Evie went to stand a little way away from the cross, swishing the thongs this way and that, rehearsing her aim.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Ready? It’s a sound thrashing for you, my lad. This’ll be a bit more than a kiss.’
Fascinated dread coursed through Adam’s veins as Evie drew the whip back, preparing for the first stroke. It was as if he experienced Trevelyan’s anxiety by proxy.
The lash fell with a swoop and a fierce snap and Adam winced at Trevelyan’s bellow. Angry waves of red rose on his body, soon joined by more as Evie found her stride and plied the whip with a will.
Snakes of scarlet crept across Trevelyan’s skin, sometimes intersecting, sometimes rising in welts. Soon he was sweating and shiny and the strokes must have hurt more, that salty emission sinking into the sting and doubling it.
But he didn’t call “Pax”, even when his bottom and back were more red than white.
Eventually Evie’s arm tired and she paused for breath, her latex-covered breasts rising and falling.
‘Boy’s got stamina,’ she said to camera. ‘I think he’s found his niche.’
Amid ribald laughter, she tiptoed up to Trevelyan and put an arm around his waist.
‘Are you all right, lover?’
Adam’s insides tore with jealousy. Why was it not his ear into which she murmured words of sweet concern? The hateful Trevelyan got to experience pleasure even when she avenged herself against him. How had he earned this luck?
He must have given her some kind of green light, because she stepped back and picked up the whip again.
Surely she was not going to subject him to more flogging? She must have come close to breaking his skin as it was.
But no. She collected a bottle of lubricant from the sidelines and set to work pushing her rubber fingers, coated in grease, between Trevelyan’s twitching buttocks. She worked slowly, the cameras on zoom, making sure that they got plenty of shots of his spread cheeks and exposed anus before sliding a finger inside.
Trevelyan rutted compulsively against his wooden prison, grunting like a man possessed. Evie continued to work on him until finally she judged him ready to accept the oiled whip handle. Carefully, inch by inch, the shiny black handle disappeared between Trevelyan’s parted globes. His hips twisted and his legs struggled to kick but the object continued in its inexorable journey until it was seated to the strands, then Evie began to thrust.
She shoved and rotated and manipulated the whip handle inside Trevelyan’s back passage until he began to twitch and utter hoarse expletives.
‘Going to come with a whip up your arse, are you, boy?’ she asked sweetly. ‘Going to show everyone what a dirty little slut you are?’
He roared and sobbed.
Adam put his hand to his crotch, horrified by his own level of arousal.
Evie laughed, softly but triumphantly, and kept up the pressure until Trevelyan was no more than a weeping mass of orgasmic flesh.
She pulled out the whip handle, threw it to the ground and circled his hips with her arms.
‘Bloody good for a newbie,’ she said, kissing his shoulders and neck. ‘You done a great job, Trev. I’m proud of you.’
Again, the words cut Adam like knives.
He almost broke his cover and strode on to the set, but remembered his sanity just in time. How on earth would it profit him to expose himself as a hopeless voyeur? It would only consolidate a reputation already held.
Trevelyan was untied from the cross and showered with food, drink and praise. It was time for Adam to get away from here. Julia Shields wasn’t going to be best pleased with the turn her little exposé had taken, but he could hardly be blamed for it.
Chapter Nine
ACCORDING TO J.E. Lydford, the amount of pagan practices thought to flourish in Saxonhurst after the Civil War merited the appointment of the most hardline clergyman available, one Tribulation Smith. This austere preacher was charged with the mission of bringing Saxonhurst to Puritan virtue. Judging by the way the modern village carried on, he had met with little success, Adam parenthesised.
The tragedy by the ruined barn was precipitated by a love affair.
‘Oh,’ said Adam, shaking his head. ‘’Twas ever thus.’
Tribulation Smith had called the local witchfinder to the village to assist him in flushing out the agents of Satan in their midst. The witchfinder had pointed out one Evangeline Lillie as suitable for burning atop a pile of faggots, but it seemed Smith had disagreed and refused to allow her death.