by Sarah Fisher
The car headed towards the coast, and as Maggie settled she was aware of the driver’s eyes in the rear-view mirror, and again she wondered what she’d let herself in for.
Max Jordan watched the car make its way slowly along the quay, then up the hillside towards the hotel. He had booked his usual suite with the sitting room overlooking the harbour. Suitably double-glazed, the French windows that opened onto a sunny terrace not only kept the sea winds out, but all sounds in. The rendezvous was far enough out of town to be private, but not so far as to unnerve his guest.
Max’s usual waiter took the champagne from the ice bucket and refilled his glass, while the austere man watched the car’s progress. Mike had told him that he considered Maggie a natural, someone who had perhaps suspected she was a submissive for years but fought her natural inclinations.
These were the kind of girls Max liked best - spirited and bright with a fire and passion that if harnessed and trained properly would be a delight for him to enjoy both as slave and companion. It was that combination and his ability to recognise it that ensured his girls always brought the highest prices, whether at auction or in a private sale.
One of the reasons Max loved this suite was the view it afforded him; out beyond the harbour a broad sandbank sheltered the little cove, and beyond that was the open sea. And below, as Maggie climbed the stone steps guided by Guido, he could see her clearly, and it appeared Mike was a better judge than he gave him credit for. He could see the mixed emotions on Maggie’s face, in the way she moved. She was nervous, full of expectation and apprehension. He was delighted to see that she was dressed as he had instructed, but wasn’t fooled for an instant, for Maggie Howard wasn’t obeying him she was humouring him - although it wouldn’t be long before she learned the difference.
‘Here we are,’ said the chauffeur. He stood before the impressive double doors, knocked once and then stepped aside so it was Maggie who waited for permission to enter. As she heard Max Jordan’s voice from inside her heart missed a beat. She bit her lip, fingers locked unmoving around the door handle.
‘Trust me, it doesn’t pay to keep him waiting,’ the driver said, and before she knew quite what she was doing, Maggie turned the handle and stepped into the cool room.
Caught in silhouette against a sunlit expanse of glass was a powerfully built man of medium height, probably in his early-fifties, with grey hair, dressed to her surprise in casual trousers and a white shirt, his sleeves neatly rolled up to reveal strong forearms. He had a trimmed beard, heavy but handsome features and a broad mouth. All this Maggie saw and absorbed in an instant. But what she noticed most of all were his eyes - blue-green, glinting, intimidating… yet there was something else, something lurking behind them that was quite impossible to fathom.
‘Maggie,’ he said in a warm but formal tone. ‘How nice to meet you.’
‘Max,’ she said, with considerably less assurance in her voice. Was she supposed to call him that, or master, and how preposterous an idea was that? She reddened, feeling uncomfortable and unsure in a way she hadn’t felt since her teens. Tension crackled in the air between them like the edge of a storm. Maggie shifted her weight, feeling like a lamb waiting for the wolf to decide her fate.
‘So,’ said Max, taking the champagne bottle from the bucket and pouring a second glass. ‘What is it you want? What excuse are you going to use? Are you going to tell me that you’re here to interview me, or shall we dispense with the nonsense and the half-truths and the lies, and you tell me what you truly want?’ As he spoke he brought the glass to her, all the time his eyes calmly taking in the details of her face and body. It felt as if he was looking into her very soul.
He offered her the champagne and she took it, murmuring her thanks while her heart beat frantically in her chest.
‘I don’t know, I’m afraid,’ she said weakly, almost to herself.
He smiled and gently stroked the line of her jaw. ‘I know,’ he said.
Maggie trembled, shocked by her reaction to his touch.
‘And I do understand, my dear. Drink your champagne then tell me, did you do as I instructed? Did you remove your hair.’ His open palm brushed her lower belly so lightly and so fleetingly it was almost like a breath.
‘Yes,’ she said, eyes downcast, trying to avoid his gaze.
‘And what are you wearing under your skirt?’
Maggie felt so self-conscious she thought she might faint. ‘White underwear,’ she began. ‘Although I?’
‘Yes, white underwear and what else?’ he interrupted. ‘Are you wearing suspenders?’
She nodded.
‘And you understood my email, that if you made the wrong choice then you would be punished?’
‘Yes, but… but surely that was a joke? I mean, you didn’t mean punished, not really.’
He pressed a finger to her lips in a gesture so intimate it took her breath away. ‘I’ll ask you again, Maggie. Did you understand my email?’
‘Yes,’ she said, still longing to justify or explain her choice, but he held up his hand to silence her.
‘Open the left hand drawer of the bureau and tell me what you find there.’
She looked up at him, eyes bright with fear. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘You will, now do as you’re told.’
Uncertainly she walked across the room, opened the drawer and let out a little gasp of panic. Inside was a white envelope with her name written on it, but it wasn’t that that made her gasp; it was the leather riding-crop that lay across the envelope.
‘Well?’ he said, sipping his champagne.
‘There’s some sort of whip in here, and an envelope.’
‘Open the envelope, Maggie,’ said Max, from somewhere behind her.
She picked it up, her hands trembling. Inside on a single sheet of paper were the words, For wearing suspenders your punishment is twenty strokes.
Maggie swung round as if he’d spoken the words out loud. ‘But this isn’t fair,’ she complained. ‘It’s ridiculous. How was I to know?’
Max held out his hand to her. ‘Bring me the crop, Maggie,’ he said, as if she hadn’t spoken.
She stiffened, determined to hold her ground. ‘How was I to know?’ she repeated.
Seconds ticked by, seeming like hours. Max Jordan didn’t move, didn’t reply, while Maggie’s mind raced… and then froze. Wasn’t this the very thing she had always imagined? Wasn’t it the fantasy that had driven her to a potent climax in the shower? Wasn’t this the act of submission that had fuelled countless such fantasies? If she walked away now, if she turned and left, then she might be turning her back on the very thing she longed for.
Maggie took a deep breath to try and still her thoughts, and then very slowly she took the crop from the drawer. For a moment she held it in her hands, trying to imagine what it might feel like to have it crack across her flesh. The idea was both enticing and appalling.
‘I’m afraid,’ she said, her voice tight with emotion.
‘I know, come to me,’ he said, and she took one step and then another until they were face to face. ‘Now give me the crop,’ he said. ‘Let me teach you, let me show you what your heart already knows,’ and as he spoke Maggie did as she was told, struggling all the while to maintain some shred of composure.
‘And now, my little Maggie, you must ask me to punish you,’ he said, bending the crop into an arch between his fingers.
Her cheeks flared crimson. ‘I must what?’ she gasped incredulously.
His voice was low and even and yet incredibly powerful. ‘You must ask me, you must say, “master, please punish me”.’
‘But I can’t do that,’ she insisted. ‘I can’t.’ All the while she could feel a surge of heat rushing through her and a raw flurry of excitement growing between her legs.
Max shrugged. ‘Very well,’ he said, and set the crop down on a side table.
Standing there in the silence Maggie wrestled with her fears and her inhibitions, until finally she said, i
n a voice barely above a whisper, ‘Master… please punish me.’
‘Very good,’ he said as he took her hand, and resistance gone she allowed him to lead her to a large leather armchair. ‘Bend over,’ he ordered, and she did as she was told. ‘Lift your skirt.’
Maggie let out a long slow breath, closing her eyes in shame as she fumbled with the garment, imagining the picture she presented to Max Jordan. Then she leant forward, her hips and bottom in the air, her feet apart to maintain her balance over the chair, her white knickers taut across the rounded contours of her buttocks. She shivered, wondering if she was already wet enough for him to see the moisture seeping through the thin fabric. Her stockings and suspenders framed her bottom as neatly as any picture frame.
She felt Max moving closer and held her breath. She felt his hand brush across the contours of her rear, felt them move between her thighs to the intimacy of her sex, cupping and kneading her through the silky material.
Her colour deepened. He must be able to feel her heat, feel the wetness and the excitement. She moaned and without thinking thrust back against him, some instinctive part of her hoping he would brush her pleasure bud.
‘You are a shameless little slut, Maggie,’ said Max Jordan. ‘You are going to be such a pleasure to train.’
Maggie whimpered with fear and embarrassment as he unhurriedly removed his hand, and the next sensation she felt was the flexible length of the crop being drawn very slowly across her buttocks as if it too were exploring her, letting her know what to expect. Max teased the looped tip across her thighs, between her legs, setting every nerve alight as he caressed her.
‘Well, Maggie,’ he whispered, ‘are you ready?’
She held her breath, then nodded.
‘Oh no, my dear, you have to tell me.’
‘I… I’m ready,’ she whispered uncertainly.
‘Then count for me,’ he said, and an instant later she felt the crop crack across her waiting flesh. The first stroke was hard enough to make her cry out, her body arching under the blow, a dark pain flooding through her.
‘Oh, my God!’ she gasped. So this was what it felt like.
‘Count,’ he snapped.
‘One.’
He ran the crop’s length under the curve of her buttocks, making her painfully aware of its threatening flexibility - and then just as she began to relax he hit her again, no harder but lower. Maggie shrieked, feeling the breath catch in her throat. It was all she could do to gasp, ‘Two,’ in a voice she barely recognised as her own.
‘Good girl,’ he murmured, letting the whip hang in the air for a second. Max watched the way the girl reacted, observing her with the eyes of a true master, watching for signs of her panic and fear, reading and relishing them like a good book. She looked exquisite, bent over the chair, her creamy flesh reddening under his ministrations.
The next stroke was a fraction harder and she cried out again, wondering how hard they would get, whether she would be able to stand the pain, whether having come this far she had made a terrible mistake, and whether she should get away now.
He hit her again and Maggie gasped, ‘Four,’ between gritted teeth.
Max smiled, feeling the stirring in his groin and more than that, the stirring deep in his soul. He adored hearing his women scream - both with pleasure and with pain He drew back the crop for the fifth stroke; it wouldn’t take Maggie long to realise that pleasure and pain were just different sides of the same coin and no more than a heartbeat way.
After the sixth stroke he ran his hand over her glowing backside, stroking and kneading the tender flesh. She was wonderfully wet and he could feel her juices soaking into the thin fabric of her knickers and smell the soft musk of her growing arousal.
This time his finger strayed to rub the throbbing bead of her clitoris. As his fingertip found its mark he could feel her whole body tense and then slowly begin to move against him, seeking a release that, although she was unaware of it, was a very long way off.
Just as she found a rhythm Max stopped and pulled her knickers down to her knees. This time there was no tenderness. He felt her flinch and before she could recover he brought the crop down again across her bare buttocks.
‘Ohhh…’ she wailed. ‘No, please… that hurt, that hurt.’
‘How many?’ he demanded.
‘S-seven,’ she sobbed, and he hit her again, her body twisting away. ‘Stand still and count, bitch,’ he growled.
‘Eight,’ she gasped. He could hear the tears in her voice but didn’t hold back.
‘Nine,’ she cried out and twisted away again, the weals rising white and then reddening on her creamy skin.
‘If you move again I will tie you down,’ he warned. ‘Perhaps I should tie you anyway…’
Maggie, bent over the chair, trembling furiously, said nothing.
‘Well?’ he said, drawing the loop of the crop across her legs, the merest touch enough to make her stiffen. ‘What do you say? Would you like me to tie you down?’
There was a heady silence, and then she said, ‘I don’t know.’
He smiled. ‘Come, come, my dear, isn’t that what you’ve always dreamed of, to be tied and beaten and used for some faceless man’s demands? To be fucked, to suck cock until your mouth fills with spunk, to feel him fucking your cunt, and your arse…?’
Her reply was a muffled sob.
‘Well, I am that man, Maggie.’ And as he spoke he hit her again.
‘Ten!’ she cried, her whole frame quivering.
He slipped his free hand between the cheeks of her bottom. Her sex opened like a flower to him and he pressed two fingers deep inside her. She offered no resistance, and as he pulled back he smeared the juice from her sex over the tight little rosebud of her bottom. He felt her tense as he stroked it, and then let his finger move to rub down over the hood of her clit. She let out a little sob of pleasure and he pressed a little harder, dipping back into her sex to lubricate his caress.
‘Halfway, Maggie,’ he said. ‘Well, would you like me to stop?’ Silence fell and he felt Maggie wrestling with all the fears and doubts she’d ever had.
After a few moments she said, ‘No, master,’ in a weak voice, and Max smiled knowingly. He let his hand drop away from the wet confines of her quim and brought back the crop, cracking it across her vulnerable buttocks again. She cried out once more, but this time they both knew something had subtly changed.
‘Eleven,’ she hissed.
At fifteen he stopped again to caress her beaten bottom. Sixteen and seventeen were relatively gentle, allowing her to settle, the rhythm of the strokes he knew was oddly comforting, and then for the last three he struck hard and fast, the count of twenty lost in a tearful scream.
As soon as he was done he stepped closer to comfort her, touching her face and hair, wet with tears. And then he placed the whip by her cheek. ‘It’s customary for a slave to thank her master for her punishment and kiss the instrument of her pain.’ At once he saw the flash of indignation in her eyes, and smiled; oh yes, Maggie Howard was going to be a real challenge and a real delight.
Slowly, very slowly she looked up at him, her face alight with countless contradictory emotions. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, and pressed a fleeting kiss to the punishing leather.
He very delicately drew the loop of the crop across her chin. ‘Master,’ he prompted.
She bit her lip and then let her gaze fall, cheeks flushed. ‘Thank you… master,’ she said humbly.
‘Now, stand up,’ he went on, and she obeyed, then as he turned to refill her champagne glass she moved to pull up her knickers.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he barked.
‘Getting dressed,’ she said, bent over, frozen in the movement.
‘Did I tell you to cover yourself up?’
‘No, but I thought?’
‘No nothing, stay as you are. While you are here with me you are mine. You do as I say; you do not act upon some whim of your own. Do you understand me?’
She nodded.
‘Now strip completely.’
‘Strip?’ she echoed.
He nodded. ‘And from now on you will not speak unless I ask you a direct question.’
Very slowly, reluctantly, almost as if her hands belonged to someone else, he watched as Maggie began to unfasten the buttons of her blouse, pulling it back off her shoulders. Beneath was a white lace bra, exquisite against her smooth skin. Next she unfastened her skirt and let it slither to the floor. With her knickers around her knees, Max could see she had done exactly as ordered and neatly trimmed her pubic hair.
She hesitated and looked up at him, eyes full of appeal.
‘And the rest,’ he insisted, waving a hand towards her.
She unfastened her bra to expose her breasts, the nipples erect, before bending to slip off her panties, suspender and stockings.
Totally naked her eyes filled with tears. She looked so vulnerable standing before him. Max indicated she should turn around, and she did. Her backside was beautifully striped with red weals that were already turning to a delicate shade of purple.
As she turned full circle he handed her the champagne. ‘You are very beautiful,’ he said.
She blushed and he slipped a hand down between her legs to feel the wet contours of her sex. ‘Do you expect me to fuck you today?’ he asked.
Her eyes widened. ‘I don’t know, master,’ she said, her brain and tongue struggling to express what she expected.
‘There are so many things you don’t know, aren’t there, little one?’ He lifted a hand to cup her breasts, fingers pinching the puckered nipples. She winced, and he pondered with relish just how much more she would wince when he clamped them. From a pocket he took a silk scarf and carefully lifting her hair, he blindfolded her.
Plunged into darkness Maggie stiffened with apprehension. She waited for what seemed like an eternity, aware of Max moving, picking out a sound on the edge of her hearing, and realised with horror it sounded like metal on metal. Max Jordan took her wrists one at a time and she gasped as she felt cold metal snap shut around them. This was crazy. What was she doing there?