She pulled a chair up beside him and stood up on it with a swooshing rustle of her long cape. "Your hands above your head," she ordered. "High up."
He stretched his arms high above his head. His hands came to the level of a stout hook that had been fixed into the door. She took the ends of the twine that bound his thumbs and tied them tightly round the hook. With another swoosh she stepped down from the chair. "Now kick the books away," she said.
"I can't. I'm standing on them."
"Do as I say."
"I can't, Fraulein Direktor. It's impossible."
"Oh, you are asking for trouble!" She moved a few paces away from him and lifted the long whip. It hissed down with terrible force and cut into the flesh at the back of his knees. He screamed wildly.
"Are you going to kick them away?"
He gave a little hop and kicked with his toes. The books scattered. His body dropped, leaving him hanging by his thumbs from the book above his head. Only the tips of his toes touched the floor. He groaned.
She licked her lower lip. "That's better. Now you can be properly whipped." She regarded him thoughtfully for a moment. "I'd better gag you. The walls and doors are thick, but you're going to scream a lot, I think. I'll make certain."
She went to the chest of drawers and took out a single sheer-nylon stocking. Then she took out a pair of gossamerlike panties in black silk chiffon with lace edges. She rolled these into a tight ball and came back to the chair. With another frooshing rustle she stepped up on it again. "Open your mouth wide." She stuffed the rolled-up panties into his mouth and tied them in place with the stocking wound round the back of his neck. She stepped down from the chair, regarded him thoughtfully for a moment, and pulled the hood of her cape up over her hair.
"And now, Herr Gunther," she breathed, her chest rising and falling fast, "say your prayers." She picked up the whip and ran its lash through her fingers. She buttoned the collar of her cape. She threw its right-hand folds back over her shoulder so that her whip arm should be unhindered. With her free hand she drew its left-hand folds protectingly across the front of her body. "Say your prayers," she repeated, "because the blood is really going to spatter tonight." She pressed the cool rubber against her breasts and squeezed her nipples through it. "Here come the first hundred."
She raised the long black whip, held it poised for a moment while she aimed, and brought it down across the exact centre of his buttocks with all her force. His skin broke. Blood welled up into the weal. He gave a strangled moan.
She struck again at his buttocks. The whip cut into the same weal. Its impact caused a light shower of blood to fly. Some of it spattered on to the front of her cape. Either in protest or appeal he shook his gagged head wildly.
She laughed happily. "A very good shot, that one. Right on the same place. I wonder whether I can do it again."
Her third lash missed the bleeding weal by only a centimetre or two, and created new blood of its own. Her fourth went very wide. She poised the whip again, narrowing her eyes slightly as she took careful aim. She struck, very hard. The leather hissed through the air. Her aim was very good this time. The whip fell neatly on to the wound of the first two lashes. Blood spattered again over the front of her cape and on to the polished parquet around.
She sighed deeply with pure pleasure. "I'm so glad I didn't go today. You should be very honoured. It'll make me a day late with all my plans and arrangements-and I've lost the price of my aeroplane ticket into the bargain." She lashed him across his shoulders. "You hear that?" Another lash. "That's why you should be honoured." Another lash. "Very-very- very-very-honoured-indeed!" She lashed with all her strength as she spoke each word.
Inside her body, inside her sexual organs, her excitement was raging tumultuously. She felt as though a hundred fingertips, each charged with electricity, were caressing the whole of her sexual nervous system. She knew that an orgasm was beginning to smoulder deep inside her loins; she knew that it would rise and take her in its grip at any moment if she went on with her whipping. She did not want an orgasm so quickly: she wanted to do a lot more whipping first.
She said: "I'll give you a few moments' rest, I'm going to change my whip."
She went back to the living-room. She took a newspaper and opened it wide. She laid it flat on the floor. Then she placed her long blood-wet whip upon it. She moved to the side of the divan and stood gazing down at all the other instruments that were lying there.
She sighed again and stood quite still, waiting for the raging tumult inside her to lessen a little. From the bedroom she could hear the sound of low groans. She tried not to hear them, for they excited her greatly and stimulated the tumult that had come too soon.
She stood there, her lovely head thrown back, her chest rising and falling as though she had been running. The right- hand folds of her cape were still thrown back over her shoulder, revealing the whole of the right-hand side of her lovely body. The creaminess of her skin contrasted sharply with the blackness of the rubber that covered the rest of her. Her stance, with the cape falling to the ground on her left- hand side in full, soft, graceful folds, gave her the appearance of some ethereal goddess from another world.
She felt the smoulder of her orgasm begin to lessen and recede. The tumult was raging less strongly. She knew, though, that her next lash would revive it; she would receive a sensation that would make her senses swim; it would be as though a droplet of ecstasy had been allowed to fall upon an open sexual nerve. And she would have great difficulty in restraining her mounting orgasm.
She had no patience, however, to wait any longer.
She leaned forward over the divan, studying the instruments. After some cogitation she picked up a birch made of long strips of naked whalebone.
She went back into the bedroom.
2
At this moment, five floors below, her private secretary entered the lobby of the building with a briefcase under her arm.
Erika Kostler was a very pretty girl, a slim brunette twenty-five years old. The men in the lobby turned their heads to gaze at her as she made her way to the lift. She was wearing a provocatively cut blue silk dress and shoes with high stiletto heels. She gave the impression that she was wearing nothing else. Her legs were very shapely, her waist was small, and her bosom firm. She enjoyed the knowledge that eyes were undressing her as she got into the lift.
She pressed the button of her employer's floor. She had come, ostensibly, to bring some files and papers from the office; in reality, she had come to give herself some pleasure.
Her employer, she knew, had left for Paris that afternoon for the beginning of a five-week foreign business trip, and she assumed that the maids would have been given a holiday. The flat, therefore, would be empty. She had a key to it, for one of her duties was to keep her employer's home-desk tidy as she kept the desk at the office, and she came frequently in the evenings to do this work.
She had come one evening several weeks before, when her employer was at a dinner party, and had found the flat empty. She had seized the opportunity of inspecting more than the study in which the desk was situated. She had gone to the bedroom and opened drawers and cupboards, fingering and admiring the clothes they contained.
It was the wardrobe, however, that gave her a strong, and unexpected, thrill of delight. She had found a number of garments made of rubber-a raincoat, a negligee, a large apron, a smock, a floor-length cape, and even a pair of pyjamas.
Her thrill of delight increased as she gazed at the garments. She had a powerful fetish for any clothing that was made of rubber.
Her own wardrobe, of course, contained many similar garments, which she wore next to her skin on all possible occasions. She experienced a good deal of physical sexual excitement when she was wearing them. She experienced, in addition, a strong mental excitement whenever she saw anyone, man or woman, wearing even a simple raincoat, provided it was made of some sort of rubber. She would mentally undress the person and picture herself slipping the garment back on again over his, or her, naked body. And her heart would begin to pound…