The Red Collection (30 page)

‘Do you think it will really work for them?’ Jonathan asked, and Caroline felt him shift slightly beside her, almost as if he were feeling a bit uncomfortable himself … in a certain way.

‘Yes. I’m convinced of it,’ said Caroline firmly, smiling to herself. ‘They’ll be much happier now. Allen’s getting to assert his dominant side … and Maggie’s getting her just desserts. Exactly how she wants them. We’ll have to invite them to a Waverley fetish night next. I think they’ll love it!’

Jonathan laughed. ‘Absolutely, and speaking of desserts, I could really fancy some “afters” now myself,’ he murmured, still moving a little. ‘And I don’t mean your strawberry shortcake, either.’

Caroline looked down the bed – and caught sight of her own most favourite ‘dessert’ in the entire world.

‘You’re a greedy man, Jonny, but I love you,’ she said, and the flaming state of her bottom only made things all the sweeter as she swung her body up from the bed, and then straddled her beloved husband for a long, happy ride.

And for tomorrow’s breakfast there would be strawberry shortcake to share.

A Study in Scarlet

UH-OH, I’M GOING
to end up in The Study for this.

Joanna Darrell ran her finger over the carefully prepared report on her Master’s pet project, Côte Mystère, his beautiful vineyard in the south-west of France. Most of the data within it was beyond reproach, faultlessly compiled, but someone in her section – Financial Analysis – had transposed a figure, it seemed, and the latest set of profit projections were miles out.

Someone had made a mistake, and that someone was her.

Distracted, she pressed her hand to her chest. Her heart was banging like a drum. In the normal course of events, something like this would have been no big deal. She would have corrected it, redrafted the report, and that would have been that. But this was not the normal course of events. There was no such thing now. Now, the most important part of her life was a tapestry of abnormal events, all stitched together by anticipation. It only took one slip to set the strangeness in motion.

Given the vineyard’s significance, both to her and her Master, she couldn’t understand how she’d made the error in the first place, other than her subconscious had made it on purpose … to initiate a response. They didn’t really need a
starting
point, but sometimes, just for form’s sake, she created one. And his terse memo had been alive with a secret glee.

Re the discrepancy in the Côte Mystère figures. Kindly see me at the usual place and time. I think you know what to expect
.

The text was unsigned and ‘sender undisclosed’, but she had no need to ask who the scant message was from or what the usual place was. No one else would dare to send such a message. She was one of the company’s senior analysts and a stockholder in her own right. She moved in the highest circles, and only her Master could summon her to The Study.

Considering her assumed obedience, Joanna continued to stare at the glassy screen of her smartphone, and faced the same ambivalence she always did at these times. She was being tugged in two different directions by the two different sides of her nature. Sides so mutually exclusive it almost amounted to being two different women. One part of her was independent, confident, brazen, even; while the other one was pliant, submissive and biddable. Her Master’s perfect slave. It always amazed her that she revelled in being both. Especially when she was across her Master’s knee. Being spanked, or played with somehow.

And it would be a spanking, at the very least. Either that, or the crop or the lash. It might be a combination of several devices, even; her Master was nothing if not inventive. He was greedy sometimes too. He had human faults, for all she almost worshipped him. He seemed to flourish on her tears and entreaties, and grow ever sterner the more she fought and struggled. She remembered the last time he’d corrected her – for arrogantly interrupting him at a forward planning meeting. The resulting session had begun with a warming up – five minutes of light, whippy strokes with a white plastic ruler – then progressed to a formal six cuts with his favourite
rattan
cane. She’d been feeling particularly vulnerable that night, a little fractious and inclined to whinge; and when she’d wriggled too much, over the end of his desk, then clasped her buttocks before being given permission to, he’d doubled the amount of cane strokes to a dozen, and turned a cool, indifferent face to her protests.

She studied the memo again. It was impersonal, mechanical, produced by cool, indifferent pixels. But she liked it that way. And she liked him to be the same. The thought of his calm, unyielding manner made her quiver and feel red hot. Her thighs were so tense they were almost twitching, and inside her silk briefs, her slim lace-trimmed slip and her pencil skirt, her bottom seemed sensitised already. It was as if the very skin and musculature of each smooth, rounded lobe was anticipating the kiss of retribution. The pain. Her nerves were running test patterns, making sure that every synapse would fire perfectly when, later, the important messages were being passed.

Imagining herself bared for discipline, she felt her face and throat colour rosy pink, and she looked up, around the open-plan office, wondering if anybody else could possibly imagine what would soon be happening. There were others in the company who shared her predilection, but it was bad form to speak of it openly. The secret nature of a punishment was sacrosanct; it belonged to a higher, more rarefied continuum than that of money and everyday dealings. And yet still her curiosity piqued her. There might be untold others who’d be sobbing and crying tonight.

For instance, that young secretary over there could well have misspelt an important client’s name. For that she might have her panties removed, and her no doubt very slim and well-toned bottom paddled severely for her sins. Come to
think
of it, the girl did look a little edgy; her face was flushed, her eyes excited. How embarrassed she would be to know that Joanna was
au fait
with her plight.

But no matter what happened to her sister in distress, it was Joanna’s own near future that bothered her. She shifted in her seat, feeling her sensitivity changing into discomfort as the familiar heaviness began to mass between her legs. The waiting period always found her in this delicious, embarrassing, love-it, loath-it state. Her bra suddenly felt a size too tight, and she bit her lip, knowing her knickers were getting soaked.

‘A problem with Côte Mystère, is there?’ enquired an amused voice from just beside her, and she looked up, flinching wildly, to see Kevin – who was always there to tease – right in her personal space. He was fond of sneaking up like that, and her embarrassment doubled as she met her colleague’s stunning eyes; eyes that were a brilliant, merry sky-blue, and which sparkled from beneath a thick, boyish fringe of smoke-blond hair.

‘Nothing I can’t handle,’ Joanna countered smoothly, closing the memo. Those eyes of his might be full of fun, but they were sharp. She was sure he’d seen the text.

‘Sure of that, are you?’ he said, challenging her as ever. He licked his lips, as if he could see straight through her clothing to the condition of her body. As if he could see into her mind and see what she was anticipating. As if he could see her stretched and humbled across the desk, her knickers pulled down and her bottom about to be rendered scarlet.

Hiding her discomfiture, Joanna kept her voice crisp, and replied, ‘Quite sure, thank you,’ then turned her attention studiously to the demands of her laptop. As Kevin moved away, she tried not to hear his mocking laugh.

As her Master would expect the amended report to be presented to him at the same time she presented her body, Joanna spent the rest of the day polishing and perfecting it. Or at least the confident, business-like half of her did, while the submissive dreamer simply longed for her fate. At lunch time, she forewent the usual pub lunch with her fellow analysts and managers, fearing that her ungovernable agitation would give her away – especially to eyes as perceptive as Kevin’s.

Instead, she went into a neighbouring shopping mall and wandered around aimlessly, imagining, just as she had in the office, that the people who caught sight of her could see her future in The Study.

On passing a small boutique, though, she became more purposeful. Aware of what her high excitement had done to her lingerie, she entered the shop intending to purchase a simple change of knickers. The selection on sale, however, was extensive, and just looking at them, and running her fingers over silk and satin and lace, Joanna couldn’t keep herself from imagining how they would feel against her bottom. This pair of fairly plain white cotton briefs with a thin trim of lace around the legs would certainly please her Master. She pictured him running his hand across them as she lay face down over his lap; testing the resilience of her flesh through the thin fabric; assessing possible targets for his hand, perhaps trying a few practice slaps before drawing the panties down.

The next pair that caught her eye were far more elaborate. A deep yet subtle burgundy red, more lace than substance, these briefs were very brief indeed. The sort of knickers her Master often left on her during chastisement. He would take hold of the back of them, and with a deft twist, draw them up tightly into the furrow between her buttocks, while he
belaboured
her cheeks with his hand or with a slipper. This particular trick Joanna regarded as truly devilish – because every well-aimed blow caused the taut fabric to jerk against her sex. After a dozen spanks, she was helpless, she was coming.

Another pair of knickers, of fuller cut this time, reminded Joanna of a caning she’d taken early in their relationship. She had presented herself wearing something very similar to these pants – a pair of French drawers made of heavy coral-coloured satin. Scared of what lay ahead of her, she had knelt before her Master and abjectly begged him to let her keep her knickers on. She remembered her Master’s thin, sardonic smile as he’d agreed to her request; then she remembered her own yowl of pain when she’d discovered that the satin made no difference whatsoever, and that for her impudence, she’d been awarded extra strokes.

Returning to the present, she made her choices – not without some difficulty, and a great deal of expense – and found herself more wound up and full of anticipation than ever, and in great need of one of the garments she’d just bought.

The afternoon seemed even longer than the morning that had preceded it, and Joanna’s thoughts were constantly with her Master … in The Study. By the end of the office day, she felt so hot and bothered and in such a stupor of anticipation that she had to retire to the lady’s cloakroom, and run cold water over her wrists to calm her nerves. She would also have liked to bathe, and to refresh herself in other ways, but to do so would be to keep her Master waiting, so she simply changed her knickers, combed her hair, and made her way to him. To his secret penthouse in a prestigious building nearby.

As she ascended in the mirror-lined lift, she studied
her
reflection – the face and body of a woman heading for punishment. Beneath her soft crop of blonde curls, her face was radiant, her eyes were bright and her cheeks were blushing. Even though she was shaking in her high heels, she stood straight – as her Master always insisted. Her figure was lush and shapely in her tailored pin-stripe power suit, and her legs were long and sleek in charcoal-grey stockings.

By the time she reached the top floor, and the lift doors slid open, her heart was pounding fit to burst inside her chest. She was almost fainting as she crossed the stark white elegance of the lobby, and as she pressed the doorbell, and waited to be admitted, she seemed to float. It was as if she had passed through a discreet barrier of some kind, and was now in the world that lay beyond it. A bright new world where different laws applied.

Her Master, ever mindful of life’s small courtesies, met her at the door. His greeting was a narrow smile, and a soft, ‘Good evening, Joanna.’

Calming her palpitations, Joanna answered with a quick, ‘Good evening. I’ve brought the corrected report you asked for.’ She followed this with a respectful, ‘Sir,’ when she saw his expressive eyebrows lift. Another mistake, she thought, nerves jittering as he escorted her to his inner sanctum: his handsome, quiet, book-lined study – the richly warm, red-decorated room where her faults and errors were often paid for. She called it his Study in Scarlet, which was apt in more ways than one. His prized first editions of Sherlock Holmes took pride of place on the shelves.

Her Master was tall and his bearing confident as he strode before her along the corridor. He was dressed, as he often was on these occasions, in black: a polo-necked sweater and jeans with a heavy belt. His hair was neatly combed
back
, and it looked darker, as if he’d just showered and it was wet. His wire-rimmed spectacles gave his features a new and serious cast. Just the sight of him like this made Joanna’s knees go weak and wobbly. Which made standing, while he sat down in his huge, throne-like, red-leather-upholstered chair, her first ordeal.

‘You may raise your skirt.’

His order was all the more implacable for being delivered in an even, conversational tone. Feeling flustered at having to juggle with her bag and her briefcase as she tottered on her high heels, Joanna made a mess of obeying him. Abandoning her belongings on the plush carpet – as there was no one to take them from her – she squirmed her hips to get her narrow skirt and slip up over them, and the end result was an inelegant bundle of silk and linen wedged around her waist by its own tightness. Her Master eyed her momentarily, then held out his hand. Reaching down and fumbling in her briefcase, Joanna fished out a tablet computer loaded with the revised report.

As her Master sat behind his desk and read, flicking the pages with slow, languid strokes across the screen, Joanna was forced to simply stand, her pants and her stocking tops on show. After much debate, she had selected the white knickers, but looking down now, she discovered that the fabric was far sheerer than she’d realised. The dark blonde shadow of her bushy pubic floss was clearly visible through the thin pale cotton, and she knew that if he should choose to look up and glance her way, her Master would be able to see it.