Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 57296 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 191(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57296 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 191(@300wpm)
It seemed that the power of the wand to enforce the Quiet command allowed little noises like that whimper, and the one that came from my throat as I put my thumbs inside the waistband of my panties and tugged them down. I looked up into the blank, black surface of the mask, my face a pitiful pout, beseeching him for mercy, though I had no idea even why he intended to punish me, let alone why he would show me mercy.
I felt my pussy, with its sparse golden curls, come into his view. I wondered with another flush of blood in my cheeks whether his hidden eyes had fixed themselves there, between my legs. To my dismay, I felt a surge of heat down there, too, to match the one in my face. The question “Why?” became the one I most wanted to ask, and I found myself trying to beam it into the hooded, masked man’s mind with my pleading eyes.
At that point I seemed to hear the word birch for the first time. He had said he was going to birch me. My eyes went to something on the end of my bed—something that shouldn’t be there. A black bag, to match his hood, his pants, and his shirt. I watched him reach into it in a leisurely way, his head turning and bending to look down into its depths and find what he sought.
I felt a moment’s surprise at the slow pace of his movements as he started to pull from the bag something long and thin… something apparently made of several lengths of… of twigs, bound together by stout cords at one end to make a handle.
Couldn’t I, like, scramble over the bed and out the bedroom door? Naked though I was, I would still fare better if I could get outside my apartment, wouldn’t I? His attention had turned to the birch thing and he didn’t seem to be keeping watch on me.
I started to do it. Really, I started to try to do it, though that doesn’t even really describe what happened between my brain and my body. The part of my mind that had realized I might have a chance to get away told my body to turn and get up onto the bed as fast as I could. My body refused. I couldn’t even swing my head in that direction, because all my focus had gone to the birch thing.
I felt my face crumple, my forehead creasing deeply. I heard another of those whimpers come from my throat, the only sounds that the horrible device the man had pressed into my back apparently permitted.
“This is my birch, Heather,” said the man, turning the blank face of the mask to me again. “I’m going to punish you with it because it’s a traditional punishment in Russia.”
My mouth opened, my jaw going slack. The man had just spoken in nearly flawless Russian—though not quite as flawless, part of me realized, as my own.
I had thought maybe he meant something else about birching me. Or maybe one part of my brain had at least managed to persuade another that he couldn’t mean by it the horrible thing toward which my mind had leapt… the mortifying image in the dark, forbidden place where I shoved things not worth thinking about.
Of course I had never seen one before. Even the concept had been vague, probably because it didn’t make sense to me on reading about it that a singular word, birch, could refer to something made of a lot of separate pieces of the thing to which it referred—twigs that would traditionally, I supposed, come from a birch tree.
Russia. My grandmother’s old books, some of them about young women’s experiences in school.
I almost managed to form my lips into a W shape. I mean, I had the impression I had almost started the movement of my face muscles that would round my lips that way. It took a moment to understand that the impression had no truth to it, that the man’s command Quiet simply prevented me from doing anything even related to speaking aloud.
My furrowed brow and my pleading eyes tried to ask the question without words, though I couldn’t even tell if he was looking at my face or my exposed pussy. Cheeks blazing, I thrust my hands in front of the little nest of curls and the untried cleft it concealed badly enough that I blushed every time I got a glimpse of myself nude in the mirror.
“Nyet,” said the man, simply and calmly, then kept speaking in Russian. “It’s forbidden to cover yourself. Use those naughty hands to strip down the comforter and the top sheet. Put the pillow in the middle of the bed, then get over it. I want your bottom nice and high for your first punishment.”