as she threw her nakedness upon the tied and waiting nudity that was Tansey Pepper.
They ate each other endlessly. Tansey strained against her bonds without wish to free herself. Hers were the sinuous writhings of feline awareness. She had no wish for freedom. All her pent up hunger found release in this dark-eyed maiden who had taken her. Here was a new and excruciating joy that only a slave girl could know. Deliberately she hurt her wrists and ankles against their cords as orgasm after orgasm filled the void she had carried within her loins for far too long. Her tongue was busy seeking and finding what she sought.
Time did not matter, they had no concern with it. When it was done, Connie raised herself on one elbow and pensively ran her fingertips back and forth over the wet and captive nipples. She smiled in quiet delight at the sounds and motions the loving play evoked. Tansey writhed gently, undulating against the four cords that spread her, much as a cat will luxuriously stretch itself after sleeping in the sun.
"You can't get loose, Pet."
"Mmmmm!" Tansey did not care.
"We can both sleep as we are, no need to untie you."
"Mmmmm!"
"Talk about a kitten full of cream! You're happy." 'Terribly, terribly happy. Don't untie me."
"Your breasts are luscious." Connie cupped one with her hand.
"So are yours. Give me one to bite. I can't reach."
"Did Phyllis Stafford ever whip them... your breasts, Pet?"
Tansey turned a lazy eye to the lovely dark eyes that were so close, she shook a lazy head. "No. But she whipped me between my legs... alright, I'll say it: she whipped my cunt."
"I'll whip your cunt too. Will that please you?"
Tansey nodded vehemently. The sensations of the busy fingers made talking difficult.
"I'll also whip your breasts."
For only a moment Tansey tensed, then relaxed again. "Alright, Mistress, I don't mind."
Connie smiled tenderly. "You like calling me Mistress, don't you? Is that what I am?"
"What else could you be, Mistress! What else is there to call you?" The captive gazed innocently up at the girl who had bound her, then added the single word, "Darling... "
"The way you said that made me crinkle up inside," Connie admitted in wonder. "You're pure female. I shall probably eat you and whip you to death. Always call me Mistress or Darling, never my name."
"Yes Mistress." Tansey savored the word lovingly.
The flicker of a rueful grin fled across Connie's face. "Phyl' Stafford's going to blow her top. I'm absolutely not letting you go until I'm satiated with you, if that ever happens. Want me to let you loose then, or turn you back to her, neatly trussed?"
"I am a slave girl, Mistress. Don't ask me things like that... darling."
Connie Smeaton felt her fires rekindle. This girl she had won as a prize in a silly draw was a new experience. Tansey was a hundred dreams come true. The dark-eyed beauty had never before been so possessed by an affectionate hunger, a loving lust for a naked girl, as she was for this submissive nudity spread and tied for herself alone. In curiosity she asked, "I'll have to untie you sometime for... well, for everything. When I make you free will you yield yourself to me again to be tied?"
To the bound girl, the question with its implied trust was heart-touchingly naive. "Of course I will, darling! No matter how you hurt me, whenever you make me free I'll give you my hands to be fastened whenever you tell me to. I'll obey you completely."
Impetuously, Connie's lips drank at the willing fountain before her captive managed to gasp: "But please never let me be free. Keep some bit of me tied or chained always, even in between times. I can't tell you why this is important to me, but it is. I suppose I want to be reminded always of what I am: I'm a slave! It's like wanting to be told you're loved."
The simple confession brought tears to the eyes of the girl called Mistress. She was consumed by love for this bounty chance had bestowed. "Pet... darling, shall I keep you forever?" Her voice was husky with emotion.
Tansey could not answer. She twisted and pulled at her bindings as though seeking from their strength both comfort and guidance. "I can't answer, I can't! I don't know... " she moaned.
The dark-eyed Mistress took her captive's face in both her hands. "Look at me. Look at me properly, deep in my eyes."
Tansey looked and was lost.
Connie Smeaton had her answer.
"We are going to love each other again, Pet. But when I'm between your thighs I want to see marks that are all mine. I'm going to whip the inside of your thighs. You're tied about right."
Tansey simply nodded, she could not speak. "It will hurt you terribly, darling. Would you like to be gagged?"
To Tansey, then, it did not seem to matter. Pain from this dark Mistress was to be expected and to be borne. She shook her head, her lips smiling their disdain for being bound. "I will make some noises, Mistress, but I will not scream."
In a turgid daze of happiness, Connie Smeaton used the whip and watched with joy the scarlet streak form within the soft length of the exposed whiteness of the helpless thigh. The thong had buried itself within the flesh from above the knee up to Tansey's crotch. Smiling wickedly, the Mistress measured the second stroke to be a twin upon the other leg, but from a fresh angle so that the end of the lash bit across the wet lips soon to be parted by her tongue. The Venus mound absorbed the blow within the dark softness of its .shining hair.
The pain was of a stomach curling intensity that sent the spreadeagled girl into a nose dive of new sensation. Her soft and most intimate flesh responded excruciatingly to the violation of the lash. She closed her eyes against the torment of the rise and slicing fall of the leather by which she was being wealed. Her head went from side to side seeking an imaginary surcease. Her lips allowed the strange inarticulations of agony to escape, but not the screams. Tansey did not scream. Her breasts heaved as though knowing they, too, would be creased and indented by the scourge.
Connie used exquisite care. When she was satisfied, each inward thigh bore with seeming pride three scarlet bars for its full length. The terminations of the lash were hidden within the triangle sanctuary of pubic hair. The girl on whose flesh the marks were etched was panting with small intermittent moans. For moments the girl with the whip drank in the sweat soaked loveliness she had wrought. Then, with a naked cry of ecstasy, flung herself upon her pulsating captive, her lips seeking eagerly the now swollen vulva labia her whip had set on fire.
Their passion was unquenchable. It was forever. They bathed in it, laving each other with their tongues, slaking thirsts that renewed themselves endlessly. When they slept within Connie's arms the world had left them utterly at peace. The black thong of the whip curled possessively over a pinioned ankle. The scent of female musk hung heavy in the room.
"Gosh, I was proud of you, sweetheart! My two silver maidens!"
Wanda glowed with pride and happiness. About them was the debris of the party; the last guest had gone. Impulsively she lifted her chained hands and managed to hug her mistress while her lips were ardently employed. "Oooo! It was fun, darling. I got my bottom pinched, but not one of them could get a finger under the mesh." She giggled happily. "But what about poor Tansey? That girl was only supposed to have her for an hour?"
Phyllis frowned. "It's closer to three. Go and see what they're up to, honey."
Her hurried tidying was interrupted almost immediately by a whirlwind of youthful concern. "They're gone! Oh, Phyl, they're not anywhere in the place. They were in my room, the trapeze bar is down and there's a whip tossed on the floor... "
"You lost something, ladies?" The voice was cool, and very male.
The two girls swirled to face the door, they were greeted with three false grins and assessed by three pairs of reptilian male eyes.
"How the hell did you get in?" Phyllis Stafford was angry and she was scared. She recognized the type: young, ruthless, living by their wits and their switchblades.
"Come in with the parties and stay after the guests are gone. There's pickings and snatch. Works out real good, never had a bummer yet," the leader informed her languidly. "Hey, Rossi, go search the joint. Find you a man, holler. Cinch, take that desk."
With a cry of rage, Phyllis Stafford leaped to get there first, but the youth thrust her aside and pocketed the gun she had sought. Rummaging further in the drawer he came up with a handful of gleaming metal that prompted an amused exclamation. "Hey, Collie, the bitch must be a cop or an escape artist." He dangled two pairs of handcuffs.
"You know what we heard about her," Collie reminded him. "And look at the kid, wears 'em permanent, I'd say. Try a pair on the Stafford dame just for size."
Phyllis knew terror, but masked it as best she could. These youths were known. They had their sport with their victims for a night. By morning they were gone without trace. They had never been apprehended. She had little hope for herself or her possessions, but there was Wanda! Could she bluff the invaders into acceptance of the lie that there was no key nor tool in the apartment by which the child's chain mail could be removed? She would have to try.
"Forget the handcuff nonsense," she said brusquely to Cinch. She turned to the obvious leader, Collie. "Alright, what's it cost me to have you pack up and go?"
Collie pretended to consider. "For starters you can take your clothes off, babe."
"How much money?" She kept a wary eye on the boy with the handcuffs.
"It's me that wears handcuffs, not her," Wanda explained innocently.
"The dough goes along with the sandwiches, the booze and your snatch," Collie explained in a bored voice. "Get them duds off."
"I won't!"
"Who cares? What's a stripped broad more or less. Stick them hands out. Cinch wants to try them pinchers on you."
"This way, lady. Let's have them pretty little flippers." Cinch held up the handcuffs invitingly.
"I'd have to be out of my mind to let you put those things on me. Try and talk sense." She was the authorative Stafford woman of the office.
"Ain't no man, but you ought'a see the room I found," Rossi returned chortling.
Collie was suddenly steel. "Help Cinch with the Stafford broad. Cuff her. Behind her back. She wants trouble."
The struggle was brief. When the grinning youths backed away they left a flushed and dishevelled woman tugging angrily at hands locked behind her back.
"You, kid," Collie pointed at Wanda. "Take a tray, load it and serve us. Looks like there's plenty left." He turned to his henchmen. "You two, strip that yappy dame."
Phyllis Stafford was a realist. Tonight she was no successful columnist, she was a girl about to be robbed, probably raped. Her twentieth-century apartment above the park had been whisked back a thousand years to where marauders ravaged their prey as spoils of an unending war. With her wrists handcuffed behind her back she was utterly defeated, she could not phone, she could not fight; she could not reach the second gun on the high shelf in her clothes closet. Desperately she did not want to be naked, not that she cared about nudity, but clothes were a strangely potent armour for a woman, without them she had no defense at all.
They used their blades to snick away whatever of her covering failed to respond to their first tug. She fought, striving to kick a spiked heel at their genitals, but they gleefully captured her foot and wrenched away the shoe. In less than a minute she stood glaring at her captors, panting and completely nude. She had no hands with which to cover anything.
"Nice snatch," Rossi commented judicially. "Centre floor, babe," Collie directed. "You just stand there and stick your tits out while the boys and me take on some chow."
Miserably, Phyllis obeyed. It was a lot to hope they were no more than voyeurs, but you never knew...
Wanda could not share her mistress's agony of spirit. She had been happy in a lifelong acceptance of being possessed by a male. For Wanda, Phyllis Stafford was no more than surrogate for her master, Dick. She would obey them both and absorb their punishments without complaint as being the normal expectation of a girl. She did not like these three strange and sinister men whose eyes burned her near nudity, and she sensed her mistress's alarm, but it seemed natural enough she should serve them. After all, she was a girl... ! She loaded her tray and innocently ministered to the leering smiles that now negligently lounged around the room.
Phyllis Stafford stood naked for their enjoyment. They ate and drank noisily while they viewed her as they might have viewed the flickering screen of a T.V. Her heart quailed when the inevitable command was jocosely tossed at the child she must protect. "Take off them pretty doo-dads, kid. Let's see the size of your cunt and how good your tits are."
Wanda's mind had flashed warnings. She knew the steel mesh locked upon her femaleness was both a punishment and a protection. From the way her mistress had fought she knew it bad to be bare before these men. She lied craftily. "I'm sorry, I can't take it off. It locks. I left the key at home with my roommate. I ought to be home by now."
"Hot damn!" Rossi inserted a brutal finger beneath the lock of the halter at Wanda's back and tugged. "I'll be go to hell!" he exclaimed astonished. "Damn things are on her for keeps."
"Gotta' be some tools around somewhere," Cinch suggested confidently.
"Hold it," Collie counseled. "We can teach the little bitch to leave her key at home. Got a mouth and a tongue, ain't she? And the Stafford broad's got as nice a bit o' snatch as I've seen. We got it made."
The naked girl on centre stage knew a flood of relief. It was going to be ugly and bad, but Wanda might emerge intact. She kept her nudity erect and taut for their approval, and watched Wanda gorge the hungry guests with food that, hopefully, might prevent their becoming too drunk.
Collie's eye rested speculatively on the busy girl with the tray. "Hey, kid, you got a tongue?"
Phyllis could have wept at Wanda's innocence. The child grinned cheerfully and stuck her tongue out as far as it would go.
"Damn good." The leader approved. "Go and put it to work in your girl friend's cunt."
An angry protest, even a plea, rose to Phyllis Stafford's lips, but she stifled it. In the thing about to be done it would be she who was debased. Wanda's innocence would protect her. When the child sought her eye in confirmation, she nodded in acceptance and spread apart her feet in readiness.
"Ain't breaking no fresh grounds," said Rossi knowingly.
Thoughtfully, he left the room and returned with the whip Connie Smeaton had cast aside. He tossed it to Collie. "Might be useful," he cynically suggested.
The raiders had no need of a whip in the tableau they now sat and watched. Wanda performed her task in ignorance of implications. Phyllis performed hers as the first effort to cut her losses. She stood staunchly making her pubis as easily available to the loving lips as she was able, her eyes sought a horizon beyond the heads of the rapt audience.
The naked woman being publicly shamed dared not be stoic. She provided the sounds and motions expected. Hopelessly she closed her eyes and her mind so that they became truly real. Wanda's lapping searching tongue was hard to deny, it was wickedly knowing and it was working upon familiar flesh. The child could probably bring her to orgasm sitting on an iceberg. When her final moan of fulfillment died to gasping breaths and Wanda sat back upon her heels, licking her lips, there came a round of sarcastic applause. Wanda beamed. Phyllis wished the floor would open and devour them. She knew she blushed.
"What's it going to be, boys, the Stafford snatch or a blow job from the girl?" Collie chuckled.
"Dammit, the kid got me going," Rossi admitted. "Hey, Wanda what'syername, come and do the same for me."
Phyllis was thankful the men and the girl lived in separate worlds, the child might survive. Once more she nodded to the querying glance.
Without visible distress Wanda obeyed Rossi's command. Her chained hands were no problem, they sufficed to unzip his pants and bring into view the object on which she must work. It was obscene, turgid, and more than ready. She looked at it in a childish amazement that men should possess such things. She was about to lower her lips when Collie's voice intruded. "Rossi, boy, don't you think it oughta' be flavoured?"
His suggestion met with favour. Phyllis backed away in horror as the men approached. Collie and Cinch seized and bent her. She cried out in anguish as Rossi's well-lubricated penis pierced her anus.
"Look what we're doing for you, kid," Rossi proclaimed boastfully as he thrust his full length into the helpless orifice Phyllis unwillingly provided.
Wanda watched in fascination and disbelief. She was now lost in things beyond her ken. She supposed Dick had considered her too young for indoctrination into this particular mystery. From Phyllis's moans it seemed evident you would need to be a very bad girl to justify it happening. Rossi withdrew and resumed his seat. "There you are, sweetie-pie, a nice mouthful."
The girl to be soiled viewed the glistening weapon without hostility. "Would you mind washing it?" she asked naively, then smiled without understanding at the male laughter.
"Give her a belt or two with that whip," Rossi requested.
The child looked up at the man she must service. "You don't need to whip me," she said appealingly. "What you want is for me to lick it the way it is?"
"Right kiddo."
"I expect it will taste funny." She gave him a doubtful grin without rancour, and devoured his male organ with her lips.
Wanda was unaware of her audience. She did not know that what she did was remarkable. She licked and tongued and sucked assiduously, a very busy girl. A deeply shamed Phyllis had been allowed to resume her shaming stand. She shared the rapt attention of the men.
"Best blow job I ever seen," Collie exhaled a huge sigh of approval at what he had witnessed. Rossi was striving to shake himself back into the world after a shattering orgasm. Wanda sat back on her heels, wondering if she should feel proud. "I gotta' get me a bit of that," the leader said avidly. "Makes a piece o' ass look like peanuts." He got to his feet.
This time Phyllis Stafford did not fight. What was the use? Her face flaming, she positioned herself for her impalement.
Wanda watched clinically as the second shaft was thrust deep within her mistress's behind and allowed to saturate itself with the mistress's secretions. Collie left it within the warm receptacle while he examined the child who should have screamed and protested until whipped into obedience. Strangely, he found it satisfying as it was, the whipping could come later if there was time. He withdrew and made himself comfortably available. Wanda's lips took him to herself.
It was after Cinch had been serviced in his turn by their two captives that the question of copulation was raised. "She's got a nice slit of naked snatch," Collie pointed out without marked enthusiasm. He eyed Phyllis Stafford's prominently displayed cunt as a connoisseur.
"Seems a pity not to use it," Rossi agreed. "But that kid's tongue beats any cunt I ever got into by a mile."
"Damn right!" Cinch agreed. "She's outta' this world. But the Stafford dame's burning up, she's mad. Bet you she's dry as sawdust up front."
"Only one way to find out." Collie made it sound like an arduous job. He divested himself of his clothes. "On your back, bitch."
Phyllis had known pique at their indifference to her most female attribute, but now it was to be used she felt only nausea. Rejecting futile defiance, she lay down, the chained arms beneath her back obligingly raising her pubic mound. The three of them could undoubtedly bring her to orgasm. She resigned herself to her shame.
Wanda watched uncertainly as her mistress was impaled again and again. She had received a warning glance from the ravaged girl on the floor. She would make no demonstration, but simply watch a thing she had guessed but had not seen. Now she understood the true potency of the chain mail around her hips, without it she herself would now be pierced. An innocent curiosity prompted a wish that just once this thing be done to her. Her mistress's reactions as the male things pounding between the spread legs were disturbing. She recognized them for what they were. But if her mistress wished to lock her cunt within its metal sanctuary, no doubt her reason was not to be questioned. Dick had never pierced her thus, so it must be something for which she would have to wait. Thoughtfully, she replenished her tray and tendered nourishment to the depleted warriors as they returned from the eternal battlefield of sex.
Food and drink was appreciatively consumed. Phyllis was made to stand at attention to display her nakedness. Wanda kept herself busy. The visitors might have gone their way if it had not been for the whip. "Saw a cute movie once," Cinch drawled. "They had a girl bend over to suck a guy's cock while a feller beat her ass with a cane to keep her on the bit."
"This girl we got don't need no cane 'cross her rump to do a good job," Collie pointed out reasonably.
"Be sorta' fun though," Rossi mused. "Hey, kiddo, you got a cane?"
To Wanda the request was not irrational. Proudly she fetched him the best of their collection. If she was to be hurt she preferred the cane to the whip.
Rossi flexed the cruel thing back and forth. Wonderingly, he eyed the girl who had given it to him. "You want I should use this on you?" he inquired blandly.
To Wanda it was a silly question, she supposed it rhetorical. Men whipped girls; that was all there was to it. "If you feel I've been bad and should be caned, then I want you to cane me," she said simply.
The eyes of the men sought each other in disbelief. Even Phyllis Stafford was caught in the general sense of unreality.
"I don't believe it!" Collie said emphatically.
"She ain't fer' real," Cinch chimed in.
"I'm going to cane her can anyway," Rossi announced with immense satisfaction. "Which of you guys want her chewing your cud?"
"Me!" Cinch jumped up and took the required stance. "Come and get it, kid," he invited.
Wanda was puzzled. Her sense of justice was being violated. "Why must I be caned?" she asked, bewildered. "What have I done?"
Rossi swished the cane through the air and seemed gratified by the ensuing whirrrr. "Ain't what you done, kid. It's just to keep you on the ball. 'Sides, I wanna' see your ass wiggle when I belt into it."
The girl about to be caned considered her sentence. Wanda held no illusion that she could evade the punishment. Men were men and had their own ideas, sometimes strange, but male and immutable. She turned stricken eyes to the grinning Rossi. I'll do what you want me to and I'll try my hardest to do it real good. I wish you wouldn't cane me. I don't think it will help."
"You're going to get caned, sugar, and if Cinch don't think you're putting your heart in it then the cane swats you twice as hard. He'll give me a wink. Savvy?"
"You'll start caning me when I bend over?" Wanda was trying to sort it out.
"I'll let you get properly started before I whale you."
Wanda shrugged. She was trapped. She would just have to try and please. She leaned forward and unzipped the familiar fly. Taking out the equally familiar phallus she found the excitement of the new scene, and its enactment had endowed it with a fresh vigor. As though to brace herself for what was to come, she held it with both her small chained hands, then bent and engulfed it with her lips, held her knees rigid and arched her back down to give prominence to her derriere. She did these things as a matter of course, they were expected of a girl whose bottom was about to be caned. She sucked anxiously.
Phyllis Stafford was desolate and helpless. She felt soiled and discarded. Her wrists twisted constantly against the cruelly tight clasp of the handcuffs. With her hands chained behind her back she had ceased to be a factor in her own home. The three ruffians would do as they pleased, she could be handled or subdued with frightening ease. She watched miserably as Wanda commenced what might well be an impossible ordeal. Phyllis doubted that any girl could give satisfaction with her mouth while her bottom was being cut with a cane. She doubted her own ability to please in this manner, but she had little doubt it would be demanded of her.
Wanda herself pursued what she must do with only slightly more optimism. She knew only too well that if she must be truly punished she would need to be tied. She could stand still for only minor punishments. Always in the past and through her whole life with Dick she had been fastened to receive the unbearable. She felt certain that if, now, her bottom was caned beyond a point of tolerance, she would squirm or fall or that her mouth would lag in its duty. She tongued vigorously and tensed.
Rossi intended to enjoy himself at length. His first blow upon the taut girlish cheeks was not all out, but it was cruel. Wanda absorbed it with no more than the flexing of one leg which she hastened to again make rigid for the next blow. He caned her in leisurely fashion, going from side to side and striving for a pattern upon her flesh. The tortured girl's nostrils flared, her eyes widening and seeking to look back in appeal, her hips weaving back and forth and her legs jerkily and spasmodically acknowledging agony. Her mouth sped faster and faster in its work and was rewarded by the gush of semen that signaled the end of this particular phase. She had come through with an amazing fortitude. Carefully she licked the penis clean and replaced it out of sight.
"Please don't cane me any more," she pleaded. "I don't think I can manage it again."
"You're going to have to try, sugar."
Wanda looked from one to the other of them, seeking reason. "If I must do it to each of you," she suggested in an even docile tone. "Could you tie me some way so I can't move?" Then added pathetically, "I only need my mouth."
Collie shook his head in frank admiration. "You're a bloody wonder, kid, but we want to see you squirm. That's half the idea, see. Just do the best you can. If you get a few extra swipes, well what the hell... " Cinch and Rossi had exchanged places. Wanda looked at their expectant leers and at the ready cane. "Will you hit me lighter, please?" she asked politely of the enraptured Cinch.
"Hell, no. Why would I?"
Incredibly, part of Wanda's concern was for the quality of the work they demanded of her. She did not want to fail because of pain, and fall writhing to the floor to receive other worse punishments.
"Well then, will you tie my ankles and my knees so I can't move them? I'd be ever so grateful."
Her sweet appeal should have melted every heart. It simply made more tumescent the waiting lust. Defeated and fearful, the tortured child reached for Rossi's pants with her chained hands.
This time she fell twice. They extracted screams. But as though hypnotized by determination the teen-ager leaped back each time to resume where pain had interrupted. Rossi also drenched her mouth and received the careful washing with the girlish tongue. Wanda's bottom was aflame with the criss-cross of more weals than anyone had counted.
"She's had enough," Phyllis Stafford said firmly. "Let me take the next."
It was as though they had not heard her. The magic of the naked girl in the silver mesh held all three of the men in its fascinated grip. Her performance was too beautiful to forego. By her own excellence she condemned herself to pain: Her suffering possessed an eroticism such as none had ever known or glimpsed. Collie took up position. Cinch kept the cane, flexing it lovingly.
"I won't do very well," Wanda told them sorrowfully. "I hurt terribly. I wish you wouldn't hit me so hard. I'm sorry. But won't you help me please? I'm going to really try."
"You're giving me another hard on, kid," Cinch told her with evident truth. "Better hurry up or Rossi will want it again too."
Wanda cried. The tears overflowed as though too long restrained, she flicked at them with captive fingers, then hastily bent and posed herself in wanton invitation to the cane. Her chained hands found and brought into view Collie's most treasured possession, her lips accepted it into the warmth and sanctuary of her mouth. She sucked and tried to close her mind to pain.
Collie's lust was rampant. Every word and act of this fabulous girl had inflamed his imagination. As the first few blows of the cane wrapped themselves 'round the tender cheeks beneath his fevered gaze he strove for an even greater joy. Gathering the lovely damp hair of the whipped girl into his hands he held her to her task, pulling her face and avid mouth closer to himself so that she was gagged by his flesh. The cane swished steadily at the round derriere weaving madly in its anguish.
The explosion was shattering. The chair smashed Cinch and Rossi to the ground in two swift merciless blows. Collie had time only to observe his fate before it descended and sent him sprawling into oblivion. Wanda fell with him, his hands still tangled in her hair.
"You rotten bitch! Is this how you look after my girl?" Dick demanded furiously of a bemused but infinitely thankful Phyllis.
As though they were scraps of rubbish, Dick picked two of the bodies up and dragged them from the apartment. When he returned for Collie, Phyllis gasped, "What are you doing with them?"
"Freight elevator. They're not dead." He lugged the leader to join his fellows.
In wild ecstasy, Wanda flung herself upon her beloved. She got her chained hands over his head and hugged and kissed in an almost savage avalanche of joy. Phyllis Stafford would have loved to do the same. She cursed her handcuffs and tore at them in frustration. She was a little frightened along with her relief. Dick had seemed a madman in his fury. She quailed at the thought that some remained to be spent on her.
"Oh, darling, it wasn't Phyl's fault! Those awful men... " Wanda returned to her passionate welcome.
* * *
Phyllis Stafford was tired and hurt and humble. She wanted only release, but had no expectation of it. She felt sure she had been hanging naked from the trapeze bar for several hours, but she knew the fickleness of time spent in agony. She fully expected to hang by her wrists for the rest of the day, even that might be only a prelude. She believed herself alone in the apartment. Dick had probably taken Wanda out on the town to give the child happiness. She knew a weary desuetude. No matter how she stretched, her toes could not touch the floor.
Dick Carnaby had refused to listen to either girl. He had sent them both to bathe, refusing to remove the handcuffs from Phyllis's wrists, but releasing a happily protesting Wanda. He had shepherded the younger girl to her bed, and then taken Phyllis to her own where he had ravished her loins savagely until both of them had slept to near mid-day.
Hanging in her punishment, Phyllis reviewed Dick's whirlwind return. A man of the sea comes and goes erratically. His arrival held no significance beyond its fortuitous blessedness. But what he had found had made a deep impression on him. She knew him still under the influence of the Island and dubious of today's world. His passionate attachment to the girl child he had reared was undiminished as was Wanda's adoration for her master.
The suspended woman shivered at a memory, but the tremulous quivering of her flesh was not from cold, and only in part from trepidation. She had called Dick Carnaby "Master." The title had escaped her lips with utter naturalness. Even in her irritation at his refusal to consider her innocence she had used the word. And, having used it once continued to address him so in all she said, or was allowed to say. Her wrists flamed fire within their tight straps as she recalled the other words she had uttered to this fierce and gentle man who had enslaved her once and who enslaved her still. Naked and handcuffed she had been thrown on her bed and had pleaded desperately: "Fuck me, Master, fuck me... " Phyllis Stafford tiredly pressed her cheek across the raised tautness of a pinioned arm. It was as though she sought comfort from the contact with her own bare flesh. She knew that to move anything else would hurt. It was best to keep still and simply hang. Her mind revolved ceaselessly upon the anomaly of Dick and the Island and herself. How incredibly absurd that one of the country's best known columnists should hang naked and punished within her own home, hoisted into suspension by equipment she herself had bought and paid for, and had not struggled or sought escape when it was done to her.
Could she maintain a life subject to these periodic invasions of her psyche and her flesh? How to be an authorative figure within her chosen work, yet slide back millenniums into a primitive slavery whenever the sea released this intensity of maleness to work his will upon her. Before him she was abject. Strangely she felt no shame that his ability to mount her nakedness and shatter her world into a thousand ecstasies was part of the compulsions by which she called him 'Master.' Dick Carnaby was a product of his island life with Wanda, but she realized her own short vivid captivity there had indelibly marked her too. She had plunged back into her former life, but its waters were lukewarm. Restlessly she brushed her other cheek against its tortured arm. Somewhere she must find her answers.
The tractioned girl saw clearly that since she could never part with Wanda, she must therefore endure Dick. Was endure the word? She did not know. Had she been seventeen she knew she would believe herself in love with this suntanned male who took so much of her for granted. But she was not seventeen. And yet...
More hours passed until she would willingly have made any promise, agreed to any terms to get her feet back on the floor. Suddenly and silently he was there. Her eyes widened to find him smiling at the hopeless resignation in which she accepted the torture he imposed. She knew it useless to plead, so waited for him to break the silence.
"Want me to let you down?"
"Please, Master."
"I won't do it, not yet. You look delightful. I should hang you like that every day."
"Where's Wanda, Master?"
"Never mind, she's happy... and safe. I'm going to whip you."
She had known it would come. It was Dick's justice. She wondered how guilty she might truly be for the horror of the night before; without her party it would not have happened. Along the way she had lost the will to defend herself. Perhaps he would treat her more kindly if she saved him servile or angry pleas. In any case he would do as he wished. She could not be more at his mercy than she was. But she was so terribly weary, she had hung from her tortured wrists so long. Silent tears gathered and trickled down her cheeks. She could brush them away against her arms. She did not try, she did not care. She wept.
"Tired?"
She nodded and sniffed. Why speak?
Casually he lowered the bar barely enough to set her heels upon the floor. She was still tautly strained.
"Thank you, Master." It was a small victory.
"What am I going to do with you?"
She eyed him doubtfully. "You said you were going to whip me?"
Dick gestured impatiently. "I don't mean that. I'll whip you tomorrow. You'll bear it better after another night's sleep." He grinned. "That's supposing we get some. I intend to fuck you until you howl for me to quit."
"I won't do that, Master. I mean, I won't howl. You know I won't."
"You're in for a rough few days, y'know. D'you want to make phone calls?"
"You mean I'm a prisoner? You want me to quiet the office?"
"Yes. Until I leave you won't exist." She considered briefly. "Yes, I can do that."
"Why do you put up with me?" he demanded. Phyllis Stafford gave her master a wry smile. "Have I any choice?"
"Not today or tomorrow or the day after. But I won't be like other men. The Island spoiled me, and there's Wanda; so after I'm gone again what do you want most?"
She tried, without success, to ease her aching muscles. "If you want to talk, couldn't you set me free? I hurt."
"No. You'll talk more realistically the way you are." He grinned at her cheerfully. "By the standards of your world I treat you brutally. So we'll talk from that basis, you're nicely positioned for it."
"I ought to hate you, but I can't," Phyllis said fretfully. "And I can't answer your questions either. Don't you have any answers?" After a moment's pause she added the word: "Master."
"I could put Wanda in a good school and leave you home free?"
She twisted in more than pain. "I love Wanda. Don't take her from me... please!"
"Lesbian love?"
"You know it's more than that. She's gorgeous... She's everything."
"The kid must love you too," he admitted soberly. "She's been on at me all day not to whip you. She swears she's been as well guarded as the gold at Fort Knox."
"Why whip me then?"
He gave her a comradely grin. "You know why. I like to whip you, and it does you good. You're the kind that need it every so often to stay human. I'm still remembering that obnoxious female who came storming up from her wrecked plane."
"Surely a girl's entitled to one wreck without prejudice! You've whipped me one hell of a lot, Dick."
"You dropped the Master. Intentional?"
"I suppose so. Whip me for it if you have to. I'm just trying to make this conversation human." She glinted at him. "Or am I only allowed to listen? If you want only humility, I'll give it you for sure. The way you've got me fixed I'm scared to say a cross word."
Dick sighed appreciatively. "Y'know, sweetheart, in your own way you're as special as the kid. Go ahead and say your cross word. No stripes for it. I promise."
"I wish you'd take me off this damn bar I'm strapped to." With a petulant toss of her head she flung the damp hair from her eyes. "You really do treat me like an absolute bastard."
"Carry on, girl." His lips slanted in amusement, "... as you are."
Phyllis Stafford's voice had become animated, some of her weariness slipped away. "The way you left me hanging here I've had nothing to do but hurt and think. The conclusion's easy: To have Wanda I have to let you brutalize and fuck me silly every time your ship's in port."
"I don't like that word brutalize."
"Alright. How about enslave? Either way I get whipped."
"I could take the two of you to a theatre tonight?"
"Damn sweet of you. All I'd see on the stage would be me hanging like this tomorrow with the whip curling around."
"You dwell on it too much."
"Oh shit!" Phyllis tried to stamp a frustrated foot, but was stretched too taut. "You're nuts! You want your damn island right here in New York. It's not real."
"Isn't it! Look at yourself."
She squirmed. "I shouldn't let you."
Dick's voice was pure reason. "When we return from the theatre tonight you need never allow me to tie you again."
"You needn't rub it in that I let you tie me. You know damn well that if I didn't hold my hands out like a good little girl you'd jump me and do it by force. I've about as much chance against you as I'd have against a charging rhino."
"Thanks for the simile."
"You're welcome!"
They were suddenly laughing. Despite the shame of her pose and the hurt of her wrists, Phyllis Stafford could not see this man as she saw all others. But, with a thrill of emotion she could not define, she knew she would never want him to be as others were. Dick would be either the suntanned god of the island or a nothing, a chimera hovering in memory. But to keep the delectable and lovable Wanda, she must come to terms with his intransigence. Or was it only Wanda... !
"O.K. The way I'm standing here I have to know I'm in for it this round. Give me a bad time and be damned! I'll probably be able to limp to work after you've gone. But what of the future! Wanda will need one or both of us for a long time. Can I expect to be chained up and whipped once a month for the next three or four years?"
"Why not!"
She eyed him shrewdly. "You were about to add: 'You know you like it,' weren't you?"
"You read my mind," he laughingly confessed.
"Well, I don't like it!" She made another futile effort to stamp her foot. "O.K., I'll admit I adore you in bed and I find your maleness the strongest I've ever known. But to have that lousy whip and that rotten manta tail slicing 'round me naked is something I can do without."
"When it's over and done you're glad it happened," he insinuated slyly.
"You don't leave a girl anything, do you!" she rejoined petulantly. "I suppose you're right about that, women are made responsive to pain. Something to do with childbirth and being raped, I suppose. But I can tell you for sure I'd do or say anything to get that whip to stop when you're actually hitting me with it."
"You react perfectly. One hundred percent female."
"You haven't answered my question."
"Yes, Phyl', you can expect to be tied and whipped whenever I come. It's the way I am and the way Wanda is. If you stop thinking about the lady columnist you'll realize it's entirely practical."
"Practical! Going around striped like a zebra!"
Dick's lips twisted cynically. "I'm sure you can tell the lucky man something convincing. I bet you he finds your marks stimulating."
Phyllis flushed and wished she could kick this smug male. "It's not men, it's women. And only Wanda!" She suddenly realized the truth of his assertion. It was practical! She could easily endure him once a month! Again she questioned her use of the word 'endure,' it was not entirely apt. "I'm not going to try and analyze why I want you to fuck me," she blurted out defiantly.
"I'll explain it to you sometime," he said flippantly. "So that's settled then? We can stop the backchat?"
Settled! Phyllis Stafford longed to scream and beat her fists upon his arrogance. But awareness of her impotent nudity swept over her like a flood. Between her need of Wanda and the maleness of this man she was indeed enslaved. Furious at her seeming weakness she found herself wondering why she had to feel so concerned at his dominance. Wanda adored it. She could see herself falling into an equal dependence.
"If I concede everything, the least you can do is let me off that whipping tomorrow?" she implored. "Please... Master?"
"You are using feminine wiles." Without warning he kissed her gently and long. "I'm immune to them. They get you an extra five."
Phyllis was surprised by her absence of reaction. "How many lashes have I to look forward to?" she asked with sarcasm.
He chuckled wisely. "You didn't ask that out of curiosity or concern," he said gently. "You asked it because knowing it's going to happen starts a little fire burning in your cunt."
Madly she writhed against her strapped wrists, expending mortification in angry futile motion. "Damn you! Damn you...!" She sobbed, chagrined by the truth of his perception. She ceased her struggle as suddenly as it had begun, and glared at him balefully. "So you know it all, don't you...!" In total femininity she burst into tears and wept in full surrender.
Wanda had a child's awareness of something of portent between her elders, but since both seemed happy she was not concerned. She would often intercept a look between them that told her they had reached an understanding beyond her ken. Phyllis's somewhat distraught preoccupation she attributed to the whipping the older girl was about to receive. "I say, darlings," she interjected at breakfast, "what about poor Tansey? Shouldn't we do something?"
"I phoned Connie Smeaton," Phyllis said absently. "She's got her safely chained. She wants to keep her." She raised an arch eyebrow at Dick. "Or would you like another slave girl, Master?"
"I was not consulted about this Tansey. That's another demerit," Dick proclaimed succinctly.
"She's awfully sweet, darling," Wanda told him wistfully. "When Phyl' wears handcuffs the way you have her now she reminds me. Can I put mine on, please? Phyl lets me."
"Sure, put 'em on sweetheart, if it pleases you. But not just in sympathy for this assertive female."
When the child had leaped away on her brief errand, he turned to the condemned girl. "This Tansey wench, she'd be another bottom to beat. D'you want her back?"
The flame of jealousy took Phyllis by surprise. She had a sudden vision of the sultry Tansey beneath Dick's whip. It would be an experience that, suddenly, she had no wish to expose him to. Tansey was heady stuff for female or for male. There came another vision of Tansey and her Master she had no wish to contemplate at all. Dick would bed the lovely creature, she had no doubt of it. It must not happen! "I think Connie Smeaton's a marvellous idea," she said as casually as she could. "It's sort of a natural, the two of them."
The subject of Tansey Pepper did not survive the return of a glowing Wanda. The man and the woman watched amusedly as the child handcuffed herself with a practiced dexterity. She made the steel a notch tighter upon herself than either of them would have done. Holding up her joined hands with their gleaming metal she enthused, "There. Aren't they beautiful! We never had anything like this on the island. If we ever went back we'd have to take them."
Phyllis Stafford drank the last of her coffee. Handcuffs were still awkward for her. She looked with love at the radiant child for whom their shining cruelty held such unending appeal. How gorgeous her flesh and her enthusiasms and the endearing innocence of her uncluttered mind! Wanda was a jewel worth any sacrifice. Smiling, almost in happiness, she turned to Dick Carnaby. "I'm ready to be whipped, Master. I think it's time."
He eyed her curiously. No doubt he read her thoughts. He rose and, almost with humility, bowed her from the breakfast table.
The girl to be whipped looked somberly at her wrists strapped one on each side of the pillar just above the level of her eyes. Well, at least it was a change from that rotten tractioning bar that kept her on tiptoe or raised her feet entirely from the floor. This whipping post would be better, except for the writhing and kicking in which she knew she would indulge. Perhaps she should ask that her feet be tied to salve her dignity, but dismissed the thought. Her limbs had little enough freedom when Dick Carnaby was in residence.
Phyl' Stafford supposed she would have to stand awhile. She recognized the validity of the suspense. It made a girl think. It made her willing. She had been unable to find out how many strokes she was to receive. Perhaps it was just as well, she was scared enough. What on Earth would they think on the network if they could see her now! It was too impossible! She closed her mind to the incongruity. In a way it was like an operation in a hospital. She could not walk away from it. Everything would follow a predetermined course. Her role was only to suffer. The blankness of the anesthetic would here be replaced by the most vivid sensitivities of her existence. In each instance there would be wounds. With wry humor she acknowledged herself as waiting for major surgery.
She found cause for wonder that she did not resent the child watching her punished. Wanda would not stay away. She wanted to watch as though by vicariously sharing the pain she might also bestow comfort. And why not! Their flesh had been welded again and again in love. The waiting victim knew herself so besotted with adoration for the child that she would feel no shame in the young eyes watching the whip wounds mount upon her skin. Wanda wore her own whip marks as a bride wore jewels.
This whipping was different. Phyllis knew it so. All the others had been in revolt or in the shame of delinquency. In each she had either hoped or vowed it should be the last, that her flesh never again be thus violated. But now the small cameo of her anguish was but a single link in a chain, the length of which might spread across the years. Her whippings might be few and far between, but they now had a continuity that she hoped would make them easier to bear. The hope was faint, perhaps it was no more than a wish!
Wanda kissed her, and Dick gave her a broad wink. Phyllis did not understand the wink, but it was better than a frown. She managed a smile for both of them before she turned back and stared fixedly at the pillar and her solidly strapped wrists.
When the cuts began to blazon themselves upon her back and the curvatures of her behind, she longed for whatever magic Tansey contrived beneath the lash. But it was Tansey's alone, and not for her. Phyllis Stafford did her best, she wanted to come through with honor. But the cries came, she tugged and fought her wrists. Once, in some desperate need to make her terror known, she thrust against the pillar with her foot, a gesture she did not repeat, for it invited the thong to invade a sanctuary she had no wish to yield. She screamed at the intimate anguish and hastily returned her foot to the floor.
She wished she could embrace the post to which she was fastened. To hold it and to press her face against its solidity must surely give some ease, if only in the mind. But the breadth of the straps and their secure placement defeated her desire. She could not bend or twist her wrists. She must stand at arms length so that all of her was vulnerable. To kick and to sway her body forward from the searching lash was her only surcease. It was little enough. The whip found her anywhere it chose.
She knew the sequences. She supposed they would never vary all her life. The desperate determination at the start that this time should be different, stoic and aloof she would bear her stripes disdainfully. When that was jettisoned beneath the flood of scalding misery there came the screams and the wild and oft times obscene contortions of the whipped flesh. When they had echoed their futility without response the pleas would take their place. The frantic and throbbing pleading that, by its very intensity, must surely melt the hardest heart. The protests, the promises, the avowals. They tumbled out in anguished hope. Surely this time he would listen! Surely he could tell from her broken gasping voice that she had endured to the limit, that to whip her more was waste. She was pliant and amenable and in despair. She had yielded all of herself and the whip had taken her bestowal and demanded more and more... The blows cut steadily at her courage until it was gone. She began to scream again. To moan and then to scream had become her life. All else was blotted out. The striations of the lash were like the measured ticking of a clock...
"You were very wonderful, darling." Wanda kissed her and went away.
Dick stood and watched her loveliness as it gasped and moaned its way back into the world. Phyllis's nakedness was wet with the dew of pain. Beneath the sweat the livid stripes were jewels for her to wear in pride, in grief, or in exaltation. In the coin of feeling they were the most costly adornments in the world. When she finally lifted her head and found him watching her, she smiled. He nodded as at some emotion of his own, kissed her as Wanda had, and turned and left her strapped to the whipping post.
She was in the 'afterwards.' Phyllis knew it as the moment of relief and of thankfulness that, for a little time, the whip was done with her. It, too, was part of the sequence. Up to the time the first stroke had burned her skin she had refused to look ahead. But now she did so avidly. What would Dick do with her for the balance of his leave! If she was obedient and cautious he would not whip her more. Surely he would not! So what awaited her! To be tied? To be chained? The best she could hope for was to be handcuffed and given the run of the apartment. She would gladly settle for that privilege; she would be happy. She reflected ruefully on the distance he had taken her down the path he himself had hewn. Phyllis Stafford was a slave, a female slave.
When Dick Carnaby returned it was after a far longer period of solitude than she had anticipated. She was tired of standing and looking at her fastened wrists and the post to which they were strapped. She was pathetically eager for communion, the touch of a hand, the sound of a voice. She sensed in her Master some fresh purpose, and would not have been surprised had he again picked up the whip. She knew sadly she would have accepted fresh stripes rather than be left alone again.
"You've stood here all morning, sweetheart."
"Yes Master."
He studied her intently. "You are most beautiful of all after you've been whipped."
"Thank you, Master." She was absurdly pleased.
"I've had a busy morning. I've reached a conclusion." He held something for her inspection. "Know what this is?"
"My check book, Master."
"Got quite a lot of idle cash."
"Yes, Master. It is between investments."
He held the small book before her eyes. The check was made out to himself in the amount of forty-five thousand dollars. Phyllis did not speak, but looked at him in mute question.
"I'm going to loosen those straps. When I do you are free. You can sign this check or tear it up."
She wanted to hold him with her freed hands. But she was a little scared, her pulse had quickened in alarm. Instead, she leant painfully against the post that had prisoned her. Mutely they looked at each other until she was breathless. Then, weakly, she asked, "Dick, please hold me a little while, in your arms. I'm afraid."
Dick Carnaby held his slave. She was trembling, she was frightened, she needed him. He held her nakedness so close her softness was welded against his strength. The fingers of one male hand hovered lightly across the ridges of whipped flesh upon her back and waist. She shivered, but this time not with fear. "Do it again," she pleaded when he stopped. Again his fingers sought the keyboard of her punishment. She clutched at him and moaned gently in a release from fear. Soon she ceased to tremble. "Take me to bed, Master. Fuck me. I need you."
"Yes, you need me. You've always needed me. But later. First the check."
She huddled against him, seeking refuge from the monsters of the mind.
"You know what the check is for, don't you, darling?"
She returned to life. "Oh that! Of course I know!" As though signing a chit in a restaurant, she casually scrawled her signature on the tiny slip of paper and, without word or gesture, returned to the haven of his arms.
* * *
It was very quiet upon the island. The tumult and the shouting had died and the small plane had winged away into the blue. Standing with her ankles firmly held within the orifices of the twin poles, Phyllis Stafford wryly reviewed the day and the night that had passed since they had stood alone watching the speck diminish in the distance.
"Well, that's that," said Dick.
"Isn't it gorgeous!" enthused Wanda. "We're home again."
She herself had wept and sought her master's arms. She was becoming ashamed of being increasingly female.
A storm had dispersed most of the wreck of her old plane. Nothing else was changed. They had washed and cleaned and repaired. The three of them working in single purpose. They had brought much material and goods. They stored them and put them into use. The two elders had laughed at Wanda's concern for the proper placement or storage for the rope and the cord, the chain and the handcuffs. The silver handcuffs were hung upon the wall as a trophy might have been. The Manta tail hung once more upon its hook. The girls had spent some of their afternoon in their Tie. There had been much girlish giggling. Dick had radiated content.
Phyllis knew not why this morning her feet had been locked between the poles. Of memories perhaps! She wished she had not been left helpless and alone. The apartment above the Park was still too close. It was all too easy to remember loss rather than to count gain. Who of her colleagues would say there was gain to count! None! They did not know Dick Carnaby.
Fear came so easily. She had renounced so much. She ruefully recalled Churchill's 'Blood sweat and tears'. With her it would be cord chain and whip. By most standards it was not much of a future. But she had chosen it. She tugged at her prisoned feet. They would not move. She bent and tried to pry apart the poles. They were solid. She was captive. She had better bloody well get used to it.
"You're feeling sorry for yourself, darling. I can tell." It was Wanda with her net. The child was glowing with happiness. They kissed long and lovingly.
"Dick's terribly mean to you," Wanda mused. "I think he's afraid of being too kind. He's in love with you. Did you know?"
The girl with captive feet feared for the pounding of her heart. If only the child spoke truth!
"I know what the two of you do at night. I think it's scrumptious!" She sparkled thoughtfully for a moment. "Not half as nice as what you and I do, of course. But I'm so pleased he likes to get inside you." She kissed the prisoner gaily and went upon her way, net trailing. It was not until she was out of sight that Phyllis knew herself blushing.
"See, darling, I've got some lovely fish." Wanda deposited net and contents upon a rock. "I want to make love to you." She surveyed the possibilities. "Dick's awfully careless about the way he ties you and fixes you up. The way you are now isn't much good, you're legs are so close."
They exchanged woebegone grins. "Oh fiddle! I'm going to let you loose," Wanda decided. "Dick won't mind."
"He will!" Phyllis was suddenly a frightened slave girl. "He'll whip you. He'll whip us both."
The younger girl giggled. Even though she hated the pain, she was not afraid of the whip. "What if he does! We'll have had our fun." Gleefully she untied and thrust apart the prisoning poles.
Phyllis knew there were no words for Wanda. Magic, elfin, fey, Dryad, Sprite! None would suffice for her vibrant sexuality, her glowing innocence. The girl who had been captive delivered herself to enchantment. Both were lost in happiness.
Much, much later they carried home the fish and the net. Dick grinned at them quizzically. He knew! "Didn't I leave you fastened someplace, darling?" he asked Phyllis casually.
Both girls had forgotten. Quaking, the delinquent fell to her knees before her Master. She bowed her head without excuses.
"It was me! I did it!" Wanda clutched Dick's arm. "Don't punish Phyl'."
"Let's say it's Tie time." The Master patted Wanda's bottom and raised the kneeling girl to her feet, she was trembling. "No lunch for bad girls. Wanda, fasten this troublesome wench. I'll deal with you later."
Pure instinct told Phyllis what to do. The two posts were there with their looped straps. Standing between them she stretched her arms and inserted her hands through the waiting circlets, then shrugged at Wanda in rueful invitation. Strange and exciting tremors possessed her as she watched the swift young hands tug and pull, and felt the inflexible bands captivate her wrists.
"You do look sweet, darling. You should never wear clothes."
Wanda's place was suddenly taken by Dick. Wanda left them alone. "Thank you for not whipping me, Master."
Their eyes met. What Phyllis Stafford saw upon her Master's face caused her to forget the apartment above Central Park completely. Deliciously she shivered against her bindings. The island slept peacefully in the sun.
