From the Top Shelf - Retirement Day, part 2

Last week we learned that Matt Preston was being forced to retire, so he tossed aside his inhibitions and spanked his assistant. Were there any repercussions? Let's find out.

About half an hour later Heather Caldwell burst into his office. She was not her usual pleasantly imperturbable self. Her flushed face showed a mixture of astonishment and amusement and she had an unprecedented tendency to stammer.

'Matt Preston!' she gasped. 'You – you –'

'I'm a dirty old man?' suggested Matt, calmly.

'That's not what I was going to say,' said Heather, 'but perhaps you know best after what you did to Julia!'

'I thought she was going to keep quiet about it,' said Matt.

Heather laughed. 'Have you forgotten that the staff of her office is entirely female? She didn't have a chance against the united curiosity of twenty-seven other women! We've heard all about it – in detail – and seen the marks! No wonder poor Julia can't sit down without wincing.'

'So what do they propose to do?' enquired Matt. 'Complain to the management? Go to the union? Have me kneecapped by a Women's Lib Action Squad?'

Heather laughed again, shaking her head. 'Wrong three times over! They're not going to spoil the most exciting thing to happen here since the police came for the Chief Accountant. Those who don't fancy trying it for themselves can't wait to hear the experiences of those who do.'

'Are you telling me –' began Matt.

'I mean,' said Heather, 'that there are at this moment four very nervous young women lined up outside your door, and several more back in the office who are still trying to make their minds up. You have a busy afternoon in front of you, Matt.'

'And an exhausting one,' said Matt. 'Heather, the spirit is willing but the flesh isn't what it was. I can't possibly give a proper spanking to four girls, one after the other.'

'Not four,' said Heather. 'Five. I'm going to be first. I see your problem, Matt, but there are other methods, aren't there? Ways to inflict effective punishment without the exertion of a spanking.'

'If I had the equipment here, yes,' said Matt. He looked sharply at Heather as she leant back against his desk with her aims folded, smiling at him, looking cool and elegant in a lime-green jacket and skirt with a white lace blouse. 'What do you know about punishment methods anyway?' he demanded.

'Oh Matt!' said Heather. 'You don't think you're the only one with a taste for this kind of thing, do you? I went across Gerry's knee for a good smack-bottom on my second date with him, and in the twelve years we've been married I've spent plenty of time baring my bottom and bending over for a good hiding. Tawse and paddle, cane and riding switch, I'm painfully familiar with them all. Even the birch, sometimes. I have to collect the twigs for that and make it myself, which is not what I'd call an amusing pastime.'

'Gerry is obviously a man after my own heart,' said Matt, 'but I can hardly send the girls from the office out into the local park to collect swishy twigs. Still, as I told Julia, one can sometimes improvise.'

'You might find this helpful,' said Heather. She picked up her shoulder bag from the desk, opened it, and produced a thick but supple three-tailed tawse, doubled to fit into the bag. It opened to full length as she laid it on the desk, and Matt stared incredulously at the ominous twenty inches or so of black leather.

'Good God!' said Matt. 'Do you always carry that around?'

'Of course not!' said Heather. 'But if I'm due for a strapping in the evening Gerry makes me put the tawse in my bag and carry it round all day. Every time I open my bag I'm reminded what's going to happen to me later. Gerry gave me my orders this morning – I was across his knee at the time, without a stitch on! It will be six strokes as soon as I get home and twelve more at bedtime. And probably a good slippering in between to keep my poor bottom suitably sensitive.'

'This will certainly be very useful,' said Matt, appreciatively examining the well-used tawse. 'I wonder if we can find anything else?' He picked up the flat, eighteen inch wooden ruler from his desk. 'This might serve.'

Heather had changed her position, perching on a corner of his desk with her right foot on the floor. It was a position which pulled the thin material of her skirt skin tight across her left thigh. Matt brought the ruler down on that thigh with a resounding crack.

'Ow!' squealed Heather, clutching her thigh with both hands. 'Matt, that hurt! I'm very sensitive there.'

'In that case,' said Matt, 'you'd better have half a dozen more.'

'Oh, but Matt –'

'Does Gerry allow you to argue?'

Headier bit her lower lip. 'No Matt.'

'Are you going to argue with me?'

'No, Matt. I'm very sorry.'

'You came to me for punishment,' said Matt, 'and I'd hate to disappoint you. Put your hands on your head, please.'

Heather obeyed at once with an apprehensive glance at the ruler in his hand. Matt brought the ruler down again, and again, flooding the front of Heather's left thigh with stinging fire from just below the groin to three inches above the knee. Heather gasped and grimaced at each stroke but did not speak or cry out. She kept her hands firmly on top of her head.

'Very good!' said Matt, approvingly. 'You can take your hands down for the time being, Heather, while you change position so that the other thigh can be dealt with. You may as well take your skirt off too.'

As Heather obeyed, Matt noted with pleasure that she was wearing tan hold-up stockings instead of tights. The flesh of the left thigh glowed angrily between the stocking top and her white lace briefs.

'Roll your right stocking down below your knee, Heather,' instructed Matt. 'That's right. Now sit on the desk again, please.'

When she was in position with her hands on her head once more, Matt picked up the ruler again. This time the wood cracked down juicily upon tender feminine flesh. Heather's gasps were louder and sharper and her eyes filled with tears, but she endured the seven strokes without protest or appeal.

'So far so good,' said Matt. 'Now, what else can we find?'

He glanced round the office. In one corner was a large plant pot which had been there when he moved in. The plant it had contained was now only a shrivelled ghost – Matt had no interest in horticulture – but the three-foot cane which had supported it was still in the pot. Matt took it out and wiped away loose earth. Bending it between his hands, he found it pleasingly flexible. He turned back to Heather, who was standing by the desk, hands still on her head, awaiting further orders.

'I think this should be quite punishing, don't you, Heather?'

'Yes, sir,' said Heather. She licked her lips nervously. 'I'm afraid so!'

'Roll the other stocking down, Heather. Now face the desk.'

Matt swished the cane through the air and she flinched involuntarily. 'Take your knickers down, Heather.'

Obedience was immediate. The white briefs were an undignified tangle around Heather's knees. She stared in front of her, breathing heavily, willing herself not to react to the shame of exposure and the imminence of chastisement. She waited, mouth dry and heart thumping, for the words which were always the prelude to a squirming, humiliating ordeal.

'Bend over!'

Tapping the cane against his leg, Matt admired the plump, lusciously rounded buttocks and full, soft white thighs which were awaiting punishment. This, he reminded himself, was no inexperienced girl but a woman trained year after year to endure every form of disciplinary correction. To deal with her less than thoroughly would invite her contempt. He laid the cane gently across the crown of her bottom and saw her knuckles whiten as she gripped the far side of the desk.

'Heather,' he said, 'why do you deserve to be caned?'

'Because I was pleased about Julia being spanked,' confessed Heather. 'I wished I could have seen her howling across your knee with her knickers down. That was very wrong of me.'

'It was, Heather, indeed it was, and now you are going to suffer for it. I shall not decide on any specific number of strokes, I shall simply continue to cane you until I am satisfied that you have been adequately punished. Do you understand?'

'Yes, sir,' whispered Heather, wriggling unhappily across the desk.

Matt took careful aim and laid on a scorching stroke across the centre of the attractive blonde's plump, bare bottom. Heather yelped and screwed up her face as a line of fire blazed across her shapely rump. Swish! Swish! Swish! Matt caned the luckless culprit slowly and methodically, and her howls of anguish filled the room as each deliberate stroke added its fiery sting to tender buttocks already desperately hot and sore.

'I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' wailed Heather. 'Please, sir, please, I'm really sorry!'

'I thought you would be,' murmured Matt. The next vigorous cane stroke landed across both thighs at once, a little above the knee. Ignoring Heather's frantic entreaties Matt worked his way steadily upwards, and each thigh displayed six red-hot weals before he turned his attention back to her spectacularly striped bottom.

'Do you still think there was anything amusing about Julia's spanking?' he asked, as his cane flick-flick-flicked across Heather's wincing cheeks.

'I said I was sorry!' blubbered Heather. 'I – I'll apologise to her!'

'I've got a better idea,' said Matt. 'You'll offer to go across her knee for a bare-bottom spanking in front of the other girls.'

'I can't!' she sobbed. 'Please don't shame me like that, sir, please!'

'Oh dear,' said Matt, 'and I was beginning to think you'd learned your lesson.'

One, two, three full-blooded strokes of the cane whipped across the lower curves of Heather's agonised buttocks.

'Eeeeeeyow!' screeched Heather. 'No more, please! I'll do it! I'll beg Julia to take my knickers down and smack me while they all watch.'

'In that case,' said Matt, 'I think we've finished for now.'

A couple of minutes later, Heather was facing the wall with her hands on her head. 'I want the other girls to have a good look at your bottom when they come in,' explained Matt. 'Just to give them an idea what to expect.'

That is, he thought as he turned away, if the sound of Heather's thrashing hasn't scared them all off.

Matt put the cane on one side. The next girl, he decided, could be introduced to the tawse. It was quite a long time since he had had a submissive young lady bending over to have her naked buttocks soundly leathered. He picked up the tawse and went to the door. Heather had said there were four girls waiting outside. Matt saw, with great pleasure, that three more had joined them. Seven extremely nervous, pale-faced, wide-eyed, lip-nibbling, hand-twisting young women, waiting with trembling legs and churning stomachs for their turn to enter the room from which such eloquent expressions of feminine dismay had just been coming.

Some of them had featured regularly in Matt's secret fantasies, now to be transformed into vivid reality. Long-legged Jane had been the star of her school's athletic team only a few months earlier. Now, her gleaming blonde hair tied back with a scarlet ribbon, she was fidgeting uneasily, breathlessly aware that this time she was really for the high jump!

Andrea, superbly shapely, lust-provoking, whose cool, black-haired elegance always gave the impression that she was on her way to some glittering social function. But today she was on her way to a tear-soaked hour of penance, facing the wall with her fiercely-stinging hands clasped on top of her sleek head and her expensive silk knickers ignominiously around her slim ankles, her crimson, clenching buttocks showing lavishly-wealed evidence that her chastisement with both tawse and cane had been blisteringly thorough.

And sweet, shy little Geraldine, whose innocent blue eyes and dimpled cheeks made her look much younger than twenty. Few people had the heart to reprimand Geraldine for her occasional mistakes; it only took a few sharp words to make her flush deeply, her eyes brimming with tears, her rosebud mouth lisping quavering excuses. Now, driven by some unfathomable feminine impulse, she was tremulously awaiting her first experience of corporal punishment. She, decided Matt, could be dealt with last, giving her time to think about it, standing outside the office in quaking suspense, hearing the juicy thwack of scorching punishment upon wincing feminine flesh, listening to the fervent declarations of repentance, the heartfelt promises of future good behaviour, the blubbering, desperate, unavailing entreaties of, 'Please, I can't take any more, sir! I can't!'

Finally, to go across his knee, not merely bare-bottomed but stripped to her sweet young skin for a good sound spanking. Then she could touch her toes for the cane – or should it be the tawse? Perhaps he'd invite her to choose.

There had been a murmur of uneasy conversation among the girls before Matt opened the door. Now they were very quiet as they saw him standing there with the tawse swinging casually in his hand. All that could be heard was Heather, sobbing her heart out, thinking, perhaps of the belting still awaiting her when she arrived home.

Matt smiled pleasantry at the girls. 'Next!' he said.

Something tells me Matt will be invited back to work under contract.