The Sacred Band Ch. 11

Laura, Philip - and Judy.

By October, I had been with Philip for four lovely months, and I was happier than I had ever been in my life. I began to want to give him something really nice to show my love for him. I decided that my gift should be an attractive new concubine of my own age.

At the end of September 1955, I started as a first year at Leicester Uni. Gazing at the imposing building on University Road, I was reminded of what the Personnel Officer at Bardon Quarry had told my father,

"You know, that building was the old Leicestershire County Lunatic Asylum – and that, as far as I can see, nothing much has changed from that day to this.

We endured a whole day of registration procedures, and introductory faculty and department meetings, the result of which was to fatten my hitherto empty briefcase with a sheaf of syllabi and booklists.

Father's colleague had one good tip at least, and I took the booklists straightaway to the University Library; registered once again, and, as one of the first freshers off the starting blocks, came away with half a dozen essential, and very scarce, textbooks on short-term loan.

The only other bright spot in an almost unremittingly dull week was the Freshers Bazaar, when all the university societies and clubs set out their stalls to attract new members.

Standing around the Hockey Club stall I saw two familiar faces – rivals from other local school teams. Ginny Weatherall from Wyggeston Girls, who beat us in the semi-finals this May, and Valerie Massey, from Market Harborough, whom we beat both years, although, admittedly, we might not have fared so well this year if their goalkeeper had not been ill at the time.

Ginny, Val and I greeted each other with delight and went off to have coffee in the refectory; our new common bond making old rivalries seem irrelevant. When we had first-year tryouts a week later, we were all picked for the freshers team, and pitted against the University Hockey team in a match soon after. By this time my mind was working overtime and a plan was forming in my mind.

A couple of afternoons a week, when I didn't have a two-o'clock lecture, I would walk down New Walk to Philip's office and we would make love over the desk or on the carpet. Only the spanking was obligatory, sometimes Philip would only have time for me to give him gam.

Sometimes; the best times; he would take give me a good shagging and then bugger me to repletion. It was those times when I acted on Denise's suggestion, always to carry some tampax in my handbag to sop up the spunk so that I didn't have to sit in it all afternoon.

Then I would walk back to the University for an afternoon seminar, or a couple of hours in the library, wondering with an inner grin if any other girls had tampax up their bums that afternoon.

Midweek I could always get a night with Philip, as Aunt Hilda was perfectly happy at the idea of me staying over with a friend in Hall. This gave us the opportunity to play a game, Maybe with Denise, or maybe with just the two of us. I would sometimes go home to Ashby at weekends, but if I did I would always catch the bus back to Leicester for the middle of the day on Sunday.

Sunday afternoon was our most important time of all. After a bit of lunch, I would get down on my knees in the middle of the carpet in front of Philip, and confess all my little sins and misdemeanours. Philip would listen, ask questions, and pass sentence.

Then I would get my punishment; so many strokes of the cane, so many of the tawse, and I would be forgiven and start again with a clean slate for the next week. Then Philip and I would just lie on the bed and cuddle, with his hand caressing my sore back and bottom, his cock within easy reach of my tongue.

Four weeks into the term. I decided that I should make a move to find Philip's present. The hockey team seemed a good place to start. On the Wednesday we were playing a friendly game against Sheffield University's first-year side. I was playing midfield, my best position, and Ginny and Val were also picked.

Our captain was Judy Daitches, the centre-forward - brave as a lion on the field, and a perpetual clown the rest of the time.

I told Philip I might stay over on Tuesday night, so I met him from work. We went back to his flat, and settled down for an evening. I already had half an idea of how to provoke him into giving me a real thrashing, and my opportunity came.

I was sitting astride him on the bed, and riding his cock. It felt really good and I was sorry to have to break it up; but sacrifices have to be made. I licked my fingers, getting them really wet. Then I leaned over and started to caress his balls. Then I gently slid a fingertip into his bumhole.

Philip hates having his anus touched – he doesn't even like me kissing it – and I knew pretty well what would happen. He took me under the armpits and flung me off his still erect cock.

I landed half on, half off the bed and slid ungracefully onto the floor. I know it is silly, but, although I had deliberately created the situation, I was already starting to cry quietly for having so annoyed him.

I got the beating I had asked for. Without a word he took me over to the bedroom door and cuffing my hands, hooked the cuffs over the hook for his dressing gown.

He took the tawse and started to whip me across the shoulder blades. One or two of the swipes went under my armpit, and I could feel the tawse wrap its two tails around my right breast with a slap like a clap of thunder.

This wasn't one of our games; this was a punishment, and I cried and cried, and begged forlornly for forgiveness as he beat my back and then he took the dragon cane and raised welts on my buttocks and the tops of my thighs.

The beating did not take long, but I had never experienced anything so intense in my life. When he was finished, He looked as upset as I felt. He laid me down face-downwards on the bed, and gently soothed the raw areas with arnica cream.

"God," he said, "that went a lot too far. It was lucky I didn't hit you across the kidneys or you'd be pissing blood. I really shouldn't beat you when I'm angry like that. I'm dreadfully sorry pet. If it ever happens again you must use our safe word and stop me. Promise me."

"Darling", I said, "It wasn't your fault, it was mine. I am so sorry for upsetting you. Please, please forgive me."

I felt so guilty for deceiving him and tricking him like that, but for the time being I had to go on pretending that it was an accident or an oversight.

"I'll forgive you, if you'll forgive me."

"There's nothing to forgive my love; nothing at all. Now, will you show me you forgive me by letting me suck your beautiful cock?

He did better than that. In the next two hours he took me through the card, and left me wrung out, sore all over, and blissfully satisfied. I felt no inclination to move, so I phoned aunt Hilda and told her I was staying overnight with a friend.

When Philip fell asleep, I lay awake and had another little weep over lying and deceiving him, and just hoped that the ends would justify the means.

***

By quarter past one the following afternoon, our hockey team were on the coach to Sheffield for a friendly game with their freshers eleven. Some of the girls had twelve o'clock lectures, so we arrived late at the playing fields.

We scrambled to change and be on the field at 3 pm, but just made it with minutes to spare. We played well, beginning to coalesce as a team and getting to rely on and support each other. Sheffield held us to a 2-2 draw, but they had some luck in doing so. I must admit that I played exceptionally well, and my passes to the forwards gave us our two goals.

I went into the dressing room on top of the world and gleefully stripped off my kit and went into the shower. The moment my team-mates saw my back and bum there were squeals of shock. I looked down at the yellow and blue-black bruises on my right breast – and knew that my rear view would be colourful enough to make a mandrill jealous.

It had not seemed appropriate the previous evening to admire and gloat over my battle scars, but today I could glory in them.

"God, Laura, what happened to you? You look as if you've been in a road accident," squealed Ginny. "How on earth did you play in that state?" asked another team-mate.

"Oh that," I said insouciantly, "My boyfriend and I were playing role-play games yesterday evening. I was a Russian spy and he was a counter-intelligence agent interrogating me. I'm absolutely fine – it was a brilliant evening."

"You mean he beat you up?" asked Valerie, in a shocked voice.

"No, of course not. He just gave me a spanking, that's all. He more than made up for it later."

It was going just as I planned. The girls were shocked and worried, but consumed with curiosity.

I pointed to Val.

"Look at your thigh, Val. You've got a huge bruise there. Where did that come from?"

"I stopped a shot at goal at the beginning of the second half. I'd forgotten all about it 'til I stripped off to come in and showered."

"You didn't make a big fuss of it, did you? It's all in the game, and the pleasure always outweighs the pain. Same with Philip and me".

To say that they were unconvinced would be the understatement of the year. But my job was done. There would be a bit of gossip about me, and sooner or later the right girl would make her way to me and when she came I would know.

I fielded a lot of questions that day from girls who were merely curious, or downright nosy. I was as open as I could be, and felt that I was drawing back the corner of a curtain and showing a different perception. They asked, reasonably enough, if I would call myself a masochist.

"No", I said firmly; "not at all. I'm not really submissive by nature and I don't take any pleasure in pain as such. Pain hurts and I don't like being hurt any more than anyone else. If I stub my toe I hop about and cry like anything. What I do like is to play rough games now and again and getting a few bruises is a lot of the fun."

What I tried and mostly failed to communicate is the pleasure of surrendering and relinquishing control to a completely trusted lover.

Every girl relinquishes control and accepts some pain as the price of pleasure at least once in her life, when she gives up her virginity. Most women willingly do it again when they give birth to their children.

Women have their ears pierced and men accept the pain of tattooing as the price of self-adornment. For me, that exchange of pain for joy is a central part of my life, and I wouldn't have it otherwise.

I had sown the seeds and now I just had to wait. The first contact happened that same evening. When we got off the coach on the London Road, I started out to walk up New Walk to the centre of town – seeing if Philip was still at work as I went by.

Ginny asked, shyly, if she could walk with me, and I noticed that her eyes were averted. This is not a rehash of the game then, I thought to myself, and smiled inwardly.

Ginny talked all around the houses for a bit, and finally started to ask me about my life with Philip.

No sense in not being frank after putting myself so far out on a limb, so I told her about our first afternoon in his flat, and how he had sentenced me to a spanking for every boy I had ever been naughty with, then made lovely love to me. Then I asked her if she had ever felt anything like that.

"No", she said, "not like that exactly, but I have some feelings I can't ignore or shake off, just like you. In my case it's that I have always liked girls, not boys. And I have always felt apart from the others because of that. I thought that you might understand".

"Yes, I understand very well. Have you ever been with a girl – I means sexually?"

"No. I've never known how to approach somebody and I'm scared stiff of being rejected. You were so incredibly brave this afternoon that I felt I could talk to you and you wouldn't reject me."

I hugged her, feeling a great wave of affection sweep over me.

"Have you ever been with a girl that way?" she asked me, overcoming her shyness with some effort.

"No", I said gently, "The only way that would happen is if Philip told me to, and he hasn't. We've played games with another woman, but they never involved that."

"So, you can't help me," she said sadly.

"No, I didn't say that at all. I'm pretty sure I can find out where Sapphic women get together in Leicester. I know two people who are sure to know, and I'll ask them just as soon as I can. I'll let you know something in a day or two, I promise."

By this time we had passed the Art Gallery and reaching Philip's office. I was disappointed to see that his lights were off, and he had already gone home. So Ginny and I walked together, companionably, to the centre of town and went our separate ways.

Yes, in a way it was a false alarm, but I gained a good friend out of it. Ada and Denise came up trumps, with the names of a café and a hotel cocktail bar where she could make contact, and, less than a week later she was already head-over-heels in love with a rather prim-looking reference librarian named Ivy. (see Ginny and Ivy's story below chapter 13.)

A few days later the one I was looking for appeared. Unexpectedly it was Judy Daitches, our centre forward; the rather boisterous clown of the team, always laughing and joking with everyone, and a bit inclined to have a drink too many when we got together in the pub after a game.

I was in the library, finding Dryden's poem Absalom and Achitophel a trifle hard going, and coming to the opinion that Dryden was a bit of a hypocrite if truth were told; when Judy Daitches sat down at my table, her usually animated face unusually serious.

I was struck by the realisation of what an exceptionally pretty girl she was with her straw-blond hair, straight as a yard of pump-water; with long, pale eyelashes framing a pair of limpid, baby-blue eyes.

It struck me that, for whatever reason, she habitually used her clown persona to throw a camouflage over her beauty. Before she spoke I knew what she was going to say.

"Please Laura, can we go somewhere where we can talk?"

I got up straight away, picked up my notes and put the books in a pile for later. I was in no doubt that she was the girl I was looking for.

I must confess that I couldn't help wishing that she were just a shade less pretty. I had gone all over the permutations well in advance, and one of them was that when I found a girl, I might find one that Philip fell head over heels in love with.

Supposing he preferred her to me. Would I be strong enough to cope with that if it came? I had decided that I would. One thing I know beyond a doubt. Even if he found someone he preferred to me, he would not leave me until I was ready to leave him. I might not be the chief concubine, but there would be a place in his life for me, and really, that was all I needed.

So Judy and I went off the campus and sat in the old Victorian cemetery on Welford Road, where we knew we would not be disturbed.

"Laura, I can't tell you how much I admired you last week. You were so brave and so open, and I absolutely longed to be like you. Please tell me more about yourself".

No sense in hiding anything. I told her everything, from my first stirrings, through Mr Gillespie and Ada Abbott; my books and my toys; how I met Philip and Denise, and our games together. When I described our game of Harem she was squirming in her seat, and her face was hot and red. Judy was hooked.

"Now tell me about yourself".

Judy really had not much to tell. She felt the same distance from her schoolfriends that I had felt. Her parents had never spanked her, but she had fantasised being punished from before she had her first period, and she, like Ginny, had no idea what to do about the strange stirrings inside her.

"Judy, here's what we should do this evening. I should take you round to Philip's flat for a nice bare-bottom spanking. You don't have to go any further than that unless you want to; you could just watch Philip and me, or go straight home if you like. In any case, Philip will see that we both get back to our lodgings by ten.

"Well, I don't know..." Judy's voice tailed off. I reached out and took her hand.

"Don't worry, it won't be like the spanking I had last Tuesday, just a hand-spank to warm you up and make you tingle. Philip knows what he is doing, and I'll be there to keep an eye on things...

Look; take the rest of the afternoon to think about it. I'll phone Philip and tell him you might be over. If you don't think you can face it, don't worry; but if you do want to come, meet me at the main gates at five o'clock."

When Philip drove up in Matilda at five, I was in the company of a tall, very pretty, very nervous-looking blonde, her usually bouncy ebullience not in evidence. I introduced them, and Philip drove us back to his mother's house. I was filled with a secret triumph. Everything was working just as I planned.

When we got to the flat, after introducing Judy to Philip's mother, I bustled about making tea and sorting out the sandwiches I had bought at the refectory, whilst Philip exercised all his warmth and charm to make Judy feel comfortable. He asked her all the usual reassuring questions about where she came from (Chichester), what she was reading (German); and told her a little about himself and his business.

By the time I came on the scene she was looking a little more relaxed, and we ate sandwiches and drank tea and made companionable small-talk.

Then Philip made his move.

"So Laura, you have been a very bad girl", he said, smiling to take the sting away, "and you have drawn Judy into your misbehaviour. I'm afraid I shall have to punish you both. You first Judy."

He sat on the spanking chair and patted his knees. I smiled at Judy reassuringly. She took the plunge; got up and placed herself across his knees, bottom in the air. He lifted the back of her skirt, revealing plain, serviceable white cotton knickers.

"Take your knickers down Judy."

She lifted her body slightly to shift her weight from his knees, and drew her knickers down to halfway down her thighs. From where I was sitting I had a clear view of her long, shapely legs and lovely round, unblemished bottom. I felt another pang of jealousy. That was my place!

Philip began her spanking at a slowish pace, slapping lightly at first, and building up the force behind the slaps until the sound echoed through the room. Judy was silent at first, and only after the first couple of dozen slaps did she start making a sort of suppressed squeal and kicking her legs. Her bottom was reddening, her knickers had slid down to her ankles and I could see the telltale glistening that betrayed her excitement.

Philip knew when to stop.

"Now Judy, go and stand in the corner. No, turn this way; I want you to see Laura get a well-deserved punishment. Now Laura, what have you to say for yourself?"

So that you don't think that Philip was a mind reader, I should say that I told him on the phone that I had something serious to confess that couldn't wait 'til Sunday.

I knelt in the middle of the floor and faced him.

"Philip, I was really dishonest with you, last week, and I broke our most important rule. I did not confess it to you on Sunday, because I wasn't sure anything would come of it. I have been feeling desperately guilty ever since.

You remember when we were making love last Tuesday night? I did not annoy you by accident; it was deliberate. I went out of my way to provoke you into giving me that thrashing because I wanted to be well marked when I changed for the hockey game. I hated to do it but it was necessary. Please punish me for it, and tell me you forgive me."