I feel his hand on my back and I wonder what he is doing. To my surprise, he rubs it around, pushing thumbs into neck and shoulders, quite reassuringly.
“You are doing well, Beth. I did not expect you to take this so well. Take a minute to catch your breath. Only six more now.”
I rub my cheek against his forearm, longing for him to grant a reprieve in this moment of unexpected gentleness. But all too soon this forlorn hope is allayed by his laying the seventh stroke – bastard! – in exactly the same vicious spot as the sixth, and now I rear up from the desk with a sharp exclamation. “No, please!”
“Down,” he commands, his tone making it clear that there will be a penalty for refusal. I manage to force myself back down, remembering the count in the nick of time before extra strokes are earned.
The end of the caning seems too remote now, centuries of pain away, and a sob escapes me as I wonder how I can cope with five more.
I’m not sure how merciful this really is, but he is very quick with the next three, flicking them down immediately after my increasingly garbled count, so that we are soon down to the final two.
“Just two more, Beth,” he says. “I will make them count.”
The eleventh is an explosion of firepower, detonating my nerve endings and twisting my face into a hundred contortions. Even amidst the general sting, it elevates itself to a new level.
“Eeeeeeleven, sir, I mean, thank you, sir.”
“Last one, Beth. I always make the last one the hardest.” Hey, thanks for the warning.
It slices diagonally across from the bottom of my left cheek to near the top of my right and it is white hot, a blinder, and I really have to jump up and clasp my raging bottom to protect it, although I objectively know that the caning is now over.
“Oooooooh,” I moan. “Oooooooh. Twelve, thank you, Sir. Ooooooh.”
“Take your hands away, Beth, or there will be more,” he says impatiently. I remove them from the heat, expecting steam to arise when I do so. “Get back over the table; I want to inspect the results. Hmmm. Very nice.” He traces each and every ridge with a finger, which makes me wince all over again. “Would you like to see?”
I mew incoherently and he leads me over to the mirror, making me stand and look at my creatively slashed bum for minutes on end. It is like an eleven-barred-gate, if such a thing could possibly exist. The stripes are deep, deep red and look set to last; certainly if the angry throbbing back there is anything to go by, I will be aware of them for some time.
“Hmmm.” Sinclair is enchanted by the scene; I get the feeling that the glories of Roman art and architecture are going to pale in comparison. “Get back over the desk.”
“What?” I yelp in dismay.
“No, not that. I want a photograph to take away with me. It’s too beautiful to let it fade without having a record.” He kisses me, deeply, fully. “Go on then.”
Shaky from the caning and lightheaded from the kiss, I flop back across the varnished wood. I hear a heavy click, then stillness. “Stay there,” he says in a low, rather unbalanced tone. “Spread your legs a bit more.” Before I know it, he has taken my hips in his hands and is penetrating me from behind. It feels blissful, so perfect, so absolutely the right thing to do to divert the warmth of my rear down a little and I push backwards, meeting his thrust, feeling a sublime urgency of need. Very quickly the rhythm is fast and primal, the banging and crashing against the desk only peripheral to the gigantic pulse of sensation concentrated at that apex where he connects with me. I begin to cry hoarsely, keening, falling, everything going black, oh, oh, oh…. He pulls out of me while still hard and I gasp, start to ask what, why, but then I feel warm liquid spurt on to my marked rump and I understand. Oh, I understand. This is why he is with me – because I understand, or at least, because I try to.
He stands braced behind me, his breathing laboured, for a few minutes. His hands rest on my hips. He is looking down at my arse. He leans over a little and begins to suck on the side of my neck, hard, until a patch of mottled red is left there.
“Another photograph, I think,” he says, and takes a couple more while I lie, winded, with my upper body on the desk.
“Your train,” he says at length. “We must go. Pull your knickers up.”
“But…” I push myself wearily, unwillingly, to my feet. “Like this?”
“Like that. You don’t have time to change.”
“But…” I wave a hand at my semen-smeared backside. “I need to clean up.”
“No. Leave it like that. Pull your knickers up.” I continue to stare and he snaps, “Now!”
I pull the knickers back up, drawing in breath as they snag over the raised welts across my behind. A large damp patch is in evidence straightaway, spreading and oozing across the white stretch cotton. Sinclair smiles.
“Good,” he says. “I only wish I could watch you on the train home. Three hours is a long time to stand, but I can’t imagine you’ll want to sit either.”
I shrug, looking ruefully up at him. I pray that the upholstery won’t be the stiff, fuzzy kind.
*
In the echoing space of Brunel’s cathedral-like railway terminus, Sinclair and I embrace on platform 9. Only the two of us exist here; the trolley pushing, shouting into mobile phones, whistle-blowing, snogging that swirls around us is just background blur.