Subculture

by Sarah Veitch

  She stopped in the doorway of the room as she saw Michael Landers leaning lightly into the cream-painted Reception hatch. He was sharing a joke with the woman behind the desk.

  ‘...And he said we get the economy we deserve,’ he finished. The woman, a Maltese subject of around forty, was laughing so much that tears formed at the corners of her eyes. Michael’s own face was creased in smiles, his shoulders relaxed, arms gesturing.

  ‘Doctor, you should be on the stage,’ the Receptionist said.

  ‘Marie-Rose, if the government keeps taxing me at this rate I may well transmogrify...’ Michael broke off as he spotted Lisa standing inside the open door.

  ‘Ah, just the person I wanted to see.’ he murmured, walking closer. Lisa forced herself to confront his gaze. She wished he was still smiling, didn’t look so nerve-rackingly stern. But I’m a grown woman, she reminded herself as she shifted her weight from foot to foot, and I haven’t done anything wrong.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ she asked, willing her voice not to falter.

  ‘You can have a word with me immediately in my surgical rooms.’

  At least he wasn’t suggesting she visit his bedroom. Lisa followed him along the corridor to his medical suite.

  ‘I’ve been finding out a little more about herbalism since I hired you,’ Dr Landers said as soon as they entered the antiseptic-scented surgery.

  ‘Oh? Good.’ Lisa turned to face him as he closed the door.

  ‘When I initially consulted you I’m afraid you didn’t conduct the consultation in a professional way.’

  ‘I was unprofessional?’ The twenty-eight year old felt her stomach contract as she remembered their first meeting all these months before in Scarborough. ‘How...?’

  ‘According to the herbalists I’ve since talked to, you neglected to take my full medical history,’ Dr Landers continued. ‘You failed to ask what conventional medicine I was on.’

  ‘Are you sure? I...’ Lisa usually asked such vital questions almost immediately. But he’d been so damned attractive and intriguing, and during the session the telephone had kept bleeping, then the doorbell had rung. ‘If I made an oversight I apologise,’ she said, taking a deep breath then forcing her tense mouth into a let’s-change-the-subject smile.

  ‘Apologies don’t make patients well again,’ the doctor said. ‘Proper procedure is vital.’

  ‘Next time I’ll follow...’

  ‘This time you still have to be retrained.’

  ‘Retrained?’ Lisa muttered, wondering if he was going to send her on further courses.

  ‘In other words, you’ll have to be soundly spanked,’ her new employer and temporary landlord said, beginning to roll up his jacket sleeves.

  Chapter Three

  What was Lisa doing now? Reece paced his Singaporean hotel room. She’d be getting to know her new boss and hopefully finding the real Malta. She might be trying out the snorkelling or windsurfing there. Lisa had always been game for a challenge, Reece thought, smiling ruefully. She was more daring than he. Personally, he loathed the idea of deep sea diving or water polo. But Lisa had been rapt to read that Malta had both.

  ‘I mean, I won’t be working all the time,’ she’d grinned, studying the rainbow-coloured travel guides. Reece wished he could invite her here to Singapore right this minute. It would be different once she was his wife. He’d have the right to take her on longer journeys then - his employer would pay her expenses. She could continue to learn about herbal medicine whilst he put some new corner of the globe to rights.

  He was the first to admit that he had a traditional streak so wanted her by his side, even though he was trying hard to be a new man. Okay, so he’d never yet bought the tampons, but he could toss a salad and made a reasonable spinach lasagne and dry a dish.

  He quite fancied the idea of tossing more than a salad right now, Reece looked thoughtfully down at his crotch, and it gave a little twitch of acknowledgment. He wasn’t really horny. It was just that there was so little to do here in Singapore late at night. The entire island seemed to be abed before twelve, which wasn’t much fun if you were the nocturnal kind.

  And there were so few books here, and the television ended at around midnight and he’d never been a drinker. Reece picked up the notepad by his bedside and uncapped his rolled gold pen. He’d write Lisa a really long letter. As they were saving up to buy a house together they’d agreed not to waste money by talking for hours on the phone.

  I miss you, Reece wrote, it’s dull here. He thought of the archery and riding that was available on Malta and added I hope that you’re having a more stimulating time.

  Chapter Four

  ‘Spanked?’ Lisa echoed. She stared in shocked surprise at the virtually expressionless doctor. ‘Don’t you dare lay a finger on me.’ Far less a palm, she thought abstractedly.

  ‘Oh, I won’t unless you agree to it,’ said the man.

  ‘In that case you’ve got no chance,’ Lisa countered, fighting the urge to put her hands on her hips like some latter day cowgirl.

  ‘I suspect that I’ve a very good chance given that I’m morally in the right,’ Dr Landers said.

  Don’t let him unnerve you, Lisa chided herself. She looked at the medical examination couch, at the long wooden desk, at the five leather chairs arranged in a rough semi-circle. After a slight hesitation she sat down on one of them to protect her shorts-clad backside.

  ‘You consulted me complaining of general fatigue initially,’ she started, looking directly up into his assertive eyes. ‘I asked in depth about your lifestyle, your diet, your state of mind.’

  ‘But not about whether I was taking drugs that might conflict with the herbal remedy you prescribed me,’ her new boss countered, his lips grim.

  ‘That’s usually my next question,’ Lisa continued, thinking out loud. She pictured the scene. ‘As you probably recall, that particular afternoon was really hectic...’

  Michael Landers perched on the low examination couch then stared at her solemnly. ‘And life would be hectic for my staff and patients here in Malta if due to your negligence I had died.’

  He’d outlined a just-about-possible picture. Some herbal remedies were startlingly potent, mustn’t be used in conjunction with certain drugs. It was the herbalist’s job to ascertain her patients’ medical history and steer them through the clashing medical minefield - she’d failed in that. No way was she going over his lap, though. She had to find a verbal means of escape.

  ‘I’m learning more about herbal practice all the time,’ she began in a rush. ‘Your giving me this job was like a vote of confidence, made me decide to give myself a hundred percent to alternative medicine.’ She sucked in her breath. ‘I decided that on my return to Scarborough I’d gradually give up the counselling service I’ve been offering and sit every level of Herbal Studies Exam.’

  ‘You won’t qualify in any of them if I write to the governing board accusing you of negligence,’ Michael Landers said evenly.

  ‘But why would you...?’ Lisa gasped.

  ‘Because I believe that adults should admit to their mistakes and accept the appropriate reprimand.’

  Lisa knew that the appropriate reprimand in his book was a stripped sore bottom. She licked her lips, but her mouth remained steadfastly dry.

  ‘Can I have a drink?’ she asked unsteadily. Watched his tanned hands as they uncapped and poured from a bottle of carbonated mineral water. Realised her own hands were unsteady as she accepted the cut crystal glass.

  ‘Don’t look like the condemned woman having a final request,’ he joked.

  ‘I feel condemned,’ Lisa admitted hollowly, knowing that she’d never envisaged such a disquieting scene on this peaceful island. ‘You seemed so pleased when you offered me this Herbal Consultancy that I thought...’

  ‘Thought that I was impressed with your enthusiasm and your knowl

edge?’ the doctor said when she tailed off. ‘Yes I was. I could see the books in your flat, the way you’d examined herbs uses as medicine, teas or foods to their roles as gardening aids and cosmetics. I liked the fact that you’d originally trained as a counsellor and were still working as one, understood something about the human mind.’

  ‘Yet I made one mistake through overwork and ruined everything,’ the twenty-eight year old concluded sadly.

  ‘No, you made one mistake that a good hard spanking will put right.’

  ‘But even my parents didn’t spank me,’ Lisa protested, looking for another angle to protect her extremities.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Michael Landers replied strongly. ‘Spanking children is a form of abuse.’

  His words threw her for a moment. Lisa toed the carpet as she tried to figure his philosophy. She agreed that the physical chastisement of youngsters was wrong - but she also thought that it was wrong to punish your subordinates the way he’d caned the luckless Jamilla. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said at last.

  ‘Well, would you hit someone under eighteen who looks to you for protection and advice? It’s cowardly and cruel. It’s an act that’s born of stupidity and anger.’

  ‘I agree with you,’ Lisa said. She took a deep breath. ‘But it’s also wrong to discipline me because I’m in a childlike position compared to you.’

  ‘Nonsense - you’re a twenty-eight year old woman with a counselling diploma,’ her boss countered briskly.

  ‘And that’s precisely why I’ll feel stupid being bent over your lap and having my...’ She found she couldn’t bring herself to add the words bottom spanked. ‘Feel stupid being corrected,’ she substituted falteringly.

  ‘But you deserve to feel stupid because you acted stupidly,’ Michael Landers said, tapping his fingers against the couch.

  Damn it. He was winning this war. She was running out of verbal fire. Lisa sucked in her breath then played her trump card. ‘I know that you secretly get off on this. I saw you caning Jamilla yesterday.’

  Michael blinked twice, then he smiled lazily down at her. ‘It’s no secret that I enjoy roasting a womanly bottom. All of the staff at Vitality have been recruited because of their sexual submissiveness.’ He waved a hand in the direction of the window which led to the gardens and the stables. ‘I’ve got a veritable sub-culture here.’

  ‘But I’m not like that,’ Lisa made herself look at him square on, pushed her shoulders back in what she hoped was a dominant gesture.

  ‘Oh, but you are. I knew that you had a subservient side the moment I met you,’ Dr Landers said. He clapped his right hand softly down on his left palm three times with hellish slow precision. ‘I bet you used to fantasize about being spanked.’

  Damn him again - was the bastard psychic, or did he use this line with every new member of staff? Lisa made a mental note to talk to Carmen, Marie-Rose and Jamilla about the doctor’s conversational gambits.

  ‘I might have done,’ she said cagily, trying to ignore the tingle which spread through her groin following his actions and words.

  ‘Don’t tell me - and then you forced your desires back because you found out they weren’t politically correct,’ Michael Landers continued. He was right again. Lisa fingered the legs of her olive green shorts. She wished that she was wearing more dignified clothes, that she could find the words and expressions to satisfactorily end this talk.

  ‘I’m a business woman now. I believe in men and women being equal,’ she said.

  Michael Landers smiled. ‘So do I - equal but different.’ He raised his eyes upwards, obviously searching for the right phrases and emphasis. ‘When a woman agrees to being punished by me she momentarily hands me her power. She has to be powerful in the first place or she’d have nothing to give.’

  ‘But Jamilla’s a servant, so...’

  ‘A servant who knows what she wants and how to get it,’ the doctor answered simply. He paused. ‘I assume you watched her being caned through a window or doorway. After the caning, did you stay?’

  ‘I... yes.’ Lisa felt caught out, at a loss again.

  ‘Then you’ll know she cried out louder and longer in orgasm than she did when she submitted to her thrashing,’ the English doctor said.

  Lisa took a deep breath. ‘But that doesn’t... I mean, she still wriggled and begged for mercy when the rod fell over her bare bottom.’

  The doctor nodded. ‘Of course she did. It hurt like hell, and she felt ashamed. I would too, if I was bent over a desk and soundly beaten. Deep down though she’s submissive so she got off on it none the less.’

  He paused, then leaned forward again. ‘Did it excite you to watch?’

  ‘No, I thought it was an assault,’ Lisa lied, remembering the traitorous rush of pleasure to her pubis.

  ‘You’d react by calling the police if it really was an assault,’ Dr Landers said. He smiled over at her. ‘You’re a woman of honour and of courage. You wouldn’t have stood by if you really believed that domestic violence was taking place.’

  ‘So I’m honourable yet you still want to spank me?’ Lisa muttered.

  ‘Very hard indeed.’

  Worse and worse. The twenty-eight year old cleared her suddenly tight clogged throat. ‘And if I don’t agree?’

  ‘Don’t agree to live by your employers rules whilst you have a live-in job?’ The suited surgeon shook his head. ‘In that case I’ll put you on the next plane back to England and we’ll both forget that this sad little interlude ever took place.’

  Lisa looked round the clean, wholesome and hope-bringing medical room. Then she walked over to the window and stared down at the Cactus Garden with its yellow rock backdrop.

  ‘I don’t want to leave Malta,’ she wailed. She stiffened as she heard the man approach, felt his strong arms on her shoulders.

  ‘Then come over to the couch now and accept your first ever spanking,’ he said.

  How much could a palm slap hurt? She’d just force her mind to think of other things. Feeling strangely nerveless and ashamed and just a tiny bit curious, Lisa allowed her employer to guide her towards the couch.

  ‘Usually I stretch a naughty girl out so that her head hangs down on one side of my knees and her legs are stretched out on the other side,’ he said conversationally. ‘Point is, when the legs are stretched out the thrashing hurts more.’ He looked thoughtfully up at her as he settled himself on the couch, his feet firmly on the carpet, legs parted. ‘But as you’re new to being spanked I’ll let you put your belly across my lap and rest your weight along the couch.’ She sensed him smile. ‘Now isn’t that kind of me? And I’ll stop and start to let you get used to the heat.’

  It was to be a long chastisement, then. Lisa stood where he’d guided her. Nibbled her lip as he patted his lap.

  ‘I’ll add on an extra punishment if you don’t bend over my knee of your own volition,’ he warned, smoothing his cream suit trousers. The twenty-eight year old considered his words.

  ‘Make me if you can,’ she said. She braced her sandals firmly against the carpet. Put her hands behind her back. Dipped her head down like a see-nothing-so-fear-nothing ostrich. Squealed with surprise as he grabbed her around the waist and positioned her over his lap and across the examination couch in a virtually seamless move. But surprise wasn’t all that she felt - the sudden rush of blood to her clitoris unnerved her, and she pushed her slim thighs together and moaned.

  ‘Oh angel, is that pussy you’re so intent on keeping hidden feeling horny already?’ Michael Landers murmured. ‘Will that clit that’s been wearing all these Keep Off signs want to come?’

  ‘Only with Reece. You said you wouldn’t touch me sexually unless I begged you to,’ Lisa countered, raising her head from the surgical couch and twisting it back.

  ‘And I’ll stand by my word,’ Michael Landers said. His prick seemed to be standing to attention, none the less she could feel the head of it pushing into her shorts-clad belly. Still, he couldn’t help his sexual cravings just as she couldn’t control hers. What they could control, Lisa reminded herself, was whether or not they gave in to them - and she couldn’t give in as she was engaged to Reece.

  Waiting for the first spank was hellish. It seemed to take an age. Lisa closed her eyes and waited for the palm to fall. Waited. Waited. Waited.

  ‘Why haven’t you started yet, you bastard?’ she muttered eventually.

  ‘Are you so keen to feel my palm?’ The voice was low, amused. ‘You’re not going anywhere for a long time so I’m just contemplating your naughty bottom. Just examining the shape of an error-making arse.’

  ‘Thought you’d have seen hundreds by now,’ Lisa spat out into the medical couch, feeling a little of her spirit re-assert itself.

  ‘But each girl and her cheeks is substantially different,’ her employer replied. He patted and palpated her shorts-hugged orbs. ‘Some backsides know that they’ve done wrong from the start. They jerk and writhe and... well, sometimes the owner tries to wriggle away before I raise the hardwood paddle. Whereas a bum like yours is a touch arrogant, almost relaxed.’

  Lisa certainly didn’t feel relaxed. Her heartbeat was pounding its tattoo through her chest. Her braless breasts were rising and falling within the loose confines of her lemon polo-shirt and new lines of electricity were snaking their way towards her crotch.

  Then Michael Landers raised his palm - and she forgot all about the crotch-based electricity. Felt her attention shift to her bum and analyse the new sensations that were happening there. Mm, that spank had been surprisingly light, surprisingly enjoyable. Maybe this chastisement wasn’t going to be so bad after all. Her new boss spanked on and on and on. His palm flattened first one small cheek then the other, bringing new stimulus to the hidden curves beneath the garments. He said nothing as he punished, his entire focus obviously on her clothed backside.

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