Jem was relieved to see that Asmita looked composed, and almost cheerful, as two guards led her to the centre of the dungeon. She looked none the worse for her ordeal on the clock; her long black hair glinted in the light of the fires and torches, and her large dark nipples appeared to be stiffly erect. Perhaps this will be entertaining after all, Jem thought, sliding into a corner of the leather upholstery and caressing the insides of her widely-parted thighs.
Nyman held Asmita's wrists in one of her football-sized fists while the two guards struggled to bring in the square wooden frame that Jem had seen used for the 'sacrifice' during the Master's homecoming banquet. They locked the wheels and then tied Asmita inside the frame so that each of her limbs was stretched towards one of the four corners. Jem's fingers encountered the wetness of her own crotch as she watched Headman place his hand between Asmita's splayed legs. He prodded, pulled and slapped the dark stretched flesh; Asmita merely smiled. She continued to smile as the giantess Nyman started to flick her breasts with a many-tailed whip.
Headman put his fingers to his nose. 'You're enjoying this, aren't you?' he said, almost to himself. 'Most people can be trained to take pleasure in a little pain, if the hurt is associated with sexual stimulation. A primitive Pav-lovian reaction. But you, Asmita my dear, seem to be a natural. You're a volunteer?'
'Yes, Master,' Asmita said proudly, expecting praise.
'I hate volunteers!' Headman seemed to be shaking with sudden rage. Jem was unable to tell whether his anger was feigned, but she had a horrible feeling that it wasn't. 'Volunteers are arrogant, ungovernable and above all untrustworthy,' Headman ranted. 'You act as if you own the place. But only I, the Master, own the Private House! Do you understand?'
'Yes, Master. Of course, Master.' Asmita twisted in her bonds, suddenly confused and frightened. 'I'm sorry, Master. I always try to be dutiful. What have I done to displease?'
'What's that got to do with it?' Headman screamed. 'You're here for punishment, you imbecilic girl, not for trial, or judgement, or correction. This has nothing whatsoever to do with any misdemeanours you may have committed.'
Asmita began to sob. Headman's voice was suddenly calm and cold, and so quiet that Jem could barely hear his words. 'And appeals for clemency are pointless. Save your tears for later; I promise you you'll need them. As you're a volunteer and, according to your file, a volunteer who can stand any amount of beating, we have prepared a very special punishment for you. I expect you think you know everything about suffering, don't you, you treacherous, deceitful volunteer? Well, today you'll find out how wrong you are.' He turned to Nyman. 'Bring me the implements. The full array.'
Jem watched in horrified fascination as Nyman and the two guards wheeled a tall cabinet into the spotlit
area
where Asmita, struggling in her bonds and looking, Jem had to admit, delightfully apprehensive, was trying to peer over her shoulder.
Headman dismissed the guards and had Nyman wait in the shadows. He paced around Asmita, touching, stroking, pinching and smacking her breasts, legs and buttocks. He stood motionless in front of her for a few moments, caressing her long hair and rearranging it away from her face so that it fell in a curtain of blackness down her back. His pale blue eyes were exactly level with Asmita's glistening dark brown ones. He stared at her with no trace of expression on his face, and then pulled her head towards his. He kissed her, gently at first and then with a semblance of passion. Jem could see that Asmita was responding: the Asian girl pushed forward her chest, and without breaking the kiss Headman brought his hands to her breasts, stroked them, and then squeezed the big brown nipples between his fingers.
Headman stepped back and studied Asmita's face. He walked round the frame, stood behind Asmita and began smacking her buttocks. It was a methodical spanking, hard enough only to make Asmita's bottom quiver. The smacks hardly sounded in the observation gallery, but Jem saw Asmita's eyes close and her mouth open a little as the girl began to ride on the waves of pain and pleasure. Jem felt a pang of envy: she imagined herself spreadeagled in the wooden frame, available for Headman to punish and please at his whim. Her fingers were at her crotch, moving inside her labia. She transferred some of the wetness up to her clitoris, and moved her fingers in a tight circle around it. Headman had stopped spanking Asmita: his hand was between Asmita's legs, stroking and pushing. Jem moved her fingers to the same rhythm. It would be easy to succumb to the Private House, she knew; with only a little training she would be as happy here as Asmita.
But she had a mission. People outside were depending on her. She could explore the pleasures of offering herself for chastisement later, when it was all over. Reluctantly, she moved her hand from the yearning dampness between her legs.
A
Asmita seemed to be close to a climax, and Headman was speaking to her, while touching her only briefly and tantalisingly. His words were almost too quiet for Jem to hear.
This is what you love, isn't it?' Headman was saying. 'Sexual pleasure, particularly when brought about through physical punishment. Am I right?'
'Yes, Master,' Asmita whispered.
'And that's where you go wrong, you see. The Private House is concerned with obedience. Obedience to me. My pleasure, not yours. And you will be made to understand that. Would you like to know what the cabinet contains?'
'Yes, Master,' Asmita said again, rather more uncertain-
iy-
'Yes, you will like it,' Headman said. 'In this cupboard lies Nyman's collection. The tools of her trade. Over fifty different whips, canes, tawses, crops and other assorted ticklers. And you're going to get a taste of every single one. You'll enjoy that, I suspect.'
'Yes, Master.' This time Asmita's voice was puzzled.
'Then let us begin. Nyman, open the cabinet. I suggest you take the smallest whip, the smallest tawse and the smallest cane. They won't be much use on this volunteer's backside, but if you stand in front of her you can help me keep her in a state of near-ecstasy. Whip her breasts when I'm changing implements or taking a rest. Cane the front of her thighs if she starts getting too close to an orgasm. And use the tawse at will, but gently, on her soaking wet cunt. I'll concentrate on her ridiculously receptive rear.'
Jem couldn't help playing with herself as she watched, spellbound. She came twice in forty minutes as Headman ran through the gamut of leather and wood artefacts that he extracted one by one from the cabinet.
There were canes, from the thin and very flexible to the stout and knobbly; tawses, long and short, thick and thin, with one, two or three tongues of leather; paddles, flat and curved, with smooth faces and textured faces; whips in a bewildering variety, from single thongs of plaited hide to multiple straps of polished leather.
Headman described each item in loving detail as he extracted it from the cabinet. Jem realised that his eulogies on craftsmanship and fine materials were designed to have a psychological effect on Asmita, as well as to give Nyman plenty of time to administer carefully-aimed lashes with the trio of small but whippy instruments Headman had allowed her. None the less, Jem sensed that Headman was deriving a strange pleasure from handling and talking about his collection of corrective implements. He was obsessive. It was creepy.
Jem was much more interested in watching Asmita. The closed circuit monitors in the observation room allowed her to see the Asian girl from several angles, including a close-up of her face. Jem found her attention flicking back and forth between the window overlooking the entire dungeon and the bank of television screens, and in particular the screen that displayed the expressions that pursued each other across Asmita's pretty face. Jem found the volume controls and turned down Headman's voice. The observation room was filled instead with only the thwack of leather and bamboo on Asmita's flesh, and the girl's gasps and moans of tortured ecstasy.
Each different instrument elicited a different response from Asmita. Nyman's single-tongued whip, which hissed through the air but produced almost no sound as it landed on the slopes of Asmita's breasts, made the girl moan and toss her head and sometimes, incongruously, chuckle throatily. The tawse, no more than a short strap of supple leather, made Asmita thrust her hips forward rhythmically each time it swung up between her thighs and flattened against the curve of her vulva, its tip licking her perineum or the lowest part of one of her buttocks. Jem particularly loved to watch Asmita's face then: the girl's eyes were closed, her lips were slightly parted in a dreamy smile, and each stroke of the tawse made her exhale a whispered gasp of lustful joy. The first of Jem's orgasms took her almost by surprise as she sat stroking her clitoris and gazing at Asmita's face as Nyman whipped her sex.
Headman, making hi$ slow progress through the scores of implements from the cabinet, struck harder blows than Nyman. But he seemed concerned more to demonstrate the various effects than to inflict suffering. He worked his way through a dozen different canes, administering only a few strokes with each; Asmita gave a little cry as each stripe appeared on her buttocks, and at the end of each short caning a secretive smile crossed her face. The last cane Headman used was a bundle of split bamboo, the tips of which reached across the whole of one buttock with each stroke. This was the longest caning, and Headman flogged Asmita's bottom with more than a dozen quick, sharp blows which left her breathless and panting.
Headman stroked her buttocks, and slid his hand down the valley between them until his fingers touched her labia. He announced that Asmita's sex was dripping. Asmita flexed her body, and Jem could see that she was on the point of orgasm. Headman smiled thinly and withdrew his hand.
The whips were next. Once again, Headman spent longer describing the different types of leather used, and the workmanship of the handles, than he did on applying punishment. Asmita writhed under the whips, her bottom jiggling as it was criss-crossed with lines that faded slowly into the darkness of her skin. The last whip was a short, single strand of plaited leather, and Headman instructed Nyman to use her whip across the front of Asmita's breasts while he delivered at least twenty stinging lashes to her buttocks. Asmita's exclamations, an 'Ah!' as each lash landed, merged into a continuous sobbing moan as the whipping continued.
At the end of it she hung in her bonds, her body gleaming with perspiration. Once again Headman touched her, pushing the handle of the whip up into the pit of wetness below her buttocks, and once again Asmita gasped and almost came.
Headman told Nyman to stand down during the next session, which was to be a demonstration of tawses, because, he said, he feared that any more stimulation of Asmita's breasts or pubes would make her reach a climax. He lingered less over the descriptions of the tawses, and spent more time using them: the next five minutes consisted of almost continuous punishment, all of it directed to Asmita's bottom.
Asmita reacted to the tawses by pushing her bottom out, opening it as wide as she could. Her face showed only a sort of concentration, as if she was as intent as Headman that she should experience to the full the slightly different sensations caused by the various lengths and textures of the leather straps.
Asmita didn't make so much as a gasp as the relentless chastisement continued. In the observation room the only sounds were the regular smacks of the tawses and, Jem realised, her own excited breathing. Jem found herself entranced by the sight of Asmita's bottom. It was obscenely displayed, and on one of the close-up monitors Jem could see the square-edged trace left by each blow, the shuddering of the flesh of each buttock in the aftermath of each blow, the tensing of Asmita's anus each time the tip of the tawse landed between the buttocks, and the spreading sheen of wetness on the insides of Asmita's thighs and, as a tawse would sometimes land with a moist slap across Asmita's vulva before continuing to belabour her bottom, across the lower parts of her buttocks.
The Asian girl's skin didn't colour in the way that Jem suspected her own would. Asmita's bottom wasn't fiery red; instead the light brown skin was now a deep bronze colour. The buttocks seemed to be larger and rounder than at the start of the punishment. Jem could imagine the heat radiating from them. There was not a single bruise that Jem could see. Some of the canes and plaited whips had left barely discernible lines, but these traces were disappearing as Headman's tawsing covered and re-covered every inch of the thrusting sphere, darkening and reddening them still further.
After the tawsing, Headman flexed his right arm and declared that he needed a short rest. Jem, too, was glad of a few minutes in which to regain her composure: she had brought herself to a second climax, caressing herself in time with the smacks of Headman's tawses. Asmita seemed the least tired: her eyes were bright, the fact that she was sexually aroused was blatantly obvious, and she was gyrating her hips as if to encourage Headman to continue.
The final instalment of Asmita's chastisement contained just two instruments of correction: one representative example of the various riding crops at Headman's disposal, and Nyman's small tawse.
Headman waited until Nyman had settled into a slow, regular pattern of lashes between Asmita's legs. Then he caressed Asmita's buttocks with the palm of his hand, encouraging her to push her bottom out towards him, and placing an experimental smack here and there, as if assessing the soreness of Asmita's burning skin. He told her that he expected her to reach orgasm while he whipped her with the crop. Jem heard Asmita's breathing become slower and deeper as soon as Headman delivered the first lash.