The Audition(4)

He grins, and for a brief second, I see the Nikolai I once knew, the man who looked like a Slavic god, and played like an angel. “Ah, Allie,” he shakes his head, his eyes hard again. “What a foolish thing to negotiate for.” He inclines his head. “Okay. Nothing permanent.”

“I’ll need clothes,” I think out aloud. “And I should probably try to find a hotel room.”

“No,” he says. “You’ll be naked. And you’ll sleep in the dungeon.”

And just like that, the respite is over.

***

Back at his apartment, he opens his refrigerator and grabs another bottle of beer. Then, he gestures for me to head downstairs.

I’m nervous now. I have no illusions about what’s going to happen. I’ve seen the wall filled with canes and belts. Nikolai is going to hurt me. He’s going to tie me up and whip me, and I am going to endure. Because he will quite literally whip me into shape for the audition.

Yet I’m startled to realize that I trust him to keep his end of the bargain. If I do what I’m told, if I hang in there, on March 6, just five scant days from now, I will ace my audition.

“Undress.” The words are bald of any sentiment.

He moves and takes a seat opposite the piano, and gestures me to a spot in the light. He’s half in shadow where he’s sitting. I can’t see his face. All I can see is that his arms are folded and he’s waiting.

Fuck. I can’t keep him waiting.

I’ve taken off my coat upstairs already. Trembling, I take off my sweater. “Umm,” I ask, blinking at Nikolai’s dark silhouette. “Should I be doing a strip tease?”

“Did I ask for a strip tease?”

“No,” I reply, feeling foolish.

“If your clothes aren’t off in thirty seconds,” his voice says, “you can leave.”

Those words spur me to speed. I unbutton my white button-down shirt and shrug it off my shoulders. My bra sails to a corner. My skirt and my panties are slid down together, and I step out of them. I’ve definitely taken less than thirty seconds.

“At what point this morning did you realize you failed?” His question whips out of the darkness. I’m in the spotlight. I feel very naked, and very exposed.

“When I played the Andante in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 3.”

“Let’s start there then,” he replies. He gestures to the piano.

I take a seat at the stool. My entire body is flaming with heat and embarrassment. I close my eyes, to try it shut it all out, and I play the concerto. When I finish, I look to the corner he’s seated at.

“Lacking emotion,” he says. He gets up and comes forward, and he has an old-fashioned wooden ruler in his hands. “Hold out your hands to me, palms up,” he orders.

Trembling, I follow his directions.

“Part your legs.”

My foot slides off the foot pedal, and I spread my legs wide, putting my cunt on display for him under the spotlight.

“Count the strokes. Thank me for instructing you.”

“Should I call you Sir?” My voice is very soft.

He laughs, a mocking sound in the darkness. “You can call me whatever you like, Allie,” he says. “As long as you keep your hands extended.”

Though he moves forward into the light, I don’t watch his face. I watch the ruler instead, the way it swings in the air as it comes hurtling towards my palm.

Swish.

I bite my lip as pain explodes in sharp bursts all over my skin, but, through a force of will, I keep my hands where they are. “One,” I whisper, hating the tremble in my voice. “Thank you, Nikolai.”

“I don’t think I need to point out that if you pull your hands away,” Nikolai’s voice is very even, “you risk damaging your fingers.”

No, he doesn’t need to point that out, though that wasn’t the reason I kept my hands where they were. I stayed still because that was what I’d been ordered to do, and though I am a fool in many ways, I know instinctively that Nikolai needs to be obeyed.

The ruler cracks down on my palm again, and tears rise in my eyes. “Two.” I gulp. “Thank you, Nikolai.”

Again and again, the ruler rains blows on my poor, swollen palms. I whimper and flinch and cry out. I don’t meet Nikolai’s eyes as he punishes me; I screw my eyes shut so I don’t have to watch. But I don’t move my hands. “Twenty,” I count finally, and he stops.

I blink the tears back, and his eyes drop to my cunt. “Wet,” he notes dispassionately. “Turned on by pain, Allie?”

I lift my chin up at him defiantly. “So it seems.” I refuse to be embarrassed by the way my body has reacted to his punishment.