The Academy

by Arabella Knight

  The rider took the lift up to the eighth floor and handed over his small package. Six men immediately abandoned their flickering screens. Tokyo would not be up for an hour. The package was quickly unwrapped to reveal an unmarked cassette. The cassette was inserted into a video. Champagne and vodka cocktails flowed as the sweating men, all sporting the uniform of striped shirt and healthy tan, expensive haircuts and tired eyes, crowded around the large screen, their jaded faces alight with expectation.

  On the screen, beautiful girls were being punished. A bottom, soft and creamy, was being hand spanked. Another, bronzed and proud, was being carefully swished with a supple bamboo cane. The men cheered lustily. Their ragged cries drew the eyes of a more senior colleague to the screen. A Bihar bullion expert, he had made his first million before they had learned to spell Porsche, let alone drive one. He frowned and shook his head sadly. These boys.

  Then the Asian banker, who had merely popped in to confirm a meeting in Bonn the following day before going on to another tiresome Embassy supper, froze in his chair. His eyes narrowed to fierce slits. On the screen was the girl he loved. Jaya. Beautiful Jaya, whose family had whisked her off on some pretext or other instead of allowing the pair of them to sort things out. Yes. There she was, her luxurious hair cropped and cruelly shaven to the scalp, her large, sorrowful eyes brimming with tears as her buttocks flinched under a brutal, scalding strap.

  ‘Where did you get that video?’ he barked angrily.

  ‘Where did it come from?’

  Several pale, tired faces swung round. He was shushed impatiently. He repeated his questions, this time in a voice of icy calm.

  ‘Little bloke I know. It’ll cost you a ton,’ an irritated voice snapped.

  The Bihar banker opened his wallet, which contained a photo of Jaya smiling shyly up at him, and peeled off five twenties. An outstretched hand grabbed the notes and replaced them with a small business card. The Asian scanned it.

  ‘And where can I get in touch with this Porteous fellow?’

  ‘Fulham Road. The number’s on the back. Now keep it quiet, Hazim. This bitch is getting it good and strong.’

  Hazim tucked the solicitor’s card carefully into his wallet and took a meditative sip of his iced lime juice. Tomorrow morning, the first plane to Bonn. He couldn’t cancel. Back by nightfall. Sixish. His secretary would arrange a meeting. No. Better still, he’d phone from Heathrow first thing. Porteous would be told to wait. Where, he wondered, was Jaya now? And where, if they were needed, could a reputable international bullion expert get hold of a team of heavies if the need arose? He closed his eyes. The iced lime juice tasted sweet.

  Miranda tapped gently on Emily Frobisher’s green baize door. It opened, almost immediately. Miranda stepped quietly into the dimly lit, untidy room. As usual, paperbacks, tissues and a dozen other items — the flotsam and jetsam of a creative but disorderly temperament — littered the carpet. Miranda smiled as her toes crunched on a little pile of acorns and pine cones.

  ‘Is it OK?’ she whispered. ‘Are you busy?’

  The words sounded strange to her even as Miranda spoke them. In those almost forgotten times before the Academy, she would never ask anyone if her arrival was convenient. She simply arrived. Now, here, with Emily, she experienced a curious hesitancy within herself, a touch of humility tinged with both awe and expectancy.

  Emily laughed warmly, delighted by Miranda’s new-found, shy respectfulness.

  ‘Of course it’s OK. I’m never too busy to see you. We have all night together. I’ve swopped my rota. I’m off duty.’

  Miranda grinned. Sometimes her nocturnal visits had to end abruptly if Emily was on night patrol duty. But tonight was theirs, entirely.

  ‘Some wine, my dear,’ Emily said, passing Miranda a large glass of chilled Chablis. Miranda’s lips found it crisp, dry and delicious.

  ‘There’s some chicken salad for you over there,’ Emily waved vaguely in the direction of her desk. She was delightfully undomesticated. Miranda found the white chicken breast, annointed with a light dressing which bore a trace of rosemary and garlic, and sank her teeth into the succulent flesh, tearing hungrily at her illicit supper with a keen, sharp appetite, all the keener and sharper after pleasuring the headmistress. Emily raised an arched eyebrow.

  ‘My, we are lusty tonight, aren’t we? I shall just slip into a bath I’ve been promising myself all evening. Relax, I won’t be long.’

  Miranda wolfed the chicken, and some bread and Stilton, as Emily bathed.

  Emily Frobisher started to sing happily in her bubble bath. The silvery notes seduced Miranda’s ears and drew her to the bathroom door. It was slightly ajar. Emily trilled an erotic coda from Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Miranda recognised it as the passage which signalled the delicious moment when a strict and pious duenna surrenders to the promise of forbidden pleasure and wicked abandonment. It was the sound of a spirit struggling with the yearning flesh which imprisoned it, of cold chastity broken on the wheel of inexorable carnality. The triumph of the venal flesh.

  The sensual music bubbled up from Emily’s fluted throat and spilled out in a wanton cascade over her trembling, moistened lower lip. Miranda breathed sharply with acute pleasure as she watched Emily’s tongue tip quiver in an effortlessly nightingaled arpeggio of liquid notes. The sweet ululation drew Miranda mesmerically to the side of the bath.

  Down in the sweetly scented, shining bubbles, Emily lay pink and passive. Miranda knelt down and closed her mouth over the slightly parted lips beneath her. A slow, searching kiss. The hot steam made the bending girl perspire. Sharp beads of salt stung her eyes like tears of remorse. Emily reached up and licked them away, her breasts rising and glistening as she did so. Bubbles, large and small, spangling and shivering, nestled in her deep, shining cleavage. Miranda bent down and burst them, one by one, with the tip of her quivering tongue.

  Emily had bunched her glorious hair into a disorderly top knot behind her, a large, black ebony clasp punishing it into place. Loosened by the steam, stray wisps dangled tantalising down over her left shoulder and along the snow-white, curved nape of her naked neck. Miranda’s fingers found and fondled them, curling them around and around her lazy fingers. Emily’s eyes sparkled invitingly. Miranda needed no further bidding. With trembling fingers, so certain yet so unsure, she loosened the ebony comb, allowing the glorious hair to tumble free. Fronds trailed in wet wisps as they spilled into the bath, or clung intently to the shining skin of Emily’s bare, wet shoulders and upper arms.

  Giggling naughtily, Emily rose from her screen of scanty bubbles to stand, proud and nakedly erect, in the bath. Her legs were splayed, her thighs open to Miranda’s penetrating gaze or touch. Scented steam rose like an uplifted veil from her wet belly and glistening hips. Droplets gathered on the slender slopes of her fully rounded breasts, splashing down one by one onto her pubic delta, remaining there like sparkling spangles of a shattered diamond strewn on a cobweb of spun gold. Miranda closed her lips over the thrilling pubic fuzz and sucked the sweet, nectar-like moisture. She gazed up into Emily’s eyes, her head swimming with giddy happiness.

  ‘Dry me,’ whispered the tutor, her brown eyes big and wide.

  ‘Of course,’ replied Miranda huskily, her blue eyes clouding to a pale grey.

  Miranda gathered Emily up into a large, loose bath towel and hugged her warm, naked body closely, tenderly. She patted the soft towelling across the beautifully sculptured shoulders and then down the sweep of the splendid spine. Emily shuddered deliciously as the hands beneath the towelling sought and found her taut, dripping buttocks. Butterfly fingertips dappled the velvet-skinned orbs of joggling flesh as they gently patted the rounded bottom dry. Slowly. Lingeringly. Often pausing to cup and weigh the breathtaking cheeks with infinite care and tenderness.

  Emily closed her eyes and moaned sweetly like a sleepy dove as the patting became firmer, more assured. She felt the questing hands pause, then drag the swollen flesh of each buttock apart, outwards. She
felt her cleft open and then gape, almost painfully. The torment was sweet. She shivered. The fluttering hands of her obedient tormentress swept up lightly over her swollen hips, skimmed across her tight belly and rose up to dry her breasts. Emily gasped, an audible bat squeak of raw sexuality as the hands closed over her exposed, defenceless breasts.

  The attention was careful, lingering and extremely detailed. Palms swept up beneath the breasts to pat the skin dry with the ticklish towelling, then dabbed the ripe flesh at either side. Next, the upper slopes of sensitive skin were gently wiped, downwards, until the tiny beads of sparkling water disappeared. The hands toiled briskly then as their delicious labours continued. They kneaded, squeezed and shaped the soft, pendulous bosoms with increasing expertise, with mounting boldness. The power balance shifted subtly moment by moment as Emily first offered, then found herself surrendering herself to Miranda.

  Miranda sensed the change. It occurred when she pressed her palms against the puckering, slightly swollen berry-like nipples. She was sure of it when she took each nipple between a fiercely tender finger and thumb, working the tiny erections assiduously, then between her lips. When her teeth closed over the nipples to bite and chew, and Emily screamed like a wounded seagull, Miranda sensed that her dominance was completely assured.

  She drew her head back and inspected Emily’s face. It was pale, the features drained with exhausted lust, the tiny muscles slack with passion. Miranda returned her mouth to each nipple, bending to pleasure them one by one between her teeth. She nibbled with controlled precision, submitting each pink peak to extreme, maximum pleasure.

  Extreme, maximum pleasure. The words, or at least the echoes of the blindly understood meaning, reverberated around her crimson mind. Pleasure, pure and perfect. Miranda, losing control, a spasm of urgent desire thrilling down along her taut thighs, buried her face deeply, totally into the creamy mounds of cushioning flesh. A trace of the scented foam pricked her lips. Her wetness streamed in spun sugar droplets from her tingling, opening labial folds of hot, tormented flesh. Her own breasts ached. Sweetly. Each erect nipple straining through the wet sheath of her soaking cotton vest. She squealed as they grazed against Emily’s taut belly. Again. And again. Her hot joy splashed in a molten teardrop onto Emily’s knee.

  The tutor opened her eyes. Opened them slightly wider, then narrowed them with growing understanding. Emily slipped her cool hand to staunch the flow between Miranda’s glistening thighs. They gazed, faces inches apart, intently. Who was to get the upper hand tonight? Who? Miranda’s heart beat wildly. Eager to dominate, yet even more anxious to submit to Emily’s fierce caresses, she was transfixed in the indecision of her own turmoil. Emily too was undecided. Her basic needs were to dominate, her deeper needs were to be dominated. Locked in their indecision, the two naked bodies closed together, after Miranda had cast aside her vest and shorts with an urgent abandon.

  Urgent. At least they both instinctively knew that their wants and needs were urgent. They slipped to the floor, hips to hips, bare breasts pressed together, lips fused in a carnal weld. Forehead to perspiring forehead, like wild beasts locked in mortal combat, they drowned in one another’s gaze. Slowly, with the wisdom of her age and experience, Emily dropped her hands down to Miranda’s hips and turned the exquisite waist a quarter turn. She slowly sank her face down into the delicately blond-haired triangle of Venus, lips stretched apart, tongue glistening as it flickered.

  As if echoing the balletic movement, Miranda grasped Emily’s waist and brought her face down into its living honeycomb of oozing sweetness. With a sinuous glide, they each rolled, grasping the other’s ankles. They lay, buried in each other’s centre of delight, in absolute balance, in total equipoise. Miranda’s body buckled as it wrapped itself into Emily’s whiteness, Emily curled so that she was buried in to Miranda’s clenched thighs. They licked, and lapped and they sucked and they bit and they mouthed and they tongued until, with a mutual scream of unbridled pleasure that threatened to waken the mournful owls in the bleak elms outside, they came.

  Chapter Seven

  The harsh, melancholy chorus of wheeling rooks woke Miranda. She emerged from her warm glow of restful sleep and delicious memories. Dawn. A quiet time, once the rooks had settled in their leafless treetops. Stillness. In the cool darkness of her spartan dormitory Miranda felt relaxed and contented. Soon she would rise, wash her face briskly and then go down to the bright, warm kitchen to prepare breakfast for the community.

  Breakfast brought her mind to Sandstones, where she would have her mocha coffee served in the sunny drawing room and where her private telephone never stopped ringing. Sandstones. She wondered if Aunt Emma would sweep up the gravel drive today and take her away from the Academy. Why had she not already done so? Perhaps she was in Rome. It occurred to her that Aunt Emma’s delay was not too great a disappointment. There had been, after all, Emily last night. The wine, the bathroom. And afterwards.

  Jane and two of her sleepy-eyed greenbands were already at work down in the kitchen, busy at the vast Aga. The smell of toast and sizzling bacon greeted Miranda’s nostrils. Her mouth watered. One of the stolen pleasures of early morning kitchen duties was to have a furtive rasher, crisply grilled, from the staff breakfast.

  At Sandstones, Miranda could have wafer thin slices of Parma ham in a bed of diced, chilled honey-dew melon. Or thick Braddenham gammons poached with peaches. But how much sweeter, she thought as she licked her fingers impishly, was a rasher of stolen streaky bacon! Forbidden fruit pricked the juices more keenly.

  The large kettle had already boiled. She made a cup of instant coffee and sipped it. Jane was brisk with her greenbands. They seemed to be sulky and sluggish. It would not be long, Miranda reflected, before a cane would swish, or a strap would bark, across the pouting rumps of the resentful girls. Jane’s tone became increasingly severe. The taller of the two greenbands turned and gave Jane a surly look. The scowl was intercepted. Miranda’s pulse quickened, anticipating instant punishment, but a small saucepan of milk on the Aga suddenly seethed and threatened to spill its frothy contents. Eyes and hands were diverted to the rescue — and the moment of danger for the languid greenband’s buttocks passed.

  Miranda remembered her first ten days as a green-band. They had been fearful, terrible times. One’s bottom was anybody’s, it seemed. Merely the collective property of all who dwelt at the Academy, to be punished at will or whim. As a greenband, one walked on eggshells, never daring to transgress. Under the constant shadow of the hovering strap or flickering cane, punishment, and the very fear of punishment, dripped in the air like humidity in a torrid, tropical zone.

  Crash. A sparkling white plate shattered on the hard, flagstone floor. The taller of the two green-bands turned anxiously, guiltily, to where Jane was standing, trimming the rind from bacon rashers.

  ‘Dustpan and brush. Get it cleared up,’ Jane snapped waspishly.

  The girl bent down on one knee and swept up the clinking debris. When she returned from the dustbin, Jane was drying her hands slowly.

  ‘Come here, girl,’ she ordered.

  With sorrowful eyes and hands clasped behind her back, the girl timorously approached the spot by the large wooden table where Jane stood impatiently.

  ‘You’ve been asking for a sharp reminder ever since I got you out of your bed this morning. Bend over.’ It was a curt command. Miranda noticed that Jane was tapping the wooden table top with one, outstretched finger. Such powerful control, she thought. How terrible to dominate with a fingertip.

  Well trained and already highly disciplined in the ways of the Academy, the svelte girl instantly bent down over the table top. Breasts squashed, arms outstretched and face to one side, she parted her legs slightly, toes rising up from the cold flagstones. The punishment was briskly administered, but Miranda knew that it was as severe and undoubtedly painful as it was economical. Jane had snatched up a long-handled wooden spoon and had proceeded to spank the upturned, rounded buttocks eight times — four str
okes to each cheek — in rapid succession. The curved wooden head of the spoon almost bounced off the taut white cotton shorts as it scalded the bottom within. Miranda flinched, knowing full well the measure of the accuracy and the blistering effect of the eight rapid swipes across the firm flesh.

  Miranda caught sight of the second greenband. Frozen in the ambiguous grip of fear and curiosity, repulsion and attraction, the shivering girl peeped over her shoulder, wincing at the chastisement yet almost magnetically drawn to it. In her confusion, one of the eggs which she was cracking into a large china bowl missed the rim and slithered down onto the floor. Terrified, she wiped up the yellow mess with a nearby cloth and quickly nudged the tell-tale fractured shell under the Aga with her trembling toes. Miranda smiled to herself. How futile. All misdemeanours were eventually, inexorably, unearthed at the Academy. And punishment was as swift as it was certain.

  ‘Now get back to your work and no more stupid nonsense out of you this morning. Understand?’ Jane was tapping the wooden spoon against the palm of her outstretched hand, as if the spoon’s work was incomplete.

  ‘Settle down to your duties, or you’ll regret it. Bitterly.’

  Silence returned to the kitchen for a few moments, then the door creaked.

  ‘Mrs Boydd-Black wants a cup of coffee in her office,’ the third of Jane’s greenbands announced.

  Miranda had casually wondered where she was. She had wonderful cornflower blue, slightly frightened, eyes. She seemed to be terrified of Jane. Had Miranda pulled down the girl’s white shorts and inspected her pale bottom, the faint pink stripes such an examination would have revealed could fully justify the fear brimming in the large blue eyes.