‘Double or quits?’ Hazim grinned.
‘Quits,’ the cabbie grinned ruefully, handing back the note. Hazim pocketed it alongside the doubleheaded dollar with which he quietly amassed a tiny fortune and stepped across to the glass door. Behind the frosted glass, he discovered Mr Porteous at his desk.
‘My name is Dhingra,’ Hazim lied, giving one of many aliases. ‘I telephoned from Bonn at lunchtime. Thank you for waiting to see me, Mr Porteous.’
The fat solicitor fussed with some papers on his desk with self-important vigour.
‘It is a little strange, perhaps, the request I am about to make. I will of course respect your decision if you do not wish to divulge the information I seek.’
In his early days of bullion dealing, Hazim had paid the price for appearing too eager.
‘Quite so, quite so,’ said the solicitor, nodding, his busy little brain immediately detecting the possibi lity of money behind all this careful preamble. Already, it was not a question of whether or not it was to be a lucrative inducement, but how much it might be.
‘I do not deal in cash. I thought these might interest you, if you find them acceptable.’
Hazim placed two gold bricks on the desk top. The yellow metal winked under the light above. The solicitor’s eyes grew momentarily wide with wonder. The foxy little brain whirred into life. At so much an ounce, and if one sold when the market was high, why, one could gross…
‘Sixteen thousand pounds,’ supplied Hazim, accurately timing the answer to complete the equation the greedy solicitor was struggling to calculate and solve.
Porteous frowned. He did not like being so transparent to another in business matters. He preferred to be in control. The chess master, not a pawn on the board.
‘Quite so, quite so,’ he purred softly.
He suddenly speculated if he could sell this gold in a way that avoided tax and bypassed his books.
‘Tax free if you go to the right quarters,’ anticipated Hazim. ‘No VAT and no one need know a thing about it.’ He was matching the solicitor thought for thought.
‘What is it that you are seeking, my good fellow?’
Hazim winced. The expression jarred on both his pride and on his nerves. ‘My good fellow’ indeed! He wouldn’t even employ this rat as a latrine cleaner.
‘An address. An address that I will not contact or approach. I just need to satisfy my curiosity.’
‘Well, I am sure that we can come to some satis factory arrangement. In relation to what, exactly, do you require this information?’
Hazim gathered up the two gold bricks and gently clicked them together. The dull yellow metal made a haunting sound. Porteous licked his lips.
‘This girl. My cousin. I do not speak with her parents, there has been a family quarrel.’ Hazim spoke in as casual a voice as his boiling rage within would allow.
Porteous picked up the photograph and recognised Jaya, looked up at Hazim and then back down at Jaya.
‘A cousin?’ he countered.
‘Sixteen thousand pounds,’ replied Hazim.
Supper was over and Mrs Boydd-Black rose. She had several things to say. She commenced by commenting that Miss Eaddes had expressed her grave concern over the results of the latest maths tests. Certain girls would be wishing that they had worked harder during the tutorial tomorrow morning. Clarissa, whose algebra was weak, shuddered. Miss Eaddes caned one so slowly, so searchingly and so mercilessly.
The next item was a note of personal concern. Mrs Boydd-Black deprecated the cleaning team who seemed to have neglected the dust on the furniture in the hall. There would be an inquiry. They had made such a very poor job of it. And after the inquiry, conclusions would be reached. There was, she hinted darkly, the distinct possibility of punishments.
‘But now, girls, a success story. Jane’s team raced well today, no doubt due to her creative and imaginative efforts. I am happy to announce that she is to be made a blueband forthwith.’
The news was greeted with a subdued murmur. Jane was widely feared, and now, as a blueband, her lash was licensed to reach farther, cut deeper.
‘I have another change to announce. As you know, Miranda is at present a redband.’
Jaya looked at Miranda in delight. She had not seen her since the race — Miranda had sought a little consolation with Emily — and had much to tell her. But all that could wait. It didn’t really matter now about Jane’s cheating. Miranda, too, was going to be promoted.
‘Miranda will no longer wear a redband.’
The tone of the headmistress’s voice was neutral and cool. Miranda looked up, smiling expectantly.
‘Miranda will revert to green and attend in my room for a Chair and Half Exercise after supper.’
Gasps of fearful dismay greeted this announcement. Miranda turned pale and clutched the wooden table for support.
‘This belongs to you, I believe?’ the headmistress held up the letter Miranda had scribbled to Aunt Emma and entrusted to Porteous. ‘It was returned to me in this afternoon’s post.’
The room started to spin around Miranda. She felt Jaya’s steadying hand and heard the reassuring voices of Clarissa and little Susie. But Miranda’s mind reverberated with one word only. The Chair. The Chair. Her dry lips opened and closed sound-lessly. Porteous. The swine had betrayed her. Delivered her up to the Chair.
An hour later found Miss Eaddes humming pleasantly. It was her favourite song from Pirates of Penzance. She was not only a light operetta buff but a G & S (as she coyly referred to them) fanatic. Up in the gallery that ran three-quarters of the way around the large study, she busied herself with the video camera. She intended to try something a little different tonight. Yes. The flick of the hair as the head jerked. A poignant detail. Punished girls had a habit of tossing their hair as the cane sliced or the strap snapped across the bare bottoms. She would try to capture the delicious moment with her lens, catch the flounce as it spread into a wild fringe over Miranda’s eyes. Her golden mane would toss proudly as each stroke kissed her exposed buttocks.
Such a wonderful subject to work on, a punished blonde. Yes, she giggled. Miranda was in the Chair tonight. Blonde. Most impressive. A fine, shapely, athletic girl. Nice thighs, splendid hips. And a most attractively shaped bottom.
Whistling a snatch from The Mikado, she checked the cassette. The little green light blinked. All set. Splendid. Miranda should come out well in colour. Red stripes are so becoming on a golden tan. For a maths tutor, Miss Eaddes showed a surprising awareness of the possibilities of colour.
Head down, arms painfully stretched out and bare bottom raised up for the impending punishment, Miranda closed her large eyes as the first rapid double explosion of pain seared across her taut rump, bathing the satin skin stretched so tightly across her firm flesh in fierce fire. Ten hands had been nominated to ply the springy table tennis bat for the painful, humiliating Half Exercise.
The first, Clare, wielded the bat competently, striking the upturned cheeks smartly and severely, the bat cracking down swiftly and firmly on the exposed buttocks. Other feet shuffled up to the Chair, other hands picked up the table tennis bat and other eyes gazed down on Miranda’s suffering. After each double swipe of scorching pain, Miranda stretched and strained to press her trembling lips against the warm surface of the dimpled rubber. Obedience to the bat and submission to it was a strict stipulation and all who suffered a Chair had to kiss the instrument that caused their pain.
The humiliating First Position, the jackknife posture that rendered the bare bottom totally exposed, came to its painful conclusion with Mrs Boydd-Black herself. She strode purposefully up to the Chair and stood, legs astride, her feet planted firmly apart. Weighing the table tennis bat momentarily, she judged the distance and then raised it up. Miranda felt a tingle of fearful anticipation thrill down the arched curve of her naked spine.
Crack. Crack. The broad bat swept down and splatted into the juddering cheeks, swooped back to shoulder height and cracked down again in a savage twinkling.
The rubicund buttocks jerked as they were kissed with scorching pain. The headmistress paused a fraction to inspect the glowing bottom and then thrust the bat up against Miranda’s lips. The punished girl kissed it obediently, penitently.
‘Second Position,’ came the curt command.
Slowly, awkwardly, Miranda clambered across the broad seat of the polished Chair and lay there, belly down. Her head and shoulders were framed and trapped by the left arm rest, her thighs and legs lay stretched out behind her under the right arm rest. Trapped and imprisoned, her naked body lay supine, waiting anxiously for the chastisement to recommence.
Her bottom, less taut because of her horizontal position, wobbled slightly as she adjusted herself. Her tummy stuck to the clammy wooden seat. Her full, rounded cheeks lay closely pressed together, the cleft hardly discernable. Unlike the First Position, which spread the taut cheeks apart to reveal the valley of the shadowed cleft, in the Second Position her bottom was rendered pliant and passive for the imminent pain.
Clare, followed by two redbands, then Zoe and then Clarissa came and went, approaching the Chair and kneeling down before it to administer the searing double swipe across the defenceless, jerking buttocks. In turn, they rose, presented the hot rubber surface of the bat to Miranda’s parted lips and returned silently to their place amid the silent ranks of punishers.
Then Jane stepped up and approached the Chair. Taking the bat in her hand, she knelt down. Miranda glanced up sideways at her tormentress. Jane’s eyes flickered like a cobra stirring in a troubled dream. Reaching out languorously, she rested the surface of the bat down acrosss Miranda’s passive cheeks. The skin crawled and flinched beneath the warm, dimpled rubber, the muscles twitched under the potent weight. Looking down in absolute triumph, Jane ostentatiously adjusted the blueband that encircled the bronzed, sinewy muscles of her upper right arm. Miranda shuddered softly and groaned inwardly as Jane slowly reached out and grasped the handle of the bat, dragging its dimpled rubber face even more slowly across the double domes of hot, tormented flesh. The bat rose and fell.
Crack. A blinding flash of golden light exploded in Miranda’s brain. Jane swiped down the bat with all her venomous strength. Maximum effort was invested for a return of maximum pleasure. The scalded buttocks juddered and bucked as the bat rose up once more. Miranda clenched her taut cheeks. A feint. Too soon. The bat remained poised aloft. Miranda relaxed slightly, the flesh softening a little.
Crack. The cruel bat sliced the air and exploded once again four square across her creamy, red streaked cheeks. Miranda’s hiss dissolved into a protracted groan. Jane grimaced and stood up, steadying herself as she rose by placing her outstretched, taloned fingers onto the simmering bottom. She squeezed it viciously in fond, fierce farewell. As she winced, Miranda knew that it was au revoir, not adieu.
Miranda suffered the final strokes of the Second Position as the headmistress stepped up briskly to deliver two deliberate swipes down across her naked bottom. Crack. Crack. Memorable blows.
‘Third Position, girl. Snap to it.’
Miranda’s tummy peeled away from the flat wooden seat of the Chair. She glanced down and was relieved to see that no tell-tale splashes of excitation remained where her pubic mound had pressed down into the polished wood. This was punishment, pure and simple. If Emily or Jaya had been wielding the bat, in a more intimate setting, then Miranda knew that the Chair would have been left slippery with her sticky juices. But here, before the assembled community of the Academy all she felt was the searing pain and burning shame.
There was no violent tenderness, no fierce joy or rush of delight as she happily surrendered her spirit and flesh to the domination of a loving partner. There were no emotional peaks and depths, no breathless expectations. Nor was there the whimpering, the pleading, the husky beseeching for the sweet punishment to scald and blister until orgasm, raw and violent, clenching its velvet fist within her molten depths. It could be like that. It had been like that. But the Chair was barren of bliss, denuded of joy, stripped bare of such precious consolations. Its purpose was dedicated to pain, humiliation and suffering. Miranda rose and sullenly assumed the Third Position, these thoughts and reflections burning darkly in her tormented mind.
Or so she thought. How frail such certainties can prove to be. Self-deception is such a curious thing. It shimmers on the mirage of false horizons, changing like a chameleon crossing the emotional colourings of the ravished mind and turbulent spirit. As Miranda bent down over the high back of the Chair and reached out to clasp the arm rests beneath, toes just inches above the floor, she felt the swollen fig between her white thighs part, blister and open imperceptibly.
Confused and ashamed, she struggled to choke down the darkly delicious ideas that danced in her crimson brain. An image of the moist fig, oozing its ripeness, flashed across her mind. Of Clare, then Zoe, then Clarissa, stepping up to punish her exposed, pert bottom, each gasping as they paused, bat in mid-swipe, transfixed by the beauty of her juicing Venus which they held in frank admiration. Clare, accidently brushing it with the hot rubber surface of the bat, leaving the dimples gleaming and glistening with her inner wetness.
Zoe, succumbing to the implacable temptation to insert her thumb top in an effort to examine the forbidden inner pinkness. Clarissa, bending, breasts bulging, to place a wet kiss on the even wetter lips now parted like a velvet curtain. Dizzy with delight at these, and other, phantasms of exhibitionism, Miranda lay across the harsh wood as if impaled upon the sweet and deeply wounding thorns of masochistic narcissism.
Let them come and punish me, she triumphed. Let them do their worst. But let them linger, let them gaze, let them look… and wonder. And in their wonder let there be want, and may yearning fan the flames of their cruel, consuming want. Let them want me. Want and desire me. Let them tremble in their liquid chains of desire as they gaze upon what they may just touch but not taste. And punish what they cannot have but most desire.
Yes. Yes. That too. Lash at what would be licked, blister what should be blessed with the benison of a kiss. Swept along on this surge of violent emotions, devastating insights and fresh awakenings, Miranda parted her thighs slightly and dared the potent bat to do its worst. Her pain might be much, but the pleasure, the dark, delicious, disturbing pleasure of teasing and taunting, displaying and provocatively exciting her tormentors, was deep.
Crack. Crack. The bat barked twice. Clare brought it across the full moons. Darkening scarlet clouded their creamy shine. Crack. Crack. The bat had found the gift of tongues. It spoke in words of anguish. The second girl blazed her double imprint of controlled fury across the supine rump.
Crack. Crack. The buttocks bounced and bucked, writhing in exquisite agony. Miranda’s heart sang, certain that her punishers now yearned for that which was punished. Crack. Crack. Silvery droplets oozed like honey, spilled in haste from the sweet, sweet comb between her glistening thighs. Crack. Crack. Her bottom jerked and screamed in mute protest at the withering strokes and their fiery onslaught.
Then Jane approached the Chair. As she assumed her dominant stance, planting her feet firmly apart, Miranda willed her thighs to open even wider. A long spindling dribble of nectar sparkled as it splashed down like quicksilver against her inner thigh. Jane gasped audibly. Miranda flexed and unflexed her thigh muscles, rippling her buttocks invitingly, enticingly. Jane barely managed to suppress the carnal moan of desire. Her very soul seemed to be in pain, torn by the sight that welcomed and greeted her, offered yet denied such a glimpse of paradise.
Slowly, wantonly, wickedly, totally controlled yet on the brink of abandonment, Miranda stretched her cheeks apart, allowing her punisher a lingering glimpse of the pink sphincter’s tight rosebud whorl buried in the warm depths of the mouthwatering cleft. Jane mewed like a stray kitten and held out her hand to steady herself, almost tipsy with desire.
‘Do your worst, bitch,’ hissed Miranda, who, despite her abject position, felt strong enough to dictate terms.
Jane�
�s eyes flashed dangerously then narrowed into fierce slits. She swiped the bat down. Crack. Again. Crack. Again. Crack. Miranda grinned through the red mist of pain.
‘Stop,’ cried the headmistress. ‘Two strokes only. Those are the rules.’
Crack. Crack. In a frenzy of frustrated lust Jane brought the bat down repeatedly across Miranda’s bare bottom.
‘Stop it this instant,’ shrieked Mrs Boydd-Black.
‘You’re spoiling everything. Stop. Two strokes. Those are the rules. You must do the Exercise properly.’
Miranda laughed softly as she heard the head-mistress, helped by two members of staff, drag Jane away.
‘Back to your rooms, everyone. Back to your rooms this instant. Jane. Get that blueband off your arm at once. You have completely ruined my Chair and Half Exercise. Ruined it. I will see you and thoroughly punish you personally tomorrow morning. And you’ll be wearing a greenband, my girl, for long time…’
Chapter Eight
‘Roll over onto your tummy. I have something for your poor bottom.’
Jaya’s soothing words were soon augmented by her cooling hands. She peeled back the single sheet to reveal Miranda’s nakedness. She had sought sanctuary in Jaya’s bed after the recent turbulent hours. The chill air of the darkened dormitory kissed her hot buttocks. Miranda shuddered and sighed. Then Jaya’s trembling fingertips, dipped deeply into a pot of Pond’s cold cream donated by a sympathetic Emily, dappled lightly across the scalded domes of punished flesh. Gently at first, then more firmly and assuredly, they wove around in expanding circles, spreading the soothing balm into the ravished skin.
Skin as soft as that of a silken peach, Jaya marvelled. A bruised peach. Cheek by cheek the dusky hands, slender fingers anointed with the gelatinous cold cream, the hands themselves rendered invisible in the darkness, worked by sense of touch on the equally invisible rounded buttocks. Following the swelling contours, the blind fingers sought and found the firm, pliant flesh. Jaya paused, lingeringly, then slid a slippery finger along the deep furrow of the cleft in between the blazing buttocks.
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