F Campbell - Drusilla

“Oh, damn!” Bryce irritably searched for the key, then unlocked the padlock and drew the chain carefully away from the weals it had made in her skin. “Sorry. I forgot. It doesn’t belong now.” It had the flavor of apology.

Now the ropes were tight around her and the post. A strand cinched her flesh to the wood, welding her to the stanchion. Her breathing became tremulous, confronting pain.

“One on each side.” His voice was brusk as he pushed her feet where he desired them and bound them fast. Once more he took the trouble to effect the cinch so that the ropes became more than ever circlets intimate within her skin.

He handcuffed her limp wrists which she offered passively. Then raised them and locked their chain to a fixture she could not see on the reverse side of the post. Her arms were held up but not high enough to make the metal bite.

“That will do.”

Drusilla was quite sure it would “do.” She was allowed more movement than when on the bench. But it was little enough: A fluttering of the elbows and knees, that was all. Her bottom was held tightly and protuberantly. She supposed it was upon its exposed contours the tawse would snap its fifty bites. But she was conscious now of her back. It seemed more naked and more vulnerable than previously. Suppose Bryce used his whip on it! Drusilla saw her back as a white and virgin field, femininely inviting. She shuddered.

“I’ll come down again before I go to bed.” It was a disinterested but polite reassurance.

It was all wrong. Everything had gone wrong! Under the spur of anxiety, Drusilla asked the most imprudent question of her life.

“Aren’t you going to whip me?”

“D’you want me to?” It was as though he was reminded of something forgotten.

“Oh, Bryce—!” It was Drusilla’s plea for understanding. “I don’t want it, and I do! Oh, darling, I’ve messed something up somewhere. We had things so lovely. Supper was such fun. And now—boom, it’s gone.

“Yes.”

Her voice became vehement. “I don’t want this spoiled. I don’t! I don’t! I didn’t cheat the way you think. But that doesn’t matter anymore. I don’t care! I want you laughing. I want to please you.”

“I expect it’s a mood. It will pass.”

“You don’t sound as though it will pass. Darling, don’t go away and leave me like this.”

“You want to be untied?”

“No, I don’t. Being tied this way is part of our deal. It belongs. I meant, don’t let’s part with this state of mind nagging at us.”

“So what d’you want me to do?”

“Whip me.”

Long afterwards, Drusilla would relive the moment as high drama. But at that moment she knew only shame that her plea for punishment arose from a sudden furnace heat between her thighs. A surging lust for Bryce. The tawse would fan it to fresh flame and would bring to him also a hunger for her flesh. Shaming as it might be, the whip would restore to both of them their lost rapport. That the punishment might be beyond her ability to bear was a possibility that did not cross her mind.

Drusilla’s whipping took place in near silence. Bryce had made no reply, but had presumably stood studying his captive wife while she herself pressed her forehead against the timber and awaited his reaction. When she heard him go to the cupboard she quiveringly looked back over a naked arm. Seeing him select the whip that, as yet, had made no mark upon her flesh, she quickly returned to her illusory refuge and closed her eyes.

With female logic, Drusilla had considered the pain implicit in her plea as some huge monstrous thing that would work its will on her, then go away. That it might leave her unconscious or moaning in agony seemed no more than was to be expected. In the travails of being flogged she was still a novice.

In the self-imposed darkness between her shackled arms, the delinquent wife recognized her emotional approach to her ordeal as unique. She wondered if any other woman had ever asked as she had asked, or been granted her request with the same impersonal detachment. She was imbued with a fierce determination not to scream. Whatever the agony, she must cling the silence of assent. If this path led to the salvation of her marriage she would tread it without demur.

It was a new and different pain; and on another part of her. The tapered thong slashed the width of her shoulders and the narrow span of her waist. Then, as though demonstrating versatility, lapped her loins with venom. But, even as the first sense of violation sent her thrusting against the post, Drusilla knew with certainty that she was not being whipped as cruelly as might be. The pain was frightening enough but, within the latitudes of such punishments, Bryce was being kind.

Drusilla soon lost the tally. Perhaps it was best not to count and not to hope. Let it happen. Suffer. Endure! Above all, accept. Holding to silence as she might cling to love, she found what expression she could by tugging at her handcuffs until they hurt, and turning her head from side to side so that one cheek and then the other shared the solace of the post with her forehead. Only under the worst of the blows did she open her eyes, and then briefly. She made no effort to look back at the man who held the whip. It was as though, while she was whipped, each of them had a privacy all his own. A privacy that her beseeching eyes might violate. The searing cuts mounted. She wondered if her back was raw and bleeding.

When it was done, Bryce quietly went away.

Pain is a companion. For a little while the prisoner at the post was not lonely. But from her previous inflictions Drusilla had learned the treacherous transience of a whip’s agony. As the blows fell upon the helpless flesh they seemed forever, but within minutes of the final stroke their scald began to fade, leaving only a tenderness to the touch and the flaming weals that proclaimed an erotic beauty all their own. The fire within her sex was more permanent. It burned demandingly.

Drusilla wept. The tears were a relief; a port after stormy seas. They were also an angry expression of her frustration at her helplessness and the fire within, which would burn smolderingly through the night with no hope of assuagement. She tugged fretfully at her handcuffs, unable to get a good look at them. The rest of her was fastened too tightly to offer any hope of release at all. Under the compulsion of loneliness and longing, she leaned back against the ropes confining her waist and tried to friction her nipples against the post to which she was tied. But the result was only more pain. She soon desisted from any effort at all, but hugged the post and allowed her tears to drift into fitful dozings through the night.

Drusilla did not know the time, but it was not yet morning when Bryce unlocked the handcuffs from behind the post and then joined them again the front. His hands tore savagely at the ropes by which she was bound. When her tired, hurt nudity fell gratefully into his arms he lifted it bodily and carried her to their bed. In the darkness before dawn, lying upon her wounded back, Drusilla shared with the savage male the most transcendent love-making she had ever known.

The phone awakened her. The bedside clock said ten forty-five. The whipping, her tiring time against the post, and then the tumultuous orgasms had kept her deep in slumber while Bryce rose and departed for work, leaving her to sleep to satiety. Bemused, she fumbled for the receiver.

It was Diana’s voice; a controlled intensity. “Did you know Bryce picked Hinton up this morning? They had a project they were both working on.”

“No. Bryce slipped away without waking me. I was asleep.”

“Haven’t you had a phone call?”

“Only yours.”

“Oh, darling... !” Diana’s voice trailed off into a wail. Drusilla knew instantly. But her voice said the expected: