Free Assigned a Guardian by Emily Tilton Page B

red as Sandra fastened the straps that would hold her down to the bench so that she couldn’t interfere with her punishment.
    Melanie had started to cry as soon as Sandra told her to get over the bench, and Kayla’s heart went out to her. She had apparently never received more than a light hand-spanking from her guardian before.
    Then the authorities entered. Kayla and Melanie faced the door, where they were bound to their benches, so that Kayla could see Marjorie Leary enter, followed by Joe, carrying his strap, and a grim-faced man carrying a cane, and finally, to Kayla’s horror, Patrick, looking equally grim.
    “Patrick!” Kayla couldn’t help shouting.
    “Silence!” Joe roared. He walked over to where Kayla lay tied over the bench. She had never seen his face angry, but it was angry now. Without any warning, he snapped the strap down across Kayla’s bottom.
    “Ah!” Kayla screamed. “Oh, God, please… oh, I just can’t!”
    Joe whipped her again. “I can’t tell you how disappointed I am in you, Kayla.” And again. Kayla screamed. Her bottom was an agony of fiery lines, and she writhed against the straps to no avail. She heard a few of Melanie’s friends gasp from behind her.
    Joe turned to Marjorie. “I’m sorry, Marjorie,” he said, “for beginning early.”
    “That’s quite alright. Bill, why don’t you get started, too. I’m sure Melanie and Kayla want to get it over with.”
    Kayla looked at Patrick. He clearly was not enjoying the sight, at least. His face remained grim, with a hint of sadness in his expression, too. What did it mean that she would go home with him?
    Suddenly Joe began to strap her again, and she felt her body squirming with the agony of it. To her right, she heard the swish of Bill’s cane. Then Melanie started to scream.
    One of Melanie’s friends started to sob audibly.
    “Girls,” said Marjorie from behind Kayla, where she had presumably gone to stand and address the audience with the two victims framing her dramatically. “I don’t think I need to add much to what you’re seeing here.”
    Kayla screamed and screamed, and Joe just kept whipping her with the strap: in the middle, on each cheek, on her thighs, methodically and quickly, up and down.
    “All I wish you to remember, girls, is that this is what happens when young women decide they want to try to bring change too quickly. Conduct unbecoming a young woman, is what we call it. It’s not a crime, but, as you can see, your guardians, who are responsible for you, will not take kindly to it.” Marjorie’s voice was hardly audible now to Kayla, over Melanie’s cries of agony and her own.
    All Kayla could see was the door, and Patrick standing next to it, his back against the wall, not taking his eyes from the spectacle, but clearly not enjoying it. Kayla wanted to cry, “Help me, Patrick!” but she knew it would only do harm.
    Joe stopped striking her at last, and the swishing of Bill’s cane fell silent.
    She heard Bill say, “Melanie, have you learned your lesson?”
    “Yes, sir,” Melanie sobbed.
    “Kayla?” asked Joe. “How about you?”
    “Yes, sir,” Kayla managed to get out, through her own tears.
    It was over. Or that part was, at least. Kayla had never imagined anything could feel this bad, that was supposed to be for her own good.

Chapter Eight
     
     
    “Alright, girls,” Marjorie said to the terrified little audience. “You may go.”
    Patrick watched them file out, huddling together. Two of them were weeping uncontrollably, and the other three had tear-stained cheeks. He questioned the wisdom of Marjorie so brazenly challenging them to lionize Kayla and Melanie, but he had begun to sense in the senior matron a sort of deeper strategy than the simple application of force. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it seemed to Patrick to have to do with making corporal punishment so essential an element of Draconian female life that a girl…
    Wait. Was that it? That a girl actually felt