He was behind me again. I felt the firm strong male hands upon my nether cheeks. Once more I gave him the tribute of the gasp I could not contain. “These are unmarked, madam.”
He was right. I had hurt so much elsewhere I had seen no significance in my bottom’s immunity.
“You will be caned.”
I wept afresh. Indignity with pain.
“Like a child! Oh, Vivian, don’t do that?”
“By no means like a child, madam.”
Miserably, I watched him select the cane with which I was to be cut. He had a great many. I liked none of them. He also produced a riding crop, a long slender thing such as I have never seen used upon a horse.
“If I am not to bind you shamefully, madam, the cane calls for your cooperation.”
“Oh, Vivian! Fastened like this, I can’t do anything at all!”
“You will discover, madam, that under the stimulus of the cane your bottom will display a surprising mobility.”
“You are being vulgar, Viv, and ridiculous. Don’t be pompous!”
“I will require of you, madam, that after the first effects of each stroke, you protrude your behind to the best of your ability for the next.”
“Oh alright! You don’t have to make a speech about it!” I still had the futile hope that by keeping dear little Jewel alive and perky I could coax back into existence the boy I had once loved.
“Are you ready, madam?”
“No! I’ll…”
The cane sliced my sentence and my bottom at the same time. Momentarily it stunned me.
I don’t know why we think of bottoms as humorous or vulgar. It’s silly. A girl’s bottom is a nice part of her. It can also feel pain the same as any other place. We think of childhood spankings, or even of those ‘six of the best’ the boys used to boast about, but we never quite manage to take our bottoms seriously. When my masked captor announced his intention to cane mine, my reaction had been humiliation. Caned like a kid at school.
The first cut cured.
It was awful! It was as bad as the whip. It was worse than the whip! It had a cruelty all its own. On impact you felt your flesh disintegrate. Felt the shock of your blood as it crept back into your crushed tissues and found its familiar paths destroyed. Felt the burn and the scald so that every nook and cranny of you cringed.
Shock got me over the first. I looked over my shoulder in reproach and in a need to know how much of himself Vivian was putting into hurting me. I saw his arm sweep back, then flash forward in fluid force. I turned away a second before the cane buried itself in the softness of my cheeks, and before I went berserk.
Is that a good word for it! One is hard-driven to find adjectives enough to meet the versatility of pain. Once more I betrayed my poor wrists and let them take the brunt of my convulsions. But it was scant moments before the quiet voice reminded, “Your position, Madam, if you please.”
The words seeped through, but I paid them no heed. I had no concern with positions and poses. I continued my gasping convulsions as though they had not been uttered. Without warning, my loins were laced with agony.
“If not the back, madam, then the front.” The imperturbable voice from which there was no escape and in which there was no mercy.
The final indignity! I must suffer and offer myself for that suffering. Nodding through my moans I indicated understanding. I stuck out my bottom. I was surprised by the degree to which I could offer it as sacrifice. I had to teeter more on my toes, but out it went invitingly. I wanted no more across my front, not across the sacred place.
My derriere’s invitation was instantly accepted. My poor hurt cheeks were sliced again. I paid my token of sound and motion. In between I managed ineffectual pleas. I knew them useless, but had to utter them. I was being tortured and knew not why.
I counted them. Ten strokes, and an extra across my front, before there was a pause. I had no feeling that my pain was ended. But the cane had ceased to fall.
“Have you glimpsed anything, madam?”
I sensed his need of an answer beyond moan or complaint. Pain had made me perceptive. Vivian was reaching. I was bereft. I had an absurd wish to offer him the comfort I needed so badly myself. But I knew not what to say. Yearning to give, the best I could manage was a tear drenched: “What do you want, Viv? What is it I should see? Tell me. If it’s there, Viv, I’ll see it.”
He sighed. I had not said the right thing. He had wanted spontaneity. But I was groping. There was something I had missed.
“You must not call me Viv or Vivian. For you, now, I have a title.”
“You want me to call you Sir?” I could not hide bitterness.
“You have perception. Try again.”
A cruel little game! Or were my steps being guided? “I suppose you expect to be called Master?” I let him hear the disgust.
“If it was not so hackneyed a word we would use it. You will call me Lord.”
“Oh Viv!” My exclamation of ridicule escaped my determination not to hurt him.
“You find the term offensive, or humorous, madam?”
“If I wasn’t in this fix I expect I’d laugh,” I admitted. “You are laying it on a bit thick, y’know.”
I was saying the wrong things! I could sense it. I was talking to someone who was not there. The impersonal thing behind the mask was not darling Vivian. In spite of agony I was still hurt and angry and utterly baffled. I had a feeling he was serious about the Lord thing. But really!
There are some things too absurd! I’d never be able to address Vivian as Lord!
“I’m going to start caning you again.” The quiet voice had a new intensity. “When you feel able to address me properly from a wish within yourself, a wish natural and unaffected, not from a desire to stop your pain, I will stop. You may keep me informed, madam.”
I was about to give him a neat bit of logic. Any girl in her senses will call anybody anything to save herself from being whipped. But he gave me no time for common sense. My already wounded bottom jerked under the impact of the most vicious blow yet. It also jerked out words that, even to me, sounded inane: “I will address you properly, Lord.”
My only acknowledgement was one more lash that drove me over the border of behavior. I danced like a puppet from my prisoned wrists. I was desperate. Somehow I must make him stop hitting me. But how! How to speak nonsense and make it sound like truth?
In the midst of my desolating pain it came to me quite suddenly that what I was labelling nonsense was only that by my own judgement. Because I believed it nonsense, I made it so. It was a profound discovery.
I fought my way up through the pain and looked back over my shoulder. I caught his eye. “Please, Lord, give me a chance. I think I understand something.”
The cane was lowered. My executioner walked to stand before me. He listened gravely while I blurted out my thought.
“I will be what you wish me, lord.” I was shamed.
I knew instantly that he was pleased. I sensed that I had crossed some sort of threshold, that perhaps he, too, had found an open door. I clutched at determination. I was terribly wounded. I wanted no more cutting of my skin.
“Have you found a message in the whip, madam?”
“Yes, lord. I have found a message in the whip.”
“What was the message?”
I was struggling again, but now I had a clue: “That I must obey you, lord.”
“Think, madam.”
I wracked my brains. There was another approach. “That I wish to obey you, lord.” For good measure I added a bit that seemed important to him. “I will treat you with respect, lord.”
From his exhalation of breath one might suppose he had been holding his breath in suspense for my answer. I knew it had been right. I was still uncertain of the truth of the commitments I was making. But I would avow them to escape the whip.
“And what does that make you, madam?”
Damn him! Was he never content! Had I not abased myself enough! How long did this guessing game go on! “I am your prisoner, lord.” I was pathetically determined to give him his title.
“Of course you are my prisoner,” he agreed irritably. “But you are more. What are you?”
I thought of parlor guessing games and wanted to be facetious, but was sure he would whip me for levity. What did you call a girl in my predicament! The answer slipped so neatly into place I was surprised I had not seen it.
“I am your slave, lord!” I felt like Scheherazade.
I had pressed a magic button. The black-clad male thing dropped the cane, took me in his arms and kissed me beautifully so that I kissed him back and longed for hands and arms. How can a girl kiss a man properly without hands and arms! I did my best. “Darling, little Jewel,” he whispered in my ear. “You are my slave, my own slave girl.”