SWISSH-CRACK!

The business end of the cat-o'-nine-tails flew in an accelerating arc, finishing its journey abruptly across the man's naked back. He writhed in agony, for it was not the first time that afternoon that his back had been the cruel weapon's target, but he neither moved from where he stood in the middle of the room, nor cried out in pain.

It would have been difficult, if not impossible, to do either. His arms and legs were secured with four unyielding straps that ran from strong points at the foot of each wall and in the beams of the ceiling, terminating in steel fixtures attached to leather cuffs tightly secured to each ankle and wrist. The restraints forced him to stand with his legs wide apart and his arms pointing upward and outward--a man-size, flesh-and-blood letter 'X' in the middle of the room. Nor could he scream in response to the abuse being visited on his body; a formidable leather gag, covering his mouth, chin, and cheeks, was fixed around his head and buckled tightly at the back of his neck. An observer might have noticed that, despite the stricture of the device the man's mouth seemed to be open, as if forced to accommodate a probe-like extension of it fully inside his mouth. The only sounds that escaped were unintelligible grunts and muffled whimpers.

CRACK!

The flails descended again on the helpless captive, this time across his unprotected buttocks. The welter of livid stripes on them showed that they, too, had often been the targets of the expertly wielded lash.

"HMMMPH!" The man reacted to the assault with more fruitless twisting and straining, and yet another expression of distress inaudible beyond the room. Again and again the cat flew through the air and found its mark on his vulnerable flesh. His back and buttocks, his thighs, calves, and arms all showed the effects of the unrelenting treatment.

The torturer drew the whip back once more and took aim at the man's left shoulder. Before the blow could fall a voice came from the back of the sparely furnished room.

"OK, Margo, cut! I want to reposition on his other side." The woman holding the brutal weapon paused and looked back at the videographer.

"You want to take a break, Marty?"

"Nah, I want to be done with this shoot tonight. And it won't take me a moment to set up in the other corner. Let's keep going."

Margo folded the cords of the cat against its handle and seated herself in a canvas-backed director's chair. She was a striking-looking woman of medium height with a trim, appealing figure. Her neck-length hair was a mass of blonde curls and ringlets, drawn back off her attractive face in a way that showed up its complexion and bone structure to best effect. It would have required more than a casual glance to note, however, that she was neither a teen nor a woman in her early twenties. Margo was very close to forty years of age, but had held her looks and sex appeal undiminished over the years. A man with an appreciation of mature female beauty would have found her significantly more appealing and certainly more sexually self-possessed than a host of girls half her age. Although her face was heavily made up for the camera, her well-shaped cheekbones and clear skin tones would have been apparent even without the cosmetics, and her deep blue eyes would still have been clear and riveting without the framing of her extravagantly long, dark eyelashes.

But it was not just Margo's looks that would have caught the eye of any normal, breathing man as she sat and waited for the videographer. Her well-proportioned figure was effectively shown off in a startlingly provocative costume, one that would not have belonged out of doors in daylight. Her torso was encased in a tight-fitting strapless bodybriefer, the front half made of smooth gold vinyl and the rear of a soft black satin-like material. It clung enticingly to the lines of her hips, waist and back, and curved around and above her breasts in a way that showed they had lost nothing of their youthful shape or firmness. Sheer nude pantyhose embraced her shapely legs from the base of the garment down to her lace-up, knee-length black leather boots. And from fingertips to above the elbows, her arms were tightly sheathed in long black opera gloves.

The videographer had repositioned the camera on the far side of the actor, facing his front, and was checking his view of the immobilized male when he stopped suddenly. He raised his head from the viewfinder and looked with impatience at the man's loins.

"That's not going to work, Paul," he said curtly. "Do something about it, or we can't finish this."

The actor writhed, shook his head helplessly, and grunted into the gag.

"What's the problem, Marty?" asked Margo. Marty pointed.

"That... He's got to get rid of it - now!"

Margo uncrossed her legs, rose from the chair and walked over to the man. Putting her chin over his right shoulder, she cast her eyes down to the area indicated by the videographer. A mischievous smile lit up her face.

"Oh my. Well, if it is a problem, it's certainly a big one, isn't it?"

The adjective was well chosen. Despite his parlous situation and the punishment he had been suffering, the man's penis told a different story. It was engorged with blood and stood proud of his abused body by some nine or ten inches; from the woman's vantage point it looked curiously like a heavy and potent cannon jutting out over the battlements of a medieval castle. She looked up at the other man, still smiling.

"I wouldn't call it a problem, Marty."

"No, you wouldn't, but you're not the one who's got to deliver the product. With this client, I can't show him in that state, not for a second."

Margo turned toward the pinioned actor and spoke softly but firmly.

"You heard the man. Down, boy." Her lips were barely an inch from his ear, and as she finished speaking she bit it lightly. He gave an incoherent grunt and squirmed again, breathing heavily through his nose.

"Look, I gotta reset the lights," Marty said. "Take me five minutes. Get it down by then, why don't you? You're supposed to be a professional, for God's sake."

As Marty went about his business, unplugging the lights, moving and repositioning the stands, Paul focused his attention on the floor directly ahead of him. Margo could tell, from the look of concentration on his face, that he was trying desperately to reduce his state of arousal. Amused, she stood to one side, folded her arms and watched the struggle progress. After about a minute she could see he was beginning to achieve some control; very gradually, the impressive rigidity of his weaponry was softening. She glanced at the videographer, still busy with his lighting equipment, then walked very deliberately to a spot directly behind the naked actor. Surreptitiously lowering a gloved hand below the level of his buttocks, she gently stroked the back and inside of his left thigh. At the moment the man felt the sensuous touch of her spandex-clad fingers against his skin he stiffened involuntarily-not just his torso, or his arms and legs, but the very part he had been trying so diligently to make flaccid. His penis, pumping with blood again, leaped back into an erect state.

Grunting with frustration and biting down on the hard rubber phallus lodged in his mouth, Paul twisted his head around to where Margo stood. He had intended to try to pass her a wordless appeal for consideration, if not mercy, but could not even make eye contact with her. The magisterial blonde's own eyes were fixed on a spot on the far wall, a triumphant smile playing around her lips. Paul knew he would have to start over.

And start over he did, but his efforts were unavailing. The next time he succeeded in relaxing his organ, Margo stepped over to a closet in the wall in front of him, on the floor of which she had left her purse. Keeping her legs a couple of feet apart and facing away from him, she bent down from the waist and searched for something in the purse. The movement presented her exquisitely shaped thighs and buttocks to him in a way that would have aroused any male who was not either blind, gay or both. By the time she had straightened up and turned around the hapless actor was again involuntarily erect, his eyes pleading desperately-and fruitlessly-with her again.

Smiling to herself once more, the woman tugged the glove off her left arm and went to work on her nails with the emery board she had taken from her purse. Breathing and perspiring heavily, Paul shut his eyes tightly as he again tried to take control of his condition. And after a couple of minutes his member did begin to obey his desperate mental commands, drooping and shrinking visibly. It was then that the ever-observant Margo returned the emery board to her purse and made as if to return to the far side of the room, except that as she bent to pass under the actor's outstretched arm her ungloved left hand strayed toward his crotch; cushioning the tip of his penis against her palm with her thumb running down the top of its shaft, she brought a newly sharpened nail into contact with the underside of his glans. A few moments' rapid, light, but insistent stroking undid all the man's efforts. His tormented penis leaped into erection once more, to the accompaniment of a high-pitched mew of distress from his gagged lips.

It was this sound that caused the videographer, who had finally reset the lights and camera to his satisfaction, to look up. And explode.

"Margo, for God's sake! What are you trying to do, dammit? You're not supposed to be fluffing him! I want him down and you're keeping the poor bastard up!"

Margo turned, a look of feigned innocence on her alluring face.

"Well now, Marty, I'm just trying to help. I thought if I kept him weak enough he wouldn't be able to keep it up." She paused and looked Paul directly in the eye, another beguiling smile playing around her mouth. "It looks like it's working, too. Doesn't he look like he's weakening?"

"He looks like he's ready to take on a whole cathouse, that's what he looks like. Why don't you go walk around the block while he gets a grip on himself?"

"Dressed like this? I suppose I could; I'd make a lot of new friends."

"More than you're making here, Margo. Seriously, you've gotta-"

"Oh, calm down, calm down, mister. I'm just trying to have some fun on a boring workday. And I know how to fix it. You said it yourself, didn't you--'get a grip'?"

"What are you talk--"

"Oh, Marty, just go next door and get me a big bath towel, why don't you?" Mystified, the videographer departed, returning half a minute later with the requested towel. By that time the woman had slipped the long, dark glove back on her arm and was busily smoothing it over her skin.

"On the floor. Spread it out in front of him," Margo instructed.

"Ohhhh, I get it," Marty muttered.

"No, he gets it." With a look of disgust, Marty laid the towel out on the floor, then walked over to the window and lit a cigarette.

Positioned to one side of the helpless actor and facing him, Margo straddled his left leg and pinned it tightly between her nylon-clad thighs. Her right hand snaked around his back and firmly grasped his waist, holding his torso hard against the sensuous smoothness of her bodybriefer. Her left hand, its every contour closely molded by the spandex material of the opera glove, moved with deadly deliberation to the area of his genitals. Closely watching Paul's face, she ran her fingers lightly over the skin of his testicles; she was rewarded by the feel of his body stiffening, the sight of his eyes widening and the sound of a muffled gasp coming from behind the layer of leather.

Margo was well aware of the effect she could produce in men virtually at will. A toss of her blonde head, a brief but inviting smile, a calculated crossing of her legs in a suitably short skirt--she knew how easily she could use such gambits to attract and keep a man's attention. And when it came to physical teasing or stimulation, she could count on many years of experimentation with men's bodies to know exactly how to arouse and torment the object of her own attention. A man in Paul's position-naked, stringently tethered and gagged-had no chance of remaining undistracted. He was, for the moment, her living plaything, and she was thoroughly enjoying the game.

She increased the pressure on his exposed scrotum, first caressing then kneading his balls with her smoothly covered fingers. The man's breath came snorting rapidly from his nostrils, punctuated by incoherent, gag-muffled sounds of distress, or perhaps pleasure. Perhaps both. And when, still palpating his testes with her fingers, she put her thumb to work rapidly stroking the underside of his swollen penis, he screwed his eyes shut and twitched his loins helplessly.

"Sensitive boy, aren't you?" Margo whispered. He turned his head and looked directly at her, an unmistakable pleading for release in his eyes. She laughed softly, encircled the base of his organ with thumb and forefinger, and squeezed hard. The look in the man's eyes became panicky, and he emitted a sound that might have been a yelp, had his mouth been unencumbered. Releasing her grip, Margo raised her face to his sweating forehead and brushed it lightly with her lips.

"OK, I guess it's time," she breathed. Swiftly she crossed to Paul's other side and took a firm grasp of his penis with her right hand.

"Better motor skills with my right hand," she explained, a playful twinkle in her eye. She took a moment to register once more the impressive bulk of Paul's weapon. Her hand, positioned at its base, reached less than half-way up its length, her forefinger and thumb only just able to meet around its circumference. Just as eye-catching was its unyielding, blood-infused rigidity, which made her wonder, whimsically, if she had only imagined its earlier semi-flaccid state.

"So what is it-the whipping, or me?" she asked softly. The actor twisted his head and neck-the only parts of his body over which he had any control-toward her, but if he thought he was about to answer her question with mouth noises and eyebrow manipulation, she quickly disabused him of the idea. Leaning in toward him and fixing her eyes on his, she sent her tightly enclosing hand on a single swift journey up the length of his shaft and down again.

"Mmmph!" His eyes widened abruptly, his head jerked away, and his entire body twitched in reaction to the stimulation. Margo didn't even blink. She leaned even closer to him, gripped the rear of his head with her left hand and swiveled it back to face her. And five seconds later, still staring purposefully into his eyes, she repeated the rapid hand movement. This time Paul's reaction was restricted to a high-pitched snort and a momentary spasm of the torso. Another five seconds passed before the beautiful dominatrix gave his penis the same treatment, then two seconds, two more seconds, then one, one, one... The captive male wrenched his head away and tightened his grip on the leather straps securing his arms, in anticipation of the moment when she would make her motions continuous and give his stubborn erection the release it so desperately needed. She was almost there: twice a second now, still jerking and pausing, she ran her spandex-cloaked hand the length of his reddening shaft. He closed his eyes, knowing that relief and pleasure were only moments away...

She stopped. She stopped with an abruptness that impacted him like a punch to the stomach. He gave a strangled, agonized cry and twisted forward in his bonds, then turned to her with a look of fury and frustration in his eyes.

Margo threw her head back and laughed. This was the moment that told her she had complete power over yet another virile, well-endowed man. And it was what she had been working toward, from that earlier moment when she had first seen and admired his tumescent condition. This, to Margo, was victory, but knowing that there was business still to be done this day she restricted herself to brief enjoyment of it. Even as her laughter died away, her hand was working again on Paul's tormented member. This time she was working to a different end; her strokes were short but continuous, her pace moderate and her grip firm but not tight. She caught his eye once more, and countered the residual suspicion she saw there with a warm smile and a whispered assurance:

"It's all for you this time..."