It seemed to Nicki that her universe had disintegrated; all that was good, clean and decent appeared to have descended into a paradoxical alternate reality -- a reality, moreover, where social norms and common conventions had been twisted into a perversion of themselves. Perversion was, Nicki thought, the right word for it. The wiring in her head had somehow become re-routed, the neurons and nerves scrambled and misconnecting -- so that things she had previously thought gross, unbearable and untenable had become somehow exciting -- inflaming her desire beyond all reasonable measure. The greater her pain and humiliation, the greater her obscene, aching arousal. She was certainly becoming much more intimately acquainted with her scrubbed wooden kitchen table than she had ever thought possible.

Nicki gasped and hissed as the first stroke of the tawse descended onto her naked buttocks, her long silk-stockinged legs quivering. Pain flowered, flamed and spread over both her cheeks. The nub of her swollen clitoris had pressed against the rough grain of the wooden kitchen table, over which she had been bent. Tom had removed the butt plug -- the relief she felt as the rude intrusion was pulled out of her throbbing anal passage, was soon surmounted by the agony she felt from the first sharp crack of the tawse. She moved her hands away from the back of her head automatically as she moaned and cried, trying vainly to protect her burning arse. Tom simply pinioned her arms behind her back, grasping her slender wrists with his strong left hand. His right hand was clutching the tawse, with which he was now remorselessly and slowly thrashing her bare behind. As each stroke landed, Nikki cried out, sobbing and begging for mercy, tears running down her face and smearing her mascara into a small, dark puddle under her cheeks.

She squirmed and moved her buttocks, vainly trying to escape the force of the blows that were building up a criss-cross collection of red welts that flared across her tortured flesh. As she squirmed, the pressure of her clit against the wood seemed to increase - sending tremulous explosions of desire up into her stomach and beyond. Through the pain and humiliation she had the dawning realisation that she was very close to orgasm. The added humiliation of accepting that her desire arose from her submission, increased the build-up of her sexual tension, the damn threatening to break and overwhelm her defences.

"Please sir," she groaned and panted through her streaming tears, "I'm going to come. I need to come!"

Now that she had to beg for her release rather than merely allowing it to devastate her was another mortification that was added to the lengthening list of indignities she had suffered: being shaved and spanked, refused the allowance of underwear, then depilated and abused by Sonia, internally cleansed with an enema, collared, her anus stretched in the rudest possible way, fingered, publically exposed and now being beaten with a tawse that she herself had purchased. It had all happened so quickly. Nicki feared that she was losing control, yet the very idea of losing that control, submitting herself entirely to Tom's dominance, was somehow feeding the furnace of her basest desires. Boy, was it hot! She was close to exploding.

"Please sir, may I come?"

"You have had 4 strokes of the tawse," Tom replied. "You have another two coming. You may climax on the final stroke."

He took his time with the final two blows, seemingly selecting areas of her raw buttocks that had escaped his previous ministrations. The second-to-last lash landed on the top of her bottom, just below the small of her back. The last slapping blow, just above the fleshy bit of her thighs, was harder than all the rest. Nicki yelped in anguish, but then had one of the most towering and astounding orgasms that she had ever experienced -- her whole body aflame with overpowering sensation. She staggered to her feet, tottering on the heels of her stilettos. Tom grasped the back of her neck and pushed her back onto the table.

"I didn't tell you to get up. Stay there."

He parted her legs, reached over for the second biggest butt plug, and without any ceremony or preparation, forced it deeply and rapidly into Nicki's anus. Taken totally by surprise, she squealed as his hand touched the raw welts on her buttocks as he jammed the plug in, and then groaned and sobbed as her sphincter at first battled and then surrendered to this new and bigger indecorous intrusion.

"Ow! Ow!! Oh please, take it out! It's too big!"

Tom simply ignored her. The familiar cramping pains ran up from her abused passage to her tummy. She felt as if she were about to burst open. Fresh tears streamed down her cheeks. Her nose was running. She was a mess.

Tom pulled her to her feet. She could barely stand, overcome and exhausted by the ferocity of her body's tempestuous response to the abuse she had suffered. He led her over to the mirror, turning her body so she could see the marks left by her punishment. The strap of the tawse was split into two stiff leather thongs, so each stroke of the implement had left not one, but two raised, purple welts on her white flesh. A dozen bruised lines of pain hatching her tender skin, forming an undignified tartan that would take a while to fade. The base of the butt plug flared just proud of her nether cheeks seeming to form a nexus, a round, black intersection at which the brocaded lines of her punishment met. She examined her face. Her cheeks were red. Mascara stained tears -- still streaming from her swollen eyes -- had tracked black lines down her cheeks. She tried to catch her breath, to stop her sobbing. She needed to blow her nose.

"Pick up your dress. Go into the bathroom and sort yourself out. We'll talk when you come back."

Tom sank down onto the settee. Nicki winced as she bent down to pick up her dress, her tormented flesh protesting at the stretching action. The butt plug felt so enormous inside her back passage -- although the cramps were now, thankfully, slowly losing their intensity. She walked gingerly into the bathroom. After a few moments, she managed to stop sobbing. She washed her face with cold water to reduce her swollen eyes, blew her nose and then re-applied lipstick and mascara. She brushed her hair and managed to put on her dress, grateful for once that she would not be wearing panties which might rub against her still burning flesh. A glance in the mirror showed her reflection looking pretty near to normal. What was normal anymore? As she turned to go back into the living room, she had a moment of blind panic. What had she become?

Tom looked up as she entered the room. His expression was maddeningly neutral. He patted the space on the settee next to him.

"Sit down, Nicki."

She sat, gingerly, wincing as pain flared across her bruised buttocks when they came into contact with the fabric of the sofa. A small groan escaped her lips. For a moment, there was silence. Then her thoughts came tumbling out of her mouth.

"I'm not sure what is happening to me. I'm afraid", Nicki said. "I don't know what to do. I seem to have become another person."

Tom surprised her. He enfolded her with his arms and pulled her head down onto his chest, stroking her hair. She suddenly felt secure, safe, protected.

"You will always be at war with yourself until you accept who you are", said Tom. "Think, Nicki. Why did you become an actor? Why do you stand up in front of people and perform? Is it not because the possibility of failure, of humiliation is alway there? And that excites you. I know this excites you. I have seen this in you from the first day we met. Is it so surprising that you can experience humiliation through physical abuse? You are who you have always been. Exciting, beautiful. Distracting."

Nicki was stunned into silence, firstly because Tom had praised her for the very first time, and secondly, because Tom and her seemed to be having a discussion about their relationship. He had called her beautiful. Exciting! She thought about what he had said. It seemed to make sense in a weird kind of way. Had she been unconsciously searching for humiliation and abuse all this time? Surely not!

"I don't know, it just doesn't seem normal." She shrugged, snuggling into his broad chest, wanting to prolong this moment of intimacy.

"Normal!", Tom's deep laugh filled the room. "Normal! Why would you want to be normal? What great actor is ever 'normal'? Forget about being normal. Be yourself. Be true to yourself. Embrace your desires."

"But if I'm getting pleasure from pain there must be something seriously wrong with me."

"You are adding up two and two and getting five," Tom replied. "You are punished. The punishment is painful. You come like a hurricane. You think that your pleasure arises from the pain, but you are wrong. Your pleasure, young lady, arises from your submission. You find the things I do to you humiliating, painful and degrading. Yet you allow me to do these things, and you even beg me to do them. It is that which gives you pleasure."

Lord! He was right. Nicki thought back -- it was her humiliation when he had first shaved her and fingered her tight anus that had prompted her first climax with him. She found humiliation and submission exciting.

"What about you? Do you get pleasure from hurting me?" Nicki needed to know.

"You give me more pleasure than you can possibly imagine," Tom replied. "Again, however, it is not the infliction of pain per se that arouses me, but the willing acceptance of it. I see the battle writ on your body -- your blushes as humiliation of the abuse inflames your desire. That, in turn, inflames mine." He paused. "I think I might be falling in love with you."

This last -- so matter of fact -- that Nicki thought she might have misheard or misunderstood. A wave of pure pleasure enfolded her. Love! Tom!

"When you came out of the bedroom wearing my collar," Tom continued, "I felt a bond and a longing so strong that I could scarcely breathe. As you know, I don't show my feelings -- and that is not going to change. But you do things to me. Powerful things. I need you, and I hope that you need me."

He pulled her face toward him and kissed her. Nicki was too happy to speak. She just beamed. Tom pulled her skirt up, pushed her legs wide apart, and examined her bald nether lips, pink and inflamed from the remorseless attention he had paid. He slipped a finger inside her. Nicki sighed and groaned. Then he pulled her vaginal lips apart to reveal her glistening, pink hole.

"Hmm," he said thoughtfully, his strong fingers grasping and stretching each rosy lip, "I think I would like to see you pierced and ringed down here. Then you will wear my tag. Come on, we're going to drink the champagne, eat some food, and then we're off to the pub to meet some friends."