Outer Island Read online

  “They won’t like it if your eyes are closed when they use the lash. I’ve seen the administrator repeat an entire flogging because the prisoner’s eyes were closed. Best to fix on one face, I imagine.”

  She was being kind.

  “Fix so hard that you let the pain go around you.”

  “How would you know?” Delila asked.

  The woman grimaced. “It’s best not to question anything around here. Like I said, just do as you’re told.”

  The matron pulled her to her feet and led her into a room where another offender waited just as Delila would wait. She was naked and cuffed too, a tag at her labia in the same place where Delila wore hers. She might have spoken to the brown-haired woman, but instead, the trembling young thing averted her eyes, so Delila sat down on the bench beside to her to wait.

  Delila: When I heard my name called, I jerked up so fast I almost lost my balance. I was trembling everywhere and chilled as I was led though the waiting room to an outside door. Through a long corridor where the September breeze whipped my skin, I found myself appearing in the courtyard as several dozen eyes inspected me. For reasons beyond my understanding, I smiled as they led me naked through the throng, even as tears trickled from my eyes.

  In the center of the brick-walled enclosure stood a dais where Delila was to be flogged. From scaffolding hung ropes to bind her wrists. In the wooden floor of the structure was a bar that would hold her feet. Buckled into the bindings, her arms were extended high above her head, her legs spread wide, her feet a good pace apart. There was no hiding from the exposure of limbs and breasts and loins. This treatment was considered the ultimate humiliation the State could decree, a reflection of its regard for her foul crimes.

  She was made to face the man that would wield the flogging implement. He stood just a yard from her vulnerable body as the instructions were read.

  “For no less than ten minutes, no more than twenty … at the discretion of the perpetrator, flogged on the backside without mercy.”

  “Do you confess this chastisement has been fairly appraised?” she was asked by an unknown voice behind her.

  “Yes,” she answered meekly.

  “Then ask for it,” she was ordered.

  As was the custom with this procedure, Delila requested her own punishment, “I request that you castigate me in accordance with the law,” she repeated the words the matron made her memorize, “and beg no mercy for my contemptible crime.”

  The administrator nodded and moved behind her as he unfurled the long lash that had been contained in his hand. The flexible strip of two-inch wide leather fell against his thigh almost touching the ground, as he eyed the target of his task, Delila’s backside.

  She was a small one, but she had the body for such things: a narrow waist, flaring hips, a well-padded rump that would take the brunt of the blows, Her well formed graceful thighs and legs were well proportioned for her voluptuous body. It would be the administrator’s task to come down with ample force and snap to raise a raw red color on her white skin. It wouldn’t take ten minutes to do the task. Five would likely suffice, but he’d continuing punishing her according to the law.

  Drawing back the leather the flogging began. A rain of lashes pelted Delila’s backside, the center of the punishment aimed at her rounded ass cheeks, which soon blushed red from the fiery heat of the blows. The lash strayed often to her back and thighs where the vicious snaps made her shriek. Otherwise, Delila Armand tried to subdue her agony, as if it was the one act of defiance against her tormentors that she could control.

  She wasn’t bound to win this war of will, however, since there was no stopping the violating lash even when it would appear a good time to stop. For this induction into her new life, Delila would experience the entire twenty minutes allowed by law. By the time the administrator finished, the young woman was struggling mightily against the bonds and crying loudly with each new strike that hit on skin that was already raw and at the limits of endurance.

  Oddly, though, the view of this travail gave the lusting onlookers a strange sight indeed; for the crowd gazing up at this creature in abject pain, witnessed not just her woe, but a certain and beguiling eroticism. The way Delila moved in response to the lash, particularly at the end, she appeared to have entered another world than the present rude one, where each strike of leather drew her deeper into its devouring center, and her body writhed more in a sexual heat than in agony.

  Delila: I thought of the pain as something that would purge me of my guilt. Where I had not felt much guilt before, I was assured that it had taken hold of me, especially when I chanced to rest my gaze on Armand’s face. I was shocked to see the fury in his eyes, at first thinking he was angry at those that had put me in this place, but then acknowledging that he was angry with me.

  If this flogging could wash the guilt away. I certainly hoped it would. However, as it was ending, I knew that it had not. Rafferty’s face came to me, whether it was because he was there in the crowd or I just imagined he was, I’m afraid my worse shame was the unrepentant longing for him still. He was a fine lover, and for a moment, the pain I felt wasn’t pain at all, but desire reaching out to grab hold of me.

  Chapter Two

  Armand: They told me I would have five minutes to converse with Delila after the flogging, that this would be the last time I’d be with her privately until our first conjugal visit four months in the future. I wanted to desire her enough to take her in my arms and hold her. I knew that the punishment she’d just received was hurting her badly, but for all my better desires, I could feel nothing but a raw and vicious anger. That she would bring us to this unhappy hour with her unbridled lust made me rage in a way I never had before.

  ***

  “They won’t let me touch you,” Armand said.

  “I know.” She looked up at him from behind a bar that separated them.

  “You must be in great pain.”

  “Most of that is over now.” She spoke the truth, not just trying to make her husband feel better. What was arising in her body was akin to sexual satisfaction in a crude sort of way, just heat, terrific heat flooding through her everywhere, though centering in her loins, adjacent to her punished bottom.

  “That’s good,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, Armand.”

  He sighed as he fought for some words that seemed appropriate. “I know.”

  “It’ll be months now.”

  “Oh, no, Delila, not months, just a week.” There was sarcasm rising in his voice. “I’ll be expected here to witness your flogging next week and then the next, until this is all over.”

  “I’m so sorry.” She was crying again.

  “And I am too. I love you, Delila. I know that beyond all the fury in me, there’s a place where my love still resides. Please understand if I’m having trouble finding it.”

  “Thank you for waiting for me. I can’t believe you’re doing that.”

  “Did you love him?” Armand asked.

  “No,” she answered truthfully.

  “But you were lonely?”

  “Missing you. I never deserved you,” she said.

  “You never believed you did,” he agreed. “Perhaps that was our downfall.”

  “Time’s up!” a voice shouted, and the matron Briel walked through the door.

  “Please!” Delila let the tears spill from her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, but the rules prevent it,” Briel told her. She pulled Delila to her feet and away from any breach of regulations on the prisoner’s mind that might have found her embracing Armand. “You don’t want to violate your re-training before it’s begun.”

  As she was led away, her eyes gazed at Armand’s sorry face, wishing that for just an instant, his dour countenance might lift, but it did not.

  ***

  Delila was in her prison cell, lying down, staring into the gray space in front of her. There was sunshine now outside, she could get just a small peek of it from the high window on the wall. It had se
emed like weeks, though it had only been days since she had the gift of sunshine on her face—when she was a free woman in the midst of a love affair that had taken her from the gloom of Armand’s disappearance. She should hate Rafferty, but she didn’t.

  “They proscribe cream for your backside,” she heard the matron’s voice, as Briel arrived with a large white jar. She unlocked the heavy metal door, moved to Delila’s side, and with the motions of her hand scooted Delila to the inner edge of her cot. The hefty woman sat down at her side, and unscrewed the lid on the jar.

  “On your stomach,” she ordered.

  Briel began spreading cream on the bare ass cheeks, and places on her back where it was obvious that the lash had struck hard.

  “That stings the most there,” Delila acknowledged as the woman’s large hands rubbed the thick substance into her thighs.

  “Yes, it would,” the woman replied.

  There was such raw energy generated under the woman’s tender touch, Delila found it difficult not to squirm against her soft fingers, especially when they were intent on massaging her buttocks with such spirited energy.

  Delila found herself groaning once.

  “It’s all right to feel the pleasure after what you’ve been through,” the matron told her. Briel’s massage slowed into a more sensuous fondling, and her fingers slipped deeply into Delila’s rear crack. “It does feel good to you, doesn’t it?”

  Delila was flustered by the question, not knowing how to answer, though Briel was requiring one. In fact, she chose that moment to stop the rubdown, return the lid to the jar and then rise to her feet.

  Delila nodded to her. “Was the flogging as bad as you thought it would be?” she asked looking down, as Delila, having turned over, was gazing up at the severe woman’s face.

  “No,” she admitted. “The pain was difficult to take, but …” She stopped.

  “But what?” Briel asked.

  “But perhaps it has its purpose.”

  “And what is that, Delila Armand?” the woman inquired.

  She thought for a moment. “Assuage my guilt.”

  “Then you’ll be sure to have more to alleviate that state. Remember, it’s all right to feel the pleasure,” she said again. The matron was about to walk out of the cell when she turned back. “I’ll bring you a dress in the morning,” she said. “For now you’ll have to cover yourself with the blanket if you get cold.”

  The cell door clanked shut and Delila was alone again.

  ***

  In the anteroom, outside Delila’s cell, the matron sat in a chair behind a desk. She didn’t have to take up such a vigilant place so close to the prisoner, but she had her reasons.

  About a half hour into her quiet solitude, Briel heard what she was waiting for, the sounds unmistakable, ones she’d heard a hundred times in her tenure at the prison. Delila’s moans were soft, her breathing heavy. The matron imagined that she had climbed under the blanket on her cot, her hand quickly finding the centerpiece of a woman’s luxury, her fingers exploring the vast valleys and soft tissue surrounding the wet center. The moans went on for several minutes climaxing in a heavy sigh and a heavier gasp. Delila Armand climaxed with Briel listening, and the matron smiled.

  Getting up from her seat in the anteroom, she left to make a phone call.

  Chapter Three

  It was a bitter cold day for the second of Delila’s floggings. It was not just the bitterness of the air, but the bite inside her that made her struggle against the treatment this time. Despite the matron’s cautions, those that the woman gave to ease the burden of her punishment, Delila, somewhere in her mind, thought that contesting her treatment might somehow change it.

  Her battle did indeed change the treatment. By the time she reached the dais in the courtyard square, surrounded by dozens of fiendish eyes, the prisoner was already bruised by the hands that had practically carried her to her fate.

  This time the leather and ropes that bound her were even more confining, and to increase the exposure of her bottom, she was tied over a beam, not just left hanging in the air. The awkward position made her breasts dangle in front of her, her head bow naturally because she couldn’t hold it up, and her arms, strung up by the uncomfortable ropes, ache nastily, long before the flogging was over. Worst of all, with her legs spread wide again, with the added benefit of the bent over pose, her entire female privates were laid open, her anus and her pubic mound below.

  This time when the lash struck, the bite went beyond the mere padded fanny flesh. The vile implement had little problem torturing the most tender skin in the normally protected places between her legs. She cried from the depths of her being when the lash struck her center. Although she attempted to struggle still, she was too well bound to make any progress against her confinement.

  At one point the flogging was stopped, an adjudicator and an inspector conferring on the sidelines agreed.

  “Flog her until she ceases to protest, and ten minutes more,” it was announced.

  Delila hardly heard the edict. All she felt was the lash striking even harder. The pain was justified though, and almost welcomed. She swore and cried and shrieked and wailed until at last she was exhausted. Only then did the flogging cease.

  Delila Armand endured a half hour this time. If she hadn’t relinquished after that time, the administrator would have stopped and brought her back the next day to finish the treatment, that, the extent of the State’s compassion.

  ***

  Delila: I was livid, though I don’t understand why. The rage came on me all of a sudden. It almost felt as if I wasn’t really in my body, but out of it, and struggling with something beyond myself to end this horror.

  Still, I was surprised to discover that this second time was no different from the first. The excruciating warmth of it was affecting me right in the pit of my belly, right in the base of my body where the most wonderful feelings begin. They weren’t beginning as I was being lashed, but I knew they would start as soon as it was over.

  When it was finished, I gazed up seeing Armand staring at me. In horror, in shame, in fear and loathing. My state of clarity after a flogging made it easy for me to read people’s states of mind. I read their lust mostly, so obviously there. I could even see it in Armand. Yes, he too! Ah, I thought myself wiser than everyone in that silly courtyard …except perhaps for the dark man. He was standing beside Armand, a man dressed in a leather shirt and pants, not heavy bulky garments as one would think leather might be. His clothes were as soft looking as silk, though they were without a doubt made of some fine animal hide, and stained a threatening black. He was tall, his complexion tan from some warmer climate, his black hair long to his shoulders and swept back, his eyes like the blackest hour of the night that had no moons or stars to break the threatening ebony hue. They were infinite, absolutely without color. Something in his immovable gaze shook me as deeply as my lust was aroused by the flogging. For just an instant, his will and power bonded me with him, until I broke off the stare and looked away.

  ***

  “Who was the man in the black leather?” Delila asked the matron when the woman was rubbing the cream into her wounded ass this second time.

  “You know you did a dangerous thing,” Briel said, as her fingers made their journey about Delila’s backside.

  “Who was he?” she asked again.

  “These will hurt for days, and if you don’t behave yourself, you’ll be strung up for an extra flogging before you can adequately recover.”

  “You won’t tell me?” Delila tried once more.

  “I’ve seen an angry administrator whip an unruly butt like yours for several days in a row to make a point.”

  “Who is he?” Delila asked impatiently.

  The woman was silent for a time, as her hands continued their massage.

  “Why do you ask?” she finally spoke again.

  “He has the blackest eyes I’ve even seen. I’d think he was a demon or the devil himself.”

  “Yo
u believe in the devil?” Briel asked.

  “No,” Delila asked.

  “Then he’s not the devil.”

  “But who is he?”

  “Runs one of the re-training sweatshops up north,” she answered.

  “Then he works for the State?” Delila asked.

  “Don’t know, and you’re asking too many questions.” Her voice turned harsh, the woman’s abrupt reply stopping another question, though there really wasn’t another in Delila’s thoughts.

  Briel’s fingers were moving into the sorest places of her body where the lash had caught the crack of her ass. Her smooth skin against Delila’s singed inner parts soothed her. Such gentleness from one so brusque. The lower her hand dropped, the more the massage turned to pleasure, Delila squirming against the invading fingers, especially when they reached her vagina.

  “You like this, don’t you?”

  “Feels so good,” Delila purred.

  “If I were to slip my fingers in here you might get off,” the woman continued, just as her fingers were slipping into the wet place between Delila’s legs.

  The prisoner suddenly jerked, her hips thrashing about on the impaling hand, the woman riding her all the way as a series of lush muted moans escaped Delila’s lips.

  “The flogging arouses you,” Briel said, as she took her hand away from the wet climaxing cunt.

  The prisoner sighed. “It couldn’t,” she whispered a half-hearted protest.

  “It does many who come through here. I detected it in you.” The woman rose from the bed, and gazed down at the limp naked form. “Be glad for it, girl. I hear the more you welcome the punishment, the more you’ll pleasure in it.”

  Chapter Four

  On the day of the third flogging, Delila was at peace, at peace enough to consider Briel’s words. “The more you welcome it, the more you’ll pleasure in it.”

  It hadn’t dawned on her that this horrifying treatment might arouse her sexually, but there was the indisputable fact that it did. Even the thought of it gave her a sudden jolt between her legs. The thought that Briel would bring her to another orgasm made the prospects of punishment filled with such lush sensations that this time when she was led to the dais and bound in place, she walked with an effortless willing gait feeling her thighs rub, which put a smirk on her lips.