A Madcap At Benningdean

Story from Privilege Plus 01.

A Madcap At Benningdean
by Glen Fairlight

'ARE you nervous?'

'Nervous?' The second girl in line, Rosamund Clarkson, giggled – but the laughter failed to reach her sparkling green eyes. 'Did you say ner-ner-ner...?'

A brief shriek, then a gulp, from Lisa Fenchurch, last of the three still waiting in the corridor outside the closed door. She too had large lustrous eyes, more blue than green, though like the two girls to her left she had long thick hair the colour of dark honey, held back from her forehead by a plain white braid.

'Shut up, you two,' she pleaded, 'or I'll wet my knickers.'

'What, your regulation navy-blues?' said the first girl, Gilly Sands, whose eyes were brown. 'Shame on you!'

'I'd commit murder for a fag,' moaned Rosamund. 'How many's been in so far?'

'Six. We're the last.'

Rosamund frowned a little worriedly. 'D'you think it'll hurt?'

'Of course it'll bloody hurt,' Gilly snorted. 'That's the whole bloody point of all this, isn't it? Believe me, if I didn't need the money...'

Rosamund put a hand behind herself, leaned forward and slapped her own bottom over the old-fashioned tartan school skirt. 'Hmm, hardly felt that.' She fumbled under the folds and slapped again. The muffled clap was surprisingly loud.

'Owp!' she owped. 'That hurt.' She grinned uneasily. 'At least I now know how a Scotsman feels inside his kilt.'

'Let me assure you,' said Gilly, 'that no way does a Scotsman feel anything like that inside his kilt.'

'Speaking from hard experience, are we?' Lisa smiled. 'If you think a little tap like that hurt, Rosie, they'll be scraping you off the ceiling before they've even got the punishment book out.'

In the preparation mirror on the wall opposite they saw again how similar each looked to the other. The school uniforms helped, of course – tartan pleated skirts of the 1920s hung to below their knees, a fawn sash tied around each slender waist, shapely calves respectably clad in grey hose. Gleaming black shoes completed the picture.

'Just look at us – we could be triplets,' said Gilly. 'Hate the tie, don't you?'

'I feel like a flippin' flapper!' This from Rosamund, trying to hide her nervousness and failing.

Only Lisa seemed relatively serene at the prospect ahead. 'You will be flapping in a minute,' she grinned. 'When I knew we were up for this I read the book.'

'A Madcap At Benningdean?' said Rosamund. 'Stupid title.'

'It's a right bodice-ripper. You should read it. Had me reaching into my knickers more than once. What we're up for today is what happens to the heroine after she's caught breaking into the headmistress's study to nick the exam results. Cor!'

'Sounds like a real yawn,' said Gilly.

'You won't be yawning soon. In the book they used a birch. Fifteen across the crown of her jacksie, knickers down.'

'What?' Rosamund stared, eyes saucering. 'I thought it was going to be a couple of quick ones with a cane over our skirts.'

'We'll find out for sure soon enough.'

They fell silent, lost in renewed contemplation. The mirror reflected three radiantly lovely young women, supposedly eighteen but each in their early twenties, bodies limber and gym-toned, each around the requisite five-foot-five and eight-stone-three, haltered breasts gently outswelling the starched cotton blouses under the grey school blazer, with the Benningdean School badge emblazoned on each top pocket, striped school ties neatly knotted at their throats.

The door beside them clicked open and a young woman in identical uniform to theirs tottered out, frantically clutching the seat of her skirt.

'Fuck me!' she gasped, turning a scarlet, tear-soaked face towards them. 'It's sodding murder! Audition? – this is for real!' She gave a choking wail and lurched off, fingers kneading her burning behind.

Rosamund gaped in horror after the sobbing figure as it disappeared towards the toilets. A thickset woman in her thirties peered round the door, greying hair trained down over her forehead to hide the lines.

'Gilly Sands?'

Gilly gulped. 'Er, suppose so.' The woman held the door wider and the girl walked past her into the room. A murmur of voices, an inner door opened and closed, then silence.

'And then there were two,' Lisa murmured.

'I'm surprised you can be so casual about it,' Rosamund said. 'I'm not worried about showing the goods – that's par for the course these days. But as for being actually whacked...' With a troubled frown she lifted her skirt again at the back and explored the springy flesh as if to test its resilience.

'Stop touching yourself up or you'll get me at it,' grinned Lisa.

'Just feeling out the territory, that's all! Virgin territory, as a matter of fact – so far as this sort of thing goes. How about yours?'

'My what?'

'What d'you think? Your arse! That thing you sit on!' Rosamund removed the hand from beneath her own skirt and slipped it boldly under Lisa's, feeling the other's knickered bottom with interested fingers. It seemed smaller and firmer than hers. 'Has this thing here ever known the kiss of anything other than a randy stud's tongue?'

Lisa slapped the hand away. 'Pack it in, you raving dyke!'

'Tell me, then!'

'If you must know, my boyfriend used to pull me over his knees a couple of times a week and spank me. Sometimes he'd use the back of a hairbrush. Other times he'd shove me over a chair and whack me with a cane. That really hurt. But we'd been doing it for ages before we packed it in.'

'Let's see!' Rosamund whipped up Lisa's school skirt, pulled back her knicker-elastic and stared at two silky-skinned buttocks of alabastrine paleness. 'Bollocks!' she said. 'There's not a mark on it.' She ran her fingers lightly over the soft mounds. They wobbled gently.

'That's 'cos we broke up a couple of weeks ago. I don't miss him much, but I do miss it. Now hands off the goods or I'll scream for a policeman.'

'But that's not fair!' blurted Rosamund, readjusting Lisa's knickers and skirt. 'Here's you with an arse that looks and feels like a nectarine peach, but has the resistance of rhinoceros hide...'

'You say such sweet things!'

Rosamund turned her back on Lisa, raised the skirt and pushed out her own bottom, tugging the knickers down. 'See that?' Lisa noted that it was larger than her own, voluptuous-looking and deeply cleft. 'Christ – don't fancy a swap, do you?' she said.

'Exactly! This is glam bum number one, right? Top of the botts. A real class ass. Men have been known to come in their pants simply looking at it. But it's never had so much as a slapping in all its life. Like I say, it just isn't fair!'

At that moment they heard something like a distant whisper and a ghostly splash – a sound already heard several times that afternoon – followed half a second later by a noise like the first wail of a bagpiper's lament. Moments later Gilly Sands exploded out into the corridor, glaring as if insane, the hem of her skirt pinned halfway up her back to expose two generous bottom-cheeks lividly marked with a network of red spindly lines.

'You poor bitches!' she managed to gasp, and then was off towards the changing rooms, hands wrenching at each wobbly mound as she dementedly danced from foot to foot.

The woman with the clipboard reappeared, shaking her head as she crossed another name off her list. 'Rosamund Clarkson,' she said, even more worriedly.

'Sorry,' Rosamund yelped. 'I just bottled out. Hang on, Gilly!' Then she was gone, sprinting off in the direction of the other's receding cries.

'Ok dear,' said the woman. 'I take it you're Lisa Fenchurch?'

Lisa nodded. 'And then there were none.' The girl braced herself and walked into an ante-office with a desk and piles of scripts on shelves. The woman offered her a hand, which Lisa shook. 'I'm Marina Pagett, the producer. I'm afraid quite a few of the others didn't seem entirely clear what would he required of them today.'

'We're auditioning as body doubles for Annabel Spearman, aren't we?'

Annabel Spearman was an international success following her performance in a low budget home-grown movie partly funded by Channel Four. The film had been a sensation, sweeping the board at Cannes and taking America by storm. Still only 22, Spearman's slender sexy body, clear green eyes, dark-honey hair and sensuous pout had earned her the apt if unoriginal tag of the 'British Bardot'. In appearance she was strikingly similar to the nine aspiring actresses who had turned up today.

And of whom the last now stood before the troubled producer.

'It's only the one scene we need a double for,' Marina explained. 'But it's of vital importance to the development of the central character.'

'Is it the one where Fiona McAllister gets birched for nicking the exam results at Benningdean Private School for Young Ladies, summer 1925?'

'My word, you have done your homework.' The producer felt a flicker of hope. 'Annabel refuses to perform the scene herself – and who can blame her?' Marina allowed herself a wan smile. 'And our director, Bryan Boone, insists on total authenticity.'

'Bryan Boone! I didn't realise...'

'It's Bryan's directorial debut. You'll know if you've read the book that the heroine is birched on the, um, bare behind in the presence of the headmistress, by one of the younger male school governors – played by Bryan, of course...'

'Who later becomes her lover.' Or, more explicitly, takes the young girl into a wonderland of sexual ecstasy previously unimagined by her!

'Why, yes.' Marina Pagett looked even more impressed. 'A full fifteen strokes, but so far no one's been able to take more than three. Bryan refuses to take it – and he's no weakling.'

Bryan Boone! Mister rugged Aussie heart-throb, strong and sensitive, pale and interesting! Lisa experienced a cascade of thrillings in the pit of her stomach. The guy was no Adonis, yet the mere thought of him made her wet. And he was the one doing the whacking!

'I will of course understand if you'd rather not go through with it...' Marina went on unhappily.

'Lead on,' Lisa said.

She was ushered through an inner door into a soundproofed room got up like an old-style headmistress's study and lit by bright lamps. The handsome male movie star-cum-director Bryan Boone, in period duds with fake moustache, watched his eighth and final victim enter. She looked, of course, remarkably similar to the other seven beauties who had already bent and bared their butts for him today. Frankly, he very much doubted whether this one would be any more stoic than the rest – and that in the end he was going to have to fake the scene and screw up the movie, all because British girls had no guts. An Aussie chick would've done it on her head, but it was too late for that now.

'This is Lisa,' Marina announced.

Boone nodded brusquely where he stood beside the waist-high stool, around which was scattered a litter of broken birch-twigs from their brief but explosive succession of whacks across seven pairs of naked buttocks. Nearby stood a bucket in which more bundles of twigs were soaking. Camera and sound stood by, alert to start filming on a nod from him. So far today they'd done bugger all except admire the scenery. Unconventional, that was Bryan Boone.

With a frown he didn't have to fake, Boone rolled up his right sleeve for the eighth time. He didn't have to work hard at being in character – a grim-visaged, black-moustached disciplinarian of the 1920s intent on flogging the buttocks of a wickedly pretty thief with far too much courage than was good for her. His suit-jacket was already off, braces hidden beneath a dark waistcoat, the stiff collar and striped necktie feeling tighter than ever. He ran a finger around the starched rim to ease his neck.

'Stand over here, girl!' he growled. Deep-voiced, menacing.

Lisa Fenchurch, becoming a tremulous 18-year-old called Fiona McAllister, trod towards the stool, head meekly bowed. Boone blinked at her – this one had something. He blinked again, and knew. Hardly able to believe it had happened, he nodded sharply. Suddenly, magically, it was the month of June some seventy summers ago, in the book-lined study of the vinegary-faced headmistress who, with long black gown and short bobbed hair, was gliding forward to stand by the stool, unyieldingly stern, ready to position her trembling charge across it.

Fiona stopped in front of the punishment stool and Miss Staplehurst glared haughtily into her face through the pince-nez. 'You know why you are here, McAllister,' came the cultured cadences of yesteryear, 'so I will waste no time in reiterating your crime and further compounding your shame. You are to be soundly birched upon your unclothed rear. Our school governor and benefactor, Mister Frencham, has kindly consented to carry out the beating!'

'Yes, Ma'am,' said Fiona, tiny-voiced. She gazed down at the stool much as Lady Jane Grey might have stared at the executioner's block, weirdly noting the seasoned wood from which it was fashioned, the swirly pattern of the grain and how smooth was its top from the countless young bodies that had bent across it. In the charged silence there came through the open window the shouts of girls at play, borne on a breeze drenched with scents of flowers and new-mown grass.

Eleanor Staplehurst, MA (Oxon.), square of shoulder, gimlet-eyed, stepped up behind the errant girl. 'Unbutton your blazer, Fiona.' Her voice was not unkind.

Tremble-fingered, Fiona did so. Womanly hands, wide and warm, eased the garment from her. The whop of a racquet against a tennis ball sucked into the room like a gulp. 'Well played!' came a distant shout. The words, sheathed in sun-heat and the tang of open spaces, chased it.

The woman stooped to grip the hem of the miscreant's school skirt and slowly raised it. Fiona McAllister was far too beautiful for her own good: lithe and limber, perfectly proportioned, bright of eye and gay of smile. Miss Staplehurst could smell the heady aroma of girlness, of boundless energy and health. She wished – oh! how she wished – that she could dip her head and kiss the nape of that pretty neck, and enfold the child, in brief embrace to give her courage.

Instead, she raised the skirt up Fiona's back and pinned the hem to the fabric of the blouse between the girl's shoulder blades. Her fingers trembled a little more as they then gripped the waistband of the dark blue school knickers and peeled them down to the middle of the girl's thighs. For several treasured moments the woman's eyes dwelt on the bared, ripely rounded buttocks, compact as an athlete's, pale as cream-hued roses, the crevice between them deeping into secret places.

'You will bend forward over the stool, girl, and grip the lowest rung.'

Fiona McAllister did not understand the shiver in the stern voice as the injunction was intoned. With unconscious gracefulness the girl bent forward until the stool-top was thrusting up beneath her belly as her weight bore down upon it. She straightened her legs, and her toe-tips touched the floor while her dangling hands sought the rung referred to.

The whop-whop-whop of a fast rally from the tennis courts thumped into Fiona's mind. Girlish laughter shrilled like seagulls. The man who was to apply the birch had not been what she had expected: no grey-bearded corpulent with snuff-stained whiskers and blood-rimmed eyes this school governor! Rather he was tall and manly and hardly more than five-and-thirty. And handsome – Lord! This could surely be neither right nor decent, Fiona thought, squirming in acute embarrassment on the stool-top and not feeling the slightest bit of a madcap now!

'Be still!' His voice was deep. It thrilled into Fiona's skin-pores like an itch and set off a storm in her brain. His footfalls sounded quick and soft as he stepped up behind her. She had not heard him reach into the bucket and withdraw a bundle of birch-twigs; yet now there came a faint plipping as the drops ran off them, and a rattling swish as he shook the weapon in his fist.

Oh woe, sweet maiden, so unconsciously beloved! As your heart fluttered in your breast like a trapped sparrow, in terror of the torrents of pain soon to explode across your petal-soft haunches, you could not in your innocence guess how your back-stretched legs, parted a little for balance, afforded your mentor breathcatching glimpses of your maidenhair and the pinky succulence nestling within. You could not hear how his heart hammered, nor how his breath ached to gasp aloud at so forbidden a sight you presented to him on that torrid afternoon, with the full-moon mounds of your bottom presented as a feast to his senses.

The exquisite offering to the gods of justice tensed, gripping the lowest stool-rung, and Eleanor Staplehurst gazed upon her own vision of perfection. Angus Frencham sighted on his enchanting target, drew back his arm and, with a groan more akin to ecstasy than effort, swept the birch-rod down. The twigs splatted against the rumpy curves of pallid flesh, sending up a spray of droplets as they struck and inspiring a loud gasp from the prostrated maiden.

Far from the wet wands cooling Fiona's nether-cheeks, they had felt like the abrupt arrival of a firestorm there! Standing at the girl's head, Miss Staplehurst felt the shock of the stroke vibrate through her body, and neither she nor Fiona had time to draw full breath before another stroke blasted down.

Swossshhh!

A tremor ran up Angus Frencham's arm as the birch struck those divine rumps again. A screech tore from the girl's throat, her body juddered and her right foot kicked involuntarily upwards, yet she stayed in place. For a moment he paused, gazing in awe at pearly peaches pinkening as a tracery of spidery lines claimed those sweet summits. In some errant part of his mind he wanted to sink to his knees and bury his face against the ferociously smarting globes, quenching the fires with kisses.

Instead, he concentrated on the task at hand. Six more times he swung the birch with studied firmness, noting how greedily the twigs lapped and spread across the tautly stretched skin of that beauteous bottom as though to possess every inch of their silken surfaces! Almost he forgot that these perfectly proportioned female buttocks were not some separate entity ordered up in a dream for his delights, but an integral part of the anatomy of an eighteen-year-old woman who had committed a grievous wrong and must perforce be punished. Her cries and tormented gasps came grudgingly as she struggled to contain them. It was this, he later realised, that so warmed his blood and drew his soul towards her; for valour under fire during those dreadsome weeks in the trenches on the Somme was something Lieutenant Angus Frencham had signally lacked.

Hwosn - hwosh - hwosh. Fiona McAllister wrenched so hard at the strut she was gripping, the surprise was that it did not snap. The harsh hisses of hurtling birch-twigs, the succession of blazing pains as they struck her naked buttocks again and again, the animal gruntings of the man, the strange little signs emanating from Miss Staplehurst, all coalesced in the girl's whirling mind into a single mad sound. The entire surface of Fiona's bottom had become a sea of ice and fire through which pain seethed and lapped, while the punishing arm continued to rise and fall with unremitting regularity and appalling severity.

Hwosh - hwosh - hwosh. The conflagration in Fiona's bottom has reached its white-hot zenith. Strange scents gradually overwhelmed those of ink and wood and carpet and dusty books and new-mown grass: the tang of Miss Staplehurst's second-rate perfume mixed with traces of something the girl could by no means as yet define; something base and animal which made her want to heave her hinder parts brazenly upwards to greet the cruel chastiser! As the fists of the punished pupil wrenched and her body juddered and writhed and she cried out again and again, she saw the carpet and the feet and sensible stockings of her headmistress through a blur of salty wetness as her bottom, prickling and burning, jerked lewdly about...

Hwoooshhh!

A scream – her scream – echoed and re-echoed in her ears. The birching had ceased and a man's voice was roaring in magnificent baritone:

'Oh, my beauty! Oh God, you're terrific! I'll love you forever!'

'Fifteen!' screeched Eleanor Staplehurst, MA (Oxon.). 'My word, that was absolutely fantastic, Lisa! Well done, well done!'

Who on earth was Lisa, and why was the headmistress hugging her? The noises of girls at play outside had been replaced by the click of a clapper-board ending the shot, and excited masculine voices close at hand.

'We've got it, got the lot in one!' The camera operator looked up, grinning hugely.

Strong hands were helping her up from the stool, and Bryan Boone was smiling into her sweat-damp, flushed and tear-streaked face.

'Christ, you were marvellous! We were soaring, really soaring – didn't you feel it?' There was no feigning his admiration. 'What was your name again?'

'Fiona McAllister.'

A roar of mirth. 'I love it, I love it! You be Fiona and I'll be Angus, eh? That lovely brave backside of yours'll get an Oscar as "Best Supporting Artist" for sure!'

'I'll have to walk up backwards to get the award, then,' she winced. Her bottom seethed and burned. Make-up were applying cooling douches and smearing cream over its crimsoned cheeks, while Wardrobe stood by with a robe to cover her modesty.

'Fancy a drink and a bite to eat when we've cleared up here?' the famous voice was murmuring in her ear. 'Just the two of us – Fiona and Angus, eh? There's something he's busting his old-fashioned balls to discuss with this sweet little flower of blossoming womanhood.'

'If you don't mind a "sweet little flower" who has to eat standing up,' Lisa said. She tried to get her mind around all the amazing things that were due to happen between the two of them in the chapters which followed the birching. Shaky with excitement, she reached for a towel and surreptitiously wiped.

'I must warn you,' she added when her voice had calmed a little, 'that I take very big bites...'

On The Couch

Story from Swish Vol.4 No.9

On The Couch

Going to see a lay psychiatrist was only really to find out whether she liked being spanked or not. Suzi felt sure she hadn't made up her mind about it. Well.... not quite.....

* * *

"So tell me your problem," Mervyn said and sat back in his big leather chair while his new patient laid herself on the couch in his consulting room.

Mervyn was a lay psychiatrist – highly-intuitive and well-trained, but without medical qualifications. His clientele included a number of attractive females, but none prettier and more shapely than Suzi whose miniskirt had already drawn up halfway along her thighs. A girl who would remain young-looking until she was thirty at least, Suzi gave the outward impression of being no more than seventeen whereas in fact her nineteenth birthday would fall in two weeks time. Beneath a tightly-fitting fawn jumper her breasts mounded like small melons, the nipples seeking like small bell-pushes to peak into the fine wool. Tightly-girded by her self-supporting nylons, her thighs were richly-fleshed without being fat. Her nose was small, her mouth petal-like.

Mervyn wondered vaguely and unprofessionally if she had been screwed yet. He waited patiently for her reply to his first opening words. Patients were often stubborn or afraid to come out with things. It was one of the reasons for having them in the most relaxed position, lying down.

"It's about..." Suzi began and stopped. A pointed pink tongue sneaked out for a moment between her lips and then retreated. Still Mervyn waited. One must never prompt a patient on, or certainly not in the beginning. You had to make them let their own minds flow. Once the seal of silence was broken it became easier. As for Suzi, the white ceiling seemed to hypnotise her. It reminded her of her own ceiling in her bedroom, the way it seemed to whirl above her sometimes after she had been.....

"Spanked...." she heard herself say suddenly and stopped. A mad desire to giggle almost overcame her. "I mean I've been spanked, or I think I have." Still Mervyn did not speak. He'd heard everything, anyway. A spanking was as nothing to things he'd heard from the couch. The Sunday newspapers weren't in it as far as private confessions went. Was she complaining?

Suzi cleared her throat and wondered crazily why she had come. Maybe she wanted to confess, and to someone safe. He seemed a nice man – about forty-five-ish. She liked older men. They were more masterful than boys of her own age who were mainly just stupid. "I'm not sure whether it's just a fantasy, you see," she heard herself saying now. It was best if she half closed her eyes and didn't stare up into the ceiling. The giggle she had tried to suppress escaped her suddenly. "Sometimes I have a bottle of wine, or more than that, in the evenings after work, you see, and it makes me feel swimmy. I don't mean drunk, or anything, not on white wine. Just nice."

"You get spanked for drinking a whole bottle?" Mervyn asked. It was too soon to ask, but something in her voice told him she was about to break. "Uh-huh," Suzi said cloudily. Perhaps that wasn't fair, though – perhaps that wasn't the real reason. "I'm untidy, too – I leave my room untidy, and sometimes, especially on Saturday nights I don't get in until half-past one or two and if I've forgotten my key, well, that adds to it."

"Yes," Mervyn said. It could take weeks sometimes to separate facts from fantasy in some patients' minds. Patience was all. Sometimes people paid him fees, he thought, just to express their fantasies to someone. The thoughts of her undoubtedly beautiful, tight round bottom which her skirt outlined but otherwise concealed crossed his mind.

"I s'pose I always think I won't get it, but I do. I believe I do, I mean sometimes I think I dream it as well. It's been months now since it started. I don't make a row about it, though, honestly I don't, but he does smack me hard, really hard." A small sigh escaped her. With her lips parted she looked as pretty as an angel. Whether she was as innocent as one Mervyn was beginning to doubt, but even virgins could have the most erotic dreams.

"Sometimes, if I'm let in by the kitchen, it's over the table," Suzi went on. "Other times I manage to get upstairs, but then I'm spanked on the bed..." Her eyes closed tightly. She could hear herself sobbing "WHOO-OOO!" as the palm came down again and again on her defenceless and un-knickered bottom, her panties looped around both ankles like they were tied. "YAH!" she would screech into her pillow, stuffing one corner into her mouth to muffle her cries. It was true she never really made a loud noise. In the beginning when she had done, it made her get even harder smacks until her tight bottom cheeks were fully invaded by a blazing fire that made her stockinged legs stiffen out as if she were trying to stretch the searing sensation away.

"It hurts very much?" Mervyn asked softly. He had a feeling this was going to get nowhere. Could be she would be one of those who came only once, paid their fee on receipt of his bill, and then never reappeared.

"Yes," Suzi breathed. There was a funny tightness in her chest when she thought about it. "It used to be through my skirt at first, but then after a few times he pulled it up and...." And took it off, she thought. Perhaps she didn't ought to say that. Being clasped around her slender waist, she had kicked lightly, feet lifted off the floor as her zip was unfastened. Once her skirt had fluttered to the floor there was nothing she could do about it. Nor about having her knicks peeled down, right down her legs, hands floating over her silky thighs, her stocking tops, and tickling the backs of her knees.

"What I mean to say is, it doesn't hurt for a long time," she heard herself telling the psychiatrist now. "In your fantasies or otherwise?" he asked, doodling on his pad. "B...both, I s'pose. Of course in my fantasies I can't really feel it. I can imagine the scorching sensation but it's not the same...."

Not when he had firm hold on her it wasn't the same. His arm was like a steel clamp around her twenty-one inch waist. She could kick as much as she liked, but it didn't help her get out of it. With her panties down it made her show herself more. Nowadays when he got her panties down on a Saturday night it was like he was staring at her bare bottom for a long time before he gave her the first jelly-bouncing SMACK! which always made her suck in her breath.

Sometimes he would even say to her, in the midst of it – perhaps after the fourth or fifth big burner – "Keep your legs still." And miraculously she would. The funny thing was that it never made her really cry – she didn't know why, because it did sting so deeply. Every smack, layered on top of the next, made it worse. The stinging heat deepened and built up until she knew there was nothing she could do to shake it off. Every time she squeezed her hot bum-cheeks defensively and yelped, he would stop until he could see her relax them and it seemed awful that he could actually see that.

"Are you saying you are trying to escape from your – er – fantasies?" Mervyn asked. In twenty minutes time he had another client. She was far more interesting than this pretty but silly slip of a girl. Her fantasies involved three men at once and were extremely erotic. The only similarity between her and Suzi was that she sometimes liked to be whipped first. Maybe, he pondered, all such women were little girls at heart, knowing they had to be punished for their sins, or wanting to be.

"I s'pose – I don't know. Oh look, I shouldn't have bothered you really," Suzi burst and suddenly sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the couch in a manner that gave him a heart-stopping view of the view of her tiny panties – well-wadded by curls, he saw.

"You're not bothering me – you're paying me for it," Mervyn said dryly. Panic like this was often a symptom that the patient desired to escape from their own would-be confessions. "Let's take it step by step. When did you last fantasise? Yesterday? Today? This morning?"

"L...l...last night," Suzi began and blushed. She wanted to slide off the couch but she seemed stuck. It had begun on the couch. She had finished a bottle of Blue Nun and felt nice. When he came and sat beside her and put an arm round her shoulders just as the Play Of The Week finished on TV she had felt quivery and expectant. With a start she had felt his free hand settle slyly on her thigh. "What are you doing?" she had asked. The last moment of the play faded out but she had gone on staring at the screen. "Feeling if you're warm," he had replied.

"I am."

"Botty nice and warm?"

"Yes. Stop it! Oh, you're not going to spank me tonight – I haven't done anything."

"A whole bottle of wine you've polished off again."

"That's not a reason." The news was coming on. She didn't want to watch the news. His hand was still on her thigh. "Look – I'm going to have a bath," she had quavered suddenly, wondering why her voice sounded funny. "Hey, look! What are you DOING?" Her voice had become a panicky shriek. Sliding one arm under both thighs he had lifted her clear off the settee. "Stop it – NO!" she had squealed. Her arms, legs, had swung as she had felt herself being carried into the hall. Trying in vain to grab at the bannister rail, her alarmed cries had rung through the house.

All this spilled out from her now – but then she stopped. Her silence this time was final, Mervyn felt. He closed his notebook. "Next time perhaps we can take it further," he said. There seemed more to it than she was telling him. It would all come out in the end – if she came back. "Yes," Suzi lisped doubtfully. It was just a silly, panicky thing that had made her come really. She wasn't ever going to talk about it any more. Not ever again, she told herself firmly as she left the building and went to the tube. Or made to go to it.

A wine bar attracted her as she passed along and she went in. It wasn't very nice to go in on one's own, but there were others of her own age group there and nobody noticed. The first bottle of white wine slid down beautifully. Then she had a half bottle for a chaser. WHOOO... she felt good now – much better. What a stupid thing to go and see that daft psychiatrist. Well – not daft really. He might have spanked her himself if she had gone on any further. The very thought made her bottom cheeks tighten under her panties as she went down an escalator.

Maybe if she'd told him all about that spanking last night, he would have spanked her, too, Suzi pondered. She had wriggled like a fish – like never before. "I've not DONE anything!" she had squealed twice more even as her knickers were being peeled down. It was really awful that he hadn't even answered her. Spun over on to her tummy with her legs slipping to the floor, her bottom had gleamed, exposed. "NO!" she had begun to blubber even as his free hand came down – his other being laid flat in the small of her back. "YES!" the reply had come back to her and, scrabbling with her fingers on the raised pattern of the bedcover, she had felt the first sting her hard.

"No please, no please, no please!" she had sobbed – quite over-dramatically as it turned out because he didn't smack her pert bottom as hard as he sometimes did. Her hips jerked to every downward SPLAT! of his palm and she could feel her cheeks reddening. "NOOOO!" she whined again and again, her legs twisting about. "All right, all right," he had soothed and suddenly the smacks were even gentler, though she jumped still to each one. The burning, the stinging, had come much more slowly, too. Little bubbling cries of "OH!" escaped her with each one, but she kicked less. A swirly, sickly, sweet feeling was building up under the emerging heat in her polished bottom. Surreptitiously as he smacked – sometimes each cheek separately, sometimes across both together – Suzi began to rub her pussy against the ribbed covering. Her small muffled cries grew softer now though a little "OW!" escaped her occasionally. Beneath his other hand her jumper was wrinkling up more and more until her bra showed.

Bubbling softly, her mind in a haze, Suzi had lifted her bottom a little – to escape the smacks higher up, she told herself dizzily as her hips churned, but to her own surprise it was really to feel a couple under the swell of her cheeks. "PMFFFF!" she had gasped as she got it there. I felt different there, as if his palm were coming in deeper. The rich, sweet feeling between her thighs was growing – she was melting. SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! "WHOOOO!" – the shuddering whimper burst from her. Her legs straightened. Careless of their spreading she had rubbed herself wildly on the bedcover and then gasped out a real, warning "NO!" as she collapsed and lay quivering.

His hand no longer fell. Squeezing each bottom cheek on the other tightly, Suzi had felt a second exquisite orgasm shimmer through her and then she had gone limp. It was then that he had unclipped her bra and rolled her over....

The wine was sweet on her breath. Maybe she'd have another when she got in. Before supper. Yes. What the hell. He could spank her as often as he liked. If she wanted to do her own thing, she would. And after last night.... No, I must have fantasised that bit, she told herself. Geting home at last, she tossed her handbag on to a chair and went straight to the fridge. There was always a bottle waiting. Leaning against a kitchen unit, she sipped the cool liquid as if it were her first of the day. She could hear his typewriter rattling away upstairs in the study. Another novel that he was working on. She enjoyed reading them. It was flattering when he asked her opinion about them while he was still working on them.

Pouring a second glass, she started as he entered the kitchen unheard. "Working late today?" he asked and picking up the bottle took a quick swig from the neck. Suzi hated him doing that. Trying to look all macho, she thought. She nodded. There was something coming, she knew it. And it came immediately.

"So, how did your visit go, Suzi?"

The question took her aback and she blushed – infuriated with herself that she did so. "What d'you mean?" she flared. "I was passing by near Harley Street – saw you come out. Couldn't stop – I was in the thick of traffic," he told her. Suzi sneered, "Oh yeah?" and made to go past him, but his hand took her arm. "So what did you say?" he asked quietly. Her lips trembled. "I told him everything – every bloody thing, the way you spank me and....."

Nothing seemed to faze him, she thought and leaned back against his grasp on her elbow. "Feel better now that you've said that? And what did it cost?" he asked. Suzi shook her head with quick, embarrassed impatience. "Oh – I dunno – the bill's in my bag." He cocked his head, smiled and said, "Go fetch it."

"Go fetch it yourself!" she almost blared, but as so often to her own surprise she obeyed. She hadn't bothered to unfold it before. "Thirty POUNDS? And who's going to pay it – you?" he asked, eyebrows raising. Suzi stared at the floor. "I can draw it out of my savings," she mumbled. It was stupid. He was making her feel like a schoolgirl or something. His hand lifted her chin, her eyes defiant in his. "You mean I'LL pay – right? You'll borrow from me and I'll never see it again, as usual."

And as usual in what was outwardly a serious situation, Suzi wanted to giggle. It was a nervous habit, she told herself, but inside she felt a funny sense of relief that he knew about it. "Are you going to get supper ready, or are you going to drink wine all night?" he asked. The relief was so great that she laughed. "Yes, sorry, all right." She brushed past him towards the cupboard, trembling inwardly as he went to go. At the door he turned and asked, "I suppose you told him you hated being spanked?"

Suzi hunched her shoulders, her back to him. She wanted to cry and laugh at the same time. "No – I didn't – oh, I dunno." She couldn't remember if she had said that or not. "Then why did you go?" He had come up behind her again, his hands lightly on her shoulders. His voice was gentle. She could feel her bottom bulbing into his flies. "Don't!" she gritted and tried to resist as he turned her about, making her sag against him. "I don't want you to become a semi-alcoholic, you know," he told her and stroked her hair. Suzi's legs trembled. "I only really have about three bottles a week," she mumbled.

"Or four," he said and lifted her face. A smile came to her lips that she couldn't suppress. "You DO spank me hard, sometimes," she said, but it was only half an accusation, and she knew it. "Yes," he answered quietly and kissed her cheeks. Suzi wriggled away. "Oh go on with you – I want to get the supper ready," she said. He nodded and went out, but despite their making-up, as it seemed to her, there was still a tension that she knew she had created.

After supper, when they had had coffee in the lounge, he took her wrist as she made to pass by him and drew her down into his lap. Suzi gave a little start of resistance and then relaxed. "Thirty quids worth of spanks," he murmured and she giggled. His hand stroked her thighs and her hip where it curved out. Suzi hid her face. "Not if you do it hard," she whispered and couldn't believe she had said it. "You have to pay for your sins, don't you, Suzi?" Her eyes were shut tight. He was lifting her up again, the way he had the night before. Her arms clung to his neck as he carried her upstairs. "I don't want to," she mumbled.

When he laid her down on the bed and raised her skirt she clutched protectively at the pillow and gasped a little "OOOH!" of surprise as he bent and coursed his lips lightly over the half-bared cheeks which bulged out on either side of the backstrap of her panties. Her eyelids closed and tightened as he took the waistband and peeled them down, drawing them off her ankles. "Lift your bottom," he said quietly, and when she did he unzipped her skirt and drew it off in turn.

A little whimper escaped her, but he drew her hips higher, making her knees draw in towards her waist. "Oh, PLEASE!" she hissed as his hand came between her stockinged knees and levered them apart. Then a sharp, short squeal escaped her as a single hard smack landed on her bared cheeks. "OW!" she jerked and he laughed. "Well – you deserve it – don't you, Suzi?" She couldn't answer – she couldn't. Her silence with her face buried in the pillow said it for her. "Suzi – I want you to ask me to," she heard. I can't, I can't, she told herself and buried herself deeper in her self-imposed darkness, hips jolting as another hard, unexpected SMACK! caught her on her exposed cheeks.

"Yes! Yes – SPANK ME!" she screeched. Her shoulders hunched more, her bottom a naked bulb of desire that she could no longer hide. Knees wider apart, the pursed lips of her quim visible in their nest of curls beneath the split cheeks, Suzi jolted and surged her hips to every incoming SPLAT! of his palm. "YEEE-AAAARGH! YEEE-OOOH!" she screeched and gritted on and on, knowing now that her cries were an outward part of her desire to yield to it – to yield as never before to the burning and the stinging.

"Go on – oh, go on!" she heard herself crying out madly. She hated it, wanted it – oh God, it stung! The heat was burning his palm almost as much as it blazed within her. The redness of her cheeks shone above the pallor of her thighs where the tops of her self-supporting nylons bit tight. Sixteen... seventeen.... she had lost count. And he wasn't stopping. Starshells burst in her tummy, her bottom rotating as if on ballbearings. "No, no, NO!" she heard herself screeching, but unheld as she was Suzi made no attempt to escape the relentless SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! that came in again and again until – arching her back and with a long whimper moan – she fell flat on her tummy, wriggling her belly madly on the coverlet until her jerking sobs and moans died away and her bottom cheeks tightened against the awful exquisite, dual sensations she was enduring.

Stroking her hair, he waited long and patiently until only her soft whimpers were heard, her lipstick and mascara smeared on the pillow with her tears.

"That's better – that's better now," he said softly and rolled her gently over. The contact of her hot bottom on the coverlet made her jerk. "I c...can't... I can't lie st...still," she sobbed and rolled over on her hip away from him, facing the wall. "You're not going to spank me again – not ever – you're not!"

"I know," he soothed. They both knew it wasn't true. Biting her lip and closing her eyes again, Suzi squeezed her raging bottom cheeks tight together. Riding through these first minutes afterwards was almost the worst part – waiting for the stinging to die away within her pert cheeks and the greater, flooding warmth to invade her. Then she could relax into the throbbing. Relax.

His lips kissed her ear and it tickled. "You've been on the couch and now you're on the bed – which d'you like best?" he whispered. Holding herself tight, Suzi felt his hands slip up under her top and unclip her bra, freeing the firm, jellied mounds. The stiff thorns of her nipples quivered.

She wasn't going to tell him. Not ever. She wasn't going to tell anyone....

The Punishment Book

Story from Janus 14.

The Punishment Book
by Tom Horner

'THERE'S YOUR TEA, Mr. Conrad.'

The pretty dark-haired young woman plonked the cup down on the desk, and with a flick of her hips, turned and left the room.

Seated at his desk Anthony Conrad watched the swing of the tartan skirt as she left, and sighed. Then he looked slowly and carefully round the room, taking in each object in turn: the leather armchair, the glass-fronted bookcase, the low oak chest, and the clock ticking quietly on the mantelpiece between two brass candlesticks. It was as if he were looking at each of them for the last time. As indeed he was, for this was Anthony's last day as Head Master of St. Edmund's School for Girls. After 25 years it was unlikely that he would ever really forget this room, but nevertheless he wanted to savour its atmosphere one last time. For he knew that it would never be the same again, even if he were invited back to the school from time to time, as he was sure he would be. He had already heard something of his successor's, Mrs. Palmer's, plans for his study — her study. Most of the furniture would remain, with the exception of the leather armchair, with its peculiarly worn back. But the heavy blue velvet curtains would be replaced by something light and flowery; the patterned Persian carpet by a plain beige Wilton; the candlesticks on the mantelpiece by fresh flowers; and the smell of pipe tobacco by Mrs Palmer's discreet perfume. It would become a headmistress's study, not a headmaster's.

Anthony sighed a deeper, even heavier sigh. He had just finished clearing out his own possessions, filling three waste bins with rubbish, and packing the rest in a suitcase which now stood on the floor beside him. Only three items remained on the big mahogany desk with its leather inlay. These were a crook-handled rattan cane, a leather tawse, and a large, red, leather-bound book, with gold lettering spelling out the words PUNISHMENT BOOK. In that Book was the record of 26 years of well-caned girlish bottoms. There were inscribed the names of all the girls who had passed through his study and lifted their skirts to receive their just rewards across stretched knickers. In some ways it was also a record, perhaps the only one there would be, of Anthony's career as Headmaster of St. Edmund's. For the cane had played an important part in life at the school. Anthony's predecessor, Miss McDonald, a formidable Scottish spinster, had been the first Headmistress back in the 1930s, and her aim had always been for strict discipline, combined with academic excellence. Miss McDonald had achieved both by means of a strong brain, a strong will, and a strong right arm, all of which she had applied wholeheartedly to the job. So that when Anthony took over from her St. Edmund's had an excellent reputation, and there was immense competition from all over the country for the 60 places offered to girls each year.

Miss McDonald had not approved at all the appointment as her successor of a man, a bachelor moreover, and only 35 years old, but that had not stopped her from giving Anthony some advice.

'You have four hundred and fifty girls in your charge, Mr Conrad,' she had said as she handed over the keys of the study. 'I hope you will love them as I have done — but never be afraid to be firm. Just because they are girls, don't think that they should be treated softly. You must drive them on all the time. And if they step out of line, cane them, and cane them hard. The girls expect it, their parents expect it, and the rest of your staff expect it — don't disappoint them!'

Anthony had taken this advice to heart, and had resolved to wield his cane with even more vigour than he had done at the boys' school where he had previously been Assistant Head.

For some reason, which he understood better now than he had done at the time, Miss McDonald had insisted on taking her Punishment Book with her, and Anthony had had to acquire a new one. It was this that lay on the desk in front of him now.

He opened the cover and read the first entry.

'14th September 1956: Jacqueline Walkington', it read. 'Form VA. Gross impertinence. Four Strokes.'

Ah yes, poor Jackie! Anthony smiled a rather rueful smile at the memory. It had been about a week after he had started at St. Edmund's. He had been returning from Chapel one morning in a crowd of girls, and had come up behind two fifth formers without their noticing him. The taller one had said:

'What do you think of our new Head? Don't you think he's rather handsome?'

To which her friend, who turned out to be Jackie, had replied:

'No I don't! He looks like a dry old stick to me. I shouldn't wonder if he prefers little boys.'

The next thing she knew a heavy hand descended on her shoulder. She turned to see who was attacking her, and went very red, and then very pale.

'It's off to my study with you, my girl!'

Jackie's feet had hardly seemed to touch the ground as she was whisked into the school, and through the door of the Headmaster's study. In another instant she was face down across the desk, and her skirt was being turned back to reveal the first pair of tightly stretched grey St. Edmund's knickers that Anthony had ever seen. And then whack! whack! whack! WHACK! Four strokes one after another, spread evenly across that pretty, slender bottom. In less than half a minute Jackie was upright again, blubbering into her hankie, as Anthony wrote the details into the book.

Anthony smiled to himself as he remembered how inexperienced he had been then. First for treating the girl's remark so seriously — nowadays he would have ignored it, or passed it off with a caustic retort of his own. But he had been lacking in confidence then, and was keen to assert his authority. And as for the punishment itself, well...! — there was no style to it. It had been simply punishment, with no attempt at rehabilitation. For Anthony was convinced as a result of his experiences at St. Edmund's that one of the quickest ways of turning an immature silly schoolgirl into a sensible young woman was, paradoxically, by transitionally reducing her to a sobbing child by means of a swishy stick applied skilfully to her bottom. But to achieve that effect the beating had to be done carefully, slowly, and with finesse, judging the critical moment in the girl's emotional state, as well as the crescendo of her pain, for the administration of each stroke. With his present experience Jackie's caning would have been a much more prolonged and rewarding episode for all concerned.

In the same way, experience had taught him that lying across a desk did not present a young girl's bottom at the most suitable angle. There was a danger of the cane hitting too high, instead of the full firm flesh of the buttocks which was its proper target. On the other hand, apart from senior girls, and more experienced victims, touching the toes, which got the bottom at the required angle, was too difficult a position to maintain, if the punishment was to be prolonged in order to obtain the maximum benefit. And so he acquired the heavy leather armchair. Now those who presented themselves for punishment could bend over the back of the chair, or kneel on its seat (depending on how tall they were), and with their heads lower than their bottoms, assume an ideal position for the attention of one of Anthony's many whippy rattans.

But no more would that happen, of course! As this realisation came back to him, Anthony began to flick through the pages of the Book in a desultory way. Some names appeared with a tiresome regularity. Far more made but one or two appearances — particularly in fifth year, when young girls' rebellious urges seemed to be at their strongest, and they needed a short sharp shock to sort them out. Those who managed to reach the Sixth Form without exposing their knickered bottom for a swishing generally managed to emerge unscathed from St. Edmund's. But there was one notable exception to this which suddenly came into Anthony's mind, and he began to flick through the pages more eagerly as he sought the relevant entry.

Aah! There is was! — 20th January 1963: Mary Singer. Yes, Mary Singer had been a very special pupil. She had joined St. Edmund's at the same time as Anthony, and from the first had shown herself a serious hard-working girl, both intelligent and good at sports, and always popular with the other girls. In fact she came close to Anthony's idea of the model schoolgirl. And when Mary reached the Upper Sixth it came as no surprise to anyone when it was announced that she was to be Head Girl. Anthony regarded this appointment with particular pleasure. Mary was the first girl whom he had been able to watch proceed right through the school to achieve this honour. And any jealousy which might have been felt by the other girls was dissipated by the conscientious and unassuming way in which Mary went about her tasks. She would get up early to sort out her administrative responsibilities so that they would not affect her A-level work; and while not taking any cheek from the younger girls, she always had a friendly word, even for the juniors, unlike most of the Prefects who treated them as though they did not exist, except when they needed to be told off or sent on an errand.

So, for a term-and-a-half Mary lived up to all Anthony's expectations. And then, one cold Wednesday afternoon, the school hockey team, of which Mary was centre-half and captain, happened to be playing another local girls' school, St. Hilda's. Anthony arrived just after half time to lend his voice in support of the shrill cries of the 10 or 12 girls shivering on the touchline. On this occasion he quickly learnt that St. Edmund's were two-nil down, principally because St. Hilda's had one brilliant forward who was running rings around the St. Edmund's defence. Anthony was soon to see an example of this.

The ball was played quickly forward to the St. Hilda's star — a tall slim blonde girl, very athletic-looking, supple and quick on her feet. She advanced steadily towards the St. Edmund's goal. Mary came out determinedly to meet her, but the ball seemed glued to the slim girl's stick. She feinted once, twice, then flicked the ball through Mary's legs and skipped round her to collect it on the other side, and Mary stood leaden-footed and open-mouthed. Several of the girls on the touchline tittered at Mary's embarrassment, until silenced by a glare from Anthony. The goal was at the St. Hilda's girl's mercy. But as she set herself to shoot, her left foot caught a particularly slippery patch of mud, her perfect balance deserted her for once, and she fell in an ungainly heap. The ball trickled harmlessly a few yards until one of the other St. Edmund's backs thumped it far down the field. All eyes, both spectators' and umpires', turned to follow the play. All that is, except Anthony. He was watching Mary, who, with an unpleasant grimace on her face was advancing on the fallen St. Hilda's girl. Anthony thought for a moment that she was going to help the other girl up. But when she got close, to his amazement he saw Mary strike the girl's ankle with her stick, twice, hard! The girl winced with pain, and her eyes opened wide with surprise, but Mary had turned and gone. Nobody but Anthony had seen what had happened, and the St. Hilda's girl was too much of a sportswoman to complain, as she got to her feet at last, and limped back to join the game. Anthony went up to one of the Sixth Formers standing nearby.

'When the game is over, tell Mary Singer that I want to see her straight away in my study. Straight away, do you understand?'

'Yes sir,' came the nervous reply. But Anthony had already stormed off to his study.

About half-an-hour later Mary bounced in.

'We won three-two in the end, sir,' she crowed, as she plonked herself into the armchair. 'Their forwards seemed to run out of steam!'

'I'm not surprised.' The harshness of his tone caused Mary to look at Anthony sharply, as he continued. 'I saw what you did to their best player. And stand up girl while I am talking to you!'

In a daze Mary got slowly to her feet and stood in front of his desk.

'I will not tolerate that kind of vicious behaviour from anyone — especially my Head Girl. Good God, you might have broken that poor girl's leg — and all because she offended your precious dignity with her superior skill. There is only one answer to such nasty behaviour. Bend over the back of the chair, please, Mary.'

Mary's brown eyes opened wide, her jaw dropped, and to Anthony's disgust she began to blubber and plead.

'Oh no, sir, don't cane me sir, please, I'm very sorry, I won't do anything like it again. I've never been caned, sir, please...'

Anthony ignored her pathetic pleadings and went to the cupboard where he kept his canes, bringing out his most punishing Senior cane, and swishing it through the air.

'Stop that noise and get over the chair, girl, or you'll be in here every day for a week!'

Still snivelling, Mary draped herself over the cold leather back of the chair. The short maroon games skirt rode up, barely covering the matching maroon knickers. Anthony lifted the skirt, and then measured his cane against the fullness of Mary's firm athletic bottom. He could see that her thighs were trembling, and she was still sobbing. And then, as he lifted the cane for the first stroke, her right hand darted back to cover her bottom. This was the last straw. Anthony flung the cane down onto his desk.

'All right, it's clear you're not in the right frame of mind to receive this punishment. If I beat you now it will not have a corrective effect upon you. Get up and clear out. But you will present yourself here after Chapel tomorrow morning, at which time I shall cane you — and unless you show a bit more restraint and decorum then, you will cease to be Head Girl, you will cease to be a prefect, and you will be caned every morning after Chapel, until you can show me, by your willing acceptance of deserved punishment, that you are a mature young lady of 18, and not a pathetic, snivelling little girl!'

Mary fled, her illusions shattered. Anthony felt aroused after that confrontation. He could not sit still, but paced his office like an agitated man.

Things were very different the next morning. Anthony had left his Deputy, Miss Hargreaves, to take Chapel, and at five past nine precisely there was a sharp tap on the door.

'Come in!'

In response to his command, Mary entered the room briskly. Her head was held high, and her chin was resolute. Her uniform was immaculate — freshly laundered white shirt, maroon tie, and grey pleated skirt. She looked at Anthony as he briefly lectured her, and when he told her to take up her position for a caning, she said, 'Yes sir.' Mary walked straight to the middle of the room, bent over, flicked up her skirt, and with her fiat-heeled sensible shoes planted 18 inches apart and her long legs stretched taut, she touched her fingertips to her toes.

'That's better,' said Anthony, with a smile, as he again produced his cane from the cupboard. He gloatingly took aim at Mary's rounded bottom, now covered in taut grey cotton, and framed by her white suspender belt and the dark tops of the stockings which, as a senior, she was allowed to wear. The only trace of the emotion of the previous evening was a slight trembling in her legs as she tried to hold them straight and firm.

Thwack!

Thwack!!

Thwack!!!

He beat her slowly, and soundly. Six swishy strokes of the very best he had ever administered to boy or girl. Mary did not react, except with a sharp exhalation of breath as the cane swished into her cheeks and, towards the end, a wriggle and squirm after each stroke. Her self-control was incredible considering the severity of the caning.

Anthony left her in position while he wrote the details in the Punishment Book.

'You may get up, Mary.'

'Thank you, sir,' she gulped as she straightened. Her eyes were glistening and her cheeks were wet, but her jaw was still firm as she said, 'You certainly laid it on, sir! But I know I needed it. Thank you.'

And immediately they were back to their old relationship of Head Master and favourite Head Girl, as they settled down to discussing school business for the day, with Mary seated extremely gingerly on the edge of the armchair over which she had sobbed the previous evening. It was a very impressive performance on her part, Anthony thought, considering the inflictions she had just received.

But all trace of cockiness and self-importance had vanished from her manner, never to return, and she completed a very successful year as Head Girl. She was now a lecturer in an English Department at a provincial University, and still wrote to Anthony from time to time.

Anthony came out of his pleasant reverie, and continued turning the pages of this Book which was providing such fascinating memories. Here was another interesting entry! 5th November 1967 — a whole page devoted to one form, VA, the top English stream, all destined for University. The form had decided in the then current fashion to have a 'happening' during one lunchtime. This had involved throwing all the classroom furniture into a pile in the middle of the room, and then dancing round it chanting 'Hare Krishna' or something similar. Miss Hargreaves had come across the event, and had been told either to push off, or to 'let it all hang out!' Anthony had then been summoned, and had arrived in his best impersonation of the deus ex machina, in full academic dress, and brandishing his cane. The effect had been instantaneous. In less than five minutes the room was back in perfect order. But then he had led the whole group of by now very penitent and apprehensive girls through the playground, past the crowds of giggling junior girls, to his study. He had had them in two at a time, in alphabetical order, from petite blonde Janet Armstrong to that tall, willowy brunette, Bridget Wilson, for four strokes each — not too severe, but enough to make them think again about 'doing their own thing' in school! The form Captain, Elaine Deasy, a plump but very attractive young miss, he had left till last, and she had taken a double dose to remind her of the responsibilities of her office. How his arm had ached at the end of that little lot!

Most of those girls, like Mary Singer, had been one-time-only recipients of the cane. At the other end of the scale there were the regular visitors. A lot of these were trouble-makers or bullies of one sort or another. They were not girls towards whom Anthony could feel any sort of affection. They deserved to be beaten, and he saw to it that they were. But there were exceptions. In particular, Maggie Clark.

Maggie was a quiet conscientious girl, and generally well-behaved. At least once a term she would be reported to Anthony for some serious breach of school discipline: a member of staff would find her blatantly smoking on school grounds, or out of uniform, or she would arrive late for school (for Maggie was one of the small number of day-girls) five days in a row. Anthony would have no alternative but to send for her and cane her. She would take her punishment without complaint, and then would return to her normal hard-working well-behaved self. Once he had noticed this pattern of behaviour Anthony was puzzled by it, and he had no inkling of the explanation for it until the affair of the blue jeans. This had occurred in 1974, when 16-year-old Maggie was in her fifth year.

During the summer term a number of girls had started wearing jeans instead of school uniform. It became so much of a craze that to stop it short Anthony announced one Monday morning that in future anyone appearing in jeans during school hours would be caned without more ado, no matter what excuses or explanations were offered. The next day at Chapel all girls were correctly dressed, with the exception of two — a sixth former named Barbara Harris, and Maggie Clark. Anthony, very annoyed at this blatant disobedience, escorted both girls to his study immediately after Chapel. The older girl, Barbara, he called in first, and having told her to remove the offending garment, he made her bend over and take six across her knickers. She left the room in tears, and caused no more trouble. Anthony then called in Maggie, and likewise told her to remove her jeans and bend over. While she was doing this Anthony went to the cupboard to exchange the light cane which he had been using on Barbara, for the heavier one to which Maggie had graduated by virtue of her previous visits. As he turned back Anthony was astounded by the sight that greeted him. For instead of a tightly stretched pair of grey knickers he was faced by the pink pert roundness of Maggie's naked bottom, tipped up towards him over the back of the chair.

'What is the meaning of this?' he spluttered. 'You know I can't cane you like that.'

'I don't like wearing knickers under these jeans, sir,' came the demure reply.

Anthony gulped. For the first time for a long time he had lost his composure — but only for a moment!

'Pull your jeans up,' he barked, 'and then get back over that chair.'

With what, he reflected later, was something of a disappointed look, Maggie did as she was told.

She received six ferocious, whistling strokes across the tightest part of the stretched blue denim. He had never caned that hard before — in fact with every erg he could summon in his strong right arm — and a slight fear that perhaps he had gone too far this time marred the slaking of his righteous anger. When he had finished Anthony wrote the punishment in the Book, and then, more than a trifle stiff below the belt, he informed Maggie that she was to report to him again the next day for a further four strokes for failing to wear regulation underwear.

'Yes, sir,' she murmured surprisingly demurely, flicking the long dark hair back over her shoulder.

It was at this second caning in two days that Anthony began to suspect something about Maggie. He had administered four firm strokes across what must have been still a very sore rump, and Maggie was standing waiting to be dismissed while Anthony wrote the details of her punishment in the Book. He noticed from the corner of his eye that, unlike most of the other girls, Maggie was not rubbing furiously at her bottom, nor, like many, was she crying uninhibitedly, but was standing, a rather misty expression in her eyes, with one hand up the front of her skirt, moving rhythmically. Surely the girl wasn't...? Anthony looked across sharply and caught Maggie's eye. She blushed, and with a flutter of eyelashes, dropped both her hands and her gaze.

'My goodness,' thought Anthony, 'the girl's actually enjoying it!'

With that moment of realisation so much else about Maggie's behaviour fell into place. Slit uncharacteristically got herself into trouble when she wanted a beating. She wanted to feel a cane on her bare bottom, so she had engineered the jeans incident.

He did not work all this out at once, of course. But over the next two years, observing Maggie's behaviour, and her regular, though not frequent, visits to his study, Anthony became convinced that he was right. And then, with two A-levels, she had left for secretarian college. Anthony sighed deeply as he looked at the last entry in her name: 'Margaret Clark, Form UVIB, Smoking. Six strokes.'

At that moment the pretty young secretary stuck her head round the door.

'Have you finished with your cup, sir?'

'Yes, thank you. In fact, I was just thinking about you, Maggie.'

For yes, it was she. As chance would have it, one year after Maggie had left Secretarial College, the old School Secretary, Miss Jones, had retired. Maggie had applied for the job, and the Governors had been very taken with the idea of appointing an 'old girl', who would 'know the ropes'. And any doubts about her inexperience were countered by the excellent references from her college and her present employer, and, if the truth be told, by the realisation that she could be paid about half the salary they had been paying Miss Jones!

So Maggie had returned to St. Edmunds. And it was not long before she presented Anthony with a letter containing more silly typing errors than she would normally make in a month. Anthony had been half expecting this, and led the way with comments such as 'Not what we expect from St. Edmunds' girls,' and 'You know what would happen to one of the girls who had the effrontery to present such an atrocious piece of work?' So that before long Maggie was tipped up over the familiar armchair, her tight black skirt folded neatly beside her, and the cane whipping into her firm round cheeks, protected now, not by thick cotton knickers, but the flimsiest nylon briefs. And once again, caning her gave him an erection.

A few months later she appeared in jeans, not unlike the pair she had worn for the previous incident, and certainly extremely tight and revealing. Maggie was informed that they were not suitable dress for a school secretary. The next day, however, her long shapely legs were encased in blue denim once again. So down they came, and over the chair she went. Only this time Anthony did not hesitate to whip the bare cheeks which were once again presented to him. He found it fascinating to watch for the first time the reaction of unprotected female flesh to the kiss of the cane. The rattan seemed to sink into the soft yielding cheeks, and then bounce away, leaving a white line which quickly turned scarlet. For the rest of the day she acted very sexily.

He had beaten her on the bare on a number of occasions since then, and he took pride in trying to make a neat pattern of parallel lines, closely spaced over the lower part of Maggie's bottom, but never crossing. Two years ago she had married, and Anthony had assumed that her husband would in future take over the disciplining of Maggie's pert backside. But no. As Maggie had hesitantly and nervously explained, while she didn't mind her husband, Bill, spanking her now and then, she would not want him to (nor would he want to) really hurt her. So she would still need from time to time the strict and more impersonal punishment that Anthony could provide. However, the cane left obvious and lasting marks. For this reason, the next time Maggie felt that she needed a beating she presented Anthony with a tawse — the one which was lying on his desk now — and asked him to use that on her. Anthony had agreed, though he had never wielded a tawse before, and at first he found it difficult to control. But after some practice he felt he had become almost as proficient with it as with the cane, and could make it embrace Maggie's checks with a curling slap! that made her wince, and rub her thighs back and forth at each blow.

But alas, no more would that happen, Anthony realised with sorrow, as Maggie tripped across the room to collect his tea-cup. No more punishing Maggie, now that he was leaving St. Edmunds. Once again the prospect of a long and boring retirement stretched in front of him.

'I've just had Mrs Chambers on the phone,' said Maggie as she picked up his cup.

'Ah, yes — Juliet's mother.'

Juliet Chambers was a pretty 17-year-old about to enter the Upper Sixth and take her Cambridge entrance exams in Classics.

'What did she want?'

'She wondered if you would be prepared to give Juliet a little coaching in her Latin. She said you were so good at keeping Juliet "up to the mark".'

Maggie emphasised the last phrase, and opened her eyes wide in a way that showed that she suspected that this was a euphemism for giving Juliet a sound swishing at regular intervals.

'Ah, I see,' replied Anthony, trying to sound nonchalant, though his spirits were beginning to lift. And they lifted even further as Maggie continued.

'I said you would let her know, and she said that a number of other mothers were interested in a similar arrangement.'

Again the last word was given a particular emphasis. Anthony did not notice it this time. He was smiling to himself at the vision of a succession of pretty schoolgirls visiting his house for individual tuition, which he always enjoyed, especially if the girl was bright and the lessons were backed up, with full parental approval, by the discipline of the cane.

'Thank you Maggie, I shall certainly give her a ring.'

'And there was one other thing, before you go, sir.' Maggie's eyes dropped and her cheeks flushed. 'I was wondering — well — you see — I don't know if—?'

'Spit it out, girl!'

'Well, I know that Mrs Palmer is going to be very nice to work for, and I'm sure we'll get on terribly well, but you see, she's a woman, so it's not the same, even if she was prepared to... which I don't think she would be — in fact she'd be shocked if I suggested it... so you see...'

'For goodness sake, Maggie,' Anthony thundered. 'Get to the point!'

Maggie took a deep breath. 'I know that I shall make mistakes in my work, but that Mrs Palmer won't punish me as I need — she's not even going to cane the girls! So I thought perhaps I could come and see you now and then, and you could clear the slate, so to speak...'

Anthony smiled again. 'Of course, my dear. I'm sure we can work something out. But now, as it's my last day here, and you've been wasting my time with your babbling, don't you think you ought to pay one last visit across the back of the old chair?'

Anthony's eyes were twinkling as he spoke, and Maggie's twinkled back as she answered him in her 'little girl' voice:

'Yes sir, I'm sure you're right. I do need a whacking before you go — just to remind me of how to behave.'

And without more ado she walked across the room and in one graceful movement placed herself over the back of the leather chair, flicking up her tartan skirt on the way. Then her thumbs came back and slipped down tights and knickers together till they were bunched in the middle of her thighs.

Once more her exquisite round bottom with its deep cleft was presented for Anthony's attention. Already he found himself stiffening. He picked up the tawse from the desk, and advanced purposefully. Maggie peeked back across her shoulder, saw the tawse in his hand, and said:

'Actually, Bill's at a conference all this week, so if you'd rather...'

Anthony took her meaning at once, and quickly retraced his steps, returning with the cane in place of the tawse.

'Now then, a round dozen should do nicely, don't you think?!'

'If you say so, sir,' came the meek and slightly apprehensive reply. For she knew that he would want to make this a punishment to remember, and her bottom felt very large and defenceless, exposed naked for the waiting cane.

'I do say so,' Anthony said emphatically. '12 of the very best, my girl, and you'd better keep in position, or there will be extra!'

He was excited as always by the sight of the young woman's nakedness, revealing the most intimate parts of her lovely body, but he knew that he must control himself from thrashing her too quickly. He wanted to make this occasion last, and savour every moment. Once, twice, three times Anthony tapped the cane lightly on the crown of her cheeks to get his aim, watching her firm flesh quiver in anticipation of the coming pain, and then — Swish! Thwack!

'Oof!' Maggie squirmed. She was not used to the cane these days, and had forgotten just how stingy it could be.

Five seconds pause... Swish! THWACK!

'Ouch!'

A slight smile lightened Anthony's face as he watched with pleasure the two red stripes appear across Maggie's superb bottom, one across the crown of her cheeks, the other half an inch below it. He took aim a little lower.

Swish! Thwack!!!

Maggie was squirming and wriggling a bit at each stroke, but she held her position. 'He's certainly putting me through it,' she thought, gritting her teeth. 'Why ever did I suggest he used the cane?'

Swish! THWACK!!! 'Aagh!' A flame of fire. It was agony!

Anthony had now reached the crease at the top of her thighs. He tapped the cane against this most sensitive spot.

'The next one is going to land here, Maggie. Just try and stretch a little more for it, to make it easier for me, there's a good girl.'

Obediently the young woman stretched her already taut body forward, tensing her legs, and thrusting her bottom back and up even more. A position that would have caused even a eunuch to become sexually excited.

Swish! Thwack!!!

'Oh, sir! Please!....'

Swish! Thwack!!!!

The sixth stroke landed across the top of Maggie's thighs, bringing tears to her eyes. She knew that the next six would retrace the path up her bottom, and that as, inevitably, the cane began to cross existing weals, the pain would be excruciating, but at the same time she had begun to feel the glow that she always longed for, so she held her long legs firm and straight, obediently offering her punished bottom for further strokes. Anthony did not take long to oblige.

Swish! THWACK!!!

Each stroke was delivered with equal power, and landed exactly on the intended spot — a tribute both to Anthony's skill, and Maggie's courage in maintaining her position.

Swish! Thwack! The incredible, uncapturable sound of the cane in motion, and the explosive crack of its contact with Maggie's hindquarters.

With the ninth stroke Maggie began to rub her silky thighs together and wriggle her bottom more urgently. Anthony recognised the signs, and swished in the tenth stroke quickly. Maggie's moans now took on a different tone.

Swish! Thwack! 'Aaah!... ooh, sir!... yes... Yes!'

Number 11 — only one more. Anthony waited much longer this time, until his target was really settled and steady, and then brought the cane down fast, with an expert flick of the wrist for extra speed and power, whipping it full across the centre of Maggie's bottom.

'Ooow!!!' she howled, as the pain and pleasure became inextricably mixed.

Anthony smiled at a job well done, as he returned to his desk. He opened the Punishment Book at a new page. With his sixth-form private pupils, and Maggie's regular visits, there was no reason why the entries should not continue for a long time.

As he finished the entry he looked up at Maggie. She was standing now, one hand tentatively exploring her now red and corrugated buttocks, her skirt still caught at the top of their swell revealing Anthony's handiwork to him. She caught his eye, and managed a brave smile in answer to his. A sort of conspiratorial recognition of mutual, fully compatible needs. Headmaster and secretary would very shortly both be relieving themselves, separately and in private, from the heat of this encounter.

Domestic Harmony

Story from Roue 14.

Domestic Harmony

Julia Maitland and the shy, nervous Charles Carey had a strange but contented relationship. Widow and widower, to the outside world their friendship was probably platonic but the villagers, without exception, liked them so much that they were not overly curious what went on within the stone, ivy-covered walls of Charles' small isolated house. Had they known, some of the details would have set the tongues a-wagging.

This afternoon, the diffident 52 years-old man watched, stomach churning, from behind a curtain as Julia's little car stopped before the house. She saw him, so when she opened the door and extended her silken-clad leg, her left hand held the hem of her skirt back so that, before Charles' eyes, it rode up above mid-thigh where a frilly suspender stretched tautly from the stocking-top, and up under the brief leg of her shadowed knickers above.

A thrill of excitement ran through her as she closed the car door and shook her skirt down. Charles' presence behind the curtain meant that, once the coming charade was over, her skirt would be lifted, her knickers lowered, and her bare bottom soundly and satisfyingly spanked.

Until three months ago her clothes had never been lifted by a man in that house. Besides a couple of afternoon visits, three days a week they would share lunch and dinner – in between, the thirty five year-old woman tidied Charles' house and cooked their meals while he wrote sporadic newspaper pieces on West Africa, where he was an administrator before retirement. He paid Julia handsomely for her work – she accepted because, as he said, his pension had increased so much by its index-linking that he had far more money than he wanted for his simple needs.

But one evening after dinner their conversation, encouraged by several drinks, reached a more intimate level than ever before. Julia talked of her husband, killed in a hunting accident eleven years earlier.

"Really he was only interested in gambling and the animals on the estate," she said. "He died leaving massive debts."

"You were neglected then?"

"As a woman, yes – as an animal, no."

"What do you mean, my dear?"

"Well, we had separate bedrooms, and he slept alone – except for the first night of our honeymoon, when he deigned to join me."

"How strange!"

"It was, but he wasn't sexless. When he... er... wanted me... always in the day or early evening, he would simply bend me over, wherever we were in the house."

"Not even a kiss or caress?"

"No. He would put his left hand on the nape of my neck and push my head down, as his right hand dragged my dress up and roughly pulled my... er... panties to my knees. I had to stay in that position, my hands against the wall or on a chair, my bottom and... you know... my... er... private parts... exposed to his eyes."

"You poor dear."

"He then talked to me as he slowly undid the front of his trousers and..."

Charles' eyes gleamed behind his glasses.

"What sort of things did he say, Julia?"

"Oh, I don't think I could tell you, Charles!"

"Please!"

"Well, that I had a lovely round, aristocratic... oh no, Charles!"

"Yes... please go on!"

"A lovely round, aristocratic.... arse... and that he liked a woman to wait for his... thing... with her knickers round her knees. Then he would crudely describe what he was going to do to me, and... my legs would be nuged as far apart as my stretched... er... knickers would allow, his hands would grip my hips and... he would thrust away savagely until he... he had finished!"

"Good God!"

"Then he would humiliate me in the harshest way. As he zipped himself up, he would ring for a servant. Quickly I had to pull my knickers up, feeling messy and unclean, drop my dress and appear unruffled as he ordered drinks. He said he liked the servants to see me blush."

Charles was breathing heavily, which surprised Julia. She had always considered him to be... somehow... unrousable.

She smiled. "I'm sure your married life was very happy before the car accident."

He nodded, but looked thoughtful.

"What is the matter, Charles?"

"Well, as you have been so honest, it is only right that I tell you that Brenda liked having her bottom spanked before we made love – and I'm afraid that I enjoyed smacking her."

Julia put her hand to his cheek.

"You silly old thing! Don't look so much like a naughty boy – I like it too!"

And she told him of her first orgasm. Of how she noticed when she was seventeen at home in the vicarage, that perhaps once or twice a week, her father's attitude in the late evening would abruptly change towards her mother. With minor criticisms – her hair was untidy – perhaps dinner was not to his satisfaction. Then he always said, "Go upstairs and wait for me, madame!", and Julia's mother obediently mounted the stairs, her shapely hips swaying, so it seemed, more than usual.

Consumed with a teenager's curiosity, Julia slipped upstairs one night to the balcony outside her parents' bedroom. She saw her mother enter and hasten to the mirror, undo the top buttons of her dress then stand, hands behind her back, facing the door.

When her father came in, he opened a drawer, took out a cane, and laid it on the dressing table. Then he walked over to her mother and undid some more dress buttons; his hands went into the dress, slowly turned, and drew out her big, rounded breasts, their nipples standing out stiff and proud. His hands stroked them for a while before he picked up the cane.

Then loudly he shouted, "Come in from the balcony, Julia, you'll catch your death of cold there!" Red-faced, the teenager came through the french windows, her head hanging.

Her green school knickers were pulled down, her pleated skirt flipped up her back and, face down across the bed, her father briskly spanked her bare bottom before she was sent to her room.

And as she heard the swish of the cane from the bedroom, and her mother's subsequent groans and cries that were certainly not of pain, for the first time Julia's hand satisfactorily quieted the strange hunger she had felt between her legs as her father's hand had stung her young bottom.

When she finished her story, Charles was visibly excited, his lips and hands were trembling, and their new-found intimacy, although fragile, had given rise regularly to the game they were about to play three months later.

-o-O-o-

Charles greeted her at the door. Julia pecked his cheek and swirled past him in a cloud of musky perfume into his comfortable living room. His writing had obviously gone well – his desk at the window was tidy. Thus was his – she would make hers presently.

He studied her as a desultory conversation drifted between them. Her hair, cascading over her shoulders, glinted in the sunlight slanting through the window. The silk blouse, tucked over – tightly into her straight skirt, emphasised the downward curve of her full womanly breasts, and a small scarf knotted at her neck gave her a careless elegance. The man's eyes slowly swept over the fullish hips, the shapely sheer-stockinged legs, and her simple half-heel court shoes.

"Shall I make some coffee, Charles?"

The words snapped him away from his lascivious thoughts.

"Yes, I would like that."

Shortly after she had gone to the kitchen he heard the crash of breaking crockery.

"Don't worry," she called, "It's only a cup and saucer!"

"What do you mean," he shouted angrily, " 'Don't worry, Charles'. Come here, woman!"

Julia walked slowly into the living room and stood before him, eyes defiant.

"Really, Julia, you are as clumsy as a schoolgirl!"

"Don't be insulting!"

"Lower your voice, or I'll treat you like a teenager and give you a pink, smarting bottom!"

"You wouldn't dare!"

Charles rose, locked the door, and pocketed the key.

"I would, and now I definitely will! Your knickers are coming down, Julia. If you have any on, that is! I can see your nipples through your blouse, so obviously you are not wearing a bra!"

"For your information I am wearing knickers, but their sight is not for the pleasure of an ageing voyeur," she snapped.

"We'll see," he said as he moved close to her and started to undo her blouse.

"Am I to be felt first?"

Without answering his fingers busied themselves until the blouse gaped open. With infinite gentleness his hands lifted her round satiny breasts clear, then his fingertips, touching light as a butterfly, stroked over the firm globes, pausing only to rotate lovingly the nipples that stood blunt, roused and rigid on their tiny pink-brown mounds.

"Having a good feel?" she gritted, but her belligerence was melting as her eyes softened and her full red lips parted.

"Yes," he said simply.

His hands left her hungry breasts. He sat down.

"Come here, Julia." She stood before him.

"Raise your skirt!"

Her fingers plucked a fold on each side of her hips that wriggled slightly as the hem lifted – to above mid-thigh,

"Like what you see, Charles?" she whispered.

He nodded. Suspenders of pink lace were tautly clamped to the tan stocking tops. The heavenly scent of roused woman reached his nostrils.

"Skirt up to your waist, Julia!"

It slid upwards. She tucked part of the hem into her waistband, clasped her hands behind her back and stood exposed; the few secrets left to her were not to remain so for long.

"Your knickers are a pretty shade of pink, and the lace is nice and sexy. I have always approved of open-legged knickers."

"Why, Charles?"

"Well, it is easy..." the back of his hand slid teasingly up her inner thigh, one finger probed up under the knicker leg and stroked along the wet, pouting parts therein... "to do that."

She gasped. Her thighs started to open. He withdrew his hand.

"But you are here for spanking, not stroking, aren't you!"

And matching his deeds to his words he hooked his fingers into the waist elastic and drew her knickers down. They hung, half inside-out, at her knees. There was nothing left to be modest about.

From under the cushion he drew a leather-covered object.

"At school we were punished with one of these on hands and bottom. It is whalebone, sheathed in leather, called a 'ferrula'. Used viciously it can bruise badly, even split the skin. I stole it from the school's resident sadist when I left."

"But you can't use that on...."

"Your tender white bum, Julia? Don't worry, I won't bruise those lovely round buttocks of yours, just make them all red, stinging and hot. Bend over the back of the armchair!"

Knees trapped by knickers she shuffled across and arched over, hands on the arms.

"Further, woman, I want your bare bum sticking up, begging for the ferrula!"

She obeyed, until her legs were rigid, and only her toes touched the carpet. Her bottom curves arched up; the hair-covered fleshiness, squeezed heart-shape by the closed thighs, glistened wetly.

Charles stroked his left hand over the rounded flesh, then his right brought the ferrula about a foot above one cringing buttock, and with wrist alone made the springy whalebone beat a tattoo on Julia's silky bum-cheek – tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat. It was like machine-gun fire.

Julia howled.

He stopped.

"Part of your buttock, about five inches by three, is turning gloriously pink. You spanking will be at an end when both your bottom-cheeks are glowing bright red. So there's a lot more spanking to do – tat-tat-tat-tat.

Julia's frantic "oows" and "oooohs" and yelps died to a growling groan when he started on her other bum-cheek because his left hand moved from the small of her back and, palm upwards, slid under her body to move from one hanging breast to another, the ridges on his hand manipulating the stiffened nipples this way and that.

When her round bottom was all pink, smarting and slowly writhing, he dropped the ferrula to the floor. As his left hand continued the fondling, his other smoothed over and between Julia's hot cheeks, down to that which was no longer heart-shaped, for the legs had parted, but even warmer and wetter... and wanting. His finger gave.

The writhing of the young woman's bottom increased. Then it stopped. Her body trembled, then jerked to and fro; her bottom thrust violently back. And from her lips came a long "Aaaaaaahhhh!!" as she slumped like a broken doll over the chair back.

Her hand reached for Charles' trouser zip, but as always before, he firmly grasped the wrist, steered it away, then quietly left the room.

Hung over the chair, Julia dozed in her afterglow for 5 or 6 minutes before, in a leisurely fashion, she pulled her knickers up, dropped her skirt, wriggled her breasts back into her blouse – and put the ferrula into a drawer.

There was no hurry. Charles would be back in 30 minutes, no more, no less. It was his estimate of the time she needed to put herself back together again without any embarrassment.

As she patted her hair into place, she realised that she loved the dear sweet Charles Carey. But his shyness prevented a greater intimacy. Oh yes, spanking her was intimacy, but her conversation had excited him irresistibly into it the first time, and three months later he still needed a sign to prompt a repetition.

On his return, no mention would be made of the spanking again. He would be his usual courteous, withdrawn self, and they would pass a quiet evening together. Unless she stirred him with her words again!

-o-O-o-

They sat pensively sipping coffee after dinner. Julia took a deep breath and said softly, "My little bottom is still glowing from your spanking, Charles. It's lovely."

He coloured. "Julia, shall we go down to the garden centre tomorrow and..."

"You do like seeing my knickers, don't you, Charles?", she interrupted.

Blushingly he nodded.

"And lowering them to leave Julia's fat little bum all bare and defenceless?"

"It isn't fat," he blurted, "It's perfect! I never know whether to spank or stroke....." – his voice, trembling, tailed away.

"Would you like to hold me close, gather up the back of my dress, slip your hands inside my panties, and grip the cheeks of my arse?", she teased.

"Not your panties," he murmured softly, licking his dry lips, "Your knickers."

She smiled. "Alright. Julia's KNICKERS!"

She crossed her legs. Her dress rode up, and the stretched frilly suspenders were in his sight again.

"Ann is coming home for her 18th birthday in a month's time. Will you come over for tea?"

"I'd love to."

"What a little minx I have for a daughter! Perhaps it is just as well that her school disciplines them so strictly."

"I didn't know that." Charles was breathing easier now.

"Heavens, yes. She regularly has her bare bottom caned, but its effect is doubtful, because she actually enjoys it with the right master. There is one that she really fancies. She told me she often deliberately misbehaves in his class just for the pleasure of lifting her skirt for him. Sometimes I think she gets the same from him as I get from you after a spanking, maybe more."

Charles clasped his hands to stop them shaking.

She pressed on. "Strange – after we all went out to lunch at Christmas she said you had lovely hands."

He closed his eyes.

"And that she'd go over your knee anytime."

"Oh, Julia!"

"It's true! And her bottom is like a peach, rounded, firm, and often has a pale pink bloom. Imagine, Charles, lifting her pleated skirt and seeing her knickered bottom!"

"Aaaaargh!"

"She wears tight skimpy briefs that only cover part of her bum. Think of dragging those to her knees and laying your hand across those naughty schoolgirl buttocks! You'd make them twitch, wouldn't you!"

Charles' head lowered and swayed from side to side. His hands gripped the chair arms tightly.

"I can see her young nubile body squirming on your lap. And as you spanked her you could savour the thought of laying the ferrula across her mother's bare bottom later, couldn't you!"

Charles was fast losing control.

"Oh, Julia..... darling!"

"What will you do, Charles, when I next misbehave in your house?"

"I'll... I'll... I'll..."

"Yes?"

"I'll... I'll... I'll tan your bottom, woman! I'll make you squeal and writhe!!"

"Over my dress?"

"Dress up, woman!"

"Knickers on?"

"Knickers down!"

"Oh, Julia's poor bottom! Will you also spank Ann's bare bottom?"

At the mention of the schoolgirl his usual quiet courtesy returned a little.

"If she is naughty in my house, and I have your permission to do so – yes."

She saw his shyness drifting over him once more.

"You know, Charles," she breathed gently, "beneath your kind exterior there is a strong, forceful man. And I'm a woman who likes that. We're lucky that basically we are close friends – and I don't mean this "just good friends" nonsense. Charles, darling, I feel at ease and peace with you."

His eyes, warm and a little damp, searched hers. He swallowed hard, and blushed once again. Drawing a key from his pocket he offered it to Julia.

"P...p...please, Julia, go and open the small despatch case in my room."

Puzzled, she did as she was asked. In the quietness of his room she put the case on his bed, unlocked it and lifted the lid. It was empty but for a note, dated four months earlier.

I want you to marry me, Julia. If you accept, come back and tell me. Otherwise, please go out of the door and drive away. I can't bring myself to ask you to your face – you are so beautiful, I am so ordinary.

If your answer is no, think of me sometime – for I love you, Charles.

-o-O-o-

He sat in the quietness of the living room, brow wet with perspiration, face creased with anxiety, hands clasping and unclasping. The thudding of his heart was almost painful as his ears strained for the sound of her return to him or........

The snarl of her car starting shattered the oppressive silence, and as she drove away he slumped in his chair, and a blanket of lonely sadness enveloped his like a shroud.

For ten minutes nothing moved in the room but the hands of the clock.... then the living room door slowly opened...

Julia entered and fixed her eyes on his. Sinuously, she wriggled her skirt to her waist, then bent forward and lowered her knickers to a lacy heap at her ankles. Daintily she stepped out of them, took the ferrula from the drawer, and walked over to him with swaying hips. With both hands she offered the ferrula to him.

"I've taken my knickers off for you, darling. Now spank your future wife's bare arse really hard, then take her to your bed and give her what she is longing for!"

"B...b...but Julia, I... I... I heard the car!"

"Well, you don't think I am leaving it outside the front of your house all night, do you? I've a reputation to consider!" And she smiled gently.

He stood up, put his arms round her, and laughed.