The first blow fell noisily on my hinder cheeks, the other cuts following quickly, without a break. She did truly flog with clockwork regularity, aiming to cover the two posterior spheres at once. The pointed ends of the twigs spread out like fiery tongues, searing my bottom all over with their flames.
The skillful lashing lady, her features impassible, stood as erect as a statue, her arm rising and falling with almost automatic precision. I groaned and twisted about under the consecutive cuts, falling fast and sturdily on my suffering stern, torn by the scratching ends of the branches.
At the thirtieth blow, Miss Florence cast away her instrument of torture, and sat down, as she crossed her legs, in a waiting attitude.
I admired her clear-cut profile and the outline of her fine figure, terminating in small pointed, patent-leather shoes peeping out from under her skirt. I marvelled at her unimpassioned disposition, permitting her to remain indifferent to such a sensational occurrence as the flagellation of a man. She soon rose to her feet, and crossed over to the other side of the oak bench.
“Look out!” she said again, emphasising her ironical warning with the first blow of the second dose.
The rod continued to cut my throbbing skin. It's “swish, swish,” was mechanically regular, and the sharp ends hurt me terribly, smartly applied to the side of my bottom which had the least suffered during the first half of the castigation. My whole backside ached with scalding pain.
I now began to feel as if bright flames were licking my stern, but the vigorous biceps of the nonchalant young woman was still active and I was flogged atrociously; the strokes descending in cadence as if proceeding from a motor.
The second rod was thrown to where laid the stump of the first, and my beautiful flagellating lady, as calm and as cold as ever, dropped a curtsey.
“All over!” she exclaimed.
I caught sight of the train of her black dress disappearing through the doorway, and I was very nearly regretting that I no longer felt her cruel birching touches so suddenly cut short. They had set my flesh on fire, without extinguishing my devouring desires.
Another minute, and the graceful girl came back. In the same deliberate way as her mistress, she unbuckled the strap, cast off the ropes, and pointed to an adjoining dressing-room.
As soon as I was alone in this feminine toilet retreat, full of subtle womanly perfume, my sense of eroticism manifested itself in furious fashion. The scientific and regular flagellation just endured, and that had not been terminated by any outburst of manly enjoyment as was the usual custom with lustful, ladies, seemed to me as if some powerful engine had been suddenly brought to a standstill. Something was wanting. It was exactly what a frenzied lover would feel, if interrupted during copulation, just as he reaches the ecstatic goal. With my hands, I rubbed my excoriated bottom, which was scarcely scratched. My burning flesh was languishing for more energetical caresses of the rod.
When the girl came to show me out, I followed her mechanically, but as I reached the hall, I hesitated. I was loath to leave the house where lovely, supple rods were always ready, and putting out my foot to prevent the girl closing the door, I pushed her gently aside. I boldly walked into the combined parlour and office.
My beautiful flogging female had resumed her grey costume, and seated in an armchair, was reading an evening paper.
“Are you going, sir?” she said, as she saw me enter.
“No, miss,” I replied. “On the contrary, I have returned.”
“I thought you would!” she said, quietly, and rising, dropped her newspaper.
“I immediately handed her two bank notes, amounting in all to twenty-five dollars. Without asking me to explain matters further, she put them in her drawer, striking the bell as before.
“Prepare the gentleman for severe punishment,” she said, as soon as the young girl answered her summons.
“All right, miss,” said the maid, at once leading me back into the room which I had only left a few minutes before.
I was about to obtain complete satisfaction and get a taste of one of those lithe whalebone riding-whips, that sting so terribly.
“This is what you've got to do,” said the pretty maid, sending me into the dressing room. “You'll undress quite naked, without a rag left on your body, and put on the belt I'll give you.”
She pulled out a drawer in a chiffonier and soon put her hand on a strange sort of girdle, fashioned in black elastic silk.
“Now, I'll leave you to yourself. I shall be back in five minutes. Mind you're ready.”
I was not long stripping until I was in the same state as Adam before he was tempted. I examined the most original black belt. I had never seen anything like it before.
It was a narrow elastic ribbon, encircling the loins like an ordinary belt, closing in front by means of a buckle. When it was on, a second elastic band dropped down vertically. This strip of material was wider in the middle, forming a kind of pocket; and then it gradually grew more narrow until it was finished off by another buckle. I understood that this last ribbon had to be passed between the thighs, and its extremity brought up on the belly to rejoin the waist-buckle.
This invention, like all other Yankee notions, was excessively ingenious. The weird girdle fulfilled a twofold purpose. A man wearing it could stand naked before a woman without putting her to the blush, because his private parts were packed away, hidden in the rounded pocket. On the other hand certain delicate manly organs were sheltered from the contact of the rod, and the vertical ribbon separating the two posterior gloves, enhanced those hinder portions of the masculine frame specially destined to receive the cutting caress of the painful twigs.
I could do naught else than inwardly congratulate the unknown inventor of this most practical belt, of great service to birching-or rather birched-amateurs.
Thus armoured, I bravely showed myself to the young servant-girl who paid no more attention to me than if I had been in evening dress.
She stood on a chair, and released a rope hanging over a pulley that I had not hitherto remarked in the centre of the ceiling. She then took two leathern bracelets garnished with eyelet holes and laces, such as are use by athletes. Each of these cuffs was finished off with a metal ring. Fastening these gauntlets tightly round my wrists, she passed the end of the cord dangling over my head through the two iron circlets, and hauled me up. I was hanging with my arms in the air and my feet just off the ground, in such a way that I could turn about in every direction, but without being able to stoop or get away.
“Miss Florence will attend to you in a moment,” was the stereotyped remark of the lovely little creature, as she disappeared with a frisky step.
CHAPTER VIII
There was a large mirror in the room of punishment. I could see myself from head to foot, suspended by the arms; quite naked, with the exception of the peculiar belt, tracing deep black lines on my body; splitting my hind quarters into two well-defined halves. I must have looked like an acrobat hanging from his trapeze apparatus. Turning slowly round to inspect myself on all sides, I saw that my freshly-birched, dark red buttocks stood out in deep contrast to the dead-white tint of the rest of my skin. Nevertheless, I hungered still for the burning smart that I had not fully experienced, and I gloated over the sight of two new, grand rods that the pretty girl had placed on a chair, side by side with a riding-whip.
The door opened. The superb female executioner came in, again attired in her tight black dress which clung so deliciously to her perfect frame.