by Sarah Steel
She squirmed as if she hated feeling his dominant fingertip against her naked skin.
After bringing the vellum up to his lips to kiss it, the parson ordered the red-bottomed girl to kneel on the floor alongside her bed.
‘For prayer, sir?’ she asked faintly.
He shook his head and offered her the vellum strap. ‘Take it.’
‘Sir?’ she repeated, even as she obeyed him and knelt beside the bed holding the accursed bookmark.
‘The devil,’ he grunted, pointing down at the junction of her thighs where her pubic coils glistened. ‘The devil tempts idle hands, Judith,’ he rasped hoarsely, his voice thickened by his mounting arousal. ‘The remedy is pain. The devil must be punished and your idle hands kept busy. Punish the devil, girl. Punish the devil.’ Snatching the strap from her trembling fingers, the parson swiped it down, aiming the flickering tongue of supple hide between her parted thighs.
The penitent young woman tossed her head back and screamed as the lash burned her wet cunny.
‘Take it, Judith. Take the strap and punish the devil. Drive sin out of your venal flesh, girl. Let me see your hands busy at their work.’
Snivelling, she accepted the strap and raised it until it fell back across her left shoulder. She flinched, causing her linen shift to loosen and slip down to her thighs, shielding her cunny from the lash.
‘One moment,’ he said, bending to pluck at the hem of her thin garment. Straightening up again, he peeled the linen away from her kneeling body, once more revealing her crimsoned cheeks and glistening pussy. She raised her arms as the shift was pulled free from her shoulders, and her naked breasts bobbed invitingly in their sudden freedom.
The sight of her naked bosom, the nipples thick and proud, provoked the parson into a paroxysm of righteous fury. ‘Drive Lucifer from thine flesh, whore!’ he shouted. ‘Lash Satan!’
Judith, her thighs parted, her ankles supporting her scorched buttocks, whipped the firm vellum down against the base of her belly. The edge of the supple hide stung her cunny and she screamed again, jerking forward and thrusting her naked breasts out in wanton abandon.
‘Lash!’ came the cruel command.
Dazedly, the young woman whipped the vellum directly down over her vulva again and again, screeching and rocking on her heels as her maidenhead seethed.
‘Lash Satan!’ he repeated, noting that the tip of the vellum, flickering up and away from the punished cunny, was stained dark with the wetness of the kneeling girl’s sinfulness. ‘Lash!’
Judith moaned as she obeyed him, and unbuckling his moleskin breeches, the parson sank to his knees behind her. Clutching at her abandoned shift he covered his erect member with the rasping linen and grunted, whilst unbidden by her stern chastiser, she continued snapping the vellum strap down between her thighs, until she suddenly collapsed on the floor, her body convulsing in the throes of a searing climax.
Behind her, clutching the linen around his gnarled length, the parson cried out aloud to Beelzebub as his pulsing release soaked the lovely penitent’s shift.
Hanging suspended from the game pole down in the cool pantry, the parson twisted like a crow on a gibbet. Beside him, the brace of woodcock bagged earlier that afternoon spindled slowly from their single chain, tiny drops of scarlet dripping from their gaping beaks. He jerked against his chains, causing other specimens of well-hung game to stir as if coming alive again.
‘Be still, good sir. The Sabbath tide is over by some hours, but you have yet to be shriven of thy sins.’
‘Purge me with punishments,’ he whispered thickly, eyes glinting as if with greed.
‘I will purge thee, sir. Pray tell me of your sins.’
‘I confess all. I espied the girl’s privy parts when punishing her and—’
‘The girl, sir?’ the housekeeper demanded. ‘Tell me,’ she quizzed sharply, ‘which girl?’
‘The youngest.’
‘Miss Edwina, sir?’ she pressed, studying the tip of the cane she gripped tightly in her strong right hand. ‘You speak of Miss Edwina?’
The parson’s moleskin trousers, unbuttoned and dragged down, bound him at the ankles. ‘Yes, Edwina. As I chastised her, I saw that which is damnation to behold.’
Behind him, Miss Strappleton palmed her free hand down across her pubic mound, and shivered. Her hand paused at her secret flesh, paused, cupped and squeezed as the bamboo cane in her right hand rose and quivered. ‘Tell me, dear sir, what was the nature of your sin, exactly?’
‘As I chastised the girl, my flesh grew hot and hard.’ Stepping back briskly, the housekeeper brought the bamboo cane swiftly and sharply down across his buttocks. The parson gasped and threshed helplessly in his bondage, rattling the chain noisily and causing the woodcock beside him to dance. ‘Purify me through pain,’ he pleaded.
‘You can depend upon it, sir. I mean to do just that.’
‘Beat me,’ he begged. ‘Rule me with thy rod of righteousness.’
‘In truth, good sir,’ Miss Strappleton purred, kissing the tip of her cane before sucking hard on the shaft, ‘I will be your confessor for the Sabbath. For is it not written that the confessor must be made to speak out his sins? Must not the shriver of sins himself be shriven?’
‘I confess…’
‘Yes?’ Her voice was urgent.
He spilled forth his sins, admitting to lewd thoughts and licentiousness at the punishment of Edwina.
‘Confess all, sir,’ the housekeeper urged whilst dominantly caressing the crowns of his caned cheeks.
The parson freely confessed to enjoying the forbidden pleasures of the spanked girl riding his manhood as she writhed across his lap, and of glimpsing her tiny rosebud deep between her chastised cheeks.
‘The jewel of Sodom, you say?’ The cane hung interrogatively in the air above his naked buttocks. ‘You spied her jewel of Sodom?’
‘Verily, I spied her jewel of—’
Swish! The cane cut viciously down again and the parson screeched. ‘Silence, sir. You must suffer your penance in silence. No more noise, sir, or I will lash you until cock-rise.’
Slumping in the chains the parson twisted and spindled helplessly, his stretched arms and caned buttocks burning.
‘And what of Miss Rebecca? Did her punishment bring about an occasion for sin, sir?’
‘Yes, I own that it did.’
The stern housekeeper took a couple of paces back and positioned herself squarely behind her bound captive, and levelling the cane at his bottom cheeks, she slowly brought the tip of the quivering bamboo to his tightened cleft. Smiling as she heard his grunt of surprise, she probed the clenched, striped buttocks. ‘Confess,’ she commanded.
Tumbling over his hurried words as the tip of the cane annoyed his sphincter, the parson freely confessed to all that had passed through his feverish mind and aroused flesh during the disciplining of Rebecca.
Swish! The sinister whisper of the bamboo broke the silence four more times in swift succession, and four fresh scarlet welts slowly faded to a pale blue tint of pain in the flickering light of the tapers.
‘And Judith, sir? What have you to tell me of the chastisement of the eldest girl, hmm?’
The parson remained silent, bowing his head in blushing shame, while standing behind him, the cane resting against her right shoulder, the housekeeper perused the beaten parson. ‘Nothing to confess, sir?’
He remained silent.
‘It were better to tell me, sir. I cannot abide the silence of a liar, nor can my cane.’ Her eyes narrowed as she watched his whipped cheeks clench in mounting dread. Lowering the length of whippy wood down to his thighs once more, she inserted the cane between them to tease, tap and torment his hot sac.
‘Satan’s stones, sir,’ she hissed.
He convulsed in his bondage.
‘Did not the chastisement of th
e little whore cause you to spill your seed of shame, sir?’
‘You saw?’ he croaked, his parched lips working anxiously.
She tapped the cane upwards, churning his balls. ‘I see everything, sir. No keyhole in this house is blind to me. You know that full well, sir. It is my duty to kneel and spy, sir.’
He trembled, discovered in his sin. ‘Yes,’ he confessed hoarsely, ‘I confess. I did spill my seed.’
‘So be it,’ she responded sternly, her voice potent with menace. ‘It shall be six strokes for you, sir. Six strokes from the stick of sorrow that stingeth like a serpent and biteth like an adder.’
Swish, swipe! Swish, swipe! Six times the glinting wood lashed down across his defenceless buttocks. Six times Miss Strappleton grunted with exertion. Six times the chain rattled as the whipped parson jerked in anguish.
‘And have you no more sins to speak of, sir?’ Her words were mumbled indistinctly as she sucked hard on the tip of the cane. ‘No more to confess to me?’
‘No, no more,’ he managed to reply through clenched teeth. ‘Free me now and set me down to kneel at thy feet where I may repent my—’
‘Hypocrite,’ she snapped. ‘You, sir, will remain in your chains until I have heard your full confession. Heard your full confession, sir, and dispensed fitting punishment and pain.’
‘But I – I,’ he stammered, his voice rising in alarm, ‘I have naught to—’
‘Silence, sir. Think well before you speak and then tell me of your wickedness. Or must my cane beat out both your confession and your penance?’
His eyes dulled with fear and perplexity, and twisting his head around to face her, he spoke rapidly. ‘There is no more, I swear.’
‘Liar,’ she snarled. ‘You dare to lie to me, sir?’
‘Good Mistress Strappleton,’ he pleaded, his eyes wide with terror.
‘Be quiet.’ She fished out a roll of parchment from the pocket of his jacket, hanging limply from a pantry meat hook. ‘These words will silence thee for my rod.’ Thrusting the rolled up copy of last Sabbath’s sermon, delivered to deserted pews, between his teeth, the housekeeper rendered the parson silent. Then dropping the cane onto the tiled pantry floor, she circled his waist with her strong, punishing arm – the arm that had wielded the whippy wood – and hugged him to her bosom. ‘Remember, sir, I see all that passes in this household. And so now I will tell you of your sin, sir. And when we are both agreed you did indeed commit this sin, I will pick up my cane and use it fiercely, sir, most fiercely, until I see you spill again your seed of shame.’ She grimaced as he jerked in his helpless bondage and her firm embrace. ‘It was last Thursday evening, sir, a little before supper, the night I served up beef and dumplings. Did you not entertain a visitor, sir?’
Gagged and mute, the parson could not even grunt his protestations.
‘Was it not the apothecary’s sister from Spixby Magna, sir, Miss Catchpole?’ She felt him twist as he writhed within her strict embrace. Releasing him, she positioned herself at his striped buttocks and caressed them slowly, and then allowing her straightened index finger to penetrate between the cheeks and torment the dark cleft with her fingernail. ‘In the parlour you two were, sir. I was watching you.’
His hot cheeks tightened, trapping her fingertip as she drove it deeply into the wet warmth of his anus. ‘She had come for her music lesson. Learning to finger the hautboy, was she not?’
Pinioned by her firm finger, the parson squirmed.
‘I spied upon you, sir, as music is well known to be an occasion for sin. I saw the instrument pass from your mouth into hers. Wet from your lips, it was, sir, all wet and shiny.’ Her other hand slid in between his thighs and cradled his sac. ‘Straight it went to her eager tongue.’ She squeezed.
The parson threshed in his chains. He spat out the roll of parchment from his mouth and begged the housekeeper not to beat him again.
She scooped up the sermon and read the opening words aloud. ‘Let the rogue feel the rod and the lecher fear the lash,’ she intoned. ‘Fine words, sir. Now, will you not eat them?’
She forced the rolled up scroll firmly back into the parson’s mouth, and he bit down into it, his spittle making the ink blotch and smudge.
‘It was sinful, sir, you and the apothecary’s sister. Susan Catchpole is a Jezebel and I must save you from her. It is a kindness I do thee, parson, a kindness. And afterwards, I will serve thee a handsome game pie and a glass of good claret to help you heal. But it was sinful, sir, thy wet lips and Susan Catchpole’s eager tongue. The devil’s music was being played betwixt you both, sir, and now you must pay full penance.’
Biting down hard into the choking parchment, the parson tried in vain to blink away the beads of sweat scalding his eyes. The queer note of jealousy in his housekeeper’s voice was curdling into the crooning of one quite mad, of one driven insane by jealously. The realisation of his helplessness before her unbridled fury burned deeply in his brain and he began shivering. Then, as his body trembled to the sound of her snatching up the cane from the tiled floor, he began to pass water, and the steaming urine scalded him much more fiercely than the sweat of fear in his eyes.
‘Jezebel,’ she whispered.
The madness in her voice sent more steaming urine spurting from him, splashing and soaking the curled feathers of the brace of woodcock beside him on the gibbet. As the last golden dribble sparkled in the dancing light of the guttering tapers, a cold thrill of terror crept down his spine that quickly melted into a nameless dread in the heat of his caned cheeks.
She thrashed him savagely, loud in her prayer as she striped him remorselessly. Like his fowling piece earlier that Sabbath afternoon, his manhood cocked and rose. Stiff and straight he was fully primed. The discharge was imminent. Then a final vicious stroke of the evil cane exploded across his blazing buttocks and he squeezed his thighs together tightly.
Dropping the cane and unbuttoning the shirt over her bosom, the housekeeper flung herself upon his groin, cradling his stiff shaft between her full breasts. Gripping his whipped cheeks with her hands she dug her nails into the flesh she had just lashed, and caught the parson’s penance as it spurted into her deep and welcoming cleavage.
Star Struck
The gaggle of chorus girls poised for their sensual interpretation of Scheherazade trod the carpet with shiny stiletto heels. James saw pale hands reach up to creamy breasts as the dancing girls thumbed their bobbling bosoms into the half-cups of red velvet bustiers. Silver feathers, rising provocatively from pert bottoms, quivered expectantly. James noticed the trembling hands furtively reaching down to pluck where seamed fishnets severely divided tender bottom cheeks.
The producer had vanished earlier. Front of House was in charge behind the scenes, and assorted flunkeys were scuttling up and down the warren of backstage corridors like midnight mice before the shadow of a sharp-clawed tabby. Any minute now…
‘Fifteen seconds,’ Front-of-House mumbled into his throat mike.
The dancing girls stiffened, thighs pressed together, fishnet-meshed buttocks clenched.
On stage, the Berlioz overture to King Lear announced the diva’s departure. James nodded. A cunning exit, he thought, very stylish. The music had a brooding resonance that would leave the audience hungry for more after the departing singer’s final bow. She was a clever little bitch.
‘Five seconds. Places, everybody.’
The chorus line trotted down the corridor, soft bottoms joggling. James watched the last silver tail-feather glint and disappear. He was three feet from the diva’s dressing room door. Two feet. His hand touched the white handle and depressed it. Nobody challenged. He felt the door give.
He had thought of a false press pass. Too risky.
Or acquiring a monkey jacket and a bunch of white roses. Too obvious.
So settling for a brown overcoat, bucket, mop and rubber gloves, he made it in
to the darkness of her dressing room. In all the glitz and glamour, he’d rightly calculated, nobody had eyes for a mere cleaner.
She burst imperiously into her dressing room moments later. He peeped out from behind a hastily drawn blue curtain as she strutted around the room, her fists clenched, taut as a harp string, the sequins on her fish-tail gown glinting like flashbulbs at a Three Tenors’ photo call. Fitted tightly at her waist and bottom, the dress accentuated her firmly fleshed, superbly rounded buttocks. James felt his throat tighten.
The dresser entered breathlessly, mumbling apologies. The diva was brisk with her, barking orders in a dismissive, domineering tone. The dresser started snivelling. In the end, weeping copiously, she was ordered from the room. Peeled out of the tight fitting gown, the diva strode around dressed in nothing but a peach-coloured thong and a rope of pearls. Locking the dressing room door, she walked to the desk.
‘No interruptions for the next hour,’ James heard her snap into the intercom. ‘And get me another dresser, understand?’
James peeped out at the near-naked icon. She had achieved success through much sweat and tears – other people’s sweat and tears. He closed his eyes, savouring the moment, the moment that had taken five long years to come. He opened his eyes. He must time this perfectly. Nothing must go wrong. After five long years, he could wait five short minutes. He peered through the slightly parted blue curtain.
Prising open a bottle of champagne, the diva poured herself a frosted glassful, drank it in one swallow, and then refilled the glass. Sprawling elegantly across a beige sofa, she nursed the moisture-beaded green bottle to her bosom. James saw the pink nipples darken slightly as they prinked and peaked at the kiss of the cold glass. He took a deep, silent breath and perused her intensely, taking in the supreme contempt in the proud arch of her neck and the delicious swell of her naked bosom, an imperial, proud bosom still heaving slightly after the two hour concert. Rigorous exercises and controlled breathing techniques had given her a very flat stomach, but he noticed with a flicker of malice in his eyes that her hips were broader than the fish-tailed gown suggested, and her buttocks, pressed heavily down against the sofa, bulged slightly. His eyes narrowed as they drank in the shadowed flesh between her parted thighs. The peach-coloured thong bit softly into her pubic mound and the line of her labia was perfectly pronounced. Fat sex lips, and moist, too. Worked herself up during Turandot, no doubt. He swallowed hard. His tongue was thick and his mouth dry. His gaze lingered on where the thong just managed to cover her pussy. Then he saw; saw and grinned. He saw that the peach-coloured strip failed to conceal stray dark wisps of pubic hair; dark wisps of coiled fuzz that belied the blonde mane flowing over a crimson cushion above. The unnatural blonde was talking into her mobile phone now, and James listened carefully.