Sixteen of the Best

by Sarah Veitch

  Tonight, he leaves me there for an hour, through the sudden, brief downpour that soaks my clothes and makes them cling to my skin. Before he goes, he slides his hands under my skirt, up my thighs and pulls my knickers up high, pulls the back of them into the crack of my buttocks, like a thong.

  He says, 'You'll never learn to be obedient, will you?' and kisses me passionately.

  Alone, I breathe the night in deeply, rain and all, waiting. I'm on two planes. On one level, the night, rain and all, is still warm, full of rich air and quiet. It's good, after the bustle of the city, just to breathe and be, to be made to accept some quiet time doing nothing else; nothing else but wait... On the other level, even though I know that for the space of a heartbeat now and then I'll wish he wasn't hurting me, the anticipation of the whip, the pain, the punishment is almost unbearable. My nipples press against the rain-wet tee-shirt, my pelvis moves in spasms against the cunt-wet knickers. They aren't comfortable and I'm stretched so high I can't really adjust them by wiggling; when I try, all I do is tighten the pressure somehow, until the material is rubbing hard between my buttocks, making my anus sore.

  Raise a glass to pain, discomfort and the paradoxically liberating thrill of being bound awaiting punishment.

  When he comes back he's carrying something. He puts it down on the ground before he comes over and strokes my damp hair, kisses me, calls me his lover. I've never known anyone whose kisses are so horny. After a while, he gently pulls my tee-shirt out of my skirt and rolls it up slowly over my stomach and breasts, over my shoulders and my arms. He settles it comfortably across my eyes, carefully adjusting it to make sure it won't fall over my nose and mouth. Then he undoes the bow of my skirt and takes it off. I feel the washing-line move as he drops the skirt on it. He pulls my knickers up tighter, a little roughly, exposing maximum skin; when I cry out, he brushes his hand gently over my mouth to quiet me.

  He moves in front of me and runs his hands over my face and neck. He cups my breasts, rolls the nipples between thumb and finger. It's all so slow and gentle, so horny, that my breath catches in my throat.

  He says softly, 'Now, let's deal with dinner. I asked for fish with new potatoes and green beans, and you cooked beef and pasta, with salad. How many disobedience points is that?'

  I go through the figures again in my head, although I already know the answer; I knew it when I planned the meal. There's a sliding scale; he's been adding to it for years. I calculate every stroke of my disobedience. It's a little like counting calories, though more dangerous, more of a gamble and far more fun: place, time, means and method are all up to him, and hand action isn't counted so I never know entirely what I'll get. Beyond the catering, I am never involved in planning for the weekend, and there may be other whippings; but disobedience à la carte is shared, a constant ritual.

  I say steadily, 'Thirty, I think,' and he kisses me again and says, 'Thirty-five: red wine not white.'

  He moves away from me. I hear a rustle of clothing as he bends down.

  'Thirty-five, then,' he says.

  'Yes,' I say.

  He says, 'When will you learn to be obedient?' and gently smoothes the whip he's chosen for tonight over my breasts. I recognise its caress: a stiff, leather strap, some four inches wide. Even though I'm expecting it, the first stroke of the cold leather, little more than a tap, makes me jump. I concentrate on the place where the leather landed: it feels wonderful, a promise of things to come. My legs go weak and adrenaline prickles through me in a hot wave.

  He uses each of his whips differently: with this one, he never does more than five strokes on a breast without a break and there's a good pause between each stroke. Tonight, he works quickly, the strokes steadily increasing in force. The pain makes my blood pound in my ears, and I can feel pulses ticking frantically in my wrists and groin.

  With the tee-shirt acting as blindfold, I'm focused on the sound, which is what he intends. The sounds of sadism are so horny: the silence before the stroke, the swish of expectation, the smack of contact, the silence settling again, these are at once terrifying and intoxicating: for him, too, he once told me during our early negotiations. 'I love the sounds you make when I punish you,' he said. 'When you breathe, when you whimper, sigh, cry out. Most of all,' he said, 'I love the way you want more, I love the way you wrap your arms around me when I'm through, I love the way you still love me.'

  Five and five. He kisses me and runs his hands over my stinging breasts, feeling the heat he's raised, pinching the hardness of my nipples. He slaps each breast once, twice, then runs a hand over the skin, bends his face to mine and thrusts his tongue between my lips. He slides his hand lower, over my stomach, over my pubis, between my thighs. He pushes my legs apart and smacks my crotch, once, twice and a third time for luck. I gasp into his mouth.

  He steps behind me. He strokes my neck and back with the strap, smoothing it downwards to my buttocks. There's a pause, then he seizes my hips and pulls me round slightly, positioning me so my back arches more and my bottom is pushed out towards him.

  'How many more?' he asks.

  'Twenty-five.'

  He begins with five on my back; that's not his main area of interest, nor mine either, but it's a useful place to get rid of the odd numbers and to prepare me for what's to come. Then he settles in for the main course, slapping the strap across each buttock in turn again and again, harder and harder, the leather growing warmer and warmer. With his strap he makes me focus, purges the worries and the irritations of the week out of me until nothing, nothing exists except pain and strap and skin, and the sounds of disobedience punished.

  'Thirty-five,' he says at last. He drops the strap, holds me close against him and slides his hand through the slit of my skirt. Neatly negotiating the knickers, he thrusts two fingers firmly into my cunt. I gasp and twist against the restraint of the washing-line, trying to spread my legs wider, pushing against him as he works his fingers in and out, rubbing his thumb against my wetness and sliding it over my clitoris. After a while I go a little dizzy, as I always do when I come standing up, and he swallows my cries in his mouth. He holds me gently through the sharp sweetness of my orgasm until I begin to breathe deeply again.

  When I'm done he unties my wrists, rubs them, kisses them. He picks me up and carries me to the house, to his room, to his bed. He takes off my shoes and my knickers. He massages me gently with lotion over my breasts and back and buttocks, pausing every so often to kiss my mouth or some patch of skin that appeals. Then we make love.

  Tomorrow and Sunday we'll continue the cycle of pain and pleasure, pleasure and pain. Alone on Monday night, I'll spend time with the mirror, being close to him: the marks on my skin help me bear the separation, I can see his love. By midweek, unless he uses a harder whip, the marks will have faded, leaving my skin a blank slate ready for Friday, ready for him to write a new chapter about disobedience and its consequences.

  Next weekend is his birthday. I've worked out a real treat for him: grilled salmon with lemon and cream sauce.

  He's asked for roast beef with all the trimmings. Roast beef, twenty; yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and gravy, ten each; runner beans, five; horseradish sauce, five. Sixty points. If I change the dessert, I could bring it to seventy-five.

  When will I learn to be obedient? Never while disobedience makes me feel like this.

  And I'll spend the week wondering which whip he'll use.

  Disobedience, Passion and the Unjust Whip

  J.D. Jensen

  'WHAT name have you, slave-girl?' the inquisitor asked casually. Yet the way he looked at her suggested that his interest lay not in her name, but rather in beholding her youthful beauty.

  The girl was kneeling there before them. She had wide, innocent eyes that seemed to occupy much of her pretty face.

  There was a momentary hesitation, and then a timid voice replied.

  'Aquistana.'

  'Aquistana? Is this not a name which suggests obedience?'

  The girl was at onc
e confused. Instead of keeping her eyes demurely downcast, she looked up almost defiantly at her inquisitor. He sat in the centre of the panel, a grey-bearded old man on his left and a stern-faced woman on his right.

  'Answer me, girl! Or is it that you know your own name is one that shames you?'

  Aquistana opened her mouth to speak, but no words came. She only lowered her head, looking down at the mosaic tiles on the floor beneath her. The single robe they had given her hung limply from her slender shoulders, scarcely covering the opening between the rises of her breasts.

  The three panel members exchanged stern glances. Then the inquisitor said:

  'You are sent here because you do not please your master. You are insolent and disobedient. How do you reply to that, Aquistana?'

  'I... I... know not what to...'

  She could not finish, her words coming hesitantly, and not as she wanted them to come.

  'So, here then we finally have a slave who denies not the truth of her master's deposition.' The inquisitor gave a mocking little laugh, leaning forward on his seat, peering closer at her.

  'A slave who admits her failings is perhaps halfway towards redemption. Yet, I see no contrition... neither in your face, nor in your demeanour. Although you kneel there before us, the haughty manner of your kneeling lacks servility or contrition. But are we perhaps mistaken with our judgement? That is, after all, what we are here for... to adjudicate between master and slave... before we decide a fitting punishment. Have you nothing to say for yourself, Aquistana?'

  There was much she wanted to say, but she only murmured in a small voice, not understanding how her demeanour displeased the inquisitor. 'No, sir. Nothing... nothing that would matter.'

  'Nothing that would matter?' he echoed. 'Then you admit your master's allegations?'

  Again she could not answer, only giving a tiny shake of her head. The inquisitor sighed, shrugging. He looked at his fellow panel members, then waved his hand curtly at the two guards standing behind the girl.

  'Strip her.'

  Immediately the guards came up close. One of them bent down, quickly grasping the loose folds around the neck of her garment. Then with a single powerful flourish he ripped it from her shoulders with such force that she lost her balance, needing to steady herself, her knees scrambling awkwardly to regain her posture.

  There was silence in the chamber. The panel members only looked at her critically in her abject nakedness. Yet, all the same there was perhaps a measure of admiration in their eyes. Her frame was sleek and well-sculpted, the youthful covering of muscle and sinew smoothly rippling beneath her lightly-tanned skin. Her limbs were gracefully long and slender, and the twin peaks of her breasts were like firm little hillocks, proudly moulded and without the slightest droop in the pert angle of their repose. And her hair was like a goddess's... a shining mass that was swept back as if defiantly behind her dainty little ears, held in place by a cheap clasp of bone.

  Once having regained her kneeling stance, she placed her hands as though protectively over her breasts. Her body seemed to clench itself inwards, as if to curl herself into a ball of modesty. She squeezed her legs together more, closing the crease between the little twinned rises of her pubis. Such crude disrobing had been shocking to her, and the humiliation made her face burn hotly. But she knew there was nothing she could do to entirely conceal her intimate places... not from the impure gaze of the onlookers.

  'Ah! So, you have shame in your nakedness, yet no shame in your disobedience?' the inquisitor challenged her sneeringly. But still the girl did not reply, her eyes downcast.

  'Put your arms down by your sides and sit straight on your knees. Lift yourself so that we should see all of you.'

  There was a hint of irritation in his tone, his eyes seeming to bore into her... and between the slender fingers that pathetically cupped the neat roundels of her orbs and her nipples.

  Slowly the girl did as she was told, a slight tremor to her body. She raised herself, stretching her neck out so that her angular jawbone was thrust forward almost proudly. Only then did she remove her hands from her breasts and put them by her sides, nevertheless daring herself to look up at the panel, feeling as if she were being defiled by their very scrutiny of her brazen nakedness.

  For a moment there was silence. Then the inquisitor demanded:

  'When did your master last whip you?'

  So direct was the question that she could scarcely avoid answering it. For a moment it seemed as if she were thinking of when that last whipping must have been. Yet the inquisitor had observed no marks upon her anywhere. Her satin-like skin was unblemished, no faintly lingering telltale traces of lines upon her shoulders or buttocks.

  Then, at last she answered in a clear crisp voice: 'My master does not whip me...'

  Her words hung in the renewed silence. Then the inquisitor got up from his seat and strode over to where she knelt, slowly circling her, all the while his curious eyes examining her, perhaps looking for conflicting evidence, seeking out her lies.

  Her back was so straight and erect now that he delighted at the way the small knuckles of her spine stood out so starkly. He marvelled at the trim narrowness of her waist, noting the way her hips swept out widely and curvaceously, each sphere resting so prettily on her feet.

  'Then if he uses not a whip, he uses a cane on your rump?'

  'He... he does not cane me.'

  Clearly these were words he did not want to hear. He was standing right behind her now, looking down upon her. For a moment he pondered her answer. Then slyly, as if he might have discovered her half-lie, he ventured:

  'Then he uses leather thongs on your rump! Or perhaps he flays you between your legs... just where the twinned rise of your coupling-entrance comes.'

  She shook her head.

  'Raise yourself onto your haunches and let me see.'

  With that he placed the toe of his velvet slipper between the scarps of her buttocks and levered her upwards with his foot, lifting her, fascinated at how the lean muscles of her upper legs tensed and rippled at such irreverent movement.

  'Open your legs out,' he instructed. 'No... remain kneeling there upright... knees spread. More!'

  He bent lower, peering first under her bottom. Then he leant right over her shoulder, looking down between her breasts and in front to where the V crease of her open thighs was exposed for his inspection. But it was clear his curious eyes found no fading telltale residues of black welts anywhere. The inquisitor was confounded. Never before had he examined any slaves that had been sent here without finding the welts and bruising of the aftermath of their masters' anger and frustration. Yet here, on this beautiful creature, there was not a single mark upon her flesh. Like some exotic bird her plumage was the very essence of perfection... just as if the gods themselves had created her.

  Now, with a knowing little smile coming to the corners of his lips, he nodded, wisdom as if having given him the explanation. He said mockingly:

  'Ah, no, Aquistana... your master is more discerning, I think. Not for him the crude use of whip or cane or thongs... or the marks they make upon his property. He enjoys punishing the inner perfection of your body.'

  He bent over her again, his mouth close to her ear, speaking in an exaggerated whisper.

  'He BOLTS you each time you show your disobedience! Is this not so, girl? Speak!'

  She was confused again. What word was this? What punishment did he mean... that perhaps her master beat her with an iron bolt? She recoiled at the idea, denying it hotly.

  'No, sir. He hits me not with an iron bolt. Not with anything.'

  The inquisitor's eyes narrowed dangerously.

  'What insolence do you talk now, girl? I said nothing of being beaten with iron!'

  'I... I know not what you mean...'

  But at that moment the inquisitor put his toe into the valley of her rump, and then pushed her viciously forward.

  'Down! Insolent girl. Get down on your hands and knees. More! Bend down low and thru
st yourself back at me.'

  Reeling with shock and humiliation she quickly arranged herself in this new debasing posture. So tense was every fibre of her body that it seemed her spine would arch until it broke, and so taut were her leg muscles as she tried to hold her thighs aloft in the way he had commanded.

  Now squatting down behind her, a withering scowl upon his face, he placed one hand on each of her buttocks and prised them apart, exerting pressure to widen the gulf. Then he peered deep into the shaded cleft. It was the small round extremity of her velvety puckered sump that his eyes focused upon. For several seconds they dwelt there, seeking out the evidence he wanted to find. But there were no signs of any forced expansion of her passage, neither any soreness there, nor any such other indication of a recent bolting there. The girl trembled all the while, he feeling it through his fingers as they continued to hold her cheeks apart.

  He peered in closer. Then another idea came to him and he released her.

  'Bend lower. Spread your legs more.'

  She could scarcely go lower, but desperately she tried to arch her body more acutely, making her rump push upwards towards him so as to accommodate his impure inspection. She was like a puppy-dog now, with its hindquarters up in the air, front paws on the ground. Her nipples icily touched the mosaic pattern of the cold floor, and the tremor to her legs was as if she had been seized by the ague of some deadly sickness.

  Now the inquisitor squatted down behind her again. His face was so near to the taut cleft of her rump that she could feel his breath upon her skin. Yet, despite her anguish she resolutely kept her head raised up and angled forward, not even glancing backwards at him out of the corners of her eyes. She was conscious of how he peered deeply into her, such that it seemed as if the focus of his impure gaze would pierce beyond the very portals of her femininity.