The Academy

by Arabella Knight

  The soft-piled, deep oyster carpet was littered with paperbacks, tissues, unopened letters, single shoes, a hat, gloves, a small jade cat with his ear missing and a pile of assorted polished stones. Brightly illustrated art magazines, tubes of oil paint and sharp black and white studies, in loving closeup, of the female form were strewn everywhere.

  A writing desk enjoyed the late autumn, pale, golden light by a large sash window. On it, almost buried under even more debris, betraying Miss Frobisher’s random, artistic nature, Miranda spied her goal. A red and yellow carton crammed with packets of Camels. Several loose cigarettes lay strewn around the desktop. She skipped over into the sunlight and reached out her hand.

  ‘Can I help you, Miranda?’ said the cool, calm, quizzical voice of Miss Frobisher as she shut the door firmly behind her.

  Miranda spun around, startled. She flushed deeply. Four cigarettes dropped silently from her frozen fingers.

  ‘I thought you were… I mean…’ she stammered guiltily, feeling frightened and ashamed. She noticed that the art teacher was wearing a soft, grey cashmere jumper and pale blue jeans that tightened at the crotch.

  ‘Didn’t know you smoked. A stupid habit. I’d like to stop of course and I dare say I could if I really tried to but they do help me relax when I’m working.’

  ‘I don’t. I was going to give them…’ Miranda started to speak, then bit her bottom lip. So much for the nerves of steel and a firm resolve. She really was making a thorough muck up of this little escapade, she thought ruefully.

  ‘To give them to whom? Jane, perhaps? Certainly not Jaya. Or were they for poor Clarissa?’

  ‘Yes. No. I’m sorry. Please don’t…’

  A sharp knock sounded on the green baize door. It opened. Mrs Boydd-Black entered. Miranda froze.

  ‘Miss Frobisher, I wonder if… oh, I see you are engaged. Is anything the matter? Has this girl been giving trouble?’

  A cold fist of steel clenched and unclenched its sinewy talons deep inside Miranda’s soft, white belly. It squeezed her entrails hard. She held her breath.

  ‘Trouble? Good gracious, no. Miranda has a ‘‘free’’ this afternoon and has very sweetly volunteered to help me sort out all of this,’ said Miss Frobisher warmly, spreading her arms vaguely towards the chaos on the oyster carpet. ‘I really must get sorted out.’

  Miranda could see that the Headmistress was far from convinced. She felt the dominant gaze directly upon her, drinking in her penitent stance, bowed head and downcast eyes. Surely this was enough to tell Mrs Boydd-Black the true story.

  ‘I’m sure that you will pass the time profitably, Miss Frobisher,’ came the terse, ironic reply through pursed lips. ‘It is so very important to get things… sorted out,’ she added drily. ‘I came to see if you would do the floral centre-piece for the staff dinner this evening.’

  ‘Delighted,’ gushed Miss Frobisher.

  ‘Jolly good. Carry on… sorting things out.’

  The door closed behind the headmistress and as it shut firmly, Miranda knew that the distinct possibility of at the very least a Chair and Quarter Exercise, possibly a Half Exercise, had receded.

  ‘Phew. That was close,’ Miss Frobisher giggled.

  Miranda looked up, an uncertain grin of relief mixed with disbelief spreading like melting cheese on a baked potato across her wide mouth.

  ‘She would have skinned your bottom raw, my dear. Sherry?’

  Miranda could hardly believe her ears. She nodded quickly.

  ‘Mm. Please,’ she murmured.

  ‘Dry? Or something a little sweeter, perhaps?’

  ‘An Oloroso would be perfectly divine.’

  ‘Sweet and sticky is your weakness. Me too.’

  The art teacher turned to a tantalus and poured out their drinks. How tight her pale blue jeans were, Miranda marvelled. How closely the stretch of fabric hugged the plump cheeks of her firmly rounded bottom.

  ‘The old trout is OK actually. Firm, as they say, but fair. My God, can she be firm. Well,’ she said, returning to a spot just before the unlit fire and passing Miranda a generous measure of golden sherry, ‘here’s to illicit pleasure. Tact forbids me from saying ‘‘Bottoms up’’. I think you’ll understand. Hardly the right expression here at the Academy, don’t you think?’ she said with a wicked grin.

  Miranda snorted into her glass. The sweet liquid slivered down her chin. She wiped it away with the back of her hand, and then licked her fingers. Miss Frobisher watched the gesture just as a hungry cat would a carefree sparrow. Squatting down, the teacher motioned the pupil to join her, patting a space on the carpet beside her denimed thigh. As Miranda sat, Miss Frobisher peeled off her shoes and tossed them across the room. Miranda was instantly self-conscious of her flimsy white cotton uniform which rendered her little more than a gauche schoolgirl beside the sophisticated woman next to her on the carpet.

  ‘It’s getting chilly. I must keep you warm. Shall we light the fire. Hm?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘The matches are over there on the desk. Next to my cigarettes.’

  Miranda, rising elegantly, blushed furiously. The teacher laughed gently.

  ‘Just teasing. Help yourself to a Camel if you like. Light one for me.’ Miranda did so, thrilling slightly as the dry filter tip went from her lips to her teacher’s.

  ‘You took a bit of a risk, my girl.’

  ‘I thought you were down in the gardens. I’m sure I saw you.’

  ‘Really?’ frowned Miss Frobisher, perplexed.

  ‘In your yellow coat…’

  Miss Frobisher laughed.

  ‘Silly girl,’ she chuckled. ‘That was Madame Nina. Always worried about catching a chill. Neurotic about her voice. I lent her my coat.’

  Miranda bent forward and, half-kneeling, put a match to the paper and kindling. The white smoke curled and soon tiny orange flames were licking and lapping the shiny black coals. A comfortable silence settled between them as they sat before the glowing blaze, sipping their delicious sherry.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ whispered Miranda. ‘I could have dished you with Mrs Boydd-Black.’

  ‘Our headmistress is no fool. Wise as an owl. Knew something was in the wind, but trusts me to sort it all out.’

  ‘And I’m sorry for stealing. Stealing’s rotten.’

  ‘My. Quite the little penitent, aren’t we? Had you down as one of our tougher eggs. But I’m glad to hear you say that, Miranda. It strongly suggests that I should take a much more lenient view of things when determining your punishment.’

  A prickle of anticipation flickered through Miranda’s veins. Not quite excitement. Yet. But certainly a pleasurable apprehension.

  ‘Punishment?’ she echoed.

  ‘Yes. Punishment. But we will discuss that in more detail a little later. And remember, my dear. Punishment need not always be harsh. Sometimes, punishment can be sweet.’

  Miranda felt a pulse fluttering in her throat. This mildly perfumed, peach-skinned, cool goddess would be dealing with her bottom within the hour. The thought took hold of her and kindled her imagination just as her flaring match had brought the dark black coals to glowing life.

  ‘Come here. Closer.’ It was a gentle command.

  Miranda shuffled over and snuggled up close to her tutor. Thigh brushed thigh. The movement immediately bridged the gap — physical and emotional — that had up to that instant crackled between them. Miranda, squeezing her softness against the warmth of the more mature woman, felt at once both secure and safe. But it was a security laced with excitement, a safety tinged with tingling expectation.

  Miss Frobisher took Miranda’s head between her elegant hands and laid it gently down in her lap. Miranda surrendered willingly, curling up like a sleepy cat before the flickering coal fire. Thrilled by the touch of her teacher, she succumbed utterly to the mildly dominant embrace. As her wide eyes reflected the leaping flames, she became docile, supine and passive, suffused with a liquid joy of delicate tremulousness.

&n
bsp; ‘Tell me your story. Everyone here has a story,’ invited the golden voice of her tutor. ‘Tell me,’ she coaxed, her tone dropping a full octave to a mere honied purr. Silken fingers stroked the pupil’s blonde hair. Miranda, accustomed to the terse, secretive world of the titled and the rich, found it remarkably easy to talk. With absentee parents, no brothers or sisters, and few close friends among her circle of brittle sirens and vain studs, she had never had access to this emotional candour and sense of intimacy. She shared many long pent up sentiments and feelings.

  For a full hour they remained in close union, the teacher cradling the pupil as she listened attentively, never querying or questioning, simply encouraging and accepting. They drifted into a gentle, tender silence, united by their body heat and rhythmic breathing. The red coals settled, briefly disturbing their shared silence. Miranda, like a sleepy cat awakening, looked up and gazed into the large, serene eyes of Miss Frobisher. She studied their liquid depths in which the reds and orange golds of the coal fire were reflected. The neatly trimmed eyebrows. The luminous, porcelain skin. The slightly stub nose with the small, dark nostrils. And the mouth.

  Miranda closed her eyes and imagined Miss Frobisher’s plum-dark lips grazing her own. A tingling sensation teased her nipples. And the mouth. Miranda willed the imagined lips down onto her soft, white throat, pausing to suck before tracing a warm path down into the deep valley between her pulsing breasts.

  And the mouth.

  The thick lips, having paid full and lingering homage to her breasts, tormented nipples and curved belly, were now being willed down to Miranda’s pubic fringe. In her inner vision, Miranda saw herself naked except for a pair of white, tarty fishnet stockings. Miss Frobisher was taking them down, slowly, one by one, with her mouth. Now the tip of the silvery pink tongue was longingly licking her legs back up to the sensitive inner thighs, back up to that shadowed delta where her scented softness awaited …She shivered.

  ‘Chilly?’ murmured Miss Frobisher with a mild note of concern. She too had been running the silent film of fantasy behind her dreamy eyes. In it, she was pencil sketching a naked Miranda in postures of which she knew all too well the Royal Academy would strongly disapprove of, were the work ever to be unveiled and submitted to their feverish gaze.

  ‘No,’ Miranda sighed, opening her eyes and staring up hungrily at the beautiful mouth hovering a mere tantalizing twelve inches above her own.

  ‘I will build our fire,’ the teacher whispered.

  Our fire. Miranda almost hugged herself with delight. Our fire.

  ‘And we shall have music.’

  Miss Frobisher, after placing several generous pieces of coal together with a dry apple log onto the fire, padded softly over to her desk. She clicked on her old Bush portable. It had a mellow bass tone. Miranda expected the room to be filled with the austere strains of Radio Three. A shivering, tinkling piano recital. Scriabin, possibly. To her delight, Lou Reed whispered his carnal, curdling lyrics, as if sharing his dark secrets with them. The Bush belted out a selection of seventies pop records. Old favourites for the sophisticated teacher. New delights for her younger pupil.

  The mood exploded. Bowie’s ‘Drive In Saturday’ squealed, the notes wrapping around their brains like silk. The log crackled and blazed up, scenting the room with its balmy aroma of plums and custard. They ate dried apricots, nibbling the fruits and feeding one another. They fraggle-danced to Jagger’s ‘Brown Sugar’, bottoms gyrating lubriciously and then, belly to belly, slow-smooched to Elton John’s ‘Rocket Man’. Miss Frobisher cupped Miranda’s buttocks with a fierce tenderness.

  ‘Better tidy up,’ she laughed, releasing her willing captive. ‘Mrs Boydd-Black will no doubt be back. Any excuse.’

  They set to their task playfully. Both flushed and panting. They stacked the magazines, tidied up and shelved the strewn paperbacks, re-boxed pastel crayons and sticks of charcoal and put away the small tubes of oil paint according to size and colour. Miranda paused, holding a small tube with no label on it between her fingers. She gently unscrewed the top and peered in.

  ‘What colour is it?’ Miss Frobisher asked gaily.

  ‘Red,’ came the enraptured reply.

  ‘Red? Scarlet as in woman or vermilion as in sin?’

  ‘Red. Just like your lips,’ Miranda whispered audibly.

  The art teacher paused, carelessly scattering an armful of notes she had just painstakingly assembled, and strode softly across to Miranda. She took her by the hand.

  ‘Come,’ she commanded firmly.

  ‘Yes,’ her pupil meekly obeyed.

  They passed through into the bedroom next door. It was a much smaller room, much more intimate. It was warm. And dark. Miss Frobisher positioned Miranda next to a low divan bed, steadying her with a strong hand.

  ‘Skin the bunny?’ She smiled, her voice just under control.

  Miranda blinked, puzzled.

  ‘That’s what my granny used to say to me. At bedtime.’

  Undress. Miranda shivered pleasurably and surrendered herself up completely, passively allowing the older woman to ease her vest up over her breasts, shoulders and head. As the taut cotton sheath left her soft body, her breasts swung freely in their satin, heavy weight. The undressing left her blonde hair in tousled disarray. Then two cool thumbs worked their persistent way inside the elastic waistband of the tight, white, bottom-hugging shorts. Sinuous fingers.

  ‘Let’s skin the bunny,’ whispered the teacher in a low, urgent voice.

  She gently slid her cool, sensitive hands over the outer swell of her captive’s hips, peeling off the taut second skin of cotton in a single, sweeping gesture. They came to rest just above Miranda’s tremulous knees, leaving the shorts there to imprison the legs together. The creative, imaginative hands fluttered like two silent doves back up across Miranda’s soft buttocks and along her furrowed spine, coming to rest once more on the satin skin of her white shoulders.

  Soon the firm thumbs were exploring the upper slopes of the naked, perfectly formed, pendulous breasts. Miranda surrendered her aching, peaking nipples to the plucking, searching fingers. A delicate pincer of finger and thumb teased their tiny pinkness into thickening buds of quivering ecstasy.

  At length, the twin breasts lay cupped, weighed and squashed within the expert, knowing hands. Such creative, such intelligent, such vibrant hands. Time congealed. As her soft mounds thrilled beneath the pressure, Miranda signalled her compliance and delight with a trickle of secret silver from her tightly wedged thighs.

  Miss Frobisher slowly knelt, sinking to both knees in a languid genuflection. As her head lowered, her thickened, moist tongue traced a wet track down along Miranda’s white belly into the valley beneath. Miranda’s breath fluttered in her throat. On both knees, the art teacher pressed her face against the curve of the soft belly before her. It was a cameo of enthralled submission and dominant adoration.

  Miranda gazed down to see her swollen, ravished breasts bob lightly as they nuzzled Miss Frobisher’s hair. The warmth of her teacher’s breath against her naked belly sent little static thrills searing up and down the length of her vulnerable, exposed naked ness. Soon the warmth announced itself a little further down, and Miss Frobisher’s mouth came to rest as it closed softly over her opening flower.

  A faint rustling crackled as fine, small white teeth crunched and mouthed the frizz of golden pubic hair. Miranda shuddered and gripped the soft, cashmere-sheathed shoulders that pressed against her waist. Steadying herself, she tried to follow the impulse of nature to open her legs and part her throbbing thighs a little wider but the tight shorts remained at her knees, a fiercely tender bondage. Her long legs quivered. An urgency, hot and delicious, coursed through her scorching veins like liquid fire.

  Now the thick lips were working busily against her moist, sensitive flesh folds, dragging, sucking and deeply kissing her wetness with a dedicated feverishness. Miranda’s knees fluttered and spasmed. She swayed slightly. Miss Frobisher reached up behind and st
eadied her pupil by placing a firm, cool hand on the tremulous buttocks. Miranda almost swooned, so delicious was the sensation of the palm against her swollen, satin skin. Soon both cheeks were held and steadied, giving the inquisitive, adoring hands full opportunity to squeeze, mould, grip and enjoy the pliant, captive flesh. The fingers encompassed the heavy globes and tightened their grip, dragging outwards slightly, causing the cleft between the cheeks to widen. Soon those very fingertips were drumming along the innermost sensitive membrane of tingling flesh, lightly skimming the shadowed depths until Miranda almost slipped away into a complete, delirious abandon.

  ‘Punish me,’ she heard herself imploring hoarsely, beseechingly.

  Keeping her thick muscle of tongue pressed tightly into the labial folds that had parted as smoothly as velvet curtains, Miss Frobisher flickered her large, inquiring eyes upwards.

  Miranda gazed down, the hungry urgency in her own eyes meeting the soft, penetrating gaze of those below.

  ‘Punish me,’ she pleaded, her voice a mere feral whimper. She jerked her buttocks back, pressing them into her teacher’s firm palms. ‘Punish me for stealing. I must be severely punished.’

  ‘No,’ murmured Miss Frobisher, mouthing the word deliciously into Miranda’s wetness. ‘No harsh punishment for stealing. I have forgiven you for that. But tender, sweet discipline… yes. The discipline of love. That you shall have.’

  With one, easy, graceful movement she rose and sat on the edge of the bed, placing her hands on the swell of Miranda’s hips. In another delicious movement, as fluid as it was fluent, she twirled Miranda around, presenting the naked bottom a mere four inches from her parted lips. She planted a firm, lingering kiss on each supple globe of heavy, luminous flesh before nipping the joggling buttocks with her tiny white teeth. Miranda squealed out in sweet agony. Miss Frobisher mouthed the creamy flesh drunkenly, taking in folds of the passive, naked cheeks into her own warm wetness one by one. She gorged on the flesh as a leopard would feast on an antelope still warm from the kill.

  Burying her face deep into the saliva-silvered bottom, Miss Frobisher worshipped fully the rounded splendour, her tongue flickering to catch the warm, clear honey that spilled freely from the flesh below. Miranda cried out in sheer ecstasy, a primitive paean to pure pleasure. Gathering Miranda by her slender waist with her left arm, she eased the trembling girl down across her denimed lap.