Painful Prize Read online

  Title Page

  PAINFUL PRIZE

  By

  Stephen Rawlings

  Publisher Information

  Painful Prize published in 2011 by

  Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.

  Copyright © Stephen Rawlings

  The right of Stephen Rawlings to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Part One: Hunted

  The man and the girl sat in a car in a country lane, consulting a small sheet of paper he held up for them both to read. He was well-built, about mid-thirties one would suppose, successful in some way obviously, his clothes, the car, his air of assurance spelt it out clearly. Though not classically handsome, women would find him attractive, even without the trappings of success. With them he was a dangerous man to have around.

  She was some years younger, perhaps twenty-five or six, tall for her sex, a mass of auburn hair tied back with a simple elastic ring, leaving her pretty face free. Its prettiness at this moment, however, had to be assumed to some extent, for she seemed to have had an accident of some sort. Her cheeks were heavily smeared with thick wet matter, greenish brown and reeking of cow. She might well have tried to clean herself up before going further, had her hands not been secured behind her back.

  As it was, she disregarded the state of her features to concentrate on an apparent problem with the message on the paper, a concentration interrupted from time to time by a grimace of pain, and a certain uneasiness in her posture, since she writhed her buttocks on the seat, and shifted her weight from side to side.

  Suddenly she said, "Axwell, the river there. Georgina said old Major Grange has a boathouse on the river he hardly uses. How about that?"

  "Brilliant," the man replied, "that's it for sure. We used to play there as kids. Martin knows the place, he's bound to have chosen it. Now no more talking, we have to get there fast. Open wide."

  For some reason he held in his other hand a small wad of pale blue nylon. A curved section of narrow lace even suggested it might be part of the girl's underwear. Though it may have started the journey embracing the girl's smooth bottom cheeks, and the moist channel between them, it was now sodden with saliva from prolonged insertion in her mouth to keep her silent. He'd slipped it out to enable her to contribute to the solving of the clue to their next destination but, now, he returned the wad of flimsy nylon to her obediently parted lips.

  "Clever girl," he cried, and impulsively pulled her towards him, regardless of her filthy face, to kiss her warmly on her panty-stuffed mouth.

  She winced as the fresh burning stripes on her bottom made contact with the cruel needle-sharp projections of the wicker mat she was sitting on, without benefit of underpants, nor dress come to that, since it was deliberately pulled up behind her to allow her bare bruised flesh to rest on the unfinished weave of the basket-work. Still, she did not resist him, responding avidly to his kiss, in as much as her nylon crammed mouth would allow. She would have flung her arms around him but her wrists being secured behind her prevented that, so she tried to press her breasts against him instead, though their position in the car made it difficult and, additionally, they and their sensitive nipples had problems of their own to contend with. All her reservations had fled now. She gave herself up completely to the adventure.

  There had been moments up to this point when she'd wondered what she had got herself into, and just why she was putting up with it. For instance, when she had hung over the gate waiting for him to begin her thrashing. She'd felt the rough timber of the top rail pressing into her bare unprotected belly, the print dress, a Versace number and a touch over the top for such rural ramblings, hiked up to her waist, her panties round her nylon-clad knees. She could just take her weight on the toes of her medium heeled sandals, her only real concession to this ride into the country, replacing the expensive Italian heels that were her usual wear in the city. Behind her she could hear him making experimental cuts of the air with the terrifying birch switch he had just cut from the hedge. As it sliced the air with a sound like ripping silk, she had flinched at the thought of it cutting into her virgin buttocks that had never felt the cruel kiss of rod or cane before.

  She was suffering even before he began. The harsh wooden gate bit painfully into her naked belly and the tops of her thighs as she bent over it, her bare buttocks jutting out behind, smooth pink half globes.

  Their deep divide, normally closed demurely over the secrets within, was now spread wide by the painful pose, so that she could feel the air on the tightly furled anal dimple. She could sense his eyes dwelling on the fatted vulva where it pouted its plump lips through the lozenge gap at the top of her thighs, its pert prominence only slightly softened by the delicate fringe of auburn curls that vied for space between the smooth columns of her legs. She was strangely disturbed by the knowledge.

  It wasn't as if it was the first time she had been naked before him. God knows he had taken her there often enough, and she had no secrets from him, but this seemed different in some deep meaningful way; an invasion of her deeper than mere sex. Now he was to whip her and she felt both fear and excitement, apprehension and a vagina-wetting tingling in her crotch. What was happening to her? What was she doing, bent three parts naked over a five-barred gate in an open field, without even the shelter of the birch tree from which he had cut that frighteningly swishy rod he was practicing with? That was shortly going to fall on those tender bare pink buttocks she was now so conscious of, as if her whole being resided in them, and leave them as barred as the gate.

  She certainly hadn't expected anything like this when they had left home that morning. Home was a charming cottage in truly rural England, as opposed to the nominally rural character of the estate houses constructed in what were no more than disguised dormitory towns serving the great conurbations. Sexton Hinds had retained its flavour of the genuine English country village, still no larger than it had been left when the last developers had put up the Georgian pub two centuries before.

  Not that the inhabitants were exclusively bucolic. There were plenty of people living there whose Great-grandfathers - and their Great-grandfathers - had occupied cottages in the vicinity, but there was a tidy proportion of folk who had come in from the city seeking peace and quiet. They had themselves. Henry had always talked of returning to the village where he'd been raised, since they had first shared an apartment together two years before and then, three months ago, he had suddenly swept Jenny off her feet by a flying visit to Sexton, when he'd walked her into Withy Cottage and announced that it could be theirs, but she'd have to say yes or no on the spot. It was hardly fair, on a beautiful Spring day, the birds singing, the trees coming into their first leaf, wild flowers in every field and spinney. She had said yes on the spot, and here they were. Well not quite here; not bent over a gate waiting to be flogged. That had come later.

  At first she'd found it difficult to fit in. Although there seemed to be plenty of people like themselves, with whom to make friends, indeed Henry seemed to know everyone in sight already, she found a certain reserve among the women; a sense of not fitting in. It was not as if they were hostile but
in some strange way they gave her a sense that she was on the outside and had not yet been elected to the club. As time went by she tried harder and harder to crack the ice but, although they were politeness itself, she never seemed to get close, seemed always to be on the outside looking in, and that through gauze curtains.

  That was how they had come to be here really. It had all started a couple of weeks back, during a Saturday night drinking session at the Trident, their local pub. They had fallen into the way of meeting there regularly with a group of youngish people, most of whom Henry seemed to have known from before they had met. The women were all attractive and confident beings who seemed to get on with their partners very well, and she enjoyed the happy atmosphere which carried more than a slight hint of sex, though little overt evidence; just a certain eroticism about the way the women dressed and carried themselves, some fetish wear, chains and leather collars occasionally on show, sometimes little games, where they would be commanded to remain silent, until allowed to speak again. Once she saw a couple in a restaurant, where the woman was not allowed to eat or drink for herself, but only had what her partner offered her on his fork, or from his glass. She suspected that quite a bit more went on in private, but that her presence might be an inhibiting factor. After all, she was the newcomer; Henry had only brought her to live in the village three months ago, while he had lived there for years, before he moved to the city. Woman-like, her curiosity was aroused... and she felt an irrational urge to join in their games.

  Her chance came when the talk turned to the forth-coming treasure hunt.

  "You're coming of course?" one of the women said to her, more a statement than a question. She looked at Henry for guidance.

  "'Course we are darling. Wouldn't miss it for the world," he assured her.

  Later that night, comfortably curled in each other's arms in the big old-fashioned bed, she asked him about the treasure hunt.

  "Actually," he said, "I'm glad that Renee asked you like that. You've always said you wanted to get to know the other girls better, and this is your chance. Mind you," he added with a hint of seriousness in his voice, "you'll need to accept the local traditions, if you want them to accept you. Be a good sport and all that."

  "You mean we've got to win."

  "That would certainly be a good start, but there's other things as well."

  "What sort of things?" she wanted to know.

  "Well, for a start it's a bit different from your usual pub treasure hunt. Not just a case of solving the clues to find your way round the course. There are things to be... collected."

  "You mean, like a scavenge hunt? A pair of corsets, a policeman's helmet, the vicar's wife's knickers, that sort of thing?"

  "Well, sort of. Actually more in the way of forfeits," he answered vaguely.

  "What sort of forfeits?"

  "I don't know really," he replied, again a little evasively. "They're different each time. I warn you, you may find them a bit embarrassing, or even a little uncomfortable at times."

  "I don't care," she retorted emphatically, "I want to be accepted by the other girls, and I'm prepared to put up with quite a lot to get that."

  "Good girl," Henry replied approvingly, turning over and pulling her down onto a stiff and vigorous token of his esteem.

  Later, after a second hot and belly-filling satisfaction, she lay, warm semen still trickling from her pouting gash, speculating drowsily about the nature of these trials. Well, they couldn't be all that bad, she thought, all the other girls seemed quite delighted by the idea of a treasure hunt.

  Came the day she was determined that not only was she going to put up a good show, but that they'd make their mark by winning outright, so, when Henry, gasping a bunch of clues in their sealed envelopes, grabbed her arm and whispered, "Let's not hang about chatting with the others. If we get a good start, we can probably stay ahead and be first home," she had gone with him eagerly to get the car on to what passed for a main road in those parts and open the first clue:

  Clue One

  Biddy kept her complexion pure

  And you must do the same.

  In her belfry seek the cure.

  And play the maidens' game.

  "Biddy?" he pondered, then inspiration came, "Bridget the Fair; one of our local Saints, and that explains the belfry. There's a church dedicated to her near the next village."

  As he engaged gear and set off for the place, she asked why she was known as 'the Fair'.

  "Not too sure how it all started," he admitted, "but she's been the patron Saint of local girls for centuries. Follow her and you're assured of beautiful skin and a rich husband."

  "I not sure how to take that," she joked. "Do I need to improve my skin, and do I want a husband? I'm quite content with you as you are."

  "Rich, you mean?" he laughed back.

  "Well it's not something I object to," she admitted.

  St. Bridget's church stood in a small field set apart from the village, sharing it with a small stream and a group of friendly cows. To reach it they had to cross the water on stepping stones, and she teetered unsteadily on her heels for a moment, looking down into the mixture of mud and slime where the cattle had mangled the bank when they came down to drink. It began to dawn on her that in order to impress the other girls, she might have over dressed for the occasion, in her designer dress, stockings and leather shoes.

  "Ugh!" she exclaimed, as the gentle breeze brought a pungent whiff of cow to her delicate nostrils. "Real country air."

  It wasn't hard to find the clue. Inside the tiny church an even tinier stair spiralled up one floor of the tower to where the bell-ringers had their room below the belfry itself. Half a dozen ropes hung slackly from the ceiling, each furnished with a brightly coloured wool handgrip. Pinned to one was a large envelope. Henry reached in and extracted a slip of paper.

  "'You must do as Bridget's maidens do. Side to side and up and down, or you won't have face enough to win,'" he read.

  "And what on earth does that gibberish mean?" she wanted to know.

  "That's easy," he assured her, "I told you there were local customs associated with our Biddy. To make your skin fair as hers it needs a mud pack."

  She looked at him, wide eyed as the penny dropped.

  "Oh no!" she exclaimed, hand to mouth. "No, you can't mean what I think you mean. No way."

  "Oh, yes, darling. Told you the girls had a way here. Nice coating of that delicious mud from the stream and the instructions are quite clear. You have to smear it all over. Up and down, side to side. Remember?"

  "I can't Henry. It stinks," she wailed.

  "So where's all the determination gone?" he asked. "Where's the girl who said she'd do anything to get in with the crowd? Failed at the first fence. Do you think the others would hesitate? Do you think Renee hesitated when George put a bowl of soup on the floor for her, and she had to go down and lap it all up in front of the whole restaurant, or Penny refused when Fred told her to wear her knickers round her knees all evening? Besides," he softened his tone a little; "you'd do it like a shot if a Chelsea beauty salon charged you a hundred guineas for the privilege."

  "You're right," she said, tilting up her chin, "I'm being a wimp. I'll show them I'm as good as them," and she headed for the stairs.

  It took some puffing and blowing, squeals, moans and flinching from the noxious goo, as she knelt on her nyloned knees, putting a hesitant hand into the stinking black gloop. She raised it to her disgusted nostrils.

  "Oh, yuck!" she exclaimed, "It's gross."

  "The local girls wouldn't make a fuss like that," Henry said scornfully.

  For answer she raised the bovine-scented goo to her delicate features and slapped it home, as if not daring to hang about or her courage would fail her, smearing it onto her cheeks, spreading more across her smooth brow and onto her rounde
d chin. A generous portion found its way onto her wrinkling nose. By the time she scrambled to her sandalled feet and headed for the car again she looked like a circus clown, or some kind of urban terrorist. She carefully avoided looking in the vanity mirror in front of her seat.

  "God!" she prayed aloud, "Don't let us meet anyone I know."

  "Then we'd better get going, before the others catch us up," Henry advised. "What's the next clue?"

  Clue Two

  Cherries are red

  In Back-End lane.

  If your man is handy,

  Yours should be the same.

  "Well, the first part's easy," she said, "Everybody knows there's a cherry orchard in Back Lane, Overton, but what's all this about the man's hands? Doesn't make sense to me."

  Henry grinned.

  "I think I know what's up," he replied, "but better wait until we get there, and see if it's what I think."

  "So what is it then?" she insisted.

  "Just you sit quietly on your pretty little arse," he said infuriatingly, "and it will all become clear."

  He wasn't saying any more, so she had to sit as he had suggested, while they drove the two or three miles to Overton. Since he wasn't saying any more about what the clue might mean, she reverted to the other topic uppermost in her mind at the time, their chances of winning and the close knit group of couples that represented the opposition.

  "Do they do this sort of thing often?" she asked.

  "Who?" he asked in return. "Oh you mean the Group," he never referred to them by any other name, so she assumed they were just an informal gathering, "well not treasure hunts, they only come round once in a while."

  "What sort of other things then?" she persisted. "Do they have other competitions and so on?"

  "Yes, well in a way. It's mainly a social thing," he explained, "parties at each others' houses, meals out together, once or twice they've arranged holidays where we've all stayed in someone's villa, that sort of thing"