Chapter 5

"If you don't mind," said Cynthia Reddick, strolling in cool as a cucumber minutes later, "mine's a large Scotch and soda. The things that go on in a Lagonda."

"Help yourself, darling," said Mavis Smith-Peters. "Jo?"

"Thanks. I could do with one, too, a double."

"Mavis?"

"Yes ... but." The smaller woman rolled her eyes, and from the drinks cabinet Cynthia smiled sympathetically.

"That's right. Not supposed to assist anyone in Restraint. Under penalty, that is."

Joanna gratefully took her glass. Her senses were still swimming. She had sat and swapped small-talk with this lovely, soft-haired, small-shouldered woman who had her wrists and ankles fettered like ... like a prisoner.

"Those bitches can really make you feel beaten, you know," Cynthia said, joining them. "Really lay it on."

"That's true," said their hostess sympathetically, "but they can also take it, too."

"Right," said Cynthia, moving her jaw. "Gee, gritting one's teeth makes the muscles ache. Mavis means this special training school. It's, well, Spartan. We got Bella from the Guard."

"Several of them go into service later," said Mavis, chinking her wrist chain. "You ever seen a Gladiator flogging, Cynth?"

"No, but I'd love to."

"Love to?" Joanna echoed.

"Oh sure," came the answer, after a long swallow of Scotch, "they must be tremendously exciting."

"They get their backs scratched," said Mavis with a smile.

"There's this great gleaming triangle, you see, and a big sweaty Gladiator's back hanging from it like a side of beef and a Corporal cutting in...."

"And behind her there's another whose duty is to give the whipper two with a switch, then and there, if the stroke isn't deemed hard enough by the officer in charge."

"Alec tells me that's become somewhat of a formality by now. Though every so often there'll be a couple ... just for show. It's tough to get into a Glad flogging."

"I've seen the usual parade punishments, though."

"Aren't they something? I saw a meaty giantess getting six across her breeches and she didn't so much as shiver her butt throughout. Oh they're trained, all right. Amazing. What is your Restraint for, Mavie?"

"Too many martinis before dinner, actually."

"Ah, me. They do make the punishment fit the crime. Any thing ... er, accompanying?"

"Yes. Six at noon."

"Dear, dear."

"Only it was a little more."

"Do you mean to say," Joanna burbled, her tongue now loosened by the drink, "you have to be like this ... all the day? I mean, what do you do for ... ? "

The other two exchanged glances and a communal chuckle. It was explained by the Victorianly demure dame, chained on (if not to) the sofa that there were set times for physical needs, when she could apply to her head maid, also an ex-Gladiator, Ida.

It transpired that her husband Simon was a businessman in Shaftesbury, who liked to supervise his wife's corrections personally. As a consequence the following scene had-as recounted to a goggling Joanna-taken place at the stroke of noon. Her wrists released for the purpose, Mrs. Smith-Peters had picked up the receiver of the telephone in her husband's study, or den.

"Put me on to Mr. Smith-Peters, would you please."

"Who shall I say is calling?"

"This is his wife."

"Very well, Madam. Kindly hold the line."

"Mavis? Hallo. What can I do for ... oh yes, it's just twelve, isn't it. Fine. Where are you now."

"In your den, Simon. As you told me."

"Good. Is your bottom bare."

"It is."

"Is Ida there."

"Yes."

"Put her on, would you."

"Ida. My husband would like to speak with you."

"Yes, Mr. Peters?"

"Just wanted to say, make these six stiff ones.

Right up and down. She marks easily as you know, but don't let that give you pause. I do have a luncheon appointment but take your time. Space it out over two minutes. Three a minute, or four and two ... you know. I want to see her really contrite tonight. All right, give me her now, would you. Dear? That you? So you're standing with your legs facing the side of my desk, that right?"

"Yes, that's right, Simon. The desk's been cleared."

"Fine. And you're well and truly stripped behind?"

"Completely."

"Skirt tucked into your belt."

"Yes."

"Been figged."

"Yes."

"First-class. Right up."

"Right up."

"Excellent. I want this to be a memorable experience. What's it for."

"Getting up late."

"Lean forward on the desk, still holding the receiver so that I can hear you. Right down with your heinie shoved back. In position? Tight? Fine. Now-feeling sorry for yourself?"

"Very, Simon."

"Look at the cane and say a prayer."

"Please God make this punishment severe so that I may be fully cured of my fault."

(Joanna shuddered when she heard this part.)

"Tell Ida to get cracking. And I mean cracking. Count the cuts."

"You may proceed, Ida, when you wish."

"Vair good, Miz Peters."

Zzzhh-upp "One!"

"Hell, I hardly heard that at all. It can't have hurt a bit. Tell her to start again, and this time hold the instrument away from you as she hits."

"Simon?"

"Go on."

"Mr. Peters would like you to give me that stroke again, Ida."

"Yes, Ma'am." Zzzzhhh-pp! "Aaah-one."

"Much better." Zzzzzhhhippp! "Two!" Zzzzhupp! "Chhhh ... three!"

"You seem to be panting nicely now. Beginning to hurt?"

"Intensely, Simon."

Zzzzzzhhhhlpp!

"Ouw ... foo-uuu...."

"I didn't hear that count."

"FOUR!"

"You'll have to take that one over."

"Please, Simon."

"Let's have some better enunciation now."

"Please, it hurts ... a very great deal."

"Well you shouldn't be so lazy. Three more and tell Ida to make these low."

"I'm to have that stripe over, Ida, if you please. And Mr. Peters suggests you strike ... low down."

"Right in the fold."

"In the sulcus, Ida."

"Yes indeed, Ma'am."

Zzzhhhwitttl "FOWR!"

"Nice long pause for it to sink in. That one hurt?"

"Oh. Oh. Oh."

"Silly girl, aren't you!"

ZZZZHWTTT!

"Fiiiii-yeeeve!"

"Press back with your knees, please, Ma'am."

"Oooo-uuuh!"

"Hey, you don't have to deafen me, darling. Really, you sound like a grampus in labor."

"Ouwhh."

"ZZWHTCK! "Ho Auh ... six!"

"Sounded as if that one belted home okay. Well thanks, Mavis. Hope it did you a world of good. Better than a mid-morning martini any time. Bye now."

The three women were standing, waiting for Cynthia to finish her third and final Scotch.

"The brute! I bet he was beating himself off all the time. That or having his secretary do the honors. The only thing I don't get, darling, is about the martinis. Was it for that, or getting up late out of bed?"

Mavis Smith-Peters smiled softly. "One and the same in a way. I over-imbibed. I overslept."

"May we peek?"

The fettered hands moved expressively. "Not much I can do about it, I fear."

"There isn't, is there? And since I showed you mine in the bathroom just now."

In a trice Cynthia had the thin skirt tucked high. The woman was not wearing panties or stockings and Joanna found herself confronting yet another well-wealed bottom. Despite her slender shoulders, Mavis had a sloping figure which filled a pair of richly flesh buttocks that thrust out staunchly from the thighs. Even though these stood plumply together, a strong clump of soft dry fur thrust back through them from in front. The weals seemed punctuated by small blotches, deeper in hue and tender-looking. Cynthia touched one apprisingly.

"Simon-likes to use a malacca. Notched, you know. Some thinks it hurts a little more."

"I do," said Mavis. She shivered as Cynthia parted the heavy cheeks and exposed the crinkled amber of the anus. Set in the shadowy valley it was a demure dimple, sweetly vulnerable and yet chaste in appearance. It touched Joanna sharply and suddenly she knew she would very much like to see this woman well beaten.

"Oooh, you were figged, weren't you?" Cynthia was saying. "Any rate, you don't have to wear a saddle strap."

"What's that?" Joanna asked.

"Goes between the legs. Horribly tight and most discouraging. Let's take a look at the view from in front. Oh boy, what wouldn't that naughty little juicer do for a length of greasy gristle right now. Mind if I pay homage, Mave? I owe you hospitality."

So saying, her great plait swinging like a club, Cynthia dropped to her knees in front of her hostess. Weakly, dazed in confusion and excitement, Joanna sat on the sofa behind the woman, whose whipped behind was on a level with her eyes and whose faintly downed surfaces began to undulate and buck as Cynthia went to work.

The dead silence of the room was broken only by a sluicing lapping, as of some dog, and quick hisses of breath from the moving woman. Mavis planted her feet as far as the short chain would allow them apart and her bottom, bucking, now thrust the strong fuck surrounding her sex at Joanna, emphasizing its animality.

And when Mavis turned her face with an effort at apologetic smile, Joanna was gripped by it, so rosy and excited did it look, so tense and shiny was the skin. There was such a total carnality in the eyes, they might have been those of some mystic or saint.

"I hope you aren't shocked, Mrs. Swanne." Suddenly she arched, head ducked down, belly retracted. "Oh Cynth, that's ... oh you're practically skinning it like that ... darling, someone is shortly going to get a. . .mouthful." There was a pause and Cynthia's long, well manicured fingers grabbed around her ass-cheeks. Mavis said in a mournful tone, "I'm afraid I go rather a lot ... after a caning ... uuaaaa!" She pumped ecstatically, and went on doing so for some time.

When Cynthia stood up she was licking her lips like a cat after cream. A runnel smeared her chin.

"Not bad as a whisky chaser, but you certainly were copious. Now we absolutely have to run."

"You might pull my skirt down, if you're leaving," Mavis said equably.

"You look sweet with it up like that, my dear."

"Please, Cynth."

As they walked out, laughing, Joanna gave a last glance back. Mavis Smith-Peters was swearing softly and plucking vainly at the material in front with her fingers. A typical hostess, Joanna thought wildly, looking her last at the chains, the ruby face, and the pronounced white dew on the thickly furred and fatted quim in front.

"That was a positively Wordsworthian torrent. I thought it would never stop." Cynthia eased herself gently onto the seat. "As the only one in the vicinity with a virgin can I propose you drive." Joanna thought over the remark all the way back.

The house seemed hung in somnolence when they arrived. She herself took her packages to her room upstairs. She had found some splendid shoes and had also bought a boutique pool dress, a short white terry to show off her new tan. She changed to a sweater and trim bermuda shorts. She ran down the stairs and into the dining-room to join Cynthia in coffee and cake, but the sight that met her brought her to a jolting halt in the doorway. Her stomach flopped and fear clutched her spine.

Alec Reddick had come in for lunch and was finishing a cigar over some brandy at the far end of the table. To one side of it, standing with her hands beside her like some soldier of penitent schoolgirl, Cynthia was staring straight ahead.

"What?"

"You were both very late," Alec said to her explanatorily. "Cynthia forgot I had a guest for lunch. I'm going to have to give her the cane."

"B-b-but ... we ... she couldn't help...."

"Cynthia has told me you stopped off at Mavis'. And what went on there. She had to call to stop."

"That's not so," Joanna answered hectically, she felt she was sinking into some new morass of loss of self. "She'd just been brutally thrashed by a highway Guard, and then given a ... she had to stop!"

"It's no use, Jo," Cynthia said in a low tone, still staring ahead of her, white-faced.

"Yes, she told me about that," Alec went on laconically. "Turn round and show your bottom, dear."

Cynthia did as bid. The stain on her skirt had enlarged. When she exposed her welted bottom Alec merely nodded.

"I think it'll hurt her quite a bit over those."

"But you can't ... it isn't fair ... it was as much my fault," Joanna responded wretchedly while Cynthia pulled down her skirt again. "Anyway you only just caned her last night.

"That was nothing. This six is going to sting. Isn't it, Cynth?" he asked cheerfully.

"Yes," she said hollowly.

"Six of the very best. Nice and low."

Joanna made a final effort. "Please. It's not fair."

The chuckle came from both of them.

Cynthia said, "You don't understand the Territory, Jo. This has to happen. Irrespective of the state of my ass." In a lower tone she added, "God is always right."

"You weren't being sassy, were you, Cynth?" the man said to that.

"No!" she protested quickly. "I'm sorry if...."

"I might as well give you a couple extra just in case you were."

Cynthia's face fell. Alec stood up and stretched his lean, muscular body in a yawn.

"I'll send for you in twenty minutes. Eight strokes with a strong cane." He sauntered out and left them.

In the horrified hush of Joanna's silence Cynthia dropped a rueful, "See? You're beginning to understand about justice now, Jo."

"like learning from behind," she tried to quip awkwardly. "Seriously. I got you into that pickle."

"Pickle is right," Cynthia said, rubbing her rump.

"Then I deserve a ... just as much as...."

She broke off on a gulp. A maid had come in. Expressionlessly the girl asked, "You wish for yo' coffee befo' your whipping, Mistress, or after?"

"Bring it up to my room afterwards, would you, Sheila. With a couple of aspirins, please."

Cynthia began to trail upstairs. Joanna followed her hopelessly. A prick of tears stung her eyes.

"Please, Cynth. I deserve it too."

At the door to her own room they paused. Cynthia gave her a long and solemn look. "You can't fool around with this, you know."

Joanna's rib cage pounded. She opened the door to the shuttered room. Cynthia went in.

"What's this doing here? We don't use them here."

On the mirrored closet dressing-table lay the hard flat sorority paddle Joanna had brought with her. She flushed as Cynthia picked it up.

"Oh, I guess," she stumbled. She would never admit she'd been taking practice swings against a pillow. "Edna waxed it, I think. Maybe she left it out."

"An impact instrument. I'd forgotten. How many did it used to be."

"Fifteen."

"First offense only. Hell night. Remember."

"Twenty."

"On each side. I'm not sure you should get any deeper into this thing," Cynthia said thoughtfully. "I hope you'll keep beating Edna nice and hard "but I don't know if you realize what the Territory really means."

"The shadows," whispered Joanna in the darkened room, as the memories flooded back. Summoned at night. Sickness and ceremony. In front of the whole sorority, the five frosh standing and then those sudden words, Assume the position. The senior with the paddle, a look of dislike in her open, sandy face-Grab pooch, pledge ... The most frightening experience Joanna had ever known, yet the most conscious. A brand in her mind she would never eradicate. As Cynthia stared at her she knew she knew. They were both living with all their senses. She herself was very near tears, too.

In a slow, moody, almost gloomy voice Cynthia said, "After I've been really well tanned, you know, after I've been birched, for instance, Alec sometimes makes me go a couple of days in clothing so tight I can scarcely take a breath. There's this continual feeling of material on the skin. No respite, you know."

Joanna's heart was hammering. She was drifting at the shadow-line of consummation. She had no will to shun it, it was totally terrible and adorable.

"I have to have it too, Cynthia," she whispered miserably. "Don't you see. If you do."

"You sure you really and truly want to go through with this feeling that you have?"

"Yes, yes."

"With us, it's more like a religion."

"Tell me what I have to do," she begged.

Cynthia's huge breasts juddered richly. The right one bounced as she swung. Her palm cracked flat on Joanna's cheek and the brunette staggered.

"Oh, now." She held her swinging head. "You didn't have to do that."

"I'm sorry but I want you to snap out of this, Jo. There is no possibility of playing around."

"I know that, Cynth."

"Then know this. Our first rule. It always has to be rather worse than expected. Remember surfing? The first thing was fear, then a desire to overcome that fear. Then it all turned to an exhilarating emotion as the big one began to work for you. From Alec you'll never get less than six with a number two. I'm expected to stay bent over properly for as many as twelve, and get extra if I don't. I rarely can. I've often had twice nine. Very few of us, you see, could possibly take eighteen, so it's ordered in two doses, with an interval. A group of girls got twice nine's at a party at the Danforth's, just before you came. I saw it. Highly discouraging."

But Joanna had turned off her tear-driven face and escaped the room. Bolting down the staircase she half-ran along the gallery to the wing where Alec Reddick had his office. And the Punishment Room.