“And anyway I can’t. My hands are chained.” Khalief produced a key. In moments the shining gyves lay on the floor and the whip had been placed in her hand. “Do it! Whip her.”
“But I’ve never done such a thing!”
“It does not require a university diploma, my dear.”
“But, Khalief, the poor dear’s been whipped so much already!” Caroline was fighting down the burn between her thighs, If she orgasmed in front of the two of them he would laugh at her forever.
“I don’t mind. Really I don’t.” The captive was concerned. “I get whipped a lot, I’m used to it. Go ahead and whip me. Khalief, how many strokes do you want her to give me?”
“You mean it doesn’t hurt!”
“Of course it hurts! But I suppose a girl gets used to anything.”
“I’d suggest just five, well laid on.” The President was enjoying himself. “We mustn’t impose on Miss Nahwali’s goodwill.”
The beaming President of a new Republic, a naked girl tied to a wall, resigned to a punishment she did not deserve. And herself! Herself holding a whip and surveying naked female flesh, and in her own loins a conflagration fierce enough to consume . . . ! Caroline looked around bemused. In a sudden wild abandonment of everything she had ever known she swung the lash . . .
“A lovely scarlet.” Khalief approved.
“It’s all right. Don’t feel bad. It’s only five.”
Rosalind seemed more anxious for the girl with the whip than for herself. She was gasping with pain but had not screamed.
Caroline struck the lovely skin again. With the eye of a connoisseur she beheld the weal which was her own creation spring up in carmine outrage of the girlish skin, heard Rosalind’s gasping moan. Then, herself, gushed into the fiercest involuntary orgasm she had ever known.
It was demeaning, humiliating, shameful! Caroline longed to disappear into oblivion. Instead, she clutched her sex and groaned her way back, slowly into the prosaic world of the cell.
“That happens often with girls,” Miss Nahwali consoled.
“I’d have been disappointed if you hadn’t,” Khalief scoffed.
“You mustn’t stop whipping me,” Rosalind reminded dutifully. “That was only two.”
Caroline scanned her companions, more shy than she could ever remember. “I’m so ashamed . . . !” Within her another small fire was gathering momentum. She knew not which way to turn or what to do. In savage frustration she lashed once more at Rosalind’s waiting back. Then again . . . and . . again . . .
Miss Rosalind Nahwali screamed.
“A most successful effort,” said the President of Zindawba.
Everything would be anti-climax now—or would it! Carrying her discarded chains, Caroline followed her mentor down the passage. Her breathing would not subside. She was still in a state of excitation. From Khalief there emanated vibrations enough to keep her quivering.
The opening of the door to the empty cell said everything. Obeying his eyes, Caroline dropped the shackles in a corner and laid her clothes on top. Naked, she faced his reflective smile. “I’m ready.”
Khalief crossed her wrists behind her back and bound them tight with a rope from a hook in the wall. Another hung from the ceiling. He looped it under her wrists and pulled. Her hands and arms rose, she bent forward gasping with pain. Up, and up again! He tested carefully with the tension until her heels left the floor. She was not exactly on her toes but was unkindly wracked. He made his knot.
“Think you can stand it?”
“I have to, don’t I, Khalief?”
“No. If you ask me to release you I will.”
“No, I won’t ask. I wish to be as you want me.”
“This is worse than some of the others?”
Caroline was panting. “It’s not worse than some. I have to get used to such punishments, don’t I?”
“Academically, yes.”
“There’s nothing academic about this, It’s a brute!” The fire in her shoulders and wrists was quenching some of the heat in her belly but not all. “How long do I have to stay?”
His voice was studiedly casual. “I’d thought all day.”
She was trembling, aghast. “You mean ’til night?”
“That’s right.”
“I couldn’t possibly stand it. Oh, Khalief . . . No!”
“That’s what they all say.” The door clanged shut.
Caroline was alone in her cell.
5
Punishment Post
For Trudy Ramsay the day promised to be long.
She suspected it was no’ more than half done. She longed to scream at the injustice of what was being done to her. But she had been warned about screaming. It would be wiser to suffer in modest silence—perhaps an occasional moan.
The flat top of the post was about the same diameter as her bare bottom. Obviously they had been made for each other. The post was in the middle of the Barrack Square. Naked, she sat astride it for all to see. She had disgraced the guard uniform, so it had been taken from her. She would not have sat upon this four-foot-high perch had it not been for the ankle clamps. They were metal. At a cunning angle they fastened one of her feet to each side of the post, bent so that her knees stuck out and all her weight rested on her bottom. To complete the ensemble of penitence her wrists were unkindly tied at the small of her back. Trudy Ramsay was most definitely a fixture.
But, being Zindawba, there had to be more. Unhappily she recalled her first sight of the coarse sandpaper glued to the circle of wood on which she must sit. It would have been bad enough without Sergeant Galla’s dictum. “Sandpaper’s better with a tender rump, love. Lie over my lap.”
The spanking had been shaming and hurt more than she would have supposed. When the sergeant was breathless there was another girl proffering her knees and the impacts of her palm—and another—and another . . . In all, nineteen. By the time they were through with her, Trudy’s bottom was ablaze and a fiery red. There had been no animosity in any of the slaps but they had hurt just the same. They had then all helped hoist her up on the stub of timber and fastened her ankles in the clamps, tightening the bolts with a spanner. It was all very efficient and most unkind. Sergeant Galla had summed it all up succinctly:
“You shouldn’t have bit the W.O.’s dink, love.”
“He shouldn’t have tried to shove it in my mouth.”
But that had all been gone over at her trial. It was generally conceded she had got off lightly. W.O. Ringbolt had demanded she be flogged. He had been conciliated only by the sergeant’s insistence that she was very new to Zindawba and would probably be a more obedient girl next time she was so honoured.
“We have to, love. All of us. He’s a terror, he is! But it makes a change from getting it up the other place below.”
Trudy had gained no solace from the sophistry.
With her blazing seat solidly planted on the sandpaper, and quite unable to move it an inch, she saw no solace anywhere. The day stretched endlessly. After it there would be others. Making the best she could of her plight, she mentally reviewed her life, so far, in the President’s Guard. It was not all bad. The cots were comfortable: and if several of the girls got an ankle chained to hers for the night it served her right for entertaining silly notions, Trudy’s ankle had been chained the first two nights, but since then had become trusted. In any case, escape over the electrified fence was close to impossible. The food was good, there was a library and a TV. The girls were kind. They were all in the same boat and, with wry resignation, made the best of it. They had all been recruited with broad hints they had better join or else! The pay was good. Not that they had, as yet, much chance to spend it.
Their lives, including Sergeant Galla’s, were shadowed by two male figures. W.O. Ringbolt and the President. They were the sexual perquisite of both or either. Failure to joyfully yield her person earned a guard a flogging. Only one girl had braved the ordeal. After seeing her back and behind no other had drummed up the courage to resist. The President’s sexual demands on his troop were spasmodic and uncertain. He was much absorbed with Caroline! W.O. Ringbolt demanded his pound of flesh and made sure he got it. But there were twenty of them and only one of him. Their sacrificial journey to his hut to be raped, sodomised or caned was not frequent for anyone of them. He had a roster he adhered to and played no favourites.