Under a Stern Reign

by Raymond Wilde

  Title Page

  UNDER A STERN REIGN

  By

  Raymond Wilde

  Publisher Information

  Under a Stern Reign first published in 2003 by

  Chimera Books Ltd. Published as an eBook in 2011 by Chimera Books Ltd

  www.chimerabooks.co.uk

  Chimera a creation of the imagination, a wild fantasy

  Digital Edition Converted and Published by

  Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  New authors are always welcome, or if you’re already a published author and have existing work, the eBook rights of which remain with or have reverted to you, we would love to hear from you.

  This novel is fiction - in real life practice safe sex

  This eBook is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. The characters and situations in this eBook are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.

  Copyright Raymond Wilde. The right of Raymond Wilde to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Prologue

  Quite a few people are responsible for this work. It has a story.

  Three years ago, I had just taken up my first appointment as a lecturer at a small university by a seaside town in Britain. I’d just turned thirty, and had been lucky in life. I wanted for little, but had just ended a relationship with my girlfriend of twelve years.

  It was taking me a while to get used to being without Samantha. We had been close. Aged around eighteen we met at university, got drunk together, made love, lived together, and as years passed, we began to know each other’s minds and bodies like the back of our hands.

  Marriage and mortgage were becoming our main talking points. I was the nicest guy she had met, she told me, and I had not met any other girl quite like her.

  But one day she began feeling her life was still unfulfilled. She was twenty-nine. It bothered her. She wanted to go her own way. She wanted to travel, to experience new things. And so that’s what she did.

  The bug was in her for a long time. I got postcards every few months, from Australia, Asia, and Latin America, where she either worked or backpacked, or stayed with new friends. For the last year Amsterdam has been her base. She works there for several months as a tour operator. She says she misses me but she believes she took the right decision.

  Anyway, after she left I slowly settled into a reticent lifestyle, giving lectures on French Literature and History in the day. Life was lonely, spent occasionally flirting with Jeanette, a nice homely secretary in the department, and I’d generally meet up with Marianne every other evening.

  Marianne was a bespectacled feminist and an enthusiastic but nervous lecturer. She was giving a course on the Spanish Cinema. I took an interest in some of her interests, and life rolled on quietly for several months until the start of the summer term.

  A week in to which the students’ photocopier downstairs in the French department broke. A notice was taped on telling them that they would temporarily have to do their copying in the library. All of them accepted this as law, except for one - Natalie.

  Natalie was a very attractive, twenty-one-year-old blonde from Toulouse and had transferred to the university from another city-based university. She had to spend a year abroad as part of her course.

  She had gone back to sunny Toulouse to recover, and with a glowing tan, she reluctantly arrived back in Britain to start the term, and complete her course requirements.

  Rather than go to the library to use the other copier, Natalie discovered it was quicker and more convenient to go upstairs, find a photocopier in one of the lecturer’s empty offices and to do her copying there.

  As a bonus, she would not have to use her photocopying card and saved money. She chose the machine in my office and started copying away to her heart’s content.

  Our first encounter was on a Thursday afternoon.

  The previous evening I had been gorging on Spanish wines and tortillas, watching the 1960s Luis Bunuel film Belle de Jour, made in France, with Marianne.

  We had discussed it tipsily for quite a while. I didn’t like it. I felt it was just an old, self-consciously erotic film that dabbled with sadomasochistic themes while trying to attach some deeper meaning to itself for the sake of it at the end.

  Marianne disagreed. She thought it was great. She also confessed that, while she had never really experienced any lesbian or dominatrix tendencies, the pretty blonde masochist and heroine of the film was the one and only woman who had ever aroused them in her. She told me this as if uncovering one of her deepest and darkest secrets. She got a bit flirtatious, too. I told her she could confide in me, but I still didn’t think the film was that good.

  It was on that Thursday afternoon the next day that I came across Natalie for the first time, using the photocopier in my office.

  She dazzled me. She was beautiful.

  She had long blonde hair and wore tight, faded jeans over a neat bottom and slender legs. She had a pair of sunglasses perched on her head. On top, she had a hippy-style blouse and an ornate, brass-ringed belt hung around her hips.

  For some reason she threw my mind back to the young blonde heroine in the film and the conversation with Marianne the previous evening. She wasn’t like her, though. Natalie was more voluptuous than elegant. Though slender, she had a round, full bum and wide hips.

  Her face was similar to the heroine, but lacked the serene demureness. She had a perkier nose, very full lips, angular cheekbones, and a glowing tan. She continued doing her copies while I headed for my desk, looking up at me without a smile.

  I watched her for a moment or two, preparing to tell her off but suspended in a kind of dumb, aesthetic appreciation. She’s French, I told myself; maybe this is a cultural thing.

  She was chewing gum thoughtfully. She finished her copies, still watching me with a sort of pouting curiosity. Then without saying a word, she strolled out of the room.

  It happened again the following afternoon. It was Friday, and again I sat back with my eyebrows slightly raised, simply staring at her.

  Her smile, after a while, gave her away. I was a sucker for a pretty face, she had decided. It wasn’t just a cultural thing; she’d discovered she could exploit me by exploiting her own looks. In French, she lazily asked me what I was doing on the weekend, as casually as if I were another student. I told her I had work to catch up on and that I needed to do lots and lots of photocopying. She shrugged, and said she’d see me next week.

  The photocopier downstairs had been fixed by Monday, but on the next Thursday afternoon I was sitting at my desk, quite immersed in correcting an essay, when she turned up again.

  This time her appearance didn’t just leave me dumbfounded. She had dressed for the occasion, and dressed to impress. It was unbelievable. Granted it was hot outside, but nonetheless, all the other students, male and female, stuck to their semi-uniform jeans, baggy T-shirts, sweaters, overcoats and boots - all except Natalie.

  She sauntered into my room, swaying her hips like a lazy pendulum, closing the door. Her sunglasses were down over her eyes.

  She had snugly encased her splendid bottom in a tight black miniskirt. On top she wore a skin-tight black tank-top. Her breasts budded out as if resentful of being covered over, and her nip
ples were clearly outlined like trapped peanuts. She also wore a thin gold chain around her neck, her throat and shoulders looking as fit and supple as a ballerina’s. She was a Hollywood starlet on the way to a casting couch.

  What an earth did people think when she went around the provincial streets of this academic town?

  Her straw-blonde hair was tied back in a bun, and unlike the previous Friday, she wore lipstick and eye shadow. I looked at her shapely legs. She wore pumps and a gold chain around one ankle.

  She looked at me from behind her tinted shades, and ignoring me, headed straight for the photocopier. I eyed her in silence for a few moments, my jaw hanging. I just could not understand what someone who looked the way she looked was doing in this dreary town, in my dreary, book-lined office.

  Again I started preparing a carefully worded remonstrance. I wanted to make it as light-hearted as possible. This could all be a wind up, I thought; be charming but stay on top.

  I took a few papers and stood behind her, acting as if I were in a queue for the machine. I smelled her perfume. She was a head shorter than me, and my eyes strayed over her body. She noticed. She wore no bra. I was sure she wore no panties either.

  She was chewing gum again. Without looking up she asked me if I was married, or if I had a girlfriend. I shook my head. She was surprised. She didn’t have a partner in this little town either, and had not met anyone she liked very much. She looked down at the copies coming out of the machine, and started to hum.

  ‘I’m not supposed to be doing this, am I?’ She smiled mischievously, looking up. ‘But you don’t mind...’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘I can tell. You like me. You want me to come here to do my copies all the time.’

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I was silent for a moment, and then I laughed. ‘I think you’re very cheeky...’ I started, but she giggled.

  ‘Is that why you like to look at my bum when I turn around?’ she said.

  I fell silent again. She was swaying her hips and humming while watching the photocopier. She looked up. Her swaying and her accent had made my heart quicken. But her sunglasses irritated me; I couldn’t see her eyes and couldn’t tell what her game was. ‘One of these days someone’s going to put you over their knee and give you a good spanking,’ I warned playfully, although deep down I meant it and dreamt of being that lucky person.

  She fell silent, then giggled again. ‘Spank me?’ she whispered. ‘Nobody here would do that.’ She turned to the copier, humming again.

  I was silent. She looked at me, then very slowly raised her sunglasses, perched them on her head, leant forward slightly, and to my astonishment, slowly hitched up her sexy miniskirt.

  ‘Professor Wilde,’ she continued huskily, ‘would you want to spank this?’

  The skirt seemed to roll up like a tight blind, forming a band around her narrow waist. She had shiny, painted fingernails, and massaged her pert bottom gently.

  I gazed down at her in disbelief. Her bottom was gorgeous, and I was right; she wore no panties. I gulped, entranced. Her shapely buttocks were like a perfect peach, and showed the very clear outline of a bikini bottom on tanned thighs. She turned slightly, and her pussy was shaved! She was showing off her deliciously naked pussy to me!

  I looked up incredulously, and her face shone with triumphant impertinence. I looked down at her impeccable French rump for a few seconds again, and seeing my gaze she tautened her buttocks, stretching over the photocopier, clearly conscious of how sensual her pose. She was offering me a better look.

  On her left buttock she had a small tattoo. It was a heart encircled with chains, and above it the name Laurianne was etched in gothic letters.

  ‘You like the view?’ she asked. ‘So, what is the problem, professor?’

  It was a turning point. I had to make a choice about where things stood, so I pulled my hand back very suddenly and slapped my palm fiercely across her buttocks.

  She gasped softly, more out of shock than anything. I waited a second or two, then slapped again. She squealed, and then sighed a sexy coo of Gallic female pleasure.

  There were footsteps and voices passing outside my door. I froze and looked over my shoulder, and she immediately pulled down her skirt. We both waited silently, watching each other.

  ‘That is bizarre,’ she whispered. ‘Nobody is usually here except you at this time.’

  ‘It’s Jeanette and Professor Keating,’ I said quietly. ‘They’re leaving.’ The footsteps and chatter faded away down a flight of stairs as she straightened her top around her breasts and told me she understood why I lived alone. Solitude was preferable to being with someone you did not want to be with - like her ex-boyfriend.

  I was admiring the healthy golden hew of her skin and the liveliness of her blue eyes, and then it happened. Some of her papers slipped to the floor. She dropped quickly to pick them up, and rising, inadvertently bumped my crotch with her forehead.

  Her sunglasses fell off, and seeing them on the floor she dropped again, this time slowly brushing her face against my groin, marking the front of my trousers with her lustrous lipstick. I doubled slightly, totally unsure of how to react.

  She rose, brushed her hand over the bulge of my erect penis, and smiled at me with the calmest complicity. We stared at each other. We knew what would happen next.

  I pulled her to me, cupped her face and kissed her. She wore no bra. I fondled her breasts, peeled down her top, pulled her skirt back up, and started groping voraciously.

  She unbuckled my belt, and my trousers fell to my ankles. She grasped my cock and began rubbing. I stooped and kissed her breasts like a starving man. She stopped me, took out her chewing gum, steered me towards my desk, and then I fucked her hard and hurriedly against it.

  It heralded the beginning of a three month relationship that was almost entirely sexual. I poured guilt on myself for getting involved. I was also terrified of losing my job. I had visions of appearing in a newspaper and never being able to teach again.

  We’d make love in my office at first. She started giving me blowjobs while footsteps and voices could be heard in the corridor outside, then after a week or so she spotted the gown and mortarboard hanging on the back of my door. Baring her buttocks she dared me to spank her, so I did. We found a cane and started using that, too.

  The town was too small and nosy for us to go out anywhere together, and I think this was what began killing the relationship; Natalie wanted to be seen. Going to college each day was a kind of fashion event for her. She’d experiment with clothing, and as our relationship continued her clothes became more and more provocative. She wanted to be proud, to flaunt her affair with a young professor. She loved taking risks, and this became draining.

  I needed someone to confide in so I told Marianne, but it didn’t help. Marianne made me feel like a monster about it and increased my concerns by continually stressing how serious the consequences would be if I got caught. So gradually Natalie and I began to bicker as the months passed.

  She wasn’t a very communicative person, and what she did say would often leave me confused, curious, jealous or insecure. To surprise her once I told her about the Buñuel film, about how she vaguely resembled the heroine and about Marianne’s feelings for the character. I playfully suggested all three of us go to bed together.

  To my surprise she didn’t object, until I pointed Marianne out to her one day and she frowned with dissatisfaction. How could I have such bad taste?

  Slowly though, aspects of her life became revealed.

  Her boyfriend had been handsome but brutish, so she went off men. She hated studying, she didn’t want to live in wet and cold Britain any more, and she had a female friend in Toulouse who was a photographer and artist. Laurianne de Agora was her name. She was a genius, and Natalie modelled for her. She had made a fair amount of money through modelling, although s
he would prefer to be an actress. She also liked dancing.

  The snippets of details about her friend in Toulouse made me jealous. Natalie worshipped the woman. She kept her picture, and Laurianne was about eight or nine years older than her and an attractive brunette, of a sultry Spanish appearance. Natalie had clippings of her modelling assignments, her portfolio mainly conventional lingerie. But her friend’s pictures of her were nudes and erotica, with a masochist theme. She looked stunning in them. There was something between them, I felt. They were so comfortable and clearly enjoyed working together. But it was none of my business, she told me.

  As the summer holidays approached I started making plans for us to travel abroad. I pictured us basking on beaches, shopping, sightseeing, dining out freely and continuing our lovemaking each night. But it was then that she dropped her bombshell.

  She wanted to end the relationship. She missed her friend, and wanted to go back to France.

  I took it gracefully. We still keep in touch.

  She dropped out of college in France and moved in with her friend. She set her sights on acting, and appeared on calendars and in a few girlie magazines. She danced at a club and on pop videos, but couldn’t get into mainstream acting at all, which was sad because she was beautiful and talented.

  Her friend, meanwhile, added holistic massage to her skills, and they both now live in a rustic hillside chalet near Lausanne, Switzerland. Natalie still writes and sends the odd photo of herself, and has invited me to visit her.

  Her departure from my life blew a hole through me at the time. I decided I still needed to go away, so I picked a destination out of a hat. It happened to be Lisbon, Portugal.

  The city was remarkably beautiful, but the sight of so many tourists, and so many happy couples, only brought home my sense of loneliness. I decided to hire a car and go exploring.

  The guidebook led me to the town of Sintra, up in the hills beside Lisbon. It was a breathtaking area, steeped in history and natural beauty. I headed off on winding roads through rich, verdant forests and rolling hills.