‘Me? Oh, no. I couldn’t.’
‘Of course you could,’ said Maria severely.
‘Go for it,’ added Tom.
‘There, you have his consent. He wants you to whip him.’ She held out the crop, tip foremost.
‘Well,’ I said, coming forward and accepting it without enthusiasm. ‘I don’t know how hard to…’
‘He’s a big boy,’ said Maria. ‘And he has some protection in the form of denim. Put your arm into it. But don’t aim above here.’ She stroked an area in the centre of Tom’s arse. ‘Try as low as you can on the cheeks. Give him something to remember you by, next time he sits down.’
I waved the whip back and forth in the air, trying to get used to the feel of it in my hand. I wanted to make it whistle through the air, but it didn’t. Perhaps an implement needed to be thinner for that.
‘Here goes then,’ I said, choosing my target – the curve of his right cheek. ‘Brace yourself.’
I laid a stroke that I thought was hard, but Tom clearly didn’t.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘That’s more like it. I could get into that.’
‘Perhaps you aren’t one of nature’s Dommes,’ said Maria, smiling. ‘Here, let me finish off.’
‘How many?’ asked Tom nervously.
‘How many do you think you deserve?’ countered Maria.
‘Er…’
‘Ellie?’ She turned to me. ‘What do you think he deserves?’
‘Six,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that the usual number?’
‘With a cane, yes,’ she said, nodding. ‘Very well. Six of my very best it is. Those first two won’t count. Now, Tom, I will expect you to thank me for each one, if you don’t want extra strokes. Is that understood?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said robustly.
Maria made the whip whistle. And she made it thwack. And she made Tom grit his teeth hard, but an occasional whimper still made it through the grid.
By the sixth stroke he had unclenched and given himself over to snorting and gasping his way through it.
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ he muttered, once the last echo of the last stroke had faded, then, ‘Dear God.’
‘Are you OK?’ I asked, hurrying around to the front of him.
‘Fine,’ he said, and there was a look of slight irritation on his face. He tilted his head to suggest I should go back to where Maria stood, and I remembered that we weren’t meant to really know each other. The intensity and intimacy of kink made faking things extraordinarily difficult. I wished I’d realised this before.
Maria handed the whip to me while she went to release Tom from the pillory. I held it before me, fascinated, trying to imagine how it would feel landing on my bare bottom with the full force of Tom’s shoulder. Mia had blogged about the day J took her riding. Halfway across a remote field, he had made her dismount and bend over a haystack, her jodhpurs tight across her bum. I tried to remember some of what she had said about it. Pure red flame, mixing with the heat of the day and my already saddle-sore stiffness. After the whipping, he had pulled down her jodhpurs and – how did she put it? – ‘entered her most secret place.’ The ride back had been uncomfortable.
And had the man who did this been that angry-looking councillor? It was hard to believe, yet I ought to consider it. After all, Mia and her friends and lovers probably weren’t the impossibly beautiful characters I had pictured in my head. It was entirely likely that she was the mousy woman I had seen earlier, and the dashing J was the broad-shouldered, bullish fiftysomething in the lobby.
My thoughts were interrupted by Tom, rolling his shoulders and twisting his neck, then clamping his hands firmly on the seat of his jeans and rubbing them, with moans of relief.
‘That was very…instructive,’ he said. ‘Thanks for the lesson.’
‘De nada,’ said Maria, taking the whip from me. ‘What about you, Ellie? I’m very interested to hear about you. And don’t be shy – tell me all about what you like and don’t like. Is there anything in my discipline cupboard that appeals to you?’
‘Discipline cupboard,’ I repeated.
‘Every home should have one,’ said Tom with a wink.