Willow had named her Cherish. She had been christened Angela Roper, but Willow rejected something so mundane. She cherished the girl child who had come into her possession and named her accordingly. Willow never had doubts as to what she would make of Cherish. The shining eyed youngster was given handcuffs at the age of nine and wore them thereafter. Willow had had them specially made to fit a childish wrist and they joined the young hands tightly and snugly and could be opened only with a key that Willow kept in a safe place. It was the beginning.
Cherish was delighted with the shining chrome bracelets. That there was a link between them mattered not at all. She wore them with immense panache and accepted without question Willow's assurance she was "one of the special ones" who, for at least the first thirty years of their life, would be always bound or chained in a fashion pleasing to their mistress. By that time Cherish lived in a beautiful world totally possessed and enveloped in the love of Willow.
Their home was "Questings." It was a mellow old house just short of being a mansion. It possessed a fairish amount of Grounds in which Cherish played. It was on the outskirts of the village and enjoyed that particular privacy which is a privilege only English country houses enjoy. In the mind of the beautiful young child named Cherish there was never a thought of escape. But, as the child grew older, Willow watched her development with a cautious eye. There was not only the tiny handcuffs but there was also tiny chains for small girlish ankles. On appropriate occasions Cherish wore these with the same aplomb as she did the bonding of her wrists. Sometimes her hands were chained in front, at other times behind her back. This was done solely at Willow's sober judgment. Willow kept a great many shining chains and metal bands alone with ropes and straps in a big chest which Cherish was at liberty to explore. It was understood between them that some of these intriguing objects were for punishment only. Cherish accepted the principle of punishment because, as Willow patiently explained, "Punishment is an inevitable part of life. " She accepted without question the principle that a young girl must be punished from time to time and to stand up to her punishment with good grace. Cherish contrived to be a model prisoner without ever realizing she was ever a prisoner at all.
Cherish beheld her owner as exactly that. She knew herself both possessed and greatly loved. Willow walked in beauty and exuded a serenity peculiarly her own. Her blonde hair was a foil for Cherish's raven bush. Since Cherish was kept mostly naked it was easy for the two of them to laughingly chart the growth of the youngster's pubic hairs into puberty and the beginnings of what rapidly became a thick and curly bush of silken fronds. When in the mood Willow would strip also and allow her young ward the freedom to play with her heavy triangle, strangely dark by comparison with the hair upon her head. From the moment of possession, Cherish had been trained and guided in the arts of female love. It came as naturally to her as did the handcuffs upon her wrists. The child fed avidly upon the nectar of the girl she had adored from the beginning. Unconsciously she played Galatea to Willow's Pygmalion. As Cherish grew into the assertions of adolescence, Willow curved them by judicious use of the treasures in the trunk. The trunk had always contained a thin, light riding crop. But when Cherish entered her fourteenth year, the whippy admonition was supplemented by a considerable collection of crops, straps and whips. None were overly cruel but all were immensely interesting to youthful eyes. It was a tribute to Willow's training that it never occurred to Cherish to ask why she wore chains while Willow did not. They were very happy.
The captivity of the girl child, while almost total, did allow for an occasional walk with Willow through the village. On these occasions Cherish was relieved of whatever bonds she had been wearing and was allowed to dress in whatever pleased her fancy from the sizable store Willow provided. Sometimes the two of them drove through the English countryside in Willow's car and on certain memorable occasions had enjoyed a weekend in London. But on most days Questings satisfied their needs. Questings was a haven to which they always returned with an undisguised eagerness to place the metal or the cords once more upon Cherish's flesh. Along with the crops and whips Willow had purchased Cherish a magnificent but totally functional collar to be locked around the youth's neck on certain occasions. Cherish adored the beautiful band in its encirclement of her neck, she would have worn it always but was told sharply not to be greedy. In the world of Questings there was a time and a place for everything. Under Willow's laughing tuition, Cherish learned more than she might have done from any school. Willow was clever and Cherish adored her cleverness as much as her beauty. The child was forever a bright eyed admirer of the older girl who guided her destiny.
By the time Cherish was sixteen the chains made for her became too small. They were lovingly draped upon a certain wall and replaced by others who's bands were larger and the links more heavy. Cherish was inordinately proud of everything the chest provided, even if it hurt!
The matter of providing correctional pain for Cherish was something that Willow gave considerable thought to. In introducing her ward to the whip, she knew herself walking a thin, fine line. But her judgments were sound. Cherish's encounters with stripped skin did not take her far enough into agony for her to hate the hand that administrated the pain. If anything, her love for her mistress grew by leaps and bounds beneath Willow's firm guidance. They discussed its effect on a young libido.
"Darling, it hurts so terribly I think I'll die." Cherish's young eyes gazed up at her mistress in a search for truth. "But when it's over I get the most wonderful feeling. It's the same kind of feeling I get when you've promised to eat me. You know, all gooey and quivering and hot up inside. It makes me forget about the pain you've given me because I'm a naughty girl. Is that bad? I mean, I'm suppose to keep on thinking about the pain, aren't I, so I won't be naughty again?" The limpid eyes because wistful, "You do still love me, don't you Willow?"
Willow had taken the warm, slender curves into her arms and reassured her with lips and fingers and tongue. Willow found it very satisfying to cane the increasing curvature of the youthful bottom. She knew she would do it often and she knew too that Cherish would give her cause.
Cherish's hands were tied above her head for her first introduction to positive pain. Willow knew the youngster could not possibly stand still for what she was about to inflect. It was Cherish's sixteenth birthday and the instrument she was planning to use was one of the new, longer, more slender riding crops which quivered like a live thing when you handled it and could be flexed double without injury. Its kiss upon girl flesh could be drastic. It was a day of discoveries for the sixteen year old teenager. Willow had promised that after she had been properly whipped, Cherish could try on the new handcuffs and the beautiful leg irons which were Willow's birthday present to her love. It was a day for shining eyes and breathlessness, of quivering expectations and fearful contemplations of the wand. Cherish had pleaded for her new handcuffs and promised to stand absolutely still with them upon her wrist while her bottom was whipped with the new and shining crop. But Willow had explained how impossible it was for a girl to stand still beneath such impacts as she was about to deliver. It would be much better for the delinquent girl to be securely bound and thus able to give her full attention to her pain instead of exerting willpower in a hopeless attempt to remain motionless. Willow was wonderful. Willow knew everything.
When Willow had paused at the fifth stroke to admire the scarlet ridges she had imposed upon her darling's curves, Cherish was weeping. Cherish did not know if her tears were of repentance or of fear that her mistress might not love her quite so much. Cherish supposed naked girls being whipped were very much in disgrace. She wept copiously but tried not to make much noise. Having her hands tied up above her head made her terribly vulnerable and compelled her to wipe her tears away on the skin of her raised arms. But it was Willow who truly dried the evidence of both repentance and grief and held the quivering nakedness tight in loving arms to comfort it before the punishment resumed. Cherish did not cry again, she had passed a hurdle. And, even in her pain, felt herself tremendously adult. Cherish danced and weaved and twisted beneath the crop and realized the wisdom of the binding of her hands above her head. It left all of her open to the whip but she was also entirely helpless, she could evade nothing.
Willow loved the girl-child often during her ordeal. Her arms were tender around slender shoulders and her lips loving upon the nipples of the budding breasts, the swelling curves of which were as increasingly evident as was the pubic bush growing below. Cherish knew that at sixteen she was by no means grown up but she was getting there and, when she had been whipped to Willow's pleasure, shining new handcuffs were waiting.
Willow would always remember that day when Cherish's bottom had received its quote of the crop. She had taken the quivering girl in the shelter of her arms and uttered words of love which drew forth moans of ecstasy from the whipped girl. She had then released the young hands and watched with glowing eroticism coupled with amusement as Cherish ruefully massaged the weals of her bottom with a tenderness almost ritualistic in discovery. When Cherish was satisfied with this sensual massage, their eyes met in perfect understanding. Cherish offered her hands and gasped in pleasure as the new and shining bracelets were locked around her wrists. The fit was as if custom measured although they followed the same pattern as the commercial items of lesser beauty. They were also connected by only a single link. A girl wearing them would know herself constrained.
"Oh, darling, they're gorgeous!" Cherish's delight was boundless. She held the lovely baubles up to view and invited Willow's admiration along with her own. Mischievously she twisted and tugged in make-believe seeking after an impossible freedom. She was rewarded by a musical tone from the single link contacting the bracelets and a reddening of her wrists under the harsh metal.
"Want your leg irons, too, lovebird?"
"Oh, don't call them leg irons, Willow. It sounds so... so rusty and heavy and ancient and not a bit pretty. But these are beautiful. These are marvelous! Oh, Willow darling, thank you, thank you, thank you!" To express full gratitude the captive maiden with her whipped bottom raised her joined arms to place them around the shoulders of her beloved mistress. It was accomplished with much giggles and laughter. And when it was done they made their love on the rug.
Both girls had long ago discovered that handcuffs and leg irons stopped Cherish from doing hardly anything. She had developed a graceful freedom of motion within their clasp. It was only when her hands were cuffed behind her back that helplessness took charge.
The restraints Willow imposed were varied. The handcuffs and leg irons were most convenient of all and were thus most often place upon the youthful limbs. Both girls came to recognize the special intimacy of cord and rope. It would be tugged tight and indented within the young skin. Cherish saw the cords as a part of Willow tight upon herself. If she fought or struggled against them they were the gentle authority of Willow's hand. Cherish never got loose. She often tried.
There favorite place was within the grounds of Questings. There were numerous trees to shelter them from prying eyes. Within them a naked teenager could be securely bound and left to dream her dreams throughout a summer day. Cherish came to know the magic of the clutch of rope in solitude. She came to endure bondage in isolation for hours and hours before truly longing for her mistress to set her free. Sometimes her mistress taught the young eagerness a lesson and left her bound to her tree throughout the night.
Cherish was brought up without contract with the Male. She read of them in books and saw them about the village and during their drives in the car. Without real explanation it became accepted between the two girls that men did exist but not within the world of Questings and most certainly not within the world of Cherish. Willow had some dealings with them because she must. There was the tradesmen and those employed to do repairs. Cherish never got to exhibit herself to any of them. When such males were in the vicinity, she was locked within a room possessing a high barred window through which she could not see or be seen. For additional security one of her wrists would be chained to the wall.
She found this a delicious sensation rather like that of the captive maiden bound in ancient times for a dragon's dinner. But this was much, much better. The enemy was truly without the walls but could not penetrate within to where the bound princess shivered and quaked with delightful apprehension. Willow deliberately added to the shivers by factual and physical accounts of the difference between the sexes and that object possessed by man which could be thrust within a girl. It was understood as a fate to be avoided at all costs.
The two females, one in the budding promise of womanhood, were insatiable in their hunger for each other. The teenager had grown up in the innocent acceptance of something she adored. For Cherish it was life itself, and endless regeneration, a vivid coloration of her life. She had no knowledge of females living without this incandescent joy. It was the only portion of their lives for which Willow felt guilt. It was a small guilt which she handled easily but it was there. In a few more years she might be cheating Cherish of her feminine inheritance. She herself eschewed men but she admitted that without the sustenance of the younger girl she would be casting curious eyes upon the male with whom she came in contact. Willow knew herself beautiful enough to attract men, any number of men. Incident after incident had proven this -- she had repulsed them all. Cherish thought they were sad, pathetic creatures beyond the pale. Willow possessed a fierce, protective knowledge of total selfishness; she would never let Cherish go. For the teenager there would never be escape.
Up to this time in their lives escape was never mentioned. But Willow realized that in her growing maturity, Cherish might seek to explore or to break the bonds by which Willow held her, bonds of affection rather than of steel or cord. True, Willow would always employ the security of handcuffs and everything else within the big chest, but she saw this no more than prudent. She laughed at the old proverb, "If you love someone, set them free. If they return to you they are yours, if they don't there never were."
Willow knew she could leave Cherish in total lack of physical bonds and she would never leave her side. Unless That "unless" was a nagging shadow in her mind. Neither girl could be certain of the effect of maturity upon Cherish's loins and glands. It was best, therefore, to entirely remove temptation. The handcuffs and the leg irons did this most effectively. Cherish never knew these thoughts within her mistress' mind. Had she known them, they would have seemed foreign and absurd. Run away from Willow... ! Never!
Willow, within her own mind, reveled in the exquisite eroticism of her own creation, but she did not discuss it with Cherish. She knew Cherish was in love with it too, so there was no need to debate it as though it were something deserving of comment or outside the norm. Cherish lived her young life in a glow of erotic innocence, a continual sexual excitation. There would be no profit in belaboring a point so vividly manifest. In her own way, Willow was also innocent. She had been willed Questings and an income sufficient for their needs. She had never fought within the marketplace. She had discovered the genie of bondage within herself from books and pictures, all of them stirring within herself strange sensations. But it was not until Cherish had entered her life that the desire flowered and blossomed under the realization of the gift of fate once called Angela Roper. Here was a virgin matrix upon which she would create her masterpiece. Willow had been very young when this piece of fate felt within her grasp. In many ways the two girls had found their way step by step into lesbianism and the world of Sappho in a natural togetherness which had left the older girl gasping in wonder but gratefully thankful. Willow had never commented upon it as an anomaly or something to be pleased about. There was no need.
The first whippings of the small and tender young bottom had filled Willow with a raging lust unsuspected until that time. She had been obliged to exert every ounce of will power to keep the small punishments she inflected on Cherish within reasonable bounds. Always the delinquent child must understand a privilege along with pain. When Willow observed a growing addiction she increased the severity and strength of her strokes. But this too was gradual. Cherish was a fragile growth to be nurtured and cherished as her name implied. Willow often rolled the single word over and over on her tongue as if to relish the sound, Cherish, Cherish, Cherish... ! There might be those to decry their love but none could measure its intensity.
Willow felt she had handled Cherish's growing up process remarkably well. She had seen each tentative girlish question as a danger point, it meant the young mind was a work and might be looking beyond the boundaries of Questings. Almost always the questions were asked in slow, deliberate fashion indicating thought. The first of obvious. "You love whipping me, don't you Willow? I can tell."
Willow had been prepared, "Of course I do, you silly little goose." She added gaily, "Whipping girls is fun, especially their bottoms. I think girl's bottoms are made to be whipped more than for sitting down."
"Does it make you hot up inside... The way I was telling you about, all fierce and terribly wanting?"
"Of course it does, darling. It makes me want to love you all the more. Can't you tell?"
"Sure I can tell. Gee, we're so lucky, Willow," Cherish breathed heavily. "Why don't you whip me sometimes just for fun? And not because I've been bad."
"All right. Bend over and touch your toes, and don't you dare move!
It had been the most severe cropping of Cherish's bottom to date. The youngster's hips weaved back and forth beneath the slapping cuts of the crop but Cherish did not break the pose. Her fingers remained touching her toes and her bottom, even though sometimes in motion, remained protruded for its punishment. When Willow dared strike the girl skin no more, they made their most violent love at the end of which both girls were weeping with overcharged emotions and in satiation almost beyond baring. Sheepishly they plucked hairs from between their lips and grinned.
"Oh, Willow... Willow...!" The younger girl could find no other words for what she felt.
"Want it all over again, darling?" Willow tested.
"Gosh, I don't think so." Cherish was gingerly fingering the burning weals her eroticism had invited. There was a far away look in her eyes. She was seeing visions as her finger tips explored the tender ridges.
"You've never hit me that hard before, Willow." The words came forth not as accusation but as praise. Willow knew the child was growing up.
There had also been the first time Willow had allowed her darling to remain bound to the tree out in the open throughout the whole of one night. She was certain she suffered far more than Cherish could possibly suffer out there bound tight against the tree. The two girls always slept together and bare, cold place at Willow's side was a night long reproach. But Cherish had been impertinent and deserved a reprimand. Willow remained steadfast until the morning. Even then she waited until the sun was well up before walking out to where the white nakedness was still roped cruelly to the ancient tree.
"Had a good night, Cherish darling? Think you'll be naughty again?"
Cherish indulged in no heroics. She was genuinely glad to see her friend and lover. She had been crying in the sad solitude of immobility. The tear stains had dried upon her cheeks for she could not touch them. Cherish's voice was broken in thankfulness, "Oh, darling... Willow, I'd thought I'd lost you. I've been thinking the most awful things; that you'd died, or you were ill, or you'd had an accident, or something. And there was nothing I could do."
Willow kissed her gently, "So you thought you'd just have to stand here and slowly die. Oh, my poor darling, I ought to be whipped for doing this to you. Was it awful in the dark?"
"Willow, you've no idea! I'm sure there were ghosts and goblins and all sorts of things. I've rubbed myself raw trying to get free." Willow teased the young exposed nipples until they were rock hard and demanding. Cherish was beginning to gasp when Willow asked, "How would you like to stay the way you are for the rest of today? Not through the night but until evening?"
"If, if you want me to. Oh, Willow darling, so long as you do that to my nipples I'll say yes to anything. You know I will." The young voice became wistful. "Do you really want to keep her here all that time?"
But Willow had learned what she wanted. Cherish was pliant to her will. Her loved one had said exactly the right words in exactly the right way. There was much kissing and hugging before Willow untied the ropes to reveal scarlet indentations of their captivity of girl flesh. She kissed them one by one and the two girls went back to Questings hand in hand and naked in the sunlight.
Willow soon learned the unkindest punishment she could inflect was to deprive Cherish of her bed. They always slept together, welded in the night, their soft, warm breathe gentle upon the skin. If Cherish was expelled from this female heaven she became far more tearful and reproachful than when whipped. Even though Willow again and again assured her of an endless love, the casting out from between the sheets always met with wails and lamentations. If Cherish had been truly bad she was chained by one wrist to the bedroom wall, or perhaps the lovely ornamental collar was locked upon her neck and from it a chain to the ring, a chain far too short to allow her steps anywhere near the refuge of the bed. More tantalizing still was the handcuffs on the bottom of the far leg of Willow's bed which, when clicked tight around Cherish's wrist, kept the slender nudity expelled from Eden, a captive upon the floor who must be content with the blanket tossed to her by a supposedly angry mistress. A mistress who ruefully suspected her youthful captive of an awareness of her own desuetude alone beneath the covers. In the morning Cherish would tell her mistress how wickedly frustration the single cuff had been and how she would never be naughty again. The question of Cherish's naughtiness was never discussed but an understanding grew between them of the ways by which Cherish could earn a punishment whenever she so desired. Each girl also knew the hazard the youngster faced in being sufficiently delinquent to achieve her ends but not more than she could bare. A few strokes with the cane, even upon her taunt open palms or across the twin cheeks of her bottom was something much to be desired. There was also the business of being tied to the tree for a few hours, this also pleased the young girl. Cherish found in such punishments an infinite delight, a consolidation and cementing of the love of her mistress and authority. Cherish had no means of comparison but was quite certain she would hate such punishment if any other than Willow were to administered them. When Willow wished to be mean, she could laughingly tilt the younger girl's chin and assure her that, since she desired punishment so ardently, she was now sentenced not to pain but to immunity. Cherish's indignation at such time was such as to almost always earn her the desired punishment by imprudent remarks.
One day, after retrieving Cherish from a long day tied to a tree, Will contrived a serious conversation. With her ardent young captive kneeling expectantly upon the rug, handcuffed wrists demurely resting in her lap, the older girl inquired, "Cherish darling, I do have to ask you this, have you ever felt you wanted freedom?"
"I don't know what you mean, Willow," Cherish answered promptly. "Aren't I free now?"
"You're wearing handcuffs, Cherish, and yesterday I kept you leg-ironed all day."
"Well, why not, that's the way it's suppose to be!"
The responses were perfect but Willow was curious. "Haven't you noticed that when we're around the village no one there is handcuffed? Haven't you felt this unusual?"
"You're not handcuffed either, darling!" Cherish pointed out reasonably. "I guess people just don't wear handcuffs in villages and cities. It's just at home, isn't it?"
Willow knelt and kissed the nude innocence she adored. She knew herself the luckiest of girls. Cherish was in the strange admixture of knowing nothing and knowing everything, everything that mattered. Willow wisely allowed the subject to drift away. She resumed her seat and watched while Cherish explored the lovely collar on her neck with fingers fettered by Willow's gift of new and shining handcuffs for her wrists. The child was totally absorbed, utterly content. The world Willow had contrived for her satisfied every need in her being. Cherish asked only a single question and that one was easily dealt with.
"Willow, dear, why does everybody else wear clothes except me? Even you wear clothes most of the time."
"They take their clothes off inside their homes, dear. You and I are lucky we don't have to go out and make a living. If we did, you and I would be clothed just like them. Isn't it nicer this way?"
"I don't think I'd want to wear clothes, Willow. When I go to the village I feel so untidy." Cherish giggled. "What would happen if I took my clothes off on the main street?"
"A policeman would put you in prison for indecent exposure. They've got silly laws about these things. Don't bother your head about them, you and I see this whole thing with clarity but they are all mixed up."
"Miss Ponsonby doesn't take her clothes off either, not even when she visits us in the house. But she loves to look at me, she thinks my being naked is very nice, I can tell."
Willow laughed. Miss Ponsonby was a relic of County society. She was an avid drinker of afternoon teas and called with a fair regularity as though supporting the whispered chuckles about her in the community to the effect that she lived on almost nothing except the tea, the sandwiches, and the small cakes provided by friends. Willow had yielded to the wicked temptation of exposing Cherish to the sharp attention to this angular spinster but had been surprised by the lack of shock. True, Miss Ponsonby had exhibited surprise, but at the same time she expressed approval and proceeded to recount some quite startling facts about her own childhood.
"My parents were sticklers for keeping a girl well restrained," Miss Ponsonby explained with relish. "We didn't have handcuffs and nice things like those chains you have on Cherish's feet, not in those days. It wasn't all that warm in the houses in winter so it wasn't really practical to keep me naked in winter but they did so during the more temperate seasons. I was thrashed regularly once a week, whether I had misbehaved or not. On those occasions when I had been a naughty girl I received additional inflections." Miss Ponsonby visibly glowed with pride. "I am positive these early disciplines made me what I am today."
Willow refrained from comment. Cherish giggled, a sound which Miss Ponsonby received as tribute and encouragement to continue her story. "We lived in an old house which had a good many dark corners. I remember particularly a compartment in the lower basement which, when the door was closed, was entirely black, no light at all. My father said that putting me inside with my hands tied behind my back built character, I am sure it did, but it was a correction I did not care for." Mildred Ponsonby sighed. "I regret to say that my parents passed away in an accident when I was only thirteen years old. The aunt who then took charge of me knew nothing about the rising of children and professed to be horrified when I reminded her that I had not been thrashed for several weeks and would she be good enough to bring me up to date." The visitor beamed at both the girls and their racked expressions. "Really, some people are ridiculous. I never did get on good terms with aunt Alice."
"Did you enjoy being whipped, Miss Ponsonby?" asked Cherish politely.
"Of course I did. I was a completely normal, healthy young woman just like yourself. It is a matter of some sorrow for me that I have never replaced my parents. I have not been whipped for so many years but the memory remains vivid in my mind. I must compliment you two on your admirable lifestyles."
"If you ask Willow nicely, I expect she'd be glad to whip your bottom, Miss Ponsonby," Cherish suggested innocently.
"Cherish! Behave yourself!" The last thing Willow desired was to whip this angular and mothball type attired in heavy tweeds and sipping tea with obvious relish. Willow was certain Miss Ponsonby's posterior would hold small allure. Apologetically she addressed her visitor, "I must apologize. Miss Ponsonby, Cherish is impetuous. But she means well. Please forgive her."
Miss Ponsonby sniffed. "The child seems completely sensible," she said, "and her suggestion a kindly one." Miss Ponsonby fixed Willow with a steely eye. "I would be grateful if you would oblige me in the way the child suggests?"
Willow found herself torn between laughter and aggravation. She directed a reproving glance at her shining eyed captive and promised herself that Cherish should receive the sound thrashing mentioned by Mildred Ponsonby. But that lady's eye was still fixed upon her in a basilic query. Unhappily she temporized, "I think it is Cherish who should receive the thrashing. Her remark was entirely outrageous."
"But, Miss Ponsonby wants you to, darling!" Cherish was bubbling over with helpfulness. "May I please watch?"
"You can watch if you're willing to be thrashed along with Miss Ponsonby," Willow assured with acerbity. "Really, Cherish, you should know better."
"I take it you are agreeable to my request, Miss Blake?" Mildred Ponsonby was pressing an advantage. "May I say how grateful I am to you both? You are a pair of delightful young women. May I prepare myself?"
Willow was flustered and wanted to giggle. Cherish was enraptured with the situation of her own creation. She took herself one step further, "Willow darling, you can take Miss Ponsonby to that room where you can tie our hands up above our heads. That's a gorgeous position for whipping girls and... ladies." She turned her sparkling regard upon the visitor, "You'll love it, Miss Ponsonby, it's terrible to be able to stand and not able to go away. But you'll have to keep quiet and let Willow whip your bottom."
Willow swallow chagrin, after all, why not! If she refused it would plant a question in Cherish's mind. In a way, Miss Ponsonby was heaven sent in all she had told did no more than confirm Cherish's conviction that all was right with their world. She made the best of it with a bright smile and a cheerful, "Come along then, I'm going to be really mean to both of you."
To fasten Cherish for her thrashing was the task of but a few moments. She was already handcuffed and her arms were raised to be tethered above to compel her to stand in sweet nudity and await the cane, the crop or the whip. If she was apprehensive, she showed no sign. Her whole attention was riveted on the unlikely figure being revealed as Miss Ponsonby divested herself of clothing. The spinster of uncertain age was unquestionably female but it was a femininity without appeal. When, breathing heavily, she extended her hands to be bound, Cherish continued, unwittingly, to compound her own correction. "Gee, Miss Ponsonby, you've ever so bony. You're not a bit like me or Willow. How did your breasts get to be that shape? Did you have an accident?"
"Little girls should be seen and not heard," Miss Ponsonby affirmed coldly. "It would be kindly to remember not all women are as well endowed by nature as yourselves."
"Cherish, do you want me to gag you!" Willow reprimanded. "If you can't be polite, you'd best keep quiet."
"I suggest an additional ten strokes for the child," Miss Ponsonby affirmed sternly. "She's quite charming but precocious. You probably don't whip her as often as you should."
Willow stepped back to survey her work. She was beginning to feel the heat and pleasurable excitement so familiar at such times. Cherish's girlishness was as heartwarming as ever. But it was the angularity of Mildred Ponsonby that attracted two pairs of curious female eyes. Willow had taken the precaution of tightening the tether to cause the woman who had requested to be whipped to stand stretched and taut in a manner which partly ironed out some of her physical defects. The result was not entirely attractive but was a distinctive improvement. It gave the spinster a little more form, it made concave a slightly protuberant tummy, it revealed the bottom about to be beaten as only a sad facsimile of her own and Cherish's pink and glowing cheeks. But it was undoubtedly a bottom and in the usual split segments. Willow felt certain whatever instrument she used upon it would hurt horribly and so doubtfully inquired, "Are your quite sure, Miss Ponsonby? I won't be mean and do it to you anyway, but if you would like me to untie you now I most certainly will."
"Don't be ridiculous, girl. We are embarked upon a course, follow it. I plead no mercy."
"I intend to whip Cherish first, if you don't mind," Willow stated firmly. "Her behavior has been atrocious."
"Oh, darling, are you going to whip me real hard... Like I was grown up!"
Willow wasted no time for more words. She selected a slender wand and sliced it neatly across both of Cherish's chubby cheeks. The child yelped, her cheeks pinkening, and used unshackled feet to vent her pain in a tiny dance of keen distress. Willow struck once more to plant another scarlet strip beside the first. Out of the corner of one eye she noted Miss Ponsonby's avid enjoyment of the scene and wished hardily she had never gotten involved in the whole thing. The last thing she wanted to do was thrash her darling's little bottom in a manner likely to satisfy this strangely erotic spinster now straining heavily at the ropes which bound her erect.
"Magnificent wrist action," Miss Ponsonby approved heartily. "I do trust you will do no less for me. Oh, and by the way, a few across by back would do no harm. I am already feeling beneficial sensations throughout. Please continue with your thrashing of that delightful child." Willow knew herself boxed into a situation she did not desire. The three strokes already livid upon Cherish's bottom were more than she had wished to give. Under the semi-compulsion of Miss Ponsonby's eye she had hit Cherish far harder than ever before and harder than she wished to do again. The youngster was looking back over a bare shoulder in uncertain apprehension. Cherish had discovered in that three strokes more pain than she had ever known previously. But, if such agony was appropriate before visitors, then she would try and bare it without making a fuss. But Willow impulsively lowered the young arms and untied the tether and ordered, "Run down to my office, darling, and bring me that crop you'll find in the cupboard. It's the one with the white handle."
The whipping of Miss Mildred Ponsonby had a particularly utilitarian atmosphere. The first strokes across a bottom by no means well padded evoked no sign or tremor. The spinster stood straining against the rope above but made no other motions, she accepted agony with an extraordinary control. The crop splatted and thrummed again and again into the flesh of the woman. It was not until Willow varied the application by a cruel stroke across the narrow back that Mildred Ponsonby made response. "That was magnificent, my dear, it hurt bitterly. May I please ask for more?"
Cherish stood enthralled. Handcuffed she could not effectively rub the burning weals across her bottom but did the best she could, the motions unconscious in her absorption with the scene in which stroke after stroke impacted upon the sparse flesh of a bound and naked woman seemingly lost to sensation and awareness but dwelling within a world of agony to which she held a key. Becoming curious, Willow exerted more and more the strength of her arm to thunk home upon the aging flesh in an ever increasing crescendo. Noticing Cherish gaze at her cuffed wrists then up at the waiting tether, she caught her darling eye and shook her head and held a finger to her lips enjoining silence. As far as she was concerned Cherish had already received her thrashing.
Cherish grinned and exclaimed, "Oh, darling, you do that so well. Look at those lovely marks. Won't it be lovely when I'm grown and you can whip my back as well as my bottom."
Willow winked at her love and returned her attention to the quivering skin of a woman who wanted to be whipped.
It had been a small incident leaving their lives untouched but the visit of Mildred Ponsonby had in some manner been a division, as though Cherish had come of age in sharing punishment with a woman old enough to be her mother. It solidified Cherish's conviction that what happened to her happened to others in the outside world. Everything was in order and as it should be. Willow felt only thankfulness, especially in the realization that having shared their unconventional activities it was unlikely Miss Ponsonby would mention them to anyone else. In fact, Miss Ponsonby continued her tea time visits in the same time spacing as before but now it was taken for granted that she and the two girls would, after the cucumber sandwiches, go down to the room in which it was convenient to raise a naked woman's arms above her head. On such occasions Cherish was tethered in the same manner as before but never thrashed. Her tethering was a concession to their visitor's seniority. It would seem improper for a teenage nymphet to waltz happily around while the spinster received her thrashing. The status quo was thus easily maintained. The two girls continued halcyon existence in Arcady until there came a knock upon their door.
CHAPTER TWO - THE MALE
Brian Aiken was essentially a dilettante. He was one of those good-looking English types who take for granted the benefits of an inheritance by which they were endowed with ample funds to enjoy the good things in life and a pleasant old English house in which to enjoy them. Let it known he was an author, as yet unpublished, but engaged in several serious works. He attended social functions and contributed to local charities. He paid court to local young women without evidence of choosing any one of them as a wife. He was definitely English.
He sat across from a disturbed and anxious Willow while stirring the tea in the cup she had just provided him. Brian Aiken was adept at inserting himself around tea time in any dwelling that caught his fancy. Willow ardently wish he had never heart of Questings.
"She is a charming child, Miss Blake. I've watched the two of you in the village. I've listened to little bits of your conversation as you passed. There has been one or two social functions we've attended." He allowed this first salvo to quietly assert himself within a home where there was no welcome. "You are a most charming person yourself.
Miss Blake. But it is within your Shall we call her your ward, I am truly interested. I wish to purchase her."
Willow stared in disbelief. Aiken possessed a charm and was exuding it in her direction with considerable effect. The incongruity of his suggestion was therefore all the more shocking.
Coldly she rejoined, "I'm not sure I heard you correctly, Mr. Aiken."
"Yes you did. You heard me. I am offering to buy from you that delightful teenager who stays by your side like a trained puppy dog."
"Don't be ridiculous. Surely you're not serious?"
"I am deadly serious, Miss Blake. In a way I've spied upon you. I've put two and two together and reached a conclusion, a conclusion which makes it wise for you to give in to my request. I am prepared to part with a lot of money."
"In England, Mr. Aiken, girls are not bought nor sold. The answer is no."
Aiken nodded as though the subject was of very little interest. His eyes roved then settled once more upon a young woman who was trying hard to hid her agitation. "I imagine you could spend quite a few years behind bars for the way in which you have brought up Miss Angela Roper," he said quietly. "I doubt very much the authorities would approve."
There it was, out in the open, the icy intrusion of the serpent into Eden. Willow often wondered what the law would do to her if her influence upon Cherish was blatantly exposed. She rose to her feet preparatory to showing her visitor to the door when Aiken barked, "Sit down! You can't dismiss me with a cup of tea," he sneered. "Where have you got the little cherub now? Locked in a cage? Shut up in a closet? Bound or chained somewhere around the grounds?" He allowed the inquire to trail away into menace.
His question was answered by the cherub herself. Cherish walked in totally unconcerned but stopped aghast at the sight of their visitor. "Oh, gosh, Willow, I'm sorry. I thought it was Miss Ponsonby." She turned to leave.
"Don't go," Aiken's command was firm. "My visit concerns you. Perhaps Miss Blake will be kind enough to explain."
Willow was frightened. Even thought this man was immaculate in the garb of a country gentleman, and even though Miss Ponsonby had never spoken ill of him, his presence was strongly Male. Brian Aiken was a man and a man should find no shelter within the walls of Questings. Dully she informed, "Mr. Aiken is amusing himself at our expense, Cherish. He has just offered to purchase you. Just like that as though you are a bag of potatoes."
Cherish giggled and said the wrong thing, "How much does he want to pay for me?"
"I didn't ask him. Cherish, run along. Mr. Aiken shouldn't be seeing you naked and handcuffed, he'll get silly ideas."
"Stay as you are child. In fact, come closer. I find your lack of clothing entirely appropriate. It would be wrong to hid what I see now."
Cherish picked up the scent of trouble. She walked closer, holding; her cuffed hands in the familiar act of joining them beneath her chin. In frank simplicity she said, "I think you should go away. I don't like you and I'm not for sale." She turned to Willow, "You wouldn't sell me to anyone, would you darling?"
"Of course not, sweetheart. Run along, I'll deal with this."
Sensing the wisdom of obedience, Cherish disappeared. Between the man and the woman there generated an electricity which finally forced Willow to exclaim, "Why don't you go, Mr. Aiken? You're an intrusion here. You take for granted something you desire. It is not for sale. It can not be yours at any price. Please go away."
Aiken sighed. Replacing his tea cup upon the tray in the manner of one who has done his best, his tone was civilized, "Very well, I'll leave. I realize my offer comes as a bit of a shock to you, I'll give you time to think about it." He paused, his manner gentle but his eyes hard, "But in arriving at a judgment you must remember this: I will have Cherish one way or the other. With or without your consent. With or without enriching you in the process. You do not understand it but when you told the girl to leave this room you had, in effect, said goodbye to her."
"That is absolute nonsense, Mr. Aiken."
"It may seem so now, but remember this: tomorrow, next week, next month, or perhaps next year, I will divert Cherish to myself. She will be held in my home in the same manner as she is held here -- naked and chained. I don't really mind how I acquire her but I would be happiest if you would name your price and I paid it. We would both be better off."
Willow sat long after he had gone. She was trembling. The intrusion of the male had been devastating. She had no way of knowing how serious his threat had been. Perhaps it had been no more than a threat. Perhaps his visit had been an exploration prompted by curiosity. She gathered up the tea things in time to be invaded once more by Cherish's exuberance into the room where the male presence still hung threateningly in the still air.
"Darling, that was a man!" Cherish made the exclamation as though in discovery. "What did he really want? He didn't want to buy me, did he? I mean girls aren't bought and sold like that."
"He said he did. I told him to go away and leave us along."
Cherish giggled. She did not share Willow's apprehension. Innocence still kept her within a feminine cocoon against the world. "Isn't that crazy! But darling, supposing he did buy me, what would happen? Would he lead me out of Questings at the end of a rope or something?"
"He'd probably put you inside a box and nail the lid down," Willow said in sharp reproof at levity. "Hush, Cherish. I found the man distasteful. Don't let's talk of him."
"You're scared, aren't you? I can tell. Oh, Willow, is something awful going to happen?"
"Of course not!" Willow's jaw tightened, her eyes flashed. "I'd kill him before I'd let him take you from me. I'd kill anyone "
"But, Willow darling, what would he want me for? What would he do to me or with me? Where would he keep me? It sounds so crazy."
"I don't know, Cherish. But I wish he hadn't seen you naked. It's best you don't come barging into rooms unless you know who's inside. You're so terribly beautiful."
"But, Willow, just supposing he did buy me and there was nothing I could do about it. Would he take me back to his home and push that male thing up inside me the way we've talked about? Does he want to do that to me so bad? I mean, it seems silly and untidy and a little bit disgusting."
They let it go at that. It was an unprofitable subject which they were left uncertain about. They didn't know, if it was anything more than a joke.
Cherish came to accept the male intrusion as evidence of how lucky the two of them were to be female and to live alone. She soon forgot Brian Aiken but Willow did not. For Willow Questings had acquired a ghost.
Time heals all things but has the disadvantage of making its beneficiaries forgetful and careless. On a day hot with summer and the scent of blossoms, Willow, in pixie mischief, bound Cherish to the tree they had so often used for this mild punishment. There was no suggestion the child would be left there for the night but Cherish had indeed committed a minor offense and such a punishment was ideally suited to the season and the day. Cherish walked laughingly to her fate and backed against the familiar trunk and placed her crossed wrists behind its relatively slender trunk. She breathed heavily as Willow tied them tight.
"Willow, darling, you needn't tie anything but my wrists. I can't possibly get them loose."
The idea intrigued. Willow backed away, considering. Cherish looked very sweet and very helpless and exceeding naked. But it was a nakedness blending well with the surrounding scene. She was simply a naiad, a sprite of the woodland resting by leaning back against a tree.
"All right, kitten, I wouldn't wrap you in rope this time but I am going to tie your tummy. If I don't you'll be sliding around and getting yourself all chafed."
It was quickly done, strand after strand of the heavier rope indenting the young stomach and encircling the narrow waist. Willow used enough of it to make the appearance of a belt by which the darling child was held tight to the chosen tree. To impose the additional authority she always used she circled the several bands from each side and cinched them tight together in the small hollow of her beloved's back. Cherish was now tightly bound and well secured for her day of contemplation. The two girls kissed and said goodbye. Willow gathered up the unused ropes and walked dreamily back to Questings and a lonely day. She could never resist imposing these punishments on the eager child she owned, but even a few hours of the teenager's absence always made her wish she had chosen another punishment in which the child were closer to her side. True, she could always walk out among the trees and converse with her captive maiden. But it was understood this was something simply "not done." The helpless maiden bound to a tree was suppose to be very much alone.
Afternoon was waning into evening when Willow went back among the trees to release her love and to hold her tight in an anxiety of desire. But Cherish did not stand against the tree. Cherish was nowhere to be seen. Upon the ground lay the scattered remains of the severed ropes by which she had been bound. They had been cut by a sharp knife. That was all.
After her usual testing of the bonds and finding them without sympathy, Cherish ceased any endeavor to escape and entered the mood of the summer day. The air was alive with the perfume of growing things and the quiet hum of insects. In as idyllic a scene as could possibly be devised, warmed by the sun, she allowed herself to accept the drowsy content of the living things among which she must spend her day. Cherish always found a strange peacefulness when thus bound. It was as thought the cords and ropes were a key by which she entered a ancient kingdom of romance. She dreamed happily of Willow.
The voice of Brain Aiken was as without emphasis as it had been in Willow's drawing room but it shocked Cherish into an involuntary surging against the ropes.
"You make a lovely picture there, Cherish. Ever done any posing? I dabble in a bit of painting now and then. We might try it sometimes." He was suddenly standing before the tree and drinking in every curve and swelling of the captive nakedness.
"You're not suppose to see me like this!" It was the first thing to enter Cherish's mind. Her voice was heavy with indignation and reproach, "Please go away, go away right now and leave me alone. Willow told you never to touch me, and I'm telling you too. I couldn't possibly belong to a man, I couldn't bare it."
"I'm afraid you're going to have to." There was no menace in the voice, just a cool statement of the fact. "I intend to take you home with me. If you want to scream, please do. She won't be able to hear you out here."
Cherish wanted very much to scream but knew it useless. Despite repugnancy she was impelled by a quivering curiosity. She was naked and helpless in the presence of a male, a male who could do terrible things to her and probably would if her got the chance. Vehemently she exclaimed, "I don't believe a word you say. I don't believe any of this stuff about buying me and taking me away. You're just a big tease and I think you're most unkind."
For answer, Brian Aiken cut away the bindings. His sharp knife slid through the strands with ease. The implications of the sharp blade sent shivers and an icy hand up Cherish's spine. She made up her mind to kick him hard once she was free then run as fast as she could towards Questings. This man would surely never dare to pursue her within sight of its windows. But Brian Aiken put his knife away and proceeded to use his fingers to untie the knots which held her hands crossed behind the trunk. The touch of his fingers sent fresh tremors through the teenager's consciousness and if he wished to conserve the cord it could be only for one purpose. Somehow she must prevent him binding her again once she was freed from the tree. When her hands fell away limply to her side she turned and kicked with every ounce of her young strength.
It was pathetically easy for a man twice her size. Aiken grasped the slim ankle as it flashed towards his groin and raised it, causing its owner to slump to the ground, kicking wildly but most ineffectually.
"I intend to tie your hands behind your back. Cherish. Do you want to fight or are you going to be sensible."
Cherish fought. She fought with every ounce of her strength and every foul blow she could devise. But in a few moments she was flat upon her face, a male knee firmly planted in her back and male fingers once more binding the slender wrists she could not keep from his grasp. Cherish beat in frantic anger at the ground with small clenched fists before they were gathered behind her back with ease. Aiken bound them tight, far tighter than they need have been. But Cherish did not complain. Instead she wept, wept not because of what had been done to her but because of the female's ancient weakness besides the strength of the male. It was humiliating and frustrating and in no way to be stood for. But the male had his way with her and in a few moments lifted her erect, brushed the grass and twigs from the bareness of her back and bottom and said cheerfully, "There we are, all trim and shipshape. Want me to tie your feet and carry you or are you willing to walk?"
Cherish's willingness to walk was academic. She had no choice. Aiken grasp her hair in a strong male clutch and directed her as he chose. True, Cherish struggled for all she was worth, but a girl's lovely locks can be her enemies as well as friends, it was so now. Holding them, Aiken has as firm a control of her as if she was bound and chained in a dozen different ways. He led her forward to the outskirts of the woods where his car stood on a rustic dirt pathway. He lifted the lid of his trunk and deposited her within. Cherish cried out in fierce anger as the lid slammed down to encase her in semi-darkness. She kicked out and struggled to free herself from the cords upon her wrists. But all she achieved was to hurt herself and so ceased. She lay naked and wept in the vibrating darkness above the speeding wheels. She did not know where Aiken lived but what did it matter... ? He had her now!
When the trunk was opened they were inside a garage. Cherish refused to scream or to plead but kept a solemn silence. She was lifted out and carried to what was obviously a workshop well equipped with tools. She felt certain none of them meant her well. Her captor's voice was unfailingly cheerful and polite. Cherish guessed the politeness was only part of the outward appearance he wished others to see, that he really didn't care about her comfort. But she supposed she should be glad that politeness was there.
"Well, sweetheart, I don't have the accouterments your mistress obviously possesses, but I do have some interesting relics of the past. Be a nice change for you and they'll hold you tight enough." Cherish surveyed the rusted iron with distaste. Someone had obviously worked upon it to make it presentable. The wire brush had uncovered the bare metal Here and there, the gyves were as effective now as in the past century when they had been fabricated.
"Pure change I found a size to fit," Aiken laughed at her woebegone face. "Someone, years ago, must have had a girl like you and made certain he kept her safe. I've simply inherited the relics and cleaned them up just for you I think I've got the inside of the wrist and ankles nicely smoothed out, they won't chafe. Now let's see how snug they are."
"You needn't think of putting them on me," said Cherish flatly. "You sit on this box, it's good and solid, and you put one foot up on the anvil...."
"Drop dead!" said Cherish with firm emphasis. "I'm not that crazy." Aiken produced the whip as if by magic from. Apparently he had thought it might be needed and had it ready. It sliced the air with a truly wicked whine to reinforce his question, "Do you want me to use this on you? I can you know. Very easily. If I have to. I'll whip you into any submission I desire. I suggest you don't be a little heroine and play the fool. That pretty back of yours need not be marked at all. At least not by me."
In a way it was their first confrontation. There had been something of the comic in what that taken place before and in Aiken's vow of purchase. But now Cherish felt nakedly afraid. She knew about pain and about her limits. The whip Aiken now so carelessly held would take her far beyond her powers of resistance, it might even cut her flesh. Cherish knew nothing of the way of men. All she could hope for now was rescue by her mistress, Willow would surely think of something! But for now, prudence won the day. She sat upon the box and set her foot within the waiting circlet of ancient iron. When it was closed snug upon her flesh she demanded sulkily, "If you're a professional kidnapper I don't see why you didn't buy some decent things to hold a girl with, something that could be locked and unlocked. You have to rivet these things on me, don't you?"
"That's right. You're an observant little trick, aren't you? But they do have the advantage that, once riveted on, nothing and no one can get them off. These are the real leg irons not the pretty things Willow used to join your feet together with."
The solid thunking blows of the hammer took the naked girl beyond confrontation into a terrible reality of surrender. She thought again of flight but that was silly, she could never reach the door, and there was then the chance of being punished with the whip. The hammer was sure and true as it smashed the soft iron of the rivet. There were two of them and when the hammer had done its work with each Cherish knew her ankle was secured beyond any possibility of release except with the hammer and anvil once again. Despairingly she lifted her other foot, fitted it in the twin circlet from which the heavy links of the joining chain now dangled mockingly. When that also was secured she was told to stand up and walk around the room. She did so, partly from her own curiosity, and discovered that having worn Willow's leg irons she was at least half way prepared for these. But the metal Aiken had riveted upon her feet was double and triple the weight and made an outrageous clatter as she walked. The chain was long enough to give her unhurried movement but she could not run, she could not leap, she could not take a stride. Miss Angela Roper was hobbled by ancient irons which had awaited her across the centuries.
"You may as well kneel for you hands, Cherish, that's about the right height." the Male said cheerfully. "I'm pleased about the fit, they're absolutely made for you." He laughed at her woebegone features. "Maybe I'll never take them off, irons become you. Seems I read that somewhere. Now hold still."
Cherish held still. She was afraid to move. The hammer was a fearful thing and could crush her wrist with a single blow. But once again the two rivets were thrust into the waiting holes and battered down with blow after blow, each one accurate and true. When it was done, then the other hand. When that too was solidly ironed she was once more told to stand and to hold her hands in such a way as the man and she could examine the effect. The effect was more picturesque that Cherish would have believed possible. The iron was heavy but the links were longer than with handcuffs. This would probably be more than compensated for by the weight of metal. The naked girl knew herself helpless and in the power of a man. Before his gaze she was ashamed of nudity but could hide nothing. Unhappily she said, "Well, it seems you've got me. You've stolen me away from everything I love. I don't see what good it will go you, I'll never obey or be the way I was with Willow." She gazed down at her shackled hands and said somberly, "I know I can't escape, you've fixed me in a terrible helplessness. But I still don't have to do things for you. I won't love you. I won't even like you. You won't get any joy out of me the way Willow did."
Aiken picked up the whip and passed the thong lovingly through one hand. "This little item says otherwise, dear girl. I won't use it on you now, I want you to think about it and remember it's always waiting. You've been sensible about putting your hands and feet on the anvil, be sensible with rest of the way. I don't want you stripped like a zebra."
The transformation of her life impinged slowly upon the maiden mind but was still not evident in its totality. Cherish had far to go into the dark realms of male possession and male desire. She sensed them now only as dragons waiting in the dark. But it was not dark and as yet she had felt no pain. The shackles on wrist and ankles were heavy and implacable but neither cut nor chafed. If they did so it would be by her own choice. Because she had not yet been hurt she could still be impertinent. "So what are you going to do with me, Mr. Aiken? Send Willow a check? Sell me to someone else?" She made her tone as gay as she possibly could.
"Cherish, have you ever been fucked?"
The hateful word was strange but not entirely foreign, she had read it in books and had heard the word in some dim memory of childhood before Willow had possessed her. In complete innocence she asked, "What you're trying to find out is if some man like you has thrust inside me those prong things men have. Well, no I haven't been... fucked. And I don't intend to be. If you fuck me, Willow will never forgive you and she and I will hound you for the rest of our lives." Aiken laughed at her terrible sincerity. The teenager supposed she still possessed a will and the chance to use it. She evidently envisioned an early rescue by an irate Willow. Aiken was thankful for ample time. He had no wish to break this lovely thing he now possessed. Cherish was exquisite, a treasure beyond dreams. He wished to break her in gently. "Has it ever occurred to you that this act you so scathingly denounce could give you pleasure? Give you pleasure in the same way as Willow's tongue?"
"But that's disgusting! That's horrible, fancy saying such a thing. Of course it won't give me pleasure. I'll hate it and I'll hate you." Cherish glared fiercely and rattled her chains in protest.
"Well, all in good time." Brian Aiken's voice was gentle. "How old are you Cherish?"
"I'm only sixteen and men are not suppose to push their things inside a girl who's only sixteen. I've read about it in the newspapers and in books so you leave me alone."
The frightened girl said angrily, "I'm suppose to lay down and open my legs for you when that happens, isn't that the way of it? Well, I'm not going to do it." Sulkily she added with a touch of jubilation, "And, anyway, you've chained my feet together so you can't do it anyway. I think you're just a big fraud. Why don't you just take me back to Willow and we'll call the whole thing off."
"For sure you've never been fucked, sweetheart," Aiken agreed soberly. "If you had been you'd know those irons on your feet don't impede anything. You can be fucked to a fare-thee-well without knocking loose a single rivet. And as for returning you to Willow, I'd be crazy, wouldn't I? Look at the way I've got you so beautifully ironed."
"I'm sure Willow will pay you for them," Cherish said hopefully. "Or you can take them off before you take me home. I promise I'll behave while you do it."
"I just bet you would," Brain Aiken laughed at her naivete. "No, I've got you and I'm keeping you. Let's go upstairs and have a drink."
"I don't want a drink. Please take me home."
"Look, sweetheart, that's a song that can get repetitious very quickly. Lay off it. I don't want to hear about you getting your irons stricken from your limbs or your going back to Questings. I've got you by right of conquest -- that's probably the way Willow picked you up years ago."
Once more Aiken grasped her hair but this time he also steadied her arm as they mounted the stairs, her ankle chains making an loud racket from step to step. Cherish tried a different tack, "Don't you realize, Mr. Aiken, I'm only sixteen and I'm frightened to death. Honest, I'm scared. I don't know a thing about men and I don't want to. But I know what you intend to do to me. Please, please don't?"
He did not bother to answer, why should he! Brain Aiken was suddenly glowing in the full knowledge of possessing a naked girl. That the naked girl was only sixteen years old impressed him not at all. They are supposed to be better when young and goodness knows Cherish was young enough for anyone. He was glad she had not fought. He would have found it distasteful to break her with the whip. That might still come but he would avoid it if he could. In the meantime, the feel of her silken hair within his grasp and the bareness of her arms within his clutch sent his pulse to racing. Here was the very essence of life itself! Here in this naked girl he was guiding up the stairs was every dream of man's desire. He thanked his lucky stars he had come across the two of them, Willow and her ward, and drawn the right conclusions. Cherish had been ripe for the plucking!
"Willow is going to be terribly worried when she finds me gone. Are you going to phone and tell her what you've done?"
"No. She'll call me. Ahh, here we are. Just knell on he rug before the chair were I'll sit and I'll mix the drinks. Next time you'll have to mix them but for this once, and seeing you're so young "
"I don't drink alcohol, thank you. Please leave me out," Cherish said in formal affront.
"You're going to drink some now. Cherish, whether you like it or not. And that's another thing, I don't want you constantly protesting that you don't do this or your don't do that. From now on you do always exactly as I say."
"What if I refuse?" Cherish's voice was defiant. "I absolutely refuse, so let's get this over with right now. If you want to keep me prisoner the way I am now, well that's your affair. But if you want me to do nasty things or drink nasty drinks, I absolutely won't do it. If you have to whip me to death because of that, then you may as well get started." Aiken paused in his activities behind the bar. There had been a sincerity in the young voice he could not ignore. He wished he had demonstrated a less formidable whip. What he should have done was shown her something she could have borne but disliked, something with which he could have sensibly whipped her into at least the drinking of a drink. The whip he had chosen would mark her horribly. Hopefully he inquired, "Ever had your bottom spanked?"
"Of course not, I'm not a child."
"You're not, are you. That means you can very well drink this drink I've gone to the trouble to prepare. And anyway you're going to have to leant how to do these things because that will be part of your duties. I want my afternoon cocktail mixed and shaken and delivered upon your knees to me who will be your master. Get that, your master! Drink this and I don't want too much choking over it. It's only a screwdriver and will do you no harm."
Cherish took it. It was her first conscious action with shackled hands. Her thoughts were racing. She supposed a drink could do no harm. If she became tipsy and fell over on the floor, well that was Aiken's trouble and not hers. She rather hoped it would happen. She gazed at the orange juice in the glass held by ironed hands and said, with deepest sincerity, "I hope I get drunk and throw up all over you." Cherish did not get drunk. Aiken had made the cocktail lean. Even after the second, which she was beginning to enjoy, Cherish was still steady and coherent. Coherent enough to explore the altitudes her captor would allow. "Do I have to kneel on the rug here like this all the time while you drink? What is it about men? You like your egos, you like a girl to butter you up and pretend you're wonderful. I know because Willow told me and I've read a lot of books. I think you're all weird." She took a deep swallow. "Look, you're aching to whip me, I know you are. So let's go and get it over with."
Aiken was startled at the stark simplicity of her demand. The girl meant it! She actually wanted him to whip her naked flesh, to take her into whatever realm of male desire came next. Startled, he was forced to ask himself which indeed came first; to rape her or to whip her. Since she was forced by her irons to be compliant in either one the decision was hard to make. But he knew for sure he must never allow this nymphet to take the initiative. She might be sixteen years old but she had a shrewd and calculating mind. Sharply he retorted, "I'll decide when and how we do those things, not you."
"Well, why don't you fuck me here on the rug? You could." Her voice held total innocence, butter would not melt in her mouth.
"Because I've decided on another way, that's why," Aiken said almost savagely. The girl was going to be a handful and would have to be treated with care. He had always avoided allowing any girl or woman to get under his skin and make herself indispensable to the point where she could maneuver him into doing what she desired. He must continue this principle now. This girl would surrender her virginity in a particularly ritualistic fashion he had long desired. Quickly his thoughts flittered to Willow, Willow Blake, the girl who had everything, the girl who had possessed Cherish. He was determined to fuck her too but that desire was secondary to his determination to impale Cherish. Brian Aiken felt he possessed Miss Willow Blake and Miss Angela Roper in the hollow of his hand. He would exact humility, submission and obedience. By the time he was through with him they would not recognize each other. Their adoration would be for him alone.
Gruffly he demanded, "Finish your drink, Cherish. We'll get it over the way you suggest, but I'm not going to whip you first. That would simply feed a delicious martyrdom you're building up inside that little mind of yours. What you're going to get is the think you call my "prong" up between your legs. Think about it, get used to the idea, make up your mind to enjoy it and be an obedient girl. He finished his own drink and picked up his naked slave.
Fiction was Cherish's only guide. She had read enough of the rape of a girl without ever imagining it could happen to her. But it would happen now and in the manner of this man's choosing. She wished now she had not allowed herself to be so helplessly ironed. But had there been a choice? She knew there never had been one. She knew the condition she was now in was inevitable from the moment Aiken released her from Willow's tree. She could never best his strength, and now, secured by his shackles, she must do his bidding. Cherish hoped devoutly he would fastening her in such ways as to rid her mind of guilt about what would happen.
It was as though he read her mind. It was a long, hard wooden bench the surface of which would clearly tell the girl fastened upon it what her status had become. With the weight of the male upon her added to her travail it offered no comfort. If, upon its surface she found joy, it would be derived from some interior source within her loins. Here upon this alter of hard wood lay the true subjection of the female. If she had pride left when this was done, then she had pride indeed!
Brian Aiken lay his feminine burden down with extreme gentleness upon her back, he grasped her hands and drew them back above her head and fastened them in some unseen way. "I can handle you easily now, sweetheart. If you want to struggle, go ahead, now's the time. All I have to do is grasp one of your ankles and pull, you've had the course. How do you feel about it?"
Cherish felt every emotion either possible or applicable. She was not sure that girls preparatory to being raped were suppose to feel anything at all except extreme anguish. And this anguish was supposed to relate to certain moral or social convictions, in what she had read of it there was very little concern about pain or the actual penetration of her body. What the girl was suppose to be concerned with was the disapproval of society. This disapproval was levied against her even though she had nothing to say or do with her predicament. Hastily she glimpsed that she and Willow were two girls far apart from ail the rest. Because of that her actions now would be far different from what the books foretold. She tugged to assure herself of the loss of hands and said, quite simply, "If you're going to rape me, Mr. Aiken, I suppose you might as well get on with the job. I don't seem able to do anything about anything. I could kick but what's the use, you'd only whip me." Cherish had forgotten the leg irons. She could not kick. She could do nothing but draw her feet up to where the linking chain came beneath the orifice within her pubic hair, the orifice so dearly lovely and so vividly described by "The Twat." It had many names but she and Willow had always called it her "pussy" and she preferred to leave it at that. When Brian Aiken positioned himself at raised knees, she was ready for the hard thrust which, strangely enough, was gently inserted between the moistness of her lips. She did not know how they had become so moist but there it was. Miss Angela Roper, the girl called Cherish, sighed and surrendered her vagina to male convenience. Slowly Aiken's immense prong slid with the warmth and wetness of her sheath. It was all pretty much as the stories had foretold. True there was the fierce, sharp pain of the sundering of her maidenhead. But it passed and was replaced by the slow and steady rhythm of the male questing within her belly. Cherish supposed there would be an injection of male semen and sometime, well in the future, she would have a baby that would be Brian Aiken's son.
It appeared a girl did not become a potential mother too easily. There was no sharp or explosive climax immediately as supposed, instead there was a slow and incessant thrust and withdrawal, a twisting and thrusting from side to side and up and down, a total exploration of her womb by a foreign, blunt-nosed hard appendage from a male. It came as an irritating surprise to Miss Angela Roper that pleasure should ensue but it was not long before pleasure did indeed manifest itself within her loins. Her heat, never long dormant, flamed vividly and she heard her own voice cry out against its searing scorch. But was it her own heat or was it his! Did the male suffer these same delicious pangs of agony as she. No one had warned Miss Angela Roper of this betrayal by her own flesh. No one warned her that the male had the same power to possess and pleasure her as had the girl called Willow. It was not long before Willow was forgotten in this new tumescence, this new and unexpected frictioning of her deepest and most secret part, this planting the male seed which she would bare to maturity. Cherish could not believe it was happening. In brief moments she realized her wrists were hurting atrociously from her constant struggles. Her shackled feet were helpless, if she thrust them hard down in revolt she did no more than intensify whatever anguish or ecstasy possessed her femaleness. The male possession went on and on and on forever. But when it burst in an incandescence of flame and fire, the girl called Cherish knew herself freshly enslaved.
Cherish was half asleep when she was carried she knew not where. When she awoke many hours later if was to find herself chained by one ankle to the foot of the huge bed in which her master slept. After a cautious exploration of her new helplessness she used the blanket discovered by her side and returned herself to sleep. She knew she could never escape this man, his chains would hold her forever, but most potent of all her bondage was the prong, the solid male rod by which her subjection had been made complete because of her own ecstasy. She would want it to happen again and again and again. And by his denial of this act Brian Aiken could mold her to his will. The girl called Cherish went back to sleep but she dreamed not of Aiken but of Willow.
* * *
The severed ropes and the bare trunk of the familiar tree came close to breaking Willow's heart. Recriminations flooded her mind in the certain knowledge she had delivered her darling into bondage by the stupid act of exposing the helpless girl out here in the woods. If she had kept her safe within the walls of Questings, she would have her now. But instead Cherish was in the possession of a man, a man who would do unspeakable things to her and who Willow well knew she could do nothing to counter or defeat. Brian Aiken was probably all ready handling those darling buds and that soft, warm, moist slit she had so long cherished as her own. It was too, too cruel and there was nothing she could do!
Willow gathered up the severed short pieces of rope and returned to Questings. She had never felt so lonely in her life or more bereft. She had always known everything she valued was within the flesh and substance of the shining girl Brian Aiken had stolen. Without Cherish life was meaningless, a nothing, a void. Determinedly she went to the telephone.
She should have guessed the response. The voice, cheerful as ever wasted no time but said instantly, "Good afternoon, Miss Blake. Were you inquiring after lost property?"
Willow would have loved to claw his smiling face. She longed to scream and batter her fists. But it was best that she discover the strength of her enemy before she sought to attack it with her own. Briefly she demanded, "What have you done with Cherish?"
The answer was instant and unconcerned, "Cherish? Why the dear child is standing against a wall to which one of her wrists has been tied with some special nylon cord I picked up. She'll be a busy little girl trying to get loose but she'll not succeed. Why don't you come and join her?"
"Do you think I'm out of my mind!" Willow could easily envision the picture he had drawn, her poor darling naked and held in some frustrating fashion by a piece of rope. "If you're contemplating some sort of deal in which you want to rape me in exchange for Cherish, forget it! If you don't get Cherish back her immediately, I shall go to the police."
There was a silence in which the listening girl could picture his quiet enjoyment of her defeat. "The police, you say, Miss Blake? Don't be silly. We both know you won't go to the police. There's really nothing you can do except what I tell you. If you want Cherish back you'll do exactly what I say."
"All right. How much?"
"Oh, come, it's not a question of money, I'm sure you understand that. The price is capital Y-O-U. The haughty Miss Blake will yield both her bottom and her front for my amusement. When I have enjoyed both to the full you can then go home."
"Drop dead!"
"Sorry, can't do that! In the event you decide to be difficult I want you to know your darling Cherish will receive periodic thrashings until you change your mind." There was short, hard laugh. "I want you to understand that when I say thrashing that's exactly what I mean. Your little darling is going to scream. I've purchased a most formidable array of whips and crops."
"Mr. Aiken, you're a bastard!"
"I couldn't agree with you more. I've never pretended to be a gentleman. I simply inherited a gentleman's estate. I intend to assure Miss Willow Blake and Miss Angela Roper leave these premises a pair of well whipped young women, taught a lesson that you at least, Miss Blake, richly deserve."
"You're talking like a Victorian villain," Willow said crossly. "If you ask for something within reason, we might come to terms. This business of humiliating me and shoving my nose in the dirt isn't profitable to either of us."
"You are quite wrong there, Miss Blake. I'm sure this is difficult for you to understand, but for me it would be a pleasure to do what you describe. There is an immaculate quality about you that positively implores a male hand."
"Look, Mr. Aiken, that poor girl must be frightened out of her wits. You're being a cad, you ought to feel ashamed. You've had your fun, you've frightened us both half to death, now please send her home."
"Dear Miss Blake!" The derisive tone was unmistakable, "You know I won't do that. The price of what you are asking is for you to come to me. I will soundly whip both your bottom and your back. I will then fuck you both till my heart's content. Only then will you return to your happy little female world with Cherish."
Willow slammed the receiver down hard. The man was impossible! Aiken's demands went beyond reason, they would leave nothing of her intact. She would be reduced to a whimpering naked piece of flesh, soiled, used, discarded. Cherish would be whipped too, she was sure of it. She could not bare to think of rape. Willow understood rape as implicit in all she had said with Aiken but she could not put it into words nor accept it with her mind. She looked angrily at the silent phone and wondered what else she might have said. Thoughts of her naked Cherish bound against a wall, awaiting a fate which could scarcely be merciful, flooded her whole being with desolation. Willow Blake could not imagine herself walking to the domicile of her enemy and then yielding her person to his demands. She knew she was immaculate, she wished to be and to remain immaculate. Glumly considered the prospect of the police but soon cast it aside. They would be no help and would almost certainly see her as the villainess of the piece. Her separation from Cherish was bad enough already without a period of years with her yearning and eating out her heart behind prison bars. Brian Aiken had thought things out with shrewd competence. Unable to any longer endure the sight and temptation of the phone, Willow turned and left the room.
The night was pure torment. Willow's bed was cold and empty without the vivid flesh of Cherish. The mistress tossed and turned in a constant turmoil. By morning the constant repetition of a vision of a sacrifice became less fearful than the day before. So what! She would go to Brian Aiken and would be whipped and raped. Then she would come home with Cherish and thereafter would make doubly assure such a disaster could never be repeated. Willow made a cup of coffee and drank it without pleasure. She then went to the phone.
"I'm glad you called, Miss Blake," Aiken said equably. "I was just preparing to thrash your little darling. She's irresistibly sweet and I was in the process of fastening her in the most attractive way to receive the lash. She is indeed a darling child."
"I thought perhaps you had come to your senses and would quote me some reasonable terms."
"No. I'm still a bastard, Miss Blake. I intend to whip your bottom and then your back and then pierce your front. Or would you wish me to be more specific? There are a few four letter words "
"No, you are explicit enough. If I come to you now can you do what you intend with me, or to me, and allow Cherish and myself to return to Questings this afternoon?"
"Indubitably!"
"I will leave immediately."
Willow walked the considerable distance between the two houses. She could have driven but felt the tremendous need for exertion and expenditure of energy. Her pent up desire to kill or claw Brian Aiken was a constant compulsion in her mind. Willow told herself the only reason she did not plan such an act was it's very impracticably. And, anyway, if she killed the man she would be separated more surely from Cherish than by acceding to his demands. She wondered unhappily what it would be like to be wickedly and cruelly whipped as was about to be done to her. Willow was quite certain the whipping she had administer to Cherish had been mere child's play compared to what Brian Aiken would do to her. There would probably be blood and scars to last her life. The act of coitus, which she still thought of as rape, was too hateful to contemplate. She would endure it as best she could.
The long walk brought perspective and courage, a courage rapidly diminished by confrontation with The Male. Brian Aiken's eyes measured her up and down and all around in a shrewd assessment of her femaleness beneath her clothes. His greeting was casually pleasant but he instantly reverted to his obsession. "I'd better give you a few drinks, Miss Blake. You'll need them!"
"I have no need or wish to be intoxicated," Willow flashed fire at him as they stood together in the hall. "May I please see Cherish?"
"Indeed you may. I knew it would be the first thing you'd ask. The little sweetheart is ready and waiting."
Willow followed him up the stairs, her heart leaden within her breast. No girl ever had been more defeated than she was now. By shrewd maneuvering she had become the plaything of a man.
Cherish turned wan features from the bed but her face came alive at the sight of Willow. Her greeting was apologetic, almost as though she blamed herself for her predicament, "Oh, darling, look what he's done to me! You shouldn't have come, I don't think we can trust him. " Willow stood aghast. Her beloved girl was spread-eagled upon the covers in total nudity. Cherish's teenage slenderness was tautly stretched towards each comer of the bed on which she lay. The implications of her plight were all too obvious. Dejectedly she added, "I can't get loose. Willow. I tried and tried. I can hardly move at all. And Mr. Aiken keeps telling me what he's going to do. He's done it once already and now he says he'll do it again to both of us. Oh, Willow, I don't think you should have come."
"I've done my best to entertain," Aiken said in mock apology. "The youngster turned out better than I expected, she's really first class. I'm most curious to sample your qualities, Miss Blake. Is your maidenhead still intact?"
"Don't be disgusting!"
"No harm in asking. I got a good deal of pleasure from breaking the maidenhead you kept inviolate inside Cherish for so long. I doubt if the dear girl will miss it."
"Don't be such an absolute bastard. You're positively gloating, watering at the mouth over a couple of helpless girls you've managed to compromise."
Willow felt anger filling her to overflowing. "Look, let's get over with it. What do I have to do?"
"First of all, take your clothes off. I'd have thought you'd have guessed that."
This was it! This was a beginning which would also be an end to innocence. Willow knew her own maidenhead still intact but to plead with Aiken that it should remain so was a lost cause. She wondered what the breaking of a maidenhead would feel like. She would soon find out!
"Mr. Aiken, I should tell you I have never in my life stripped naked before a man."
"Good! A premiere performance! I am greatly blessed." Every word Aiken uttered was a mockery of modesty.
"I see no reason why I should be entirely nude. You can whip my bottom while I'm fully clothed. I will arrange my garments for your convenience. As for whipping my back, I will arrange that too. Please don't force me to total nakedness."
"Strip!"
The single word told Willow all she needed to know. There was no mercy, no thought of maiden modesty or a background of years as a virgin. Willow knew herself, in fact, more desirable to his man in the condition she was than any other woman could be with the possible exception of Cherish, and if he had told the truth, he had already enjoyed the fruit of Cherish's loins. As though dazed and drugged, Miss Willow Blake reached for the fastening of her dress. She let it fall to the floor around her feet. She wore little less but delayed the final revelation by unfastening her shoes and peeling down the pantyhose from her hips. Logic told her this was not enough, it would be useless to plead now for her bottom was still fully clothed in panties. In a desolation of loss, she put her thumbs on each side of the waistband and pushed the scanty garment down and down and down... !
"A lovely bush. I'd not hoped for anything quite as beautiful," Brian Aiken's voice was almost reverent. "Ever noticed the way that lovely hair shines and curls? Perhaps, if you aggravate me enough, I'll shave them off. How would you like to have a naked cunt?"
Willow ignored the vulgarity. She knew she was being provoked. Any response she made could be used as an excuse for punishing her beyond what was already promised. There still remained her bra. Under male eyes her loins burned in shame. She shrank from further exposure. Cherish was naked and unconcerned with her nakedness. Cherish was the only living person to ever see Willow in the nude. It had seemed natural between them. But now to match Cherish's nudity by displaying her own to the avid eyes watching every move was a thing almost impossible to do. Despairingly she looked at the man who held her in the strangest thralldom of all and pitifully asked, "Must I uncover my breasts. You're not going to whip my breasts, are you? My back is bare, you can whip it all you want without taking off my bra."
"Take it off" It was one more male demand she could not ignore. Exposed as she had now been for several minutes, her loins and pubic patch freely delivered to watching male eyes, what point was there in quibbling now! In the manner of a person about to be tossed into a snake pit, she reached for the fastening of the cups which shielded the gorgeous curvatures of her breasts. Willow shed the scanty bits of nothing to fall atop her other coverings on the floor. Brian Aiken clapped his hands, "Bravo! There was a moment or two there when I didn't think you'd make it, when I thought I'd have to strip you by force."
"If I could kill you, I think I would."
Brian Aiken laughed, "And spend the rest of your life peering through iron bars, Miss Blake? You've got more sense. My whip and my cock are a mere trifle by comparison."
"Yes, I understand." Willow's tone was dull and lifeless. Had it not been for Cherish bound upon the bed she would have longed to die. They assessed each other, Willow without hope and Brian Aiken in jubilation and pleased surprise at the beauty now revealed. The girl bound naked on the bed surveyed the strange scene without enthusiasm. Cherish knew what awaited her mistress. She thought of it with mixed feelings, remembering her own rape and her own response. She was still thoroughly ashamed. In a wave of anger Willow took the role of wanton. She cupped her breasts while steadfastly gazing into the eyes of the man who held her in his power. She played with her own nipples. Then her hands went lower to her pubic hair and as she searched therein she said, "I hope you're satisfied, here is all of me. I am naked, I can give you nothing more. Whatever happens now will be anticlimax, even this business of the whip."
The naked Cherish was left alone upon the bed. She struggled in futile anger and frustration as her mistress was led from the room to a fate of which she was not quite sure. Cherish believed Willow would be whipped, believed also she would be raped. Cherish could not gage the effect of these atrocities upon the girl she adored above all else. But she was helpless. After a while her struggles faded and she accepted her immobility as an inevitable fact. She listened hard but heard no sound.
As she was led to her martyrdom, the payment of Aiken's price, Willow thought of all the other situations she had read about, "Walking the last mile," or perhaps "the path to Tyburn Hill." There were others such as "Quo Vadis," and then also, "the Traitor's Gate and it's leading to the block and the man who held the ax." This was fanciful stuff. Willow felt ashamed. But never had a girl more surely gone to the deliverance of her virginity than she did now. That it must accompany a prelude of pain was nothing more than a tribute to man's egocentric need to dominate and to possess the female who's breasts and pubic hair had been designed for his delight. What she would endure now was Aiken's reaching out for the ineffable and the unattainable, the forbidden! She could have turned and run but it did not occur to her to do so.
It was a room like other rooms, without furniture, completely bare. From its ceiling dangled a rope. Willow knew its purpose and allowed her wrists to be crossed and tightly bound. She supposed she was paying a price and should not consider flight or resistance. When she had walked across the fields to deliver herself, she had already made the decision to evoke neither. When her tethered wrists rose up before her eyes and then her arms, she stood in desolate acceptance of feminine fate. She knew other girls had suffered in the past. Bitterly, she understood herself as a tribute to male ego. When the whip sliced her flesh the male organ would rise in jubilation, later to expend itself within her sheath. She wondered if she would become pregnant and bare the child of this man so preoccupied with the whipping of her nudity. She closed her eyes.
"Sure you're not looking forward to this?" Aiken, for once, sounded sincere.
"Please don't make fun of me. Get on with what you think you have to do."
The sear and scald of the first stroke changed Willow's life. She had dealt with pain only in the abstract and then only in very small inflections upon the skin of her beloved. This was agony in earnest. This was the male intention to make her scream, to beg, to plead for surcease. Willow clenched her teeth, trying hard to give no evidence of her disquiet. She knew she was now dealing with a new dimension of something only glimpsed in the past. When the second stroke cut her from shoulder to shoulder, she scream in an utter loneliness of pain. Willow was shocked in disbelief of an agony beyond reckoning. She realized she had overestimated her capacity to bare pain, her concern had been overawed by the threatened rape which had driven the whipping to secondary importance. But as Brian Aiken's thong sliced her for the third time and lapped around her naked waist, she exclaimed brokenly, fighting back the screams, "I'm terribly sorry, Mr. Aiken, I hadn't dreamed it would be like this. I can't bare it, I simply can't bare it. Please forgive me."
Willow could sense his joy. Here was his plan coming into fruition. Here was the haughty damsel brought to her knees and made to plead! Cheerfully he said, "I will forgive you nothing, Miss Blake, why should I. What you get now is no more than a thousand other girls have had from time to time and, let me assure you, it is far less than you may expect to receive yourself on future occasions. I am being kind."
"I can't bare it. I'm sorry. Let me loose and we must talk about this."
"Miss Blake, don't be silly. You're behaving like a child. You're panting and your breasts are heaving as though you were confronted with some major horror instead of just a whipping. Come, come, don't make me ashamed for you."
Willow's voice became a moan. "I'm ashamed of myself. Don't you understand, don't you realize I'm surrendering, I'm telling you you've won your victory."
"In theory, yes, I agree. But you're forgetting that in actual practice you've had only three strokes with the whip there are many more to come. I won't tell you how many."
Willow drew a deep breath. She fought back panic. This must be the way a criminal felt when freshly sentenced, knowing there would be no escape and no reprieve, seeing only the bleakness of the years to come behind bars. That she believed this agony unbearable in no way influenced Brian Aiken's opposite opinion. She was a girl facing painful punishment without hope of mercy. She realized the bitter pain of her bound wrists, she had struggled more than she knew. In utter desolation she pleaded, "Please, please punish me some other way. Vent your spleen on me in a way I can bare."
" Ah... Miss Blake, would you prefer that I whip Cherish rather than you? I would allow you to watch."
"No... NO!" Willow was distraught. "Leave Cherish out of this, it's between you and me. Go ahead and whip me. I'll probably scream and most certainly loose consciousness from the pain, but go ahead if that's what you desire."
Tugging at tied wrists, Willow looked back over a bare shoulder to watch her tormentor measure his distance and once more swing back his arm. Swiftly she turned away and closed her eyes.
"Stop that!"
The two words impacted within the room like a pistol shot. Brian Aiken lowered his arm and turned with a swift, "What the hell!" Willow turned in swift hope to behold the irate flushed features of Mildred Ponsonby.
CHAPTER THREE - FRAGILE FREEDOM
The British spinster of indeterminate age was invincible. Miss Ponsonby pointed an accusing umbrella direct at Brian Aiken's chest. There can be little doubt that, had it been a gun, she would have pulled the trigger. Before the steely eyed displeasure of Miss Ponsonby's regard, the Male quailed, his arm lowered and the whip hung from nerveless fingers.
"How the devil did you get in here?" he demanded angrily.
"I walked in your back door, I had my suspicions. It appears I was not a moment too soon. Free that poor girl instantly."
"That poor girl is none of your business. Stop pointing that umbrella at me. You can leave by the same way you came."
"I will not leave without the two darling girls you have incarcerated. Where are they?"
"I'm here," Willow said with wan thankfulness. "Gee, Miss Ponsonby, am I glad to see you."
Brian Aiken's defeat may be ascribed to several factors. The unquestioned integrity of Miss Ponsonby's person, the threat of her still pointing umbrella, and the fact the still virile spinster had caught him in the wrong. A swift consideration of the facts told Brian he had not a leg to-stand on. Sort of imprisoning Miss Ponsonby along with the two younger women, there was nothing he could do.
Lamely he started to say, "Look, the damned girl's enjoying it!"
"No, I'm not! Don't you believe him. Miss Ponsonby!" Willow affirmed. "Please, oh please, let me loose. Let my arms down. I've had enough of this."
"You heard the girl, lei her down," Miss Ponsonby demanded. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, a grown man...!"
Willow had never been more grateful in her life. When her hands fell to the level of her waist and she ran swiftly to the woman with the umbrella and held them out for release, she exclaimed brokenly, "None of what he said is true. He threatened to whip Cherish terribly if I didn't give myself to him. He kidnapped Cherish, she's upstairs tied to a bed."
Miss Ponsonby eyed the bound maiden hands with disapproval, waving them away as through in distaste. "They may as well stay tied for the time being. Miss Blake. I'm ashamed of you for getting yourself into an absurd mess like this with such a man. I can not believe you had no other recourse."
"But I didn't! But I didn't!" Poor Willow was distraught.
"You could have come to me, you little idiot. I could have dealt with the matter properly. All a woman needs in such cases is a determination, a certainty she is in the right, and a good umbrella! I have all these, you had nothing to fear."
"I'm terribly sorry...." said Willow. She felt like a small child reprimanded before the Class. "I'm afraid I never thought of burdening you with my problems."
"Nonsense. I am indebted to you." The umbrella once more served to center on the male chest. "Mr. Aiken, I would now be obliged if you would lead us to the second woman you have so ill used."
"Are you sure you wouldn't like to untie my hands?" Willow asked hopefully.
"No. You can stay as you are, it will teach you a lesson. I'm going home with you and I'll teach you a few truths you appear to have overlooked."
Her heart beating high with thankfulness yet feeling strangely shamed, Willow followed her captor and rescuer upstairs to the waiting Cherish. She wished Miss Ponsonby had untied her hands and allowed her to dress, but supposed a girl could not have everything.
Events moved swiftly. Brian Aiken had evidently decided to put an end to hostilities for the moment and to give in to the beldame's ultimatum. Cherish's Joy as she was unbound knew no limits. "Oh, Miss Ponsonby, you've come to rescue us. Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!" Then, turning to her beloved Willow, "Oh, darling, did he... Did he...?"
"No, he didn't." Willow was able to tell the truth thankfully. "You are a disgusting man," Miss Ponsonby affirmed with certainty. "I am well aware of what you intended for these two unfortunately maidens. You are a lustful male creature who should be turned over to the police. You may be thankful for my mercy. Had you succeeded in your foul purpose of copulation, I would have hounded you into the ground. Come girls, we will leave this creature to his own devices, I will drive you home."
"I'm afraid I'll walk awful slowly, my feet are ironed," Cherish said apologetically.
"Free Cherish's feet instantly, you rogue."
"Sorry, lost the key." Brian Aiken had retained some of his usual sardonic humor.
"I'm sure you are lying," said Miss Ponsonby, failing completely to note that the leg irons were riveted, not locked, on. "But it does not matter. Cherish you can walk as far as the car. I'm sure. Take short steps. Here, I will hold your arm." The umbrella once more pointed, "Here you, walk in front of us. I don't trust you."
A strangely sorted quartet made its way to Miss Ponsonby's waiting car.
* * *
Mildred Ponsonby was in her element. She took possession of Questings like a benevolent invading force. She retained possession of the two naked girls as a matter of course, making no effort to untie Willow's hands or unlock Cherish's feet. She marshaled her semicaptives into their own living room and took an authoritative stand using her umbrella as a pointer.
"I shall not free either of you at this time. I am by no means certain you do not deserve punishment. Willow, turn around and let me see what that villain did to your back. Hmmmm... Yes." Miss Ponsonby's tone moderated. "I'm sure that must have hurt terribly."
"If you hadn't come when you did, he would have given me twenty or thirty strokes like that."
"The man is a cad, an absolute bounder. I'm sure he never went to one of the good schools, his family was a mere nothing." Miss Ponsonby sniffed. "And I take it that at the end of such an ordeal he proposed to inflect upon you that disgraceful male function, by which, in happier circumstances, a family is achieved." She sniffed again, even more disdainfully than before, "It is an impalement I have never sustained and I am only too thankful I have saved you from such a fate.
Cherish was on the verge of blurting out her own loss of maidenhood when she caught Willow's eye and thought better of it. It would be as well to kept this disaster to herself. It was all too easily misinterpreted. Miss Ponsonby had obviously leapt to the conclusion that being bound spread out upon the bed and with her feet chained she had still been awaiting such a fate instead of being in its aftermath. Cherish joined her gaze with Willow's in regard of their rescuer.
"What am I to do with you!" Miss Ponsonby demanded with relish.
"You can untie us?" Willow suggested hopefully, motioning with her still tied hands.
"And don't forget my feet are still chained," Cherish pointed out reasonably.
"I am well aware of your condition. You both appear to have forgotten your nakedness. I have two bound and naked females on my hands and cannot trust them to look after themselves. I am by no means sure a good thrashing, from the proper hand of course, might not teach you a lesson. You have been outrageously careless in protecting yourselves."
"I expect we have, Miss Ponsonby," Cherish admitted brightly. "If you would like to whip us a bit I'm sure neither Willow or I would mind."
"Speak for yourself!" Willow said irritably. "For my part I don't wish any more of the whip than I've had already. Please, Miss Ponsonby, untie my hands and we'll have tea. This whole thing will seem a lot better once we're dressed."
At the word "tea" Miss Ponsonby visibly brightened. To the British spinster, tea is a panacea for all ills. With ill grace she tugged at Aiken's knots upon Willow's wrists. A moment later the elder girl was free. No one bothered with Cherish, it appeared she did not matter.
When Willow had hastily dressed and prepared the steaming brew, the three of them assembled in the lounge with a fresh sense of normalcy. Miss Ponsonby accepted her cup and saucer with an air of reverence.
"You must have deadbolts installed in all doors and electric burglar alarms on each window."
"Yes, Miss Ponsonby."
"I do approve of keeping young Cherish properly naked and chained. But you should never expose her to hazards beyond these walls."
"No, Miss Ponsonby."
"Have you a gun, a pistol?"
"No, Miss Ponsonby."
"Get one." Miss Ponsonby pursed thin lips. "You don't have to kill him, just wing him in the shoulder or in some male portion of his anatomy," Miss Ponsonby conceded graciously. "I shall stay with you the remainder of today and through tonight."
"Yes, Miss Ponsonby."
"Ah, yes, thank you, another cup. You brew an excellent cup of tea, my dear." Miss Ponsonby sipped appreciatively. "There is, however, a matter which concerns me. You have behaved thoughtlessly and without care. I feel some punishment is called for. Some disgrace or discomfort which will mark in your mind a memory of this failure and a determination never to repeat. Do you agree?"
From another woman this suggestion would have be outrageous, but from this virgin spinster it seemed normal.
"I can't think of anything but to be whipped," Willow said disconcertedly, "and I've had enough of being whipped."
"I'm sure you have. But there must be something. What would you inflect upon Cherish if she had been as remiss as you?"
Cherish came instantly to the rescue, "She'd take my clothes off, tie my hands behind my back, and lock in the dark closet for the night.
It isn't very nice, but if I've been bad "
"Sounds a bit juvenile," Miss Ponsonby said. "But I suppose, in the dark, and for all night...." Willow kept silent. If she could appease and at the same time show her gratitude to this militant female, she would gladly endure the discomfort of the closet and bound hands. She shot Cherish a swift look of gratitude for diverting their guest from the more sinister enjoyments the two of them had often used. She could well imagine the horse or the tiny cage as having an appeal to this woman to whom they owed so much.
"Very well then," Miss Ponsonby sounded cheated. "I will be satisfied with this modest imposition. As for Cherish, she deserves nothing. Responsibility lies entirely with you, Miss Blake, you will bare its cost." Miss Ponsonby sighed happily. "And now, if you don't mind, another cup of tea...?"
For a sixteen year old girl, naked and leg-ironed, it is not easy task to act as hostess to a mature and acerbic spinster, but Cherish did her best. She maintained a discrete but tearful silence throughout out the ceremony of her beloved Willow being placed in punishment. The three of them had stood before the closet until Willow had looked from one to the other of them, as though seeking advice, but then slowly and with obvious distaste disrobed in front of Miss Ponsonby's eagle eye until she was stark naked. Willow shrugged, she turned her back to the waiting woman, she crossed her wrists and stood quietly while strong fingers bound the cord tight about them in implacable certainty of there being no release. Miss Ponsonby had then kissed Willow gently upon the forehead, patted her bottom and gently propelled her through the open door. She then closed the wooden panel and locked it with a firm, loud click and pocketed the key, eyeing Cherish disapprovingly as though daring her to interfere.
The woman and the girl had gone away, leaving the condemned maiden to stand or dispose herself in the darkness as she pleased. One thing was certain, Willow would have plenty of time in which to contemplate her alleged deficiencies.
Cherish dried her eyes with inadequate fingers and clicked her shackled way with Miss Ponsonby's firm grip upon her arm. Once more in the living room, Cherish asked, uncertainly, "Is there anything you'd like to do to me, Miss Ponsonby?"
"You are thinking of punishment, dear child?"
"Well... Yes, I suppose I was."
"You are feeling sorry for your mistress and wish to shared her shame?"
"Yes, I suppose that's it."
"I find you without guilt. You will suffer no punishment." Miss Ponsonby's voice had become more kind, her tone more gentle. "You are feeling sorry for your mistress, I can tell, I can understand your wish to share whatever she must suffer."
"Yes, I suppose I'm just a silly girl." Cherish gazed up appealingly. "But I'm wondering what you and I can do for the rest of the day.
Would you like me to whip you?"
"That is an outrageous suggestion."
"Well, I only thought... I mean, I'm remembering that other time."
"Thank you, but I prefer a girl considerably older. You are far too young," Miss Ponsonby acknowledged stiffly.
"Well then, would you like to whip me... ? I mean, everybody seems to be whipping everybody or something. I only seems fair that I have something, too."
"You are a dear, sweet child. I will consider your suggestion, but at this moment, no."
"Well... I just I thought I should have something...?"
"You may service me at bedtime." said Miss Ponsonby with the air of suggesting the vacuuming of a rug. "I am sure you are highly trained."
They stared. Miss Ponsonby drinking in the youthful loveliness so totally in her power, and Cherish thinking sadly of her mistress bound and naked in the dark. She knew Willow would discover the night stretching endless...
"What I would enjoy now is a tour of the premises," Miss Ponsonby said with decision. "I will examine those areas requiring reinforcement and you can show me any little punishment places possibly overlooked on my previous visit. But at this moment get me a pair of handcuffs. I like you in handcuffs."
Cherish obeyed. She was a trifle disturbed about the tour but there was nothing she could do about it. She brought the handcuffs and asked, submissively, "Shall I hold my hands out or turn around and put them behind my back?"
"These are entirely for effect, dear. You may hold your hands out and I will clasp them on your wrists. You look absolutely charming when you're handcuffed. The French have a- word for it, it is 'douce' and that is the way you look when thus constrained." Miss Ponsonby clicked the handcuffs snug around each maiden wrist and stood back to admire the effect. "Excellent, excellent, you are an absolute darling and never more so beautiful as when ironed as you are now. Come along now."
Miss Ponsonby methodically made notes on locks and doors and windows. She was evidently determined no male should encroach upon this feminine heaven. Her interest then centered upon a room upon which she had previously been excluded. Cherish clinked doubtfully into the punishment room in a dutiful attendance. Miss Ponsonby sighed with pleasure. "I am unfamiliar with these things but I suspect this contraption is your simulation of the famous 'horse'?"
Cherish admitted it was indeed exactly that. Miss Ponsonby fingered, almost lovingly, the narrow surface designed for the punishment of a female crotch. "I'm am sure this is most painful to sit on."
Once more Cherish agreed, adding her hope that she would not be required to demonstrate. Miss Ponsonby turned her attention to the little cage which always seemed to Cherish to be inviting an occupant. It did so now.
"And this is for you too, dear girl?"
"Yes. It isn't much fun sitting inside there either."
"How absolutely darling!" Miss Ponsonby had almost become a girl again in her enthusiasm. "I do envy the two of you possessing all of these enjoyments. Darling, would you mind terribly spending a little while in this delightful cage for me?"
Cherish looked down at her chained hands and feet and knew it stupid to refuse. She was still grateful to this astounding spinster for deliverance from Brian Aiken and was happy to lend herself to her visitor's pleasure. She would have preferred a light whipping to any of the instruments in this room. It would have hurt less and been over more quickly and possessed less possibilities of prolonged inflection. But with good will she clicked her way to the waiting cage and showed her temporary mistress the mechanism by which she could be safely imprisoned therein. Strong female hands helping, Cherish was neatly inserted behind the bars and the door closed and locked securely. Miss Ponsonby now had a second key in her purse and two firmly imprisoned young females.
Cherish clutched the bars with her ironed hands and shifted for what comfort the cage allowed. She peer up and pleaded sweetly, "Please don't keep me in here too long."
"You will stay there as long as I please, young woman," Miss Ponsonby said with only a mock severity. "What I am curious about now is the quality of this thing called the horse. It is truly that bad?"
"It's awful."
Mildred Ponsonby was a remarkable woman. With only a moment of hesitation she swiftly divested herself of the garments which might shield her loins and approached the structure designed for the punishment of the female sex. Cherish watched in amazed admiration as Miss Ponsonby, with the aid of a box, mounted the waiting frame, throwing her leg astride, then easing her weight down, then kicking aside the box. Miss Ponsonby gasped in acknowledgment of pain.
"I see your point, my dear. This thing has great possibilities. My hands are free and I am thus adjusting and easing the suffering. But with a girl's hands tied behind her back, well... I'm certain the thing had infinite possibilities. I will speak to your mistress when she regains a state of grace."
Virgin eyes sought the captive in the cage and asked kindly, "Or would you care to demonstrate it for me, my dear? I'd be most grateful. "
"I'd rather not, Miss Ponsonby, if you don't mind."
"Very well. I will not impose. You are a child and not subject to the punishments due a mature girl or a woman like myself. I will get a chair and read a while here while watching your responses to your confinement."
"I'm not very interesting, Miss Ponsonby. I can't move enough to give you very much of a show."
"I'm receptive to every nuance, my dear, every sigh, every motion of the head, every clinking of those handcuffs on your wrist. I'm sure you'll do your best for me."
The darling child watched as her captor departed to obtain a chair. Cherish supposed things could be worse.
To Willow Blake her punishment and present condition seemed absurd. She had felt only embarrassment and a touch of shame as she had stripped and allowed herself to be tied and locked into this darkness. With the closing of the door she stood uncertainly and drew slight comfort from the narrow band of faint light beneath the bottom of the door. She suspected that glimmer from the outside world might save a girl from hysterics. It was the only comfort the small prison offered. She knew the closet well and had not reason to explore. Having stood long enough, she lowered herself to sit and rest her bound arms against the wall. It was a sad captive condition but as much comfort as she could contrive. Her mind was chaotic with the congestion of events and, without even trying to free her bound wrists or test the solidity of the door, she contented herself with considering her overall condition in the fresh light of Miss Ponsonby's intrusion of her world and Brian Aiken's avowed intention of making her prisoner. For a quiet English countryside it was all too bizarre.
The bound and naked girl now took a perverse pleasure in nibbing her weals against the wall or fingering them as best she could with bound hands. A man had placed them on her skin, a man who had, briefly, owned her totally with the avowed intention of rape as the grand finale of a terrible punishment. She was curious about this punishment. True, it had been cut short but this had left her inconsistently unsatisfied. She had in no way wanted the punishment but now felt a compulsive curiosity as to how she would have stood up to it. Girls had been whipped and survived, she supposed she would have been one more on an endless list. Yet, while it was happening to her, she had believed it could lead only to some disaster that could only end with her death or some permanent injury, or be reduced to a groveling idiot. That she underrated herself in these matter did not matter, she could only feel as she had while it was happening to her.
Willow supposed she would follow Miss Ponsonby's advice and turn Questings into as much a fortress as money could buy. She was sure Brain Aiken would not take his defeat laying down. He would return to battle. Thought of him roving the parameter of her home sent a strange thrill, not merely of apprehension, through her being. Brian Aiken was the predator and she the prey. It was a strange and heart- fluttering thought.
She was still a virgin. But the darling girl who was her slave was no longer intact, Cherish had been pierced, impaled, violated. But, strangely, had survived the ordeal with her usual cheerfulness. But rape can not be repaired. Forever now there would be between she and the younger girl the knowledge of Cherish's enlarged knowledge of The Male. Willow decided to ask no questions, they would label her as naive. She would allow Cherish to speak of her piercing as she wished and if she did not wish, then so what! But nothing was going to be quite the same. Brian Aiken had reduced both Cherish and herself to a common level, he had made them both captive, and each one of them would have served him equally. The difference in their ages mattered to him not at all, they were both girls and delightfully naked beneath his hands. Willow wondered unhappily if her authority over Cherish was now diminished. Cherish had seen her naked and bound and marked by a whip, it was hard to believe they could reestablish their previous relationship precisely as it had been.
Willow sighed and amused herself for a few minutes by testing Miss Ponsonby's skill with cord. She was not surprised to find herself completely helpless, the knots were firm and the strictures deep within her wrists so she could only hurt herself by struggling. She reviewed within her mind a question she could no longer ignore. How did she truly feel about men? Did she hunger for a man? Did she have the need of a man's phallus piercing her sex? These were questions she had long been aware of but consistently ignored, her present condition thrust them hard at her now.
Willow was well aware that Cherish in these same circumstances, even though tearful, would enjoy an erotic arousal. Her pussy would be wet and her eyes vividly alive. Willow wondered about herself but with hands bound tight behind her back she could not test other than to ask herself honestly how she did feel about Miss Ponsonby's hands upon her flesh and this imprisonment to which she had given in only to be polite or to show a gratitude for rescue. She could concede sensuality and a touch of amusement. No doubt the imprisonment would eventually become a bore unless she could sleep it away, but this she doubted. Willow knew that had she been vouchsafed hands she would play with herself to help pass the time, but she was totally robbed of all possibilities of friction. She contented herself with the understanding that under Miss Ponsonby's firm hand the punishment was definitely bearable. But had it been imposed upon her by Brian Aiken she would have hated every moment and would probably have been struggling furiously, although uselessly, to shed her bonds.
Despite her seniority over Cherish, Willow was willing to concede a degree of naivete in things sexual. She had contrived with her adored child to create a halcyon paradise purely female, never experimenting beyond the boundaries of Questings or the village. Brian Aiken had been every bit as much a shock to her as he had been to the younger girl. Grudgingly Willow conceded envy for Cherish's rape. At least Cherish now knew what it was like and could adjust her thoughts and mind and life accordingly. If only Brian Aiken had had the sense to rape her first and whip her later, it might have happen!
Willow now allowed her thoughts to toy with an amusing fantasy. Miss Ponsonby owned her now and had her safely captive in a dark closet with bound hands and a total absence of covering. She had Cherish even more securely in her power. The darling child's feet were firmly ironed and goodness knows what the two of them were getting up to while she sat alone in the dark! Willow could not stop herself from considering the possibility that this condition might lengthen. There females! If two had been good, why then should three not be better! Mildred Ponsonby could very easily keep her captive. There was no compulsion to release her when this punishment was done. Cherish was captive anyway and all Mildred needed to do was to inform her of an intend and make it real with handcuffs and leg irons and whatever else she chose. Mildred Ponsonby might well be ridiculous from many points of view but, without her clothes, she was distinctly female and exerted upon others of her sex the auras with which the female bombards the female. Just suppose... !
It was at this "just suppose.." point in her musings that Miss Willow Blake became vividly aware of being bound naked in a dark closet. It was as though previously she had been intoxicated by a euphoria of femininity. Now, in one more futile revolt against bonds, she fought and struggled and twisted, but to no avail. She considered crying out and asking for release but this would lower her in Cherish's estimation. She saw little choice but to sit out her punishment in the dark. Resignedly she lay over on her side, arranged her hands and arms as best she could, and went to sleep.
* * *
It was with relief the two girls watched Miss Mildred Ponsonby's car vanish down the drive way. Cherish summed it up, "I suppose we have to be terribly grateful to her but she really is a silly old trout and she kept me in that rotten little cage ever so long and she kept you in that cupboard far longer than she needed to this morning. I got up early and wanted to let you loose but she wouldn't let me. She suggested to me that you needed a lesson." Cherish sniffed indignantly. "She and her old lessons, according to her everybody needs to be taught a lesson. I wish she would teach that Aiken chap a couple." She giggled, "I bet if Brian Aiken had her along, he'd teach her a thing or two."
Willow closed and locked the door. They would never know real security again but could only do their best. She led her darling child to the lounge and relapsed happily into the softness of the sofa. Cherish knelt submissively at her side, she was still handcuffed and still leg-ironed, it seemed most natural. Neither girl thought of release for her. After a long period of wonderful but silent communion. Willow laughed, "I've got a terrible feeling, darling, either you or I ought to be punished. I'm not sure which or even if it should be both of us. I can't get rid of the feeling of being a naughty girl."
"Don't be silly, mistress," Cherish chided. "It wasn't anybody's fault except that so and so of a man, he did it to us both. You don't have to pay attention to Miss Ponsonby."
"Yes, I do. Part of what she said was true, I should never have exposed your out there tied to that tree. It was asking for trouble." Willow paused for thought and then burst out, "Darling, I've never asked this of you before, but I ask it now. Please whip me."
"No I won't do such a thing, you're being silly. Besides, whipping a girl hurts terribly, you wouldn't like it."
"But, Cherish, darling, I'm not suppose to like it, isn't that the purpose of being whipped?"
"Well... I suppose so. The way you whip me is absolutely darling and I adore every stroke, but I'm different, I'm a slavegirl. I have to be punished regularly. You know that as well as I do."
Willow was silent in puzzlement. She could not understand this need she felt for corporal punishment. It had been the last thing she wanted yesterday, but today... ? Sensibly she realized what she truly wanted was Cherish and not the whip. The whip would simply be held by Cherish. But she sensed the with another woman holding the whip, the punishment might be more erotic. She was simply being selfish and deserved to be whip... There it was again, she always came back to it. Getting herself whipped by a female hand might prove more difficult that she anticipated. Cherish would not do it and even if Miss Ponsonby agreed it would spoil something between the two of them. It was Miss Ponsonby who was suppose to ask for her favorite term of "being thrashed." It was all very difficult.
"Would you sit me on the horse for an hour or two, Cherish?" she queried hopefully.
"No I won't. You're indulging some sort of masochistic feeling. Willow, I don't know what's got into you."
"Neither do I, darling. I feel I have to be punished. I do wish you'd do it and get it over with so we can get back to normal."
"Slavegirls do not whip their mistresses," Cherish pronounced severely. "If they did that then you'd have to punish me in return and there'd be no end to it. Don't be a silly mistress. Why don't you punish me, you'd feel better."
Willow realized it was only exasperation with herself that led to her taking Cherish to the punishment room and seating her upon the horse. The younger girl made no protest, realizing her mistresses need for some form of physical expression. Cherish stood docile to be locked from handcuffs, then put her arms behind her back for her wrists to be once more joined. Then came the problem of the riveted leg irons of Brian Aiken, she could not put her legs straight down the sides of the horse. But Willow solved that problem by simply cutting off the leg irons. It took a while and a great deal of work with a hacksaw, but the iron bands were removed from Cherish's slim ankles.
Willow was then helped astride the horse, each foot standing on a box placed on either side of the horse. Willow secured the ankles in leather cuffs, each of which had a rope attached. Cherish swallowed hard, fighting not to plead even as she felt the wooden triangle of the horse pressing lightly against her sex. When the boxes were taken away and the ropes pulled tight so that her legs were pulled away from the sides of the horse, there would be no way the naked girl could take her weight on anything except her tender, sensitive private parts. It would hurt terribly. While her hands were being checked behind her back and realizing her mistress' disturbed emotions, Cherish anxiously pleaded, "Dear, please promise you won't leave me here more than a hour. Maybe two?"
"You'll stay there as long as I decide," Willow said with as much severity as she could muster. Quickly she kicked aside the boxes and drew upon the tethering ropes to spread wide the helpless feet of her darling girl and to embed deep within Cherish's cunt the cruel edge from which she would suffer the pain and punishment for which the horse was famous. Cherish gasped and emitted a tiny moan but then kept silent, her eyes steadfastly fixed upon the ground to suffer as her mistress might decree. Without a backward glance the mistress strode angrily from the room and the pathetic scene.
But in the passage beyond conscious smote her heart and, with a cry of pure anguish, she turned and fled back to the straddled girl who's crotch bore a terrible punishment. Feverishly Willow's hands flew to their task and a minute later she eases her darling from her perch and gentle massaged the punished pussy with a loving hand. The two girls clung and kissed and clung again. Cherish understood and knew her mistress was aware. Slowly they sank to the floor and it was the mistress who now paid tribute to her slavegirl's engorged and swollen sex. The room soon filled with moans, but they were the moans of ecstasy.
Much later, back in the lounge, the slavegirl seated her mistress upon the couch and, still totally free of bonds, fled to the bar and mixed two drinks, offering one to her mistress and shyly sipping the other as she knelt in proper humility at her mistress' feet.
"Brian Aiken taught me about these," she explained. "They're nice, aren't they."
It could never be the same. Willow defiantly reassured the fact in the silence of her thoughts. Brian Aiken has set his mark upon them both. She had always separated Cherish from alcohol, but the here the girl was enjoying a cocktail with obvious zest. She could punish Cherish but that would not be fair. Stubbornly, and reverting to a previous theme, she demanded, "Cherish, darling, I still want you to whip me."
Cherish did not answer. She went away and returned with leg irons and handcuffs, giving them to the girl upon the couch as she demanded, "Put them on me. We'll both feel better if I'm chained."
Willow obeyed, she snapped the leg irons firmly on the trim young ankles but set the handcuffs aside. "You'll need your hands," she said with decision. "I won't handcuff you until after you've whipped me, that will be time enough. Now let's enjoy these drinks."
Of the two girls, Cherish was least affected by their contact with the Male. In theory she had lost the most but neither felt or showed awareness of the fact. Sitting at Willow's feet she was the same Cherish she had always been. Shrewdly she recognized her darling Willow's deeper involvement. Cherish supposed the three cruel cuts of the whip across the virgin back had affected Willow more drastically than supposed, but there was also the difference in age. Perhaps when a girl got over twenty her feelings towards the male were different from those Cherish managed to pass off with a laugh, and it was understandable Willow would feel a responsibility about the whole affair which Cherish did not share. In this matter of whipping her mistress. Cherish had already refused once and was now confronted for the second time. No doubt Willow saw the punishment as a cleansing her of the male contact, taking her back to normalcy in the same way the irons upon Cherish's ankles did for her. Cherish looked down upon her chained feet and drew from them a strange comfort.
The whipping of Miss Willow Blake by her slavegirl was something they would both long remember. It broke a pattern, opening up fresh vistas of their relationship. Although both hated the admission, they could not deny it had come about from association with the male. Had it not been for Brian Aiken, neither girl would have dreamed of such an act.
Cherish went about her task with ritual solemnness, doing everything as slowly as possible with the hope of Willow's changing her mind. Willow, herself, had become inert, simply allowing herself to be led and pushed and postured as her darling desired. She even allowed Cherish to remove her clothes in preparation for the whipping of her flesh. There was no need for Cherish to perform this service but it seemed in some way proper. When she was naked, Cherish led her to where her arms could be raised well apart and her wrists strapped tight in the age old posture of the whipping of the girl.
"You're not going to like this, darling," Cherish said soberly. "Are you sure you wouldn't like me to undo those buckles? I will if you ask."
"Whip me."
Cherish was awed, sensing the unexpected. Willow's eyelids lowered and she had obviously entered some sensory realm divorced from the world, but Cherish exclaimed, "But darling, you're trembling and you're panting...." Cherish's voiced was anxious.
The voice of the mistress was calm, even containing a hint of amusement, "So would you be darling if you were on the verge of being whipped."
It was on the tongue of the slave to tell her mistress that she could not possibly whip her hard or be too cruel. But Cherish kept silent. Willow was fighting some battle of her own and perhaps, to her, this business of being whipped upon her bare skin by her own slavegirl must hold some purpose. Cherish said no more but, reluctantly, made her choice and selected the lightest of the wicked thongs available, it was one by which her own flesh had been marked often and she knew its limits. She struck the first blow squarely across her mistress' naked back.
Willow did not move, she did not speak, she gasped in a small moan, hands clenching tight against the straps, but that was all. She stood a naked, helpless figure of exquisite loveliness ready to be marked again. Cherish looked at the thin, slowly forming line of white and pink and red responding to her slash. Below it were the marks of Brian Aiken's whip still heavily distinct upon the otherwise unblemished skin.
"Darling, didn't that hurt?" Cherish asked in dismay.
"Don't talk. Whip me."
It was as though Willow was in the grip of a strange trance, her voice a monotone without expression.
Cherish discarded the challenge to strike harder. It would be too obvious an effort to break a will. Instead she carefully governed the swift swing of her bare arm to plant the second stroke an inch below the first and with exactly the same force. Once more the same almost imperceptible tensing, the gasp and then the slow coloration of the wound. From somewhere Willow was finding a fortitude Cherish found hard to believe. True, the slavegirl was not striking her mistress with great force, but now, under a suddenly vivid curiosity. Cherish did something unforgivable, she drew back her arm as far as possible and cut with one swift and terrible stroke a grove across the naked back of her beloved.
The results was shocking. Willow tensed in pure shock. The wound sprang into instant vivid live, causing the flesh to swell in a ridge of flame. The helpless nudity now soundlessly struggled in a paroxysm of agony as it had not done before. The straps around the slender wrists creaked in protest as Willow fought the pain, but Willow made not sound nor spoke a word. Overwhelmed by the enormity of her act, Cherish flung aside the whip and clasped her mistress in an embrace of anguish, clamping her lips upon the dry, parched mouth of the whipped girl and thrust her breasts hard against the familiar breasts of she who had no hands. Cherish was sobbing, "Forgive me, oh darling, forgive me! I don't know why I did that, I just don't know."
There were no more words, only a fervent kissing and the clasp of two young arms and eager youthful upon the flesh of the whipped girl. Slowly the lips of Cherish sank down to the softness of Willow's throat and then below to the pink rosebuds of the breasts, then on and on until Cherish knelt before the legs which opened to receive her. The young mouth sought its familiar feeding place with a fresh eagerness and a hunger of repentance. The room, for a long while, contained nothing the but scene of the girls, one strapped helplessly, the other embracing the captive legs and thrusting her face hard within the pubic patch of the girl she called her mistress. When it was over Cherish continued to hold the pose and to nestle her head within the hot, wet thighs. It was a long while before the reluctantly rose and once more kissed the waiting mouth. By this time both girls had returned to something approaching normalcy.
"You haven't told me to unstrap you darling?" Cherish pointed out, puzzled.
"Of course, not. You haven't finished whipping me."
"Yes, I have!" Cherish was vehement. "I ought to be whipped myself for ever allowing that silly impulse to run away with me. I'm not going to whip you any more and that's flat."
"You liked it, didn't you? I bet you're as wet as I am."
"Yes I did and I'm ashamed of myself. Oh, Willow!"
"You've made amends, I've never been more wonderfully nibbled."
"I hope this whipping business got the whole idea out of your system, mistress."
"Well... sort of. How badly did that marvelous stroke mark me?" Cherish looked and gasped, "Oh, mistress, its glorious but its almost frightening. It's going to be ages before it heals and goes away."
"Because it's from you. Cherish, it can stay there forever for all I care. Don't you ever feel guilty, I asked for it."
Their emotional storms appeased. Cherish returned to her normal exuberance. She pinched each of Willow's nipples with mischievous tenderness and suggested slyly, "Why don't I leave you like this? There's no reason for me to undo those straps."
She considered for a moment before adding, "Darling, I've got you, haven't I! I could keep you forever. I could reverse our roles?"
"You could, you little bundle of mischief, but you won't. You'll see." Cherish pouted. "You underrate me, darling. Are you sure I wouldn't make a lovely mistress? I promise I'll only whip you once a week. But I'll have to keep you properly chained, how it be if I go and get the key for these leg irons you've got on me and put them on you? I can then easily handcuff your hands when I free your wrists from the straps." The slavegirl's voice was persuasive.
"Go ahead, I don't mind. Treat me as a Barbie doll you can do anything with you like." Willow's voice had regained its vibrancy, the ordeal of pain had done its work, her laugh had become a joyous, "Go ahead, you little imp. I'll bet you'll make a rotten mistress." Cherish stuck out her tongue but was as good as her word. She clanked and clinked her way from the room but soon returned, her feet completely free, the shining leg irons dangling from one hand. With an air of tremendous superiority she clicked shut the metal circlets around her mistress' ankles, the shining chrome still warm from her own flesh.
Willow looked down and thrust one foot forward to admire its bond. "Do you realize, darling. I've never been chained or constrained in any way, it's always been me doing it to you."
"Well, now you can look forward to a real bad time." Cherish grimaced and teased captive nipples. "I'll never whip you again, I hate whipping you. But you are going to be the most chained up girl that ever was. I promise."
"Enjoy your freedom, dear. It won't last. Gosh, it's strange to see you waltzing around without a single rope or chain or anything." Willow giggled as at some private thought. "But never mind, I bet I'll have you safely in irons before we go to bed."
They were suddenly immensely happy, Brian Aiken forgotten, totally engrossed in their new and delicious game.
"Well, now you've got me, what are you going to do with me?" Willow taunted teasingly.
Cherish considered. She was suddenly aware of a tremendous weight of responsibility upon her shoulders. "I think I ought to dress," she said suddenly, "mistresses don't go around naked, do they. I ought to wear something."
She got no help from Willow. The newly captive girl smiled a sly female smile and suggested, "You'll hate wearing clothes, darling, you're a slave."
Cherish dressed, but then discovered the truth of Willow's statement. The garments felt burdensome, she could not imagine playing games while so encumbered. She took them off and returned them to their resting place, well aware she would have to bare the jibs and taunts of her new captive. Momentarily she considered gagging Willow but that would rob their roles of half the fun. Speech was essential to their relationship. Forthrightly she returned to the fray.
The collar was exquisite on the slender neck. Cherish saw it as a work of art. It was her first true infliction on the girl she now possessed, something they had long owned and used only on herself. She clasped it snug and snapped the lock around Willow's throat with immense relish. From it a sliver chain looped down upon the rug. The slavegirl would not admit to an accelerated pulse as she unstrapped the captive wrists, it would now be so easy for Willow to fight. It was quite possible that, even with ironed feet, she could get the best of her former slave. But she had no need of fear. Once again Willow became extraordinarily meek and passive under the young hands. It was as if she had gone into the same trance under which she had found protection while being whipped. She laughed, "You're scared I'm going to fight, aren't you darling? Well, don't worry, we might as well see this thing through since we've started it."
With a greater decision than she felt, Cherish possessed herself of the bare and captive arms hanging so limply and passive and clasped the metal cuffs around the willing wrists. Willow was not helpless indeed, far more so than was her want than with Cherish. Willow stuck out a mocking tongue, "You're scared of me, aren't you, puss? You're afraid I'll get the best of you. Well you don't have to be scared now, you've really got the best of me. I'm helpless. But remember, darling, from now on every chance I get to escape, I'll take it."
The chained tether felt good in Cherish's small hand. She tugged it joyfully as if in the reigning of a horse. Willow followed without demure, a small, quiet smile upon her lips, her feet unaccustomed to the joining links, making short and careful hobbled steps to go where she was led. Their destination was the lounge, there Willow was told to knell where Cherish usually knelt, before the seat occupied by the mistress.
"I'd mix drinks, darling, but I know you disapprove and I won't take unfair advantage," Cherish assured her prisoner. "But I think it would be nice to have something to sip while I admire you there on the rug so I think I'll go and make coffee. Be sure to stay right there on the rug. If you move I'll have to punish you." She disappeared gaily towards the kitchen.
Cherish had no sooner departed than Willow did the obvious, she swiftly got to her feet and clinked her way to where she could back against a draw and, fumbling therein, retrieve the keys she had so prudently cached. Within two minutes she was free. She sat the leg irons and the handcuffs back in the draw along with the hidden keys then tripped lightly to her familiar seat to await Cherish's return and the coffee she would bring. Willow was enjoying the escapade hugely.
When Cherish returned with the cups and handed her mistress the steaming cup, taking the other for herself and knelling in her accustomed place and pose, it was not until the brew was half way to her lips that she realized something amiss. It was a tribute to her enslavement that it had taken that long to permeate her conscious. The cup stopped half way and she exclaimed stupidly, "You're free!"
"Of course, darling, what else would you expect, I'm a mistress." Willow's voice was honeyed and sweet.
"But I had you all chained up...."
"You did, didn't you. But you forgot I'm a mistress and a mistress has more than one set of keys. Let this be a lesson to you."
The kneeling slavegirl gulped coffee as if in need of a stimulant. Her thoughts were racing but she must never let Willow see the relief she was feeling at this moment. Throughout her time in the kitchen she had been wondering what to do with so much beautiful nakedness totally dependent upon her as Willow had seemed to be. Willow never seemed worried or concerned about what to do with a chained Cherish. But with the roles reversed, Cherish found herself hard put to decide what to do with such a great quantity of girl. Defensively she accused, "That's not a bit fair. I think you cheated."
"I gave you warning, darling."
"Yes, but who ever would have thought...." Cherish gulped more coffee and cocked an inquiring eyebrow, "Will you whip me now?"
"Of course, darling. I'm sure you'll agree your insubordination has earned at least a good whipping."
Cherish's whole being flooded with relief and gratitude. Here was her mistress back, the old and familiar and all too beautiful one. But she must not be to quick to give up without at least a token resistance. "You're forgetting, Willow, I'm a free girl, I'll run away."
"Go ahead, darling. I'll still be here when you come back."
"Oh, all right. So you know I'll not run away. And you're quite right, I won't. But I feel cheated. It was such fun owning you."
"You silly child, you would soon have been bored stiff with me. You would not have known what to do with yourself or what to do to keep me in subjection. Make yourself useful, go to the draw over there and get your leg irons. Leave the keys alone."
Cherish obeyed. Her feet once more secured leg-ironed and feeling back to normal, she asked, "Why not the handcuffs?"
"You forget, darling, you have to be whipped. I shall fasten you the same way you fastened me. It's much the nicest way to fix a girl to be whipped, you know."
The old, familiar excitation repossessed them both as Cherish was led to her punishment. She made no more demur than Willow. With arms stretched high and wrists safely strapped, Cherished exclaimed, "Go ahead, whip me, beat me, make me cry." She sniffed pointedly and added, "I still think I've been cheated."
This whipping of Cherish was within their Code. Willow had not started with the intent of severity, but when, after the third stroke, Cherish muttered, "I'm not a baby, I don't have to be treated like one," Willow found herself under the same compulsion to excess as had Cherish. Without conscious decision to do so, her whip swung in a full circle to cut cruelly across the teenage back the most terrible whip mark Cherish had ever suffered. Willow stood aghast at what she had done, hardly believing her eyes as they beheld the cruel and beautiful wound deepening its brand across her darling's back. Anguished in guilt, she dropped the whip and clasp her arms around the strung up girl to press her naked flesh against the swelling wound and then to stoop and kiss it gently. Circling the weeping Cherish she felt between her captive's legs and discovered what she sought. As though driven by an urgent need, she freed her slave from the straps, handcuffed the young wrists in front, and used them as a leash to drag the tear-stained slavegirl to their bed. Taking turns, they frictioned their wounded backs against covers far into the night. Man was forgotten, Brian Aiken faded into the mists of unconcern. The two girls had never been more happy.
"I have kept an eye on him, he's up to no good."
Miss Ponsonby sipped gently before replacing her cup. "I don't know whether you realize it or not, but he's watching this place. Brian Aiken sees Questing as his prey and you along with it. I'm thankful for the extra locks and the wiring of the windows. Take no chances." Cherish's mastery of her leg irons was never better demonstrated than when serving tea, it was so now. Having served her mistress and their guest, she helped herself to a cup and knelt in obedience to their will. Miss Ponsonby eyed her with approval.
The news was disquieting. Willow accepted it and was grateful for the spinster's concern. "You don't mean he actually comes and tries to get into this house?" she asked anxiously. "We've never seen or heard of him since that awful day. Cherish and I are trying to forget him."
"You must never make that mistake, my dear." Miss Ponsonby's declaration held an air of female triumph. "Remember he is a man and men are capable of anything, especially him. Should he approach close enough to be seen from the windows, you should call the police."
"But he couldn't possibly kidnap us again...?"
"Indeed he could!" Miss Ponsonby affirmed with conviction. "You are only little more than a girl and you keep Cherish properly chained, which indeed you should considering her status. Once inside this house that horrible man could get the best of both of you with ease. Believe me I do know men!"
It was in Willow's mind to inquire where Miss Ponsonby had acquired this knowledge of the opposite sex but she thought it wiser to keep quiet. Instead she said, "Very well then. We'll keep our eye open. I don't understand why the man doesn't take a trip to the city to vent his lust upon the numerous women there, many of whom would be glad for his attention in exchange for a small sum of money."
"Men are ridiculous, my dear. They get fixations upon us females and can't rid their minds of it until they have performed the carnal act which I'm sure they see as conquest, but which, in reality, is nothing more than relief of their glands."
"I expect you're right," Willow said as she poured Miss Ponsonby's second cup of tea. "I've never been with a man so I don't know much about it." She laughed awkwardly. "I came very close to it that day you rescued us. I'll be forever grateful."
Miss Ponsonby accepted her cup. But she was in full cry and in excellent form. "Men are beasts, my dear. It is a mistake to regard them otherwise. It is humiliating for us girls to realize our presence on this planet was make possible only by their cooperation, or should I say their carnal lust. I fear nature has erred somewhat in this situation. Men should be castrated at birth."
Cherish longed to giggle but felt it not the time. She had an absurd vision of Brian Aiken clutching the place where his genitals had been before severance. He looked both shocked and somewhat pained before her vision faded. Coyly she said, "I read somewhere that all a girl has to do is kick him in those things, you know the ones I mean."
"What's all very well," said Miss Ponsonby stiffly, "but how are you going to get him to stand still while you perform this act? No, the solution to this problem is to have nothing to do with them and, if they pester you, call the police."
Willow had come to like the woman. Mildred Ponsonby was one of those many spinsters the wars had condemned to single lives and an element of loneliness, their men had all been killed. True, she could not envision Miss Ponsonby jumping into bed with a member of the opposite sex, the idea was incongruous. But still... ? She suspected that, confronted with an eligible male, Miss Ponsonby would snap him up with speed and thankfulness. It was a pity Brian Aiken was far too young.
"I have a personal concern in this matter," Miss Ponsonby continued. "I have been advised of the demise of my brother in the United States. It appears he has left me a considerable sum of American Dollars and the custody of his only child, a girl of Cherish's age. I have been in touch with his lawyers and the girl herself and she will be arriving here shortly. I would appreciate any small kindness you can do her, I'm afraid I'm sterile company for a sixteen year old. I trust she can be cured of American dietary habits and of American discords which are universally mistaken for music."
Cherish perked. "A girl my age! Oh, wow, isn't that splendid! Will you keep her feet chained the way Willow does me, Miss Ponsonby?" The visiting spinster flushed. "I've been giving this matter some thought, young woman. Naturally I consider it the proper treatment of a girl that age. But I anticipate some resistance and have no wish to resort to force. It is my hope I can introduce her here and allow her to assimilate the delightful atmosphere the two of you have so innocently created."
Willow was amused. It would be a delightful diversion to cope with a teenager who, should she prove recalcitrant, could easily be send home. On the other hand, should she prove amiable... !
"Her name is Janet," Miss Ponsonby informed. "It is not a name I would have chosen, but we must live with what we are given."
"You're probably have to do what she'll call 'whip her ass,'" Cherish offered innocently. "From what I've read, most American girls need their asses whipped."
"Perhaps you may have read that sixteen years old nymphets should be seen and not heard," Miss Ponsonby retorted acidly. "Really, Miss Blake, I would have supposed you would have whipped this young girl sufficiently to instill a proper reverence for the rules of deportment."
"Cherish is only trying to help. Miss Ponsonby. Any aid we might give to your niece will probably come from Cherish, who is a excellent position to offer guidance with demonstration. You do approve of Cherish's enslavement?"
"Indeed I do! By the way, I noticed the little darling's back. You appear to have been unusually severe. It appears to bare a most graphic marking from a whip."
It was on Willow's tongue to tell of the wound she bore herself but she killed the impulse. Equably she said, "There are times when and unusual severity is called for. But you will notice there is only the mark of a single stroke. I deemed it sufficient for her sin."
"Ah, yes, quite so." Miss Ponsonby finished her third cup and returned it to the tray. "I was wondering, Miss Blake, if you might accommodate me this afternoon. I am all too conscious of an imposition on your tolerance, but I find myself in urgent need...." Willow's pulse raced. It was not with a longing to inflict pain but she freely admitted to herself the erotic of the swing, the impact, and then the rising coloration of the weal. She was also aware of an obligation. Unconcernedly she said, "By all means, this is something I understand, you have only to ask."
"Oh darling, are you going to whip Miss Ponsonby's bottom! May I watch?" Cherish exclaimed imprudently.
"I've have said before, little girls should be seen and not heard," Miss Ponsonby admonished, her face blushed.
"But I watched last time?"
"The circumstances were different." Miss Ponsonby turned to the amused Willow. "Would you mind, dear, I really do feel this is a private thing between ourselves?"
Sensing Cherish's disgust but unable to do anything about it, Willow took handcuffs and led her darling to the ring with which every wall in Questings was equipped. There she snapped one cuff upon an unwilling wrist and the other on the metal circlet designed for immobility. Her voice was gay, "We won't be long, darling. You won't mind standing for that little while, will you?"
Cherish minded! She had long ago discarded the stamping of a bare foot to demonstrate displeasure. She satisfied herself now with an pout and an irritable tugging at her linkage to the wall. She was soon alone to vent her displeasure upon the wall.
Willow supposed it must be familiarity which prompted the thought of Miss Ponsonby having gained some pleasing curves since their previous time together in the room where girls are whipped. With being asked, the spinster had gone methodically to work in the stripping of her clothes until she was naked. She emerged from the process far more presentable than Willow remembered. Perhaps she had been dieting, or exercising, or perhaps it was the feminine influence at work within her since their first adventure in the whipping of Miss Ponsonby's bare skin. Whatever it was, the contours of the spinster below her neck belied the severity of her features above. Miss Ponsonby offered her hands to be bound as a matter of course.
"You must not be kind, dear. I fear I am outrageously deserving of severity."
Willow was far from kind. The marks of the previous whipping had vanished from the ivory skin, but she soon replaced them with fresh weals of scarlet hue. It took no more than a few strokes to engender within Willow's breast and within her crotch a scorching exhilaration in her task. Her arms flashed, the whip sang its jubilant song and the impacts paid tribute to the skill with which they were applied. Mildred Ponsonby moaned and gasped, she twisted, but she did not scream. By the time the twenty strokes had been etched upon her flesh, Willow was excited to a point almost beyond bearing. When she freed the woman she had whipped, the two of them automatically sank to the floor to assuage their mutual concupiscence. They did not bother even with the palming of their sex, each knew its condition. When it was done they addressed in silence, but it was silence not of shame but of satiety.
"Thank you, dear. You are very, very kind." Miss Ponsonby's voice trembled with real sincerity. "I will not impose longer, but please remember my warnings. I do indeed hope to see you soon."
Cherish had only an ungracious greeting for her love. "I think you're mean. I've been cheated. It wouldn't have hurt either of you to have let me watch, you could easily have chained me down there the same as here." She rattled her handcuff to indicate her displeasure with the metal bond. "I've had to just stand here, bored to tears, while you've been enjoying yourself. I hope you gave the silly old trout a good beating."
Willow only smiled.
CHAPTER FOUR - LINKS OF CHAIN
The magic of Questings regained its potency. The Male had been routed and all was well within the feminine heaven created by a girl named Willow. Neither she or her slave considered the miracle by which Questings had come into its own, they were satisfied to enjoy it as it was. If the rest of the world saw them as unbelievable and incredible, so what!
It has been said that it is not the things we do but the things we fail to do that we later mourn. Willow found herself with an unsatisfied curiosity. A man had shamed her in nakedness and given her three terrible strokes upon her bare flesh with a whip, but that was all. It had been a fearful beginning to an ordeal about which Willow could only speculate. And the speculation remained to nag constantly at her feminine conscious. If Brian Aiken's purpose had been consummated, it would be easier now to banish him into the shadows, but as it was he remained an unknown quantity which Miss Ponsonby had brought vividly back to mind. Thoughts of Brian Aiken wandering the woods and keeping Questings under surveillance was at the same time disquieting and exciting. It was also flattering to the female part of her to know a man desired her to that degree. Inevitably this morbid curiosity led to an idea.
Cherish wasted no words. "Darling, you must be out of your mind. Remember what happened to me!"
"But this is not the same," Willow explained patiently. "I had you tied but what I want you to do with me is to padlock a chain around my tummy and then padlock it again around the tree. I'd be quite safe, he'd have to get a bulldozer to make me available."
"I think it's a nutty idea."
"But I want to talk to the man. Maybe I shouldn't but I want to. I want to see why he prowls around. I want to communicate. I'm not going to admit him to Questings and I'm damned if I'm going to visit him at his place. This makes a nice compromise."
Cherish sniffed disapprovingly. "Naked, I suppose?"
"I had thought about that but wouldn't it be far more plausible without clothes? If I'm fully clothed, I'm going to look a bit silly with a chain fastening me to the tree." Willow paused for thought before adding, "And anyway he's seen me naked, there's nothing I need hide from him." She grinned, "You know as well as I do how, after the first time, it doesn't seem so bad."
"I bet you want him to fuck you. Men can, you know, even with the girl standing up. I've read about it. Don't be disgusting. It sounds utterly impractical."
Cherish considered. It was unquestionably an exciting idea, disapproval faded into mischief. "But Willow darling, you might have to stand against that tree for hours and hours and he might not even come at all."
"Miss Ponsonby says he does it everyday at the same time." Willow's voice became persuasive, "If we take a run to the hardware right quick we can try it this afternoon."
"Sure we can. But what happens to me while you're chained up without any clothes on to a tree out in the woods. He'll know that I'm at home alone and come battering at the door. I'll be scared to death."
"Don't let him in. If he becomes a nuisance, call the police. The other thing you can do is hide in the woods where you can see me but he can't see you. That way you could keep an eye on things."
"With chained feet...?"
"You'd have to be free for the afternoon. Darling, is what I'm asking so terrible?"
Cherish shrugged, "Oh, all right. You'll never be satisfied unless I do and it would serve you right if he does manage to rape you standing up. You're being silly, I thought a mistress had more sense."
The scented solitude of an English wood is unique. It lends itself to the fanciful imagination of a naked and chained maiden awaiting deliverance. There are historical precedents. Willow was aware of them and hoped she conformed to the true precepts of romance. She had blushed steadily for the first thirty minutes when left alone and panicked to the point of striving to free herself, a hopeless task. But the serenity of dappled sunlight through the leaves and the joyous sound of birds allayed fear and embarrassment, she settled down to enjoy what might well be an exciting adventure without risk.
The chain was magnificent. It was far heavier then anything they had owned previously and the padlocks were formidable indeed. The links were heavy around Willow's slender middle and sufficiently snug to preclude any possibility of movement up and down. No male fingers would get her out of them. The same could be said of the chain circling the tree. Miss Willow Blake was firmly fixed to await conversation with Mr. Brian Aiken. The captive girl vanished from vision the disapproving features of Miss Mildred Ponsonby.
It was a strange captivity, Willow's feet were free, her hands and arms were free, only the encirclement of her waist made her prisoner, but the clutch of links upon her bare skin left her no delusions about escape. Cherish had done her work far too well. From time to time the enchained maiden exercised the freedoms still remaining. She kicked first one leg and then the other, she stretched her arms up high and wiggled her hands. She was by no means the professional prisoner that Cherish was but she had an awareness of these things and found pleasure in this small exercise. Willow assured herself she was simply finding out how the other half lived. That falsehood brought comfort and she dozed sleepily.
"Lovely! Truly exquisite!" The male exclamation brought Willow alert with a start. "Don't tell me you've been a naughty girl," Brian Aiken chided. "I suspect a ruse. You wouldn't, by any chance, be a bait in a trap?"
Aiken was standing ten feet distant and surveying her with his usual over-interested scrutiny. Willow blushed and was well aware of the creeping red of this reflection of shame and embarrassment. But she had asked for it, this was exactly what she sought. "There's not bait and no trap," she said sharply. "I simply knew you'd be along some time and I want to talk to you."
"Well, I'm honored. Talk away."
Willow found herself irritatingly speechless. Her whole awareness was taken up with her nudity, which she now found was a mistake. She was terribly aware of her blush and was now awkwardly seeking to dispose her hands in some manner not seeming too coy. To clasp her breasts or to seek to cover her pubic bush would be purely absurd. Instead, she cradled her cheeks in them and demanded, "What I want to know is why are you pestering Questings? Why do you keep us under surveillance?"
"I intend to kidnap you... Unfinished business, you know."
"No, I don't know!"
"A good thrashing and then a good fucking, in case you've forgotten. We had barely got started on the first when that old Ponsonby bat threw a wench in the works."
"I would have thought a grown man like you would have been ashamed of prowling."
"You're my first dividend," Brian admitted cheerfully. "But what a dividend! I presume you've arranged yourself for my pleasure. You do have the most marvelous breasts and pubic bush. I'm truly grateful. "
"No, I was not arranged for your pleasure. This is one safe way of getting to talk to you. What must I say or do to stop you from constantly spying on us?"
"Come over to my place and let me finish what we started. Simple!"
"You know I won't do that. Be sensible."
"You may surprise yourself, Miss Blake. Don't tell me you're not a little curious about what you missed."
Willow snorted indignantly. Aiken took the opportunity to examine the means why which she was fastened to the tree. He traced the chain around her middle and then around the trunk, examining the padlocks along the way. "Neat idea," he conceded. "You're what a bank would describe as well secured.'" He checked his watch. "I suppose you realize I could hop over to the village and be back with bolt cutters inside an hour -- have you loose in no time."
It was a possibility undreamed. In a panic Willow computed the possibility of Cherish freeing her in time. Her disquiet must have mirrored itself upon her features. Brian laughed, "I can see you haven't thought of it. But why would you, you're only a female? I can tie your hands, tether your neck, and then cut you away from that tree and lead you home. Just imagine dear little Cherish's shock."
"I refuse to discuss what you've just said," Willow said. "Please be sensible and tell me how I can stop your prowling."
"I've already told you. How would it be I wait for dear little Cherish to show up with the keys and then I take you along home with me? Take her along, too, if she wants to come."
"That's ridiculous, it like surrendering to win a war. If you continue to make a nuisance of yourself, I'll call the police."
"You know you won't. We both know you won't." Brian Aiken laughed easily at her disquiet. "I won't bother with cutting you loose today. It's an unsporting way to possess you. I mean you don't have a chance, do you? No, I much prefer you walking up to my house, knocking at the door and then asking me to finish whipping you and then to give you a good fucking."
"That will never happen, you're an animal, go away."
"It's a chance I'll take. You and your little sweetheart can think about it for a while. I've got lots of time, I've very much a gentleman of leisure. But I very much want to make repossessing you sporting event, this taking you here when you've been sort of chained as a piece of bait to catch my attention had no appeal. I'll keep watching and what you call 'prowling' and if I can pick up either one of you or both I'll do so. I would imagine this adds a bit of spice to your life, too!"
"Miss Ponsonby is right, you're a cad." Willow unconsciously tugged at her chain bond, her fingers clutching the metal links as though in dire need of freedom.
"I ought to pick up that old biddy along with you, but I'll play this cool, no sense over doing things."
"Couldn't you give me a sensible answer to a sensible question, Mr. Aiken?"
"Well, if you don't like my idea, we could alter it a bit. How about sending sweet, little Cherish to a terrible fate with me. I'm sure she'd come knocking at my door if you told her to. I'd want her naked and handcuffed, of course. Got to do these things right."
Relief was aiding Willow's composure. Brian Aiken had not touched her and it seemed unlikely he was going to seek the means of cutting her loose. His threats and promises might just be words. Safe within the comfort of her chain, she considered him seriously. It was useless to continually affect exclamations of indignation. Perhaps if she indicated some faint interest in his outrageous proposal, she might provoke him into a worthwhile statement of intent.
"I absolutely refuse to yield my body to rape," she told him calmly. "But if I had your word of honor that you would cease this predatory prowl, I might concede this erotic desire of yours to whip me. Not as cruelly as you did before but something within reason."
"My, my, we are growing up aren't we!" Brian affected a genuine tone of admiration. "Miss Willow Blake attains grown up status by accepting the lash. Jolly decent offer, I must say!"
Willow wished it a offer she had not made, her tongue had run away with her. She said, "I suppose your word of honor is worth something?"
"Indeed it is, none better. But I haven't given it, have I?" He laughed at her serious mien. "You females really are amazing. There's something else you've forgotten, you know. How would it be I cut myself a few switches from the willow bush over there and proceed to give you your thrashing right now. What could you do about it?" Tears brimmed Willow's eyes. They were tears of chagrin and anger at herself for failing to realize this possibility. She was cruelly and wickedly vulnerable. If Brian Aiken carried out his threat there was little her hands could do to protect her. They could cup her breasts, the rest of her frontal nudity was his for the taking.
Her voice was chocked by alarm, "You wouldn't do that to me! Surely you wouldn't whip my front, a girl's not suppose to be whipped on her front."
He laughed at her naivete, his voice now mocking, "Then where would you suggest, Miss Blake?"
Willow blushed anew and shifted uneasily within the chain. "Well, if we must talk about whipping me or any girl, she's suppose to be whipped on her back and bottom. Certainly not her breasts and belly or the front of her thighs. Really, Mr. Aiken, you're making me so ashamed...." Aiken did not bother to answer. Instead he strolled to the willow bush and cut a switch which he trimmed with his pocket knife as he returned. He then swished it back and forth through the air to test the cut and whine, and to chuckle at Willow's flinch. He held it up to view. "You find this of interest?"
"I find it horrible." Willow was already having trouble with instinctive emotions. Her hands had risen to her breasts but she forced them down and compelled her voice to an even tone. "If you use that thing on me as I am now, I'll never speak to you again. Mr. Aiken, please...!"
"Oh, and stop calling me Mr. Aiken. My name's Brian, call me that. I'll drop the Miss Blake and from now on you're Willow. If you wish to protect your breasts with your hands, I'll make not effort to stop you. I have no wish to mark up or damage such loveliness. The rest of your pretty person will serve my purpose very well."
So this was it, this was reality! Willow cursed her stupidity in making this scene possible. She had foreseen none of the true hazards, relying far too completely upon the chain and padlocks. Within a few minutes Brian could whip her most severely and Cherish would not hear her screams. Brokenly she pleaded, "Please, I beg of you...." He cut with the switch squarely across the concavity below her ribs. The force of the blow was sufficient to break the switch in two and to elicit from Willow an involuntary squeal of pain. Her hands were firmly clamped upon her breasts.
"You make a beautiful picture like that," Brian conceded as he tossed aside the broken wand. "Want me to cut another?"
Willow stared at him through a mist of pain. "Of course I don't! Have I a choice?"
"Not really. But I suppose if you agree to my original proposition I might consider letting you off this time. I'd admit I find your back and bottom fair more attractive for my purpose than what you're offering me now."
They stared while a horrible realization entered Willow's mind. To be whipped from her breasts to knees with willow switches would be unquestionably better than a formal whipping with a cruel thong wickedly applied and then followed by an equally formal rape or active coitus, or whatever else one chose to call it. In a sober judgment a girl would be stupid not to invite the thrashing now rather than the dual anguish of total surrender in Aiken's house. But it was a decision no girl should be asked to face, she could not face it now. The blow still burned and the memory of its first fire was still vivid in her mind and in her flesh.
Brokenly, she said, "I can't ask you to thrash me with these horrible things you cut from that bush. Maybe I should but I just can't have the courage." A sob punctuated the declaration. "All you can do is simply go ahead with whatever pleases you. I could ask for mercy but I don't think you know the meaning of the word."
Aiken did the unexpected. Instead of fetching a second switch he cupped his captive's face in gentle hands and kissed her long upon her lips. When he had done with her, he stood back, it was then Willow beheld Cherish approaching the path and screamed in alarm, "Cherish, no, no! Back to the house, run, run, run!"
All three of them were instantly aware of possibilities, Cherish not the least. She swirled around and fled. With a hoot of triumph Brian leapt in pursuit. Against the tree the chained Willow struggled and tugged and sobbed out her despair. The others were soon out of sigh but she had little doubt of Aiken's ability to overtake the teenage girl. Mental images of Cherish being dragged back by her hair, the keys extracted from where ever she hid them, and the two of them being led back in triumph by a man who could subdue a pair of naked girls with the greatest of ease danced before Willow's eyes. With her face buried in her hands, sobbing in desolation. Willow waited without hope. It was with a shock of pure gladness she heard Brian's voice and looked up to find he was alone.
"That little so and so, she beat me to the house. Had a good start, of course! Didn't bother to try and break in, it's you I really want." He grinned at her. "The run did me good. Revived my proper spirit as a member of the gentry. I've decided not to be a complete bastard. I'll leave you chained here the way you are. You can think about my offer, it's the only one I'll consider. And you can think about the fact that I'm bound to pick you up one way or another. As a Victorian villain would pronounce, 'There is no escape.'" It was a reprieve. With a tremendous sincerity Willow said a heartfelt thank you. She added nothing. When he kissed her in farewell, she kissed him back. As she watched him go she was still as much a prisoner as ever.
With the swift passing of euphoria, Willow faced one more shocking realization. Brian Aiken had gone but Cherish would not know this, Cherish would be afraid to leave the house. She would be as uncertain in her actions as Willow was in her captivity. The afternoon was already well advanced and it was borne upon the chained girl that she would almost certainly spend the night standing up nakedly with her belly locked against the tree. It was a frustrating standoff. She wondered if Cherish would think to phone Miss Ponsonby. It seemed a remote chance. Cherish would stand guard with the gun in a house threatened by no one. A storm of tears possessed the chained girl who bitterly, over and over, condemned herself for conceiving a plan so filled with weaknesses. After a while twilight came with its silencing of bird song and a mischievous night wind that Willow knew would be cold by morning. In the darkness of night the chained maiden wept anew, cursing the lovely chains and locks she and Cherish had purchased only that morning. They had kept her safe, but far too safe, they held her now as they would hold her forever.
The captive of the tree could not count time. She knew the night would be endless and the possibility of sleeping in her upright state close to impossible but it was midnight when she heard the sounds of running feet and then, her eyes well accustomed to darkness, beheld her darling Cherish. They clasped each other in a paroxysm of ecstasy. The darling child was breathless. "Oh, mistress darling, I didn't dare come. I was afraid of that awful man. But he's just called and given me his word of honor that I could come and let you loose and he would not interfere. I wanted to believe him so bad I actually did and here I am. Oh, and darling, let me get those padlocks."
* * *
"You deserve exactly what you got," Miss Ponsonby said. "Really, Willow, I'm surprised at you, naked in front of a man and placing yourself completely at his mercy. I've never heard of such nonsense."
"I feel silly about it now, myself," Willow admitted. "I never thought of any of those horrible things he could do, I just thought about him not being able to take me away. I'm terribly sorry."
"And so you should be. When I think of all the things he could have done to you... ! Well, it's over now, there's no use dwelling on it. I must admit the man treated you better than I would have expected. I hope you don't even consider his outrageous proposal."
Willow felt both silly and contrite. Had Miss Ponsonby not been their second line of defense against the predator male, she would not have mentioned the incident. But Miss Ponsonby was indeed a tower of strength and Brian Aiken was still very much a presence to be guarded against. Her protestations of innocent intent were interrupted by the spinster's surprising declaration.
"I mentioned that niece of mine. They damned girl's out in the car.
I decided not to bring her in without warning you." Miss Ponsonby drew a heavy sigh. "She was christened the sensible name of Janet but she tells me nobody calls her anything but Misty. Really... These Americans!"
In instant sympathy for a girl far from home Willow turned to Cherish, "Run along darling and signal her to come in. You can do it from the door, there's no need for you to go outside."
"I'm afraid Misty is Well, she's sort of attached," Miss Ponsonby volunteered with a trace of embarrassment. "I decided to start off with her training on the way. As a matter of fact I've got the child handcuffed in the boot." Apologetically she added, "It was only a short ride." Since Cherish was chained and naked, it was Willow and Miss Ponsonby who went to the car. Upon raising the lid of the trunk they were confronted with the pink and angry features of a quite delicious young woman who was reclining on a rug thoughtfully provided and who's hands were linked by shinning metal cuffs. Misty sat up, unabashed, and stated firmly, "This is an asshole of a way to travel. I don't see why I can't ride with you in the car, Aunt Mildred. Here, give me a hand."
Two pairs of willing hands almost lifted the transatlantic import to the ground. Misty stood gazing around, totally naked, handcuffed and seemingly unconcerned. She gazed at Willow in frank friendliness and added, "This isn't the way I usually travel, it's Aunt Mildred's idea." Willow was intrigued. There was indeed more to Miss Ponsonby than met the eye. She wondered what arguments the spinster had used to persuade her niece into her present circumstances. It said much for the girl that she was not in screaming hysterics. Willow ushered her guests up the steps to Questings and on into the lounge. Misty and Cherish like each other instantly, it was love at first sight. Cherish was sparkling eyed, and Misty lost no time in pointed comment, "You've got her feet chained together. Is everyone in England as kooky as this?"
"Don't use such offensive words, dear," Miss Ponsonby reproved. "I've tried to explain to you the proper manner in which girls of your age are dealt with in my home and here in Questings. Please avoid vulgar observations." She turned to Willow. "Perhaps Cherish could give Misty a tour of the premises?"
The nymphets departed in a flurry of chain and broad smiles. Along, Miss Ponsonby brought her gaze to bear upon an equally smiling Willow. "I must say the dear child has taken to constraint far better than I dared hope," she said reflectively. "But I fear she had so far regarded it as an aberrant piece of humor. She probably thinks me Well, at least, unusual." She sighed and cocked an inquiring eye. "Willow, may I ask your help?"
"Of course you may. You'd like Misty to stay here with Cherish. I know."
Miss Ponsonby heaved a heartfelt sigh. "You are so understanding. I am so fortunate in having met you. Really, Willow, you are more than kind."
"Not really. Misty will be company for Cherish and I will enjoy them both. You can visit your niece whenever you wish or take her back for visits in your home."
"Ah, yes, of course." Miss Ponsonby cocked an anxious eye, "But I do trust the dear girl's coming will not impair the... well, the thing you and I do together."
"Of course not. When we need privacy a pair of teenagers are no problem if they are properly chained. And I will make sure Misty and Cherish stay in the proper state."
Miss Ponsonby radiated relief and gratitude. "That brings up a point. I don't want you to show Misty favors. And, above all, don't ever give her even a hint of freedom. Keep her chained at all times. I suspect her of being a bundle of mischief."
"I've managed to keep Cherish safe for a good many years. Misty will be likewise safe here."
"You have things so well in hand, my dear." Miss Ponsonby's admiration knew no bounds. "And now I am wondering... There has been so much stress and my nerves are so frayed. Do you think we might...?"
"Of course. When the little darlings return we'll restrain them suitably and go about our business. Cherish will guess what we're doing and will probably tell Misty, but that's something I don't think we can avoid."
The spinster once more heaved a great sight. "This whole thing has been a great strain on me, I admit it. What do you say, Miss Blake, to a cup of tea before we begin a whipping?"
Willow was enjoying herself immensely. Tea flowed, accompanied by some cucumber sandwiches to which Miss Ponsonby was much addicted. A pair of protesting nymphets were handcuffed to rings in the wall and told to improve themselves with intellectual conversation. Misty pouted and Cherish stuck out her tongue. But that was their only protest. They, too, were obviously happy in fresh discovery. Willow and her guest, a woman about to be whipped, made a dignified exit.
The marks of her previous whipping had not yet faded from the spinster's back but the manner in which she discarded her clothes clearly indicated determination and a fresh need. Once again Willow had the illusion of a younger and more curvaceous woman. When she spoke of it, Miss Ponsonby shyly admitted, "I've noted something myself." She blushed and set her curves in motion. "I'm terribly ashamed but, on the other hand, it's rather nice. I'm terribly grateful to you Willow, it's all your doing. And now, for today, I'm wondering if we could use that bench thing over there. I suspect I'm behaving atrociously, but it's piqued my curiosity."
It was a reproduction of a Regency whipping bench which Willow had seen in an old print and caused to be recreated. The victim knelt upon the lower step then bent forward the full length of her body to expose a bent bottom and a cruelly vulnerable back. There were no straps, the female to be whipped was bound with rope or cord in what ever manner pleased the executioner. It had often held Cherish while her twin rounds were redly inflamed by the cane. But this would be the first serious use ever made of it. Willow explained its finer points and uses while Miss Ponsonby quivered in her own brand of sexual excitement, in which a fearful expectation was not entirely absent.
It went as though rehearsed, as though both of them had reverted to times past and were performing their tasks under the eyes of a motley crowd. Breathing heavily, Mildred Ponsonby knelt upon the step then extended her full length, placing her arms to where they would be fastened. Her voice trembling, she said, "Dear Willow, I want you to tie me very tight. Don't try and be kind. Let us do this in the manner it was intended."
It was a considerable chore to bind the naked spinster at ankles, knee, and wrists, but Willow wound her cords and tugged her ropes with satisfaction and amused wonder at Mildred Ponsonby's self immolation. When the female limbs were tightly secured, she turned her attention to the still narrow waist, cording it with several bands of rope and then cinching them down to force her victim's tummy hard against the wood, curve down the back, and extend the taught posture in a fresh cruelty of invitation to the rod.
"Oh, dear," said Miss Ponsonby in obvious pleasure, "I can't move. Really Willow, you've done a magnificent job of binding me. Now I want you to whip me just as hard. Do whatever you wish with my bottom but I really would prefer lashes on my back."
It was absurd. It was ridiculous. It was a strange mixture of cruelty and eroticism. Willow felt the familiar tingling in her veins as she selected the cane with which she would first mark the taught, stretched bottom invitingly presented. And to be given carte blanche in such a task! It offered opportunities and freedoms such as few people ever get, and overrode her usual caution in dealing with her beloved Cherish. Here, a naked woman had delivered herself for pain and would be bitterly disappointed if the pain was less than she could bare.
Willow stepped back, measuring the distance. She noted the manner in which Miss Ponsonby's toes were moving nervously below the tight bound ankles and her fingers stretching as though searching above the equally securely tied wrists. No doubt it was the only motions the spinster could make in this terrible moment of acute anticipation. Willow swung the cane in the familiar arc to hear it cut the air with its own snickering cry of triumph. It impacted upon the bound bottom with a thunk all its own, a terrible or a wonderful sound according the point of view. The owner of the caned bottom had been gazing fearfully at the girl who held the implement of her agony, but now in one swift motion she turned to gaze upon the wall. But she made no sound.
Willow found a breathtaking contrast between the two chained maidens happily chattering below and the bound woman suffering beneath her rod. But she had adjusted to the incongruity of Miss Ponsonby's desires, she caned, then whipped, then caned again with studious vigor, assessing each stroke before delivery and then watching its crimson line rise upon the ivory skin. The whipped nudity made involuntary anguished surges against its bonds but did not move. The ropes and cords creaked but did not move. The fluttering fingers and toes proclaimed their agony, there were gasps and small moans but that was the only sound, the only indication of Miss Mildred Ponsonby's self-imposed martyrdom.
Questings was alive with female joy.
CHAPTER FIVE - MARKS ON NYMPHET SKIN
Misty was aware of having entered an enchanted land. She was Finding an endless fascination in the steel bracelet upon her wrist and its tethering of her naked person to the wall. She could not quite believe in the fact of being thus tethered but Cherish's similar condition told her of it's being true. The girls stood ten feet apart and Cherish was tugging at her ironed hand in irritation.
"It's not a bit fair," Cherish announced indignantly. "They always chain me here like this when their doing something amusing. You can bet they're having fun downstairs while you and I have to stand here with a wrist we can't use." She eyed her companion with a continuing interest. "Gosh, you're a pretty girl, you've got the loveliest figure."
"So have you. I was just thinking the same thing." Misty's tribute was sincere. "Are you telling me that big girl has kept you handcuffed or leg-ironed or whatever all your life?"
"Of course she has. It's only natural, isn't it?"
"Not where I come from. I think you're all a bunch of kooks. But I'm getting a kick out of it. I've got a wet snatch."
Cherish giggled. "And you'll probably have a burning bottom if you're not careful about being vulgar. Willow always canes me when I say bad words."
"And you just stay here... ? You have to be nuts."
"I love it here. I wouldn't leave Willow for anything. And, anyway. how could I leave Willow when she keeps me chained all the time? I'm so glad she keeps me chained, it saves me the trouble of making all sorts of decisions."
"You mean. I'm never going to get let loose and put my clothes back on!" Misty was cheerfully disbelieving. "Boy, have I walked into something! I figured Aunt Mildred for a dried up old biddy with a cold cunt she never used. Now I'm not so sure."
Cherish giggled and stopped tugging at her handcuff. "I'm not so sure what they do with that thing you've just mentioned, but I'm certain your Aunt Mildred is getting her bottom whipped. I only got to watch it happening the first time. Since then I get cuffed to the wall like this and miss all the fun. I'll bet you'd like to see it too."
"Holly Cow!" Misty was seeing visions. "When I get to know the old girl a bit better. I'll simply ask. If I have to have the fetters, I might as well have the fun. Jeepers, Cherish, I was real cheesed off coming over here in the car, bare naked and handcuffed, but I think I'm going to like it. What happens to that lovely girl. Willow, what does she do?"
"Oh, she's my mistress, she doesn't do anything except look after me." Cherish chuckled, "I've got a suspicion she's now your mistress, too. I don't think your Aunt Mildred was too keen on having a niece. It's not that she doesn't like you, but figure it yourself, she wants to keep you chained and a prisoner just like me. But, on the other hands, she loves to get her bottom whipped and comes over to visit Willow anytime she can't bare it any longer. With you here like me, we're all sort of doing the same thing."
They were happy prisoners, radiating contentment Their occasional testing of the link holding them to the ring in the wall was more a gesture reassuring themselves that the incredible was true than any serious attempt to escape. Misty's entry into the felicity of Questings might have passed unimpeded by incident had it not been for her imprudent tongue. When Willow and Misty's Aunt Mildred appeared the first thing Misty said was, "Why, Aunt Mildred, Cherish tells me you've just had your ass whipped Oh, wow!"
There was a stiff British silence, one of pure shock, broken at last by the acid tone of Aunt Mildred herself, "That was not a bit nice, Misty. I'm ashamed of you."
"Well, you have had your ass whipped, haven't you? I mean, it's nothing to get all worked up about."
No words were wasted. Miss Mildred Ponsonby sought the gaze of Miss Willow Blake. A message was silently exchanged. Willow unlocked the cuff attaching the exuberant niece to the ring and handed the half handcuff to the frigid aunt. She then possessed herself of Cherish in the same manner. On their way down stairs Misty's steps tended to lag and she was irritably tugged into tagging along. The other three members of the group advanced in an inevitable march to retribution.
"I think the bench," Aunt Mildred pronounced. "The girl needs guidance. Misty, my dear, you are about to be taught a lesson."
"Did I say something?" Misty asked in dismay, "I mean, all I asked was "
"We know what you asked. Kindly refrain from repeating so offensive a query." Aunt Mildred was in the full flush of indignation.
Cherish reflected ruefully it was her fate to be attached to walls by a handcuffed wrist. She accepted the imposition without demur, having little doubt she was to be royally entertained. She gaze upon the exuberant but mystified Misty with compassion, her own bottom tingling in sympathy.
Misty was a perceptive young woman. She surveyed the waiting bench and read its intend all too well. In a voice still fascinated in awe, she inquired, "I suppose you want me to place myself on that thing?"
"If you please. Immediately."
It was hard to guess how much of curiosity lay in Misty's willingness to place herself for correction. But with nothing more than a glance at the watching eyes, she shrugged and knelt to arranged herself upon the wood still warm from the whipped flesh of her Aunt Mildred. Willow went immediately to work, aided now by a woman of experience. Aunt Mildred knew exactly how to tie and how hard to tug the knots. The handcuffs were allowed to stay on. They were, as usual, a convenience and only had to be roped into a position to hold the young arms as punishment dictated. When she-was fully stretched and tightly bound. Misty ejaculated, as thought just regaining speech, "Well, I'll be damned! I know what you're going to do, you're going to whip my ass!"
"Perhaps you shouldn't use that word, Misty dear," Willow suggested gently. "Refer to it as your bottom or something equally innocent."
"An ass is an ass!" Misty was standing by her guns. The first stroke had not yet fallen upon her waiting flesh. Cherish was in breathless anticipation of a spirit about to be tamed.
"You are not only vulgar, Misty, but also personally offensive. Whatever Miss Blake and I do in our privacy is none of your affair and should never be spoken of in public." The spinster's features turned to Willow. "Really, Miss Blake, I feel Cherish has been indiscreet and deserves correction."
"I've only got one bench...."
"I am content to wait." Miss Ponsonby was feeling herself once more on the ascendancy. "A suspenseful wait will do Cherish no harm."
The first stinging cut of the cane across the tight, young bottom delivered Misty into the reality of Questings. If she had doubted before, she did not doubt now. She squealed in shocked surprised and delivered an instant ultimatum, "You do that again and I'll pack right up and go back to the States."
There came an amused silence during which Misty came by the full realization she was going no where. She was bent and postured for the inflection of pain upon her small, round rump. Her mind searched urgently for suitable words of surrender. "Couldn't I say I'm sorry or something?" she implored abjectly. "That hurt like crazy, you must have cut my ass in two -- oops Sorry!"
"Would you care to rephrase that remark, my dear?"
"Well... I suppose. I think you must have ruined my poor bottom. It will never be the same again."
"You are about to receive correction, dear," Aunt Mildred informed kindly. "Please strive to comport yourself as befitting a gentlewoman."
"I'm not a gentlewoman and I don't want my ass whipped again. Oh, hell."
What Misty may or may not have wanted was now lost in the whirl and splat of the cane upon her flesh. Misty evidenced little concern with gentility and was vocal from the start. Her yelps and screams were interspersed with harsh comments from across the Atlantic, but these gradually diminished until the bound young woman ceased uttering words of cursing or pleading. In the hand of Aunt Mildred the cane maintained a steady rhythm of reproof, its sting and scald transforming the virgin skin to the hue of a crimson sunset. It was Willow who placed a gentle restraining hand upon an upraised arm and said, "Perhaps Miss Ponsonby, enough for this first time...?"
The caning of Misty's bottom had by some feminine mystic made the trio one. From her chained ring, Cherish watched while the sobbing nymphet was released and comforted and kissed. Her tears were wiped from cheeks and eyes by the pure white of cambric in the surprising gentle fingers of her aunt. It was not long before Misty turned a shinning maiden eye and inquired meekly, "Is that all?"
"It is all for this first time dear. Let us hope you give no cause for a second."
"Gosh, no! That was awful. I wouldn't ever have believed...." If Cherish had hoped she was forgotten in the excitement, she was doomed to disappointment.
"And now for Cherish," Miss Ponsonby announced with punitive relish. The darling of Willow Blake knew herself heavily out numbered and made no complaint as she was freed from the ring. Somehow she knew that even Misty would consider it proper that she receive equal punishment for a offense related to her own. Without a word she walked to the bench and assembled herself thereon, a picture of sweet loveliness to inflect breathlessness upon those who watched.
"I've never caned Cherish's bottom as hard as you've caned Misty's, Miss Ponsonby," said Willow. "I wonder if you'd mind a somewhat more modest inflection?"
"She is your child, you must do as you think best." Miss Ponsonby's voice was acid with disapproval.
"I won't mind, really I won't." Cherish, still unbound, was looking back over a bare shoulder. There was already a rapport between she and the tearful niece of this formidable female. "I'm sure if Misty deserved it, I deserve it too. I'll try and not make too much fuss."
"The proper British spirit!" Mildred Ponsonby proclaimed. She handed Willow the cane. "The warming of this child's derriere is at you discretion, Miss Blake. I leave her in your hands."
Willow knew herself caught in a dilemma. She did not wish to cane Cherish at all, and would not have done so had it not been for Miss Ponsonby's insistence and the transatlantic eye seeking evidence of British justice. She solved her problem by handing the limber instrument back to Aunt Mildred. "I think you'll be more impartial with this," she suggested hopefully. "Please punish Cherish on my behalf. I'd much rather you did."
Miss Ponsonby accepted the weapon with which she had proved herself so adept. She accepted it gracefully and then lent a hand in the binding of Cherish's nakedness. The task was completed in silence, even the girl sentenced to the rod made no comment. When the young loveliness was tautly trussed and Misty conveniently cuffed to the wall, the fresh drama of maiden punishment now began.
There was now an unquestioned rapport among all present. The cane sang wickedly, the young bottom paid its scarlet tribute, and its owner emitted an appropriate gasp. But it was evident to all that the holder of the instrument of punishment was considering Willow's wish. The strokes had not been as severe as Aunt Mildred had delivered upon her own kindred flesh. True it was enough to inhibit Cherish's thought of asking for a harder stroke in sympathy with what she had seen bestowed upon Misty. With calm competence the Aunt continued her rhythmic retribution, the cane singing its gladness with each cut as crimson mounted upon defenseless flesh. Willow and Misty watched in fascinating breathlessness while Cherish gulped and swallowed, clenching her bound hands and striving not to scream. From Miss Ponsonby's point of view it was a most satisfactory ten minutes.
Untied, the softly weeping Cherish was comforted and kissed by all and much adored. She was allowed to rub her bottom to her heart's content before her wrists were once more handcuffed in the front. Two sobered and handcuffed young nudities followed their mistress back up stairs.
With Miss Ponsonby's departure in a wave of goodwill, the mistress of Questings surveyed her dual responsibility with only the faintest misgiving. Cherish was a natural submissive, the same could not be said for the new arrival. It was hard to place Misty in her proper category at this early date, but she was undoubtedly a bundle of mischief. However that was much to be preferred to a sulky acceptance or outright rebellion. Willow gave thanks for having the nymphet safely chained. Still under the influence of her caning, Misty had made no complaint at the ironing of her feet. But now, upon Willow's returning to the scene were the two captive maidens had been left kneeling in the lounge, the visitor from the one time colony reverted to form.
"Has the old fart gone home?" Misty inquired without rancor. "She cramps my style. Golly, I'd no idea...." She grinned in apology for a near slip of the tongue and added, impudently, "I'd no idea the thing I sit on could possibly hurt that bad."
"It need not happen again if you behave yourself."
"I bet it will, though," Misty avowed without concern. "I say. Willow, you do handle things so well -- I mean the way you've got us caught in these chains and how polite you are to Aunt Mildred, and how sweet you've been to me since I got dumped on you. I say, she's not likely to come back today, is she?"
"No, she won't be back today, maybe not even tomorrow. Don't you like her?"
"Well, I don't exactly pretend to be in love with the old girl. Seems to me she should be on Mount Rushmore, along with those other stern old pricks -- oh, wow, I'm sorry. Am I suppose to watch my tongue in front of you too?"
"I think you'd better. You can't possibly be rude to me and polite to your Aunt, you'd get us mixed up." Willow smiled affectionately. "You can use me to practice on. I mean being polite. I know it's not easy for you."
"Well, it's this whole thing, it makes me worse than I am. At home I didn't use four letter words nearly as much as I do here. I'll watch it." Bedtime brought Willow her next dilemma. She wished to keep the two girls together for company but she was unwilling to forgo the ministrations of her own slavegirl in their own bed. How unkind would Misty deem it to spend her night chained upon the rug! But when they were assembled in the bedroom Misty solved the problem for them.
"I've sort of got this figured out, Willow. I mean you and Cherish and not a man in sight, and the way you whip Auntie's hind end, it all sort of adds up." She giggled happily. "I bet you and Cherish nibble each other, don't you? If you want I'll nibble you too. I'm not dumb. I mean, at the school back in the states... Oh, wow!"
Willow supposed she ought to reprimand such forward manners in one so young but Cherish was obviously under Misty's magic and she felt a touch of it herself. With a lack of concern she did not truly feel, she chained Misty's collar in the same manner as she had been chaining Cherish for years. For tonight at least she would be flanked on either side by willing hands and willing lips. There would be much sounds of swirling chain, but this was a music she had long adored. With wry humor Willow determined she deserved whatever hot young lips and probing youthful tongues might give. With only the slightest embarrassment she stripped to flaunt her nudity before transatlantic eyes. She could tell Misty was impressed and the fire within her belly burned more fiercely. To Misty she said, "Very well, I'll take you first."
Questings slept replete with female joy.
* * *
To Brian Aiken Questings remained a pleasant challenge. He will by nature a dilettante with the means to indulge his fancies. He knew himself tarred by the same bush of bondage and the whip as were the girls. He ruefully conceded to himself an envy of their happy state with each other while he was entirely alone. From time to time in his bachelor career Brian had brought girls from the city to his home and played his game with them. Mostly they came for money. To find a true member of the Craft was a rarity, and in any case, such excursions into the erotic were always terminated far too soon by the terminating of a contract. Willow and Cherish had obtained a perfect union and if he could intrude upon it and divert some of their happiness to his own needs, he would do so. He was like a man contemplating a tasty dish and delaying the first mouthful in the joys of anticipation. Soon or later Questings would make a slip...
Gossip informed him of the new arrival. But it was coincidence by which he cornered Miss Ponsonby in the pub. No doubt the same loneliness took both of them to this meeting place. Accosting her frankly but with courtesy in the bar, he could not be denied without causing something of a scene. Grudgingly the spinster allowed herself, armed with the appropriate beverage, to be maneuvered to a quiet corner where she admitted to her nieces arrival and disposition, adding acidly, "And it's none of your business, Mr. Aiken."
"You're right, it's not." Mr. Aiken had been salesman once and was not unacquainted with temperament. He offered bait, "I'd be glad of your advice. You broke in on a scene I had carefully engineered. I cannot blame you for what transpired, you did what you though best. But you robbed me of the fruit of much endeavor." He smiled winningly. "I am not unaware of your own involvement in the esoteric activities at Questings. I'm sure they are in full floor now with the new arrival." He eyed Miss Ponsonby with his most flattering regard. "I can't help wishing you'd consigned this young woman to my care instead of adding her to a menage already complete?"
"It would be most improper. You are a single man."
Aiken sighed. "That single man thing again!" he said disgustedly. "It haunts a fellow like myself. Because we have no woman in our home we are regarded a bit odd and under suspicion. Actually, we're just like any body else." Once more his grave eyes searched hers in an effort to placate and evoke sympathy. "I really do wish you had allowed me to look after this maiden from across the seas?"
"Don't be ridiculous. You would have whipped the poor girl quite outrageously and ravished her after. She would quite probably have offspring in the nine month period."
Aiken shook his head as though in deep regret at bitter injustice. "You underrate me, Miss Ponsonby, I beget no babies and I would never destroy female loveliness by whipping it to death. That would be a waste."
"In any case, you're suggestion is unacceptable. Perhaps now, if you would excuse me...." Brian made no move. His voice continued its quiet persuasiveness, "I understand your feelings. You and I have not met under the happiest of circumstances. I suspect you do not much care for men."
"I most certainly do not. Men should be exterminated."
Brian Aiken sighed, but he had been prepared for a rebuff. Things were going better than he had actually anticipated, they were still talking. Very softly he said, "I have no word of scandal about you, Miss Ponsonby. To the community you are a pillar of propriety." He paused for effect, smiling into the disturbed eyes of his companion. "But suppose a rumor went the rounds, and you know how it is in these country places, a rumor to the effect that you enjoyed strange and erotic pleasures, pleasures the vicar would undoubtedly frown on... Have you thought of this?"
Miss Ponsonby sat stunned. "You would not dare! You could not be so base...?"
"Indeed I could."
They stared, assessing this declaration of war and its potential. Huffily, she said, "I suppose you want something. What is it?"
"I want Miss Willow Blake."
The lines were drawn. They understood each other. It was a tribute to Miss Mildred Ponsonby that Aiken's bland suggestion evoked no Victorian protests. She was calm and coldly alert.
"In that case, why not call at Questings and discuss your wishes in a civilized manner?"
"They would refuse to open the door to me."
"And rightly so. I suppose you want me to act as an intermediary?"
"Yes. Would it not be preferable to the spreading of an outrageous rumor, a rumor everyone would all too willing to believe?"
Miss Ponsonby fixed him with an icy stare. "You are a cad, Mr. Aiken, and unprincipled rogue. But I cannot see how I can be of service to you. I cannot possibly tie up Miss Blake and deliver her to your loving arms. But, if you would be content with such a service, I would be willing to tell her of your wish. I consider it unlikely, but there is the possibility of her acquiescence to your desire."
"Thank you. But I prefer the conquering male approach. What I would like you to do is to take your niece home, perhaps for a weekend, and then contrive a plausible manner by which she falls into my hands. With her in my absolute control I can dictate terms to our Miss Blake. I suspect, provided you show the proper concern, she will repeat her prior performance and deliver herself in payment of ransom. If it worked once, it should work again."
Miss Ponsonby rose, stiff in indignation, in the manner of a British matron repelling the Roman hoards as had happened long ago. Her voice had a fearsome finality, "You are not a gentleman, Mr. Aiken. You are a cad and a bounder. You are a man without principle. I bid you good-day."
Brian Aiken watched her go but there was a smile upon his face. He was far from displeased with the interview, it might well bear fruit.
"The man is impossible!" Miss Ponsonby was panting from her hurried walk to Questings. "But it is best I acquaint you with his demands. We must, more than ever, be on our guard."
Willow moaned inwardly. She supposed she had been expecting something like this. "It's typical of the man," she said. "Look, Miss Ponsonby, I know you won't approve, but how would it be I give in to his demands. Do you think we could get rid of him that way?"
"No, of course not. To make a gift of a girl like you to such a man would simply be to add fuel to the fire. I told you before, you're too good for any man."
Miss Ponsonby snorted her indignation, but Willow was soberly considering the possibilities. She was also hiding from her visitor her quickening pulse and own erotic curiosity at the situation now disclosed. After several moments reflection, she said quietly, "Please don't think badly of me, but I'm going to do what he demands. But I'm going to do it only on his assurance of his dissolving you and Questings from any further harassment. I believe us females are the focus of a good deal of male obsession. If I can erase it in this case I will have done something well worthwhile."
The silence could be felt. Willow sensed, along with disapproval, her companion's relief at the possibility of being absolved from a truly terrible threat. They would, of course, be backing upon Aiken's honor. But she believed it possible that he might possess some sense of honor. Perhaps at the price of pain and shame she could appease Aiken and drive him from their lives.
Quietly she repeated, "I think I'd better do it."
"The nakedness and the whipping I can understand," Mildred Ponsonby conceded unhappily, "but the rape! Willow, dear child, you cannot possibly allow...." Willow was adept at placating female ire. She sent Miss Ponsonby home comforted and assured of deliverance from a male menace. So far as rape was concerned, she quickly assured the anxious spinster, she could talk her seducer out of such an intent.
Brian Aiken's voice over the phone was comfortably polite. "I was sure I'd hear from you, Willow. I assume you've been visited by our indignant spinster?"
"She's just gone home. Look, Mr. Aiken, I absolutely refuse to deliver Misty to you."
"Do you now?"
"It's absolutely unthinkable, I'm surprised you'd even ask."
"A bargaining ploy, dear lady."
"Very well. I will deliver myself to you."
She heard his indrawn breath and he following exhalation of, "Ah- h-h-h-h... ! You are an endless delight, Willow. I had scarcely expected so easy a capitulation."
"You threaten Mildred Ponsonby, you threaten me, you threaten this young girl recently arrived here from the USA. If I can erase that threat by giving myself to your tender mercies, I will be glad to. But only by your giving me your most solemn pledge, your word of honor, to keep the bargain. I give myself to you for twelve hours. In return you cease to concern yourself with any of us. Is that a deal?"
"It's a deal."
Willow had little experience with men, but she believed his tone sincere. Abruptly she asked, "When must I deliver myself?"
Brian Aiken laugher came delightedly over the wire. "How deliciously you put that, Willow my dear. You sound like a thousands legions surrendering their arms."
"I am not a thousand legions. I am a frightened and distressed girl. I hope you feel the bastard you are!"
Again the laugh. "Oh, come, come! Come of it, Willow. You're not that pure. You can't tell me you don't want to do what you're going to do. All I've done is given you an honorable excuse. Be honest now?" She could not be honest, it was asking far too much. If some absurd female compulsion was driving her, it was none of Brian Aiken's business. Tersely she exclaimed, "Never mind the analysis, you getting what you want, be satisfied."
The whole affair left Willow feeling a bitch. It was not only the deception of her two slavegirls but also her own erotic flame between her legs that prompted her reactions. Irritably she left Cherish and Misty chained upon the bed but with enough slack to reach the bathroom, telling them of a fictitious errand, and leaving sufficient food to last them through the day, before she left upon her shameful errand.
She chose to walk. For some reason it seemed more proper. The time had been set at ten AM. and she arrived with a few seconds of that moment. Brian Aiken's greeting was casually polite, "You look very lovely today, Willow."
"Thank you. I don't feel lovely. I feel ridiculous. Can we get on with this horrible charade?"
Irritated he said, "Oh, come off it! Stop playing the grand lady. Move up a century from Queen Victoria. Damn it girl, if you've never been fucked, it's high time you were."
Willow sustained the blow. She was about to give an acid reply when her cheeks were compressed between two male hands and she was being soundly kissed. She supposed it out of keeping with her submission to fight, she allowed the kiss to linger on and even found herself returning it. Then there were the two arms encircling her being and pressing her breasts hard. Slowly and without volition her own arms followed their natural course. It was quite a long time before she broke away, hot and angry and shame faced.
"You have a gift for making me feel a mere nothing, a feminine convenience," she said. "Surely you're not going to offer a pretense of affection."
"Why not! A man may whip the girl he loves, especially if it's for her own good."
"Oh, you and your rationalizations. You make me so mad!" Willow shook herself as though to be rid of a stigma. "You want to be mean and brutal and unkind to me so get on with it. I suppose, first off, you want me naked?"
"No I don't. And stop putting words into my mouth." He sounded angry. "Come along. We'll do this my way. I don't want you calling the shots."
"And I don't need intoxicating beverages to sustain me," Willow affirmed when they were seated in the lounge. "Please don't offer me a drink, it's far too early in the day."
"The British tradition?" He cocked a sardonic eyebrow. "Remember, you're going to be cruelly whipped. Surely a stimulant might help?"
"Oh, all right, if you put it that way." Willow was glad of an excuse. The thought of the whipping, now so close, was unnerving. "I suppose I might as well find such relief from agony as you're willing to allow. "
"You always make me feel a horse's ass with this Victorian attitude," Brian declared with bitter amusement. "I think you see yourself as all the heroines of the past century's fiction, probably the period of about 1880. You remember the old cliches? 'Unhand me you villain!' Or perhaps. 'If you take my maidenhead you will pay dearly!' And then the old favorite, 'You would not treat me thus if my father was present, you cad!'" He laughed at her flushed features. "Honest, that's the way you sound. And you're making me respond in the same stilted absurdities. Look, girl, we're talking about cunts and assholes and tits and cocks and pricks and the whole damned business. Why don't you grow up!"
She was already blushing and could blush no more. Willow hated him, but at the same time was fascinated with his honesty and realized the truth of it.
"Well, what am I suppose to say?" she demanded fretfully. "Do you want me to be ugly and vulgar and say things like, 'Get that beastly cock of yours out of my cunt!,' or maybe, 'Don't you dare you stick that thing into me!,' or maybe, 'What would your mother think of the way your acting!."' Willow laughed bitterly. "There isn't any dialog for what you propose. Consider that!"
"Bravo, bravo!" Brian was genuinely admiring. "For a girl who has never been fucked, you do have acute perceptions. Young Cherish is a lucky girl!" He allowed the compliment to linger before adding, "And Miss Ponsonby's contribution to your menage? I'll bet she well- titted and well-twatted and all together desirable? The US product is usually superior to ours. I'm looking forward to seeing her."
"You won't be seeing her. Remember that was our bargain, that after I've given myself to you today you'll relinquish all further demands. I'm here to save that girl, and Cherish, and Miss Ponsonby. Gosh, when I think of it, you are an absolute bastard."
He had mixed their drinks and Willow was sipping with an outrageous urgency. She did not disguise her fear of the cut of the thong which would so soon now mark her flesh. She was coldly and calculatingly assessing both herself and possibilities of evasion. Since Brain Aiken seemed in no hurry to strip and whip her there might be cause for hope.
"You are absolutely delicious." Brian Aiken had been studying her features. "I've been watching you and you've been figuring ways by which you might fox me, or maybe talk me out of it, or perhaps convert me into a good member of the church. How's that for analysis?"
"You're absolutely correct. When do you wish me?"
"When you've finished your drink. Don't hurry."
It was utterly unreal. The two of them sitting in this civilized lounge, quietly discussing her flogging and her rape. Willow considered the matter now in the light of the alcohol she had consumed and began to understand Brian Aiken's point of view. She was a female and females were designed expressly to receive the implant of sperm from the rigid male. They were also expected to provide the moans and groans, both of orgasm and of the whip. Today she would be the star performer in both premieres of a production staged and planned by the laughing male who was now offering her the second drink. Perhaps it was offered in mercy, or perhaps to appease his sardonic sense of humor. Willow sipped, disgusted with herself, while Brian Aiken spoke. "I have to feel sorry for old Ponsonby," he said regretfully. "She's really a sad case, never been fucked, never been loved. But I suppose those whippings you give her make up for it. Does she howl?"
"That's a private thing and none of your business."
"Ah... So you do whip her! I'm glad of the confirmation. I was actually working on the basis of putting two and two together. Does she whip you?"
"Don't be ridiculous. No one whips me. I'm a mistress." Willow flushed anew. "At least, no female whips me. I suppose quite soon now, I won't be able to say the same about the male." She met his eyes steadily and demanded, "Why does it mean so much to you to whip my bare skin, Brian Aiken?"
He answered with unexpected ease, "To put you in your place, you're all together to hauty-taughty, the Grand Lady. Then there's the question of male lust, that's in there, too. I can't fuck you all night long but I can certainly whip you to my heart's content. And believe me, the sounds and emotions you'll make are pretty much the same in both cases." He paused and considered. "But that still leaves the question of the male conquest, the eternal need to capture and possess and subdue the female. Do you understand?"
"I suppose so, it's always been like that, hasn't it? You're one of the luck ones who can make it real."
All things end. Willow suddenly found herself facing an empty glass. She looked at Brian Aiken and knew her time had come. Without any false front of shame, coyness, or being arch she asked, very simply, "You want me naked now?"
Before his eyes it was different from a girl. Willow undressed slowly with a tremendous awareness of male eyes and an erotic sense of power. Her nakedness could enslave this man, or any man, but how to apply it and make it real! How could she turn her naked body into a potent weapon strong enough to withstand his male strength and the cut and mark of the whip! There was no way. Quietly she reached for the fastening of what she wore.
The Man examined the nakedness revealed. It was a blushing, shameful nakedness which left Willow without defense. She hated it. She hated him who gazed now in rapture. Caustically she asked, "I please you?"
"Don't ask a silly question. You are superb."
"Why whip me then? Why not love me instead?"
"Loving you is your reward. The whip is the way you earn it." It was all so simple, so preordained. The male statement covered everything. At that moment Willow wished ardently she had been born a man and not a woman. It was a wish she had never previously known. Without expression she asked, "What now?"
As she had been to Brian Aiken's room of punishments before, there was nothing new. She raised her arms as she had done before and, while he buckled the straps around her wrists, asked conversationally, "Why do you whip me first, why don't you rape me instead? I'd have supposed the male need to expend yourself inside me would have been greater than your wish to have me scream beneath your thong?" Brian laughed her question to scorn. "It's very simple, sweetheart. After I've made love to you long enough, I'll go to sleep. Then I won't feel like whipping you. But, if I whip you first, then I get the best of both worlds. You will delivery me your moans, your screams, your twisting of your nakedness. True, if I fucked you first, I would get them too. But they are our grand finale. What you suffer now is something of the prelude, the taste of pleasure to come.
Willow felt strangely at home. She knew this was absurd, knew she would soon be screaming in agony. But she remembered the previous occasion, it had all happened before. But this time there would be no Miss Ponsonby to the rescue. This time she was alone with The Male. And the male would have its will with her without mercy. She wished she could feel more concern."
"There, nice and helpless?" Brian might have been asking as to the fit of a glove.
"Yes. I'm totally helpless and you know it. I'm scared to death and I hope you know that, too. Brian Aiken, I said it before and I'll say it again, you're a bastard."
The whip sliced across her bare shoulders with an agony beyond her memory of the time before. It was an agony unbearable. Willow screamed instantly in response and it was accompanied by the creaking and groaning of the straps and framework holding her prisoner. Her punishment had begun.
The naked girl, strapped helplessly and delivered to the whip, tried hard to divorce herself from the present moment of awful anguish and tried to hide herself in memories of times past. She thought of walking across grassy fields in the morning light. She thought of happy times with herself and Cherish in the gardens and forest of Questings. She thought of the two girls, hopefully happily enchained upon her bed.
She thought of Miss Ponsonby and wondered if the frustrated spinster was thinking now of the plight to which she had delivered herself. She supposed the Mildred Ponsonby would be happy to be so strapped, naked and helpless, provided, of course, that she would be whipped by one of her own sex. It was unthinkable for Miss Ponsonby to be whipped by the male as Willow was now.
Brian Aiken whipped the loveliness held helpless for his lust with a studious and methodical precision all the way from her neck down to her knees. When her back had been lashed he changed his instruments from the whip back to the riding crop which he had first used on her lovely bottom, and repeated the process over again. The captive struggled. She jerked at her encircled wrists and kicked her legs at nothing and for naught. He was remembering her as he had seen her around the village and on her previous visit to his home, clothed, precise, proper, and immensely civilized. But look at her now, here was all the savage exhalation of the male in retribution for all the snubs and rebuffs by which the female had taunted him throughout the ages. Here was male revenge! Brian Aiken, after using it cruelly, set aside the cane and retrieved the wicked whip by which his true purpose was achieved by the etching of the helpless feminine back.
By the time her whipping ended Willow was half unconscious, half delirious, and all together disorganized. Her body jerked and twitched without her knowing it, reacting to an overload of pain. Her mind was lost in a red haze of pain, yet some part wondered why her nakedness and dancing body had not prompted the man to discard the cane and whip, and perform that ugly act of sex upon her helpless body. But that was still to come. She had escaped nothing, she had paid for nothing, the most potent portion of her bargain remained still to pay. Sobbing, she stood, arms upraised and still strapped, while the conquering male took her in his arms and kissed her with all the fervor of love. In a terrible loneliness she kissed him back.
It was pleasant to stand without the clutch of leather around her wrists, to allow her arms to fall passively to each side, to reach back in tentative exploration of her wealed flesh. Willow Blake stood before her conqueror in submission. She was broken and pliant and subject to his will. Even though unbound she had no thought of flight. With female pragmatism she asked quietly, "Would it be asking too much for one more strong drink?"
Laughingly she was led back to the lounge. Not by hand or fingers on her bare arm but by a harsh male grasp of her hair propelling her through passages and doors. She understood it as simply a symbol of male dominance. That was implicit in the pledge she had given. Miss Willow Blake followed meekly where she was led.
"You can mix the drinks, sweetheart. Why not?" Brian said cheerfully when the reached the comfort of the lounge. "Go ahead. If they're not mixed to my satisfaction, you'll suffer some more, but you can make yours as strong as you want."
Willow knelt where indicated, handing him his glass and sipping her own heavily laden potion. She supposed rape would be more bearable if drunk.
"You took the whip remarkably well, sweetheart, far better than I thought." Brian's tribute sounded sincere. "One down, one to go."
"Must you rape me?"
"I'm afraid I must. It's a man's right, you know, when he has the female in his power. Plenty of precedents."
Willow was sure he was right, but wished it otherwise. She had already exhausted all her inspirations for appeal. She had best resolve herself to the end itself. She spoke of what she hated, "So now you're going to use that beastly weapon between your legs to impale my... My sheath?"
"Bravo, well put," Brian professed admiration for what she had asked. "Yes, darling, I am quite simply going to fuck you."
"Do I get tied down?"
"I'll be a gentlemen, I've give you the choice."
It was a choice surprisingly hard to make. Willow longed to be free. But on the other hand, if she was securely bound and without recourse, she would also be free of guilt, her rape would be forced and without contest or submission. Quietly she said, "If you don't mind I think I'd sooner be bound."
"You're chicken?"
"Yes. Sorry."
Her frank admission pleased him, lending him a power and an awareness of possession. This woman's body was his, soon he might have her mind, too. He was not too sure he might not have it now.
"It's hard for me to believe, sweetheart. I don't mean as a rape, which I know you're calling this, but in any of the contexts in which a girl looses her virginity. " He looked down at the kneeling nakedness quietly sipping the drink she had made for herself. "I wish you'd forget the compulsion business. I know you are under compulsion, I can do anything I want with you, but just the same wouldn't it be nice if you and I simply made love down there upon the rug?"
"Thank you. I suppose it's a nice thought. But no!"
"Have it your own way. When you talk like that it makes me feel like I should haul you back into that other room and whip you to bits." He glowered. "I don't want you to forget I could whip you into groveling submission to anything. Do you understand?"
"Yes, I understand." Willow's voice was wooden. "If it would please you to do this, you may as well do it. I don't seem to care about anything anymore. You've hurt me so much."
Willow was suddenly in his arms, her drink sat aside to allow his total possession. After the first onslaught of kisses and the probing hand, he picked her up and carried her to where his bed was to be the alter upon which her virginity must be sacrificed. Willow did not struggle.
She remembered Cherish and the manner in which Cherish had been bound to the bed on that previous time. It happened to her now. Willow made no complaint nor did she struggle as her arms were stretched to either side and bound fast to the bedposts. When the same was done to her feet, she muttered only a simple, "Thank you."
"Maybe a pillow or two under your ass, sweetheart?" His tone was casual.
"If you wish. I'm afraid I have no previous experience."
It was all too perfectly classic and in the manner of porno pulp. Brian Aiken played with the captive nipples, first his fingers then his lips and tongue. One hand stole down to the furry patch and beneath to find it wet and ready. In the true tradition of such rapes, he held his palms, smeared with the moisture from her sex, against her mouth and Willow obediently licked them dry. She did it as an act without volition, wondering if any man could exact a greater tribute from a girl.
Willow hips had been raised by pillows. She felt his approach between her legs and knew her time had come. She was happily numb from both alcohol and that protective insensibility her sex provided for such occasions. She held tense until his searching prong probed and found the wet lips awaiting its entry, when it had sought and found the wet comfort of the sheath, she relaxed in total surrender. From then on, Miss Willow Blake was consciously aware only of an intense curiosity, a curiosity which carried her through the short, sharp agony of loss of maidenhead and the final penetration of her womb. She supposed this was the end.
But it was not the end! It seemed there was never to be an end to this day. Having discovered her the immense, whatever it was, proceeded to plunge then slowly withdraw. Again and again it did this and the male breath was heavy on her cheek. The male lips sought hers and glued themselves on hers to a point where she desired nothing more. Miss Willow Blake arched her back, raised her hips to thrust against the invader, not to repel but to invite. And surrendered herself totally to the invasion of her innermost self by that hard phallus of the male. It went on and on seemingly forever. Miss Willow Blake lost count of orgasms and climaxes, lost count of shame and entered into womanhood.
She was kneeling once more in the lounge, totally unbound, but this time without aid of alcohol. Willow gazed up at the man who had whipped her and raped her. But she found little difference in either act. There had been a strange link between the two. She had originally thought of them as pain and shame. She supposed that other girls might have called it pain and pleasure but she would not so demean herself. Without feeling she asked, "You have had all of me, everything I have to give. What now?"
Brian Aiken had been asking himself the same question, but did not tell her so. For lack of anything better to say, he pronounced, "You have paid your debt and that's the end of it."
"It wasn't a debt, it was a bribe to set us free."
"Have it your own way."
"May I go home now?"
"Why not, you're completely free."
Willow remained kneeling. She was well aware of how we fail to do the things we long to do when they are impossible but now, in complete freedom, she failed to rise, failed to seek her clothes. With feminine insistence she demanded, "You promised to leave us alone. I suffered what you wish. Will you now repeat that promise?"
"Why should I? Once should be enough."
"I'm a girl. I'm scared, that's why."
"I won't repeat a pledge, you've had it once and you'd best be satisfied. Go back to your female Questings but remember I'm still here."
"Still a threat to us?"
"I didn't say that. Be satisfied with what you have before I demand more." He considered her marked back and bottom and even the backs of her legs, and added, "It would be easy for me to keep you now, to keep you forever. You are something of an infinite desire." Willow recognized the signs of a regenerating male concupiscence and refrained from overplaying her hand, after all she had only this man's words, he could easily keep her and whip her on and on and on with intermissions for the penetrations of her sex. Awkwardly she rose to her feet. Awkwardly she said, "Well then, if you don't mind I'll be getting along."
"Run along." He waved a careless hand. "You know where you clothes are and where the door is. No one's stopping you."
The walk home should have been an exhilaration, a time of glory, but it was not. If Brian Aiken had been a gentlemen he would have driven her in his car. But this had not happened. He had airily and contemptuously waved her into a trudge across the fields. He was done with her, something was at an end. Remembering the two captives awaiting her return. Willow stepped out briskly, her clothes frictioning the weals upon her flesh but this was a minor concern she hardly noticed.
The two girls were joyful and vocal. She suspected they had been enjoying lesbian sex to the point of satisfaction and now welcomed a diversion. Feeling a tremendous need of diversion herself, Willow became overly generous. "How would it be darlings if I take you out to dinner? Some nice pub where the food is good?"
"But you'd have to unchain Misty and then she'd run away," protested Cherish.
"No I wouldn't. I think it's a lovely idea," said Misty.
Willow did what she had done before, cinched a chain around each slender waist and snapped it tight with a padlock.
"Just to keep you aware of what you are," she cautioned gently. "But remember, I'm trusting you."
Willow was nervous. She could be sure of Cherish but not of Misty. Misty was an unknown quantity. But perhaps the child would gain from the evening's entertainment a sense of belonging and an awareness that her enslavement was not as implacable as she might have at first thought.
It was a chance Willow decided to take.
The "horse and cow" was a pub renowned for good food. Willow felt certain they all needed it and felt a maternal concern for the two maidens who now were only semi-captive. If Misty chose to run away she would do so with her tummy tightly clasp in chain and padlock. But she might still do this and consider the handicap something she would later overcome. Willow shrugged the thought away, Miss Ponsonby would have to take the risk.
Life is never dull. The first person they beheld, when installed at their own table, was the smiling countenance of Brian Aiken, the man who that afternoon had whipped and raped her. Willow could have screamed in frustration. When he came to greet them and ask if he could share their table, she had but little choice. When he was seated it was all too evident he had attracted the attention of both the moppets who should have been safely chained back at Questings. Willow's worst fears were instantly confirmed.
"You're the bad man Aunt Mildred told me about," Misty volunteered brightly. She added, "You want to get all us girl into bed and do that you know what' to us. I bet you have a lot of fun."
"Misty...!" Willow was horrified.
"She's just trying to shock us all, Mr. Aiken," Cherish explained helpfully. "I'll bet she never said those things back where she came from."
"Enchanting!" Brian Aiken eyed Miss American with approval. "My bed is yours anytime, kid," he assured the shining eyed moppet. "Don't bother to ask Willow, she wouldn't approve."
Adult eyes locked. Both beheld the same vision of Willow, naked, bound, whipped, and spread-eagled for her rape. Willow flushed and turned her attention to Misty. "If you're going to talk like that, we'll go home right now," she said testily, including the intruding male in her regard she added, "I'm incline to think we should leave in any case. Mr. Aiken is not suitable company for girls your age."
"She thinks she doesn't like me." Brian Aiken shrugged at the teenage regard. "Let's see if some ale will soften her up. Oh, and by the way, dinner is on me."
Willow conceded his aplomb. Brian was taking every advantage of a situation she no longer could control. His coming had ruined what she had hoped would be an intimate get acquainted dinner between three girls. The bright chatter she planned had become stiltedly formal. She drank the cocktail and was annoyed with herself for feeling good from it. While Willow was seeking a suitably acid comment. Misty once more took the stage.
"Is Willow kooky, Mr. Aiken? Back at her place she keeps Cherish and me naked and chained. It's the greatest fun but are all English girls treated that way?"
"Indubitably." Brian smiled across the table for approval. "Cherish and me, we've got a chain and padlock around our tummies right now, Mr. Aiken. Is that so we won't eat too much or is every English girl have a chain around her middle."
"Every single one," Brian assured with solemn seriousness. "Helps the figure no end."
"And Cherish and I get our bottoms caned if we used a four letter word. I've got a real sore ass."
"And so you should have," Brian spoke as from long experience. "Every girl your age should have her bottom caned once a week."
"Does Willow whip Aunt Mildred's ass because Aunt Mildred didn't get it caned when she was young, I mean sort of catching up?"
"You Aunt Mildred has been sadly deprived," Brian Aiken agreed with the same serious face. "Miss Blake is being a wonderful influence; aren't you Willow?"
Willow hid her fury by ignoring the male and focusing her attention on Misty who now wiggled unhappily beneath that stern regard. "Do you realize how many times you have used offensive words since Mr. Aiken has sat down with us?" she asked. "I do not see how I can overlook these deliberate lapses on your part. I have a responsibility to your Aunt Mildred. When we return to Questings you will be adequately punished."
"Oh, wow! Gee, whiz Willow, you're not going to cane my bottom again, are you?"
"There are other ways of bringing you to penitence. We will not discuss it further." She turned to Brian Aiken, "Perhaps we should order."
Brian unexpectedly cooperated in the matter of decorum. He had an endless fund of small talk and amused the teenagers and occasionally drew an unwilling smile from the girl he had whipped earlier in the day. Willow recognized unreality. For the girl it was probably the most incredible day of her life and the most painful. But the association she had established with Cherish created an atmosphere from which she could not escape. Brian Aiken was simply an extension of it. There was also Miss Ponsonby. She wondered what The County would think if they only knew.
The mistress of Questing wished she could share the teenager's enjoyment of both the time and place and the man. Whatever his character might be, Brian Aiken was good company and set himself to work to please. But, throughout the dinner talk, and even under the influence of the wine she let him choose, Willow was never unaware of male regard. Brian's eyes constantly focused upon her, evoking a blush she hoped the girls failed to see. She knew what he was thinking and Brian was well aware of her knowledge. But, if she had expected innuendo and carnal hints, she was disappointed. The behavior of their male host was impeccable. When they parted to go their separate ways, he possessed himself of her hand and gazed steadfastly into her evasive eyes and said, "Don't be too hard on the girl, she's only a kid." Cherish picked up the vibrations but was uncertain of their origin, she could only guess at some shared incident between her mistress and the man who had bought their dinner. But Willow's word was law and Willow still appeared, in her eyes, in command of the situation and most certainly in command of she and Misty!
Arriving back at Questings, she immediately fled to her bedroom, stripped naked, and took her handcuffs and leg irons to the older girl she adored. In an absent minded manner Willow locked the irons on the wrists and ankles of the young, eager girl. It was a act they had done so often it had no significance. It was simply the thing to do.
"Gosh, Cherish, do you really want those things on you that bad!" Misty asked in frank curiosity as she looked at Mistress and blithely inquired, "Do you want me to go get mine too?"
"Yes, please. You'll soon get used to being ironed."
The girl from far away was still enjoying the mysteries of her new environment. She submitted to her ironing procedure with the same pleasure as shown by Cherish, but he comment was typical, "Being naked and wearing these things makes me homy as hell, Willow. Aren't you going to do something about it?"
"I've warned your about vulgarity, watch it. I'm still trying to decide a suitable punishment for your behavior at dinner, it was quite unforgivable."
"But, darling... The chain around our tummy?" Cherish reminded gently.
In the same abstracted manner, Willow found the keys, unlocked the padlocks and allowed the trim waists to return to normal, the pink impression of links remaining on teenage skin. The effect was wickedly erotic.
Willow viewed a much subdued and now expectant young woman. Misty was conscious of judgment close at hand.
"I don't really want to punish you," Willow admitted reluctantly, "but you give me no choice, your behavior at dinner was outrageous and, if your aunt hears of it, I could not possibly explain my failure to inflict proper punishment."
"Well, why don't you whip me? Isn't that what you always do?"
Willow sighed. Misty was a darling of a category she had not previously dealt with. She had none of Cherish's sweet submission. True, she did submit, but it was in a way that was Misty's own. "I'm not going to whip you, Misty," she said reflectively. "If I whip you every time you misbehave, you'd be covered in welts. I don't want that and neither do you. I'll satisfy my conscious this time by giving you a rather uncomfortable night in which you'll have plenty of time to contemplate your sins while Cherish and I sleep comfortably upstairs. Come here."
Misty sensed an occasion. They were in the lounge and she had been secretly hoping for a nightcap but thought it better not to ask for one. She was still sampling the eroticism of being ironed and naked and in the company of these two females unlike any others she had ever met. Erect and competent, she obeyed Willow's command and stood before the woman she must obey.
"Give me your hands, Misty."
Misty did as she was bid. She watched the unlocking of her left wrist and thrilled to the tug upon her right by a determined Willow who led her to the wall and the familiar ring. Once more there was the equally familiar series of clicks while the empty cuff sought a refuge of its own within the metal. Misty was securely tethered.
Cherish could guess the punishment but Misty had not yet grasped the import of what had taken place. She playfully rattled the single link of the handcuff that held her to the wall and arranged her hair with her free hand. As far as she was concerned nothing had happened.
"Cherish and I are going to bed now. Misty. You can stay right where you are. We'll see you in the morning."
Misty came to life. She tugged at the handcuff and then asked, "You mean you're going to leave me here all night. I have to stand just like this?"
"You can probably sit down, dear, but only with your hand up above your head." Willow's voice was sweet. "You can arrange yourself anyway you like, but I don't think you'll be terribly comfortable. Think of all those vulgar words you need not have used."
Cherish would have preferred to be whipped. But no doubt her mistress was wise in her handling of a girl to whom all of Questings was new and hard to believe. Misty would not sleep much and would have an opportunity for thought. In any case, whatever Willow did was right. Cherish impulsively kissed the girl who was just beginning the strangest punishment of her life, then followed her mistress up the stairs.
Her hand upon the fastening of the dress brought Willow to a realization of a contretemps. Aiken's whip had marked her cruelly. True, it had broken no skin, but by now the lash strokes would be vivid. Her bottom and her back were still cruelly tender. For a moment she considered making excuses, but there would still be tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Cherish would be hurt and demanding at so strange an absentation from love. Willow shrugged secretly and made the best of it. Cherish would understand.
"Oh, darling!" Cherish surveyed the multicolored flesh of the girl who possessed her utterly. It was a shock but a shock explaining much. Her voice held only the faintest tinge of accusation. "You let Mr. Aiken do this to you, didn't you? Oh, Willow, you must have been hurting terribly all through dinner!"
"Only were I sat down." Willow smiled. "You know yourself the agony of a whip quickly dies, a girl is just left with tender spots and not wanting her clothes."
The two girls stared. Cherish was ironed but it was the mistress who bore the marks of a cruel whipping. It was an incongruity they had not previously met, a happening Cherish did not fully understand, but in a suddenly flash of feminine intuition she exclaimed, "And I bet he did that other thing to you, didn't he, the thing he did to me!"
"Yes, I'm afraid he did."
"Darling, why did you let him! Jeepers, Willow, you look so beautiful with all those terrible marks. How did he compel...?"
"I made a deal with him. If I made him a present of myself today he swore never to bother us again."
"But he bothered us at dinner! I know you didn't want him with us?"
"Yes, but he's promised to stop prowling around this house and trying to kidnapped either you or me. I discussed it with Miss Ponsonby. She said she believed he would be a man of his word."
"But, darling, suppose he isn't!" Cherish was alarmed.
"In that case I've subjected myself to pain and indignity without profit. I thought it a chance I had to take."
The two girls surveyed each other for a silent moment. Cherish, who was adept in almost any function while ironed, arranged her arms around the beloved, and now heavily wealed loveliness, and hugged and hugged and hugged. Their kisses, passionate as ever, but made now under the duress of a strange urgency. It was as though something beautiful was ending.
When they untangled, and Cherish was once more submissive in her irons, the youngster grinned shyly and said, "But now we both know what it's like. I didn't feel good about learning of it before you. It doesn't seem it made much difference to me. How about you?"
Willow managed a sad, small laugh. "It's not what the story books tell us, darling. I wish I could feel something different than I do, but I don't even feel guilty or soiled...."
"That maidenhead thing they talk so much about, I guess it's just some sort of membrane, isn't it? I didn't know I had it before and I don't miss it now," Cherish giggled. "I wonder if it's this way with every girl!"
"I think you have to love someone terribly to make it what it ought to be," Willow said reflectively. "There were moments...."
"I feel awfully guilty about them, too. Darling, I know you won't approve of me saying this but you and me have both been fucked."
"No, I don't approve, but that word does just about describe it. Describes the way I feel. Brian Aiken is probably not a bad guy if we had met him under different circumstances. His trouble is he's living alone out here in the country whereas he ought to be in the city and doing something."
"Mistress, darling, I've come to sort of love Misty, but I wish she'd stayed back there in the USA. You and I have something so beautiful I resent anyone trying to spoil it. Or even spoiling it without trying. Poor darling, can't we give her back to Miss Ponsonby?"
The two girls buried the dolor of the day in the passionate entanglement of love. Inhaling the heady perfume of their own femaleness, they feed upon each other and gorged themselves with breasts and pubic hair, their erotic carnality fed upon itself to generate in both female bellies and endless fire. Cherish and Willow loved each to distraction.
In the morning Misty was gone.
CHAPTER SIX - RUNAWAY
"I think he slipped her a key during dinner," Cherish moaned. "I thought I saw something but then I forgot. She could easily hide it in her hair."
Willow felt a guilty sense of relief. Misty was a burden anyway you looked at it. Questings had been complete before she came and, now with her gone, it could return to normal. On the other hand, where had Misty gone? There would be a perturbed Miss Ponsonby to deal with. While considering what she could tell an angry spinster about the disappearance of her niece, the phone jangled its discordant ring.
"I thought I'd best let you know where I am." Misty's voice was tranquil and faintly jubilant. Willow found herself breathing a sigh of relief. But the bad news was still to come, it began with a girlish giggle, "Darling, I left your handcuffs and leg irons where I took them off, but Mr. Aiken had some of his own and he's got them on me now. Isn't this positively cunt crinkling!"
"No it isn't! Get yourself back here."
"But, darling, I've just told you I can't. Mr. Aiken has my legs chained and lovely handcuffs on my wrists. These he's got are beautiful black ones and much more feminine that those you put on me. I'm so glad I came here."
"You won't be glad when your Aunt Mildred finds out." Misty's sigh of deep content was unmistakable over the wire.
"Darling, I don't know about Aunt Mildred, but I'm sure you'll be glad to be rid of me. I did so envy what you and Cherish have going for you, and all I did was mess it up. Aunt Mildred should have kept me for herself but that wouldn't have been half so much fun."
"Misty, you've made a terrible mistake. Let me speak to Mr. Aiken." The cheerful male voice went instantly to the attack. "Don't say I've broken my word. I've left you and Cherish alone, I have not bothered Questings. The young lady we are discussing came to me of her own free will. Naturally I will put her to good use."
"Misty is a simple child, probably misled," Willow counter attacked. "Giving her that key was an interference in my affairs." Willow was breathing heavily in this facing of a new dilemma. "So all right, so you want something -- what is it?"
"You."
"But you said...."
"You're right, I did. So instead of you my price is Mildred Ponsonby. How does that grab you?"
Willow's first instinct was to laugh, it was too absurd. But with Brian Aiken, and Misty in his power, anything could happen. She demanded, "You surely don't mean to inflict on her what you did on me!"
"Why not! Do her a world of good. She won't die wondering. Besides, if you whip her bottom, why shouldn't I? She might even be grateful."
Misty's voice came back on the line, "Oh Willow, darling, I think it's the most wonderful idea. Mr. Aiken is so clever...." Willow slammed the receiver back down hard.
Phoning Mildred Ponsonby was not easy. Willow felt a child who must confess to sin. But Miss Ponsonby was equal to this fresh disaster, equal at least to contemplate it without becoming hysterical. "I blame myself," she said firmly. "You mustn't feel guilty about this.
I will phone Mr. Aiken and see if I can't pound some sense into his stupid head. As for my niece... ! When I get that little strumpet back in my possession she won't sit down for a month."
"Don't blame Misty too much. She's just a kid and Brian Aiken is a bit overwhelming for a teenager. He's a damned good looking man. " Miss Ponsonby hesitated. "Look, Mildred," Willow continued, "I think Aiken is going to demand a price. I've paid him once, I suppose I might as well pay him twice. It's really my fault he's got Misty, I should have paid more attention to the girl. If we ever get our hands on her again, we'd best use padlocks."
"No one will be paying any price of any kind to this dreadful man. Not even if I have to go over there with my umbrella."
"But Miss Ponsonby...." Willow considered the dreadful confession she must now make. "He whipped me and violated me as his price for giving Cherish back. I think he'll demand the same of you."
"We will see about that!" Miss Ponsonby declared grimly. "We shall see...!"
* * *
Misty was delighted. By her own choice she was now owned by a man, a delightful and good-looking example of the genus Male. She had entered into an enslavement which, for her, was nothing more than a continuation of the bizarre events beginning with her Aunt Mildred, then the adventure of Questings, and now the spine crinkling excitement of being chained and naked and possessed by a real live male who would most certainly do things to her. Misty was certain boredom had no place in her immediate future. If the English wanted to be kinky, she would show them how!
For a sixteen year old girl the humming of glands and the palpitation of excitement of both her heart and her sex was nothing new. Misty knew they heralded immense delights waiting around the corner of birthdays. Now, freed of inhibitions, she hoped to find in Brian Aiken the answer to a maiden's prayer. When she had exclaimed delightfully about the beautiful black handcuffs about her wrists, she had unashamedly inquired, "Are you going to fuck me, Mr. Aiken?"
"Do you want me to?"
"Well, I think it would be very nice if you would, but I've never been fucked yet... Would that make it more difficult? I mean, would you mind?"
"My pleasure, sweetheart. Here, let me turn you around and have a look at that bottom of yours. My, my, someone really did give it to you, huh?"
Misty giggled, "That was Aunt Mildred. She tied me down on a real whipping bench and went to work on me. She made me cry. But by the time she let me loose, I was homy as all get out. I do hope you won't mind but I'm homy right now."
Brian Aiken accepted his blessings thankfully. Life had suddenly become replete with naked maidens, tastefully chained and agreeable to his will. True, Misty was young for his taste, but the dear child would lead to more mature delights.
Misty had been trying to feel her wealed bottom with handcuffed hands, but was not finding it easy. To the man watching these sensuous contortions, Misty's next query was a further confirmation of fortune in his grasp. "Will you whip me, Mr. Aiken?" Misty giggled. "Seems like in England, anyone who loves you whips you. Cherish couldn't explain it to me but I'll get it figured it out someday. Would you enjoy whipping me, Mr. Aiken? I'm not to fussy about getting my bottom caned any more right now, but that still leaves quite a lot of the rest of me."
Assured of available delights, Brian chucked her under the chin and kissed her mouth enough to give Misty what she called within her mind, the flutters. Purposefully he went to the phone.
Miss Mildred Ponsonby's thoughts were bitter as she parked her car adjacent to the heaven of The Male. She had fought her own battle in her mind and was now determined and anxious on account of her niece. She had decided against calling the police. She was determined not to embroil Willow further. She would fight this battle on her own and yield to the victor the spoils of war.
"I trust you have some honor left, Mr. Aiken? If I yield to your outrageous demands, may I be assured you will not renege?"
"Absolutely." Aiken's tone was fervent with sincerity. "And now a glass of sherry?"
It was on the tip of Mildred Ponsonby's tongue to refuse, but after all a glass of sherry might prove beneficial in an ordeal she might find difficult to endure. She said a stiff thankful and followed her host to the lounge. "I am assuming you have not harmed Misty?" she inquired as she accepted the brimming glass.
"You will soon be seeing her, Miss Ponsonby. May I say how much I admire your acceptance of the inevitable?"
"Yes, thank you, I will have another glass." Miss Ponsonby handed over her empty glass as though conferring a favor. "I will remind you of your promise to allow me to forcefully explain to my niece the reason for her being whipped?"
"Of course, of course I will. In fact I will be curious as to your realization."
"That is simple. The child has behaved disgracefully and deserves a thrashing." Miss Ponsonby sniffed angrily. "But I will admit to finding the infliction of pain upon this young woman thrust upon me by fate a distasteful task." She took a hearty sip and fixed her host with a gimlet eye. "I simply demand you do not go beyond sensible limits in her punishment."
"You appear to have given her bottom severe attention already."
"And I intend to do so again at some later date. For now I will see it as a favor if you would perform the task. This is the one small dividend I seem to be receiving in this whole unfortunate affair."
Sitting, watching his visitor bolster her morale, Brian Aiken was not unaware of Miss Ponsonby's physical possibilities. She was a woman who long ago appeared to have given up the pursuit of men and retired into an early spinsterhood. He numerated in his mind the many things she might have done to make herself attractive. Should an opportunity present, he would present to her the wisdom of abandoning the stilted Victorian phrases of her mother or grandmother. They aged and dated her far back past her proper age. Brian found himself with a growing curiosity as to what she would look like when naked. He would soon find out.
Miss Ponsonby was a confusion of strange notions. She knew most women approaching her ordeal would be hysterical or prostrate with fear, but her courage was sustained by more than a natural different from most women. She had been whipped by Willow and found it a tremendous and erotically satisfying experience. She understood herself as a woman with an actual need of pain, or corporal punishment at the hands of another. Up to now she had not contemplated the possibility of receiving the whip from any but a female hand. Soon now it would be a man who would strip her nude and lash her nakedness to his heart's content. Mildred Ponsonby was trembling with a strange eagerness with which she was completely ashamed but which, on the other hand, seemed likely to give her greater strength than two glasses of sherry. Nervously she suggested, "Perhaps we should get started?"
Brian Aiken had set a stage with almost professional skill. The first thing to catch Miss Ponsonby's eye was her niece. Misty was stark naked and standing to one side with her hands crossed and bound and raised comfortably above her head to compel her to stand in one place and to be an appreciative audience for her Aunt's humiliation. When Misty caught sight of them her response was instant, "Oh, Mildred, isn't this wonderful, we're both going to be whipped!"
Miss Ponsonby had expressed concern for the welfare of her niece but she had not expected this. She stopped dead in her tracks and addressed their tormentor, "Mr. Aiken, I absolutely refuse to subject myself to your carnal interests with the audience of this young woman, my niece. Immediately remove her."
"Don't be ridiculous. What you and I are about to do deserves an audience. Misty needs experience in the esoteric arts and this will be a marvelous opportunity for the dear child." Brian chuckled, "Besides, she wants to see you get what she describes as 'your ass whipped.'"
"Misty, I am ashamed of you!" Miss Ponsonby's tone was loaded with menace. "Be good enough to tell this man to take you elsewhere. He and I have some business matters to discuss."
"I know what it is, Aunt Mildred," Misty assured cheerfully. "He's going to whip your bottom, don't bother to call it business. He's going to whip mine, too."
"I should indeed hope so." Miss Ponsonby's tone was frigid. "Your behavior merits punishment. Mr. Aiken assured me you will receive one. I am not, however, anxious to be a witness." She turned to the smiling man and demanded, "Mr. Aiken, please take this irresponsible maiden away out of sight. Attach her to something in a distance place."
"You won't do that, will you Mr. Aiken?" Misty had obviously been coached. "I'm going to watch everything that happens to you, Auntie dear. I'm so excited."
For Miss Ponsonby it was a moment of decision. But she had gone this far, she felt herself already soiled so what did a pair of sparkling young eyes matter? She contented herself with, "There will come a time, Misty, when I am alone with you in complete freedom. You will regret this day."
Misty watched breathless while her Aunt Mildred was positioned on center stage and received the crisp male command, "Strip." Miss Ponsonby swallowed hard. Victorian terms of condemnation choked her throat but were swallowed in grim determination to acquit herself honorably in a time of crisis. Almost fiercely she removed her clothes.
The watchers were impressed. When he beheld the nude Miss Mildred Ponsonby, Brian realized this was indeed his day. Naked the target of his attentions was twice the woman she was when clothed. It was an unexpected bonus, a bonus to set his pulse to racing and his sex to hardening.
There was no dangling tether of rope or chain. Nonchalantly the male demanded, "Just gather your hair please, Miss Ponsonby, and raise it while I fix this collar on your neck. I promise the effect will be quite nice. When we have time I will allow you to admire it in a mirror."
It was an unexpected move but one hard to deny. Miss Ponsonby raised her hair away from the nap of her neck and suffered in silence while a ban of leather encircled her neck, was fastened snugly, and made secure with the snap of a padlock. Acidly she said, "I am not a dog."
Brian paid no heed. His next move to was handcuff the hands reluctantly given, then to raise the hands above the unhappy head to fix the joined hands at the nap of the spinster's neck. Miss Ponsonby was now most blatantly exposed. With a male hand on each side of her rib cage, Brian Aiken guided Miss Mildred Ponsonby to her fate. It was a simple and innocent device, difficult to identify, rather like a divided box upon the floor. However, in the space between the two halves were the half circles that told their own story. Brian had Miss Ponsonby step into place, insert her ankles within the waiting holes. He then moved the other half forward. There then came the snap of a padlock. Miss Ponsonby stood now, hands held tight behind her neck, arms raised, but most of all she had lost her feet, they appeared severed at the ankles by the wooden device in which she was now locked. They were separated by just enough to assure indecent exposure.
Misty was breathless. She, herself, stood comfortably with her crossed wrists just above her hair. She could turn and twist to her heart's desire. But her aunt was now a firm fixture in the center of the room. She, too, could contrive a half turn and a considerable amount of motion in which she could struggle and try to avoid the coming whiplashes. Twistings and struggles that would, in the end, avail her naught. She must stand where she was for whatever might ensue.
Brian had chosen a riding crop, a slim, evil instrument his victim eyed with hatred. But before using it, he placed one arm around the not unlovely waist and used his other hand to explore between the legs that could not close. Laughingly he suggested, "This is your turn, Miss Ponsonby, to come up with some real old-fashioned expressions like, 'Unhand me, you cad!' Or perhaps, 'Take your hand from there, you villain!'"
"Consider them said," Miss Ponsonby retorted coldly. "As I have stated before, you are not a gentlemen."
"For which I offer thanks," said Brian with feeling. "I say now, look at my hand. It's as wet as if I just palmed young Misty. Here, lick it off. Dry my hand, you may as well do something useful."
"I could never do such a thing."
Brian gathered the helpless nudity under one arm and bent it down to present the twin cheeks for his attention. Without warning he delivered upon each of them a resounding slap, the impact made all more audible by a wet hand. He finished the drying process upon the spinster thighs. He backed away, laughing, to receive one more vocal relic of Victorian days, "That was a dastardly thing to do, Mr. Aiken. If you feel no shame I will feel enough for both."
The riding crop sang its fierce, glad song and wound itself across Miss Ponsonby's bottom from hip to hip. The nakedness, hands held high by her neck, feet firmly locked within the stocks, gasped and flinched. The pain was undoubtedly a shock. Then, quietly she suggested, "I suppose it is useless to ask you to whip me somewhat less vigorously?"
"I'm afraid so."
Misty watched enthralled. She had been introduced to eroticism only recently but already found herself deeply involved in an emotional rapport with each situation as it unfolded. As she watched now, Brian Aiken methodically and artistically laid blow after wicked blow across the bottom of her aunt, a bottom on which she could now discern the marks of similar attentions. Aunt Mildred was a fraud. Bursting with things to say, the nymphet said nothing. She suddenly remembered her turn would come. She contented herself with the impotent query, "Does it hurt, Auntie?"
It is doubtful Miss Ponsonby heard. She was fighting tooth and nail to retain a reasonable composure and refuse to scream. The pain was atrocious, far more than Willow had imposed, yet when Brian paused in its administration the fire burned hotly between the spinster's legs to give her reassurance. Perhaps the agony would be less when Aiken abandoned the crop and moved from her bottom to her back! On the other hand the back always hurt more than the bottom... !
"Maybe you shouldn't hit her so hard, Mr. Aiken." Misty was feeling a belated loyalty, her own twin cheeks twitching in sympathy to each solid impact across her Aunt Mildred's flesh. "You're not being a bit kind."
Aiken turned his attention from the aunt to the niece. Without a word he slashed hard with the crop across the virgin back. Misty screamed and danced a puppet jig at the end of her tether, her eyes brimming tears fixed upon him in reproach. "You do not give me advice, sweetheart," Brian said gently. "Just one stroke for now, there could be more."
"You are a monster," said Aunt Mildred with conviction.
"I am simply giving guidance where needed, dear lady. That single application will teach our little darling to watch her words." Brian spoke in a pleasantly conversational tone. He was living intensely but only wish he could share this ecstasy with the woman who's punishment was not yet half way through. With Willow or Cherish it would have been different. But with Mildred Ponsonby it was an unknown quantity. He had uncovered unsuspected depths, there might be more. He turned his attention back to the vividly wealed skin of the woman who must needs stand, obscenely straddled to receive his justice. His arm swung viciously and one more line of crimson appeared. Miss Ponsonby was holding up well, he would take his time.
Misty wept. It was not only the unexpectedly awful pain of the crop across her back but also her fear the rapport between herself and this strange man might be jeopardized. For the first time she was glimpsing authority in the male arm and the stern male lips. She was now frighteningly conscious of her own impending pain. But Mr. Aiken appeared fully occupied with Aunt Mildred so perhaps he might forget. Hopefully she dried her cheeks upon a raised bare arm and gazed in awe at Aunt Mildred.
Aunt Mildred had no choice but to stand erect and thrust her breasts into prominence. The locked hands behind her neck were a compulsion in this exposure. The stocks in which her legs were fastened were artfully designed. When Brian paused his application of the crop and devoted a free hand to the exploration of her crotch and the softness of inside thighs, she uttered urgently, "Please no. Please don't whip me there. You mustn't, you mustn't...!"
But when her inquisitor exchanged the crop for a lightly thonged whip which swept swiftly up between her legs, she deigned to say no more. To plead was useless. Miss Ponsonby bore the harsh impacts on her thighs and upward into the intimacy of her crotch in as silent an anguish as she could.
"Are you going to whip me in there like that, Mr. Aiken?" Misty had recovered and was showing a more concerned curiosity in events. "Does it hurt something awful, Aunt Mildred?"
"Unspeakably!" Aunt Mildred looked back beneath a sweat-soaked armpit to demand, "You absolutely must not whip the child in such private places. I realize your lust must find its outlet with me but Misty is only sixteen...."
"Going on seventeen," Misty added, helpfully.
Brian Aiken adored them both. Beneath his whip Mildred Ponsonby had acquired a strange new aura of desirability. Her sweat of anguish was doubly and triply female. He sniffed it appreciatively and noted the swelling curves and contours of a woman who had hidden her femininity beneath a cloak of rejection. His curiosity as to her quality during the act of rape quickened, it was a discovery he could afford to delay and with each blow across her virgin skin, Miss Ponsonby would become increasingly amenable. Her protests had already faded away, she was devoting every ounce of her character to the suppression of screams. With the exchange of whips he eyed the new field of his efforts and decided not to carry the woman he was whipping beyond the bounds of tolerance. The pain she seemed able to handle should prove enough.
"Are you going to whip Aunt Mildred's back now, Mr. Aiken," Misty asked. She was not involved to the point of forgetting. "Jeepers...! I say though, shouldn't you cover her breasts? Wouldn't it be awful if...." It was a repeat performance. Aiken once more selected the silken thonged whip which he had marked the Ponsonby crotch and advanced to a now cringing Misty. "You really do talk a lot, child," he said easily as, with a swift, sure stroke, he splatted the thongs hard across the nymphet's left breast. While she was still in shock he repeated the blow upon her right, nodding in satisfaction at the spreading red upon the smooth, pert young breasts. Casually he returned to his task.
"Mr. Aiken, I really must protest. You should never whip a female in such a delicate place. In any case, Misty's far to young."
"Got nice tits though."
"You are disgusting, beyond the pale. Kindly return your attentions to me. I am trying hard to compose myself beneath your cruelty."
"Oh. come of it Mildred. You know you're loving every stroke and wanting more. As we progress I'll return to that bottom of yours and keep it well scolded. I'll bet you've got a nice little fire burning right now" He smiled pleasantly and took a practice swing. "And now your back, Mildred. Please feel free to scream."
Misty was in a fever of lust as she watched the whip cut its will upon her Aunt's back. The captive girl was emotionally uncertain of her own feelings. Her breasts were tingling, but after the initial agony the effect was decidedly arousing as was the stroke across her back. If only Mr. Aiken would space his cuts upon her skin sufficiently wide apart, she knew she could bare them and would unquestionably climax explosively. It was the steady cut after cut after cut she feared. Watching her aunt now, Misty had little hope of emulating her fortitude. Mildred Ponsonby swayed, twisted and gasped. Her elbows pointing to each side of her head were like small wings fluttering in anguish. The youngster's bound hands were fluttering in much the same manner, struggling to free themselves from the rope holding them. Misty scarcely noticed the rough chafe in preoccupation in what she had received. She had entered a strange new world in which she was already encountering intensities of emotions she had never dreamed of. When she realized her own travail had scarcely started, her heat flamed anew and made her long for a free hand with which to touch the engorged flesh between her thighs. Misty guessed she was wet, wet, wet and was willing to bet her aunt was, too.
Brian Aiken was a Sybarite who well knew the brevity of joy. He was practiced to know the value of variety and moderation. When he had planted his last blow across the bare back, he circled the twitching nakedness to savor every nuance of feeling from the erotic vision. Mildred appeared unaware of him, her eyes were still closed in the seeking of an escape from pain denied. And she continued to provide the man who had whipped her with lush tributes from the curves of her female body. Unconsciously she bombarded him with wave after wave of female scent until the watching man felt positive of lush rewards in the second half of the pinioned woman's punishment. His reverie was shattered by Misty's pert inquiry, "Are you going to fuck Aunt Mildred now, Mr. Aiken?"
The outrageous question now only robbed Brian Aiken of his vision but it brought Aunt Mildred herself back to reality. Her retort was typical, "I've told you never to use that word, Misty." She turned to Brian to ask, quiveringly, "Are you done with me, Mr. Aiken, is my whipping at an end?"
"I fear so." He regret was genuine. There can be no doubt he would have been happy to whip her throughout the day. He turned to Misty and said, "Quiet girl. I'm going to deal with you." But then he and the woman he had whipped reverted to their own visions and their own pains and ecstasies. It was almost with reverence he left the female feet locked in the stocks and turned his attention to the shinning eyed nymphet who's breasts were enchantingly decorated in a bra of scarlet. His first act was to palm her heated sex, withdrawing a wet hand and making her dry it with her tongue as he casually observed, "Be nice when you've got as nice a pubic bush as your Aunt Mildred. I hope you've noticed she's got a nice forest there."
"Will mine grow like that, Mr. Aiken? Gee, I hope so."
Brian was well aware of the deadening effect of too much pain too soon. A mischievous thought had entered his mind. "I wonder if the growth of your little triangle might be speeded by a good shave?" His suggestion met with a stunned silence. Misty was turning the suggestion over and over in her mind, uncertain of how she should react. Stupefied, she asked aghast, "Oh, Mr. Aiken, you really mean you'd shave my cunt?"
"I was thinking of you pubic hair. But, of course, that little thing with the four letter name is right in there. I'm sure it would yield a few hairs."
"But why...?"
"It would show off your neat little slit better than inside a bush and would make it much more vulnerable when being whipped. Too much hair tends to hide the weals."
"But I haven't got that much, Mr. Aiken. Not near as much as Aunt Mildred."
"No great loss then. But a nice experiment, don't you think?" Misty's heart pounded. A shaven cunt! The vulgar words turned over and over in her mind in a joyous wave of eroticism, envisioning a neat virgin plumpness the razor would reveal. But it was Aunt Mildred who answered on her behalf.
"Don't be obscene, Mr. Aiken. I don't recall the removing of pubic hair as part of our contract. Kindly move me on to the second part of my punishment and leave my niece's pubic hair alone. If you must so excite your lust, you may shave me."
"But, Auntie, you've got such a gorgeous bush, that would be a shame!"
"I entirely agree," Brian interposed. "Set your mind at rest Mildred, your pubic bush is save. I have decided to shave Misty."
"I absolutely forbid! Really, Mr. Aiken, you are absolutely outrageous. The poor child would die of shame."
"No she wouldn't," Misty assured brightly. "Wouldn't it be fun, you with lots of hair and me with none." Misty sparkled at the grinning male. "When will you shave me, Mr. Aiken?"
"No time like the present, huh? Just hold still while I pick up the things I'll need. I can shave you right here where your Aunt Mildred can get a full view of the proceedings."
"Do you mean to tell me you intend to have me stand in this unseemly posture throughout?" Miss Ponsonby demanded, shocked.
"You're highly decorative as you are, Mildred. Be grateful for my appreciation of your charms."
"Misty, your behavior is deplorable," the whipped woman said when the two of them were alone. "You are positively inviting this terrible act he is about to do."
"But, Auntie dear, it will be such fun. I've never had my cunt shaved and it would be a pity to spoil your lovely patch, and like he says, mine will grow again and maybe a lot thicker and darker. I'm so excited."
"You deserve the thrashing I hope you are about to receive." Miss Ponsonby sniffed disgustedly.
"Well, don't take on so, Aunt Mildred, I'm not any worse than you. I saw you have that orgasm while you were being whipped. And I'll bet you're near another one right now. Gee, you look beautiful the way he's got you fixed. I never realized how beautiful you are. You don't dress properly."
Brian Aiken returned with the shaving kit and soap and water and a towel, he was whistling cheerfully and obviously a happy man. "Oh, jeepers!" said Misty. "Oh, wow...!"
CHAPTER SEVEN - PUSSY SHAVE
For once Misty was silent. AS she was prepared for, what her aunt considered a truly awful fate, she quivered and palpated in the grip of waves of sensation. She had offered to stand very still for the operation but Brian had swept the thought aside and done it properly. He had raised the captive hands to place Misty in a taut stretch. He had then looped one ankle and raised it almost as high as her bound wrists to leave her standing upon one foot, fully exposed for the lather and brush. He applied both vigorously and lamented Misty's inability to see the foaming white at the junction of her thighs where, quite soon, there would remain not even a single hair.
"Glad I thought of this," Brian said musingly. "Makes a nice break in the proceedings. Nothing like a bit of comic relief." He stropped his razor busily and eyed the small mountain of white foam hiding heart's desire. "And now, my proud young beauty...!" The proud young beauty, no longer proud in her stretched and obscene exposure, was pantingly aware of sensation after fresh sensation. The first was cold. As the blade slithered upon her lubricated flesh, the foam and the hair left a sleek wetness upon which the air of the room, even through warm, seemed like ice. It was hard to believe that pubic curls could so shield a maiden from the cold, but there it was, and the sensation grew as the keen blade sought her secret place and, guided by firm male fingers, denuded the pubic treasure its owner had watched grow in impatient interest. Soon this fruit of her loins would be departed from her. The hope of a more luxuriant growth was something sufficient in the future not to be considered at this moment. Misty sighed and longed to watch.
"My poor child, to think this should be done to you!" Aunt Mildred's eyes were focused on the impossible. Her own pubic area was crawling with sensations not entirely unpleasant.
"It tickles. Auntie, and it feels all cold where the razor's been," Misty informed. "Oh, jeepers!"
The well tethered teenager could not move, she did not even try. Moving was the last thing on Misty's mind. She wished she was not stretched so tight. But then a girl cannot have everything. She contented herself with delicious visions of what was taking place around the orifice of her sex. She knew that when the operation was finished, she would long most ardently for a mirror, or even for a free hand with which to explore a fresh discovery of herself.
The advancing blade and the shrinking foam were having an unsuspected effect upon all present. As his careful lifting of a maid lip and his meticulous caution to miss no single strand progressed to reveal hidden delights, Brian was wondering, with wry amusement, if he could hold out the demands of his throbbing phallus long enough to finish the job. At the moment his greatest desire was to bury the pulsing rod deep within a female sheath. Under the same stimulus Misty voiced a warning, "I... I think I'm going to have an orgasm, Mr. Aiken, I'll tell you when I can't hold it any longer. Gosh, isn't this something!" Miss Ponsonby was not immune. She could not tear her gaze away from the blade so busily denuding her niece's crotch. The area being exposed was enticingly smooth and svelte, and the snicker of the steel transmitted itself to her own loins to bum her fire more brightly with the promise of an orgasm to match the man's and the girl's. She reflected wryly that never had so many owed so much to a razor blade. She longed for a free hand with which to reassure herself of her own hairy forest and the degree of its humidity.
It was done! Brian steeped the wash cloth and laved the revealed and naked skin. He then toweled Misty dry and stepped back to admire the effect. It was breathlessly astonishing. He had once known a girl who shaved regularly, but she had been nothing like this. Misty's youth and Misty's contours were a revelation such as few barbers knew. He cupped the lips in an inquiring hand, at which point Misty emitted, "Oh... Oh-h-h-h-h-h! I'm going to...." The teenage orgasm was explosive. It was to be understood her strained and stressed posture in the ropes would add a new dimension to a female climax. Misty moaned and wailed in a delicious paroxysm of gorgeous agony. At its peak it was joined by a similar demonstration from the woman in the stocks. Mildred Ponsonby twisted and moaned in a way even superior to that of her niece for she had more freedom of motion.
Brian Aiken was hard put to watch both female exhibitions at one time and loose nothing of either. He was glad he had thought of the razor and soap, they had been a great success. Thoughtfully he freed Misty's bound leg to allow it to descend to the floor and to give Misty the chance to pant her way back to normalcy under more natural conditions. As thought to pinpoint Mildred's peak of ecstasy, he slashed the well-marked bottom with one more terrible stroke of the crop to send her over the brink into a depth of sensation he could not share. But Brian Aiken smiled, his time was close at hand.
Two females watch the male disrobe. Climax had brought satiety to neither. Their interest in the risen rod was acute, Misty's from the hot well of longing, and her aunt's from an undeniable curiosity at something she had turned her back upon all her life, but which now she could now not escape. She was much in the position of a girl sentenced to die as the firing squad aimed their rifles. When Aiken unlocked her ankles from the stocks, she knew only relief.
"Surely you do not intend to do -- what you intend with my hands in this disgraceful position behind my neck?" Mildred asked as she was thrust upon her back upon the bed. "There is no need to secure me at all, I have given my word. I will suffer my defilement without complaint."
"You do use the damnedest words," Brian said admiringly as he looped each of his victim's ankles and tethered them loosely to each side of the bed. The tethers would impede nothing but would inhibit Miss Ponsonby from making a quick dash for freedom. He had little doubt he could trust her assurance of compliance, but he liked it this way and felt it added its own little erotic touch. Mildred Ponsonby had become sheer delight. He watched her nestle down against the covers but then strive to rise at the frictioning of whipped flesh. If the virgin needed further stimulus to orgasm, he was positive her striated back and bottom would be a useful supplemental to his own endeavors. The hands clasped behind the collared neck added their own symbolism and were quaintly appropriate in their simulation of a woman reclining gracefully upon a bed. She could dispose her tethered feet as she pleased other than to leave the couch. Miss Mildred Ponsonby was ready to be raped.
"Perhaps you should advise me. I mean, this is something quite new," Mildred explained shame-faced, blush spreading as though she was a virgin bride. She seemed about to say more but closed her lips in determination to accept the inevitable as gracefully as might be.
"Just roll with the punches, sweetheart. Leave everything to me," Brian advised. "You shouldn't think of this as rape, it isn't rape at all."
Mildred Ponsonby did not answer, she closed her eyes, but the watching man noticed with amusement the manner in which her legs separated well apart, perhaps it was an involuntary feminine invitation... !
He entered Mildred's wet, hot sheath with gentle care.
Misty was still tautly stretched and wishing Aiken had taken time to give her slack for comfort while she waited on his convenience and her aunt's introduction to womanhood. She would have liked to watch and had thought of asking but deemed it unwise. And, in any case, Aunt Mildred would never have approved. Misty supposed she had a good idea of what awaited her from information gleamed from giggled conversations in washrooms and other hidden spots at school. Sex had been much discussed and well described. There had also been a great many books! But the act itself would be new to her. Brian had left her intact over night, satisfying himself with love play and finding relief by introducing maiden lips to his throbbing member when it became too hard to bare. Misty had heard of this act, too, she was thrilled to be introduced to its eroticism before being bound spread-eagle for the other, for more important, penetration of her sex. She had asked about the spread-eagle and Brian had laughed at her naivete. It had been in this happy rapport they had approached this day, the day in which Aunt Mildred was to give all!
The room was silent in a sudden loneliness. Misty shifted from one bare foot to the other in an effort to find comfort where none existed. It hurt too much to struggle against the cords around her wrists, she could not free them anyway but struggling was something to pass the time. If she had not been stretched so tight, she could have leaned forward and caught a glimpse of her shaven puss. But even that small pleasure was denied. She was forced to fall back on reflections of her aunt's impalement. She dare not dwell upon her own whipping, still to come, her imagination was vivid enough to cause the first few strokes to lead her into sensations too acute to bare. She wondered with a giggle, whether she and Aunt Mildred would ever be able to discuss, in whispered confidence, the subject of their rape. Misty wondered mischievously if her aunt had ever heard the expressions, "a piece of tail," or the sly, "bit of nookie." It would be amusing to know what term Aunt Mildred used in the secrecy of her own mind.
Unhappily, the tethered girl remembered books in which male virility had been endless, progressing from one orgasm to another, matched only by female capacity for sperm. Misty was not sure about the books, but if they were only half true then she could resign herself to remaining where she was and as she was for a long time. After a while she shed a few tears of self pity at the loneliness and the pain of bound wrists. Being a slavegirl was not an unmixed blessing.
The mood of the room of punishments changed as Brian Aiken led in a wealed nakedness by a single cuffed hand. The striated nudity which had once been a spinster named Ponsonby was utterly passive, pliant to its master's will. It spared only a small wan smile for its waiting niece before it was handcuffed to a ring and leaned back in weariness against the wall to watch whatever its master might do next. The one time Miss Ponsonby had taken a long journey and lost her way.
Misty guessed her aunt's travail was over. As her own arms were lowered her eyes met those of the man to whom she had delivered herself. There they found the same rapport she had felt for the first time in the restaurant. It was to lead her now to discoveries, at the thought of which every nerve in her being pulsed into apprehensive life.
Brian kissed her. "Ready, sweetheart?"
"Yes, of course. Will you whip me first or do the other thing?"
"The whip." Brian paused for effect, his eyes intent upon the youngster's face. "Up between your legs."
It was like a blow. Misty supposed it explained the shaving of her pubic hair. She could scarce envision so bizarre a punishment but fear was swamped beneath a wave of sensuality which flowed from her and was felt by the male.
"Looking forward to it, aren't you sweetheart?"
"Yes, aren't I silly." Misty's voice was choked and articulation blurred but her eyes were shinning. And, even though she trembled, she watched her master's every move in the sure knowledge each motion would result in pain, a pain inflicted within a maiden place no pain should be. Without comment she watched him place a box beside her leg, it was as though she shrank from violating the passive silent solitude within which her aunt was chained.
"Up with one foot, Misty dear, plant it on the box."
The helpless young nakedness obeyed. She stood on one leg, the other held off to one side, a gap which Aiken widened by gently easing the box further away until he achieved an exposure of the maiden crotch to suit his purpose.
"I'll make this interesting for you," he assured his shivering victim. "I'll sentence you to a number of lashes in phases. You can keep your foot where it is to receive them. But if you take it down or knock the box away you'll get twice as many. Remember, I can always tie you in a suitable posture. Be a good girl."
Misty looked at the man and at the silken thonged whip. She suspected he was being kind, or at least more kind than to her aunt. She said, "Mr. Aiken, I'm terrible sorry but I'm frightened. I'm going to try to do what you want but I'm afraid I'll scream. I've read about girls being whipped "
"You're a real treasure," Aiken assured her with a trace of admiration. "I wouldn't have done this if you hadn't asked." He went to the discarded pile of female clothing laying on the floor, extracted the tiny panties and thrust them inside Misty's mouth. The girl opened wide to accept the redolent article that had been pushed against a woman's sex, choked as her tongue was depressed and cheeks bulged but resolutely clenched her teeth upon a mouthful she had not desired. From the same small pile Brian retrieved a nylon with which to bind the captive mouth. He used two of them to insure the purpose he and this remarkable maiden both desired. When it was done. Misty shook and nodded her head experimentally, her eyes shinning in a new sensation.
Aiken stepped away to admire his new creation. It was more awkward than pleased him but it served his purpose well. He was curious to see how well this girl could command her own responses. He chose the small, but wicked, whip and swung it in sure aim for where his razor had paved the way.
If Misty had tossed her head before she did so now with double intensity, it was the only expression she could make, she could do little contorting and still keep her foot where the man had order. Brian chucked her under the chin and said quietly, "For this first time, five." To be shaved had been a shock, delicious perhaps, but still a shock. Now to be whipped upon the skin thus bared and upon her sex devoid of covering was a punishment doubly awful. But Misty was concerned with not more than to bear her pain and gain the approval of this exciting male who had lured her from the safety of Questings. She clenched her teeth.
The splat of thongs on bared thighs was electric, the pain had a quality all its own. When the silken thongs found their way into the innermost crevasse to cut her crotch, they had been gathered into a single weight which cut cruelly upon unprotected lips and should one of them penetrate between, the pain was excruciating. But Misty lasted out the five shrewd strokes. When they were done she resolutely put her raised foot back on the floor and made motions that she had to speak. He removed the gag from her mouth, curious as to what she wanted to badly to say. She said with calm certainty, "I'm sorry, Mr. Aiken, I can't stand it, I can't take any more. You'll have to whip my back or something." The woman handcuffed to the wall neither moved or spoke. It was as though she were in a trace, compounded both of pain and a strange new ecstasy with which it was hard to cope. But Brian Aiken was not basically cruel. The sweetness of Misty's statement and suggestion penetrated to his sympathy. She had, after all, come to him in trust and accepted his chains with girlish glee. Yet he was still the master. How much authority could he relinquish and still retain her respect? He made an instant decision.
"Very well, sweetheart, I see your point. I'm not a brute. Tell you what, I'll move the box to the other side, you raise that leg for five and we'll call it quits. That's the end of it, no more whip for you today." Misty's heart fluttered with joy. Brian Aiken did love her after all! In her heart she deduced his motives and, while she feared the five fresh strips, longed only to obey. She put her other leg up upon the box as directed and sweetly said, "You're a darling, Mr. Aiken, I wish I wasn't such a sissy. But, yes, give me five more of the same and I think you'd better gag me again. It was nice of you to take Auntie's panties out of my mouth to give me a chance to speak but, honest, I don't want to scream. Please?"
It was simply done. The whip cut the air and cut the skin of a girl forced to give it greeting with her willing flesh. Inarticulate sounds came from behind the panties firmly bound within the young mouth, but the soft inside of Misty's thigh shivered and bounced beneath the impacts and the plumpness of her pussy was flattened momentary by one terrible and knowing stroke. When the box was taken from beneath her foot and Miss Ponsonby's panties from her mouth, Misty rested her head upon a male shoulder and wept as she was embraced in the strong and tender arms of the man she idolized. Brokenly she muttered into the softness of Brian's neck, "Thank you, thank you, oh, thank you!"
The quiet communion of the man and the still tethered girl went on and on. Mildred paid no heed. She was still immersed in whatever land her whipping and the male lovemaking had sent her to. Misty stole a swift glance but was satisfied to leave her aunt as she was. When her arms were lowered and she was picked up and held against male torso as naked as her own, she did no more than sigh in a deep contentment, her heat burning in a fierce incandescence, undiminished by her orgasms. Reaching the bedroom, her hands still tight tied in front, Misty was tossed upon the bed. Aiken looked down at her loveliness, a loveliness enhanced by the scarlet of her thighs, his mind active with plans to extract from this charming girl every nuance of feeling and sensation his mastery of her could make possible. His pulse throbbed anew when she held out her bound hands and suggested, "You'll have to untie these, won't you Mr. Aiken?"
He did as suggested, tossing the rope aside. The girl was finitely desirable there upon the bed and her eyes were alight with expectation. What more could a man demand!
But Misty had her own ideas. "You're not going to fuck me without tying me up first, are you Mr. Aiken?"
He adored the child. She was utterly incredible in her vivid yearning for both experience and sensation. Gruffly he replied, "There's no need to tie you. You and I can enjoy each other as we are." Misty was shocked. Such a thought violated every concept by which she and all her generation viewed the act of rape. She thought of herself as a kidnapped girl and of Aiken as her captor. Misty saw it as totally inappropriate that she not be tied and she said so in no uncertain terms.
"You're quite wonderful," Brian Aiken conceded, almost in homage. He took the discarded rope and, cutting it to his need, bound each of her hands far out to the comers of the headboard. Having rendered her thus helpless he inquired, in true amusement, "There, sweetheart, that satisfy your little heart? You couldn't get loose in a week. No use tying your feet, you can probably do the occasion more justice if I leave them free."
"Oh, no!" Misty was shocked. "You have to tie my feet, every girl who gets raped like this has her feet tied. I think you're suppose to push a pillow or two under my bottom after you've got me bound. That's the way I've read it should be."
In wonder at his good fortune the man did as his joyous victim required. Brian Aiken tied each slender teenage ankle with care and precision as well as a vicious tightness. He took the trailing rope to the bottom corner of the bed and made it fast, being sure to leave a trifle slack for the struggles Misty could not yet conceive. Sardonically he pushed a pillow beneath her hips.
"How's that, sweetheart? Does that fulfill your fantasy?"
"Oh-h-h-h-h... Mr. Aiken, you're so wonderful!" Misty proclaimed, eyes shinning, breasts heaving, her scarlet thighs and belly proclaiming an ordeal now past. "You're really going to push that great big thing of yours up inside me? I mean you're not going to rub my clit with a finger or something?" Her tone was anxious.
Brian laughed at her eagerness. "What do you call 'my great big thing,'?" he inquired, amused. "Give me a name for what's going to go up inside your belly."
The nymphet flushed. She was quick enough to use four letter words in teenage efforts to shock, but when they were pointed at herself she remembered respectability. Shyly she said, "Isn't it called a prick, Mr. Aiken? Or maybe a cock?" she giggled. "I think that's so silly, it doesn't look the least bit like a rooster." In sudden seriousness she added, "Please don't hurt me, this hasn't happened to me before. But I wouldn't want you to not to. I would hate it if you stopped now." She wiggled against her spread out bindings with a delicious testing of their hold. "See, Mr. Aiken, I'm ever so helpless. Please do it to me."
Brian Aiken "did it" to Misty with the same gentleness he had evidenced in the impalement of her aunt. Reflecting ruefully that if all seducers were as overworked as he, there would be fewer of them. Misty moaned, but whether in ecstasy or agony it was hard to tell.
CHAPTER EIGHT - PUNISHED LOINS
It was an unintrusive little shop on a quiet side street. On a day's excursion to the city, Willow and Cherish discovered it quite by accident. They would have passed it by had not Cherish suddenly clutched her mistress' arm and pointed. In the window were none of the usual appeals to purchase, nothing more than a black velvet backdrop which draped in cunningly contrived folds across the window space to reach the glass. Centered upon this was a small square raised pedestal. Upon its top was a shinning metal circlet. It was exactly the size of a girl's wrist.
The woman was neither shocked nor coy. The luxury of the interior complemented her svelte attractiveness. She was a business woman who assumed those who entered knew what they desired. She correctly assessed mistress and slavegirl at a glance. She frankly admired Cherish and quietly said to Willow, "She is a charming child. I envy you."
Both girls had a sense of finding hidden treasure. They allowed themselves to be ushered into what was described as a "dressing room." It contained showcases and a small counter. Beneath the glass was cunningly displayed an array of shinning metal objects to bring a gasp to maiden lips. The quite feminine voice suggested, "Perhaps if the young lady would remove her clothes?"
To make herself naked was never difficult for Cherish. She did so now and shared a shy smile with the sales lady who examined the chain and padlock around the slender waist with interest but also with a faint disdain. Which led her to ask Willow, "Perhaps if you would unlock this... ? I have treasures...." Cherish rubbed the link marks on her skin. But was instantly lost in wonder at what now replaced the chain. It was a two inch wide band of shinning steel, deceptively thin, amazingly pliant. It encircled the young waist as might a serpent to click itself shut without a trace of lock or hinge. Standing before the big mirror to admire and fingering the shinning belt in delight, Cherish could find nothing but a completely smooth surface. It was as though the silver band was a part of her being, adjusting itself to her breathing and never for a moment being anything but firmly snug. Entranced, Cherish exclaimed, "It's beautiful!" And then to Willow, "Oh, darling...!"
The priestess of the little shop produced miracles as if my magic. She knelt now before the breathless girl, there was a swirl of heavy links and two distinct snaps as locks plunged into place. She then stood back to allow Cherish to admire leg irons so vastly superior and lovelier than those she was accustomed to, that they almost were in the nature of jewelry. Everything about the shackles was crafted with skill, one might almost believe the heavy links might have been hand craved. The circlets were snug upon the trim ankles in the same manner as the band around the waist. It was though a magician had anticipated the visit and prepared the lovely constrains for Cherish alone. Willow shared her darling's excitement and was certain she would soon part with a great deal of money.
"They are tres chic, are they not?" the priestess was suddenly French, a witch from Normande or perhaps a sorceress from Circassonne. "Perhaps if Mademoiselle carried to walk...?" Mademoiselle did indeed care to walk. Cherish delightedly, and proud of her shackled skills, sent the lovely links to swirling on the rug. She instantly guessed the shackles she wore now had a shorter linkage than the old police leg irons Willow had formally used on her. But her performance drew approval from watching eyes. When Cherish once more stood before her mistress, the appearance of slender irons for her slender wrists was but one more piece of magic of this wonderful place. Cherish held out her hands.
"The demoiselle will be most secure, no?" The voice was as lovely as its owner and the things she sold. Cherish raised her forearms for the audience to behold the span of links and the shinning circlets they joined. The tether between the wrists was longer than handcuffs and the shinning bands were far less heavy than those upon Cherish's ankles. "We do not make the wristlets of heavy gauge to give the little one a weapon with to fight." Their mentor laughed, "But she will never in her whole life get rid of them unless her owner should so choose."
The collar was inevitable. If there were choices, the owner did not offer them, but instead gently clasped the young shackled hands and pressed it into the willing fingers, "The young lady will wish to fasten this herself. Here, I raise the so beautiful hair, so!"
Cherish, heart thumbing with excitement, her wrist chains clinking pleasantly, encircled her own neck in metal and closed it tight in a decisive motion to produce an impressive click, as though making certain she would wear the ornament for life. She turned to the mirror and once more found wonder in herself. She was Isis and Aphrodite, she was Eve.
But they were not yet done. Willow and her slavegirl were led to the counter upon which were now displayed exquisitely wrought handcuffs of varying weights and sizes, but none with the familiar racket and notched band. These, when they replaced the shackles on the girlish wrist were obviously designed for Cherish as had been all the other constraints had been. The fit was snug and total, tighter than would have been wise with handcuffs. But here the encircling steel had a greater width so their wearer might struggle to her heart's content and her skin not suffer. They could not chose between them so they bought them all.
There remained now upon the velvet pad one small smoothly made object. "It is the little cuffs for the tiny thumbs," the magic voice explained. "Mademoiselle may wear them now as she walks around, or should her mistress wish they can be fastened anywhere. You will notice the hole provided for the screw or bolt. Mademoiselle must then sit or stand where it's put. I find them the most enchanting."
Next, the two girls found themselves gazing in astonishment at rings, rings of many sizes but with an intent most obvious. "The little one is not pierced, is she? But this I do for you without the charge." Soft, wise fingers tilted Cherish's breasts and gently pinched the rosebud nipples to test their adaptation to the rings. "She is well formed for them." There came a silver Gallic laugh. "They are not only for the ornament, the precious jewels, but a maiden with ringed nipples must be most obedient to her mistress. Her mistress has only to clasp a ring nippled by the ring to enforce demands. I have never known a ringed maiden disobey."
The black velvet was suddenly cleared. The nipple rings swept aside to be replaced by two of a much heavier gage and widen dimensions. "This small one is for the nostril... Behold!" The ring was instantly held against and beneath the nose of a startled but enraptured girl. It was much admired until the larger ring replaced it in the deft fingers which now came around the counter and placed its elongated length beneath the moist thighs and pressing hard up against the maiden lips it was made to pierce. "You will observe the elongation by which it will not chafe when Mademoiselle walks. If it were round it would rub." The silvery laugh tinkled once again. "It will be understood Mademoiselle will be inviolate to men while thus confined. I give it the recommendation most high."
The rings were the only exhibits the girls could not bring themselves to buy. They promised to think about them and knew they would. But the lovely circlets were too much too soon. They contented themselves by buying all else they had been shown. A small suitcase became part of their purchase. It held everything except the band around Cherish's middle. "I have here a confession of the most awful." The saleslady, who Cherish was certain was a witch, explained guiltily, "When it is once locked upon the lovely waist, it will never again come off save by the use of a heavy, ugly tool for the cutting of steel. I place this lovely band upon you, mademoiselle, knowing the risk of refusal, in which case I would have obtained the tool and cut it free at my own expense." She smiled sweetly. "Would you so wish?"
Cherish did not wish. Neither did Willow. Both girls were well aware that a continuation of these erotic rites would result in each having an orgasm before amused Gallic eyes. They could never imagine such an interview happening before. It seemed too expressly designed for them alone, as though fate had led them there were it have been waiting all too long. Cherish regretfully dressed and they departed in a welter of goodwill. The case was heavy, they would share its weight as they walked back to their car. Cherish was gleefully certain her constricted waist was causing her to sway her hips in a harlot's walk. She did not mind. Willow saw it too and assured her slavegirl she was an outrageous hussy, deserving of much punishment. But Willow was as captivated by it all as was her slave. She had to be firm with Cherish to prevent the bubbly nymphet from stripping in the car to enjoy her new toys.
Questings absorbed them in its familiar tranquility. Safely within, Cherish was allowed to instantly divest herself of coverings and to open the suitcase. She stood quivering, while her mistress fastened its contents upon those portions of herself for which they were designed. The result was almost a barbaric delight. These chains had a quality no other stricture ever approached, they were rich and beautiful and knowledge of the size of the check in no way diminished their enjoyment. Willow, in an amused conviction her slavegirl was intoxicated with happiness, fastened the thumbcuffs to the heavy newel post at the bottom of the stairway balustrade. She had a way with tools and the wicked little metal trap was soon immovable against the wood. She beckoned and the pouting Cherish came close to raise her hands with her forearms against the wood and insert her thumbs within the tiny circles, circles which immediately closed below the thumb knuckles and warned her with their usual click she was there to stay. Willow kissed her, patted her bottom, and went about her own affairs.
It was lonely in the hall. But Cherish was accustomed to such solitude. Willow made a practice of subjecting her slavegirl to such long, lonely periods to dampen an over heated eroticism. Not that the purpose was achieved, quite often, for instance right now, eroticism flared to greater intensity under the stimulus of newly cuffed thumbs.
Cherish was in the irritating and frustrating position of being able to examine her bonds. The cuffs were almost straight before her eyes and the imprisoned thumbs protruded within them in mute appeal. She made the usual twists and turns, even to the point of slightly hurting herself, then tried licking and spitting on the encircling metal jaws in the hope of lubricating her thumbs into freedom. But it was useless. Cherish was a prisoner and the vicious little contraption, which had looked so innocent on the black velvet, held her with ease. She could fancily believe the thing was quietly laughing.
Finding herself captive to the cuffs and post, Cherish turned her attention to what she could see of her other newly acquired constrains. Thumbcuffs in no way intruded upon wrist shackles and the chain drooped now between her wrists. If she tried to shake it, it would only hurt her thumbs, so she let it be. But her ankles were different. She could raise a foot and shake the tethering links to her heart's content.
She could kick and snub her ankle on its chain. Every movement of her head told her of an encirclement of her neck she could never escape, the same was true of the band upon her waist. No matter how she twisted or turn the tension remained the same as though it had an elasticity all its own. When she was dangerously close to climax, she ceased her endeavors and stood still. It would be most unsatisfactory to flower and blossom in her present confinement. Cherish could well imagine any additional contortions her climax would generate would probably hurt her thumbs. Everything hurt her thumbs!
At bed time Cherish was allowed to remain a prisoner in her new and shinning chains. The thumbcuffs remained on the newel and was the only item of their purchases she was glad to be rid of. They discussed the nipple rings. Willow did not want them but Cherish, who would bare their pain, was adamant. "If we just talk about them a little more, I'll have an orgasm," she admitted without shame. "They're the most horny making things I've ever seen. Are you sure you wouldn't like to have me ringed?"
"No, I don't want any part of you to be cut or pierced or changed. I like my Cherish as she is."
"Well, how about you then, darling?" Cherish asked innocently. "Don't be impertinent, I'm your mistress."
"They'd look super on you, darling. Yum, yum!"
"You're sometimes a handful to control just as you are." Willow said severely. "You don't imagine I'm going to handicap myself by rings, do you! Imagine the fix I'd be in if you managed to grab one. No thank you."
Cherish glowed. She knew she would never get the best of her mistress, not that she much wanted to, but it was a pleasant thing, like the carrot before the donkey's nose. Pretending anger she said, "Oh, all right then, you stuffy old so and so -- really, Willow...." Delightedly playing with her own nipples Cherish suddenly tensed in sudden memory. "I say, darling, that woman must have seen the whip marks on me but she never said a thing. And she never showed us whips or riding crops or anything like that. I wonder why?"
"Probably figured she'd gotten enough of my money for one day."
"Maybe, but I bet that wasn't the reason at all. I wonder perhaps...." Willow laughed, "She probably felt sorry for you and figured I'd bought enough inflictions for you for this first time. Besides, she probably figured you were well marked enough so that I didn't need a one."
"Willow, darling...?"
"Yes, what now?"
Cherish giggled. "Let's go back and have another look."
* * *
The gorgeous woman was undoubtedly a witch. Cherish assured herself and Willow as they gazed through the plate glass to where the modest circlet had been the day before. It was now replaced by a silver handled riding crop of unusual length and cruelly thin.
"Oh, wow, I bet that hurts!" Cherish was gazing at the lonely, beautiful exhibit in fascination. They went inside.
She was waiting for them as though their return were preordained. Her smile was warm, "Ahhh, it is for the marking of the so lovely young skin you have come back to me." There was the same silvery tinkle of her laugh. "And I am ready, please to come this way." The room had changed. The shackles had gone, to be replaced by instruments of pain in every size and nature. In the center of the room, which had been bare the previous day, now stood a square post of solid timber, towards the top of which, at the height of a maiden's chin, were thumbcuffs firmly fastened in the wood. They had only been in the shop a minute or so but both girls were already breathing heavily and exchanging glances. Once more they were in the grip of magic.
Breathlessly Willow and her ward examined the implements of punishment. The lovely French voice rolled on in an insinuation monotone explaining how this one would cut the flesh and this other one would not, discussing casually the merits of whip or crop or strap and explaining as to novices the special uses to which each could be put. Listening to such talk, Cherish quivered in a mixture of emotions, awe, fear, knowing that whatever of these things Willow bought it would be she who bore their bite. It was as though this whole establishment were dedicated to the punishment of a girl named Cherish. The end of the discussion was inevitable.
"Perhaps Mademoiselle would wish to lend herself...?"
The post had warned. But now with the suggestion, almost a command, hanging heavy in the still air, made Cherish almost choked with emotions. But the magic held. Words seemed superfluous. The teenager slipped out of her clothes with motions now almost automatic.
Cherish had long since discovered in this act the same sensations of comfort and well-being others felt when putting them on. She made a neat little pile of them upon a chair then stepped towards the post, inserted her thumbs in cautious upward motion and looked expectantly at her audience. Instantly firm fingers clicked the metal strictures tight. Cherish was a prisoner, a naked girl upon who's skin there would now be made a series of experiments and tests, more bizarre and more painful than most girls could ever dream.
"Perhaps you may wish to scream, Mademoiselle?"
"I'll try not to," Cherish said bravely.
The saleslady turned to Willow. "I have a most unique gag, should you wish to inhibit screams. It does not nullify all sounds, but perhaps...?"
"But won't you want me to tell you how it feels?" Cherish asked doubtfully. "I won't be able to if you gag me."
"Ah, yes, the wise young woman. The gag then I leave until later. It is a thing you should most certainly see."
Willow had supposed it was she who would use the cruel but lovely things displayed but an authoritative arm barred her from the act and firmly took charge. "I am of much experience, with me each test is for most certain," Willow was blandly assured.
"Allons, I now commence."
It was the strangest of tableaus. A palpitating Willow watching anxiously, the firmly competent French woman who's arm was doubtless strong, and the naked young prisoner who's thumbs were clamped to the post as she stood in nervous attention but with an incandescence in her loins. In her desire to acquit herself well before this woman. Cherish felt her heart pounding and her pulse racing to match the flames below. She was a bundle of intense and erotic sensation.
There was a strange respectability about the testing. The three females of varying ages were solemnly engaged in testing instruments of pain. After each stroke upon the bareness of her skin, Cherish would dispose of her gasps and moans with a firm intent before giving a factual account of its agony. Her remarks were noted appreciatively and certain implements were, as a consequence, set aside. The pauses thus resulting between strokes gave the innocent but helpful victim time to compose herself before the next. There was about the whole procedure the atmosphere of a courtier fitting the latest gowns upon a possible customer. Since there were many instruments to try, Cherish soon became a well whipped young woman. When the trials were done and she was released from the post the French woman turned to a grateful Willow and suggested, "Perhaps, Madam, you yourself might wish to sample...?" How easy it would be to say yes! Willow was sorely tempted but instead contented herself with, "I'm already atrociously marked. Perhaps some other time."
"Of course. " There was no tremor in the voice. "Perhaps rings for the so lovely nipples?"
"We're thinking about those," Willow said with a shy laugh. "I'll admit we're both tempted but not today."
"Of a certainty. But there are still some delicious small things I would like to demonstrate to Madam upon this so delightful young girl." Neither Willow nor Cherish was in a mood to refuse any diversion in this enchanting place so long as it didn't hurt excessively. Cherish had already been well whipped in the testings and deserved no more. But when their silence was assumed as consent, it was Cherish who was taken firmly by the arm and positioned on the opposite side of the post. There, strategically placed at a lower level, a second pair of thumbcuffs awaited willing thumbs. It was only a moment before the naked and quivering Cherish stood, her back to the post, her hands and arms firmly anchored in the tiny metal gyves.
"These are so very beautiful," said the saleslady, picking up two metal devices. "Today I make them kind."
Cherish prepared herself to gasp in pain as the small silver jaws approached her nipples but adjustments had made them harmless. True, they bit hard enough to stay where they were placed and to bear the weight of the silver chain to which they were attached. "The tension may be increased as desired," their demonstrator explained helpfully. "I will do so now if you desire but the effect is as you see it, there is no need."
The girls agreed there was indeed no need. Cherish sighed gratefully when the tiny jaws were taken from her breasts. But her relief was short. The next entertainment was the two curved, hard circles, joined on one point of the outer rims. From the front of them there curved backwards a shaped and shinning metal prong of no great weight but of considerable length. Each circle opened like a large handcuff. Capable fingers carefully adjusted this strange contraption within Cherish's pubic bush and contrived entry for the prong within her wet and willing sheath to trust it and position it gently upward until it was completely buried within the wall of flesh. The open halves of the large circles were then closed tight around the juncture of her thighs below her bottom. They were pushed more and more firmly until she was solidly encased by the grip of solid metal and the thrust of prong. Her thumbs were then released.
"Perhaps Mademoiselle would wish to stroll?"
The query held no threat but only a curiosity.
Mademoiselle tried to stroll. Cherish tentatively put one foot before the other in a dubious beginning but was instantly rewarded with pain. She looked from one to the other of her audience in dismay, but then again attempted to step forward in a stride, only to yelp as the metal imposed its rigid clutch and the prong was pulled in a direction it should not go. Apologetically she explained, "I'm very sorry but I'm afraid I can't. This thing's got me fixed."
"That is as it should be, Mademoiselle." The French voice was warmly satisfied with a successful deneument. "It is a thing of much amusement as assures young woman she will not run away."
There was the insertion of a key and suddenly the vicious penetration and the rigid clamp fell away and Cherish was free. She looked at Willow and explained, "I'm sorry but I couldn't walk at all with that thing. If you locked that on me, I'd have to stand still. Really! Maybe we shouldn't buy that one?"
"We will purchase it, thank you," Willow said firmly. "Perhaps you have other items...?"
"I spoke of an interesting gag." The French woman's smile encompassed them both. "My feminine revolts at the ugliness of gags. But I have a device here which, while unpleasant in the mouth, need not be seen, the lips may cover it completely. I am sure a girl, even when gagged into silence, does not want her features disfigured by leather harness or sticky tape. Perhaps if you now permit...?" Cherish obediently opened her mouth. She was prepared to do anything this woman asked, she was under a spell. Everything in this place, even though it hurt or was uncomfortable, had about it an enchanting quality to flame her interest. She glanced at her mistress and knew Willow felt the same.
"And now you bite your pretty teeth between these two clamps which are so very small and give no pain."
Cherish did as she was told. The inner side of the two clamps could be felt only with her tongue, the outer brushed above and below her lips but would not be visible to the watching eye.
"But now these amusing devices must be fastened. I have here a key device to work upon those portions of each small clamp we can make visible by pulling back a lip. Behold!"
Cherish flinched as the key turned and she felt the pressure on the chosen tooth. It was much like being in a dentist's chair and determining to hold tight and give no sign of anguish. First the top then the bottom. It was very simple, two turns of the key and the clamps were firmly fixed within her mouth and holding her teeth together immovably. Given the freedom of her lips at the end of the operation she tried to speak but could not utter a word. She could, however, make a good deal of noise. But when she tried mischievously to scream, she emitted an inarticulate screech which would not be audible beyond the confines of a room. She managed a restricted grin and emitted a series of demonstrative grunts.
"It is of the most successful," the French lady approved. "There have been instances of husbands compelling a wife to diet by his possession of the key. His lady could open her mouth only by his choice and never at meal times. It is droll, is it not?"
"We will buy that, too," said Willow decisively.
Cherish said nothing. She could not speak.
There was the writing of another check. At the end of it. Cherish got back the gift of her thumbs and was able to move from the post. She pointed to her mouth, realizing the gag was forgotten, but neither of her companions seemed to notice the gesture. Even a series of grunts and strange inarticulate sounds failed to gain attention. Willow placed the vital key within a small compartment of her purse and snapped it shut with finality. Her tone was loving as always, "You may dress now, darling. It will be such a delightful rest for you to keep silent on the drive home."
Cherish accepted defeat. She was not entirely displeased by being thus quaintly gagged. Like everything else in this unusual place, it was damned erotic and heating to the blood. She wrinkled her nose at her mistress but that was all. She was soundly and lovingly kissed by the woman who had sold so much to a pair of girls who would undoubtedly use it to the full. She said, "I envy you both. I envy you terribly." They returned to their car with two long but well wrapped packages. Cherish wondered if her mistress would decide to test the purchases again. She hoped not, at least not today! She tried to giggle but the clamps denied that, too.
Questings gathered them once more within itself.
Disaster was waiting for tomorrow.
CHAPTER NINE - QUESTINGS' CAPTIVE
It was early afternoon and Willow and her slavegirl were happily testing out the clamp and prong device which needed a trifle of experience to comfortably manipulate. Between giggles and squeals they had at last succeeded in the full insertion and the tight clamping of the thighs. Cherish was discovering once more her inability to walk and was standing, her arms uncertain where to go, and a bewildered look of amusement on her face, when the bell to their front door rang insistently. Willow patted a bare back and advised, "Stand still a minute, darling. I know you won't mind."
Cherish stood still. The clamps were so tight within her flesh there was not even much to get hold of, the least deviation from a normal posture brought pain.
Willow looked uncertainly at their visitor, a handsome soignee figure, vaguely familiar, but a name she could not place. There was about the woman on the doorstep an air of having been freshly coiffured and shampooed. The clothes also had a newness as though worn for the first time. Two firm, aggressive breasts thrust hard against the scanty summer covering.
"I'm so terrible ashamed," said Miss Mildred Ponsonby.
"I don't believe it," Willow gasped and stood aside. "But, for goodness sake, do come in."
"It's that terrible man," Miss Ponsonby affirmed without her usual vigor as she entered. "I really don't know what to do about him, he's got me so confused."
Miss Ponsonby was sufficiently confused not to even notice Cherish's strange condition. True, there was very little visible of what was compelling the teenager to stand in one place without moving, but now, picking up the thread of conversation, Cherish felt little need to leave. She listened with the same close attention as did Willow.
"He made me do this. He had two women come, I think they're professionals, and do my hair, make up my face, and dress me outrageously. I have never been so mortified."
"But Mildred, you look very nice. You look entirely changed and quite wonderful. I never dreamed "
"Neither did I, and I wish I was dreaming now. I am utterly shamed. Thank heavens Mother can't see me."
"You mean Brian Aiken...?"
"Of course. The man is a menace. He drove me here, he's waiting outside in the car. He's got Misty chained up back in the house and he wanted me to give you a message."
"Yes?" Willow's heart was sinking.
"If we don't do as he says he's going to do terrible things to that poor girl. Oh, dear, I do wish she'd stayed back in the United States."
"Yes, but what's he want us to do?"
"That!" Miss Ponsonby was having difficulty keeping up with her own thoughts. "He says you must deliver Cherish to him as a gift or I must marry him. He says he doesn't mind which but it must be one or the other. In the meantime he's got Misty and I don't know what to do."
"Marry you!! He has to be out of his mind!"
"I'm not so sure of that. " Miss Ponsonby's voice had gained a touch of its old acidity. "He's fixed me up in this outrageous raiment and says I look quite charming and acceptable in bed. But I'm sure his reason is my money. He appears to have wealth but I suspect it is no more than a comfortable living. Whereas I myself have been the beneficiary of several wills."
It was hard not to giggle. Cherish and Willow dared not lock eyes. As yet the import of Miss Ponsonby's information was without credence, it was all together too bizarre. Their main attention was riveted on the spinster herself. The transformation Brian Aiken had performed on this staid and acid spinster was incredible. True, they had caught sight of possibilities themselves and noted the way Miss Ponsonby had lately blossomed into something resembling womanhood. But this... !
"If that man's sitting out in his car, I'm going out there to give him a piece of my mind," Willow affirmed savagely. "He promised he wouldn't bother us any more but look at what he's doing all the time!"
"I don't think you should, dear," Miss Ponsonby was all a flutter. "The man's not all bad, you know. I've caught sight of certain good features." She sniffed decisively. "Not that I think he'd harm you, it's Cherish he's demanding not you. But I think you'd better let me tell him whatever we decide to do."
Willow noted the "we" but was far too angry to want discussion or believe in its benefit. Determinedly she strode out of the room and out of Questings to the waiting car. The car was empty. When she opened the door to investigate hard hands gripped her from behind and a moment later she was securely bound in the back seat and effectively gagged. The motor started and Brain Aiken drove back to his own domicile with his prize.
Willow cursed her own stupidity. She was getting no more than she deserved. She should have known better than to walk straight a trap that was now all too obvious. Angrily she lunged against cords with which Brain had rendered her helpless. He had neatly bound her at ankle, wrist and elbow with nothing more than a single strand of thin twine which cut cruelly. After a handful of painful heaves and tugs she relapsed to await her fate. She could not touch the gag nor rub it off against the cushions. It was a most successful kidnapping.
Willow's silence lasted as she was carried into the now-familiar house and the all too familiar room. There soft leather cuffs were fitted on her wrists, her hands and arms unbound, but her feet left tied while she was placed beneath the dangling ropes waiting in readiness. When they were attached. Miss Willow Blake found herself standing with her arms and hands held high and out to either side, cruelly exposed. This exposure was accentuated instantly by a smiling eyed man who stripped her bare, tearing what he could not undo. Brian Aiken gathered the discarded clothes and shoes and packed them into a draw in a manner indicating she might never have use of them again. He then removed her gag.
"You rotten... liar, you promised us...." A male hand covered Willow's angry mouth. Her expostulations were silenced. The male eyes were very close to hers and bored deep into her fury.
"Look here, you silly little pigeon," Brian admonished severely, "I've had enough of everyone's abuse. Sure, I've earned some of it. But you and that damned Ponsonby woman are so damned irritating. The trouble is I get a hard-on every time I come near you." He laughed. "And that's all your fault for making yourselves so damned desirable. Hell, I could fuck you ten times a day and still not be satisfied. Do you suppose a man can keep promises in the face of that!"
"He could if he was a gentleman."
"I never even pretended I was one, I told you that long ago. That's always the trouble with women, they ask too damned much of a man. I feel like whipping the hell out of you."
"I fully expect that." Willow eyed him levelly. "Look at me now, I'm half covered in whip marks and they're all yours. I hope you can find some spaces in between to whip me this time."
"Really want it, don't you?" The male voice was aroused in curiosity. "You like the whip as much as dear little Cherish."
"That's not true. You know it isn't. You say that to justify the cruelty of whipping me again. Where's Misty? Is she safe?"
"You bet she is. I have her naked and spread-eagled on a bed. She's tied good and tight, of course, but it's by her own choice." Brian laughed unaffectedly. "The dear child insists it's the only way. From what she's read she considers it the conventional posture for a girl being fucked. I even offered to leave her free while I Rogered her, but she says that spoils things."
"You're horrible!" Willow flung the word at him in a choked sob. "That girl was a virgin, and now...!"
"She's a lovely, young piece of ass."
"That's a beastly expression and you're only using it to make me angry. You ought to be ashamed of what you're doing to that girl, to all of us for that matter. When may I see her?"
"If you're a good girl, maybe tomorrow."
"Tomorrow! I thought you were going to whip me and send me home!" Willow's voice rose to a wail. "Probably with some awful message or note for Miss Ponsonby and poor Cherish."
"I'm not sending you home. Why should I! I've decided to stop being anything but simply myself. I am a dastard and a cad. I'm sure you can add a few to that but I'm happy with them all. I'm simply going to enjoy myself with this diversity of female charm fate has place within my grasp. You may as well get use to the idea."
Willow choked in concentrated anger and dismay. She lunged and shook her body in fury but the bonds held her fast. True, she could twist and kick to her heart's content but she was cruelly exposed to whatever Brian Aiken had in mind. Willow could guess what it would be.
With deliberate vulgarity, Brian thrust his hand between her legs. She did not either kick or strive to clench, she simple stood erect and stony-eyed while she sex was mauled. There was the usual comment on the wetness of his hand before he used both to message her nipples. "Just want to make sure everything's working," Brian assured her pleasantly. "You can never be certain with girls, they get up to the damnedest things."
"I don't. I wish you'd stop doing that. There's no way I like it."
"Little liar! You're adoring it, you know you are. You only have to look at your nipples. Damn it, they're flint hard and a mile long...."
"That's a lie and you know it is. It's you who are the liar, you've lied to me every time. Whenever I get to half liking you, you spoil it by doing or saying something beastly."
"Like now?"
"Yes, like now! Brian, why must you be such an absolute rotter!"
"You haven't used that word on me before," Brian said. "Perhaps it deserved a reward."
Willow knew instantly. She watched him select the riding crop with which he would repay her unkind words. She did not think to plea or complain, she simply clenched her teeth and tensed for the blows to come.
"Just your bottom this time, sweetheart. A short refresher course." Brian swung back the arm and the whining crop to deliver, with more than half his force, a blow squarely across the already wealed twin rounds of Willow's bottom.
It was six strokes this time. Willow supposed she should be grateful it was not more. She bore them as best she could, flaying with her feet and dancing out her pain, but doing no more than whimpering dismally at the now-familiar agony. When Brian put away the crop, she stood quietly in her bonds, sweating and panting, head bowed in defeat, eyes closed. In an easy voice the man said, "You asked for that you know, you little idiot. Watch it, you could get another quick half dozen if you don't watch your tongue. Like I said, I'm not really half as bad as you paint me."
Willow, hanging against her strapped wrists, brought her breathing under control and reassembled herself as best a bound maiden can. Without interest she asked, "What on earth did you do to Miss Ponsonby?"
"Simple, sweetheart. I whipped and fucked the dear girl alternately until I changed her into a true submissive. When I was finished with her, she was eating out of my hand. I had her fixed up as an experiment. Turned out well, wouldn't you say?"
"She hates it and you. Oh, Brian...."
"That's better, love. What me to fuck you now or later?"
"Later." Willow stiffened erect in alarm, realizing what she had thoughtlessly said. Blushing furiously, she retorted, "I didn't mean that, you know I didn't. I was thinking of something else."
"That may be, but you did say it. OK, it will be later, I've other things to do."
"Oh, Brian, please don't whip me. I'm so damned sick of all this pain and humiliation. Maybe I have said unkind things but you've just cropped me enough to pay for them. Surely...."
"A mere trifle, dear heart, only the hors doeuvres. Your punishment is still to come. Have you considered my proposal about young Cherish?"
"No, why should I! I'm certainly not going to deliver an innocent sixteen year old to your tender mercies," Willow snorted indignantly. "And, anyway, you've got me. Aren't I enough for you? Do you need her as well?"
"Well, she's a lovely piece of tail," Brian assured with an air of quiet deliberation. "Just sampled the goods really. Feel I should make a deeper exploration. I'm not a bit sure she'd object."
"You're fell! You're absolutely disgusting! When I think of that darling girl in your hands...!"
Brian Aiken selected another riding crop, this time one even more lean and wicked than the first. Willow unashamedly wept and squealed as she was cropped for the second time in a space of minutes. After the sixth blow had left her ass aflame, she mutter brokenly, "Oh, the hell with you. The hell with this whole thing. Do what you like to me and be damned," Willow sobbed and relaxed against the upward tug of the tethers on her wrists. She was utterly helpless. Brian Aiken found her infinitely desirable. Quietly he took her in his arms and kissed her tears away, licking her cheeks and the tip of her nose and kissing both of her eyes until the tears had ceased. When he stepped away he said soberly and regretfully, "You make what I have to do very difficult." Willow raised sad eyes and still blushing cheeks to stare him full in the face. "I don't see why you use that word 'have to,' You don't 'have to' do anything. You don't have to whip me, you can untie me and let me go home if you want to. Please don't whip me any more. Please let me go home... Please, please, please...?"
Whatever Brian might have replied was lost in the flinging open of the door and the dramatic appearance of Mildred Ponsonby. From somewhere the spinster had obtained an umbrella and this she pointed at the open mouthed male as she might a gun and demanded, "What are you doing to this poor girl! You're a monster, an absolute monster! I know I'd find the poor child here. Free her instantly!"
It was, at least for a brief period, the Miss Ponsonby of old. No doubt the umbrella gave her strength and confidence. Willow looked without hope at the strange incongruity of the militant pose and the svelte attire. Miss Ponsonby's hair and make up were still surviving her emotional turmoil. She presented the unlikely contrast of a young matron from Belgravia waving a borrowed umbrella in the face of a man who appeared quite unaffected by the apparition. Willow exclaimed, "Oh, no! Why did you have to come? Why didn't you stay at Questings? Or go to the police?"
It was too late, everything was too late. Brian Aiken took the fierce umbrella from a suddenly nerveless hand and set it aside. As though having a matter well in hand, he commanded sternly, "Strip!"
It was pitiful to watch. All the starch suddenly dissolved and Miss Ponsonby shrank back to size. She sought for words she could not find, then, to Willow's utter dismay, began to remove her clothes. There was no complaint, no plea. By some strange power of the male. Brian Aiken had reasserted the authority established by the whippings and the ravishings he had so recently imposed by this woman so obviously in his power. He fetched wristlets and, when Miss Ponsonby was totally bare, demanded, "Give me your hands." The result was predictable. He buckled the leather tight before placing Mildred Ponsonby in the same exposure as Willow Blake. Miss Ponsonby did not demure. Miss Ponsonby was broken. Seeing Mildred's pathetic surrender, Willow was suddenly stricken in alarm and demanded of her fellow captive, "What did you do with Cherish? You didn't bring her, did you? She's still safe in the house, isn't she?"
Miss Ponsonby raised a bowed head and blinked in surprise. Her concern were obviously elsewhere for she stammered, "Cherish" What about Cherish? When you didn't come back, I dashed after you, I told her where I was going, she was just standing there the way you left her. "
"You mean she was still -- you mean you didn't...?"
"I didn't do anything, why should I? You didn't have her tied or handcuffed or anything, she was just standing. What's the matter?" Miss Ponsonby now showed interest.
Willow was aghast. But she hid this emotion and stopped her questioning. The last thing Brian Aiken must know was that Cherish was helpless at Questings, that Cherish could not move from where she stood. Everything was outrageous and impossible and beyond bearing but she bore it as did Miss Ponsonby. There was little fight left in either of them. Willow was praying silently for Brian Aiken not to deduce the helplessness of the naked girl alone at Questings. In her present condition, Cherish would be an easy prey. Willow blinked back more tears.
Brian had stood quietly listening and admiring the multicolored effects of his works on female skins. There was no doubt about it, a through whipping enchanted feminine loveliness with the weals and striations it left behind. A female was undoubtedly best clothed by the impact of a whip. He sighed with deep content.
However, within the male mind, a query nagged. From the exchange he had listened to an idea slowly took shape and form.
* * *
Left alone, Cherish was in instant dismay. The flight and pursuit of her two companions had left her forlorn. Still, without knowledge of events, she supposed one of them would soon come back. In the meantime it would be fun to free herself. If she could... !
First, the key! It could be anywhere. Willow's bag was probably upstairs and she certainly could not mount stairs in her present condition. Without hope the imprisoned girl applied her fingers in one more search for a weakness in the metal over her most secret place, her efforts were no more than another confirmation of inescapability. She could not move. But Cherish was a resourceful girl, if her legs were locked and hurt too much to move, she still had hands. Supposing she somehow lowered herself to the floor and used her hands and arms for propulsion! The idea seemed plausible and she immediately bent her knees with a view to carrying it out but the result was too awful to continue. She straightened instantly against the insistent demand of cold steel within her sheath and beneath her hips. The fixture Willow had playfully imposed was there to stay and was a demanding mistress. In a wave of desolation, Cherish knew she could never free herself nor could she search the house. She tried to hop to the couch and, with its aid, lower herself to the rug. But the first try was the last. That too the prong within denied. Cherish stood in utter helplessness and frustration to gaze about her in disbelieve at her own defeat. It seemed impossible she must stand nakedly as she was until someone came, but what other choice was there?
Cherish was thoroughly disgusted with herself, with her mistress, and with Mildred Ponsonby by the time Brian Aiken arrived. She viewed his arrival with pure horror, instantly realizing what had occurred. In teenage disgust she said, "Oh, not you again! Don't tell me you've got Willow?"
"Indeed I have, sweet thing," Brian acknowledged happily. "And now I've got you. Can't you show a little bit of pleasure?"
Cherish sniffed. She eyed Brian in a shrewd speculation of her own. "Before I start looking pleased, you'd better tell me what you've done with Willow and that poor Miss Ponsonby."
"I refused to be a bore. You can guess what I've done with them, sweetheart. Pretty much what I'm going to do with you now. " He eyed her in sudden interest. "What the hell are you standing there naked like that for? Are you posing for a statue?"
It was too cruel. Cherish wanted to cry. Her plight now was in the classic tradition of all the maidens sacrificed to mythical monsters through the ages, and some of them eaten by monsters not so mythical at all!
With sincere male interest he inquired, "What the hell have you got there around the top of your thigh, that band of something digging into you?"
"Never you mind. Leave it alone."
"Oh, come now darling, you know I'm not going to leave it alone any more than I'm going to leave you alone. Let's have a look."
Cherish stood dejectedly during his examination, she could guess its outcome and she was powerless. Sure, she could beat at him with clenched fists but he would only laugh and cuff them behind her back. When he demanded, "Where the hell did you get this? And who locked it on you? I can't get it off."
"Willow and I bought it at a shop. Nobody can get it off if you don't have the key. I'm fixed but good." She gazed fiercely at the grinning male and added, "Go ahead, I'm helpless. You can do what you want with me, everything except that thing with the four letter word I'm not suppose to use." Cherish contrived a spontaneous giggle. "You can't do anything with that and it serves you right."
Brian Aiken was intrigued, his curiosity perked at the thought of the constriction within the soft, young flesh and the implication there, too. There was no way he desired to change anything, he would explore this to the full. Calmly he gathered the naked girl in his arms and carried her to his car. Cherish did not bother to fight, she was far too busy hurting.
* * *
For the helpless Willow it was a long and frustrating wait. She could guess Brian's mission and, despite a foreknowledge of failure, she tugged and jerked at her tethered wrists. Miss Ponsonby watched but did not emulate. Mildred had abandoned hope. She knew herself in the power of the male and expected no mercy. Even had she been disposed to say "yes" she realized the proposal of marriage was false. Brian had simply set in motion certain wheels and watched them turn. This was the results; she and Willow hopeless and helplessly fastened and sharing stark nakedness. And the weals of whips. Mildred saw it as a macabre and Gothic story the end of which she could not guess. With all four females in his power it was possible Brian Aiken might not free any of them but keep them as a modest harem for his own pleasure. Mildred Ponsonby shuddered but the fire she would willingly clench burned bright.
"Oh, darling, I'm so sorry!" Cherish lamented as Brian Aiken stood her erect where she could view his other bits of helpless femininity.
"If only I could get to you. Oh, Willow, I want you so damned bad. But I can't even hop, I can't do anything but stand and wave my arms. Oh, Willow, this started out as fun but now it's the pits. Please tell him where the key is, I don't want to wear this any longer."
"Don't tell me," Brian warned, "I don't want to know. Your little darling is marvelous as she is. I can always cut that thing off with bolt cutters if I wish."
"Very well, you've got all of us. Now what are you going to do?" Miss Ponsonby had come to life.
Brian Aiken strolled casually around his captives studying every curve and plane and every bizarre bond by which they were held. He was a fortunate man and knew it well. He thought of Misty upstairs on the bed. His course was obvious. Muttering a polite, "Excuse me a minute, ladies," he went to fetch the missing member of the quartet. Some, perhaps all of them, might soon be singing.
Misty was a minority of one. She by no means hated Brian Aiken, she adored him and everything he did. Her greeting betrayed her loyalty, "Oh, darlings, you look so sweet, what has dear Brian been doing to you?"
"Misty, come here and unfasten me immediately," Miss Ponsonby demanded.
"No, you don't, sweetheart," Brian assured his immediate favorite. "Here, dear, I'll fix you so there's no more arguments about that." He lead her to a wall and handcuffed her to a ring there. Misty was very calm about accepting the tethering of a single hand to the wall as if it were a normal part of any girl's day.
They were superb. Brian Aiken glowed with the pride of ownership as he went from one tethered and helpless nudity to the next. Even Miss Ponsonby for all her reversion to the original stamp held promise. Her body was good and her loins were still young. He would fuck her only when jaded with the other three. There was no longer any thought within his mind of giving any of them freedom. He was certain he could look after their affairs and keep them prisoners forever.
Willow and Miss Ponsonby stood taut, arms held high, expecting to be whipped, and knowing Brian Aiken it seemed the rational expectation. Misty leaned happily back against the wall and toyed with her handcuffed wrist with her one free hand. Knowing little of events, she was unconcerned. Cherish stood nakedly in the greatest dilemma of them all, she had her hands and arms and seemed to all intents and purposed, free. True, she could move by accepting pain but that pain would increase to a point with each step to where it became too high a price to pay. It was best to stand.
As though indulging in oratory, Brian Aiken swept all four of his possession in a benign regard. "I know you think I'm a bit of a bastard," he assured them, "but look at it my way. Each of you in her own way is everything a man desires and I have all four of you. It's a bit awesome when you come to think of it. No less than eight breasts. And on them, eight tits, delightful little rosebuds to be teased or punished as I wish. Down below there are three black forests, delightful triangles of curly, shining fronds. And, with the little darling over on that wall, a shaven cunt. I hope you notice the exquisite effect as I allow Misty's to grow again. I may shave one or another of you between your legs just to keep one of you exhibiting this bare condition."
"You spouting this rot to get yourself an erection?" Willow demanded acidly. "You're not telling us anything we don't already know."
"Temper, temper... Remember the riding crop, sweetheart, it's still here."
Hating his mastery of them. Willow lapsed into a sulky silence, but Miss Ponsonby took up the cudgels for their sex. "You're gloating over helpless, naked woman does you no credit, Mr. Aiken. If you had only gone to a proper school...!"
"Mildred, my dear, I would have been a bastard even if I had gone to Eton or Harrow, and I am using the term advisedly. I'm not a bastard at all. I'm really a very nice type if you treat me fairly. Look at Misty over there, she's happy as hell with me and I adore the child."
"Why don't you marry her then!" The retort slipped out of Miss Ponsonby with thoughtless anger. She snorted disgustedly. "I'm beginning to think that young lady is no better than she should be. She's just right for you. You appear to enjoy robbing cradles."
"I thought I had you trained, you silly creature." Brian shook his head in despair. "Would you like to start the course all over again?"
"Never mind," Miss Ponsonby stated firmly. "I will bear what I must. I will not provoke you."
Aiken ignored the angry and disgruntled woman. Selecting a riding crop, one Willow recognized all too well, he said, "I'm going to give each one of you a good, solid stroke with this little darling. I want you to watch each other's reactions, you may learn something, and no snide remarks while I'm doing it."
There were no snide remarks, there was only sulky silence but eyes were busy watching what they had no wish to see. Cherish was the first victim. She did not dislike Aiken, there was something about him appealing to her youth. She knew she was going to hurt, but only one stroke... ! She even had the audacity to smile back over a bare shoulder as he swung the crop. On impact she made not sound and was careful to move only arms and shoulders above that portion of herself strictly held in steel. Willow accepted her infliction in a seemingly haughty disregard of agony. By intense concentration against the cut upon her skin she held herself in perfect immobility, her eyes contemptuous against his when he was done. Miss Ponsonby swallowed hard and was clearly nervous at the male approach. With the searing of her bottom she felt like ejaculating her usual Victorian reproof, but choked it back in fear. She too would invite no extra punishment.
It was Misty who provided the true entertainment. Those watching could well suspect she and Aiken of rehearsals. Between them they delivered a masterly tableau of erotica. "Are you really going to crop my bottom, Mr. Aiken," the nymphet asked with sweet expectancy. "Indeed I am, you delicious morsel," Brian assured her.
"And would you like me in a more suitable posture, Brian dear?"
"That would be nice. Let's see your idea of a suitable posture." Misty was in her element. Cherish, watching, realized it would be easy for any one of them in their knowledge of only a single stroke, to put on an act. But by any standards, this was a superior act indeed! Misty, still smiling that quiet, knowing smile, had turned about, placed the palms of her hands against the wall and, spreading her feet well apart, backed up so she was leaning well forward and her bottom protruding well backward. The cane rapped demandingly and in complete obedience she arched her back down to protrude that portion of her to be whipped even more.
"Is that the way you like me, Brian?" she asked in seeming innocence. The man and the girl indulged in what was little better than love play. Brian, in mock preparation for the awful stroke, performed sundry rappings and tapping with the crop and even went to the extreme of smoothing the already smooth flesh with palms. Misty constantly looked back over a bare shoulder to admire these preparations for her agony. She was obviously in a state of intense excitation. It was to be expected Brian Aiken would palm the young denuded sex with the customary vulgarity. He did so now. Misty hungrily licked dry the offending member she should have resented but from which she had received only pleasure. In the huskiest of sensuous whispers she pleaded, "Please crop me ever so hard, Mr. Aiken."
He did just that. It was a truly wicked blow but beneath its impact Misty weaved her hips while tossing her head in what Cherish suspected was a abandonment to total ecstasy. At the end of these demonstrations, still in the same sensuous deliberation, she turned once more and, though still tethered by one wrist, used her other hand to embrace her master, kiss him avidly, then fall knelling at his feet. It was a picture of submission not only of the flesh but of the mind. Here was a maiden who knew what she wanted and knew she held it safe.
The remaining three nudities of Aiken's enforced harem viewed the proceedings, each in her own way. Cherish was amused and slightly envious, well understanding what Misty had done. In different circumstances, or with Willow, she would have done the same thing. Willow was simply offended. She vowed that, should Misty ever fall within her power again, she would warm that pert backside in a manner she would not soon forget. Miss Ponsonby was still viewing everything she saw with some degree of incredulity. With the performance of her niece she realized she was seeing a facet of human sexuality she had always turned her back upon. Misty was vividly alive with joyous and fecund life. The youngster was in such an exuberance of arousal she would have done or said anything for her chosen male. For her the tethered wrist was no more than a sign of love. With Brian Aiken she would always desire the bite of cord or chain or cuff. She remained kneeling, lost in dreams, long after Brian had turned his attention to Cherish.
"I'm curious, sweetheart. Where did you get that band around your tummy?"
"Leave the girl alone, Mr. Aiken. If you want to be unkind to someone, be unkind to me," Willow demanded instantly.
Cherish looked down and fingered her lovely adornment. It had withstood her trials and tribulations and given her nothing but the sensuality of love, in the same manner as Misty with her handcuff.
"It was present, Mr. Aiken, Willow gave it to me. Isn't it lovely?" Aiken added his fingers to hers but they were not the same. Cherish shivered and assured him earnestly, "You can't possibly get it off, Mr. Aiken. But I don't really want it off, it's far too beautiful." The minds of Cherish and her adored mistress dwelt fleetingly in memory of the lovely chains and collar and the lovely crops and whip laying unused at Questings, the metal cold without the heat of flesh. They would tell Brian nothing of such delights, they were far too good for him. Mischievously Cherish thrust the man away and posed with her arms high above her head and her breasts out-thrust and the silver band clinging to the concavity below her rib cage with a snug certainty as though alive.
"Look at me, Brian Aiken, aren't I simply gorgeous!" Cherish breathed with deliberate huskiness in her suddenly doubly female voice.
"You little devil," Brian laughed delightedly at her mimicry. "I'll fuck you but good when I get around to it. And after I get that damned thing off you. Do I have to torture Willow to find out where the damned key is?"
"It's lost," Willow said, a trifle too hastily. "I was looking for it everywhere when you brought Miss Ponsonby over. You've messed things up for all of us."
"Oh, I could whip it out of you sweetheart, don't have any doubt about that. But your little darling is going to get awful tired of having a clamped cunt. And when that time comes you'll tell me of your own accord. In the meantime let's enjoy it."
There was an expectant silence as Brian once more took the floor. He was obviously enjoying his role as master of ceremonies, probably seeing himself as "The Master."
"And now, my four delightful darlings, we come to the true purpose of this occasion. I won't hurry it, I want all of you to extract every ounce of entertainment it provides. And now, if you'll excuse me for a minute, I'm going to be a very busy man."
Each in their own way was ashamed of the excitation in their loins caused by Brian's announcement. Something was going to happen and whatever came from this man would be intensely sexual, they were sure of it. But when he returned they found only a puzzlement. There were two pairs of white panties. Willow got hers first. Disdainfully she lifted one foot and then the other for them to be dragged on up her legs to their resting place around her hips. They were certainly nothing to gladden the heart of a female. The material might have been Lycra or some such artificial fabric. But around the bottom of each side they merged into rubber which clung and almost bit at the soft thighs they encircled with a tighter and tighter band as they were drawn up towards the waiting crotch. The waistband was also of rubber but, in spite of these three strictures designed for tummies and thighs, the garments were not close fitting, there remained a wrinkle or two their flesh failed to fill.
"Had a hell of a time finding these," Brian assured them busily. "I don't know who wears such things but they're going to suit this particular need damned well." He fingered and rearranged the ample fabric designed for a female's most secret place. They might be called panties but were far more voluminous than the ordinary briefs commonly worn. Their ample size was reminiscent of the garments worn thirty or forty years ago or even farther back at which time they would probably have been described as "knickers." Having arranged Willow to the full tolerance of her knickers capacity, he turned his attention to Miss Ponsonby, who, while anxious to rebuff, felt it prudent to accept in silence any covering for her private parts. She maintained a dignified but offended silence throughout.
"I'm afraid there a bit more, girls." Brian had stepped back and was viewing his work with modest approval. "I've got something quite unique planned. Got to leave you again for a minute or so."
"These aren't whipping draws, are they?" asked Willow anxiously of no one in particular. "I have heard of such things."
"Let us be thankful of any covering of our private parts," Miss Ponsonby suggested stiffly.
"But Misty and I don't have any!" Cherish wailed. "I'll bet he's up to something, and I'll bet none of us are going to like it."
All four female hearts missed a beat when Aiken reappeared carrying a hot plate on which a gallon can was already heating. He plugged it in a socket and once more took the floor. "You can take a look at what I'm doing and perhaps figure out what's coming," he suggested slyly. "I'm about to perform a deed so dastardly it's in the best tradition of Victoria's reign."
It could be anything. Willow looked at the preparations heating up upon the floor and was gratefully that at least there were no branding irons heating to a red glow over the electric elements. The can on which the lid was only lightly ajar, seemed innocent enough, it gave no clue. For all she could tell it might hold water or sulfuric acid. But she doubted it to be either. It would be something far more subtle from a man like Brian Aiken. She was devoutly wishing the garment clothing her sex was elsewhere and she was still nude.
When Brian Aiken reappeared for the third time he was carrying a funnel and a handful of rags. Dropping the rags at Miss Ponsonby's feet, he inserted the funnel into the back of her newly acquired knickers, pushing it well down within the tight grasp of the rubber waist band. Miss Ponsonby shifted uneasily and pleaded, "I beg of you not to do whatever it is you have in mind. I am sure it is indecent and will probably hurt me terribly. Mr. Aiken, please...?"
Once more Aiken was viewing them all and each of them viewing him with apprehension, all except Misty who had now returned to life and was straining at her leashed wrist to get the best possible view. Willow could easily imagine the nymphet was well aware of Aiken's intent.
"I've tried to make you see how a man sees you bitches," Brian explained tolerantly. "All you see is you own side of things. None of you realize how it bums us up to endure your haughty caprice and gracious condensations. I'll bet you most fellows have a vision at one time or another of rubbing your pretty noses in a mud puddle, in fact a lot more than your noses. Well, I don't have a mud puddle. What I have is a lot more interesting and may leave a more lasting impression. I think by the time we're finished with this little ploy you're going to be pair of much wiser and more amiable wenches."
"Brian, please don't, I beg of you not to do this. I still don't know what's in that can but I don't want it inside these things you've made me wear." Willow flushed unhappily. "You're going to pour that stuff into us aren't you and make us wear it. Make us hate ourselves. Make us something to run away from instead of love. Brian, you're crazy."
"Crazy as a fox," he agreed. "I could probably get the same effect by constantly whipping or subjecting you to disagreeable punishments but I prefer the gradual approach. I believe humiliation is probably a most potent tool and not used often enough in cases of this sort."
"There are no cases of this sort, expect those you create. I don't suppose anyone has thought of something as beastly as what you're going to do to us now."
"Willow is quite right, Mr. Aiken," Miss Ponsonby added. "I beg of you desist. I would appreciate it if you would remove this... this object from the waistband of this absurd garment."
"No way, sweetheart, there's just no way you're going to avoid a little discomfort." Brian assured each of them, including both in his broadest and friendliest smile. "I want this to be an experience you'll never forget."
"But, we'll be scolded! You've got whatever it is over the heat, it will be torture!"
"Give me credit for a bit of sense, dear ladies. I'm not going to ruin those pretty little cunts of yours or those lovely pubic bushes, I'm just going to give them a real bad time." He laughed at their dismay. "The way I see it, I'm now about to get to where a girl is most vulnerable. You keep it away from us most of our lives, you use it with total selfishness. So here's a male opportunity to get a bit of our own back. Your little private parts are going to have a bad afternoon."
Using a couple of rags, Brian Aiken lifted the can from the heat and set the lid aside to reveal a black mass not yet steaming. "I expect you've figured this out, haven't you? It's tar and it has to be heated a bit before it will pour. After you've got it where you want it and leave a while, it hardens. If you use your imagination a bit, you'll get a picture of yourselves an hour or two from now."
"Don't you dare! I absolutely forbid. I refuse," Miss Ponsonby affirmed without conviction.
"Brian, please, you're being silly, you're frightening us to death. I don't want that stuff all around my... my... Well, you know where I don't want it!"
"Why aren't you doing this horrible thing to the two girls? Look at them, I think they're enjoying it!" Miss Ponsonby asserted indignantly.
"You've often told me the little darlings are too young, too young for anything according to you. So I'm taking you at your word. They're too young to have tar hardening nicely over their cunts. I'm sure you approve?" The male voice was heavy with sarcasm.
The fastened nudities watched in breathless concern as Brian tilted the can. Miss Ponsonby's features were a study. She had been holding her breath to scream at the first scold, but no scold came, only a pleasant warmth which, in other circumstances, might have been comforting. But now the warmth was bringing something too terrible to contemplate. The warmth spread through the almost virgin crotch but was well contained by the tight of rubber on the softness of feminine thighs. As the flow continued the warmth rose and, little by little, the fluid filled the vacant spaces of the demeaning knickers, ironing out the folds and creases to create an illusion of plump flesh. Mildred Ponsonby was allowing herself to breath but cautiously in the still grave expectation of an infliction too hot to bear. She drew a deep breath of shock and offended modesty when her master grasped her knickers in the center of their crotch and pulled them down to allow an adequate inflow of tar to reach the most strategic part of her anatomy. As the terrible liquid covered every square millimeter of her privates, Miss Ponsonby wondered if the stuff could possibly go up inside and do her injury. But how could she voice a thought so vile! She contented herself with an offended, "You will repent of this, Mr. Aiken. I have never heard of a woman suffering such an outrage."
"Neither have I," Brian agreed, still deeply absorbed with his task. "Damned original idea if you ask me. I'll bet there is a hell of a lot of chaps would try it out if they had the chance."
Miss Ponsonby's knickers were now in lull bloom. Tar had penetrated to every nook and crevasse of her most private place. Had she sat in a barrel of the black, outrageous stuff, she could not have been more completely covered. But the knickers did their task. They held in the Offensive liquid most effectively without a leak. Watching the critical moment, Brian withdrew the funnel, capping its spout, then looking inside the can. "I'll be damned!" he said, "you took the whole gallon, Mildred, I'm proud of you!"
Mildred sniffed but made no reply. She was still intently sensitive to her loins, expecting at any moment an agony she was certain was still lurking within the knickers she could not even touch. Willow, for her part, was faintly relieved at the empty container, hoping devoutly Aiken had underestimated his need. Along with the girls, his eyes focused on the fatal knickers and their bulge indicating their content. It was all too easy for a girl to feel in sympathy with Miss Ponsonby and her agony. She was the first victim of Brian's inspiration. Willow could almost feel the heat of the hateful stuff filling the knickers she was forced to wear. But she could no longer demand reprieve. To have done so would seem a disloyalty to this other woman who was already suffering the strange, bizarre punishment. Willow supposed she would have to accept it in silence, and that sometime in the future she could not comprehend she would be rid of the tar encased pubic bush. She, too, wondered if it could penetrate up...?"
Brian replaced the can and pulled out the cord. Wiping his fingers on a rag, he made a slow circle of Miss Ponsonby and, from time to time, prodded the bulging knickers. He was not disappointed, the knickers responded everywhere by returning to their bulge. Tar had flowed therein and asserted it sovereignty. "Damned nice job, Mildred, if I do say so myself. I've even got tar up over your hips. These knickers were a real find. Trouble is, now I've got to go and get another can for Willow."
"Please don't bother." Willow knew it a cliche but could not prevent herself from saying it.
"No trouble, dear girl. I'll be gone an hour at the most. Give it plenty of time to start hardening. If I can get you both tarred this afternoon I can probably peel you by bedtime. If it hasn't hardened by then you'll have to stand as you are all night. But don't worry about that. I've still got the darling girls."
"You are a monster," Miss Ponsonby affirmed for the second time. "I am positive I am suffering injury."
Willow said nothing but strove to stare down the insolent male eyes which were seeing her as their next victim. She could see an hour of apprehension and suspense while he was gone. Brian Aiken appeared a master in the art of extracting the utmost from any female he desired. She watched him pick up the can, but ignored his cheerful, "Be seeing you all" as he disappeared from view. Dimly she wondered how a whipped bottom would respond to hot tar.
"Isn't he gorgeously unkind!" Misty contributed to a pregnant silence. "He thinks up the damnedest things. I asked him to do it to me but he wouldn't. I say. Aunt Mildred, what's it feel like?"
"I can not describe it, it is too awful," Mildred Ponsonby acknowledged. She turned to Willow, "If there is any way you can bribe him to mercy, I would advise you do so." She shifted awkwardly. "I must admit there is as yet no pain. But I am sure Aiken must be well aware of the trauma this must be causing. I will never be the same again." She snorted in despair. "I'm sure he has forgotten a female's Misty snickered. "Don't worry, Aunt Mildred, if the worst comes to the worst I'm sure he'll drill a couple of holes." She rattled her wrist's tether mischievously. "Are you looking forward to having tar around your cunt, Willow darling?" she inquired sweetly. "I bet when it begins to harden it feels like a man's hand." She sighed in mock envy. "I do so envy you both."
Cherish still longed to giggle but it seemed unkind. She was still standing in a separate bondage of her own. She was sure the others envied her this relative freedom but she did not envy herself. The grip and thrust of the clamp and the prong reminded her constantly of the pain of motion and the dominance of metal she could not defeat. She was tired of standing in naked impotence and was on the verge of telling Misty to shut up and be grateful for the comfort she enjoyed. Compared to the rest of them, Misty was not suffering at all. Misty was the sultan's favorite!
But Misty confounded her companions utterly. With sugar in every word, she inquired, "Would you darlings like me to let you loose?"
"You can't. You're chained. You can't get near us."
"Oh, yes I can," Misty assured them, her voice vibrant with pride. "I'm not as dumb as you may think. Remember that key Brian darling slipped me in the restaurant? Well, I didn't give it back to him and he forgot to ask. It's still hidden in my hair. A girl's got to keep something for emergencies, you know."
There was a stunned silence. This would be another of Misty's cute little notions of something funny. Three hearts denied hope lest it prove false. But all three pairs of eyes gazed, startled, at the girl from the USA.
Misty was enjoying her part. She held the fate of three naked females hidden in her hair. She knew herself safe from cruelties beyond her bearing. She had tested Brian Aiken and not found him wanting. Brian Aiken always left her breathless with ecstasy. In full view of all she reached up and extracted the key and, with ceremonious flourishes unlocked her wrists. She then carefully replace the key in her hair.
When the straps were unbuckled from her wrists, Willow threw her tired arms around Miss USA, there were hugs and kisses and ardent expressions of regret over past remarks. When they broke apart Misty was still in command. "You and Cherish had best get back to Questings pronto," she said urgently. "Back there you're home free. I'm staying here with Brian," she giggled contentedly. "We've got a relationship, maybe you've noticed."
"But Mildred... We must unfasten...?"
"No, we mustn't." Misty's young voice was very firm. "You leave Aunt Mildred to me, I understand Aunt Mildred." She giggled again, "Brian darling has chosen to fill her pants with tar, well, OK. But let him worry about getting her out of it. He can clean up the mess, there's no reason why you should have to."
Strangely, Miss Ponsonby said not word. But Willow noted a growing stain of pink mantling her features and creeping down her throat. But it was not in Willow's makeup to leave a companion in distress. Anxiously she asked, "But, Mildred, you don't want to stay fastened like that, do you? You'll come with us, won't you?"
"I'd rather not if you don't mind."
"You see, I told you so," Misty said jubilantly. "You run along and leave Aunt Mildred to me and Brian, we'll look after her."
"But if you don't come with us, Misty, he'll punish you terribly for letting us free!"
"No he won't. I'm going to lock my wrist back to the wall there were I was and I'm going to tell him Cherish got you loose. That somehow she managed to hop over and undid your wrists. Brian may be puzzled but he won't be able to prove a thing."
Willow was far from satisfied but it was useless to remain and argue until Brian returned and made her prisoner again. But she suddenly remembered the obvious, "I can't go, I can't leave all you here. Don't you understand, Cherish can't walk or run. She's fastened and the key is back at Questings...?"
"You and I can carry her to the car, that's the way Brian brought her over. You'd better grab your clothes if you know where they are. " Fear, elation, and terrible urgency drove Willow to dress. Clothed, she went timidly to the still bound Mildred to kiss and kiss again, but Mildred said no word of release. Willow was forced to realize Misty's wisdom and possibly some greater insight into Aunt Mildred than she knew herself. Her task now was to get Cherish to the car with as little pain as possible.
When the task was done with many a grunt and groan from the cunt- clamped maiden, Willow and Misty kissed and embraced in fond farewell. Willow knew it useless to speak of the future or their next meeting if there ever was one. Willow was puzzled and emotionally disturbed but the thought of hot tar inside tight knickers drove her to get behind the wheel and start the motor. The last she saw of Misty was a naked, cheerfully waving nymphet in the garden of her master's house. Willow stepped hard upon the gas.
Questings was at peace. The two girls who's warm presence gave it life were back in residence. All was well with their world. For Questings the world ended at the tall hedge along the road, Questings was a world unto itself.
For the first hour of their return both girls had clasped each other urgently in a hunger for feminine security. It was hard to believe their good fortune or that Brian Aiken would no longer come knocking at their door, impossible to believe they were free of bonds and of the threat of tar or whip. It took a little time for conviction of escape and safety deep enough to give relief. There had been the awful moment when both realized Cherish must stay alone in the car, albeit within their premises, while Willow went in search of the key so she might walk again. But the key had been found and the French woman's amazing device released from youthful thighs and youthful sheath and Cherish walked in joy. It took another hour and the prosaic brewing of coffee and the making of sandwiches to fully return them to normalcy. Even then their minds and thoughts were still with the exuberant Misty and the tar-smothered loins of Aunt Mildred.
"How will he get that stuff off, darling. He intended you and Mildred to wear it, didn't he? But he couldn't keep it on you forever?"
"I don't know much about tar," Willow confessed. "But I can only think of two things. The first is a hot bath and lots of soap and simply sit there and soap and soak for the time it takes to loosen the stuff up. But there is some stuff called solvent, and I believe that would handle it easily. Maybe that idiot man has some and didn't tell us. It would be a beastly ordeal and I'm glad it didn't happen to us, but I'm quite sure the worst of it was in the mind. I don't think it would do either Mildred or me an injury. Brian isn't that dumb."
"And Misty? She's letting Brian fuck her all he wants, I know she is," Cherish said with a trace of envy. "You don't think he'll hurt her, I mean because of us?"
"The worst he'd do is to whip the silly little so-and-so and she'd
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Arhival Note: The text abruptly ended there, the next page in the book was totally blank. The story continued on after that missing section. Unfortunately there is no way to know what is exactly missing.
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Mildred."
"But if Brian finds the key she's got hidden...?"
Cherish laughed, delighted at her own wisdom. "I bet he knows already. I bet he and Misty had this whole thing fixed and planned. Brian couldn't possibly have missed that key in all the love play he's been doing with Misty. Gosh, darling, a man runs his fingers through a girl's hair again and again while he's fucking her. Don't worry about Misty and that key, she and Brian have got everything well in hand."
Willow swallowed hurt at Cherish's frank admission of knowledge of male lovemaking. She would indeed have to whip the child and get her back where she belonged. She had intended to do it later but Cherish's observations had moved the date forward to right now. Firmly she changed her tone, "Go and get your chains, you carnal creature. Oh, and while you're about it, bring back the clamp for your cunt. Hurry up now. You've had far too much freedom and I've had far too little."
Pulse racing in adoration, Cherish obeyed. The task completed she stood in quivering delight as Willow cautiously made the first manipulation with the clamp. The strange innovation into what they shared was still potent with unexplored delight. Cherish stood, legs apart, while shining metal found her flesh and nestled tight therein and beloved feminine fingers insured its resting place. When the tight stricture and the fatal click came at the end, both girls sighed in simultaneous pleasure. Brian Aiken's house and all therein were forgotten.
"And now the lovely chains for a naughty girl." Willow's school marm severity was not entirely convincing. But Cherish did not mind. She stood now, legs tight clamped and the threat of pain within should she rebel, to tremble in eagerness while the French woman's exquisite shackles were made fast on wrist and ankles. She could swear the band around her waist greeted them as old friends. She was given a moment in which to hold the collar and examine it before it was locked around her throat. In wonder the ironed girl exclaimed, "You've got everything on me, darling! The chains, the lovely belt, the collar and the clamp. Oh, darling...!"
"You're forgetting quite a lot, you outrageous nymphet," Willow chided, smiling. "You've forgotten these." She held up two sharp- jawed little beasties connected by a silver chain. "You don't have to hold out your nipples, they're sticking out already. I'll bet they knew...!"
With rapt absorption, Willow clipped each rosebud within vicious jaws, disregarding her slavegirl's gasps of pain but adding, "I've tightened the tension, dear, adds a bit of discipline to the effect. Don't you agree?"
Cherish supposed she should agree. But the jaws were hurting and this was a punishment to which she was not accustomed. Resignedly she said, "Oh, well, I can't do anything about it, can I?"
"That's right, you can't darling. Wear them with pride they look marvelous on you. I've a good mind to buy a second pair to wear myself, with the tension off, of course."
"Willow... Why have you taken that riding crop out of the draw? I thought...."
"To whip you with, darling, what else! I thought of leaving it until tomorrow but you're far too precocious."
"But, Willow dear, you can't. Not like this! You'll have to fasten me to something, I can't possibly stand still for it."
"Think a minute, Cherish, my pet. Is there anything else you can do except stand still?"
Cherish considered the matter before saying, with a fresh tone in her voice, "No, I suppose there isn't...!"
"Then you'll just have to stand still, won't you dear!"
Cherish stood still. Her heart was pounding. This was something new! When her mistress displayed the clever little gag, she said nothing but opened her mouth for the clamps. When they were tightly screwed within and covered by her lips, Cherish allowed herself to be kissed and tried as best she could to kiss back. When her mistress joined her hands and feet with one more chain so -she could not touch her breasts, her cup was full to overflowing. Cherish knew herself ready to be whipped. Beneath the excoriating impacts of the crop Cherish utter only the tiniest of scream behind locked teeth. It was nice not to be able to scream properly, it saved her much decision and self-control. In between the wicked blows and feeding upon their delicious agony, Cherish reflected on good fortune and how wonderful Willow was.
