From the Top Shelf - When the Master Speaks

I rediscovered When the Master Speaks by Josephine Scott recently, and it's a fascinating book. The chapters alternate between letters written in 1869 and events that take place in 1969.

This selection is an erotic fantasy that one of the modern characters is imagining.

I am walking along the road, an address in my mind, aware of being on time to visit a mistress.

Here, this is the house, with neat railings and manicured garden, with beautifully cared for wooden door and glittering brass knockers and letter box. This is it. My nemesis my pain my dues.

My fluttering nerves can surely be heard a hundred yards away! The dryness of my mouth, the dampness of my palms, oh why am I walking here, what am I doing here, what is the matter with me? Walking toward pain.

The door opens as if by magic... She is there, my mistress.

"Come" and I follow. A dungeon. A playroom, she calls it, a room with padded benches and horses to bend over straps for suffering and a mirror to see. And racks of implements of pain and pleasure awaiting my skin my skin my skin.

Over her knees, her cool skin on mine, for I am stripped to nothing to be sure she misses no part of me she wishes to hurt. Over her knees feeling childish and waiting for the sting of whatever she chooses, never her hands, her white hands with the glittering red nails are not allowed to touch someone, she prefers to use something hard and inflexible usually. Now, a paddle.

Flat and hard, it covers a wide area, it smacks on this cheek and that and I gasp and writhe and she orders me to be still and I am.

Over a padded bench, hands secured to the legs, ankles secured to each other, helpless, cannot balance, must lean forward,  must throw body weight into the bench as she has designed it to do. Helpless. Bottom red and stinging, helpless I await the tawse, her favourite, a three tailed heavy one that is well used, flexible, well able to deliver a violent and nasty sting, as it does now. Twelve from one side, twelve from the other.

I know the drill, she has done it before. Twelve times standing to my right, the thickness of the leather and delight of the leather wrapping itself around me covering both cheeks at once, covering the stinging redness of the paddle, covering my skin, I cry out for release and yet delight in the pain, for the pain goes deep and touches every erotic feeling I have. Thrills and spills thrill of anticipation and apprehension of fear and longing and she knows it.

She stands, I get twelve strokes from her standing to my left, the leather wrapping itself over the weals already inflicted, I am crying out and protesting and getting nowhere for the twelve will come whether I want it or not, and I do want it, of course I do, it is my desire, my feeling, my own decision to be there.

I am allowed to rest and wait to stand and to rub and to ease the pain a little before the cane, oh twelve hard nasty cuts with a fine whippy cane are enough and then and then and then...

Satisfaction is achieved.