Chapter 6

"Why?" she asked.

"Have you ever beaten somebody?"

Lila shook her head.

"Well," he answered, "perhaps you should have the experience before..."

She shook her head sadly, "Yes, perhaps I should."

Her first strokes were hesitant, Lucinda screamed, perhaps to try to convince Manu that it hurt, but he was too experienced for that. He judged progress by the number, depth and color of the cuts, not by the slave's reaction to them.

"Don't go easy on her," Manu instructed, "it will take longer if you do."

"I understand."

Then Lila began to strike in earnest. Lucinda's screams turned into pitiful shrieks as her ass was covered by pink stripes that soon turned into deep purple welts. Even though Lila hit her as hard as she could, she lacked experience as well as strength, and it took her quite a while to draw first blood.

By the time the first drops of blood appeared, Lila's nude body was covered in sweat; she had dropped the sheet that she had wrapped around her waist. Lucinda's body was also glistening with sweat, although for totally different reasons.

Manu contemplated the Amazon that wielded the cane more skillfully each time. His desire for her burned his insides, he so much wanted to have her, before the end, but the knowledge of what he had done, and was bound to do to her, gripped his heart and turned his desire to ashes.

Lila swung the crop, hitting her target, Lucinda's sweet ass, and noting her shrieks of pain. Her breathing became heavier, more labored from the exercise and, to her surprise and shock, from something else. She noticed a heaviness, a sense of want, deep inside. Her pussy lips, opening, her moisture, dripping from her insides. She swung the cane faster, harder, in unconscious rhythm with her galloping desire. Manu noticed this, his hand slowly stroking his chin, a faint smile on his lips.

Her need taking over, her left hand slowly moved to her pleasure center and reaching there, found only emptiness. Her shriek of frustration set off a harder series of cuts to poor Lucinda's tortured cheeks. Lisa, no longer conscious of her victim's screaming, only sensed her building wave, her damned flood, and with no way to relieve her pent up tension, her vicious need to come. In her frustration, she no longer saw Lucinda or her striped buttocks, the cuts of her cane just as soon falling on her ass as on the table, or on Lila's own thighs.

"Enough!" said Manu, holding her wrist.

Lila fell on her knees, her fists punching her thighs, her face full of tears, her head falling on her hands, sobbing in frustration, despair, or perhaps both.

Manu let her cry herself out on the floor; it was he that removed Lucinda from the pillar and shackled her crying, tortured body to the wall. It was he that removed the pleading, frightened Maya and shackled her to the pillar.

"We will do your breasts before we do hers" Manu told her, as a small measure of consolation.

Between sobs of anguish and terror, Maya had enough presence of mind to answer:

"Thank you."

Only after Maya was prepared did Manu kneel besides Lila to console her. She did not want to cane Maya's ass; she did not like what she found while doing Lucinda. Manu listened to her pleas but he insisted.

"It would be unfair to Lucinda if I were to cane Maya," he said.

Lila stopped crying and shot him a questioning look.

"I am stronger and more experienced; it would be done faster."

Reluctantly, Lila picked up a new cane.

She tried to be professional about it; she tried not to feel, not to let the power carry her away. Vain hope; Maya's piercing shrieks, her screams, her pleas for mercy, and the stripes growing on her small, firm ass, pushed Lila deeper and deeper into the fire. She felt her blood, rushing to her center, piling up, behind a dam that would not open. She hit harder, faster, until again, her eyes no longer saw the room, or Maya, or her ass. A red fog surrounded her, until she felt that she only needed just one more, one more strike, just one more and she would reach, she would be able.

"Crack!"

A sharp pain cut across her nipples.

Lila fell on the ground, her hands at her pussy, her fingers pushed deep inside her. Her insides churning; sloppy, slurping noises coming out as she tried to push both her fists inside her depths. She felt the waves coming; once, twice, three times, more. Her legs thrashed, her ass bounced on the floor. It took her a long time to finish. When she was done, breathless, she looked at Manu.

"How did you know?" she asked him.

He simply shook his head sadly.

He picked up the cane. He swung at Maya's breasts slowly, hard. He ignored her pitiful wailing, her tears and her pleas. He hit her mammaries with swift, precise strokes. Despite appearances, the punishment was efficient. It did not take ten minutes or more than twenty strokes for the blood to flow freely from her lacerated bosom. Lila appreciated his efficiency although she wondered how he could be so cool, so professional. She took a furtive glance at his crotch. Nothing was going on down there.

While Manu moved Maya to the wall, Lila tied the crying Lucinda to the table. When Manu approached her with her cane the poor girl pissed herself in fear.

"I wonder if I will do the same, when it's my turn," Lila thought.