ELEVEN
Jenny appeared and passed my drawers to me through the bars.
'Put them on-your uncle is coming,' she said. I scrambled into them just in time. My hands were pious over my breasts.
Uncle did not look at me. Jenny opened Amanda's cage and brought her out. She cowed under his gaze and tried to hide her pubis. Jenny smacked her wrists. There was a strap in my uncle's hand, broad and thick-the same perhaps that our bottoms had tasted in the stable.
Amanda's ankles twisted, causing her to stumble. Jenny took her to the bar which was at waist height. The wood was round and polished. In the centre where her belly would rest was a slight dip.
'Bend and keep your heels together. Grip the lower bar tightly,' my uncle told her.
Was his voice more authoritative than the one she had known? Her eyes were dull. For a moment she stared at the wall and then obeyed.
'Please not too hard. May I go then?'
Her voice was a Sunday School voice. Jenny bent and fastened a broad strap round her ankles. Stepping back she glanced at me over her shoulder. I looked at the door, my friendly door. It would grow warm if I leaned against it.
My uncle approached Amanda whose display was quite delicious. Of a purpose, as 1 realised, her hands were not tied to the lower bar. The orb of her bottom was flawless -the cleft tinted with sepia in its innerness. The strap lifted and uncoiled.
Cra-aaaaack! Ah, the splat of it-the deep-kissing leather kiss across her girlish! Amanda winced in anguish, her mouth sagged. A low wail came. The strokes were slow and lazy-insistent. The weight of the leather appeared to need only an indolent movement of arm and wrist. Sometimes it fell across, sometimes under-under the offered apple where the long thighs met and the skin made small creases as if puckering itself in readiness for the outbulge.
Each splat brought a higher gasp from her. Her bottom became a haze of pink and white. Her knuckles whitened where they gripped the lower bar.
'Noo-Noo-Noo-Noooooo!' she pleaded. Her hips began to make more violent motions of rejection. At each stroke the tight cheeks tightened. A big man's hands would have encompassed both cheeks together. A split melon. I wanted my tongue to pass around it in its warmth, its heat out-giving, receiving. I counted ten, twelve, fourteen. Amanda gritted her teeth. Was she crying far within herself? The glow of her bottom was luminous, yet no marks showed. I have since learned the art of it, have heard it called indeed, 'French polishing.' The leather must never be thin. Thin would be cruel.
The metal bands that held the tops of Amanda's stockings rubbed together. Her knees sagged, making her bottom orb out more. A low whoooo-hoooooing sound hummed from her lips. It is the sound one waits for.
My uncle ceased. I could hear her sobbing, but it was not a sobbing of pain. It was the sobbing of a child who has lost her toys. The sobbing of a child who has ceased to cry when nobody listens.
'Be quiet, Amanda-Quiet!'
Jenny's voice was a voice of love. She unfastened the strap around the girl's ankles, drew her legs wide apart and fastened each to the sides of the stand. The salmon-pink of her lovelips showed. Amanda cried out and made to rise, but Jenny took the nape of her neck and forced her down again. My uncle turned away. I wanted him to look at me, to acknowledge my existence, the modesty of my posture with my palms cupped over my breasts. But he did not. He went as one who vaguely recalls an errand to be done. His walk was awkward, stiff. His erection was considerable.
With his exit Aunt Maude appeared. In her hands were a phial of warm, sweet oil and a long thin dildo.
I watched, I listened. I no longer needed to cover my breasts. An oiled finger moved about Amanda's restlessly rolling globe. It sought her rose, her bottom mouth. Jenny's hand was laid now on her down-bent head. All was silence save for her rushing gasps. The dildo when it entered her did so fraction by fraction, upwards between the cheeks, parting their parting.
'Nnnnnnnnn…' Amanda hummed. Her neck and shoulders strained against the pressure of Jenny's hand in vain. Her hips twisted wildly. The dildo rotated slowly in my aunt's fingers, half embedded. Twirling it, she began to glide it back and forth.
'Sweet mare-you will take his piston yet,' she murmured. Her voice was without malice. It spoke of hushed rooms, drawn curtains, a muted sun.
'No-oh-OH!'
Amanda's voice rose on a long singsong note, but there was no reply. The dildo entered another inch and then withdrew. Jenny unstrapped her and led her back to the cage. Amanda slumped down sobbing, her face covered. Her elbow tilted the bottle of wine. The neck fell trapped between the bars.
'Why does she cry? We are a benediction,' my aunt said.
'They are tears of wrath,' Jenny answered. She looked uncertain as if she had collected the wrong words together. She looked to Aunt Maude for refuge. My aunt frowned.
'The spirit of NO is being driven from her,' she said. She motioned to my cage. The door was unlocked. I was led without as if I were going to communion. The bar received me. 'Caress her first-she is the worthy one,' my aunt said.
With my thighs together I was bent as slowly as a mechanism under test. I grasped the bar. My fingers lay upon the ghosts of Amanda's. Jenny's fingers felt for the pouting of my nest, the lovelips pursed. With her free hand she palmed the warm cheeks of my bottom. The upper crease of my slit into which her fingertip wormed, parted just sufciently to allow her to lovetease my button. I murmured softly in my mind. Pleasuretravellers voyaged through my nerves. The cheeks of my bottom quivered to the urging in-thrust of Jenny's other forefinger.
From the other side of the bar my aunt bent and fondled my breasts very gently as if she. were handling hothouse fruit. Her thumbs spoke to my nipples, whispered over them, erected them. Rigid cones on hillocks of snow.
'It is enough-she holds the pose well,' Aunt Maude said.
I knew the strap then-knew its bite. Jenny who wielded it permitted me to sway my hips, catching the left cheek as I swayed left-the right as I swayed right. I knew the humming sound in my head-the burgeoning of images, pictures, wickednesses. The heat was tempest to my flesh. I moaned in my undoing.
Twelve? Did I count twelve? My knees sagged. I needed a mouth beneath my open mouth. Amanda was a wax statue in a cage. I parted my knees. The gesture was not unseen.
'Come,' Jenny said. There was comprehension in her voice. My moist hand in her cool hand. Wriggling like a schoolgirl I was taken to a divan so narrow that when I lay upon it my legs slipped down on either side.
'Heels firm on the floor-head back,' my aunt said. The heavy heat of my bottom weighed upon the black leather beneath.
Jenny moved behind, took my arms and drew them far back above my head. She held me lightly, fearing no rebellion perhaps.
From her sleeve my aunt drew a long white feather with a curving tip. It passed across my vision. My hips jerked.
'No, Beatrice,' my aunt intoned. Her words were chiding, soft. The stinging in my bottom from the strap deepened and splurged. 'Look at me, Beatrice. Peep your tongue between your lips. Just the tip.'
My eyes were Aunt Maude's eyes. They knew countries of the past I had not visited. My tongue peeped. Amanda would lie on her bed at home. The veils of her undoing would be raised. The strap would rise and fall. The metal bands would become gold bands. The roseate hue of her bottom would dwell in his mornings, illuminate his evenings.
'Good… so… remain… do not stir,' my aunt admonished me. The feather tickled and moved between my thighs. I bit my lip. My tongue retreated.
My aunt was kind. She waited. A bubble of saliva floated from the re-emerging tip of my tongue. It dwelt on my lower lip. I sang in my throat and felt the twirling of the tip -the white heat of it around my button.
Aunt Maude's eyes dared me to turn from hers. I held. Up, down, the feather teased. It entered me. My buttocks rose, fell, rose again. My eyes were saucers on and on. I writhed-the ceiling in my vision swimming in its
