The Choice (17 page)

The day of the Chamber elections came and all my hard work bore fruit. Giles made it, with a comfortable
three-hundred-vote
margin, to the utter fury of his opponent, who seemed convinced that he stood on a moral high ground so elevated that no sane individual could have voted against him. All the other results followed much the same pattern. We had conquered the middle ground, or rather, I had conquered the middle ground, most of whom felt that Giles was the lesser of the two evils. My own margin of victory was over six hundred votes.

Giles might have been President, but it was my election and he knew it, taking care to keep me firmly on side and helping me to settle into my new role during the final few days of term. I accepted it all, dizzy with victory and full of confidence. People were speaking of me as an obvious choice for President, and even Giles seemed a little in awe of me. He had stopped making quips about my background and began to stress to his cronies that I was fourth-generation Oxford, effectively bringing me into his own elite circle. Yet on the final afternoon of term, when I went over to Emmanuel after dinner for what I hoped would be a passionate farewell with Stephen, he wasn’t there. I waited, staring out over the backs of Emmanuel and down to where the huge old magnolia outside his block was already in flower. He had to pass it to get to his room, but I knew he wouldn’t be coming for hours or, at least, not with me.

My second homecoming was very different from the first. Dad was delighted with my achievement, and for the first time in my entire life he actually seemed to be impressed with something I’d done, rather than simply expecting me to succeed. Mum was more critical, worrying about my work suffering because of all the time I’d been putting into the Chamber, but I had passed my examinations comfortably enough.

After the boredom of my Christmas holidays I’d made a point
of
angling for invitations from friends, and while Stephen was back in the US teaching rowing I managed enough to keep me busy, including a very important one indeed, to join Violet and Dr James McLean on the Contentin Peninsula in Normandy. I couldn’t possibly turn it down, but I was feeling more than a little nervous as I kissed my parents goodbye at Exeter Airport and made for the check-in desk.

I knew the address of the
gite rural
James had hired, and had looked it up on the internet to discover something a little bigger than a chalet set into a hillside that was very nearly a cliff and sloped down to a jumble of little beaches and rocky outcrops. It was certainly very beautiful and, if the satellite picture was anything to go by, also very lonely, with nothing but other single houses, the occasional farm, endless fields and one small village within miles.

It was hot for spring, and stepping from the air-conditioned interior of the plane onto the tarmac at Cherbourg was a shock. The air felt thick and sticky, and as my taxi drove out towards the end of the peninsula the sea looked increasingly inviting. Violet had obviously had the same idea, as when I arrived there was nobody in the house at all, just a note on the kitchen table, a single word scrawled in Violet’s big looping hand – ‘beach’.

I changed into a bikini and espadrilles, then made my way down a steep path of loose soil running between thorn bushes to a tiny cove flanked by twin outcrops of jagged grey rock. The beach looked wonderful, a crescent of pale sand leading down to blue-green water that barely stirred in the lifeless air, but it was empty, or seemed to be until Violet emerged from beneath a jut of rock. She was stark naked, her pale slender body bare to the sun, her dark curls caught up in the familiar ribbon.

For a moment I just stood and watched, remembering what we’d done together and thinking what we might do in future,
especially
with no prying eyes or attentive ears to worry about. I’d never seen myself as a lesbian, and still didn’t, but there was no denying that she was beautiful, or that she could give me what no man had yet managed to do. Then there was James, and I was biting my lip as I hurried down the last few yards of the slope.

The path ended on a slant of bare rock, hot under my feet. Violet had dumped her clothes at the bottom, shedding them any old how. She was already in the sea, swimming out with her back towards me, and I was tempted to strip and try to catch her, but decided against it, unsure if James was about. I called out to her instead and she immediately turned back, quickly reached the shallows, wet and naked, and walked towards me, smiling a welcome.

We went straight into each other’s arms, her body wet and cool against my hot skin, her mouth pressing to mine with her tongue immediately probing between my lips. I resisted, not quite ready and not at all ready to do it in front of James, but she wasn’t having any nonsense, whispering into my ear that it was safe even as she pushed my bikini bottoms down around my thighs. I still wasn’t sure.

‘Where’s James?’

‘In town, buying dinner. Now come on, I’ve missed you.’

She pulled up my top as she spoke and I gave in, efficiently stripped and with my arousal already soaring. I shrugged off my bikini and we went down onto the sand together, Violet on top, her thighs open across my body, her eyes feasting on my naked breasts as she squeezed them. I let her feel, my feelings rising higher still, waiting for the moment when she’d go down on me, to kiss my body from my mouth to my sex the way she liked to, only for her to suddenly speak out. ‘I think it’s about time you returned a little favour, Poppy Miller.’

I nodded, knowing exactly what she meant, suddenly uncertain again, but telling myself it was only fair and that she had me pinned, any excuse to get over myself and do it. My heart was pounding as she moved forwards, her smile now more than a little wicked as she straddled my chest, sat squarely on my breasts as she took me gently but firmly by the hair and pulled me in. She didn’t need to make me. A moment’s hesitation and I’d done it, poking out my tongue to taste another woman for the first time in my life.

She gave a pleased sigh as I began to lick, pulling my head in tighter and wriggling her bottom against me. I took hold of her hips, doing my best to pleasure her just as she had pleasured me so often. My legs had come up and open as I licked, just because it felt right to be in an available position, but she took it as a hint, laughing as she let go of my head.

‘Greedy girl! OK then, but I want mine too.’

Before I could tell her it was OK she had twisted around, presenting me with her bare bottom. She went straight down, taking hold of my cheeks in her hands and burying her face between my thighs. I responded in kind, licking eagerly and stroking the skin of her neatly rounded behind; pale smooth skin, but marked with tiny red spots. She’d been whipped, and she had to know I could see what had been done to her, her beautiful bare bottom spread wide just inches in front of my face, the tiny blemishes all too obvious.

Just knowing was almost enough to make me come, and she was doing amazing things with her tongue, bringing me higher and higher as I imagined her getting it as she was, with me licking while James applied the birch. A moment later she’d tipped me over the edge and I was clinging onto her with my thighs locked tight around her head as my orgasm swept over me. No sooner was I finished than she suddenly sat up, her bottom full in my face.

‘Now me, go on, Poppy, do it.’

She wiggled, and I’d begun to lick again for all my shock at having her bum stuck in my face. It was a deliciously rude thing to do, but I couldn’t resent it, just the opposite, licking as eagerly as before and delighting in the soft cool feel of her cheeks against my face, still wet with sea water. As I licked, she squirmed herself against me, faster and harder, until at last she finished with a long sigh and I was left gasping on the sand as she rolled off me, laughing.

‘That was wonderful. I have missed you so much. You didn’t mind having your face sat on, did you?’

‘Er … not really, it was just a bit unexpected.’

Again she laughed, with clear uninhibited joy for my embarrassment. ‘I’m glad you came, and you’ll love it here. Oxford’s so stifling, isn’t it? Here we can do as we please and go naked all day.’

‘What about James?’

‘Don’t worry about James. He’d love to see you nude.’

‘I bet he would, but what about me!’

‘Don’t be prissy, Poppy Miller. You’re beautiful, and you should be proud of your body.’

She rolled over, to lie face down with her chin resting on her arms. The sand had stuck to her wet skin, making shapes on the muscles of her back and bottom, but I could still see the faint red speckles from her whipping. She had to know I’d seen, and I wondered what to say, but, unlike with Stephen, it wasn’t really all that difficult.

‘Your bottom is rather red, Violet Aubrey. Whatever have you been up to?’

She laughed. ‘OK, let’s talk. You know, don’t you? James spanks me.’

‘He spanks you?’

Just the word was enough to send the blood to my cheeks,
and
I’d begun to colour up as I asked the question. The birching was bad enough, but I couldn’t get my head around the sheer indignity of a grown woman allowing herself to be put across a man’s lap to have her knickers taken down and her bare bottom smacked. It was too much, and I quickly tried to turn the conversation back to something I at least felt I could cope with.

‘I thought he birched you?’ I immediately realised that I’d given away too much and hastily tried to correct myself. ‘I mean, I saw you picking birch twigs one day, and I guessed.’

She raised an eyebrow, grinning. ‘Just because I was picking birch? How did you know it wasn’t for a flower arrangement?’

‘OK, I admit I heard you with James, and when I saw you picking the birch I put two and two together. Anyway, the speckles on your bum look as if they were made by birch twigs.’

She twisted around, wiping sand from one cheek to inspect her skin. ‘The bristly side of my hairbrush, actually. I was done this morning.’

A shiver passed through me for the way she said it, that she’d been ‘done’, as if she was describing some necessary and regular part of her routine. It was all too easy to picture, Violet laid across James McLean’s lap, probably stark naked, her little round bottom lifted to the smacks as he took her own hairbrush to her cheeks, probably before easing her to her knees and slipping his cock into her mouth.

She carried on. ‘He does birch me, occasionally, and it is rather special, but he usually spanks me across his knee.’

She was almost purring as she spoke, making it completely superfluous to ask if she enjoyed the treatment. I wanted to know more.

‘How did it start?’

‘Oh, I’ve always liked it, even before my first serious
boyfriend,
who used to do me quite often, once I’d managed to persuade him, but you’d be surprised how many men won’t do it, or don’t feel right about doing it, which is just as bad. I was hoping I would meet the right man, or preferably a woman, and James had a collection of Louis Malteste illustrations on his shelves, privately bound.’

‘That doesn’t mean anything to me.’

‘I don’t suppose it would. Louis Malteste was a French artist, working from the late nineteenth century up until the 1920s. He’s best known for fine art and satirical cartoons, but he also did erotic illustrations, many of which involved girls getting their bottoms smacked.’

I felt the blood rise to my face again as she spoke, but tried to hide my reaction behind my hands.

Violet gave me a wan smile, perhaps through her own embarrassment, perhaps as a reaction to mine. She went on. ‘When I first saw it I thought it would just be a collections of cartoons from
L’Assiette au Beurre
or something, but I had to check, and when he went to talk to somebody at the door in the middle of a tutorial I sneaked a peek. It was a collection of Malteste’s spanking drawings, just those, from several different volumes and some of them damaged, but beautifully displayed.’

‘So it was obvious what he was into?’

‘Exactly, and he was just the man for me, older and in authority. Even from my boyfriend it always took me somewhere I couldn’t reach with normal sex, but from an older man, who had authority over me …’

She trailed off with a little shiver of pleasure, but sounded more than a little apologetic as she carried on. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have come on to him, but I had to. Anyway, a lot of first-year girls fancy their tutors, at least when they look like James, and there’s nothing wrong with it, is there? It’s not as if I was at school, after all, so …’

She spread her hands and shrugged, a gesture of guilty resignation.

‘So you seduced him?’

‘Yes, and believe me, he tried to resist. I was awful. At first I thought I should just make it plain that I was available, because I prefer the man to take the lead, so I’d turn up to tutorials in tiny skirts and generally show off. When he didn’t take any notice I started to find ways to slip references to corporal punishment into my essays. He still didn’t take any notice, but I could see I was getting to him …’

‘How could you tell?’

‘Easy. He’d get a whacking big erection during tutorials. I wanted to get it out and play with it, and he knew, so you can imagine what the tension was like. There’s another picture, by an unknown artist from the 1950s, which shows a girl sitting on a sofa with her skirt turned up and her knickers around her ankles while she pulls on a man’s cock. You can see the turn of her bottom and the flushed skin where she’s been spanked. I used to imagine it was us.’

‘And you told him?’

‘No. I was late one day, on purpose, and suggested I deserved a spanking. He gave me a lecture, pointing out to me that it was not only inappropriate but illegal and that I’d have to go to a different tutor. I broke down, telling him that I loved him and that I needed to be punished by him, all the stuff I’d been building up for weeks. He still wouldn’t give in, but he admitted he wanted to do it, and after that there was really no going back. I pretended I’d accepted his decision, but now that we both knew we could talk about it, which used to drive me crazy, and him. He could have had me at any time, but we still managed to hold off, until ninth week.’