Lessons in Art

by Sam Eden

  Rebecca led her to the centre of the room and helped her undress completely, while Carlo watched. Even after Saturday Nicola was more nervous to be naked in front of him than any man before, but his admiring gaze gratified her.

  When all her clothes had been neatly laid on the sofa Carlo fastened leather cuffs around Nicola’s wrists; the cuffs linked by an adjustable strap. Then effortlessly he lifted her by the waist and she obediently slipped the strap over the hook, and when he released her she could only just reach the floor and she had to strain on tiptoe.

  Powerlessly strung up like a bird at the butchers, Nicola felt a nervous excitement in the pit of her stomach. She was his helpless plaything. She could see herself in the mirror over the fireplace, her stretched torso heaving gently in anticipation. Carlo stood behind her, holding her hips and smiling at her in the mirror. She caught sight of Rebecca standing to one side, a determined look darkening her face. In spite of her fiery temper, Rebecca had always seemed to Nicola to be a kind woman, so did she have no qualms at forcing a girl to submit to such brutal treatment?

  Carlo took off his light sweater, revealing his dark-haired chest and well-defined stomach. Swoon material, thought Nicola, wondering how he got those muscles lifting paint brushes all day.

  Rebecca approached her and said, ‘Once this is over I will be satisfied. If you like you may even stay on as James’ secretary, although I would expect your work to be so good that he is never tempted to beat you again.’

  Nicola nodded and Rebecca stepped back to leave plenty of room for Carlo’s swing.

  ‘Forty lashes, Nicola,’ he said, running the thongs through his left hand. ‘Added to the sixty with the paddle, it will bring your total sentence to one hundred strokes.’

  Not knowing what even one lash felt like Nicola was deeply apprehensive, but she nodded her understanding. He explained that he would tolerate a little movement on the hook, but moving too much or too soon would lead to penalty strokes.

  ‘There is one final thing,’ he continued. ‘After every fifth lash I expect you to say, “I am sorry, Rebecca”. Failing to say it in a reasonable time will earn a penalty stroke.’

  ‘Okay,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Speak up and tell me that you understand the instructions.’

  Firmly she said, ‘Yes, sir, I do.’ Why had she called him sir? It just came out naturally. From nowhere, in the flick of a switch, he had become the dominant male in her life.

  With trepidation she watched in the mirror as he moved his arm back for the first time. Then quickly he brought the whip from high above his head, snapping it into her bottom with a twist of his torso. Nicola gasped and blinked. Nothing had ever felt like that; it was like being slapped with a thousand stinging nettles. Before she had a chance to absorb the awful sensation he delivered the second lash, and the third. Her eyes were watering and she took gulps of breath. As the fourth and fifth strokes bit into her she began to whimper, tears rolling down her cheeks. The sharpness of the pain was unbelievable. There was a pause; she didn’t know why. Her only thought was that she could never take the full forty. Then when she saw them looking at her expectantly she remembered.

  ‘I’m sorry, Rebecca,’ she said through her tears.

  Carlo smoothed out the thongs and drew back for the next batch of strokes. As he proceeded Nicola’s moans turned into shrieks, but he did not stop until after the tenth. Between shuddering breaths Nicola stammered out the apology again.

  Soon she was arching her body forward as his arm fell, to try to avoid full contact with the whip’s biting tails. As she did so for the third time he stopped his arm mid-air.

  ‘A penalty stroke for moving,’ he said coldly, and delivered a lash to the small of her back, provoking an astonished wail.

  Nicola could not prevent herself from dodging the whip so Carlo asked Rebecca to blindfold her, and after taking a moment to steady the girl’s sobbing Rebecca pulled a black band over her eyes. She smoothed Nicola’s hair under the band, pushing the damp strands back behind her ears. Feeling Rebecca’s gentle touch in the midst of her suffering made Nicola cry all the more, and the tears flooded into the band’s absorbent felt.

  Now Carlo varied the frequency of his delivery, so she could not guess when the strokes would fall. With each cut came an answering scream from Nicola. Sometimes, above her howling, she caught the whip’s faint whistle, but she barely had time to flinch her buttocks before the thongs wrapped around them, sending her dancing from foot to foot. Her knees began to buckle, causing her to swing on the hook. Her arms and shoulders ached from supporting her weight.

  Another pause - had they reached twenty? She could no longer see if they were expecting her to speak. She was perspiring and breathing deeply, as if working out. After a moment she risked blurting out the apology, expecting the next blow to land soon after, but instead Rebecca’s scent wafted near again and a glass was put to her lips.

  ‘We’re halfway through,’ she said. ‘Rest a moment and have a sip of wine.’ Although Nicola coughed up the first drops, the glass was held patiently to her mouth until she had taken several good sips. When her foot slipped some wine spilled down her chin and instinctively she apologised. Rebecca told her not to worry, dabbing her face with a handkerchief to dry both wine and tears.

  Although the warmth of the wine brought her some comfort, her bum felt lacerated beyond repair. She despaired to think that she had to bear the same amount over again.

  ‘Let me down, I don’t think I can take any more,’ she pleaded, hoping for the woman’s mercy, but there was no sound of a reprieve.

  Instead she felt the whip’s handle stroking her shoulder blades. Carlo traced the shape of her back until he reached the stinging flesh of her bottom. He cupped the lower curve of each buttock in his hands. Surprisingly the skin here was not so sore, and Nicola realised he had been working his strokes steadily down from the upper slope of her backside.

  ‘Now for here and here,’ he said, patting the underside of her buttocks and the backs of her legs.

  ‘No more sexy miniskirts for a while, Nicola,’ Rebecca could not resist goading.

  The second half of the punishment was almost unbearable. When the thongs sliced into her legs her body lurched and swung so erratically that Carlo struggled to land the strokes on target. During one pause, her mind blanked by pain, she forgot to utter the apology, and such failures of compliance were dealt with ruthlessly, with penalty lashes to her lower back.

  Finally Carlo called Rebecca over to hold the girl steady, while he flogged the roundness of her bottom once more. Nicola wanted to faint; and perhaps she did because she found herself with her arms around Carlo’s neck, her hands still cuffed. She looked him in the face through half closed eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry, Rebecca,’ she murmured, but Carlo told her that Rebecca had left and they were alone.

  Deep into the night Carlo slept naked beside Nicola on Rebecca’s double bed. As she watched him her mind was a strange mixture of thoughts, some silly and some solemn. He had eagerly inflicted on her the utmost agony of her life, but it was eventually followed by ecstasy and she was left in no doubt about her feelings for Carlo.

  Chapter 9

  Spotless table linen, glittering chandeliers and subtle blue decor formed the backdrop of the evening in the Dorchester ballroom. A small string orchestra played softly in the background, and groups of people dressed in a cosmopolitan mixture of costly evening wear had begun to drift in from the reception hall and take their seats. There was an air of genteel gaiety.

  As he entered, James was deep in conversation with the head of Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiques Unit. The detective, who held a relatively junior grade in the hierarchy of the Metropolitan Police, felt rather honoured to be invited to this event at all. At dinner he would sit at the table of the Commissioner himself, along with other members of the Met’s top t
eam. He listened to James attentively, although his eyes were following his wife, who was chatting excitedly with an exotic redhead some feet in front. Their invitation to the ball, which he suspected was the work of Sir James, had seriously put him in her good books. He was pretty sure he would get lucky at home tonight.

  In the reception hall the sounds of seasonal jollity were more muted as the crowd thinned. Well-starched waiters, who had moved to and fro with champagne and other aperitifs, began to clear away the debris. Rebecca and senior figures from her firm moved easily between the groups, oiling the cogs of social interaction.

  As she cast her eyes about for stragglers Rebecca noticed a stag group of young high flyers, including a senior civil servant from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. She was taken aback to find that Nicola was at the centre of this select band, listening attentively to the young men and saying the odd word in reply. Whatever she had just said was obviously pertinent, because the mandarin nodded energetically before continuing his flow.

  Rebecca flushed with pleasure; Nicola was full of surprises. She looked ravishing in a black gown with simple lines, finished off by a pearl necklace and earrings. Rebecca realised that she knew very little about the girl. Indeed, before this week she had been polite to her but distant. She knew that Nicola had been the ward of James’ old friend, but that did not make her any happier at seeing the girl flaunt her body around his office. But the previous night they had spent the evening together and their relationship flowed into much warmer waters.

  Carlo, who’d been caught up in a group of artists arguing about the merits of various exhibitions over the past year, appeared at Rebecca’s elbow.

  ‘You need to rescue your date from her new fans,’ she said, nodding towards Nicola’s group, and he moved off in pursuit.

  As Carlo drew out the chair for Nicola, James was taking his seat opposite them.

  ‘James, someone’s just told me that the gallery we visited in London has been closed by the police,’ she said excitedly. ‘Francesco’s, wasn’t it called? Did you know?’

  Carlo stiffened immediately and James glanced at him. ‘Yes, I think someone mentioned it,’ he replied airily. ‘Good job I didn’t buy that Madonna and Child, isn’t it?’ This time he studiously avoided looking at Carlo.

  ‘I thought it was a dirty, horrible painting anyway,’ she laughed, surprised to notice Carlo lapse into silence. Sensing competition from the cocks in the reception hall he had plumed himself to respond to the challenge, becoming animated and attentive. He had whisked her away from the group, which looked on enviously, resenting in their staid English way the easy gallantry of the Italian. Now, suddenly, the taciturn Carlo had made a comeback, and Nicola reflected that her date was the moodiest man she had ever met.

  The remaining guests at their table arrived, under Rebecca’s escort. To Nicola’s left sat an elderly professor from the Courtauld Institute of Art and his wife. On Carlo’s right sat the wife of a leading investment banker, her husband next to Rebecca.

  Nicola chatted affably with the professor who, it transpired, had known Edward slightly, and she suspected that this happy coincidence was a victory for Rebecca’s skilful handling of the seating plans. When the professor went on to express his admiration for one of Edward’s scholarly books, Nicola was delighted. She rewarded him with such kittenish behaviour that by the end of the meal he was a flushed and happy old man.

  From time to time Rebecca glanced across at this performance with admiration. Nicola was proving herself to be so adept socially that she was sorry the girl would soon be leaving. Rebecca herself was in conversation with the banker about the buzz of the moment, the closure of Francesco’s. The banker was sharing, in a carrying voice, gossip about the police raid. Although the police had soon finished their investigation at the scene, Francesco had not yet reopened his gallery. It was rumoured that the mistrust which would now surround him might lead him to sell up. Carlo, she could see, was more interested in this conversation than in entertaining his own neighbour at the table.

  The banker’s wife wanted to bore him with accounts of her visits to Italy. Carlo was fending her off by pretending to understand little English, but the woman was having none of it. Moving in the shrewd world of her husband’s financial wizardry she was well able to see through the ploys of a penniless artist. Whilst her tales purported to cover the many museums and classical sites they had visited, Carlo was actually given more detail about the luxury hotels and yachts where they had stayed.

  Both Rebecca and Nicola noticed that the banker’s wife was not Carlo’s only admirer. Their young waitress had made several bright-eyed glances towards him, and when she finally caught his eye she gave him a dazzling smile. As she served his vegetables her arm touched his, and her cleavage lingered as long as possible near his face. Her blonde hair was swept back from her shapely neck and forehead into a short ponytail. Her black skirt was shorter and tighter than those of the other waitresses and showed every curve of her bottom. As she moved off Carlo gave it a cursory glance, but in his glumness he did not seem interested. Rebecca and Nicola smiled and shared raised eyebrows across the table.

  On Thursday Nicola was too sore and aching to go to work, so she phoned James to say she felt unwell. Ever the gentleman he was solicitous and hoped she would be recovered by Friday night. So, thought Nicola, did she, or else dancing would be a nightmare.

  Rebecca had gone up to London the previous night to oversee final preparations for the ball. It was an important event in her firm’s calendar, bolstering their connections with the rich and influential and fostering new ones. She didn’t return until the evening, so Carlo and Nicola had the day to themselves.

  They went to the village pub for lunch and then for a walk in the countryside. He told her about growing up in Calabria. He spoke warmly of the Mediterranean light and the wind off the Ionian Sea.

  ‘If you love it so much why did you leave?’ she asked.

  He replied vaguely that after his mother’s death he wanted a change of location, and that rich art patrons abounded more in Lombardy than in the poorer south. It seemed explanation enough, yet the way he said it suggested to Nicola that there had been other reasons.

  In turn she told him about her life in Oxford; how sometimes she had felt as though she didn’t belong there, because it was a place full of brilliant minds. So much of the city revolved around the life of the university that non-academics were treated rather as an afterthought. Still, she wanted to show off its beauties to him. It was one of only a tiny number of places in Britain where a large medieval centre had been preserved. She promised to take him soon.

  When darkness fell at four o’clock they returned to the cottage. Once again Carlo applied lotion to her body and once again it culminated in marvellous sex. Afterwards he begged her to come to Milan with him. He knew the way they had met would not make it easy for them, but he told her that he loved her and wanted them to try.

  Nicola had to admit that a boyfriend who paddled her on the first date and whipped her on the second did not look like a keeper. Yet she was sure she loved Carlo too, or at least was infatuated with him enough to call it love. She was happy and a little surprised when he said he loved her, and wondered if he meant it or if it was just specious Italian charm. On the other hand, if he just regarded her as a brief affair why burden himself by giving her houseroom? Their relationship seemed to be moving too quickly, but given the geography, thought Nicola, if it didn’t move quickly it would never move at all.

  And then there was James. She accepted that that had ended now. There were some sizzling memories, but his future lay with Rebecca. If she stayed on to work for him there would always be tensions between the three of them. So she accepted Carlo’s offer to give him and Milan a chance. It was exciting and new, and if it turned sour she could simply come home.

  When Rebecca returned at seven she sent Carlo
to have a long drink at the pub, explaining that she needed to talk dresses with Nicola. Eventually the two girls did discuss their clothes for the ball, but it seemed that Rebecca had some serious apologising to do first. She was sorry for having had Nicola punished so severely, and said that she herself deserved to receive Nicola’s punishment, but James, the one man she desired to deliver it, must never know what happened.

  ‘Even though you were wrong to sleep with him it didn’t warrant a whipping,’ she said contritely, holding Nicola’s hands. ‘Will you forgive me?’

  As well as forgiveness Nicola suspected that Rebecca was looking for a promise never to reveal the events to James, and Nicola’s reply stopped short of granting her that.

  ‘I will forgive you,’ she said, ‘and if it’s any consolation, I never actually slept with James; we just had a quickie.’

  ‘A quickie? That’s not like James,’ Rebecca said ironically.

  ‘Well, okay, it wasn’t that quick, but it was only the once.’

  Rebecca seemed somewhat satisfied, and hugged the girl. Of course, thought Nicola, her concerns would be much allayed now that she and Carlo were an item. She never really believed James would spurn such a lovely and accomplished woman as Rebecca for her, a mere girl, even though older men behaved oddly with young women sometimes.

  If James had wanted to get serious about her, would Nicola have felt the same, she wondered? She didn’t know. It would have been a tempting offer for a girl all alone in the world.

  ‘I want to thank you for coming to the ball, even though you must be feeling so sore,’ said Rebecca.

  ‘I’m dying to go,’ lied Nicola enthusiastically

  ‘Do you need a dress?’ asked Rebecca. ‘We’re similar sizes.’

  Nicola shook her head. ‘Edward bought me a special one for his last college ball. I think I’ll wear that. Fortunately it’s off the shoulder, not backless.’