Blushing at Both Ends (20 page)

‘Dan,
no
!' she wailed. ‘Not here! People can see! Oh please, Dan, don't!'

‘You bet they can,' retorted her husband. ‘That's what you wanted, isn't it – lots of people to see you in your skimpy little bikini? To get a good look at this sexy young bottom of yours? Well, now they're going to get a ringside view.'

Julie squirmed frantically. Bad enough that she was going to be spanked again, and on a bottom still tender from last night's session. But to be spanked in public was too humiliating! ‘Dan, please!' she begged desperately. ‘Take me back to the hotel – you can spank me all you want there! I know I deserve it. But not like this – with people watching! I'll just die!'

But this time Dan was determined to get through to his wilful young wife, and if a public spanking was what it took then so be it. ‘You should have thought of that sooner, young lady,' he told her, brushing the sand off his hands, ‘before you broke the promise you gave me last night. Think yourself lucky I don't take your bikini down. But, since it leaves so much of your bottom bare, I think I can do a pretty good job just the same.'

Peering apprehensively over her shoulder, Julie gulped in alarm as Dan raised his hand high in the air. The next moment she yelped as it cracked down across her temptingly exposed mounds with a vivid report that rang out across the quiet beach.

‘Owww!' Julie wailed. On her still-tender bottom Dan's hard hand stung like fury. ‘Oh no, Dan, please!'

She might have saved her breath. Remorselessly her husband's hand rose and fell while Julie yipped and wriggled, uttering heartfelt pleas for forgiveness as the heat built up in her gyrating bottom-cheeks. Dan was in no mood to be forgiving. His errant bride would be spanked just as thoroughly this morning in public, he resolved, as in private the night before. So, for what seemed to poor Julie an eternity, swat after stinging swat fanned the flames on her defenceless rear, each one hurting worse than the last. Her only consolation, as spanks rained down hard and steadily on her tormented hindquarters, was that yesterday's news photographer hadn't shown up. That would have been the ultimate humiliation.

Not that her chastisement lacked for an audience. The spectacle of a pretty girl being spanked on her all-but-bare bottom wasn't so common in 1960s Bournemouth as to pass unnoticed. The beach had seemed almost deserted when Julie's punishment started, but as if from nowhere a small crowd soon gathered to watch the show. It was well worth watching, too. The slim, shapely blonde, her bare legs kicking in the sand and her blonde mane tossing wildly, a deepening blush enhancing the beauty of her lush rearward curves, made a glorious sight in the clear morning sunlight.

One or two of the spectators murmured uneasily, but most of them were clearly enjoying the show. ‘That's the little minx who was in the paper yesterday,' remarked one man to his companion, a pretty brunette not much older than Julie. ‘Didn't I say she needed a damn good spanking? Glad to see she's getting it, too, flaunting herself like that!' He fixed the brunette with a baleful eye. ‘And if I catch you wearing anything like that, young lady . . .!' The girl giggled nervously and chewed her lip, her fascinated gaze fixed on Julie's bouncing reddening rump.

Unfazed by his audience, Dan continued to spank Julie soundly, concentrating his fire on the exposed half-moons of her lower cheeks and especially on the soft sensitive undercurve where bottom meets thigh. If she had ever wondered just how much of her pert globes the ill-fated bikini left uncovered, she was now getting very tangible evidence.

‘Oh stop, please, Dan,' she wailed, writhing wildly as the merciless spanks rained down. ‘No more, please! I'm sorry! I'll never wear it again, I promise! Oh please, please stop!'

‘Too right you won't, honey,' retorted her husband, smacking away with unabated gusto, ‘because after we're through here I'm going to take it away and burn it. But, before I do, I'm going to make sure something else is burning!'

So saying, he unleashed a salvo of hard fast smacks that made Julie squeal and kick up her heels. One of her flailing feet kicked over her beach-bag, and – alas, poor Julie! – out fell sun-oil, a paperback novel – and a hairbrush. A black wooden hairbrush with a handle and a flat oval back, just perfect for applying to a naughty girl's already well-warmed bottom.

With a dangerous grin, Dan reached down and picked up the wicked-looking implement. ‘Ah,' he said, ‘just what I need. How thoughtful of you to bring it, my love.'

Julie gasped in dismay. ‘Oh, Dan, no!' she begged plaintively. ‘Not the hairbrush, please! It'll really hurt!'

‘Oh, will it now?' asked Dan, patting her roseate rump with the back of the brush. ‘So my hand-spanking doesn't
really
hurt, then? Seems I haven't been spanking you hard enough, young lady. Well, this should do the trick.'

He raised the brush high in the air, prompting sharp intakes of breath from the rapt spectators. Then down it swept, contacting the tender target area with a sharp
crack
that elicited a shrill squeal from Julie. And again and again, now right, now left, turning her bouncing behind from bright scarlet to a rich deep crimson.

Frenziedly, Julie squirmed and wriggled, trying to evade the brush's cruel kiss. But Dan had her firmly pinioned and there was no escape. Spankings from her mother, she now realised, were nothing compared to the impact on her vulnerable rear end of a hairbrush wielded by determined male muscles. Each stroke seared her flesh, igniting fresh fires on her sizzling-hot mounds. To poor Julie, it felt as if she'd never sit down in comfort again.

Ceasing to struggle, she lay limply over her husband's lap, her frantic pleas reduced to inarticulate sobs of ‘Sorry – sorry – sorry . . .'

But Dan was not to be diverted from his purpose. He felt a fierce protective joy in holding his headstrong young wife over his knee and giving her the spanking she deserved; and to do so in front of others only strengthened his resolve. So for several minutes the crisp sound of hard wooden brush on soft female bottom-flesh, accompanied by remorseful wails, rang out across the sunlit beach. Only when Julie's twin globes were blushing like ripe tomatoes did he at last relent.

‘OK, my sweet,' he told her, stroking her soundly spanked curves, ‘I think you've learnt your lesson. Up you get.'

With murmurs of amusement and appreciation, the crowd started to disperse as Julie rose painfully and hid her tearstained face in her husband's shoulder, gingerly rubbing her flaming
derrière
.

Dan stroked her hair, murmuring soothing words and feeling a surge of tenderness and desire for his wayward love. ‘Come on, bad girl,' he whispered, ‘back to the hotel. I've got something here that'll make you feel much better.'

* * *

The scandalous bikini, as Dan had promised, met a premature end in the hotel fireplace. And for the rest of their holiday Julie's behaviour showed a marked improvement. No longer did she throw tantrums, stamp or sulk; no longer did she demand her own way. Mentally Dan raised a glass to his mother-in-law, marvelling what magic could be worked on a stubborn young woman by such a simple – and simply delicious – expedient as toasting her bottom.

Yet, oddly enough, Julie must somehow have contrived to misbehave. How else to explain the fact that, at least half a dozen times before their return home, the pretty little blonde found herself turned over her husband's sturdy knee, her sweetly rounded bare bottom bouncing and reddening beneath his punitive palm? Surely she must have been naughty – what other explanation could there possibly be?

On one of these occasions of marital discipline, it happened that a passing chambermaid, hearing the sound of yelps, gasps and vigorous smacks, couldn't resist putting her eye to the keyhole. And, even in prestigious establishments like the Grand Hotel, Bournemouth, gossip has a way of spreading.

When, on the last day of their holiday, Dan and Julie entered the dining room for dinner, Dan was puzzled to see the orchestra's leader wink at him as they launched into a new tune. Julie, luckily for her potential embarrassment, wasn't familiar with it. But Dan, who knew his Gershwin, permitted himself a quiet grin as he recognised the big chorus number from the second act of
Porgy and Bess
:

‘
Oh, I can't sit down
. . .'

12

Tutoring Miss Lillian – An
Edwardian Romance

ON A CRISP
clear morning in the spring of 1903, a pony-chaise might have been seen approaching the gates of Cartwright Hall in Lincolnshire. It carried a sole passenger, a young man named Walter Jessop. A few weeks earlier, he had been one of the most promising scholars of Pembroke College in Oxford. But the sudden death of his father, his financial affairs in sad disarray, had obliged Walter to break off his studies. Now the sole support of his widowed mother and young sister, he had bowed to necessity and taken a post as private tutor to the heiress of the Cartwright estate.

As the chaise swung round a bend in the road, the driver pointed with his whip. ‘There be the Hall, young sir.'

In the distance Walter saw a handsome Jacobean pile, venerable but still robustly well preserved. The same, he soon found, could not be said of its owner. Mr Merton Cartwright, Walter's employer, proved to be an elderly gentleman who spoke in a whisper so faint the young man had to bend to catch his words. Sunk deep in a huge studded leather armchair in the dusty air of his library, an ancient tome open on his lap, Mr Cartwright seemed so fragile that any sound louder than the turning of a page might loosen his scant hold on life. Only his
eyes
were fully alive. Startlingly blue, they blazed with an ironic intelligence in the dry parchment-like old face.

‘So you have come to tutor my niece, Mr Jessop?' he enquired in his papery whisper. ‘D'you think you can?'

‘I don't see why not, sir,' responded Walter staunchly. ‘At Oxford I was accounted a good scholar.'

The old man gave a thin smile. ‘No doubt, else I should not have engaged you. But scholarship may not be enough, young man. My niece is a headstrong creature – what is known, I believe, as a New Woman. She has an excellent mind, as you will discover, but applies it just when and as she feels inclined. Any notion of discipline is wholly foreign to her. Her father died when she was an infant and her mother – my poor dear sister – did not long survive him. I, as you see, am a poor sickly specimen, in no state to impose conduct upon a wilful girl. That, Mr Jessop, will be your task.'

‘I shall do my best to prove equal to it, sir.'

Mr Cartwright regarded him quizzically. ‘I'm sure you will – do your best, that is. But I should warn you that Lilly has already seen off a whole procession of tutors and governesses, all of whom doubtless strove to do their best.'

Half an hour later, Walter was shown into the room set aside as a schoolroom. Spring sunshine flooded through the high mullioned casements, so that at first he did not see the girl who stood watching him by the window. Her voice, clear and musical, made him start. ‘Well, at least you're not positively repellent!'

Peering into the dazzling light, Walter perceived approaching him a strikingly attractive young woman. Lillian Trent, eighteen-year-old heiress to the Cartwright fortune, seemed to blaze with vitality: a mass of red-gold curls framed a lovely face whose fresh beauty was, if anything, enhanced by a hint of stubbornness about the mouth. Her dress, elegantly simple, betrayed a slim and fetchingly nubile figure.

‘I'm gratified that I don't repel you at first sight, Miss Trent,' said Walter, bowing slightly. ‘I hope you'll think as highly of my teaching methods.'

‘Oh, as to that,' she flung back carelessly, ‘I'm sure you'll prove an intolerable bore like all the others!'

Boredom, Walter soon found, came readily to Lillian Trent. She had a lively intelligence and rapidly grasped the essential principles of all subjects. But once she reached that point where brilliant intuition no longer sufficed, and a little patient persistence was required, she lost interest. ‘Oh! What a
bore
!' she would exclaim, and refuse to study further, demanding a change of subject or tripping scornfully away with a toss of her pretty head.

This could not go on, Walter mused to himself. As long as she was given her head, his pupil was frankly unteachable. He could resign, but what then would become of his mother and sister? Besides, his surroundings were agreeable, his salary not ungenerous – and Lillian, when not in a petulant mood, had a bewitching smile. No, Walter resolved, he would not give up so easily. Something must be done about this sweet seductive and utterly spoilt girl.

The inevitable clash came one morning some ten days after his arrival at Cartwright Hall, while he was attempting a German lesson. Though her pronunciation was excellent, and she sang Schubert
lieder
charmingly, Lillian showed a blithe indifference to the intricacies of German grammar. ‘Oh pooh!' she cried, springing to her feet, when Walter pointed out her umpteenth fault in declension. ‘The devil take the stupid Germans and their stupid adjectival endings! I shan't waste another second on this idiotic language! I'm off!'

‘Miss Trent,' responded Walter, quietly but firmly, ‘if you persist in flouncing off at every difficulty, you will never learn anything. You have an excellent brain; all you lack is application, and it's my job to help you
acquire
it. Now, I must insist that we complete the lesson.'

Lillian's eyes blazed with anger, and she stamped her foot pettishly. ‘Oh, you insist, do you? And who are you, a hired tutor, to
insist
? I'm off, and I'd like to see you stop me!'

The insult stung Walter to the quick, the more sharply since he could scarcely refute it. He was indeed a hireling, but it wounded his pride to be reminded of it – especially by a chit of a girl. He still spoke quietly, but there was a dangerous edge to his voice that Lillian would have done well to heed. ‘I may be merely a hired tutor, Miss Trent. But one of the duties I was hired to discharge was to instil in you some sense of discipline. And since you persist in acting, not like a well-bred young lady, but like a spoilt brat, I'm tempted to impart that lesson by the most appropriate means.'