The next pair that caught her eye were far more elaborate. A deep yet subtle burgundy red, more lace than substance, these briefs were very brief indeed. The sort of knickers her Master often left on her during chastisement. He would take hold of the back of them, and with a deft twist, draw them up tightly into the furrow between her buttocks, while he belaboured her cheeks with his hand or with a slipper. This particular trick Joanna regarded as truly devilish – because every well-aimed blow caused the taut fabric to jerk against her sex. After a dozen spanks, she was helpless, she was coming.
Another pair of knickers, of fuller cut this time, reminded Joanna of a caning she’d taken early in their relationship. She had presented herself wearing something very similar to these pants – a pair of French drawers made of heavy coral-coloured satin. Scared of what lay ahead of her, she had knelt before her Master and abjectly begged him to let her keep her knickers on. She remembered her Master’s thin, sardonic smile as he’d agreed to her request; then she remembered her own yowl of pain when she’d discovered that the satin made no difference whatsoever, and that for her impudence, she’d been awarded extra strokes.
Returning to the present, she made her choices – not without some difficulty, and a great deal of expense – and found herself more wound up and full of anticipation than ever, and in great need of one of the garments she’d just bought.
The afternoon seemed even longer than the morning that had preceded it, and Joanna’s thoughts were constantly with her Master … in The Study. By the end of the office day, she felt so hot and bothered and in such a stupor of anticipation that she had to retire to the lady’s cloakroom, and run cold water over her wrists to calm her nerves. She would also have liked to bathe, and to refresh herself in other ways, but to do so would be to keep her Master waiting, so she simply changed her knickers, combed her hair, and made her way to him. To his secret penthouse in a prestigious building nearby.
As she ascended in the mirror-lined lift, she studied her reflection – the face and body of a woman heading for punishment. Beneath her soft crop of blonde curls, her face was radiant, her eyes were bright and her cheeks were blushing. Even though she was shaking in her high heels, she stood straight – as her Master always insisted. Her figure was lush and shapely in her tailored pin-stripe power suit, and her legs were long and sleek in charcoal-grey stockings.
By the time she reached the top floor, and the lift doors slid open, her heart was pounding fit to burst inside her chest. She was almost fainting as she crossed the stark white elegance of the lobby, and as she pressed the doorbell, and waited to be admitted, she seemed to float. It was as if she had passed through a discreet barrier of some kind, and was now in the world that lay beyond it. A bright new world where different laws applied.
Her Master, ever mindful of life’s small courtesies, met her at the door. His greeting was a narrow smile, and a soft, ‘Good evening, Joanna.’
Calming her palpitations, Joanna answered with a quick, ‘Good evening. I’ve brought the corrected report you asked for.’ She followed this with a respectful, ‘Sir,’ when she saw his expressive eyebrows lift. Another mistake, she thought, nerves jittering as he escorted her to his inner sanctum: his handsome, quiet, book-lined study – the richly warm, red-decorated room where her faults and errors were often paid for. She called it his Study in Scarlet, which was apt in more ways than one. His prized first editions of Sherlock Holmes took pride of place on the shelves.
Her Master was tall and his bearing confident as he strode before her along the corridor. He was dressed, as he often was on these occasions, in black: a polo-necked sweater and jeans with a heavy belt. His hair was neatly combed back, and it looked darker, as if he’d just showered and it was wet. His wire-rimmed spectacles gave his features a new and serious cast. Just the sight of him like this made Joanna’s knees go weak and wobbly. Which made standing, while he sat down in his huge, throne-like, red-leather-upholstered chair, her first ordeal.
‘You may raise your skirt.’
His order was all the more implacable for being delivered in an even, conversational tone. Feeling flustered at having to juggle with her bag and her briefcase as she tottered on her high heels, Joanna made a mess of obeying him. Abandoning her belongings on the plush carpet – as there was no one to take them from her – she squirmed her hips to get her narrow skirt and slip up over them, and the end result was an inelegant bundle of silk and linen wedged around her waist by its own tightness. Her Master eyed her momentarily, then held out his hand. Reaching down and fumbling in her briefcase, Joanna fished out a tablet computer loaded with the revised report.
As her Master sat behind his desk and read, flicking the pages with slow, languid strokes across the screen, Joanna was forced to simply stand, her pants and her stocking tops on show. After much debate, she had selected the white knickers, but looking down now, she discovered that the fabric was far sheerer than she’d realised. The dark blonde shadow of her bushy pubic floss was clearly visible through the thin pale cotton, and she knew that if he should choose to look up and glance her way, her Master would be able to see it.
The longer he read, the more nervy and unstable Joanna became. She felt as if she were teetering on the brink of doing something ridiculous and fool-hardy, and she discovered, to her surprise and horror, that her fingertips were touching the welts of her stockings. And stealing inwards. She gasped in shock when her Master suddenly spoke.
‘You’ll regret it, Joanna,’ he said without looking up.
Her heart thumping, she linked her fingers behind her back.
Mercifully, the Côte Mystère report did not take too much longer to read. Joanna had done her best to make it comprehensive, yet precise. Tapping the file shut, her Master laid aside the tablet and looked up at her, folding his long hands lightly on the desk before him. From behind his glasses, his sharp eyes appraised her.
‘Well done,’ he remarked, one finger stroking the edge of the tablet. ‘A pity though, that you could not have done this well first time around …’ He paused, a familiar expression coming into his eyes. A look that was both fierce and dreamy. ‘You could have saved yourself a great deal of suffering, Joanna.’
‘I know that,’ Joanna replied, experiencing her exposure and desire acutely. Both seemed to feed off the other, their fires stoked by a real and potent fear. She had a classic love – hate relationship with what was about to happen to her, just as she adored her Master, yet still bristled against his total control of her.
There was a long pause while her Master simply stared at her, his gaze intent on her suspenders and her knickers.
‘Lower your panties,’ he said suddenly, the light in his eyes, behind his glasses, unchanging. He rose from behind his desk, and as he did so, Joanna nervously hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her knickers, knowing that the deed must be done before he reached her. Quickly, she skinned down the thin white briefs as far as her knees, then left them there, bunched up, as he preferred. She wrinkled her nose as she caught the scent of her own arousal, rising up from her crotch, and from the anointed gusset of her underwear, then blushed hard as her Master reached her, smiling.
He walked around her, passing so close that their bodies briefly touched, then he stood behind her and settled his hands on her bottom. ‘Delightful,’ he murmured, flexing his cool fingers and caressing each lobe. ‘Simply delightful … ‘he repeated, lifting and parting them.
Joanna moaned and pushed her buttocks toward him.
‘Have a care, Joanna,’ he whispered, his mouth brushing the back of her neck while his hands oh-so-slowly manipulated her. ‘Remember why you’re here.’
Joanna hung her head, fighting her weakness, her burgeoning desire. Why wouldn’t he start? Begin her punishment? Tan her behind until she cried and begged for mercy?
As if he’d heard her plea, her Master suddenly released her. ‘Come along then,’ he said briskly, ‘Let’s have you across my knee … Hurry up!’ Stepping away, he d
rew out a tall, straight chair from against the wall where it had been standing, and sank down onto it with an easy, studied grace. Then he tapped his lap.
Joanna needed no further urging. Shuffling forward, hampered by her knickers, she moved towards him, then tipped over his dark-clad knees and struck her pose.
She always liked to savour this moment. It was like standing on a diving board, or in the open hatch of an aircraft wearing a parachute. Her Master understood about hesitation – he never felt it, but he knew she did. He allowed her these few seconds to explore her feelings, to change her mind if she needed to. She never had changed her mind – because she had never wanted to – but the chance was there, if ever she should need it.
The moments ticked by, and the opportunity to turn back was gone. She felt his hand settle on her bare bottom, testing her again, but more stringently this time, squeezing the flesh with his steely fingers and palpating it. One fingertip slid down along the division between her buttocks, then pressed at her tight rear closure – just for an instant, but so firmly it make her gasp.
Her Master answered the gasp with a sigh. An impatient sigh. Her involuntary exclamation was not a sign of acquiescence, and now she’d passed the point of no return, she was his and she must accept his every whim. Or at least try to.
‘Are you ready then?’ he enquired, still touching her.
‘Yes … Yes I am,’ she said quietly, suffering the delicious torment of his fingers in her sex-cleft.
‘Excellent,’ he said crisply, then began the spanking.
It hurt, and as ever Joanna had to concentrate intently to prevent herself crying out. Her Master’s hand seemed to have acquired a new and alien texture. It was no longer the gentle, soft-skinned hand that could caress her body so lovingly, but a new extremity that was as hard as stone and could move with blinding speed.
As the smacks built up, and the sensations of pain and heat grew rapidly in her buttocks, Joanna asked herself, as she always did, why she let this happen.
Why? she posed as her Master’s skilful hand kissed the crown of her right bottom-cheek, then matched it with a stinging impact to the left. He was creating a pattern now, a design of crimson soreness and susceptibility, a redness to match the aura of his beautiful room. The slaps went up and down, and from side to side over the whole area of her tautly toned backside. Occasionally, he would stray down to the upper area of her thighs – in the zone delineated by her stocking top and the crease where thigh and buttock met – and decorate her there with the same glowing ornament. It was an area where her skin seemed especially tender, and his attentions there made Joanna grit her teeth. Her cries and whimpers she still held back, but only barely.
Just with his hands, she thought, struggling for control, for lucidity as her pulsing, flaming rear consumed her senses. He’d hardly begun yet, and already her resolve was crumbling. And a groan escaped her when a deft spank caught her anus.
The fact that he’d invoked a cry clearly pleased her Master. He struck again at the same site. And again. Then repeatedly. Joanna heard an uncouth choking yelp, and knew it was coming from her own lips, but she was too consumed by the waves of feeling to suppress her noise. It seemed as if she had passed inside herself somehow, her whole consciousness was settled in the area of skin and flesh that lay beneath the volley of impacts. The rest of her body was operating on auto pilot. The mouth that cried and keened. The eyes that watered, and so shamingly wept. The legs that kicked. The sex that grew so puffy and engorged … and also wet.
‘Oh God,’ she moaned, feeling her Master perform a devilish trick. He had grasped one coral-pink buttock in his hand, the pressure of his fingertips a pain in itself, and was stretching open her anal cleft to create a target. Each blow now landed fair and square across the portal of her bottom, a zone where he knew she feared it most.
‘Agh!’ she yelped, her feet flailing through the air, as a sharper slap made her seething vulva quiver.
‘Not so stoic now, my love,’ whispered her Master, inclining his lithe body over hers. His lips moved gently against her ear as his fingers cruised her backside, stirring her anguish with the tips of his dragging nails. He paused again at the vent of her anus, prodding the inflamed little entrance in a vulgar rhythm. ‘You can’t help yourself at all now, can you?’ he quizzed her softly. ‘I hurt you … Hurt you right there –’ he pressed again, making her whimper ‘– and all it does is arouse you even more.’ The finger stopped pushing but remained exactly where it was.
Making a supreme effort, Joanna remained still, although every nerve in her was screaming that she move; that she grind her pelvis against his knee and immediately come. It seemed perverse to resist a climax, he’d made her suffer enough for it. Even with his only hand, he’d turned her buttocks into slabs of fire.
But there was a pride in her that still forced her to defy him. It always did. It was the wild and stubborn heart of her that was as dominant as he was, and which always brought her submissive side to grief. Closing in on herself, she ignored her dripping and swollen crotch. She ignored the agony that smouldered in her bottom cheeks. She ignored the delicate, invasive fingertip that sought to enter her rectum. She gritted her teeth, and raised her bottom, to invite him still more.
Her Master laughed. ‘It’s like that is it?’ he said, and though she couldn’t see it, she imagined his glacial eyes warming and dancing with amusement, and a smile spreading across his chiselled, handsome face. He loved her to fight him. He delighted in the defiance that gave him permission to test her limits. He pushed his finger a little way into her bottom, and, though it was just what she didn’t want to do, Joanna squealed. She heard him laugh again, but the finger was swiftly removed.
His hand touched her back, almost caressingly, as he spoke again. ‘It was such a little slip up, my darling. Just a figure transposed. Nothing really.’ He sounded amused, mock-regretful, profoundly happy. And so he should be, he’d got exactly what he wanted. ‘A hand spanking would have sufficed …’ He stroked her back encouragingly, through her jacket, seeming to ignore the crimson lobes that beckoned below. ‘But you leave me no choice now.’ His voice was jubilant, full of excitement, but strangely tender. ‘There’s no remorse in you yet, Joanna. No genuine regret over anything.’ He paused. For effect. She just knew it. ‘It will pain us both, but you clearly need a sterner test.’ He gave her a pat – on the bottom this time, which made her yap – then helped her, with some difficulty on her part, to get to her feet.
‘Please remove all your clothes, my dear,’ he said, leaving her swaying as he walked around to the back of his desk. ‘Every stitch.’ He opened a drawer, seemed to debate for a moment, then took out a thick leather strap about a foot in length. ‘But you may bring me your panties, because I’m sure we can put them to use.’ He ran a contemplative finger over the length of supple black hide in his hand, tracing its texture and the way it was divided into three equal tongues. ‘You’re likely to scream soon … and I can’t concentrate when the noise gets too loud.’
Oh God, thought Joanna as she undid the buttons of her jacket, her fingers trembling. Why do I always ask for this? she demanded of herself, stripping off her blouse and revealing her thin silk bra beneath. When her body was naked, she stood there defenceless, her knickers in her hand.
Because you love it, answered her submissive self as she walked towards the desk and prepared to lay herself over it. Because you love him, she thought, watching her Master’s long fingers caress the menacing black taws.
‘I hope there won’t be any more problems with Côte Mystère, my darling,’ said Joanna’s Master later, as she lay panting across his denim-clad knees in the scarlet study. She wasn’t face down this time, but the torment she felt now was as bad as a spanking – because his rough-textured jeans were harsh against her hot, punished rump.
The discomfort would have been less, she supposed, if she could have managed to keep still. But the way he was touching her – in the cleft between her legs – ke
pt her well-whipped cheeks in motion.
‘I’ll do my best,’ she gasped, ‘but I can’t make promises … Things … Agh! Oh God! Th-things happen …’
‘I know that,’ he said, kissing her throat as she climaxed. ‘But I want everything to be perfect next time we go to Côte Mystère. I’ve bought a new birching trestle. And I’ve put it in the south cellar. All ready for you.’
Joanna’s head felt as light as a feather set adrift on a stream. She was sore, terribly sore, but at the same time sublimely relaxed. Her bottom was in agony, but she was blissfully happy. She was deeply in love.
Her Master was obviously pleased with life too. He’d removed his glasses, and his bright, teasing eyes were now twinkling like stars. They were so blue, as Joanna looked up at them, so sweet and wise. She raised a hand and tousled his thick smoky hair, flicking it forward from its combed-back severity into his usual endearingly floppy fringe. He smiled, his expression indulgent as he let her have her way.
‘I love you, Master,’ she whispered, brushing her fingers over his brow, his elegant cheekbone, his firm, chiselled chin.
Beneath her touch, he shifted his face, then pressed his lips against her palm before he spoke. ‘I love you too, Joanna.’ He placed his hand over hers, caressing her gently with the same living weapon that had not long ago turned her bottom-flesh to flame. ‘But I’m just Kevin now … Just ordinary Kevin. Not your Master anymore.’
The Red Collection Page 24