In those high-heel shoes I was taller, my waist stretched and flat, my bottom clenched, my breasts tingling and alive, the black triangle of my pubic hair glossy and damp. I was at my physical prime, and in that situation it was some small solace and gave me confidence; stupidly, pathetically, at the far edge of my embarrassment was a touch of conceit. These two emotions had no place together except perhaps for a girl standing naked before a man who could do anything he wanted to her.
He stood. He walked around the desk, gazed down at the shoes, then approached the long leather sofa below the window. He didn’t look at my naked body. He looked into my eyes.
‘Magdalena, you are going to bend over this sofa, you are going to spread your legs, and I am going to spank you.’
He paused to let the words sink in. It seemed astonishing, unbelievable. He was going to spank me? Were people allowed to do such things? I’d read Anaïs Nin. I had read about girls being spanked. But wasn’t that all fantasy? Did such things really happen?
‘Do I make myself clear?’ he added.
‘I think so.’
‘Have you been spanked before?’
‘Just at school …’
‘It hurts and it is humiliating. That is the point. I am going to spank you twelve times. You must not make a single sound except to count each stroke after you receive it. You can refuse to accept the beating and get dressed. If you do so, I shall put through a call to the police and report the theft of more than £3,000 from the company account.’
I took a deep breath. I was trembling. My breasts were still outrageously pert, betraying me. I could do this, I thought. To save myself I could take the pain and humiliation of being spanked. I’d stripped off my clothes without a murmur of resistance. What did a dozen smacks on my backside matter?
I gave a little shrug.
‘That’s not all, Magdalena. That is just the beginning,’ he continued. ‘I told you, I can have any whore in Soho for £100. Your debt is …’ He paused, waiting for me to answer.
‘£3,100,’ I said.
‘If you can accept the spanking, you will have earned the right to be taught the true meaning of the word discipline.’
His words hung in the air like black clouds on a sunny day. I swallowed. The feeling of fantasy was growing inside me. What could he possibly mean? What was he going to do? I really had no idea, no idea at all. Hadn’t I been taken on a trip around the world with Sandy Cunningham? What more was there? I bit my lip, I shrugged, and I nodded.
‘OK,’ I said.
‘I want you to be very sure of this.’
I swallowed again. ‘I don’t really have a choice.’
‘Did I have a choice when you stole my money?
I lowered my eyes and shook my head.
‘You make your own decisions. That’s the definition of being free.’
Free, I thought. I was stark naked and about to get a thrashing. How free is that? ‘What will I have to do?’ I asked.
He took a long breath through his nose. ‘Anything. Isn’t that the word you used?’ he replied. ‘A whore can be purchased for £100. Your debt is?’ He was rubbing it in, making sure I understood the enormity of what I had done and the enormity of what I must do.
‘£3,100,’ I said meekly.
‘So, Magdalena Wallace, beginning this weekend at my house in the country, you will spend the next thirty-one days at my disposal. You will do everything that is asked of you. You will be spanked and cropped, caned and humiliated, you will be penetrated and violated, as I have been violated.’
On more than one occasion I’d had my bottom caned at school and knew how much it hurt. ‘Caned?’ I said.
‘Painfully so, Magdalena. That bottom you keep pushing out so arrogantly will be chastised by me and by others associated with me. You will be like a concubine in a harem. You will perform any service asked of you and you will perform that service immediately and without question. If you hesitate, you will be severely punished.’
There was a shooting pain in my stomach as if someone had taken my intestines in their fist and was squeezing tighter and tighter. A concubine in a harem … perform any service … severely punished. How did it all come to this?
‘For thirty-one days?’ I asked.
‘Is the punishment out of balance with the crime?’ he asked in return.
‘Yes, I think,’ I replied.
‘That is the nature of discipline. When those thirty-one days have passed, you will be the most honest – and the most disciplined – girl in the country. You will be ready for that sparkling future you imagined you had.’
I nodded my head as I thought about that. Perhaps he was right. I had never done anything dishonest before and I certainly wouldn’t again. I looked up as he continued.
‘You will perform this task according to my will,’ he said. ‘How well you perform that task will be your choice.’
If I had a choice it was no choice at all. Did I really push my bottom out so arrogantly? I remembered that night studying my breasts at the casino and feeling so pleased they looked so pretty. I had brought this on myself. The alternative was to call the police. I’d have a record. My life would be in ruins.
I was pressing my nails into my palms, clenching my bottom. My breasts were prickling. I wanted to touch them. I wanted them to be touched. It was strange standing there stark naked, but not as strange as it would have been had I not allowed Sandy Cunningham to strip off my clothes and bore into the very heart of my being. I’d been compromised, embarrassed, and it was all my own fault. I deserved to be punished and, in some shocking and shameful way, there may even have been a small anonymous part of me that wanted to be a concubine in a harem. Had I not fought tooth and nail for the part of Sally Bowles in Cabaret ? Did I not enjoy flaunting my body on the concourse at Rebels Casino? Simon Roche must have seen something in me that I didn’t know was there and that was terrifying.
The sun must have come out from behind the clouds, lighting the room in golden bars, and again I had the feeling that I was a bird in a cage. I had been flying high and was about to have my wings clipped.
‘Now, girl, bend over the sofa, spread your legs and don’t make a sound.’
I did as I was told, leaning right over, my ribs cushioned on the thick arm of the sofa, my breasts hanging below me, my feet slightly splayed, my legs stretched to keep balance. I took a deep breath and waited.
When the first spank hit my bottom it wasn’t like being spanked by the soap star at Rebels, or spanked playfully by Sandy Cunningham while I lay naked on top of him. Simon Roche’s big hand caught the plump curve of my right cheek and a stab of fire shot through my body.
‘I didn’t hear you?’ he said.
I had been trying so hard not to make a sound I hadn’t said anything at all. ‘One,’ I whispered.
‘Louder, please.’
‘One,’ I said.
Before the word left me, his big right hand had swatted my left cheek in the same position. I bit my tongue and gritted my teeth.
‘Two,’ I said.
The third stroke bridged the crack in my bottom and joined the other two, spreading the pain across the whole lower half of my poor bottom.
‘Three.’
And again, his aim picking out a fresh spot to inflame and humiliate.
I spread my legs and braced my shoulders. ‘Four,’ I said, and waited for number five with equanimity.
I had stolen £3,100. It was a terrible thing to do. I deserved to be disciplined. I deserved a spanking. I was lucky not to be receiving a worse punishment and felt a certain comfort from the slow tide of pain spreading down my thighs and over the small of my back. He hit me again, much harder.
‘Five,’ I said, my voice stronger, more confident.
The thought of being spanked was far worse than the actual beating. I needed this. I would be all the better for it. Simon Roche was a scientist resetting my DNA, a novelist reshaping my character. I couldn’t imagine what had been in my mind
when I transferred the money from the company account to the online casino. I had been confused. I had tricked myself into thinking that I could beat the system. I had grown too full of myself.
The next spank took me to the halfway mark. ‘Six,’ I said, and the pain was intense but sustainable.
I wriggled my bottom to try to take the sting out of the burning flesh, and I’m sure all that wriggling must have made the target more appealing. I was provocative and arrogant, and I was lucky to get the chance to have that arrogance spanked out of me. I had been disobedient; worse, I had been dishonest, a wayward girl, an unruly child. I deserved to be punished and wanted to be punished so that Simon Roche would appreciate me again.
He paused for a few moments and out of the corner of my eye I noticed him swinging his arm, building himself up for the second half of the beating.
When his hand came down again the pain shot through me like a fire in the forest. Every inch of my soft flesh was aflame. My body was dripping wet, steaming like a pony after a hard ride. Tears flowed involuntarily down my cheeks, snot ran out of my nose. My throat was dry, but I didn’t cry out. I clenched my fists and gritted my teeth.
‘Seven.’
And then came number eight, harder still, the sound reverberating around the room and ringing in my ears. I had the same odd sensation that I’d had when I was playing blackjack. That time was suspended. There was no past. The future was unknown. There was just this moment. Me bent over the arm of a leather sofa, my dear little bottom raised to meet Mr Roche’s big hand as it came down again, searing into my flesh, cleansing me of my debt, of my sins. When it was over, I would be a better person.
‘Eight.’
I squirmed into a new position, pushed my head lower and pushed my bottom up further. It was strange but I felt comfortable like this, my body angled, my posterior perfectly poised as if in anticipation of pleasure rather than pain. When you force yourself to forget about the pain, there is a certain pleasure in being in someone else’s hands, completely submissive, you don’t have to make any decisions, you only have to remember to count the next spank.
‘Nine.’
I pressed my eyes shut and the sting didn’t seem quite so bad. It was like diving into cold water: the moment passes. Like anal sex, being spanked, I realised, could transform mysteriously from pain to an inexplicable feeling of contentment. The only obstruction to this rare state is in the mind, in the rules and conventions programmed into us at school, at home, by society, by forces outside ourselves. If we look deeper into the dark recesses of our minds we find new treasures, new pleasures, a hunger for new experiences. When you overcome a barrier in your mind like a hurdle on the athletics track it feels as if you are flying and the emotion is lit by an aura of excitement.
I tried to picture myself bent over in that shadowy office, stark naked, vulnerable, tall in black heels, my body long and slender and glistening with perspiration, my breasts hanging heavily and tingling with new sensations. I could smell sweat under my arms, feel the damp ooze between my thighs and the blaze sweeping down my legs to my toes and up my spine to my confused and feverish mind.
Down his hand came again.
‘Ten,’ I said.
I was almost there, almost eager for the next one. Something unexpected and terrible was happening to me. My sex was throbbing, pushing through my thighs. A sticky moistness was gathering about the inflamed lips. I could imagine nothing more shameful. I was finding perverse pleasure in my humiliation. I was panting for breath. The pain had stretched over my back, across my shoulders and down to the fiery tips of my tingling breasts, and with the pain was a warm, cosy, comforting feeling like taking a hot bath after a cold swim.
Down it came, harder than ever, his handprint branding my flesh, a shooting star of agony and ecstasy running up my spine and into my brain.
‘Eleven.’
The dampness between my legs had grown into a steady flow. I could feel a hot trickle ooze down my inner thigh. My armpits were a lake. My hair was wet. Tears had dried on my face. I sniffed hard and could smell my own arousal, the scent not of suffering but of nameless shameful desire. I pushed up on the balls of my feet and the tall heels of my shoes left the ground. I arched my back and pressed down with my hands and, as the twelfth great spank crossed my skin, something inexplicable happened: I started to come.
‘Twelve,’ I said. ‘Twelve, twelve …’
I was gasping for air, wriggling like a fish on the end of a line, my body going into spasm as an orgasm, much bigger and more demanding than that time with Sandy Cunningham, ripped through me and I collapsed over the arm of the sofa, my bottom red hot and throbbing with pleasurable jolts of pain.
‘It’s nearly six, time to go,’ he said.
I was unable to move. I just lay there, quivering and spent. He took my arm and somehow I eased myself unsteadily on to my feet. I thought I saw in his eyes an odd sort of pride, but that may just have been a reflection of my own feelings, and mingled with that pride was a sense of shame far greater than the pain of my burning bottom. I’d climaxed under his hand. I didn’t know such a thing was possible. It wasn’t something they wrote about in Cosmo and Nuts. This was a new world, and I felt privy to a marvellous secret more valuable than the system.
5
Journey to Black Spires
HE TOOK THE bag with my clothes from the desk, lifted the telephone receiver and spoke to his secretary. ‘I’ll be at Black Spires for the weekend. I don’t want to be disturbed unless it absolutely can’t wait.’
There was a pause. I was panting for breath, my bottom like a burning brazier, ears honed trying to listen.
‘I’m sure I will, Hannah,’ he said. ‘And you too.’
I’m sure I will what? I wondered.
It was time to go and the horror of what now faced me only entered my consciousness as he opened his office door.
‘If you please,’ he said.
‘But …’
‘Magdalena, this isn’t a game. You understand our contract. You will do everything, and anything, and you will do so without question. Now, for the last time, is that clear to you?’
My head dropped. ‘Yes, Mr Roche,’ I mumbled.
‘Now, head up and don’t mumble.’
I made my way unsteadily like a sleepwalker across the pale wooden planks of the flooring, through the open door and listened as the lock clicked shut behind me. I was stark naked on the seventh floor of the Roche-Marshall building, my bottom scarlet, my thighs coated shamefully in my own discharge, my hair in tangles, my pubes sopping. There was sweat on my back, my body was taut and shapely in the magic black heels and it occurred to me as the lift opened that in high heels you feel less naked, you are poised rather than posed, and Simon Roche had been very clever acquiring them.
As we stood in the cool air of the descending lift I remembered rising in that mirrored amber-lit box at the hotel with Sandy Cunningham. That had been a week ago. I had done it all in seven days. Actually six! I had become a whore, a gambler and a thief. At least I wasn’t an alcoholic, I mused, my lips creasing with the briefest smile as the thought flickered like a candle flame in the dark heart of my imagination.
I had been given a good spanking, something Sister Benedict had always said I needed. But the chill sense of foreboding before being spanked actually turned out to be far worse than the whiplash of Simon’s hands on my bare bottom. I had a vague sense of satisfaction from having endured the beating. Knowing that I wasn’t going to have a criminal record was an added comfort. My punishment was going to be less official, more traditional, more in-house, and a chill ran through me as I imagined spending the next thirty-one days as Simon Roche’s slave.
The doors opened on the ground floor. I hung back, peeking out through the open lift as if afraid of the light. I could see people moving about the front desk manned by Amanda, who looked like a man in drag and, for some reason, always seemed to give me a dirty look when I arrived for work each morning. She was signi
ng a slip for a tall bicycle messenger, a Rastafarian wearing yellow lycra and a black helmet with flames down the sides.
Mr Singh, the uniformed porter, was standing beside the revolving doors, stern and stately with his mature beard and dark all-seeing eyes. When he saw us he came to attention like a toy soldier.
I stepped out into the main lobby as the doors were about to close. I felt small and hopeless, totally humiliated. What could I have been thinking? I had read articles in the London Lite and the Evening Standard. Gambling was an addiction. People were running up huge credit-card debts, they were losing their homes, throwing themselves under trains. Deep down, I had known all along that there is no system, there is no secret. Of course, you may have a lucky run and win. But luck runs out and, if you keep playing, you will always lose. Always.
‘Are you ready?’
I had closed my eyes, blocked out the past. Blocked out the future. The lobby was brightly lit and the sun outside the glass building was still high in the sky. It was the end of July and it would be light until ten, and for some reason being naked in the daylight made me feel more exposed, like some nocturnal creature desperate to scurry back to its hole before the dawn predators came to gobble me up.
I nodded my head.
‘After you,’ he said. His voice came from another dimension, dark as night.
I took a deep breath, straightened my shoulders, sucked in my butterfly tummy and led the way, my black heels tapping out a drum roll as I crossed the concourse to the door that led down to the garage.
The bike messenger had removed his Ray-Bans and openly stared, enjoying the show – a nude girl parading through the glass beehive as if for a fashion shoot. The frankness of his gaze was humiliating but at least honest. Amanda wore a tight, condescending look about her lips, and I noticed that her scorn was lit, too, by the green-eyed monster. In every girl, I’m certain, there is an exhibitionist, a desire to expose herself, and I was aware that, except for my red bottom, I must have been an enviable sight in Amanda’s eyes – an untamed, satiated young animal stepping from the wilds beside Simon Roche, the king of the jungle.
The Gift of Girls Page 5