The Red Collection

by Portia Da Costa

  Without being asked, Maggie stepped forward to take the unwanted dress from Caroline. She gave her a nervous smile, but her eyes were brilliant and eager. Caroline saw Allen give his wife a nod of approval, and then the younger man’s eyes re-focused on the centre of attention. She could almost feel his hot gaze stripping the delicate lingerie from her body.

  ‘Now, your bra, my dear,’ continued Jonathan, in a tone that was both arch and conversational, ‘Peel down the straps, then get your tits out of the cups so we can see them.’ She knew he was being crude to enhance the drama, for effect. Normally he was the most refined and respectful of men.

  Caroline obeyed him, longing to fondle her own nipples in the process, but managing to control herself. There was a special sweetness in denial that made her sex throb.

  ‘Now the tights and knickers … Just to the knees, I think.’

  Demon!

  Fumbling with her undies and hosiery, Caroline wanted to crawl on her knees and kiss her husband’s feet. He knew how her submissive side thrilled when she was hobbled this way; that was why he insisted on tights for her instead of stockings and suspenders, the more obviously sexy choice. This arrangement accentuated her bottom too; her best feature in both her and Jonathan’s opinion.

  ‘Now, Allen, would you like to help me choose an implement? Maggie, you can do me a favour and check what’s going on between my dear wife’s sluttish thighs … And you, my dear, turn and face the wall, spread your legs a little so she can reach you, then don’t speak a word or move a muscle.’ The orders were quiet, but they were still orders. Her Master’s dictates.

  It was difficult to obey them, though, especially when Maggie’s gentle, tentative finger slipped between her sex-lips. Caroline was grateful she couldn’t see the others’ faces; see the way they would be looking at her bare bottom, and her thighs. Jonathan was right about her being sluttish, and the admiration in their eyes would only make her want to show off even more, wriggling and testing the limits of the pushed-down knickers stretched between her knees, behaving like a trollop. The urge to move, and to moan, was almost irresistible, especially when Maggie whispered ‘sorry’ and began to rub her. The men were murmuring over Jonathan’s collection of punishment implements now – his most prized items that he kept discreetly tucked away in the bottom drawer of the china cabinet – and might not have been able to hear her, but Caroline still kept as quiet as she could. Her Master had spoken and for now his word was her law.

  ‘You might caress her bottom a little too, Maggie,’ said Jonathan casually, not interrupting his selection process. ‘Test the texture of the skin there. Be gentle … She might appreciate the memory of that later.’

  Caroline closed her eyes. There was a sensation of the ground giving way beneath her, and she fought to brace her legs and not crumple. Maggie’s fingers were sticky against the bare skin of her buttocks, and their touch there was more exciting, in a way, than being masturbated.

  ‘You’re enjoying this too much, my dear,’ said Jonathan in her ear, and Caroline did sway then. She’d been so out of it, so lost in the waiting, that she hadn’t heard him move. ‘Don’t you worry. We’ll soon put a stop to that.’ She felt him take Maggie by the wrist and lead her away.

  The delay after that seemed interminable. Caroline was anxious to proceed; hungry to begin. She wanted the process to be over too, for the pleasures afterwards, but somehow, also, she didn’t. The rewards could be heavenly, but the process had its own perverse charms. She almost fainted when Jonathan spoke again.

  ‘Now then, my sweet little show-off, let’s have you over the table. You know the drill.’ His voice lowered and became sterner, but paradoxically he also sounded proud. ‘And with as much grace as you can, Caroline. I don’t want our guests to feel cheated.’

  Hardly daring to breathe, hardly daring to think how she might get through this with any kind of equilibrium, Caroline draped her body against the damask of the table cloth. The figured cloth was cool and tickly against her nipples, and the hard wood of the table’s edge pressured her crotch.

  ‘Keep still, Caroline,’ her husband ordered softly. ‘You will be moved by one of us, if necessary.’

  Caroline bit her lip, wanting to groan with desire but knowing she mustn’t.

  ‘Allen, perhaps you’d like to arrange her?’ he added after a moment. ‘Legs more open, I think. As much as the elastic allows … It’d be nice to have more access to the inside of her thighs.’

  Strange hands, wider and warmer than her husband’s, settled upon her, and the fact that they were shaking was a comfort. Allen and Maggie were as apprehensive and excited as she was. This was a whole new world to them, a new dimension of experience and opportunity. She felt Allen palpate her slightly, then slyly finger her anus in the course of his adjustments. Ah hah, he was clearly just as precocious, and as much a natural, as his wife.

  ‘Now then, you two, why not take up a position behind me?’ suggested Jonathan, and Caroline heard the creak of leather, and a swish, as he tested the implement. ‘That way you can see everything. Every stroke. Every wriggle. The way the redness blooms … Caroline’s skin always marks beautifully.’

  There was the sound of shuffling, and an intake of breath. Jonathan had shown Maggie the implement now – that was certain.

  ‘Yes, Maggie, it’s a leather strap. I’m going to spank my wife with a leather strap as a chastisement for her shortcomings.’

  ‘Will it hurt m-much?’ Maggie stammered, and her soft, fearful voice made Caroline want to leap up and cover her new friend’s face with kisses. What a sweetie she was.

  ‘Of course it will hurt!’ Jonathan laughed merrily and there was the sound of the strap being hefted – very lightly – against his own hand. ‘It’ll hurt a great deal. It’ll be agonising and humiliating. There wouldn’t be much point to the exercise otherwise, would there? I can see that Allen has a huge amount to teach you, my dear.’ The sound of steps came now; he was getting into position. ‘Now come, let’s not waste any more time. Caroline?’ His attention had at last focused solely on his purpose. Upon her, his bared and penitent wife. ‘Do you understand why I have to do this?’

  She nodded, almost choking with anticipation, capsizing with love and lust.

  ‘Are you going to be a good girl? And take your medicine quietly and with modesty? No throwing yourself about. No shrieking. No clasping yourself, no touching and no rubbing?’

  She nodded again, the very words, the very reminders, already making the sins themselves more infinitely desirable.

  ‘I mean anywhere.’ His voice was controlled, yet silken with his own desire.

  Caroline nodded, her mind flooding with the sounds and sensations of last time. Her guttural grunting, so crude and animal; her burning thighs spread; her fingers jerking and jabbing; her red bottom waving like a monkey’s; Jonathan’s sudden, swift possession, his cock like an iron bar, thrusting inside her.

  Would she be allowed such a treat this time, in front of her friends? She didn’t think so, but it was too late to debate about it now. Too late to be scared of any possibility. Too late to do anything at all as the strap came whistling down.

  All she could do was whine and claw the table, her buttocks on their way to crimson fire …

  ‘I wasn’t a very good example, was I?’ Gripping herself just behind her knees, Caroline lifted her bottom a little way up off the mattress. The sheets were soft and cool, but even so, the site of Jonathan’s handiwork had far too much in common with the strawberries downstairs to press it against the cotton yet.

  ‘You were stunning, love. Magnificent,’ said her husband, rolling over beside her and looking down on her with a smile. ‘Utter perfection. Never better.’ He rested a finger against her left bottom cheek and made her gasp.

  ‘But, Jonny, I had three spontaneous orgasms while you were spanking me … Ah!’ She caught her breath again as the finger pressed, then moved. ‘And after that I climbed up on the table and brought myself off again
, even though it meant taking another twenty strokes. I thought we were supposed to be giving our friends a show of discipline … and grace under pressure?’

  ‘But it did hurt, didn’t it?’ Jonathan enquired, his finger still moving now, but not in a place that pained her. ‘It still hurts, doesn’t it?’

  Caroline nodded her head, and then thrashed it from side to side as the finger described a slow, sensual pumping action.

  ‘Well, that’s what matters then, isn’t it?’ he persisted gently, bringing his other hand into play, in a different place. ‘And there’s more than one way of expressing grace.’

  Caroline whimpered and squirmed, and grew incoherent, but a short while later, when she could speak again, she said, ‘Yes, love, you’re right. As ever …’

  ‘Of course I’m right,’ said Jonathan a little smugly, subsiding onto his back. ‘And if you’d been listening carefully for the last fifteen minutes you’d know how successful our little performance really was.’ He fell quite silent for a while to allow her to hear much better.

  Still holding her bottom and haunches up off the mattress, Caroline listened to the noises that were coming from their guest bedroom. They were excitingly graphic, and she’d never been more pleased that the walls were thin.

  Allen’s mock-stern voice. Little sobs and pleas from Maggie. Then the delicious tell-tale slaps of a hand meeting flesh – accompanied by the throaty squeals and gurgles of a happy female being punished. Shortly after came more cries – both male and female – and these were nothing at all to do with suffering.

  ‘Do you think it will really work for them?’ Jonathan asked, and Caroline felt him shift slightly beside her, almost as if he were feeling a bit uncomfortable himself … in a certain way.

  ‘Yes. I’m convinced of it,’ said Caroline firmly, smiling to herself. ‘They’ll be much happier now. Allen’s getting to assert his dominant side … and Maggie’s getting her just desserts. Exactly how she wants them. We’ll have to invite them to a Waverley fetish night next. I think they’ll love it!’

  Jonathan laughed. ‘Absolutely, and speaking of desserts, I could really fancy some “afters” now myself,’ he murmured, still moving a little. ‘And I don’t mean your strawberry shortcake, either.’

  Caroline looked down the bed – and caught sight of her own most favourite ‘dessert’ in the entire world.

  ‘You’re a greedy man, Jonny, but I love you,’ she said, and the flaming state of her bottom only made things all the sweeter as she swung her body up from the bed, and then straddled her beloved husband for a long, happy ride.

  And for tomorrow’s breakfast there would be strawberry shortcake to share.

  A Study in Scarlet

  UH-OH, I’M GOING to end up in The Study for this.

  Joanna Darrell ran her finger over the carefully prepared report on her Master’s pet project, Côte Mystère, his beautiful vineyard in the south-west of France. Most of the data within it was beyond reproach, faultlessly compiled, but someone in her section – Financial Analysis – had transposed a figure, it seemed, and the latest set of profit projections were miles out.

  Someone had made a mistake, and that someone was her.

  Distracted, she pressed her hand to her chest. Her heart was banging like a drum. In the normal course of events, something like this would have been no big deal. She would have corrected it, redrafted the report, and that would have been that. But this was not the normal course of events. There was no such thing now. Now, the most important part of her life was a tapestry of abnormal events, all stitched together by anticipation. It only took one slip to set the strangeness in motion.

  Given the vineyard’s significance, both to her and her Master, she couldn’t understand how she’d made the error in the first place, other than her subconscious had made it on purpose … to initiate a response. They didn’t really need a starting point, but sometimes, just for form’s sake, she created one. And his terse memo had been alive with a secret glee.

  Re the discrepancy in the Côte Mystère figures. Kindly see me at the usual place and time. I think you know what to expect.

  The text was unsigned and ‘sender undisclosed’, but she had no need to ask who the scant message was from or what the usual place was. No one else would dare to send such a message. She was one of the company’s senior analysts and a stockholder in her own right. She moved in the highest circles, and only her Master could summon her to The Study.

  Considering her assumed obedience, Joanna continued to stare at the glassy screen of her smartphone, and faced the same ambivalence she always did at these times. She was being tugged in two different directions by the two different sides of her nature. Sides so mutually exclusive it almost amounted to being two different women. One part of her was independent, confident, brazen, even; while the other one was pliant, submissive and biddable. Her Master’s perfect slave. It always amazed her that she revelled in being both. Especially when she was across her Master’s knee. Being spanked, or played with somehow.

  And it would be a spanking, at the very least. Either that, or the crop or the lash. It might be a combination of several devices, even; her Master was nothing if not inventive. He was greedy sometimes too. He had human faults, for all she almost worshipped him. He seemed to flourish on her tears and entreaties, and grow ever sterner the more she fought and struggled. She remembered the last time he’d corrected her – for arrogantly interrupting him at a forward planning meeting. The resulting session had begun with a warming up – five minutes of light, whippy strokes with a white plastic ruler – then progressed to a formal six cuts with his favourite rattan cane. She’d been feeling particularly vulnerable that night, a little fractious and inclined to whinge; and when she’d wriggled too much, over the end of his desk, then clasped her buttocks before being given permission to, he’d doubled the amount of cane strokes to a dozen, and turned a cool, indifferent face to her protests.

  She studied the memo again. It was impersonal, mechanical, produced by cool, indifferent pixels. But she liked it that way. And she liked him to be the same. The thought of his calm, unyielding manner made her quiver and feel red hot. Her thighs were so tense they were almost twitching, and inside her silk briefs, her slim lace-trimmed slip and her pencil skirt, her bottom seemed sensitised already. It was as if the very skin and musculature of each smooth, rounded lobe was anticipating the kiss of retribution. The pain. Her nerves were running test patterns, making sure that every synapse would fire perfectly when, later, the important messages were being passed.

  Imagining herself bared for discipline, she felt her face and throat colour rosy pink, and she looked up, around the open-plan office, wondering if anybody else could possibly imagine what would soon be happening. There were others in the company who shared her predilection, but it was bad form to speak of it openly. The secret nature of a punishment was sacrosanct; it belonged to a higher, more rarefied continuum than that of money and everyday dealings. And yet still her curiosity piqued her. There might be untold others who’d be sobbing and crying tonight.

  For instance, that young secretary over there could well have misspelt an important client’s name. For that she might have her panties removed, and her no doubt very slim and well-toned bottom paddled severely for her sins. Come to think of it, the girl did look a little edgy; her face was flushed, her eyes excited. How embarrassed she would be to know that Joanna was au fait with her plight.

  But no matter what happened to her sister in distress, it was Joanna’s own near future that bothered her. She shifted in her seat, feeling her sensitivity changing into discomfort as the familiar heaviness began to mass between her legs. The waiting period always found her in this delicious, embarrassing, love-it, loath-it state. Her bra suddenly felt a size too tight, and she bit her lip, knowing her knickers were getting soaked.

  ‘A problem with Côte Mystère, is there?’ enquired an amused voice from just beside her, and she looked up, flinching wildly, to see Kevin –
who was always there to tease – right in her personal space. He was fond of sneaking up like that, and her embarrassment doubled as she met her colleague’s stunning eyes; eyes that were a brilliant, merry sky-blue, and which sparkled from beneath a thick, boyish fringe of smoke-blond hair.

  ‘Nothing I can’t handle,’ Joanna countered smoothly, closing the memo. Those eyes of his might be full of fun, but they were sharp. She was sure he’d seen the text.

  ‘Sure of that, are you?’ he said, challenging her as ever. He licked his lips, as if he could see straight through her clothing to the condition of her body. As if he could see into her mind and see what she was anticipating. As if he could see her stretched and humbled across the desk, her knickers pulled down and her bottom about to be rendered scarlet.

  Hiding her discomfiture, Joanna kept her voice crisp, and replied, ‘Quite sure, thank you,’ then turned her attention studiously to the demands of her laptop. As Kevin moved away, she tried not to hear his mocking laugh.

  As her Master would expect the amended report to be presented to him at the same time she presented her body, Joanna spent the rest of the day polishing and perfecting it. Or at least the confident, business-like half of her did, while the submissive dreamer simply longed for her fate. At lunch time, she forewent the usual pub lunch with her fellow analysts and managers, fearing that her ungovernable agitation would give her away – especially to eyes as perceptive as Kevin’s.

  Instead, she went into a neighbouring shopping mall and wandered around aimlessly, imagining, just as she had in the office, that the people who caught sight of her could see her future in The Study.

  On passing a small boutique, though, she became more purposeful. Aware of what her high excitement had done to her lingerie, she entered the shop intending to purchase a simple change of knickers. The selection on sale, however, was extensive, and just looking at them, and running her fingers over silk and satin and lace, Joanna couldn’t keep herself from imagining how they would feel against her bottom. This pair of fairly plain white cotton briefs with a thin trim of lace around the legs would certainly please her Master. She pictured him running his hand across them as she lay face down over his lap; testing the resilience of her flesh through the thin fabric; assessing possible targets for his hand, perhaps trying a few practice slaps before drawing the panties down.