Girl on the Net

“Listen here, young lady. It’s all well and good being a naughty slut because you want me to beat your naked bottom, but if you keep up with this disobedience I’ll do the one thing you really don’t want: I shall withdraw the whip.”

Please forgive me for what I’m about to do, but if UK politics insists on repeatedly using the phrase ‘withdraw the whip‘, then I’m afraid this sort of shit is inevitable. 

The whip isn’t just a device to dispense pain. It does more than hang threateningly from its hook above the fireplace. And more even than deliver thin, red, satisfyingly swishy lashes to the naked cheeks of her bum when she’s done something wrong. It isn’t just a trick, the whip’s a treat.

“Please don’t withdraw the whip, sir!” she pleads. Down on hands and knees, with her skirt hiked up around her waist and her back arched so he can see the rounded curves of her flesh, still marked red-and-black from the last time she disobeyed him.

She loves the sting of it, you see. The swish as it cleaves the air, and the staccato tsh as it lands on her bottom. Like the noise water makes when you drop it onto boiling metal – tsh. Hot and swift and vicious.

For weeks she’s been engineering ways to get him to use it – ever since he hung it so carefully from that hook, and gave her the speech about whipping as a proper kind of punishment. She watched him with eager, hungry eyes as he paced back and forward in front of the fireplace. As he put on his ‘firm but fair’ voice, clasped hands behind his back, and did everything he could to play the part of controlling patriarch.

He’s not a controlling patriarch, not really. That’s why she’s had to bend the rules to win the game.

The rules are as follows: for small infractions, accidents or mistakes, he will punish her with his hands, the way she’s used to. For deliberate disobedience, he’ll ply the whip. They both know that she likes the whip, but he doesn’t understand just how much. Truth is, he’s nervous about wielding it. Despite the confidence he projects when he’s clothed and she’s naked, his hands tremble when he holds it – worried that a misplaced stroke might miss the fleshy parts of her body and accidentally graze the vulnerable wetness of her cunt.

The whip is a deterrent, and a promise. A symbol. A once-a-week-at-most tool that he can use to build excitement.

Something she’s meant to pretend to be frightened by.

It did not frighten her for long.

That first night, she spilled wine on the carpet. Red wine, of course, because this was no accident and she was hoping he would wield that heavy whip. Instead, he grabbed her by the wrist and turned her firmly over his knee, warming her bottom with harsh smacks that – while delicious – didn’t burn with the pinpoint hot-water tsh sound she was after.

Once she’d finished wriggling under his hand and offering faux-apologies, she topped up the wine. This time she tipped it – all of it – onto the rug.

That was the start. And in hindsight it may have been a far too successful start. Because the speed with which he leapt up from the sofa and grabbed the whip from it’s hook had her head spinning with excitement. The way he rolled his sleeves up as she bent over to touch her toes left her breathless and trembling. And finally – sublimely – the rapid strokes that rained down onto her taut skin satisfied her every craving.

The intensity. The burn. That sublime and vicious sound – tsh.

“Please don’t withdraw the whip!” she begs again, on her knees. She hungers for the whip – it’s not a punishment. The way he applies it and the way her body responds is too much – too good – for it to work as a corrective. That’s why for the last couple of weeks she’s found every excuse under the sun to make him angry: a sarcastic comment here, a broken plate there, an argument started over nothing whatsoever which escalated with alarming speed.

Those things add up. They take a toll. The problem with being in charge is that you have to deal with rebels, and sometimes you just aren’t in the mood. You need harmony and obedience, not brattiness and conflict. He’s tired of it, this game. He likes to play at being cruel, but in between the games he wants his friend back – not this bratty, mean, snarky person who he no longer recognises. The person who wants him, in dominance, to be thick-skinned and cold and inhuman.

So eventually, he threatened to withdraw the whip. And it feels odd to him now, to stand in front of her, threatening to take away her punishment if she will not try to behave. Even stranger, that the twenty-four lashes he gave her last night, which left her arse crisscrossed with red and stinging so hard that she couldn’t sit down without gasping, should be wanted so much that she’s willing to beg for it.

On her knees, weeping, imploring him to hurl her fully into the briar patch. Excusing herself of every crime by explaining how much she hungered for punishment.

“Please Sir,” she tries, one final time, as he stands sternly over her quivering body. “Please don’t withdraw the whip.”