Amid cheers and whoops, the switch was flicked back and then forwards, with a significant speed and swoosh, snapping on to my backside with angry, exquisite intensity.
‘Ohhhhh!’ I wailed, kicking a leg up behind me, but having nowhere to go with it.
‘That’s one!’ shouted a good proportion of the watchers, used to the form, I supposed. The people lining the Green facing me were grinning, some of them leering, and then they began to move sideways, crab-style, so that the faces I saw were replaced by new ones.
‘Give her another!’ yelled a male voice.
‘Make it a hard one!’
Then the second stroke took my breath away, burning just below the first, igniting a fresh burst of cheering and some cries of ‘Two!’
This peculiar ring-a-roses around the Green, I realised, was to ensure that each villager got to witness my whipping from every perspective, missing none of the detail, from my scrunched-up reddened face to my criss-cross reddened bum. They could savour every aspect of my disgrace, keeping the images alive in their memory for the rest of their days.
A third cheer was synchronised with the flaring line of pain at the underhang of my cheeks – a particularly tender spot. Goodbye, jeans, at least for a few days.
Evan continued to lay the lash diligently and with a will, but I had to assume he was not using the full strength of his arm, as I was not in agony – just hopping around as if the target in a devilish game of darts. My bottom throbbed and seared, but my sex was more humid and itchy than ever – Evan would have to do no more than scrape that willow across my clit to set me off on an explosive series of climaxes.
‘She likes it!’ called out one perspicacious rustic. ‘She’s wet!’
‘Dirty mare!’
‘Give her more!’
‘Lay it on harder!’
‘She’s loving it!’
Evan heeded the consensus, and the seventh stroke was a vicious slash that seemed to buzz as the welt swelled in its aftermath. I jumped and crouched, twisted and writhed, but the pillory held my wrists and neck fast, and my bum was going nowhere until the last stroke was laid.
I was sure the eighth struck sparks, while the ninth unleashed a howl that could be heard in Little Swingeing, three miles down the road.
‘The last one,’ he said quietly. ‘You’ve been so brave, Faith. You’ve taken it so well.’ He put one hand on my bottom and traced the tracks he had already made, admiring their heat and symmetry. ‘Where shall it go? Hmm.’
He stepped back and I clenched my jaw right down, knowing that this would be the hardest lash of all.
The air whistled, the crowd held collective breath, there was a swoop and a crack of impact and a scream of both triumph and anguish, and then a cacophonous elation all around me as the audience jumped and hugged each other and waved their torches. A chant of ‘Faith! Faith! Faith!’ started at one edge of the Green, as if I had scored the winning goal in a cup final.
‘Faith is a free woman of the village of Great Swingeing! She is our mascot now! Line up and pay tribute to her!’
I did not know what Evan’s words meant – what kind of tribute? – but soon it became clear, as every woman in the crowd passed in front of me, kissing my hands and my dripping forehead. Meanwhile, the men processed to my rear and ... oh God ... they were kissing my burning sore bottom, one by one.
‘Don’t touch what isn’t yours!’ Evan had to warn a couple of the friskier youths who seemed fascinated by the wetness below, which was beginning to gush at the feel of so many rough lips and stubbly chins on the marks of my whipping.
‘She liked that, by the smell of her,’ replied one cheekily, to which Evan’s sharp rejoinder was, ‘Shame you won’t get the benefit, isn’t it?’
The torches began to gutter and the villagers to trail off towards the pub and the village hall for one last chug of cider before bed. I thought Evan might let me out of the pillory, but it was not until we were finally alone on the Green that he came around to the padlock and began to toy with it.
‘You were fantastic,’ he crooned, ducking down to press my captive lips against his. ‘My heroine. I think it’s time you had your reward.’
‘Mmm,’ I had to agree, but he moved back behind again, rubbing his thumbs delicately along my welts, augmenting the sting of them so that I wiggled violently under his hands.
‘You’ll be uncomfortable for a while,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘Sitting down. Lying down. Driving.’
‘Good thing I’m on my feet mos
t of the day then,’ I said, trying to push my pussy into his hands. ‘Oh, God, please, Evan.’
‘Did that turn you on?’ he asked, plunging a finger, then another, into the honeytrap between my thighs. ‘Oh, it did! You kinky little thing!’