From the Top Shelf - Under a Mediterranean Sun

This is another old Janus story by R.T. Mason, and is a tale of righteous retribution. What is it about a hot climate that, in the author's opinion, makes men and women misbehave?

It was August. The sun burnt implacably down from a brassy sky, parching the Southern Italian landscape, sapping men's efforts and energy. Outside the sun held sway but in the room in the ancient stone house, behind thick walls and closed shutters, it remained very cool. A cool retreat and also a very convenient one for the purposes of Don Stefano, the middle-aged country priest, who now in the early afternoon sat in this small room reading, and waiting for his first visitors.

For the house was joined to the back of the church - Santa Lucia - and could be discreetly entered by that route through a door otherwise kept locked. Discretion was something routinely sought by Don Stefano's afternoon visitors - his female parishioners or their teenage daughters - as they came to do penance for sins they would not wish to be made public. Sins which typically involved some sexual transgression, for the local women were notably hot blooded.

Perhaps, Don Stefano thought, it was different to more northerly cooler climes but here the women seemed to find it extraordinarily hard to resist the sins of the flesh. It had to be the sun. While it sapped men's energies it seemed to produce an extra fire in the loins of the local women. It was always the same - I am sorry, Father, I could not help myself. The sun and the Devil. Fleshly sins could be properly dealt with only by chastising that same flesh, but, like the sin itself, this chastisement was not something the sinner ever wished to become public knowledge.

So discretion was doubly sought and Don Stefano did not deny it. What was important was that the sin was punished, that errant female flesh was properly chastised, female buttocks bared and offered up, for the sharply searing cut of the cane. And, as that most fleshly part of the sinner was vigorously scourged, so hopefully the Devil in the sinner's flesh would therefore be subdued.

In Don Stefano's eyes actual subjugation was a forlorn hope but at least the Devil could be kept in check. And for that purpose the priest came here in the afternoons to this quiet little room behind Santa Lucia in the little market town. Under the burning sun he rode the three miles from his village on his bicycle. The sun could never defeat Don Stefano.

There was soon a discreet knock at the door. The priest, who despite his grey hair, was still lean and athletic from those many miles on his bicycle, went to open it. Two women, or more correctly one and a girl, stood there. Elena Solari, bringing her fully developed 17 year old daughter Maria. Submissively they entered and he locked the door behind them.

It was not the first visit for the young but ripely fleshed Maria Solari. Her parents were keen to marry her off to a neighbour, a bachelor in his forties who enjoyed the relative affluence of owning his own small-holding. Though very interested in Maria he had as yet made no firm commitment and in the meantime the girl, who clearly had to remain a virgin, was showing every sign that her ripe body was ready and eager to be sampled. In particular, though strictly forbidden to, she had been out with a number of the local boys.

It was the latest of such escapades which had brought her to Don Stefano this afternoon. She was still virgo intacto - her mother had grimly determined that - but another salutary caning from the priest, and she'd had several already, was obviously called for.

The room was quite small and now seemed full with the arrival of the two newcomers, but there was space enough for what had to be done. Don Stefano told the mother to be seated in an upright leather chair to the side - then sat himself sideways on to the desk and told the girl to stand right in front of him. And then to bare herself.

Maria, as always in this situation, felt a tremor of excitement. Don Stefano might be a priest but he was also a man, a not unattractive one, and having to bare herself in front of him made her blood run just a little faster. There was also the thought of what was to come when she was bare. Don Stefano's cane. That, undoubtedly, would make her blood run a little faster too.

It was Maria's fourth such visit to the priest. Her father used his leather belt on her bottom but the priest was the only man to have caned her. The first time had been six months before, when her mother found out about that boy, Giorgio. That time she had been terrified, about to get the cane for the first time - but, in fact, because it was her first, Don Stefano hadn't caned her all that hard. Not as hard as the subsequent two times. Not as hard as he would today. She shivered.

Maria's hands were fumbling at the waist of her skirt, undoing the buttons, then the zip. She slipped down the full calf-length mauve skirt and stepped out of it. Underneath was a half slip and she stepped out of that too. There was now only the pair of white knickers, tight-fitting over womanly hips and bottom. She glanced at Don Stefano, then her hands went to the waistband of her knickers.

The knickers came straight down and off. Maria stood still and straight with her hands at her sides. Her face was flushed and her heart was racing. She was now as he required her for the caning. She still wore her white blouse, her thigh-length self-supporting black stockings and her flat shoes but from waist to mid-thigh she was naked.


Her full ripe hips and her equally ripe bottom were bare. And squarely in front of Don Stefano's unblinking eyes, at the centre of her intimate flesh, was the luxuriant black tuft which those boys would get so excited about if only she would let them see it. Maria wondered if Don Stefano got excited by it. He became very red in the face at times.

Standing still and straight Maria received her lecture from the priest- on the sins of the flesh and the Devil's perpetual desire to seduce young girls into his lustful ways. Don Stefano had said it all before, to this girl and to many others. His eyes flickered from the sensuously pretty face to the ripe foliage around her loins. She was without doubt a prime target for the Devil's desires, and he would have to ensure that the cane really bit in. Much harder than before.

It was for her own good - but equally Don Stefano knew he would get pleasure from the act. But that was merely the pleasure of doing his priestly duty. He finished his monologue and then stood up. Maria was told to get down over the seat he had vacated.

She felt the dryness in her mouth and her body trembling as she did as she was told. Head down near the floor and plump, ripe young buttocks thrust up high. The priest's cane tap-tapped at her legs and she obediently parted them as wide as she could, her knees straight. Maria waited, conscious of her mother looking on. Don Stefano positioned himself and then raised the cane....CRACK!..

Square across the ripest part of the buttocks, a flesh-juddering cut that was distinctly worse than anything Maria had received before. It brought an involuntary gasping grunt, a desperate clenching of the buttocks, as she fought to come to terms with the knifing pain.

The priest waited, until the now red striped bottom was almost still. Then he raised the cane again.

CRACK! ...

Equally as hard, it splatted the resilient flesh close below that first red stripe. The gasp this time was half a shriek. It was murder! She couldn't take many like this!

CRACK!..The third stroke struck lower, just above the tops of Maria's thighs, an excruciatingly sensitive region and she almost toppled off the chair in her reaction. Don Stefano ran his hand lightly over his brow. Despite the cool room it was hot work for he was using all the strength in his arm. That, though, was not the only reason for his perspiration; there was also that nerve-tingling excitement when caning the ripe bottom of a young girl. Not a sinful excitement of course, the priest quickly reminded himself, but the excitement of dealing with the Devil.

CRACK!..Once more the thick rattan bit into the quivering youthful flesh..

He gave her ten strokes in all on that luscious round rump and, at the end of it, the pretty girl, tears coursing down her hot flushed face, did not know which end was up. She got up off the chair and hopped from foot to foot rubbing her tortured rear. Watched by her mother and the priest she fumblingly replaced slip and skirt and then, very gingerly, her white cotton knickers. One could almost see the heat radiating out of them.

"I hope I shall not need to see you here again!" the priest told her sternly. Still crying, the girl vigorously shook her head. But the experience of Don Stefano was that she would be back. The pain in her bottom would die away and be forgotten, at least temporarily, in the face of ardent male blandishments.

Wiping her eyes, Maria had a muttered word with her mother and then went outside to catch the bus home on her own, for her mother had further business with Don Stefano which she would not discuss. Her day's tribulations were not over, for there was still her father. Maria knew that, this evening, he would want to reinforce the lesson administered by the priest.

There's more to this story besides Maria's second punishment. Stay tuned for part two, coming up next week.