Mal and O, in front of us, open the door. Lloyd removes my hand from his and takes hold of the leash. I am to walk behind him.
We process through the café, where bodies turn and eyes swivel to follow our progress. It feels unlike anything I’ve ever done before. I’m so used to displaying myself, yet I’ve never been put on display like this. My skin crawls, but at the same time, my cunt moistens, feeling puffy and heavy almost immediately. Lloyd’s arse looks fine in those leather trousers, so I concentrate only on its tight outline, swaying from side to side in front of me.
Down to the dungeon we go, down, down. The stairs are hard to negotiate in heels and Lloyd takes the descent considerately slowly. People mill in the flame-lit corridors. There are submissives kneeling at their master or mistress’s feet all over the place, even more so when we enter the dungeon.
A cross, a pillory and a spanking bench are all in use, small crowds and queues of people lining up to watch or wait their turn.
I peek from the corner of my eye at all the naked, willing flesh on show. At first, I’m drawn to their bottoms and thighs, their spread slits and marked skin, but after a while what I want to see is their faces. Twisted in pain, lips bitten, eyes popping desperately or screwed shut, none of them looks as if they’re enjoying the experience at all. There is none of the ‘ecstasy in agony’ one might expect. They look like I feel when Dr Lassiter or Lloyd is on the cruel end of the cane. True physical masochists are rare, I suppose.
But behind those tormented faces, inside their minds, there must be fierce efforts of self-control and dedication to their dom/mes going on. I think of what I get from a good whipping – the endorphins, the tumble into the luxurious embrace of submission, the sense of being dealt with and controlled and made use of and yet cared for all at once. Really, there is nothing like it.
The man at the cross is untied and released. Now he has the beatific expression, dropping to his feet and kissing his master’s boots. O steps up and stretches her limbs in the required X-shape while Mal ties the ropes.
At the pillory, they seem in no hurry to finish their exhibition. The dom has finished flagellating his submissive, but he is rubbing something on her bum cheeks that seems to be exacerbating the soreness, by the look on her face.
The domme at the spanking bench releases her male submissive and leads him away by means of a leash attached to a cock ring. He is fully hard, gasping for breath, and, as she yanks him past us, I admire the deep crimson shade of his paddled bottom.
I wait for him to be replaced, but then a tug at my leash makes me stumble and I realise that it’s my turn.
‘Now?’ I whisper as Lloyd takes hold of my upper arm and turns me to face the amused onlookers.
‘Speak when you’re spoken to,’ he mutters from the side of his mouth. ‘Unless it’s to safe-word.’ He raises his voice, addressing the crowd. It’s not enormous, as most people are interested to see what’s happening at the pillory. Nine or ten people give Lloyd their polite attention. ‘Masters, mistresses and their devoted submissives, I’d like to introduce you to Sophie. Before we start, there’s one thing you need to know about Sophie, and that’s that she’s a very, very bad girl.’
There is an amused ripple from the crowd. He puts his hand, which is now gloved in thin leather, underneath my lacy skirt, and rubs it up and down my arse.
‘Tell them, Sophie.’
His gloved finger draws a line up my crack, squiggling between my cheeks. My pussy gushes.
‘I’m a very, very bad girl,’ I falter.
‘And I think we all know what very, very bad girls get, don’t we?’ More chuckling. ‘What do you think, Sophie? Any ideas?’
My mouth is too dry to answer. I think my cunt has used up all the moisture in my body and there’s none left.
‘Hmm?’ He pats my bottom gently with his gloved hand, still expecting his answer.
‘Do they get spanked, sir?’ I finally manage.
He joins in with the general revelling in my humiliation that’s going on around the bench. ‘Do they, Sophie? Are you asking me? I thought I was asking you.’
His head is cocked to one side, his lips curled in amusement, his eyes gleaming with lustful purpose. I want to slap him and jump on him, both at once.
I take a deep breath and try to edit the natural sulky tone from my reply. ‘They get spanked, sir.’
He claps his hands, making my collar wobble as the leash swings between them. ‘That’s right. They do. Now, I’m going to throw this open to the audience. I’m going to ask them exactly what kind of spanking a very, very bad girl deserves. The answer I like best wins a prize.’
‘What’s the prize?’ asks a domme in a peaked leather cap.
‘The prize, ladies and gentlemen, is that you get to administer the whipping.’
I wheel around, stunned.
They like that. The laughter is more than a chuckle this time.
I open my mouth to form a word, but then I remember what he said. Only when spoken to, unless to safe-word. Of course, I could safe-word now, in theory.
But why would I? Lloyd is offering me the chance to take my thrashing from a practised, experienced top. In a way, he’s doing me a favour. And himself, of course – I suspect his offer is driven by the fear of wielding a less-than-steady hand under public scrutiny.
I have to hold my nerve, that’s all. I have to beat him at his own beating game.
I press my lips together and lift my chin, staring ahead at the crowd, daring them to think I’m scared.
‘Eyes down,’ he orders, and the accompanying pat on the bum is less gentle this time, though the gloves add an extra dimension of sensuality. ‘What am I bid?’
Some hands go up in the crowd, which is growing. The action at the pillory appears to have ended.
‘Three minutes with a flogger,’ somebody suggests.
‘The birch,’ says another. ‘Has she been birched before?’
‘No.’
‘Oh, then maybe not this time. She’s been caned?’
‘Yes.’
‘Six for a bad girl, twelve for a very bad girl.’
‘And for a very, very bad girl?’
‘Maybe eighteen. Has she taken that many before?’
‘No, twelve is the current record.’
‘What’s she like with a wooden paddle?’
‘Oh, she hates that! With a passion.’
‘I guess I’d recommend the wooden paddle then! Maybe twenty.’
‘I like the tawse,’ says the peak-capped domme. ‘Gorgeous impact on a round female bottom.’
‘I like it too,’ says Lloyd. ‘I’m giving you the prize.’
Ugh, the tawse, horrid. Better than the cane though, and the paddle, so I congratulate myself inwardly while the domme is being congratulated outwardly.
Until Lloyd speaks again. ‘OK, how I’m going to organise Sophie’s punishment is like this. I’m going to strap her to the bench and warm her up myself, using my hand and the wooden paddle.’
Oh, you bastard! How can a wooden paddle be considered a warm-up implement anyway? It’s a travesty.
‘When I think she’s done, I’ll hand over to you, ma’am, and this rather wonderful Lochgelly tawse here, and you can give her, let’s say, twelve of those. After that, well, we’ll play things by ear.’
Lloyd’s improvisational skills are altogether too good, and I assume that, by the time the whipping is over, he will be well over his nerves. Perhaps mine should start kicking in now.
He unclips the leash from my collar and stretches out an arm towards the spanking bench in silent command.
Its design makes it obvious how I am to position myself. I straddle with my knees on padded shelves, my stomach over a large bolster that lifts my bottom high. My wrists are cuffed together behind my back while my neck rests on another padded insert, keeping my face in full view of the crowd.
The lacy skirt is barely worthy of the name now. It slides frothily and independently towards my
lower back, baring my bottom in its corseted, suspendered frame to the view of the audience. Once I am secured, Lloyd moves the bench so that I am looking outwards at the crowd. Only by shutting my eyes can I avoid their gaze. On the other hand, they won’t see my bottom and my widespread pussy lips.
Except they will, because Lloyd invites a select group behind me, promising to change the aspect later on.
‘Now, Sophie, you are to keep your eyes open and face the good ladies and gentlemen who have come to join in your discipline. If anyone reports to me that you have shut them at any time – except to blink, or if there’s a very hard stroke – then you’ll get the cane on top of all this. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, sir.’
My pathetic squeak draws another laugh from the crowd, who are loving Lloyd’s showmanship.
I shiver and let out a little moan as his shiny, smooth hand rubs itself all over my bottom and thighs, grazing the soft inner flesh, taking a few sly pinches that make me jolt, as far as I can.
‘Ready, Sophie?’ he says very quietly.
‘Yes, sir,’ I whisper. I wish I could see him. I feel like one of those hog roasts on a spit – a piece of doomed meat, stripped of all dignity. But I like it. I want it.
I want it even more when Lloyd’s palm falls, stinging but sweet, on my arse. Those gloves soften the blow and give it a sexy edge I haven’t felt before. I want to squirm and offer myself up, higher, more. Give me more. He does.
He spanks firmly and thoroughly until every inch from the bottom of the corset to my stocking tops feels warm and glowy.
‘She likes that,’ says someone in the crowd, knowing I can hear, knowing I am watching them speak. ‘Dirty girl. Bet she’s wet.’
‘She is,’ says one of the people behind me.
I am.
‘Well, that’s nothing new,’ says Lloyd, his hand falling over and over again, speeding up the pace until I start to bite my lip and dig my fingernails into my palms. ‘A spanking always gets this little trollop good and wet. Sometimes I’ve had to fuck her first, so she doesn’t get too excited by it. Anyone else tried that?’
They start swapping topping anecdotes while their submissives blush and flutter their eyelashes. I’d be amused, if Lloyd’s hand wasn’t starting to really hurt. A gasp jerks out of me, then several cries.
He stops, indulges in a bit of chat for a while, leaving me to process the heat and soreness of my arse and lament the fact that my first public spanking is far from over.
The people behind me are sent away again, and a new clique takes their place. They admire my bottom and my juicy pussy while Lloyd taps the paddle upwards from the backs of my thighs, preparing me. I am a little relieved to feel that it isn’t one of those ping-pong bat shaped numbers that wham themselves into the whole of your bum with each stroke, but a slightly wider version of a ruler. It’ll hurt, but not in such a universal and overwhelming way.
The first stroke is mild, but the second is not. I notice the audience cringing in advance of the ruler’s impact and I know it’s going to be hard, so I shut my eyes.
Busted!
They all rat on me in chorus and Lloyd tuts.
I’m too busy trying to absorb the sharpness of the blow to care. It fell right at the curve of my bottom and it throbs.
‘I’m going to let you off that one,’ he says, ‘because it was a little harder than I intended. I seem to have the spanker’s version of an itchy trigger finger. But make sure you keep your eyes open for the rest.’
He manages to keep his paddling arm in check for the remaining strokes, which fall with an even sting across my already warm bum, taking the heat deeper, broadening the pain.
I know that a bigger and bigger crowd is watching my shameful treatment, but somehow that seems to help me take the pain. The encouraging, somewhat wistful smiles on the faces of the submissives remind me that this is what we all love, what we come here for. They all understand the dynamic, which very much lessens the potential humiliation factor. What they see is a girl having a great time with her lover, where someone outside the scene might see a girl being exposed and punished.
The tops are seeing it differently, though – I can tell by their flushed cheeks and cruel smirks. They are enjoying my pain, silently judging Lloyd’s technique, hoping he’ll make me scream, or beg, or cry. I avoid their eyes and focus on the peak-cap domme’s very handsome sub.
Lloyd’s final stroke – a doozy – coincides with my sudden recognition of the handsome sub as the barista from upstairs. He gives me a heart-melting smile of sympathy when I yelp inelegantly and puff out my cheeks.
Lloyd puts down the paddle and rubs my other cheeks all over. The leather is not cool enough to soothe but I don’t care. I want those slick smooth fingers inside me. He fails to oblige, though.
‘Warmed up now?’ he asks me, leaning down over my ear.
‘Yes, sir.’ My voice is syrupy, breathy. I am well on my way.
‘Good.’
He puts a hand on my neck, standing beside me. I can almost make him out in full profile if I strain my eyes.
With his other hand, he beckons the winning domme.
She pats her sub on the head and orders him to behave himself before crossing the floor and taking up her position behind me.
‘Lovely leather,’ I hear her say.
Then Lloyd shifts the spanking bench around one hundred and eighty degrees, so my arse faces the crowd and I am looking up at the domme, watching her stroke the triple tongues of the tawse with blood-red taloned fingers.
She lowers the strap and brushes it across my face. ‘Kiss it,’ she says.
I do. Its smell makes my clit bloom. I want to breathe it in forever. But she withdraws it and removes herself from my line of vision.
‘Did we say twenty?’ she asks from my rear.
Lloyd laughs. ‘Twelve, I believe.’
‘Worth a try, wasn’t it?’
Lloyd drops to his haunches in front of me until our faces are level, then puts his hands on my shoulders. ‘I want you to watch me,’ he says. ‘All the way through. I want to see your face.’
I’m not sure I can do this. I try to shake my head, but he shakes his back, chewing on his inside lip. He smiles, a kind of scared rabbit-in-headlights twitch of the mouth.
‘Please,’ he whispers. His fingers press into my flesh.
The tawse whooshes through the air and cracks down hard. Raw, hot pain flares from my bottom and radiates outwards. I cry out, scrunch shut my eyes.
‘Look at me,’ insists Lloyd.
I look at him. He is making this happen to me. This is all his fault.
I can’t be angry with him for it. But I can be angry with him for this – for trying to turn a good strapping into some kind of fucking love-in. Why does he want me to look at him?
I ask the question. ‘Why?’
The space I leave for his answer is usurped by the tawse, falling for a second agonising time on the same spot she marked before.
‘Oh God!’ I pant, wanting to break free of the cuffs and defend my bottom. Ten more of these? Impossible.
‘You need to think about why this is happening,’ he says, while I wriggle in my tethers. ‘You need to remember why you’re here. I want to give you a constant reminder.’
‘I’m here because you’re a bastard,’ I hiss, tensing up for the next lash.
‘No, you’re here because you can’t make a decision. You’re here because you’re scared.’
‘Shut up.’
‘You really want me to punish you, don’t you?’
‘Shut up! Owwwwww!’
The third stroke is lower down, lighting up my lower bum. I imagine it vivid scarlet, glowing into the crowd so that they can warm their hands around it.
‘What do you want me to do to you?’ he asks, his face even closer, his lips almost brushing mine. ‘After this?’
‘I don’t know.’ I really don’t. I can’t think now, all other considerations pushed out by the drea
d knowledge that another stroke is on its way.
‘I’ll do anything you want.’
I take the next stroke with a belligerent cry. I’m getting close to swearing. I have to be careful.
Lloyd takes one hand off my shoulder and strokes my hair instead. ‘You know that, don’t you, Soph? Anything you want.’
‘This isn’t … I can’t talk … don’t make me talk.’
He cocks his head and smiles this insanely soppy smile. His eyes are misty-blue inside the mask, as if he might cry. He has that look I’ve seen in paintings and films, the look denoting Mad Love. Is it real? It’s certainly unnerving.
It’s more unnerving even than the prospect of eight more of Mistress Nasty’s worst shots.
I revise this opinion after the next one, which makes me shout, ‘Fuck!’ really loudly into Lloyd’s adoring face.
‘That’s not your safe word,’ he points out. ‘Use it, if you can’t bear it.’
‘I can,’ I insist through gritted teeth. ‘I can bear it.’
‘You’re not going to let her get away with that language, are you?’ asks Mistress Nasty. I watch Lloyd’s eyes flick upwards to her.
‘Sophie never gets away with anything,’ he says. ‘I see to that.’
‘I should think so too.’
Another swingeing smack knocks the breath from my body. I moan, my voice cracking, horribly near tears.
Lloyd puts both palms flat on my cheeks – not the ones undergoing the ordeal, the other cheeks – and lays his forehead against mine.
‘Halfway there,’ he says, which makes me moan even more. Only halfway!
‘Let yourself go,’ he says, then, taking me by panicked surprise, he fastens his lips to mine.
I try to shake away at first, but he holds me.
Is he serious? Kissing me while I am being strapped? Is this even possible?
But the tawse falls again and the burn drives me into a kind of hot, sensual fog where anything becomes possible. Lloyd’s ravenous mouth and probing tongue carry me out of my tense self-consciousness, even though I keep on whimpering and snuffling each time the leather falls. It is soft and lush at one end, hard and fierce at the other, or sometimes interchangeable. A murmur of heartfelt aws from the onlookers laps against my ears. I feel like I’m drowning, but that the vortex will lead somewhere good, better than life.
Game Page 14