For David, Friday night was always what his mistress called his 'time of atonement'. Normally, that meant a prolonged and- it seemed to him- severe whipping, stretched out in an 'X' shape between two posts, or bound over a vaulting horse, or face down in a horizontal frame. He was given a varying number of strokes, sometimes supplemented with a caning on his buttocks or thighs, and he was always gagged- his mouth stuffed with a soft leather pad that was strapped into place- to stop him screaming. The pain was severe, and the worse because it was so long drawn out, the strokes being delivered in batches of between four and ten, with long breaks between while the gag was removed for questioning. It was a kind of ritual; admitting him to the weekends of pain and pleasure, of sex and bondage, without which he didn't think he could live now, after three months of enslavement.

Once he was securely bound in position, Mistress Jayne always interrogated him about each of the weekdays that they'd spent apart. She took them one at a time, which was why it took so long. He had to confess all his transgressions while she checked his answers with a lie-detector, which he suspected was no more than a toy. She then put the gag in place and administered what she deemed the appropriate number of lashes. At the beginning of their relationship he'd struggled to understand what was required of him. Since she always put him in a chastity cage while they were not together, and his social life was almost non-existent, he could protest his innocence with a clear conscience. What he failed to grasp was her rather cynical view of the way men thought and behaved, which meant that his guilt was taken for granted. Failure to confess it attracted a more severe penalty- a dozen lashes- so if he had nothing to confess for the week, it would be sixty. As he wasn't free for the whole of Mondays and Fridays, however, she let him off with fifty, which was enough to ensure that he didn't repeat the error. After that he made sure that he had plenty of mental lapses to confess, and as he made part of his living writing pornographic stories and novels, that wasn't too difficult. So long as he told her something, it didn't seem to matter much what, as the punishments were entirely arbitrary. Usually, he suffered between twenty-five and thirty-five lashes, but sometimes she wasn't satisfied that he was remorseful enough, or that his professions of love and loyalty were sincere. That meant a dozen strokes with a cane on either his buttocks or his thighs, or split between them. If there was the slightest doubt in her mind, she'd leave the gag in place for another hour or two, until she felt he'd earned the privilege of kissing her and sucking her nipples. Her dungeon was stuffy and she always wore one of her leather corsets on Friday evenings, but the part that covered her lower breasts could easily be parted at the centre and folded down.

David's feelings about the Friday evening sessions were very mixed. The pain was difficult to bear, for although he knew she wasn't using her heaviest whips, she swung hard and left very clear marks. The canings, when they occurred, were worse, inflicting a very sharp sting, as if he was being cut with a white-hot knife. Nevertheless, although he wouldn't have described himself as a masochist he found it highly erotic to be so completely at her mercy, and he was often hard while she was flogging him. There were limitations, for she never took the cock cage off him first, or indeed for up to two hours after she'd finished. Usually, and always when he was bound upright, she masturbated in front of him, on a couch that she kept in the dungeon specially for that purpose. His usual chastity cage was the rather 'art deco' type with tastefully shaped apertures in a shiny metal sleeve, and although it was almost large enough to contain his erection, on those occasions he always more than filled it, the purplish flesh of his shaft bulging through the holes. When she was satisfied for the time being she took him down, or let him up, but she always chained him by an ankle or his locking slave collar to a staple in the floor or a ring in the wall. For the entire weekend, he was never free of locked restraints. Then, or sometimes a little later in the kitchen, she'd make him clench his fists, and wrap them in thick, multiple layers of self-annealing tape. Once they'd merged into solid faux-rubber, she painted them with a quick-drying glossy finish, viscous enough to form a smooth coating. It would all dissolve in a couple of minutes when dipped into a special solution, but only she knew what that was, or where it was kept. Theirs was an unusual relationship- or so he thought- but to him the most frustrating and remarkable thing about it, was that he'd never touched her breasts, or any of the intimate parts of her body, with his hands. The encasing process was boring enough to give him time and space to think about his situation, and the way it had come about. She'd never given him any reason to believe that it was permanent; she referred to him sometimes as being 'probationary'. He had no idea what lay ahead, but he was quite certain that he didn't want to go back, even if that was possible, which he doubted. She took her ownership of him completely for granted.