Chapter 12
"Do you want to inspect the drawer out here?" asked Clara as Garnett stood in her living room, looking strangely awkward among the china figurines, lace doilies and tatted rugs.
"No, don't bother to bring anything out here. I can conduct my examination just as well in the bedroom."
Clara led him into the room. She unlocked the drawer and pulled it open. Garnett took the cat-o'-nine-tails from it. He weighed it in his hand and dangled the light leather straps. "You say you found one just like this at the house?"
"Well, not exactly, but almost. The one at the house looked heavier, but I could be mistaken."
He examined the torture-implement carefully. "It's very cleverly made," he observed after a moment. "A soft enough leather so that it won't cut the skin, but heavy enough to sting. If the other one cut, it must have been quite a bit heavier. I wonder just how intimate Rita was with this one." He took the diary from the drawer, and, sitting down on the bed, proceeded to leaf through its pages. At last he said: "This seems to be what I'm looking for-can you make it out?"
Clara took the diary. He pointed to the passage he wanted her to read. She sat on the bed beside him, drawing one leg under her, and began:
"' ... F. was very angry when I told him. Or at least he pretended to be. He said I deserved to be severely punished for getting drunk and spending all night at C's. Next time, he said, I would be more apt to remember when I had an appointment with him.
" 'He told me to take off all my clothes, and, when I had stripped, he sent me to the closet where he keeps the whip and made me kiss it and then bring it to him. He took it from me and swished it through the air until all the tails whistled. I started to imagine it whistling like that over my naked bottom, and I began to feel excited. He told me to go into the other room. There, he switched my ankles lightly, just enough to make me dance and to yearn for the switching to begin in earnest.
'"In the room was a very large leather armchair, and F. pointed to it with the lash. "Stand on that," he said. I obeyed, and he made me bend over the back of it with my head dangling toward the floor and my legs spread wide to steady me. I couldn't see him, but I could hear him moving behind me, swishing the lash through the air. Not knowing when the first blow would fall added to my excitement, which was rapidly reaching fever pitch. He must have realized this, for he began teasing me by laying the whip on my buttocks and then drawing it away so that the thin leather slithered snakily over my thighs. I waited anxiously for him to strike, but the moments passed and nothing happened.
" 'At last I heard the swish of the leather. I closed my eyes, biting my bottom lip so that I would not cry out and discourage him from striking fiercely, the way
I needed to be struck. The lash hissed and struck empty air.
"'I could bear it no longer. I raised my head and begged him to begin. I was ready to go down on my knees and plead for it when the lash fell. The leather stung my bare flesh sweetly. Again he struck, this time harder. My bottom smarted excitingly. It was marvelous. I wriggled as I waited for the next blow. He whipped slower than most of the others had. I loved it that way.
" 'After a few lashes, my buttocks began to burn all over. There was not a spot which the whip hadn't touched, and it fell time after time on places already heated with two or more previous kisses of the lash. He beat me for several minutes, focusing his blows on my bottom alone; he did not so much as tickle any other part of my body.
" 'Before he had finished, my buttocks were aflame. He seemed to sense that I had gotten as hot as whipping alone could make me, for he stopped and made me promise never to be late again. Finally, he gave me a dozen really cruel lashes, just for good measure. Then he helped me down from the chair and made me bend over one of the big arms of it. I felt him lay his hands on my backside, and felt his thing pressing between my legs.
" 'First in here," he said, "and then I'll drive into this little pink door of yours." In a moment he was in me. Later, he took me brutally from behind. It was glorious.'"
"That's enough," said Garnett. He glanced at Clara's pretty knees as he took the diary from her. With a flippant gesture he lifted her skirt with the stock of the lash and coolly appraised her thighs. "I wonder if this one was the one he used," he mused, flicking Clara's calves lightly with the leather strips.
"How can you?" wailed Clara. "How can you be so callous? Didn't you listen to what I just read? Oh, my poor sister. She's been debauched and ruined by those horrible people. Imagine, wanting to be beaten. Poor, poor Ruthie." Clara buried her face in her hands and sobbed loudly. "And now," she continued, "they're trying to do the same thing to me. They want to debauch me, too." The face went back into the hands, and the sobs recommenced.
Garnett leaned over and patted her leg, having put his hand quite far up under her dress to do so. "Do you know," he said, "that when I look at you I just can't believe that you did all the things you told me about? It just doesn't seem possible."
The sobs grew louder.
"Perhaps what you need is for me to use this thing on your bottom," he muttered. "Then you'd really have something to sob about."
Suddenly he pulled her down on the bed with him. Holding her with one hand, he unzipped his fly and took out his love instrument with the other. Then he leaned over the girl pulling her dress up to her hips, and pressed his organ against her bare flesh.
"You need either to be whipped or to be made love to," he said. "Perhaps both." He pulled down her panties and put his hand over her delta, his fingertips just touching the thin slit between her legs. Then he rubbed his maleness along her thighs.
"Why must you do this to me?" whispered Clara. "You know that I couldn't help what I did with the others. You know that."
He ignored her words, gently removing her clothes and sliding her off the bed and onto the scatter rug beside the bed. He told her to kneel between his legs, and, robot-like, she did so. She appeared to have lost the last vestige of her resistance.
"Do you swear to me that you haven't had a man inside you?" Garnett asked.
"I swear," cried Clara.
"Then show me what Webster and the other man made you do."
"Why?"
"Because I asked you to." He dropped the pretense of coherent reasons somehow connected with finding Rita. "Unless you show me just what you did I'll give you both the whipping and a loving." He took her hands and pressed them around his organ. "He made you hold him this way, you said. Then what did you do?"
Clara just sat for a moment, but finally began to lick him as she had licked Webster and Arnold.
"And while you were doing that, what was Mary Lou doing?"
"She was sucking Webster and my tongue at the same time. Filthy creature. She threatened to make me do it to her husband if I wouldn't go on licking him after Webster was finished with us."
"How could she make you do it?" asked Garnett skeptically.
"She and her husband were both holding my head. Then she took his-you know what-and put it against my mouth in front. like this."
"Are you sure," Garnett asked, "that it wasn't like this?" He moved quickly and suddenly slipped the head of his member into her mouth, at the same time placing his hand at the back of her neck to prevent her from pulling away.
His lip curled in slight sardonic triumph. Give him three more days, he mused, and she'd be begging for it. They always did.
He slid the organ a little further into Clara's mouth, then took it out. She crumpled into a small naked heap at his feet, the back of her hand flung across her mouth. He looked down at her scornfully.
"See how easy it would be for me to make you do that?" he asked, thrusting his words into her silence. "But I don't want to just yet. You will when I want you to, though, and you'll swallow, too." She shook her head mutely.
"Oh, yes, you will," he chuckled. "You'd be amazed at what women can do."
But he was tired of talking and playing games. All this kid stuff had inflamed his shaft, which now stood out rigidly from his body. He prodded the girl with his hands, and she quietly obeyed his unspoken injunction to sit up.
"Lick me, Clara," he said, and was given the double satisfaction of feeling her tongue on his sex and of knowing that he had practically broken her spirit.
She licked him thoroughly and wetly, slobbering over the organ juicily and coming very close to-but not quite-taking it into her mouth. He could not understand why she made such a point of not sucking it, when she seemed to have no qualms at all about licking it. After a few minutes he made her stop.
"Now hold it at the base of your neck," he told her. "No, keep moving the skin up and down with your hand!"
She pressed the tip into the hollow of her neck and held it there while he discharged. The liquid splattered over her throat and trickled down her shoulders. He sat up and wiped her with his handkerchief, saying: "You do it quite well and enthusiastically for a girl who has done it only three or four times."
He rubbed his softened member over her parted lips and laughed when she drew back as though she had been stung. "It won't kill you," he said as she wiped her tongue on the back of her hand. "Now, put on your clothes. We have an appointment with your Mrs. Mason."
He was toying with the whip, and, as she bent over to pick up her panties, he touched her quickly on her vulnerable buttocks with the leather thongs. "The Scorpion's sting," he suggested quietly, watching the pink streaks turn white and disappear on the young girl's tender flesh. All right, old man, he chided himself, that's quite enough. No cheap theatrics, please.