‘No.’ He spoke for me. ‘And I’m not some fly-by-night. I had plans for you from before we even met. I’ve told you that.’
‘That’s absurd, though. You couldn’t have known we’d be … like this …’
‘No, a real spark is hard to find. I suppose I just got lucky.’
‘What have you told her? Your mother, I mean.’
‘Nothing too specific. Met a nice girl … hoping it all works out … that kind of thing.’
‘You’re hoping it all works out?’ I didn’t dare hope again. I was always trying to stop myself hoping, it occurred to me. Perhaps I should just let go of my fears and allow hope in. But when things ‘worked out’, didn’t that have a sort of ‘for ever’ connotation? Happily ever after.
No. He couldn’t mean that.
I kicked hope back out and girded my sorry excuse for a tough exterior.
‘Yes. Is there anything wrong with that?’ He sipped his drink.
‘Of course not. I mean, I feel the same.’
‘Good. Because she wants to meet you.’
‘Fuck, no!’
‘Sarah!’ He dropped his voice to the minimum. ‘Six strokes,’ he whispered, tightening the ankle lock to near-painful proportions.
‘Why? What? I can’t!’
‘Of course you can, you silly mare. There’s no rush. She mentioned Christmas.’
I waited for my heart to stop galloping and tried to take a measured view.
‘Christmas? I’ll be at home. Mum and Dad’s, I mean.’
‘I don’t mean Christmas Day. Just some time over the holidays. You have a car, I have a car. I’m sure something can be arranged. Christ, this is like pulling teeth. I had no idea you were so commitment-phobic.’
‘I’m not commitment-phobic,’ I said. ‘I’m not. I’m just … scared.’
‘That’s what a phobia is,’ he said with exaggerated patience. ‘Listen, love, I know it’s easier for you if I just lay down the law, so that’s what I’m going to do. You’re coming with me to visit my mother at some point during late December. It’s settled. It’s an order. Right?’
‘Oh … right,’ I said, flooded with curious relief. Jasper said it was so. It was so. I squished my thighs together, still damp from our earlier activities, and got another little burst of adoring submission from it.
‘I’m serious about the six strokes, too,’ he said. ‘As soon as we get back to my place you’re going straight into the study and bending over the desk while I fetch the cane. Do you understand?’
I did a quick side-of-the-eye check on the neighbours before murmuring, ‘Yes, sir.’
‘I won’t have you swearing like a sailor in public and showing me up. In fact, I think I might pick up a nice bit of ginger on the way home. What do you say to that?’
‘Oh,’ I moaned, wringing my hands. Ginger was Jasper’s new favourite thing. My bottom didn’t share his enthusiasm for it.
But if he wanted to fig me, then he would fig me.
There was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
Chapter Five
‘Popcorn?’
We were at Jasper’s house, in his home cinema room. The evening before, we had filmed a few minutes of footage at the museum, inspired by the caning and figging scene we played on our return from London, and now Jasper wanted to watch it.
It was dark, a little blustery outside, but every now and again a faint pop or fizz travelled over on the wind from the village firework display. Bonfire Night had passed a couple of days ago, but many had saved their celebrations for the weekend.
‘No, thanks,’ I said, already too nervous to think of eating. I always got this way when I watched myself on screen. I couldn’t think why – it wasn’t as if I didn’t know what was coming. I had this vague fear that I might have forgotten or missed something while I was off in my endorphin haze.
Jasper sat down beside me with his laptop and cued up the start of the film.
‘OK, ready?’
He turned to me and I nodded.
‘Action.’
He pressed Play and put the laptop on the floor. I wanted him to put an arm around me, to scoop me into his side, but instead he sat forwards, fixated on the screen, tense-faced and fidgety.
The lighting wasn’t great and I looked somewhat wraith-like, entering the room in my Victorian underwear. I had the corset by now and I was pinched-in tight. I held my breath in sympathy, watching myself cross the room. Our voices were faint or loud, sometimes muffled, depending how close to the mike we stood, but the dialogue was at least audible.
Jasper sat in the chair by the hearth, his booted ankles crossed on a footstool, looking every inch the lounging lord at leisure.
‘Walters, do you know why I have summoned you?’ he asked.
I stood before him, head bowed. Ugh, that gave me a double chin. The camera didn’t love me in the way it did him. Damn its favouritism.
‘I look awful,’ I commented.
‘Sh, you don’t,’ he said, not looking at me. But he did take my hand and squeeze it while I spoke my line.
‘I don’t, sir,’ said Walters.
‘Because you seek to defy me,’ said Cruel Bastard.
Walters’s head shot up.
‘It is not so, sir. Are you unhappy with my work?’
‘No, Walters, your work is perfect. More than perfect.’
‘Then I do not understand, sir.’
‘Look me in the eye, Walters. Yes – yes, there it is. There is my difficulty with you. You don’t flinch. You don’t cower.’
‘Do you want me to fear you, sir?’
‘Damn it, I want you to understand what I can do to you.’
I forgot my next line and stood there for a moment, shuffling my feet on the floor.
Jasper turned to me and clicked his tongue.
‘You are …’ prompted Cruel Bastard gently.
‘Oh! Yes. You are my master. I understand that you can do anything to me.’
‘Good. Then you’ll understand that I can punish you on a whim, for no other reason than that I don’t like the way you look at me. Kneel down, Walters, and kiss my boots.’
Walters knelt and did as she was told. I remembered the leather-and-polish smell and how grateful I was that these were costume boots that had never trodden a muddy path.
‘Fantastic expressionlessness,’ murmured Jasper. ‘You nailed that look precisely.’
Actually, now he mentioned it, I was starting to be convinced by my performance. Walters seemed a separate entity to me, not least because I would have pouted and huffed and complained about the unfairness of it all, while she did everything with that serene grace I hadn’t realised I possessed.
And the capricious sadism of Cruel Bastard (whose character name was actually Lord Dunraven) took my breath away. It was a few steps beyond Jasper’s natural inclinations, but he captured it with terrifying ease.
Dunraven removed his kiss-anointed boots from the footstool and ordered me to bend over with my palms flat upon the buttoned velvet.
I grimaced in sympathy with my character, remembering how awkward it had been to bend in that corset. The bones had dug into the underside of my breasts, squashing them upwards into even ruder display.
I was filmed in profile, but Jasper said afterwards that, when he filmed the scene properly, I (or the other actress) would be facing the camera. Obviously, in that case, the caning would not be real. For the purposes of rehearsal – and our private enjoyment of the film – he wanted to see the stripes laid on my bottom though.
This being only a few days after our trip to London, there were six fading streaks across both cheeks already. I was dreading the additions, especially as the old ones still throbbed when I sat down.
‘I suppose you think you know what I’m going to do to you?’ said Dunraven, picking up a supple length of rattan from beside the chair. He placed its tip beneath my chin, forcing my face upwards.
‘You are going to thrash me, sir,’ I said. I
liked the neutrality of my tone – it worked well for the character, I thought.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said, lowering his face until it was an inch or two from mine and smiling his wide, bright smile. ‘That goes without saying. I’m going to give you six hard strokes and I’m going to see that you feel them for a long time afterwards. Perhaps the sting will remind you to subdue this spirit of yours when you are in my presence.’
He spoke the words softly, caressingly – not all hissy and mean like a melodrama baronet. It made them twice as frightening and I clenched my thighs. I gasped, unable to rein in my growing arousal, when Dunraven ran the tip of one long finger from Walters’s brow to her chin, stroking her cheek with his thumb. The look on his face was the clear prelude to a kiss.
But the kiss never came.
Instead he whispered – and it was obvious he had theatrical training, because he could make a whisper carry further than most people’s yells – into Walters’s face.
‘But that’s not all. Did your esteemed housekeeper ever show you the disciplinary properties of ginger root?’
‘Ginger root, sir?’
‘Let me demonstrate.’
Jasper paused the video.
‘I’m not going to keep the ginger bit,’ he said. ‘Not in the final script. Think it’s too fetishy for the middlebrow.’
‘Yeah, you’re probably right,’ I said.
‘But it was good, though,’ he said with a grin.
‘Depends on your interpretation of good.’ My waspish tone widened his grin still further and he dropped a swift kiss on my lips.
‘You love it,’ he said, and I didn’t deny it.
He resumed the film. Dunraven removed a plug-shaped piece of ginger from a glass of water on the table and brandished it in Walters’s face.
‘Can you imagine where I might place this?’ he asked.
I had presumed Walters to be innocently unaware of this peculiar function of the spice, so I had played dumb.
‘N-no, sir.’
‘Actions will speak louder than words, in this case,’ he said, moving around to Walters’s rear.
I cringed at the screen, but my excitement mounted as I watched Dunraven part my linen drawers behind with fussy, exacting fingers, until my bottom was bare and framed by their white folds. I could see the faint marks from the recent punishment but for the purposes of the film we had to pretend they weren’t there. It was difficult not to wince when he ran his fingertips over the curves, stroking my skin into enhanced sensitivity.
I thought about how hard I had had to work not to look or sound turned on. Then I had to act surprised, shocked even, when he parted my cheeks and introduced the rounded nub of the ginger root to my bottom.
I think I did this quite well.
‘Sir, what are you doing? Sir, please, no.’
But he pushed the yellowish plug slowly and firmly onward. I watched it disappear by degrees, swallowed until only the flange at the end remained. It had felt cold and slippery but it had entered with ease.
When I glanced at Jasper I saw that he was biting his cheeks and his eyes had that drugged, faraway look of avid lust in them.
‘How does that feel?’ he whispered, although Dunraven didn’t speak the words until quite a bit later in the scene.
‘Are you asking me?’
He still had my hand in his and I twisted it a little to get his attention.
‘Yeah,’ he said, looking my way. ‘Tell me how it felt.’
He paused the film again for my reply.
‘Freezing cold at first,’ I said. ‘So I was maybe a bit numb to start off with. Then it started to warm up, quite slowly. It felt really nice for a while, tingly. Then it got uncomfortable. Then it got really uncomfortable. You could see what it was doing to me.’
‘Yes, I could.’ He looked down at his lap and I couldn’t help noticing the bulge in his trousers. ‘The way you squirmed and gibbered, dear God. I have to watch it again.’
After he pressed Play, he pulled me on to his lap and held me there, moving a hand underneath my skirt and up the smooth expanse of my thigh. I nestled there, enjoying the closeness and his bold use of me, watching the screen.
‘Have you had your behind used in this manner before?’ asked Dunraven of poor bemused Walters.
‘Never, sir.’
‘Be warned. It is one of my favoured modes of punishment. You may expect to have your bottom filled whenever you transgress. It gives me the most exquisite pleasure to witness your humiliation and discomfort.’
I could see it was starting to burn. I was swaying my hips from side to side and my eyes were squeezed shut.
Now he asked how it felt.
‘It burns, sir,’ I whimpered. ‘Oh, it burns.’
My face was as hot as my bottom. I looked wildly aroused, which probably wasn’t quite right for the film. I could see why Jasper wanted to remove the figging element for the final cut.
‘Then it is time for your caning,’ he said, swishing the lithe brown demon through the air.
Jasper’s hand slipped inside my knicker elastic, his fingers pressing and rubbing between my wet lips as we watched.
‘This your favourite bit?’ he murmured, kissing my ear as he watched himself tap the cane against my wriggling bum.
‘Mmm.’
‘The sound of it,’ he breathed in ecstasy, when Dunraven laid the first stroke. ‘Oh, poor little Walters.’
He liked the way I gritted my teeth and curled my toes and tried so hard to take it.
I liked the look on his face, fiendishly self-possessed, a mixture of every deadly sin in the book. Oh, do it again, sir, don’t spare her …
He held me tight against him, bundled up firmly while he fingered my pussy and my clit with inescapable strokes. I could feel him quiver every time he watched the rod fall, and the lump at his crotch threatened to burst through his trousers.
What an odd couple we were, I thought, in the last parts of my brain to admit coherence. How unlikely but how wonderful it was that we had found each other.
I knew that the third fall of the cane saw Walters make the elementary mistake of trying to clench her rectal muscles. The keen of shocked, aroused pain that ensued made me clench my own in sympathy.
‘Bad move,’ chuckled Jasper, working his fingers harder. ‘That must have stung.’
‘Big time … ohhh …’
I could see long red lines forming on Walters’s unfortunate bum. They were still there, throbbing inside my tight knickers, chafing against the material as Jasper’s hand stretched it.
The buzz of them augmented the effects of Jasper’s rubbing fingers, my sex seeming to grow and bloom in greedy response. I squirmed in his grasp, elbowing him, but he didn’t seem to notice, just clung on all the tighter and pushed his fingers deep inside me while his thumb pad kept up the good work on my clit.
‘This does it for you, doesn’t it?’ he whispered, as if the question needed asking. ‘Watching your own arse getting striped. Seeing yourself bent over and figged and caned. God, your face … I can’t wait to get the full face shot when that fig burns into you … though you’d be imagining it … but you’d remember how it felt, I’ll bet.’
My mouth was sticky, my throat dry. I couldn’t answer. My answer was in the arch of my spine and the flex of my thighs.
‘Tell me how it feels.’
But that was Dunraven speaking, not Jasper, so I was not forced to unglue my tongue from the roof of my mouth to answer.
Poor Walters had that honour.
‘It hurts … oh, it hurts …’ she panted.
He whipped five and six across her buttocks, quick and smart, and she wailed and rocked to and fro.
‘I know that,’ said Dunraven. ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’
‘It is almost more than I can stand,’ said Walters.
‘Almost? Then the sentence is too light.’
Unexpectedly – both to Walters and to me, because he had not told me he would do this wh
en we talked through the scene beforehand – he laid one last, brutal cut, harder than the rest, right across the very lowest point of my bottom.
Walters leaped upright and clutched at it, hissing out the pain.
‘Sorry. Sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.’ It was Jasper now, the sadistic Dunraven slipping away inside him. ‘Damn. I’ve broken the flow of the scene now. Are you OK?’
‘I’ll live,’ I said, turning to face him with an accusatory frown. ‘You could have warned me.’
‘I need to make this with another actress,’ he said, putting his palm to his brow, looking every inch the neurotic high-maintenance film director. ‘One with a less magnetic arse.’
I laughed, on screen and off it.
Jasper turned off the tape.
‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘I could have got you off by now if I hadn’t gone and overstepped the mark there.’
‘It’s OK,’ I murmured, my mind back on his intent fingering of me. ‘It was hot … really hot … especially since I can feel it now.’
‘Still? It was lovely to watch you trying to sit down afterwards. Gorgeous. Your poor suffering behind.’
‘I wish I had that fig now,’ I said, a tad delirious now, bucking on him. ‘It made me madly horny. Madly.’
‘You didn’t say.’
‘Madly,’ I repeated, my brain stuck in a loop of memory. The ginger juices had burned my back passage, yes, but they had also had a startling effect on my level of arousal. It wasn’t captured on film, but after he’d taken the ginger out of my bottom, I’d had to practically force him to have me, right there, over the arm of the chair.
I wanted to know how it would feel elsewhere, perhaps a little of the juice on his fingers while he felt me up. There were lubes that did this, I knew, but something about ginger was pleasingly organic and historically authentic, and I preferred things so.
Was I turning out kinkier than Jasper himself?
‘Yes,’ I whispered, my orgasm on the way at the remembrance of how that ginger had made me so sweaty, so needy, so soaked in sex. Jasper thrust his fingers deep, his thumb firm on my slippery clit, and pushed his lips against mine at the moment of release, opening my mouth with his tongue. It felt so primal, so dirty, so exactly right. I was his and he could take me any way he liked.
By His Command Page 6
