Amity’s mien, on her return, boded ill.
"May I have your word, ladies, that you will not resist? That I may expect obedience?"
"What on earth are you going to do? Behead us?"
"No miss, But the master feels your day might be better employed than just sitting."
"Nice of him. Okay – do what you must do."
"If you will allow me, miss."
It took very little time. When it was done and Amity gone, two naked girls surveyed each other from opposite walls, their hands spread wide at head level, wrists clamped snugly to the stone. They could stand without strain. But stand they must! There was no pain. That might come later. Two maiden quims invited a guest that would not come. It was a very frustrating pose.
Dorinda looked at the two piles of chain beside their bench. It seemed impossible their slenderness could have endured it. She felt miserably certain it had been left there to be used again. It felt so good to be rid of it, that for a little while she would feel a sense of relief in her new plight. It would not last. But, for the moment, only her wrists felt bonds.
No one came. They spent the day alone. Drooping wearily as the hours passed, their pinioned wrists protesting as they accepted a little of the weight that had tired the legs so long. As the light faded the two girls became two pale ghosts in the uncertain light. Inconsistently, at night, their chains came almost as a boon. But now the separation that had sundered them through the day continued. Their tethers were on opposite walls. No tears or pleas or threats prevailed. Once more their ultimate bribe was rejected. On opposite sides of their dungeon they wept themselves to sleep.
The following day was both better and worse. Less tiring. But a shaming posture. They lay upon their backs, bottoms tight against the wall, legs up in a "V", ankles chained to the stone. Their view was restricted to small portions of the wall and ceiling. They could only see each other by painful strain and twisting. Their hands were free, but to what purpose.
On the third day they were whipped.
They suffered together, receiving single lashes alternately. The other’s agony always before their eyes as they felt their own. Amity used the fearful whip. Mark had vanished from their ken.
That morning, released from their chains, they had been suspended by their wrists, heels barely on the floor. Amity left them to wait. They hung, well separated, in the big dungeon, the most hated whip between them on a stool specially provided so that it be well displayed before their stricken eyes.
"Is it possible to bear, or will we faint?" Dorinda had built a devastating vision of suffering within her mind.
"I didn’t faint, darling. But don’t let that fool you." Terry searched her memory for consolations. "It depends on who whips us. I hope it’s Amity. She doesn’t hit as hard as Mark. She probably thinks an employer – that’s me – has to be whipped with respect. Then it’s a case of how fast they let you have it. I’m damn sure I couldn’t take fast from that awful thing. I would faint. I think you’ll find now we’ll get it laid on slowly and spread over a long time. If it’s any comfort I can tell you they won’t whip you nipples with that thing."
Was there comfort anywhere? Dorinda cringed in her nudity. She longer for the whip to get it over, to pass through the agony over to the other side. But she longed, with equal ardour, that the whip not touch her at all. She felt no bitterness against Mark. He had told her she would be trashed if she touched the forbidden fruit. She had knowingly gorged on it. Thus it was proper that she now stand naked with her hands high, the familiar bite of the cords urgent on her wrists, the whip before her eyes. Soon she would know its searing cuts and scream the pleas of a slave who has transgressed.
How awful to stand thus. More naked than naked. Curvature of breasts and Venus mound accentuated by the traction of her arms. Only the soles of her feet were denied the whip. She had read of the bastinado. No doubt Mark had too. That day would come. To be whipped on the soles of her feet. How awful. How a girl would scream.
It was though all of her cried for the whip. The cords held her curved. She heard their voices. Her breasts did not know themselves inviolate. They cried ‘Whip me, whip us both. We’re too beautiful not to feel the lash! It’s our destiny.’ Her bottom, her poor caned bottom jutted, curving its pinkness and its fading stripes in its own special demand: ‘Whip me, master. I am designed for the whip. Millenniums of men have whipped the bottoms of millions of naked girls. Whip me, whip me, master. I am a slave.’
Two bands of chord held her, sacrifice. They cut into her wrists. Only two bands of chord… Yet she was their slave. She would stand, naked and palpitating, to be whipped just because they told her to. So that she might know herself truly divorced from freedom and from choice they cut her skin en bestowed upon her flesh their own brand of pain. Soon they would bleed. She was a slave.
The secret place between her legs. It had known little of secrecy since Mike had handcuffed her that fatal night. The night of decision. The night she had been delivered to Kyrexos. She could not tough her dark triangle. She could not shield it from the whip. Would she be compelled to part her legs so that the lash, the cutting tip could find her loins and bed itself upon the seat of joy? How terrible it was to be whipped upon her cunt. She considered the word as Terry had considered it. A hateful word. Yet what other word was so apt? The slit by which she was pleasured. The portal by which men entered the world and sought surcease forever therein. Should he or she who whipped her pause for a moment to cup their hand thereon she would glow with gratitude. It, too, cried out: ‘Whip me, whip me, whip me!’
She wished she had the courage to request a gag. She would not dare. Amity and the authority vested in her would not approve. The girl under the whip should rightly howl. She should writhe and scream. This was her tribute, her acknowledgement of just punishment. It was like signing a piece of paper to say: '‘Yes, I have received so and so many strokes upon my female flesh. The liquidation of an IOU.
It was Amity who picked up the whip and looked from one to the other of them with amused speculation in her eyes. No words. No pleas for mercy. No attempts to bribe. Two naked girls, hanging helpless without thought or hope or escape. The whip was the center of their being. It owned them as did the woman who held it. All of the girl who was Dorinda, save her voice which was mute, cried in some strange paean of exultation: ‘Whip me, whip me, oh, please whip me…’
Amity swung the sneaky length. It curled around Terry’s waist leaving a narrow neat belt of punished skin, the buckle of which was a drop of blood where the tip had cut. The lovely slenderness swung under the whiplash pull of the blow, the female lips acknowledged it. Dorinda quailed. The next stroke would be her own. All the agony hers to cherish.
Amity contrived a twin. They would wend their way though their whipping together. Their maiden flesh equal under the lash. Their fault expiated with a just precision. Dorinda heard her voice cry out to join that of the girl whose tongue had given her delight. Men hated and feared this union of girls. Always they would whip the flesh that had found joy in what they had not shared.
How exquisite a ritual. Terry… Dorinda… Dorinda… Terry. The naked breasts jerked and shuddered. The slender hips writhed this way and that. The cords held. The wrists bled. The girlish bottoms swayed. But the whip mastered them. Amity struck where they believed themselves immune. They yielded all their agony.
Dorinda drifted on a cloud of pain from which she witnessed the striation of her lov3ed one’s flesh and knew it for her own. How beautiful it was. She knew gratitude. She could not see all her nakedness. But Terry was the mirror of herself. Lash and lash. They were made one by the whip.