The Business of Pleasure (6 page)

‘I think … I’m wondering what is going to happen. Here in this wood.’

Charlotte looked about her for signs of civilisation, but all she could hear was the rustling and sighing of leaves in the light wind.

‘What do you think?’ repeated Bryant, looking down with a tilted eyebrow.

‘A punishment of some kind.’

‘Don’t you think you deserve it?’

‘Yes.’ She smirked self-consciously. Bryant was too anxious of her consent, too solicitous of her feelings, to play the truly cruel master. Collins would have played this scene differently, she thought, dragging her unceremoniously to a tree and delivering a summary whipping. Perhaps, she mused, she would prefer that … all the same, Bryant was here, and it was no disappointment when she considered the pleasures that might lie ahead.

‘Yes. You do. Well, then, Charlotte, I think you should find me a nice, strong switch, don’t you? Plenty to choose from here. Of course, autumn isn’t the birching season – they are drier and more brittle than their springtime counterparts – all the same, a serviceable enough instrument can usually be made. Well, hurry up, then. What are you waiting for?’

He patted the seat of her skirt, encouraging her forward, to explore the lower-hanging branches of the surrounding trees and assess their branches for flexibility and potential sting. Her hands were trembling as she snapped off long, thin wands of birch and willow, thinking of how they would soon be employed in striping her quivering pale rear.

When she had selected five of the rods, she proffered them hesitantly to Bryant. Rather than accepting them, he produced a Swiss Army knife from an inner pocket and flicked out a blade.

‘Do you know how to trim these?’ he asked urbanely. ‘Have you ever done it before?’

‘No,’ Charlotte whispered. ‘I never have …’

‘Never felt the kiss of the switch, eh? Oh, you’re in for a treat then, aren’t you? Come on, take the knife. Any rough spots or old buds need to be sliced off. We need the rod to be as smooth and sleek as possible, or it can be nastier than even we would like.’ He smiled. He had such a
kind
smile. It was so
strange
.

‘Really?’ Charlotte asked, nervous as she began to hack at the knobbly parts of the switch with Bryant’s blade.

‘Oh yes. I like to make a mark, but I don’t like to draw blood. Nice stripes, but skin unbroken – that’s the sight I like to see. Would you mind if I took a photograph when I’m finished?’

‘Oh … I suppose not.’ She looked up at him briefly, vividly. ‘I seem to trust you for some reason. I hope I’m not misguided.’

‘Thank you, Charlotte. I’ll do all I can to be worthy of your trust.’

He took the switch, denuded of bumps and loose flecks of wood, and swung it through the air, adding a blood-chilling topnote to the endless leafy whispers.

‘Ah yes. Good work. This will do very well. Now, can I assume that you will keep still while I’m thrashing you, or should I tie you to the tree?’

Charlotte was not sure if the question was rhetorical or not.

‘I’ve never done it before,’ she prompted, ‘so … um … I don’t know if I’d be able to keep still.’

‘You think you should be tied? Yes, that’s probably sensible.’ Bryant removed the balled-up pair of tights from his trouser pocket. ‘Your tights might not have been such a bad idea after all. Though of course I’m still going to punish you for wearing them. That goes without saying. Well, then.’ He ripped the offending hosiery in half with the aid of his knife, then took Charlotte gently by the elbow and led her over to a tree whose trunk offered the perfect width and circumference for a whipping post. After turning her to face the tree, Bryant looped one stretchy tight leg around her waist, securing it with a firm double knot, before manoeuvring her arms to embrace the trunk and tying them together at the wrists, her palms pressed together as if in prayer.

‘You’re in my power now,’ he murmured softly into her ear from behind. ‘How does that make you feel?’

‘Scared, a bit,’ admitted Charlotte. ‘But in an exciting way. I feel helpless … but in the way I fantasise … not in a bad sense.’

‘Perfect little submissive,’ he crooned, nipping at her earlobe before grasping her around the waist and roughly pulling up her polo-neck top until it was stretched above her breasts, exposing most of her back and her bra to the chill-tipped woodland air. His hands moved to the cotton bra cups, easing them down over her nipples until they were bunched low beneath the underhang where breast met ribcage. Charlotte’s nipples now brushed the ridged wood, painfully sensitive, so that she thought sparks from them might ignite the dry bark. She lay her cheek flat against the whorls, pressing her tits to the trunk, embracing the chafe and the soreness, waiting for the next move, which would not be of her making.

‘I’m sure we won’t be needing this.’ She felt the hook and eye fly apart, the zip slice down, the slippery lining of her skirt slide slowly over her hips, then thighs, then tickle the backs of her knees before landing in a heap around her ankles. She was naked from the waist down, and there was no way she could do anything about it. The white moons of her bottom would be seen by any off-the-beaten-path rambler with dogs or binoculars and, once Bryant had encouraged her to spread her legs a little by slipping a hand between her thighs and tapping at her spreading pussy lips, so would her unprotected sex. There was no way around it. She, Charlotte Steele, was a horny little slut who needed a good switching from a man who was not afraid to lay it on hard.

But how hard would he lay it on? Charlotte bit her lip, tensing everything in anticipation of Bryant’s opening strike. She flinched and squealed at the sudden touch of the rod, but it was not a hard stroke – not a stroke at all, and she cursed herself for expending vital energy on a little introductory tap. He continued to brush it over her bottom, down her thighs to her knees, then up again, prodding between the sensitive lower lips, jiggling the wand a little, getting it up nice and high until the tip was sodden with her immoderate leakages.

‘You look perfect,’ Bryant told her. ‘My damsel in distress, lashed to the tree, writhing and naked. If only I were the hero instead of the villain, eh? If only I was here to save you … instead of …’

The switch sliced the air and a row of firecrackers lit and danced on Charlotte’s behind. She moaned and wrenched at the tights around her wrists.

‘Ahhh,’ Bryant exhaled with satisfaction. ‘How did that feel, Charlotte?’

‘Like fire,’ said Charlotte, when she could speak. ‘It burns.’

‘Mmm, a lasting burn. I don’t know how many to give you, sweetness. How many do you think you could take?’

‘I … don’t really know. It hurts a lot. Maybe … six.’

Charlotte found that she was growing impatient with the negotiation. She wanted him to pronounce the sentence and be done with it, rather than canvas her opinion.

‘Six it shall be. But if you can’t take any more, tell me. Say my name. Say Bryant.’

‘Yes, yes,’ muttered Charlotte, and Bryant chuckled.

‘Impatient for more? Oh, you are such a find, dear Charlotte.’ And the second stroke was delivered before the sentence was finished, causing her to jerk and hurl herself closer to the tree bark, rubbing her bare stomach against the brittleness, finding distracting comfort in the lesser pain.

‘It makes such a pretty mark,’ mused Bryant. Why did he have to be so damn verbose? It was nice to be appreciated; all the same, Charlotte found herself thinking again of how Collins would have done this. Differently, more severely, the mood would have been darker, he might have been silent or he might have issued low-toned orders. Bryant was like some kind of gentleman dilettante in comparison. ‘Two lovely lines of red. Let’s add another.’

So he did, and Charlotte was remembering now to breathe through the stroke, even though she still reared and howled. Should she say his name? Should she make him stop? This was three – halfway through, halfway there. To stop before the end would be shameful – he would be disappointed in her. She would be disappointed in herself. No. She would grit her teeth and get to the end and have the memory and the sweet after-pain that made it all worthwhile. And now she was annoyed afresh that she was even having this debate with herself. Collins would have brooked no refusal. He would not have made her have to do this irksome
thinking
.

Halfway through an open-air switching, Charlotte was starting to make some startling realisations about the nature of her submissive tendencies. Funny how things were so different in theory than in the field, so to speak. If asked before, she’d have said that the Bryant model would have suited her far better, and yet …

‘Owwwww!’ The fourth stroke caught her unawares, mid-self-analysis, and she resolved to stop thinking and limit herself to feeling from now on. The stripes he had already laid were beginning to throb. A switch was well-named. It switched her on, made her feel nothing but the fiery rawness of the welts, crossing her arse like a collection of sore red ropes, tied to her, inescapable.

She had collected herself for the fifth and sixth, almost enjoying them in the knowledge that they were the final strokes, after which lay … who knew? Hopefully a pleasurable way of maximising the sensual stimulation the whipping had precipitated was on the cards. Would she have a say in the next step, or would Bryant guide the proceedings?

‘No more tights then?’ he said brusquely after the sixth stroke.

‘No more tights,’ Charlotte repeated, her voice a little shaky, bits of bark sticking to her cheeks and forehead now, not to mention her breasts, which were hurting more than she had realised from their rough acquaintance with the tree. She flexed her hands and wriggled her bottom, trying hard to calm the angry stripes painted across it, but to no avail.

‘One more to make sure then,’ said Bryant to her surprised consternation, taking advantage of her relative relaxation to give her a stinger of momentous proportions, catching her just at the lowest line of her buttocks, where any attempt to sit down thereafter would remind her of it.

‘Oh fuck!’ she cried, completely blindsided by her assumption that the whipping was over.

‘Oh, Charlotte!’ purred Bryant, throwing aside the switch and running his hands across his handiwork. ‘Such language. If I were a cruel man, I would probably have to add more strokes for that. I’m not though.’

‘No, right,’ Charlotte laughed ironically. ‘Not cruel at all. It’s not cruel to tie girls to trees and whip them.’

‘Not when it’s what they want,’ pointed out Bryant laconically. ‘Is it? Do you think?’

Charlotte clenched her teeth, not wanting to admit that he had a point. She began to think she might have underestimated the extent of his capacity for sadism – it seemed to her that he was crueller in persistently pointing out her consent to this than Collins might have been in pretending to act against her will. The flood of shame quickened to a wild lust, a need to be forced and overwhelmed and taken.

‘And now,’ said Bryant into her ear, his palms flat and large against her glowing bottom, ‘I suppose you’d like to be fucked, would you?’

Charlotte whimpered, pushing her arse back against him, sighing when he parted her cheeks with his thumbs and began to massage the area.

‘You’d like to be fucked here …’ One hand moved between her legs, gliding into her wetness. ‘Against a tree … my stomach slapping against your hot red arse … until you come … and I come … and then I might leave you here, Charlotte. What if I left you here, tied here, with my spunk running down your legs and your poor, striped bum on display. How would that make you feel?’

‘Ohhhh,’ Charlotte could barely string a thought together, let alone a sentence. ‘I don’t know … humiliated. Ohh, God, yes, so humiliated and used and ashamed.’

‘You like that, don’t you? At least, the idea of it. But I wouldn’t leave you, Charlotte. I have too many uses for you.’

Zips, buttons, fumbling and then a swift, hard, much-needed cock was slid snugly into Charlotte’s tight snare.

‘There,’ whispered Bryant. ‘Sore bum, full of cock, for the world to see, Charlotte. Take a moment to think how you must look.’

Charlotte took that moment. She took that moment to look down at her hips, where Bryant’s fingers could be seen holding on. She took that moment to listen for distant voices or car noises, hearing nothing but the eternal leaves and the slight clinking of Bryant’s belt, swaying against their sides, the cool leather sometimes stroking her skin. For the duration of that moment only, she realised how her arm and shoulder muscles ached from the tension of the whipping, and she wondered how distracting the intense sting of her switch marks would be when Bryant began to thrust against them.

But then all that was forgotten when Bryant began to withdraw, slowly, then sheath himself once more, without thought or care for her poor bum or her sore nipples, rubbed against the bark again. This was no slow, sensual coupling but a hard ride, Bryant grunting with each forceful stroke, the tree creaking as if their fucking might snap it. His pelvis slapped against her bottom cheeks, and she clung tight to her support, her feet sometimes raised from the ground as Bryant’s cock plunged deeper and faster. Bryant pushed urgent fingers against Charlotte’s clit, needing to get it over with, needing to fill her while she moaned in defeated ecstasy, and she let her orgasm scorch out from her cunt and along the searing lines of the switching, overtaking her exhausted body with thrilling, painful pleasure. Bryant snarled and pinned her so tight to the tree that she had to fight for breath, spilling inside her while he sank teeth into her shoulder.

He slumped against her, his arms encircling her and the bark, breathing heavily. Charlotte felt that she was melting into him, her body smudged and dirty, her pussy slick with their combined fluids, the sweat of sex seeping into her welts and making her bottom feel as if it had caught fire. It was so uncomfortable, so sticky and icky and mucky, and yet she could stay like that indefinitely, she thought.

She had a moment of panic when Bryant pulled out of her, having to hug the tree all the more desperately to keep upright.