'It's my punishment? The one that's been hanging??'
'Two birds with one stone, darling. D'you mind?'
'A Roman holiday? Because I ran away?'
'Sweetheart, you put that so well.'
'No, Cicely, I don't mind.' Ilona's heart was racing. 'My pussy's going crazy down there. .! But, darling, to have me whipped in front of all these people. .!'
'It's going to be a beautiful and glorious spectacle. A ritualistic whipping of an errant slave. Darling, every one of us is going to remember it always.'
'Me especially.' Ilona was holding tight to equilibrium, telling herself she had known she would be whipped and that all the spectators didn't matter. They had already seen her naked. It might be better than to hang by her wrists day after day. . Quaveringly, she asked: 'Cicely, is this the whole of my punishment, or is there more?'
'I won't tell you, pet. After all, you were a naughty girl.'
'Yes, I know. I? I won't complain. You've really been terribly sweet.' Ilona's voice faltered. 'Is it too late to ask to have my ankles ironed instead? You did mention it. . '?'
'Too late, beloved child.' Cicely kissed her frightened slave. 'Ironed ankles, for you, are a bit impractical. You've become a part of my life. Can you see yourself walking around in this room with all that metal on your feet?'
'Oh alright, Cicely, but I sort of had to ask. I'm so damn scared and ashamed. I'll scream and scream? I just know I will.'
'Of course you will, darling. Everyone will love it.' Ilona Paisley examined the proposition that she would be fastened naked and flogged for the delectation of people like Elmer and Marian Hardwick. Once, briefly, her limbs had been freed and she had run away into the hills. She wanted to be punished for that stupidity, sharing with her mistress a conviction a punishment was just. But all these watching eyes. . ! They would double and treble her agonies. Breathlessly, she pleaded:
'Punish me worse, Cicely, something really awful. Pain between the two of us without them watching?'
'Darling, you're panicking. You don't need anything worse than what's going to happen. Believe me, you don't! But it will be over today. Isn't that better than a punishment that could go on and on and on'?'
'Well. . perhaps.'
'As part of your punishment you must now go out and let anyone talk to you who wants to. Be sweet and cheerful and do try and sparkle a bit?'
'I'll try. I've got over the first shrinking embarrassment.'
'I know they'l all want to buy you and ask a lot of silly questions.' Cicely's voice had become matter-of-fact. 'But you can handle that. Oh, and if any of them want to handle your pussy you'l have to let them. They're always curious about how wet a slave gets. Or maybe how dry she manages to say. O.K.?'
'I'll be a good girl.'
'I love you.'
'I love you too.'
It was like 'Sports Day' at school. A pounding heart, the spectators out there waiting, the last minute admonitions. Her owner's voice was urgent: 'Darling, except for your collar you're bare. You look so damn sweet. . ! I want you to walk slowly and very erect to the whipping post. Al the guests will be scattered along the way. They'l close in and follow along behind as you pass. You must look at the post and nothing else. Never look at them, make like they're not there.'
'Cicely, who's going to whip me?'
'I am. Hate me?'
'No. I'd have hated it to be Nora or Josh.'
'I'll be merciless, darling.'
'Of course. You must be. And it's O.K. for me to scream?'
'Hold back as long as you can. After that they'll expect it. Away you go, pet. Sorry it's such a long walk but that's part of the ceremony, darling. You're a penitent on her way to the stake.'
'Isn't there a final touch you've forgotten, Cicely?'
'Mmmmmm? Why, of course!' Cicely instantly understood 'Poor darling. You're going to feel all hands again during the long walk, and it's out of character for you to be totally free. Turn 'round.'
This time it was rope. The slave winced but made no sound as her wrists were crossed and the rope bit savagely, far, far too tight. But for that short a time it would not matter. Ilona understood the strictures as a final admonition. She was grateful. Slaves should never be freed, it imposed too great an emotional stress.
Head high, eyes focused on the distant stake, Miss Ilona Paisley stepped out into the sunlight.
This time there was no chatter, no cocktails. No one was blase. As Ilona walked her measured paces she was aware of eyes, they focused and followed. Behind each pair would be an emotion, perhaps a wish: some to hear her screams, to watch her writhe while the weals formed. .! Here and there might be sympathy. To most she could only be erotically contoured flesh punished for their amusement. Approaching her destination, the naked girl beheld Nora waiting, her feet still trailing the heavy links of the ankle irons, her eyes alight with concern. They exchanged smiles of wisdom in their sisterhood of pain.
On each side of the post was a strap and buckle, looped.
To reach them her arms must be raised above her head. Ilona looked at the simple things by which she would be held. Behind her, Nora tugged at the cords so recently knotted. When her hands fell free, Ilona took the few remaining steps and positioned a wealed wrist within each leather circle. Nora tugged again to make the leather bands a part of the woman they would render helpless while she screamed.
Strap and buckle were neat and tidy without loose ends. They compelled their naked captive to face the post, breasts touching the wood to tease pink nipples. When the whip started its play with her she would have a choice of flattening her nudity against the vertical timber or bending back to writhe and twist in pain. 'Nothing round my waist, Nora?' She asked in whispered surprise.
'No, Miss, it's more cruel this way. Those straps up above will hold you tight.'
The maid's words became tremulous. 'Ilona, I'm so glad it isn't me who whips you.'
They would have kissed but slavegirls do not kiss in public. Nora stepped away.
It was bad and it was beautiful. Bad only for the strapped girl, but for those who watched she had become twice beautiful, the symmetry of back and buttocks held, in their white innocence, an infinite promise of things to come. Ilona heard the sighs and was thrilled in her trembling, heat flaring within her crotch. She wondered if she would have the courage to thrust her sex against the rough surface and friction it to climax as she undulated beneath the lash.
There was no hurry. Ilona would have to wait for her agony. This was proper and in an old tradition. Her white nakedness was so spotlighted as to reveal even her smallest motion to the watching eyes. She held the stage, so that to tug at her strapped wrists or to thrust her bel y against the post evoked responsive murmurs from the audience. She could not forbear to look back over, a strained bare shoulder from time to time, but it was a restricted view. Palpitating, she studied the grain and splinters in the wood before her eyes. She would remember them always.
The cool sweet fingers smoothing her back and the twin curves below were Ilona's first awareness of Cicely's presence. The gentle loving hands generated waves of ecstasy. The soft voice was tender. 'I won't prolong this prelude, darling. I'll soon start to whip you. Are you O.K.?'
'I'm O.K., Cicely.' It was an affirmation of love.
'You are more beautiful than ever.' The fingers smoothed away hair to allow warm lips to kiss the soft flesh below the iron collar whose weight the slavegirl no longer felt. The beloved voice tinkled laughter: 'Maybe not the hundred lashes you asked for, darling?' Then Cicely was gone.
No matter how the strokes are measured, the whipping of a girl takes unto itself an inescapable rhythm. The breathless cringe of anticipatory flesh, the pounding heart. Then the blow itself: strangely it is the least awful of all in its brief moment of impacting within the female skin. It is the wave after wave of the unspeakable, spreading to encompass every feminine secret crevice, that is the true agony. It fades reluctantly to make way for a fresh hope and a slowing of the heart. But while it lasts the restraints are tested to the full by limbs which find, in futile struggles, the only vent a whipped girl can know: that and her screams which sometimes she herself does not hear. And then the panting sweat soaked aftermath, inevitably merging into another fearful dread.
