Lecture Notes Read online

  Back at the flat, he sits me down at the table and instructs me to trim the rods of any rough edges.

  “I don’t want to draw blood,” he says, reassuringly. Is that reassuring? I’m not sure. Then he hands me some twine, which is to be wrapped securely around the ends of the bundle to a length of about six inches, forming a handle. A ribbon – how sweet – is tied around the spot where the twine ends and the whippy rods flare out. The weapon is ready. It looks meaner than Cruella de Vil with PMT.

  “Good work, Miss Newland,” says Sinclair, picking it up and caressing the strands lovingly; a good workman who does not want anything to blame his tools for. “This will certainly get my point across effectively, I trust.” Gulp. “Now I must ask you to remove your lower garments and bend over your chair, if you please, keeping a tight hold of the sides.”

  The formality and dispassion of his tone is frightening and yet, at the same time, rather a turn on. Sinclair is horribly strict, but that is a big part of what makes him so sexy. I cannot deny that, as I drift into sleep each night, I hear his voice in my head telling me to place myself over his knee…lower my knickers…slap!...need to be taught a lesson, Miss Newland…slap!...and then he would touch me…ooooh yes, he would touch me there….and I fall asleep satisfied, and yet so very unsatisfied, so full of longing and need. Oh Sinclair.

  But there is no time for fantasy now – this is real, and it is going to be real pain I feel. Once I have unwillingly uncovered myself from the waist down, I droop forwards over the chair seat and grip the sides, as instructed. My arse thrust up and out while my spine slopes down, I am hideously aware that my masterful mentor can have a good long look at my womanly parts from this position. I hear him walking around behind me, shaking out the bundle of birch twigs in a manner that makes my heart stop, continuing this process for what seems like a very long time.

  “Now then,” he says in a low, authoritative voice, once he has tired of the psychological terror tactics. “You will receive ten strokes of the birch, each one of which you will count for me. Should you move out of place or attempt to protect the target area, please be in no doubt that additional strokes will be added to the total until your behaviour indicates obedience and suitable contrition. Have I made myself clear, Miss Newland?”

  “Yes, sir,” I say fearfully, my backside twitching.

  “Then I shall begin.” He lays the birch rods against my behind; I feel their harsh texture and coldness and I cringe. When he removes them, I tighten my grip on the chair and my jaw clenches. They fall through the air with a swoosh and a slight rattle and then land on my bottom like a swarm of angry bees, stinging me in long lines across the startled flesh so that I gasp and utter a weak cry, only just preventing myself from jumping up. This is serious punishment. “One, Sir,” I say unevenly, but now he is raising his arm again and I don’t think I can… oooh, noooo. Another stinging slash of pain overtakes my every nerve ending; I sway dangerously, almost bringing the chair over and bite down on the cushioned seat. “Two, Sir,” I say, and my broken voice betrays my fear that I will not be able to take eight more of these without trying to elude the lash.

  Indeed, after the fourth stroke I have to admit defeat; I leap up and clutch at my raging bum with a forlorn appeal to my disciplinarian to please let me take any other punishment, anything but more of this… His face dashes my hopes and he gently admonishes me that he must add another stroke to the total to make it eleven. Twelve unless I resume my position immediately.

  With a deep sigh, I bend back over the chair, tears in my eyes and dread in my soul. “Four, Sir,” I whisper.

  The rods fall another seven times, each occasioning wild rocking of the chair and much under-the-breath moaning and oohing and aahing while the tears stream. Suddenly I understand the full implications of ‘unapologetic sadist’. He gets off on this. Perhaps he will be thinking about this later, alone in his bed… In fact, he most definitely will. Somehow, the idea that my pain is fuelling his sexual release makes the last few swingeing strokes bearable. I swim into the fierce burn, imagining the look of glazed lust in his eyes, and I maintain position as obediently as I can until I count the final “Eleven, Sir,” and let out a shuddering half-sob of breath.

  “Well, then, Miss Newland,” he says, and I detect just the faintest tremor of uncontrolled vibration in his voice, “I trust we can conclude that there will be no repeat of Friday’s disgraceful behaviour?”

  “Yes, Sir,” I whisper huskily, wiggling my searing hot bottom with just a trace of seductive intent, despite the horrible pain that lingers in the mistreated globes. Touch me, touch me, touch me.

  He draws a sharp breath and takes a step back. “You will fetch one of the hard kitchen chairs and sit at the table to write me a thousand word essay on the importance of respect in a functional society.”

  “Oh!” I stand up, running a tentative hand across my tender posterior. “But I’ve two other essays to finish before next Friday. And what about our lesson?”

  “It will have to be postponed until tomorrow, I’m afraid. Go on, then.” He shakes the birch rod at me, precipitating my flight into the kitchen for the aforementioned wooden chair.

  A highly unpleasurable two hours is spent shifting wincingly on the unforgiving seat while I scribble out a load of old flannel about god knows what. Sinclair retires to his office and leaves me to it, checking up on me every half hour to make sure I’m not slacking. I can’t work out whether I want to kiss him or punch him in the face. A bit of a blend of both, I suppose.

  Once I have finished the essay, he reads it slowly and deliberately, pacing up and down in front of the table while I watch his facial twitches disconsolately.

  “Very well, you may go to your room now,” he says tonelessly.

  “But…it’s only nine o’clock!” I protest.

  “Now,” he says firmly.

  I traipse off and the first thing I do is check my rear in the mirror. It is an intricate palimpsest of long red slices, interweaving and meshing across the twin spheres of flesh, with occasional beads of blood blister. I trace it with fascinated fingers, feeling as if I am reading a braille document. Sinclair really went to work on me.

  I throw myself stomach first on the bed and wonder what it would take to get him to kiss me. Would he like to? Would he like to take these disciplinary scenes a little further? I imagine him doing so…how it would feel…his strong arms around me, his hands rubbing soothing cream on to my sore skin, his lips on my face, my neck, lower, lower, oooh. My hand has strayed underneath my stomach and has seamlessly slipped down to the throb between my legs. Two fingertips circle and press at the soft nub of flesh down there while I picture him kneeling behind me, opening me, stretching and filling me, harder and faster, backwards and forwards, pushing me purposefully towards the edge and then, with a hard pound and a low vibrating whisper in my ear that tells me I am his, he tips me over into freefall….oh yes…God, yes…Sinclair…Sinclair…Ooooooh.

  Flushed and sticky, I sail into sleep hoping that dreams of my lustworthy landlord will meet me there.

  *

  Somehow the birching has driven me over the margins of decency into florid Sinclair-madness. I slink into the kitchen at breakfast wearing shortie pyjamas and nothing else, subtly made-up with hair artfully mussed. He barely registers. I try to initiate conversations that will break the barriers of our relationship and carry us further on a tide of intimacy. He cuts them short, starts talking about Robespierre or whatever. I scoot slyly closer and closer on the sofa during our scholarly sessions. He stands and expresses a need for a glass of water. Bah! I am thwarted at every turn.

  On Thursday night, the penultimate night of term, I make a bold approach over dinner.

  “Have you ever married?” I ask him.

  “No,” he says curtly, almost succeeding in not looking at me, but falling at the last fence and flicking a quick glance up to gauge my reaction.

  “Do you think you ever will?”

  “I don�
��t think it’s entirely my decision,” he says sniffily, spearing a carrot with deadly accuracy.

  “So you aren’t opposed to marriage on principle?”

  He stares at me. “Are you considering proposing, Beth?” That look…oh my God….is so smouldering I am reduced to smoky embers on the spot.

  “No,” I blurt. “Not marriage, anyway.”

  The beat of silence that follows is fraught with near-unbearable tension.

  “Is your Diderot essay complete?” he asks, looking away.

  I could slap him.

  *

  On Friday at five I am instructed to meet Sinclair in his office to hand in my final essays of the term.

  When I get there, he is leaning back in his chair looking raffishly casual with his tie loosened and top button undone. Growl. I could eat him up.

  “Ah, Beth,” he says in an almost-friendly way. “We need to discuss your arrangements for the Easter break.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m going home for a couple of weeks. Probably not till next weekend. But I have to come back a week early for dress rehearsals for the opera.”

  He nods. “Fine. You’re here for at least another week then? I’ve devised a holiday task list for you. Some reading, a few book reviews. Nothing too onerous.”

  I pout a little, but retract my lips at the look in his eye, knowing full well he will only add to it if I complain.

  “I have to go out tonight, Beth. I will be back before midnight. Please don’t let me come home to any more scenes of drunken dissolution, will you?”

  “No, of course not,” I retort.

  “Good. Because we both know what the consequences will be, don’t we?”

  “Yes, sir,” I mutter, my countenance florid.

  “What will the consequences be, Beth?” Gah, he is going to make me say it. The man is intolerably intolerable.

  “I will be birched, Sir,” I whisper.

  “Correct, Beth. Run along then. I’ll see you later.”

  *

  Lying on Sinclair’s top-of-the-range leather sofa, I wonder what he is doing tonight. I wonder if he has a date. Oh God. Please don’t let him have a date.

  I mooch moodily into the kitchen looking for likely snack fodder. Nothing but olives. How bloody tasteful. Surely the man must have some crisps stashed away somewhere? I start banging through the cupboards, then move on to the drawers. Corkscrews, tin openers, cheese knives…oh…a set of keys. Spare keys. What…might they…fit?

  Blood rushes in my ears as I tiptoe out into the hallway. I stand at the study door for a long time. Am I really going to do this?

  Of course I am.

  Even the tiny click of the key as I slide it into the lock makes my heart jolt and my teeth clamp together. My arm is shaking but I manage to twist the door handle and…I am in.

  The breath I have been holding gushes out. I switch on the light and find…just an office. A bit on the Victorian side, perhaps…There is an old school desk, with inkwell and all, highly polished with a matching chair. Also a more comfortable chair; a green leather wingback number set back in the far corner. But as I take in more and more of the scene, certain jarring elements hit my senses. Many of the books in the shelves that line the wall appear to be rather non-academic in tone. A vast collection of Victorian ‘yellow novels’ for instance, along with many other titles indicating kink-tinged erotica. An umbrella stand beside the desk contains not umbrellas but a goodly-sized collection of canes and riding crops. And the pictures on the wall are prints of old-fashioned black & white or sepia pictures of buxom young ladies in Edwardian undies getting their bottoms whipped.

  Well, OK, so far it’s…unconventional, but nothing too surprising. I lift the computer off the school desk and lift the lid and…

  Eek!

  Collars, cuffs, chains. A selection of dildos and…is that a butt plug? I’ve heard of them but have no real idea what one looks like. A scary-looking strap and a leather-covered paddle. Various jars of lubricants. Some kind of harness arrangement. Feckin hell – talk about the Compleat Sadist. Though there isn’t anything sharp or too painful-looking, it’s all a bit intimidating. Can I imagine myself trussed up at Sinclair’s mercy….OK, not that intimidating. Ooh, the things he might do to me…ooooh.

  I pick up some egg-shaped things on a string and turn them over in my hands, wondering what their function might be.

  Something makes me turn around sharply and look at the door.

  Sinclair is standing there.

  The egg-shaped things drop to the floor with a clatter. He has the most peculiar look on his face, not angry as such, more…controlled. Expectant.

  “I’m sorry,” I stutter. “I just couldn’t…”

  “No. You couldn’t resist. I didn’t think you would.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask faintly.

  “I left the keys there as a test. I wanted to see if you would take the bait. I was right, of course. You did.”

  “You meant me to see all this?”

  He just looks at me for a long time then says, “Yes. So what do you think?”

  “What…do I think?”

  “Does it frighten you? Appal you?”

  “No.”

  “Seriously?” He leans against the door jamb, eyebrows raised. I am twisting my hands nervously, but I mean what I say.

  “It’s…interesting. I mean, why would I be frightened? I know what you’re into. I’ve experienced it often enough! And, you know, sir, if I didn’t like it, I would have moved out by now.”

  “You like it. I thought you did. Beth, I rarely meet women whose tastes coincide with mine. Occasionally I meet people at clubs or through the internet, but my position makes it risky. Nine times out of ten I try to meet people in the normal way but find the rigmarole of dating and getting to know them leads to a sexual dead end when it turns out they find my proclivities abhorrent. I’m tired of it all, Beth.”

  My heart is thundering almost out of my ribcage. He seems to be building up to something…quite…interesting…

  “Are you?” I whisper.

  “Very. What I would like is to meet a woman who will accept my tastes and enter into a relationship in a spirit of enthusiastic curiosity. Somebody I could teach, somebody who is willing to learn from me. Somebody attractive and sexy and…in need of a firm hand. Could that somebody be you, Beth?”

  His voice, deep and low and reminding me of rippled silk, washes over my numbly unbelieving ears. Is he really asking me this? Am I dreaming? He lured me into this situation with the express intention of propositioning me. It’s weird, but so knicker-wettingly exciting I can hardly emit a squeak.

  “If you like,” I shiver.

  He looks at me again for a long time while I curl up and die of mixed embarrassment and desire. “Come here,” he says at length.

  I totter over what seems like hundreds of acres of ground and then he puts out his hand, I take it and am pulled close to him, against his chest, my forehead just level with his chin so that bristles of beard tickle it. He smells gorgeously musky and sandalwoody; I want to bury my nose in the crisp warm cotton of his shoulder and breathe long and deep, but he pre-empts me with a long finger on my chin, tilting it up until my lips hover in his orbit, I can feel his breath, hot and sweet and I can feel this enormous force radiating from him, his intentions for me, he intends to possess me. Those seconds before our lips meet are so powerful I can picture myself turning to jelly and slipping through his strong arms before the moment crashes over us, but then he has me and the moment is there and I am inside the moment, kissing Sinclair, KISSING SINCLAIR, and my life is complete.

  I have kissed a few boys in my time, but this is no boy, and doesn’t it show?! I am unused to the confidence with which he latches on and his persistence in pushing the kiss further and further until his tongue has slipped past my (admittedly hopeless) defences. I cling on, hoping he is not revolted by me, hoping I am doing this right, shaking with the enormity of it all and trying at the same time to s
tore and record in memory every scintilla of sensation his thorough scouring of my oral cavity brings. There comes a point, way past the time I stop caring about the prickling of his beard on my chin, way past the moment when I remember I can breathe through my nose, when I stop analysing it and the anxiety ends and I float amoebically on to clouds of pure desire. Sinclair, it seems, has been waiting for me to reach this pinnacle, for he promptly disengages, leaving his lips tantalising millimetres from mine and smiles at my heaving-chested gasping.

  “Shall we continue this in the bedroom?” he murmurs archly, his words sending an instant message to my groin, as if my knickers weren’t damp enough already.

  I’m not sure what my reply is – it isn’t a word as such, more a sort of ‘nnrgh’ type utterance, but Sinclair accurately construes it as an affirmative and…oh, I’ve died and gone to heaven!...swings me up into his arms and carries me down the corridor to his inner sanctum.

  The lines are clean, the linens are fresh in Sinclair’s bedroom. There is no clutter at all, just sternly functional furniture and a large square bed, on to which I find myself dropped without ceremony. He stands looking down at me from a towering distance, shrugging off his jacket and unknotting his tie before folding his arms across his chest and knitting his brows at me.

  “What are you waiting for, Beth? I want you out of those clothes and on your back. Now.”

  Chapter Six

  Egad, this is weirdness itself. I have never had to undress in front of a man in this way; somehow it was always a bit of a fumble-in-the-dark job with the two previous occupants of the Beth’s-Bloke post. This dispassion and control-freakery on Sinclair’s part is pretty novel too, but in a smoking hot way. I am horribly self-conscious as I peel off my polo-neck, feeling his eyes burning me and hoping I am not disappointing him. Somehow I feel I should be sleazing around in leather or PVC rather than easing a rather frumpy rust-coloured corduroy skirt over my woollen thighs.