Subculture (4 page)

‘That's usually my next question,' Lisa continued, thinking out loud. She pictured the scene. ‘As you probably recall, that particular afternoon was really hectic...'

Michael Landers perched on the low examination couch then stared at her solemnly. ‘And life would be hectic for my staff and patients here in Malta if due to your negligence I had died.'

He'd outlined a just-about-possible picture. Some herbal remedies were startlingly potent, mustn't be used in conjunction with certain drugs. It was the herbalist's job to ascertain her patients' medical history and steer them through the clashing medical minefield - she'd failed in that. No way was she going over his lap, though. She had to find a verbal means of escape.

‘I'm learning more about herbal practice all the time,' she began in a rush. ‘Your giving me this job was like a vote of confidence, made me decide to give myself a hundred percent to alternative medicine.' She sucked in her breath. ‘I decided that on my return to Scarborough I'd gradually give up the counselling service I've been offering and sit every level of Herbal Studies Exam.'

‘You won't qualify in any of them if I write to the governing board accusing you of negligence,' Michael Landers said evenly.

‘But why would you...?' Lisa gasped.

‘Because I believe that adults should admit to their mistakes and accept the appropriate reprimand.'

Lisa knew that the appropriate reprimand in his book was a stripped sore bottom. She licked her lips, but her mouth remained steadfastly dry.

‘Can I have a drink?' she asked unsteadily. Watched his tanned hands as they uncapped and poured from a bottle of carbonated mineral water. Realised her own hands were unsteady as she accepted the cut crystal glass.

‘Don't look like the condemned woman having a final request,' he joked.

‘I feel condemned,' Lisa admitted hollowly, knowing that she'd never envisaged such a disquieting scene on this peaceful island. ‘You seemed so pleased when you offered me this Herbal Consultancy that I thought...'

‘Thought that I was impressed with your enthusiasm and your knowledge?' the doctor said when she tailed off. ‘Yes I was. I could see the books in your flat, the way you'd examined herbs uses as medicine, teas or foods to their roles as gardening aids and cosmetics. I liked the fact that you'd originally trained as a counsellor and were still working as one, understood something about the human mind.'

‘Yet I made one mistake through overwork and ruined everything,' the twenty-eight year old concluded sadly.

‘No, you made one mistake that a good hard spanking will put right.'

‘But even my parents didn't spank me,' Lisa protested, looking for another angle to protect her extremities.

‘I'm glad to hear it,' Michael Landers replied strongly. ‘Spanking children is a form of abuse.'

His words threw her for a moment. Lisa toed the carpet as she tried to figure his philosophy. She agreed that the physical chastisement of youngsters was wrong - but she also thought that it was wrong to punish your subordinates the way he'd caned the luckless Jamilla. ‘I don't understand,' she said at last.

‘Well, would you hit someone under eighteen who looks to you for protection and advice? It's cowardly and cruel. It's an act that's born of stupidity and anger.'

‘I agree with you,' Lisa said. She took a deep breath. ‘But it's also wrong to discipline me because I'm in a childlike position compared to you.'

‘Nonsense - you're a twenty-eight year old woman with a counselling diploma,' her boss countered briskly.

‘And that's precisely why I'll feel stupid being bent over your lap and having my...' She found she couldn't bring herself to add the words bottom spanked. ‘Feel stupid being corrected,' she substituted falteringly.

‘But you deserve to feel stupid because you acted stupidly,' Michael Landers said, tapping his fingers against the couch.

Damn it. He was winning this war. She was running out of verbal fire. Lisa sucked in her breath then played her trump card. ‘I know that you secretly get off on this. I saw you caning Jamilla yesterday.'

Michael blinked twice, then he smiled lazily down at her. ‘It's no secret that I enjoy roasting a womanly bottom. All of the staff at Vitality have been recruited because of their sexual submissiveness.' He waved a hand in the direction of the window which led to the gardens and the stables. ‘I've got a veritable sub-culture here.'

‘But I'm not like that,' Lisa made herself look at him square on, pushed her shoulders back in what she hoped was a dominant gesture.

‘Oh, but you are. I knew that you had a subservient side the moment I met you,' Dr Landers said. He clapped his right hand softly down on his left palm three times with hellish slow precision. ‘I bet you used to fantasize about being spanked.'

Damn him again - was the bastard psychic, or did he use this line with every new member of staff? Lisa made a mental note to talk to Carmen, Marie-Rose and Jamilla about the doctor's conversational gambits.

‘I might have done,' she said cagily, trying to ignore the tingle which spread through her groin following his actions and words.

‘Don't tell me - and then you forced your desires back because you found out they weren't politically correct,' Michael Landers continued. He was right again. Lisa fingered the legs of her olive green shorts. She wished that she was wearing more dignified clothes, that she could find the words and expressions to satisfactorily end this talk.

‘I'm a business woman now. I believe in men and women being equal,' she said.

Michael Landers smiled. ‘So do I - equal but different.' He raised his eyes upwards, obviously searching for the right phrases and emphasis. ‘When a woman agrees to being punished by me she momentarily hands me her power. She has to be powerful in the first place or she'd have nothing to give.'

‘But Jamilla's a servant, so...'

‘A servant who knows what she wants and how to get it,' the doctor answered simply. He paused. ‘I assume you watched her being caned through a window or doorway. After the caning, did you stay?'

‘I... yes.' Lisa felt caught out, at a loss again.

‘Then you'll know she cried out louder and longer in orgasm than she did when she submitted to her thrashing,' the English doctor said.

Lisa took a deep breath. ‘But that doesn't... I mean, she still wriggled and begged for mercy when the rod fell over her bare bottom.'

The doctor nodded. ‘Of course she did. It hurt like hell, and she felt ashamed. I would too, if I was bent over a desk and soundly beaten. Deep down though she's submissive so she got off on it none the less.'

He paused, then leaned forward again. ‘Did it excite you to watch?'

‘No, I thought it was an assault,' Lisa lied, remembering the traitorous rush of pleasure to her pubis.

‘You'd react by calling the police if it really was an assault,' Dr Landers said. He smiled over at her. ‘You're a woman of honour and of courage. You wouldn't have stood by if you really believed that domestic violence was taking place.'

‘So I'm honourable yet you still want to spank me?' Lisa muttered.

‘Very hard indeed.'

Worse and worse. The twenty-eight year old cleared her suddenly tight clogged throat. ‘And if I don't agree?'

‘Don't agree to live by your employers rules whilst you have a live-in job?' The suited surgeon shook his head. ‘In that case I'll put you on the next plane back to England and we'll both forget that this sad little interlude ever took place.'

Lisa looked round the clean, wholesome and hope-bringing medical room. Then she walked over to the window and stared down at the Cactus Garden with its yellow rock backdrop.

‘I don't want to leave Malta,' she wailed. She stiffened as she heard the man approach, felt his strong arms on her shoulders.

‘Then come over to the couch now and accept your first ever spanking,' he said.

How much could a palm slap hurt? She'd just force her mind to think of other things. Feeling strangely nerveless and ashamed and just a tiny bit curious, Lisa allowed her employer to guide her towards the couch.

‘Usually I stretch a naughty girl out so that her head hangs down on one side of my knees and her legs are stretched out on the other side,' he said conversationally. ‘Point is, when the legs are stretched out the thrashing hurts more.' He looked thoughtfully up at her as he settled himself on the couch, his feet firmly on the carpet, legs parted. ‘But as you're new to being spanked I'll let you put your belly across my lap and rest your weight along the couch.' She sensed him smile. ‘Now isn't that kind of me? And I'll stop and start to let you get used to the heat.'

It was to be a long chastisement, then. Lisa stood where he'd guided her. Nibbled her lip as he patted his lap.

‘I'll add on an extra punishment if you don't bend over my knee of your own volition,' he warned, smoothing his cream suit trousers. The twenty-eight year old considered his words.

‘Make me if you can,' she said. She braced her sandals firmly against the carpet. Put her hands behind her back. Dipped her head down like a see-nothing-so-fear-nothing ostrich. Squealed with surprise as he grabbed her around the waist and positioned her over his lap and across the examination couch in a virtually seamless move. But surprise wasn't all that she felt - the sudden rush of blood to her clitoris unnerved her, and she pushed her slim thighs together and moaned.

‘Oh angel, is that pussy you're so intent on keeping hidden feeling horny already?' Michael Landers murmured. ‘Will that clit that's been wearing all these Keep Off signs want to come?'

‘Only with Reece. You said you wouldn't touch me sexually unless I begged you to,' Lisa countered, raising her head from the surgical couch and twisting it back.

‘And I'll stand by my word,' Michael Landers said. His prick seemed to be standing to attention, none the less she could feel the head of it pushing into her shorts-clad belly. Still, he couldn't help his sexual cravings just as she couldn't control hers. What they could control, Lisa reminded herself, was whether or not they gave in to them - and she couldn't give in as she was engaged to Reece.

Waiting for the first spank was hellish. It seemed to take an age. Lisa closed her eyes and waited for the palm to fall. Waited. Waited. Waited.

‘Why haven't you started yet, you bastard?' she muttered eventually.

‘Are you so keen to feel my palm?' The voice was low, amused. ‘You're not going anywhere for a long time so I'm just contemplating your naughty bottom. Just examining the shape of an error-making arse.'

‘Thought you'd have seen hundreds by now,' Lisa spat out into the medical couch, feeling a little of her spirit re-assert itself.

‘But each girl and her cheeks is substantially different,' her employer replied. He patted and palpated her shorts-hugged orbs. ‘Some backsides know that they've done wrong from the start. They jerk and writhe and... well, sometimes the owner tries to wriggle away before I raise the hardwood paddle. Whereas a bum like yours is a touch arrogant, almost relaxed.'

Lisa certainly didn't feel relaxed. Her heartbeat was pounding its tattoo through her chest. Her braless breasts were rising and falling within the loose confines of her lemon polo-shirt and new lines of electricity were snaking their way towards her crotch.

Then Michael Landers raised his palm - and she forgot all about the crotch-based electricity. Felt her attention shift to her bum and analyse the new sensations that were happening there. Mm, that spank had been surprisingly light, surprisingly enjoyable. Maybe this chastisement wasn't going to be so bad after all. Her new boss spanked on and on and on. His palm flattened first one small cheek then the other, bringing new stimulus to the hidden curves beneath the garments. He said nothing as he punished, his entire focus obviously on her clothed backside.

After an indefinite duration the heat began to build substantially in Lisa's rear. ‘Ouch,' she muttered, and ‘That was a hard one!' and ‘Oh! Aaah!'

‘Just another twenty, I think,' the doctor said. ‘Then we'll let you stop and regain your composure.'

‘What makes you think I've lost it?' Lisa muttered darkly, then yelped as he doled out six much harder spanks. He'd been holding back so far, then - she hated to envisage the force of a no-holds-barred spanking. She shut her eyes tightly and concentrated on keeping quiet as he pained her with the other fourteen smacks.

‘Right, that's the warm up taken care of,' he said, sounding pleased with himself. She felt his palm tracing the full swell of her hips. ‘It renders the flesh more supple, prepares it for its proper punishment.'

‘You mean there's more?' Lisa managed, shocked to hear her own voice reduced to a breathless squeak. She searched for her businesslike tone, but found it sadly lacking. There was no hiding behind a power suit or a briefcase here.

‘Of course there's more. You can't endanger life and not expect a serious reprimand,' her employer retorted. ‘A bum that's put others at risk of fever deserves to experience a similar prolonged temperature itself.'