On A Short Leash (2 page)

***

Chrissie stood in Andrew’s living-room, lounge, whatever it was called and looked round while he fetched a bottle of red wine and two glasses.

There were bright posters for productions by the National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company on the walls, a couple of squiggly abstract paintings and lots and lots of books, many in bookcases and others in piles on the bare boards where the carpet or rug didn’t reach. The furniture was cane or wicker or something, the kind she thought went best in conservatories. There was a rubber plant and some other slightly dusty varieties in a trough on legs. Chrissie thought the room lacked the homely touch, like so many single men’s apartments.

Chrissie told him she wanted help with the mysteries of the apostrophe in a piece of prose Andy had asked them to correct, but it was an excuse. He poured out two large glasses of red wine. Another threat to the whiteness of her teeth, she thought, as she picked it up and tasted it; it was velvety smooth so she guessed it wasn’t cheap plonk. She drank half the glass fairly rapidly, knowing it would relax her.

She had put on flesh coloured stockings with coral-coloured garters, which she thought would meet his approval if they got that far. She was also wearing a coral push up bra from Ann Summers which did what it said on the box, and tiny frivolous knickers. Her gauzy little blouse was sufficiently transparent to let him see the bra and, with most of her top buttons undone, her cleavage was well exposed. She wasn’t certain her denim skirt looked exactly right with the rest of the outfit but she’d chosen it because it was eye-poppingly short. Strappy high heels in gold. She probably looked like a tart but she didn’t know how to do subtle and sophisticated.

They actually discussed punctuation for a time, sitting on the same leather sofa and when he got up to replenish their glasses she edged a little closer each time.

Suddenly Chrissie laughed her rather raucous laugh.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

‘None of my friends would believe this if they were flies on the wall.’

‘Believe what?’

‘That I’m sitting next to a good looking guy in his flat drinking wine talking about where to put apostrophes and semi colons and things.’

‘Good looking, huh?’ For some reason he adopted an American hoodlum’s accent in the De Niro, Al Pacino mould.

‘I didn’t know you were Welsh.’

‘So what would your friends expect us to be doing?’

‘The obvious, I guess.’

‘Would you like that?’

‘I’ll tell you when I come back from the loo. Where is it?’

‘You’ll see it on the right.’ He waved his hand in the general direction of the door.

The toilet was pretty clean considering it belonged to a man who lived on his own. When she came out after checking her make up carefully in the mirror, she saw the bedroom door was ajar and couldn’t resist pushing it open. There, lying on the bed, with the shepherd’s crook handle resting on the pillow, was a cane of the traditional schoolmaster’s kind. Chris dodged back into the toilet and locked the door to give her a few moments to think.

Did he expect to use it on her? The bloody cheek! As well as being weird, it was so calculating, the obvious expectation that he would get her to the bedroom and that she would just roll over – literally. She was amazed he just had it there on the bed out in the open as though it had not crossed his mind that she might be shocked, rather than having it hidden away until he found out if she was into such things.

Chrissie knew corporal punishment was a turn on for some people and she’d often wondered what it would be like. The idea of being punished by a forceful man she admired was quite attractive as a fantasy but she was doubtful she could stand the pain, let alone enjoy it.

Then the thought struck her that he might be intending to ignore her feelings altogether and cane her whether she was willing or not.

Chrissie told herself she was getting carried away and would be seeing him as a potential rapist next.

‘Where were we?’ he asked when she sat down again and took another sip of her wine. Then he placed his hand on her thigh. She knew her body stiffened and that he would sense a change in her manner towards him.

She always thought she was a broad-minded person but realised she was seeing him in a different light. Andrew Scates, her English teacher and her tutor, liked to cane girls’ bottoms. He was a man who gained enjoyment from hurting people. It took some thinking about.

‘Thanks for the help, Andrew,’ she said. ‘I think I better get back to work.’

‘Come on, Chrissie,’ he said, looking surprised. ‘You only just got here. We haven’t even finished the bottle.’ He held it up and swished the contents round to make his point.

‘You’re supposed to be encouraging me to work, remember? Teaching me good habits.’

‘All work and no play…’

‘
Some
work would be a good idea. No, Andrew, I’m really grateful and everything but I must get this piece done and then get on with my essay on
The Merchant of Venice.
I don’t want humiliating in front of the class again.’

‘I didn’t humiliate you.’

‘That’s what it felt like.’

‘I just asked for the work which was overdue.’

‘Well I don’t want to be overdue again.’

‘Good, I’m glad.’

She made a move towards the door and he followed her, looking quite concerned.

‘Thanks again,’ she said, sounding icy. She hadn’t meant it to sound quite so frosty but that was the way it probably sounded.

***

Andrew Scates grinned broadly behind his desk because she’d caused him to get a hard-on. The lovely lady had just left his office but her perfume lingered and so did her image. Even wearing a smart suit for her interview it was obvious she was full breasted and very curvy in all the right places; she was also tall and had very good legs.

She sounded intelligent and her answers to his questions had been sound enough, but he’d made his mind up to appoint her as soon as she’d taken her seat, or perhaps it was as soon as she’d entered the room. He’d just waited to hear her voice because some women looked gorgeous but when they opened their mouths…

Emma wore glasses and her glossy dark hair was tied back but she made Andrew think of the super heroines who throw off their specs and undo a couple of clips in their hair and become transformed. They whiz round like Wonder Woman or step in and out of a phone box or something; the suit is replaced by something much briefer, the tumbling hair cascades over bare shoulders, the alluring eyes are fully revealed and we see her in all her super-heroine splendour.

Andrew then imagined Emma over his knee receiving a spanking or kneeling on a bed with her bare bum raised for a caning and that was what induced the erection. He did this with any attractive woman he met, thought what would her tightened cheeks look like if she was made to bend over.

He was fixated on women’s bottoms, couldn’t get enough.

It was common to celebrate the breasts and he was far from indifferent to them but a beautiful woman viewed from behind was the quintessence of femaleness. Someone, he couldn’t remember who, advanced the theory that men liked breasts only because they imitated the shapes of the bottom cheeks which our ancestors got good sight of when they fucked in the natural animal way, the position not approved of by the missionaries.

He thought a woman’s back was beautiful too, shoulder blades, spine, tapering lines and he greatly approved of those dresses that displayed the naked back and accentuated the bottom by using material that clung to the contours.

When he lectured on D.H. Lawrence, he thought about Mellors waxing lyrical about her Ladyship’s tail and wanting to fuck her in the back passage between her magnificent cheeks. Oh, to have Emma Holman in that position or Chrissie Latimer for that matter or a host of other students he lusted after.

It was hard to account for Chrissie’s strange behaviour when she came round to his flat. He’d been sure they’d end up shagging, but there was this sudden change of mood. Now,
she
had a particularly nice ass, the sort you could lay a tray of drinks on. It was a mystery why some women’s bottoms stuck out like that while others didn’t protrude at all.

Chrissie always seemed well aware of her charms, though he wondered if she knew her ass was her best feature and usually wanted to flaunt them, which was why it was so odd she’d suddenly taken fright in his flat when there was an opportunity to do something about it. Perhaps she was a prick tease of the first water.

He wondered if she’d seen his cane.

He couldn’t remember whether he’d closed his bedroom door properly. Perhaps she’d glanced in on a reconnaissance mission and seen it lying there.

The way Andrew planned it was to have plenty of foreplay with the woman on the rug in the living room or on the leather sofa before they ran for the bedroom, unable to hold back any longer. The hope was the girl was so aroused she didn’t balk at the sight of the cane and allowed a few playful taps on the butt (being naked by now) as part of the fun and then…

It didn’t always work. He could remember a few getting quite shirty about it. Fortunately no one had reported him. He supposed they felt too embarrassed to tell the story, but he knew it was risky in this feminist age.

He should have been born in a different century.

It was a much safer proposition once they got down to Septimus Grey Academy in the heart of the Wiltshire countryside. The difficulty was getting them there.

Chapter Two

Chrissie lay in the bath wondering what it would be like to be caned on the bare bottom.

She’d passed up an opportunity for a new experience and a little niggling voice kept asking if she’d been too hasty in turning it down. She hadn’t really turned it down, of course, her options were still open. At least she assumed that was the case. She supposed there was a chance he’d decided she was too prudish, too unadventurous, too conventional, whatever, to venture into that territory and that he wouldn’t try it again. Or perhaps he’d decided she was too much of a risk. She knew she came over as feisty and over-assertive, it was partly the way she dealt with nervousness and self-doubt, and he might be thinking she was just the type who might report him to the authorities.

When Chrissie had dried herself, she padded through to her bedroom and looked at herself in the full length mirror incorporated into the wardrobe. She tried to look at her bottom and imagine how it would appear to Andy. She picked up a hand mirror and held it behind her so she got a better view reflected back. Chrissie wondered about her bum like a million other women, in her case because she thought it was possibly too well rounded and protruding. The question, ‘does my bum look big in this?’ was constantly on her mind even though girlfriends and the occasional boyfriend said everything was in proportion and she looked great in tight jeans or shorts or anything else that showed off her ass.

She wasn’t totally convinced.

Chrissie knew that once a woman decides she dislikes a part of her body no amount of reassurance from friends or family would change her mind; possibly cosmetic surgery was the only way.

So imagine baring her bum for Andrew Scates!

Chrissie opened her wardrobe, pulled a dress off an old-style wooden hanger and threw the dress on the bed, positioned herself carefully so she could see herself in the mirror and smacked the coat hanger across her so-white cheeks. She had such soft white skin that a vivid red mark appeared immediately, though she had not dared to hit herself very hard.

That was another problem. Andy would only have to tap her a few times and her backside would be a mass of bruises. She was the Princess in the story of the Princess and the Pea. No matter how many mattresses were layered over the little green thing, she would be bruised in the morning if she slept in that bed. She picked up bruises just doing housework or knocking about in the ordinary course of a day. They showed up on her legs and her arms. Her friends assumed Brian put them there but that wasn’t always the case.

Brian. That was the other factor. She’d been subjected to some physical violence, though it was mainly the steady drip of vicious comments that undermined her and the thought of enduring more pain at the hands of a man didn’t seem that inviting. All right, a caning was more controlled and would take place between consenting adults (or would it?) but it produced pain, nevertheless. Did anyone
really
like pain? Masochists, obviously. Submissives in the whole S&M scene. Women who liked being bound and gagged and totally at the mercy of some whip-wielding master. Was that what Andy was into? Perhaps being a teacher he had that sort of temperament. Perhaps it went with the territory for a teacher, ordering people about, being domineering and knowing what was best for other people.

The red mark on her left cheek had cooled a little.

Chrissie tried to reach further round to strike her right cheek with the second blow but couldn’t rotate her body far enough.

She asked herself what she was trying to achieve. Trying to feel what it would be like? Testing her pain threshold?

So was she seriously thinking of letting Andrew use his cane on her? She wasn’t sure.

***

Andrew asked Emma if she’d like to come to the pub after her first day. She’d been allowed to start with only a month or so to go before the summer vacation rather than wait until September and Andrew knew now why her school had seemed so generous. Couldn’t wait to get rid of her and get a supply teacher in to provide cover.

They took their drinks, Andrew’s pint and Emma’s white wine, out to the so-called beer garden, where the sun was still strong.

Andy thought Emma was looking stunning, slightly tanned and freckled at her throat where her shirt was open, thick glossy hair less restrained than it had been at her interview. There was no doubting she was a large breasted woman the way her shirt bulged and, best of all in Andy’s opinion, her bum looked magnificent in tight denim jeans.

He wanted to introduce the topic of Septimus Grey Academy and take her down there as soon as possible.

Andrew noticed her bare arms on the table and that the tiny hairs on them were quite dark. She was the sort of girl who had to shave her legs frequently. He looked at her face and saw the soft dark down above her bee-sting mouth, then thought of her pubic hair, which he knew would be thick and luxuriant unless she shaved there too. He longed to see her naked. The infinite variety of young girls delighted him. Compare her with Chrissie who was all soft white skin and Pre-Raphaelite hair, not as red to be truthful but of that ilk and probably didn’t need to shave much at all.

He commended the Academy as a way of making extra money, knowing she had suffered a drop in her salary.

‘Is it just like a residential part of the College?’ she asked innocently.

‘Yes and no,’ said Andy and grinned.

‘Right,’ she said, smiling beautifully. ‘That’s crystal clear then.’

‘No, sorry, what I mean is the curriculum is the same or similar depending on the needs of the students who enroll there, but the regime is quite different.’

‘In what way?’

‘It’s a throw-back to the good old days, I suppose. School uniform, strict rules, plenty of vigorous exercise, traditional lumpy custard.’

‘And students like the ones we teach here accept all that?’

‘They sign a contract and pay quite a large deposit or their parents do. They know what they’re letting themselves in for.’

‘Is it open to all or are you selective?’

‘By invitation really. We ask certain students if they would like to join us.’

‘How do you choose which students to invite?’

Andrew didn’t say what he was thinking, that only the best looking boys and girls were invited. ‘If we see certain qualities in them, I suppose.’

‘How fascinating. I suppose the teachers have more authority and are backed up when they’re challenged by disruptive students. That’s what’s lacking in so many schools, support from the top.’

‘Those sorts of problems don’t arise at the Academy. Would you like to come down with me at the weekend? See for yourself.’

Andrew tried to see it all through Emma’s eyes, the long tree-lined drive up to the house, fountains playing in the formal garden, the impressive façade with its stately pillars, the bronze statue of Septimus himself, peacocks strutting on the manicured lawns. It was about as different from Branksholme College as it could be as the FE College was situated in the centre of a sprawling estate of mainly social housing whereas the Academy was surrounded by farmland and there were horses in the field adjacent to the school buildings.

‘Did this all belong to this Septimus Grey person?’ asked Emma.

‘No, another wealthy landowner, called Lord Sackfield. Septimus Grey was a Headmaster in the nineteenth century with a fearsome reputation for strict discipline. Apparently he was one of the great floggers of his time.’

‘We could do with a few of his kind around today,’ said Emma. When Andy glanced at her, he saw a smile on her lips but he was intrigued by the way she talked about school discipline.

‘Are you a believer in corporal punishment?’

‘Certainly I am when it comes to these toe rags that make a teacher’s life a misery.’

‘Then you’ll approve of the way things are done down here,’ he said, pointing to the building as they drew up in the car park.

Andy took Emma on a tour of the building and showed her the swimming pool and gymnasium, the main lecture theatre, small seminar rooms, the well-stocked library and the canteen and Emma sounded suitably impressed. On their way back to meet the Principal, they heard shrieks of pain coming from one of the classrooms

‘It sounds as if someone is being punished,’ said Emma. ‘Can we look in?’

Andrew watched her face as she registered the scene that greeted them when they opened the classroom door. All the pupils scraped their chairs back and stood to attention behind their seats at their entry, looking very cowed.

‘Sit!’ said Andrew as if addressing a dog.

An attractive blonde girl with pigtails was bending over the front desk with her short uniform skirt lifted back to expose her bare bottom; her knickers were round her ankles. A schoolmaster in black gown held his cane high over his head and was about to deliver another stroke. The girl was facing the class with only the desk to hide her pussy and there were boys watching as well as girls. If she moved away from the desk, they would see her bush. By now the onlookers were all sitting up straight and behaving impeccably.

‘What’s her offence?’ asked Emma.

‘I noticed she has dirty fingernails,’ the teacher answered, addressing Andrew as if unsure of Emma’s right to be present.

‘It’s all right,’ Andrew told his colleague. ‘Let me introduce Emma Holman who has just joined the staff at Branksholme. She’s taking a look round with a view to teaching here at weekends. Emma, this is Martin Fowls.’

The pretty girl, who must have been eighteen or nineteen, remained bent over with her bum raised as the teachers conducted their conversation, not daring to look round or relax her position.

Andrew saw Emma looking carefully at the blazing stripes across the girl’s cheeks and her smile returned. ‘You punish them for misdemeanours as trivial as not having clean fingernails?’ She sounded incredulous. ‘How do you punish serious crimes?’

‘We have a whole repertoire at our disposal,’ said Martin. ‘The boys and girls know what to expect if they are foolish enough to break the rules. We expect them to be scrupulously groomed on the
cleanliness is next to godliness
principle.’

Emma continued to question Andrew out in the corridor as they strolled along slowly.

She showed no surprise at seeing young men and women dressed in school uniforms, although most people seeing them for the first time thought it strange. The uniform was made to fit the young people but the shorts worn by the boys and the mainly green tartan skirts worn by the girls were designed to be extremely short. Both sexes wore shirts in grey with the top buttons undone and the striped school tie deliberately pulled down. The girls wore white ankle socks and the boys long grey socks with garters. They all had blazers bearing the flamboyant Academy badge but usually placed them over the backs of their chairs during lessons. The girls had to wear their hair tied modestly with ribbons in the Academy green and plaits, bunches and ponytails were common.

‘And are the boys caned on their bare bottoms as well?’

‘Indeed they are.’

‘By female teachers as well as the men?’

‘Absolutely. Perfect equality!’

Andrew fancied he saw a gleam in Emma’s eye.

‘We could easily arrange for you to flog someone now, Emma.’

‘Really?’

‘If we go upstairs to the dorms we’ll find someone doing what they shouldn’t. If all else fails, just say the room is too untidy and you’ll have an excuse to flog ’

‘I don’t have a cane.’

‘We can easily do a detour to my office and you can take your choice from my collection.’

‘What about the Principal?’

‘The Principal can wait,’ said Andrew and they smiled at each other conspiratorially.

Andrew opened the doors of the cupboard in his office and showed Emma the contents with a sense of pride. Laid neatly along the shelves were canes of every size and thickness, some straight, some with curved handles. There were specimens of the strap or tawse as well as paddles and thick belts, gym shoes and even a short whip with many thongs. Emma selected a whippy cane and practised some air shots which suggested she had a good wrist action. He thought how good she looked with a cane in her hand…

When they got to the landing, Andrew watched Emma look at the signs pointing to the boys’ dormitories and girls’ dormitories in opposite directions and wondered which she would choose.

He was delighted when she took a left turn and strode off purposefully in the direction of the girls’ dorm.

Even Andrew was surprised by what they saw. On one of the beds a girl about the same age as the one they’d seen caned in the classroom was bouncing up and down very vigorously on a young man’s cock. They were both naked.

When they saw the two teachers they uncoupled as quickly as they could, clambered off the bed and stood to attention, the boy still erect and the girl glistening with sweat.

‘What’s your name?’ Emma demanded.

‘Angus, Miss.’

‘Angus what?

‘Angus Dworkin.’

‘And you, slut?’

‘Susannah, Miss.’

‘How dare you bring a boy into the girls’ dormitory?’

‘I’m sorry, Miss.’

‘You will be when I’ve done with you!’

Emma faced the boy and tapped the end of his cock with her cane.

‘What do you call this?’

‘I’m sorry, Miss.’

‘Is that all you can say, sorry, sorry, sorry?’

Andrew just knew he was going to say it again.

‘Sorry, Miss.’

Emma tapped her cane on the underside of his cock which was standing back almost touching his navel.

‘You’re trying my patience, young man. Do you think this is the appropriate way to behave in front of a female member of staff?’

‘No, Miss.’

‘It’s very insulting and demeaning for a female to have to look at that,’ she said in a tone of voice that suggested extreme disgust while she tapped the shaft of his cock twice more. ‘Don’t you know any better? Do your parents know how rude you are?’

‘No, Miss.’

Andrew wondered what Emma was really thinking. She’d struck lucky if she liked big cocks because Angus Dworkin was definitely well endowed, not just in length but also in girth. He was circumcised and his exposed glans looked coral pink and healthy. His face had coloured up and he moved about in the self-aware, awkward manner of adolescent boys.

‘As for you,’ Emma turned back to the girl, ‘I suspect this isn’t the first time you’ve fucked Dworkin?’

‘No, Miss.’

‘You should be concerned about your reputation, young lady. Do you want everyone to think you’re a whore?’

‘No, Miss.’

Emma gripped the other end of the cane with her other hand and bent it in front of the girl to show her how supple and whippy it was.

‘Get up on the bed, girl!’ Emma ordered. ‘Kneel, tuck yourself up as tight as you can, grasp your ankles and raise your backside.’

Susannah almost rolled herself into a ball getting into the position Emma demanded and by the time she was satisfied, her bottom cheeks were tight as drum skins.

Emma took the cane back a long way and cracked it down over Susannah’s behind with full force. Whack!’ The girl shuddered and Andrew saw her struggle to stop herself crying out, trying desperately to retain some pride. Instantly, a livid weal appeared across both taut cheeks. He saw Emma remain calm and unflustered, coolly taking the cane to the backlift position again before delivering another stroke parallel with the first.