Caroline sat at command, forlorn. My wrist was gripped. The door to the bedroom left wide open, I was taken upstairs. "The second door," Katherine said. She unlocked it and pushed me roughly within. The room was long and bare. There were cages, the bars of slender ironwork. Three cages in a triangle stood, each the size of a small closet. There were benches, leather-covered. A wooden bar hung across trestles stood in the centre of the floor. Two skylights misted -with dust allowed the day to enter.
Katherine stripped me quickly of my dress and drawers and placed me, booted and stockinged, in the nearest cage. I wailed a small wail as the door clanged and closed. A bowl of strawberries and cream, a plate of brown bread and butter and a bottle of white wine lay in the small space at my feet.
Katherine walked to the door. Opening it she glanced back at me and said, "You are lucky, Beatrice. You are the chosen." There was silence and she was gone.
I crouched to eat and drink. There was no spoon with which to eat the strawberries. The cream dripped from my fingers. I licked it. A small drop lay upon the springing of my pussy curls. The wine had been uncorked. 1 sucked upon the neck of the bottle. The cool gurgling. I did not want the bread.
The door looked at me beyond. It was padded with thick black leather, rimmed all around with metal studs. I liked it. The door would be my friend.
Half an hour passed. I leaned back against the bars and felt one of the cool round rods between the cheeks of my bottom. The sensation was pleasant. I pressed against it but the contact was not as I wished. I could not bend forward.
The door opened. My aunt Maude led Amanda in: Unbound, her dark hair was as long as my own. At her pubis the triangle of curls was crisp and neat. Her stockings were banded at the tops by metal rings. Her long legs teetered in the same mode of high-heeled boots that Caroline and I were made to wear. Her breasts were pale mounds of jellied glory. She held her head high in her nakedness, her pride stung by shame.
"I did not want to come," she blurted. My aunt ignored her. The door of the cage next to mine swung open. On the floor the same meal awaited her that I had received.
"You would not obey-you know you would not obey," my aunt said. The lock clicked. "Beatrice, be still and finish your wine. It is good for you." Her heels sounded loud upon the floor. The studded door closed. All was still. I drank my wine. If there were two bottles I would have poured some over my breasts. -1 would have raised my nipples to the bars so that Amanda could lick them. Her bottom was quite delicious. Tight and small. Like half a peach it jutted. Had she been tried, trodden, mounted? I was naive then. I should have known that she had not been.
Amanda tried to look at me. She could not. Her hand gripped the bars. Her other arm fell lax. In sagging she showed the sweet curve of her hip.
"It is hateful," she said. She did not ask me who I was. I had wanted her to ask.
"You have not been spanked," I said.
Her eyes were lidded. She had a small, delicate voice. "Have you?" she asked.
"Often." I poured a little wine over my finger and sucked it. I did not want the cage between us. We could have kissed with the cage between us. Her face was oval, cold. There were no mirrors in her eyes. I nibbled a piece of bread. I forgot that I did not want it.
"What will they do?" Amanda asked. Her mouth was small. Under pressure it could be made to kiss with succulence. I like succulence. It is like foutre.
"They will train you," I said. She stared at me with her mouth open. The metal bands around her thighs fascinated me. They fitted by being slid up her legs where, at the greater swelling, they stopped and gripped as a finger ring does. They had been made for her, she said. She had kicked exceedingly when they were first fitted a month ago. She had been held and had been made to wear them ever since.
"Who fits them?" I asked. She blushed and would not answer. I felt a small inpatience with. her. "Drink your wine," I said. She needed to be unlocked, eased, made supple.
The thought stirred me. I was my first revelation.
ELEVEN
Jenny appeared and passed my drawers to me through the bars.
"Put them on-your uncle is coming," she said. I scrambled into them just in time. My hands were pious over my breasts.
Uncle did not look at me. Jenny opened Amanda's cage and brought her out. She cowed under his gaze and tried to hide her pubis. Jenny smacked her wrists. There was a strap in my uncle's hand, broad and thick-the same perhaps that our bottoms had tasted in the stable.
Amanda's ankles twisted, causing her to stumble. Jenny took her to the bar which was at waist height. The wood was round and polished. In the centre where her belly would rest was a slight dip.
"Bend and keep your heels together. Grip the lower bar tightly," my uncle told her.
Was his voice more authoritative than the one she had known? Her eyes were dull. For a moment she stared at the wall and then obeyed.
"Please not too hard. May I go then?"
Her voice was a Sunday School voice. Jenny bent and fastened a broad strap round her ankles. Stepping back she glanced at me over her shoulder. I looked at the door, my friendly door. It would grow warm if I leaned against it.
My uncle approached Amanda whose display was quite delicious. Of a purpose, as 1 realised, her hands were not tied to the lower bar. The orb of her bottom was flawless -the cleft tinted with sepia in its innerness. The strap lifted and uncoiled.
Cra-aaaaack! Ah, the splat of it-the deep-kissing leather kiss across her girlish! Amanda winced in anguish, her mouth sagged. A low wail came. The strokes were slow and lazy-insistent. The weight of the leather appeared to need only an indolent movement of arm and wrist. Sometimes it fell across, sometimes under-under the offered apple where the long thighs met and the skin made small creases as if puckering itself in readiness for the outbulge.
Each splat brought a higher gasp from her. Her bottom became a haze of pink and white. Her knuckles whitened where they gripped the lower bar.
"Noo-Noo-Noo-Noooooo!" she pleaded. Her hips began to make more violent motions of rejection. At each stroke the tight cheeks tightened. A big man's hands would have encompassed both cheeks together. A split melon. I wanted my tongue to pass around it in its warmth, its heat out-giving, receiving. I counted ten, twelve, fourteen. Amanda gritted her teeth. Was she crying far within herself? The glow of her bottom was luminous, yet no marks showed. I have since learned the art of it, have heard it called indeed, "French polishing." The leather must never be thin. Thin would be cruel.
The metal bands that held the tops of Amanda's stockings rubbed together. Her knees sagged, making her bottom orb out more. A low whoooo-hoooooing sound hummed from her lips. It is the sound one waits for.
My uncle ceased. I could hear her sobbing, but it was not a sobbing of pain. It was the sobbing of a child who has lost her toys. The sobbing of a child who has ceased to cry when nobody listens.
"Be quiet, Amanda-Quiet!"
Jenny's voice was a voice of love. She unfastened the strap around the girl's ankles, drew her legs wide apart and fastened each to the sides of the stand. The salmon-pink of her lovelips showed. Amanda cried out and made to rise, but Jenny took the nape of her neck and forced her down again. My uncle turned away. I wanted him to look at me, to acknowledge my existence, the modesty of my posture with my palms cupped over my breasts. But he did not. He went as one who vaguely recalls an errand to be done. His walk was awkward, stiff. His erection was considerable.
With his exit Aunt Maude appeared. In her hands were a phial of warm, sweet oil and a long thin dildo.
I watched, I listened. I no longer needed to cover my breasts. An oiled finger moved about Amanda's restlessly rolling globe. It sought her rose, her bottom mouth. Jenny's hand was laid now on her down-bent head. All was silence save for her rushing gasps. The dildo when it entered her did so fraction by fraction, upwards between the cheeks, parting their parting.