“Lift up your skirt, Chloe, right up above your waist. Good girl. That’s a very pretty cunt, isn’t it?” I placed my palm against her, fingertips just inside, and stroked wetly. I held her to me with my other arm. We were almost ourselves.

Chloe said, eventually, “I don’t know, sir.”

I squeezed her lips, enough to hurt. “Isn’t it?”

“Uhh. Yes, my cunt is very pretty, sir. Would you like to fuck me, sir?”

“Chloe, I want you more than anything in the world. Or the world.” I said that. Mr Mortimer said, “But you’ve still been a naughty girl. You’ve got a pretty little bottom, too, haven’t you?”

Chloe had to think about that. Eventually she said, “Um. You might be nice enough to think so, sir.”

I gave her five more strokes, feeling the temptation to go harder with each stroke, and resisting it. It seemed that in any case each stroke hurt a little more than the one before.

She found it harder to keep her hands out for the last three strokes, and she had to breathe heavily, several times, before she could speak the last two ‘thank you, sirs’.

I lowered the strap and contemplated her. She was still panting a little, but holding her hands out bravely, not sure if I’d finished. I remembered something. “You were a very good girl then, Chloe. You’re a very brave and good girl.”

Chloe brightened. “Thank you, sir.”

I’d never used a strap on a woman before. It had clearly hurt.

My conscience was a little worried that I’d hurt her, deliberately, and I’d enjoyed watching her reactions. I’d loved her obedience. Chloe watched me, her hands still held out. To be convenient for me, in case I wanted to hurt her more.

I’d decided that six was enough for now. On her hands, at least. But it seemed best to keep her waiting for that information. At last she asked, “May I rub my hands, sir?”

I would always have said yes. But Mr Mortimer was the pilot for the moment, and that man, he was a bastard. “Of course not.”

“Ohhh, si-ir.” But she kept her hands up and presented. 

I considered putting my fingers in her mouth, making her lick them clean. But perhaps that’d be in the wrong genre. Another time. “Hold out your hands, Chloe.”

“Yes, sir.” Chloe obeyed, and watched me lift the strap and let it fall behind my shoulder. I didn’t know how hard I should swing it, but without some force it wouldn’t swing at all. Well, many generations of real schoolgirls and schoolboys had been strapped on the hand, so although I disapproved of real corporal punishment, hand-strapping must be basically safe.

I swung the strap as gently as I could while making sure the folded leather arced through the air and landed on Chloe’s outstretched hands. There was a loud swack – a heavy piece of leather doesn’t want to be gentle – and a musical “ah ow!” from Chloe.

She’d flinched before the strap landed, and winced attractively when it did. It had hurt, which was good, but not too much. It hadn’t jolted her out of her game. She kept her hands steady. A second or two later she said, “One, thank you, Sir.” 

“Hands on head.” She obeyed. I stepped forward. “Feet apart.” She shuffled on the spot. “Further.” She spread her legs as far as the panties at her thighs would allow.

Mr Mortimer said, “I’ve heard that there are very naughty girls who enjoy getting the strap. They need to be dealt with extra, I don’t know, um, firmly. Are you one of those very naughty girls, Miss Sendak?”

Chloe shook her head, eyes wide. “Oh no, Mr Mortimer, sir.” I stood close, looking down into Chloe’s eyes, and reached under the skirt to touch her cunt. Chloe gasped, not entirely theatrically. I stroked gently, and she fell against me. My fingers entered her easily; of course she was one of those very naughty girls. She nestled her head into my armpit and sighed while I pleasured her.

Mr Mortimer said, three fingers deep in lusty girl, “I think, under the circumstances, Miss Sendak, that from now on I’ll call you Chloe.”

Chloe giggled. I hadn’t heard that sound before. “I’d like that, sir.” 

Chloe bit her lip. “Yes, sir.” Chloe didn’t bite her lip when she was nervous. This was acting. I wondered how I could be sure that she was enjoying this. Was she wet under that little skirt?

It occurred to me, at last, that she could never have worn her skirt like that to her expensive school. It was far too short. She must have worked – when? – to take the hem up to its current, absurdly sexy, height. Still, however much she’d prepared for this, she might have changed her mind now that it was happening. I realised that I didn’t have to wonder about this. Mr Mortimer had the power to find out.

He said, “Take down your panties.”

“Sir? I thought you were going to strap my hands.”

“I’ll strap your hands and your legs if you don’t do as you’re told, girl.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” Chloe reached under her skirt and tugged the panties halfway down her thighs, taking care not to lift the hem more than necessary for the purpose.

She put her hands back out.

She put her hands out, palms up. They shook. I was shaky too. It occurred to me that Mr Mortimer hadn’t given a direct order. I’d softened it to a suggestion, so that if Chloe complied it was through choice, not obedience. Avoiding giving orders was part of the sexual politics I’d worked out, to be a dom and a pro-feminist guy.

But this was only a game; none of it was real. So they wouldn’t be real orders. And Chloe had initiated the game anyway. I decided to think about it later and get out of Mr Mortimer’s way.

He said, “Good girl. See, you can be a good girl.” Chloe smiled. I remembered that six weeks ago she’d asked me if she was my good girl. It had been a joke and not a joke. 

Mr Mortimer said, “I’m going to give you the strap, Miss Sendak. Keep your hands out straight.” Now it was an order, but Chloe already had her hands out. She couldn’t enact her obedience. I remembered something else from the texts.

Mr Mortimer tried again. “And thank me for your lesson, Miss Sendak, each time I strap you. Say, ‘One, thank you, sir, Two, thank you, sir’. And so on. Got that?”

“All right, Miss Sendak, you’ve asked for a very severe punishment, and now you’re going to get it.”

Mr Mortimer considered possibilities. The uniform would come off soon, but I liked its mixture of innocence and depravity, and I knew that Chloe had gone to a lot of trouble to set this up. It could stay on for now. I let the strap thwack onto my palm again, looking into her eyes. “What happens to naughty, cheeky girls?”

“It’s sweets, isn’t it, sir?” (Then we can do a Curly-Wurly joke.)

“They get given sweets and taken to the movies, sir?” Sir. I’d never been called sir before. It sounded sweet from her mouth, and satisfying. Yes. I would be sir.

“You will be taken, girl. But not to the movies. And not yet.” That was good for impromptu, I thought. I was starting to get the hang of being Mr Mortimer. “I want you to hold out your hands, Miss Sendak. If you could put both your hands together, palms upward?”

See? I was terrible at giving orders. But I swung the strap onto Chloe’s bed. I knew how to do that. It really was loud, and it made an impressive dent in her bedclothes where it had landed.

Chloe stood and faced me, still with her hands on her head. I wanted to step out of role to check that she was all right, that her consent was real, to reassure her. But that would only be about reassuring me. Chloe had shown me what she wanted, she’d taken a brave risk, relying on my response, and so I swallowed my doubts and tried to be worthy of her.

Yeah, I felt ridiculous. It was like I was channelling this. (I think this is a British music-hall comedian called Jimmy Edwards, by the way.)

Mr Mortimer the strict teacher might be ludicrous, but I could be him, and he could do this. He said, “Well, Miss Sendak, Miss – what the hell was her name? – Laffers or something says that you have been a Very Naughty Girl.”

“Miss Laforge is silly.”

Mr Mortimer also felt slightly silly, but he did have an erection.

He realised that he did have a script for this game. There were any number of literary sources. He said, “I think you’ll find, young lady, that you’ll think twice before you say that again.”

“Hah.” Chloe put her tongue out.

If I were not already in love with her, I’d have fallen at that moment. I wanted to multiply into many men, like Krishna with the Gopi girls, to fuck her in every way simultaneously. I wanted to whip her mercilessly and caress her gently. I wanted us to dissolve in mist and merge. She was my fellow pervert, she was brave, beautiful, clever and generous.

And, of course, she was as cute as a baby panda, if one were to put its hands on its head and poke its tongue out.  

I opened Chloe’s desk drawer. There I found a long and heavy leather strap, three inches wide and nearly five feet long. There was a buckle at one end, but it was too big to have been a belt. Chloe later told me it had been part of an old suitcase.

The drawer also contained a wooden hairbrush and a heavy wooden ruler, and a jar of something that said on the lid that it was Dubbin. I assumed Dubbin must be lubricant, Chloe for the buggering of. Ignorant sod that I was.

Chloe had collected these items from her parent’s home, along with her old school uniform. She’d worn that uniform in earnest just five years earlier. Somehow, in the intervening time, it had turned into a sexual costume. It was a self-mocking costume, like a naughty nurse outfit or a French maid’s costume. But once all the layers of irony had been duly acknowledged, she still looked sexy.  

I picked up the belt. I’d only hand spanked Chloe, apart from a couple of occasions I’d used the back of her hairbrush. A strap seemed much more serious.

I folded it and hit my palm experimentally. It gave a slow and heavy impact, more of a thud than a sting. And a satisfying clap.

Chloe winced. I supposed she must have already tested the leather on her leg, to see how it would feel.

I felt, again, that familiar rush of power and sexual energy. “All right, girl.” I coughed. “All right, girl. Stand up.”