Chapter 6

Sharon put her house key in the door and turned it, then pressed her hand against the door to push it in. But the door gave way, and she realized somebody was pulling it open for her.

She stepped in and looked around the other side of the door. Melanie had opened it for her, and she wore a deep, stern expression carved into her face.

"Come inside," Melanie said.

Sharon smiled and said sure, and followed her. Melanie's walk was stiff and formal; she was not at all the same girl she had ... she had been with the other day while involved with the frat brother.

"Is something wrong?" Sharon finally asked as they walked up the stairs and passed her room. They moved into a hall with which Sharon was unfamiliar.

"Be quiet," Melanie said harshly. "You'll be told everything there is to tell you quite soon enough."

Melanie led her down another corridor, at the end of which was a lone door. Light poured out from beneath it, and suddenly Sharon's feeling of unease increased. Something was amiss, she thought; she had done something wrong.

Melanie opened the door and ushered Sharon hi. She had to blink for a minute to adjust her eyes to the harsh, glaring light from three suspended, naked bulbs. When she could finally see, she saw the room was filled with about eight girls, and three guys. Among the girls was Connie, sitting on a tall stool behind a tall table. She appeared judge-like, as the seven other girls and two of the boys sat in a row to the right of her. To the left was Paul Slaughter, leering at Sharon from a plush chair.

Melanie indicated Sharon should stand in the center of the room, facing Connie. She did as she was told, and Melanie joined the nine others at Connie's right.

"What is this?" Sharon asked, her heart hammering from fear.

"Be silent," Connie said, "and speak only when spoken to, pledge."

Sharon cowered in her spot, feeling three feet smaller all of a sudden. She pursed her lips together and waited.

"We are honored with your presence," Connie told her, sneering. "So nice of you to join us lowly Greeks back at your sorority house."

"I don't..." Sharon said, then caught herself and shut up, but it was too late.

"I said SILENCE!" Connie bellowed. "I'll not warn you again. Do you understand?"

Sharon nodded sullenly.

"Now then," Connie said, restoring her voice to its normal, icy tone. "You appear before us this evening to be judged by a jury of your peers. You will accept the verdict of this jury, and you will accept whatever punishment they opt to dole out to you. You should be made aware that punishments are established in the SEX Code, and such appropriate punishment will be mandated. Any questions, pledge?"

"Yes!" Sharon said, grateful for the opportunity to speak. "Why am I on trial? What have I done?"

Connie looked at her incredulously. "What have you done? You mean-you don't know?"

Sharon shook her head. She was sincere. She truly didn't know.

"Do you know what time it is?" Connie bellowed.

Sharon looked at her watch. 'Two in the morning. Shouldn't everybody be asleep?"

"Indeed we should," Connie said sharply. "It is entirely because of you that we are all awake."

"But... what have I done? Is there a rule about the time, a curfew? If there is, nobody told me about it."

"There is no curfew at SEX house, pledge," Connie said. "But there are rules of other sorts. Tell us, pledge. Where have you been?"

"Out," Sharon said innocently. "Out to dinner."

"With whom, if we may be so bold as to ask?"

"Dirk Roland. He's a history professor here. He been so nice...."

"Be SILENT!" Connie shouted again. She was aghast, and the faces of the jury mirrored Connie's surprise. "Do you really want to incriminate yourself so openly?" She turned to the jury. "You are to disregard the pledge's last remark. Your verdict will be strictly based on the facts that are to be presented to you. Brother Slaughter?"

Paul stood and faced the jury. "Tell this jury what you saw."

"We were at the French restaurant, a bunch of guy from the frat and I. We were just out to have a good time when I saw Sharon Simmons enter the restaurant."

"You recognized her?" Connie said.

"Sure," Paul answered.

"How?"

"I was her pledge initiator. It would be hard to forget somebody you initiated that... enthusiastically."

Connie glared at him, jealousy brimming in he eyes. "Brother Slaughter, you will confine your comments to the business at hand. You positively identified Pledge Simmons at the restaurant?"

"Yes."

"Was she alone?"

"Nope. She was with Roland, like she said. The history teacher."

"Did it appear to be a chance meeting?"

"Nope. They were on a date."

"Did you attempt to speak with pledge Simmons?"

"Knowing my duty, I did. But Roland cut me off. Threatened to flunk me so I wouldn't make eligibility for the team. I knew it was blackmail, but what could I do? So, I just came back here and reported, like the rules say."

"We're all aware of your dedication to the SEX-KKA bind, Brother Slaughter. "Thank you. You may be seated."

Paul sat down and sneered again at Sharon.

"And now," Connie said, looking at Sharon. "How do you plead to these charges?"

"What charges?" Sharon begged. "Please, tell me what I've done wrong? I don't understand."

"Pledge," Connie said. "One of the strictest of SEX house rules clearly states that it is forbidden for a member of the sorority to socialize with any but another member of SEX, or a member of our big brother fraternity KKA. You have blatantly and flagrantly violated this rule, and now must pay the consequences."

Sharon shivered and stood erect, torn between the fear of the consequences she would have to take, and the unfairness of the doctrine. Her singlemindedness, her willpower won out over the fear, and she spoke her mind.

"First of all, nobody ever told me I couldn't date outside the sorority," she said. Connie looked concerned, and said, "You should have been told. Are you certain you weren't told?"

"Positive," Sharon said, indignation making her voice well up with anger. "And secondly, what business is it of the sorority to tell me who I can and can't date?"

Connie slammed her fist into the desk. "Sorority rules are 'paramount," she said. "They will be obeyed, or the violating members will be drummed out of this sorority unceremoniously. I regret you were not informed of the rules, but the rules they still are. If this jury finds you guilty of dating outside the sorority, you will either accept the standard punishment, or leave the house. And I think we've already discussed the consequences of leaving the sorority, haven't we?"

Sharon did not have to answer.

Connie turned her attention to the jury made up mostly of SEX sisters, with a few KKA brothers thrown in for balance. "You have heard the evidence, and you have heard the accused respond. As the court has already informed Miss Simmons, we regret the oversight in not explaining this rule to her. Yet even now that she understands the rule clearly, she flaunts her indifference to us and expresses a sentiment clearly against the house rule. It is the opinion of this court that she be found guilty as charged. Will the jury render a verdict."

One by one, the members of the jury rose and uttered the word, "Guilty." There was silence in the small courtroom when they had finished.

Connie eyed Sharon, who stood firm and tall, not wanting to be the small, cringing creature they obviously expected her to be. "You have been found guilty," Connie said happily. "You now have a choice. You may accept punishment, or leave. If you elect to leave, you are commanded to do so at once. What is your choice?"

'That depends," Sharon said bitterly. "What's the punishment?"

"You may not learn that until after you have made your decision."

"How much time do I have to make a decision?" she asked.

Connie smiled down at her. "You have no time. Your answer is expected now."

Dear Diary:

I didn't know what to do. It had been only a matter of hours since the threat of non-membership had been suspended over my head, and I had learned the bitter truth of what would happen. No friends, no home, no family, complete, utter and total isolation.

And that was only if I quit. God, what would happen if I was thrown out?"

So I told Connie I would accept whatever punishment was due me. I was afraid and rightfully so, I figured. I was walking blindly into the unknown, leaving myself open for ... what? Would they do something like whip me with leather, burn a symbol into my flesh, tie me to the rack? More likely, I would have to submit to some sexual humiliation. Eighteen guys from KKA or something like that.

"You have chosen wisely," Connie told me, and I felt hate radiating from her at me. I had to assume, as I had before, that her hatred was due to Paul's interest in me. That wasn't my fault, I told myself. How can I control what a man thinks? It's neither fair nor right for anybody to expect that of me.

But Connie was president, and I'm just a lowly pledge. There was obviously no arguing, no negotiating, no reasoning with these people. I had to take my medicine, and like it. Dear God, I thought, what have I gotten into with Sigma Epsilon Chi?

"You will follow Melanie, and she will dole out your, punishment. This is Melanie's responsibility as rules chairman of SEX."

Melanie rose from her juror's spot, where she had only moments earlier added her voice to the chorus of guilties. She beckoned me to follow her.

We went downstairs, through the kitchen and out onto the back porch. "Wh.. .what's going to happen to me?"

"I can't tell you," Melanie said. But she took my hand and squeezed it reassuringly, a definite about-face from the way she had been behaving before. "It was good that you decided to stay with us. That makes it so much better," she said.

She opened the back porch door and I followed her out, through the back yard to the tool shed out back. It was a spacious, manicured yard, and my feet felt like they were padding on clouds as we made oar way across the decahedra lawn.

Melanie opened the tool shed with a key she wore around her neck, and I followed her into the darkness. She closed the doors behind us before she flipped on any lights.

Finally, though, she turned the lights on, and the room was bathed with it. It was empty, except for a couple chairs. On the wall various things hung, but nothing I could identify as a threat.

Melanie pulled out one of the folding chairs and sat primly in it. 'Take your clothes off," she said.

I looked at her with indignation. "What?" I had been right, it seemed. They did want me to go through some sort of sexual humiliation.

"Don't argue with me, Sharon. Any hesitation and I have no choice but to report back that you were uncooperative. Take your clothes off."

I began to comply slowly. I was down to my brassiere and my lacey, frail slip when there was a knock on the door. Melanie had obviously not been expecting anybody, judging from the way her head whipped around. "What is it?" she called.

The door opened, and Paul thrust his head in. "Mind if I watch?" he said.

"Get out of here," Melanie hissed at him. "This is private. The rules require it."

"Ah, the hell with the rules," Paul said.

"It was the rules that brought Sharon to this punishment," Melanie said. "It was also you reminding Connie of the rules. So don't go and make light of them now. Thanks to you, personally, Slaughter, we're well beyond that phase now."

Paul shrugged and looked me up and down like a hungry wolf. 'That's all right, Sharon," he said. "We'll get together for some fun and games later."

He pulled his head out and slammed the door before I could say anything. I didn't know what I would have said anyway.

"Go on," Melanie said. I looked into her eyes and tried to see if there was anything there, any betrayal of how she felt, what lay in store for me. But there was none of that. Her face bore a smile, but other than that, it was empty. Completely blank. She was obviously well-trained at this job.

'Take them off, Sharon," she told me. "The sooner you comply, the sooner we'll be finished with this."

I reached between my breasts and unclasped my brassiere, and it fell into two loose parts. I shrugged out of it, and my orbular breasts jiggled free of their restraints. I hesitated only briefly after that, then hooked my thumbs into the rib of my slip, and pushed it down.

The slip slithered like satin over the length of my long, tapering legs, and I finally stepped out of it, completely naked. I stood straight, mustering all the pride inside of me, and waited.

"Now come here." Melanie said.

I approached her, keeping my thighs pressed as firmly together as I could. I wasn't aware of it until I thought about it later, but it made my walk seem slinky and sexy. But Melanie didn't seem interested in that; her job was clear, and she was going to do nothing more or less than execute it.

I stood naked before her, inches from her, and I felt the strangest rush of warmth pass over and through me as she looked up at me. I can't describe it, but it was like a flood of heat that made me tremble.

Melanie lifted her arms up over her head. "Lay across my lap," she said.

The warmth was replaced in an instant by a chill, but not an unpleasant chill. I started to say something, but then I realized I was always saying something. I was always coming out with a but, or a what, or a you can't be serious, or something along those lines. And those little things I said never did any good. I realized suddenly that not only did whatever was in store for me come to pass despite my protest; I usually ended up liking it.

Still, I couldn't bring myself to believe I would like this. Punishment is not a word associated with pleasure, with the exception of a masochistic few. And yet, once again, I knew I had no choice. It was comply or be expelled. As much as I wished I had never heard of Sigma Epsilon Chi, I could not stand to be expelled. I simply could not stand it.

So I lay across Melanie's lap, face down, my cool, still cunt pressed against her leg tops. My round, firm ass was curved upward into the air. Oh my God, I thought. Is she going to spank me?

She answered my question before my mind had time to finish posing it. There was a short whishing sound as something sliced the air, and then something hard and flat connected with my buttocks. The pain was sharp, and the sound it made was a loud slap. I cried out, and grabbed Melanie's legs, but made no move to try to escape. There was no escape. I could run away, but then what? Then what?

I didn't see her pick up a paddle, but she was definitely not using the flat of her hand in the punishing spanking. It was, unquestionably, a hard wooden or plastic paddle of some kind, and the pain was exquisite. I didn't want to see my tender ass, but if I could, I was sure it would be as red as a beet.

She paddled me mercilessly; I thought it would never end; Each blow was as hard as the last, never a letup, never an easing of the force of her blows. And each spank mounted atop the pain of the last ones, so each spank I anticipated was a hundred times worse than the last.

Tears rose to my eyes and I hugged her legs tight, some refuge in the storm of agony Melanie inflicted on my bare, exposed buttocks. But the tears slowly gave way to something else, something completely and utterly unexpected.

My pussy, which had been uninterested and unaroused, suddenly began to turn warm. At first I thought it was the heat from the spanking transcending the fleshy surface of my buttocks and flooding straight down, into the depths of my cunt. But that wouldn't account for the erotic stimulation I felt, the urge to turn around and spread my legs lewdly for Melanie, open and inviting.

Each spank still created pain, but each spank now also intensified my desire. I had never before associated the two, but here they were, together, welling up inside me like a bomb ready to go off.

My hard little clitoris throbbed, and as the paddle slapped against my cheeks, it grew a little harder. I was moaning through clenched teeth, squirming anxiously in Melanie's lap, and she assumed it was from pain.

It wasn't. My now-burning cunt was grinding into the rough fabric of Melanie's jeans, spreading my sizzling cleft apart and tickling the inner pink membrane flesh. I chewed on my lower lip to keep from screaming as the paddle rose and fell, turning my sculptured ass into a mass of red pain, as my liquids oozed out of the cavern of my pussy onto Melanie's jeans.

The paddle fell one last time, and my wanton lust reached a fever pitch as I climaxed, gyrating madly in Melanie's lap. I squeezed her legs tightly in my arms and humped my pelvis against her thighs, moaning and grunting from the extraordinary intensity of the orgasm.

My spent little pussy finally quieted, and I relaxed, dangling over her lap. It took a minute to realize the paddling had also ceased, and Melanie's breathing was accelerated--I could tell by the way I rose and fell in her lap.

It wasn't as accelerated as mine; her exertion had been lifted to the paddling she was administering, while I had been suffering from her blows and experiencing a delicious orgasm on top of that.

"So you like that?" I heard Melanie say. I just continued panting and did not respond. She pulled me over, so I lay on my back facing her, my cunt at the top of my body and my legs and torso dangling lower. Over the peak of my bilious breasts, I saw her looking down at me. This time, there was more than emptiness in her eyes. "I asked you a question, pledge," she said. "You liked that?"

I couldn't lie. I had no willpower left in me, and I could not lie. "Yes," I told her. "I loved it."

"I thought so," Melanie said. "I couldn't be sure, but I thought you did." And with that, she gathered my hair in both her hands, leaned forward, down, as far as she could bend, and kissed me.

I shook and shivered at the sensation of her moist, feminine lips touching and brushing against mine, the fullness of them pressed against the ripe fullness of mine. Our mouths, as though acting on a long-buried instinct, opened at precisely the same moment, and our tongues met at the midpoint. The tips of our long, wet, vibrating muscles quivered against one another, and sparks flew from my tongue along the length of my body. I had been so certain I had spent all of the energy within me, but I was wrong! I was alive with feeling, cosmic energy flowing through me and concentrating in my vibrant living pussy. It shivered and trembled and longed for attention, to be filled with a hot, thick cock or to be tongued by an anxious, hungry woman, anything at all!

Melanie's hand formed a cup over my breast, and my nipple shot up like a small, fleshy spike through her fingers. She pinched her digits together, capturing my stiff, erect nipple between them, and she pulled and twitched, sending erotic flashes from my hard nipple into my large, full breasts, and flooding down to join the other multitude of sexual, aroused feelings inside my alive vagina.

"Oh, God, Melanie," I moaned not really aware of what I was saying, or even what I was thinking. "Oh, Jesus, fuck me, my darling. Fuck me!"

Her mouth, already lifted from my hungry, desperate lips, dove down to my hard nipple and encased it in its moist fullness, sucking and flicking at it with the tip of her tongue. I honestly believe that, when she had started, she had not been interested in sex with me, but now she was as aroused as I was, as excited and as intent on personal satisfaction as was I.

I fumbled in the darkness that existed behind my closed eyes, and finally found her hand. I held it tight, squeezing and manipulating it in mine. Slowly, I maneuvered her hand between my legs, about knee-length, and then gradually pulled it up. First it was between my sweaty, smooth thighs, then against the fluffy mound of musk-scented pubic hair, then pressed firmly against my stimulated vulva. When I touched her hand against me there, I sighed audibly, and the sound gurgled within my throat.

"Sharon," she moaned, and her index finger separated the two folds of outer cuntal flesh and probed within the hot, wet slit of my cunt. The finger felt like an instrument of exquisite torture there, a pebble under the mattress that made me ache with wanton arousal. I felt the perspiration spring to the surface of my flesh as she began to move her finger, hungrily searching inside my pussy for some unknown hidden treasure.

"Oh God, Sharon, you're so hot," she said. "So... so hot." Her finger began to vibrate with speeds I would not have imagined possible, and her other hand continued to hold my breast, squeezing it as her lips closed over it and sucked, her tongue aiding in the effort.

I was still lain across her lap, my head even with my feet, almost dangling to the floor. I was completely helpless in her clutches, except for my one hand clasped around the wrist that jiggled and shivered inside my pussy, with each vibration finding itself a half inch deeper inside my forbidden crevice.

I was determined not to let her have such complete advantage over me, and I wrenched myself upward. I twisted and maneuvered myself until I was now seated in her lap. and I locked my arms around her neck and pulled.

She came easily out of the chair, and we fell as one to the cold floor. Melanie started as she felt the icy surface of the floor crawl on her skin, but I knew it would be but a moment until we warmed it up just fine. I held her close and pried her fine, long legs apart with one of my knees, and pushed the knee upward, until I was digging it hard into her hair-fringed cleft.

Her parted lips were inches from my ear, and I heard her breath coming in short, sputtering rasps. I also felt her hot, moist breath flooding my ear, and the sensation from her breathing transcended my ear and filled my white shimmering cunt.

I twisted and gyrated my knee between her deliciously splayed legs, my other knee hard against the cold surface of the floor, creating friction and making it easy to apply pressure to her.

"Oh God," Melanie moaned close to my ear, and the tiny tip of her tongue darted into my ear and made me shiver. "Oh God," she said. "Sharon, darling, fuck me, baby, fuck me!"

If I had a cock like Paul Slaughter or Dirk Roland, I would have shoved her knees apart and slammed it into her, humping her until there was no strength left in me. I have no idea what it was that had overcome me. I had always before been unnerved by the thought of lesbian sex.

Even in the house bedroom the other day, with Melanie and the frat guy and the other girl, the only thing I had been interested in was cock. And even that was a new, thrilling, forbidden experience for me. The fact that I had been sharing the cock with two other women made it only that much more exhilarating.

But now there was no penis, only pussy. Mine and hers, and I wanted hers. I wanted to feel and taste her come, and I wanted to climax myself at her hands. But God help me, I didn't know how.

I allowed my instincts to take over. I pulled my knee away from her pussy, and noticed for an instant it was wet and sticky from her dripping female juices.

I pressed her shoulders once against the floor to let her know I wanted her to stay there. Her hands were moving like buff pads over my skin, raising mounds of goose flesh, and I had to concentrate hard to keep my mind on what I wanted to do.

My ass planted firmly on the floor, I swiveled around so I was no longer facing her head. Instead, I was looking down at her glimmering mound of pussy hair, the bare light bulbs suspended above shining off the wetness that had saturated he delectable pubic mound.

Her thighs were parted only an inch, locking the forbidden entryway to her gorgeous, quivering pussy beyond my access, but open enough to be stimulating and inviting. Even though I did not touch her, she writhed uncontrollably, her hands pressing and kneading her orbular breasts as her aroused fervor grew.

I rose to my knees and slid my cool hands beneath her pliable flesh of her cheeky buttocks, and lifted just a bit. She bent her knees and let gravity spread them apart. I watched as the hidden slit of her hair-fringed fissure opened like some mystical doorway. At first I could only see the sizzling lips of her pussy, then a hint of her interior pink, shiny cuntal skin, then the deep, cave-like hole that lay behind her portal.

As though dragged there by a force beyond my control, I pushed my head between her warm, sweaty thighs. The inebriating odor that rose from her obscenely open cunt rose to my nostrils and made my head swim; my own pussy quaked and reminded me of its emptiness. I shut that out, though, as my lips encountered the hot moisture of her trembling vagina.

Like a fish to water, my tongue fled from inside my mouth and gouged deeply into the recesses of Melanie's cunt. As it thrust inward, she was arching her back, raising her buttocks a half-foot off the floor and she screamed. I looked over the rise of her pubic triangle and saw she was squeezing her titties so hard the blood had turned them a deep red, but she didn't seem to mind.

This time she shook, as though a volcano had erupted inside her. She relinquished her grasp on her breasts, and dug her hands into my head, grabbing tufts of hair but digging her nails into my scalp. The pain, surprisingly, only intensified the pitch at which my tongue worked on her sweet pussy.

As I tickled and tugged at her pebbly clitoris, I captured juice from her gushing pussy on my tongue and worked it back into my throat, swallowing it down like a soft drink. It was delicious, and as it coursed down into me, I think it worked to arouse me even more.

I felt something wet beneath me, and realized I was dripping so much myself I had left a puddle of love juice between my legs. I moaned as my pussy urged me to please myself, and the moan vibrated against Melanie's clitoris and made her gasp. "Oh sweet Jesus, Sharon, give me your cunt. Give it to me baby, bring it to my face!"

My heart began pounding to a crescendo at her words, and I complied, trembling, by raising one leg over her breasts and settling it on the other side of her. I never once stopped working on her slippery, smooth pussy, but I backed my ass against her face. Her hands latched onto my buttocks instantly, and guided my splayed hole to her mouth.

Her tongue was obviously more expert and practiced than mine. She wiggled it in the opening of my cunt, jerking it back and forth for a minute before she began pushing it into the desperately anxious interior of my pulsating pussy.

Each time she shoved her rotating tongue in an inch, she pulled it back out a half inch. I gyrated and twisted my pelvis against her face, and she dug her sharp nails into the fleshy cheeks of my ass.

It took a long, exquisite time, but her tongue finally filled my hot cunt, still twisting and turning. She moaned and made sounds from deep in her throat that vibrated inside of my pussy, making my cuntal walls quiver and shake, and my own tongue involuntarily reacted by increasing the rapidity of my thrusts in and out of her quim. Each thrust dragged against her growing clitoris.

My own little pleasure button had not been touched yet, but suddenly Melanie withdrew her tongue with a lurid plop, and curled it around the clitoris nested in wet flesh at the top of my burning cleft.

I wanted to scream from the ecstatic joy of the sensation, but that would have forced me to lift my head away from her pussy, which I was not yet done devouring. But the reaction had to come from somewhere, and without knowing it, I clamped my teeth down over her clitoris and nibbled on it while I moaned, saying to myself, "Oh God, Melanie, eat me, don't stop eating me."

That was enough to do it for her. Her buttocks leapt into the air and I felt the shock of her entire body racked with fits of trembling. Her face came loose from my saturated cunt, and she screamed, "I'm cumming, dammit, oh it feels so.. . ahhh!-Ah, Sharon, fuck me! Aaarghh. .. ."

Her words evaporated into meaningless gibberish as she entered the hypnotic stage of her orgasm. I knew I was only seconds from my own climax, but she was so wrapped up in her own that she could not possibly concentrate on me.

I had to do something. I don't know what made me do it, but it certainly worked. I slid away from her face, until I felt one of her firm, small breasts between my legs. I reached between with both hands and squeezed her tit into a cone and thrust it between the slick lips of my vagina.

Her erect nipple met with my erect clitoris, and the chemical reaction was instantaneous. My clitty erupted in a shower of meteoric sparks, hot and electric.

I humped up and down fanatically, burying her breast inside the dark interior of my cunt, letting her nipple continue to scrape my exploding clitoris.

I felt a new, gigantic wave of female juices gush out from within me, spilling onto her breast.

By this time, Melanie had finished her orgasm, and was aware of what I was doing. It excited her immensely, and as she thrust her finger inside my sweat-soaked anus, making the orgasm I was experiencing more intense, she said, "Oh yes, Sharon, fuck my tit. Fuck it hard, baby."

I didn't need any encouragement. Between the nipple up my cunt and the finger worming inside the entry to my asshole, I was in paradise. I shivered and shook, twisted and gyrated and moaned. My hand went back to Melanie's pussy and explored it as I came.

Finally the sensations subsided, and I fell to the floor beside her, struggling for breath. My breasts and belly heaved as they rose, my lungs searching for air.

After a few minutes, I was relaxed, and Melanie lay her arm across my belly, holding me affectionately.

"That was a punishment?" I said.

"It's never worked that way before," she said. Then she added, "although I've always hoped it might, at least once." She looked at me meaningfully. "I'm glad it was you," she whispered.

Her lips brushed against mine.

We lay in each other's arms for a long while before dressing to return to the main house.