‘I’ve got a date, I’ve got a date tonight,’ she sang, feeling silly, because Henry was more than a date, he was her super lover, not that all her lovers weren’t super – they had to be, or they wouldn’t be allowed to love her! – he was a friend, he was a kiss-smooth body under his adorable power-striped suit, he was a briefcase stuffed with papers that had lots and lots of dollar signs on them, he was always working and never seeing her as much as she wanted, he was adorably cute and maddeningly rich! Or perhaps the other way around.

She looked at herself in the mirror on the ceiling, then in the mirror over the fireplace, then tried to look at both at once, trying to find a flaw in her body, something she could have a good worry about, and failing, as she knew she would. Feeling naughty, she pressed her bare breasts to the window, misty from the night’s breath. The few passers-by showed no astonishment at the sight of a nineteen-year-old heiress pressing her naked teats to her window. Out of their gaze lay the lush forest of blonde curls that prettily garlanded her pubis; but the full, ripe young breasts, with their big soft nipples like apricots in a dish of honey, were nakedly, radiantly visible. She felt quite delicious and naughty, then put her fingers over her nipples as though from modesty, but really to give them a little stroking, because the act of showing herself nude to strangers made her quite tingly with excitement. She wished that all the millions of London’s people could look at her at once, and the idea made her sex moisten a little.

She wished Cassie were here, sweet Cassandra, her friend who was more than a friend, so that they could stand naked together, and look out at Chelsea, and giggle and stroke each other and have a little cuddle, and then maybe . . . Oh, what was the use? Cassie was in Spain, her last letter from Marbella answered eagerly, then followed up, then followed by a plea for contact, and no further letter had come. She must do something about it . . . One of these days. Go to damn Spain herself, maybe, and find her, for Cassie was too special to lose for ever, and when she had found her, give her a good telling-off, and be really, really cross, and pull her jeans down and give her a darn good spanking on her bare bottom – well, it would be her bare bottom, wouldn’t it, since Cassie didn’t usually bother to wear panties – and then when her bottom was all red and smarting, they would have a stupendous cuddle and kisses, then put their arms round each other and . . .

Every time she thought of Cassie, she ended up the same way, all wet and fluttery in her sex! Damn! She grinned ruefully. One of these days! Yet, as she padded into the kitchen to make breakfast, not bothering to slip on a robe, she wondered why she had thought of actually spanking Cassie. She was so mad at Cassie’s flightiness, her neglect – ooh, she was so horrid and selfish! – that it seemed right she should be punished. Tears, hurt looks, a shouting match, would have no effect, Cassie would just laugh.

‘Cassandra,’ she would say, ‘do you wish to break my heart, you neglectful temptress?’

‘Yes,’ Cassie would say, with a rich smile. She knew Cassie. Yes, a good spanking, that was the thing. Make her bottom squirm – her bare bottom, mind, those lovely globes all twitchy and pink and hot under my bare palm!

God, she thought, I’m dripping wet down there! What gave me the idea of spanking her? I’ve never thought of that before. And then she remembered that curious book she had bought the day before in the Charing Cross Road. She took it for the binding, really, in sumptuous white Morocco, which would look nice on her groaning bookshelf alongside all the other white Morocco bindings. And she had felt so . . . sexy as she bought it! Books as furniture, indeed, that was in the bookseller’s disapproving eye.

‘I do read all my books, you know,’ she said severely, and he grinned.

‘You’ll read that one, Miss, and be back for more. I know by your eyes.’ The cheek of the man!

The book lay on the coffee table, awaiting transfer to the shelf, alongside all the things in French and Spanish and German which she felt obliged to plough through – how she could enthral a dinner party with her tales from eighteenth-century travellers in the Caucasus, or tickle their palates with recipies as served to Louis XIV! But a quick glance had told her this book was not about cookery or travel, except by the kinkiest of definitions.

De Artibus Castigationis, by one Parfaite Cecilia of Ubrique – a nun from some mysterious Spanish convent? – printed in Amsterdam in the seventeenth century, and evidently a translation from some monkish Latin. The English title was The Fine Arts of Chastisement, and she could see why it had to be published in Amsterdam. The frontispiece was an engraving, showing a naked girl strapped to a flogging frame, with four vicious whip-thongs frozen in mid-air on their way to stroking her writhing back. She was being whipped by another woman, wearing a strangely exciting costume of tight chains and feathers, and Jane wondered what was going through the mind of each woman as they conspired in their savage ritual.

In the kitchen, she prepared coffee and eggs and juice, and brought her meal to the coffee table. She ate lazily, forcing herself not to look at the book until she could relax with a cigarette, but still she wolfed the food, without admitting she was hurrying to open it. It was a quarter past seven; annoyed at her impatience to look at the silly thing, she told herself to make sure her kit was ready for her market stall before sitting down to relax. She would open the book, of course, but only to kill time before going off in her Range Rover about nine. It would probably be a disappointment.

She went into her workroom, where her moulds and turning-wheels and kilns lay cool from the night, and inspected the shelves full of gaudy wax candles. She began to work, though it was scarcely arduous, filling boxes with the bright wax ornaments, for she considered them works of art, really, although happily her customers burnt them at dinner parties in Hampstead and Islington, and had to come back for more. There were even nice chocolate candles, which you couldn’t burn, but you could eat them, and every single candle was modelled from a man’s erect penis.

‘A girl has to have a trade,’ she would say, ‘and my great-something grandfather made his fortune up in my native turf, which is rainy old Northumberland, by making candles, and all sorts of other things too, and that is why his lovely little great-something granddaughter happens to own a flat in Chelsea as well as big chunks of said Northumberland, and why is it so strange to make a fortune selling candles, anyway it’s sort of in my blood, you know? and yes, they are all modelled from life . . .’

Her work complete, she returned to the table, sat down and poured herself another cup of black coffee, lit a Gauloise, then nonchalantly yawned again, and reached for the book with fingers that she wished were not trembling. Being naked made reading it seem somehow naughty, and she put her feet up on the coffee table with her thighs apart, which seemed naughtier still.

The book was copiously illustrated, and she studied the pictures with increasing, horrified fascination. The text was solemn, po-faced even, with detailed descriptions of punishments, tortures, and the equipment used to inflict them. She saw torments she would not have thought bearable, with metal clamps, rods, and harnesses merciless in their caress of naked flesh. The majority of the illustrations, however, showed floggings in all their terrible forms. Naked men and women were lashed with a variety of horrid implements – cane, tawse, scourge or birch – and as she scrutinised the loving detail of the punishments, Jane realised that the fingers holding her cigarette had unconsciously strayed to her quim, which was quite tingly and wet as she stroked. She put the cigarette out, and, swallowing, put her hand back between her legs and, as she read on, rubbed her stiffening clitoris with the tips of her fingers. She thought of herself lashed by those fearsome whips, and shuddered. What must it be like? Then she thought of being dressed in that curious gaudy harness, and flogging Cassie’s naked bottom with a long birch or cane, and shut her eyes as she felt her quim gushing with hot love-juice. What, oh what, must it be like?

This is crazy! she thought, and opened her eyes. Trembling, she made her way to the bathroom for a shower, but once there, she could not help looking at her buttocks in the mirror and wondering what they would look like after a naked spanking, or zurrado as Parfaite Cecilia quaintly called it. On impulse, she picked up one of her silver hairbrushes and slapped herself gingerly on her bottom, but it hardly hurt at all. She spanked herself again, harder, and saw a pretty crimson flush where her naked skin had received the blow. Another slap made her bottom nice and crimson, and it did hurt, now. She began to spank herself as hard as she could, feeling the hot smart suffuse her body with a giddy glow that was pain and pleasure at the same time. She looked at herself in the mirror, and saw her eyes heavy with desire, her lips slack and red. On and on she spanked herself, not counting the blows.

‘Naughty girl! Silly girl!’ she hissed with mock severity. She thought through her stinging pain, my poor bare bottom is glowing now, like the furnace for my candle moulds, and she thought then of all those cocks somehow inside her at once, fucking her soaking quim as her naked bottom squirmed under a spanking; then it was more than a spanking, a heavy four-thonged whip lashing her without pity, making her helpless naked body writhe under her caress, as her cunt-petals now writhed pink and glistening at the caress of her fingers, waving and swelling like some beautiful sea-flower.

The silver hairbrush descended without ceasing on Jane’s bare nates; her hand was on her clit, throbbing and hard, sending shock waves of pain and desire through her nipples and spine. Her cunt-petals lapped the waters that flowed from her gushing sex, and as her bottom smarted and glowed with fiery pain, Jane Ardenne cried out in the savage sweetness of her orgasm.

Jane nursed her own glass of champagne, just to look sociable, for her lady customers who bought their candles in fours or sixes expected, with the thriftiness of the well-heeled, to get a glass for every single candle. It was a nice way to spend Saturday morning, although she was still a little dazed from the unexpected intensity of her masturbation, and the smarting of her still-glowing spanked bottom. She thought of Henry, could scarcely wait for his arrival that evening. How she wished it could have been Henry who spanked her! Maybe he would; but he would be too gentle, perhaps, not wanting to hurt her. That wouldn’t be good, but then, if he were rough, and hurt her too much, that wouldn’t be good either. The flogged girls in that strange book would surely not complain that their lacings were too gentle.

And yet, some of them had had a dreamy, faraway look in their eyes, as though they were actually enjoying their punishment, as though it were akin to some weird sexual ecstasy! A spanking was one thing, a bit of harmless fun. She recalled, now, that Henry had once or twice threatened playfully to sparik her as ‘punishment’ for some flirtation or other, and she had made it firmly clear that he was out of order. Perhaps she shouldn’t have; perhaps, now, she could provoke him into really spanking her, just for fun, nicely. Not seriously, of course. To see what it was like. Yes, a gentle spanking might be a naughty thrill for both of them, not like the proper floggings in those pictures . . . it was so confusing!

As she talked to her customers over their champagne, she found herself looking at their bottoms and wondering if they were spanked by their men, how they would look with their panties down and their bums all pink and squirming, and she found that those thoughts made her quim seep with wetness again. Suddenly she needed to pee! Her market kit was designed for just that: she wore a brief leather mini-skirt, and a rather low-cut silk blouse, both red, with a lot of gold chains nestling between her breasts, which was meant to be, and was, a rather deliciously tarty complement to her risqué merchandise. You had to look the part at Portobello, and she had learned that the most successful traders were precisely those with all the patter, who looked like charming, unscrupulous flash gits.

Taking a moment between customers, she moved discreetly to the side of her car and opened her thighs to pee, smiling with relief as the little pool formed between her calfskin thigh-boots. Then she noticed a young girl, rather embarrassed, hovering around her display, as though she didn’t dare to touch or enquire. The girl took advantage of Jane’s absence to move closer, absent-mindedly, as though she were really looking for something else. She was maybe seventeen, pale, and beautiful in an elfin way, with soft blonde locks like Jane’s own, framing a narrow, pretty face and a skin of translucent gentleness. She wore a light grey raincoat, and under it some kind of dark blue school uniform. Well, she did not look like someone with fifteen pounds to spend on an erotic candle, so Jane politely approached her.

‘Like anything?’ she said. ‘They’re fifteen pounds each, and a free glass of champagne with every purchase.’ The girl’s answer surprised her.

‘What kind of champagne?’ she asked.

‘Why, Taittinger,’ said Jane.

‘That’s nice,’ said the girl. ‘But fifteen pounds is an awful lot of pocket money. They are lovely things, though.’ And she blushed heartily. Jane warmed towards her.

‘Still in school uniform, on Saturday?’ she said.

‘I go to a boarding school, the Rosebush School, actually.’ She named one of the most exclusive, and expensive, schools in London. ‘My name’s Sarah Pennington,’ she added, though Jane hadn’t asked.

‘Well, Sarah, I’m not sure the Rosebush School would appreciate your bringing back one of my candles,’ said Jane in a kindly tone. ‘Perhaps they might think you are too young for such things.’

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said the girl ruefully. ‘Would you mind if . . . if I touched one?’ Jane laughed.

‘Touch as many as you like, Sarah,’ she replied. ‘Rather bewitching, aren’t they?’ Jane reached out and began to stroke a big pink candle; decorated with roses, which Jane had modelled from Henry’s own cock.

‘Are these all real?’ asked Sarah, blushing again. ‘I mean . . .’

‘I know what you mean. Yes, they are real, every single one.’

‘Gosh, Miss, you must know a lot of boys.’

‘Boys? Yes, you could say I know a lot of boys.’

‘Have you one special one?’

‘I suppose the one you are stroking with such evident pleasure, Sarah.’

‘He must be very handsome. What’s his name?’

‘Why, his name is Henry.’

‘That’s a nice name.’ Jane’s heart melted. She imagined all the thoughts and dreams and desires that must surge in the young girl’s breast, and was on the point of telling her she could keep the candle, when Sarah turned and said that she had better go. At that moment Jane saw something peeping from the pocket of her raincoat. It was the pink tip of a candle, a ‘Henry’! It was so artlessly concealed that she must have filched it in a hurry, while Jane was distracted by her peeing. At once Jane seized the girl’s arm with the speed and severity of a hunter.

‘Just a minute,’ she said, and retrieved the candle from Sarah’s pocket. Rage welled up inside her. She had been about to give her Henry’s cock as a present, and this little angel had pinched it!

‘So you are a thief, Sarah Pennington,’ she said harshly. ‘Well, I don’t suppose they’ll be impressed at Rosebush to see you arrive back at school in a police car.’ Sarah’s face blushed an angry red, then changed abruptly to the paleness of terror.

‘Oh, God!’ she blurted. ‘Please, don’t call the police! Daddy would be so angry, and the Sisters at school, and I might be expelled, and then I’d never get to finishing school! Oh, I do so want to go to finishing school! I’m just eighteen, I can go very soon. I’ve never done anything like this before, honestly, truly, oh please don’t call the police!’

All this was blurted in a terrified rush of anguish, and Jane almost, but not quite, felt sorry for the poor girl with the angel’s face. Her voice was soft and melodious, with the ease of wealth, and Jane realised that the Burberry concealed no common tea-leaf from across the river – but a tea-leaf none the less. There were inquisitive stares from the other stalls.

‘We don’t take kindly to thieves, here,’ said Jane.

‘I’m not a thief!’

Jane waved the wax penis in her face.

‘This says you are!’

And Sarah blushed deep red, whether from shame at her crime or embarrassment at the succulent cock only an inch from her rosebud lips Jane wasn’t sure. She hung her head, and began to sob gently. Then she gasped, and swallowed, and took a deep breath, as though filling her slender frame with courage.

‘Miss, I know I’ve done wrong, and I must be punished,’ she sobbed, ‘but I beg you, don’t bring the police.’ Jane felt awful. It was a wretched thing to see the girl cry. She put her arm round Sarah’s shoulders, and gave her a little hug.

‘Oh, Sarah, I have to,’ she said gently. ‘Everybody’s watching – they can’t see me let a thief go unpunished, or I’ll be thrown out of the market.’

‘You mean, like expelled?’

‘That’s it.’

Sarah looked up, and smiled through her tears.

‘Well, Miss, I needn’t go unpunished, need I?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You could punish me yourself.’

‘I can hardly send you to jail!’ cried Jane.

‘No . . . I mean, if you called the police and everything, I’d be punished at school, I’d get a caning, certainly, and it would be on my school record for ever and ever, and I would never be admitted to finishing school!’ And the tears threatened to well up again.

‘Are you suggesting that I should cane you?’

‘Well . . . yes, Miss. Not hard, I mean, but, well, you know, that could be my punishment, couldn’t it?’ Jane stared at Sarah in gaping astonishment, and yet she felt her heart pound with a strange excitement at the thought of caning the girl’s bottom, of making her squeal and sob as she flogged her, and then, Jane knew, she wouldn’t mind those sobs at all.

‘Please, Miss, I beg you, punish me yourself – I’ll go home with you, if you like, and you can cane my bottom and I promise I’ll take whatever you decide. I’ll hate it, I know, and the pain will be absolutely horrid, but then I’ll have been properly punished to your satisfaction, won’t I?’

Jane found that her inner thighs, pantyless, were beginning to feel wet from the liquid that now seeped quite copiously from her tingling slit. Her eyes were misty, her breath harsh as she looked at the sweet elfin face of this girl who was pleading to be beaten! What was happening to her? Instead of dismissing the request as ridiculous and possibly dangerous, she was longing to accede to it! Well, the girl was eighteen, legally an adult in most things. Jane frowned.

‘Look, I don’t like this mess any more than you do,’ she said. She wished she could send the girl away, but she could not deny the surging of her body, the wetness in her quim at the thought of that girl naked under her lash!

‘I know I’ve been foolish! I must pay for it!’ cried Sarah passionately.

‘But a caning? One girl caning another, people might think that a little bizarre.’

Now it was Sarah’s turn to frown in puzzlement. ‘Why, we are often caned at school. It is the normal punishment. Sometimes, Miss, on our bare bottoms. We have to kneel over a flogging-stool, and lift our skirts, and pull our panties down to our knees, and then we get the cane all bare. How it smarts! It is awful. Oh, I hope you won’t cane me on my bare bottom, Miss!’

‘I haven’t said I will,’ answered Jane, fighting to control her rising swell of desire to make the naked body of the girl squirm. It was as though Sarah’s very innocence were a tool of devilish seduction; as if – but no, it couldn’t be – as if she knew exactly what she was doing, and had known right from the start.

‘Oh, please, Miss,’ repeated Sarah. ‘Miss, if I deserve it, yes, I’ll take it on the bare bum!’ Jane’s resistance broke.

‘Sarah, I wouldn’t be so cruel! You can take it on your skirt, it’s all right! I’ll make you sting, but . . .’ She paused, and blushed furiously, realising what she had said.

‘Thank you, Miss,’ cried Sarah Pennington, and put her arms around Jane’s waist, and kissed her so that her tears moistened Jane’s cheek, as wet desire flowed from her helpless, throbbing, cunt-lips.

An added frisson was that boys sentenced to ‘six of the best’, normally delivered on the trousers, could elect to take the beating from either matron or the headmaster’s wife, a woman’s delivery being thought weaker: but in that case, they were obliged to take the cane on the naked buttocks, to compensate. Either way, a beating coolly given and received was a reminder that maintenance of the gentleman’s code was well worth the momentary discomfort of an individual. A gentleman, Henry had always chosen to be beaten by the women.

So, Jane told herself, what she was about to do was quite normal, even salutary: a girl with Sarah’s accent could scarcely suffer the indignity of a police station! And yet, she was afraid: not for the comfort of Sarah’s presumably experienced bottom, but of her own new and disturbing emotions.

Sarah, in contrast, behaved as though a caning from a stranger were the most natural thing in the world.

‘By the way, Miss,’ she said, as they drove through South Kensington, ‘what are you going to beat me with? I expect it’ll be pretty tight. You were so cross with me! I’m keen to get it over with – the waiting’s the most painful part, really.’

‘I hadn’t thought,’ replied Jane. ‘It’s not every day I cane juvenile delinquents.’ She did not add that this was the first time in her life she was going to cane a girl’s naked buttocks, for, yes, she shall take it naked, thought Jane, and my quim is sopping wet and my heart’s pounding, and I don’t know what’s got into me.

‘You must have a riding crop around your house, or something,’ stated Sarah.

‘Cheyne Walk isn’t the best place to keep polo ponies,’ said Jane drily.

‘I suppose not. A cane, then, a quirt, or a nice whippy birch?’

‘Why, of course not,’ said Jane in astonishment.

‘We’ll have to buy one, then,’ said Sarah briskly, as though it were she in charge. ‘Look, if you can find a place to stop – Walton Street’s your best – I’ll pop into Harrod’s and get something.’ Numbly, Jane agreed, and did manage to find a parking space. She sat nervously with the motor running, her body on fire with anticipation, until the younger girl scampered merrily back from the shop with a long slender object wrapped in the distinctive shopping bag. Jane wondered if Harrod’s did a special size of bag specially for canes, and gunned the motor just in time to avoid an approaching traffic warden. Sarah bubbled with enthusiasm as though she had bought herself a fluffy toy, not an instrument of punishment.

‘I got you a lovely one, Miss. It’s yew, a four-footer, with a splayed tip, and I bet it’ll hurt dreadfully!’ Jane nodded, and wondered why her heart leapt with desire at the innocent froth of Sarah’s words.

‘Actually, I don’t know much about canes,’ she said.

‘Oh, I do, Miss,’ said Sarah. ‘When you go to Rosebush, you know all about canes.’

‘Yes, I do, as it happens,’ said Jane curtly. ‘And I don’t think you need to know any more than that, young lady. You had better be thinking about what my cane is going to do to your bottom.’

‘I’m thinking of that, all right,’ said Sarah brightly, so brightly in fact that any hesitation Jane felt about the punishment was quite gone. Sarah removed her Burberry, and folded it neatly on the sofa. Jane looked at her slender frame, crisply encased in her uniform, yet with the breasts and bottom of a ripe woman blossoming under the sober skirt and blouse. Jane’s belly trembled with a desire to punish this elfin thief for her insolent beauty.

‘Well, I suppose the civilised thing is to offer you a glass of champagne before we proceed to business,’ she said. ‘I could do with one myself. Taittinger all right?’

‘Yes, please,’ said Sarah. ‘I hope you’re not nervous, Miss.’ Jane fetched glasses, and they toasted each other with mock gravity.

‘Here’s to your beating, Sarah,’ said Jane. Sarah’s eyes shone with a fierce sparkle that was not just from wine.

‘Here’s to my learning my lesson,’ she said gravely. ‘But you haven’t told me how many I’m to get.’ Jane took a deep breath. Now was the moment of truth. Could she go through with it?

‘It’ll be a full six, Sarah,’ she said quickly.

‘Yes, I deserve it, don’t I? This champagne is scrumptious.’

‘Bare bum, I’ve decided.’

‘Thought you would,’ replied Sarah, draining her glass and grinning impishly. ‘Well, we had better get on with it, Miss.’

‘Right,’ said Jane, businesslike now, ‘over the sofa, please, with your skirt well up, and your panties round your knees.’

Sarah obeyed, bending over the sofa and raising her skirt to reveal a delicious pair of blue silken panties embroidered with butterflies in gold thread. Over these stretched a white lace garter belt with straps holding up the sheerest white silk stockings. She undid her garter straps and pulled down her panties to her knees, and Jane had a stifle a gasp of admiration at the perfect roundness of her smooth bare fesses.

‘Pretty panties,’ she said.

‘Thank you, Miss. Actually, I’m glad it’s bare bum, because then they won’t get spoiled. Would you like to take me on tiptoe, Miss? It hurts more that way, because I can’t wriggle so much to ease the smarting. I’ll slip my shoes off if you like.’

‘Yes,’ said Jane, faint with desire. ‘Yes, I’ll take you on tiptoe. I . . . I want to make you smart.’

When Sarah was correctly positioned, her thighs straining as she perched on her delicate pointed toes, Jane raised her cane to her arm’s full height, and stood, heart racing, over those naked white buttocks, tempting her beyond endurance with their innocent nudity. She felt a crazy desire to stop and kiss them, before they were flayed: they were so utterly, gorgeously pure.

‘Well,’ she blurted, trying to sound jovial, ‘I dare say you won’t be so glad when I begin your punishment, Sarah, for I’ve decided to give that bare bum of yours a really tight skinning. It’ll be six juicy whistling cuts, and you will remember your lesson, all right.’

‘Mmm,’ said Sarah.

‘No flinching, Sarah, and no silly squirming or girly wriggling, or the stroke’s repeated. Understand?’

‘Mmm,’ said Sarah again, as though she were about to lick a bowl of cream.

‘One!’ Jane brought the cane down as hard as she could on Sarah Pennington’s trembling, naked, and utterly adorable bottom.

As the cane whipped across her bare flesh, Sarah clenched the cheeks of her bottom, but made no sound other than a sharp drawing of breath. Her legs, stretched taut on tiptoes, shivered slightly. Jane waited for long seconds before lifting her cane to deliver the second stroke, and when that fell viciously on Sarah’s fesses, the girl shut her eyes and pursed her lips tight, with a little catching sob at the back of her throat. Thereafter the beating took place in total silence, except for the crack of the cane on the blushing skin of Sarah’s bared nates.

The cane felt quite heavy, and Jane wondered how the girl could take it with such apparent calm. Each stroke made her clenched buttocks quiver like two lovely white blancmanges, now prettily adorned with pink, and shook the garter straps, unfastened to permit the lowering of her precious panties, which dangled over the tops of her stockings. Jane felt herself becoming wet between her thighs as she gazed at the flogged bottom of her victim, framed by the swaying garter straps. She felt a crazy desire to kiss that smarting croup, to have it for herself and feel the lash descend upon her naked body. And she felt an anger, that Sarah was experiencing a private intensity, which she could, or would not, share. What thoughts passed behind those tightly closed eyes?

Jane was panting hard, and sweating well, when she finally lowered the cane after the sixth cut.

‘There!’ she gasped. ‘That’s it. You’ve taken six.’

Sarah did not move, except to open her eyes, and shake her head as though it had been immersed in water. She opened her mouth, and now she made a sound, a long, low moan that seemed to come from the very pit of her belly.

‘Aaaah,’ she rasped. And now her bottom began to squirm crazily, shuddering and dancing with all the pent-up pain of her beating.

‘Oh, oh,’ she cried, through clenched teeth. ‘Gosh, Miss, that was tight. Oh, how tight it was! My bottom feels on fire! I’ve never taken such a beautiful tight lacing, I think!’

‘Beautiful?’ said Jane. ‘Well, if you think it thus.’ And in truth, the sight of those bare fesses dancing for her was indeed beautiful. Was it possible that the victim of her lacing could feel that beauty too?

‘I mean in the sense that something done expertly and with grace is beautiful. Daddy laces me sometimes, when I’m naughty – I suppose I shouldn’t tell you this, but it’s at home in Dorset, you know? I mean, it doesn’t really count, does it? And it hurts horribly, but it’s beautiful in a way because he is so good at it, and so strong and tender at the same time, and makes me feel I never want to upset him again. He takes me in my nightie, and makes me lift it up, and gives me twenty-one beats with his silver hair brush on my bare bottom. Always twenty-one, I don’t know why. It smarts awfully, though it doesn’t hurt half as much as the cane. Especially your cane. Oh, I am prattling like a little girl, I suppose you think I’m a silly.’

‘Well, you can get up now,’ said Jane. ‘That wasn’t really so bad, was it? And no . . . I don’t think you’re silly.’

Sarah swallowed and gasped for breath. She looked around; her face was as crimson as her bottom, and her eyes brimmed with tears, but she grinned fiercely.

‘Oh, Miss,’ she said, ‘it was much worse. I don’t think I shall ever be naughty again! I must look – may I please go to your bathroom?’

‘Of course. You may pull your panties up now, Sarah.’

‘No . . . I’ll take them right off, please. You see, I don’t know how to say it, well, I’m all . . . naughty.’

Jane looked and saw that the inside of Sarah’s thighs glistened with moisture.

‘Yes, I see,’ she said. ‘Well, leave your panties and run to the bathroom and take a good look at yourself. I hope the sight will teach you a lesson, for your bum’s well blushing, girl.’

Sarah stood up, and skipped out of her panties, then, holding her skirt carefully up, she hurried to the bathroom. Jane was intrigued to see that this virginal convent girl, as well as possessing a pair of quite unvirginal panties, had shaved her mink so that the lips and inner thighs were completely naked, right up to the top of her prepuce, and the hairs above were sculpted into the shape of a butterfly that seemed to flutter up towards her belly. She thought it awfully pretty and, as Sarah made bathroom noises, she went to get another glass of champagne and sat down with a cigarette.

‘Everything OK, Sarah?’ she called after what seemed quite a long time.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Sarah rather faintly. ‘I’m fine. You’ve made my bottom so red, Miss!’

‘It had to be done, Sarah, you know that. There is some ointment in the cupboard, if you need it.’

‘Thanks. I’m just . . . looking at myself, actually. I hope you don’t mind?’ Jane laughed.

‘No, I don’t mind. There is a glass of champagne for you, if you like.’

‘Thanks awfully, but I must rush. And I don’t want to be squiffy at Rosebush, or I’ll get another lacing.’

Jane finished her cigarette, and thought that Sarah gave little sign of rushing. The bathroom door was slightly open; she padded quietly, and glanced through. Sarah had arranged the folding mirrors of the bathroom cabinet so that she could look at her behind. With one foot on the carpet, and the other perched on the side of the bathtub, she gazed at her red bare buttocks, writhing slightly as her hand caressed them. Her skirt up, and her fingers between the shaven lips of her quim, Sarah Pennington masturbated.

Sarah finally departed, saying that the cane that had flogged her was a gift, to make up for her crime. She insisted on having the precious Harrod’s shopping bag, though. Her face was flushed as she donned her Burberry, and her eyes glistened with innocent satisfaction. Jane had to suppress her own desire to take the girl’s wet quim against her own lips, to find that throbbing little virgin’s clit and tongue it to the sweetest of orgasms. But something told her to beware of Sarah Pennington, virginal though she might seem.

‘I must rush, Miss. I’m expected at Daddy’s for luncheon, and then back at Rosebush by teatime.’

‘Do you have far to go? I can call a cab.’

‘Oh, no, it’s just off Walton Street, actually. Wait – before I go . . .’

To Jane’s astonishment, she took the yew cane and knelt at Jane’s knees, then kissed the cane which had so recently whipped her bare bottom, and handed it reverently to the woman who had punished her.

‘Thank you, Miss, for my chastisement,’ she said gravely, and left without another word.

Jane thought of taking a shower, but decided not to. Henry was coming later: he wouldn’t want that. And when she lifted her arms to smell herself underneath there, and bent her head to sniff the aroma of her moistened sex, she thought that there was something different about her scent. It was as though giving the tight beating to Sarah’s naked and compliant arse had awakened a new power, a new knowledge in her. The events of early morning, too, the way her own arse had glowed so pleasantly at the slightest of slaps, the suddenness of her urge to masturbate . . .

She made herself some lunch, prawns and bits of lobster and salady stuff from the fridge; she could not eat much. All the time, she wondered if Sarah Pennington had been using her, if she had arranged their little scene precisely in order to receive a beating for her absurdly obvious theft. But why? And why had Jane herself become wet and trembling in her belly as she whipped the girl?

She forgot about all the things she had planned for the afternoon, and curled up in her chair to spend the rest of the day engrossed in the strange enchantments of Parfaite Cecilia’s De Artibus Castigationis.

It was only much later, when she got up to do some tidying for Henry Gordon Playste’s visit, that she noticed one of the wax models of his penis had disappeared from the bathroom along with her prized set of silver hairbrushes.

She had the champagne in an ice bucket, and wore just her little black silk number, the one that hung on her breasts like gossamer with the thinnest of straps on her bare shoulders, and nothing on underneath. She was barefoot, nails and lips painted fiery red, and in the bathroom she had carefully shaved her legs and armpits, then, on a sudden impulse, shaped her mink into a butterfly. She wore no perfume and no jewellery, and, most important, she hadn’t showered. She sniffed her armpits, and smiled, for they were ripe with the smell Henry liked. More accurately, the smell of her drove him wild.

‘I want Jane to smell fruity and rank, and like Jane,’ he would say, ‘not like some essence of French tart out of a bottle.’ He loved to have his face clamped beneath her arm, or to press his lips and nose to her lush mink, breathing in the aroma of her with great contented sighs. Henry was awfully sweet.

She was excited at his visit, and felt all warm and fluttery inside, and, she had to admit, her quim was just a little bit liquid. It was not just the thought of Henry’s arms around her, and the smell of his maleness, and her hands on his trim, muscled bum as he thrust so hard inside her, and . . . Oh, all those yummy things! She was getting wet just thinking of it. But also, the book of punishments, studied so soon after Sarah’s bare-bum caning, had thrilled her more than she wanted to admit. She was not sure if Parfaite Cecilia’s scholarly tone masked a secret exuberance as she detailed the floggings, scourgings, bastinados, and even the humble zurrado, the bare-bum spanking, all accompanied by meticulous woodcut illustrations.

And she was not sure what to make of her own reaction, the excitement as she studied the impossibly serene faces of those naked men and women who bared their bodies to the lash. The book rested on her top shelf with the other Morocco volumes, and she didn’t think Henry would spot it there. And then she wondered why she was embarrassed: the very fact of being embarrassed was strange!

She was ready to cook them a cosy supper, if that was what Henry wanted, but she felt somehow edgy, and she hoped he would take her out instead. Either way, she knew, she would have a delicious sleepless night, with the freshness of a new love, or a love rekindled; then a traditional snuggly Sunday of newspapers (she loved being sent out to get them for him!), breakfast in bed, a walk to the Cross Keys for lunchtime pints, then a lazy vinous lunch, and, well, more bed.

Henry came in and put down the bulky package he was carrying. Jane raised her lips for a kiss, and put her arms round him. To her surprise, he was not wearing his usual silk or cashmere suit, but a tight black jacket of soft thick calfskin, black boots to match, and jeans. Admittedly, the jeans were razor-pressed, and probably had a fabulously expensive Italian label, but they were still jeans. And his soft, silky locks had been replaced by a bristling crewcut!

Without saying a word, his face stony, he put his hand on the front hem of her dress and jerked it up to her belly, revealing her naked pubis. Then his hand forced itself between her thighs and clamped the lips of her sex very hard. He kissed her brutally, his tongue caressing hers with the harsh voracity of a serpent. He pressed her to him, and she knew that he had put on weight: a lot of weight. There was a whipcord in those arms, and iron in his chest. As his mouth pumped hers in a long, wet kiss, she whimpered softly, and clung to him, her nipples stiffening as they felt the metal buckles of his blouson scratch her through the thin silk of her dress.

She felt his fingers on the tingling lips of her quim, then sighed as he put in two, three, then four fingers, driving them with startling force all the way inside her, and, with the heel of his hand clamped against her pubic bone, he held her like a vice. After kissing her for an age, until she could hardly breathe, he released her, and smiled for the first time, the cruel knowing smile of a predatory beast. Flushed and gasping, she automatically smoothed down the front of her dress, her face radiant with surprised delight. Eyeing her, he slowly licked the glistening fingers that had penetrated her slit.

‘Well . . . hi!’ she said, flustered. ‘You . . . you’ve put on weight, Henry!’

‘You were all wet,’ he said. ‘Your cunt was all wet and oily.’

‘You make me feel naughty!’ she blurted happily.

‘I mean, you were wet before I got here. You were wet from thinking about fucking.’

‘From thinking about you, Henry. But you’ve changed. You’re all, sort of, hard. Leather and jeans! And your hair. I like it! Is that the thing in Leadenhall Street now, the butch look?’

‘I haven’t really changed, Jane, sweet. Nobody ever changes. A person is like a diamond, sometimes the light shines on different facets. Here, I brought you a birthday present.’

‘It isn’t my birthday, silly.’

‘Ever hear this: “Today is the first day of the rest of your life”? Go on, open it.’

‘Yes . . . yes, of course. But don’t you want to . . . you know?’

She giggled, and felt so silly at this sudden attack of coyness! Almost bashfully, she lifted her dress up high, revealing her naked breasts, and put her fingers in her mink, to part the shining pink lips of her sex.

‘You want to,’ said Henry.

‘Of course I want to, dummy! You can’t sweep me off my feet and . . . and fingerfuck me like that, and not expect me to feel as horny as a goat.’

‘I’ll sweep you off your feet,’ said Henry simply, and with a swift movement, he bent down and scooped her up, wriggling with delight in his arms, pleased that he was so strong.

‘I want you to open your present,’ he said, ‘but since you are such an insatiable little fox . . . why, you’ve even shaved your mink for me.’

‘Oh,’ she answered, blushing, ‘it’s supposed to be a butterfly. Do you like it?’

‘I love it.’

He was holding her so that the opening of her glistening red slit was just an inch from his lips, and abruptly he lowered his head and buried his teeth in her sculpted mink-hairs. Gently, he kneaded her mons with his lips, and then allowed his teeth to chew the plump flesh of her mound, just above the hood of her clitoris. She moaned and wriggled, and his arms clutched her like granite pillars, and then he sank his nose and lips between her thighs, parting them a little, so that his mouth could fasten on her swollen labia, and his darting tongue tingle against her naked clitoris. Jane closed her eyes, unable to stop herself writhing as the man feasted on her; she heard him greedily sucking at the juices which flowed now so copiously from her swollen cunt-lips, and swallowing as he drank, all the while mercilessly caressing her clit with his stiff, flickering tongue, and making her shudder with electric pleasure. He held her body like a cup, and she felt like a sacrificial chalice.

Her hand clutched the back of his neck, pressing him against her cunt, and with her free fingertips she stroked her stiff nipples, squeezing them and pinching them hard between thumb and index until her body pulsed with the sweetness of harpstrings. She longed to throw off her dress, and be naked with him, his flesh to eat. Her chin was wet; saliva trickled helplessly from the corner of her lips parted in a silent scream. Her cunt was a hot fountain, and she swam helplessly in its gushing oil, her whole body reduced to the searing point of white light that was her throbbing, tongued clitoris; then the spasm of her climax shook her, and she writhed in her man’s arms, and her scream was no longer silent.

Tenderly, Henry carried her to the sofa, and sat her down. Her dress was still around her neck; she looked down and saw that her mink and inner thighs were gleaming with her liquid, and the lips of her sex shone red and swollen. He stood before her, hands on his hips, and smiled. She lay back and lifted her thighs, drawing her sex-lips apart with her fingers so that he could see the glistening flesh inside.

‘Henry,’ she gasped hoarsely, ‘come inside me, please, sweet Henry, fuck me with your cock.’ Still he smiled; she focused, and saw that there was no swelling at his crotch.

‘Oh!’ she cried in alarm, ‘Oh, darling Henry, let me . . .’

Frantically, she scrabbled at the zipper of his jeans, and drew the garment down. He was not wearing panties, and his cock hung there, almost cherubic in its innocent softness. To her surprise, his penis and balls were completely bare, shaved of the silky mink she loved so much. She pressed her lips to the flaccid penis, flicking the tip with her tongue and sucking his glans like a sweet, but the shaft did not stir. Hands on his bare buttocks, she bent under him and opened her mouth as wide as she could, then slipped her lips around his ball-sac and drew his whole manhood, penis and balls, into her mouth. It was too big for her to swallow the whole shaft, but she had the peehole tickling the back of her throat, and her lips almost covering his soft balls. She wasn’t sure what to do: she had never known a man to be completely soft in such circumstances! So she delicately tongued the balls, massaging them very gently with her palate, while she sucked on the shaft of the cock. Had she not been worried, she would have found the sensation adorable, like having a sweet little baby in her mouth, all to herself.