I try to regulate my breathing, but my body will not accept that this ordeal has to continue. “But it really HURTS, Sir,” I wail.
“I know. I don’t believe I’ve heard your count yet?” He lays the horrible thing against my backside again and I quickly pipe, “One, sir.”
He taps it gently two or three times, then it is swinging upwards and I clench my flat palms into fists, biting down on one of them before the cane paints another incandescent stripe in rivalry with the first, just beneath it.
“Oooooh nooooo,” I waver, swaying and twisting and moving from one foot to the other against the all-pervading sting. “Please, please, please don’t…”
“The count, Miss Newland. If I have to remind you again, there will be additional strokes.”
“Two, sir,” I say miserably.
At the third stroke I can’t keep still any longer and I leap up to rub my poor bottom, shouting “Three, sir,” as I do so.
“Oh dear me, no, Miss Newland,” he reproves. “I warned you there would be consequences for this. This is what it takes, isn’t it, to get the message through to you?”
“I’ve got the message, sir, really I have!” I assure him urgently but he shakes his head.
“Hand,” he commands. Oh no. I hold out a shaky palm; he taps the cane against it then whips it smartly down – not from a great height, but it didn’t need to be. I howl and tuck the wounded palm into my armpit, tears springing to my eyes.
“Back down,” he says pitilessly. I begin to sob melodramatically, hoping against hope that I can make him feel guilty and relent. Ha. Fat chance. I resume my position over the desk and resign myself to five more cutting swipes before Sinclair will be satisfied I have paid the price of my misdeeds. “You understand now that disobedience from you will not be tolerated?”
“Yes, sir,” I mope.
“Good. Let us continue.” The fourth stroke catches me at a sensitive spot underneath the curve of my bottom and it takes every speck of willpower I possess not to leap up again, but somehow I succeed.
“Aaaaaaaaaah ffffffour, sir.” I pull myself back and forth over the smooth surface of the desk moaning in a low register.
“I think you’re learning,” says Sinclair sardonically.
After what seems like an age of agony, and two further strokes on the hands for leaping up twice more, Sinclair swishes the final swingeing sizzler and I can say with hysterical relief, “Eight, Sir, thank you, sir.”
My hands are throbbing and seem to have swollen to twice their normal size, my legs are wobbling hopelessly and I cannot even start to describe the pulsing pain of my rear. I am too busy shaking and trying to come to earth from a strange floaty place just above my head to think about Sinclair, but eventually I hear his breathing, slightly laboured, behind me and hear him replace the cane with its fellows. Then I remember. “Unapologetic sadist.” Now I think I finally understand what I have let myself in for. This is what Sinclair truly enjoys; the infliction of pain. He is bound to want to do it again.
He leans down over me and places his hands on my shoulders, pulling me upright and keeping hold of me in case I fall over, which is a very real possibility.
“Do you understand now, Miss Newland?” he murmurs into my ear, and I think I know what he is asking me. “Do you appreciate the true and serious consequences of your actions?”
I pause. I can say no. If I say no, he will let me go. It will all be over. I stand, swaying slightly, under his hands, my head leaning back into his shoulder, feeling his heat, his breath, almost his heartbeat. He is hanging on my answer.
“I do, sir,” I whisper. “I will behave better in future.”
He turns me round to face him, an eyebrow raised. “Honestly, Beth? You think you can live with me? Live like this?”
A strong flame of love burns fiercer than the throb of my sorry arse. I nod. He runs a hand down the side of my face, slowly and consideringly. “Thank you,” he says, barely audibly. Then he moves the hand down to my ridged, roasted backside and tests it for heat, appearing well-pleased with the results he finds. “How does that feel, Beth?” he asks, running a finger wincily across each welt.
“Oooh, it’s very sore, sir,”
I whimper, tensing my face against the sting.
“Hm, I daresay you’ll have difficulty sitting tonight,” he says thickly. Christ! That’s a point. Unless the dining chairs at the Gourmet Boat are padded in the manner of the bed in the Princess and the Pea story, I am going to have to hover half an inch off the seat all evening. How sophisticated. Could I get away with saying that it’s what everyone is doing in London these days? The thought is chased from my mind when Sinclair pulls me suddenly and roughly against him and…helloooo…something very big and extremely hard is making a cock-shaped dent in my stomach.
“Get into the bedroom,” he whispers, his teeth nipping lightly at my ear. “I want you on all fours on the bed.”
I catch my breath. “Should I undress?”
“No, keep the uniform on. Though you can lose the knickers. Go on. Now.”
I kick the unwanted underwear off on the floor and make haste to the bedroom. I can hear Sinclair tutting behind me, picking the knickers up. “Not on the bloody floor,” he grouses under his breath. Oops, forgot – compulsive neatnik, even in the heat of passion.