Mark nodded soberly. His gaze was riveted on the taut loveliness he was about to whip. Dorinda’s last word and her lucid rationale disconcerted him. He would have preferred her to plead or weep, or even to be some other girl who would spit at him and curse. Dorinda had matched her own logic with his. Mark found himself warming to the idea of discussion, a battle of wits and will, with his guest somewhat more comfortably circumstanced than she was now. Whatever that errant thought may have led to will never be known, for in the midst of it young Terry’s voice decided the issue.
"What an absolutely glum pair you are." She eyed her brother discerningly, then turned to the quaking captive. "I bet poor old Mark’s funked out. You look gorgeous enough to eat…"
"We’ve been talking," Dorinda vouschafed lamely.
Terry’s laughter pealed through the bare room transforming it into a place of gaiety. Without wasting words she snatched the whip from her brother’s hand. She turned a radiant and consoling smile on the quailing captive. "Frightfully sorry, old girl. But this job has to be done. Absolutely must get it out of the dear boy’s system." She winked broadly. And out of little Terry’s too…"
Dorinda froze in shock. The limber with had crossed her back and curled over her ribs. There could not be all this pain in the whole world. She knew there could not be! No one had ever borne it or could ever bear it. She was sliced and bleeding. She was sure she was!
Then a scream. Her cry of outrage split the room. It held all the desolation of a girl who knows herself lost, delivered to a force no girl deserved. Terry’s second lash had been neatly beneath the first, but delivered from the other side. Dorinda’s white nudity was circled by a band of fire. All resolution dissolved. In frantic panic she leaped at her bonds. She kicked and twisted, sobbing in the frustration of her helplessness. For moments at a time she bent her knees and lifted both feet from the floor as though seeking surcease in foetal shape. Her slender wrists were cut by the rigid bite of the metal cuffs that circled them so snugly. But that pain was unnoticed under the all consuming agony of the two welts Terry had bestowed so lovingly and with consummate skill.
"Now let’s talk for a minute, darlings," Terry suggested with enchanting insouciance.
Brother and sister watched raptly as Dorinda panted and sobbed her way back into the world from which she had been reft. The chained girl had no coherent thought. She was dazed and smarting from something more awful than her wildest fears had envisioned. She squirmed on suspenseful vulnerability, every nerve screaming in expectation of the next stroke. It was perhaps two minutes before her wild eyes focused on Terry’s gamin grin. Her breasts were still heaving under both the pain and the strain of her suspension. A small trickle of blood found it’s way down one wrist.
Tenderly the girl who held the whip dried her captive’s eyes and wiped her cheeks. Gentle fingers smoothed the hair damp with the emanation of fear and pain.
"Tell us what it’s like, darling," Terry asked soothingly.
A broken Dorinda looked Mark squarely in the eye. "It’s a worse cruelty than I thought anyone could inflict," she said desolately. "I can’t stand anymore. If you are going to whip me more, than kill me and be done with it."
There fell a small silence broken only by the sounds of the whipped girl’s distress.
"I’ve been whipped like this many times," Terry said brightly.
Dorinda did not know whether to accept the statement as a rebuke or as consolation. She only knew a panicky compulsion to end her martyrdom. "I’ll do anything at all," she offered flatly. "There’s nothing I won’t do… I’ll be a slave gladly. Don’t whip me anymore. Oh please, don’t!" She looked from one to the other of her owners with abject eyes.
"It’s not over, y’know," Mark told her somberly.
"We’ve stopped for a little while because the is a genuine experiment," Terry explained soothingly. "We hope you’ll examine it along with us."
"What is there to examine in such awful pain?" Dorinda asked bitterly.
"You have had two strokes with a whip. Have they taken you anywhere?"
Dorinda knew very well what Mark sought. But she was too distressed to deal with subtleties. Within herself she was crying resentfully. ‘Why me! Why me!’ But she knew it useless to propound the same question to her captors. Pure chance had delivered her to where she now stood. Her agonised wrists told her very clearly that she had been cast in a role and would have to play it. She wished she had been shown a reward for playing it well.
"Pain will make me obey you." She looked from one to another. "Please help a bit. I can’t give a lecture."
Terry handed the whip to her brother. "Step two, darling," she suggested queryingly.
Their victim watched the transfer with pure horror. If Terry could hurt her with such intensity, what would Mark’s stronger arm inflict? Only the brake of reason inhibited her from another panic driven struggle with her tether. Her vulnerability devastated courage.
"At this stage we have to compel your participation," Mark said reflectively. "So you will ask me pleasantly and intelligently, to give you two more strokes. You may even choose where they fall."
"I’d have to be nuts!"
The exclamation got out before she had time to think. Mark grinned understandingly. "Sounds damn silly, doesn’t it? So to make it valid we do the Pavlov bit. Ask for two nicely or get four."
So simple. A sort of conditioning process. Dorinda was furiously angry at being its subject. But she was also desperately afraid, she glimpsed the path devised for her unwilling feet. She was defeated by their faces: two nice young people with a mission, earnest and dedicated. She knew they liked her. It was paradoxical. A discordance that defeated reason. How would any girl be expected to adjust?
The four strokes cut in rapid succession. Her cry of protest faded before her cry of agony. She groped her way, sobbing and gasping, through the dark forest of pain to the distant point where she could look at Mark reproachfully with incredulous eyes. "You took too long to make up your mind," he explained evenly. "Never believe I will not be cruel. We will start again. Ask for two or get four…"
At that moment Dorinda would have asked for anything. But not the whip! She manufactured his demand. It was on her tongue. But it was insincere. Surely Mark would recognise the words as false. She did not utter them. She was groping for others when the whip found her again …
This time, returning from the pit of agony, she found her head thrown back, her gaze resting on her tractioned arms on each of which a thin trickle of blood fell from wrists cut by shining metal. In the thoes of her wild threshing she had not known of that wound. It came as a surprise, but did not matter. Nothing mattered, save that she be no more whipped… Hopelessly she turned to plead.
But the room was empty. Mark and Terry had gone while she was still in that fearful other place. Dorinda was alone.
It was with great thankfulness that the naked girl stood simply in her enforced pose.. An onlooker would have found her exquisitely lovely in her weariness and pain. The whipping may have paused. But the handcuffs continued their unyielding compulsion. Dorinda stood very straight, even with tired head and bent knee. From time to time she stood on her toes to ease her wrists. Her pain was constant. When coherent thought returned, curiosity came with it. Straining, she tried to examine her body. There was no blood, but the ridged welds were as frightening. She had no previous experience with such inflictions. She could see little of herself, and wondered what her back might show.
Released from immediate threat she wept quietly, wiping wet cheeks against her raised arms. Fear spurred her thoughts, confronting her with the knowledge of a lesson learned: she would have to be obedient. Only by a responsive act she could save her skin. Hesitation spelled out a mental reservation. The master would perceive and punish. Reservations and secrets were denied a slave…