We are aware that it is not customary to pursue the fortunes of the characters in a romance once they are married, –in deference, possibly, to the notion that nothing that can be said of their life could do justice to its almost supramundane bliss, and also for the reason that there is little in their behaviour whose description would not violate the most elementary laws of propriety. That we have, however, so far dared to follow our hero and heroine past the sacred portals of matrimony, is due solely to the special exigencies of our story itself, which require that its climax be demonstrated in accordance with what has gone before.
The only omission we are obliged to make is one that is enforced on us by the sheer limitations of our ability, for the ecstasy in which Richard literally swam when he at last plunged his fine nervous member in Harriet’s vulva is something that our poor pen cannot describe, and we must be content to indicate the excess of his sensations by saying that his first orgasm in the womb of his beloved was so violent that he fainted quite away.
The honeymoon was passed, as Harriet had planned, in the absolute seclusion of the house at Christchurch, in the same surroundings which she had found so well adapted to the strict training of the boy only four years earlier. The same domestic arrangements were made for the comfort and privacy of the young couple; only the time-table of the days was altered in the interests of later rising and earlier retiring. Thus the regular routine and the sequestered life which had so favoured the application of the severest discipline by the governess were recalled and recreated to subserve the softer but no less rigorous demands of the wife; and for two weeks the house in the woods was a veritable abode of love. Its walls, which had once re-echoed so often to puerile screams and the insistent whistle of cane and martinet, were now filled at all hours of the day and night with soft murmurs and the sound of kisses, with deep-drawn breaths and low continuous cries.
During this period Richard was inducted into all the mysteries of voluptuousness: he learned what it was to be caressed from head to foot with the most consummate skill, and to have not only his member but his anus sucked to the limits of their capacity for sensation. Moreover, Harriet’s whole body came to engross his attention, calling him to its centre as to an irreducible absolute, so that the whole region of her loins became for him not only the centre and focus of his desire but an area of genuine worship, and he was never happier than when lying for hours together between her thighs with his mouth glued to her vulva, whose need and every sensual vagary his tongue now understood and took delight in satisfying. In short, Harriet had made of him a finished libertine, a connoisseur of every kind of delight to be enjoyed with a woman.
For her part, she continued to exult in the possession of a youth who was not only made to receive pleasure but to bestow it. She found that his appetite for her body was almost insatiable: the slightest touch of her hand, even the glance of her eye, was enough to provoke him to immediate erection, and once his member was sheathed in her vulva she found its vigour and persistence all that she could have hoped for. Richard, indeed, otherwise so passive and weak-willed, assumed another character in bed: one would have said he was made for nothing else but to gratify a woman’s lusts, that this was his single and supreme mission in life.
She was well aware, however, that it was she who had made him so. With her deep knowledge of his nature, she was waiting for this idyllic period of their relations to come to an end, and for the results of her long and severe training to be justified.
It was autumn before the hour of proof arrived.
That day it had rained all afternoon, with a warm persistent drizzle that discouraged any activity out of doors and left the young couple to their own devices. Harriet, not displeased by the circumstances, had carried her beloved youth to bed as soon as luncheon was over; and in the great bedroom, which had once been hers alone and which was now the arena of their loves, the happy pair had passed the entire afternoon, renewing embraces each more leisurely, passionate and prolonged than the last, and sinking at last into a condition of blissful exhaustion from which they were only roused by Molly’s discreet summons to dinner.
This was no unusual programme for the lovers, and had heretofore been followed by the chastest of goodnights and a long restorative slumber. But this evening Harriet, whose desires were accustomed to increase with the waning year, was still unsated: when she rejoined her husband in bed that evening it was to clasp him once more in her arms, with a fresh and importunate desire which the enervated youth was unable to return. His limbs drooping with fatigue, his eyelids heavy with sleep, he was unable to rouse himself. Harriet had redoubled her efforts, striving to reanimate him by the caresses of her hands and her breasts; in vain did she stroke and flatter the whole region of his loins; in vain did she display her moist and throbbing vulva before his eyes; in vain did she take his flaccid member in her mouth and seek to revive it by the most vigorous suction. It was no use, and she was left pressed against his sleeping body in a fever of unappeased desire ...
Richard was indeed quite worn out; he slept heavily, dreamlessly, his whole body relaxed and quiescent. How long he had slept he did not know, but he was borne back reluctantly into wakefulness by a sensation of coldness coupled with the sound of Harriet’s voice. He opened his eyes: for a few moments he did not know where he was, he believed he was a child again, lying naked on his bed and shuddering before the most familiar and dreaded vision of his boyhood.
Harriet was standing at the bedside; she wore the long hooded cape, her face was set in lines of extraordinary severity, and the black riding-whip was quivering in her hand; her voice was cold and clear.
“Come, Richard, it is time. Get up at once.”
He stared at her, once more a terror-stricken boy anticipating the bite of the lash on his buttocks; then, still as if he were in the clutches of a nightmare, he rolled out of bed, found his feet and bent over submissively. From behind him he heard the brisk premonitory whistling of the whip as it cut the air, and heard his governess—ah, it was not his wife now, it was his governess! – addressing him in the tones he knew so well.
“You know, Richard, why you are to be flogged, do you not?”
The voice paused, and the lash touched his shrinking flesh lightly. “Listen: I must remind you that your status as husband involves certain duties, and that when we were married you assumed the responsibility of performing them at all times. At all times, you understand! Until this evening you have behaved yourself well; but a few hours ago you refused to gratify me.” The whip touched him again. “When I was your governess, you knew the result of any act of disobedience. Now that I am your wife, you will find that my methods have not changed. You are going to be whipped now, Richard, until you decide to satisfy me. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Harriet...” He was still only half awake, and his feelings were in a turmoil.
“Good,” she continued. “You are not to think, Richard, that your course of instruction is finished. I assure you the same methods that produced the perfect pupil will not be spared to make the ideal husband. In the next few weeks, in fact, I think you will have learnt to look back with proper shame on your conduct earlier tonight...” She paused, and when she spoke again her voice came with the cold sibilance of controlled anger. “Are you yet fully aware of the insult comprised in your refusal of my rights over you? Answer me.”
The wretched youth’s cheeks were on fire with shame. “Oh Harriet, I did not know ... But forgive me! I – I tried–”
The whip lashed him sharply across the loins, cutting short his protestations.
“I did not ask you to recall your affront to me! And bear in mind that I am not interested in your excuses. No, your pardon will be granted only when you repair your fault... But we are wasting time. Put your hands on your knees! So.”
The next moment the whip wrapped itself around his loins with a rich and urgent hiss. Richard screamed; Harriet exhaled a deep luxurious sigh; then slowly and with all the strength of her wrist, she struck again and again ...
The wretched youth was soon twisting and swaying on his feet, his breath coming in great sobs. “Oh Harriet –I beg you–but I cannot ... cannot–”
“Ah, we shall see!” The whip fell again, directed this time at the tenderest flesh of his thighs. “Come now–we shall see ...”
And all at once the weeping youth was aware of a development over which he had no conscious control; the next moment, with a feeling of blissful incredulity, he felt a mysterious vigour coursing through his hips and causing his member to waken, –and as he did so his eyes were caught by the reflection in the great mirror opposite him. Panting with a newly generated excitement, he saw the tall caped figure, its bare arm raised in the classic gesture of correction above the nude cowering body which for an instant no longer seemed to be his own. Fired by the vision, with a wild ecstasy, a whole–hearted delight, he saw the whip cutting into the quivering flesh of this impersonal body.
“Ah! Yes, yes!” he cried. “Again–again!”
Once, twice more, the lash wrapped around his thighs; and then, his senses in a delicious chaos, his brain reeling, he was aware of Harriet throwing aside the whip. He saw her cape fall to her feet, –and then he was clasped in her bare arms and being borne in triumph to the bed which received them both in its soft depths.
She took him from above like a goddess or a savage queen, her back arched, her breasts with erected nipples thrust out, the splendid hips crissating with an urgent, imperious motion; her vulva gripped him like the oiled fist of a wrestler, searching and clasping, importuning the smooth bulb throughout its enforced passage, from the stringent embrace of the frothing lips where it was freed for a moment to rub the fleshy finger of her clitoris before being engulfed again up to the spongy cavern of the womb itself into which she drove it with an expert stroke of her loins and then paused, holding it captive while she ground her buttocks over it with a kind of luxurious and leisurely greed.
As she smiled down at him in triumph the arch of her brows was lifted slightly, lengthening the fine curve of her eyes which were like two shining bowls filled with a cold grey light. “Ah, this is how I like you!” she cried. And leaning forward she took his face in her hands, panting, “A boy–to be whipped and enjoyed, again and again ...”
All at once she began to groan, as if in the act of defecation, and as she let her breast fall slowly on his her movements shortened, became more violent, concentrated, her spine stiffened as if in agony and deep lines sprang out along her thighs, her sides, her neck, as she began to be shaken by a series of convulsions spreading in a double wave from her loins and prolonging itself to the limits of her frame, as if winding her whole body into the central shuddering ecstasy of the womb.
He achieved his orgasm at the same moment, his sperm jetting weakly into her with the concurrent spasms of his captured and subservient member...
Later, happy and relaxed, he lay on his back, his head turned sideways on the pillow so that he could see Harriet’s face beside him, studying the pure profile presented to him. Her dark eyelids drooped over her eyes, but she was not sleeping: rather, the intent dreamy expression of her flushed face, the pouting contours of her soft mouth, bespoke her pursuit of some further and persistent sensual reverie.
No longer inclined for sleep, he passionately devoured the lines of the beautiful face, –the low, classic brow, the short, cruel upper lip, the heavy, voluptuously carved chin and throat; his eye travelled lower, and dwelt with livelier admiration on the curve and swell of the naked breast whose exposed nipple raised itself almost within reach of his lips. He drew a deep breath. Never had she seemed more lovely, more desirable, than at this moment when his desire had just exhausted itself...
After a while his eyes grew dim with voluptuousness, and a quiver went through him; his hand, as if acting independently of his will, passed over her thighs and sought her vulva in a burning caress. Turning his head to seek her lips, he found her warm mouth awaiting him; there was a look of renewed expectation, of fresh desire, on her smiling face. He pressed his body against hers feverishly, waiting for his flesh to echo the excitement of his brain. It was not until almost a minute had gone by that he understood what he wished.
Harriet, already stirred by her reveries and the unequivocal caress of his hand, lay awaiting the further and final assuagement of her desire ... And it was then that she experienced her most intense emotion, when she saw his glowing beautiful face approach hers with a smiling expression of appeal, and heard him asking in low and passionate tones for the boon which he now craved with every nerve in his body.
Her eyes closed for as instant in ecstasy; then, springing to her knees with a single sinuous movement, she reached for the instrument of correction, uttering a glad and savage cry...
Richard was sleeping now, his breath coming with the deep regularity of content and fatigue. Harriet, at last enjoying the bliss of absolute satiety, lay beside him, herself feeling the delicious approach of sleep.
She smiled in the semi-darkness. The promised goal had been reached, her cup was full at last: she enjoyed the entire possession and control of the man whom she loved with all that mixture of tenderness and cruelty which marked her nature. He was indeed, she thought, such as she had made him: a creature dependent on her, body and soul, the plaything of her humours and caprice, the helpless, beloved and obedient instrument of her desires ... A vision of the future unrolled itself before her in a sudden blaze of beauty, –the vision of the husband whose devotion would never weaken, whose disposition would keep him her willing slave forever.
She breathed deeply, luxuriously. Not for her, she knew, the fate of so many women, not the experience of neglect and indifference, the cooling of a husband’s love. Not for her, as the years went by and her beauty waned, the heartbreak and dismay of the woman dependent on her fading physical charms, on artifice and dissimulation, for the satisfaction of her body and the return of affection. Not for her the affront of a pretended admiration nor the pangs of jealousy! She had taken her measures, her patience had its reward, and her prey was safe at last. The man she loved would never falter in his adoration or respect, he could never escape ...
Her eyes closed gently, slowly. Happiness flowed over her in a soft wave, lulling her like bodily weariness ... And as she drifted off into slumber her hand reached out involuntarily to the bedside table and touched the whip as if for an assurance, caressing for an instant this symbol of her victory, this talisman of her present joy, this guarantee of her felicity and satisfaction in all the years to come.