Loosening his hold, but still staying close, he gave her a gentle nudge in Odette’s direction. The frightened maid took a tremulous step toward her Mistress. She raised her arm; suddenly the whip felt impossibly heavy and her limbs not her own. The first swing hissed through the air and grazed the shoulder, the skin taking on a rosy blush where the braided end had met; not a thin, neat stripe like the ones still faintly visible on her backside. Marie’s blow had fallen short and with not much conviction, leaving little mark and eliciting little response; just a bare flinch. Bringing the whip back around on a back hand cross stroke she found her power. A loud crack as it connected with her lower back, on the same sweet slope where George had previously caressed; the mark so sudden and deep, blood flushed red, the skin surrounding seemed so unnaturally white. Odette bowed backward so low the ends of her golden hair near brushed the floor, the drapery ropes straining but holding her fast, biting deep into her wrists; her cry loud and wailing.

Marie’s reticence quickly dissipated in seeing her Mistress’ reaction. Not to anger, or even empathy, or pity. Marie’s response—the very first emotion rising up from her bowels like Lazarus from the dead—was pure hate. Marie saw not pain, not sorrow, no sliver of repentance despite Odette’s tearful pleas for forgiveness; what was there was always there, lurking behind the unsullied face of an angel, teasing with a fleeting glimpse during an unguarded moment—feral, raw, reaching hunger. Her mask had slipped, Odette was nothing but an all encompassing, indiscriminate, greedy orifice begging to be filled, at all costs; all else of little or no importance.

The next few minutes (or hours?) passed as but a dream. No longer fearing her employer, Marie alternately laughed and sobbed, the whip an extension of her disgust, rising and falling with determined accuracy, leaving swollen red welts that would take months to fade. Still, she only felt Odette’s animal heat, crying for more which drove Marie to further effort. George, behind her, lifting her skirts and whispering, "The viper is loose." His erection, a smooth bar of iron, sliding easily between Marie’s slick thighs; matching her rhythm, grunt for grunt, stroke for stroke. Until Odette reached whatever pinnacle, whatever primal need this summer ending ritual invoked, and collapsed; she breathed a sigh, long and contented, still held aloft by gold silk ropes.

Bent over the edge of the bed, Marie watched her Mistress’ face in sated repose, the angel defiled and oblivious; oblivious to another hunger being appeased while she drifted away in exhausted slumber. Marie felt George’s hands braced on her hips, his sweat falling on her back, belly rubbing against her bare bottom as he took his final pleasure deep inside her bowels. The sun would rise soon and find Marie, a household menial, asleep in an enormous feather bed, with mountains of pillows and clean, soft sheets. For the next two days she would dine on rich foods from fine bone china and sip exotic, imported teas from a silver service; lounge in three full rooms wearing silks and satins, unconcerned for no one’s comfort save her own. All this, in addition to permission to scourge a Gentry, before returning to London with Mistress Odette. All these promises Master George made in exchange for one night’s access to her back passage.

Master George was a gentleman of his word.