second,' I went on, ignoring her wrigglings that were meant together with her silly, tumbling words to express refusal, 'on the second bout, my sweet, your rosehole will receive the repeated pistoning of the cock until you have drawn forth his spurting juice.' 'No! I don't want to!' she whined. 'Then you will be whipped first-or strapped perhaps.'
With each word then 1 smacked her bottom loudly, ringing my free arm tightly about her slender waist while she jolted and struggled madly. Finally I let her roll free. Her pert bottom was a perfect picture of pinkness, splurged with the paler marks my fingers had imprinted. Drawing up her knees she sobbed and lay with her face against the wall.
I waited. After a moment when she had not moved I rose and put on my dress. Immediately she spun over and lay upon her back.
'Wh… what are you doing?' she asked. Her eyes were blurred with tears, her hair mussed. In such disarray she looked at her prettiest.
'Maria will learn to use the strap on you now,' I said severely. Without looking at her I brushed my hair in the mirror.
Caroline rolled immediately off the bed and, kneeling, hugged my legs.
'If I say that I will-please!' she begged.
I glanced down at her and then resumed my brushing. 'It is not for you to say, Caroline,' I answered briefly. I moved away from her by force so that she slumped upon the floor, looking as forlorn as she could contrive. It was a game that she was learning, I could sense, yet her knowing must not be too great. Not as yet. In a year or two perhaps. The fine balance of yes and no was truly here.
I looked down upon her once more. The violin troves of her hips were indeed sweet, the upsweep of her bottom infinitely appealing. With a slightly greater plumpness than Amanda there possessed, Caroline would surrender eventually to her pleasures more than she knew.
Head hanging and eyes clouded, she rose slowly to her feet and endeavoured to hug me. I stood unmoving.
'Do not let Maria strap me hard,' she murmured. Her fingertips fluttered about my back like petals falling. When I did not answer she snuggled into me closer, manoeuvring one thigh and trying to press it between my own. 'Do you not love me?' she whispered.
I raised her face at last.
'In all my being,' I replied softly and kissed her mouth. 'Now go upstairs-4 shall strap you myself. You will learn.'
'Yes,' Caroline whispered. It was a plea rather than acceptance. Another moment and I might have relented.
'Go,' I said again, 'wait for me-over the bar. Leave your dress here.' Her footsteps slouched. Her look was a lostness – sweet and well contrived. It passed across my mirror and was ignored.
Five minutes later the strap swathed heat across her cheeks.
In her sobbing cries as she gripped the bar beneath was her surrender.
TWENTY
In the week that followed I made ready for our departure. Katherine made her future appointments with me. Maria's husband, Ned, was interviewed formally. He would come into service with me, I told him carefully. His uniform would be that of a valet. He would be put to many different tasks. Maria-I was pleased to think-had evidently scolded him into agreement beforehand since his continued nodding during my conversation became almost tiresome. His physique, however, was entirely suitable -his thighs good, his loins muscular.
There would be Frederick also, as I apprised Katherine. He had been permitted no further licence with her. To ensure that, I had kept him to the house while she was elsewhere. The day before leaving I called her to my room.
'You will devise a play-not too simple a one, Katherine. I will have it performed a few weeks after we have settled in again.'
She curtsied playfully. I had not asked her to sit. 'Shall there be many players? Six or eight, perhaps?' she asked.
I merely nodded as if my thoughts were already elsewhere. It is a simple enough trick. It keeps those I need, desire-or would work to my will-in a state of slight imbalance.
'You will engage Amanda in it,' I said. 'We shall then best see her progress-and her silver stocking bands, no doubt. And the maid at Arabella's house-the young one who attended upon us. I want her. You will obtain and bring her.'
The play itself would be of no great importance. The words, the acts, could be peeled away at my discretion and replaced by others. Arabella possessed a controllable wantonness, as I had witnessed. She would present a voluptuous example to occasional novices. As to the young maid who had lain at my feet after tonguing me-the sly-eyed, sloe-eyed one-there was a hint of impudence in her eyes that I could quell at will or use according to my whims.
On the morning of our departure I made Caroline ready in the prettiest of blue dresses with matching bonnet and patterned stockings of the same shade. For myself 1 wore a modish back dress, severely buttoned to the neck, with a pearl choker. My bonnet was a three-cornered one. It gave me a slightly swashbuckling air without looking flirtatious. As to the kid gloves I had desired, I had now a dozen pairs in different shades. My uncle's wallet had been well pillaged.
Maria and Jenny, I attired in oatmeal cloaks with hoods. Beneath, they were naked save for stockings and boots. I placed them, together with the clothes and cases my uncle had been made to endow, in the smaller of two carriages outside.
Aunt Maude had relinquished Maria not without reluctance. We had discussed much in private. I broadened her horizons. There would be garden parties from Friday to Monday on half a dozen occasions throughout the summer, I said. We did not use the word 'weekend.' It was considered common. From the gatherings, both my aunt and myself would make a discreet choice among the females and, occasionally, their escorts-whether related to them or not. They would be drawn aside and would receive special attention. The likeliest females would be cosseted and flattered. In the privacy of bedrooms there would be means of bringing them to undress and even of displaying them to the males through peepholes in adjoining rooms.
'The males will be discovered at their peeping by one or other of us,' I told my aunt. 'It will be necessary for them of course to be punished. Their fear of betraying the conventions will make them submit. The females they have viewed and who will remain naked-while being aroused by Maria or Jenny or another-will then be shown to the peepholes in turn and may gaze upon the males in their bondage.'
Such discourses pleased my aunt immensely. My imagination flourished. Even so I kept some secrets to myself. There were caves I would not allow her to enter. She sensed that. It gave her a certain air of diffidence as I flourished my images before her. There were moments when she seemed to stand in awe of me.
We stood in my room prior to descending to where Caroline and my uncle waited. Amusement and apprehension mingled in her eyes as I pressed her to the wall and bid her stand with her arms at her sides. I took her cheeks in my hands. They were as smooth as a girl's. 'You enjoyed?' I asked. She knew well enough to what I rferred. Her smile was cautious but impish. e 'When your bottom took his cock? You were superb,' she breathed.
I kept my eyes level with hers. As one enraptured by a fine statue I ran my little finger delicately along her lower lip.
'You will be used,' I said.
'With Frederick?' The question was a little unexpected but I absorbed it without expression. She had veiled her desires carefully.
'Yes-and with others. You will obey me, Maude.'
It was the first time I had used her Christian name. 'Yes,' she acquiesced softly. The tips of our tongues touched as if with a timidity at our own daring. My sails were hoisted, set. There would be no turning back for her.
