The winter sun had nearly set behind the skyscrapers of Metropolitan City when the man left the Packard taxi and entered the soot-gray art deco apartment building. He strode across the tile foyer, pulled the gate and squeezed into the elevator cage. At the fourth floor, he checked the contract in his hand. "L.L. 16:00, Wednesday. Weekly." As the four o'clock hour pealed from the belfry of the nearby Temple of Extremely Reform Judaism, he rapped twice at Apartment 436. Promptly, very promptly, she opened the green door. One glimpse and she nervously backed up a step. He was at least six-foot-six, gaunt like Rushmore, attired in tuxedo with velvet lapels and a black cape. He was anywhere between 40 and 60. Neither his demeanor, nor the dark pompadour with a front shock of silver gave his age away. But he was not there to pay a social visit. "Mr. Kant," he announced himself with all the ardor of a professor calling roll at the end of a semester. "Yes, come in," she said as demurely as possible under the circumstances. It was then that Miss Layne, 24, a secretary of adept shorthand and long dark secrets, noticed the long leather sample case that preceded him across the threshold. "The contract," he intoned. She bowed her head, the Gibson-girl brunette sheen swishing slightly beneath the topknot clasped by a copper barrette. She knew what was to happen. After all, it was in the contract. "Yes, the contract," she repeated, her voice trembling. He surveyed the darkened apartment, decorated fastidiously in cherrywood and oak, the polished planks of wood covered partially by an ivory rug. He set his case on the low marble-topped commode, the monogram "C.K" discreetly facing away from his work area. She shifted uncomfortably beneath the floor-length ochre dress, cinched at the waist and puffed at the shoulders. But, the contract. She was a proper lady and the contract was in force for the first time. She lifted her chin, her ivory cheeks reflecting not pale sunlight but sheer pride, the pride of a woman with a past -- and a future. As he opened the valise, she began lifting her ruffled hem and scooping up the petticoat beneath. In two steps she was at the rolltop desk, its writing surface opened for the occasion. Her slim wishbone arms began the chore of removing her heavy brocade dress. The swaying of her hips and the softshoe two-step of her high-laced pumps assisted the raising of her dress up above the modesty she was to forfeit by dint of the contract. She reached back to nimbly unlace the corset and wriggle it from beneath her clothing with the deftness of the recently departed Houdini, himself. She stood before him in her chemise, then stepped out of her petticoats and bent over the desk flap, lifting her pantaloons. He was not bothering to watch her machinations, as he was deep in thought selecting the proper instrument. Finally, he procured from his case a moderate-length very thin cane. By this time, he did notice that the lady was, shall we say, sans culotte. Her alabaster mounds bent over the desk, framed by violet garter belt and sheer white silk stockings. He looked at his watch. There were no other appointments, but this was a well inculcated habit. "Let us commence, Madam," he said in the guttural roll of indistinct European heritage. "Indeed," she sighed, shifting her feet slightly apart and back so that her torso would lie as comfortably as possible across the mottled desktop. He rolled the cane in his right palm as DiMaggio would when assuming his stance. He tapped her once on the top of her bared hips. Then the hissssssswwhiippp of the first cut bit into her soft flesh. She had been to Miss Venus' finishing school in Arizona and was trained to keep both surprise and emotion within. She tightened her buttocks as the cane struck, but made no sound audible to Mr. Kant. He slowly drew the British-crafted cane back at a 45-degree and aimed carefully at the lowest curve of her bottom, as if contemplating the alignment of a 9-ball destined for the corner pocket. wwwwwwwhhWHHHACCCKKK! A soft "oof" acknowledged the rattan greeting. It was over precisely as spelled out in the contract. One minute. Twelve strokes. Five seconds of anticipation, a millisecond of searing enforcement. The thin stripes would weal into blisters that would last three days, but, of course, no one else would ever see them or know. She lay over the desk mentally composing herself, swiftly swiping away a single teardrop, in reality a pearl she would treasure. He was at his valise, re-arranging the tools of his trade when she looked back and summoned the courage to depart from the exacting terms of the contract. "Sir? It would please me if you could stay another moment or two. My poor bum is, indeed, well-striped, but, prithee, might you offer a tender ministration?" "The contract," he grumbled. "Sir, I complied rather well with the contract. No one shall have to know about this." He hesitated but a moment, checked his fob and his datebook. "This IS my last appointment. And yes, Madam, you were quite proper." As he took the first step toward her, she reached into a pigeonhole of the desk to remove a flat tin. He thought presently it might be snuff, but as she handed it to him, he saw it was a can of imported mutton tallow. Her rump cheeks rose higher, her hands flattened against the front of her thighs as counterweight. He placed his right hand, tissue thin on the back but lamb soft on the palms, between her parted thighs and stroked her trimmed brown brushy carpet authoritatively. He drew it back and upward with all deliberate speed and crooked his bony forefinger, then poked her widened puckered aperture. With his left hand, he undid his braces, untied the cummerbun and let the loose trousers down far below his plaid sock garters. He laid his experienced, yet still rigid, length of manhood flat against the crease of her bald bottom, feeling for the first time the river of blood that ran through him. The silky head of his uncircumsised penis jabbed forward toward her opening. He put his hands atop hers on the front of her thighs to force her bottom yet higher. He daubed his long fingers in the tallow, and with deft prestidigitation lubricated the lady's back parlor. She widened on cue and took the mysterious contractor into her, her spasms and jerks -- ladylike as they were -- pulled him deeper inside. He went about his business adroitly, pulling on her hips, back and forth to obtain maximum flexion. As he satisfied himself that they fit tightly, he let his Michelango fingers slide up the front of her brocade dress to pinch her firmly swaddled breasts. For the first time, Miss Layne vocalized, in an almost operatic twelve-tone scale of tra-la-las, missing neither a half tone nor a beat. Her sighs and moans transposed themselves into a syncopated lilt as Mr. Kant worked himself harder and deeper, slapping his wool tuxedo trousers arhythmically against her iron hot callipygian hillocks. "FUCK ME!" prim lady Layne suddenly erupted! "FUCK ME FUCK ME HARD!" Mr. Kant drew a deep breath, then rammed every inch of his regal rod into her, exploding her zeppelin of repressed reserve. She screamed. He corkscrewed himself further and further, reminiscing at the moment of vintage Jassy 1909. The lady was writhing and pounding her upper torso upon the weakened writing surface of the desk, wiggling her ass in a way that her former tutors and headmistresses could never imagine. "MORE!" she implored. "KILL ME WITH YOUR COCK!" His long arm twisted backward to just reach the top of his still- opened valise. He took the grooved handle of a riding crop that had done its first work at Upson Downs decades before. He worked his penis furiously in and out of her, and each time he withdrew a centimer, he whacked her lovely arse with the crop. FUCK SMACK HUMP WHACK MPPPPH SLLLLASSSHHHH. He was fucking and whipping her. She was dying from passion and becoming reborn with each fucksmack. As she slumped drained to the floor, he caught her, scooped her up and laid her on the davenport. She was weeping tears of unimagined passion and still thrusting her felinity up and down as she lay, knees bent and apart, on her back. He still gripped the crop, twirled it like a baton, and caught the leather tongue between his thumb and forefinger. The tightly wrapped grip-handle hung above her frontispiece like the sword of Damocles. But she had no fear. He sensed that, and pressed the flat top surface of the handle against her swelling love bud. She screamed and purred all at once. The lady reached down to pull apart her nether lips, and the contractor obliged by gently manipulating the crop handle inside. She was in the throes of yet another priceless and uncountable orgasmic fury. He thought back to all the ladies he had disciplined and swained over his life, but never had he felt an erotic cruxifixion and resurrection like this. Each movement from either of them was a sex act in itself, multiplied a thousandfold. It was, he mused, death by a thousand cunts. "Darkness, my dear," he announced as the temple bells rang 17:00. She looked up at him, her gaze fixed in blank admiration like the wife of a president. He opened the door, turned his head, a cowlick from his pompadour sweeping across his forehead, and reminded her. "The contract. Next Wednesday. 4 o'clock." She opened her mouth to form the word, "contract" but all she emitted was a ghostly, "YesYesyessssyessssyesssssssssssssss."