Discipline of the Private House (31 page)

Thank you,' Olena said. 'I hope you're right.'

Olena was instructed to loosen her muscles by walking around within the mirror enclosure. For the forthcoming punishment she was to resume her position kneeling on the chaise longue, and Nicole wanted to prevent muscle cramps and fatigue.

Olena could not avoid seeing herself reflected in every mirror. Her tear-streaked face and trembling lips spoke of sorrow, but the light in her eyes and the languorous grace of her movements betrayed the simmering cauldron of desire within her. Her breasts appeared even larger than usual, with the nipples hard and very prominent. And her bottom was swollen and actually seemed to be glowing with its own heat, outdoing the flickering light of the candles. Nicole had applied the paddle with precise, overlapping strokes, so that both buttocks were evenly reddened; the lashes of the strap had been applied so close together that the individual lines were difficult to discern, and it was only by running her fingertips across the surface that Olena could detect the striations where the strap had fallen.

Olena admitted to herself that for all Nicole's effort she, Olena, had not lost one bit of her sinful pride: she still thought she looked desirable, and she was particularly pleased with her well-smacked bottom. She could hardly wait to show it off to Jem: that would be naughty, and embarrassing, and fun - all at the same time.

'Come back to the couch, Olena,' Nicole said. 'Adopt the same position. Place your left hand on the back of the seat, to give yourself some more support. Make sure your breasts are pushed well forward; Bernard is going to cane them.'

Olena sighed. It would do no good. As soon as Nicole had announced the punishment, Olena had felt the now-familiar lurch in her stomach that told her that she was about to enjoy something despicable. She remembered the illustration she had come across in the library: the servant girl, bare-breasted, tied to a post, awaiting the fall of the lash on her trembling bosom. The picture had intrigued and excited her; she had no reason to expect that the reality would do less.

'Move your legs as wide apart as you can,' Nicole went on. 'And put your right hand on your stomach. I'm going to make you touch yourself while Bernard whips you.'

Olena felt a hysterical urge to laugh. It was not that the punishment was lenient: the cane would sting her breasts, and the thought of touching her own secret parts with Nicole and Bernard watching her made her insides curl up with shame. But Olena knew that it wouldn't be enough to stop her enjoying the experience. She would disappoint Nicole again, and reveal even deeper pits of her sin.

'Are you ready?' Nicole said. Olena nodded and Bernard, standing beside her and flexing the thin wooden rod, said, 'Yes, miss.'

'Olena, start to move your right hand down towards your little purse. Don't lift your fingers from your skin. Stop when your fingers touch your hairs.'

Olena moved her hand. It was exciting just to imagine what she was about to do. Her fingers met the wiry curls of her hair; she played with the curls, as Jem had done, and enjoyed the tickling feelings. She pressed a little further, into the mat of hair, and realised that she was already close to the marvellous place that gave her such pleasure: the place where her clitoris peeked out from beneath tender folds of pink skin. She pressed with her fingertips: the place was close, but seemed to be inside her. She was being instructed to explore her own secret parts; it was supposed to be a punishment, but Olena suspected that she was going to find it delightful.

She looked up at Bernard to find him grinning at her. He must have bee$ waiting for her to glance at him, because he immediately brought the cane whistling through the air to land on the undersides of Olena's breasts.

Olena let out a shrill shriek. She had expected the pain to be like that of a caning on her bottom, but it was different. The sting was the same, but there was also something that went deeper: something that sent a lurch of shock to her stomach, and made her want to curl her body inwards. It was a frighteningly intimate form of punishment; just the first stroke had made her feel vulnerable and helpless.

Bernard allowed plenty of time between his strokes. After three more Olena was beginning to absorb and appreciate the strange pleasures of having her breasts caned. The sick feeling in her stomach receded but remained in the background as a reminder of the peculiarly intrusive and perverse nature of the punishment; each lash seemed to sting a little more than the last, so that she was continually caught unawares; and, in time, a general feeling of heat and heaviness began to expand within her breasts, and she could sense that a few more strokes would carry her into her dreamland just as comfortingly as a bottom-smacking always would.

It was wrong to take satisfaction from such a thought but, nonetheless, she congratulated herself on discovering another source of shameful, painful pleasure. As soon as she had travelled away from her parents' community she had realised, without wanting to admit it, that people she met couldn't help staring at the promisingly large bumps concealed beneath her robe. She had discovered the shameful truth that her breasts inspired sinful thoughts in others; worse, when she touched them they caused feelings in her that were deceitfully enjoyable. With increasing guilt she had come to take pride and pleasure in her breasts; the shiver of embarrassment she felt when Barat, or anyone, stared at her body was increasingly difficult to disassociate from the tremor of desire that simultaneously ran through her. And now she knew that, like her bottom, her breasts could be smacked and whipped, and could transport her to the heights of ecstasy she had experienced with Jem.

The caning continued. The strokes caught her nipples and made her cry out. If Nicole would just instruct her to move her hand a little lower, to the exquisite point just inside the top of the split of her purse, she was sure she would have another climax immediately. She could imagine it: it would be like an explosion as soon as she touched the spot. A flash of light; she might scream with the beauty of it.

T didn't tell you to move your hand,' Nicole said. 'You're not to touch your pleasure point. This is supposed to be a punishment. Put your hand further between your legs. Use your fingers to open your purse. Let me see inside.'

Olena moaned with frustration and remorse. Nicole was right: she was not supposed to be enjoying herself. As she tried to order her thoughts along righteous lines, the thin lath created another stinging line across the tops of her breasts. She concentrated on the flare of pain, and on the humiliation of being whipped, naked, by a slave, and did her best to ignore the heavy warmth that was building in the swollen globes and the vivid, jagged bolts of sensation that the lash sent shooting through her.

Now she was to use her own fingers to open her secret place for Nicole's inspection. It was impossible; it was too shameful. Nicole's fingers had, she was sure, performed the same operation, during the examinations Olena had been subjected to on previous days. But it was one thing to hold her body still and bear the degradation of being touched and exposed, and quite another to bring about the degradation herself. Perhaps, at last, she thought with a flicker of hope, Nicole has discovered a small kernel of cleanliness inside my impure body and mind. Perhaps, if I cannot bring myself to touch myself there, I will prove that I'm not completely wicked.

'Keep your bottom up, so I can see,' Nicole said. The cane sang through the air, and caressed Olena's breasts with a line of fire. And Olena knew that she was lost. Nicole's words had
_A
been enough to remind her of her exposed position; the sting of the cane had taken her one more step into her dreamworld of sheer sensation. She shuddered as she cupped her hand under the warm, fuzzy mound between her thighs, and felt on her fingers the stickiness of her escaping juices.

Jem's fingers had touched her here, and had explored inside her. It had felt wonderful.

Bernard's lashes with the wooden lath came faster now, but with less force; Olena was acutely conscious that the blushing globes were trembling and jiggling continuously under the onslaught of light flicks.

Tut your fingers inside, Olena,' Nicole urged. 'Feel for yourself what a wickedly wet girl you are.'

It was as if Nicole and Bernard were conspiring to direct Olena's thoughts away from the punishment she justly deserved and towards the tempting, sinful pleasures that her body craved.

Olena's fingers seemed to slip, almost without her willing it, between the parted lips of her secret place. Her fingers were enfolded in skin as delicate as silk and soaked in hot, sticky fluid. A wave of sensations flooded her body. She threw back her head and pushed her breasts towards the insistent beats of the cane.

'Are your fingers wet?' Nicole said.

Olena nodded.

'Take them out, then,' Nicole said. 'Putting your fingers in there isn't your punishment.'

As she reluctantly obeyed Nicole's instruction Olena was so frustrated that it took a few moments for her to appreciate the significance of the second sentence, with its stress on the word
there.

Her horrified mind recoiled from the implication, and from the pictures that were only beginning to cohere in her mind, as Nicole gave the unthinkable command: 'Now put your wet fingers up your arsehole.'

It was impossible. It was dirty as well as sinful. No one had ever touched her there. She couldn't do it.

She hardly noticed that the caning had ceased. She hardly felt the throbbing soreness of her reddened buttocks and breasts.

'What's the matter, Olena?' Nicole said. 'Are you afraid that you'll like it? That it will make you even wetter?'

Olena had not even considered the possibility that she might like to touch herself there. But as soon as Nicole said the words, Olena was struck by the appalling, terrifying realisation that she would enjoy putting her fingers into the most intimate and shameful of her secret places.

She gave a sobbing cry of despair.

It was a despicable, disgusting thing to do. It would be horribly embarrassing in private, but to do it in front of the slave, Bernard, and with Nicole watching at such close quarters, would be the worst degradation imaginable.

And yet Olena knew she would have to do it. She had to know whether she was really so depraved that even such a monstrous act could give her pleasure. Only a few days previously she would not have believed such a thing possible in any person, and certainly not in her. But she had learned much in the Chateau. She knew now that, possessed of some demon of perversity, she took pleasure in the punishments that were designed to correct her licentiousness; performing the abominable act now required of her might hurt, and she had acquired an incorrigible liking for pain, particularly in the area of her bottom. She knew that the act was certainly the most shameful, disgusting thing she had ever been required to do, and she knew also that her treacherous body could therefore be relied on to fill her with lewd thoughts of yearning desire.

She lowered her blushing face, turned it away from Bernard's gaze, and allowed the tips of her fingers to creep from the warm, viscous security of her purse and along the furrowed ridge behind it.

All too soon her fingertips reached the lip of the crinkled crater.

'Just one finger, to start with,' Nicole said. 'Your index finger, please. Push it in.'

Olena sighed. Jem's words of encouragement seemed hollow now. What was the gist? That Olena was lucky, because she enjoyed the pleasures of being ashamed. Well, look at me now, Jem, Olena thought bitterly; what normal, good, decent person could take pleasure from what I'm about to do? If I find myself enjoying this, what kind of person am I?

'Come along,' Nicole said impatiently.

Olena placed the tip of her forefinger in the silky, wrinkled crater. She detected warmth, and a faint pulsing. At the centre was the tiniest of holes, surrounded by a ring of tightly furrowed tissue; it seemed unlikely that even one of her fingers could gain admittance.

She sighed again. She could hardly believe her own vileness. But she had felt an unmistakable thrill, of a kind with which she was becoming all too familiar, when her fingertip had circled the little hole.

'That's right,' Nicole said. 'Use your juices, on your fingers, to lubricate the entrance.'

The coarse words were enough to spark another thrill in Olena.

And then, when Olena pushed with her finger, and the back of her hand brushed the blazing, punished skin of her buttock, and she felt the ring of muscle expand slightly, she knew that this appalling, obnoxious act was going to give her a new, different, but exquisitely pleasurable experience.

Her finger slid easily into her anus as far as the first joint. Olena gasped in surprise. Experimentally she moved the end of her finger, and gasped again as a pleasure seemed to flow in tingling streams throughout her secret places and up to her hot breasts. The sensations were similar to those she had felt when Jem had caressed her secret places, under the bedclothes the previous night, but they seemed less acute: bass notes rather than treble. For some reason every slight movement of her finger in her little hole made her nipples tingle; in fact, touching her little hole seemed to make her more conscious of her breasts. And then, as she pushed her finger in a little more, she was overcome by a feeling of intrusion and fullness; it felt wrong, and sinful, and almost painfully uncomfortable — and breathtakingly wonderful. As she tried to analyse this remarkable new sensation, Olena wondered, in a moment of unguarded lewdness, what it would feel like to have a man's erect penis in her little hole; the fact that she
could
conceive of such a notion was as appallingly shameful as the pulse of pleasure that suffused her as she thought of it.