Down The Rabbit Hole Pt. 04

"Well that's good news, certainly. I did think the restrainer was improving his behaviour. At least in the bedroom, at any rate!" Suzanne grinned. "I suppose they all make some mistakes, don't' they?"

"Even an old hand does. Don't you, Henry?" Julia called.

"Owggnn!" Henry responded.

Suzanne smiled at Henry's inarticulate response. "I could do with one of those. It might help me cure Ollie of his tendency to answer back."

"That's exactly the right approach," Raven cut in. "Don't try and solve everything at once, just face up to each challenge as it comes, find a solution and push on through."

Julia joined in. "While we're talking of solutions, we need plans for implementing the Respect Agenda across the department. Would it be an idea to get Henry and Oliver to work together on that? I'm sure between them they'll come up with some proposals. It will be good for them to have to think about the Agenda from a practical perspective and it will be good for Oliver to learn from Henry's experience."

Henry was feeling more and more uncomfortable. Bent over the chair with his naked arse in the air, being discussed as though he wasn't there by women who were debating getting him to work on improving the way that men behaved around women at work, left him feeling humiliated. With his mouth filled by the hard rubber ball, though, he was hardly in a position to protest.

"Anyway," Raven went on. "I brought you a gift. Something to help now that you are a fully fledged sponsor. Here." She opened the brief case she was carrying and took out a multi-tailed flogger. Its carefully formed stitched leather grip with silver bands at the top and the base, coupled with the soft leather of the flogger's tails told Julia that was an expensive item.

"You shouldn't have," she began. "It's lovely. It's much needed just at the moment -- I wasn't sure what I was going to use on Henry to be honest. It might well have been a spatula from the kitchen or the strap from my handbag. But, I don't think I can accept it. We have rules about gifts from suppliers. You can see how it might look"

"I understand. I don't want to do anything to make you feel uncomfortable." Henry thought Raven's last remark quite ironic. Mostly his experience had been of Raven wanting to make him feel very uncomfortable indeed. "Perhaps if I lent it to you? You could let me know how you got on with it. In the interests of improving the content of the training programme, perhaps."

Julia was still reticent but finally agreed. "A short loan. Let's say for a week. It will give me a chance to see if this is the sort of thing I can make use of on a continuing basis." Henry found Julia's words worrying. He was definitely not interested in her making regular use of such an implement.

"That's agreed then. Now, I wanted to explain how I thought the next steps for the training programme could be organised. Then, if you're in agreement, I'll just get on with it." The three of them began to review Raven's proposals.

It was some time later, when the women had finished their discussions and Raven and Suzanne had left, that Julia remembered why Henry was bent across the chair. "Now," she said. "I think we were talking about your understanding of respect, weren't we? And given the new project you are going to be working on, I think we can can agree how important that is, can't we?"

Julia picked up Raven's gift, swished it with enthusiasm and took up her stance behind Henry's nervously clenched buttocks. "I think we'll start with a dozen strokes and then you can explain to me what you think are the most important issues to be addressed in your project."

Henry braced himself for the first blow and tried to think quickly. He knew that once the beating started he would soon find it difficult to concentrate on anything except the burning sensation he expected to feel from the flogging. He was beginning to wonder if Julia's discovery of a latent dominant streak was such a good idea after all.