Then, suddenly, Diane's body relaxed completely. Sharon scrabbled up to her knees in alarm, wondering what could have happened.
And then, as she looked at Diane's lovely face, the long-lashed eyes closed and the full red mouth moist and slightly parted, the other girl's eyelashes suddenly fluttered a little against the petal-smooth cheek.
Sharon sighed with relief. She knew the look on Diane's face full well; she'd seen it on more than one pretty face, and under exactly the same conditions.
Diane, she knew, had fainted from the unbearable ecstasy of her orgasm.
Sharon bent over her. "Diane," she said softly. "Are you all right, baby?"
Diane's blue eyes opened wide. She smiled up at Sharon with love and gratitude, then threw her arms around her and drew her close.
"Oh, Sharon!" she cried. "Let's do it again!"
CHAPTER SEVEN
When the phone rang the next afternoon, just after one, Sharon was in the shower. She slipped into her scuffs, wrapped a huge towel around her, and ran out to answer it, thinking it would be Vickie.
But it was her parole officer.
"I'm very unhappy with you, Sharon," she said.
"Very."
"Why, Miss Thornton?" Sharon said.
"We'll discuss that in twenty minutes," Joyce Thornton said. "That's the minimum time it will take you to get here. And that is also the maximum time I will allow you to take."
"But what's wrong?"
"Twenty minutes, Sharon. I'm at my home. See that you are too, in twenty minutes." She hung up.
When Sharon knocked at the door of the big stucco-and-clapboard house, she knew she was in for trouble, but she couldn't imagine what it would be. The only thing she could think of was that Joyce Thornton had discovered the cunt juice that had seeped onto her bedroom rug, and drawn the obvious conclusion.
"Late again," Joyce said as she opened the door. "That's twice in a row, Sharon."
"I was in the shower," Sharon said as she stepped into the living room. "I had to dress, and wait for a cab."
Joyce had been standing with one hand behind her back. Now she brought it forward, and the long velvet whip snaked out to lick around Sharon's ankles. Sharon hadn't had time to put on stockings or pantyhouse, and the whip stung her ankles sharply.
Joyce drew herself to her full height, towering over Sharon, her yellow-flecked green eyes cold and mocking. "Get your clothes off," she snapped.
To protest would be futile, Sharon knew. She took off her dress and bra and panties and stood waiting.
"I said I was very unhappy with you," Joyce said. "The truth is, I'm furious with you."
"But what have I done, Miss Thornton?"
"It's what you haven't done. I ordered you to clean that guest room."
"I did."
"You did not. You merely cleaned around the furniture."
"I didn't think you expected me…"
"I expected you to clean that room. All of it." She laughed nastily, and the whip coiled out to wrap around Sharon's thighs. "You're strong enough to move that furniture aside. Why didn't you?"
"I told you. I…"
"Bend over that hassock there."
"What?"
"Can't you hear? Get down on your knees and lean over that hassock!"
"What are you going to do?"
Joyce took a threatening step toward her, raising the whip handle above her head like a club. "On your knees! Do you hear?"
Sharon sank down on her knees and leaned over the hassock.
"You deserve to go back to prison," Joyce said. "But I've decided to give you another chance. This time, your punishment will merely be a whipping. But I warn you, girl, the next time you displease me, I'll put you back behind those bars for two long years. Do you quite understand?"
Sharon said nothing.
The whip stung across her shoulders.
"Do you?" Joyce said.
"Yes," Sharon said, and flinched as the whip cut across her hips.
"Then be thankful your punishment is so mild," Joyce said, bringing the whip across Sharon's hips again in exactly the same place. "I'm going to give you forty lashes. And if I hear a single whimper from you, I'll double them."
As Sharon had once resigned herself to serving her sentence a day at a time, she now resigned herself to enduring her whipping a lash at a time.
They were all, every one of them, on her buttocks. And while the first few merely stung, the next half-dozen or so were harder. She counted them, and by the time she had reached twenty, she was in real pain. And when, finally, the fortieth lash seared its way across her burning hips, she was crying uncontrollably.
Joyce stood over her – gloating, her face flushed with pleasure, slapping the folded whip sharply against her palm, her slitted eyes like dirty green ice.
"You are to be here tomorrow afternoon at two," she said. "You will clean that entire guest room as you ought to have cleaned it yesterday. Do you understand?"
Sharon rose unsteadily, brushing the tears from her eyes. "Yes," she said.
"I won't be here, but you will find the back door open. You are to undress the moment you come in, and stay undressed all the time you are here." She paused. "Need I tell you what will happen if I come home and find you are not undressed?"
"No."
Joyce turned on her heel and started toward the door that opened on the dining room. "See that you don't forget it," she said over her shoulder. "Now put your clothes on and get out of here."
When Vickie came home that evening, Sharon told her nothing at all about the whipping her parole officer had given her. It would have upset the little silver-blonde terribly – and making Vickie unhappy was something Sharon had always been very careful to avoid. Besides, she had recovered from the whipping almost completely. True, her buttocks still smarted a little when she sat down, and the skin was still a trifle pink. But she was no longer in any real discomfort. On the contrary! To her surprise, she found that her mildly stinging hips aroused her sexually in a subtly different way that she had never before enjoyed. She knew now why Vickie had often asked to be spanked, and she regretted never having let Vickie spank her in return. Hereafter, she decided, she'd not only let Vickie spank her, but she'd initiate the spanking herself.
Vickie had seemed strangely excited about something ever since she came in. But when Sharon asked her the reason, she was coy and evasive.
"Put on your sexiest dress," Vickie said, as soon as she finished the martini Sharon had had waiting for her. "I'm taking you out to dinner."
"If by sexiest, you mean the shortest," Sharon said, "I'm wearing it." She raised her arms above her head, knowing the movement would draw the hem of her skirt up above the dark shadow of her delta beneath the sheer pantyhouse. "See?"
Vickie laughed. "That's perfect," she said. "Let's go."
They had two martinis before dinner, and three stingers after it. By the time they got back to the apartment, Sharon was in the best mood she'd been in since she had walked through the gates of the prison.
The moment they stepped into the apartment, the lights came on, and they were greeted with a shrill chorus of "Surprise! Surprise!"
"What in the world!" Sharon said, looking around at the roomful of pretty young girls who stood laughing at her.
"It's your coming-out party, darling," Vickie said happily. "This is the first night all the girls could be here."
"Well, aren't you the tricky one," Sharon said, laughing. "So that's why you took me out to dinner."
All the girls were crowding around her now, kissing her, laughing, making bright little jokes about Sharon's sex life in prison.
Sharon was deeply touched. None of her friends had phoned or come to see her, and she had been sure they thought she was guilty and wanted nothing to do with her. It had hurt her terribly, even though she had been unable to blame them, and she had resigned herself to the fact that only Vickie thought she was innocent.