Club Mephisto by Annabel Joseph Page B

progress in Mephisto's keeping dissipated in a sick, sinking feeling of disaster. She only shook her head, unable to answer his question.
    "You didn't read it? At all?" She bit her lip and bowed her head, hating this horrible moment and the irritated disbelief in his voice. "Why do you think I left it there beside you? As I said, it was reading for you. Reading I expected you to do."
    She was mute, forbidden to speak anyway. But if she could have spoken, what would she have said? I'm sorry. I didn't know. I was stupid. Forgive me. Apologies. Excuses. None of it took away her mistake. She was so preoccupied with looking out for her own desire not to get horny, that she hadn't even considered the fact that he'd given her the book expecting her to read it. She did the only thing she could think to do, which was to slowly lean forward and press her forehead to the floor in a pathetic plea for his forgiveness. For the punishment she knew she deserved.
    She heard the springs on the bed, felt herself lifted across his hard lap. She clung to his leg as he started raining stinging blows on her bottom, accompanied by a lecture meant to sting just as much.
    "How forward of you, slave, to just assume a choice. I don't give you choices. I give you instructions." Smack. Smack. Smack. He pressed the plug deeper in her ass, twisting it viciously so she whimpered and strained against him. "I give the instructions in this relationship. You follow them. If I take the time to pick out a fucking book and give it to you, you fucking—" Smack. "Read." Smack. "It. Don't you?" Smack. Smack. Smack.
    The pain was so awful. His hand was like a paddle, only stingy- er . She wanted to kick her legs, to pull away and plead for respite, but she forced herself to lie still and accept the angry blows raining on her ass. She still cried, dripping hot, copious tears against the dark denim of his jeans. How could she have screwed up so badly, just when she was starting to make progress under his dominion?
    The tempo of the blows increased and she cried harder, tensing her ass cheeks as if that might somehow save her, but it only reminded her of the acute invasion of the plug in her bottom. He stood with a tsk and pushed her face down on the bed. She heard the whisking sound of a belt sliding free of its loops at the same time she felt his knee press down against the middle of her back. She cried out as the doubled-over belt seared across her ass. The book was beside her face, taunting her. Another shockingly painful blow, and another. "From now on, you don't do what you decide you prefer. You do what I tell you to do." Whack! "Open the book, now, and start reading."
    With a stifled sob, Molly grabbed the book and opened to the title page, stammering out the words and the author's name, crying hysterically as the belt fell again. She hadn't said words in days, and the syllables sounded garbled.
    "Louder, so I can hear you!"
    She read it again, crying, trying to enunciate through tears. She turned to the first page and started to read the story aloud, swiping the blurry wetness from her eyes so she could see the print. As she read, the whipping continued and she had no avenue to escape it. His knee still held her firmly pressed to the bed. She wailed , feeling turned inside out, trying to focus on reading the words she could so easily have read in his absence. At last, by the end of the fourth excruciating page, he flung the belt down beside her.
    "Keep reading," he barked when she paused. "Read the whole damn thing. Out loud. Don't move until you're done. You deserve worse, but I want my guests to have a chance to mark you at the party," he said with a final frustrated slap to her rear.
    She read, barely able to remember the basics of the story in her misery, but fortunately she remembered enough to answer the handful of questions he asked her a couple hours later.
    "Put the book on the shelf, and then return to kneel here before me," he said after he quizzed