The Bottom Line (9 page)

‘What do you reckon about Melody's threat? Do you think she meant it?'

‘I'm sure she meant it when she said it,' Billy replied, ‘but it won't come to anything. That sort of thing never does. I once told my history teacher I'd get him when I was grown up, even if I had to wait till I was as old as he was. Frankly, I couldn't care less now.'

‘It might be interesting to help her, though,' Terry suggested.

To say that Justine Dewberry was surprised when she walked into the changing room and found Melody, Gail and Caroline waiting for her would be an understatement.

‘What do you three think you're doing here?' she demanded. ‘And where are Kathy and Irene?' On this occasion they were her two intended victims.

‘Oh, don't worry about Kathy and Irene,' Caroline told her. ‘We volunteered to come along instead.'

‘Volunteered?' echoed Justine. ‘You're in no position to volunteer anything. You'd better get those other two here at once or I'll tan all five of you till you've got no skin left on your arses.'

‘I don't think so, Miss Dewberry,' Caroline countered, smiling sweetly, in no way intimidated by the threat and apparently in total control.

‘What do you mean by that?' snapped Justine. ‘I think you'd better get out of here while you still can.' As she spoke she plucked her remote control out of her pocket.

‘I think you'll find that's not much use this evening,' Caroline warned her. ‘You see, it's all been fixed. There are a number of the other girls in your office at the moment, watching and listening to this, and unless you do exactly as we say they're going to the group manager to tell and show him exactly what you've been up to.'

‘What do you mean, do as you say?' Justine demanded, her tone less acerbic and less aggressive.

‘We thought we'd give you a taste of your own medicine,' Caroline explained, ‘and see how you can take it.'

‘You won't lay a finger on me,' blustered Justine. ‘If you try I'll be the one who goes to the group manager, and probably the police as well. This is common assault, no more no less.'

Caroline was about to speak but Gail got there first. ‘It's very common assault,' she mocked. ‘So common that you've perpetrated it on at least five previous occasions that we can prove. You see, we've got all your tapes, the ones you threatened to use to blackmail us. Did it never occur to you that if we got ourselves organised we could use them against you?'

Justine sneered. ‘Big talk,' she said, ‘but what makes you think you can punish me? It would take all three of you to hold me down, let alone beat me.'

‘The difference is,' Caroline began to explain, ‘that previously it was you who had access to the videos, but now we have and we'll show them to every member of staff if we have to. And anyway, we shan't need to hold you down. You're so fond of letting everyone know how tough you are that you can't risk losing face by refusing to take your punishment.'

There was a long silence, eventually broken by Melody's gloat. ‘I told you it would be the other way round next time,' she said triumphantly.

‘That's enough,' Caroline warned her. ‘You're only here because you were with us before.'

There was another silence and then it was Justine who spoke. ‘It's that creep Terry who's behind this, isn't it?' she said.

‘Terry's one of them,' Caroline admitted. ‘And my ex has a key to your office.'

‘Well, come on then, you'd better get on with it,' Justine challenged, using the last of her bravado, and she peeled off her clothes, unhooked and removed her bra and stepped out of her knickers. Her breasts, large and white, looked somewhat less aggressive without the support of their foundation garment, but her buttocks still thrust proudly outwards as she turned and walked into the gym.

There was no apparatus visible, no table bearing any implements, no stool, no hint of any likelihood of unusual activity. Caroline, however, was already pulling a beam out and motioning to Melody as she did so. She secured the free end and then lowered the beam to an appropriate height and secured that. Melody dragged up two mats, one of which she positioned beneath the horizontal span of polished wood, while she lifted the other and draped it over the beam.

‘Right, Miss Dewberry,' said Caroline, ‘come and lean over the beam with your arms stretched out along the top of it.'

Justine did as she was ordered. ‘Aren't you going to fasten me?' she asked. ‘I don't think much of this so far. And you haven't even told me how many strokes I'm to get or with what I'm to get them.'

‘No, Miss Dewberry,' Caroline said, ‘we're not going to tie you. We're going to trust you to stay in position. This is your chance to show us just how a punishment should be taken.'

‘I might have known you'd have it all worked out,' Justine said bitterly. ‘So how many strokes is it and what are you planning to use?'

‘We're going to birch you,' Caroline informed her. ‘Eight strokes from me and eight from Gail. And if we don't think that's enough, we might let Melody have a go too. So would you like to check your position?'

Justine stood up, rigid, waited for a moment, and then resumed her position over the beam, just as Melody reappeared from the changing room with a bucket, containing what looked like two old-fashioned besoms standing in water. Caroline removed one of the items and inspected it.

‘Not bad at all,' she said. The weapon consisted of several twigs cut to similar length, shaved carefully at the handle end to allow an easy grip, and bound together with insulating tape and twine, while the twigs fanned out at the other end where they were about half a metre in length. She walked round the beam to stand in front of Justine, showed her the birch rod and swished it through the air.

‘This is what you're going to get, Justine.' It seemed appropriate to call her by her first name in this situation. ‘Four from me and then four from Gail. Then we'll repeat the dose and see what you look like and how you feel. We may let you off with sixteen or, as I said earlier, we may let Melody have a go. It depends mainly on you. Understood?' There was no answer. ‘I asked whether you understood,' Caroline said sharply.

‘Understood,' grumbled Justine. ‘Understood, Miss Hough, if that's how you want it. Now can we stop playing games and get on with it?'

‘I'm surprised at you,' Caroline said. ‘You're always so stuffy about having everything just so. Protocol, you call it.'

There was no answer. Caroline walked back round the beam, laid the birch carefully across Justine's bottom, drew back her arm and struck. There was no reaction; no noise, and even the birch didn't swish as other implements did. But there was a visible marking of the skin where the blow had landed. She repeated the blow, slightly higher, with the same effect, and then a third time. For the fourth blow she lowered the angle and struck from beneath, this time eliciting a gasp from Justine. Then she handed the birch to Gail, who was standing ready at the other side.

The next four strokes increased the blotchy discolouration considerably, but Justine was able to control herself to the extent of not actually crying out. And then it was Caroline's turn again. Now there was no mistaking the effect as Justine shrieked in pain and a few flecks of red could be seen on the tortured flesh. When Caroline had finished and handed the birch to Gail again, the skin was broken in several places and Justine was making quite a noise.

‘Do you think we should stop there?' Gail asked.

‘No,' said Caroline. ‘We said sixteen and we'll give her sixteen. Maybe more. It's up to you to decide how hard you're going to strike her.'

Gail accepted the birch, nodded, took a deep breath and took careful aim. There was hardly a pause between any of the next four blows and Justine would have slumped to the floor but for a supreme effort of bracing her arms across the top of the beam.

‘Okay, Melody,' Caroline said. ‘She's nearly had enough, but you can have one stroke so you'd better make it count. Gail, would you go and get the bath ready, please?'

Gail walked back to the changing room as Melody picked up and flourished the implement. ‘I'm really going to enjoy this,' she vowed, drawing back her arm and striking as hard as she could. Justine rocked against the beam, gasped again, then slowly straightened up, rested momentarily before turning round, then spoke to Caroline.

‘Thank you, Miss Hough,' she whispered between sobs, ‘you're very good at this. So good I think you may need to help me a little.'

Caroline motioned to Melody, and between them they supported her as she walked, with as much dignity as she could muster, from the gym to the changing room.

 

 

 

As soon as the trip had been authorised, I started wondering who might come with me. My company had recently been successful in opening a number of branch offices in northern France, and the idea now was to look at one or two premises in the southwest to see whether further expansion was possible. I hadn't been involved in reconnoitring the first venture, but now my boss had decided that I was the person to fly out there for five days and see whether any of the contacts that had been suggested to us were seriously worthy of consideration.

So there it was: cheap flights to and from provincial airports in France, and a hire car for five days and four nights to be spent in French hotels. I had deliberately suggested not booking anything in advance since my route and progress might depend upon the success, or lack of it, of any of the contacts. Having no advance reservations would allow me to vary my route according to decisions taken in the field. It would also mean that nobody would know where I was going to be, except for my formal appointments, and that suited me very well.

But it seemed a shame to be going to France alone, when the business part of my trip was not expected to take more than an hour or two each day. I mentally composed a list of possible partners whose discretion could be relied upon, who would be good company and who would enjoy travelling through beautiful countryside and eating gourmet meals, in return for which they would no doubt be happy to provide further forms of relaxation and entertainment.

There was no shortage of possibilities, but I could think of disadvantages in most cases and eventually reduced my mental shortlist to three. First of all there was Jenny, a plump and bosomy former colleague of mine whose attitude to sex was both unusual and convenient. In her own words, she ran on kisses. As long as she was being soundly kissed and cuddled she was game for almost anything, having no inhibitions that I had ever discovered. Her idea of a perfect orgasm was to be brought off by finger while being kissed non-stop, and once she'd been satisfied she would do whatever was required of her, and if nothing was actually suggested could be quite inventive.

Then there was Gwyneth, similar to Jenny in one respect at least, namely her stamina, though not in build. Gwyneth was a thirty-six inch bust packed into less than five feet of height. She was totally insatiable too, and while being no more inhibited than Jenny, demanded a far greater share of the action for herself. In return for this, however, she offered the most concentrated coupling I'd ever experienced.

And finally there was Belinda, though this was a more hypothetical choice. I'd recently met Belinda by chance after not having seen her for twenty years. We'd been boy and girlfriend on and off for several years, and I could say without hesitation that she was the best kisser I'd ever met: and that was as far as I'd ever got. She was tall and slim with a nice figure, but more than that I couldn't say, until our recent encounter. Then I bumped into her, to my surprise, at a school reunion. I was surprised because she'd never been at any previous reunions, whereas I was a regular.

I gave her a lift home afterwards, was invited in for coffee, was soundly kissed as I got up to go and, without any opposition at all, was allowed to unbutton her blouse, unhook her bra and play with her breasts, which were attractively rounded and had very prominent nipples. And then the shutters came down again. ‘You can have the whole works,' she told me, ‘but not in a lucky one-night stand. If you want me, you'll have to go about it the right way.'

And so after much thought and a great deal of comparing, I phoned Belinda - and got no answer. Every night for a week I tried her number and every night I got no answer. So then I tried Jenny who was in, but who had commitments for the dates in question, otherwise, she assured me, she would have loved to come and, in her case, ‘come' would no doubt have been the operative verb.

So finally I got to Gwyneth. Now don't get me wrong. When I say ‘finally' I intend no disrespect or disparagement, simply that I knew very well that four nights with Gwyneth would probably leave me in need of a holiday. She was the only woman I'd ever met who, after being well and truly fucked from about nine o'clock till midnight, would wake me at four in the morning complaining that she needed more action.

Anyhow, it was arranged that we would meet at the check in desk at the airport, spend four nights together being wined, dined and erotically entwined, and because of the lateness of the return flight, have a last night at the airport hotel before going our separate ways. I have to say that I was more than a little excited at the prospect, even though I knew that my stamina would be severely tested. I'd previously spent two nights with Gwyneth in her London flat, which left me feeling satiated for a week.

So imagine how I felt when, two days before the off, she phoned me to say she was going to have to withdraw from the trip because her brother, who lived in Canada, had been taken seriously ill and she was flying out there immediately to be with him. It was too late to reach a replacement, though I did try Belinda again, and I faced the prospect of suffering four rather empty evenings and four even emptier nights. I had no doubt that the wining and dining would be excellent, but it seemed such a shame there would be no erotic entwining afterwards.

I arrived at the airport in ample time to check in my luggage, have a snack and bemoan the fact that I still had well over an hour before my flight with nothing to do, so I did what I always do in such circumstances: I visited a selection of shops. In each one I found a number of things I fancied buying, but rejected them all because they seemed to have price tags far higher than could be found on the high street. My very last call was in a bookshop and, having rejected all the offerings, I turned sharply to head for the door and bumped quite hard into a lady who was turning away equally sharply.

She said sorry and I said sorry and that would normally have been that, but then she looked more closely at me and squealed, ‘Julian!'

I looked more closely at her and said, ‘Juliet!'

You can imagine that, with names like ours, neither of us was likely to forget the other, but in my case there was more to it than that. Juliet worked for a rival firm and we used to meet quite often at regional conferences, since we covered the same part of the country. She was never alone, at least not for long, partly because she boasted a pair of breasts that would have made Jenny or Gwyneth look flat-chested, and when I say ‘boasted' that's precisely what I mean. To Juliet, a dress was low-cut only if it revealed her kneecaps. She wore the most amazing garments and undergarments; the latter designed to enhance her already voluptuous figure.

Almost every mate on the circuit claimed to have made it with Juliet, though they were surprisingly coy when asked about details. ‘Oh, you know,' they would say. ‘Seen one pair, seen every pair,' which, I'm quite sure, couldn't have been true in this case. Oddly enough, I'd never actually propositioned Juliet, though I'd never been able to resist scrutinising her principal assets, and I think it may have been this combination of facts that persuaded her to indulge my gaze as far as it went.

Again I looked down. There was no cleavage at all today, but what there was instead was a teasingly tight mohair jumper, one effect of which was to guarantee that she would have needed mirrors to see her knee caps at all. She caught my eye and grinned at me, but then her mood changed.

‘Actually,' she said, ‘I'm pretty fed up. I've come all the way here and now I've had a call on my mobile to say that Harvey couldn't make it.' Harvey, I should add, was her husband who, as far as one could establish, had no particular interest either in Juliet or in knowing who else had. Rumour had it that Juliet was his fashion accessory and that, provided she obeyed the rules whilst in his company, the rest of her life was her own. There were further rumours about what happened if she transgressed this code, but nobody I'd spoken to had any direct evidence, as was true of most aspects of Juliet's life.

With time still to spare I took her for a coffee and invited her to explain why she was fed up. Apparently Harvey, en route to the airport from a different part of the country, had been suddenly called away to something more important than a short holiday. And so here was Juliet facing five days with nothing to do, a holiday aborted and an empty house to return to. It seemed to me that it would have been poor manners to leave her in such a situation, and so I did the chivalrous thing.

An hour later we were strapped in to our seats and heading for a small airport in south west France with nobody any the wiser. Juliet had phoned Harvey and left a message to say that she was going to visit friends in London, and suddenly I was facing four nights with the best booby prize in the business, and one won with little apparent effort. I thought of Jenny, of Gwyneth, and of Belinda.

Jenny would have been delightful company but Juliet was something new. Belinda still intrigued me and I suspected that I would be phoning her again on future occasions, but a bird in the hand was the right place to have one. As for Gwyneth, I was pretty sure that I could always renew that acquaintance if I needed a night of highly acrobatic nooky, but who could foretell what brand of nooky Juliet would have to offer?

The plane was on time, the hire car was ready for me, the first appointment was satisfactorily concluded within an hour and, by late afternoon we were pulling into the forecourt of a modest two-star hotel known for its fine location and gourmet food. This was the only time that Juliet expressed concern. ‘Won't they think it's funny,' she wanted to know, ‘that your firm reserved a room and dinner for one and you're turning up with me?'

‘They won't be remotely interested,' I told her. ‘This is France. You book a room and it doesn't matter whether it's for one person or two. To them it'll mean an extra place at dinner and breakfast and a slightly higher bill to give me. They'll make a little bit more than they expected to and they won't ask any questions.' With which words we booked in and were shown to a modest but pleasant room with a double bed, a well-equipped private bathroom and a view over the hotel gardens and swimming pool. I put my case on the stand, kicked off my shoes, loosened my tie and turned towards Juliet.

She began to peel off the mohair jumper, but then suddenly stopped and turned towards me. I was just thinking that it was a bit late for second thoughts when she spoke.

‘Don't worry,' she said, smiling, ‘I know what I'm really here for. But before I show you the goods, may I say something?'

I nodded, wondering what was coming.

‘Just about every bloke in our line of business has tried to make it with me,' she said, ‘and it's all because they want to feel my tits, isn't it?'

‘Well, you do rather advertise them, don't you?' I replied.

‘Yes,' she admitted, ‘of course I do. In our business you use every advantage you've got. But it doesn't mean I want every drooling lecher pawing at me.'

‘My impression was,' I told her, ‘that very few of our mutual acquaintances had actually made it with you.'

‘None of them, if you really want to know,' she replied, ‘though I've let one or two get as far as second base. If you see what I mean.'

‘Yes,' I said, ‘I'm sure I do. Probably what my friends and I used to call upstairs inside when we were in the sixth form. Anyhow, why are you telling me this now?'

‘Because I don't want your hopes rising too far,' she said, to my surprise. ‘You're used to seeing the goods on display, in the shop window, if you like. I hope you're not disappointed when you unwrap them.' The mohair pullover came off, and I stared, transfixed.

‘Oh yes, they look pretty good to me,' I assured her. ‘Suppose you complete the unveiling?'

‘Why don't you help me?' she asked. ‘You could stand behind me and undo my bra.'

‘Okay,' I said, ‘I'd like that, but let's stand in front of the mirror.' I moved, and was pleased that she came and stood with her back to me, her hands on her hips.

With slightly trembling fingers I unfastened her bra, the rear strap barely able to take the strain of her large breasts anyway, allowed the flimsy garment to drop to the floor, then reached round and cupped her superb, naked breasts, watching in the mirror as I did so.

Juliet leaned her head back on my shoulder to whisper to me, ‘Do you like them now you've got your hands on them?'

‘I've never seen or felt anything quite like them before,' I assured her. ‘And what I really want to know is whether they taste as good as they look.'

She disengaged my hands, turned to face me, pressed down on my shoulders until I was kneeling in front of her, and then leaned over me. ‘Now's your chance to find out,' she invited, swinging them tantalisingly just above my face.

I took one large globe in my hands and sucked in as large a mouthful as I could of the soft flesh. Then I did the same with the other one, and then began to suck and chew the nipple, licking it and squeezing it tightly between my lips, and taking it between my teeth and nibbling it none too gently.

There was little reaction from above, so I gave her other nipple similar treatment, biting quite hard as I pressed my face into the smooth, soft flesh. Then I stood up, took the two nipples between finger and thumb and pulled on them. I teased her for a few minutes then released her, took one of her hands and guided it down to the swelling my trousers were having difficulty in concealing.