A Secret Place

Basil takes on a disguise. Story from Blushes 1. Continuation of The Cellar.

‘Sir?’ Anne’s voice has a definite tremor to it, and understandably so. The hand which patted her bottom a few moments earlier up under her buttocks, before patting again with a little lift to each cheek in turn, had a distinctly expert feel to it, as though it had smacked more bottoms than she would care to know about. ‘Sir? Excuse me, Sir.’

‘Hmm?’ They are standing outside a door which, when it has been unlocked, will lead to a long, narrow passage. At the far end of the passage will be a second door, and beyond that, a room which Anne has never seen but about which she has heard more than enough. The man whom she is calling ‘sir’ has been introduced to her as a ‘school governor’, although she has never met him before. At this moment he is sorting through a bunch of keys for one that will fit the lock.

‘Sir — m-may I ask — wh-what exactly is it that I’ve done wrong?’

‘Done wrong, my dear? Um — ah yes, this is the one.’

The key turns easily in the well-oiled lock. ‘After you.’ And Anne’s bottom is smacked playfully through the door. The passage is dark, and the girl stumbles as her foot catches on an uneven floorboard.

‘Just a moment,’ Basil gropes along the wall for the light switch, his hand swooshing softly against the brickwork. The light clicks on. A naked bulb glares down bleakly from the ceiling.

‘Alright — I’ll just close the door.’ Anne hears the quiet ‘click’ as the key turns. She goes dubiously towards the second door, Basil following and watching her navy knickers as they pull tight around pert buttocks, her bottom full and plump and with that firm-soft look that is typical of the teenage girl’s bum. Basil squeezes past at the second door and unlocks it.

He coaxes the girl into the little room with a hand cupped under her buttocks. She feels warm and skittish to the touch, her skin satiny where his fingers overlap the leg elastic of her knickers.

There is only one window in the room, high in one wall, and the level of lighting is not improved by the grime on the quartered window panes. The bare floorboards have a layer of dust on them, although there are numerous footprints, and at one place there is an area which looks as though people have been scraping their feet around and clearing the dust away. High on the wall, immediately above this shoe-scraped bit of floor, there is a metal bracket projecting from the bricks. It is at about the height a girl might reach if she were to stand on the very tips of her toes. There is an old school desk and a tall stool and nothing else.

Basil closes the door, and there is a rattling sound. Anne looks around and sees several canes dangling from hooks screwed into the door’s woodwork. They swing gently in the quietness of this frightening room, making little intermittent scraping sounds as they touch against the door with their swinging. The girl’s eyes follow the hypnotic movement of these ominous intimations of the present function of this hideaway. She looks pleadingly at the man whom she supposes to be a governor of the school, seeing something in his expression that she mistakes for kindness or sympathy or understanding of her predicament.

‘Sir — please — what did I do wrong, sir?’

‘Wrong? I’m afraid I don’t know what you’ve done wrong, my dear.’ The vague smile is there again. ‘Didn’t you have to see the Headmaster? Didn’t he explain the matter to you?’

‘N-no, n-not really, sir.’

He glances down at her knickers. ‘But he told you that you were to be punished, surely. I mean, I presumed that the point of your turning up to see me in your knickers was that you knew you were to be punished and simply wanted to be as co-operative as possible. Wasn’t that it?’

Anne blushes furiously at having to talk about her knickers to this man, this stranger.

‘N-no sir — the Headmaster told m-me that I was to come in my gym things, but I got my shorts wet in the shower this afternoon, sir, so I couldn’t wear them, and when I t-told the Headmaster he said it didn’t matter, an-and I should come in my — my knickers, sir.’

Basil drops his eyes and another of his ephemeral smiles plays around his mouth. And a charming idea it had been too. Finding her waiting in a tee-shirt and school knickers, and nothing else besides socks and shoes, had got him off to a good start right from the start. That man knew him too well.

‘Well, it doesn’t make much difference, actually. I shouldn’t worry about it. I mean, you’re not going to have them on long, are you my dear?’

Anne’s face looks slightly shocked at that. Her tongue peeps out and touches her lips nervously.

‘Sir — are you sure I’m to be p-punished? The Headmaster didn’t actually say that I was to be punished, sir. He didn’t actually say.’

‘Oh yes. You’re to be caned, my dear. Soundly caned.’

‘Oooh —!’ Anne’s eyes blink as though tears are threatening already. She edges away and bumps against the wall. ‘S-sir — please sir — do I have to be c-caned sir?’

‘Er — well yes. Yes, you do.’ Another of his smiles — of course he’s simply teasing her, which is why he smiles — passes across his face. ‘Surely you know that naughty girls are liable to be caned, don’t you? Hmm?’

‘Er — I didn’t realise I’d been naughty. I — I still don’t know what I’ve done. An-and I’ve only been here a few days sir — I don’t know much about c-caning and things, sir.’

‘Really? You’ve only been here a few days? Dear oh dear! Well it’s a pity you have to start off with a caning I suppose, but — well, there it is. I mean, I’m only lending a hand this evening. The Headmaster has an appointment, and he asked me if I would fill in for him in various ways — I suppose you just happen to be one of the little duties I have to perform. Er — in my capacity of school governor, that is. I mean, he definitely said that Anne Powell, whom I would find waiting at — I suppose you are Anne Powell, aren’t you?’

Plainly wishing that right at this moment she wasn’t, Anne nods her head dismally.

‘Well, there you are. You’re to be caned, Anne and I’m afraid that’s that.’ Basil spins on his heel, all resolution and determination to do his duty, and he takes one of the canes from the hooks behind the door. He flexes it in his hands, as though not sure it’s quite right for a bottom as plump as Anne’s, then he puts it back and checks along the row for one that might have just that extra touch of sting in its supple length.

This performance, the testing of the canes and the swishing of them, the experimental taps against the palm of the hand, the quiet, almost considerate suggestion that the girl might like to bend over and touch her toes so that the cane can stroke teasingly across her knickers, the instruction to stick her plump young bottom out so that a series of tentative little pats can reach across both round buttocks and a flick with the tip can sting her without warning on the bits her pants leave bare: all these things conspire to undermine whatever reserves of determination the girl has to be brave and see it through, and suddenly she is sniffing and snuffling and then she is crying in an undemonstrative way that somehow reveals more of her distress than if she had sobbed out loud.

He keeps her down there, touching her toes, while the cane ‘swhits’ and ‘whups’ playfully across her navy knickers, making her start nervously and pant a little between her quiet tears, the strokes not really strokes, enough only to make her buttocks tweak together as the cane lands. Anne’s weeping becomes gradually more like sobbing; her knees are beginning to flex with every other stroke as she struggles against the urge to swerve her bum away from the smarting cane-flicks. A few more, just a touch harder, and then Basil draws his hand across her bottom, patting it and telling her what a perfect bottom it is for the cane, slipping her knickers across into the division and standing back a little so that the cane has a better swing at the freshly bared plumpness of her trembly, reddening bottom. Several minutes of this and Anne is plainly losing her grip. She is getting livelier at every teasing contact of the cane with her crimsoned bum, and her crying is becoming irregular with little ‘ouch’s and ‘ooogh’s to relieve the monotony of her distress.

‘Right. That will do, I should think,’ says Basil.

Anne stands up gingerly, eyes wide, hands sneaking round to her bottom to rub and squeeze.

‘Yes, I think this is the cane I’ll use.’

Anne’s look of shocked disbelief is something to behold.

‘Come over here.’ Basil indicates the bracket set in the wall. ‘Hold onto this — up on your toes, now. Come on.’

‘Please — please don’t. No more — Please!’

‘No more? Whatever do you mean girl? I haven’t even begun yet.’

When Anne has finally done as she has been told, and she is standing on tip-toe, clinging to the bracket with her arms above her head, Basil squats down behind her and peels her knickers down from her hips, down her thighs, down to her ankles. She swings nervously around, trying to keep her eyes on him as he circles round her, the cane in his hand.

She tries to edge away as he strokes a hand down the curve of her tummy, down into the moist niche between her thighs. His hand cups the soft swell of her pubic mound, fingers slipping along underneath her. With the cane held short in his other hand he begins to give her a series of strokes, harder than before, most of them angling up under her bum-cheeks, catching her always in much the same place, making her jerk and jolt away from the sting, forward onto his hand.

Anne’s evasive attempts send her veering away in various directions, but always the interloping hand restrains her. Her eyes constantly swivel round to look pleadingly into those of her tormentor. She gasps pleas, promises, profuse apologies, her lips moist and sweet, her tears flowing copiously down her cheeks. She pants and sobs but she clings onto the bracket.

She is still dangling there ten minutes or so later. Her bottom has so many crimson stripes across its pert rotundity that it is impossible to differentiate between them for the most part, except where a wilder swing on Anne’s part has presented her flank to the swishing cane and a red finger has inscribed itself across unmarked skin.

Basil leaves her there and goes to the desk in the corner of the room. He rummages around and produces a small jar from which he unscrews the lid. He dips in a finger, bringing it out with a fat dollop of translucent cream on it. Anne blinks through wet-rimmed, puffy eyes. She utters no coherent sound as Basil slides his hand down underneath her, but she pulls herself up on her toes as the cream slides along the tunnel between her thighs. Basil’s other hand meets the slippery goo between her bum-cheeks and begins to spread it over her tender bottom in small, gentle, circular sweeps, across and round to where the soreness is worst, then back again through the slippery gap between her thighs.

He talks to her quietly, murmuring soothing words and telling her she’s been a brave, brave girl, and not to let go of the bracket, not just yet, not until he tells her. Slowly, involuntarily perhaps yet quite definitely, Anne begins to respond to the slithery, slidy stimulation as Basil’s fingers slip between her legs. His voice coaxes her, chides her gently when she seems to recover her senses and wants to pull away, calms her into obedient compliance while his fingers nudge her confidently to a quivering, undemonstrative climax, reached almost resignedly, panted out quietly in submission to the inevitable.

When Anne has dressed herself again — she has only to pull up her knickers of course, so it takes but a moment — she is sent to wait at the end of the passage. Keeping her eyes averted from those of the man who has frightened and bewildered her by turns, she leaves the little room and goes unhappily down the passage.

Basil locks the door behind him and then lets the bewildered and ashamed Anne out of the second door. He lets her go, and she scampers off, bottom bobbing crimson where her knickers fail to cover the evidence of the punishment. Basil walks unhurriedly away to have a brandy with his old friend, Reggie.