Back to the Institute

Story from Februs 31. Colin Weaver’s sequel to The Institute Girl

The stretch of pavement in front of the Birley Institute is about fifty yards long. Lucinda Horton had walked along it twice, and was in the middle of her third preoccupied perambulation when she became aware that someone had fallen into step beside her.

She turned her head and looked into the pale, plump, bespectacled face of a fiftyish man with the general appearance of an undertaker’s chief clerk.

‘I was wondering’,’ said the man, with a grimace meant for a smile, ‘if you were — er — looking for business, love?’

After a moment’s stunned surprise, understanding came to her, and the expression on her face was obviously an adequate answer. The man backed away hastily ‘Sorry!’ he said. ‘My mistake! No offence meant!’ He was almost running as he turned away and crossed the road.

Staring after him, Lucinda uttered two explicit words which would have horrified her fellow teachers at St Jude’s. Then she marched up the steps of the Institute and rapped sharply on the door. It was long after closing time but the door opened almost at once.

‘Come in, lass,’ said Jim Mytton, placidly. ‘I thought you were going to wear a groove in that pavement. And you gave Sam Earnshaw a bit of excitement, didn’t you? He won’t have decided yet whether he’s disappointed or relieved.’

Lucinda remembered, blushing, that the window office overlooked the street. I said I’d come,’ she retorted defensively, ‘and here I am.’

‘I knew you’d keep your word,’ he said quietly. ‘You’re an honest girl, and a brave one.’

Lucinda felt a comforting glow at the approval in his voice. This sardonic, middle-aged man had been the closest approach to a friend she had made in the month since she had moved to Birley. A tall, attractive woman of twenty-seven, something in her speech and her dress and her manner had seemed just a little exotic for that rugged Northern town, and people had been a trifle wary of her, taking their time to offer acceptance. She had become a regular visitor to the Institute, and it was there, thanks to sophisticated surveillance equipment, that Mytton had watched her acting out an absurd charade, lying across the marble thighs of a statue in Gallery Three and pretending to take a spanking.

Mytton had not been shocked, he had not reacted with derision or unwelcome lust, and he had made it clear, thank God! that he would not gossip. What he had done was to order her across his knee, take her knickers down and give her an exemplary, uncompromising spanking which surpassed any she had experienced in the eight years she had been submitting her shapely bare bottom to various disciplinary hands.

Afterwards he had taken her to the Reserve Room, which housed the equipment of the old Birley Reformatory. It was there that he had told her about SPOC, the Society for the Purpose of Correction, a group of local CP enthusiasts with room for another member.

She had used his mobile phone to speak to Helen the secretary of SPOC, and when she was accepted as a member she had endured the initiation of six scorching cane strokes across her tender rump from Jim Mytton. And now, she was about to attend her first meeting.

‘Jim,’ she said as they walked towards the Reserve Room, ‘Do I look all right? I wasn’t sure what to wear.’

He looked at her thoughtfully. She was wearing a sleeveless, dark blue dress, snug at the waist, with a modest scoop neckline and a full, knee-length skirt. Her legs were bare and she wore cream peep-toe shoes with a medium heel.

‘Just right,’ he said. ‘We don’t go in for black leather or St Trinian’s stuff. You look fine, Lucinda.’

They reached the door with the sign: RESERVE ROOM. STRICTLY PRIVATE.

‘You can still turn round and walk away,’ he said. ‘We’ll be disappointed, but we’ll understand.’

Lucinda took a deep breath. ‘I made my decision outside,’ she said. ‘Let’s go in.’

----//----

The room was as she remembered it; in effect, a workshop equipped for every variety of corporal punishment. There was the sturdy wooden trestle with the padded leather top at waist level, bolted to the floor. An equally sturdy oak table with a long, faded cushion along one side. Several chairs. On one wall, about six feet up, were two substantial steel rings, bolted into the brickwork. And in racks on the walls, lying on the table, hanging on hooks and pegs, were canes, straps, whips, paddles, every kind of punishment implement.

Three days ago she and Jim Mytton had had the room to themselves. Now it seemed full of people, all looking towards her as she entered. A woman came forward, smiling. Slim, blonde, elegant, fortyish. ‘Lucinda!’ she said. ‘Welcome to SPOC. I’m Helen Withington.’

‘Hello, Helen,’ said Lucinda, blushing a little as she remembered the last time Helen had heard her voice, when she was yelping under the cane.

‘This is my husband, Robert.’ A burly man with a broad grin beneath a bristling, sandy moustache.

‘And this is my daughter, Kelly.’ A line from a song came into Lucinda’s head. Tall and tanned and young and lovely, Kelly, at twenty, was all of that; her shining fair hair was plaited into a thick pigtail and tied with a red ribbon. She wore a tight white top and a red miniskirt.

‘As you see,’ said Helen, affectionately, ‘Kelly is rather too big to go across Mummy’s knee now. In fact, she sometimes threatens to put me across hers! Do you think I should let her, Lucinda? I read a letter in a magazine once, from a woman whose daughter gives her a good smack-bottom when she misbehaves. It made me wonder.’

Kelly smiled at Lucinda. ‘I don’t really think I’d spank Mum,’ she said. ‘But I’ve taken an awful lot of punishment since I joined SPOC — it’s about time I had a chance to spank someone!’

‘Perhaps that can be arranged,’ said Mytton, enigmatically.

A handsome, athletic-looking woman wearing a burgundy-coloured shirt and white jeans stepped forward. ‘I’m Marjorie Taverner,’ she said. ‘I gather Helen’s described me in rather unflattering terms, a real she-devil with the tawse, in fact.’

Lucinda recalled her phone conversation with Helen. ‘Something like that,’ she admitted.

Marjorie shook her black curls. ‘I shall discuss that with Helen later. Yes, I can be severe, but I object to her making such an ogress of me!’

‘Rubbish!’ said Helen, unrepentantly. ‘You know you enjoy using that strap, Marjorie.’

‘I shall certainly enjoy using it on you later, Helen!’

There was obviously no malice in the exchange, and the friendly bickering made Lucinda feel more at ease. ‘Do you take punishment as well as giving it, Marjorie?’ she asked.

‘Oh yes. The others would never let me play the stern dominatrix all the time, even if I wanted to.’

‘Let me introduce you to the others,’ said Helen, ‘and then we can make a start.’

So Lucinda exchanged greetings with Frank Kay and Jane Morris and the elderly Miss Foster, who smiled grimly when Helen described her as, ‘Our expert with the birch’.

‘And now,’ said Helen, briskly, ‘let’s start with someone giving my darling daughter the thrashing she deserves! Kelly has not been a good girl since we last met here.’

‘I’m always first!’ pouted Kelly. ‘And anyway, Jim said I’d have a chance to spank someone else.’

‘Did I?’ said Mytton.

‘Well, you sort of hinted.’

‘In that case,’ said Mytton, ‘you’d better put Lucinda across your knee and spank her.’

Overcoming the sensation of a sudden drop in a fast lift, Lucinda said, ‘Rather Kelly than you, Jim! But have I done anything to deserve a spanking?’

‘Of course you have!’ said Mytton. He turned to the others. ‘You should have seen Lucinda a little earlier, trying to kid Sam Earnshaw that she was on the game!’

‘I did not!’ protested Lucinda, red-faced.

‘I can’t blame Sam,’ said Mytton, solemnly. ‘There she was, strolling along, wiggling her hips, oozing sex appeal!’

‘Jim, please!’

‘I think he expected her to produce a price list,’ went on Mytton. ‘You know, so much for straight sex, a bit more for the kinky stuff.’

‘Please!’ begged Lucinda, squirming, ‘can I have my spanking and get it over with?’

‘Oh, how I am going to enjoy this!’ said Kelly, gleefully. ‘Lucinda, come here!’ She sat down and beckoned imperiously. ‘You have been a very naughty girl and I am going to take your knickers down and smack your bare bum in front of everyone.’

‘Yes, Miss,’ said Lucinda, meekly.

If Lucinda had been embarrassed by Mytton’s teasing, that was nothing compared to her feelings as she lay bare-bottomed across Kelly’s lap. She had only once before been spanked in front of an audience, and that had been at a party when she had been pulled across someone’s knee and given a dozen quick smacks on the seat of her skirt. The same thing had happened to some of the other girls and it was all in fun anyway, so it hadn’t been too shaming, but this was very different.

Kelly began to spank. Although she smacked with vigour and enthusiasm it was by no means as painful as the spanking Lucinda had taken from Mytton three days earlier, and her first reaction was to lie quietly, showing little response. Then she realised that she must be disappointing Kelly and the spectators by her impassivity, and when Kelly paused, as though wondering whether to continue, Lucinda quickly began to squirm and moan. ‘Please, Kelly!’ she gasped, ‘That really hurts! I didn’t think you’d spank so hard!’

‘A half-hearted spanking is no use at all,’ said Kelly. ‘You have to learn your lesson, Lucinda.’ It sounded like something Kelly had heard many times when her own bottom was suffering. She started to spank again and Lucinda wriggled and yelped and kicked to everybody’s great satisfaction. It wasn’t all acting. Kelly’s spanking technique might have been inexperienced but her slaps still stung, and by the time she said breathlessly, ‘That’s it, you can get up now,’ Lucinda’s shapely rump was very sore.

‘I thought you took that very well,’ said a quiet voice beside her. It was the man who had been named to her as Frank Kay. During the introductions he had just been a hand to shake, a face to glance at before passing on to the next. Now she saw him as an individual, a stocky man a few years older than herself with a square, pleasant face and an air of good-humoured self-confidence. His smile did not seem to be mocking her, but rather inviting her to share his amusement at the unlikely, bizarre, often downright ludicrous antics of the human race in search of pleasure.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Of course I’ve had plenty of experience — and I expect you’d be delighted to give me more!’

She became embarrassingly aware that her knickers were a forlorn little tangle of fabric around her ankles. ‘There doesn’t really seem much point in putting these on again for a while,’ she said, and stepped out of them.

Frank stooped and picked them up. ‘I’ll take care of them for you,’ he said.

‘Somehow,’ said Lucinda, ‘I don’t think this is the first time you’ve pocketed a warm pair of panties from a girl with a well-smacked bottom!’

Frank grinned. ‘It isn’t. Although I’m usually the one who’s been doing the smacking.’

‘The girls you spank,’ said Lucinda. ‘Is there… are they…’

‘If you mean, is there a deep, meaningful relationship,’ said Frank, ‘the answer is no. Brief, casual encounters, that’s all, great fun but nothing serious. And anyway they usually come to an end after the first spanking.’

‘You find the girls resent it?’

‘Usually they’re more startled than resentful,’ said Frank. ‘But even the ones who seem to enjoy it don’t generally stay around for a repeat performance.’

Lucinda shook her head. ‘You’ll get into trouble one day, Frank. It only needs one girl to turn nasty.’

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘What I need is a steady relationship with a nice girl who understands what it’s all about and enjoys her part in it as much as I enjoy mine.’

‘Anyone special in mind?’ asked Lucinda, casually.

‘Lucinda,’ he said, ‘when I saw you across Kelly’s lap and your knickers came down, I thought, that’s a bottom I would be happy to tan frequently and thoroughly.’

‘Oh Frank,’ she said teasingly, ‘you say the most romantic things. Ow!’ The concluding yelp came as a vigorous bottom-slap stung through the thin material of her dress.

She glared at him indignantly, but then his hand returned to her bottom, not punishing this time but stroking, caressing, gently squeezing. She became aware of the most delightful sensations, glowing, throbbing, spreading. ‘Oh Frank!’ she sighed. ‘Oh, that’s nice.’

‘Can you two leave the lovey-dovey stuff till later?’ enquired Jim Mytton, drily. ‘There are more bottoms to be tanned at this meeting.’

Blushing vividly Lucinda moved away from Frank, trying not to catch anyone’s eye.

‘You enjoyed spanking Lucinda, did you, Kelly?’ asked Marjorie. ‘Well now it’s your turn. Weren’t you among that crowd of young rowdies who filled the car park of the Birley Arms with broken glass?’

Kelly looked crestfallen. ‘I don’t know how you found out about that,’ she blurted. ‘It was just a bit of fun that got out of hand.’

‘Really? Well, tonight, Kelly, your elders and betters are going to take you firmly in hand. To begin with, you can take off your skirt.’

Kelly quickly obeyed, displaying diminutive black bikini pants beneath her white top. Marjorie picked up a leather paddle from the table. ‘Touch your toes, Kelly.’

Again, Kelly obeyed immediately. Little muscles were jumping in her long, shapely bare legs. Her firm, apple-round buttocks were the focus of every eye.

Marjorie swung the paddle and tough leather cracked resoundingly upon bare feminine flesh. Kelly gasped but stayed in position. Crack! The paddle landed again. A louder gasp, and Kelly’s outstretched fingers turned into clenched fists.

Marjorie missed nothing. ‘I told you to touch your toes, Kelly!’ The fingers uncurled again, touched Kelly’s trainers. ‘You are going to learn obedience before I’ve finished with you girl, indeed you are!’ Crack!

A fourth impact of the paddle across Kelly’s shapely seat and then Marjorie commanded, ‘Stand up!’

Kelly did so, looking puzzled rather than relieved. Marjorie handed her the paddle. ‘Now go to every person in the room in turn, Kelly, hand them the paddle and ask them to give you four stingers.’

Kelly looked around at the assembled, expectant members, hesitated for a moment and then approached Jim Mytton. ‘Please, sir,’ she said, ‘will you whack my bottom four times with this?’

‘Certainly Kelly.’ Mytton took the paddle and waited for her to touch her toes again. ‘Your cheeks are looking nice and rosy already. I’ll warm them up a bit more for you.’

Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Four thwacking impacts of the paddle upon Kelly’s near-naked bottom, each bringing a shrill yelp from the unfortunate culprit.

‘Stand up, Kelly. Now, what do you say?’

‘Th-thank you, sir,’ mumbled Kelly, head downcast

‘That’s right. Here’s the paddle. Who’s going to be next?’

Kelly stood in front of Lucinda. Somehow she managed a wobbly smile. ‘Here’s where you get your own back, Lucinda. Please lay on really hard, or Marjorie will say they don’t count.’

She bent over, hands down-stretched. Lucinda looked at the leather-scorched curves, obviously very hot and sore already, and remembered the delight with which Kelly had welcomed the chance to spank her. ‘You’ll have to excuse my inexperience, Kelly,’ she murmured, ‘but I’ll do my best for you.’

She gave Kelly four hard, deliberate strokes of the paddle, pausing after each to let the fiery sting reach its peak before whacking the next one across Kelly’s squirming bottom. When Kelly stood up there were big tears rolling down her face and it was an obvious effort for her to whimper, ‘Thank you, Lucinda.’

Lucinda watched as the girl went from one to another, offering the paddle, dutifully bending over to present her delightful posterior for punishment, howling, weeping and pleading as the paddle did its disciplinary work but always, somehow, managing to miserably stammer out her thanks for the punishment. When she finally returned the paddle to Marjorie she looked extremely sorry for herself.

‘So far so good, Kelly,’ said Marjorie, approvingly. ‘Now I shall just put you across my knee and take those absurd little panties down.’

‘Oh no!’ wailed Kelly. ‘Oh please, Marjorie, don’t smack my bum, not yet! Let me cool off for a few minutes, please, just a few minutes, that’s all!’

‘Come here, you silly girl!’ said Marjorie, impatiently, and sitting down she pulled the weeping girl across her broad thighs and peeled her briefs down. ‘Making such a fuss about a sore bottom at your age! I’ve half a mind to take the back of a hairbrush to you — and I will, later! For now, five minutes under my hand will teach you to respect other people’s property.’

‘I’m sorry, Miss!’ blubbered Kelly, squirming under Marjorie’s firm grasp. ‘I won’t do it again, I promise I won’t! Waaaah!’

Five noisy minutes later, Kelly was sobbing her heart out in a corner, hands on head. ‘Now,’ said Marjorie, cheerfully, ‘who’s next?’

‘I want to smack Helen!’ announced Jane Morris. ‘It’s about time — I haven’t punished her for two meetings.’

Lucinda looked at Mrs Morris in some surprise. She was a plump, bespectacled, amiable little woman who looked like the winner of the home-made jam contest at the village fete. Anyone less like a strict disciplinarian was hard to imagine.

‘How do you want me, Jane?’ asked Helen.

‘Stand on that low stool,’ replied Mrs Morris. ‘Now lift your skirts. Right up, dear, let’s all see your knickers!’

Blushing and reluctant, Helen displayed very shapely legs in tautly suspendered stockings, topped by bare white thighs and pale green French knickers. Mrs Morris calmly unclipped the suspenders and rolled the stockings to Helen’s ankles. ‘And now, Helen,’ she said, ‘I am going to smack your legs.’

It did not, at first, sound a formidable threat, but as Lucinda watched the tender flesh of thighs and calves redden under Mrs Morris’s methodical slapping, saw Helen wince and heard her gasp, she realised that it was more of an ordeal than she had supposed. Soon Helen was squirming and hopping on the stool, performing an odd little dance of shame and pain, while the smacking went inexorably on. When Mrs Morris stopped smacking, it was only to pick up a martinet, and soon Helen was weeping bitterly as the biting thongs lashed her crimson thighs and calves.

When the whipping was over, Mrs Morris noticed Lucinda’s fascinated stare and nodded pleasantly to her. ‘People do seem to concentrate on the bottom when they’re punishing,’ she said calmly. ‘That’s all very well, but other parts of the anatomy should not be neglected. Remember that when you come to correct someone.’

‘Usually,’ said Lucinda, ruefully, ‘I’m the one who’s corrected!’

‘Speaking of which,’ said Frank, ‘has your bottom cooled down after Kelly’s spanking?’

‘A little,’ said Lucinda, warily.

‘Have you ever been walloped with one of these?’ said Frank. He held out an eighteen-inch plastic ruler.

‘As it happens,’ said Lucinda, as calmly as possible, ‘I haven’t.’

‘Then this is a good time to try it,’ said Frank. He took her by the wrist and led her to the padded trestle.

‘Over you go, Lucinda,’ he said. Very aware of the watching, amused faces, she obeyed.

‘You’ll find a bar low down on the other side,’ he said. ‘Keep hold of it. It will help you to stay in position. Jumping up without permission automatically means six strokes of the Lochgelly tawse across your bottom, and the original punishment starts again from the beginning.’

‘Thanks for telling me!’ said Lucinda. Her face burned as she felt her dress turned up to expose her naked bottom and legs. She had already suffered the indignity of a spanking before people she had only just met. This would be worse; she would be making a squirming, pleading, weeping exhibition of herself without even having deserved punishment.

‘I won’t decide on a specific number of strokes,’ said Frank’s voice behind her. ‘I’ll just whack that lovely rear end of yours until it’s hot enough to make toast on. Your thighs too, remembering Jane’s advice. I’ve a feeling we’re going to have a long and interesting relationship, Lucinda, and I’d like to have some idea of what you can take.’

‘And when you’ve got her nicely roasting, Frank,’ said Helen’s voice, ‘I will take over. Jim says her bottom wriggles very nicely under the cane and I want to see for myself.’

Lucinda grasped the bar firmly and took a deep breath. By coming here she had invited punishment, offered herself as a willing victim. Now it only remained to endure and, in that incredible, inexplicable way, to enjoy her ordeal.

First the plastic ruler, smacking and stinging her wincing buttocks and her quivering thighs, again and again and again to the very borders of endurance, while she yelled and implored and wept. Then a brief pause, sobbing, gasping, half convinced that she must, after all, have done something wrong and desperately trying to remember what it might be, ‘I’m sorry!’ she moaned. ‘I’m truly, truly sorry!’

‘That’s what I like to hear,’ said Helen’s voice. ‘The genuine sound of true repentance which only a well-tanned bottom can inspire. And now, Lucinda, I am holding a brand new rattan cane, which I am going to apply to those rosy cheeks of yours with considerable severity. Jim gave you six of the best, didn’t he? Well I’m going to cane your legs as well, so I think we’ll say ten this time.’

‘Please, Helen,’ moaned Lucinda. ‘I’m not a very naughty girl, really I’m not!’

And then the cane slashed across her naked, ruler-roasted buttocks. Helen took her time and the torment seemed never-ending, but despite the anguish of her exquisitely hot and sore bottom and the incredible pain of a wickedly wielded cane biting into the tender flesh of plump, bare thighs, Lucinda managed to hold onto the bar until she was told she could get up.

They made her stand facing the wall afterwards with her hands on her head and her dress pinned up to expose her punished bottom and legs, they warned her that she would go back across the trestle if she spoke or moved without permission, but even in that position of disgrace Lucinda felt a secret pride. She had endured to the end, she had proved a worthy member of SPOC. She thought that Frank would be pleased with her. That seemed very important.

Behind her she heard Kelly taking the second stage of her punishment, howling across Marjorie’s lap, naked from the waist down, receiving the hairbrush spanking she had been promised. She heard Frank say, ‘Hold your hands out, Kelly,’ and then the crack and the yelp as Kelly took the first of six scorching strap strokes upon her palms and fingers. And finally Kelly pleading, ‘Not the birch! Please, please, don’t birch me!’

‘You shall be birched, Kelly,’ said Miss Foster’s voice.

‘Most soundly birched! And Helen shall go across the table at your side for an equal dose. A dozen apiece to begin with, I think, and then I shall decide how many more you need.’

The heartfelt soprano duet of birch-inspired eloquence seemed to go on for a long time, but when it was over Lucinda was allowed to turn around, in time to hear Jim Mytton say ‘Marjorie, you’ve been getting away scot free so far. I reckon you’re overdue for a damn good hiding!’

Marjorie smiled. ‘What have you in mind, Jim? Knickers down and a good smack-bottom? I’m rather in the mood for that.’

‘That’s not a punishment for you!’ said Mytton, good-humouredly. ‘It’s just fun and games. No, I think we’ll try something different. Strip, Marjorie. Everything off.’

She hesitated for only a moment before starting to unbutton her shirt. ‘This is something new,’ she said. ‘I don’t think we’ve had anyone punished completely naked before.’

She took off the shirt, kicked off her shoes, unzipped her jeans and removed them.

‘You can keep your socks on,’ said Mytton.

‘That would seem more indecent somehow,’ she said. She took them off, reached back and unhooked her bra. At least my tits are in reasonable shape,’ she said, as her full breasts swung free.

‘Fancy your blush going that far down,’ said Mytton. ‘Get your drawers off, Marjorie.’

‘You bastard!’ she said, and threw her knickers at him.

He caught them, grinning, and handed them to Frank. ‘Add those to your collection, lad.’ He picked up two narrow leather straps. ‘Hold your wrists out, Marjorie.’

‘You want me on the rings?’ she said. ‘All right — but I won’t be fastened. Put the straps away, Jim.’

Mytton stepped to a wall rack and looked round at the watching group. ‘You’ve heard of women being whipped at the cart’s tail back in Tudor times?’ he said. ‘Most people think it was done with a kind of cat o’ nine tails. Usually it was with one of these.’ He showed them a wooden handle with a long, heavy leather strap attached. ‘It didn’t cut the back to pieces like a cat would,’ he said. ‘Though it sometimes drew blood because they did the entire whipping on the back. I’m going to spread it out a bit. That’s why I didn’t just have Marjorie strip to the waist.’

‘And bloody chilly it is standing here without a stitch on!’ she said. ‘If I’d known this was coming I’d have asked you to turn the heating up.’

‘You’ll soon be a damn sight warmer,’ he said. ‘On the rings, Marjorie.’

She walked to the wall and stood facing it, one hand grasping each steel ring. They all looked at the white, unblemished flesh of arms and back and buttocks and legs.

‘Ready, Marjorie?’ said Mytton. ‘Here we go, then.’

He swung the whip and the leather thong cracked across her back at shoulder level. She jerked and cried out sharply. The whip left another weal, just below the first This time she choked the cry down to a gasp, but she writhed where she stood with her nipples pressed against the brickwork. He gave her four more strokes, working downwards, and by the time the last one landed she was moaning loudly and her forearm muscles stood out as she gripped the rings. Then he started again, from the top. As the whip landed on flesh already swollen and throbbing she shrieked. By the time the second set of six lashes was over Marjorie was howling out sobbing entreaties, but she still clung desperately to the rings.

Mytton stepped back. ‘Now someone else can warm her backside,’ he said. ‘How about you, Lucinda? You’ve taken a lot more punishment than you’ve given so far. Anyway, it used to be the job of schoolteachers to make sure naughty girls couldn’t sit down in comfort.’

‘Before my time, I’m glad to say,’ said Lucinda. ‘The idea of beating children never appealed to me. Having a grown woman offering her arse for punishment is another matter. Twelve of the very best on the way, Marjorie.’ She swung the whip hard to crack solidly across the meatiest part of Marjorie’s generously curved buttocks.

----//----

‘Frank,’ said Lucinda, sometime later, ‘I hope my fidgeting doesn’t annoy you, but to tell the truth I can hardly bear to sit down!’

Frank smiled at her as she sat, or rather wriggled beside him in the car. ‘That’s the usual effect of a girl’s first visit to SPOC. I hope you haven’t found it too — er — exciting.’

‘It won’t put me off coming to the next meeting, if that’s what you mean. Three weeks between meetings will be just the right interval for the marks on my bum to fade and for me to anticipate the next time. Anyway, I couldn’t abandon the friends I’ve made — and one in particular. Why are you stopping the car?’

‘It’s a road junction,’ pointed out Frank. ‘If we turn left it leads to your flat, where I escort you to your door, shake hands and drive away. If we turn right, it leads to my home, where other things may happen.’

‘Do you usually invite girls home on the first meeting, Frank?’

‘Only very special girls.’

Lucinda smiled. ‘You mean pretty girls with good figures who’ve shown they don’t mind having their bottoms tanned?’

‘Such girls,’ said Frank, sadly, ‘are all too rare.’

‘And when such a girl visits you, is there a good chance she’ll be soundly spanked and sent to bed, no matter how sore she may be already?’

‘Not sent to bed,’ said Frank. ‘Taken.’

‘Frank,’ said Lucinda, ‘I already know you’re a good man with a plastic ruler. It would be very interesting to discover what you can do with your open hand when you’ve got a girl comfortably settled down bare-bottomed across your lap, and plenty of time to make a good job of it.’

‘Even if her bottom is very sore already?’

‘Especially since her bottom is very sore already. Drive on, Frank. Turn right!’