by Maren Smith
Her legs felt like rubber. Her knees kept wobbling and when she dragged first her panties and then her jeans up her legs and pulled them back into place, her bottom sizzled and throbbed. She’d dropped her paper, but found it again half under his desk.
“I want you to have fun today,” Master Marshall told her as they walked to the door. His hand was on her bottom the whole way, cupping and squeezing to make the heat flare like a bonfire all over again, and patting until she squirmed from the delicious discomfort. “My door is always open if you need me.”
When he opened the door, Kaylee slipped outside to exchange places with John, the gentleman waiting in the hall.
“Beth.”
It took Kaylee a moment to remember that was her new name. She looked back at Master Marshall. His was a stern but smiling Look.
“Behave yourself,” he said, and leveled a similar Look at each of three women in turn. Retreating back into his office, he closed the door.
“Oh my God,” one maid whispered as the other covered her mouth with both hands. All three stared at Kaylee with wide eyes and pale faces.
Plucking at her bottom lip, the princess began to jiggle one knee rapidly up and down as she hesitantly leaned over to whisper, “Are you okay?”
Reaching back, Kaylee framed her tender bottom with both hands. “I have never, ever been spanked like that in my life,” she said. She was rotten for doing it—the poor women were nervous enough as it was—but she hadn’t lied.
She left them there, contemplating the punishments that awaited them, and made her way to Wardrobe. She couldn’t wait to strip down in front of all those dressing room mirrors and finally see what he had done to her—all that bright, beautiful red skin that she could feel blazing up with every step she took.
No, no one had ever spanked her like that before.
The hurt hadn’t yet faded, and already she ached to have him do it again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“So, what kind of maid do you want to be?”
Kaylee stood in dressing room with mirrors on all sides of her, staring at the selection of uniforms hanging neatly before her. She had three basic models to choose from. The first was a skimpy, fantasy French maid’s outfit. More corset than gown, it came without garters or stockings but offered shiny black, tiptoe-high dominatrix heels with crimson-red laces that laced up the heel and tied around the ankles.
Tipping the other end of the scale, the second was a dour neck-to-ankle gown that could not have covered more of her had it been a burka. It lacked all the frills and (she suspected) thrills of the first outfit, but did come with a very utilitarian full-length apron and probably very utilitarian stockings, although that was anyone’s guess since no one would ever see them.
The last option ran straight down the middle between the two extremes. The dress was knee-length with a modest neckline that showed a bit of cleavage, enough leg to know the stockings were garters, but with flat, sensible footwear to round it all out.
All three options were stark black and white. All three were crowned with mob caps: a full hair cap for the dour uniform, something very normal looking for the modest uniform, and a veritable tiara of lace and impracticality for the sexy maid’s outfit.
Behind her, the scantily-clad "Lisette" watched on as she agonized over her choices. She herself had picked the sexiest of the three outfits. But then, she also had the kind of body that absolutely rocked that look. She was gorgeous—all big blue eyes and golden curls piled high in ringlets all around that lacy tiara. The corset-style bustier plumped her already full breasts, pushing them up so high that she verged on spilling out over the top with every breath she took. Layer after layer of lacy frill fluffed out her too-short skirt, a length of cloth sufficient only to cover her so long as she did not bend over. There wasn’t enough of her tiny slip of an apron to make a pocket out of.
Kaylee had to work very, very hard not to hate her guts on sheer principle.
“Well,” Lisette prompted and gestured to the dresses, “what do you think?”
“I’m not sure.” Kaylee examined each outfit yet again. She knew which one she’d select if only no one else would ever see her in it. If she were in the privacy of her own living room, hands down, she’d have been a French maid, dancing and strutting and dusting the hell out of everything she owned. But she wasn’t back in her living room. She was here, where she would be expected to go out in public with her fanny hanging out for heaven only knew how many people to see. She didn’t need all these mirrors to know her face was bright red and so far she hadn’t even touched that outfit.
She turned to the middle uniform, demure and respectable. A good girl could still do naughty things in a respectable uniform, but again and again, her eyes strayed back to its scanty cousin.
“Know what I think?” Lisette asked, her hands settling on Kaylee’s shoulders. The two women looked at one another in the circle of mirrors.
“What?”
Lisette took down the uniform Kaylee couldn’t stop admiring. She held it up to Kaylee’s chin, hanger and all, and they both studied her reflection. “Baby girl, I think you are going to look sexy as hell in this.”
Hesitantly, Kaylee felt the fabric. “I don’t know…”
“What do you want?” Lisette pressed, the reflection of her gaze never leaving Kaylee’s in the mirrors. “Do you want to serve? Do you want to follow ordinary, everyday orders—carry trays, polish silver, blacken boots, oil straps? Do you want to sleep in a servant’s bed, be treated as less than equal with the fear of minor punishments hanging over your head but without any sexual release? Put on the long dress and you’ll be like any other shadow walking these old halls. You’ll rise early each morning and be among the last to fall into your bed at night. You’ll be given task after menial, mind-numbing task, with scoldings and the threat of the switch your only chastisement—unless, of course, you come to other arrangements with Mr. Grimsley, the head butler.”
Lisette smiled and smoothed the skimpy outfit out across Kaylee’s belly and hips. “Or maybe, you’re one who aches for punishment but not for the sex that makes this game so much fun. Maybe you want to remain faithful to a vanilla partner on the outside, or you want to avoid the complication of romantic entanglements. A more boring way to spend your time here, I can’t imagine, but at least you’ll get your sitter dusted upon occasion. And who’s to know what you do late at night…all alone in your bed…just you and your busy little fingers. Do you know why I come here, twice a year, every year?”
Mesmerized by Lisette’s blatant sexuality, Kaylee shook her head.
“I love being a bad girl. I love walking into a room and seeing all the men who can’t take their hungry eyes off me. I love serving refreshments in the drawing room and feeling all those hands that can’t resist touching me. I love being cornered in the shadows, kissed until I’m breathless while some stranger seduces me into wearing his collar for a while. Sometimes I wear two or three different collars every day; sometimes I wear chains all night long. I love this place. But it’s not about me, is it, baby girl? What do you want?”
That was the question, now wasn’t it? Kaylee stared at their reflections. She thought about Master Marshall: his angel-blue eyes, that devil-born smile, and his voice as smooth as honey. If she couldn’t have that, what would make a good second choice? Her mind kept coming back blank. “What if you don’t know what you want?”
Lisette’s smile turned sympathetic first, and then blatantly coy. “Not knowing what you want and being ashamed to admit you do want it, are two very different things.”
Kaylee gave the skimpy maid’s outfit one last glance before reluctantly hanging it back up on the hook. “I better not.” She took down the middle dress. “I don’t think I’m comfortable wearing something so revealing in front of other people.”
“Why not?” Lisette challenged. “When will you ever see any of them again? Who are they to judge you when they’re here too?”
“I don’t thin
k I want to be backed into a…a shadowy corner and…and molested.” Unless it was Master Marshall doing the backing and the molesting…and the collaring. The heat in her face burned hotter as she looked up at skimpy dress. She couldn’t quite keep her longing from showing.
Lisette reached around Kaylee to bring the costume back down. She held it up so they could see it side by side with the more modest one. “Do you know why Master Marshall sent me here to talk to you?”
Abandoning the mirrors, Kaylee twisted to look at Lisette directly. “No. Why?”
“Because I get two full hours of Jackson’s undivided attention just to show you what the Little Maids are all about. You must be new, not just to the Castle, but to the lifestyle, right?”
Kaylee felt a little deflated. “Is it that obvious?”
“Only if you know what to look for. You have a little lost lamb feel about you. But that’s okay; Doms love that sort of thing. And how are you supposed to learn to swim if you don’t first jump in the pool? Just consider me—” Lisette paused and smiled. “—a really sexy water wing. Trust me, baby girl. That costume might be more modest, but if you put it on, you’re going to regret it. Deep down inside of you, you already know it’s not who you are.”
“B-but…” Kaylee felt herself weakening. When Lisette gave a tug, she let go of the modest outfit and took the one that left her blushing.
“Don’t worry,” Lisette said, and hung it up again. “There are ways to avoid all those touchy-feely hands out there…until you’re ready to enjoy them, that it.”
Hands settling on Kaylee’s thin shoulders, the sultry maid turned her physically from the extra costume choices, until all she could see in the dressing room mirrors was herself, Lisette, and that barely-there costume held between her hands.
“Have you ever worn a man’s collar before?” Lisette purred in her ear.
“Last night,” Kaylee confessed.
“Did you like it?”
Pure desire flushed her. She tried to say yes, but the word stuck in her throat. She nodded instead.
“Strip,” Lisette commanded, taking the costume off its hanger. “We’ll get you dressed and then, if you want, we’ll put a collar on you. If everyone thinks you’re already taken, they won’t bother you too much. So long as you avoid the demerits, this is like a free pass: you can be just as sultry, sexy and naughty as you want to be to the clients and there’s nothing they can do about it. It’ll give you the chance to get to know who you are and what you really want. Strip, I said. Come on, you’ve taken your clothes off in front of other women before, haven’t you?”
“Not since high school gym.” Kaylee dutifully bent to pull her shirt off and unfastened her jeans.
“Bra, too.” Lisette grinned.
Kaylee hesitated all over again, but the bustier was cut to flatten her breasts and push them up, offering the swells to their best visual advantage. Wearing a bra in conjunction with that would only look ridiculous.
She took it off, painfully aware of how small and inadequate her breasts were compared with Lisette's, not that the other maid seemed to notice. She simply loosened the laces of the bustier and helped Kaylee thread her way into it.
The actual dress part was soft and shined like satin, and the bustier fit her like a second skin, even before Lisette began to tighten the laces. It felt constraining, but in a nice way. She had to change the way she breathed, drawing air up instead of outward because with every jerk and cinch, Kaylee’s ability to expand her chest diminished. Breathing this way did two things: it made the rise and fall of her near-naked breasts incredibly pronounced; and it made her a little lightheaded. But from her first glance in the mirror, Kaylee decided the former was well worth the price of the latter.
She looked good.
No, not just good. She looked fantastic. Women weren’t made to have hourglass figures like this, but damn if it didn’t look hot. The skimpy skirt barely came down low enough to cover the gusset of her panties in front and the lower swell of her bottom cheeks in back. Her blushing bottom cheeks, she might add. When she turned around to see how she looked from behind, her eyes were drawn to the tell-tale flush left over from yesterday’s spanking.
Lisette noticed too. Her eyes sparkled and her smile turned knowing all over again. “Sit. I’ll help you with your stockings and heels.”
Sit, she'd said. Easier said than done. Kaylee hadn’t realized how much bending was required in the act until suddenly the corset prevented it.
“It’s like learning to move all over again, isn’t it?” Lisette teased as she knelt in front of Kaylee. “Don’t worry. It feels funny for about an hour or so, but you quickly get used to it. And you still look hot, even when you feel completely awkward.”
“Thank you for doing this.” Kaylee puffed a little at the compliment, deserved or not, and she raised her feet to make it easier for Lisette. “I don’t think I can bend over far enough to reach my feet, much less put those shoes on.”
“By the end of the day, you’ll wish you never had to take it off.”
Unlikely. A practical girl at heart, Kaylee did so like both the ability to breathe and her sensible shoes, but she could also easily imagine herself playing dress-up in this outfit from time to time. Sometimes a girl just wanted to feel sexy, even if only in the privacy of her home, and especially even if no one else was there to see it.
Maybe the Castle had outfits like this for sale in the gift shop.
“Alley-oop.” Lisette gave her knee a pat once she’d finished lacing Kaylee into her heels. When she stood up, it was with all the grace and ease of someone who…well, who had been doing this twice a year for heaven only knew how long. Kaylee wasn’t quite as agile. It was like trying to balance on stilts.
“Wow,” she said, wobbling.
“But you look hot, just keep telling yourself that.” Laughing, Lisette provided a steadying hand. “Find your balance on your toes until you get used to it, and whatever you do, don’t trip or you’ll break your ankle.”
Kaylee turned in a slow circle, looking at herself from all angles in the mirrors. “Wow,” she said again. The effect of the heels on both her butt and her legs was incredible.
Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, Lisette grinned at her reflection. “Baby girl, you haven’t seen anything yet.”
* * * * *
Wardrobe provided the costume and the lacy tiara; make-up was across the hall. Apparently, they had been told to expect her. From the moment she stepped inside, she was plopped into a chair and provided with the full Victorian treatment—her fingernails were buffed and painted, her face was delicately made-up, and her hair was brushed, curled, twisted, tortured, pinned, sprayed and finally wrestled into a rare state of submission on top of her head. When that carefully choreographed mess of curls was finally tamed, the tiara was clipped into place. Lisette herself completed the image by teasing a few curls back out to hang freely around her cheeks. When it was all done, the two women stood side by side in front of the mirror until Lisette playfully bumped her shoulder and said, “Let’s go get into trouble.”
Kaylee let herself be led along so easily, she should have had a nose-ring. But just as Lisette predicted, in the beginning at least she had a ball.
At no other time in history, much less the history of this particular castle, had servants gotten away with as much as Master Marshall’s Little Maids. Although given chores, it quickly became apparent than Little Maids were not expected to actually keep the Castle clean—there was a small army of Castle employees who did that in shifts that spanned around the clock. But if there was a way of telling them from the actual guests, Kaylee couldn’t see it. Everyone dressed in identical costumes and wore the same yellow bracelets on their arms. Everyone dallied and flirted, miscommunicated and misbehaved, open defied and took the licks Mr. Grimsley dished out exactly the same as everyone else.
“That’s part of the Castle’s charm,” Lisette whispered to her. “You never know who’s your real sister in cr
ime and who’s whispering in Mr. Grimsley’s ear, ‘Skinny-dipping party in the garden fountain tonight at midnight—shh, don’t tell anyone.’”
One look at Mr. Grimsley’s long-suffering face, however, and Kaylee suspected 12:01 would see him crashing said party with the same supple birch he had wielded earlier that morning in hand. Within her first few minutes of meeting of the man, the head butler forever cemented in her mind that he was nothing if not capable at his post.
Little Maids were supposed to be naughty; he was supposed to catch them at it, and that’s exactly what he did. All day, every day, he supervised all three tiers of maids, from the dowdy to the sultry, with his brown hawk-eyes keyed toward uncovering even the slightest misbehavior. To the purpose of this, he carried with him either a birch or a lithe garden switch, every morning freshly cut (and ofttimes replenished during the course of the day as necessity demanded). He walked from room to room with one lightly clasped behind his back—his scepter of duty, dutifully brandished however, wherever, and against whomever he deemed necessary. On that particular morning, as Lisette and Kaylee descended the servants’ steps to the rear kitchen and took their places in the daily inspection lines (each class of maid being segregated out into a column of her peers), Little Maid Mary was the first to become necessary.
“Demerit to Mary, unkempt,” Mr. Grimsley intoned as he strolled along the line of dowdy maids, that switch held idle behind his back and lightly flicking the empty air. “Where is your apron, Mary?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Mary replied, her gaze held straight ahead and her expression as close to neutral as she could make it. “It was stolen.”
About to walk on, the head butler paused and then backed up a step to standing directly before her again. “Stolen or misplaced? Theft is a serious accusation, as is a baseless charge of the same. Consider carefully.”
