Will you gag me tonight, or would you like to hear me beg for mercy?' There was anxiety in Olivia Holland's voice, there was something pleading.
'I don't know,' replied Rupert, feeling guilty that it would be neither of those alternatives.
'You could tie me up if you wish.' She could have suggested any number of things that they used to do. The variety of whips and canes, the methods he used to bind her hand and foot before flogging her. She could have done - but she wouldn't; it would be a waste of time and she didn't want to admit that.
'I'll have to see what time I come back from the club. You know how long these meetings take.'
But Olivia didn't know, she was never invited anywhere these days, he didn't take her anywhere at all. It might be something to do with the cheap perfume she smelt on his shirts or the exhausted yet contented look in his eyes as he fell asleep without even so much as a 'goodnight'. It was three years since they had married. Only three short years and already he was bedding other women; whores from the Haymarket or the painted trollops that roamed Piccadilly and Oxford Circus.
'I'll dress up for you, if you like.' It was a last desperate attempt to entice him back early, away from the wanton legs of the whores and between her own. He used to like having her dressed up, sometimes as a young girl, her hair in bunches, skirts that barely covered her knees, nipples painted pink.
'You could?'
It had failed. There was no interest there either. She knew she was losing her self-control, but that would not do. It would be an admission of defeat. She searched her hand and threw the highest card onto the table; the only one left to play. 'You could flog me before you leave,' she implored, though she knew that if he did it would only be an exercise to stop her constant moaning - his heart would not be in it. The saving grace was that the sight of her whipped haunches might, just might, excite him enough to penetrate her. Then he might not go to the club.
'Very well. Take off your drawers.' There was a flicker of a smile in his exasperated reply. 'Fetch the bamboo cane, and be quick. He was thinking of the pretty little whore in the Black Bull, the one with the big mouth. He would have to be quick if he was to get there before she took to the streets. Already she would be putting on her face paint and pulling on her stockings, the ones that reached halfway up her thighs. What was it, he wondered, about a woman's leg that looked so inviting in stockings that revealed an expanse of creamy thigh. The same, he supposed, about a tight fitting corset that made them wasp-waisted and swelled the heave of their breasts. Even the plainest of their sex could look devastating dressed like that. But Laura wasn't plain, that was the trouble, she was as beautiful as his wife Olivia who at that moment was handing him the cane.
While he held it, turning it over and over, running his fingers along its gnarled length, Olivia slipped out of her drawers. She tossed them aside with deliberately gay abandon and bent over the back of a chair. Her arms were straight in front of her, resting on the seat, her bowed head tumbling a mass of splendid raven hair that hid her face completely. He placed the tip of the cane under her falling curls and swept them back over her shoulder. Now he could see her full breasts swing in profile as he caned her bottom. The nipples were erect with anticipation; they poked clearly through the material of her dressing gown. A fine bead of sweat trickled down her deep cleavage. He was half-tempted to bend and lick it's saltiness, but instead averted his mind to the cane.
Olivia liked it hard, there was no denying that. So he would give it her just as she wanted, without mercy, and by the time he'd finished with her backside she would be begging, for him to stop. There was only so much any woman could take, and then perhaps she would leave him in peace. He lifted her dressing gown and folded it high over her back.
She grunted when the first blow cracked into her buttocks, a blow aimed right across both cheeks where it would sting the most. A weal began to form, a light shade of pink on her pure white flesh.
'You love beating me, don't you Rupert,' she said through hair that cascaded down again. Her voice was half-muffled and he didn't hear her properly. The cane whistled through the air and caught her under her left buttock, just above the crease of the thigh. Another pink weal was left in its wake. The first was already turning a deeper shade of red.
'I beg your pardon?' he asked, intending to give her another in a place that would really make her howl.
'I said, you like beating me.'
'Of course I do.'
The cane came again at full strength, catching her across the crown of her bottom, at the base of the spine. The howl he expected to wake the dead was no more than a savage hiss through clenched teeth, then, a few seconds later a peculiar snorting sound as she fought off the pain rising in her bottom. The clock in the hallway struck nine. He counted the gongs with mounting annoyance that bordered on panic; Laura would be putting the finishing touches to her lips and lacing up her corset. Outside the front door the coachman would be wondering what was keeping his master. He would have to get this over and done with as soon as possible.
The cane swung into the tops of her thighs and she jerked forward. The chair creaked. Again he hit her, this time on the fleshiest part of her bottom, sinking the cane into her cheeks and leaving a deep red weal. He thought he heard a sob as he whistled the cane across her back. That made her jump, and now she did howl.
'You said I liked beating you,' he muttered by way of an excuse, as he saw the weals turning a hideous purple.
Olivia kept silent. This was not quite what she had hoped. Why was he not concentrating on her bottom, the place that made her orgasm and him go as hard as a rock? Instead he was lashing her back, working his way down the protruding spine, seemingly attempting to cause her as much agony as possible.
'My bottom,' she pleaded. 'Hit my bottom, or under my legs if you desire. But not my back.'
Rupert did not desire. He would go on laddering her back and shoulders, making her scream, not from sexual excitement but from unrelenting pain. At the sound of her sobbing he lashed her without respite, striping her between the shoulder-blades and on her sides.
'I've taken enough!' she wailed, rocking uncertainly on her heels.
But something in Rupert had snapped. He was enjoying the beating he was giving her. He no longer felt guilty. She had asked for it, and he would give the ungrateful bitch exactly what she wanted.
She was crying now. Through her tears and sobs she managed to mutter, 'Will you stay with me after you've finished?'
When I have finished with you, he thought, there will be little point in staying.
Her back was crossed with stripes; hardly an inch of her flesh was left unmarked. He decided to fulfil her wish and thrash her bottom raw. It really didn't matter if she did recover and fell begging at his knees, begging for his organ inside her. Laura was waiting, that was all that mattered. He heard the clock strike the quarter-hour. Laura would be heading towards the Black Bull. The cane went slashing into Olivia's bottom; six strokes delivered one after the other with such rapidity she hardly felt the pause between them. He whipped under her buttocks, lifting her up on tiptoe, making her long legs tense, the calves and thighs straining as she lifted higher, trying to escape the blows. But in vain. He caught her on the side of her flank and she tumbled forward, losing her balance and hanging over the back of the chair, feet free of the carpet, the weight of her body taken on her stomach. Her hands frantically gripped the edge of the upholstery. 'Please Rupert, stop! This isn't love! Why don't you have me?!'
He stopped and wiped the sweat from his brow. On the table near the chair was a decanter of brandy. He reached over her shaking shoulders and unstopped it. Beating Olivia was thirsty work. He was late now and would have to drive straight to the brothel. With luck he might meet Laura on the way. Having her in the carriage was not such a bad idea. He paused and looked at Olivia's breasts. Because of the angle at which she had fallen they were swinging away from her chest, her arms were trailing backwards thrusting her body in a forward motion. Only the chair back prevented her from falling over in a somersault. She was still incredibly beautiful, but they'd been married for three years now, and he naturally required some variety. She was on heat now, he was sure of that, and it wouldn't take a great deal of effort to penetrate her. But if he did that she would want more, and more, and more. Then he would be trapped, held in the vice of her long legs around his back, the heels locked. No, he was not falling for that.
The cane went up under the swell of her breasts and Olivia went with it. Carried by her own momentum she tumbled head over heels and landed in a crumpled, sobbing heap. Ironically, she had landed on her back and stayed there with her legs open, slightly bent at the knees as if he had planned it that way.
'Will you take me now?' she wept.
There was a part of him that almost succumbed to her pleading; that wanted him to kneel between her legs and roger her rotten. Where had he heard that before? Laura, who else. 'Go on, roger me rotten', she often said in her course cockney accent.
'I've done what you wanted,' he said, straightening his shirt-cuffs and putting on his coat. 'I've beaten you, now let that be suffice.'
Her head rolled to one side and she saw his highly polished boots treading towards the door. It opened and closed. The footsteps died away in the passage, the front door opened and closed, and the footsteps came back again on the pavement outside the window. The carriage door slammed and the horses trotted away.
Olivia stayed where she was, on her back with her legs still open. Rupert had gone, leaving her in a sexual coma. He might at least have had the decency to put her out of her misery. Now there was nothing to do but finish the job herself. In the emptiness and gloomy silence of the drawing room she felt terribly alone and forgotten.
At times like this she was sorely tempted to go streetwalking; to put on paint and stand in doorways whispering to passers-by. On the other hand there was always Granby, the footman. But that would be tempting fate. He was sure to talk. It would be all over London by the next morning; how his Mistress had summoned him and demanded sex. And what about all those marks on her bottom? Rupert would throw her out without a penny. She had no wish to go begging for a loaf like a vagrant. She was too proud to return to her bad old ways.
Her fingers strayed to her sex where it was hot and wet, the labia sensitive and swollen. She slipped her index finger inside, then took it out again and slipped back all four fingers crossed at the tips. Her thumb searched out her clitoris. She had become something of an expert in the art of pleasuring herself. It could be done almost without thinking; a mechanical exercise that had her gasping and panting, arching her back and digging her heels into the carpet.
To heighten her arousal she sometimes inflicted pain upon herself. It was easily done by placing a stiff hairbrush under her bottom, the bristles were sturdy enough to prick the skin and cause just the right amount of pain.
And there were dreams; not those that made her wake-up wet, but those which woke her in the middle of the night desperate to be loved. In the absence of Rupert she could only resort to sex in absentia, the use of anything that came to hand, the handle of the hairbrush or the end of a poker. But in the end it all returned to one thing - or rather the lack of it.
She lay panting on the carpet listening to the clock ticking away the precious minutes of her life; a life that seemed increasingly unfulfilled. It was anger that made her straighten her clothing and summon her maid; anger and frustration.
Rupert had told her once how in ancient Egypt highborn ladies would assuage their frustrations on their slaves by whipping them or sticking golden needles into their nipples. Sticking needles into Dorothy might be taking matters to extremes, but she could give her a sound thrashing. All she needed was an excuse.
The maid came scurrying into the room, her face flushed and uniform awry. Olivia didn't need to be told what she had just been doing, it was written all over her face; that tell-tale sparkle in her eye, the blushing cheeks and insolent look.
'When I ring for you I expect you to be here at once,' she said as firmly as she could. Being strict did not come naturally to Olivia. 'So tell me, what was so important that kept you from answering my summons immediately?'
Dorothy blushed redder. 'I was in the parlour, Miss. Polishing the grate.'
'Are you telling me the truth?'
'Yes, Miss, cross my heart and hope to die.'
'If you are lying your wish may well be granted.' She grabbed the maid's wrist. 'We shall go down to the parlour and have a look at this grate of yours.'
'Please, Miss, you're hurting me.'
Olivia paid not the slightest heed, but went on along the passage to the parlour dragging the maid behind her. 'The grate has been cleaned,' she said, 'but not recently, or else why would the tiles be covered in ash. If you are going to lie never take anything in vain.'
'Pardon, Miss?'
Olivia couldn't be bothered to explain that a skilful liar always covers the tracks. That was one thing about Rupert; he was good at that, but then, in his position he didn't really need to cover anything. If he told her he had been with a dozen whores there would be little or nothing she could do about it. The thought made her even more angry than ever.
'I want the truth, d'you hear? The truth and nothing but the truth.' And she picked up a bunch of birch twigs used for sweeping the scullery floor. They were fresh and springy.
Dorothy looked very frightened indeed. 'I - I was with the butler, Miss,' she sobbed.
'Really?' Olivia's surprise was genuine. Miller of all people. He who was a devout Methodist and who had worked in a home for fallen women. 'Fetch him.'
'I was led astray, ma'am,' Miller confessed. 'By this chit of a girl who came to my room.'
Olivia somehow doubted that, but nevertheless it was worth pursuing if only as a distraction from her present misery.
'Show me how you led Miller astray,' she said to the maid.
Dorothy pouted, but hitched her skirts up to mid-thigh. She wasn't very old, seventeen or eighteen perhaps, but then it was sometimes difficult to tell. She had good legs, Olivia could not deny that.
'And what else?'
'Miss—'
'And what else?'
Dorothy unbuttoned the apron of her uniform. She had breasts, but small and pert, as were her bottom-cheeks.
'Did you take off your clothes?'
Dorothy looked at the ashes on the tiles. 'I did, Miss.'
'In front of Miller?'
'Yes, Miss, I did.'
'All of them?'
'Every stitch, Miss. He asked me to.'
The butler eyed her maliciously. 'I did no such thing, ma'am. I—'
'Get out, Miller.'
He was gone in a trice, closing the parlour door behind him as he left.
'I will accept that Miller is probably as big a liar as you,' Olivia said duly. 'But good butlers are hard to come by. Maids, however, are ten-a-penny. Take off all your clothes and bend over that table.'
To the maid's astonishment, Olivia threw off her dressing gown and picked up the birch twigs. Dressed only in her drawers she stood and watched while Dorothy reluctantly peeled off her uniform.
'And now you can remove my drawers.'
'I'm sorry, Miss?'
'I think you heard me quite clearly.'
Dorothy pouted that cute pout again, but she knelt before her mistress, slipped her fingers under the drawer-strings, and wriggled the garment down over her hips. They dropped around Olivia's ankles, and her hands 'accidentally' rested on the maid's head, preventing her from rising: She could feel soft breath fluttering through her pubis. Not wanting to alarm her too much she helped her stand and then kicked the drawers away.
'Over the table,' Olivia instructed. She was finding it increasingly difficult to maintain a stern air. 'Right over, so your bottom is well in the air.'
The parlour table was as tall as Dorothy's waist, and so she had to stand on tiptoe to bend forward and lower her breasts to the highly scrubbed wood. She reached forward and gripped the worn edge opposite.
'One dozen, Dorothy. That's your due.'
The maid's boyish buttocks tensed with alarm, and tensed an awful lot more as the twigs sailed into them. Olivia used her full strength. Not for nothing had she been flogged many years before in the House of Correction. She knew exactly where to land the twigs to deliver the greatest pain. Dorothy yelped as they struck her almost in the groin. Olivia hopped deftly backwards, avoiding being kicked by the flying legs. She delivered another on the flanks, just below the hips. The slim legs flew again and crashed back against the table leg.
'Keep still, or you'll hurt yourself,' Olivia advised kindly, her pretence of anger now forgotten. 'Your legs are a little thin, but very pretty,' she complimented.
Dorothy strained to look over her shoulder. 'Thank you, Miss. I've always had—'
Her sentence erupted into a howl as Olivia lashed the backs of her thighs. The twigs shattered under the blow and scattered about the floor.
'Remind Miller to order a new birch,' Olivia panted. The implement had lost its capacity to sting, so she resorted to using the flat of her hand. She spanked the maid as if she were spanking a naughty schoolgirl. Hard uncompromising slaps that went all around the cheeks and upper thighs. The pale skin turned a mottled pink, red and white. A slapping from Olivia was no light thing, and neither did she tire easily. The spanking seemed to go on forever until Dorothy was reduced to a sobbing, blubbering wreck.
'Off the table, Dorothy,' she eventually said, quite out of breath.
Dorothy levered herself up and planted her feet unsteadily on the cold tiles. Her mistress regarded her with an expression the like of which she'd never seen before; her cheeks were glowing, her eyes were a little glazed, and her voluptuous lips were moist and slightly parted. Quite what was going through her mind Dorothy really didn't understand. But it was not her place to question her mistress.
'Stand up straight, Dorothy, while I complete your punishment.'
Dorothy squinted and bit her lip as Olivia began slapping her legs. At first the blows were sharp and painful, delivered on her thighs and slowly, very slowly, working their way down to her calves. But as the slaps progressed they lessened in their velocity until they were little more than a gesture.
'Your legs really are quite thin,' Olivia remarked again, squeezing the flesh of the girl's calves. Her voice had become noticeably husky.
'Yes, Miss...' Whereas Dorothy was previously expecting and accepting the punishment for her lie, she was now nervously unsure of her mistress's intentions.
'And your thighs... very shapely, but so slender.' Olivia stood and placed her hands on her young maid's hips. As she squeezed she drew her forward until their bodies touched.
'Open your mouth, Dorothy,' Olivia whispered. It was not often - if ever - that she was able to play the dominant role, and she was finding it extremely exciting.
Dorothy obediently opened her mouth, and Olivia pulled her close and kissed her full on the lips. She gripped and squeezed the small buttocks. The maid, astonished at this intimate fondling, put her arms around her mistress and instinctively returned the gesture with adorable charm.
'Where is cook?' Olivia asked a little breathlessly as their lips parted.
'It's her night off, Miss,' answered the maid sweetly.
'So it is.'
'She's gone to visit her friend - the Cavendish's cook - in Whitechapel,' Dorothy offered further.
Olivia smiled and kissed her maid's hot forehead. 'My bottom,' she rasped, 'feel my bottom.'
Compared to her own slender buttocks Olivia's felt both wide and rounded. Dorothy's hands roamed freely over the soft cheeks, her fingertips tracing the courses of the recent whipping from Rupert with inquisitive uncertainty.
Olivia winced slightly at the touch. 'Do you know what those marks are?' she whispered hoarsely.
'I think you've been beaten too, Miss.'
'So I have. And now I need someone to apply a soothing balm to my injured parts. Do you understand?'
They looked at one another in silence and then, as if an understanding had been reached, nodded simultaneously. Leading her by the hand, Olivia made her way back through the quiet house and up to her bedroom. If she was going to seduce her maid far better to do it in the privacy of her own quarters where it was a good deal more comfortable than the parlour and away from prying eyes. Miller, she decided, was not one to be trusted.
Olivia lay on her bed, bottom uppermost, and beckoned for Dorothy to kneel beside her. 'I take it men are a great source of comfort to you,' she said.
'I like being with men, yes Miss,' said Dorothy candidly. 'I like them to give me pleasure, and I like to give them pleasure.'
Olivia warmed to her crude honesty. 'And what about giving pleasure to women?'
She wasn't quite as naive as her lack of years would suggest. 'But you've got a husband, Miss.'
'Indeed I have, but he isn't here and you are.' Olivia handed her maid a pot of perfumed cream from her bedside cabinet, and rested her cheek on her folded arms. She held her breath and waited, and moaned softly as hesitant hands eventually rubbed the cooling substance into her heated buttocks. 'Hmm... that feels very nice,' she whispered.
It wasn't every day that a maid was able to gain favours by pleasing her mistress in such a way, and Dorothy knew better than to waste such an opportunity.
She massaged and kneaded the glorious bottom before her with great diligence. She watched with intense fascination as the firm cheeks quivered under her touch. She had never seen another woman's bottom, and comparing Olivia's with her own she noticed how deep was the cleft and how generous the fleshy cheeks. Her hands worked methodically up the lightly bruised back.
Olivia murmured her satisfaction. While she lay there the awful truth of what was happening hit her like a thunderbolt. She was lying face down on the carpet in her own bedroom having her bottom beaten by a skivvy. She was allowing it to take place at her own command, not resisting but accepting it as if it were all part of the maid's duty to give her employer a hearty thrashing.
Was this how far she had fallen, feeling every blow that struck her bottom, each lash stinging and burning, each lash sending a dart of delicious pain through her bottom and legs, not to mention her insides.
As Dorothy scooped some more cream from the pot Olivia rolled over, and casually allowed her legs to loll apart. The two females stared at each other. The whole house seemed quieter than Olivia had ever known it before.
She reached out and caressed her maid's young breasts. Dorothy nibbled her lip. Her nipples stiffened beneath the teasing fingers. 'Put your head between my legs,' Olivia whispered. 'Kiss me there.'
There was a breathless pause which seemed to last forever, and then Dorothy's flushed face lowered, and her hair tickled Olivia's inner thighs. Olivia filled her lungs and pushed her fingers into that soft hair. Timid hands pulled her knees a little wider apart, and hot breath wafted over her labia. She lifted her bottom off the bed a fraction, waiting for the first beautiful touch...
'What in damnation is going on in here?!'
Olivia shrieked and Dorothy grabbed the bedspread to her nakedness.
Rupert had missed Laura and all night had been cursing himself for wasting precious time on his wife. Seeing her lying with her legs spread and the maid kneeling between them only added insult to injury. The slap that landed on Dorothy's head sent her sprawling onto the floor. The cane that thumped into the pillow would have brained Olivia had that been Rupert's intention.
'Never in all my days...!' he raged.
Olivia thought Rupert was about to explode. She looked up at him with entreating eyes that only served to increase his anger.
Dorothy wrapped herself in the bedspread and scurried towards the door on all fours. The glimpse Rupert had caught of her between his wife's knees had encouraged quite an erection that needed seeing to. 'Stay where you are!' he snapped sternly at the maid without tearing his blazing eyes from his harlot wife. 'Olivia - get dressed and get out of my house!'
Dorothy huddled on the floor and watched her sobbing mistress gather some of her things. There wasn't very much to gather, all things considered; not much to show for three less than happy years of marriage.