The summer sun blazed down upon Sternwood Grange, its heat silencing the doves sheltering in the wilting elms. Mandy had hardly seen the blue sky stretching wide over Suffolk since her arrival. She had been toiling in the basement kitchens, preparing delicacies for the exotic tastes of the residents up above, and had then been made to labour in order to satisfy their more peculiar appetites for pleasure and pain.
‘You were quite a hit in the sauna,’ Erica commented, escorting Mandy towards the gym. ‘I’ve had some very good reports from the blonde submissive you attended to after her sauna. Wants to see a lot more of you, my girl. Enjoy yourself?’
Mandy blushed but made no reply.
‘You seem to have a flair for dealing with the submissive type. I think we’ll focus your activities as an angel on the yellow robes to begin with.’
To begin with. Mandy was momentarily distracted by a sticky warmth oozing at her labial lips, prompted by the memory of whipping the blonde’s bare bottom with the hazel scourge yesterday. To begin with. Erica’s words echoed in her brain. How long would she be trapped here? Could she really make her escape whenever she chose? With the stiff imposition of fines and penalties, it could take weeks, months perhaps, before she had amassed the means to escape. And then what? How and when would she confront Celia Flaxstone?
‘Stop daydreaming, girl, or I’ll use my strap,’ Erica rasped. ‘Come along. This way.’
At the end of the cool corridor they turned left and entered the gym. It was brightly lit, spacious and superbly equipped. Silver mirroring lined three of the four walls. Mandy followed Erica across the polished wooden floor, her mind trying to form pictures to fit the muffled sobs of pleasure and soft gasps of sweet pain that filled the vast echoing space around her.
‘All submissives.’ Erica nodded to the line of pegged yellow robes. ‘Let’s see how the angels are entertaining them.’
They approached a prickly mat. Mandy remembered the type from her boarding-school days. It was the type that scratched soft schoolgirl bottoms through their blue serge knickers. The older girls in the Upper Sixth used to giggle and call it ‘pussy teaser’ – Mandy never knew why until, when she was in the Lower Sixth one chill November morning, she crushed her wet labia down into it during an attempt at five press-ups. She had lingered until the bell rang. ‘Pussy teaser.’ Mandy smiled at her schoolgirl memories. Smack. Smack. Erica slapped Mandy’s bottom harshly, the double spank echoing around the gym.
‘Pay attention.’
Mandy donned the mask of alertness. She saw a naked brunette squatting on one of the mats, her bare cheeks pressed painfully down into the tormenting bristles. The brunette was nursing a scuffed medicine ball, cradling the heavy sphere against her bulging breasts. Standing at the edge of the mat, cool and clinical in a simple white sheath dress, stood the brunette’s angel.
‘Now lift it up above your head and keep it up while I count to twenty,’ came the sternly spoken instruction.
The brunette’s bosom bobbed delightfully as her slender arms stretched up. Mandy studied the face of the perspiring brunette as she struggled to keep the medicine ball aloft. It was, she considered, probably the pale face of the eldest daughter of some Shires squire, or perhaps that of a neglected niece frequently found haunting vast rectories. Now, under the pitiless gaze of her cruel, brooding angel, the brunette was blossoming: flushed with excitement, apprehension and strenuous effort. The angel counted slowly, the slender arms sagged slightly.
‘I shall punish you if you fail. I shall punish your bare bottom with my cane,’ promised the angel sweetly, thrumming the air with a short length of bamboo.
Mandy saw the brunette grimace with renewed effort, her bosom heaving and her face set with determination.
‘Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen,’ counted the angel methodically, tapping the short cane against her thigh.
The left arm spasmed and gave way. The heavy leather ball fell with a thud on to the polished wooden floor and rolled towards the angel. She stopped its progress with a jab of her foot, then kicked it back to the panting brunette who lay slumped on the mat.
‘You failed. You know what that means, don’t you?’ the angel murmured, fingering her cane. ‘Don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ mumbled the brunette thickly, cupping her breasts and squeezing hard. ‘Yes. I must be punished. I must bend over and have my bare bottom –’
‘Must?’ challenged the angel, dragging the tip of the cane up along the brunette’s throat until it captured her chin and controlled it. ‘Must? I say what may and may not happen to your bottom.’
‘Sorry. You are right, of course. You own my bottom. Do with it what you will,’ the brunette gasped, looking up at her angel with dark, sparkling eyes.
‘Pick up the medicine ball.’
Scrambling across the mat, the brunette obeyed. Kneeling in front of the ball, which she steadied with her hands, she eased her breasts, then her belly, across the surface, presenting her naked buttocks for discipline.
‘No, I don’t want you across the ball, yet,’ the angel said quietly. ‘Pick it up and let’s try again, hmm?’
Mandy and Erica watched. This time, the brunette managed to keep the ball aloft until the angel had counted seventeen.
‘Again, you have failed. Across the ball,’ the angel snapped, her tone crisper.
Crushing her bosom into the soft leather, the naked brunette straddled the medicine ball, presenting her bottom for punishment.
‘Discipline and dominance is all about timing,’ Erica whispered into Mandy’s ear. ‘The promise of punishment must be delayed, before it is fulfilled. Always dictate terms, and deny for as long as you can what the submissive most desires.’
Mandy nodded her understanding.
The angel knelt, thighs parted, alongside the bending brunette and fingered the cleft between the upturned cheeks. Thumbing the left buttock, she dimpled its soft satin swell.
‘I am disappointed in you,’ she whispered, now punishing the captive left cheek in a severe pincer of finger and thumb. ‘And when I am disappointed, what do I do?’
‘P–p–punish me,’ grunted the brunette, squeezing her thighs together against the leather ball.
The cane cracked sharply down across the creamy cheeks, leaving a thin red line of fire across their curved swell. Again, the bamboo sang – a tuneless note of pain. Then again. The brunette squealed her dark response as she ground her splayed labia into the scuffed hide beneath. The angel, supremely indifferent to the brunette’s writhing, sliced the cane down three more times in a savage staccato, rocketing the brunette into the ball.
Savouring every delicious moment of the discipline, Mandy gazed at the brunette’s mask of frozen ecstasy – gazed and suddenly understood. This domination and discipline brought the brunette back to some beloved memory of distant years: back to the dusty attic in the rambling rectory, perhaps, when, after tea, an angry aunt would spank her naughty niece for stealing plums from the orchard. Discipline and punishment were delicious, and here, at Sternwood Grange, the brunette’s yearning could be met by a discerning angel who could diagnose the need, and dispense the appropriate treatment.
At the ninth stroke of the cane, the brunette cried out softly and hammered her thighs into the medicine ball with renewed fury. Methodically, imperiously, the angel plied her glinting yellow wand. At the thirteenth stroke, Mandy saw the crimson buttocks spasm as the girl tensed for her orgasm. Again, and yet again, the wood viciously caressed the curved cheeks. Peeling her breasts and belly away from the dull hide, the brunette toppled and rolled over on to her back. Pounding her whipped cheeks into the prickly mat, she orgasmed loudly. The angel bent over her, pressing the hot tip of the cane against her parted lips, quelling the brunette’s shriek of delight. Mandy’s heart thumped wildly within her, then stopped as her eyes fell on the dark wet patch where the whipped girl’s pubis had kissed the sphere’s scuffed leather.
‘Let’s see what’s going on over there,’ Erica suggested, touching Mandy’s elbow gently.
As they approached the wall bars, Mandy could not resist the temptation to glimpse over her shoulder. On the mat, the young brunette lay spread-eagled, spent and exhausted after her violent climax. The angel knelt beside her, worrying the nipples of her captive with the tip of the bamboo. Mandy sensed the climactic release of pent-up longing from the brunette. After long winter months in the rectory, in the dimly lit drawing room where the large black grand piano was never played, and only scratchy 78s of Kathleen Ferrier grated against the heavy silence, the spring had come, quickly followed by the full blaze of summer. And under the fierce heat of the Suffolk sunshine, a spell for the brunette at Sternwood Grange. Such delicious memories to store up for the lonely months ahead, once harvest was home, for the girl. Memories of Sternwood Grange, and the angels, to consume furtively like the box of chocolate gingers smuggled up to her bedroom in the rectory on a cold winter night. Mandy remembered the wet patch on the hide of the medicine ball – and felt a surge of admiration for her late aunt and all she had achieved here at Sternwood Grange.
‘Bondage can be a difficult art to master,’ Erica remarked as they approached the wall bars. ‘What qualities do you think an angel needs?’
Mandy remained silent, considering the question.
‘Not just for effective bondage, but for discipline and domination?’ Erica pressed.
‘The ability to create and sustain an aloof intimacy?’
‘Good. Yes. I like that. And?’ Erica coaxed.
‘A savage gentleness and an impatient patience.’
‘Excellent,’ Erica said, ‘you demonstrate a clear understanding of the qualities required in an angel. Our residents expect their angels to be either angels without mercy, or angels for whom mercy is denied.’
Mandy paled at these words, fully aware of their dark meaning.
‘The angel must be remote from, yet intensely connected to, her submissive client. And, when dispensing strict discipline, a touch of tenderness should sweeten her savagery. The punisher should have, shall we say, a fierce affection for the punished. Yes,’ Erica concluded, ‘I think the mistress will be pleased with your progress.’
The mistress. Mandy’s heartbeat quickened.
‘Is she returning soon?’
‘No, but I am in constant touch. I believe she has hopes of you making a significant contribution to the success of Sternwood Grange. Do not disappoint her. Look –’ Erica pointed, directing Mandy’s gaze to the naked woman roped to the wall bars. ‘See how tightly those knots have been tied.’
Mandy’s eyes flickered up. On the wall bars, spread-eagled and securely bound, was the submissive blonde she had birched with the hazel twig scourge in the sauna. The naked buttocks still wore the crimson kiss of the rods.
‘Your friend and admirer from yesterday,’ Erica purred.
A waxed cord, threaded tightly round the captive breasts, was stretched out to bind the splayed arms at each wrist. A second biting cord hugged the hips to the wall bars, rendering the woman completely immobile. A third cord lashed the thighs together, welding the soft flesh into a cruel crease of suffering. Mandy’s gaze lingered on the fourth waxed cord of the naked blonde’s bondage. It arrowed down from the neck and shoulders, which it effectively haltered, along the sweep of her spine, buried itself in the cleft between the bound cheeks and disappeared up between the shadowed thighs against the pubis.
Mandy plucked furtively at her wet labia, the sight before her had turned her hot and sticky with keen arousal almost instantly.
The attending angel reached up, tugged the fourth tight cord and released it back into the cleft. The nude blonde grunted her pleasure.
‘Shouldn’t she be gagged?’ Mandy whispered thickly.
‘Not at this stage,’ Erica replied, obviously appreciative of the studious attention Mandy was paying to events.
Taking two steps back, from the wall bars, Mandy looked up at the ceiling, then lowered her gaze to the vast sheet of glass. Eight feet from the wooden floor of the gym, the mirrored glass reflected a perfect image of the immobile blonde in her strict bondage. Mandy saw where the fourth waxed cord emerged against the pubis, threading between the splayed labia. She narrowed her blue eyes, noting where the bosom bulged within a fiercely restricting rope. Mandy’s gaze came to rest where the bound nude stared hypnotically into her own expression of exquisite anguish. At the point where the parted lips almost kissed the silvery glass, the blonde’s heated excitement spread a dull, opaque smudge.
‘It is always a difficult decision for the dominatrix to make,’ Erica remarked. ‘What would you choose to do now?’
‘Do?’ Mandy echoed, puzzled.
‘Whip her while she is still in her bondage or cut her down and release her for the lash, hmm?’
Mandy considered this slowly, replying at length that she thought it all depended.
‘On what?’ Erica pressed.
‘On what she begged for. Whatever she implored me to do, I would do the opposite, to begin with. I would at first deny her desires, only later granting them – but strictly on my terms.’
‘Wonderful. You understand the submissive type really rather well, girl. And what about you, yourself?’
‘Me?’ Mandy blurted out, alarmed.
‘Do you prefer to be punished, or to punish?’
Mandy blushed, unprepared for the question – and not willing to respond.
‘The whipper or the whipped? Which is it to be?’
Mandy rubbed her foot into the polished wooden floor, her head bowed.
‘I’ll find out soon enough,’ Erica chuckled. ‘Half an hour down here in the gym, with you bare bottomed across that vaulting horse. My cane will soon search out your secret desires.’
Mandy reddened, bitterly resenting the casual intimacy of the cruel, cropped blonde.
‘Punishing the maids is purely a matter of good governance,’ Erica observed, ‘but, with the angels, discipline is more of a voyage of mutual discovery. The mistress,’ Erica added, ‘has asked me to take close control of the angels. To become their tutor and mentor.’
Tormentor, Mandy murmured silently, shrinking slightly from Erica. Anxious at the direction the discussion was taking, Mandy sought refuge in the plight of the naked blonde.
‘I’ll just see how tight those bonds are,’ Mandy said, mounting the bars slowly. Her foot curled over the smooth wood as she came to rest five and a half feet above the floor. Inching closer to the blonde, Mandy tentatively fingered the rope that bisected the rounded buttocks. Inserting her index finger knuckle inwards, Mandy felt the intense pressure of the waxed cord against her flesh. Gliding her knuckle down into and along the velvety ribbon of the cleft, Mandy gasped as the naked blonde shuddered, suddenly tightening the strain of the rope so that Mandy’s knuckle was pushed into the wet sphincter. Writhing in the strictures of the waxed cords, the blonde groaned her delight.
Who was she, really? Perhaps not the daughter of the shambling rectory, Mandy thought. No. A high-powered futures dealer from the City? Perhaps. If so, she would be one of that army of Armani-suited executives making million-pound decisions in a minute, shaping future fortunes in an hour. Fingering the roped breasts lingeringly, Mandy formed a picture of the blonde. Driving a gunmetal BMW down to Dulwich under the sodium street lights after a gruelling day in the Square Mile. On the front seat, a winking laptop that never slept. Mandy imagined the crisp blouse, expensive dark tights and a pert but appropriate hemline: the blonde was shrewd enough to know that girls who dare to bare mid-thigh do not make important decisions in the office – they make the tea.
‘Ask her,’ Erica called up. ‘Ask her what she wants. Make her confess to you.’
Mandy nodded down obediently, secretly resenting the intrusion into her thoughts. Deciding that the blonde was indeed a supercharged City high-flyer, Mandy mused upon the path that had brought the girl here to her bondage in Sternwood Grange. It was a chance to shrug off the huge burden of pressure and responsibility, no doubt. An opportunity to taste the delicious torments of surrendering utterly, of submitting completely, to the stern authority and cruel will of another.
Mandy, who had been caressing the tightened cheeks once more, withdrew her finger. The waxed cord snapped back into the dark cleft. Mounting another bar, Mandy levelled her face with that of the blonde. Slowly, carefully, Mandy stretched out her thumb and brought it to the passive lips. The mouth formed a surprised circle and then closed over the thumb, sucking fiercely. Mandy probed the wet warmth of the blonde’s mouth, marvelling at the strength of the tugging muscles. Reflected back from the mirrored glass, the blonde’s eyes were wide with excitement. Mandy stiffened. The sound was unmistakable: warm golden pee was cascading down between the blonde’s thighs. She’s wetting herself, Mandy realised. Actually wetting herself in ecstasy.
Back down on the floor, Mandy stared in fascination at the dark stain below the blonde.
‘The angel will take her away shortly,’ Erica remarked, ‘for a bath. Then she’ll be dried, powdered and babied. A spanking will follow, then nappies, perhaps, or a bed made up with a rubber sheet. But not yet. The angel has not finished with her submissive blonde.’
Mandy shivered as she saw the angel produce an eight-inch solid-rubber dildo.
‘Dominance and discipline, for the female, is not always achieved with a cane, crop or cords,’ Erica remarked, reading the wonder in Mandy’s widening eyes. ‘Come along.’
As they turned and walked away from the wall bars, Mandy stole a backward glance. The cord that had arrowed down into the dark cleft was now bisecting the bulging left buttock. The bulbous tip of the rubber dildo was being firmly stroked down the cleft. Below, the wet, shining thighs – recently soaked by the golden rain of the blonde’s delight – were clamped tightly together. A shrill scream echoed around the gym. Mandy quickened her pace to catch up with Erica. As she joined the cropped blonde in the centre of the gym, another piercing scream of raw pleasure split the air. The probing rubber shaft would now be gliding firmly into the blonde, she realised, exactly where her own knuckle had worried and nuzzled the hot, sticky sphincter. Mandy shivered with delight and fingered her own seething slit.
They stopped at the edge of a black rubber mat. Straddled by a strap-wielding angel (Rowena, the redhead who had helped Mandy in the sauna yesterday), a submissive was executing sweaty press-ups face down into the rubber. Mandy recognised the bare buttocks. She had seen them being punished shortly after her arrival at Sternwood Grange. It was Lady Davinia, her matted chestnut curls tumbling down in a riot about her aristocratic features.
‘Faster,’ instructed Rowena. ‘You’re not really trying, are you?’ The leather barked harshly as it lashed the buttocks.
As Lady Davinia’s spilling breasts grazed the rubber mat, they bunched deliciously. Mandy watched, transfixed, as the next press-up was completed: it powered the hips down and forced the pubis to kiss the dark rubber. Another crack of the strap made Mandy blink, and the naked hips of Lady Davinia jerk: pounding the nest of chestnut fuzz into the hard rubber once more. Rowena placed her bare foot dominantly down upon the hot cheeks. Lady Davinia wriggled and writhed, squealing her excitement. The angel’s foot lifted, moved up the sweep of the spine, and lowered itself into the chestnut curls, toes curled. Lady Davinia’s second squeal of delight was smothered as she mouthed the rubber mat.
‘Silence,’ snarled the redheaded angel, fingering her length of leather.
‘This is a simple exercise, devised by the former owner of Sternwood Grange,’ Erica observed. ‘Simple but very effective.’
Aunt Clare? Had her late aunt really devised this exercise herself? Mandy was about to follow up this unexpected line of inquiry, but remained silent. Better not raise any suspicions by showing any interest whatsoever, she decided, in the provenance of Stern-wood Grange. But, in her silence, Mandy was amazed. The casual remark fired her imagination. Aunt Clare was more suited, she thought, to a mild hand of bridge and a traditional high tea served in the drawing room at three minutes after four. But if this was all her work, what was Mandy’s potential? A blood relative, similar talents for dark pleasure probably flowed through her veins, she conceded. Was her inheritance from her late aunt to be more than money and property? Was it also a Sadean propensity for devising delicious torments for naked females?
Mandy brushed these thoughts away and tried to concentrate. Erica was speaking. Mandy listened.
‘Simple, but an exercise in which control is exerted absolutely. The subject is brought to the very edge of her ecstasy –’ a harsh snap of the belt whipping down across the upturned cheeks punctuated Erica’s commentary ‘– but her climax is denied. Let’s just stay and watch. I think you’ll find it quite instructive.’
They sat down together at the edge of the rubber mat. Rowena, Mandy noted, was not wearing the clinical white uniform sported by the other angels in the gym. Like Lady Davinia, she was utterly naked. No, not exactly, Mandy realised. Rowena was wearing a pair of light bronze tights. As she turned, Mandy caught their delicious sheen in the glare of the bright neon light. The tights sculpted Rowena’s buttocks superbly, moulding and hugging the bottom as the dominatrix bent over to ply the lash. Mandy, her wet slit now almost molten, yearned to lick and tongue the tights, mouth the thighs they sheathed, bite the soft buttocks imprisoned in their taut sheen.
Rowena snapped the leather down once more. Screaming softly, Lady Davinia sprawled across the rubber, dragging her nipples across its dull surface. Mandy knew that, like the erect nipples, the nude’s clitoris would be rasping the rubber, hungry for orgasm.
‘Bottom up,’ Rowena commanded, positioning her foot – which Mandy had supposed naked until she had seen the gleam of the sheer nylon – upon the nude’s neck.
The whipped cheeks rose up in submissive obedience, peeling the pubis away from the rubber mat.
‘Her climax –’ Erica motioned to the prostrate nude ‘– is now within her angel’s gift.’
Mine too, Mandy realised with a sudden rush of self-knowledge. She parted her thighs a fraction to ease the burning torment. Mine too.
‘It is for the angel to grant or deny the ultimate pleasure,’ Erica added. ‘See how absolute the authority of the angel is.’
Pointing her foot as she lifted it up from the nude’s neck, Rowena dragged her nylon-sheathed toes down along the spine, bringing her foot to rest on the crown of the left, reddened cheek. Mandy’s slit spasmed and tightened as she watched the dominant foot spreading the whipped cheeks apart. Into the yawn of the cleft, the angel dipped the tip of her dangling leather strap. Lady Davinia bucked and jerked – to reject the cruel hide? Or hug it between her hot cheeks? Mandy considered the problem, but could not be sure, could not be certain, of the answer. Slowly, she forced her brain to repeat the question, applying it to herself. She blushed and shivered as she saw the answer unfolding: if she were Lady Davinia, she would want to capture and keep the tormenting strap between the buttocks it had just severely lashed.
Mandy shrugged these thoughts away and watched as the redhead teased her submissive for several spellbinding minutes before eventually allowing the bottom to secure the dangling leather.
‘Any moment now,’ Erica whispered, recognising the signal.
Mandy’s fingers plucked feverishly at the edge of the rubber mat. The polished wooden floor at her slit was clouded with her moist heat. She smothered her mounting excitement as she watched Lady Davinia grind her pubis into the rubber, her thighs and buttocks tightening and spasming rhythmically. Rowena gazed down with knowledgeable eyes and smiled. Reading every little twitch and jerk accurately, she suddenly wrenched the strap aloft. The crimson cheeks rose up as if in pursuit of the sticky dark hide. Rowena inched the strap up higher; tormented and denied, Lady Davinia pummelled the rubber with fists of frustrated fury.
‘Now,’ hissed Erica excitedly. ‘The bitch gets it now.’
Mandy, to her horror and delight, started to come. Rocking slightly, she pressed her labial flesh-folds down into the wooden surface of the gym floor. The feral aroma of her excitement hung like the scent of a Chinese musk-rose in the air. Mandy bit her lip as the tightness within became deliciously unbearable.
Snapping the strap down four times in merciless succession, Rowena flattened the nude down into the rubber and jabbed her stockinged toes into Lady Davinia’s wet fig. Tossing the strap aside, the redhead angel scrunched her toes into her victim’s open crease, treading the flesh firmly to a strict tempo. Seconds later, the nude threshed in the frenzy of her long, shrill climax.
‘Go and look at our equipment,’ Erica said, rising from the edge of the rubber mat, utterly indifferent to the paroxysms of the nude orgasming at her feet.
Mandy, her own muted climax still welling rather than spilling inside her, rose a little groggily and sought the dark, cool sanctuary of the storeroom. Fingering the gleaming chrome calmed her, but a brush with the polished leather of a vaulting horse – the harsh tang of the hide stabbing her nostrils – quickly inflamed her. Steadying herself against the horse, she found and fingered herself ruthlessly.
‘Caner or caned?’ whispered Erica, emerging from the shadows.
Mandy, about to spill her own violent climax, gave a drunken grunt of surprise. She flinched as she felt the cool kiss of a cane pressed against her bottom.
‘Or are you not quite sure?’ Erica teased, levelling her cane firmly against Mandy’s cheeks. ‘You may come,’ she said, her tone crisply clinical.
The presence of the wood against her bare bottom; the cool authority of the intimate command; indeed, the very fact of her self-pleasuring being scrutinized and sanctioned by the predatory cropped blonde rocketed Mandy into a fierce orgasm. Sinking down on to her knees, she came violently.
‘As your tutor and mentor, I am in control of you completely,’ Erica whispered, bringing the cane down on to the nape of the kneeling girl’s neck. ‘The mistress was most insistent on that point.’
Celia Flaxstone. Mandy’s bare buttocks tightened in response to the unexpected reference to the solicitor.
‘You belong to me, just as we all belong to the mistress of Sternwood Grange,’ Erica continued, her voice treacling with excitement.
Mandy felt the tip of the cane dragging down along her spine, pause at the swell of her buttocks, then visit her wet delta, tapping it gently.
‘As an angel under my tutelage, it is important that you share all your secrets with me. It will help me make a better angel of you, help you discharge your duties.’ The tip of the cane emphasised these words by tapping at the glistening labia. ‘And your duties as an angel are?’
‘To pleasure the residents,’ Mandy whispered. Looking down at the quivering cane, she saw the yellow wood darkened with her lust juice.
‘Precisely. Now go and wash yourself thoroughly and go back out into the gym. I will arrange to have a resident brought to you.’
The gym was deserted when Mandy emerged from her shower. The doors flapped softly. She looked across to see Sophie entering. Mandy smiled.
‘Bitch,’ Sophie hissed. ‘You deliberately ditched my chances of being an angel, didn’t you?’
Mandy instantly remembered the slice of stolen cake – given with affection – and the hot bottom it had incurred for the platinum blonde. ‘I didn’t mean –’
‘Got your wish, didn’t you?’ Sophie snarled. ‘She’s making you an angel.’
‘How is Partridge? I haven’t seen her –’
‘Keep your little claws off Partridge, understand?’ Sophie snapped.
Mandy was surprised at the venom of the response. Turning away, she walked towards the vaulting horse. ‘Erica said she was sending a resident down to me.’
‘She’s here,’ Sophie snarled.
Mandy smoothed the surface of the horse with both palms. She did not see Sophie usher in the resident, a red-robed dominant. Sophie slipped off the red robe and buried it under a yellow one.
‘Your angel,’ Sophie announced softly, indicating Mandy at the horse.
Mandy turned. Sophie was holding up a yellow robe and folding it carefully. In silence, Sophie retreated to the doors, pegged the yellow robe and departed. Mandy ignored the resident, merely snapping her fingers and pointing to the vaulting horse.
Raising her eyebrows in surprise, the dominant strode purposefully across the polished wooden floor.
‘Up,’ ordered Mandy, still ignoring the approaching nude.
It was a disaster. Within a minute and a half, during which Mandy had treated the dominant to a taste of what was usually experienced by the submissive residents, the nude exploded in outrage.
‘How dare you? Are you stupid? Stupid, or simply wicked?’
Mandy paled. ‘I don’t understand –’
‘Fetch my robe this instant,’ thundered the angry dominatrix. Stunned and uncomprehending, Mandy took down the yellow robe from where Sophie had pegged it.
‘No, not that one. My red one.’
A red robe. Mandy suddenly understood. Understood what an enormous error she had made – with Sophie’s cunning assistance. Trembling, she found the red robe buried beneath the others and retrieved it.
Putting on her robe, the dominant sat down on a low bench and ordered Mandy across her knee. Arranging the angel across her lap, she sniffed at the musky tang of Mandy’s recent arousal. Prising Mandy’s thighs apart, she fingered the exposed fig.
‘Moist, hmm?’ the stern voice remarked. ‘We’ll see how wet a severe spanking makes you, shall we?’
Mandy shrank at the touch of a firm hand pinning her down by the nape of her neck, and shuddered as a firmer hand palmed her upturned buttocks. The spanking hand stuttered into life, raining down a savage staccato across Mandy’s bare bottom. The spanked girl wriggled and squirmed but the spanker’s grip was as sure as her unerring aim was certain, allowing no possibility of escape for the sore-bottomed angel.
‘What’s this?’ Erica asked, entering the gym between the flapping doors. ‘Not satisfied with the girl?’
‘She is either colour blind, or very stupid,’ the dominant snapped, vigorously palming the buttocks she had just chastised.
‘Then should we not make the punishment fit the crime?’ Erica purred solicitously, anxious to assuage the resident. ‘Give her to me and allow me to punish her for your pleasure.’
The dominant surrendered Mandy to her fate. Erica gripped a cruel handful of Mandy’s dark hair and led the captive angel across to the wall bars.
‘Touch your toes, girl,’ Erica ordered.
Mandy obeyed, seeing the approaching feet of the curious dominant in her inverted vision.
‘I won’t be a moment,’ Erica remarked, departing. Seconds later, she returned from the storeroom, a table tennis bat in her right hand.
‘What colour is a dominant’s robe?’
Mandy replied, whispering the word red.
‘And what colour is this bat?’ Erica murmured.
‘Red,’ repeated Mandy, peering through her legs at her bottom reflected in the mirror behind the wall bars.
Erica examined the dimpled latex surface of the bat and nodded. ‘Red,’ she echoed. ‘And what colour is your bottom?’
Mandy remained silent.
The bat swept down, splatting against the peach-cheeks. Seven times, in a furious onslaught, the bat whipped down, flattening the swelling curves on impact. The dimpled latex left blazing red blotches of pain on the creamy skin.
‘What colour is your bottom, girl?’ Erica hissed.
‘Red,’ gasped Mandy, squeezing a tear from her eye.
‘Wrong,’ Erica snapped. ‘The robe is red. The bat is red. Your bottom is not red. Enough. Not yet.’
Thrilled by the discipline, the dominant nodded vigorously.
‘But it will be when I have finished with you. Up. Get up,’ Erica ordered. ‘I want you across the vaulting horse.’
Mandy stumbled, naked and ashamed, across the polished wooden floor. Erica’s pumps squeaked as she followed with a menacing, measured tread. The red-robed dominant, her eyes sparkling excitedly, joined both punisher and punished at the leather horse.
‘Up,’ Erica commanded, swiping the bat down across the hide.
Hot bottomed and afraid, Mandy straddled the horse then eased her breasts down to kiss the leather. The table tennis bat suddenly appeared before her eyes.
‘Kiss it,’ Erica demanded.
Mandy pressed her dry lips into the dimpled latex submissively.
‘Lick it.’
Licking the latex with her rasping tongue, Mandy shivered at the watching dominant’s appreciative grunt.
‘I’ll hold her down, my dear, while you use the bat on her bottom,’ the red-robe volunteered eagerly.
Mandy felt the powerful grip at her shoulders, and, to her misery, felt the warm breath of the dominant against her nakedness. Erica swished the table tennis bat down – again, again and yet again. Pinioned, naked and helpless, Mandy squealed as her bare bottom blazed.
‘Harder,’ hissed the dominant, her face now pressed into Mandy’s flesh. ‘Harder.’
Erica needed no such encouragement, but heeded it as the bat swept down repeatedly to explode across the upturned cheeks.
As the cool of the evening bathed the elms surrounding Sternwood Grange with its soothing air, the doves broke their silence and murmured dreamily. In the purple twilight at the edge of the darkening copse, an early owl hooted its mournful reply. Someone, somewhere – a maid in a remote attic dorm – was playing Elvis Costello’s ‘Watching the Detectives’. It was a short-lived pleasure. Someone, probably Partridge on the prowl, Mandy thought, had quickly seen to that.
Outside the linen room, she paused, her hand resting lightly on the door handle. From inside came the muffled sound of a girl weeping. Mandy entered and found Sonia, the little minx of a maid she had seen, and had been obliged to spank, in the Gibbet. Sonia sniffed, hastily wiping her eyes.
‘Whatever’s the matter?’ Mandy whispered, circling her arm around the minx and cradling her gently.
‘Had enough of this place. Not enough to eat and Erica’s always punishing me and all my so-called wages go in fines and I’m going to run away tonight and I don’t care –’
Mandy stemmed the sobbed outburst with a kiss and a tender caress. Aunt Clare, she knew, would be horrified to see any of her girls in such a state. She felt honour bound to help. Besides, she liked the plucky little minx.
‘But you can’t possibly get away. Not without proper plans.’
Mandy listened as the minx defiantly said that she had been watching the midnight arrival of vans and thought it was a perfect means of escape and return to London. Mandy made no comment, but filed the information away for her own, undisclosed, purposes.
‘But where will you go if you make it to London? What will you do?’
‘I’ll sort it when I get there,’ Sonia sniffled, nuzzling her wet face into Mandy’s soft bosom.
‘And how much have you actually got?’ The question was put gently, without any hint of sarcasm.
Sonia murmured that she had amassed the prodigious sum of seventeen pounds. Struggling not to smile, Mandy hugged the minx, then slipped her hands down to cup and squeeze the girl’s firm buttocks.
‘You know you can’t survive. Not on seventeen pounds. Wouldn’t last long on seventy, in London. You can’t go. Not yet. Let me look after you, hmm? I’ll see you’re OK.’
‘And what can you do?’ the minx snapped petulantly. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean …’
‘Stay here,’ Mandy said quickly. ‘I’ll be back in a minute or two,’ she promised, resolving to give the minx a special treat.
The housekeeper’s office was empty, the kitchens deserted. With her heart hammering louder than the clock ticking on the wall, Mandy secured biscuits, sweets and fruit by the handful, and, scuttling away with her brazen spoils, rejoined Sonia in the linen room.
‘Here, enjoy these. Eat the apple last, it’ll mask the smell,’ Mandy whispered, showering Sonia with treats.
Wide-eyed, the pert little maid accepted the gifts and was soon gobbling greedily. ‘You have some,’ she said generously, her mouth full of Belgian pralines.
‘No, you enjoy them,’ Mandy said. ‘And we’ll talk about getting you out of here later.’
‘You could get the Gibbet for this,’ the minx said solemnly, swallowing an inelegant chunk of Mantuan nougat. ‘You’re just like a prefect I knew in school. She was kind.’
Mandy snapped a chocolate biscuit in half and munched it quietly. ‘Better now?’ she asked the minx at length.
They embraced and kissed, the minx’s tongue-tip flickering out to wipe the tiny biscuit crumbs from Mandy’s lips before Mandy forced her mouth dominantly down on to the upturned face of the younger girl. Again, Sonia’s tongue wriggled and probed.
‘Is that what your prefect taught you at school?’ Mandy asked in a tone of mock severity, squeezing Sonia’s bottom.
‘Mmm.’
‘What else?’
Sonia slid her hand, palm inwards, up inside Mandy’s blouse. The inquisitive fingertips paused at the swell of the left breast, then inched up boldly to rub and stroke the nipple. Mandy pulled the minx towards her. The minx was fresh from the bath, scrubbed, and mildly carbolic to the nose. Mandy sniffed the delicious scent of freshly washed, slightly aroused girl. The busy fingers at her nipple brought the pink nub of flesh up into a peak of pleasure. Mandy eased her thighs apart, feeling the stretch of her damp panties across her mons veneris. The minx playfully pinched the nipple, and pulled. Mandy spanked the minx. Sonia’s fingers withdrew, sliding sinuously down across Mandy’s belly. Mandy felt them scrabbling at the elastic waist of her panties.
‘Not now, little one. I will try to come and see you.’
‘When?’ whispered Sonia urgently.
Mandy cupped the minx by her buttocks, then, dividing them with her thumbs, spread the soft hillocks painfully apart. Sonia squealed, and rose up on tiptoe.
‘Soon. Now off you go.’ She spanked the bottom firmly. ‘And no more wild talk of running away. Not till we plan it properly. Understand?’
Sonia, nibbling her apple, nodded. Looking up, she smiled shyly. ‘You’re just like that prefect,’ Sonia blurted out. ‘I loved her so much.’ Turning, the minx ran out of the linen room, dropping the apple in her haste.
Mandy picked up the apple, wiped and then ate it, carefully disposing of the core. Even a stray pip could merit a whipped bottom in Sternwood Grange.
Remembering the deserted office in the empty kitchens, she returned, opened the door and entered: risking a brief examination of the accounts. The encounter with Sonia had unsettled her, troubling her mind with thoughts, and possible means, of escape. But her work here was not yet completed. She needed more facts and figures. She needed to open and peruse Partridge’s carefully kept ledgers.
She was not disappointed, and within ten minutes had gleaned a great deal of new information. A strange sensation of discomfort, almost like the chill of a sudden draught, stilled her hand on the page of the accounts book. What was it? What was her sixth sense telling her? Something was wrong. Something was different, missing. She closed the leather-bound volume and stole out of the housekeeper’s office into the shadows of the kitchen. The coast was clear. She relaxed a little, the tightness in her belly easing. All was still and silent. Silent? The clock. Mandy’s brain missed the ticking of the clock.
‘Looking for something?’
Mandy turned swiftly and saw Erica emerging from the shadows. She was cradling the clock against her breasts.
‘I was just –’
‘Just?’ Erica sneered. ‘I rather think that anything you had in mind was far from just. Quite criminal, no doubt.’
Mandy shivered. Had Erica seen her emerging from the housekeeper’s office?
‘This little chap needs regular attention,’ Erica whispered, winding the clock up with a slow, rhythmic motion of her supple wrist. ‘If I neglect it, the mechanism becomes irregular.’ She paused, then added meaningfully, ‘I abhor irregularity.’
Mandy tugged at the cuff of her blouse nervously. ‘I only came down to see if there was a bit of spare fruit. Spoiled fruit,’ she added earnestly, trying to minimise her crime – and impending punishment. ‘Bruised apples that wouldn’t be fit for the residents.’
Erica ignored this frank confession and patted the clock at her bosom. ‘It is quite simple. If I attend to this clock, it serves me well. Works for me, reliably. And it is the same with both the maids and the angels. To make sure they run reliably, I attend to them. Vigilantly. Sternwood Grange has a delicate mechanism. I strive to maintain the balance. I find that nothing oils the wheels better than punishment. Into the Gibbet, girl. At once.’
‘But I was only –’
Dangling in the Gibbet, her panties pulled down to her knees, Mandy clenched her bare buttocks in fearful expectation. Erica checked the leather collar around her captive’s wrists, then addressed the ripe swell of the naked buttocks with her wooden spoon.
‘Looking for a bruised apple, you say. I think,’ she whispered, tracing the curved cheeks menacingly, ‘you will not go to bed disappointed. You start with an advantage,’ she purred, lowering her face down to slowly lick, then fiercely bite, the fleshy warmth. ‘Being apple-buttocked,’ she mouthed into the squirming cheeks, ‘all you need is the bruising.’
Twisting and writhing, Mandy shuddered in her bondage. Erica went upstairs and returned with a bustle of naked, sleepy maids for the group punishment.
‘Pay attention,’ the cropped blonde barked.
Mandy, her wrists burning as they hung painfully from the leather collar, jabbed at the empty air with her naked feet.
‘I promised you that I would bring order and discipline to Sternwood Grange and, as you will discover, I never break my word. You will all lose one week’s pay.’
The assembled maids moaned in dismay.
‘Silence. And I want you to bear that in mind while punishing our little thief here. Four strokes apiece. Commence.’
Sophie stepped up, accepted the wooden spoon and swiped Mandy’s bare bottom savagely, evidently relishing her chance for revenge. After the four searing swipes, Mandy’s buttocks tightened, as if squeezing out the pain from her ravished cheeks. Sonia followed, her strokes softer. The rest of the maids queued impatiently to vent their anger at the loss of yet another week’s wages. Mandy’s bottom paid a hot and heavy price as they blazed her crimson cheeks with the cruel wooden spoon.
‘Excellent,’ Erica remarked, stepping up to thumb the hot flesh and inspect it intimately. ‘Back to bed with you all. As for you, girl,’ she remarked to Mandy, ‘you can stay up there for a while. Stay and suffer.’
‘It’s only me,’ Sonia whispered, tiptoeing back across the flagstones eight minutes later. ‘Are you all right?’
Mandy nodded silently, smiling down at the minx.
‘Ooh, your poor bottom. Let me make it better.’
Mandy closed her eyes, wriggling her wrists in their leather collar to ease the burning ache. She opened her eyes at the soft sound of the fridge door. Sonia giggled as she rattled the ice tray, deftly closed the fridge door with her foot and scampered across to the hot, punished bottom swaying in suspended bondage.
Mandy gasped as the ice cube swept across the swell of her ravished cheeks, and gasped again as the minx traced slow circles on the crimsoned globes.
‘There,’ Sonia whispered. ‘Better?’
‘Mmm.’
‘I hated it. Spanking you with that awful wooden spoon.’
‘I understand.’
The minx drew the ice cube down along the length of Mandy’s cleft. Mandy grunted softly.
‘Nice?’
‘Mmm. Very.’
The cube paused, glistening against the sphincter. Mandy twisted and bucked in her bondage.
‘May I kiss you?’ Sonia murmured, her lips now inches from Mandy’s pubic fuzz.
‘Lick me,’ Mandy whispered huskily, her words half command, half imprecation.
Sonia wedged the ice cube between the punished buttocks and gently rotated Mandy, bringing the proud pubis three inches from the tip of her tongue. The distance between the two pairs of glistening lips – one darkly fleshed and vertical, the other pink and horizontal – vanished as Sonia brought her mouth up to, then into, Mandy’s delta. A lapping sound filled the silent kitchen, almost but not quite drowning out the soft moans of delight. A fiercer sucking sound followed. Mandy squeezed her buttocks together, forcing a trickle of cold ice-water to sparkle as it slivered down her cleft and dripped, dripped slowly on to Sonia’s breasts below. Fused, flesh to flesh, mouth to splayed labia, the minx furiously tongued the girl suspended in the Gibbet.
A sound at the door made Sonia spring back, her chin as wet as her gleaming bosom. Released, Mandy swung slowly round in a slow agony of anguish. Had Erica, and her spoon, returned? Mandy twisted to see. The velvet voice of Partridge broke the tense silence.
‘Should you not be upstairs and in bed?’ she inquired. The tone was not stern, more one of concern. ‘You know what will happen if Erica catches you here, Sonia.’
‘But Mandy was punished unfairly and she’s been so kind to me,’ Sonia replied breathlessly, ‘and she –’
‘Talked you out of any foolish ideas about running away, I hope,’ Partridge interrupted gently.
Sonia blushed and looked down at the flagstone floor.
‘Kiss Mandy goodnight, Sonia. I will take care of her now.’
‘Will you?’ the minx asked eagerly. ‘Promise?’
Mandy, twisting in the Gibbet, turned to face Partridge just in time to see the housekeeper’s large, brown eyes devouring her helpless nakedness. Partridge nodded and smiled. Sonia encircled Mandy’s thighs with her embracing arms, and kissed the flaming buttocks tenderly. Without another word, the little maid scurried out of the kitchen, nimbly dodging a spank aimed at her retreating bottom.
‘We don’t need the light,’ Partridge said, reaching out and switching it off.
The chain suspending Mandy rattled expectantly.
‘It was really very good of you to take care of little Sonia. You stopped her doing something very foolish, tonight. Running away: it would have been a disaster. But then all the maids, and many of the angels, are unhappy here. Things are so different since –’
‘Erica took control.’
‘The mistress has her reasons,’ Partridge said, her voice sad and gentle. ‘Fruit, wasn’t it?’ she inquired brightly.
‘Fruit?’ Mandy echoed.
‘I was informed that you are being punished for attempting to steal fruit.’
Mandy remained silent. In the darkness of the larder, she heard Partridge rustling. The rustling stopped. Footsteps approached her. A hand swept up between her thighs and grazed her pubic mound. Mandy welded her legs together. Partridge laughed gently and, reaching out, cupped and weighed the soft warmth of Mandy’s bare bottom. Imperceptibly, she inched the cheeks apart, slowly widening the cleft. Mandy gasped.
‘I cannot take you down from the Gibbet. Erica is now in a position of power here since the mistress came down from London to inspect her enterprise.’
Mandy quelled her surge of anger at these words.
‘But I can reward you, Mandy. Reward and pleasure you for taking care of little Sonia. You are generous and unselfish. Such qualities cannot go unrecognised.’
Mandy felt the hands at the cheeks of her bottom slide down her thighs, following the line of her naked legs to her feet. Stooping, Partridge picked up an unseen object from the flagstone floor.
‘Feet together,’ the housekeeper whispered.
Mandy’s feet pressed together as if joined in silent prayer.
‘I could only find this orange, my dear, but I’m sure it will serve.’
Placing the orange just above Mandy’s knees, Partridge palmed the fruit slowly upwards, rolling it against the naked flesh. The leathery touch of the peel on her own satin sheen sent a thrill arrowing down from Mandy’s belly into the tightening muscles below. She clamped her thighs fiercely as the orange approached her pubic mound.
‘Open wide,’ Partridge whispered.
Mandy inched her thighs apart, admitting the orange in between them. The palm positioned the fruit, pressing it against the labial lips, and crushing them tenderly, before raking it up across the tiny, erect clitoris. Mandy screamed softly, jerking violently in her bondage.
Partridge deftly shifted her hand to cup and press the fruit up into the pubis. Rolling it gently at first, then with a mounting frenzy, she ravished the clitoris. Mandy squealed as her pink thorn rose up, only to be pressed beneath the soft weight. The hand that held the maddening fruit suddenly squeezed: zest spurted out, invisible in the darkness but filling Mandy’s nostrils with its delicious tang. The juice scalded her open sex. Mandy threshed, rattling the taut chain that stretched up above her to the oak-beamed kitchen ceiling. Mandy sensed the hand guiding the fruit down against her splayed labia. They widened into a welcoming smile and kissed the thick peel. Mandy whimpered. With a burst of intimate fury, Partridge skimmed the bound and helpless girl’s wet slit mercilessly, stretching up with a warning hand against Mandy’s lips to stem her welling screams.
The housekeeper removed her hand. ‘Open your mouth,’ she commanded.
Mandy parted her dry lips as the legs of an unseen chair scraped the flagstone floor. Mandy sensed, rather than saw, Partridge mount the chair. The haunting tang of the zest flooded Mandy’s senses as Partridge held the orange just above her upturned face.
‘Wider,’ came the command.
Mandy’s mouth stretched open, her tongue flattened like that of an exhausted animal. Mandy heard Partridge grunt softly with effort as she squeezed the orange viciously. A cascade of pulpy juice rained down over Mandy’s face, splashing her with sweet, sticky wetness. Lowering the split and weeping fruit, Partridge allowed Mandy to bite deeply into it.
‘Enjoy,’ urged her sweet tormentress, cramming the wet flesh into Mandy’s mouth.
Eyes tightly shut, her slit tingling and ablaze, Mandy mouthed the citric pulp, violently sucking its ripe sweetness. Partridge dragged the orange away. Mandy’s chain rattled as she jerked in a spasm of ecstasy.
‘No noise, my dear, no noise when you come,’ Partridge cautioned, her voice warm and tender. ‘This must be a silent pleasure.’
The chair squeaked in the darkness as, having dismounted, the housekeeper removed it. Mandy quivered expectantly, the pain in her bound wrists now pleasantly, unexpectedly sweet. Partridge returned the split fruit to Mandy’s labia. Grinding the pulp into the flesh-lips, and pleasure-punishing the clitoris, the brown-eyed housekeeper fuelled the flames of Mandy’s burning climax. Working the orange adroitly, the controlling hand scrubbed the crease until a suppressed scream filled the darkness as, writhing in her bondage, Mandy came.
Turning slowly, her arms stretched painfully up into the leather collar, Mandy listened to the loud silence that remained after the housekeeper’s departure. Nothing broke the stillness except the rushing sound in her ears: the beating pulse of her hot blood quickened by orgasm. No, she realised. She listened intently, and heard the tick of the clock. The clock, she remembered, which Erica had been winding earlier on. Winding with such grim exactitude: each twist of the supple wrist had tightened the spring just as effortlessly as each twist of her supple wrist would tighten the skin of a bottom she was punishing. Clocks suited Erica, Mandy mused.
The cropped blonde was blindly obedient. A clockwork martinet. Slavishly obeying the controlling mechanism: Celia Flaxstone. The grey-eyed solicitor controlled Erica and, through her, Sternwood Grange. The new mistress planned to run her private realm with clockwork precision. Partridge, Mandy smiled as she considered the comparison, was too tender-hearted to survive in the new regime. Partridge, with her big brown eyes and her gentle severity.
Mandy resolved, if and when she gained her rightful inheritance, to keep Partridge on, certain that the housekeeper would serve her as loyally as she had served Aunt Clare. And the minx, Sonia, would have no more reasons to attempt another escape. Harmony, happiness and pleasure would come back to visit – and stay at – Sternwood Grange. When Mandy was mistress of Sternwood Grange, pleasure would come before profit, and all profits would be shared.
The door squeaked. Mandy tensed with pleasurable expectation. It would be Sonia, sweet little Sonia, the ponytail-swishing minx. Sonia, back to show her affection and devotion.
Mandy took a deep breath and wriggled eagerly, twisting in her bondage to catch a glimpse of the little maid. One fingertip, then a second, grazed her pubic fuzz. Mandy mewed like a kitten at its cream.
‘Bitch.’
A scarlet flash of light flickered across Mandy’s brain as the unseen fingers plucked at her pubic tuft.
‘Bitch,’ Sophie hissed. ‘I saw you seducing her. Leave her alone.’ The fingers tweaked the soft curls again. ‘Partridge is mine.’
Erica would be on patrol, and would deliberately leave Mandy in the Gibbet for at least another hour. Mandy jerked her wrists as the chair legs scraped the flagstone floor and Sophie mounted. Helpless in her bondage, she squirmed at the hot breath of the jealous maid as it neared her left breast. Where there was hot breath so close to her nipple, Mandy knew, sharp teeth must surely follow.