The Carrot and the Stick (20 page)

Natasha said nothing, but grunted when the third blow fell, and again on the fourth.

By the sixth her bottom was a fiery crimson all over, except deep down in the valley where nestled her puckered opening. As she was swinging the brush back again, Beth noticed that Natasha's labia were open and moist, like a juicy fig ready for eating. By the eighth fierce stroke Natasha was in tears. She writhed around and sank to her knees between Beth's legs, burying her face in the folds of the bathrobe covering Beth's thighs.

‘No more, please Beth.' As the muffled sobs came from her lap Beth could feel the girl's hot breath warming her through the towelling. ‘I really did do my best. I even took a peak in his briefcase when he went to the loo.'

‘You did what?!' Beth exclaimed, pushing Natasha away so that she fell to the floor with a shocked squeal.

‘Well, answer her,' snapped Merchant, standing openly in the bedroom doorway. ‘You did what?'

Both girls looked up at him in horror, as if frozen for a second. Natasha turned her face, stained with tears, to Beth. ‘W-what's he doing here?' she snivelled, a note of despair and incomprehension in her voice.

‘I'd say it's a good thing I am here,' he answered for Beth, ‘otherwise I would not have found out just how underhand and deceitful and...' he hunted for the correct word, ‘...how unethical you two obviously are. Going through my briefcase, indeed! It's an utter disgrace!' Merchant looked at Beth. ‘And I hold you responsible.'

‘But...' Beth floundered, ‘but I didn't do anything.'

‘Maybe so, but this would-be thief, this industrial spy, she works for you. She does what you tell her and I therefore hold you responsible.'

When neither of the girls spoke up, he went on. ‘Either I take this outrageous matter further, undoubtedly costing both of you your jobs,' he paused, staring at them each in turn, ‘or I deal with you both myself, here and now.'

Still neither girl spoke. ‘Your choice,' he barked.

Still silence. ‘So it's up to me, is it?' he said, taking off his jacket. ‘Right, first we must even things up.' He pointed to Beth. ‘Robe off and bend over the end of the bed.' Then he looked at Natasha. ‘She gave you eight strokes with the hairbrush, so you give her eight in return, and then it will be my turn.'

Natasha looked again at Beth, waiting for her to lead. Beth stood up and handed the hairbrush to her. ‘This isn't fair,' she said, taking off her bathrobe as she spoke. She was naked underneath. She lay over the foot of the bed, her bottom exposed, and Natasha hesitantly stood beside her, the brush held limply in her hand.

‘Get on with it,' Merchant demanded.

‘Sorry Beth,' Natasha said, and she swung the brush so that it slapped across the middle of Beth's buttocks.

‘Harder,' Merchant insisted. ‘She hit you harder than that.'

Natasha swung the brush a second time, and again it landed with a dull slap in the middle of Beth's bottom.

‘No, you can do better than that,' Merchant said impatiently. He stood immediately behind Natasha, gripping her right hand, which held the brush, and pushing himself against her shapely form, her hot and punished bottom against his groin, the rough trouser material chafing her sore flesh.

‘Like this,' he guided, pulling back both their arms as one, and propelled them forward and down with pace so that the brush swatted with a ferociously cruel impact on Beth's bottom. She squealed as if she had been branded and slumped on the bed.

They repeated the routine five more times without mercy, and Beth cried out with the pain of each stroke. Natasha was crying too, mortified that she was being forced to punish her friend so severely, and uncomfortable with the possessive closeness of his embrace and the telltale lump that pressed into her tortured bottom cheeks.

Merchant then took the hairbrush into his hand alone. ‘Now it is my turn,' he said, slightly out of breath.

He made Natasha bend over the bed next to Beth so that their hips touched, two naked and inflamed bottoms next to each other, four red and purple blotched buttocks in a row.

‘I am going to thrash you until my arm hurts,' he vowed. ‘I will brook no argument or protest. And then you will do everything else I want or I shall beat you again.'

Beth rested her head on one arm, gazing into Natasha's eyes, just inches from her own. With her free hand she reached for Natasha's hand, its palm damp.

Merchant took his time. ‘Two of everything,' he said. ‘Double the time and double the number of strokes,' he added, swinging the brush down for the first time, ‘on double the number of miscreants.'

He beat each vulnerable cheek at random and then systematically in order, never once letting up. Beth and Natasha gripped each other's hand fiercely, trying to stifle their sobs. Beth was pleased to see Natasha even try to smile through her tears, but her return smile turned to a grimace as the wooden back of the brush fell like a branding iron in a particularly sore spot.

Finally Merchant tired. They heard the brush drop to the carpet and his panting breath as he studied his handiwork for long seconds.

When he had recovered his composure, he ordered them to lie on the bed, head to toe. ‘Guess what you are going to do now, while I undress,' he goaded. ‘The last one to come will be beaten again.'

Beth slid her head forward as Natasha raised her upper leg. She nestled her face into the girl's groin, feeling Natasha doing the same to her, the same way at the same time. Beth gently kissed the younger girl's sex as her nose burrowed between Natasha's buttocks, the scalding flesh warming her forehead and cheeks. Lovingly she slid her tongue between Natasha's labia and deep into the already damp tunnel inside. At the same time she could feel Natasha's tongue tracing the path between her vagina and anus and back again before penetrating her own labia. Beth forgot Merchant, forgot the beating, and forgot the hotel room. All that mattered, all that she was aware of was the need to give and to receive sensual pleasure. She lapped her tongue up and down, and around and around Natasha's clitoris, knowing if she brought Natasha to a climax, then she herself would climax with pleasure in response. She wanted it to last forever while, at the same time, she desperately wanted the release the climax would bring.

The heat of her bottom spread all over her body and she knew she was gasping and panting as she licked furiously at the younger girl. When the climaxes came, Beth had no idea whose was first. And it did not matter. Both girls convulsed, moaning deep in their throats and then threw their heads back and lay with their eyes closed, breathing heavily.

When Beth opened her eyes she saw Merchant standing at the foot of the bed. He was naked, his penis standing out from his body like a flagpole on the side of a building.

‘I would call that a dead heat,' he decided. ‘Now move over.'

He lay on his back between the girls and told them to follow his instructions. Natasha had to ‘go south', to lie between his legs and to lick between the cheeks of his bottom and to take his balls into her mouth, while Beth had to ‘go north', squatting over his head with her legs apart to suck his penis.

As she took the engorged head in her mouth she could feel his tongue tickling her already sensitive clitoris, his fingers running lightly over the ridges on her buttocks. After many minutes in which the only sound in the room was that of wet lapping and suckling, he mumbled, ‘All change.' The girls obediently swapped places and the lapping and suckling resumed.

Then he ordered them to position themselves either side of him and to lick his penis in unison, from the hairy, broad base at his stomach, up the column to the glistening summit and back again. He placed a hand on each of their heads, the right hand on blonde hair, the left on black, to guide their movements and to synchronise their timing, the two tongues touching on their journey.

‘Beth, you are the oldest,' he croaked, as he stiffened and his muscles tensed, ‘so you can have the first mouthful,' so she obediently clamped her lips over his helmet and sucked avidly. Within seconds he spasmed and shot a jet of warm, sticky fluid deep into her throat. When her mouth was full she moved away and Natasha leant forward to swallow the next and lesser ejaculations, holding his penis in her mouth until it was flaccid again.

Ten minutes later he was dressed. ‘I'd like to stay the night,' he said, ‘but I need my sleep - and I don't think I'd get much here.' At the door he turned. ‘You'll be hearing from me very soon.'

In bed the girls lay on their sides cuddling, Natasha's hot bottom resting in Beth's lap.

‘Do you think he's forgiven us?' Natasha asked quietly.

‘He jolly well ought to have done, after that,' Beth said. ‘But I'm more worried about the contract; whether or not we're going to get it now.'

‘It's hard work, your job,' Natasha said sleepily, nestling her bottom closer to Beth. ‘But it has its compensations.'

 

 

 

At eight in the morning the telephone rang in the hotel suite. Beth shook her tousled hair and placed the receiver next to her ear on the pillow before uttering a muffled hello.

It was Richard. ‘My office,' he said. ‘One hour.'

‘But it's Saturday,' Beth complained, still feeling drowsy.

‘My office in one hour,' he repeated. ‘And bring the other girl with you. What's her name? Natasha.' His voice was replaced by a heavy click and a dialling tone.

‘What's up?' Natasha asked, sitting up and stretching.

Beth shook her head to try to understand what was happening. ‘It can only be that bloody snake Merchant,' she said. ‘He must have ratted on us and told Richard. Shit, he didn't waste any time.'

‘After what we did for him?' Natasha yawned, then looked alarmed when Beth told her they'd been summoned. ‘I don't want to meet Mr Cross like this,' she said.

‘We have no choice,' Beth said, throwing Natasha's clothes onto the bed and heading for the bathroom. ‘Our master has spoken.'

 

Sixty minutes later the pair threaded their way through the empty offices of Cross, Carstairs and Denton to the inner sanctum where they found Richard Cross sitting behind his desk, his face bleak with anger. He looked at his watch as they entered. He was wearing a sweater instead of his customary suit, and was unshaven.

‘I do not enjoy spending my weekends getting early morning calls and chasing up recalcitrant members of staff,' he snapped at Beth. ‘Explain yourself.'

‘Explain what? Beth asked.

‘You know full well what - what you two got up to yesterday.'

In a halting voice Beth explained as best as she could. She told Richard who Natasha was and what she wanted, how the girl had hoped to prove herself and win his approval with an unofficial, freelance job, how they had tried to elicit information from Peregrine Merchant, and how together they might have overstepped the mark of conventional behaviour.

Richard snorted in disbelief and turned to Natasha for the first time. ‘Is that the way you try to impress me, by acting like some second-rate industrial snoop?'

‘No,' she said. ‘I'm sorry, Mr Cross, I was only trying to help... to help Beth.' She glanced sideways at the other girl for support.

He snorted again. ‘Help? You realise you could get us struck off the register, thrown out of our professional association?'

When Beth tried to interpolate on behalf of Natasha, he peremptorily gestured to her that she should sit down on the couch behind her friend so that the two could no longer have eye contact, saying, ‘I'll deal with you in a moment.' He kept Natasha standing in front of his desk.

‘You realise you could be prosecuted,' he barked. ‘You could be up in court.'

Natasha started to sob. ‘But I didn't do much,' she pleaded. ‘I didn't find anything.'

‘I know just what you did,' Richard replied. ‘Merchant told me on the telephone first thing this morning. He could still press charges.'

Natasha's dismay momentarily flashed into anger. ‘Well then, he's a bastard,' she snapped, fleetingly forgetting the seriousness of her predicament. ‘He already dealt with us himself. He had no right to tell you.'

Richard sat incredulous for long tense seconds, and Beth cringed behind Natasha. ‘A bastard?' he eventually said, his tone one of disbelief. ‘A potential very important client of ours and you call him a bastard?' He shook his head and rubbed his temples. ‘And for your information, of course he should have told me. I should know everything that happens if it concerns the firm.'

‘And did he tell you what he did to us in retribution?' Natasha ploughed on angrily.

‘He did,' Richard said, a slight smile playing around his lips for the first time. ‘He sounded quite impressed by the both of you.'

Natasha was indignant. ‘He beat me - he beat the both of us.'

‘How?' Richard asked.

‘On our bottoms, our bare bottoms, with a hairbrush,' Natasha spluttered, her cheeks flushed. ‘And then he rats on us.'