American Blue (14 page)

The rest of the site was much the same, including two clips of other girls being paddled. Both were in tears, and the heavy thwack of the paddle as it hit their bottoms made my tummy jump and my cheeks tighten, both in sympathy and the involuntary arousal that always comes when I witness another woman’s punishment. I knew they were paid models, and presumably genuinely into spanking, but their pain and their tears were real, and I wasn’t at all comfortable with the way Blue Ridge seemed determined to strip girls of all possibility of anonymity.

Before exploring the site I had more or less decided to abandon Jemima to her fate. Now I wasn’t so sure. Blue Ridge was exactly the sort of thing I’d been worried about, because of both exposure and severity. Unfortunately the exertions of the night before and my long walk across New York were catching up with me. I was having difficulty keeping my eyes open, so sleepy that my fingers were slipping on the mouse. There was nothing for it but to go to bed and decide what to do once I was refreshed. Despite my exhaustion I forced myself to double check that there was no evidence of my snooping about in Hudson’s study, before stripping off and climbing into the shower. The hot water and the feel of soap on my skin was glorious, especially where I was sore from my bondage and fucking. It was also soporific, and I’d no sooner wrapped the largest towel I could find around my body and collapsed on to my bed than I was asleep.

It was not an easy sleep. The dreams started immediately, full of fear and helplessness as I watched Jemima beaten to tears with a huge wooden paddle, knowing all the while that it was my turn next, all on
the
basketball court, with hundreds upon hundreds of grinning, laughing men and women to watch us in our pain and humiliation. Hudson was there, lecturing me on how it was Jemima’s own choice, and Morris, Melody and the other Brooklyn Bitches, the Tribeca Tails too, every one of them with little Stars and Stripes flags and huge wooden paddles.

Worse still, Pippa was in the audience, in tears for her sister, and her mother, horrified by the whole thing, and mine, cold and stern and in no doubt whatsoever that it was all my fault. I woke at that, prickly with sweat as if I had a fever, but went back to sleep almost immediately. Now my head was full of vivid but unconnected images; the bearded man from Blue Ridge telling me he was going to post a picture of my face and bumhole on the university website, Jemima stripped nude and ready for paddling, my own swollen cunt with Buttman Bailey’s cock up my bumhole beneath, Melody’s bottom, huge and black and round as she lowered it into my face, and a vast cartoon rabbit with a monstrous erection pursuing me over Brooklyn Bridge, intent on rape, his erect cock impossibly large for my pussy, so that my only escape was to leap into the river below …

I woke with a jerk, sweaty, shivering and with my hand between my thighs, clutching myself. My fingers were sticky with juice, my clit badly in need of my touch. I rolled on to my back immediately, still half asleep as I began to masturbate, struggling to sort out all the frightening, erotic images in my head. It took just moments, and I did it to all the images together, allowing the fear and excitement and shame to flood over me until I was bucking my hips and clutching hard at my sex and breasts, calling myself a slut and a tart and begging to be beaten and fucked as my orgasm tore through me.

Had anybody asked me, I’d have said I’d been asleep a few minutes, but it was dark outside and a glance at the clock on my bedside table showed me it was close to nine o’clock at night. I’d slept for hours, but I was still alone, the flat eerily quiet, and all the more so for the sounds of the city drifting up from the streets. The sleep had at least refreshed me, and I was famished, not having eaten for well over twenty-four hours.

I ordered a Chinese take-away and sat down at the computer, looking through the Blue Ridge Spanking website. This time I read their blurb, which stressed the realism of their punishments when compared to other sites and even claimed that the girls’ names and sins were real. I was fairly sure they were making most of it up, if not all of it, but it was the gallery I found of sixty sets of four pictures, each of a different girl and showing face, pussy and anus in sequence, that decided me. There was no choice but to go to North Carolina.

Nine

GETTING THERE WAS
another matter. I had two days, and the obvious thing was to take a flight south to the nearest convenient airport and then hire a car. The disadvantage would be that I knew only roughly where Blue Ridge was, and with my luck would end up benighted in some godforsaken motel where the proprietor kept his mother’s stuffed corpse in the basement and liked to make jumpsuits out of girls’ skin. I thought of using a small motorhome instead, which would hopefully enable me to park at campsites with no more risk than of being pushed into rough sex by what I’d once heard Hudson describe as ‘tornado bait’.

While surfing for motorhomes I came across a site that offered not only to hire a thing called a Winnebago but also to collect it from any reasonable location in the United States. The smallest version slept four, apparently quite comfortably, but that would give me the option of bagging Jemima and driving her to the nearest city with an international airport, an option that was becoming increasingly tempting. After all, she wasn’t going to pay any attention to me otherwise, and it would mean I could get her away from Hudson’s influence. How I could physically get her into the vehicle if she didn’t want to
come
was another matter, something I’d just have to deal with when the time came.

The more I thought about the scheme the better it seemed. I could even pick up my Winnebago from a lot to the north of Manhattan and leave first thing in the morning. They had one called a Classic, which was a sort of luxury bedsit on wheels, complete with armchairs and a huge double bed, all tastefully upholstered in a quiet blue. It wasn’t exactly cheap, but I had to take into account the savings I’d make on accommodation, and if I was a little cheeky I could claim back at least a proportion of my travel expenses from the university.

By midnight I had my Classic booked and ready to be picked up, fully fuelled, when they opened in the morning. It would have been a little awkward if Hudson and Jemima had walked in just as I clicked the button to confirm my credit card payment, but they didn’t and I went to bed with a glass of his most expensive brandy and a new determination.

Morning seemed to come in a blink, and this time without any disturbing dreams to drive me into an erotic frenzy. I showered, dressed, packed my things and made a grand exit, pointedly not tipping Kunstmann. Only when I was in the cab did I realise that I hadn’t left a note for Hudson and Jemima, but I couldn’t face going back.

My Winnebago was ready as promised, a gleaming monster in red and silver, more like a bus than anything. The thought of driving it at all was daunting, never mind six hundred miles in a strange country and on the wrong side of the road as well. I’d hired the thing, though, so had little choice but to make the best of it, manoeuvring it out of the lot and in a generally southerly direction to the sound of protesting hoots from New York’s population of cab drivers.

Another pointless but romantic ambition I’d had was to drive out of New York on the New Jersey Turnpike, which I now did, rather slowly but gradually building up my confidence on the wide lanes. Before long I was singing to myself as I went, and in a surprisingly good mood, which got better as I gradually left the city behind. I could see the land rising to the west, and although I knew I had a long drive ahead of me I didn’t mind at all.

The Winnebago came complete with maps and a guide book of recommended camp sites, so after a long day with only two rest stops I was able to spend the night in safety and comfort. I’d covered over four hundred miles, and the atmosphere of the place was already very different from that of New York, in accent and in general manner. There was even a restaurant there, and I treated myself to a rack of ribs in barbecue sauce, which seemed the right sort of thing to do in rural America.

I started early after a night as comfortable as any in a hotel room, pushing south and west until I was nearing Grassy Creek and could turn off into the mountains. The landscape changed abruptly, to steeply wooded slopes and shadowy valleys. I took my lunch at a restaurant made out of huge logs and populated by bearded men and brassy women, where I ate outside in warm spring sunshine Everybody was extremely friendly to me, wanting to know where I was going and eager to give advice, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask the location of a maker of spanking videos, which didn’t seem likely to be something they’d know anyway.

The Blue Ridge website had provided a fair amount of information, but nothing precise. Yet there were clues, such as the view from the window of the supposed principal’s office, which showed rounded,
tree
-clad peaks just like the ones around me. Some of the other samples showed girls being spanked outdoors, and two of those included a distinctive double peak. I’d printed one out, taking care to crop the image of a dark-haired girl in pigtails and a yellow gingham skirt being paddled by a woman who was supposed to be her mother.

A huge ginger-haired man in a red check lumberjack shirt and scuffed jeans was eating at the table next to me. He seemed just the sort to recognise the local geography.

‘Excuse me,’ I ventured, ‘but do you recognise this peak?’

He took a single glance at the picture, nodded and jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

‘You’re right under it, Miss. Split Peak. I reckon that picture was taken no more than two, three miles down the road.’

I looked up to where the trees rose high above us, to what seemed to be a single peak, but he presumably knew what he was talking about. All I now had to do was drive around until I found myself at the right angle and distance to the appropriately named Split Peak, and I would presumably be on top of wherever Blue Ridge Spanking did their shoots.

‘Who’re you visiting?’ the man asked.

‘I’m not,’ I said quickly. ‘I’m just passing through, but some friends I was staying with in New York recommended this area.’

‘They got that right,’ he answered. ‘God’s own country.’

He drew in a deep breath of air, then swung his leg across the bench he was sitting on so that he was facing me and spoke again.

‘Say, you’re English, ain’t you?’

‘Yes. I’m here for a conference, in Phoenix, but I thought it would be interesting to travel a little.’

‘Is that right?’

We began to talk, with him asking the questions and me answering truthfully except avoiding any mention of kinky sex. He was called Matt Reynolds, and had lived in the area all his life. I enjoyed talking to him, though it felt a little curious after being almost completely on my own for two days, but when he invited me to call in at a bar he planned to visit that evening I gave a noncommittal answer.

I knew if I accepted we would end up in bed, and the thought of being held by him was not at all unappealing, despite the fact that he didn’t seem likely to be able to provide the sort of sex I crave. On the other hand it was quite possible that before the end of the afternoon I would have a sulky Jemima on my hands. Also, I had no desire whatsoever to listen to the country music band that would apparently be playing. There are limits to my masochism.

He went back to work before I’d finished my lunch and I turned my attention to the map. To the east the land fell away towards a sizeable town, whereas Blue Ridge was obviously deep in the woods, but to the west there was only a scattering of villages before the border of a major national park. There was also a ridge over a hundred metres higher than the top of Split Peak, which allowed me to cut down my search to an area just a few miles square, with a single road running through it.

I was feeling confident as I returned to the Winnebago, and I was soon parked beside the road at a point where the view of Split Peak almost exactly matched that in the photograph. There was a steep valley on one side of me, but a long, heavily wooded slope on the other, and, less than a hundred yards further up, a track leading into it, marked with a battered wooden sign. I walked closer, to find that the
sign
was in fact a weather-beaten spanking paddle with the Greek letters β and ρ painted in faded blue.

Finding it was one thing, preventing them from using Jemima quite another. I had to make a deliberate effort even to start down the track, but I’d already worked out my options on the long drive south and there was no excuse for hanging back. It was a long track, leading deep into the woods. Split Peak was visible across the valley, and the ground was dappled with sunlight filtering through the verdant leaves, creating a scene both beautiful and peaceful, very much at odds with my mission.

I must have walked the best part of a mile before I reached the house. It was a curious structure, built of wood on a wedge-shaped stone base set into the hillside, with a single storey looking out over the valley, and a cluster of ugly concrete outbuildings at the back. The garden was below the house, a gentle slope ending in a patch of scrubland that might once have been a field. I recognised it immediately from the pictures of the girl in pigtails being beaten. It all looked so homely that I hesitated, wondering if the shoot had been real, with some unprincipled mother paid to have her daughter’s spanking recorded.

The paddle, I decided, proved otherwise, and I walked on with a tight knot in my stomach. As I knocked I could hear music, very faint, then footsteps and the door swung open to reveal the bearded man, in shorts and dark glasses, looking far from friendly.

‘I’m a friend of Hudson Staebler’s,’ I said quickly.

‘Penny Birch.’

His suspicious grimace vanished, replaced by a grin so wicked he’d have made a good understudy for the Devil.

‘Cool. Come on in,’ he offered. His accent was very different from Matt Reynolds’, but I’d already guessed that he was no local. ‘I’m Tucker Vance.’