Tie and Tease

by Penny Birch

‘She didn’t mean it!’ I answered. ‘We were playing, just playing.’

  ‘She was sat on your face! She was going to do it in your mouth!’

  ‘No she wasn’t! She was joking! She just said it to help me . . . No, I mean as a fantasy thing . . . You know, in play, like talking dirty . . .’

  ‘But that!’

  ‘Listen, Beth, she wouldn’t do that; she just said it to scare me, to make sure I got the biggest possible kick out of coming. It was too much in any case, but not by far. Look, Beth, I’ve known them years. Melody’s into spanking and to having people as her slave, men and women, but it’s all for fun, all pretend. She does it at Morris’s clubs, here and in New York, leading men around on collars and leashes. So does Harmony, only she’s more submissive. Morris whips and spanks them both, regularly, and they love it. Can you really see Melody being made to do something she didn’t like?

  ‘I’m as bad. Mark never forced me; I love being spanked. I love it from men and from other women too, I really do. I love to be done in front of other people. I like it with my panties down and everything showing! If they don’t pull my panties down it’s not good enough! I like to give it too: it’s nice. It’s not wrong; just as long as everyone is having fun it’s not wrong at all. That’s all it is, Beth, fun, and I wish you would join in.’

  It was out, all of it, if not the whole truth, then at least the truth about my sexuality. Beth had listened open-mouthed, indifferent to the rain running down her face and my naked, mud-plastered body. When I’d finished I just sank to my knees on the sodden grass and buried my face in my hands.

  Five

  I REALLY THOUGHT that would be the last I’d hear of Beth, but I was wrong. On Wednesday morning a letter arrived from her, not direct, but via the Rathwells, which must have taken a bit of nerve in itself. It was pretty heavy stuff, about how much she liked me but that she found it impossible to accept what I was into. She still wouldn’t believe that I actually liked it, despite what I’d said, but gave a long spiel about why I should break away from what I’d been forced into, comparing it with the way she herself had broken away from the Catholic Church. She finished by saying that she’d be happy to see me again once I had put my perversity behind me.

  After the first page of the letter I’d been feeling an absolute bitch, but by the end I was shaking my head in disbelief. She had more or less written my life for me, and it just wasn’t true. Admittedly I had only myself to blame if she thought Mark had done terrible things to me, but from this she made the assumption that I was in the habit of choosing violent lovers. She went on about this at length, saying it was a common phenomenon among women with low self-esteem. I knew it already; I’d read the article in Metropolitan.

  I wished I could have answered her, because the truth was almost the exact opposite. As the youngest senior lecturer in my department I had more trouble with an excess of self-esteem than a lack of it, and to some extent taking undignified and humiliating punishments counteracted this. Only to some extent though, most of the time I do it because I adore the feelings it gives me.

  Worse of all was the suggestion that I might have been abused in some way when a girl, leading to sexual insecurity. This was absolutely at odds with my genteel and even somewhat sheltered early years. True, I’d been a bit of a slow starter and insecure about my sexuality during my teenage years, but that was all. My need for spanking had started with guilt for doing rude things with boys, culminating with Aunt Elaine taking down my panties for getting carried away with my cousin Kate and her boyfriend. I’d deserved that spanking, but afterwards I’d come for the first time and I’d never looked back. A smacked bum became the ideal prelude to sex, not indispensable, but preferred.

  The letter left me with my head spinning and a desperate need to answer Beth back. I thought of writing to explain my real feelings, but I knew it would do no good. She had decided that I was ‘in denial’, and that was that. It was pointless for me to do anything. Amber was off at some horse show, so I couldn’t talk it out with her, and when I went up to my room in an effort to clear my head by masturbating over some really dirty and painful fantasy I found I just couldn’t concentrate.

  I ended up driving in to Broxbourne to see a film, something called Night Over the Volga which was supposed to be intellectually challenging. It turned out to involve a bunch of morose nineteenth-century Russians murdering each other and hanging themselves. The closing titles announced that it was based on real-life events, which made my own difficulties seem so utterly trivial that I was just about skipping as I left. This earned me a few funny looks from those who had found it either depressing or deeply moving, but I didn’t care.

  Back at Amber’s I went straight up to the bedroom and stripped, stark naked. I promised myself I would stay that way until she came home and that if I felt like it I would masturbate, wherever I happened to be at the time. When Amber got home I’d ask for a punishment, perhaps for playing with Melody, whom she always regarded as a rival. My cane strokes had gone down enough for me to be able to take something quite hard, and when I’d been whacked, taken her to orgasm and come myself, I would forget all about Beth.

  It was warm enough for being naked not to be actually uncomfortable, but no more than that, keeping me constantly aware of my nudity. After a late lunch and a glass of beer, taken sitting bare at the kitchen table, I began to think about enhancing the experience. It is nice being naked, but I’m no nudist. If it didn’t make me feel naughty I wouldn’t bother, simply because clothes are more practical.

  Amber is very careful about her public image, and I had no intention of starting rumours about her in the village. The shutters on to the road remain firmly shut and barred, so I was quite safe, yet it occurred to me that if someone did see me they might or might not be shocked. Even if they were shocked they might just think I liked to be nude, and not think of my behaviour as dirty at all. I needed to enhance my nudity in some way that made it blatantly obvious that it was meant as sexual display. That it was for my own benefit was irrelevant: I wanted to feel naughty.

  There was plenty in the bedroom to keep me happy. I started with my riding boots, knee-high black leather, which would have been perfectly respectable over a pair of jodhpurs, but were undeniably kinky when they were all I had on. That felt better, pleasantly naughty in a way that drew my attention to my legs and bottom.

  Nothing obviously rude goes on in the bedroom, but there were several riding-crops in the cupboard, all of which had been applied to my bottom at one time or another. I took one out, a whip with a particularly thick leather snap, in two layers to give a satisfying smacking noise when it hits. The last time Amber had used it on me I had been made to bend over with my legs well spread and my hands on my ankles. It was a great position, with my pussy and boobs vulnerable as well as my bum. She had worked me up slowly, with little smacks on my buttocks and legs, even a few on my pussy. It hadn’t hurt at all at first; there had just been the snap of leather on my flesh and the feeling of utter exposure. By the end I’d been so turned on she had been able to give me a pretty sound thrashing and I’d just soaked it up.

  That would be the way to deal with Beth, if only she would let me start. I’d spend hours over her bottom, cuddling her as I eased up her dress and whispering soothing words as I slid her panties down to leave it bare. With her laid out on the bed I would massage her lovely cheeks, squeezing them and patting them until she had begun to sigh and stick it up. Only then would I start the spanking, slapping her rump with my fingertips, never hard, but just enough to make her flesh tingle. When her cheeks started to pink up I’d get firmer, making them wobble and part, showing off the depths of her crease, her pussy and her tight little bumhole.

  I’d change to the crop then, and start to beat her, still lightly, working her up gently until at last she began to beg for it, to ask me to beat her properly, to thrash her impudent little backside while she came on her own fingers . . .

  Which was exactly what I was doing,
rubbing the leather shaft of the whip between my thighs, bottom stuck out behind and legs tight together. I really wanted to whip Beth, to use every technique I knew to bring her up to such a head of ecstasy that she would end up thanking me on her knees for doing it.

  I was close to orgasm, and began to think of what might have been at Rathwell’s, if only. We could have given them a show, with Beth over my lap to get her virgin spanking. After that she’d be passed around, from one to the next, red-bottomed and kicking across Melody’s lap, then Harmony’s. They could do her together, the two of them, knees locked, Beth held tight, wobbling pink bum high in the air, thighs cocked open, pussy and bumhole on show, frigging openly as I laid into her with a whip.

  My orgasm hit me and I sank down to my knees, jerking and twisting the whip shaft against my clitoris with that glorious thought of Beth’s round, red bottom and her fingers on her pussy. There was a wry smile on my face as I came down, and I realised that it was not going to be as easy to forget about Beth as I had imagined.

  Sure enough, I failed to put her out of my mind. Not that I wrote back to her, but it was impossible not to feel that our relationship had been left incomplete. It was also impossible not to resent the way she was so certain that she knew how I thought better than I did myself. True, I was as bad myself for trying to get her into spanking, but at least I acknowledged that she could hold different opinions.

  I kept myself busy in the hope that I’d stop being so silly, helping Amber in the shop and at shows, indulging in rude behaviour with her and others and generally having fun. By the end of the week I felt it was working, only to get a shock that brought the whole thing back with a vengeance.

  Even though it was certain to aggravate my feelings, I had bought the new issue of Metropolitan. It was full of the usual stuff: an article on how men should behave, but undoubtedly never would; a questionnaire that allowed the reader to compare her physique with a supposed ideal roughly on the lines of a Barbie doll; a piece on chocolate cake and what a pity it was we weren’t allowed to eat any. I read out a bit of this last one to Amber, suggesting that an hour a day’s pony-girl training was more than enough to justify the odd slice of chocolate cake, then turned the page and had the smile wiped clean off my face.

  It was the agony column, presented by some smart little blonde called Isabel, whose smug-looking photograph was directly above a letter from Beth about me. It even used my name, and I read it in open-mouthed horror. From the date she had to have written it immediately after our night together in Streatley, and it described in vivid detail my relationship with the imaginary Mark and how I’d begged her to spank me. If that wasn’t bad enough, the reply was worse, a condensed version of what she had put in her letter to me, basically suggesting that I was undoubtedly the victim of abuse and should be advised to seek help.

  I read it three times as the enormity of it sank in. It was one thing for Beth to lecture me in private, but to display my supposed problem for national scrutiny was quite another. I felt invaded, abused even, which would have been a fine piece of irony if it hadn’t been at my expense.

  After a spate of tears and a cuddle from Amber I began to feel sorry for myself, then angry, not at Beth, but at Isabel and the magazine in general. I decided to write to the editor, only to abandon the idea as pointless for the same reason I hadn’t written back to Beth. It didn’t matter what I said. If it didn’t agree with their preconceptions then it wasn’t my own opinion but something put into my head by wicked and manipulative males.

  I could see exactly what would happen. They would get my letter. Isabel would tut over it, shake her head, feel sorry for me and then put a reply in the next month’s issue saying more or less what she had said to Beth. Doubtless she would end with some advice on therapy. If I used my full title and qualifications, then they might be forced to take my opinions more seriously, but of course I couldn’t without coming out to the world, including my university colleagues and my mother. That was not something I was ready to do, and I was stuck.

  After my night with Beth I’d needed reassurance of my own sexuality, a good humiliating punishment. Now I was furious, and seething with frustration. A number of juicy revenge fantasies went through my head, all completely impractical. The best was to hire a man of the sort they hated the most. He would be big, say six foot six, fat, too, a total slob but muscled like a bull. In character he’d be a lager-swilling, loud-mouthed lout, the type to whistle at girls in the street and pinch their bums. A builder or car mechanic would be best, perhaps a dustman, something that involved wearing filthy overalls for rough, manual work. He’d be called Daryl or Dave.

  I’d let him do whatever he liked to me, even though it probably wouldn’t be anything more inventive than a blow-job. I might even pay him, anything, just so long as he did as he was told. After a crash course in spanking and the humiliation of girls, I’d have him waylay Isabel on her way back from work, maybe even at work. He would pull her over his lap, get her tight little bum bare and spank her purple with all her friends and colleagues watching.

  Not that it would have solved anything even if it hadn’t been completely impractical, because it would just have served to confirm her prejudices, both about spanking and men. Nevertheless it was soothing to think about it and made me feel a fair bit better.

  I had to do something, but I was determined not to act hastily, a decision Amber heartily agreed with. Even the idea of going into the Metropolitan offices and giving both Isabel and the editor, Amy McRae, a piece of my mind was out of the question. With my respectable job and exotic sex life I could hardly afford to get on the wrong side of a magazine with a nation-wide circulation. Suing them was impractical for the same reasons and wouldn’t have worked anyway. So I was forced to swallow my pride and put up with it, contenting myself with imaginary revenge.

  We had been invited to dinner at Henry’s on the Saturday, along with Anderson and Vicky, Ginny and her husband Michael. This was more or less the fox-hunting team, and I hadn’t seen Ginny since the fateful day, so after we’d eaten I ended up telling the whole story, right up to the publication of Beth’s letter in Metropolitan. I finished with my wicked plot for Isabel, including Amy this time, tied side by side on a desk with their bare bums stuck out to the office.

  ‘It has to be a huge room,’ I finished. ‘Open plan, so that the entire staff can see them get their spanking.’

  ‘Excellent!’ Anderson declared. ‘Spanked in front of their colleagues, especially the men. Just imagine how they’d feel!’

  ‘Utterly humiliated,’ Michael put in, ‘but probably turned on, too.’

  ‘You’re no better than they are!’ Amber laughed. ‘Not all girls get turned on by being punished; you’re just putting your own concepts into their heads.’

  ‘As they do to poor Penny,’ he answered. ‘At least I don’t do it in the national press.’

  ‘Public spanking would be good for them,’ Henry put in thoughtfully, ‘but it would still leave them the chance to be self-righteous about it afterwards. Using force is no good. They’d have to take the spankings willingly and be seen to submit, mentally as well as physically. That would really humiliate them.’

  ‘How?’ I demanded.

  ‘Tricky, I admit,’ he went on, ‘but maybe if offered enough money . . . Yes, I have it, imagine this. Someone, maybe even a woman but tough and physically strong, Vicky say, goes to the office and asks to speak to the two of them alone. She has a case, which contains bundles of twenty-pound notes, shrink-wrapped in plastic. After adjusting the venetian blind to block off the view to the main office, she states that the case contains a million pounds. This can be theirs if they simply kneel on the desk, have their bottoms bared and take a spanking each. How could they resist?’

  ‘Great, except that they end up with half a million each!’

  ‘Not at all. Each bundle is in fact paper topped with a single real note, which they are not going to get in any case.’

  ‘They’d be p
retty suspicious.’

  ‘Why? The money is there; the offer is there. You make up some story, explain that their editorial attitude has offended some wealthy man and that he considers a million a small price to pay to prick their bubble of self-righteousness. Avarice would prove too much, vanity, too, as the story makes them seem frightfully important. Precious, too, which sounds like them. Wasn’t there some film where a man accepted a million pounds for some fellow to bugger his wife?’

  ‘Just to sleep with her, Henry. It was called Indecent Proposal, with Robert Redford and Demi Moore.’

  ‘Yes, of course, thank you. Anyway, they’d be bound to have seen it and you could make the comparison, adding a touch of Hollywood glamour. They’d have to accept, and under the conditions you demanded. So, you lock the door, up they go on the desk, hands tied behind their backs, skirts up, knickers down and there they are, fannies on show, ready for punishment. You spank them, taking your time. Being innocent in these matters they won’t realise how noisy a spanking can be, especially when you are using a cupped hand to make the slaps as loud as possible. It would get louder still when they started to howl, as they undoubtedly would.’

  ‘Lovely, and then you let the venetian blind up?’

  ‘Exactly, preferably so that they don’t notice. In any case the entire staff now has a fine view of their freshly spanked bottoms. You then pick up the case, lock the door as you leave and stroll from the building. Not only have they been punished and in public, but they have accepted spankings of their own free will, and they have been cheated, making them look not only stupid but also greedy. Their humiliation would be complete.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ I admitted, ‘but I can see a dozen reasons why it wouldn’t work.’

  ‘Sadly so,’ Henry admitted, ‘but it conjures up a pretty picture.’

  ‘The final indignity would be for them to find themselves turned on afterwards,’ Michael put in.