F Campbell - Margo

For Henry Ross, it was a gala day!

Rossland absorbed them. The tunic of a mistress covered Margo's wounds. She was now sufficiently uninhibited that if one of her colleagues shyly suggested she would like to observe more closely the terrible results of her punishment, she cheerfully raised her tunic and allowed her wounds to be examined. There was no cut skin. But most certainly, there was an array of rainbow colors to evoke quite satisfying gasps from those who ventured. But there was not a single girl in the school who either had not or would not receive a similar coloration of her skin. None were immune from the thong. It was, in fact, very much a part of their daily life. They lived with it.

Mildred bore herself well. None would suspect the wounds she bore beneath her dress. Her punishment remained entirely secret. Only Margo knew. The headmistress waited a couple of days before summoning the whipped girl to her office.

"The bastard!" she said. "It's taken me this long to look you in the face. He didn't have to do that, but he's a clever son of a bitch, and he knows what hurts most." She laughed dryly. "Not that I didn't enjoy the role you were cast in. I could not have endured being whipped half as much without your help. Even if I did nearly go crazy when you made me orgasm. How many times was it? The whole damn thing is best forgotten."

Tonelessly, Margo asked, "What now? I'm under your authority here while the master is absent."

"Of course I want you! I want you right here and now, but we are both frightened, aren't we? That asshole has got us so scared we won't dare act naturally. We'll see him peeping at us from every corner. Is that the way you see it?"

"Of course," Margo admitted. "That's the effect of any punishment. That's the intent behind it all – to make you too frightened to do it again. But it won't last. By the time the marks on your skin have disappeared, we'll have relaxed, and we'll be doing it again."

"And eventually he'll catch us, just as he did this time," the headmistress said somberly, sharing Margo's disgust with female dependence on the male. "How do you still fell about me setting you up in that apartment and having you all to myself?"

"What's the use? He'd find me. We couldn't keep anything from Henry Ross." Margo shrugged hopelessly. "With all his money, he can do anything."

"All we can have of each other is illicit and subject to punishment."

"For the sake of this position you hold, which has to be valuable to you, you would do best to forget me. Just let me go out there among the rest of the girls and don't ever bother to notice me again."

"Is that what you want?"

"No, it isn't. You know it isn't. But in a way, we're both prisoners here. What the hell else can we do?"

They surveyed each other in rueful silence. Both, in their way captive, by invisible bonds. Mildred spoke again, forcefully.

"I won't let you go. I simply won't! It's too much to ask, to have you walking around this place and neither see nor touch you."

Standing before the desk, in the posture of humility, Margo realized the strange alchemy of female love which had made her this woman's equal. It had ceased to be headmistress and pupil – it was now lovers, fugitive from male wrath. Margo knew herself torn between male and female, but knew also she would not desert this woman in a crisis. Helpfully, she made a suggestion.

"You could make things easy for me here. You could easily make certain I was not constantly punished. I would simply serve my time and be available to Henry Ross when he wanted me. Isn't that the best way out?"

"No, it isn't. He'd find out. If I make things easy for you, the other girls will be jealous and suspicious, and one of them will tell him. You mustn't forget that he occasionally picks one of them rather than you or me, and a girl in bed will tell a man anything. The little bitches are so damn, grateful for a male cock!"

"Well, how about letting me escape? Surely we can figure some way of my getting out of here which will place no blame on you."

"You're dreaming, sweetheart. That's my job – to make sure you don't escape." Mildred shook her head, perplexed. "So, all right, we get what we can of each other in the way we've been doing. And fuck Henry Ross! I'm having you in my bed tonight, regardless."

It was not to happen, but neither knew it then.

Henry Ross appeared early in the evening. He wasted no time, but had Margo stripped, her hands cuffed behind her back, and another set of cuffs securing her ankles. Since she was not quite helpless, he picked her up bodily and carried her to his car. He did not put her in the trunk, but sat her on the sat by his side and drove away with her in much the manner of a conquering hero taking his prize to the family castle. Margo was quivering with excitement. She was outside the walls of Rossland in the owner's Rolls Royce. She felt she bad been promoted.

"Rossland will have done you no harm, sweetheart. I will have prepared you for what I now intend." He spared her an affectionate sideways glance, his voice softening and taking on a more normal tone.

"Don't worry about the handcuffs. I've got them on you just in case you change your mind or find this sudden change too much for you. I'm setting you up in an apartment and having you all to myself. There will be a woman to look after you and to look after the place itself."

"I'll still be a prisoner?"

"Yes, of course." He smiled. "Do you think you're quite ready for freedom?"

It was a question Margo could not answer. Of course, she was ready for freedom, but her what terms and at what price? She was unsure about spending her days in freedom and yielding her body every evening to his caprice. Henry Ross had not yet unbent enough for her to feel she truly knew him. His headmaster role clung and dictated her regard. But she was still in no position to quibble and bad no intention of doing so. With in sight of freedom, she would be stupid to ignore its possibility.

Wryly, she was forced to concede within her own mind the absence of ignominy in the yielding of her flesh to either phallus or whip. These things were now a part of her life, possessing a potency to make the routines of everyday life insignificant. She was about to speak of these things when they saw the fallen tree.

They were still well into the country. The road was narrow and the tree blocked it completely. It was not a big tree. A man might, with considerable exertion, drag it to one side. Without concern, Henry Ross left the car with that intent. The man who had delivered the blow to knock the master unconscious ad risen from the foliage of the tree and now proceeded to drag it back into the ditch out of sight. He dragged the unconscious Henry Ross to one side and left him on the grass. Margo was aghast. Helplessly, she had seen the whole terrible charade without being able to use either hands or feet in defense of the master or herself. The man responsible came closer, and she watched his approach as the victim of a snake might watch the hypnotism of its eyes. He wore a hood of transparent spandex, totally obliterating his features. He drove the Rolls Royce to the side of the road and parked it. Silently, he plucked the nakedness from the seat and deposited her roughly in the trunk of his car, which was parked a few feet from the Rolls. The whole thing was well conceived and had taken only minutes to execute. The car, with its helpless burden, drove away without even a screech of rubber. The abduction had been discreet. In the total darkness and discomfort of the trunk, Margo was mystified. She could not be other than terribly afraid. In her fear and loneliness, she wept.

She knew not who the tears were for.

The feminine voice had a familiar sound, but was hard to place. It was, moreover, in the next room and difficult to hear. Margo, tied spread-eagle on the cot, was still dazed and bewildered by the swift succession of events but was straining every nerve to pick up the conversation which might be her only clue to why and what was happening. A short, sharp struggle with the cords on wrists and ankles had already convinced her she would not escape their clutch.