Daring

I am a little baffled by the reactions to the disturbing image I blogged about but that is only to be expected. I think some of you, at least, feel that this is something that happens to you too. That something you feel you don't like still intrigues you. Enough of that now.

It struck me that I am as embarrassed about silly fantasies as about wicked ones. When I started blogging I wanted to talk about all kinds of fantasies and share some of the personal and silly ones. I feel that I want to return to that. So here is a kind of fantasy that is one of those that are close to reality but still very much just an idea. And quite silly.

Heart is beating hard. Cheeks are hot. I almost stumble, feeling dizzy. My legs are trembling as I enter the bus and look around for a seat. I believe there must be something haunted in my gaze, something uncanny.

There aren't many passengers and most of them sit towards the front. This is good. This will make it easier, make it possible.

I go to the rear, almost no one there. I sit down, look around. Behind the seat I am protected. It will be possible. It is doable.

It is such a lovely day, sunshine makes the streets look cheerful, sunshine makes my head full of courage.

Why am I so obsessed? From where comes this idea? I can't do it. No, it is impossible. No one is looking. It is possible. I can't do it.

If someone tells me to do it. That is the answer. I am not free to do what I want. That is the key. I am not my own any more. I sit on the bus and someone is in charge. I have to obey.

I have to hurry. At the next stop someone may board the bus who will sit at the rear, someone who will see.

My hands tremble as I reach under my skirt, my lovely thin, white summer skirt. My fingers feel the fabric of my knickers. This is madness! I have to do it!

I close my eyes, take a deep breath and start to move the knickers down. Like a terrified bird I look around. No one notices me. They are all occupied with other things. That is good.

I shift my position, let the knickers slide down from my bottom. I can't believe I am doing it. Someone has told me to do it. I have to do it. I take a deep breath and continue.

Knickers glide slowly down my thighs. They are free from my bottom.

The bus stops. My heart stops beating. What happens if someone sits close to me? I can't put my knickers back on, and they will fall off if I rise. Have to move quickly.

The old woman sits at the front. A man rises for her. He walks back but sits down three seats in front of me. I can breath.

I slide the knickers close to my knees. Now it has to be done. I have to be quick. Still they are covered by my skirt.

In one movement I let them slip over my knees and with beating heart I feel them fall to my feet. I have to lean forward, free them from my feet, quickly. No one is allowed to see.

Panic takes a hold of me as my knickers get tangled up in my feet. I manage to free them and crumple them into a small ball in my hand. Now I am unclad.

I hide my knickers between the seat and the wall of the bus. I don't know why I have to do this. They have to be lost for me, left on the bus. Makes it more shameful. They will be there, on the bus, when I leave. Someone may find then and wonder, laugh at them.

My cheeks are red. Wonder if someone notice it?

One more thing to do on the bus. I start to pull my skirt up. I have to look around. No one is looking. I have to shift my position again, slowly working my skirt upwards.

I feel the rough seat against my skin. Makes me feel naked. Makes me feel exposed. It is me touching the world, it is my body close against the harsh reality. I am naked underneath my skirt and only I know I am. Only I know my skin is touching the world.

The sense of degradation sweeps through me. I am glad no one sees my humiliation. I don't do this myself. I have to do it.

Elation fills me, and a sense of confidence. And perhaps pride. Humiliation and pride, what a strange combination.

I feel alive, alive and bad.

Someone enters the bus and walks towards me. He can't be allowed to see. My trembling hands make sure my skirt is in order. He won't understand.

He walks past me and I am safe. I take a deep breath.

At the next stop I rise and my skirt falls down. No one can see that I am naked underneath it. I won't look back, won't check the seat. I just leave the bus. I am mad.

My skirt falls to just above my knees. That is scary. The wind may take hold of it, flip it up. Still no one can see.

Unless it is written in my face. Maybe it is. Maybe anyone who sees me knows I am naked underneath my skirt.

I feel naked, more than just knickerless. I seem to be unclad and that anyone looking at me sees how naked I am. My heart beats faster.

My knickers are still on the bus. They are forever gone. And I feel vulnerable, as if anyone can walk up to me, lift my skirt and touch me. As if politeness and inhibitions are gone. Any time now. I walk in a dream.

But I am just another citizen, another girl in skirt walking through the streets. My dream is my dream and soon I will take the bus home. Nothing has happened.

I wonder how I will sit on the bus home.

Consent

Dear Readers, I am truly sorry for not blogging last week. Life has been busy, mostly good things but some bad ones too. Life is like that, isn't it? Bad and good things, in a mix. Now, I am trying to sound philosophical. I will leave that immediately. Anyway, I will try to blog twice a week.

Last entry in my blog made me think. Some people pointed out that they weren't at all excited by the image and there were some interesting discussions. Wilhelmina pointed out that she needed consent for it to be arousing.

Consent is important. It is crucial for all sorts of real life activity – at least of the kind of kinky varieties we are dealing with here. It is so important that it is really easy for me to state that spanking, for example, is wrong unless both parties agree. This makes it wrong, wrong, wrong to spank children. And I am not going to accept the argument that a child may choose between different kinds of punishments and thus consent to a spanking. That is just a silly argument.

No, I am not inviting you to discuss spanking of children. This area is a complete no no for me and I will not enter into any arguments. Full stop.

Back to my point. I do think consent is crucial in real life and it makes for good stories. There is so much to explore regarding that. And I do think most of my stories are about consent or some kind of accepting what is happening.

I still think the mind is allowed to roam more freely. There is something intriguing in non consensual situations, or situations when someone is forced to accept what happens to them.

What I am trying to say, is that there is something very sweet about stories about consensual situations, romantic meetings that have a kinky edge and all that. You should know by now that I do like that. But there is also something fascinating with something a tad crueller and I think we should allow that to happen in our fantasies and in our stories.

I think I am preaching for the converted but I wanted to say this anyway.

Disturbing Images

You have them too, I am sure. Those images that are disturbing, showing something bad, something you don't like. Still you can't avoid looking at them, being fascinated by them and even aroused. And the more you decide that this image, actually, is not something you should be excited about the more excited you get. Is it the sense of it being forbidden? The sense that this is too bad to be allowed to be intriguing?

This is such an image for me. I am fascinated by it and to some extent it is because it is cruel.

Where do I begin to talk about it? Describing it may be a good start. What do we have here? Two men, looking very 70s, one with shirt and hat, the other with no shirt. They are holding a woman and she is, really the centre of attention. She is naked, very naked. And she is bound, her hands behind her back. She is held by the men and they seem to be lifting her onto some kind of pole, a sculpted pole and you seem to know that they intend to impale her on it.

She looks scared. She looks in horror at the sculpted pole. Yes, I see it looks like a man's sex but I am a little too embarrassed to shout about that.

I am not sure it is going to hurt her. Her fear may have to do with being humiliated by it all and feeling helpless.

But here we have a very naked and bound woman, about to be impaled on a menacing looking pole. She is terrified and if you like, this is a picture of cruelty, and abuse. The expression on her face seems to suggest that this is not about mutual pleasure. Rather it is about those men wanting to humiliate her, or even hurt her.

There is something in her utter desperation and helplessness and her nudity that makes this picture very charged for me. She is in the hand of two strong men and she is, in addition, bound, even made more helpless.

This is not a picture of something nice. On the contrary, it is quite cruel. Still, and this is the crucial point, still I find it exciting. We don't have to explain, to find the symbolism that makes us sleep well. I accept it to be disturbing and arousing at the same time. I will not admit that it shows something I want happen. It is not a nice fantasy, far from it. It is an arousing picture that still, after all the times I have looked at it, disturbs me.

Another One

Dear Readers, I am back. My mind is still in as strange place but some of the texts come out of it are possible to put on the blog. And some of you said you didn't mind more of the same so here is a variation on a known theme. Hopefully it is a little different.

This is a rather long story but i decided to put it here anyway.

'Do you know what this is?' he said and put his hand on the wooden pillar that supported the roof in the barn.

'A beam,' I replied looking at him.

He smiled. That smile scared me but it also intrigued me immensely. He had something in mind and I knew it wasn't just a pillar, or a beam or some piece of wood.

'It is a whipping post,' he said, his smile just a tad menacing.

I strange kind of charge surged through my body. I blushed and felt silly for doing it.

His smile changed the whole atmosphere in the room. The mentioning of the whipping post had shocked me, hit me between the eyes, made me aware of what that smile meant.

His hand caressed the surface of the wood.

I nodded.

'You see the rope here?' he said and took hold of a rope that ran through an sturdy iron ring high up on the pillar.

'Yes,' I said, unable to say much more.

The rope was smooth and rather thin, but strong enough, I was sure, to bind, to tie someone like me with. I blushed again.

'If I want to whip someone,' he said, 'I tie them with this rope.'

There was nothing in the tone or the prosody that told me but I knew who that someone would be. I knew he spoke of me.

It could have been a silly display of a man's toys but his way of saying that he may want to whip someone made it seem frightening, rather than ridiculous.

I drew my breath. I was scared. I felt it in my whole body. The strangest of things was that I didn't fret. I was scared but I felt that I wanted that fear. Maybe it wasn't fear, maybe it was anticipation, expectation.

'If I was to whip you,' he said, his words coming closer to me, 'then I would have you stretch out your arms on either side of the post.'

He looked at me, making sure I was listening. He scrutinised me for a while as if to try to figure out what I was thinking.

'Then, you see,' he continued, 'I would tie your wrists together, with this rope, so you were standing, facing the pole embracing it.'

He looked at me. I nodded.

'To secure you to the post, I would pull at the rope so that you had to lift your arms. Maybe I would be cruel to you and pull so hard that you had to stand on tip toes.'

When he talked about being cruel to me that strange charge surged through me again. I held my breath, felt my heart beat faster, my cheeks burn.

'Then, when you were standing like that, hand above your head, embracing the post, your body pressed to the wood, then you would be ready to be whipped.'

He looked at me, scrutinised me.

'What are you thinking of?' he asked.

'How helpless you would feel,' I replied, my mouth dry.

'Indeed,' he said, 'you would. That is the very point, to tie you helpless, ready to be whipped.'

I nodded.

'A very cruel thing,' he continued, 'to whip a person, like that. She is helpless, at your command, at your mercy and all you do, all you choose for her is to whip her. You deny her the possibility of defending herself and then you beat her with a whip, just to make her suffer. That is cruel.'

He enjoyed it. He enjoyed the thought of being cruel to someone. He enjoyed the thought of being cruel to me. I was scared but I stood there. I didn't run.

Did I want him to be cruel to me? Did I want him to tie me to that pole and whip me? In my mind all of this seemed so romantic, the passion, the whip, the agony, the ecstasy, the pain as a companion to lust. But standing by this pole, this sturdy, wooden post, with its iron ring, its ropes and with this man it all seemed so real, so frightening, so full of real pain, real unforgiving pain, real relentless pain, pain that seared through you and was just horrible and cruel and excruciating.

'It is of course worse if you are naked,' he said.

His words brought me back to reality. It brought me back to the unforgiving pain, the cruel pain.

But his mentioning of being naked made my body shiver. There was true fear, the fear of being bared to the whip and its pain, but also the charge, the red wave that shot through me and seemed to focus between my legs.

He walked over to the wall and now I saw that this was were he kept his tools. Neatly hanging side by side on hooks were horsewhips and crops and canes and some menacing looking whips. I didn't know the names of half of them.

He took a horsewhip from one hook. Held it out, looked at it, swished it through the air. Seemed to decide it was a good tool, turned to me and approached me.

I almost took a step back as he came closer.

'Of course it seems rather pointless to allow the one you are whipping clothes,' he said, 'it seems to defy the very purpose of whipping them in the first place.'

I didn't answer. The very matter of factly way he spoke of whipping someone made it seem even crueller, even more menacing.

The idea of baring the skin that was to be whipped seemed logical to him, a rational part of the overall plan. But to the one being whipped, to me, if I was tied to that pole, it would mean something completely different. It would mean more excruciating pain, and the baring a deliberate and humiliating part of something immensely cruel.

'This horsewhip,' he said, 'is designed to sting through the thick hide of a horse. It is not meant for the soft skin of a woman, not the bared skin of a woman.'

He swished the whip through the air and I had to take a step back, my heart beating wildly.

'This makes it a good tool for whipping a woman.'

He looked at me.

'It must really hurt,' I said, sensing that this was a very trivial and obvious thing to say.

'It is meant to hurt,' he said, smiling.

He looked at me and I knew he was intent on hurting me, whipping me. He wanted to tie me to the post and whip me. This thought made me dizzy.

Did I trust him? Would I let him do it? Would I be sure he wouldn't harm me; hurt me but not harm me? Did I want him to hurt me?

'Are you ready?' he said.

How could I know if I was ready? Could you be ready for such a thing? The pain, the excruciating pain. And the humiliation. How helpless wouldn't you be, tied to that post, unable to defend yourself and knowing that he was to use that helplessness to make you suffer. How could you possibly want that?

I nodded.

It was easy to nod. It was easy to just tilt your head a little and set it all in motion. He made it easy. I was in the middle of a turmoil of emotions and sensations and I had no idea what I wanted, if I wanted it, what it entailed. It was easy to nod and say yes and let it happen. It was like pulling a trigger, a tiny movement of the finger that could kill someone. From this moment, from this tiny nod, he had to do it, he had to help me through. I couldn't do it alone.

'Take your top off!' he commanded.

I was shocked by his bluntness. Having me taking my top off meant he was really baring me for the whip. There would be no protective cover. He had said it would be pointless to whip a woman unless her skin was bared but it all seemed too cruel to imagine.

I slipped my top off and in an instant the scene changed. Up to this point, everything, the post, the ropes and even the whip in his hand had been something we talked about, something we imagined. We were two people talking about cruel things, or rather he telling me about them. Now I was changed.

He was still clad, in his jacket, his black trousers and his shoes. I was not fully clad. I stood there with my top in my hands and my bosom bared. I was no longer just an ordinary person listening to his talk of cruel things. I had become a half naked woman standing by a whipping post.

The room was charged with the new tension. He looked at me. He looked me over. He took his time. He smiled. He showed me he liked what he saw. His gaze lingered on my breasts, my bared breasts and he showed no hesitation, no shame. I blushed.

He took my top from my hands and put it on a crate that stood behind him. I felt even more naked as I saw my top being moved further away from me and with him standing between me and it. It was beyond reach and I was just a woman with no top on, with her breasts on full display.

I didn't try to cover up. It seemed pointless. And there was something in the situation that compelled me to accept his gaze, accept him being able to look at me. Maybe I felt as if it was a kind of punishment this would be part of it, the baring of the breasts and the man looking at them and the woman not allowed to cover up.

Standing there being looked at with no top on made me feel embarrassed, self conscious and scared but there was also a strange kind of satisfaction, a hidden excitement that lurked inside me.

'Come here!' he said as he stood by the post.

I knew it was time for me to be tied to it. My heart was beating hard in my chest.

He took hold of the rope as I approached the post and I walked close to it and stopped. I waited. I didn't stretch out my arms. I didn't know what I was supposed to do now.

'Arms!' he said.

I stretched out my arms on either side of the post. The closeness to the uneven but smooth surface of the post made me aware of my relative nudity. I didn't want my skin to touch the post. I don't know why I feared it. It seemed cold and unwelcoming and I wasn't prepared to feel the rough world against my skin at that moment. I knew it would come but not just yet.

He grabbed my hands and gently crossed my wrists. I held them like that when he let go and encircled them with the rope. He draw it taut and tied it and I was bound.

It struck me that I was no longer in control of my body. Up till that moment I could have turned and run but now I was tied. Now I couldn't even take a step back.

I thought about the fact that he had allowed me to keep my jeans on. Did it possibly mean that I was going to be whipped on my jeans, that this taking off of my top was just to make me feel more naked, more vulnerable but he would be kind enough to whip me on my jeans.

I thought of the fabric in my jeans, the denim and how much it would protect me. I supposed there would be a difference. Why else this talk about baring a woman for the whip?

Or was he going to whip me on the back? The thought startled me. After all, that was how it was done in the olden days. A real flogging was on the back. For some reason I had imagined being whipped on the bottom. You were spanked on the bottom, it all seemed natural but this may be different.

I was strangely disappointed. I was shocked at this realisation. I was really and truly disappointed. I had imagined the embarrassment and the humiliation of having my jeans being lowered, my bottom bared, being stripped naked and although I felt only shame and fear I knew, deep in my heart, that I had wanted it, had expected it.

He took his end of the rope and started to pull. I felt my arms being lifted in the air. Up until that moment I had been able to stand with my arms away from the post and my upper body some inches free. But when my arms were lifted I had to come closer. My arms touched the cold surface first and I shivered, then I had to lean my upper body against it. I struggled to avoid it although I knew it was inevitable in the end.

First my nipples touched to wood and then my breasts and then I pressed even closer. The surface was smooth but uneven and very cold. Having my arms hoisted in the air made me feel more helpless and exposed to this whipping post than before and sensing my naked skin, the sensitive skin on my breasts and belly press against its surface made me feel very naked.

He pulled me skywards and I felt the strain in my arms. He stopped just short of forcing me up on tip toes.

'Now you are almost ready to receive your whipping,' he said and I was startled by his words. He brought me back to his grim reality and all the dread of his whip returned to me.

I felt my body tremble as I prepared to feel the whip land on my back. My mind was blank and I could only think: 'now it happens, now it becomes real.'

'Just one thing,' he said, 'those jeans. I hope you didn't expect to be allowed to keep them on.'

I gasped. I was not prepared for this. I almost cried out in agony. I was trembling as I felt him approaching.

Suddenly there was intimacy. He was close to me, I felt his closeness, sensed his smell, heard him breathe. He stood behind me and his jacket brushed against my naked back, making me feel even more exposed, more vulnerable.

I gasped as I felt his hand find their way over my hips. He was so close it made me tremble. That red wave surged through me again and my cheeks burned as I felt his fingers take hold of the button in my jeans.

He worked with it, not being able, at first, to undo it. And all the time he was leaning close. I felt him close, both as a threat and a comfort. I felt naked and exposed and touched and this filled my body with a strange arousal that I didn't choose.

The button became undone and he unzipped my jeans. I held my breath as his fingers came close to my sex. I gasped as he let go and took hold of them and started to pull them down my hips.

I was utterly embarrassed as I felt him yank my jeans down from my hips. I felt exposed and wondered if this was what I wanted.

I wasn't to be disappointed, I wasn't to be whipped on my jeans. I was to be undressed at this post and my shameful arousal surged through me and I could do nothing to stop it.

I was ashamed because I wanted to be stripped naked. At that moment I didn't care that I was to be whipped on my naked skin. I just wanted him to take my clothes off and I felt guilty for feeling like that. Maybe even the thought of his whip on my naked skin added to the sense of a guilty pleasure, something I shouldn't feel. I was frightened but that was not all I was.

He made sure I kept my knickers on. They threatened to come down with the jeans but he made sure they stayed in place. He pulled my jeans down my legs and I helped him by lifting my feet as he pulled them free. With my jeans my shoes came off and I felt how cold the floor was as I now stood on bare feet.

I was naked bar my knickers and I felt the cold surface of the whipping post against my thighs and my lower belly.

Again I went through this strange sensation of wondering if he would remove my knickers, that mixed feeling of being glad I wasn't completely naked and the disappointment that he would let me keep them on.

I figured that the thin fabric of my red cotton knickers wouldn't make much difference when he whipped me and perhaps he wanted to grant me this modesty.

Still I had expected him to expose me completely and I wondered why he let me keep my knickers on.

'Almost there,' he said, and I knew he was smiling.

'I wanted you to think that I may, just may, grant you the mercy of keeping those knickers on. But, don't worry, they will come down.'

I felt caught out, as if he had read my mind and knew about the turmoil in my head those knickers had caused.

I held my breath as he took hold of my last item of clothing and gently but swiftly slipped them down my hips and legs. I lifted my feet and stepped out of them. Now I was naked. Now I had nothing that would protect my body against his whip. I was ready.

I froze when he placed the horsewhip across my buttocks. My heart stopped beating. I realised that I was, really, going to be whipped. He was, really, going to hit me with the whip across my naked bottom and it was going to hurt. I knew how much it hurt to hit your own leg with a horsewhip, through the fabric of your jeans. I knew the force and power of it. Now I was going to be hit across my buttocks, my exposed and naked buttocks with the cruel whip.

'I am not,' I said, my voice weak, 'I am not sure, I can do this.'

'Take a deep breath,' he said reassuringly, 'you don't have to do anything.'

I closed my eyes as I felt the whip leave my skin. It was all silent. My mind was racing. How painful was it going to be? How horrible would it be?

I was startled by the hissing sound of the whip through the air and the sharp report when it made contact with my skin. This was the sound of a whipping, the sound of pain.

My bottom exploded. It burned with fire. I wasn't prepared for this. Nothing in my mind could have prepared me for this. I gasped. I squirmed. I couldn't believe how painful it was. It took over my body and exploded in my head. It was unbearable, unthinkable.

As I came round I felt as if a red hot iron was pressed against my buttocks. I was shocked. And in that moment I couldn't imagine this happening again. Surely this was it, surely he would let me go now?

The hissing sound and the sharp report told me otherwise. I cried out in agony and shock. It hurt even more the second time. I heard myself whimper.

'Please, please, I can't take it, please, no more,' I heard the panic in my own voice as I pleaded.

'No, my dear,' he said, his voice calm, 'it is too late now.'

He whipped me again and this time I lifted my feet in agony as I cried out.

'Take a deep breath and calm down,' he said with a soothing voice, 'you are doing fine.'

I cried out in misery and the mockery of this. It seemed cruel to say I was doing fine and to suggest what I should do to cope with it. He wanted this, he wanted me to suffer so why mock me by pretending to help me?

I cried out again as the fourth lash hit me. I squirmed in panic, desperate to get away from this. It overwhelmed me. I wanted it to stop.

He hit me again and I felt how tears came to my eyes, how I started to sob, feeling utterly helpless and miserable.

I braced myself for the sixth but when it hit home I still cried out. The seventh made me whimper. It slowly dawned on me that there was no escape. I had chosen to let me be tied and I had let him whip me and now he wasn't going to let me off the hook. I had to take whatever came my way.

Eight and nine was pure agony but somehow my mind started to settle in a kind of grim determination. I had to brace myself, I had to take this.

'And now, one on the thighs,' he said and immediately he hit the back of my thighs and another kind of pain filled my senses. I can't say it hurt more but it was different and I screamed in pain.

Next one hit across my buttocks again and I jumped.

I can't say I accepted what was happening to me but the pain swept my mind clean and I was thinking of nothing else and how to survive the next. I stopped thinking about when it would be over, I just concentrated on the next one to come.

I settled into a pattern and took what came my way. I cried because it hurt but I didn't think of the unfairness and of his cruelty. I just let it happen. I desperately wanted it to stop but I no longer expected it to stop. I was there, I was only my body being whipped and I was, in one sense, whole.

Then he stopped. I didn't believe it at first but he stopped. I hadn't counted well but I think I had got 23 or 24 plus a couple more on my thighs.

My bottom was numb and there was a certain throbbing, rather than searing pain. I knew, somehow, that when the numbness would disappear I would be very, very sore.

I gasped as I realised he was standing close to me.

'You did well,' he said as he placed his hand on my bottom.

He gently caressed my hot aching skin and it was both cool and soothing and agonising and painful.

I wasn't prepared for sensing him this close and in my sobbing, sweaty and exhausted state I was unprepared for his touch.

A touch is a touch and it is sweet and in this state I didn't care who touched me. It was sweet even if I was touched by the one who had caused me this misery.

'Your bottom is hot,' he said, 'you won't be able to sit on it for a couple of days.'

I sighed at this remark. It seemed so deliberate, so cruel to point it out, to talk about the obvious, as if he enjoyed the fact that I was marked, the fact that I would feel this whipping later. It was as if he was happy and proud he had whipped me. I had suffered and he had enjoyed it. The unfairness of it made me whimper.

But that was not all I felt. This strange cruelty, this unfairness made my body react. His words sent the red wave through me, it started where he touched me and it surged through my body to end between my legs. I trembled.

His hand travelled over my hip, forward, onto my lower belly. I held my breath while his hand moved over my skin. It started fires in me, fires I couldn't resist.

I wondered if his hand would go upwards or downwards. I feared downwards but was still disappointed when it went upwards. It stroked my belly, a finger in my belly button and I gasped as he caressed my breast.

I heard him humming. He liked this. He enjoyed first whipping a woman and then caressing her.

I held my breath as his hand went down my body, over my belly, over my lower belly and in between my legs.

I cried out as his hand rested on my sex, held me there, made my heart beat faster. Then he slipped his fingers into me and invaded me.

I was helpless and I felt ashamed and humiliated by his touch, still I wanted it, still I yearned for it.

I lost track of time but I don't think he held his fingers in my sex for a long time. Still the red wave surged powerful through my body. It was as if the whipping had not brought just pain but also this readiness to being aroused. It surged through me and down to his fingers and I couldn't stop it.

As if I had waited for a long time and the mere touch brought it to a conclusion I came with his fingers in me. I whimpered and gasped as I came, still bound to the whipping post. My legs were weak and I was hanging in my bound wrists.

As I came round he was standing by the rope, ready to untie it. He waited for me to stand on my own legs and when he saw I did he loosened the rope.

I stood trembling as my arms were no longer stretched above my head and he untied my wrists. I still shivered as he turned me to him and took me in his arms.

I found it strange that he would embrace me, he who had whipped me, and I found it strange that I would find comfort in his embrace.

Still I cried against his shoulders while he held me and told me how brave I had been. I didn't feel brave. I felt small and whipped. But I cried.

'You may dress now,' he said, after a while when he sensed that I had composed myself.

As I walked over to my clothes I felt as if the world was returning to me. I started to see the things around me. I started to return to myself.

Gingerly I donned my clothes and when it was done I turned to him. He smiled. He seemed happy, almost cheerful. I found this reassuring and I felt no bitterness. He had whipped me and he had been cruel to me but I felt no bitterness. I wondered why.

I wondered why I had let this happen, why I had let him whip me. Did I want it? I couldn't possibly want it. Why did I let him do it? Maybe I did want it. No one forced me. That must be it. I wanted it. I know I wanted it. I had gone through with it and I had survived.

I looked at him and felt a kind of tenderness for this man. He was handsome and very attractive but I didn't love him. He had done something for me, with me, and maybe I had done something for him.

'I will be here if you ever wish to come back,' he said.

I nodded. Then I turned and went, out into the world. I think I had a faint smile on my face. I think I had.