She raised, the whip and lashed the foot-long thongs across the nipples in Claudine's cupping hands. Claudine winced as each lash cut its welt into her tender mammary flesh. The hardened nipples stood up as Louise raised the whip again.
Once more she brought her arm downwards. Again and again she raised her right arm, and again and again lashed savagely at the breasts of the woman who now wriggled in agony beneath her onslaught. And then, as if by instinct, she switched her whipping attack to the belly and flanks of the naked, rolling, tormented body on the bed.
Harshly disregarding the moaning and cries which her torture was provoking, she reached out her left hand, grabbing at Claudine's hair. She wrenched her around, exposing the woman's incomparable buttocks. These she now attacked, directing a rain of blows upon the white flesh that soon made of each buttock an angry, red, flaming globe of torment.
And Louise stared in fascination as Claudine, sobbing in pain through the onslaught, wriggled to a knee-squatting position, buttocks in the air, to present still a greater area of her backside to the delicious, unendurable, unceasing whipping. Twisting, she brought these buttocks to point directly at Louise.
"Strike!" she howled dementedly. "Harder! Mutilate me! Cut me to ribbons if you can! For Christ's sake, don't stop now. I'm coming – ooooh! But any moment now I'll come!"
The rounded globes of her posterior were now angry, inflamed spheres of red. In some places, blood oozed. But they were like magnets, those buttocks, to that rising and falling instrument of silvered thongs. Again and again the whip descended.
And now Claudine, consumed utterly by the agony, thought up an awful thing. Sinking her shoulders upon her hands, arching her back, she seemed to thrust herself literally inside out, exposing her cunt in a convex mound at the snaking thongs of the castigating whip. The way she knelt, ass in the air, all that seemed visible between the mounds of her buttocks was her gaping cunt, a red, angry maw beneath the tight-drawn button of her anus. The lashes could not avoid it. There, from its curly, wet-haired bed, it stood out, lips agape, and Louise tore into it with the whip, fiercely watching as if hypnotized at the way it seemed to reach for each stroke she bestowed upon it.
By this time she had been whipping Claudine for a full five minutes, although it seemed to have been hours.
Suddenly Claudine shot her legs out, kicking them straight back, so that she fell on her belly over the bed, and Louise knew that her orgasm was upon her.
Sweating from her exertions, Louise was shiny-skinned in the light, but she never let up with her flagellation. Up and down went the whip, now across Claudine's twisting, turning back again – and the howls of the tortured woman, demented with pain, consumed in the Elysium of her orgasm, made the night hideous.
And then Louise could whip no more. Her right arm refused to raise itself at her will. Limply she let it hang, and the whip fell from her fingers. In a dead faint, Louise fell limply to the floor on top of the whip.
Claudine, still now except for an occasional twitching she was powerless to control, lay upon her bed, lost in her own heaven of perverted rapture.
Louise recovered consciousness to the sound of running water in the bathroom next door. Over her, Claudine was bending, sponging her forehead with cool water on a soft towel.
She struggled through the moments of orientation, adjusting to their dual nudity, to her surroundings, mechanically answering the questions, acknowledging the spoken sympathy of Claudine.
Everything felt strange, but strangest of all was the queer sensation in Louise's loins, where a sense of heaviness, born of dammed up frustration, pressed down upon her internal organs. It was not so painful as numbing as Louise struggled warily to her feet.
"Poor girl," fussed Claudine. "Come. A bath first. That should help."
Naked, Louise hung upon the other woman, allowing herself to be led to the bath where the bluish sheen of water steamed slightly. The bath was big enough for both of them, and the two women slid into the water, floating their way into a fit against its sides.
Louise felt herself reviving rapidly in the warmth of the water. She began, once more, to notice things in greater detail. The bathroom – its mirrors, its towels, its luxurious appointments. Even Claudine.
She shuddered to see the livid red welts, some of them turning blue already, upon the perfect skin of Claudine. She closed her eyes and shuddered at the memory of her strange part in mutilating this splendid body.
"Doesn't it hurt?" she asked, her voice muted to a whisper almost.
"Terribly, darling. But deliciously. Oh, my God, but you were wonderful!"
"I don't know what got into me. Oh, I just don't know how I could have been like that, how I could have done that to you!"
"Please don't worry, Louise. You did magnificently! You were perfect!"
"But, Claudine, those welts on your body! All those lashes! How can you endure it?"
"It's an acquired taste, shall we say? Who knows? Perhaps one day you, too, will know the delight of it."
"I've heard about it. Flagellation. How and when did you discover it?"
"Don't forget, Louise, I live for sex, which is my whole life. And what is whipping, after all, just another method of coming, just another manifestation of sexual activity. So I endure it. That's all there is to it."
"It must have taken fantastic courage, the first time. Did it?"
"Courage? I don't know. I don't remember. It was long ago."
"Tell me about it?"
Claudine laved her striated body tenderly with a soft cloth.
"It was on Capri about five years ago, I think. I'd gone there with another woman especially for the experience. On purpose, you'll understand, at her invitation. She was very like me but she was so much more learned in so many things that are still a mystery to me, I'm afraid. Anyway from her I learned what I went to learn, and plenty, too."
"But weren't you afraid? I'd have been."
"Yes I think I was. But I had to do it. Compulsion. I had to go through with it, to find out what it was an about. That's something I don't think I can explain, Louise."
"I – do you think it would work with me?" At that Claudine laughed merrily.
"Candidly, I don't. It's like drugging, Louise. It all depends on your attitude of mind when you go into the experience, your attitude of acceptance, let's can it. If you're just experimenting, then I wouldn't advise it. But if you feel a compulsion, if you feel you simply must undergo it to round out your gamut of experience, then I'd say yes. By any means, and my blessing on it!"
Claudine became reminiscent, as she thought back to her stay on Capri years ago.
"God, what a fantastic woman she was," she said.
"The one who initiated you?"
"Yes. Quite perfect. I think it was only after I'd known her – that I came to formulate my reason for being, my philosophy of sex. If you think I live for sex, Louise, you should have known her. Not in another ten years could I reach the level she already was at in sex, not with any amount of trying. She just was sex. It exuded from her, it was so strong you could almost put out your hand and feel it. There was just nothing, she had not done. And any of it perfectly. Men, women, boys, all the mechanical tricks… even dogs. She knew it all. She'd done, it all."
"Dogs? But how revolting!"
Claudine shot a sharp look of disapproval at Louise.
"Revolting?" she echoed, eyebrows raised. "Don't ever say that. I tell you, Louise, it was beautiful. With her, everything in sex was beautiful and perfect. She was utterly incapable of anything revolting."