The Carrot and the Stick (3 page)

‘I'm just reheating the...' Celeste paused in mid-sentence, transfixed by the sight of Beth in the bath, ‘...chicken casserole... What on earth happened to you?' Apart from her head and shoulders the only part of Beth to show above the bubbles on the water's surface were her buttocks, twin islands in a foamy sea divided by a ribbon of water. Instead of their normal unblemished beauty, they were ridged with red and purple weals.

Celeste fell to her knees beside the bath and reached out a hand, wanting but hesitating to touch them. ‘What happened?' she asked again.

Beth rested her head on her arm and looked back down the length of her body. She could not quite see the focal points of Celeste's attention.

‘Get the mirror,' she said, ‘and show me.' Celeste lifted the mirror off the shelf and held it above Beth, adjusting it until she found the right position.

Beth studied her magnified bottom with awe and no small measure of pride. She had taken
that
and hardly cried out or shed a tear.

‘You've been hit with a stick,' Celeste deduced, horror in her voice. ‘Who did it?'

‘Richard Cross,' Beth said, her voice muffled by her arm. ‘But I deserved it.'

‘Wow,' Celeste gasped. She had heard quite a lot about Richard Cross in their evening chats. ‘Did he enjoy it?'

‘Oh yes,' Beth chuckled, ‘he enjoyed it. I could see that all right.'

Celeste ran her fingers gingerly over the ridges. ‘I bet you didn't though, you poor thing,' she said. ‘You are so beautiful, and he's so cruel.'

‘It was that or the sack,' Beth said simply. ‘I have cost the company a lot of money.'

Celeste picked up a large bath towel from the warming rail and held it invitingly. ‘I want to hear all about it - every detail,' she said. ‘But first let me make a fuss of you. You need something on it.'

Beth happily acceded. She felt like being pampered and the good-for-nothing Celeste might as well be good-for-something. As she stood up in the bath, Celeste enveloped her in the soft towel and began to pat her dry. The younger girl was as gentle as a mother with her baby, and when she put her arms around Beth to reach her back, their cheeks touched and Beth could feel her breath on her ear. Then taking down a smaller towel, Celeste sat on the floor and dried each of Beth's feet.

‘I'll finish you off in the bedroom,' she said, putting her arm around Beth's shoulders and leading her out along the hall to Beth's bedroom. Gently pushing her shoulders she made Beth lie down, still wrapped in the bath towel, on the bed.

The evening sun flooded the room with a strong, warm light. Tenderly Celeste opened the towel as if she was unwrapping a present while Beth watched her handmaiden with grave eyes. She lay still, face up, her naked body gleaming like a pearl in a pink shell.

Celeste took the second towel and began to pat Beth dry, starting with her shoulders and then circling around and around Beth's breasts, which were firm and held their shape even though she was supine. Celeste took her time, teasing the small pink nipples with the towelling, and continued long after every drop of water had disappeared.

‘That tickles,' Beth giggled.

Celeste towelled the flat stomach and the small patch of fair pubic hair which, when dry, was as soft and fluffy as a kitten's fur. Beth moaned and instinctively opened her legs slightly so that Celeste could dry the creases at the top of her thighs on either side of her labia. Slowly and gently, Celeste then rubbed the towel up and down the pink, inviting lips.

‘What are you doing?' Beth asked, but there was no anger in her voice.

‘Nothing much,' Celeste said huskily. ‘Don't say stop.'

Beth placed an arm across her eyes. ‘I'm not going to.'

‘Tell me what happened,' Celeste said, her voice almost sounding too urgent in the quiet, sunlit room.

Beth spoke almost dreamily as Celeste continued the slow up-and-down movement against her sex. ‘Richard caned me because of my figures - I received six of the best,' she said throatily. ‘I deserved it. I accepted that necklace when I did well. I got this because I did badly.'

‘Were you naked?' Celeste asked breathlessly. ‘Turn over...'

Beth obeyed reluctantly; she had wanted that to go on forever. ‘No,' she said, rolling gracefully over onto her stomach. ‘In my undies. He pulled my panties up so they were like a g-string.'

Beth's back was already dry from lying on the towel, so Celeste patted it and her thighs quickly and then concentrated on her tender bottom.

‘Did Richard do anything?' she asked, a tinge of jealousy in her voice. Very tentatively she placed her towelled hand on the punished flesh.

Beth winced. ‘No,' she said, her head again buried in her arms. ‘But I wanted him to.'

‘Open your legs,' Celeste said. She dried between Beth's buttocks and again between her legs. She lowered her head and began to kiss the stripes on the warm flesh, counting aloud with each kiss. Beth did not move but drew her breath in with an audible gasp when Celeste kissed ‘Five' where it crossed with ‘Six'. Totally engrossed in her task, Celeste intuitively ran her tongue along the welt on the left cheek, down into the unmarked valley to Beth's pink and puckered anus, and then back up the other side, along the welt on the right cheek. Beth moaned with discomfort and pleasure.

‘Don't move,' Celeste said, and disappeared off into the bathroom as Beth lay immobile in the evening sun. She was beginning to feel drowsy but was awoken when a blob of cold cream landed on one buttock. Celeste smoothed it in and then did the same to the other cheek.

‘Richard taught me one thing,' Beth said.

‘What's that?' Celeste asked, absorbed in her work, rubbing her hand in a circle around Beth's bottom.

‘What I am going to do to you one of these days, if you don't pull your finger out.'

‘Like this, you mean?' Celeste giggled, and she ran her greasy forefinger into the valley between Beth's cheeks and slipped it gently into the girl's anus. Beth groaned, as she cheekily eased it in and out.

‘Yes,' she sighed, ‘something like that.' She lay still, enjoying the delicious sensation. Celeste again put her finger into the cream jar and stroked Beth between her anus and vagina.

‘A good spanking on your bare bottom might do you the world of good,' Beth mumbled.

‘Would it make me as hot as you are now?'

‘We'll find out... very soon.'

‘Promise,' said Celeste, and she slipped onto her knees at the end of the bed and put her face between Beth's thighs. Then she did with her tongue what she had done with the towel, licking up and down the length of Beth's labia. Beth, who had been simmering sexually since her encounter with Richard, relaxed and spread her legs wider to allow Celeste entry. Celeste's tongue penetrated Beth's moist and eager vagina while, with her right hand, she gently teased her anus. As the tongue darted in and out with increasing speed, Beth started to moan and to move her hips, but she still had time to think that the good-for-nothing girl was good-for-something after all. It may be unorthodox, it may even be wrong, but it was what she wanted, and wanted desperately at that moment.

As Celeste removed her tongue and ran it upwards along the line of perfumed ointment until it reached and tickled and teased her tiny anus, Beth could hear Richard's voice again announcing that he was going to give her six strokes of the cane. She lifted her bottom to Richard's cane, and to Celeste's tongue.

While Beth's bottom was still arched in the air, Celeste slid back down again and found the firm bud she sought and sucked on it as if it was a grape she wanted to swallow whole. Beth stopped thinking and simply felt. Her body knew it was finally going to have the release it had yearned for so long. She ground and rotated her wet sex against Celeste's mouth and tongue, moaning and grabbing handfuls of the duvet.

It was over all too soon. The movement of Celeste's firm moist tongue on her eager clitoris was more than Beth could bear. Waves of liquid heat like molten lava surged and swirled through her loins until in one brief but timeless moment they exploded in a volcanic eruption throughout her straining body. Beth shrieked and clamped her thighs together on either side of Celeste's head, holding the younger girl still, her lips welded to Beth's vagina with an amalgam of cold cream and the intimate secretions of a female body at peace with itself at last.

The chicken casserole went cold for a second time as the two girls fell asleep together in the same bed.

 

 

 

The Rybix building was in Victoria and Beth had time to get her hair done before her meeting at ten. As she strode through the glass and marble lobby at five to ten, she knew she looked good with her neat pageboy haircut shining above a white summer suit. Good enough to eat, she thought as she caught sight of her reflection in the darkened glass, and she blushed remembering the previous evening. She had never made love to a woman before; and she had certainly not thought of Celeste in that way. The girl had been sweet though, and suspiciously adept at what she did. But not so sweet and adept that she did not still need a damn good spanking.

Three men sat across the boardroom table awaiting her. ‘The redoubtable Ms Forrester - alone,' said Jim Tyson, the Rybix marketing director, hardly bothering to stir from his seat to greet her. ‘Travelling without your team this time?'

Beth sat. ‘We're close to the end,' she said, laying her briefcase on the table. ‘There should be nothing I cannot settle myself.'

‘Perhaps Miss Forrester would like some coffee - I certainly would.' The speaker was a heavyset man in a Savile Row suit at the head of the table.

‘Right away, T.J.,' Tyson said, and leapt up from the table and disappeared to talk to a secretary. Beth smiled her thanks to T. J. Kearns, the managing director of Rybix, and busied herself sorting out her papers on the tabletop. T. J. Kearns was her man; the man who would make the final decision, the man she must win over to win the contract. Take it slowly girl, she told herself.

Nothing more was said until the coffee was poured. The third man, Charles Haigh, the finance director whose face was as grey as his suit, opened the proceedings.

‘I'd like to start with the questions of debentures and default payments,' he said.

Beth patiently found the correct papers and started to negotiate. For half an hour she and Tyson and Haigh went over the contract details, ironing out differences and sorting out ambiguities and confusions. Kearns sipped his coffee and watched and listened.

When the conversation ground to a halt, he spoke. ‘That seems quite straightforward,' he said to no one in particular. Then he fastened Beth with a piercing gaze. ‘You are sticking to a three year contract at six hundred thousand per?'

‘Yes,' she said, ‘I would consider five but for a five year term.'

Kearns stood up and the others immediately followed suit. He offered his hand to Beth. ‘We'll be in touch soon, almost certainly tomorrow.'

He held on to Beth's hand, pulling her gently through the door into the corridor. ‘Come to my office when you finish up here,' he said quietly. ‘Jim will show you where.'

Ten minutes later Beth stood in the lift and pressed the button for the top floor.

Once there, she found Kearns' secretary, Mrs Woods, who rose from her desk, a desk almost as big as Beth's office. ‘How nice to see you again, Miss Forrester,' she said with a practiced smile. ‘T.J. is waiting for you.'

She opened double doors opposite the lift and ushered Beth inside. Across an acre of sumptuous carpeting, Kearns rose from his mahogany desk and approached his visitor. ‘No interruptions, please,' he said to Mrs Woods, who was already quietly closing the doors.

He again formally offered his hand to Beth. ‘The wunderkind of Cross, Carstairs and Denton,' he said flatteringly. ‘Come and sit close to me. This place is so big it has drafts.'

He led her across the office to a comfortable easy chair, in front of and to one side of his desk. It gave Beth a chance to size him up properly. She was not fooled by his benign resemblance to Santa Claus in expensive tailoring. She knew he was a self-made man who could be and frequently was tough and ruthless.

‘I hope I am not holding you up,' he said. ‘I wanted a quiet word with you alone.'

‘Not at all,' Beth said. ‘I am at your service.' A voice inside her head was repeating like a mantra: be bold, face him like an equal. ‘What can I do for you?' she asked.

‘It is more a question of what I can do for you. Or rather, what I cannot do for you.'

Beth suddenly felt cold.

‘You have been a very good negotiator,' Kearns went on. ‘I think it is only fair to be honest with you now.'

For some reason Beth's confidence flowed away, and her voice became croaky. ‘I don't think I want to hear this,' she said.

Kearns gave her a rueful smile. ‘It was between you and AdWise. There's hardly anything between you but, on balance, AdWise offers the better deal. The official announcement will not be made until tomorrow but I thought, since you are here, I should tell you now in person.'