Beth was on the telephone in the office talking to Peter Parnell. She thanked him effusively for the proofs of the Rybix shoot and asked him about his availability for another job. Just before saying goodbye, she asked casually, ‘Peter, you don’t have the home telephone number of Natasha Perry, do you?’
‘Natasha who?’
‘Perry. One of the girls in the Rybix shoot.’
‘I’ve probably got it here somewhere,’ he said. ‘Why?’
‘Because I need it, Peter. Would you have a look?’
‘I will if you give me Charlie’s number,’ he said.
‘Her name is not Charlie,’ Beth retorted.
‘She’ll always be Charlie to me. Hang on, I’ll go have a look.’
In less than a minute he was back with the number. ‘Remember you owe me, Beth. Send Charlie around here on another errand. She’s the sweetest creature I’ve ever met.’
Beth laughed. ‘Don’t be offended, Peter, but I think she likes her men just a touch more masculine than you.’
As soon as she’d said goodbye and put down the receiver, she picked it up again and dialled the number.
‘Natasha Perry,’ said the same bright voice that she recalled from before.
‘Natasha, this is Beth - Beth Forrester from Cross, Carstairs and Denton. You probably don’t remember me but we met...’
‘I remember you well, Beth,’ Natasha interrupted. ‘Very well indeed... and I’m extremely glad you’ve called.’
‘Oh, great,’ Beth said, the promising tone of the girl’s voice making her pulse quicken. ‘Well forgive me telephoning you at home, I know I should go through your agent, but as this is just an exploratory call, I thought you wouldn’t mind.’
‘Not at all, Beth,’ Natasha replied. ‘I’m only too pleased to hear from you. I’ve thought a lot about the other day...’
Beth did not want to pursue that particular subject - not for now, at least. She tried to sound businesslike. ‘Good, well, I’m planning, or at least thinking about a new and different campaign. I thought you might be very good for it. You’ve the right looks.’
‘Sounds fascinating,’ Natasha said brightly. ‘I’m certainly game for anything. Things are rather quiet right now.’
‘Excellent. So we should meet, just to discuss things.’
‘Any time,’ Natasha said. ‘You say when and where, and I’ll be there.’
‘I noticed when I was calling you that you have the same telephone prefix as I have at home. Where do you live?’
‘Pimlico.’
‘Then we’re neighbours,’ Beth said. ‘What are you doing tonight? How about coming to dinner.’
‘Mm, I’d like that.’
‘It won’t be much,’ Beth warned. ‘Neither I nor my flatmate are cooks.’
Natasha laughed. ‘I don’t mind. I’ll bring a bottle of cheap wine to kill the taste. What’s the address and what time?’
At the appointed time that evening, Celeste called from the kitchen, ‘So where is she?’
‘Don’t worry about it; she’s always late,’ Beth replied, just as the doorbell rang.
Natasha stood on the threshold holding out a bottle wrapped in tissue paper. Beth thought she looked adorable. Natasha was small and slender, dressed completely in black, in a polo-neck sweater, slacks and flat-soled shoes. Her black hair was loose and framed her face, curling inwards slightly under her chin.
Beth smiled her welcome. ‘You don’t look old enough to drink,’ she said, taking the proffered bottle.
‘You’d be surprised,’ Natasha replied, walking into the sitting room.
Beth introduced Celeste and fussed around pouring drinks. After chatting for five minutes or so about the pros and cons of living in Pimlico, Celeste started to ask Natasha about her life as a model, but Beth cut her off in mid-sentence. ‘Get back to the kitchen, wench,’ she said playfully. ‘I want to talk business with Natasha.’
Celeste pouted, but got up anyway. ‘Remember, I can hear every word,’ she said, disappearing around the corner.
To try to put her visitor at ease, Beth queried Natasha about herself and her background. ‘Where does your family live?’
‘I don’t have any family,’ Natasha replied bluntly.
Beth flushed, fearing she had entered forbidden territory. ‘Do you live alone?’
‘Yes, just two streets away.’ Natasha looked around her. ‘But it is pretty squalid; nothing like this. May I look around?’
‘Don’t show her my room,’ Celeste called. ‘She hasn’t even seen squalid until she’s seen in there!’
When the two were sitting down again, with their second glass of wine, Beth spoke about business. She talked at length about marketing and advertising, the difficulties of being an account manager, the need for fresh thinking and originality in each campaign, how each message should be geared to the medium that would carry it and how client companies judged only by results.
Natasha listened carefully and when Beth stopped, she said, ‘It sounds fascinating, and so much more interesting than my job. I am nothing more than a clotheshorse.’
Beth nodded. ‘It is fascinating, but it is also very demanding,’ she pointed out. ‘It takes all my skills, everything I’ve got.’
She went on to explain that she was just thinking about a new campaign. It would be deliberately designed to shock, to command attention and to cause controversy, and would feature a series of photographs in underground magazines.
‘Is that where I come in?’ Natasha asked, sitting forward on the sofa, indicating her interest.
‘Possibly,’ Beth said. ‘You wore a swimsuit in the studio for the ice cream shoot. Have you ever modelled underwear?’
‘Yes,’ Natasha confirmed. ‘It’s all the same to me.’
‘You don’t think it’s degrading?’
‘Not at all. Why should I? It’s all money in the bank.’
Beth poured Natasha a third glass of wine. ‘Would you consider posing in the nude or the semi-nude?’ she asked.
Natasha smiled, looking directly into her eyes. ‘Like you did the other day?’
Beth resumed her seat. ‘I hoped that was not going to come up, but yes, something like that.’
Natasha stroked the stem of her glass. ‘I would,’ she said eventually. ‘I am not certain my body is attractive enough though; not as attractive as yours, leastways.’
Beth waved a hand in the air dismissively, brushing Natasha’s protest aside. ‘We’re not talking about me here. Anyhow, as far as I can see you’ve got a gorgeous figure. You shouldn’t be so modest. Now, would you mind showing me?’
Natasha put down her glass. ‘No, I don’t think I would... now?’
When Beth nodded, she stood up and with natural sexiness pulled her sweater over her head and unfastened her waistband to wriggle her trousers down. Then she stood unselfconsciously in the centre of the room with her arms to her sides so that Beth could study her. She wore a low-cut brassiere and a g-string, both of them black. Beth was pleasantly surprised how full Natasha’s breasts were, for someone so petit and slender. She had not really noticed the other day during the photo shoot and this evening they had, until now, been hidden under a loose sweater. Now they were standing full and proud, creamy flesh cradled in black lace.
Beth let her gaze roam downwards. The bikini style pants hid little other than the slight mound of the girl’s sex. Her hips were gently rounded, her groin devoid of visible hair, the thighs slender and straight. Natasha obviously looked after herself, as a model always should.
There was the sound of a low wolf-whistle from the doorway and both girls looked round to see Celeste standing there with a saucepan in her hands. ‘Not bad,’ she announced approvingly, and then added quickly to Beth, ‘It’s okay, I’m going. I know my place,’ before disappearing again.
Beth smiled an apology to Natasha. ‘She’s right; you’re not bad... not bad at all.’
She rose and led Natasha to her bookshelves, which stretched from floor to ceiling against one wall, and placed her with her back to the books. ‘Stand with your arms outstretched, feet together and head down,’ she instructed.
Without another word Natasha adopted the pose, and Beth stood back to admire her model. ‘Perhaps without your bra,’ she decided.
Again without a word, Natasha unhooked the skimpy lace garment and threw it onto the sofa with the rest of her clothes, and then resumed the pose with her head bowed and her black hair falling loosely forward. Beth thought she looked stunning. The girl’s breasts were even more beautiful than she had previously imagined, firm and proud with soft, pink nipples.
‘Turn around, would you?’ she said. ‘Arms above your head.’
Natasha turned to face the books, raising her hands. Beth took a velvet tieback cord from one curtain and then stood on a chair to fasten Natasha’s wrists above her head, tying them to a metal stanchion that supported the top shelf. ‘Bondage,’ Natasha purred, as Beth climbed down and stood back to admire the sensual tableau.
Her eyes travelled down Natasha’s slender arms to her smooth back, its muscles stretched and the spine indented, to a waist so narrow Beth was sure she could span it with two hands. A dimple on either side marked the place where the waist flared out into a bottom as round as an apple, the two perfect cheeks divided by the neat black line of the girl’s g-string.
Beth could not resist it. She let her hand run down the length of the valley of the girl’s spine until it reached the waistband of the g-string. ‘You have glorious skin, so soft,’ she said, clearing her throat a little as she spoke. ‘Do you mind?’ she added, hooking her fingers into the g-string.
When Natasha made no protest, Beth pushed it downwards, over the soft flesh and then down the girl’s legs. As she worked them off Natasha’s feet, she deliberately placed her cheek against the girl’s bottom, feeling the soft warmth pass from flesh to flesh. With some difficulty she resisted the urge to kiss it.
‘I’ll take a quick snap with my digital camera so you can see,’ she said, and she did, and then untied the girl, telling her to adopt the original pose. She used the viewfinder to study the innocent beauty from the front. Natasha’s skin was as white and as unflawed as the best porcelain, made even whiter by the pink of her nipples and the shiny black of the tiny patch of pubic hair discreetly obscuring her sex.
‘Beautiful,’ Beth breathed, using the camera to study the photos she’d taken.
‘Let me see,’ Natasha said eagerly, and seemed totally unconcerned by her nakedness, both in digital form and in reality.
‘Just one more,’ Beth said, when Natasha leant down to put the camera on the coffee table.
‘Let me guess,’ Natasha said sexily. ‘Would this last one have anything to do with corporal punishment? Is this how you want me, for example?’
She turned away from Beth and bent at the hips, grasping her knees with both hands. ‘Isn’t this the way you were the other day, Beth?’ she said provocatively, looking back over her shoulder. ‘Does it give you any ideas? It certainly gives me ideas.’
Beth said nothing. She stared at Natasha’s lovely bottom and at her sex peeping between her parted thighs, the neat line dividing the moist lips that, it seemed to Beth, were pouting an invitation. She wanted to smack those buttocks and kiss those lips, but instead she put the camera to her eye and pressed the button.
‘What do you think?’ Natasha asked, when she was dressed again and sitting on the sofa, drinking more wine.
‘I think you’re gorgeous,’ Beth said.
‘Do you really?’ Natasha replied thoughtfully. ‘Then that explains it.’
‘Explains what?’
Natasha sipped her drink. ‘I’ve been posed like that before,’ she admitted. ‘Quite a few times, in fact, but I never knew what I looked like before. That’s why I stared at you so much in Parnell’s studio the other day. It must have annoyed you, but it brought back many memories for me.’
She lifted her feet and lay back on the sofa, closing her eyes with a deep sigh.
‘Are you going to tell me then?’ Beth gently prompted, after a minute’s silence.
‘Tell you what?’ Celeste asked, entering the room. ‘It’s all cooking nicely. It’ll be about half an hour,’ she said, sitting down. ‘Tell you what?’
Beth held a finger to her lips and nodded at Natasha, still lying with her eyes closed on the sofa. She was giving the girl time to think.
Finally, Natasha spoke, still not opening her eyes. ‘It brought it all back,’ she said, ‘bending over in front of you.’
She sat up, her normal bubbly self slightly deflated. ‘You asked me about my family. I never had a family; I never knew my parents.’ Beth and Celeste listened but said nothing, so Natasha went on.
‘I was raised by foster parents in Kidderminster. When I was about eight they thought I was too difficult to cope with properly. They had other children in their care, so I was moved on to other foster parents and so on. Between the ages of eight and thirteen I had four sets of foster parents. It didn’t make things better, you can imagine. I started to bunk off school, to smoke dope, things like that. I must have been pretty difficult.
Anyway, when I was thirteen I was placed in a hostel. It was like a remand home for kids who had been in trouble with the law.’
Natasha paused and drank some more wine. Celeste refilled her glass.
‘To start with I quite liked it,’ Natasha said, swirling the wine around in her glass. ‘In a funny way, I had more freedom. I liked being with the other kids. Then two of the boys got into trouble, serious trouble, and the regime changed. A new warden was appointed and everything became much stricter. By now I was sixteen and doing really well at school. By and large I behaved myself; I wasn’t interested in getting into trouble. But it didn’t work out like that. The chief warden, Mr Chambers, used to pick on me. He was always telling me off for tiny things, mostly imaginary misdemeanours and mistakes. He just liked telling me off.’
She finished her wine in one gulp, and Celeste replenished all the glasses. ‘Go on,’ she said to Natasha. ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt.’
‘One Sunday when the place was empty I came across him in the corridor. He stopped me and said he’d received a complaint from another girl that I wasn’t showering often enough. It was a lie, of course; I used to shower every morning. I’ve always been very particular about cleanliness. I think he just made it up.
‘Anyway, he told me to go and have a shower immediately. I said I already had and he said I should have another one. Then, when I was in the shower, the door opened and he was standing there. He said he had come to make sure I washed properly. He made me wash my breasts, then between my legs, front and back, over and over again, and after I’d dried myself he inspected me - far more closely than he should have.
‘And that was the start of it. I wish now I had made a fuss at the time, reported him to someone, but I was too naïve and scared. After that, he used to pick on me all the time, usually when we were alone and no one else could see.
‘A week or two later he told me that he had a bad report from my school and that I should report to him that evening in his office. It wasn’t a bad report; it just wasn’t one of my best. After that though, because of him, my schoolwork did begin to go downhill.
‘Then one day, in his office, he told me he was going to punish me by spanking me. He made me lie over his lap and he turned up my skirt and pulled down my panties. I was crying even before he smacked me, I was so scared. It lasted a long time but he never hit me very hard. When it was all over I was extremely relieved. Then he told me to come back again the next evening, and when I went back he said he wanted to inspect the marks, to see if I was okay. He made me stand in front of him and pull down my panties. He poked and prodded me and then sent me away.
‘Dirty bastard,’ Celeste said, utterly engrossed in what Natasha was confiding in them.
Natasha nodded. ‘He was, and I was just too young to understand. To me he was an authority figure, someone to be obeyed. After that he used to find fault with me as often as he could and it was always the same routine. He would spank me one night, usually late at night after lights out, and I would have to go back the next evening to show him my bottom. Hardly a night went by when I did not have to bare my bottom in front of him - either for a spanking or for an inspection of the results of the previous spanking.
‘And I used to hate the inspections more than the spanking. He got into the habit of making me lie over his lap for the assessment as if I was going to be spanked again. He never actually touched my sex, but he used to poke and prod me. He liked to run the palm of his hand round and round over my buttocks, pulling the cheeks of my bottom apart and asking me if it hurt. I have never told anyone this. Do you want me to go on?’
‘Yes, we do,’ Beth urged intensely, ‘so long as you don’t mind talking about it.’
‘I suppose I guessed he was getting a kick out of it,’ Natasha continued, ‘but I wasn’t that sure. I just didn’t understand enough, until one night. I had left my books in his room and I ducked back in straight after a spanking, without knocking, and low and behold he was wanking. I caught him with his cock in his fist. He tried to cover up and yelled at me to get out, but he knew I knew what he was doing.’
Beth giggled and Celeste snorted into her drink, spilling wine down her front.
‘It wasn’t funny,’ Natasha said. ‘It made things worse. The next time he called me in, two days later, he was different. The matron was there. He told me of my misdemeanour. I can’t remember now what it was, but it was definitely something trivial. Then he said he was going to cane me. He made me take off my skirt and knickers and lie over his desk with my arms outstretched so that matron could hold me by the wrists. Then he caned me very hard, and I still had to go back for the inspection the following night. Matron was there again and this time I had to lie over her lap, naked from the waist down while Chambers watched. I was really sore from the cane, you can imagine, and she was not at all gentle. She slapped cream on my buttocks and rubbed it in roughly. I can still feel her stubby fingers pushing and probing, her nails digging into me.
‘It went on like that until I was old enough to leave; every time the welts would fade he would find some excuse to punish me again.’
Natasha stopped talking and picked up the camera again, eyeing the digital image of herself bending over. ‘That’s why I wanted to see this, to see what he would have seen.’
‘What he saw was very beautiful, not that that excuses him, but it makes it more understandable,’ Beth said, then taking the camera she added, ‘May I ask what you felt during a spanking?’
‘I hated him,’ Natasha snapped vehemently.
‘But what did you feel about the actual spanking?’
‘Well,’ she thought for a moment, ‘I don’t suppose, deep down, that I really minded the spanking. Actually, I think it was probably quite a turn on. I just hated him, he was such a bullying creep.’
‘But if it was someone else spanking you?’ Beth persisted.
Natasha raised her eyes to the ceiling, carefully assessing the question again. ‘I wouldn’t mind, I think. It depends on who, though.’
Beth turned to Celeste with a triumphant smile. ‘I told you she was one of us,’ she said.
‘One of us?’ Natasha asked, raising a questioning eyebrow.
Celeste moved to the sofa to sit beside her. She took one of Natasha’s hands in hers. ‘One of us,’ she confirmed. ‘And as your place is so squalid, why don’t you move in here?’ She looked to Beth for approval. ‘She could move into my room - and share my bed until we get another one for her.’
‘No,’ Beth countered, ‘that is not an option. You seem to forget, my dear young lodger, that this is my flat, so I decide who moves in and who shares with who. So, Natasha can share my room... and my bed.’ She smiled calculatingly. ‘My bed is bigger, after all.’
Celeste made a moue of disapproval and cast a mean look in Beth’s direction. ‘Go on, be like that,’ Beth said, ‘and our new flatmate will learn all about house rules and house discipline sooner than you think.’
As she was speaking, Beth tilted up her nose and started to sniff the air. ‘In fact, if what I can smell is our supper burning, she will start her education as an observer this very evening.’
Celeste shrieked and rushed to the kitchen, returning a moment later with a glum look on her face and a blackened casserole in her hand. ‘That’s the tuna pasta,’ she grumbled.
‘Then we’ll go out for supper,’ Beth announced. ‘Celeste will pay, and she’ll pay again when we come back.’
Two hours, two pizzas, and two bottles of wine later, the three girls returned to the flat carrying two suitcases of belongings from Natasha’s flat. Over supper, Natasha had found out what she could about the other two. She was much cheered by Celeste’s story, how the girl, her own age and with a similar education, had in the space of a day or two gone from no work and no future into a career with prospects. Could she, Natasha, follow a similar route? She was bored with modelling and was quite prepared to do it just part-time.
‘I’ve had to use all my assets,’ Celeste had said with a slightly inebriated giggle. ‘Especially the one I’m sitting on!’
‘I wouldn’t mind, as long as I was putting it to good use,’ Natasha replied, also feeling the effects of the drink.
‘All in good time,’ Beth said.
Back in the flat they made coffee and began to get ready for bed. Celeste wandered off unsteadily to run a bath while Beth and Natasha remained behind in the sitting room. Natasha took Beth by the hand and thanked her for letting her move in. ‘I feel that my life is about to change,’ she said. ‘I will do anything to work with you, to learn from you.’
‘You will,’ Beth said succinctly, ‘but I’ll put you to the test first.’
They could hear Celeste leaving the bathroom and moving about in the hall, and Beth called her in. She appeared wearing her fluffy robe; otherwise she was naked. Beth made her lie over her lap on the sofa, and lifted the hem of the robe. ‘Spank her,’ she commanded Natasha.
‘I - I,’ Natasha stammered, her eyes wide.
‘She ruined our supper,’ Beth pointed out, ‘so she deserves to be spanked.’
‘Oh no, I couldn’t,’ Natasha protested. She looked pleadingly at Beth. ‘I am more accustomed to being spanked,’ she added, by way of explanation.
Beth picked up one of Natasha’s hands and laid it on Celeste’s buttocks. ‘Spank her,’ she repeated.
Natasha slapped Celeste twice, feeble slaps, and then stopped. ‘I can’t do it,’ she moaned. ‘She’s too lovely.’
Beth spanked Celeste hard. ‘What would you like to do?’ she asked Natasha. She spanked Celeste’s bottom again. ‘When you see this?’ And she spanked it a third time.
‘I would like... I would like to kiss her,’ Natasha blurted.
Beth spanked Celeste again. ‘Kiss her?’ she asked, bringing her palm down crisply yet again.
‘Yes, and make love to her,’ Natasha explained shyly.
Beth continued spanking her younger friend. ‘Then you shall when I’ve finished with her,’ she said. ‘She’ll have a nice red bottom and you can kiss it better.’ She delivered a ferocious flurry of blows on the reddened flesh while Celeste moaned and wriggled but made no serious attempt to get away.
After a few minutes, Natasha reached out and grasped Beth’s arm. ‘That’s enough,’ she said, falling to her knees between Celeste’s legs. ‘Oh, you poor thing,’ she murmured, burying her face between Celeste’s buttocks. ‘Your poor bottom.’ She licked the crimson buttocks and then sank lower, her mouth pressed against Celeste’s sex, her tongue probing wetly.
Beth was content to watch and stroke Natasha’s silky hair, while with the other hand she stroked Celeste’s taut bottom, allowing one finger to probe within her tight anus. She enjoyed the spectacle of her new young and beautiful friend bringing the other to a noisy, writhing climax on her lap.
‘All for one, and one for all,’ Beth purred contentedly, and put paid to any talk about the sleeping arrangements. That night, all three girls slept in Beth’s bed.
Talking to oneself is the first sign of madness, Beth said to herself as she studied her reflection in the mirror, but it did not stop her conversation. She was not mad, she was happy. The job was going well, Natasha was a good and willing flatmate who actually paid the rent from her modelling income without being asked, and even Celeste coughed up on demand now that she was earning a salary and could not plead poverty. The sun was shining, the world looked beautiful, and her mind and body were fulfilled - oh, so fulfilled.
What could be better?
But the reflection wagged its finger at Beth. At times like this, the reflection said, things go wrong. It is the law of nature. When your head is in the air you don’t see the banana skin at your feet.
Two hours later, Beth and Natasha had checked into a suite at an ultra-modern west end hotel. Across one end of the lobby as they arrived hung a huge sign: Power to the Future. Dozens of men and a few women were darting around studying notice boards on easels, proclaiming the times and the places of various lectures and symposia. Some made notes on clipboards, others gathered in groups making polite conversation whilst trying to decipher their companions’ lapel badges.
‘It’s all go,’ Natasha said as they were heading to the lift.
‘There’s electricity in the air,’ Beth replied with a giggle.
Power to the Future was the biennial gathering of the huge utility companies from across Europe and North America, and Beth and Natasha were on a scouting mission. The companies represented at the conference were among the largest in the industrial sector, and an advertising contract with just one of them could keep a relatively small advertising company off the breadline for years.
‘If we’ve got to go to that conference,’ Beth had said two days before, ‘we’ll go in style.’ She explained to Natasha how the only way to make good contacts and to seek new business was to be there and to mix with the delegates. That was why she had booked the suite and why she was taking Natasha. ‘With your looks...’ she said, allowing her thoughts to drift.
Now, in the suite, she grasped Natasha by the shoulders. ‘Do well here, Tash, and I’ll introduce you to Richard Cross. You never know, you might have a future behind the camera.’
Natasha leaned forward to kiss Beth on the cheek. ‘I’ll do anything you say. You’re the boss.’
‘And don’t you forget it,’ Beth said. ‘I have ways of reminding you,’ and she lightly slapped the girl’s rump.
Two hours later Natasha had lost some of her enthusiasm, having sat through a lecture entitled Generation in the Twenty-First Century without understanding a word of it.
‘Shoulders back, chest out, our work starts now,’ Beth said, when they met at lunchtime. She led Natasha by the arm through the swing doors of the bar. It was crowded but the girls, smiling and shoving in equal measure, secured a small table near the bar. They ordered drinks, realising from the scrum that they were unlikely to be served more than once.
Before she had taken a sip of hers, Beth heard a voice. ‘Is it Ms Forrester?’ someone asked.
The girls looked up to find a tall man of about fifty standing over them. His hair was greying but his complexion shone with good health and good grooming. ‘Peregrine Merchant, Eastern Light,’ he introduced himself.
Beth held out a hand. ‘I know, I haven’t forgotten,’ she said with a smile. ‘This is Natasha Perry.’ Merchant took Natasha’s proffered hand in both of his, and his smile widened. ‘Natasha, do you mind if I sit awhile.’ He pulled up a chair without waiting for an answer.
They chatted for a moment until they noticed someone at the bar waving at Merchant. He got up, saying, ‘Don’t go away, I’ll be right back.’
As soon as he was out of earshot, Beth turned to Natasha. ‘Listen carefully, I must be quick. Eastern Light used to have a contract with us. When that contract ran out they signed up with another company. No time now to tell you why. Anyway, that contract is running out in a month. They are punting around; everyone knows it. Try to find out what he’s thinking. He’s the chairman.’
‘What, me?’ Natasha said in dismay. ‘Where will you be?’
‘I’ll leave you to it. He likes you, I can tell. And he loves girls; he pinched my bottom once.’
Natasha felt nervous when Merchant returned. As he sat down, Beth stood up. ‘I’ll leave you in Natasha’s company, if you don’t mind, Peregrine,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen someone I must talk to over there.’
Merchant turned his chair slightly so his knees pressed against Natasha’s. ‘I don’t mind at all,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘You needn’t hurry back,’ he added quietly, his face close to Natasha’s.
By five o’clock Beth was feeling tired and dispirited. She had talked to so many people without results, listened to two debates about arcane subjects, and swallowed too many cups of coffee and tea. It had been a waste of time; her only hope was Natasha. When she found the other girl in the lobby, Natasha’s expression and body language told her what she needed to know, or rather, what she didn’t need to know.
Natasha shook her head. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I tried, I really tried. I think he fancies me but he’s quite cagey.’
‘What did you expect?’ Beth said hotly. ‘Him to give it to you on a plate?’
Natasha took Beth by the hand. ‘Don’t be angry. I’m just not very good at this sort of thing. I tried everything...’
‘And you failed,’ Beth retorted unkindly. ‘So it’s time for plan B. Meet me upstairs in an hour,’ and she strode off.
She found Merchant where she thought he would be, in the bar. He seemed pleased to see her. ‘What a charming young lady you employ, Beth,’ he gushed. ‘You must be coming up in the world to have an assistant at your beck and call. She speaks very highly of you.’
‘And she speaks very highly of you, Peregrine,’ Beth said, and then took him by the hand. ‘Only you didn’t talk about what she wanted to hear you talk about.’
He looked at her in mock horror. ‘You mean, this?’ he said, holding up his briefcase. He clutched it to his chest with his arms around it. ‘You mean she wanted to see inside this with those great big, beautiful eyes.’
‘Is that where it is?’ Beth asked.
He laughed. ‘My dear girl, that’s for me to know and you to find out,’ he said, and then became serious. ‘I’m not a fool, you know, Beth. I knew what you two were up to.’
‘I know you’re not a fool, Peregrine. But your contract with the company I shall not name is coming to an end. You could give me a clue about the way you’re thinking.’
He considered her words for a while. ‘A clue,’ he said eventually. ‘Now let me see, what would that be worth? At least drinks and supper, I would say. On your expense account.’
‘Seven o’clock,’ Beth said. ‘Upstairs, in suite one-five-two-four.’
At six forty-five in the bedroom of their suite, Beth said, ‘Tash, whatever I say in the next few minutes, whatever I do, you go along with it.’
At six fifty Beth made sure the main door to the suite, the door to the corridor, was left slightly ajar.
At six fifty-five she called Natasha into the bedroom again, leaving that door slightly open too.
At six fifty-seven, she announced loudly and sternly, ‘Natasha, you are a good-for-nothing, useless waste of space. Come here, I am going to teach you a lesson. Get over my lap,’ and just then there was a light tap on the outside door, and Beth heard footsteps enter and then stop. At the same moment she smacked Natasha hard, across both buttocks. ‘I’m going to teach you a lesson,’ she repeated, and smacked the girl again, and again.
At six fifty-nine Natasha, crying, ran from the bedroom into the sitting room and bumped into Peregrine Merchant standing near the door, his face flushed, a lecherous grin on his lips. She shrieked in horror and sobbed even louder.
‘Come back here - I haven’t finished with you yet,’ Beth shouted from the bedroom.
At exactly seven o’clock she entered the sitting room and smiled at Merchant. ‘Hello, Peregrine, I didn’t realise you were here,’ she said. ‘Just a minute, I’ll be right with you.’
At one minute past seven Beth was talking to Natasha in a corner of the room. Her voice was a sibilant whisper capable of being overheard, and the only person other than Natasha within earshot was Merchant. Only certain words were audible. ‘Deal with you later... very severely... tonight after dinner... my hairbrush... on your bare bottom.’
At two minutes past seven, Natasha left the suite with her head down to hide her tears.
At three minutes past seven, Beth took Merchant’s arm. ‘Drinks downstairs, I think, Peregrine. I’ve had enough of this place for a while.’
At four minutes past seven, Beth and Peregrine left the suite, closing the door behind them.
At a restaurant more frequented by tourists than gourmets, where the service was surly, the portions large but badly cooked, and the bill even larger, Beth and Peregrine Merchant eyed each other across the table. Both knew what the other wanted and each was determined not to crack first.
Merchant poured more wine into their glasses. ‘You were very tough on Natasha, Beth,’ he said casually. ‘I couldn’t help hearing. What had she done?’
‘Not enough,’ Beth replied briskly. She changed her tone and looked up at him from under her eyelashes. ‘You could at least give me an idea of how many companies are in the running,’ she said, completely changing the subject.
‘Six,’ he disclosed frankly. ‘She’s a very pretty girl; I’m surprised she puts up with it,’ he commented, bringing the subject back to where he preferred it.
‘She’s a very naughty girl and she has to put up with it if she wants to work for me,’ Beth said. ‘Is Cross, Carstairs and Denton one of the six? Surely you can tell me that.’
‘It could be,’ Merchant said, nodding inscrutably and reaching for his glass. ‘Are you really going to be... to be punishing her later?’
‘I could be,’ Beth teased, matching his inscrutability. ‘Will you tell me if we’re on the list?’
‘I might do, if you do.’
‘And I might do, if you do.’
‘Yes, you are on the list,’ Merchant conceded.
‘Yes, I am going to spank her,’ Beth told him.
‘Is there any way I could assist, or at least be there?’ Merchant asked.
‘Is there any way I could assist our chances to get to the top of the list?’ Beth replied.
‘Possibly,’ said Merchant.
‘And possibly to you, too,’ Beth said, and they smiled knowingly at each other. ‘But the trouble with this arrangement,’ Beth went on ruefully, ‘is that I have to declare my hand before you do.’
Merchant took one of Beth’s hands in his own and looked at it, lying on his palm. ‘And a very pretty hand it is too. I hope it is a firm hand.’
Beth looked at him carefully. ‘What exactly do you want, Perry?’ she asked.
‘Just to be there at the time.’
‘Discreetly?’
‘Very discreetly,’ he confirmed.
‘And what do I get in return?’
He squeezed her hand and then let it go. ‘I can make no promises,’ he said. ‘Not yet, at least. But I can tell you this: I am looking much more favourably on Cross, Carstairs and Denton now that I know you are still there, working so diligently for your clients and with such a pretty, willing and naughty assistant.’
He raised his glass. ‘To the future.’
Beth raised hers. ‘To the future, together.’
‘Mm, I like the sound of together,’ he said. ‘You’ve always been one of my favourites, Beth.’
She laughed. ‘I gathered that. I’ve still got the bruise on my bottom where you pinched me.’
‘Me, pinch you?’ he said, in mock offence and innocence. ‘Never, surely.’
When she called for the bill, he raised his glass again. ‘To the very near future,’ he said.
Beth looked at her watch. ‘Indeed, about half an hour from now?’ she said.
Twenty-five minutes later Beth was back in her suite, making sure to leave the main door unlocked. She found Natasha in the bedroom, lying on her stomach on the big bed, glumly staring at the television in the corner. She had changed into pyjamas and her hair was loose.
She seemed pleased to see Beth. ‘Good dinner?’ she asked, rolling over onto her back and stretching with her hands balled into fists.
‘Not bad,’ Beth replied, thinking that Natasha looked like a kitten when she stretched.
‘Any progress?’ Natasha asked, with a hopeful look.
‘More than you achieved,’ she said, then emptied her handbag noisily on the dressing table, listening out for the telltale sounds she expected. Sure enough, as she dropped her powder compact on the glass top with a clatter, she heard the slight squeak of the door and soft footfalls in the other room.
Natasha, apparently totally unaware of the extraneous noises, followed with her eyes as Beth walked around the room. ‘I did do my best, you know,’ she said earnestly.
Beth stood over her, as she lay on the bed. ‘That may be, but it wasn’t good enough, was it?’
Natasha hung her head. ‘No, I’m sorry I let you down.’
Beth was unrelenting. ‘So we have some unfinished business with my hairbrush.’
Natasha looked up in surprise. ‘Oh, but I thought that was just a game to get the old goat going.’
‘No, no, that was no game,’ Beth assured her. ‘I’m going to have a quick shower now, and when I come back you will be naked and waiting.’
As Beth showered rapidly, she wondered how Merchant was enjoying being the audience. Natasha naked and waiting timidly on the bed would be quite an appetiser for him - the overture before the grand opera.
When she reappeared in the bedroom wearing only the hotel’s white bathrobe, Natasha was indeed naked, lying on the bed again on her stomach, with the hairbrush loosely held in her hands, tears of trepidation sparkling in the corners of her eyes.
‘I don’t mind being punished by you, Beth,’ she said meekly. ‘I am just sorry that I let you down.’
‘You’ll be even sorrier in a minute,’ Beth replied, picking up a straight-backed chair and positioning it beside the bed, in full view of the glinting eye just visible behind the crack of the bedroom door.
She sat down and without a word Natasha placed herself across her lap. Beth opened the girl’s legs, knowing that her sex was pointing directly at the door. Then she lightly drew the stiff bristles of the brush up over the moist labia and between the cheeks of her bottom, over the small tight ring of her anus, so that Natasha shivered. Then just as lightly she began to spank her with the bristles, until little pinpoints of red sprung up all over the yielding flesh.
She raised the hairbrush, turned it over in her hand, and then brought it down with a resounding smack on the farthest buttock. Almost immediately she did the same to the buttock nearest her. Then she sat back for a moment, watching the blood colour the punished globes a bright red.
Natasha said nothing, but grunted when the third blow fell, and again on the fourth.
By the sixth her bottom was a fiery crimson all over, except deep down in the valley where nestled her puckered opening. As she was swinging the brush back again, Beth noticed that Natasha’s labia were open and moist, like a juicy fig ready for eating. By the eighth fierce stroke Natasha was in tears. She writhed around and sank to her knees between Beth’s legs, burying her face in the folds of the bathrobe covering Beth’s thighs.
‘No more, please Beth.’ As the muffled sobs came from her lap Beth could feel the girl’s hot breath warming her through the towelling. ‘I really did do my best. I even took a peak in his briefcase when he went to the loo.’
‘You did what?!’ Beth exclaimed, pushing Natasha away so that she fell to the floor with a shocked squeal.
‘Well, answer her,’ snapped Merchant, standing openly in the bedroom doorway. ‘You did what?’
Both girls looked up at him in horror, as if frozen for a second. Natasha turned her face, stained with tears, to Beth. ‘W-what’s he doing here?’ she snivelled, a note of despair and incomprehension in her voice.
‘I’d say it’s a good thing I am here,’ he answered for Beth, ‘otherwise I would not have found out just how underhand and deceitful and...’ he hunted for the correct word, ‘...how unethical you two obviously are. Going through my briefcase, indeed! It’s an utter disgrace!’ Merchant looked at Beth. ‘And I hold you responsible.’
‘But...’ Beth floundered, ‘but I didn’t do anything.’
‘Maybe so, but this would-be thief, this industrial spy, she works for you. She does what you tell her and I therefore hold you responsible.’
When neither of the girls spoke up, he went on. ‘Either I take this outrageous matter further, undoubtedly costing both of you your jobs,’ he paused, staring at them each in turn, ‘or I deal with you both myself, here and now.’
Still neither girl spoke. ‘Your choice,’ he barked.
Still silence. ‘So it’s up to me, is it?’ he said, taking off his jacket. ‘Right, first we must even things up.’ He pointed to Beth. ‘Robe off and bend over the end of the bed.’ Then he looked at Natasha. ‘She gave you eight strokes with the hairbrush, so you give her eight in return, and then it will be my turn.’
Natasha looked again at Beth, waiting for her to lead. Beth stood up and handed the hairbrush to her. ‘This isn’t fair,’ she said, taking off her bathrobe as she spoke. She was naked underneath. She lay over the foot of the bed, her bottom exposed, and Natasha hesitantly stood beside her, the brush held limply in her hand.
‘Get on with it,’ Merchant demanded.
‘Sorry Beth,’ Natasha said, and she swung the brush so that it slapped across the middle of Beth’s buttocks.
‘Harder,’ Merchant insisted. ‘She hit you harder than that.’
Natasha swung the brush a second time, and again it landed with a dull slap in the middle of Beth’s bottom.
‘No, you can do better than that,’ Merchant said impatiently. He stood immediately behind Natasha, gripping her right hand, which held the brush, and pushing himself against her shapely form, her hot and punished bottom against his groin, the rough trouser material chafing her sore flesh.
‘Like this,’ he guided, pulling back both their arms as one, and propelled them forward and down with pace so that the brush swatted with a ferociously cruel impact on Beth’s bottom. She squealed as if she had been branded and slumped on the bed.
They repeated the routine five more times without mercy, and Beth cried out with the pain of each stroke. Natasha was crying too, mortified that she was being forced to punish her friend so severely, and uncomfortable with the possessive closeness of his embrace and the telltale lump that pressed into her tortured bottom cheeks.
Merchant then took the hairbrush into his hand alone. ‘Now it is my turn,’ he said, slightly out of breath.
He made Natasha bend over the bed next to Beth so that their hips touched, two naked and inflamed bottoms next to each other, four red and purple blotched buttocks in a row.
‘I am going to thrash you until my arm hurts,’ he vowed. ‘I will brook no argument or protest. And then you will do everything else I want or I shall beat you again.’
Beth rested her head on one arm, gazing into Natasha’s eyes, just inches from her own. With her free hand she reached for Natasha’s hand, its palm damp.
Merchant took his time. ‘Two of everything,’ he said. ‘Double the time and double the number of strokes,’ he added, swinging the brush down for the first time, ‘on double the number of miscreants.’
He beat each vulnerable cheek at random and then systematically in order, never once letting up. Beth and Natasha gripped each other’s hand fiercely, trying to stifle their sobs. Beth was pleased to see Natasha even try to smile through her tears, but her return smile turned to a grimace as the wooden back of the brush fell like a branding iron in a particularly sore spot.
Finally Merchant tired. They heard the brush drop to the carpet and his panting breath as he studied his handiwork for long seconds.
When he had recovered his composure, he ordered them to lie on the bed, head to toe. ‘Guess what you are going to do now, while I undress,’ he goaded. ‘The last one to come will be beaten again.’
Beth slid her head forward as Natasha raised her upper leg. She nestled her face into the girl’s groin, feeling Natasha doing the same to her, the same way at the same time. Beth gently kissed the younger girl’s sex as her nose burrowed between Natasha’s buttocks, the scalding flesh warming her forehead and cheeks. Lovingly she slid her tongue between Natasha’s labia and deep into the already damp tunnel inside. At the same time she could feel Natasha’s tongue tracing the path between her vagina and anus and back again before penetrating her own labia. Beth forgot Merchant, forgot the beating, and forgot the hotel room. All that mattered, all that she was aware of was the need to give and to receive sensual pleasure. She lapped her tongue up and down, and around and around Natasha’s clitoris, knowing if she brought Natasha to a climax, then she herself would climax with pleasure in response. She wanted it to last forever while, at the same time, she desperately wanted the release the climax would bring.
The heat of her bottom spread all over her body and she knew she was gasping and panting as she licked furiously at the younger girl. When the climaxes came, Beth had no idea whose was first. And it did not matter. Both girls convulsed, moaning deep in their throats and then threw their heads back and lay with their eyes closed, breathing heavily.
When Beth opened her eyes she saw Merchant standing at the foot of the bed. He was naked, his penis standing out from his body like a flagpole on the side of a building.
‘I would call that a dead heat,’ he decided. ‘Now move over.’
He lay on his back between the girls and told them to follow his instructions. Natasha had to ‘go south’, to lie between his legs and to lick between the cheeks of his bottom and to take his balls into her mouth, while Beth had to ‘go north’, squatting over his head with her legs apart to suck his penis.
As she took the engorged head in her mouth she could feel his tongue tickling her already sensitive clitoris, his fingers running lightly over the ridges on her buttocks. After many minutes in which the only sound in the room was that of wet lapping and suckling, he mumbled, ‘All change.’ The girls obediently swapped places and the lapping and suckling resumed.
Then he ordered them to position themselves either side of him and to lick his penis in unison, from the hairy, broad base at his stomach, up the column to the glistening summit and back again. He placed a hand on each of their heads, the right hand on blonde hair, the left on black, to guide their movements and to synchronise their timing, the two tongues touching on their journey.
‘Beth, you are the oldest,’ he croaked, as he stiffened and his muscles tensed, ‘so you can have the first mouthful,’ so she obediently clamped her lips over his helmet and sucked avidly. Within seconds he spasmed and shot a jet of warm, sticky fluid deep into her throat. When her mouth was full she moved away and Natasha leant forward to swallow the next and lesser ejaculations, holding his penis in her mouth until it was flaccid again.
Ten minutes later he was dressed. ‘I’d like to stay the night,’ he said, ‘but I need my sleep - and I don’t think I’d get much here.’ At the door he turned. ‘You’ll be hearing from me very soon.’
In bed the girls lay on their sides cuddling, Natasha’s hot bottom resting in Beth’s lap.
‘Do you think he’s forgiven us?’ Natasha asked quietly.
‘He jolly well ought to have done, after that,’ Beth said. ‘But I’m more worried about the contract; whether or not we’re going to get it now.’
‘It’s hard work, your job,’ Natasha said sleepily, nestling her bottom closer to Beth. ‘But it has its compensations.’
At eight in the morning the telephone rang in the hotel suite. Beth shook her tousled hair and placed the receiver next to her ear on the pillow before uttering a muffled hello.
It was Richard. ‘My office,’ he said. ‘One hour.’
‘But it’s Saturday,’ Beth complained, still feeling drowsy.
‘My office in one hour,’ he repeated. ‘And bring the other girl with you. What’s her name? Natasha.’ His voice was replaced by a heavy click and a dialling tone.
‘What’s up?’ Natasha asked, sitting up and stretching.
Beth shook her head to try to understand what was happening. ‘It can only be that bloody snake Merchant,’ she said. ‘He must have ratted on us and told Richard. Shit, he didn’t waste any time.’
‘After what we did for him?’ Natasha yawned, then looked alarmed when Beth told her they’d been summoned. ‘I don’t want to meet Mr Cross like this,’ she said.
‘We have no choice,’ Beth said, throwing Natasha’s clothes onto the bed and heading for the bathroom. ‘Our master has spoken.’
Sixty minutes later the pair threaded their way through the empty offices of Cross, Carstairs and Denton to the inner sanctum where they found Richard Cross sitting behind his desk, his face bleak with anger. He looked at his watch as they entered. He was wearing a sweater instead of his customary suit, and was unshaven.
‘I do not enjoy spending my weekends getting early morning calls and chasing up recalcitrant members of staff,’ he snapped at Beth. ‘Explain yourself.’
‘Explain what? Beth asked.
‘You know full well what - what you two got up to yesterday.’
In a halting voice Beth explained as best as she could. She told Richard who Natasha was and what she wanted, how the girl had hoped to prove herself and win his approval with an unofficial, freelance job, how they had tried to elicit information from Peregrine Merchant, and how together they might have overstepped the mark of conventional behaviour.
Richard snorted in disbelief and turned to Natasha for the first time. ‘Is that the way you try to impress me, by acting like some second-rate industrial snoop?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Cross, I was only trying to help... to help Beth.’ She glanced sideways at the other girl for support.
He snorted again. ‘Help? You realise you could get us struck off the register, thrown out of our professional association?’
When Beth tried to interpolate on behalf of Natasha, he peremptorily gestured to her that she should sit down on the couch behind her friend so that the two could no longer have eye contact, saying, ‘I’ll deal with you in a moment.’ He kept Natasha standing in front of his desk.
‘You realise you could be prosecuted,’ he barked. ‘You could be up in court.’
Natasha started to sob. ‘But I didn’t do much,’ she pleaded. ‘I didn’t find anything.’
‘I know just what you did,’ Richard replied. ‘Merchant told me on the telephone first thing this morning. He could still press charges.’
Natasha’s dismay momentarily flashed into anger. ‘Well then, he’s a bastard,’ she snapped, fleetingly forgetting the seriousness of her predicament. ‘He already dealt with us himself. He had no right to tell you.’
Richard sat incredulous for long tense seconds, and Beth cringed behind Natasha. ‘A bastard?’ he eventually said, his tone one of disbelief. ‘A potential very important client of ours and you call him a bastard?’ He shook his head and rubbed his temples. ‘And for your information, of course he should have told me. I should know everything that happens if it concerns the firm.’
‘And did he tell you what he did to us in retribution?’ Natasha ploughed on angrily.
‘He did,’ Richard said, a slight smile playing around his lips for the first time. ‘He sounded quite impressed by the both of you.’
Natasha was indignant. ‘He beat me - he beat the both of us.’
‘How?’ Richard asked.
‘On our bottoms, our bare bottoms, with a hairbrush,’ Natasha spluttered, her cheeks flushed. ‘And then he rats on us.’
Richard laughed. ‘Good; that’ll teach you not to meddle in affairs that are none of your business.’
Natasha could hardly contain her fury. Beth could see her quivering with anger. ‘Then,’ Natasha said, clearly working hard to remain calm, ‘then he made us suck him off. I whored for you and I don’t even work for you.’
‘Quite,’ Richard said calmly. ‘You don’t work for me. And if you ever have any hope of doing so you’ll have to learn, as Beth has, that everything is fair in love and war and business. How do you think I became managing director here?’
‘I don’t know, do I?’ she said. ‘By hard work?’
He smiled patronisingly. ‘Yes, plenty of that, and also because I married the boss’s daughter. My wife Helen is the Cross in Cross, Carstairs and Denton. I took her name when we married, to keep things simple. Is that whoring?’
Natasha shook her head.
Richard went on. ‘I slept with her long before we were married. Is that whoring?’
‘No,’ Natasha said meekly.
‘So let’s get this straight,’ Richard said. ‘You did what you did voluntarily. Nobody made you do anything - right? You paid a penalty that was only fair - right?’
She nodded, and Richard changed tack. ‘Do you still want to work here?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’ Natasha nodded.
‘Even after what you’ve been through?’
She nodded again, so he thought for a moment and then said, ‘Well at least you show the right spirit. You have also shown enterprise, albeit misdirected, but you’ve a lot to learn. An awful lot. I’ll tell you in a minute my conditions, but first I think we’ll give you a practical demonstration.
‘Won’t we, Beth,’ he said, snapping his head in the direction of the other girl.
‘Yes, Richard,’ Beth said respectfully, rising to her feet.
He also stood up. ‘I hold you responsible for everything that went wrong last night, Beth. I hold you responsible for recruiting Natasha in the first place and for putting her in a position with which she could not cope. I hold you responsible for everything you two did to Merchant and everything he did to you in return. Natasha has every right to be angry with you...’
‘Oh no,’ Natasha interrupted, ‘I’m not angry with Beth, it wasn’t her fault...’
‘So now you will pay the penalty and give Natasha a lesson at the same time,’ Richard went on, ignoring Natasha’s protestation. ‘Bend over the desk.’
‘But you can’t beat her, please,’ Natasha tried again. ‘She has already...’
‘Are you telling me what I can or cannot do?’ he snapped. ‘Do you want to make it worse for her?’
Natasha fell silent and Richard again told Beth to bend over the desk. He cleared away papers and an executive toy with silver balls, and Beth lowered her top half to the surface, gripping the sides with her hands.
He turned to Natasha. ‘Lift up her skirt and take down her knickers.’
‘Oh please,’ she said, but he was unrelenting, so she did as she was told, whispering an apology to Beth as she raised the skirt and eased the girl’s knickers down around her ankles.
‘Right off,’ Richard said. ‘Legs apart.’
Natasha slid the knickers over Beth’s feet and put her hand between her friend’s thighs, pushing her legs apart. ‘Look at those marks, Mr Cross,’ she pleaded. ‘You can’t spank her again.’
‘I can see she has been well punished,’ Richard said, touching Beth’s flesh. ‘Peregrine Merchant is good at his job, I always knew that.’ He reached into a desk drawer and produced a jar of lubricant. He handed it to Natasha. ‘Put some of this on her.’
Natasha smoothed the oily paste onto the inflamed and purple buttocks. ‘No,’ Richard corrected, ‘not there; on her anus, where it will do some good.’
Natasha looked at him in horror. ‘You’re not going to...’
Richard’s eyes flashed. ‘Are you trying to tell me again what I can and cannot do?’
Natasha shook her head. ‘If you really are going to do it,’ she said quietly, ‘you should do it to me, not to her. I was the one who was naughty.’
Richard was unmoved. ‘You’ll get yours soon enough, I dare say. For the moment you can learn by watching. Now do what I told you.’
Natasha smoothed the paste over Beth’s anus, which puckered at her touch and then loosened again to allow the greasy finger to slip inside. When the little ring was shining with grease, Richard turned Natasha around so she faced him and, pressing on her shoulders, forced her down to her knees. With no further instruction, Natasha undid his belt and unzipped his fly, sliding his trousers and pants down to his feet.
‘Beth, watch,’ Richard instructed, and still lying over the desk, Beth turned her head so that she was facing them. His erect penis was just inches from Natasha’s face, and the younger girl took the swollen helmet into her mouth. Richard allowed her to suck him until his rod was stiff and full to bursting, and then pushed her away. ‘Now the lubricant,’ he said.
As neat as a geisha at a tea party, the dark-haired girl smoothed the lubricant the full length of the rigid column and then ran her hands up and down it in a continuous movement, gathering speed with every stroke. When it dawned on Richard what she was trying to do, he gripped Natasha by the hair and pulled her away from him. ‘Oh, no you don’t,’ he said. ‘This is for Beth.’ With Natasha still sitting on her heels on the floor, he positioned himself between Beth’s legs and held his penis with its head touching her anus. ‘Now come and watch,’ he ordered Natasha. ‘Come close.’
She crawled across the carpet to the couple. ‘Closer,’ Richard barked, and Natasha rested her cheek on Beth’s buttock, feeling its heat, and stroked her friend’s thigh with her hands, trying mutely to offer her support. Natasha’s eyes were just inches from the rod that now began to seek entrance. She watched as it slid silently out of sight, deep into the most intimate part of her submissive friend.
The act was not lovemaking; it was brief and frantic, designed not for Beth’s pleasure but only for Richard’s. Beth gasped with every thrust, tears running down her face to form two small pools on the desktop. Richard seemed to be full of lust and anger. With each shunt Natasha sobbed in sympathy for her friend, and Richard rutted against Beth so aggressively that the desk moved a little, before arching his back and shuddering, and letting out a strangled groan.
Five minutes later the two girls with tearstained faces sat next to each other on the couch, Natasha’s arm around Beth’s shoulders. Richard was back behind his desk looking as he had done when first they entered the office, apparently untouched by the experience since.
‘I won’t keep you much longer,’ he said. ‘I hope lessons have been learned this morning,’ he added sternly, searching their faces. They both nodded mutely, Beth shifting uncomfortably where she sat. She had hated the lesson, not because of what he did, but because of the uncaring way in which he did it.
He addressed her directly. ‘Chester Hampton will be back in town in the coming week. We need that Internat contract. See if you can get back into my good books. Incidentally, it seems only fair to tell you now that Perry Merchant was not just angry about your behaviour yesterday, he was impressed too; impressed by your ingenuity and your fortitude.’
He picked up a folder. ‘You can go now,’ he added.
‘But...’ Natasha began, but Beth spoke for her.
‘What about Natasha?’
Richard cocked an eyebrow at the lovely dark-haired girl. ‘You’re still interested, after that?’
Natasha blushed again. ‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘Beth likes working for you and she admires you. I have not yet worked out why, but I’d like the chance to find out.’
Richard snorted. ‘You’re certainly a girl with spirit,’ he mused. ‘That’s good. But it is untamed; you don’t know the difference between being frank and being rude.’
‘So?’ Natasha replied cheekily.
Richard twiddled a pencil in his fingers. ‘So before we go any farther you will have to prove yourself a willing worker, and to learn some discipline and manners.’
‘From you, like Beth just did, you mean?’
‘No, from my wife. Do you agree?’
Natasha looked surprised and glanced at Beth, who raised her eyebrows, a gesture that Natasha could not immediately interpret.
‘And what would that entail?’ she asked.
‘You will spend two days in our home in the country, with my wife. She is very experienced. She will teach you and she will discipline you. If you are smart you will learn from her. If you are smart, you will also do what she says. Do you agree?’
Natasha shrugged. ‘I suppose so, yes.’
‘But that’s not quite all,’ Richard went on. ‘You must also prove yourself to me. You will keep a journal of your stay, what happens and what you have learned, in detail. I want to know everything. When you return to London you will present your report to me. You can write, I take it?’
Natasha ignored the last question, and asked one of her own. ‘What will your wife be looking for?’
Richard shrugged. ‘She won’t teach you advertising, if that’s what you mean. She’s a bit out of touch. But she is a very good judge of character and a very firm teacher. She enjoys instilling a sense of self-discipline into young women, as Beth can confirm.’
Natasha glanced again at Beth and then said, ‘Okay, it’s a deal, but if I pass at the Mrs Cross school of self-discipline, do I get a job?’
‘That depends upon your report; it better be good, it better be detailed, and it better be the truth. Remember, I will have already heard it from Helen.
‘You can go now.’
As the two girls threaded their way back through the empty offices, Beth took Natasha by the arm. ‘When I was young,’ she said, ‘we were going on a cycling holiday. Before we left we rubbed turpentine onto our bottoms.’
‘What on earth for?’ Natasha asked, pressing the button for the lift.
‘To make them harder, so we didn’t get saddle sore.’
Natasha giggled. ‘Why are you telling me?’
‘Oh nothing, it’s not important,’ Beth replied with a smile, hugging Natasha’s arm closer to her bosom. ‘I just thought you might want to buy some turpentine before visiting Helen Cross.’
Beth and Celeste sat leaning against the arms at either end of the sofa in their flat. Beth’s feet were in Celeste’s lap and the younger girl had her head leaning to one side, concentrating on painting Beth’s toenails.
Celeste held up one small foot, to admire her handiwork. ‘I have something to show you,’ she said.
‘And I have something to tell you,’ Beth replied. ‘You first.’
Celeste dropped the foot on the sofa and went off to find her handbag. She returned holding three photographs that she handed to Beth without a word. Beth looked at all three carefully and then looked up at Celeste.
‘Great, aren’t they?’ Celeste beamed.
‘They’re pornographic,’ Beth replied.
Celeste was indignant. ‘They can’t be pornographic, they’re me.’
Beth laughed. ‘I know they’re of you,’ she said patiently. ‘I’d recognise that bottom anywhere. But they’re still pornographic. Look.’ She held them up as if Celeste had not seen them before. ‘They’re of you being caned in the nude by T.J. Kearns, who also happens to be in the nude and who has a great big hard on.’
‘I know,’ Celeste giggled. ‘Isn’t it exciting! He’ll think twice before trying to get rid of me now.’ She looked up to the ceiling in mock innocence. ‘He might even promote me or increase my salary.’
‘Have you shown them to him?’ Beth asked, incredulity straining her voice.
‘Just one of them. I told him to keep it as a souvenir.’
‘That’s blackmail.’
‘No it’s not. It’s cinema-verite, or photo-verite at least.’
Beth shook her head in disbelief. ‘Who took them?’
Celeste looked triumphant. ‘I did.’
‘Oh sure,’ Beth said. ‘You took these from the side while you were bent over the desk having your bottom thrashed.’
‘Yep,’ Celeste said, and laughed. ‘It was the remote control camera I tried to pocket when I was in Peter Parnell’s darkroom. He lent it to me a week ago.’
‘Not for nothing, I bet,’ Beth said.
Celeste blushed. ‘You’re right. I had to pay with my bottom again.’
Beth shook her head in dismay. ‘You’re awful, Celeste.’
From a pocket Celeste produced the camera, smaller than a cigarette packet. ‘It’s great.’ She held it out to Beth. ‘I thought you might like to use it for your work, if you know what I mean.’
Beth pushed her arm away. ‘No, I would not,’ she insisted. ‘You keep it. I don’t want to touch the dirty thing.’
Celeste made a moue of protest and with a swirl of her skirt sat down again with a thump. ‘So what did you want to tell me?’ she asked, taking the photographs and putting them to one side.
‘Now that Natasha is away in the country for a couple of days of strict training,’ Beth started, and both girls gave an exaggerated shudder at the thought, ‘I want to use this place for work tomorrow evening and I need your help.’
‘Sounds like fun,’ Celeste said, wriggling with pleasure, quite forgetting her annoyance about the camera. ‘How can I help?’
Beth smiled at her. ‘I want you to be Charlie again.’
‘Yippee!’ Celeste cheered. ‘I’m quite getting to like Charlie.’
Beth explained about Chester Hampton, that he was a valuable potential client and she was doing her best to win his business. ‘He likes games,’ Beth said, reminding the younger girl about the night they spent in the hotel suite in central London. ‘I thought we might use this place tomorrow for a charade.’
‘With me as Charlie,’ Celeste said.
‘With you as Charlie in a mask,’ Beth confirmed.
Celeste whooped with delight. ‘A masked play,’ she said eagerly. ‘Let’s plan it now.’
At eight the following evening, Chester Hampton stood outside the door of the flat checking the number. It was the right flat. He checked his watch. It was the right time. He recalled Beth’s somewhat confusing instructions; it was Candy’s flat but Candy would not be Candy, she would be Abigail, and she would be there with a ‘friend’. The front door would be unlocked and he should enter and join in any activity or game he found going on.
So he turned the handle and went inside.
One end of the sitting room, the end where Chester Hampton sat, was dark, whereas the other end of the room was brightly lit. Abigail, dressed as a maid, wore a sexy black dress, the short skirt of which just reached the tops of her shapely thighs, black stockings and shoes and a tiny white apron. On her face was a cat mask and in her hand a feather duster.
‘I must get this done,’ she murmured, flicking the duster at the bookcase, ‘Mr Hampton will be home soon.’ She leant over to pick up a bit of fluff on the carpet, revealing tight black knickers stretched across a pair of saucy buttocks. ‘He’s so strict with me, I mustn’t get in his bad books.’
She flitted around the room, bending and stretching, totally absorbed with the task in hand, oblivious to all else. When she was bending with her back to the door, a figure entered silently. The intruder was slimmer, with short fair hair and wearing a dark trouser suit and also a mask. The newcomer approached the maid silently from behind and smacked her proffered bottom. The maid squealed and turned to confront the intruder.
‘Oh, Charlie,’ the maid said when she saw who it was, ‘what are you doing? Mr Hampton will be home soon. You shouldn’t be here.’
‘Well he’s not here yet, so give me a kiss,’ Charlie said, taking the maid into his arms.
The maid pushed him away angrily. ‘You’ll get me into trouble. Remember if Mr Hampton finds you, you’re my brother. Now leave me alone and let me get on.’
She tried to continue the dusting but was pestered at every step by Charlie. As she reached to dust a picture he cupped and squeezed her breasts. When she bent down to the wastepaper basket he deftly pulled aside her knickers, revealing soft pink flesh and a shadowed cleft.
As she moved he followed, insinuating a hand between her legs. Relenting, the maid stopped, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him deeply and passionately, but when he reached behind to grasp her bottom, pulling her even closer, Abigail pushed him away.
‘Cool down,’ she said. ‘Better still, go away.’
But instead of leaving, Charlie lounged in an armchair, making himself at home.
‘Well, occupy yourself with a book, or something,’ the maid said. ‘I’ve got to clean the bedroom.’ As Charlie looked around, the maid added, ‘But don’t touch those in the bookcase with the glass doors. They’re Mr Hampton’s special books. He keeps a cane hidden behind them, to use on anyone who breaks his rules.’
As soon as he was alone, Charlie opened the bookcase and began to read the titles of the books from the spines. When he found one he liked, he pulled it out and opened it. It was a large book with full-page illustrations. As Charlie turned the pages slowly, studying each picture with rapt attention, he shifted uneasily in the chair. After a moment or two, with the book open on his lap with a particular picture on display, he pushed one hand down the front of his trousers. The cloth emphasised rather than concealed the slow, rhythmic movement of the hand beneath. Charlie had his head back and he began to pant.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Chester Hampton demanded, entering into the spirit of proceedings.
Charlie leapt to his feet, and the book clattered to the floor. ‘I-I’m sorry,’ he stammered. ‘I’m your maid’s brother. I was just waiting for her.’
‘I don’t give a damn who you are,’ Hampton said. ‘You were reading one of my private books.’ With his toe, he touched the volume lying open on the floor. ‘The penalty for that is a severe caning.’
Hampton reached into the bookcase and found the cane, four feet of hard bamboo. ‘Bend down,’ he commanded.
Just then the maid hurried into the room. ‘Please sir, don’t beat him,’ she begged. ‘I didn’t realise you were home. He’s my brother.’
‘That makes no difference to me,’ Hampton retorted. ‘I’m still going to thrash him.’
‘But it’s my fault,’ the maid pleaded.
‘Did you tell him to read my books?’ Hampton asked.
She shook her head.
‘Did you tell him not to read my books?’
She nodded.
Hampton swept the cane through the air. ‘In that case there’s no reason to change my intention.’
The maid grasped the hand holding the cane. ‘He’s not really my brother, sir. He’s my lover. If you are going to punish anyone it should be me.’
‘It will be you after him,’ Hampton snapped. ‘The nerve of you, using my home as a clandestine meeting place. I can imagine what you get up to when I’m not here.’ He turned to Charlie. ‘Remove your trousers and underwear and bend down.’
Slowly Charlie took off his shoes, socks, trousers and underpants and bent down in front of Hampton, with his hands on his knees. With the end of the cane Hampton flipped up his shirttail and tapped Charlie’s legs apart. He whistled quietly under his breath as he studied his victim.
‘Take all your clothes off,’ he said.
When Charlie stood in front of him, naked apart from her mask, her pubis shaved and her breasts firm and cherry tipped, Hampton said, ‘You try to deceive me, on top of everything else. You will get double the number of strokes for that - double strength.’
When the maid cried, imploring him not to carry out the punishment, Hampton turned on her. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘for you too. This... this female is your lover, you say? It is unnatural. You are lesbians and you are deceivers. It is right that you are severely punished. I shall enjoy administering it but not until you each have had a turn.’
He ordered the maid to strip but to leave on her shoes, stockings and suspender belt. When she had done so, he made her sit down and take Charlie across her lap. ‘Now you will spank your lover, as hard as she deserves,’ he said, adding that the softer the spanking, the harder would be the caning that followed.
The maid needed no second bidding. She spanked until her hand hurt and until Charlie’s buttocks were bright red and she was squealing with pain. Then it was Charlie’s turn, and she too spared no mercy, spanking even harder in return. The maid’s bottom, deliciously framed by the suspender belt and stocking tops, quivered delightfully with every stroke. By the time Hampton stopped them, every visible inch of Abigail’s flesh was a burning scarlet.
‘Now for the real thing,’ he said. ‘Who’s first?’
‘I... I’ll take a double dose if you’ll spare my friend,’ the maid said meekly.
Hampton laughed briefly. ‘Very noble,’ he said. ‘And for such unselfish behaviour, I shall take you second.’
He made Charlie bend over the back of the sofa, and the maid to kneel the other side, holding her friend by the wrists. ‘I am going to beat you for deceiving me, for disobeying my orders and for being a dirty little girl who plays with herself.’ The maid watched with wide eyes as he positioned himself behind Charlie, cutting the cane in the air.
As each stroke landed with a meaty crack across Charlie’s bottom, the maid could feel the girl’s hands clench inside her own, and see the tears that sparkled in her tormented eyes. She sobbed continuously and hung her head, resigned to her fate.
‘You may kiss her better and then change places,’ Hampton finally announced, noticeably panting with the effort of caning Charlie.
With her friend still draped over the back of the sofa, Abigail went around to the other side and fell on her knees in front of the cruelly striped bottom. Tenderly she kissed the stripes, trying to draw out the pain with her soft lips.
After a moment or two, Charlie straightened up and walked a little stiffly around the sofa as the maid took the position she had vacated, the fabric of the sofa already warm under her belly.
‘A double dose,’ Hampton said. ‘That seems only fair for a slightly plumper bottom.’
The maid said nothing, but clasped Charlie’s hands firmly with her own. She gasped as the first stroke landed with force across the middle of both buttocks and she was crying freely by the time the last stroke cut across the top of her thighs.
As Hampton dropped the cane, Charlie rushed around and started kissing the maid’s bottom, placing a cool cheek on the burning flesh. Apparently oblivious to Hampton, she ran her tongue along the last weal until it met and lingered on the sweet lips peeking between Abigail’s thighs.
Hampton, who had picked up the discarded book, looked up from the picture on the page that Charlie had been studying to the two girls in front of him. ‘This gives me an idea,’ he said.
He made the girls stand up and study the picture with him. It showed two naked girls making love. One was lying on the floor on her back, her legs apart. The other was kneeling over her, also with her legs apart. Each girl had her head buried between the other’s thighs; each had a pink tongue against the other’s red cleft.
‘This is what you like, so this is what you shall have,’ Hampton said.
He made Abigail lie on her back on the floor, with her legs apart and her knees raised. She wriggled as the tender flesh of her bottom touched the carpet. The maid still wore her mask, suspender belt and stockings. Charlie was naked apart from her mask. With her back to Hampton, she straddled the maid, her bottom in the air and her head lowered to the warm sex exposed and inviting in front of her. Instinctively and without further instruction, the girls placed lips to lips and started licking each other.
Hampton watched intently as he undressed. When he was totally naked, he too knelt by the maid’s head, his penis just inches from her tongue as it disappeared inside her friend.
Arching his body over Charlie, he slid his erection between Charlie’s vagina and the maid’s tongue and began to slowly pump so it was warmed and wetted by each. Then he withdrew, took the maid’s hands and placed them on Charlie’s pink and purple bottom. ‘Open it for me,’ he said.
The maid, licking her friend again, gently pulled Charlie’s sore buttocks apart to allow Hampton free passage. As both girls increased the pace of their licking, issuing wet gurgles and gasps, Hampton thrust into Charlie’s tight rear passage and started to pump slowly back and forth. This movement pushed Charlie’s vagina harder against the maid’s mouth, and Abigail thrust even deeper with her tongue as if trying to lick Hampton inside her friend.
The gasps turned to moans and the moans to cries as all three chased their climaxes together, and when their climaxes arrived, they came as a single explosion. With a satisfied sigh Hampton collapsed with his full weight on Charlie, and the two slumped onto Abigail.
When Hampton finally raised his head, he saw the maid’s mask had slipped off, and he saw that the maid, the ‘model’ who’d been photographed being spanked and enjoyed fantasy games under the names of Candy and Abigail, was in fact the star of Cross, Carstairs and Denton - Beth Forrester herself.
‘You look well. The country must have done you some good.’ Richard Cross looked admiringly at Natasha. She did indeed look well, her pale skin tinted by the sun, and her cheeks gently flushed. The evening sun flooding through the window of his office turned her soft black hair into a lustrous dark gold.
‘Thank you, I do feel rested,’ she said.
‘Rested? I’m not certain that’s such a good thing. You didn’t go to the country for some R and R.’
Richard Cross was, as usual, seated behind his desk. Beth lounged on the sofa with her feet up. It was Friday evening, after all, and the staff had finished work for the week. Natasha sat in an easy chair by the window, with a red folder on her lap.
‘Is that your report?’ Richard asked.
‘Yes,’ Natasha replied. ‘I wrote it today when I got back. I used Beth’s computer at home. I had to compile it in a hurry, so there are probably lots of mistakes.’ She didn’t add that Beth had helped her with the writing, lay out and presentation, even helping her print the report and put it neatly into a folder.
She stood up. ‘I’ll leave it with you,’ she said, reaching to put the folder on his desk.
‘Not so fast,’ Richard said. ‘We are all here. There is no hurry. I would like you to read it.’
Natasha, taken aback, resumed her seat, still clutching the folder. ‘I’m not very good at reading aloud.’
‘If you want a job here you’ll find you have to speak in public,’ Richard said, not too unkindly. ‘You’re among friends now, so it will be good practice for you. But before you start, perhaps you’ll pour all three of us a drink.’
Natasha busied herself with bottles and glasses at the sideboard, trying not to look at the object lying on its surface until she had to move it out of the way. She pushed at it with tentative fingers, telling herself it was simply a piece of wood, not a cane. Beth, watching but not helping her friend, noticed the smile play around Richard’s lips as he observed Natasha’s hesitancy.
When all three had their drinks, Natasha resumed her seat and opened the folder. Richard nodded and she began to read aloud in a light, girlish voice.
‘Tuesday, August 3.
‘Arrived by taxi mid-afternoon. Big house, very beautiful. The central section dates back to sixteenth century. Enormous garden, complete with swimming pool.
‘Mrs Cross very gracious, tells me to call her Helen. Tea together on the veranda followed by a walk around the grounds. Helen talks about purpose of visit. Says she was raised in a very moral home, turpitude was severely punished. (Looked up turpitude later in the library. It means baseness, depravity, vileness.) Helen says young women should learn obedience and self-discipline in an old-fashioned way, that infractions should be dealt with severely, a lesson she had learned at the hands of her father. Not certain I agree, not entirely certain what she meant, but kept silent.
‘Helen says that she had heard from Richard that I had a tendency to be “light-fingered”, and was an example of such turpitude. Her father would have been most severe. Helen says the means never justifies the end. Must think about that. Helen says deceit is always destructive but most destructive when we deceive ourselves. She says the nuns who used to live in the house centuries before when it was a convent, used to flog themselves and each other to purify their spirits and that it was good for them. She calls it self-flagellation. I say I bet it was the monks who flogged the nuns, but Helen is not amused. She says I need purification.
‘We sit under a huge oak tree in the garden and she asks me about myself. She is very easy to talk to. I tell her about modelling, how I am fed up with it and want a more demanding career. She asks me about my family and my childhood. I tell her about my time as a teenager in the hostel, how I was frequently being punished. She puts her arms around me and asks for the details. I sit on the grass with my head on her lap and she strokes my hair as I tell her exactly what happened to me and how unhappy I was.’
‘Excuse me interrupting, Natasha,’ Richard said, ‘but this is news to me.’ He turned to Beth. ‘Did you know about her time in a home?’
Beth nodded, and Richard turned again to Natasha. ‘Perhaps you will be good enough to tell me about it when you’ve finished your report. Now continue.’
‘We make supper together in the big kitchen. It is lovely. New potatoes, cold meats and salad, followed by strawberries freshly picked from the garden with a sauce of crushed raspberries and cream. Perfect. Afterwards Helen shows me the library. So many books and documents. She finds some books that are more than a hundred years old, maybe two hundred, about how life used to be in the convent. I think they will be boring, but they are not. In fact, they are quite naughty. There are pictures; Helen calls them plates, under sheets of tracing paper. Some of them show nuns being whipped. We giggle a lot but I feel quite sorry for them.
‘Helen says it is time for bed as I have a hard day ahead of me tomorrow. She sends me upstairs for a bath. It is an enormous old-fashioned tub, and I feel as if I’m swimming, not bathing. When I’m up to my neck in water, Helen comes in and sits down on a bath stool. We talk again about my childhood and Helen says what I must have missed most, not having a proper mother, was bath time and bedtime. I am quite touched when she makes me wash well behind my ears and between my legs. When I stand up she wraps me in a large warm towel and helps me out of the bath. Helen is a strong woman. She is beautiful and the opposite of me, with a voluptuous figure.
‘In the bedroom, a lovely light and airy room, she makes me lie naked on the bed while she powders me like a baby. I am not at all embarrassed in front of her; she does it all so naturally. First she powders my front, my armpits, my breasts, my stomach and lower parts. Then she makes me turn over and she powders my back. She runs her hands over and around my bottom for so long that I am almost hypnotised by it. She says she can understand why the man in the hostel spent so much time looking at my bottom because it is beautiful. As she talks, she rubs the powder over my bottom and between my legs. Her fingers touch me quite intimately but I am too dreamy to object. To be truthful, I do not want to object, I want it to go on. I hear her say that tomorrow the lessons in unquestioning obedience start, but I am listening not to her voice but to her hands. She is a beautiful woman. I think I am a little bit in love with her.’
Richard snorted derisively, but Natasha ignored him and continued to read.
‘Wednesday, August 4.
‘Mrs Cross can be so cruel. I am awoken by her calls from the bathroom. I rush to her in my pyjamas and find her up to her neck in soapsuds. Then I say good morning and she replies, “Mrs Cross to you, girl. Now wash me”. She stands up in the tub like Aphrodite rising from the sea. Her figure is as nice as I knew it would be. She makes me wash every inch of her, some areas, the areas between her legs, over and over again. I am soaked. Then I have to dry her. She sits on the bath stool and opens her legs for me so that I may dry in between. She says she always thought that a woman’s sex looks like a ripe fruit, a fig maybe. I agree to be polite. “In that case”, she says, “why don’t you taste it?”. I decline politely. Then she says that I am going to learn my first lesson, that an invitation from her is an order. She makes me remove my wet pyjama trousers and lie over her lap. She spanks my bare bottom hard. It stings like anything. As she is spanking me, she tells me that before the day is out I shall taste her forbidden fruit. In the meantime, my bottom will be severely chastised, that Richard Cross expects nothing less.’
At this point, a blushing Natasha stopped reading aloud and glanced at Richard, before reaching for her drink to conceal her confusion. Richard nodded. ‘My wife was correct,’ he said. ‘How did you feel being spanked?’
‘Like a teenager,’ Natasha replied. ‘Humiliated. Embarrassed.’
Richard nodded again. ‘Details, girl. I told you I want all the details. Continue.’
Natasha replaced her glass on the windowsill and resumed reading.
‘When the spanking is over, Mrs Cross tells me to take off my pyjama jacket so that I am naked and to wait for her. In the meantime I should clean the bathroom. She takes ages getting dressed so I have time to make the bathroom really clean. When she returns she is carrying a cane and an apron. She throws the apron to me and tells me to put it on. When I protest that I need my clothes, she says the apron is the only clothing I am permitted. I put it on. It covers my front, just, my breasts and my tummy, but from behind I am bare. I have already inspected myself in the bathroom mirror and I know that my bottom is red. Now I must walk around with it exposed.
‘Together we go to the kitchen, Mrs Cross never letting go of the cane. I have to make breakfast for both of us. Luckily she wants nothing fried; I was worried that I might burn myself. But when I drop a cup, although it does not break, she lashes the cane across my sore bottom as I stoop to pick it up. I want to cry but I am determined not to give her that satisfaction. In fact the longer the morning goes on, and the more I am caned, the more it becomes a battle for me to show that I don’t care. I see it as a battle of wills between me and the cane, a battle I am determined to win.’
Natasha looked up at Richard, her chin high and defiance in her eyes, as if implying it was him she was fighting. He said nothing but nodded encouragingly.
Her voice broke a little as she spoke to him. ‘You said you wanted the facts, just the facts. I hope you don’t mind that occasionally I put in my opinion.’
‘As so long as it is valid,’ he replied.
‘I don’t see the point of this. What is cleaning the house in the nude teaching me? Being thrashed like a convict... what has this to do with a career, with advertising? I clean virtually every room downstairs with Mrs Cross following my every footstep and lashing me whenever I miss a speck of dust. I hate it. If it were not for Beth, I would leave right now. I am not a fighter; I am a weeper. I break down in tears in the library and Mrs Cross softens for a moment. She rubs soothing oil on my buttocks that helps with the pain. When I catch a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror, my bottom looks like a plum, polished and ready for sale on a market stall, purple and glowing. I am so ashamed.
‘She leaves me alone after that for a while. I have to scrub the stone passage leading from the backdoor to the scullery. I have been on my knees with a bucket and scrubbing brush for a good ten minutes when I feel a draft around my nether regions. I look over my shoulder to find the door open and a figure standing in the doorway, a man who is staring at me. He takes a filthy pipe out of his mouth and says, “In the country, that be what we calls an invitation”. The brute was referring to my bottom. I stand up and slam the door; thankful my nakedness is fairly well covered from the front. But from that moment on, I feel always his eyes are upon me, even though he is not to be seen.
‘At lunchtime, Mrs Cross says lesson one is over. She allows me to get dressed. She gives me a white T-shirt and shorts and white tennis shoes, no underwear or socks. The T-shirt is very tight, as are the shorts, but after my near-nakedness of the morning they feel like a suit of armour. Mrs Cross says I must work in the garden in the afternoon under the supervision of the gardener, Ned Gudgeon. I fantasise about the gardener being young and good-looking but when I meet him I find he is the man who was looking at me in the morning, the man who saw me nearly naked. He is about fifty, filthy dirty and unshaven. He wears a slouch hat, old clothes and a leather apron. I could not tell you the colour of any one garment; they were all the same muddy brown.
‘I like gardening normally but I don’t enjoy the afternoon. Every chore seems to involve not only Gudgeon’s supervision but also his assistance. When I rake the mown grass he stands behind me and holds my hands, holding the rake. He presses himself up against me and I can smell him. Even through the leather apron I can feel the pig is aroused. He makes me climb the apple trees to remove rotten fruit, and he stands beneath me. As I lift one leg or another to climb, I know that my shorts hide nothing. If he puts up a hand to help me it is always indecently placed. When I pick the raspberries, he reaches for my breasts, saying, “Here be a fine one, nice and ripe”, and chuckling at his own pathetic joke. I feel like braining him with a spade. Perhaps I shall.
‘When I finally go in, there are muddy paw prints on my shorts between my legs and on my buttocks, and on my T-shirt over my breasts. I feel as filthy as he looks. “I can see Gudgeon appreciated your assistance”, Mrs Cross says.
‘I cannot wait to strip off my clothes. When I am in the bath, Mrs Cross comes in again. She babies me. She makes me stand up in the water while she washes me all over. I cannot help feeling aroused. Again I lie over her lap as she pats me dry and puts more oil on my poor bottom and between my legs. I can feel I am already wet there - not from bath water or oil - from my own juices. She leads me to her bed, puts me in it and then undresses in front of me. We lie together for a long time, with me nuzzling her breasts and her hand stroking my bottom. Gradually I feel her pushing my head down her body, to her belly and then to her sex. She opens her legs for me, and puts her thighs on my shoulders. “The forbidden fruit”, she says. “Enjoy it. Eat it nice and slowly”.
‘Later we have a cold supper in bed together. For pudding there is a raspberry mousse. We eat it not from plates, but she licks it off my bottom; she says it has soothing qualities and will help the bruises. I lick it from that part of her anatomy that most resembles it in colour. I think I love Mrs Cross.’
‘You can’t make up your mind, can you?’ Richard said.
Natasha shook her head. ‘She’s a very unusual woman.’
‘She was unusually severe with me,’ Beth replied ruefully, as Natasha took another sip of her drink and resumed reading.
‘Thursday, August 5.
‘The last full day, I return to London tomorrow morning. Mrs Cross says she is going out for the day, and I must spend my time with Gudgeon in the garden. I plead with her but she is adamant. At least I get clean clothes; I washed them last evening and they dried overnight. At ten o’clock she leads me out to the garden to find Gudgeon. He is weeding the onion patch. Yellow saliva, from his pipe, is running down his chin. To my horror, Mrs Cross tells him to cut himself a willow switch because he “will need it”. He chuckles, takes out a knife and goes off.
‘As soon as Mrs Cross has gone, I hide among the rhododendron bushes. I crouch down on all fours under a low branch. For minutes on end I can hear the old fool stumbling around looking for me, calling, “Come out, Come out, wherever you are”, as if it is some child’s game. Then just as I think he’s forgotten about me and given up, there is a loud swish and the willow switch lands with a crack across my bottom. “Gotcher”, the horrible old man cries, laughing so much it looks as if the one remaining tooth in his head will fall out.
‘He tells me he is draining the swimming pool and that I must clean it out. He has other tasks but he will come back every thirty minutes or so to see how I am getting on.
‘It is lovely to be alone in the sunshine in the garden. I wish the pool was full, but it is not. It still has about two feet of water in it, the drain being plugged with leaves and other debris. I get in and clean the sides as best I can. When I look up I can see Gudgeon watching me. He tells me I am going to have to get really wet to free the drain and clean the rest. I wait for him to go, but he doesn’t. He just stands there, watching me and directing with his stick.
‘It takes me ages to free the drain and by the time I am finished I am soaking wet. I notice with horror that my white clothes are virtually transparent, and my nipples are clearly visible through the cloth. I try to stand with my back to him as I wipe up the debris, but I am sure when I bend over he can see the shadowy valley of my bottom. To my relief he tells me that he is going off to have his lunch. The sky has clouded over and I am quite cold but I wait five minutes before getting out of the pool. There is no sign of Gudgeon. I make a dash for the house but find the back door is locked and the windows are closed. There is no other choice but the tool shed.
‘Inside it is beautifully warm and cosy and smells of dried earth. It holds the heat of the sun and I wish I had found it earlier. When the door opens, though, Gudgeon is standing there and I realise its disadvantage; there is nowhere for me to run. The disgusting pig says we can have lunch together; he has his bread and cheese for himself and that he will find me something to eat. I can guess what he means and tell him to get lost. He waves the stick in the air and tells me there is an alternative; we could go down to the local together and have lunch there. I would have to go as I am, in wet, skimpy clothes, but he was sure the men in the pub would not mind. Which is it to be? I tell him that I am not going anywhere and he pretends to be kind and thoughtful. I should give him my wet clothes otherwise I’ll catch a cold. When I refuse, he cuts the air with the stick. What am I to do? I turn my back on him, pull up my T-shirt and push my shorts down over my hips. When I am naked I reach for an old sack to cover myself and then face him. His eyes are glued to my body and he seems amused. When I look down, I see the sack is crawling with lice. I scream and throw it away. Now I am naked in front of him, my last defence has gone.
‘He sees my nakedness as an open invitation and begins to take off his leather apron. It strikes me I have two choices, bad and worse. Either I can do what he wants, bad, or I can refuse and then no doubt he will thrash me and presumably take me by force anyway, worse. He must have read my decision in my eyes because he asks, as if he is asking if I want sugar in my tea, where I would like it. I don’t need telling what “it” is. He says he would prefer my arse. I think he actually thinks he is being helpful and polite. That’s one wish he is not going to get. Nor am I going to fuck him. I say nothing but give my answer by kneeling down in front of him, my knees pressing uncomfortably into bits of gravel on the floor. I start to fumble with his trousers, undoing the string tied around his waist and wrestling with old fly buttons.
‘I finally get “it” free, probably the first time in months it has seen daylight. He is hung like a stallion. It is half erect and waves around in front of my nose like the trunk of an elephant smelling the air for water. I begin to massage it with my hands. He’s not having that. He twists my hair painfully, forcing my head closer. I take the tip in my mouth. It soon becomes as hard as a rake under the attention of my tongue. After a minute or two of sucking, I hear him say, “Tits”. I do not understand what he means so I ignore him. He speaks again. “Use yer boobies”. I am glad to get my mouth and my hands off him. I mould my breasts around his shaft and continue to rock up and down. Then he presses my head down on it again, so not only is my jaw aching but my neck as well. It takes an age. The seed inside him must have dried up so that only the husks remain. A gardener without seed; that’s an irony. I would have been amused if I wasn’t the one doing the digging, so to speak. I wish Helen would come home. She would be horrified, finding a young girl naked and on her knees, with her mouth open and the gardener’s cock rammed down her throat. She might have saved me, but Helen is out for the day; there is no last minute saviour. There is nothing for it but to go through with it to the end.
‘Eventually my hard work begins to pay off; those doors inside him that have been closed for years begin to swing open. I can hear him panting and feel his cock getting even larger and harder. I can hardly breathe.
As I feel his muscles tense, a sign that his ejaculation is on the way, I turn my head away and masturbate him furiously with my hands. He snarls in anger and roughly shoves my head back down again, holding me as he wants me, pushing himself deeper into my throat. I think I am going to suffocate. Just as I can take no more, he comes. The first spasm hits the back of my throat. He lets go of me so I whip my head to one side, swallowing and gasping for breath. His second ejaculation hits me in the eye and runs down my cheek. Some of it is in my hair. I have never been so humiliated in my life.
‘As he gets dressed without so much as a thank you, I sit naked on the filthy floor, my tears mixing with his come on my cheeks.’
Natasha stopped reading. ‘Detailed enough for you, Richard?’ she asked indignantly.
‘Yes,’ he replied calmly. ‘Very graphic. Well written, too. It is good to know that you were so charitable to a common labourer. What do you think, Beth?’
Beth looked at Natasha. ‘You didn’t say whether you enjoyed it.’
‘In retrospect, I suppose I must have done. I was horny that evening. At the time it was the dirt I hated. He and the place were both so filthy. Let me go on.’
‘Having got what he wanted, Gudgeon slinks off. With Mrs Cross away, he isn’t going to hang around unnecessarily and at least I don’t have to do any more work. Naked as a jaybird, I stand in the empty swimming pool and run water from a hose over myself, washing away the touch and the taste of him. I wash my clothes as well. With my clothes wet and the sun again out and hot, I sunbathe in the nude on the lawn outside the back door. It’s lovely, the most lovely two or three hours of the weekend. I lie on my back in the sun, thinking of everything that has happened, and then I fall asleep.’
Richard Cross interjected again. ‘I feel you may have missed out something there, Natasha, before you fell asleep.’
Natasha blushed. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said defensively.
‘Remember, I want all the details.’
‘I’ve given them to you.’
‘Have you? Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then why are you blushing? Before you answer, don’t forget I warned you I would know everything.’
Natasha was indignant. ‘I have told you everything. And I am not blushing.’
Richard spoke quietly. ‘You have not told me everything. Don’t lie to me.’
‘I am not lying.’
Richard was persistent. ‘Look me in the eye and tell me the truth. Did you touch yourself while you were sunbathing?’
Natasha shifted uneasily. ‘I might have done. I don’t remember. It’s not important.’
‘I’ll be the judge of what is important. Did you touch yourself?’
‘Yes.’ Natasha bowed her head shamefully.
‘Did you masturbate?’
‘Yes... yes I did.’
‘Did you come?’
Natasha was almost in tears. ‘Yes... yes, I came. Are you happy now?’
‘No, I am not happy,’ Richard replied levelly. ‘You lied to me and you left out important details. We’ll deal with that later. Now continue.’
Snivelling a little and wiping her eyes with a small hand, Natasha took another sip of her drink before starting to read again.
‘I awake with a start and a sore bottom. Helen has found me fast asleep on my stomach and has slapped me hard. She’s not angry; she’s smiling. She tells me I deserve a good spanking for not working hard but she’ll let me off because it is my last evening. I get the impression she’s quite fond of me. She won’t let me get dressed, apart from putting on a robe until we get inside. She lights a fire in the sitting room and makes supper while I have a shower. After supper she makes me lie stark naked on the rug in front of the fire and tell her about the afternoon. I tell her about the incident in the tool shed. She shudders and giggles, but all the time as I am talking she is kissing my breasts and touching me, touching my sex. I can feel I am getting wet; she knows just what to do. When I have finished talking, she delves into her bag and produces a vibrator. “It is bigger and better than Ned Gudgeon”, she says, “and is certainly cleaner”.
‘She runs it over my breasts and nipples, making them tingle, and then makes me turn over on my tummy. She pulls the cheeks of my bottom apart and puts the vibrator on my bottom hole. She reminds me that this is where Ned Gudgeon wanted to put his penis. It is a strange feeling, the vibration on my anus, tantalising but at the same time slightly upsetting. Still on my tummy I lift my bottom into the air. She slides the thing into my vagina, which is more than ready. She plays it over my clitoris, which is absolute heaven, and pushes it in and out. She is such an expert I am putty in her hands. Within seconds, it seems, I am screaming for her to stop, I can take no more; my orgasm is so intense.
‘I kiss her with gratitude, worming my tongue into her mouth. She tells me to do the same with her nether lips. As I am lapping at her beautiful clitoris, she reaches into her bag again and gets another dildo, this one with straps. She asks me if I have ever fancied being a man. I say that occasionally I have been curious, such as when I see Beth with no clothes on. She is so beautiful. “Well”, Helen says, “ you can practice on me”. She helps me to strap on the dildo and we both play with it as if it was real. I stroke it with my hands as Helen takes it in her mouth. Then she lies on her back with her legs apart and pulls me down on top of her. I imagine I am Richard as I fuck her. I fuck her and fuck her, until she screams and orgasms. I wish I could come inside her.’
There was silence as Natasha stopped reading.
‘Is that it?’ Richard asked.
‘That’s all I had time to write today once I returned,’ Natasha replied. ‘There’s not much more to tell. I left early this morning and came straight home. May I thank you, Richard, for an interesting few days.’
‘It wasn’t supposed to be interesting,’ Richard said grimly. ‘It was supposed to be educative. Show me your bottom.’
‘Pardon?’ Natasha could not hide her surprise.
‘Show me your bottom.’
‘Now?’
‘No, tomorrow,’ he sarcastically replied. ‘Of course I mean now.’
Facing him, her chin up again in defiance, Natasha reached for her belt buckle. She undid it and unzipped her slacks. As she pushed them down, she turned with her back towards him. When they were around her knees she hooked her thumbs in her panties and tugged them down too, pushing her bottom towards Richard as she did so, and then using both hands to hold up the hem of her sweater.
‘It looks unmarked to me,’ Richard said after a long moment of contemplation. ‘Perhaps you would be good enough to take a closer look, Beth.’
Beth got up from the sofa and knelt by her friend, to inspect the soft, rounded flesh. ‘Hardly a mark,’ she said quietly when she had resumed her seat.
‘I’m disappointed in Helen,’ Richard said pensively. ‘I can see I am going to have to do the job for her. And there’s also the question of Natasha’s lie and the details she missed out.’ Natasha was pulling up her trousers. ‘No,’ Richard said, ‘take them completely off, and your knickers too. I haven’t finished with you yet.’
With one hand on the arm of the sofa for support, Natasha humbly obeyed.
‘Sit down next to Beth,’ Richard ordered, ‘and keep your legs open as we talk. I want you to tell me about your time in the remand home when you were young. Touch yourself between your legs as you are talking.’
Natasha leaned back, pushing her hips forward on the couch, her legs parted. ‘It wasn’t a remand home, it was a hostel,’ she said, sliding one hand between her legs. ‘Richard, do I really have to do this?’
‘Yes.’ He was adamant.
Natasha told again about her time as a teenager, about the warden of the home who liked to spank her, and eventually cane her for imaginary offences. As she spoke she began to pant and writhe on the sofa. Many times she lost track of what she was saying and had to go back and correct herself, constantly having to start incomplete sentences over again.
‘Beth, Natasha seems to be having some difficulty,’ Richard said, watching and listening intently with his chin on his steepled fingertips. ‘Perhaps you would help her?’ and without a word, Beth slid seductively to her knees in front of her friend. She pushed Natasha’s hand out of the way and buried her head between the girl’s thighs as fingers instinctively entwined in her blonde hair.
‘Tell me again about the caning,’ Richard went on, watching the beautifully conflicting look of bliss and shame on the dark girl’s face, and the alluring sight of her breasts slowly rising and falling as she relaxed under the artful and audible ministrations of her friend.
As she tried to explain, her eyes closed dreamily and her cheeks rosy, she became more and more aroused until finally her last words crescendoed into a panted squeal, intermingling perfectly with Beth’s wet lapping. Her head lolled back and she clamped her thighs against either side of Beth’s head, giving herself over entirely to the orgasm that contorted her body.
A few minutes later, as Beth resumed her seat, Natasha fanned her flaming cheeks with her hands. ‘Take your sweater off,’ Richard instructed. ‘You look hot.’ Again she obeyed and dropped it onto her trousers, and now she was naked.
‘Now perhaps you will fetch the cane on the sideboard,’ Richard went on. ‘I thought we might settle the score we owe you by re-enacting what you have just told us.’ He turned to Beth. ‘What do you say, my dear? It strikes me that she got off lightly with Helen.’
Beth nodded. ‘Helen was much tougher with me,’ she said, ignoring the sulky look Natasha gave her, and then watched appreciatively as the naked girl stood and walked sexily across the office, picked up the cane and presented it to Richard.
‘Show me,’ he said.
‘Well, I would lie across the desk, like this,’ she whispered, gracefully bending over the uncluttered desktop, resting on her forearms. ‘I would have my legs parted,’ she shuffled her feet apart, ‘then the housekeeper would hold my wrists.’
Richard nodded to Beth. ‘That’s where you come in,’ he instructed, and Beth moved to the desk and stood opposite her friend, then grasped the girl’s wrists in each of her hands and pulled them to her until Natasha’s breasts moulded softly to the gleaming surface.
‘And then what?’ Richard persisted.
‘Then... then he would cane me, sir,’ Natasha answered, her cheek against the wood of the desktop.
‘Like this?’ Richard said, slicing the cane through the air and across Natasha’s trembling bottom. Natasha bucked and pulled at Beth’s restraining grip, but without being able to break it. ‘Yes, sir, just like that,’ she gasped.
‘Like this... and this... and this?’ Each time the cane slashed down against Natasha and each time she acknowledged the stroke with a gasp of acceptance and of pain.
‘How many would he give you?’ Richard asked.
‘Usually s-six, sir,’ came the sobbed reply.
‘Only six?’ he mused. ‘A mere two to go, then, so I’d better make these particularly memorable.’
Beth flinched watching the last two strokes. She knew how cruel and how accurate Richard could be; she knew without being able to see that they would fall on the plumpest part of her friend’s bottom and that each would fall in exactly the same place.
Brave as she was, Natasha could not hold back her cries, and she was still sobbing quietly when Richard said, ‘And then what would happen?’
‘I-I would g-go to my room,’ Natasha snivelled, ‘and cry m-myself to sleep.’
‘That seems a bit of an anti-climax, don’t you think Beth?’ Richard said indignantly.
Beth nodded. ‘I don’t think the warder had the courage to do what he really wanted to do,’ she suggested.
‘And that’s the big difference between him and me,’ Richard said.
‘I think you should do to Natasha what you did to me the other day, Richard,’ Beth said firmly, then let go of Natasha’s wrists and searched in one of the desk’s top drawers. Quickly locating what she wanted, she rounded the desk, unscrewed the lid of the jar, and began to spread the lubricant between Natasha’s gloriously striped buttocks as Richard took off his trousers.
‘Oh no,’ Natasha muttered against her own upper arm, both of them still lying inert on the polished surface. ‘Please, not my bottom. It’s so sore.’ But she made no attempt to stand up or to change her position.
‘Oh yes,’ said Richard, ‘your lovely tight bottom it is to be.’
He positioned his gleaming helmet against the small, neat ring of Natasha’s anus and eased forward with his hips. Natasha moaned and gripped the far edge of the desk until her knuckles turned white, as her body responded to the inexorable penetration. Beth was forgotten as the two of them, slick with grease and eager for fulfilment, raced towards their separate but simultaneous climaxes.
‘Are we going for fun, or the opposite?’ Celeste’s voice was full of nervous mischief as the three girls headed for the country in Beth’s car. It was Saturday morning.
‘We are going because we are summoned,’ Beth said, ‘and we’d better not be late.’
‘If I know Richard and Helen there’s bound to be a bit of the opposite involved,’ Natasha piped up from the back seat.
They fell silent, contemplating what that might mean. Natasha was undoubtedly right. A summons to the Cross family country house was rare enough; a summons for all three of them was downright suspicious.
But their concerns were allayed somewhat as soon as the tyres of Beth’s car drew to a reassuringly crunchy halt on the gravel outside the large house, just five minutes after the appointed time. Richard Cross was waiting for them on the doorstep, dressed in casual clothes and smiling broadly, the very picture of the perfect genial host.
‘Let me record this for posterity,’ he said, as the girls piled out of the car, and he held up a digital video camera as they primped and preened themselves for him in the bright sunlight. Beth was wearing a white linen skirt with a bright lemon shirt, her blonde hair tied with a lemon ribbon. Celeste was simply elegant in a red and white flowered summer dress, the skirt short and slightly flared so it swayed in a liquid fashion as she moved her hips. Natasha wore dark slacks as usual, and a lilac cotton pullover. She was so petit, making most men quiver with the desire to protect such a defenceless creature.
The Crosses were punctilious about formalities. Richard graciously put the girls at ease in the morning room, chatting lightly about the weather and the nearby sights, while Helen served coffee and croissants. ‘I bet none of you had breakfast,’ she said in a motherly way. ‘Don’t eat too much though,’ she added. ‘We thought you might like a swim before lunch.’
‘I thought we were here for business,’ Beth said, licking crumbs off her lips.
‘You are, you are, but business with pleasure,’ Helen told them. ‘Business will come after lunch.’
‘I have a special surprise for you all this afternoon,’ Richard said, and Beth, who knew him best, found that slightly ominous, but she soon forgot her trepidation in the excitement of the other two.
‘I didn’t bring a swimsuit,’ Natasha lamented.
‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ Richard said. ‘House rules - we swim naked here.’
Having devoured the light snack, they went out through the open French windows and across the lawn to the pool. Natasha was the last to leave and as she set foot on the grass she looked about warily. Helen, glancing back and noticing her expression, returned to take her by the arm. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘It’s Gudgeon’s day off.’
Celeste was the first in the water. She flung her clothes and shoes beside a pile of towels and dived into the crystal water. Her head broke the surface as slick as a seal and she whooped with joy. ‘Come on, you two,’ she squealed excitedly.
Beth and Natasha needed no further encouragement, and in no time at all they were standing on the side of the pool, the sun hot on their naked backs. While they were still arguing about who was going in first, Helen pushed them from behind and they plunged into the water with simultaneous splashes. In retaliation, without consulting each other, they climbed out of the water and grabbed Helen as she was unhooking her bra and threw her in, still wearing her knickers and with her bra held on by one strap.
Richard stood in the shade of a chestnut tree, leaning against the trunk with the video camera to his eye, recording the idyllic scene before him. ‘For the scrapbook,’ he announced to no one in particular. ‘And for insurance,’ he added under his breath.
For an hour or more the four females played games in the sun. They threw shoes in the water and had to retrieve as many as possible without coming up for breath. They then raced two lengths of the pool and Celeste, who was comfortably in the lead on the second leg, realised it might be impolite to win, so slowed up to allow Helen to pass her. Then Richard made them do it again because he had missed the start. He wanted to shoot it from behind, especially when the four of them bent over to make racing dives. They had water fights in the pool, with Beth on Celeste’s shoulders and Natasha on Helen’s. Beth noticed that whenever there was any pairing up to be done, Helen chose Natasha, especially if it meant touching her in any way. Even though she lost the fights, Helen looked supremely happy with Natasha’s naked thighs on her shoulders and the girl’s sex pressed into the nape of her neck.
At lunchtime they lay, still naked, on the lawn, fanning their hair with their hands to allow it to dry. Helen trundled a trolley out, bearing a giant bowl of prawns in their shells, and dishes of mayonnaise, butter and thinly sliced brown bread.
‘Perfect,’ said Celeste, when she had finished eating, her lips greasy with mayonnaise and her eyes slightly glazed from some wine Richard provided. She lay back, and like a contented cat, was asleep almost instantly. Gradually the others dozed too, Natasha on her stomach with her head on Helen’s warm thigh, and Beth with her head resting on Natasha’s bottom. Richard lay back in his deckchair and allowed his eyes to feast on the beauties before him.
‘Okay, you’ve had some fun - time now for work.’
Richard paced the floor of the sitting room as he spoke, glancing at the three girls in turn, sitting fully dressed, in armchairs.
‘Let’s see this as a sort of end of term report,’ he went on. ‘I’ll start with you, Beth.’
She looked apprehensive but soon brightened as she listened to his words. He said she had been industrious and imaginative. She had won a new contract and hoped for two more. She had planted an ally, Celeste, in the bosom of a client company, and had taken another potential recruit, Natasha, under her wing. He said he admired initiative and enterprise and on those counts she had scored well.
He turned to Celeste. She had shown a drive and a purpose distinctly lacking when he first met her. At this Celeste blushed prettily but looked pleased. She seemed to have an aptitude for business, he said, and would be an asset to Cross, Carstairs and Denton if she joined the staff.
He glanced at his watch and then turned to Natasha. She was young and had a lot to learn, but was undoubtedly keen and willing. He added that Helen had spoken very much in her favour. At this Beth stole a glance at the younger girl, but Natasha had her eyes demurely cast downwards.
When he had finished speaking and was glancing at his watch again, Beth spoke up. ‘Thank you for your kind words, Richard,’ she said. ‘They allow me to raise something on behalf of all three of us, something we have discussed together. We would like to work for Cross, Carstairs and Denton but in a separate capacity, as an independent agency recruiting new clients. We think...’
‘Beth,’ Richard cut in, ‘be quiet.’
All three girls sat upright, their attention again riveted on Richard.
‘I hadn’t finished,’ he continued. ‘I had mentioned your good points. Now let’s deal with the bad. I have one word to say to all three of you: ethics.’
Beth was the speaker for the threesome. ‘We don’t know what you mean, Richard,’ she said.
‘Oh yes you do,’ he snapped, ‘but you think we are so foolish that we cannot see it. You think that by using feminine wiles and your bodies so wantonly you can manipulate men into giving you exactly what you want.’
‘No we don’t,’ Beth said firmly. ‘That’s unfair.’
He cocked an eyebrow in disbelief. ‘You mean you don’t use your bodies?’
‘Well...’ Beth murmured.
‘You know it’s true,’ he said, as in the background the doorbell rang. ‘And I’m about to prove it to you. Helen, perhaps you would answer the door.’
The three girls and Richard remained silent, listening to muffled voices in the hall. Then the sitting room door swung open and Helen ushered in three men: T.J. Kearns, Chester Hampton, and Peregrine Merchant.
Beth felt her jaw drop and noticed that Celeste and Natasha had gone pale. Richard was an effusive host, seating the men and bidding Helen to make some tea. He thanked his guests for coming, saying that he was sure they would think it worthwhile, and asked them about their journey until Helen returned with a tray. Not once did the men acknowledge the girls and, Beth noticed, on the tea tray there were only five cups. There would be no tea for the girls.
When the pleasantries were over with, and everyone was settled, Richard addressed the newcomers. ‘I gather you gentlemen have grievances about the working practices of Cross, Carstairs and Denton, for which I am indirectly responsible. I take my responsibilities seriously; hence I have invited you here today to try to iron out the problems and to try and make amends. First I think we should hear the charges against the girls and then we should try to concur on the consequences. Is that agreeable?’
The men nodded and Richard invited T.J. Kearns to start.
T.J. stood up and approached Celeste, staring straight at her. ‘This girl was planted in my company as an agent of one of your staff,’ he started. ‘She took indelicate photographs at a sensitive moment and she has tried to blackmail me with them.’
Celeste was shocked. ‘It was nothing like...!’
‘Is it true - yes or no?’ Richard demanded.
‘Well, yes, but...’
‘Yes,’ said Richard, cutting her off and nodding to Peregrine Merchant.
Merchant remained seated but looked fixedly at Natasha. ‘That girl may have an innocent look, but while working with a member of your staff she rifled my briefcase intending to steal private papers.’
Natasha hung her head and mumbled, ‘It’s true, but I have already paid...’
Again Richard cut in and indicated that Chester Hampton should speak. He got up from his chair and crossed the room to Beth. Placing his hand on her shoulder, he said, ‘I accuse Beth Forrester of deception. She arranged a very private affair for me with a third party and then pretended to be someone she was not in an attempt to inveigle me into signing a contract with your company.’
Beth dropped her eyes, but said nothing.
Richard held the floor again. ‘The case is proven, I think. Guilty, all three of them. Now we must consider the question of penalties.
‘To win your trust, and perhaps your business,’ he added with a slight smile, ‘I suggest they should be severe. I am sure, gentlemen, that you have ideas of your own and perhaps you would like to consider them in the next hour or so.’
‘But, don’t we get a say in any of this?’ Beth piped up.
‘No,’ Richard said shortly, ‘unless of course you want to leave, but leave now and you’ll be leaving my employment. Your careers, or your putative careers, in advertising will end instantly.’
He turned away as if sure of their answer and continued talking to the other men. ‘While you are thinking, Helen has an idea to get the ball rolling. I don’t suppose the girls will like it but they are hardly in a position to object. The offences for which they have been found guilty, and which they have not denied, are grounds for dismissal at the very least, and possibly for prosecution. If they are wise they will go with Helen now and do as they are told...’
The girls filed out silently behind Richard’s wife. ‘You may not realise it, but the central part of this house was once a convent,’ Beth heard him telling the men. ‘In the seventeenth century, the nuns were subjected to severe discipline...’
On a cue from Helen, Richard led the men into the library, directed them to armchairs and poured for them early evening aperitifs. The far end of the room was curtained off and from behind the curtains came the soft but distinctive sound of plainchant.
When the men were comfortable and each had a drink, the curtains drew back, pulled by an unseen hand and revealing what looked like a simple chapel, a wooden altar rail with a screen behind it. Kneeling in front of the rail with her back to the room was Helen Cross, wearing a black nun’s habit. When she stood up her face was obscured by a white wimple. Three nuns, wearing grey habits and also wimples, filed in.
The first girl knelt down in front of the taller woman and kissed her hand. ‘Bless me, for I have sinned,’ she said in a clear voice. ‘I have had carnal thoughts and I have practiced deception. I need to be scourged.’
‘Genuflect,’ said the ‘mother superior’, indicating the altar rail. The girl walked to it and knelt, with her back to those watching.
The second girl went through the same process of kissing hands. ‘Bless me, for I have sinned. I have touched myself in an unseemly way and have practiced extortion. My flesh should be made to pay for my sins.’ She took her place at the rail alongside the first girl.
Then it was the third girl’s turn. ‘Bless me, for I have sinned,’ she murmured. ‘I have lusted after your body and I have contemplated theft. The lash will purify my soul.’
‘Fetch the scourges and take your place at the rail,’ the mother superior said to her. The girl disappeared momentarily and reappeared carrying a cane, a riding crop and a birch, before kneeling alongside the other two.
The mother superior approached the first girl and turned up her robes, revealing that she was naked underneath. ‘Choose your instrument of purification and who should administer it,’ she said.
‘The cane please, administered by one of the guests.’
She turned up the second girl’s robe, revealing another pink bottom. ‘The riding whip please, from one of the guests,’ the girl said.
The third girl was visibly shaking as her robe was turned up as well. ‘The birch please, administered by a guest and by you,’ she said quietly.
Helen Cross then picked up the cane and handed it to Chester Hampton. ‘Scourge the flesh of my first novitiate so that her soul remains pure,’ she directed.
Hampton took his place alongside Beth, as it was she who was the first of the novitiates, and swung the cane in the air as if trying to find a rhythm. Without a word, he started to cane the girl with hard, measured strokes. After five she cried out and slumped back on her heels, so Helen Cross stepped forward and helped her back into position with her hips supported by the altar rail, and the caning resumed. Twelve times he slashed the unprotected bottom, and each crack of impact was followed by a despairing wail and the sound of sobbing. Eventually Hampton dropped the cane on the floor and resumed his seat, panting slightly.
Helen Cross, the ‘mother superior’, handed the riding crop to T.J. Kearns. ‘Perhaps you would deal with the flesh and the soul of my second wayward girl,’ she offered.
Kearns took his place alongside Celeste with a grim, determined look on his face. ‘Strip,’ he demanded. The girl stood up, removed her wimple and pulled the robe over her head. Naked, she knelt down again, supporting her body on the rail. Without further ado, Kearns started to whip her mercilessly on her bottom and upper thighs. The beating lasted so long that Celeste, who had vowed to herself to remain silent at all costs, cried out for mercy. After five more strokes he was gasping for breath, and he too dropped the whip and returned to his seat.
The mother superior handed the birch to Peregrine Merchant. ‘Punish the flesh of my third nun and drive out her sins.’
Eagerly, Merchant grasped the birch and strode quickly across the room to his quivering victim. He arranged her over the rail with her legs slightly open, and began to birch her bottom, making sure that the extremities of the birch twigs reached around buttock and thigh to the most intimate regions. Natasha yelped but made no attempt to move, so he continued until the floor around her was strewn with the brittle ends of birch broken by the force of his blows, and then handed it back to Helen Cross.
She threw off her wimple and robe, and the watching men caught their collective breath, for she was a magnificent sight, naked apart from a white satin corset, skimpy satin knickers, stockings, and high heels. Her eyes blazed like an Amazon contemplating war. She grasped the birch, still warm from Merchant’s grip, and slashed two quick strokes across Natasha’s already ridged and discoloured buttocks. ‘You’ll get no mercy from me, my child, despite what you may have thought,’ she vowed, birching the girl for a third and fourth time. Natasha yelled again, but four more strokes fell before Helen was satisfied.
Then she ordered Beth and Natasha to disrobe like Celeste, and made all three girls remain as they were, naked and kneeling with their punished bottoms on full display for the delectation of the very appreciative guests.
A week after the meeting in the country house, Cross, Carstairs and Denton issued a press release. It said that following the acquisition of the Rybix contract, the company was pleased to announce it had signed long-term advertising deals with two giant corporations, Internat and Eastern Light. At the foot of the press release, there was another announcement that received little attention at the time. It was to the effect that Cross, Carstairs and Denton were creating a subsidiary company to be known as C.N.B. Holdings Ltd to handle the new contracts and to seek new clients for the parent organisation.
A year on, and the new company is doing well, so well that it may soon be floated on the stock exchange. There is no shortage of potential new clients; senior businessmen seem to enjoy going personally to the offices of C.N.B. Holdings Ltd. There is no shortage either of potential staff, even though they are all females aged between eighteen and thirty. The working hours are long and irregular and the duties are punishing, but the opportunities are limitless.
Helen Cross is the chairperson of C.N.B. Holdings, and Beth Forrester the managing director. Natasha Perry is the director of human resources, and as such she reports directly, and very frequently, to Helen Cross alone. Celeste Hampton, the wife of the reclusive Internat billionaire, is an executive director and enjoys attending all board meetings and personally interviewing all new members of staff.
C.N.B. Holdings was named after Celeste, Natasha and Beth, but the girls know a secret, a secret shared with an ever-expanding group of very select and intimate friends. It really stands for: Cane Naughty Bottoms. Look out for it in the city; it’s there.