There was a rapport between them, three members of a club whose insignia was the wound of a whip. Suzie teetered on her toes, her girl’s nudity appealing and inviting, her bottom a rampant scarlet and purple from Moghere’s caning.
When the whip was placed in Stacie’s hands by her smiling mistress she felt like a novice at a banquet whose speech must be the keynote of the function. It was a beautiful and wicked thing, supple and heavy and balanced, wonderfully tapered. At the feel of it she would have gladly fled the room, yet the blood was coursing madly through her veins in an unfamiliar excitement. Suzie’s slight pale loveliness was waiting, beckoning.
“I will allow you only one error, slave girl. A second tender-hearted stroke, and I’ll thrash you until you both scream. Understood?”
“Yes, my Lady.”
The naked girl whose back was about to be whipped looked apprehensively over one shoulder. Rannah found herself a chair. The stage was Stacie’s. She knew not how many strokes she was to deliver on the innocent flesh, she dared not ask, she dared ask nothing . . . she swept back her arm and struck.
It was a blow worthy of Yousef himself. It snapped across the beginning of Suzie’s back above her hips and curled to bite her concave belly. She writhed so that the frantic rattle of her ankle chain was continuous, her head was thrown back so that her hair was wild, but she did not scream. Consciously or unconsciously she was striving to join the Stoic Club.
But it was upon the girl with the whip that the potency of the occasion was to be most vividly and indelibly impressed. All her life Stacie would remember that first sweeping impact of her lash upon the skin of a bound female. After it life could never be the same again. Absurdly she remembered the whispered confidences of a grubby little girl who had explained graphically the origin of babies. It was a landmark in self discovery. Her sex flamed demandingly. Rannah laughed in understanding. Suzie gasped and fought her bonds.
There was the white back! Hers to etch with stripes, to paint with scarlet lines. Aflame with a great need Stacie struck again and ridged the responsive flesh high under the shoulders so that the thong’s tip buried itself in the curve of a breast. As though hypnotised she circled the furiously plunging nakedness to view her work. Entranced, she bent and kissed the crimson weal beneath the engorged nipple. As she straightened up her eyes were close to those of the girl she was whipping. In neither was there either hate or love, only a great wonderment in what was happening. It was quite spontaneous that each should smile. Stacie went back to once more wield the whip, Suzie made no plea.
It was exciting to watch the lines spring up across the swaying back. Gradually Stacie knew that it had become most necessary and urgently desirable that Suzie scream. The crazily plunging girl was moaning and sobbing in erratic gasps, but the true cries that would touch Rannah’s heart and loins had been denied: now Stacie desired them too. Pivoting on her toes she cut the tapered leather down across the swollen bottom that after its ordeal yesterday should have been inviolate.
Suzie screamed most satisfyingly. Again and again the young voice pealed out its desolation at the violation of her flesh. The cries were never the same. Screams of fear, screeching bursts of anger, shrill paeans of pain. Stacie plied her whip across the young back and livid rump to evoke more and more of them in wider and wider ranges of anguish. Experimentally she sliced the soft thighs and discovered new and edifying sounds . . . When Rannah held her hand and took away the whip she was, for a wild rebellious moment, quite bereft.
Stacie was drunk with ecstasy, dazed with the violence of emotion engendered by what she had just done. She allowed her mistress to gently lead her to a seat, together they watched the lovely sweat-drenched, white body fight its terrible battle with its pain. Then the grip on her arm was firm, she was led to the room where she shared Rannah’s bed. In a wild tumultuous abandon they feasted upon each other in their own demanding love. It was a long time before they returned to the naked girl who was hanging by her wrists.
With Mohammad Yasin absent, the two girls returned to the lotus land of their adoration of each other Stacie wore her handcuffs as a bride might wear her ring, her ankle chain was set aside until the return of the master. Yasin would insist on chained feet, but for Rannah and her slave the handcuffs were sufficient and infinitely pleasing. Suzie’s punishment had been enough for the moment, the day before Yasin was to return she would be whipped again so as to shockingly proclaim upon her skin the badge of his displeasure. Rannah judged that to be enough to save her own skin harmless from the kurbash.
They had both known and cherished the knowledge of what they would do. Each found herself intriguingly obsessed by the thought of the act they would perform. They rolled it over in their imaginations and knew their concern with it and their determination to go through with it as being purely erotic, a sensual carnality to delight them both. Over a lazily long drawn out breakfast one day Rannah mischievously took their dream into reality.
“You know what we will do today, slave girl?”
Stacie’s nostrils flared. She knew. For very sure she knew!
“Yes, my lady.”
“It is I who should call you that today.”
Stacie considered the proposition. “No, please! I am not the one who owns a slave girl.” She was quivering with nervousness and with love. “Can’t we just be two girls exploring their femaleness?”
Rannah nodded. “Yes, that is good.” She grinned intimately. “Neither one of us . . . ever before . . . ?”
“I’m shivering with fright,” Stacie admitted. “I think I’m . . . willing to renege.”
“Don’t be absurd. You’d be heartbroken if I forbid.”
“You’re still terribly marked by that awful kurbash.”
“Don’t start getting noble, slave girl, or tomorrow you may find yourself naked with Yousef. Surely that should deter sweetness and light.”
“Yes, my lady.” Stacie gave herself over to the game. “You wish me to make you scream?”
Rannah gave more attention to the question than the questioner had anticipated. “Yes . . . I think I would value that. There is an inborn resistance in me to making a noise: I think it will be so even with you, I will long to be proud and haughty. Break me of it.”
“How many strokes, my lady?”
“I do not care. Whip me as much as you wish, but make it last throughout the whole day. I insist on that, it is an order. One of my last. Once I am tied you must pay no heed to any order I many be foolish enough to give. That too is a directive as of this moment. Understood?”
Stacie trembled with happiness. “Yes, my lady.”
“There is a thing I have learned, slave girl. I have never known a woman fail to scream when her breasts are whipped: I think it would be so with me.” She smiled amusedly at Stacie’s anxious eyes. “I will not forbid you to whip me on those two nice things we wear in front, but if you do not I will be grateful.”
The idea that a girl had be whipped both front and back sent Stacie’s heart pounding again, it invoked incredible possibilities. “You have never whipped mine, my lady. I will not whip yours.” It was a promise easy to make. Thoughts of marring the roseate buds of love by whip wounds was frightening, either Rannah’s or her own.
“It is true I seem already well whipped, slave girl. But with the skill you have acquired I think you can place your own lash between the others. They are mostly on my back, so you have my bottom and my thighs.” She smiled archly, “and any other places you may discover . . .”
Stacie blushed furiously.
They laughed in genuine amusement at her carmine admission of her thoughts.
Awkwardness was inevitable. Stacie felt the world upon her shoulders as they walked to the fatal room. Rannah seemed determined to enjoy the awful experience. She would do this through the words and acts of her slave. Stacie knew herself an instrument and longed to acquit herself with distinction. The strangeness of what they were about to engage in set them to trembling. They laughed about it and made fun, but tension was there. Rannah had ceased to order or direct. She had become passive and very feminine. Stacie sensed the reins had been passed into her hands, there would be no more help, no directives, no decisions other than her own. She felt proud and scared. There was an amused glint in the mistress’s eyes that would take note of all she did.