Chapter 3

It had made such an effect, indeed, that before Eleanor Stanfield took her leave of him to keep her dinner engagement with the woman friend she had previously mentioned, Arthur Hadley eagerly exacted a promise that she and Betty would be his guests for dinner in the hotel dining room the following evening.

He ate by himself that evening, for Hester was in one of her blue funks and had complained of a headache. Accordingly, he had room service send a tray of dinner to her room. So he was lonelier than ever, and he ate without much appetite. Fortunately for the sake of distraction, there was a movie in the little assembly hall to which all the guests were invited, and Arthur Hadley took advantage of the opportunity to relax and, while he watched the frothy comedy which was being enacted on the silver screen, ponder over the almost incredible new direction his thoughts were taking.

He was reasonably sure that Hester really didn't have a headache and was just indulging in one of her little spiteful tantrums to show her disapproval of their vacation spot. He remembered that she really hadn't wanted to come to Malibu after all, and he was piqued to remember, now that he was in a faultfinding state of mind, so many of her little "stunts" over the past few years. If Hester could be as well trained, as docile and as charmingly and refreshingly gregarious as Betty Stanfield, he thought to himself, he would be a much happier man.

But most of all he found it difficult to credence that a big grown girl like lovely golden-haired Betty should be so humiliatingly and childishly chastised. He found himself examining with a great deal of curiosity the possible ways in which this voluptuous and handsome widow would administer such discipline to that lovely girl. And when he went to bed that night, he tossed and turned, his drowsy mind haunted by the most singular phantasmagoria in which he saw the ripely curved adolescent not only across her mother's lap, kicking her legs and turning back a tearstained face to implore mercy, but also standing on tiptoe with her hands tied high above her head and tethered to an antique whipping post.

Until now, Arthur Hadley's erotic dreams had been perfectly unimaginative, though very definitely frequent, even while he had been enjoying harmonious and pleasant--if not thrilling exciting--sexual relations with his beloved Sonya. But now it was as if he were reborn and aware for the first time of the curious vagaries of physical desire. And before he finally fell asleep, he told himself that he must learn all he could about the methods which this fascinating woman employed to produce such praiseworthy results in so delightfully charming a daughter...

The following afternoon he put on his bathing trunks and went out to the beach again. Hester's headache had vanished, apparently, and she decided that she would take a long walk. Since this was outdoor exercise of a sort, he couldn't very well sermonize her about her lack of cooperation, for he would have really enjoyed her companionship. Perhaps he might have intimated to her, had they been together, how far she was from the standards he had set for her and how it would be beneficial to them both if she tried to be more companionable and tolerant of others.

His heart bounded as he saw Eleanor Stanfield seated on her blanket and with a beach umbrella above her, browsing through a book and looking up every now and then out towards the sandy shore of the beach. Following her gaze, he recognized golden-haired Betty tossing a beach-ball back and forth to three youths of about her own age. There was no doubt about it, she had one of the loveliest figures he had ever seen, and in a few years she would certainly be as desirable and delectable as her mature mother. The moment he thought this, he guiltily rebuked himself for having carnal desires toward Eleanor Stanfield--but he knew perfectly well that was the case. Sonya had been dead now for sixteen months, and if he wanted to keep thinking of himself as young and vital, he would have to return to the living world of reality, and that in turn would mean thinking about remarriage. Why not? A man wasn't a monk, and Sonya herself would have wanted him to be happy. Besides, it was more evident than ever, judging from Hester's behavior, that the steadying influence of a wise and understanding mother was more important than ever now, particularly as she was approaching college and the test of mingling with others of her own age who would undoubtedly have had better training in the amenities of polite society. It was true that he was going too fast, but then he had never before met a woman as stimulating and desirable as Eleanor Stanfield.

There was almost a kind of magnetic response between them, he joyously told himself, for now the comely widow turned and saw him, then waved to him in a gesture which suggested that he join her. He didn't wait for a second invitation, but quickened his step and moved towards the red and yellow beach umbrella which marked her sunbathing vantage point.

"Good afternoon, Arthur," she said cordially with a dazzling smile. "Sit down and keep me company. How are you today, and how is Hester?"

"I'm fine. Hester's out for a walk," he replied.

"I do hope I'll have a chance to meet her soon, Arthur."

"I was thinking that perhaps this evening at dinner--that is if our date still holds--I might bring her along?"

"Do you know, I was about to suggest that myself! Oh, now, just look at that girl of mine!"

He turned to look in the direction of the shore. Betty had abandoned her beachball and was now playing gymnastics with the boys. One of them had hoisted her to his shoulders, and she was trying to balance herself on them like an acrobat.

"Betty!" Eleanor Stanfield rose to her feet and, cupping her hands to her mouth, called out. "Come here, if you please!"

Betty very nearly toppled from her precarious post, but the two boys standing around their crony hurried up behind him to catch her and then lower her to her feet. She extricated herself, and then hurried towards her mother and Arthur Hadley. "Hi, Mom! Did you want something?" she gaily asked. "Oh, hello, Mr. Hadley."

"Hello, Betty," he answered. But his eyes were on Betty's mother, whose face was stem and grave.

"You know perfectly well, young lady, that I don't like you making a spectacle of yourself being part of that muscle bunch."

Immediately Betty's dazzling smile vanished and a look of contrition appeared on her lovely heart-shaped face. "I-I'm sorry, Mother," she murmured placatingly.

"Not half as sorry as you're going to be in a little while, my dear," was the brisk retort. "Let me see, it's three-thirty now. You may go to your room and prepare. I'll be there at four."

"Yes, Mother. I-I'm sorry. Goodbye, Mr. Hadley," Betty flushed, lowered her eyes, and then meekly trudged off towards the hotel.

Eleanor Stanfield turned to the bemused widower: "I'm dreadfully sorry, Arthur. But I'm afraid that Betty won't be able to accept your very gracious invitation to dinner this evening. I trust you will forgive her this once?"

"Certainly, Eleanor."

"But I want you to be sure to bring Hester, because I'm quite anxious to meet her," Betty's lovely mother continued, glancing at her wrist-watch. "And I'm also afraid that in a little while I'm going to have to leave you, Arthur, till I meet you for dinner this evening."

"You-you're going to-to punish Betty for what she just did?" Although his face was impassive, he couldn't quite hide the unsteady tone of his voice. And once again the lewd, startlingly intimate image leaped into his febrile mind, of seeing that delicious pinkskinned adolescent draped across Eleanor Stanfield's voluptuous lap, her round, succulent young buttocks upthrust to maternal chastisement.

"Decidedly I am, Arthur. And you tell me that you've never punished Hester, and that your wife didn't either?"

"That's true. But you see, while it might have been possible when she was just a child, she's all of eighteen now."

"But she's still under your direct supervision and she lives at home and is supposed to obey you, isn't she, Arthur?"

"Yes, I suppose that's so."

"Of course it is. But then, my dear man, I don't expect you to change over night your educational methods. You see, it took me quite some months after my husband's death to discover that the method I am now using is the only practical and sensible one. And you can see for yourself that Betty doesn't look at all abused or starved or unhappy, does she?"

"No, I'd certainly never say that of her," he admitted.

"Well, we shall talk about these things later, Arthur. I look forward to meeting your daughter, and again, all my thanks for being so attentive. I'm very glad we came here on our vacation."

"Likewise," he said and then blushed like a schoolboy. She flashed him a deliciously coquettish smile, and then rose and smoothed the sand off her magnificent thighs. As he looked up, his heart nearly stopped beating with desire as he caught the glimpse of the valley between her full round titties, and he observed that although her skin was beautifully tanned from the sun, the tender soft skin between those luscious love-globes of hers was breathtakingly milky-white.

"I-I'll see you at dinner, then, Eleanor," his voice quavered as he rose to his feet. And he was hugely embarrassed to discover that his cock felt hard and throbbing, though fortunately it wasn't in sufficient erection to be discernible...

It was as well for Arthur Hadley's peace of mind that he couldn't look into the bedroom which Betty occupied at the hotel at this particular moment. A strange scene was being enacted. After the reproof by her mother, the golden-haired teenager had gone directly to her room, taken off her bathing suit and then put on her bra and panties. Next, she had pulled open the second drawer of the dresser, and taken out two straps, one with a buckle at one end, and the other without one. Next she had taken a pillow from the bed and placed it in the middle. Then she glanced around nervously to make sure that her clothes were tidily hung in the closet and that there was nothing on top of the dresser. Then, as if satisfied, she stooped and removed her panties and placed them neatly over the back of a straight-backed chair beside the bed, and then clambered onto the bed and carefully laid herself down so that her stomach was directly over the pillow. Then, folding her arms, she laid her head on them and waited.

In the adjoining room, she could hear the footsteps of her mother entering, and she shivered a little, turned her face to the other side, and closed her eyes and continued to wait. The naked skin of her buttocks twitched spasmodically, but other than that she exhibited no signs of apprehension or distress. She acted throughout, indeed, as if this were an exercise which she had practiced many times--and so indeed she had. She knew, for example, that her mother would leisurely remove her bathing suit, put on a slip and robe and not come back into her room until the exact moment announced out at the beach.

It was usually anywhere from fifteen minutes to half an hour, and the longer prolongation was used when the offense had been extremely serious, as it apparently was this time, for the wait became almost interminable, and one could see the contraction of Betty's thigh and bottom muscles becoming more and more frequent as she lay there waiting. The pillow proffered up her naked bottom in the most enticing way imaginable; it tautened the smooth satiny skin and defined the voluptuous and already quite mature contours.

Then the door opened and her mother entered the room. Betty looked up and said in a soft, faint voice, "I'm sorry, Mother."

"I am too, my dear, because I'm afraid you won't be able to accept Mr. Hadley's very kind invitation to dinner this evening. I'll have a tray sent up to your room. Now you know perfectly well why you're being punished, don't you?"

"Yes, Mother."

"Suppose you tell me, then."

"For-for playing rough games with those fellows down at the shore."

"And I told you about such things before, haven't I, dear?"

"Yes, you have, Mother. I'm sorry. I won't do it again."

"I certainly hope not. Very well, give me the buckling strap."

Now the fatal moment had come, and Betty was seen to shiver throughout her entire almost naked pink-sheened body. She reached out to her left which was near the edge of the bed, and took up the buckling strap, which was of brown soft leather. Eleanor Stanfield took it, and Betty dutifully clasped her hands together and extended her lovely bare arms out in front of her while her mother proceeded to wind the strap tightly around the slim wrists and to draw up the buckle as tightly as she could. The other strap was black and polished, about two feet long, of double thickness along the last three inches at one end, and about a quarter of an inch thick throughout its major length. At the applying end, it was rounded off in a kind of semi-circle, to create a kind of extra-stinging slap.

"Get ready, dear," Eleanor Stanfield said as she took her stance by the edge of the bed, the strap in her right hand. Betty quickly squirmed till she was exactly over the center of the pillow, her stomach and loins pressing down upon it, and pressed her thighs together, then laid her left cheek against the surface of the bed and waited.

Her bottomcheeks were splendidly ample, up-standingly rounded and quite plump and firm at the summits. The groove between them was gradually sinuous, broadening at the base. There was an adorable dimple in the exact center of each buttock, and both seemed to come and go as the girl's bare skin twitched and shrank in understandable anticipation of what was to follow. She pressed her bare dainty little toes down hard into the covers, to give herself support, but this maneuver served to project and tauten the target of the black leather strap which now slowly rose in the air.

Crack! The strap flashed down and leaped across the tops of both delightfully rounded naked hips. Betty caught her breath and closed her eyes, convulsively tightening her clasped fingers ahead of her, but she made no sound or movement other than that. As the strap lifted, one could see the bright pink tracery imposing its vivid hue over the baby-pink satiny epidermis of the teenager's naked behind.

The strap rose again slowly, hovered in the air, then again flashed down with a sonorous impact, visiting the girl's naked upper buttocks, perhaps half an inch below the mark of the first stroke. Betty's calves flexed and her toes scrabbled at the covers, while she lifted her head slightly, and then laid it back down in exactly the same place as at the outset of the punishment.

Eleanor Stanfield continued with a deliberate cadence, allowing perhaps ten seconds between strokes. After twenty-five, she paused to contemplate her handiwork. Betty was sniffling now, squirming uncomfortably, but she had not left the limited boundaries of the pillow. Her face was now pressed down on the other cheek, so that it seemed turned towards her beautiful, relentless executioner. Her eyes were still closed, but there were tears glistening at the ends of the long thick curly lashes, and her face was flushed. Her arms were still thrust out ahead of her, the fingers tightly clasped together, and her thighs had begun a nervous kind of rubbing together, and shifting just prior to the infliction of each new biting kiss of the black leather strap.

The marvelous smooth pale pinkness of the young girl's naked body, with the lovely back adorably hollowed by the spinal column and the pronounced vista of the chinkbone, and then the soft sheen of the bare thighs and calves, was emphasized all the more by the now vividly crimson-striped pattern designed on the girl's round, voluptuous young bottom. From the tops of her hips to the base of her buttocks, the strap had visited with an impartial vigor, and Betty's netherglobes seemed to tense and then relax with a sporadic motion she seemed unable to control.

After this brief pause, the handsome brown-haired widow once again lifted the strap, and Betty, who had opened her eyes at this moment, uttered a gasp, "Oh, Mother!" and quickly closed them again while at the same time she seemed to press herself down tightly against the pillow in an attempt to steel herself for the resumption of punishment.

Thwack! This stroke encircled the base of both quivering nether globes, and Betty's hips squirmed convulsively under the stinging impact. A stifled sob escaped her, and she turned her face to the other side now, pressing her left cheek down against the covers, while she stretched her arms out ahead of her with a kind of supreme gesture. If it had not been that she lay on her stomach, one could have seen the beautiful young titties arch and jut with that maneuver which tautened them.

Again the strap fell, this time slightly higher up, and now the spanking resumed with the same methodical regularity as during the first portion. With brisk horizontal cuts, the black leather band wedded to both globes at the same time, ascending the inflamed and twitching posterior to the tops of the hips, covering every cranny of tender young flesh with the chalorous embrace of leather. Now "Ohhhs" and "Ahhs" began to be heard at virtually every stroke, and from time to time it was seen that Betty's bare hips convulsively swerved to this side and then to that. But never once did she leave the confines of the pillow, nor did she make any outcry for mercy or reprieve.

Again after twenty-five, making a total of fifty, Eleanor Stanfield stopped and lowered the strap. Her face was flushed, her eyes sparkling, her lips moist, and her magnificent bubbies rose and fell majestically under the thin bathrobe which covered the even sheerer black nylon slip. Betty was crying softly now, and rubbing herself nervously back and forth over the pillow, as she attempted to find a less irksome pose in which to endure the finale of her punishment. During the last three or four spanks, she had kicked up first one leg and then the other, but never once throughout this already prolonged and quite painful whipping had she attempted to roll to one side to escape any of the punitive, biting descents of that black leather strap.

During this pause, the golden-haired culprit turned her face again so that her right cheek rested on the covers, and her tear-filled eyes fixed on her mother's beautiful, absorbed features. This time she crossed her ankles, tightening her leg muscles as she prepared for the resumption of correction.

Eleanor Stanfield slowly raised the strap, and Betty uttered a "Ohh, Mother!" as she hurriedly closed her eyes. She seemed to press herself down tightly against the pillow in an effort to diminish the much too vulnerable plumpness of her now vividly streaked hindquarters. The strap descended with an ominous "Crack!" and this time fell vertically, dividing the left buttock exactly in half as it merged its black polished leather end along the luscious netherhillock.

"Ouch, ohh!" Betty sobbed, she shifted her bound wrists nervously, lifted her head, and then closed her eyes and pressed her chin down firmly against the covers, her entire body rippling with tremors. The strap rose slowly again, paused in the air an excruciating moment, then fell vigorously down the right buttock, attacking it from the base to the small of the girl's bare back. Betty's body jerked convulsively under the stinging lash, her hips swerved frantically from left to right, then from right to left again, and she pressed herself down frantically against the pillow as once more she tried to diminish the prominence of the inescapable target of that punishing, burning strap.

Eleanor Stanfield concluded the whipping with a dozen more lashes down each bare bottomcheek, and then a final cut, delivered horizontally, across the plumpest curve of both naked globes. Betty was sobbing aloud now, and almost each stroke had brought fervent "I'm sorry, Mother!" and "Aaahhh, I'll be a good girl from now on, honest, Mother!"

The whipping had been reasonably severe. It had comprised fifty horizontal strokes, twenty-six vertically applied lashes, and a final "finisher-upper" delivered with full strength across both flaming naked bottomglobes.

Eleanor Stanfield folded the strap and laid it down on the edge of the bed near Betty's bare feet. Then she went through the door connecting their rooms back into her own, and left her daughter there for at least ten minutes. The goldenhaired culprit, her face wet with tears, was thus compelled to remain with her wrists bound, unable to soothe the burning anguish of her well thrashed bottom, which was exactly one of the nuances of discipline which her mother had imposed during this ritualistic chastisement. Left to herself, Betty cried softly, squirming back and forth over the pillow, lifting first one leg and then the other, sometimes rubbing her bare calves together, in ingenuous though understandable attempts to alleviate the fiery pangs in her voluptuous young naked seat. Finally Eleanor Stanfield reappeared and, leaning over the still softly sobbing girl, deftly unbuckled the wrist strap. At once Betty plunged her soft little hands to her flaming behind and rubbed it feverishly, while her mother moved over to an armchair, seated herself and then beckoned to the girl.

Sniffling and trying to control her crying, the almost naked young culprit got down gingerly from the bed, wincing and gasping as the movement aggravated the seemingly intolerable heat in her posterior, and approached her mother, head hanging, in a total attitude of abject contrition. She was breathtakingly lovely in this punishment attire which consisted of only a pink nylon brassiere; the lovely round globes of her titties rose and fell agitatedly, and through the nylon one could make out the narrow, light coral aurolae and the pouting, saucy buds of her nipples. Her bellybutton was wide and shallow, and there was already a surprisingly thick fleece of silky dark blonde curls over the plump mound of her virgin Venus.

Eleanor Stanfield patted her lap, and the goldenhaired penitent cautiously seated herself on her mother's lap. Eleanor Stanfield's left arm curved around the girl's naked waist, and she cupped Betty's chin with her right hand and murmured gently, "I'm sorry I had to punish you, darling. But you know that my heart was in my mouth when I saw you playing with those boys."

"I-I know, Mummy." After a spanking, Betty invariably seemed to use the childish title rather than the more formal one of "Mother." Then she added, "I-I know I shouldn't have. I'm awfully sorry."

"And I'm sorry I had to whip you so hard, precious. But most of all, because you won't be able to have dinner with Mr. Hadley and me. He's a very nice man, and he has a girl who's two years older than you are, Betty. I'm afraid she isn't nearly as lady-like and well bred as you are, though. I'll have a chance to meet her. Now then, you go to the bathroom and take a shower, and then put on your pajamas. I'll send up a nice dinner for you. But don't you ever do that again, young lady, because you know how I worry about you."

"I promise I won't, Mummy. Thank you--thank you for punishing me because I was naughty," Betty quavered. Then, impulsively, her beautiful pink round satiny arms clung around her mother's neck as she exchanged a fervent "kiss of peace" with the voluptuous and mature brown-haired widow. When she rose, a brave little smile was trembling on her moist red lips, and Eleanor Stanfield playfully patted the flaming naked seat as she said cheerfully, "That's a good girl, Betty. Now take a nice cool shower and you'll feel lots better, I'll tell you all about what Mr. Hadley's daughter is like when I come to see you and wish you good night, darling."