His hand was halfway to his crotch before he stopped it.
"There’s no need to be offensive," he enunciated stiffly.
Suburbia outraged. He looked at me doubtfully. "You mean to say
… you sold yourself?"
"Don’t be ridiculous. When they need a girl they simply kidnap her. There’s always a loose girl trotting around. They kidnapped me. Now I’ll never, never escape. I know I won’t."
I made my voice as pitiful as I could. Than added as an extra thrust: "I’m always chained like a puppy dog or some wild animal."
It hit him. Suburbia is tender hearted Or rather, it has a keen sense of what is proper. Girls in chains aren’t. Except, of course, in the old secluded villa. He wriggled uncomfortably.
"You make this very difficult for me," he admitted. "I’d made up my mind to be quite hard hearted and go through with something I’ve always wanted very much. Now I get you.." He looked at me with red faced irritation. "You aren’t what I bargained for at all. You’re very sweet. You keep pecking away at my better nature and on top of that you’ve been terribly whipped. Really. I am beginning to think I had better send you away, back to Mr. Rabin. Such a nice man. I’m sure there’s something wrong somewhere."
"If I give you an address will you only contact them and tell them where I am?" I looked at him adoringly. "I’ll be ever so nice to you."
He waved a disgusted arm. "There. That’s just what I mean. Mr. Rabin said you’d ask. I had to give him my word I’d treat the whole matter strictly confidential. No young lady. Back you go."
I’d won a small victory. For a moment little Terry was proud as a punch. I wasn’t to get whipped after all. But then it hit me. I’d dug myself a pit and fallen right in it. What sort of a reception was dear old Mr. Rabin going to give his little slave girl when she was sent home unsatisfactory. I could just feel Thalia going to work on me with her strong right arm. I couldn’t dazzle either of the Rabins. But I could twist poor Cedric a bit… So I bent down at his feet in my best slave girl submission act and sobbed. "I have been a bad girl, Master. Please punish me."
It gets ‘m every time. I used to use it on Mark until he caught on. I think wives use it on their husbands. You ask for what you don’t want and hope you don’t get it. It worked with Cedric. He’d never seen anything so lovely as me. He tossed nobility out the window.
"That’s better," he said grudgingly just to show he was not a man to be trifled with. "I think you really deserve to be punished."
"Yes, master." You know, butter wouldn’t have melted in my mouth.
But poor Cedric was back at square 1 again. He had a naked girl complete with all parts. But his problem was which bit to start on. Understandable, really, considered he’d never in his life touched any of ‘m. I took a chance and peeped up. He was a perplexed young man.
"Would you like to look at the nice things, Mr. Rabin sent over? I’d love to see them," I suggested innocently. Actually, I was curious. It saved the day. First thing I knew I was on my feet and we were peering in a sizeable wooden box. It was quite a collection. I’d sort of got out the idea that I0d stay on this assignment for as long as Cedric paid the rent. That meant until he got tired of making me howl. Old Rabin must have hoped for a lengthy visit. The little lot we were looking at would have kept Torquemada happy for years. I didn’t know what a lot of items were. I could tell Cedric didn’t know either. But he wasn’t going to say so.
There were chains galore and a lovely collection of whips, canes and crops. I was thankful to note that the old boy had not included any kind of that slice. He would watch the well-being of his investment that far. There was a lot of cord and some straps. Then there were grim looking things I really didn’t want to know about.
"What are you going to hurt me with first?" I asked enthusiastically.
Cedric winced. "I do wish you would couch your remarks with a kinder phraseology. You make me feel like Genghis Kahn."
I was about to come up with something flip when I realised I’d better go easy. I might yet be sent back to father Rabin with request for a refund. "I’m sorry, master," I said as though I really meant it. "Would like to punish me for my insolence?"
He perked right up again. His faith in Rabin’s Rentals restored. "What would you suggest?" he asked briskly. I could see he wasn’t much of a one for decisions.
"I usually get two on my bottom for impertinence," I said meekly.
"Very well then. Mustn’t break with traditions, eh?" He oozed bonhomie. "Which cane do you prefer?"
Only Cedric could have asked that. I picked the one that hurt the least. He didn’t notice.
"What position would you like me in, master?"
Another decision. Pure cruelty!
"Well, err, what about the touch your toes sort of thing?"
"Thank you master." I’d really butter him up.
I bent over. I couldn’t touch my toes with my hands cuffed behind my back. But I decided to give my lessee another glimpse of the unknown. I bent as far as I could and parted my legs.
I heard him gasp. Looking back and up between my legs I could see his fingers twitching. He was immobilised. Poor Cedric was looking at a phenomenon that has disconcerted better men than he. Simply that, in such a posture, the principal bit of a girl that you expect to see in front begins to show up at her back. Hair and all.
"I say, Miss Esmond, perhaps you’d better close your legs." He evidently feared I was about to suffer some irreparable displacement. Or perhaps my little thingummy seemed an accusing eye.
I promptly obeyed. It’s with your legs together.
He lashed me twice. Savagely. I’d expected them to be bad. They were. Into those two cuts at my bottom had gone twenty years of frustrated longing.
I can take one, even two like that without a fuss. The hurt’s all there. But you keep it inside. I smiled radiantly as though he’d given me a diamond necklace.
"Thank you, master," I said gratefully. Then I stood at tiptoe and kissed him on the forehead. After that I knelt, bowed my head and waited.
It was really a tensed moment for me. I’d have sworn I could hear his heart beating. I guessed him steeped in sensation. The nothing-else-like-it feeling of a cane thunking into a girl’s flesh. If it triggered the wrong instinct I could very well be half killed in the next few minutes. The silence lengthened. Suburbia won.
"Please get up." His voice was squeaky. "I would like to.. discuss what has… Has, err, just happened."
What had happened? I’d been caned twice on my bottom. I hurt. He was probably sexually excited. Hardly a matter for a League of Nations debate. But talking doesn’t hurt. So I got up gratefully enough.
We sat and looked at each other. "Would you like me to make tea?" I said innocently.
"Oh, I say. Would you?" You’d have thought I’d offered him my virtue.
"I’d love to, master."
Without a pause I walked up to him, turned my back and wriggled my handcuffs.
Nothing happened. He would be enduring agonies. "I say, y’know, I can’t let you loose."
"I can’t get tea like this, master."
"No you can’t, can you?" He was doing some having thinking.
"You’ll have to take my handcuffs off sometime, master. You do have a bathroom, don’t you?"
He got the hint. My back was turned, but I swear I could feel him blush.
"Err, quite so…" he mired again.
"I know the very thing, master," I exclaimed joyfully. "You unlock me and I’ll fetch the proper chains from the box and you can chain my ankles."
He was so relieved at an obvious solution that he undid the bit of ribbon around my neck and unlocked the cuffs before he’d realised he had set me free. I was not about to do anything foolish. I had to try and condition him a bit first. I went and got a set of ankle chains with about the linkage I can walk with best and the key, and presented them to him, kneeling. While he was fumbling away at putting them on me, I asked sort of absently: "Do you realise, master, that I was quite free’ I could have fought or run away."