"No, Miss, it's more cruel this way. Those straps up above will hold you tight."
The maid's words became tremulous. "Ilona, I'm so glad it isn't me who whips you."
They would have kissed but slavegirls do not kiss in public. Nora stepped away.
It was bad and it was beautiful. Bad only for the strapped girl, but for those who watched she had become twice beautiful, the symmetry of back and buttocks held, in their white innocence, an infinite promise of things to come. Ilona heard the sighs and was thrilled in her trembling, heat flaring within her crotch. She wondered if she would have the courage to thrust her sex against the rough surface and friction it to climax as she undulated beneath the lash.
There was no hurry. Ilona would have to wait for her agony. This was proper and in an old tradition. Her white nakedness was so spotlighted as to reveal even her smallest motion to the watching eyes. She held the stage, so that to tug at her strapped wrists or to thrust her bel y against the post evoked responsive murmurs from the audience. She could not forbear to look back over, a strained bare shoulder from time to time, but it was a restricted view. Palpitating, she studied the grain and splinters in the wood before her eyes. She would remember them always.
The cool sweet fingers smoothing her back and the twin curves below were Ilona's first awareness of Cicely's presence. The gentle loving hands generated waves of ecstasy. The soft voice was tender. "I won't prolong this prelude, darling. I'll soon start to whip you. Are you O.K.?"
"I'm O.K., Cicely." It was an affirmation of love.
"You are more beautiful than ever." The fingers smoothed away hair to allow warm lips to kiss the soft flesh below the iron collar whose weight the slavegirl no longer felt. The beloved voice tinkled laughter: "Maybe not the hundred lashes you asked for, darling?" Then Cicely was gone.
No matter how the strokes are measured, the whipping of a girl takes unto itself an inescapable rhythm. The breathless cringe of anticipatory flesh, the pounding heart. Then the blow itself: strangely it is the least awful of all in its brief moment of impacting within the female skin. It is the wave after wave of the unspeakable, spreading to encompass every feminine secret crevice, that is the true agony. It fades reluctantly to make way for a fresh hope and a slowing of the heart. But while it lasts the restraints are tested to the full by limbs which find, in futile struggles, the only vent a whipped girl can know: that and her screams which sometimes she herself does not hear. And then the panting sweat soaked aftermath, inevitably merging into another fearful dread.
Pain and love! Surely not many whipped girls could be a prey to both! That pain be synonymous with adoration. . ! Was it an anomaly she shared with none! As the straps creaked against her surging arms and her feet kicked helplessly, Ilona Paisley wondered about herself and the woman with the whip. Why, why, why did she love. How could that love endure what was happening now! But it did endure. It flamed more brightly in longing for Cicely's arms. But who could explain love. . ?
No one ever had.
Ilona did not scream for a surprisingly long time. She did not count the cuts on her skin, nor did she set herself a goal. She thrust herself against the post, finding a rough and illusory refuge in the wood as her breathing merged into moans and small feminine cries of desolation as she was lashed. But soon there came the stroke she could not bear. It was no different from the others but told her of an endless going on and on. . ! Her scream was part of anger and part of pain. She pealed it out into the Texas sunlight, not once but twice. As though released from unseen bonds, her body and her limbs abandoned themselves to whatever wild gyrations hurt flesh dictated. Ilona forgot her audience, forgot Cicely. She remembered only the whip. If animal responses gave her easement from its venom she would render them gladly without shame.
Did she lose consciousness? Ilona was never sure.
Certainly, after she had been whipped for what seemed eternity, she retreated into a world of her own wherein she felt the impacts of the whip as the defenders of a castle might have felt the hammer blows of a ram against their massive gate. When the blows stopped she was kissed and tried to return the kiss but could not. She then became the lonely tenant of a vast silence.
The post was friend and enemy. It held,her prisoner but it was something to lean on. It had shared her travail, now she found herself luxuriating against it as sentience returned with a flood of thankfulness that she had been whipped and it was done. If she had to stand thus with her wrists strapped above her head what did it matter! Tentatively, she tried to test herself. She was positive the whip had made her outrageously wet. But her pussy was denied. She could contrive no contortion by which it might be reached:
There was but the one way, to thrust her pelvis against her post while she curled a leg around its circumference. Her Venus mound made contact instantly, and then the soft swelling below. . ! Furtively, she looked at as much of the scene as her strapped wrists permitted. The posture she must use was obscene. But there was no one in sight. In an urgent need she did not try to analyze, she began the hip motions and the thrusts by which she would give surcease to her sex.
Miss Ilona Paisley felt better. The climax had been explosive enough to elicit moans and cries and more sweat. She was at peace. The straps on her wrists did not hurt if she did not struggle. They were broad and snug and would accept some of her weight if she became weary enough to wish it so. She looked up at them from time to time in chagrin that two strips of leather could make her so helpless, but she never for a moment had dreams of freeing herself. She and the post were wedded by a firm bond.
The punished girl's back and bottom were beyond her ken. Any movement told her they were tender and sensitive. She knew she would be shocked if she could see what the whip had done. But she could not see, she could not touch. Her back and bottom were for another time. Certainly she would not sleep on them! She wondered, as she had often done, about the whip. Fiction said the screaming agony went on and on.
But it did not go on and on. It was unbelievably terrible while it lasted but slowly it faded. The shock and the trembling could outlast it. She knew this was why she and others would choose to be whipped rather than endure more lasting penances over many hours or many days. Ilona had just received the most severe whipping of her slavery, but she knew she preferred it to a week of days and nights chained in the dungeon.
She heard the departure of the plane. Cicely's party was over. Soon now someone would come. It was a blissful thought that the straps would be,loosed and she would lower her arms and for a moment stand free. And then. .! This euphoric dream lasted her some little time before she realized it was dusk and night not far away.
Despite herself she shuddered as a frightening loneliness descended with the dark.
She could not get free. . there was no way she could get free.
By the time the Texas night possessed the land Ilona was fighting panic. Cicely might sometimes be cruel but she would not do this to her slave. True, she might leave her thus for the night as an additional punishment, but there would have been a kiss and whispered girl talk before she was left alone in penance. Something was wrong, something was desperately wrong indeed! In atavistic fear she panicked, sobbing and berserk she fought the straps, she fought the post, she pealed out cry after cry for help. But at the end of it the wood remained her only friend, she leaned against it, panting, cheeks tear stained, her wrists as firmly strapped as though she had not moved. Her whipped back made its own contribution to desolation.