"Let's see, Elise...you've been here five weeks. Am I right?"
Elise's eyes darted around the room, taking in the intent but impassive faces of her employer's personal staff. Mr. Hal, the steward, was to Lord Conroy's right. Beside him stood a handsome but older woman, Mistress Beatrice the head maid. On the lord's left were Allan the chauffer, Daniel the butler, and Vincent the man servant. Elise then looked down to see her chest rising and falling rapidly, the movement throwing up into view the slightest hint of cleavage with each breath, and considered her own position as Master Conroy's private secretary. The heat began to rise in her cheeks.
"Elise?"
Startled, she looked up quickly.
"Yes, sir?"
She felt their disapproval, even though they did not show it. Conroy remained calm, even perhaps seemed a bit indulgent as some emotion flickered at the corners of his mouth before he spoke.
"I hired you five weeks ago, Elise, did I not?"
"You did, sir."
"At that time, did I not only make my expectations known to you but also then instruct Hal to elaborate the details?"
Elise's eyes fell back to the front of Conroy's credenza, studying the mahogany grain.
"It is as you say, my Lord."
"Wait outside the door, Elise."
His voice was cold, perfunctory. Her legs trembled as she backed the twelve steps to the jamb and pulled the door closed on the six of them. Five weeks she'd been his private secretary. She'd accepted the job, accepted the oddity of Mr. Conroy enacting upon his large estate, set on a Tennessee bluff above the Mississippi, an on going play of late-Victorian manners. It was like one of those public television series, except Mr. Conroy had real investments, real and important philanthropic interests, and no patience with foregoing modernity—electricity, indoor plumbing, gas heat, or telecommunications—except when it came to interpersonal relations.
As she had stood before the credenza, the evidence of her non-performance sat there in front of Conroy: the half-sorted mail and messages, the forty unopened emails, and yesterday's tea cup. It was just so hard to get up in the morning here in the country, and too easy to pull a volume from the shelves of his fabulous library and lose an hour.
Elise stewed in her growing distaste for her performance to date and was startled when the door to Conroy's study opened again.
She crept in. Dread reached through the satin of her corset, pulling her forward by the navel as her knees pushed the petticoats of her dress forward to within three paces of the credenza. She gave a small curtsy and looked up through her lowered brows to see that Mr. Conroy was alone behind his desk.
"Miss Helton... Elise, your performance to date has been terrible. Given your obvious talents, your performance is utterly inexcusable. Each of the persons behind you has formed the opinion that you are possessed of lazy and reprehensible work habits."
She noted now that the other members of his personal staff stood near the wall behind her, their hands clasped before them in watchfulness.
"No doubt, given that you are fully a woman and not a youth, you are set in your ways. That might be reason enough to fire you, Elise.
"It might be, except that, even despite how dreadfully and inadequately you've performed even the simplest of your duties, you've also managed to demonstrate great promise and some real moments of brilliance.
"On account of that potential hiding within you, Miss Helton, I'm going to knock you into new ways...if you agree."
Anger had risen within her at the sting and truth of his words. Elise let it take her, thinking that she could brazen her way past this upbraiding as she had always done before when called on substandard performance.
"I do not agree, sir, and I believe that I have put in the full number of hours expected of me this past five weeks."
Conroy was on his feet, around the corner of the desk, and clutching the hair at her neck in his fist as her mouth closed upon the final consonant. Before she knew what had happened, she was toppled with her waist across his knees and Daniel and Allan holding her wrists outstretched in front of her. Just as she thought to kick, she felt Hal and Vincent firmly grip her ankles and pull her legs apart.
"What the fuck? You can't do this to me, Mr. Conroy!"
His fingers twisted in her hair as she felt the weight of his chest press onto her shoulder blades and crush her breasts against the side of his leg as he leaned to whisper in her ear.
"My dear, in fact I can. It is in your contract. It says that recognizing the complicated nature of the responsibilities of a private secretary, you acknowledge the likelihood that upon occasion you may be corrected for shortcomings in your work."
"I had nothing like this in mind!"
"I did."
"How dare you!"
Conroy enraged her more by only chuckling as he said, "look in that mirror."
She turned her head to see Beatrice wheeling a full-length mirror into position so that Elise could see herself stretched over Conroy's lap, her face reddened as she struggled to free her arms and legs from the men's grip. Beatrice moved to her, grasping the back of her dress and ripping the buttons open to expose the laces of the corset and the top of her bikini panties.
"Damn it!" she screamed as Beatrice gathered her shoulders and tore the pale green dress from the waist to the hem. The mirror showed Elise that she looked like a rough-handled head of lettuce, her petticoats revealed as a wad about her knees.
Conroy's hand came down hard onto her bare thigh. The sting lit up the inside of her skull as she heard herself wail, "you can't!" He was. She pushed her eyes open and watched his open palm sweep onto the other thigh, gasping as she watched the imprint of his fingers blossom red on her flesh.
"Shit!"
"Elise, you'll hold you tongue and stop using such words. If you do not, I will double the number and severity of the blows I intend for this spanking."
Incredibly, his words and the tone of his voice combined with the radiating sting to send a wave of wetness surging through her pussy. How could that be?
"I cannot begin to explain to you how disappointed I am in you, Elise. How lazy, undisciplined, willful, rude, and bad-mannered you've shown you can be. For each of these five traits I shall punish you. Not only me, but with the assistance of each of these five fellow staff members will assist."
Tears of humiliation filled her eyes. What humiliated her most was the secret throbbing of her clit, which had grown more insistent with each word from Lord Conroy's mouth. Inside her head she asked God, what kind of slut am I? Conroy firmly turned her head toward the mirror and growled softly, "watch." His hand poured on a dozen blows to the cheeks of her ass. She watched them grow redder and redder as her pussy began to swim, and it wasn't until he stopped that she saw herself wriggling her hips up and down in an attempt to grind herself on his thigh. The sight made her whimper.
"Look at yourself, Elise. Its obvious to all of us: you are enjoying this."
"Yes," said Beatrice, "Elise, I think you are a sexually submissive pain slut who has behaved badly her whole life with the hope of being harshly disciplined."