Free Afternoons of a Woman of Leisure (9781101623565) by Elizabeth Bennett Page B

her tray to the entryway.
    Two men brush past her when she lets them in, taking two of the glasses from her tray, shrugging off their jackets. She hears a rustle as they are hung up, a closet door closing. They go into the living room and talk quietly. Another knock and three men enter. Her tray lightens in her hands as more glasses are taken. Joanna looks at the floor. She is aware of eyes studying her body through the lace, lingering over her pushed-up breasts and darkened nipples, but no one speaks to her. From the living room she begins to hear laughter, as from old and intimate friends meeting. A man arrives alone. Joanna steals a glance at him as he passes her without comment: tall, bull-necked and broad. She senses cruelty in him, even from behind, and shudders. Finally, the last three enter, all together, and take the remaining glasses from her tray. She locks the door behind them and goes into the living room, her eyes on her own feet.
    Low voices and sporadic laughter. Just like any other cocktail party, Joanna thinks, smiling to herself. An empty glass is presented to her and Joanna pours scotch into it, adding ice. As she does, a hand reaches to touch her breast, lightly, near the nipple. Involuntarily, Joanna looks up, meeting the eyes of the man, and instantly he slaps her, stinging her cheek. She gasps and looks down again. Across the room someone says, solemnly, “She’s new. She’ll need to be taught.” Joanna feels a room full of eyes on her and breathes heavily, the leather stiff against her breasts.
    Suddenly, the crack of a whip shatters the silence, then a moan. Clarissa, she thinks. There is a collective shuffle in the living room. Someone takes Joanna’s hand. “Come with me,” a voice says, kind and vaguely elderly. It pulls her gently and she follows. “Come,” it says again. “we’ll watch together.”
    She lets herself be led into the adjoining room, sensing the bodies of the men before her and behind her, then gently, she is pulled down onto the lap of the man whose hand she holds. They are in a deep chair, plush but armless. Beneath her, she feels him, stiff inside his pants, probing her through the fabric. His hands fold across her waist. “Look,” he tells her, speaking into Joanna’s ear. “It’s all right to look.”
    Joanna looks up. The bull-necked man she noticed earlier stands by the far wall, examining the objects on the tabletop. One by one, he lifts the whips, running his fingers along their lengths, bending them between his hands until they crackle. The other men, settled on couches and chairs around the room, watch silently, sipping their drinks. Clarissa, still clothed in her slip and underpants, is motionless, manacled to the wall, her head hung down, but each time a whip is cracked through the air she moans and cringes.
    Finally, the man makes his selection, a slender riding crop, black, with no tassel. Turning to Clarissa, he takes a fist of her hair and raises her head, gliding the crop over her cheeks and throat. She moans in terror. Briefly, Joanna feels the lap beneath her shift, a low groan at her ear.
    A hand runs down Clarissa’s back, then reaches around her to feel her breasts and belly. Her legs are stiff, slightly apart, the calf muscles bulging. Carefully, her crotch is felt, in front and behind, then slowly the whip is inched beneath the white silk slip, and lifted over her buttocks. He pushes it up her back and rolls it in front of her shoulders, letting the whip brush her shoulder blades, then he steps back.
    The first blow lands on the backs of Clarissa’s thighs and is followed, immediately, by the man’s other hand, tracing the sudden welts. Clarissa jerks from his touch and the whip descends again, punishing her this time, cracking against her flesh. The stiff length of leather is drawn lazily across her lower back and over her ass, then slowly between her legs. Clarissa writhes,