“I'm not frightened! She won't kill me!” I exclaimed. “That's just the treatment I prefer!”
“I reckon you'll get about your bellyful,” was the matron's dry rejoinder. “Miss Cora will spank you pretty, and there'll be nary laugh about it!”
At these words, the lass with the golden locks rose majestically, tossed her head in the air, arched her loins, and looked at me scornfully.
“It's ten dollars,” continued the old procuress eagerly, and in a fiffey she seized the bank-note I handed her.
“Pass on-in front of me! Hurry up!” said my tall imperious queen, and she pushed me rather brutally toward a short passage leading to a small room.
I found myself in a real arsenal of flagellation implements. A large enamelled zinc tub contained quantities of birch-rods in all sizes and lengths, soaking in water. On a table were loose twigs ready to be selected and tied in bundles. On the walls hung various kinds of martinets with thongs of leather and cord. I also remarked a collection of whips. A shelf was stocked with riding-whips of whalebone and twisted catgut; all slender, elegant, and flexible. A servant-girl in a white apron was making rods, and the floor was littered with the green leaves she had stripped from the branches.
“I've tumbled into a wholesale flagellating firm,” said I to myself, as I glanced round at the enormous number of instruments of torture. “Bottoms are cut up here, I should say, by dozens-nay, by the gross!”
My thoughts were interrupted by my fair-haired, conquering Cora speaking to the hired girl.
“Choose two good rods, Molly! The longest and strongest you've got! I don't know what's the matter with me to-day! I'm quite unnerved and fretful. I'm just dying to hear a man howl!”
“If you feel that way, Miss Cora,” said Molly, “I guess you'd better take a stinging little riding-whip. That'll make him yell louder still!”
“Yes, I'll not forget the whip,” responded Cora warmly, “but I want two rods as well, so as to tan his hide before I weal it till it bursts!”
This bloodthirsty little speech was uttered in sharp, biting accents, followed by a tigress-like flashing side-look at your humble servant, causing a voluptuous shiver to run through the whole of his body.
While the servant carefully wiped two long, supple, stout rods, Miss Cora selected a whip, after trying several on her open pink palm. She chose one of elastic black whalebone, as straight and tapering as the steel top of a lightning-conductor.
“Look alive! Get along!” she said to me, as, grasping her rods and whip, she drove me before her, out of the room.
CHAPTER IV
Roughly, with brutally nervous movements, the young woman took me a few steps down the passage, and then sent me spinning into another room, deliberately bolting the door, which she hid by heavy hangings.
The floor of this chamber was covered with a soft carpet, and I could not help seeing a kind of post, breast-high. It was fixed in the middle of the room, and covered with velvet. At the top of it was a bright copper ring through which ran a silken cord, the end reaching to the ground.
“Strip!” exclaimed martial Miss Cora. “Wait a bit. You seem rather dull! I'll wake you up, my lad!”
I had just taken off my morning coat, and as she spoke, she gave me such a fearful stinger from her whip across the back of my waistcoat that I almost lost my footing.
Before I could utter a syllable, the cruel flogging lass threw herself upon me, and tore off the rest of my clothes with skilful strength quite uncommon in a woman. It was not without a throb of pleasure that I submitted to the strenuous efforts of the implacable and vigorous feminine fingers which impressed me with the power of petticoat tyranny. So, ready to endure any suffering Cora felt inclined to inflict, I offered her my naked body.
With a coquettish gesture, Cora flung off her delicate little shoes, and the whiteness of her tiny feet-like a pair of spotless doves-showed up gloriously enhanced by the dark red background of the Smyrna carpet.
She dragged off my shirt and undervest, and throwing me on the ground, trampled on me, as she seized a rod. Threatening me with it, she made me lay prostrate while she thrust her toes to my lips.
“Lick!” she shouted, and down came her rod with a loud crash, swishing my shrinking rump without the slightest idea of moderation, while my mouth feasted greedily on her exquisite pink and white pedal extremities, perfumed like some strange tropical flower and as agreeable to the taste as fruit from the gardens of paradise.
I writhed in agony under the fiery cuts of Cora's busy birch, and as, by the irregularity of my contortions, I let her foot escape from between my lips, she dealt me a startling blow, with renewed rage.
“I'll give you the whip, if you let my foot go again!” she exclaimed. “Take it entirely in your mouth!” she added, not ceasing to birch me rigorously while giving her orders.
Her delicious tiny toes-five rose-petals-passed beyond my lips to be sucked by my mouth and tickled by my tongue. Her foot half choked me, but I groaned with rapture, which the searing stripes of the painful birch were powerless to overcome.
My adorable charmer passed round to the other side of my body, so as to whip in the contrary direction, and she thrust out her other foot for me to kiss. I rolled on the carpet, unknowingly describing a circle in order to try and evade the awful blows of the sharp twigs. I took good heed, however, not to let Cora's exquisite wee toes escape from my clinging mouth. One devilish, white-hot stinger caused the tit-bit to slip from the touch of my tongue. My efforts to regain possession of the fairy foot were in vain, for the alert young female threw her rod away and fell back on the sofa.
I breathed freely, relieved at no longer experiencing the dreadful burning smart of the rode. I stretched my limbs, and contemplated my tormentress.
“How was it? Great, eh? Had a good time?” she asked roguishly, with a smile. “Lucky chap to have a free lunch off women's natty feet!”
Then suddenly rising, she grew serious again.
“Come here! Now, I'm going to whip you!” she said harshly.
I hardly understood her. For the last half-hour I had been writhing on the ground under the flaming cuts of her stinging birchen caresses and now she spoke as if only just about to begin flogging me!
I begged her to spare me. My praywers-alas! — only made her burst out with a long peal of silvery laughter.
“What a fool you are! Let you off?” she merrily said. “I haven't whipped you yet. I've only just started! Come along and make no fuss about it!” she picked up the silk cord, and tying my wrists, dragged me to the post, fixing my bound wrists to the ring at the top. I was captive by the arms and entirely at her mercy.
Cora's flowing robe, loose from top to bottom, had opened itself during our struggles, showing the treasures of her fair-skinned frame; her hard, white breasts tipped with pink buds; her flat polished ivory belly, finished off by the mysterious golden curls of her sexual fleece; and her perfectly-shaped legs terminating in a pair of adorable little feet, still moist from my hot servile kisses.
She rolled up her sleeves, pinning them to her shoulders. I could see her lovely, white, dimpled arms, while she seized the second, unused rod, and clutched me under her left arm. I felt a thrill of enjoyment by reason of the contact of her tepid skin, but my delight was quickly dispelled when such force that I started in real excruciating pain.
The rod hissed serpent-like through the air, and spreading out like a released steel spring, slashed deeply on both buttocks, as the torturing creature held me with her strong arm to prevent me moving.
With sonorous swishing sounds, the shower of blows fell on my aching posteriors. Unable to support the acute suffering, I began to groan.