by Emily Tilton
* * *
“You girls are, in some very important ways, adults,” Mrs. Kimball began the hastily called two-household meeting in the Woods’ living room, as if to confirm what the girls had discussed among themselves. “But you are not the sort of adult, right now anyway, that you see on TV. Because of your special status as wards of Selecta and your residence here on Oak Street, you don’t have the same freedoms adults usually have.”
Mr. Wood put in, “In some important ways, your legal status here is still that of minors. Your mommies and daddies get to make some vital decisions for you.”
The girls stood, literally on the carpet, in the center of the spacious room. Their mommies and daddies sat on two couches, on either side of them. Wendy supposed that she had heard all this before—especially before her daddy spanked her for the first time, eighteen months or so before. It sounded very different now, though, somehow: now that she and her friends had been caught playing with their panties down, all this information seemed to have a good deal more to it.
What did it mean to have vital decisions made for her by the Kimballs? Wendy didn’t like getting spanked, obviously, but she hadn’t minded living here in a nice house, learning the proper conduct for a young woman in the world of prosperity represented by her mommy and daddy, and by Oak Street itself. She did get a little bored, she guessed, but she had Frankie and Ginnie and Heather—and Tricia and Luisa and Renee and Delia, too. Even Mary, though right now Wendy didn’t feel especially keen on Mary.
They didn’t go out drinking or anything, the way Wendy knew other girls of their age did, and their parties probably would look to those other girls like something from a 1950s TV show, but she hadn’t missed the wild side of life at all. They got all the first-run movies before too much time had passed—and, besides, TV shows were so much better than movies these days. Even Mommy and Daddy said so.
Mrs. Kimball continued. “That’s right. And because of what happened today in the pool house, it’s time for us to make some of those vital decisions right now.”
“Please,” Mary said, so bravely that Wendy couldn’t stop her heart from going out to her, and almost forgiving her, “it was my fault. Don’t spank Frankie and Wendy. I wanted… I mean, I just… I was just… curious.” Her face had gone bright red, and she was looking at her daddy’s tennis shoes.
Mr. Wood spoke again. “I’m glad you can admit that, honey, but Frankie and Wendy must have been curious, too. Frankie, did Mary force you to take your clothes off?”
“No,” Frankie mumbled, her own cheeks very pink.
“Wendy?” Mr. Kimball asked. “Did Mary take your bathing suit off for you?”
“Not all the way, but…” Wendy hadn’t meant to put it that way, but she was so scared of getting another hair-brushing that something in her—something frightened and still indignant at Mary’s tempting them into trouble—did want to blame Mary for this as much as possible.
“Mary?” asked Mrs. Wood sharply. “Did you pull down Wendy’s bathing suit?”
Mary gave a little sob. “I’m sorry. I… I don’t know. I mean… I was just curious!”
“Curiosity is a fine and important thing, sweetheart,” said Mrs. Kimball. They did talk a lot in their school lessons about how people needed to be curious about the world around them—Wendy thought that must be why Mary had fixed on the idea as a kind of excuse.
“But,” said Mr. Wood firmly, “this particular kind of curiosity needs to be satisfied in specific ways, honey. Here on Oak Street, your mommy and your daddy get to decide how that happens.”
Mary looked up into her daddy’s face. Wendy found herself turning to her own daddy, wondering exactly what Mr. Wood had meant. Frankie, too, had lifted her eyes to look at Mr. Wood.
“How?” Mary asked in a tiny voice. “How does it happen?”
Mr. Wood looked around the room at the other guardians. “Tom? Wilma? What do you think?” He turned to Mrs. Wood. “What about you, Laura?”
Wendy’s daddy said, “I don’t think we have a choice, do we? I think these girls have shown that they need special lessons.”
Wendy felt her jaw drop.
“What are special lessons?” Frankie whispered.
“Mary,” said Mrs. Wood. “Go get into your PJs. The first thing that’s going to happen now is your punishment for starting the naughtiness in the pool house. Your daddy is going to whip you here in front of your friends.”
Mary turned to Mr. Wood. “Please, Daddy, no! Not here! Up in my room! Please?”
But her daddy’s face had a stern expression upon it that made her step back a little. Wendy’s heart raced as Mr. Wood rose from the couch, his hands at the big buckle of his jeans belt.
“Mary, I can start your whipping right now, and then finish it when you come down here like a good girl.” He reached out to take her by the arm, but she shrank back. The look on her face struck Wendy as so terribly ambiguous that she did forgive Mary everything, then. That same strange, scary, almost-delicious ambiguity seemed to well up in Wendy’s own heart, and to reach further down, too, in a way that made her face hot.
“I’ll go!” Mary cried, turning to run up the stairs.
Wendy’s attention was turned from watching Mary’s departure by her mommy’s voice. “Wendy and Frankie, you girls have been here on Oak Street for longer than Mary has, and you’re a little older, too. You’ll probably have an easier time getting used to your special lessons than Mary will. I know you feel like she got you into trouble, but I hope you’ll forgive her, and help her get used to what’s going to happen to the three of you now.”
“Why?” Wendy asked, growing more alarmed by the minute. “What’s going to happen?”
“We’ll talk about it after Mary gets back.”
The silence seemed to stretch on forever, but Mary returned at last in pink-striped pajamas, her face a little tearstained but that same ambiguous look in her eyes.
“The girls get punished in their PJs,” Mrs. Wood said by way of explanation.
“It’s usually over my knee,” her husband added. “But we’re going to do it differently today, honey. Frankie, go get one of the dining-room chairs, please.”
Mary’s face showed confusion and anxiety as Frankie obeyed, bringing a high-backed wooden chair with a red cushioned seat.
“Put it right in the middle of the room, honey,” Mr. Wood said. “Right there. Thank you.”
Frankie’s expression, her lip caught between her teeth and her fair brow creased, seemed to show exactly the same confusion Wendy felt.
“Now, Mary. Over the chair for your whipping.”
The blonde girl, so adorable in her pajamas, seemed frozen in place. She looked at her daddy with wide, frightened eyes. Mr. Wood stepped forward, no longer seeming angry, perhaps because Mary had come down like a good girl, just as he had specified. Again she quailed back a little, but she let him take her by the upper arm and guide her to the chair.
Wendy couldn’t suppress a little whimper deep in her throat as Mary’s daddy laid her over the chair. She closed her eyes, hoping somehow that it would ensure that no one paid attention to her uncontrollable reaction to the sight of her friend being prepared for punishment, being made to take hold of the chair legs, made to raise her still-pajama-covered bottom.
She glanced over to Frankie, hoping to see in her best friend’s eyes the same struggle Wendy felt inside. To her relief, but also a little to her distress because of what happened between her thighs at the sight, Frankie looked straight back with what Wendy felt sure was the mirror image of her own face: lips drawn into a line, brows knit.
Well, Mary had wanted to see their bottoms, hadn’t she? Why should Wendy feel bad when her pussy clenched at the sight of Mr. Wood pulling down Mary’s panties along with the cute pajamas? At the sound of Mary’s little cry of fear and shame when her daddy bared her backside for punishment?
Chapter Six
“Everything’s checking out,” Paul said. Jane could see for
herself the truth of the statement from the data-crawl on the three monitors showing different angles on the living room of 10 Oak Street, but the lead assessor’s job included such proactive updates in case his colleagues’ attention had been focused elsewhere.
There was a good deal on which to focus, certainly. Three Oak Street girls, each progressing at her own rate into a full awareness of her submissive sexuality. Each needing—from the Institute perspective—careful attention to determine when the time had come to flag her on the Institute’s darknet as ‘For Sale at Auction.’
Mary Wood, against all expectation and really even against the course of action laid down in the Oak Street master plan, might be the first. Jane’s money still sat on Wendy, though. While Frankie’s response to discovering the copy of Best Friends concealed in her daddy’s desk had been strong, bringing her arousal as high as seven as she blushingly read it, she hadn’t shown signs of spontaneously pleasuring herself in reaction. Wendy, reading Best Friends in Frankie’s room, had gone to nine, with her hand drifting down the front of her skirt as she and her best friend sat on the bed, passing the book back and forth.
The summary of Wendy’s time on Oak Street, too, held notes of five interventions to keep her from masturbating—only three of them after spankings. The other two, Serena thought, could be tied to TV shows or movies she had watched that evening, which featured dominant male characters. By contrast, Frankie only had two interventions on her record.
Mary, of course, had tallied three interventions in the six months she had lived on Oak Street—less than a third of the time the other girls had had.
On the monitors, Wendy had reached out to Frankie to take her hand as Fred Wood unfastened his belt and pulled it out of its loops, doubling it and wrapping it around his fist with practiced skill.
The arousal numbers flickered up and down, but held in the ranges where Paul, Serena, and the rest of the assessors gathered in the control room for this very important moment, wanted them.
Wendy: 8
Frankie: 6
Mary: 10
“Fred,” Paul said, speaking to the man with the belt through the comm device implanted in his ear. “I want you to see if you can ratchet up Mary’s arousal one click. She’s on the verge of a recalibration.”
Fred gave no indication of course, on the monitors, of having heard the assessor—nor did the other three guardians, who could also hear Paul’s request. But he said, “Bottom higher, Mary,” and he reinforced his words by taking hold of the girl’s slim hips to adjust her over the chair, moving her backside firmly up and down a little. The motion, Jane could see, was well designed to bring Mary’s now pantyless clit against the cushioned edge of the chair.
Mary gave a whimpering cry.
“That’s it,” Paul said. “Thanks.”
The ten flashed: Mary had just experienced more arousal than she had ever known before.
Wendy: 10
Frankie: 7
“Look at their hands,” Serena said, zooming one of the monitors in on the clasping of Wendy’s fingers with Frankie’s. “Wendy’s holding on for dear life.”
“She’s trying not to touch herself,” Jane said. “Wow.”
“Hold on tight to the chair, Mary,” Fred said. “No hands, or you’ll get extra from the belt.”
It was Frankie’s turn to give a little whimper, clearly audible to the mics, though in the Woods’ living room no one but Wendy took notice of it. Wendy turned to her best friend only for the briefest of moments though, her mouth a little open and her breathing, according to the data-crawl, clocking in at twice its normal pace.
“Wendy, watch closely, please,” Tom Kimball said, unnecessarily but to great effect, as seen in the increased tightening of Wendy’s fingers on Frankie’s and, yes, her other hand starting to drift toward the front of her bathing suit. “I’ve never used the belt on you, but if this behavior continues, I won’t hesitate, and it’ll be you over a chair next time.”
“Yes, sir,” Wendy whispered, her eyes not moving from where Fred had lifted the belt high, her left hand resting atop the middle of her thigh where the black fabric of the swimsuit arched along the crease of her pubic triangle.
“Wet spot,” Serena said with some satisfaction. It was hard to see even with the zoom, on the black material, but with the help of the hygrometer between Wendy’s legs there was no doubt that the shadow on the image, which Serena now helpfully outlined in yellow, was an authentic wet spot. “Wilma, be ready to notice it, when Fred is done with Mary.”
This advice to Wendy’s mommy overlapped with the beginning of Mary’s whipping. The younger girl yelped as the belt snapped down across both her pert cheeks. Her ten flashed again with the stimulation, but then quickly receded under the influence of Fred’s very severe style. Little cries of discomfort turned to screams and sobs and pleas for just a moment’s respite, all falling on ears that certainly weren’t deaf—you could have cut the arousal both in the living room and in the control room with a knife—but might as well have been deaf for all the aid Mary’s distress brought to her young bottom and trim thighs.
Frankie hovered at eight, jumping to nine once when Mary squirmed desperately and had to be told to stay in place for the end of her whipping, but then receding to eight. She definitely wouldn’t be the first to step onto the auction block. Wendy stayed at ten, with one recalibration, the whole time. The wet spot grew more obvious, and twice—so obviously that Serena didn’t even have to announce it—she shifted her weight, bending her knees, in an obvious attempt to assuage the burning warmth between her legs. When Fred at last told Mary she could get up and go stand in the corner with her pajamas and panties still down, Wendy had caught her lower lip in her teeth so firmly that Jane wondered if she would draw blood.
“Frankie,” said Fred, then, surprising the two unpunished girls with his sudden address to them. “Go ahead and take off your shorts and your t-shirt, please. You may leave your panties on.”
Frankie’s jaw dropped, and her eyes went wide as saucers. She clearly wanted to say something in protest, but the words apparently wouldn’t form.
“Wendy,” Wilma said into the silence, “come here, please.”
Wendy turned to her mommy, looking quite puzzled. Mary, in the corner, turned her head over her shoulder to see what was happening. All three girls clearly wondered whether the special lessons were about to begin. Oh, yes, Jane thought. Yes, girls. They have.
“Nose against the wall, Mary,” Fred said sternly. The youngest of the three turned her tearstained visage back. Her arousal had soared again, to nine. The pain of her red-streaked backside was clearly working its way forward as arousal, just as it should.
“Laura,” Serena said over the comm channel, “why don’t you go ahead and push things along here?”
Instantly Frankie and Mary’s mommy said, “Girls, because of what we found you doing, we’re going to have to take steps that will ensure you get what you need. Wendy’s mommy is going to inspect her, and I’m going to inspect Frankie. Frankie, do as your father said: strip down to your panties, please. Wendy, go over to your mommy, now.”
“Inspect?” Frankie whispered, looking wildly around the room as if to see whether any further information could be found on the faces of the guardians.
Wilma said, “From now on, girls, you will all have regular inspections of your private parts, to make certain you are behaving yourself. Wendy, no more delaying. Come over here and stand in front of me.” She spread her knees where she sat, smoothing her red skirt modestly down, so that Wendy could bring herself closer and stand with her knees against the couch and her mommy’s face only a few inches away from her pussy.
Wendy clearly saw precisely what this stance would do, and how it would reveal to her mommy how wet she had gotten during Mary’s punishment. She shook her head.
Tom sighed, quite theatrically, and rose to come fetch her. Wendy looked up at him with alarm in her eyes, but when he put his arm around her shoulders
to urge her forward toward Wilma, Wendy allowed it. Her eyes seemed a little dazed now, as if she couldn’t figure out whether she was awake.
“Thanks, Tom,” Serena said. “Nicely done.” Wendy’s arousal had dropped for a moment to seven, but now it went up again to nine.
Paul said, “Fred, go ahead and force the issue with Frankie. We want the inspections to be simultaneous.”
“Frankie, honey,” Fred said, very sternly now. “I don’t want to have to whip you again. Take off your clothes and go over to your mommy, just like Wendy is with hers.”
Frankie gave a little cry, and started to fumble with the waistband of her shorts.
Jane noticed something. “Look at Mary,” she said. The younger Wood girl had begun to rub her bottom. Her arousal jumped to ten.
Charlotte, who had kept silent in her place at the upper console through the whole scene, clicked the switch in front of her that connected her to the comm channel. “Fred, my gut says Mary is going to start playing with herself. Don’t stop her from rubbing—everyone just pretend you don’t notice. We’ll let you know, but if she does, bring her over and have her do it in front of everyone.”
And that’s why she’s the dean, Jane thought with admiration. Taking a possible distraction and making it a key moment in the development of the scene: brilliant.
Wilma waited for Frankie to strip down to her polka-dot panties and scoot over to Laura so that both young women stood in front of their mommies. Wendy and Frankie wore practically identical expressions of shame, arousal, and alarm.
“Young lady,” Wilma said in a softer, but more admonishing tone of voice than she had used, as if both confiding and warning her naughty ward, “is this a wet spot on your bathing suit?”
Wendy emitted a whimpery sob. She closed her eyes and shook her head slowly from side to side, but she made no answer.