The Pain And The Pleasure

The hallway was cold and drafty. Silently I stood outside the oak-panelled door, softly kicking my heels against the wall. I had endured the first half hour of my wait with a growing apprehension and now, chilled and weary, I could feel the fear gripping me, wrapping itself around my shoulders like a dark December night.

'Come!' summoned the voice within.

I straightened my blazer, skirt and tie, pulled the white socks up to my knees and fearfully entered Sister Emily's study.

I had been inside this sanctum many times before but its atmosphere – endowed by the ghosts of all the girls who had been there before – never failed to awe me. The room itself was like a mad professor's den. The walls were lined with bookshelves overflowing with learned texts. Religion, philosophy, history, novels, poetry. Books, pamphlets and journals of every description rubbed against each other. Every surface too was covered with yet more tomes, most closed, but many lying open, their pages transcribed with spidery notes written in Sister Emily's neat, dense hand. Papers were piled on the carpet in precarious towers that almost toppled as I crept past them.

Between the bookshelves religious icons and artefacts hung on the walls: an ivory crucifix, a print of Michelangelo's Last Supper, dozens of photographs of ancient sacred sites. A grandfather clock beat out the seconds to my release from this cell. A gilded mirror, seldom used, I suspect, by the sister, hung beside it. In the middle of the room was Sister Emily's desk: a vast, imposing slab of mahogany, itself covered with papers. On one corner sat a chess board with large, carved wooden pieces which the sister would move around absent-mindedly as she spoke.

The study was illuminated only by a desk lamp, casting dark shadows around the perimeter and lending the surroundings an eerie intimacy.

'Ah, yes, Annie..... Again....' said Sister Emily sternly, setting aside her glasses on the desk.

The lamp bestowed upon the sister's virginal face a halo of silvery light. As always, she was wearing a blue cardigan over a white open-necked blouse. Her head was cloaked in a black veil: beneath a white wimple framed her handsome features. She must have been in her early thirties but, to me, she was ageless. Susan, my best friend at the convent, had once seen her at the swimming baths, and told me that she had long blonde hair and a slim, shapely figure. But so heavenly was she in my eyes, that I could hardly imagine that the sister had a body at all. At one time or another all the girls had enjoyed an unrequited 'pash' for Sister Emily but, to me, quite simply, she was an idol and had been ever since I joined the convent school all those years ago. But now, since I had entered the senior year and had come of age, we seemed to clash endlessly over the most trivial matters. It was as though, despite myself, I was compelled to test her constantly and to assert my independence, repeatedly rousing her fearsome temper.

'What are we to do with you, Annie?' asked the sister, shaking her head with weary resignation.

'It's not what you think,' I burbled. But, of course, it was.

*******

It happened the previous weekend. It was two days after my eighteenth birthday and I, with the other sixth form girls, had been allowed to attend a Disco Party at St Gregory's, the boys' school. A boy with whom I'd been dancing had led me outside 'for a breath of fresh air'. What was his name? We had hardly reached the school garden before he was kissing me fervently. He pulled me down onto the grass (was it Dave, or maybe Dennis?) and, as he pushed my hair from my face to kiss me the better, he prised my legs apart with his thigh. I could feel his hip pressing against my mound. I thought about resisting but he had been so friendly and keen (and I loved his long, blonde locks and his girlish face), it seemed ungracious to object. Besides, I'd heard tales from other girls who had 'done it' and was curious to see what all the fuss was about. So far, the experience was rather tiresome and uncomfortable and, anyway, I wasn't really that keen on boys.

His lips pressed hard against my own. My back was aching and my dress was becoming smeared with grass stains. I was beginning to think about stopping him when I noticed a movement in the bushes, a figure watching us from about twenty yards away. Immediately I realised it was Sister Emily who had come along to chaperone us girls. What was she doing there? I could have stopped then, pushed my callow lover aside and pretended that I'd done so of my own will. But I didn't. Something impelled me to continue, to go further, deeper. What was it? Defiance certainly. Perhaps too that assertion of womanhood, my coming of age.

But there was more. As I felt Emily's eyes upon me, an indescribable, delicious sensation coursed through my limbs, flooding my veins like liquid gold. This could be yours, I thought, as I glanced over to the bushes. You could be overpowering me now, pressing me hard against the ground, your thighs entwining my own. It could be your mouth eclipsing mine, your untutored hands exploring with me this new, untrodden realm of longing, desire and fulfilment. And if you won't have me, then you must watch.

From the hall I could hear the band playing that James Blunt song, 'You're Beautiful'. I thought: Yes, I am beautiful and young and desirable. And I can have anything I want. With one hand I drew the boy's face into my own, rewarding him with an even deeper, longer tongue-tipped kiss. He moaned gratefully. With the other I rolled him onto his side and guided his hand up my dress. It eagerly traced my thigh, my groin and then rubbed against my panties. His forefinger traced the line of my slit through the cotton. Squirming on the damp grass, I slipped down my panties for him and helped his fingers into me.

'You're all wet,' he whispered.

'Mmm. It means I like you,' I lied, looking over his shoulder at the quivering bushes.

I arched my midriff against his palm. Inside me, his fingers found an urgent, insistent rhythm. His thumb inadvertently brushed against my clit, sending shivers cascading through my limbs. I lay back and breathed in the sensations: the breeze ruffling the hedgerows, the grass tickling my thighs, his fingers pumping into me, my teeth biting his lip. It felt so, so lovely. I closed my eyes again.

What are you thinking, I wondered, as you watch your 'little girl' enjoying a woman's pleasures. These fingers, as soft and delicate as yours, feeling me, exploring my damp, soft pussy. This cheek, as smooth as a woman's, caressing my own. I arched my back further, no longer aching, as the boy forced his fingers into me ever more deeply. Their tips pressed against my special place.

'Mmm. Yes ..... y-e-e-e-s,' I insisted. My lips drew his tongue into my mouth. His fingers thrust further and faster. Are you enjoying this as much as me, Sister?

'More,' I murmured and licked his earlobe. The boy, shifting his position, withdrew his fingers. I gasped with disappointment. But then I heard the zip of his trousers. He smiled and I laughed wantonly. I slipped my hand inside. His cock felt slippery, stiff and eager. I stroked it and felt it harden more until it filled my fist. Such power. Then, with blissful mischievousness, I opened my eyes to watch Sister Emily's reaction.

But I couldn't see her anywhere. Where was she? The bushes were silent and dark and still. I propped myself up and searched for her frantically until I realised that she had gone.

Crestfallen, I let go of the boy's cock. His fingers kept plunging violently into and out of me. Suddenly it felt like an invasion. I shook my head.

'No, please. Can we stop? Please.' I pushed the boy off me and struggled to my feet. Lying on the ground, his trousers around his thighs and his cock slowly subsiding, he looked rather absurd.

'I'm sorry. So sorry,' I said, as I pulled up my panties, rearranged my dress and rushed back into the dance hall.

'Prick tease!' the boy yelled to my back.

Now the band were playing 'Lay, Lady, Lay'.

*******

'Annie, what you did was utterly appalling. The behaviour of a common slut. You are a beautiful young woman. Why do you defile yourself in this way?'

'I'm sorry, Sister. I don't know what came over me. As soon as I saw you, I stopped,' I pleaded.

'I should hope so. The Lord has given you many talents and it is your duty to use them wisely. How will your future husband respect you if you've been with every Tom, Dick and Harry?'

Dick, recalls Annie. Of course, that was his name.

'There are many temptations in today's world but you must resist them, child. Do you understand?'

'Yes, Sister, yes. I'll be good. I promise.'

'Now, I have two options. Either I can inform your parents and they can ....'

'No, Sister! Please don't tell daddy. He would be mortified. It won't happen again, I swear.'

'Well, if you don't want me to tell your parents, then I must administer your punishment myself. Is that what you want?'

I knew what this meant – it was what I had been expecting as I waited so fearfully outside the study.

'Yes, I suppose so, sister,' I gulped.

Sister Emily inhaled deeply as she rose to her feet. Was that a smile curling the edges of her sensual lips?

'Don't think I enjoy this, Annie. It is a burden I bear with the utmost reluctance,' said the sister. But there was an excitement in her eyes, I noticed, that belied her words.

'Take off your blazer.'

I peel it off reluctantly and fold it on the chair slowly, buying time. The sister removes her cardigan. Her hardened nipples press against her bra, visible beneath the white cotton blouse.

'Now, girl, when I tell you, you will lean across this desk,' commands the sister. She clears a pile of books from the polished surface in order to make space for me. I'm standing cross-legged, a picture of innocence. Then she walks across to an umbrella stand beside the door and removes from it a rattan cane. It is long and thin as a whip. I've felt it before.

'Now bend.'

The air is still, only the grandfather clock's ticking disturbs the silence.

I bend across the desk, watching the sister in the mirror. Bending over, my skirt rides up my legs. I know how good they look. Still bronzed from the summer holidays, my thighs are slim and supple and browner still against the white socks. I stretch out my arms and clasp my hands together, resting them on the desk. My dark pig tails brush the polished wood. I'm already panting hard – harder than one can ever imagine from someone so motionless. My breath mists the desk.

Sister Emily pulls my pleated skirt up over my hips. My panties are tight around my crotch and buttocks. If she is interested, the Sister can see the cleft of my buttocks through the thin cotton. She is. She traces the line with the tip of her cane. Then she slips her finger tips inside the waist band of the panties and tugs them down my thighs.

'You can't do that!' I exclaim.

The sister merely smiles.

'Do you want me to write to your parents?'

Obligingly I step out of the panties. Sister Emily picks them up. I pretend that I'm not watching but see her stroke her cheek with them. She deposits them on the chair. Then again she rolls the edge of the cane across both buttocks.

The air is thick with a thunderous silence, burning with an electric charge. Across the walls the desk lamp paints the sister's silhouetted outline as she raises the cane to her shoulder.

By now, bent across the desk, my bottom arched upwards, I'm trembling, braced against the impact of the first blow. Goose pimples prick my skin.

But Sister Emily hesitates. Her eyed are fixed on the two white domes of my buttocks: firm and ripe and round. She rests the cane on the desk. She kneels down behind me and tentatively takes my cheeks in her hands. Then she begins to lick them. I'm astounded. What's happening? A reprieve. I can't believe it.

Her lips are cool, her tongue insistent. An unfamiliar pleasure – a hundred times more powerful than when I stroke myself, a thousand times more than Dick's crude fingering – begins to fill my stomach. I begin to relax, surrendering to her touch, waiting for her to lips to find my slit.

I should have known what would happen. Sister Emily has not forgotten my crime. She has merely been distracted. Reluctantly, she rises from the floor and picks up one of the chess pieces – a bishop – from the desk. She plays with it in her fingers as she considers my plight. I crouch awaiting her decision. Then she puts down the bishop, retrieves the cane and rolls up the sleeve of her right arm. The silence now is deafening. A tear runs down my cheek.

The Sister raises the cane in a wide arc and draws it down, cleaving the air like a knife. It falls high on my right cheek. I flinch as the initial sting scorches my buttock. I don't cry out but emit a long sigh as all the breath is slowly sucked from my lungs and replenished by pure fire. Then a deep, throbbing pain flushes through me, drawing a wave of sweat. I sense that my skin is already a red flame. I want to touch my bottom, to rub it better, but I daren't. I groan, knowing that the first stroke is always the worst, until the next .....

I look up into the mirror. Emily's eyes are wild. She lets me recover for a moment before her hand rises and falls again, this time falling mostly on the left cheek. I let out a little shriek as my hips bump against the desk. My hands tighten their grip as once more the pain begins to fan through my limbs, scalding every cell.

Then slowly, slowly, beneath the pain grows the warm glow of pleasure: pleasure in the purging of my guilt, in my submission to my goddess, in the complete and abject surrender of my body and mind, and pleasure too in the very pain itself.

Now there are no senses but only the sensations of agony and ecstasy. No sound but the beating of the clock, the ebb and flow of our stifled breath and the swipe of the cane. Time itself stands still as if the past is dead, the future not yet born. There is only the present: the now and now and now as each blow cracks against my bottom. My fingers are clawing the desk, my pelvis banging against its side, tears and spittle wetting the polished mahogany.

I am moaning with satisfaction and despair, pleading for mercy and fulfilment, begging for an ending and a beginning of another sort.

Sister Emily too is groaning. She strikes me again. My shrieks grow louder. The welts on my buttocks deepen. The pain multiplies and the pleasure intensifies. I rub my bottom. It feels as though it has been torched. I'm weeping.

Now, she'll demand that I pray forgiveness, I'm certain, as I wipe away my tears. I know the mantra so well: Mother Mary, forgive my sins; Mother Mary, forgive my sins.

Sister Emily sets down the cane and leans beside me against the desk. She is panting from her exertions but also, I suspect, from excitement.

'What do you have to say, Annie?' she asks sternly.

'Mmm.... Mmm....' I start through clenched teeth.

'Say it!'

'Mmm... Mmm.... Mmm...'

'Yes?'

'Mmmore, pleeeaaase,' I murmur defiantly.

'What!' exclaims the sister. She snatches up the cane. 'Spread your legs wide. Wider! You little devil.'

She takes a step back and raises the cane high above her head. I brace myself against the desk in expectation of the blow.

But Emily drops the cane and falls again to her knees.

'You're so wicked, so sinful. What are you doing to me? Now stay where you are.'

She licks my bottom again. I'm shuddering. The skin is livid from her attentions and blazing to the touch. But then the ministrations of her tongue and lips begin to soothe the rawness of the wheals better than any chemist's balm.

'Yes, yes. Don't stop, please don't stop.'

Emily slips her hand between my legs. My slit feels warm and wet; her fingers too, hot and urgent.

'Oh, God, this is shameful, shameful,' whimpers the sister as she slides her fingers between my yielding lips. I want more, so much more.

'No, it's heaven. Use your tongue.'

She pulls off the wimple and veil. I see, in the mirror, a pile of long blonde hair tumbling down onto her shoulders. She tucks it behind her ears and leans between my legs. I push my bottom higher. Her lips suck on my own as my wetness bastes the sister's cheeks. Then her tongue is in my pussy, thrusting in and out like a relentless tide. She pulls back and, turns me around, shoving my back on to the desk so that I'm spread-eagled, my feet barely touching the floor. Another wave of pain floods my body as my bottom presses against the desk. Now she's leaning over me, tearing at my blouse. Her face is flushed and fearsomely lovely. She unclasps my bra at the front and buries her head in my breasts, her hair drowning them in a sea of blonde tresses.

She's licking and sucking and biting my nipples. My hands are in her hair, brushing and combing its lustrous waves. I want her so much, I love her so much, I need her so much.

'God, yes, yes,' I'm screaming.

She pulls away again.

'You're beautiful, so beautiful.'

But Emily pushes me back onto the desk. Now she can use both mouth and fingers on me. She strokes up my thighs, pressing the heel of her hand against the mound. My gut and limbs and slit are drowning in a sea of desire.

'Forgive me,' she weeps as her lips suck on the lush bush of thick pubic hair. Beneath, my pink, slippery flesh is soaked with my juice, my pussy overflowing with need for her.

'Please, Lord. Do it, do it,' I'm yelling.

And Emily's fingers are in me again. Her tongue too. Lips squeeze my clit in reverential embrace. My bud feels so hard against the softness of her tongue. I can't let her go. I hold her head between my thighs, my hands pressing her face against the pillow of my pussy. My body arches and bucks. I draw up my legs so that they are resting on Emily's shoulders. The heels of my shoes dig into her back.

'Oh, God, I'm coming, I'm coming.'

Fingers – two, three and then four – plunge into me. A swollen, thirsty tongue laps at my pussy like a starved kitten licking her cream. I'm pulling Emily's face ever more firmly into me, rubbing my clit against her chin. Then, I come in wild, sobbing shudders that overtake my whole body.

Emily works her tongue and fingers harder and harder as I yield to the afterwaves of my coming and then she gradually slows and withdraws them as I subside with a long, satisfied groan.

'Mother Mary, please forgive me,' I whisper.

'Amen,' says Emily.

I lay her on her back and slowly kiss her face: her forehead, eyebrows, lids and cheeks, then her nose. I can taste myself on her skin. Her mouth is red and full and I reward its endeavours with long, lingering kisses. My hands stroke the nape of her neck.

For me, all is calmness. I feel spent, temporarily, but I can see the fever on Emily's skin, the heated cheeks, the pink rash about her neck. I sit astride her and complete the removal of my blouse and bra. I unhitch the skirt and pull it up over my head. Now I'm naked but for my socks and shoes. Slowly I undo Emily's blouse. Her eyes are on me, mine on hers. They never waver. We are both smiling but seriously so.

I let her turn over and I strip her of her blouse and bra. Her breasts look delicious: small and firm with dark pink aureoles and delicate nipples. Then I slip down her skirt. I turn her back onto her bottom. And pull down her knickers. I'm astride her again. Her arms are by her side, defenceless; her eyes are watching me.

'Do you want to beat me?' she whispers.

'Do you want me to?' I ask.

'No.'

'Then, I won't. I love you too much to hurt you.'

'I hurt you because I love you,' she says.

'I know. Sometimes I like to be hurt.'

'Kiss me.'

I kiss her lips again and again and again.