How I Discovered CP

An interview with Janus illustrator Paula Meadows, from Janus 29.

There are some girls for whom the drama of discipline and corporal punishment is not a dread penalty but a reward — among the ripest fruits of a relationship with a member of the opposite sex. We men, the seekers of CP experiences, are in turn being sought, albeit more subtly as is the way of a woman, by females whose desire to receive correction is every bit as intense as our delight in administering punishment. It would be a fallacy to imagine otherwise. We at Janus have met many girls who frequently and regularly submit to CP from men, out of their own need for the pleasure which pain alone can bring.

One of these young ladies is Paula Meadows, the feminine half of our team of Janus illustrators and the sole contributor of artwork to issues 14 - 23, and to this issue too. Apart from being an extremely talented illustrator and painter with a wonderful visual imagination and an acute perception of CP possibilities, Paula has also modelled for Janus — as Lesley in issues 13 & 21. Both as an illustrator and as a model, Paula has provoked tidal waves of positive feedback from readers, although none knew that model and artist were the same person.

A second secret which Paula has authorised us to share with you is that she is regularly and severely caned, both over jeans and bare-bottomed, by the Editor of Janus. Severely — because by agreement, the better the work she brings us, the more elaborate will be her chastisement. So as you enjoy her excellent illustrations you may care to imagine the price that has been paid for each picture according to its merits.

JANUS: When did you get into spanking?

PAULA: I started in my early twenties. I’m 34 now, so to me that is a long time ago.

JANUS: Were you a painter and illustrator in those days too?

PAULA: Oh yes. My career hadn’t taken off though. I was virtually unknown except for a few posters and even they had only made me a reputation inside the trade, so to speak. The ‘public’ hadn’t heard of me at all.

JANUS: Many of our readers have expressed delight over your illustrations in Janus, but you practise what you preach, don’t you?

PAULA: Oh yes! Not every girl actually enjoys having her bottom caned, but I certainly do.

JANUS: How did it begin? Were you ever punished as a child at home?

PAULA: Good heavens, no. My parents never even smacked me, they didn’t believe in corporal punishment at all. My mother did everything by gentle persuasion. Endless reasonable explanations aren’t effective and they don’t mean a damn thing to any child.

JANUS: Were you caned at school?

PAULA: No. The cane had been banned from schools in my area by educationalists who regarded it as a relic of the Dark Ages. We drearily did lines or lost merit marks instead of getting the adrenalin kick that a bit of honest fear and a swift whop across the backside would have given us.

JANUS: You think those educationalists were wrong about that?

PAULA: Yes. Although it’s more a case of a pendulum swing. They were concerned to provide protection from the out-and-out sadism of teachers who found fault in order to be able to cane defenceless pupils, but they’ve gone much too far in the other direction.

JANUS: Can you remember any particular event or person that started your interest in spanking?

PAULA: When I first read The Story of O, I suspected that I might, just might, be interested in dominance and submission. By the way, do you mind if I insist on calling it dominance and submission and not S & M?

JANUS: Not at all. But why?

PAULA: The connotation of S & M combines sadism with masochism and no masochist is really in the least bit interested in meeting a real sadist. Not even in fantasy. Submissiveness and dominance is a more real definition and those who are into the scene explore this in so many ways. But they are never sadistic or cruel, no matter what the appearance may be. The men in The Story of O were not cruel or sadistic and O wanted them to do whatsoever they did to her. That is quite clear. That is what intrigued me when I read it.

JANUS: How long ago did you read it?

PAULA: When I was about 20. Bought it in W. H. Smiths, of all places. I decided to read it just to see what on earth it was all about I was amazed to discover that it turned me on, as fantasy. I didn’t think for one moment that it was for real or that people actually did things like that. I was surprised by the really tremendous frisson I got from the whole idea of this girl going to the mysterious Chateau at the command of her lover, to be whipped and used and seemingly abused and humiliated by his friends. The book has very ‘religious’ undertones to it of course.

JANUS: It has?

PAULA: Very much so. I don’t want to be intellectual about it though. But it is full of Catholic feeling. The, how shall I put it, surrender to a Divine Lover at whose behest she can do absolutely anything and love doing it. What O does is quite different but, you know, it’s a very woman thing because we CAN do things for a special man that we wouldn’t necessarily do merely by ourselves. That’s why it doesn’t work when a man hears that I enjoy being spanked and imagines he can waltz up and start whacking me. There has to be a relationship.

JANUS: You still thought that the book was merely fantasy?

PAULA: Yes. Reading the book certainly excited my imagination but I doubted whether I’d ever want to submit to the whip or the cane in reality. Canes hurt people.

JANUS: When did you decide otherwise?

PAULA: It was weird really. It was on a fine sunny morning in June, and I was 23 years old and standing in my rather poky studio when the telephone rang. It was my agent He wanted to know if I’d consider doing a special portrait for a client who had seen my posters and liked my work. Fame at last, I thought. My agent read me his remarks about my brushwork, composition and colour. Oh definitely a man of great discernment. What else could he be after making comments like that?

JANUS: So what happened?

PAULA: I found myself sitting in a third class compartment on my way to some village in the Home Counties. I had my portfolio under one arm and a letter of introduction to a Dr Andre Murat. That’s not his real name by the way. I was on my way to an experience that was to change many things in my life, including my painting.

JANUS: You’re talking about a crossroads or turning point. In what way?

PAULA: I’ll have to take a very deep breath. I got off the train at a tiny rustic station in a straggly village. Then I caught a taxi which took me through woods and fields and finally dropped me in a small clearing in the middle of a wood. I found myself gazing at a fast-flowing stream and a weir, which had a watermill with a waterwheel attached. It was a very old mill. It looked as if it might have been one of the addresses in the Domesday Book. I walked across a stone courtyard and pulled the iron bell pull. There was a loud clanging inside the house. I was all alone curiously waiting for whatever came next.

JANUS: And what did come next?

PAULA: A very attractive, dark-haired young woman in a demure summer frock with a lacy frill on the collar. Her hairstyle was short and quietly sophisticated. A contrast to my long hair and middle parting. I was still a halfway hippie in those days. She said I was expected and ushered me into the house. Her accent was definitely upper county which would probably have made me dislike her except that she had a very friendly smile. I stepped out of the sunlight into a dark and grey hallway, stone flagged with a polished wooden staircase facing me. There was a suit of armour standing at the bottom of it.

The girl told me she was Dr Murat’s wife and then flowed up the stairs, her hips swaying naturally but demonstrating a positive sexuality! She was a touch of the twentieth century in a background that was otherwise completely mediaeval. I trotted obediently up the stairs after her, my hips swaying a bit too. I carried myself and my portfolio into a huge sunlit room with white walls and recesses with clear glass windows overlooking the weir and the garden. A man rose from an armchair and came towards me, unsmiling. Years older than his wife. That was my first impression. Greying hair, a small pointed beard and heavy eyelids which drooped over very bright blue eyes. Bright but cold. He asked me in a civilised manner if I would take tea, in the English fashion, or wine.

I was dying for a cup of tea. I said ‘Wine’ and could have kicked myself.

He was an arrogant bastard, I thought. My second impression. He didn’t gesticulate or get excited as stage Frenchmen do. His gestures were minimal. There was a quietness about him and an aura of power that money and self-assurance can bring to men of wealth. I wasn’t accustomed to dealing with men like that All the men I knew tended to be either weakly docile or heavily boastful. I’d never met a man like Dr Andre Murat before. I mean, like the way he held out his hand for my portfolio and I gave it to him at once. Usually I like to chat a bit, open it myself and show the client what I think will interest him. The Doctor allowed me no such censorship. He took it, unlaced the tapes with deft fingers and proceeded to look through all the sketches and paintings I’d brought in complete silence. It was unnerving. I needed the wine by the time his wife brought it to us.

‘Bon,’ he said, ‘You can paint, Miss Meadows, and you can also get a likeness which is a rarer talent than people think.’

So far so good. Everything normal enough. But then, the whole scene changed, drastically. I can remember it all as if it was yesterday. Dr Murat said, ‘We will discuss business after lunch. Suzette, you will now serve us, immediately.’

His wife jumped to her feet and moved across the room towards the door. His voice halted her half way.

‘You will, of course, be properly dressed.’

Her mouth opened in a little moue of dismay. ‘No Andre,’ she said. ‘It is not suitable. Not in front of a guest we do not know and who doesn’t know us.’

‘You refuse?’ I cannot convey the menace in that softly spoken question.

Suzette said, ‘Of course not, monsieur.’

‘Then please to go and do exactly as you are told.’

She flung me a hapless, woman-to-woman look, and then walked to the door. ‘Must I?’ she said.

He looked at her in total silence. She went out, leaving that silence in the room.

He escorted me to an alcove and bade me sit myself down at a table laid for a meal. It was laid for two. Not three.

Dr Murat chatted pleasantly about art, and medicine, theatre and films; the perfect host, being a witty and interesting raconteur. A silver plate slithered in front of me, laden with Parma ham, tomatoes, lettuce, celery and eggs. I looked up to thank Suzette and almost choked over my wine. She wore a tiny, transparent French maid’s apron and a frilly cap. And that was IT.

Apart from that she was stark naked, except for high-heeled shoes. Her breasts were bare, and so, when she turned and bent over the trolley, was her backside. Across each buttock-cheek there were bruise marks as if she had recently fallen and banged herself very heavily.

JANUS: The stuff fantasy is made of?

PAULA: You can say that again though I wasn’t then familiar with the welts left by the cane or a whip. She moved round the table to serve her husband. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. It challenged and affronted my middle-class upbringing to see a nearly naked women serving food in a dining room as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

JANUS: Challenged and affronted you. Why?

PAULA: My hippie years recognised this as a ‘happening’. But it was a happening in a background where I’d expected to meet only the stuffy respectability of my mother and my unimaginative uncles and aunts. People like doctors and their wives were not supposed to behave like that!

As Suzette bent over to put a plate in front of him her breasts dangled and bobbled delightfully. The doctor picked up his fork and flicked the sharp prongs upwards, touching one rosy nipple, dimpling but not breaking the flesh.

‘You look quite charming Suzette,’ he said.

‘Thank you, monsieur,’ she said.

‘But you should not have argued with me about wearing your costume.’

‘No, monsieur,’ she said.

‘You observe that our guest is perfectly happy to see you dressed properly for such an occasion. You will go now and have your own lunch and then I will see what has to be done to prevent such behaviour erupting in my household again. Disobedience threatens the smooth running of a civilised house with an anarchy that is all too common today. We do not wish to be common, do we Suzette?’

‘No, monsieur,’ she said. She straightened up and walked away, her buttocks swaying delightfully until she opened the door and went out.

The doctor and I went on chatting. It was macabre. Really weird. I knew they were both testing me. Playing some bizarre game to which they knew the rules and I did not. More wine, more talk and then Dr Andre Murat rose to his feet and murmured that he had a small domestic matter to deal with. He would return in a few moments.

I was left all alone in the Solar, as they called it, overlooking a small enclosed courtyard with a bricked-up well in the centre. It was a most peaceful oblong of shadow and sunlight I could hear the hiss of water splashing down into the weir; the creak of the wheel and the cooing of doves nearby.

The door in one of the walls opened and Suzette stepped into the courtyard. No frilly apron and no cap. She was naked as she walked slowly across the stones. Why is it that a nude woman is so sexually exciting when seen in the open air, even to me, another woman?

JANUS: Contrast perhaps. Because we rarely see you ladies naked except indoors.

PAULA: You’d think that a naked woman to another woman was just bread and bread though. But it wasn’t. I sat bolt upright and peeked like crazy. She had a lovely body and moved so beautifully. She paused and looked round. The Doctor stepped through the doorway and I swallowed with sudden excitement He carried in his hand a long, flexible cane and I knew at once what he was going to do with it. I knew also that I ought to have been horrified at this exhibition of sheer male chauvinist arrogance. I ought to have wanted to go rushing down to protect poor Suzette from this horrendous bully. But I didn’t. I wanted him to cane her.

JANUS: And that reaction really surprised you?

PAULA: Very much. I mean, where was all this much advertised compassion of women that I was supposed to have? How many times had I heard women saying that if they were in charge there’d be no more violent wars with men killing each other and so forth. Today we have a lady Prime Minister and were recently marched straight off to war in the Falklands.

JANUS: It was a shock to you that you didn’t want to rush out and prevent Suzette being caned?

PAULA: Of course. Mind you, I also guessed that Suzette was a fully-fledged party to what was about to happen. I couldn’t see how she could possibly enjoy it but I felt that she did. As she turned she looked up at the window and though I jerked back I knew she knew I was watching her.

Then she stood on the coping of the well and slowly bent herself over the pointed wooden housing, a position that brought her shapely rear high in the air, her long legs stretched with her arms and hands supporting her own weight on the opposite rim of the well. Her breasts dangled upside down, almost touching her throat Murat walked behind her and stood to one side. His arm moved upwards and I watched, my mouth dry but my panties very wet It betrayed the inescapable fact that I was having a supremely sexual, voyeuristic experience.

The cane rose, hovered in the air and then it came down in an arc of pure pain. A crimson welt began to appear, slowly, across Suzette’s already bruised buttocks.

He stepped back and then his arm moved and once, twice, three, four and FIVE times the cane came flashing down in quick succession and Suzette screamed, her legs kicking out sideways as if trying to rid herself of her tormentor. Then, SWIIISH, it came down again, striking diagonally across the welts already rising from her poor bottom.

She didn’t scream this time but groaned and tried to roll away, bringing her hips round almost facing me. For a brief moment her belly and thighs and pubic hair gleamed in the sun and then he slashed her across the top of the thighs and she rolled back again, falling against the wooden struts of the cowling. Her whole body was limp and sagging. A surrender, and I thought, ‘Surely the punishment must be over?’

JANUS: And was it?

PAULA: Good heavens no. It had hardly begun! Dr Andre Murat stood quite still, his eyes surveying her welts as if to determine how truly lethal they had been.

‘Up!’ he commanded crisply. ‘This is no time to fall asleep Suzette. Higher than that.’

Suzette’s head twisted round and I heard her say, ‘I can’t take any more, Andre.’

‘Monsieur,’ he snapped.

‘I c-can’t take any more monsieur.’

‘UP!’ he said, and struck her with the full strength of his arm and she straightened up, her buttocks clenched together so great was the pain. Then she bent over in the same position that she had so willingly assumed only a few minutes earlier.

‘How many have you had?’ he asked her.

Suzette shook her head helplessly. ‘I don’t know An-monsieur. I lost count.’

‘Tres stupide,’ he said quietly. He never raised his voice at all, not once. ‘Now I shall have to begin all over again, non?’

‘Oh noooo…’ she wailed.

‘Yes,’ he said, and his arm went up once more and then, his knees and legs twisting very slightly, he brought it down and slashed another red line exactly where he had placed the first.

‘One,’ he said softly. ‘Don’t lose count again Suzette. It was to be twenty strokes, was it not?’

‘Y-yes monsieur.’

‘I shall be as fast as I can for we must not keep Miss Meadows waiting, must we? She is a guest, non?’

‘Two, three; four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,’ she yelled as his cane flashed up and down and up and down again nine times in swift but merciless succession. As I watched I felt a tide of heat flaming upwards from between my thighs, and not a moment of pity or compassion for Suzette. No one, I thought, could possibly take another ten of those cutting strokes yet I wanted him to go on and on and on. ‘Eleven, twelve, thirteen — oh please stop Andre! — fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen —’

Her white buttocks were a bright crimson when he stopped.

‘Twenty?’ he asked her most courteously.

A shake if the head. ‘N-nineteen!’

‘Ah. One more then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Shall I do it hard, or just a little tap?’

‘HARD,’ she yelled. ‘As hard as you damn well like!’

And he DID. The cane rose and came whamming down, parting the air with a whistle of sound, the thrill of which never fails to excite me from that day to this. The cane snapped and one piece flew into the herb garden.

‘Go back to the kitchen. Wash the dishes and then come and join me and our guest in my study.’

Suzette stepped off the coping, and to my astonishment she smiled radiantly, flung her arms around his neck, kissed him and then ran across the courtyard and into the house.

The Doctor picked up the piece of broken bamboo and then followed her. A few minutes later he entered the solar and looked at me quite expressionlessly through his glasses.

‘The danger of anarchy has temporarily abated.’ It was all he said.

JANUS: You didn’t receive a spanking or a caning on that occasion?

PAULA: Oh no. I wanted to try, but the process is very gentle and very slow. Neither the Doctor nor Suzette showed the slightest interest in ‘initiating’ me. We sat in his study and discussed the painting of her that he wanted me to do. It was a private portrait, as my agent had told me. He wanted her semi-nude and being whipped. All she was to wear was a special leather corset he’d designed.

Suzette — that was only her name as a ‘French Maid’ by the way. Her real name was different. She joined us in the study, this time in a long woollen dress and wearing spectacles. She sat down opposite me and took out some knitting and clicked and clacked away very domestically.

It was bizarre. There she was, every inch the Doctor’s demure young wife, knitting something that looked like a ‘Build your own Swamp’ kit. I had looked around his study when he conducted me into it and felt it was hardly a room for casual visitors.

JANUS: Why not?

PAULA: On the wall, to the left of me as I sat in a very cosy armchair, there were two rows of implements having no other function in the world but to inflict pain in varying degrees. Canes, rods, paddles, leather tawses and a most alarmingly long bullwhip. A cat o’nine tails too. And lots and lots of canes. I was no expert but it looked like a very complete collection.

Dr Murat saw the direction of my eyes and he smiled, very charmingly. ‘They are tools, Miss Meadows. Tools of transformation.’

Well now, that remark was a bit over my head. I’m fairly intelligent, I think, but I didn’t understand that statement at all.

JANUS: Not even today?

PAULA: I understand it better today but there’s a long way to go. He was a philosopher and I find philosophers are a bit pompous about everything. I liked talking with his wife much better really. She was a woman.

JANUS: Did she tell you anything interesting?

PAULA: Lots. But it came out over the years. I remember she did say to me, ‘The pain is not resisted, Paula. If you are being punished, as in the old days at school, you’d tense up and hate it. I accept the pain willingly, and it flows through me and builds the most fantastic energy.’

JANUS: You mean, like the way she ran across the garden after the whipping?

PAULA: Exactly. I will tell you one thing the Doctor said to me though. He said it to me much later. ‘A man cannot demand too much of a woman, Paula. You simply CANNOT ask too much of them. Their problem today is that their men demand too little. It’s the way they’ve been brought up. They believe they ought to be that way but it’s quite WRONG. They are too soft, too weak, too ready to apologise and say ‘Sorry dear’. Woman do not like that at all. Not when they are being honest with themselves. They hate it, and take their revenge by running a man ragged.’

JANUS: Do you agree with that?

PAULA: Oh yes. I’ve been discovering how true it is ever since. In myself, and in a lot of other women too. The trouble is, women often aren’t honest with themselves at all. There are too many double standards, and lies, and social appearances to keep up and worry about what the neighbours might think — all that sort of thing. Oh he was right all right It’s tricky though, isn’t it? A loud-mouthed, insensitive bully won’t move us either. We’re difficult, we females, aren’t we?

JANUS: Yes. Always have been. One small point that occurs to me though. You went down to the mill house to meet a client in the normal way of your professional business as a painter, right?

PAULA: Yes.

JANUS: Surely you were a bit more surprised than you make it sound when the doctor’s gorgeous young wife walked in nearly naked, and within a very short time you were watching her have a caning?

PAULA: I told you. It was a ‘happening’. But yes, I see what you mean and I was surprised but I also knew it was a set-up! I mean, they wouldn’t have arranged a situation without some reason to believe I’d be interested. Someone, unbeknown to me, had obviously told them I might be that way inclined.

JANUS: Do you know who it was?

PAULA: My agent of course. He’d known Andre Murat and Madame for years. He knew my embryonic interest in D & S. I talked to him a lot about the Story of O. He was and still is a very close friend as well as being my agent. He thought it would be interesting for me to see that it really did happen.

JANUS: Are you prepared to tell us what happened next?

PAULA: Of course. You mean when did I stop peeking through windows and start doing it, or having it done to me? That’s what this interview is for, isn’t it?

JANUS: It is indeed. One question before we continue with your adventures, Paula. It always comes up and I’d like your reaction. Do you feel pain as pleasure?

PAULA: Certainly not. Pain is pain. It hurts like hell and that’s all it does.

JANUS: Then why do you do it?

PAULA: I need it. I need the after-effect. I’m not a doctor so I can’t diagnose or prescribe, but it may be that women like me, and masochistic men too although I’m only talking about females, have a low adrenalin count, or whatever you want to call it. I used to get very depressed and miserable and moody in my younger days. But any sharp pain, like a pinch, a burn, a slap, always makes the adrenalin spurt, I believe, and energy flows. Once I started this I found that my moods vanished almost completely and that’s why I have no need for drugs, for example, and I don’t drink very much. I like a little tot of whisky now and then, but never compulsively. On the other hand, if I do start to feel low, and lacklustre and tired, I simply bend over and have a good old paddling and I cheer up at once! But the spanking, the caning, the whipping, as such, merely hurts, just as it does for anybody.

JANUS: When did you meet your doctor and his wife again?

PAULA: Within a few weeks. I was painting her portrait remember. It was a perfectly genuine commission. My agent wouldn’t waste my time about things like that. I met them in Paris. I went by taxi to a private club where we were to meet It was empty, when I got there, the club I mean, one of those swishy nightclub-cum-restaurants with, I discovered, somewhat sexy goings on in the wee small hours. For members only.

Andre and ‘Suzette’ were waiting for me in a most luxurious bar. All black and gold it was, with astrological signs on the walls. The pile on the carpet came up to my kneecaps and I had to wade across the floor and sit in one of those armchairs where you sink completely from sight.

JANUS: Sounds very swishy and decadent.

PAULA: It was. Anyway, Suzette was there looking lovely in a long evening dress, which was almost topless. Andre bought me a drink and sat back and said very little. It was ‘Ladies’ Night’. Suzette told me they had arranged with the proprietor for me to go down into the cellars below where I could photograph Suzette in her costume, and get the poses I wanted for the painting which I later did.

This is where I got my comeuppance. Suzette took me down a private staircase at the back of the bar and through about three wine cellars filled with barrels. There was a most unobtrusive little door and it opened into a large empty room that was also a cellar. However there were very weird tapestries on the wall and a stone block right in the centre. The carvings on the block made me giggle. They were copied from the Hindu Wheel of Life and showed couples and foursomes in duets and quartets doing what comes naturally if you’re a Hindu god or goddess and able to rig up a twosome or a foursome with your friends. And laid out on this grey stone there was a most beautiful corset of leather, patterned in red and brown and having a network of silver chains attached to it like filigree work. It was lovely. I stroked the leather with my fingers.

‘May I see you dressed in it?’ I said to Suzette.

She simply stepped straight out of her gown and stood in the cellar stark naked except for her high-heeled shoes. Of course I looked straight at her buttocks but they were creamy white again with not a bruise in sight.

‘Wouldn’t you like to try it on?’ she said. ‘It would give you the feel of it.’

I’d been dying to put it on from the moment I saw it. I looked around, just to make sure no one was watching and then I unzipped my skirt and stripped as quickly as I could. Suzette unclipped my bra and then a warm mouth kissed my nipples and I blushed a bit. I wasn’t sure whether I was ‘into’ girls or not.

Suzette picked up the corset and fitted it round my waist. She had to kneel to string up the laces and this brought her face level with my pubic hair. She looked up at me and winked very mischievously. Her tongue snaked out and drew a wet line down my thighs and then upwards and all around the edge of my triangle. She rocked back on her heels and blew cold air across the wetness and her face wore the most wanton expression I’d ever seen on a woman. She bent forward and her breath was hot on my bare flesh. I’d never felt anything so erotic or so sexually arousing in my life. I began to decide I might be into girls after all. I’d had my fair share of male love-making at that time, and I liked it very much, but no man had ever done those sorts of things to me.

Suzette stood up, leaving me all throbby but unsatisfied. She finished fitting the corset. It had hollow leather rings where a bra would normally go and this piece of cunning design pushed my bare breasts out and left my nipples exposed to one and all. It felt GORGEOUS! The corset was drawn in very tightly to emphasise the flow of my hips. The silver chains tinkled softly as I walked. I had a very good little bum in those days.

JANUS: You still have. Our readers have seen it in your naughty Lesley photo sessions. Anyway, what happened next?

PAULA: Suzette made me stand, my legs apart and my thighs pressing against the cool surface of the phallic block of stone in the centre of the cellar. And before I could do, or say, a thing about it, she had bent me helplessly halfway over the stone block, my arms hanging but taking almost all of my weight.

‘It’s a funny feeling, eh Paula?’ said Suzette. ‘To be helpless. Now I can do whatever I wish to you. I can stroke your lovely body, like this… I can tweak your nipples, like THIS.’ — ‘Ouch!’ I yelped. She had twisted both my nipples into a pair of corkscrews and it DID hurt! But I didn’t mind.

‘Or, of course — I could give your bottom a very sound spanking with this leather paddle.’

She walked in front of me and she was carrying a long-handled leather thing shaped like a ping pong bat at the end. She slapped it against her own thigh and it left red patches on her skin.

‘But you are not ready for that. Not yet.’

A timid little voice said: ‘You can spank me a little bit if you want to, Suzette.’ I looked round to see what idiot could possibly have said such a thing. It was me.

‘You are sure you would really like to try it?’

‘Oh YES,’ said the idiot.

Suzette walked behind me and I tensed, expectantly. WHAP! A broad leather surface hit my left buttock cheek lightly. ZAP! it struck my right cheek just as lightly. I relaxed. It stung a bit but it didn’t hurt at all. I thought I could take any amount of that treatment.

Zing, zing, zing, zing Wham! it went, and I began to feel my bum beginning to glow very pleasantly.

From somewhere upstairs some rock music began to play. The ‘Club’ was obviously open.

Suzette used the beat of the music to whop me very swiftly all over my bottom. It felt very nice. It really did. The tattoo of the leather against my flesh and the loud, flappy but explosive noise that went with it as the paddle rotated all over my posterior and down the back of my legs. My arms were aching from hanging on the damned bar, but my bottom was glowing like an overheated furnace. I’d never felt such a sensation of utter well-being in my life before.

The paddling stopped and Suzette’s cool hands slid over my burning cheeks, caressing and fondling very, very gently.

‘Your arms ache?’

I nodded.

‘So we lower the bar then,’ she said. The strain left my arms as the bar dropped to ground level, but as it did so I was dragged right over the stone block with my rear high in the air and my legs stretched to their fullest extent.

‘Not too bad eh, so far?’ Suzette whispered in my ear. She kissed me in the hollow behind my ears too, and I wiggled. ‘I think perhaps you should now try a taste of Mister Bamboo, Paula. He hurts. He hurts like hell. Do you dare to let me cane you?’

‘Oh yes Suzette,’ I gasped. ‘I think I might like it.’

I heard the whistle of the cane parting the air and then I screamed aloud. Never, ever, had I felt such a stabbing slash of pure agony in my life. Tears came into my eyes.

‘STOP!’ I yelled. ‘Please stop. That hurts!’

A warm hand cradled my bare bum again and a fingernail drew a tiny slither of pain across my buttocks as Suzette traced the welt she must have raised. Her face swam into view and her tongue licked along my eyelids, sipping my tears.

‘You gave your consent, Paula,’ she said. ‘After that you cannot continue to control the scene. There would be no challenge in it if you could, would there? Should it be six strokes, or ten? That’s the only choice I can allow you.’

I blinked at her. ‘Ten,’ I said. And no one, but no one will ever be able to explain to me why I chose the higher number.

She stepped back out of sight She twitched one of the tapestries to one side and revealed a large mirror. The reflection showed a young woman bent obediently over a stone block with a tall, naked girl standing behind her with a long swishy cane in her hands. She was running the cane through her fingers and smiling secretly.

JANUS: Quite a sight to see in the mirror?

PAULA: It was. Except that I knew that the girl bending over was ME and I was going to have ten more slices of pure agony handed out at my own request. ‘Let the pain flow through you Paula. Don’t resist it,’ I heard Suzette say. I saw her step back and the cane came hissing down a second time and the girl in the mirror clenched her buttocks together and tried to straighten up. She didn’t cry out though. Her buttocks went rigid, so tightly did she clench them. The cane came down a third time and her bum juddered as she writhed sideways trying to dodge the agony.

JANUS: This was your first taste of real pain, wasn’t it? What on earth must it have felt like?

PAULA: Two repeat doses of white fire across my backside and my spine jolted and added to the pain. Never, never, never again would I ask anyone to give me a taste of Mister Bamboo. NEVER!

Four, five, six, seven, eight. This time Suzette’s arm rose and fell very fast and the shockwaves of pain had no time to die away before the next pain hit me, driving me up the wall. Then she stopped.

‘Only two more little strokes,’ she said sympathetically, and once again caressed my naked backside gently. Heat began to radiate from me yet again and I was aware that I was also… wet. Love juice was trickling down my thighs and I had never felt so sexy in my life.

‘ONE — TWO,’ cried Suzette. I jerked upwards each time but the pain was totally different now. I cannot describe the difference. It still hurt like crazy but it was flowing through me. Without knowing how I’d done it I’d found the trick of not resisting it and I knew I could go on and take a further ten if Suzette asked me to do so.

JANUS: Did she?

PAULA: No. She released me and I straightened up and she took me in her arms and we kissed each other very tenderly. As we did so the whole damn cellar broke into loud applause. I looked round and the place was full of club members who had entered very quietly, their arrival camouflaged by the rock music. I made a lot of friends that evening though. Many of them are still my friends.

JANUS: Thank you, Miss Meadows.

PAULA: My pleasure.