A Thoughtful Woman

by K T Findlay

  'I'm free.' he said.

  Selina giggled. 'What a good Mr Humphreys!'

  Helen laughed. 'Only tonight, he's the one that's going to be served.'

  The three of them went through to the dungeon where Holmes disrobed at Helen's command. He lay face down on the padded bench, a bolster under his hips pushing his bottom into the air. Helen secured his hands and feet to the opposite ends of the bench, making sure he was properly settled.

  'Discomfort is the enemy of pain.' Helen told Selina. 'Discomfort distracts.'

  'But surely a distraction will help take his mind off what happening, so he'll be able to take more?' asked Selina.

  'This isn't like stubbing your toe.' said Helen. 'Here we’re on a journey, with patterns, expectations, excitement. If we do it right, he'll be able to process the pain, work his way through it. If his arms are being pulled out of their sockets, or a muscle is being pulled somewhere, or the circulation’s being cut off, he won't be able to do that. Although he's going to be hurt quite severely tonight, it’s still a game, and we mustn’t actually harm him.'

  She gave his bum a hard smack with her hand. 'And he knows that, which is one of the reasons he comes back! Now, if we want him to be able to take a lot of pain, we need to build him up to it. So we start off with light instruments, like hands, or this soft flogger.' she said, whirling a small multi-strand whip gently against his cheeks.

  Selina did her best to match Helen's movements, spinning the whip in small low-speed circles, striking the skin gently.

  Helen pointed to the reddening colour. ' You can see the blood rising to the surface. That shows he's warming up. Once his thighs and shoulders are warmed too, we can start to move on to the heavier implements if we want.'

  She picked up a red leather paddle. 'You can see that this one is very thin and lightweight. It's going to give a sharp stinging sensation. Because it's narrow, we can be quite precise.' She demonstrated on the back of his left thigh where it left clearly defined marks. 'Here. Before you try it on him, you should try it on yourself. Lift up your skirt and tap yourself on the inner thigh. Harder than that. Hit yourself as hard as you think you're going to hit him.'

  Selina dropped her skirt. 'It certainly stings.' she said.

  ‘You wait.' laughed Helen.

  Selina added to the marks on Holmes’s leg.

  Helen picked up another leather paddle. 'This one is a lot wider and much heavier. It's going to sting a lot more and go much deeper.' She demonstrated, and for the first time Holmes began to react to what they were doing.

  Selina had her turn and felt something stir inside her. So far she’d managed to suppress her inner rage, but having Holmes tied here, helpless, it began to creep back. The desire to hit him and hit him hard, grew stronger as the harshness of the implements increased. She had a constant fight to keep her self control, but she managed it.

  Helen was delighted with her performance and happily confirmed her place on the team. The benefits to the business went far beyond offering the customers a choice. Because Selina was doing it for little or no pay, she was able to advertise double sessions at a price far below her competitors. It enabled her to pick and choose her clients and increase her pool of regulars like Holmes.

  For Sally, being able to knock seven bells out of Holmes once a week made waiting for her true goal much more bearable, even though she hated that the bastard was actually getting off on it as well. Emma too, found solace in the stories Sally was telling her.

  In other ways of course, life went on as normal. Emma continued her cycling and photography around the countryside, making sure to be seen regularly in her escape outfit. Sally cycled too, sometimes with Emma, sometimes on her own, did her painting, and kept up her social connections with people like the McEwans and Alison Falconer.

  All the time though, Sally was thinking about her alibi. Emma and the boys were easy. They could just take off and really be somewhere else, but she needed something special. Eventually, technology provided the answer. She bought herself a high quality video camera, which she could point out of her lounge window and leave running while she did other things, like visit Miss Helen. She could then play back the up to eight hours of tape on the TV, and use that as a painting subject later on. The resulting works would show the sun, sea, clouds and rain as they had actually happened, and “prove” she’d done them live, sitting in her own lounge.

  The problem was speed. If at any point she found herself under really intense time pressure, then only watercolours would be fast enough, but they brought their own problems. Unless it was stretched and mounted on a board, even thick, high quality paper was likely to warp and dip as the wet paint soaked in. Already known for her high standards, Sally had no alternative but to stretch her paper, and this gave her a logistical problem.

  If she did a different painting at 8 AM, 10 AM, noon, 2 PM and 4 PM as planned, she’d need five boards a day. However, each board needed to be prepared the day before, so she’d need a minimum of ten boards. If she wanted a buffer in case things went wrong, she’d need even more. In the end, she and Emma bit the bullet and created twenty five boards, enough to do an entire week if she needed to.

  8 Prepping the prey

  It was on Wednesday, February 15th 1989, just shy of two years since she’d met Emma, that something happened to make Sally decide the time had come.

  She was at the Dalton swimming baths, something she did every couple of months to work on an old injury. In the changing room afterwards were two women chatting intensely to each other. As they were putting their clothes in their lockers, one of them, a stunning, iridescent redhead, dropped her knickers.

  Almost without thinking, Sally surreptitiously kicked them under the bench out of sight. The two women didn’t notice the loss and went off laughing and chatting towards the pool, leaving Sally alone in the room.

  She opened her own handbag and pulled out a plastic sanitary towel bag that she'd acquired months ago from a hotel room. She retrieved the redhead’s knickers using a piece of tissue paper and stuffed them into the bag.

  She’d planned for some time to use Holmes knickers fetish to bait him, but for evidential reasons was highly reluctant to use her own. The redhead’s would be perfect. Holmes would never know they weren't hers.

  Then, like a chess player, she wondered if the redhead could be useful in other ways. She thought through her plans. Selina herself was a carefully crafted false trail, but it wouldn't hurt to lay a few more.

  She went across to the hand basin where the redhead had been getting ready and putting on her bathing cap. There in the sink was what Sally was looking for, some of the redhead’s hair. She collected the strands with some more tissue paper, wiped them dry and added them to the bag.

  When she got home she put on her cotton gloves and pulled the redhead's hair and knickers out of the bag and onto a white enamel serving tray. Using tweezers, she took the hairs and put them carefully into a small glass bottle with a screw cap. Then she used the tweezers to examine the knickers. Trapped in the lace, she found five of the redhead’s pubic hairs, which she carefully extracted and put into another glass bottle.

  That evening she drove round to Emma’s and told her she planned to strike the Saturday after next. It gave Emma enough time to get her alibi in place, preferably one that included her son Alan. She wasn’t worried about Tim because he was away in the Bahamas and already in the clear.

  The following day was a Helen day of course and Sally put her own watercolours alibi into action. Playing the camera tape back on the TV worked as planned, allowing her to capture the size and movement of the waves to perfection, providing the five paintings she needed for that day’s frame.

  On Friday, while Emma was arranging a late-night dinner party and games evening for four friends and her son Alan, Sally revisited the Shrewsbury wig shop and bought a shoulder length number as close in colour to the redhead as she could find.

  ◆◆◆

  Sally had enjoyed b
eing able to deal to the lawyer once a week, but now that it was coming to an end, she wanted her last time to be a doozy.

  As they were preparing for the first session on Tuesday morning, Selina raised a suggestion with Helen. 'I've been thinking about Andrew.' she said. 'I've come up with an idea that might stretch him and give us some fun.'

  Helen arched an eyebrow. 'What do you have in mind?'

  'Well,' Sally said, 'he always has a week to recover. I know that's a lot less than any other client you have, but I think he's gotten used to it. How do you think he’d respond if he had both a Tuesday and a Thursday session before he went off to your place to wash your smalls?'

  'Oh!' cooed Helen. 'What a simply delicious idea! I love that. I take it you have something specific in mind?'

  Selina grinned. 'Of course! Today we'll give him a good solid workout with the smacking, stinging implements like the ruler, straps, and paddles. But I'm not talking about just surface stuff. I want to give him some deep bruising that'll stay a while. Then on Thursday, we'll use the canes to go to work on those bruises, as well as creating their own welts on the surface of his bum. I’ve got another idea for the start of Thursday’s session, but I'd like to keep that as a surprise.'

  Helen clapped her hands in delight. 'Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! We'll take him to a place he's never been before.'

  When Holmes arrived later that afternoon, Helen put the idea to him about the sessions two days apart and he eagerly agreed.

  'No backing out now!' laughed Helen, wagging her finger in his face.

  Over the next hour and a half Selina demonstrated just how much she’d learned under Helen’s guidance. She spent the first ten minutes gently warming him up, using a range of soft floggers and light slappers to bring the blood to the surface, then moved onto the more serious tools, the slaps deepening into thuds.

  Selina paid no heed to the noises coming from his mouth, allowing herself to be guided solely by the tensions rippling through his various muscles. Just when he thought he could take no more, she stopped and Helen knelt down to whisper sweet nothings into his ear.

  Selina never ceased to be amazed by the power of Helen’s voice. From her very first words, Holmes began visibly to relax.

  Selina waited until his breathing returned to normal before she picked up the soft flogger and started to repeat the journey. It was at her leisure though, and by extending the duration of each implement, she enabled him to take much more. The third cycle went further yet, but when he approached breaking point in the fourth, she changed the game. This time, she indicated for Helen to move in as before, but she herself continued what she was doing.

  Astoundingly, Holmes soaked it all up, far beyond anything he had taken before, sustained by nothing more than Helen’s soft encouragements. In the end it was Helen herself who called a halt, her experience and empathy telling her he could take no more.

  After a very sore, but very happy Holmes had left, the two women talked.

  ‘You’ve come on beautifully Selina.’ approved Helen. ‘Excellent technique!’

  Selina’s blush was invisible under her makeup, but her smile of pleasure was clear enough. ‘Thank you! Coming from you that means a lot. I’ve got so far to go though. What you can do with your voice!’

  Helen chuckled. ‘Making a nice sound is important, but far more so is making him want to do it. If it’s a new client, you can gently persuade him that if he does this for you now, you’ll do something lovely for him later. With Andrew the relationship is so strong, he’s just trying his best to please me. Simple as that.’

  Selina raised her finger. ‘But with other clients you shout, and order them about, yelling commands like a sergeant major!’

  Helen shook her head. ‘Different kind of guys, different kinds of fantasy. They want to be stripped of control, to have no choice, to have peace from making decisions for an hour or two. Guys like Andrew want to give you a gift, if they can. You just use the voice in a different way, like using a trumpet to play jazz or classical. You need to know which to play when.’

  Selina grinned. 'Then roll on Thursday, because I want to see that again!'

  ◆◆◆

  Two days later, a very nervous, but excited Holmes was once more secured face down on the bench.

  Selina took up position on his left and with a thin cane gave him two quick strokes across both cheeks about 4 inches apart. Then, to his surprise she moved up and stood by his head. Striking down his body, she put two more on each buttock, also about four inches apart.

  She turned to Helen with a grin. ‘Do you fancy a game of noughts and crosses?' she asked, producing a steel carpenter’s scribe from her rear pocket.

  Helen shrieked with laughter. 'Excellent idea! Let me get the brazier to sterilise it.'

  She lit the portable butane gas burner and held the point of the scribe in the flame for a full five minutes before letting it cool. They then took it in turns to scratch the circles and crosses into the two grids. Helen won the left cheek, Selina the right.

  The marks stood out, angry and inflamed, and here and there the odd tiny drop of blood gleamed on the surface of his skin.

  'Whoops! We need to clean that up.' laughed Selina. To Helen's surprise, Selina went out to the kitchen. She returned with her hands behind her back and with a wicked smile walked to where Holmes could see her. She slowly brought her hand forward, to reveal a bottle of salt.

  His eyes widened and his mouth opened to object, but Helen just had to raise a finger to her lips to still him. Selina carefully poured salt onto the abrasions and watched as the small drops of blood soaked into the crystals, turning them red. He gasped as the sting began in earnest.

  Helen raised a finger, 'I’ve an idea.' and she went to get a spray bottle. 'Its just water Andrew.' she laughed as she sprayed a gentle mist over his skin. The salt dissolved quickly, creating a concentrated brine that found its way into every broken crack and crevice.

  Selina giggled as he squirmed. 'Well, I think it's time to scrub the playing board clean. Let him up.’

  Helen undid the straps and led him to a new piece of equipment. It was a framework about the size of a door and ten degrees off the vertical. He lay against it, his feet resting in the holes at the bottom on either side, his hands grasping the handles in the top corners.

  Neither woman made a move and he turned his head towards them in puzzlement.

  ‘’It’s a Berkley Horse dear,’ explained Helen, ‘and you’re quite right, you’d usually be tied to it. But today, I thought I’d find out what you’re actually prepared to do for me, so you’re going to take it without being bound.’

  She moved to the other side of the frame and smiled at him. ‘Now I’m aware that’s going to make it a lot more difficult, knowing you could just step away whenever you want to and yet stay and accept a bit more, so I’m going to help you.’

  Gracefully she knelt down onto a large cushion at the base of the frame, took him in her hand and skilfully brought him to a full stand. Satisfied, she sat back on her heels and nodded to Selina, who promptly delivered half a dozen light strokes.

  ‘Tut tut, that’s not very good!’ said Helen, observing his masculinity lose some of its intensity. She brought him back to the desired condition and gave Selina the nod to deliver the next six from the other side.

  For the next three quarters of an hour the pattern was repeated, a half dozen strokes followed by a restorative rub. Along the way, Selina increased the intensity via a combination of harder strokes and more severe canes. Although Holmes managed to cling on to the frame, there eventually came a point where Helen’s fingers could no longer work their magic.

  Silently she rose to her feet and stood in front of him. Ever so gently she kissed him on the lips, then slid sideways to begin whispering in his ear. To Selina’s astonishment, after a couple of minutes he was once more standing tall and proud, without so much as a touch from Helen.

  Selina fired off another set of six, but this time hi
s arousal held. Slightly miffed, she delivered another half dozen then another, and another. His skin had split in places and small trickles of blood began to make their way down to his thighs, but still his arousal held.

  Selina had her own inner struggle, to restrain herself from cutting him to ribbons. Only the thought of what the weekend could bring sustained her strength.

  Finally they reached the agreed number of strokes and Helen kissed him once again, longer and deeper than before. Absentmindedly her hand fell to his groin and she giggled in satisfaction at what she found.

  ‘You see what you can do when you put your mind to it? Now, go and get cleaned up and we’ll take care of this little thing later on this evening.’

  While Andrew was taking a shower, Selina expressed her admiration.

  ‘That was simply astonishing. Your voice took him to a place your fingers couldn’t! And kept him there despite everything I was doing. I couldn’t believe it!’

  Helen inclined her head modestly. ‘Once you know your man… Good sex takes place almost invariably in the mind and the voice has direct access. Pop the right personal fantasy in there, bring it to life and away you go.’

  ‘All the same…’ murmured Selina.

  Helen laughed. ‘Well, I guess you just started my advanced class!’

  Later, as Helen was tidying up the dungeon, Selina and Andrew chatted in the family room. As she’d planned, he was still bubbling about his experience. There would never be a better time to bait the hook.

  ‘You’re not too sore for serving Miss Helen later on this evening?’ she queried.

  ‘Oh no! I’m still breathing!’ he laughed.

  'You really enjoy washing Miss Helen’s under things don't you?'

  He smiled happily. 'Yes Miss Selina. I’m closer to her then, than at any other time except in a session like we had today.’

  ‘Would you like to get closer to me?’ she asked softly, trying to use some of Helen’s guile.

  His eyes flicked wide and he turned to see if Helen was there.