Beth still looked dubious. 'I'm shy,' she said. 'And there's another thing.'
'What?'
'He's old,' Beth said. She had seen several photographs of Charles.
'I'm old too,' Matthew retorted.
'Not as old as him,' Beth said. 'I just don't know if I'm comfortable with him like that. Sexually, I mean.'
'You like him, don't you?'
'Yes,' she said. 'I like him a lot.'
'And he's kind to you.'
'Yes, he is.'
'Well, then,' said Matthew, closing the discussion, 'if you have a bit of resistance, that's no bad thing. It's good for you to be made to do things you aren't too keen on.'
Beth was allowed to have her conversations with Charles without Matthew or I being present, but she had to give us a summary of what happened each time. Apparently, during the first encounter after these arrangements were confirmed, Charles told Beth to take her top off, on camera. It seems she had hesitated for a while. He then told her that if she didn't do as she was told he would report her to Matthew. She knew what the consequences of that would be. So she complied, not, I imagine, without some pouting. She said she spent the rest of the conversation terrified that Charles would make her take her bra off too.
'I'm sure that's what he'll do next time,' Matthew said. Beth looked worried. I don't know if there was a discussion between Charles and Matthew, but this prediction proved correct. By her account, Beth sat frozen to the spot when Charles told her to strip to the waist. It took him a full ten minutes of coaxing, wheedling and threatening to get her to take her top and bra off. Even then she insisted on sitting with her arms wrapped across her chest. But I knew Beth well enough to be sure that though her resistance was genuine; the public exhibition of herself was something that aroused her. It was the same as in the little games in Starbucks. She was scared to be seen, yet excited. I knew that, after talking online to Charles for half an hour with her hands hiding her breasts, her knickers would have been wet.
Charles took things very slowly. Having established the principle that Beth would obey him, even if on occasion with reluctance, he consolidated his position. The next time she wasn't required to remove anything. The time after that he told her to remove her bra before she came online, but keep her top on. Throughout the session she was waiting, with some tension, for the moment when the top would have to come off too, or at least lifted to reveal her breasts, but the moment never came. Then the next time he appeared online, his opening words to her were, 'Top and bra off straight away, Beth. No arguments. Just do it.' And after a moment's hesitation she did. He then forbade her to hide her breasts. 'You got lovely little tits,' he said. 'Matthew has told me all about them. So let me have a look.' And she did.
During the next few sessions he gradually divested her of the rest of her clothes until finally she sat naked before him. He told her how pleased he was with her, what a good little girl she was, and how he was going to ask Matthew to reward her. Accordingly, we took her out, bought her a pretty new skirt, and took her for a nice dinner.
However, Charles wasn't satisfied with getting her naked. The next stage was to get her to perform sexual acts online. Not surprisingly he encountered further resistance. Despite the fact that her sexual life would have raised eyebrows, and even produced shock, among her family and friends had they known about it, Beth was basically quite a shy girl sexually. Before encountering Matthew and I, her sexual experience was conventional. Not only had she never had any kind of group sexual encounters, she told us that she had never experienced cunnilingus (it had been offered but she was too shy to accept it), had only performed a couple of blow-jobs in her whole life, and had no experience of anal sex. Even masturbation was something she had done only rarely.
Thus it was not surprising that when Charles told her, after she had taken her clothes off, to open her legs and touch herself for him, she coloured bright red and said she simply couldn't do it. It was too embarrassing. Charles wouldn't accept that for a moment. He made a formal complaint to Matthew, that his little girl was disobedient. Matthew's response was to give her a sound thrashing.
At this point I ought to say a word about punishment. Matthew was always rigorous about calling Beth to account for any perceived misdemeanour. This included not only things she had done that she ought not to have done (and things she ought to have done she had not done), but also whenever he identified an incorrect attitude. He didn't care for pouting or brattiness or sulking. His orders were to be accepted with good grace, even when they weren't welcome. The test of your obedience, Beth, he would tell her, is not that you do the easy things. It's whether you do things you don't want to, and do them with a good grace.
Punishments were taken seriously, and administered with due solemnity and ritual. Matthew was always careful to make sure that Beth knew exactly what she was being punished for. He was patient with her, talking her through her conduct in great detail, pointing out her errors. And punishment was never carried out until she had been persuaded of the necessity for it and that it was well deserved. It doesn't do you any good, he would say, unless you accept that it is merited.
There is always a problem with a submissive girl who enjoys a spanking (and there is no doubt that Beth did so very much), that if you also punish by spanking, you will merely furnish her with precisely the stimulation she desires. Matthew therefore always made a firm distinction between maintenance spankings and punishment spankings. The former, given to keep Beth centred, focussed, in touch with her inner submissive self and in touch with her owners, literally, was always begun slowly, almost gently, often by hand. Gradually he would work up to something stronger, and often such spankings could conclude with some really hard and painful blows, with a crop or cane. But she would have been well prepared, put in the right frame of mind, her bottom nicely warmed up, and with lots of encouragement and reinforcement along the way.
A punishment beating, on the other hand, was meant to be unpleasant. It started hard, with no physical warm-up, though there would often be a lengthy process of getting her mind in the right place. Matthew would read her long lectures about why he had rules, demanding why she felt driven to flout them, and getting her to agree that she deserved punishment, and that it would make her a better girl. But however much she accepted the justice of it, the punishment, when it came, was harsh, usually with his belt or a cane, intended to hurt. Usually she was reduced to tears, by a combination of pain and remorse. Matthew was always very good with her then, holding her, kissing the tears away, telling her that now she was his good little girl again.
The trouble was that Beth seemed to have a perverse need to contrive situations where punishment became inevitable. It wasn't because she enjoyed the punishment spankings or whippings. They were much harder than she liked, and the tears she shed while they were taking place were genuine, I am sure. But she had an insatiable appetite for drama. If she was forbidden to do something (for example, she was frequently on orgasm denial), she would complain, texting incessantly about how hard it was to be forbidden physical release, arguing that she didn't deserve this, or cajoling, saying she had been a very good girl, wasn't it time she was allowed to come? She knew that such behaviour was provocative to Matthew. To his mind, she ought to accept his orders without question, go about her business quietly and meekly, and hope that eventually she would gain a reward. Beth's continual whining and whingeing made him increasingly cross, to the point when it would inevitably boil over, and Beth would be punished for her failure to behave as a good submissive should.
One would think that Beth would learn from this, but seemingly she never did. For example, there was a constant argument about bedtimes. Matthew liked her to go to bed at an early hour, no later than eleven o'clock. He believed that Beth needed eight hours sleep and that her health suffered if she didn't get it. Beth was always moaning that this was too early, always asking if she could stay up late tonight because she had to write her blog or perform some chore. Matthew would scold her for not getting these things done in advance, since she knew what the rules were about bedtime. These disputes would go on and on, and then frequently Beth would have a tantrum, with predictable consequences the next day. Matthew would scold her, administer a severe spanking, then forgive her, and Beth would be good for a while, only to start the same performance before too long.
The punishment Beth received for her refusal to follow Charles's instructions to masturbate on camera was especially severe. I witnessed it. Matthew was determined to make his point.
'Your refusal to do as he says is disrespectful not only to him, but to me. I have told you that you are to obey him as you would me. I have told him this is my position. It is therefore more than somewhat humiliating to find that the girl who, as I informed him, was an owned submissive, trained to obey, is surly and recalcitrant. Charles must think that I am a poor sort of Dom if I cannot control you and have you perform simple tasks for him. It's not as if he's fucking you, after all. You are sitting in the comfort and safety of your own room, removed from him by hundreds of miles. I can't see what the problem is.'
'I feel it's almost like a violation,' Beth whined. 'It's not that I don't like him, but I don't feel about him the same way I feel about you.'
'But I have told you, at the moment he is issuing instructions; he
is
me, to all intents and purposes. And you will obey him, I am determined.'
Beth snivelled. She knew what was coming. Matthew left the room and came back with his cane. It was a thin, whippy bamboo cane. He'd never tried it on me, but it looked as though it could sting like crazy. I saw Beth's expression when she caught sight of it. She visibly quailed. I've heard submissives talk about the cane, how it's different from other implements of discipline. A belt, a whip, a leather tawse, all may hurt a lot, but the cane is different. Being thin, it concentrates a great deal of force into a narrow strip of flesh, rendering the impact more penetrating. Girls know the cane can really bite, know the pain goes deep. And once after a punishment from Matthew, Beth had talked to me about her dread of it, how the very sight of it made her go weak at the knees. Yet on another occasion she told me that when Matthew threatened her with a caning, her cunt clenched. Despite, or even because of, her fear, she grew wet at the very prospect.
This time, she didn't look like she was getting very wet. Matthew was annoyed with her. He felt she had made him lose face in front of another Dom, after he had told Charles what a good girl she was and how she would do anything he said. So now he was going to make her pay.
Matthew made her strip naked and bend over the table. She gripped the edges tight, bracing herself.
'Don't you dare move till this is over,' Matthew said. 'Do you understand?'
'Yes, sir,' Beth said in a small voice.
Matthew struck her full across her behind. I heard the cane swish as it came down, then a crack as it landed. Beth let out a yell. Matthew raised the cane again. When it struck, Beth yelled again, and half turned away. Matthew waited patiently for her to get back in position. I wondered how many strokes it would be. Already two lurid red lines were visible across her buttocks. I always found watching her being beaten a strange experience. In a sense I identified with her, felt the blows as they landed on her defenceless backside, enjoyed vicariously the pleasure of the pain. But at the same time it aroused my feelings of dominance. I wanted her to be punished, I wanted her to be forced to obey, and I wanted her to be marked and to see the tears flow. I would never have had the nerve to cane her myself. I'm much too squeamish. But I enjoyed seeing Beth brought to heel. And in truth, I felt that she deserved it, that all too often she was a spoiled brat and that her endless whining deserved a sound thrashing.
This time Matthew really gave it to her, with the result that her round white bottom was striped with bruises for several days afterwards. He told Charles exactly what had happened, and encouraged him to do exactly as he pleased with her.
'She needs to be taught a lesson,' he said to Charles. 'She needs to learn that to be owned means just that; you don't have the right to refuse an order. So do as you please with her.'
Apparently Charles took great pleasure in making her strip in front of the camera and display the bruises on her bottom to him. Then he made her sit facing him with her legs apart. He told her to put her finger in her cunt, and then to put it in her mouth. Beth made a face, as if that were somehow disgusting, though I can't see why; she had done more deviant things than that in our presence. Beth went red in the face and indicated her distaste for what was happening, but Charles seemed to take no notice, insisting she follow his instructions to the letter. Afterwards he made a point of telling Matthew that she had been a good girl, 'Thanks to your excellent disciplinary methods!'