The Delicious Torment

by Alison Tyler

  Jack could read me.

  “You’re so smart,” he continued. “What do you think I should do to you?

  I held my tongue.

  “I’m asking you a question,” Jack repeated coolly. “You get two chances in my world. Name your punishment.”

  Like in the fairy tales. You know the ones. The Grimm Brothers’ cruel tales—always my personal favorites. In which the evil queen or imposter princess is tricked into naming what ought to happen to someone who has behaved in the exact manner that she has. (The royals never recognize themselves, somehow.) But this was different. He would do what I said. And I was responsible for choosing the proper level of discipline. It would be like sending me out to cut my own switch. If I chose one too weak, too slender, I would be punished far worse than if I picked correctly from the start.

  I knew better than to tell Jack to spank me. Spankings are candy to me, a reward more than a true punishment.

  “I’m waiting.”

  Two things Jack didn’t like: worrying and waiting. I was digging my hole deeper by the second.

  “Crop me…” I didn’t ask it as a true question, yet I didn’t have the strength to make my voice a statement. The cadence was somewhere in between.

  “Good choice,” Jack said, rising from the bed and heading to the chest. “We’ll start with that.”

  I tensed, automatically. I wished for clothes, even clothes Jack would lift or rip off me. Being totally naked is always worse. Always. Jack started slowly. Each stroke hurt, but I could tell he was saving his energy, and this scared me more than if he’d cut fiercely from the start. Jack had a plan. He might be pretending to put me in charge, but he was driving the car. He knew the route.

  He used the crop until my ass was on fire and my breathing was ragged. Tremulous. Then he touched me once more. The same way he had at the start. Stroked me all over with his strong hands, making the pleasure radiate through me. Intense. Remarkable to feel such sweetness and tenderness after such pain. And once more, even though I ought to have known better, I let myself relax, melt into the mattress, close my eyes.

  Jack leaned over and, like the prince before the kiss, asked, “And what should your punishment be for trying to persuade Alex to lie to me—”

  Oh, fuck—

  “Did you think he wouldn’t tell me?”

  “I—”

  “Did you really think so?”

  I plead the Fifth, I thought, but didn’t say.

  “Name it, Samantha.”

  My head spun. My heart raced. What did Jack want to hear? What ought I say?

  He pressed even closer, his body on top of mine, holding me down. “One last chance, baby. Name it—”

  Chapter Six:

  Under My Thumb

  Did I really think Alex would lie for me?

  Honestly, I didn’t consider what I’d asked him to do as lying. Simply omitting. And that’s different, right? Not to Alex, apparently. Or to Jack. I’d forgotten a key element in the relationship of our twisted trio—Alex reported to Jack. That was his job. And he lived for his job. Lived for Jack, as far as I could tell. This wasn’t some office scenario with ever-shifting alliances. Alex was one of those guys who craved a role model. A father figure…

  All of these thoughts swam through my head, like those signs in a Magic 8 Ball—the inky blue liquid cleared and slowly another message appeared.

  But I didn’t have time to process the dynamic between the two men in my world. I was face down on Jack’s bed and he was waiting impatiently for me to name my poison. I tried to put myself in Jack’s position. I knew better than to choose one of his toys, because that would be too easy. A crop was fine for transgression number one. But this was different. This was bigger.

  “You write all day,” Jack said, bending now to be eye level with me. “I know you have a creative mind. You ought to be able to come up with something perfect.”

  I write. That’s true. But words come easier for me through my fingers than my lips. I can never ask for the things I truly crave. (A remnant perhaps of that night with Byron. The vodka-drenched midnight when I begged him to use his wood-backed brush on me, and he looked at me as if I were lower than something stuck to the bottom of his shoe.)

  But suddenly, I had an idea.

  “Untie me,” I said, my voice feeling raw from lack of use. I’d been quiet so long.

  Jack stared at me.

  “Untie me,” I repeated. “Let me have my notebook.”

  His eyes narrowed. He didn’t like this request. Maybe because I didn’t phrase the statement like a request.

  “Please,” I added, almost as an afterthought. “Please, Jack. Let me get to my notebook. I’ll write down what I think you should do to me—”

  “What you think you deserve.”

  “Yes, Jack,” I spoke meekly now. “Yes, Sir.”

  He cocked his head at me, and I could see he was considering the offer. Art and life, blending together.

  “A script?” he asked, and I knew he didn’t want to star in something that I had penned, as if he were an actor, and I the director. No matter what we did, he needed to be in charge.

  “No, Sir,” I said quickly. “My penance.”

  Jack nodded. And smiled. He liked the concept. I could tell. He’d read my writing. All of it, I think. Not the way Nate had, each morning as part of our agreement. But for pleasure, chapters at a time. He never gave me feedback or comments, never had really mentioned my work until now. Telling me that I had a creative mind. Creatively kinky, but no more than Jack’s.

  He let me loose and then sat on the edge of the bed while I slid into panties, jeans, and a long-sleeved T-shirt. Casual, easy clothes for writing.

  “You can’t watch me work,” I told him.

  “You have a lot of demands.”

  “I won’t be able to write if you’re staring at me.”

  “Try it.”

  “Jack—”

  He stood and looked at the clock on the nightstand. “You have an hour,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

  Like the witch in The Wizard Oz with her nasty hourglass. Sixty minutes. I hadn’t expected that. I don’t know what I had thought Jack would say. “Tomorrow.” Or, “Whenever you finish.” Of course not. But writing in a specific time period was new to me. Even if this was something I’d requested.

  Jack left the room, and I could hear the front door open and shut. He’d left the apartment, as well. I sat down on the bed with my notebook, and I stared at the blank page.

  Blank.

  That was the perfect description of how I felt. I didn’t have any idea of what I should tell Jack to do to me. I didn’t have any idea what the standard punishment was for things like this in Jack’s world. For inspiration, I crossed the room and opened the closet door, then started to paw through the contents. There were a variety of costume-style outfits: naughty nurse, prisoner of love, 1920s flapper girl. All sexy, sheer, short, and tight. And then I looked at the shelf on top of the closet—the rows of boots, and high heels, and marabou-tipped slippers, and…

  At the end of the row was a bag I hadn’t noticed before. A doctor’s bag. I stood on tiptoe to take it down. Jack had never pulled this out before, and it had been tucked in such a way that I had thought it was simply another one of my many purses.

  Inside the bag were various real-looking medical devices. I knew what to write about. I didn’t know if I could handle what I was saying. Didn’t know if Jack would even be into what I was writing. But the shame that filled me as I penned the words made me sure that I would at least get credit for effort. I wasn’t going to stick to the same old style of punishment we’d played with in the past. Not a whipping—public or private. Not a session in his hateful puppy cage in Malibu. I spread out the various frightening-looking items and started to work. The stainless-steel speculums. The rectal thermometer. The rubber gloves, the old-fashioned enema syringe…

  “She must be unwell,” Alex, the assistant, murmured to the doctor. />
  “Yes, definitely. When she’s feeling herself, she’d never act in such a naughty fashion.” A deep sigh. “We’ll need to do a thorough exam to determine the cause. It would be against my judgment to punish her until we know the cause for her malfunction.”

  “What are you planning?” Alex asked, fingering the different items on the sterile tray.

  “You’ll take care of the preparations. The enema. The shower. Record her temperature in her chart. And then I want her spread out on the table and readied for me.”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  My heart was pounding. I’d written stories that skirted this issue before, but never really delved. Naughty patient, strict doctor. That’s nothing new. But the thought of Alex assisting Jack made me wet. And the knowledge that Jack had been waiting to play with me like this—that bag up there, where I could find it at any moment—that let me know I must be on the right track. I crossed my legs tight and tried to continue. But in my head, I could already see Alex stripping me of my clothes, handing me some flimsy little tie-in-the-back nightie. Caring for me intimately at the instruction of—and I had to say it, at least in my mind—his Master. Because Alex was as much a slave as I was.

  That thought stopped me. Just because I said the words didn’t make them true. I had to consider the concept. But it made sense. Alex didn’t simply punch a clock. No normal job required an assistant to spank a boss’s girlfriend. My head swam, and I tried my best to return to my story. One that I knew would be less fiction and more reality in a matter of minutes. Could I handle that?

  I realized that there was no “me” in the piece. Not yet, anyway.

  “Call her in.”

  The patient entered the room, head down, cheeks flushed pink.

  “You know the rules,” the doctor said, his voice stern, but calm. “Lying is a serious offence. But before you’re properly caned, we’ll need to make sure that you’re fully capable of withstanding the punishment.”

  Oh shit. Properly caned? Where the fuck had that come from? I crumpled the page and tossed it on the floor, then repacked all of the devices in that black medical bag and tucked it away once more at the back of the closet. I had to work a little to make the top shelf appear undisturbed, and I was sheened with sweat by the time I sat down on the bed and started again.

  What if I simply said that Alex should spank me for asking him to lie to Jack? He could bend me over one of the chairs in the living room. He could use his belt. That would make us even, wouldn’t it?

  I started to write once more. As quickly as I could. The clock was ticking. I’d wasted precious moments going through the closet for inspiration. Had wasted more time on that fucked-up Doctor fantasy. Now, I did my best to capture a scene Jack would appreciate. He’d never watched Alex spank me. He’d probably get a thrill out of that, right?

  “Bend over the chair, Sam. Hold tight to the arms.”

  “Lift her skirt,” Jack instructed. “And pull her knickers down.”

  “Of course.”

  Alex’s fingers gripped the waistband of Samantha’s lipstick-red panties and dragged them down her thighs.

  “Step out of them, kid,” Jack instructed. He was in charge. Even if Alex was doing the punishing. He was always in charge. “And hold still, doll. It’s going to hurt. Right, Alex?”

  “Yeah, Jack. That’s the point isn’t it?” A low laugh. “Why bother if it’s not going to hurt?”

  Samantha lowered her head. She bit her bottom lip. She could hear Alex undo the buckle on his belt, could hear the almost nonexistent sound of the leather being pulled free of the loops. In total silence, she waited for the first blow, wondering how many he would give her, how much it would hurt, how long she would manage to take the pain without crying—

  The front door opened. I glanced at the clock. Oh Jesus. I was out of time. How the fuck had that happened? I kept on writing. Jack’s footsteps down the hall spurred me on. I had nearly a full page of text by the time he pushed the bedroom door open. He took the notebook from my hand and read, his eyes following the text quickly. And then he handed the book back to me and picked up the crumpled piece of paper from the floor. As he spread the sheet out flat and began to read the discarded story, I saw a smile light his blue eyes, and I realized I was like those idiot imposter princesses in the fairy tales.

  I’d named my punishment. Ordered my poison.

  And now I would have to drink.

  Chapter Seven:

  Secret Things

  By now you know that I think sugar tastes better in cubes, that coffee is richer in my favorite mug, that food is more luscious on a special blue glass plate. I am focused almost as much on presentation as I am on content, which is why I worked so hard to fulfill this fucked-up fantasy scenario.

  Jack didn’t want me as a patient, though. Instead, he had me dress as a nurse in a crisp white uniform, so short you could see the tops of the white lace garters. White stockings. White, stack-heeled, patent-leather pumps. The outfit had red piping, like icing, on the seams and the pockets, and the stockings each sported a red line down the back that was almost impossible to keep straight.

  I dressed in silence and solitude, imagining Jack in the other room discussing the situation with Alex. Who would do what. How long they would torment me. My hands were shaking, and I was in no position to put on my makeup. But I worked hard. After slicking my hair back into a neat ponytail, I outlined my full lips a dark ruby and then filled them in. I was still admiring myself in the mirror, when Alex opened the door.

  We didn’t take this thing to the moon. Alex wasn’t wearing a white lab coat. Didn’t have a stethoscope hanging around his neck. He looked more like an intern than a doctor. At first, that is. But when I met his eyes, I saw a gleam there. He was pleased. This had worked out to his benefit. He’d remained true to Jack the whole way—and now look. He was being treated like a prince, the heir to the throne.

  I wondered why Jack had even asked me to bother getting dressed, because Alex roughly tugged the snaps open on the outfit without a word, letting the sterile white dress fall open. He admired my matching pearly white bra and panties, before indicating that I should lose all three: dress, knickers, push-up bra.

  Alex watched as I stripped, and heat stung my cheeks. I’m no stripper. I have none of that inner confidence you see with women who work the pole. So that’s why Jack had instructed me to put on this uniform. Because it almost hurt to undress under Alex’s hawk-like gaze. Only when I was down to the garters and heels did he take a step forward. I felt faint as Alex spread me out on the bed, as I realized with a jolt that the mattress had been covered with a new sheet. A rubber sheet. Must have happened when I had been in the bathroom. My heart pounded and my head swam.

  This was my fault. Why hadn’t I come up with some other sort of fantasy punishment? I’m a creative person, after all. I might have penned any number of kinky scenarios…

  As I continued on this self-pitying trip, Alex was preparing something behind my back. I should have been paying attention. Isn’t that the story of my life? I should have been preparing myself. But how could I? How could I possibly?

  Alex didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. He simply arranged me how he wanted me on the bed, on my hands and knees, then had me lean forward with a pillow under my chest, rear raised. For a moment, I thought (I’ll even say I hoped) that he was getting me set for a spanking, that the rest of the fantasy would remain simply that—a fantasy. But why would I have such little faith in my man? Jack had been saving that doctor’s bag for a reason. A reason, a motive, a perfect time.

  Sliding one knee on the bed, Alex moved closer to my body. His hand gently began stroking my lower back, and I wondered if he meant to relax me. I was so tightly wound, I felt as if any motion might shatter me to pieces. And then, my worst fears realized, Alex dabbed something slick around my rear hole and slowly began inserting what felt like cold metal between the cheeks of my ass.

  I was horrified. So filled with sham
e that I closed my eyes tight enough to see violent purple stars. Slowly, water began to pour inside of me. There was no pain involved. Alex wasn’t hurting me in the slightest—in any way except my ego. I knew my cheeks were beyond scarlet. This punishment stemmed from the fact that I’d asked him to lie. He wasn’t only punishing me at Jack’s request. He was doing so as a reward for his own good behavior.

  I didn’t have much time to process these thoughts, however. Most of my effort went into not begging, not pulling away, in properly behaving in spite of my total misery.

  When Alex was finished, and I was well filled, he slid a plug easily inside of me, patted me once on the ass as if I were a house pet, and left the room.

  Oh Jesus. How long would he leave me like this? What was he waiting for? Was Jack going to come and view me in this utterly humiliating position? Was Alex going to come back? I started to cry, tears streaking my cheeks, but I didn’t call out, didn’t move at all. Finally, Alex came back to the room. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw the glee on his face. He was wickedly enjoying every second of my absolute, overwhelming discomfort. Yet he didn’t say a word. He simply lifted me in his arms and carried me to the bathroom, and then, to my great and utter relief, left me alone.

  There were instructions for me. To remove the plug myself. To expel the water. To shower. And to know—in Jack’s own words—that this was only the beginning. I tried not to think about what that meant as I followed the commands. There was a timer on the sink. I had sixty minutes to myself. And I relished every one.

  When Alex came back for me, he didn’t offer me clothes. He pulled my towel off and let me walk down the hallway on my own. Barefoot this time. Totally naked.