The Academy

by Arabella Knight

  ‘Clare,’ she almost whispered, tapping the cane against her thigh.

  ‘Yes?’ gulped the girl anxiously, shifting from buttock to buttock.

  ‘Come here, Clare.’

  Miranda tapped the scuffed leather vaulting horse with the tip of her clouded yellow cane. Clare rose up unsteadily onto one knee, wobbled, then stood up. Reluctantly, she approached the leather bound horse.

  ‘Up,’ commanded Miranda. ‘Face down, toes just touching the floor.’

  Clare assumed the position as instructed, fully aware that it left her beautiful bottom exposed to anything Miranda might choose to do with it or to it. She eyed the cane fearfully over her shoulder as she wrapped her arms around the cold, shining belly of the vaulting horse, her toes scrabbling to touch the polished wooden floor.

  ‘This time, you will keep your shorts on. All future interviews or subsequent punishments will be conducted with your shorts off. First,’ Miranda continued imperiously to establish her supremacy, ‘I will be brief. Simply answer my questions and your discomfort will not be too great. Second, do not plead for pity. I will show you little mercy. I know why you are here and propose to make sure that you fully benefit from your visit to the Academy. Although you do not think so now, one day you will thank me for being so strict.’

  Approaching the horse she rested the gleaming length of bamboo across Clare’s tightly rounded buttocks. They flinched and clenched in a reflex of fearful anticipation. The cane lay patiently, full of potent malice, across the tightly bunched cheeks sheathed in their taut cotton. Clare squirmed noticeably beneath the tender threat of the inert wood.

  ‘Tomorrow, we shall have an intensive tutorial. I will go over all the rules and regulations, disciplines and punishments that operate here. Tonight, I merely wish to get to know you. Informally.’

  She raised the cane 26 inches up above the trembling bottom.

  ‘Name?’

  Clare answered, giving the name of a bullion speculator often featured in the financial press. Recent money, Miranda thought. A tough, brash breed. ‘Age?’

  ‘Eighteen… nineteen next month.’

  ‘Virgin?’

  Clare remained silent. Swipe. The cane flickered down across her tight, white shorts, cutting deep into the fleshy double domes. The pale arms hugged the belly of the apparatus. On the floor, the punished girl’s toes scrabbled in surprised pain.

  ‘Virgin?’ repeated Miranda laconically.

  ‘N…N…No,’ whispered the anxious, fearful girl.

  ‘Reasons for attending this place of correction? Why were you sent here?’

  ‘I’m not sure —’

  Swipe. The bamboo cane swished down once more across Clare’s plump, rounded rump. She squealed, wriggling her buttocks deliciously.

  ‘Fighting, swearing and bullying…’ she spluttered.

  Swish. Another cutting swipe of supple wood on cotton-sheathed flesh.

  ‘Smoking… drinking sherry… breaking the rules…’

  ‘That’s better,’ murmured Miranda. ‘You will find it easier to confess. All questions must be answered. Never try to conceal anything from me. Ever. I shall and will find out. I need to know everything. I am in complete charge and control of you for the next few weeks at least.’

  Clare rubbed her feet together, toes curling. She shook her golden curls as she tried to wipe a tear which had escaped her green eyes against the scuffed leather surface of the horse.

  ‘Get down, Clare. But remember. Listen, learn and obey. Next. You, Zoe. Up on the horse.’

  Miranda tapped the worn leather with the tip of the cane. Zoe shivered and clambered up, babbling loudly as she did so.

  ‘My name is Zoe Winterman and I’m just eighteen and I’m not a virgin and I was sent down from my last school for the same things as Clare and please oh please don’t —’

  Swish. The cane sliced the raven-haired girl’s spreadeagled bottom with a crisp, incisive lash which, falling exactly across the middle of her cleft, quartered the bucking orbs with mathematical exactitude. She squealed.Swish. Swish. Her anguish was redoubled as she squirmed under the cruel bamboo that kissed her flesh so insistently.

  ‘Silence. Speak only when spoken to. Understand?’ Miranda said menacingly.

  Zoe nodded, her mane of raven hair tumbling over her white shoulders in sweet disorder. In the massive silence, her stifled sniffling sounded all the more pathetic.

  ‘Now. Answer me slowly and properly. Do you intend to reform and behave yourself while at the Academy?’

  Zoe nodded her reply. Swish. The cane spoke once more. Zoe’s bottom bounced, the deep cleft of her rounded cheeks accentuated by the tight, white cotton shorts that moulded and pertly defined each buttock. She squealed.

  ‘Answer my questions, Zoe,’ Miranda hissed.

  ‘Sorry, yes… I mean no, I mean I will be good …’ Zoe whimpered, frightened and confused.

  Swish. Again, a lethal swipe across her generous buttocks, cracking down onto the swelling domes of luminous flesh. ‘Silence. Get down. Next.’

  Susie scampered to the horse, her blonde hair swinging impishly behind her. She had an elfin tread and the gait of a naughty pixie. Miranda immediately felt herself drawn to this impertinent little minx, drawn to punish and to dominate — and later, perhaps, to enjoy.

  Susie, being petite, struggled to mount the leather horse. She slithered twice from the slippery mount which loomed up over her on its tall wooden legs. Miranda raised the cane and swished it against Susie’s plump little bottom. The startled girl turned, glared and then redoubled her efforts. Miranda watched the buttocks squirming provocatively as Susie eventually wriggled up and sat astride her mount in triumph.

  ‘Down on your tummy, Susie. Bottom up,’ Miranda chided the minx sternly, managing to suppress a smile.

  The petite greenband obeyed, straddling the gym apparatus sensuously.

  ‘Name?’

  Susie, not without a flicker of rebellious pride, gave the surname of one of the current leading television game-show personalities.

  ‘Age?’

  ‘Seventeen.’

  ‘Virgin?’

  ‘Yes,’ came the soft response.

  Swish. The cane whispered even more softly. Susie whimpered slightly as the bamboo cut across her perfect bottom. She slithered down from the vaulting horse, her belly dragging against it during the ungainly descent.

  ‘Bloody bully,’ she hissed as she rubbed her rump.

  ‘Don’t hit me with that cane anymore, OK? I’ll not stand for it. Just you wait until my dad gets hold of you…’

  ‘Silence.’

  Miranda did not shout the command — such a slip would have suggested loss of control. She simply dropped her voice down to a deadly whisper.

  ‘Shorts off. Now.’

  ‘You can’t do this. Who the hell do you think —’ Susie wailed.

  In a vicious twinkling, Miranda yanked the tight white shorts down to the protesting girl’s ankles then scythed Susie down onto the rough, prickly coconut matting. The diminutive rebel squealed as her sensitive skin sank into the abrasive, wiry prickles. Miranda pounced, positioned her foot firmly in the small of Susie’s squirming, wriggling back and flicked the cane down four times. The whippy bamboo licked the writhing rump with savage affection. Susie, firmly pinioned, bucked and threshed as the searing swipes kissed her naked bottom, striping it with discernable pinkish strokes. The punished girl buried her face in her quivering hands and sobbed hot tears of vexation and shame.

  Spoiled little madam, Miranda thought. No breeding, no backbone. Just easy money. The type who could afford anything but knew the value of nothing. And a virgin? With the showbiz connections she found that very strange. Daddy’s little princess? Decidedly. Daddy probably kept her well away from men backstage. Lesbian potential? Possibly. Perhaps the girl underfoot needed awakening …Miranda made a mental note to the effect that Susie would prove the most interesting of this penitent trio.

  ‘Back
over there with the other two. On your knees, hands on head,’ she commanded.

  ‘Get lost, fat bitch,’ Susie muttered, sniffling as she stomped back to where Clare and Zoe knelt, pale and trembling.

  ‘Susie,’ Miranda called softly, her tone dangerously controlled.

  ‘Oh what now?’ The sulking girl pouted, pulling her shorts up over her scalded rump and flouncing around, hands on hips, to stare directly back at her imperious tormentress.

  ‘I want you to do something for me, Susie, and do it at once. I want you to go over to the wall bars and climb up about four or five bars. Can you do that for me, please?’

  ‘Suppose so,’ answered Susie, tossing her hair and shrugging her shoulders petulantly.

  ‘Thank you,’ Miranda whispered, her tone saccharine sweet and carefully modulated.

  Susie padded over towards the wall bars, her pert bottom swaying gently in a lazy, provocative manner. Miranda’s hand tightened around the cane, almost as if in anticipation. Susie approached and then mounted the bars, scrambling up until her little feet were at least six feet clear of the floor. Miranda followed, climbed up alongside the clinging girl and swiftly bound her hands and wrists to the wooden spar with two lengths of thin rope. The knots were cruel and tight. Susie hung at full stretch, her hands tightly bound, her breasts squashed into the bars, her feet pointing downwards. Miranda removed her shorts down to her pathetic ankles and pulled Susie’s vest up over the bulge of the bunched breasts, revealing the bare buttocks. Susie squirmed and squealed.

  ‘You are here to do a few simple things, girl. Listen, learn and obey. Do you understand?’

  ‘Pig,’ howled Susie, her aching arms infuriating her.

  Miranda placed the cane down gently, almost tenderly, onto the highly polished gym floor. It rattled slightly. A dry, eerie sound. Raising her hands up to shoulder height, Miranda placed them palm down over Susie’s bare cheeks. The plump buttocks filled each cupped palm with warm, recently punished flesh. Miranda squeezed, gently but firmly, spreading the defenceless bottom apart, widening the cleft ruthlessly. Susie squealed. Without pity, and determinedly deaf to the frantic protestations from the penitent girl suspended by her tightly bound wrists, Miranda drew a thick fold of the imprisoned flesh between her splayed fingers and thumb pincers. And twisted.

  The cheeks became mere wax within her cruel grip. Susie’s tiny, white-stockinged feet, toes straight down, danced in the empty air. The arch of her instep spoke mutely of her pain. Miranda’s hands worked the bare bottom like a potter works pliable clay. Squeezing and gripping, twisting and turning. A few hot tears splashed down from Susie’s screwed up eyes as her liquid remorse moistened her naked bosom. Miranda’s firm thumbs burrowed slowly, deeply, into the exposed, warm shadowed cleft between the soft cheeks, finding then rubbing the sensitive membrane therein with burning strokes.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry…’ gasped the petite girl, her spine arched in exquisite torment.

  ‘Silence. Face the wall,’ commanded her punisher, stooping down and snatching up the cane. Miranda tapped Susie’s bottom twice, and then took two steps back.

  ‘No. Please…’ whimpered the girl, straining to look down over her tear-stained shoulder, her eyes large and wide with fear.

  ‘Listen, learn and obey. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes. I do. I promise to…’

  ‘No, you don’t. Not really. Not yet. But you will. Believe me.’

  Miranda stood next to her suspended captive, raised the supple cane and swished it vertically up against the taut cheeks. Again. Then again. Swish. Swish. Swish. The thin wood sliced through the air and bit into the tight satin flesh. A long thin wail of distress filled the cavernous gym as Susie gave voice to her anguish.

  ‘When you get back on your knees, consider. And consider this very carefully. You can do things two ways at the Academy. The painful way, or the very painful way. The choice, such as it is, is yours, girl.’

  Reaching up, Miranda deftly undid the cords that bound the slender, white wrists. Susie slumped down onto her striped rump with a sudden bump. She snivelled, dried her eyes and watched the tip of the bamboo cane with a mixture of wary anxiety and grudging respect. Susie scampered back to her allotted place between the two awestruck girls, wriggled into her shorts and sank to her trembling knees. The cool white crisp cotton that kissed her hot flesh was soothing. Bliss.

  Miranda turned and surveyed the penitent trio. The three girls, kneeling, gazed up at her sorrowfully. Miranda suddenly felt the meaning of power. Power and control. It broke over her like a delicious surge. She had, of course, exercised considerable power and influence in her life before the Academy. Gossip columnists stalked her. Head waiters had fawned. Acquaintances had imitated. Her name, her money and her privileged status had opened many doors, turned many heads. But this new-found, intimate power was almost intoxicating.

  To be so close, so palpably close to the freshly washed, soap-scented skin of a naked bottom. To exercise sovereign control, domination even, over a tear-stained girl’s bare buttocks — ruling the tender flesh with cane, strap or naked hand. To feel the pliant flesh sink and yield to her own touch. These were all exotic, hothouse fruits new to her palate, new to the tongue. Fruits she had not tasted until her arrival at the Academy, and none more intensely than this evening in the gym. And the flesh of this fruit was luscious. And the flavour of this fruit was sweet.

  ‘Time for bed. Follow me in silence to your rooms. In the morning, first bell will sound. Be up, dressed and ready to come down to breakfast by second bell. I will collect and supervise you. Tardiness will not be tolerated. Latecomers will be publicly thrashed. Up. In silence,’ Miranda commanded sternly.

  The quartet of skimpily uniformed girls, one erect and confident, three muted and subdued, trod the carpeted passageways through the Academy in silence. Miranda, cane in hand, wrist loose and supple, drove her greenbands as a goosegirl, wand in hand, once drove geese. Zoe’s was the first dormitory they arrived at, and so, leaving Clare and Susie standing, heads bowed, outside, Miranda ordered her in.

  ‘Strip, and into bed,’ she commanded crisply.

  Zoe dawdled as she shyly unvested her milky bosom. Miranda flicked the cane impatiently. The humming bamboo caused Zoe to shiver and peel off her shorts in haste. Miranda noted the dark pubic delta at the soft, seamless junction of the naked girl’s thighs. Not a virgin, she suddenly remembered. The thought thrilled. Miranda quenched it, focusing on her duties.

  ‘Bed,’ she instructed.

  But despite her determination to remain coolly clinical and in command, Miranda’s heart fluttered with an unexpected urgency as she watched the naked girl turn, raise one knee and bend her golden suppleness down over the stark white sheet. Zoe’s bottom bulged fulsomely as she clambered into the bed. Miranda savoured the audible shiver as the cold linen kissed the warm flesh. The bare buttocks were beautiful. Quite superb. Spankable.

  I hope she is a bad girl. A very bad girl, Miranda suddenly thought. I want to spank her. Have her all to myself, warm and softly naked, bare-bottomed over my lap. My hand resting gently on her swelling curves, her rising mounds of pliant flesh. Then, the intimate punishment. My hand holding her down by the soft white nape of her neck. Or gripping her protesting hands by the wrists. Her hot tears on my bare thighs. The kiss of palm on cheek. Hot, hard palm on soft, juddering buttocks.

  Miranda sighed and snapped out of her intense reverie. All in good time. There would be tomorrow. And many more tomorrows after that. Tomorrows full of such sweet sorrows. Zoe’s head lay sideways on the single, hard pillow. Her eyes were still open.

  ‘Are you a bad girl, Zoe?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ whispered the girl.

  ‘Good,’ whispered Miranda, then suddenly corrected herself. ‘I mean, goodnight.’

  Minutes later, Clare shook her golden curls and closed her large, green eyes as her tight vest came off. Interesting breasts, Miranda mused. I will soap them in the shower, and dry them with a
warm, white towel. Very slowly and very, very thoroughly.

  Shadows played along the length of Clare’sdimpled spine as she stooped and stepped out of her tiny tight shorts. Between her exposed thighs, her pubic fuzz sparkled like spun gold. Miranda caught her breath. She shuddered as the desire to touch, to delicately fingertip the spun gold seized her. To trace a quivering fingertip through the matted web of tiny golden curls.

  ‘Get into bed,’ she commanded, her throat tightening.

  Clare obeyed, her breasts bobbing as she bent and climbed in between the spartan covers which she drew up modestly to her chin. Miranda approached the bed. Reaching down, she slowly picked up the covers between her trembling fingers and eased them back. Over the soft, pale shoulders. Further back, down over the milky, rounded breasts. Further, to reveal the swell of the taut, flat belly. Further, to allow the swell of the hips to emerge. Miranda gazed steadily into Clare’s shy but untroubled gaze.

  The splendid breasts wobbled, the dark nipples suddenly and briefly mobile. Miranda steadied the pillowy flesh until it calmed into delicious stillness. Clare returned her steady gaze unflinchingly. A tacit communion trembled between them. Miranda swept her hand, knuckles against the silky flesh, down over the flat belly to the golden curls between the softly parted thighs. Slightly nervous, yet thrilled with her sheer wanton audacity, Miranda gathered a wisp of the golden pubic hair between her finger and thumb, and tugged gently.

  Clare blinked and gasped softly through parted lips. Miranda tweaked the captive curl of slightly wiry, oily pubic hair. Clare winced and silently mouthed a muted protest. Miranda arched her eyebrow, challenging the tremor of protest. Clare closed her wet lips, firmly crushing any flicker of rebellion. Miranda smiled a soft, secret smile of triumph. With her curled little finger, Miranda teased up fronds of the golden downy fuzz. Delicious. Bliss. This was what power meant. Power and absolute dominion. But she would not abuse it. Not wickedly, like Matron. No. Not like that.

  Notions of decent behaviour, of fair play and doing the correct thing were suddenly banished by the raw, carnal desire to tie and bind Clare with ropes and cords that bit into her passive, pale flesh. Miranda suddenly bubbled with a silver trickle of sheer wet excitement. Yes. Yes, she would rope this filly in and then, when Clare was utterly at her mercy…