“I’m beginning to think, darling-” She taps the crop against her thigh in thought, folded leather tip level with your eyeline. “-that this may be just a little counterproductive.”

“Miss?” You shift on your knees, suddenly unsure where she’s going with this. There is a routine, an understood sequence of events, anticipation-ordeal-catharsis. Deviations are - unusual.

“I mean, look at you.” The crop strokes your cheek; a flinch, a caught breath, a lingering, flutter-eyed shudder that terminates at the base of your spine. “Can’t even pretend you don’t want it. Takes the edge off somewhat, considering that this is meant to be a punishment. Does it not?”

You do not comment - rhetorical question, response optional - but the rapt attention with which your eyes follow the crop as it settles back into its tap, tap, tap is tell enough.

A laugh. She steps away, tosses her tool upon the low table at the centre of the room; the widening gap tugs a string in your chest, but you have not been told to move. “How many was it this time, doll?” she asks, drawing the pin from her hair. It cascades along her spine, agate-black, heavy as silk. She doesn’t really need to ask, but this time there comes a delicate little hook woven into the skein of the words, and to answer is compulsion.

You swallow. The mechanisms of your throat tick like the tumbling of a lock. “Fifty, Miss.”

She makes a contemplative little hn as she steps behind the folding screen. (An exquisite image of a blood orchid roils upon the silk.) “You know, what I would do is have one of your sisters take it. Cinnabar, perhaps, or Silky.” A small pause for your hitched breath to drop into - time to picture Silky’s tears, Cinnabar’s silent, shuddering resilience - before she continues. “Unfortunate, isn’t it, that they’re in town this afternoon.”

“Perhaps we could–

“No, no,” she says, plucking the sentence from your tongue like a heron with a fish. “No deferrals. I know how important schedule is to keeping you in tune.” You nod your gratitude and wait, violin-string tense, for what comes next.

The witch emerges naked, and everything else in the room becomes immediately and totally irrelevant. She moves without haste, feet silent amid the cloudlike thickness of the rug, sparing not a moment’s regard for the wordless adoration that courses along the lines of her flesh - almost. Not quite. Despite her efforts, you catch the mote of a smile in her gaze as it passes across you. She is no great actress, your Lady, and she loves to be seen.

Then: “I suppose it can’t be helped,” she says, a little sigh of mock resignation. She stretches herself belly-down upon the chaise lounge, catlike, radiant in her shamelessness, and flicks her eyes at you.

“What are you waiting for, sweetheart?” she says. “Begin.”

The crop lies on the table between you; you’d quite forgotten, addle-brained thing that you are, that it was still there. You balk, of course, stutter and freeze, dread blooming in your chest like icewater. Direct order, you have to, but- but–

“I don’t want any fooling around, you understand?” she says, Oh, she’s really beginning to enjoy herself now. She wriggles, settling into the give of the upholstery as if she plans on taking a nap. You can hardly hear her over the tchk tchk tchk of your internals shifting up several gears at once - and yet her voice asserts itself, the very forefront of your mind, sparing you not a syllable. “Do it properly; if I don’t feel it then there’s really no point, is there? As for location, the back of the thighs or-”

“Miss please I can’t-”

“You will.”

You are on your feet, your fingers curling around the hilt of the crop, every string drawn taut. It’s true; you will.

“Don’t worry, love.” She smiles over the crook of her folded arm, and oh, she says it so kindly, as if she isn’t extracting from you a blasphemy. A sliver of honey-gold eye beneath the feather of her lashes, warm and merciless. “I’ll keep count for you.”