Page 11 of Thwack!

Judge Roberts had been prevailed upon to withhold the more embarrassing part of Mather’s sentence until after dusk—not for the sake of Mather’s paleness but out of respect for the sensibilities of the ladies doing their weekly marketing—and so the first half of Mather’s incarceration was unremarkable.

His head was constrained in a hollow nook between two boards, and his wrists were likewise constrained. His legs were free to move, but other than dancing them around, he couldn’t move them far, and being bent at the waist kept his gaze down and firmly ahead. His back ached, and the wood against his skin was rough and splintered, but the few taps of the paddle he’d received were so ineffective as to be almost disappointing.

A sign had been posted labeling him as a sodomist, and the paddle lay within easy reach for whoever chose to apply it, but few did. Occasionally a stern-faced farmer or a tittering maiden delivered a single smack to his outthrust backside, but for the most part people had more pressing things to concern themselves with than what Mather and another fellow had gotten up to behind the pub.

As the light began to fade, Mather grew sleepy in his bonds. What a long, boring day, and still hours yet to go. His stomach growled restlessly. He was as empty as a man could be, barely a sip of water all day, and he was thinking fondly of his bed when he became aware of a gathering presence.

The square had been emptying, vendors packing up their stalls and mothers hurrying home with their children, but now it was filling again. Men filtered in from the shadows and took quiet, watchful stances, as though waiting for something.

“No sun now,” someone behind him said. That was Tom, the devil. Mather would know his voice anywhere.

“Nor any ladies either.” That was Judge Roberts, his voice as stern and deep as when he’d been handing down Mather’s sentence. “The time has come. Bailiff, if you would do the honors.”

Mather felt two rough hands at his waist, undoing the knot on the rope he used to hold up his trousers. The bailiff made quick work of stripping him—trousers first and then small clothes too until the cool evening breeze wafted over his bare backside.

“Walp,” someone said. “He waren’t wrong about having a pale ass.”

The assembled crowd laughed, the sound low and rough and menacing.

“And I wasn’t joking about pinking it up for him,” Judge Roberts said. From the corner of Mather’s eye, he saw the judge’s hand reach for the paddle. “Who would care to start us off?” A light tapping sound suggested Judge Roberts was testing the paddle against something—his palm or perhaps his thigh.

“Seems as though you should do the honors,” Tom said.

Mather and Tom might not have parted on good terms, and perhaps Mather was more to blame for that than Tom, but was he so much to blame that Tom should be a part of this planned assault on his person? Mather was sorry about their break now. The two of them had had a nice hidey-hole for their romantic interludes where nosey barmaids couldn’t intrude. And Tom had been good to him. Perhaps too good. He was a rotten little thing. His mother had always said so. He never appreciated when he’d gotten lucky and always had to push until he got unlucky again.

But it wasn’t Tom with his muscled arm who stepped up to Mather’s side now. It was Judge Roberts, less bulky without his robes but no less intimidating, especially since Mather knew the size of the paddle he was about to wield, which was a good six inches broad and long enough that a man could work up a swing.

Mather had felt it against his backside at regular intervals throughout the afternoon, but he’d had his breeches on then, and the folks swinging it had seemed to be doing it out of duty rather than interest. Judge Roberts had interest. Mather could see now that the sentence he’d been given was for the judge’s own lewd purposes and that the judge intended to make the most of the opportunity he’d presented himself.

Still, the first tap came lightly.

“Get one with yer,” someone yelled.

Mather swung his head sharply in that direction and saw his worst nightmare materialize. It was the group of young men who’d been loitering against the pillory the other day—five or six of them. Strapping and healthy and cruel.

“We’s all going to want a turn,” one of the boys said. He grabbed his crotch and the rest of them laughed.

“You’ll be having a turn in the pillory,” an older man warned them. “That’s Judge Roberts you’re haranguing.”

“Aw, we’re just encouraging him,” the first boy said—Angus Johnson’s son, Ezekiel. A fine-looking young man with bulky shoulders and a beard worthy of a man twice his age. “All of us is here for the same thing, ain’t we? I’m just saying time’s a wasting.”

The crowd stirred, everyone seeming to take a step forward at the same time, their eagerness apparent in their energy. Mather tried to count the men surrounding him, but he couldn’t do it. It seemed an endless number. He whimpered, low in his throat, as he realized how helpless he was.

“Not crying already, are you?” Tom asked. His tone was harsh, but he placed a steadying hand on the small of Mather’s back, almost like he meant it to comfort.

“I ain’t crying,” Mather insisted. “Just waiting for you-all to get on with it like the boy said.”

“Stand back,” Judge Roberts told Tom. Mather could hear he was riled up, and his first blow proved it. Breath whooshed out of Mather as fire spread across his ass. He’d thought Judge Roberts too old to deliver a stroke that strong, but it was soon followed by another and then another.

“You’ll wear him out,” someone grumbled.

“Hold your horses,” the bailiff ordered, doing Judge Roberts’s bidding even out here in the public square. “Everyone will have their chance.”

Mather couldn’t fathom it. Each blow sparked a fresh fire, and the fire seemed to transmit itself to his cock, which had been steadily plumping as if blood were being pounded out of his ass straight into it. He’d never been at the center of so much male attention before, and he thought that if he survived this night, he might come to cherish the memory of it. But would he survive the night?

After the first few strikes, which Judge Roberts had delivered as if he had a point to prove, the swats came slower and steadier, without quite so much force. Mather settled into the rhythm of them, appreciating the warmth the paddling was infusing him with until Judge Roberts grumbled about his arm hurting and handed the paddle over to his bailiff to continue the job.

The bailiff had a strong, steady swing, and he grunted as he peppered Mather’s ass. His grunts weren’t so different from the ones Mather heard when he had a man behind him for another purpose, which only caused his prick to grow even more engorged.