Etta Has A Strange Dream

He had smooth, soft hands, the man who was fondling her breasts. Benedetta could not help but want them, despite the jeers of the crowd, and the weight and chafing of the heavy wooden stocks upon her back. His right thumb was pressing uncomfortably into the base of her spine, his palm splayed wide across her tailbone; the left hand was the one fondling, all five fingers roaming and kneading and tickling, tracing circles in the path of her areolas, occasionally plucking at the hard, tender stubs of her nipples like a picker snatching cherries off the branch.

For some reason, she was wearing a sky-blue cotton dress, the kind she'd often seen the milkmaids wear as they tramped along the village byway toward the grazing pastures to the east. She had never liked dresses, too much movement, too much room for unwanted exposure (from young, she had seen the other girls do cartwheels, or find themselves caught in an unexpected updraft to the uproarious laughter and cheering of whichever boys were in eyeshot), but here, all the same, she was wearing one. Below the waist she was intact, from the apron and the skirt right through to the stockings and the shiny, buckled shoes, but above it the dress had been utterly ruined, ripped or cut in two and left to hang down in wilting strips either side of her hips. Beneath it, she had no hint of a shift or brassiere on, and with the way she was bent forward and trapped in the stocks, her pale breasts were completely on display. Gravity had made them settle into a lewd, exaggerated parody of their usual shape—a pair of pretty white lumps quivering and swaying, like raindrops at the corner of a window frame.

Ordinarily, she might have been embarrassed, but the man with the soft hands was taking care of her. Every rub or squeeze he gave them was a jolt of clouded, illicit pleasure, and every time she gasped or moaned, the crowd would give the most excited shout. The only thing was that she couldn't see his face. Intermittently, she would wriggle about, trying in vain to turn her head and get a better look at him, but the stocks were too restrictive, and what little leverage she could get besides was stymied by that firm, soft hand on her spine. Her mind reeled, and she found herself grasping wildly for some clue as to his identity. "...Jacob?" she ventured, thinking of the farrier's boy who lived just down the lane, the one with the honey-brown eyes and the easy smile that always seemed to manifest just in time for her to walk on past their picket fence. "Noooo..." a voice replied, rich and deep as the dark at the bottom of a well. "Guess again, sweet thing." An encouraging flick of Benedetta's nipple drew a whimper from her lips. "...Anto?" Her old schoolteacher, an irritable fusspot who always used to rap her knuckles with a ruler, and often eyed her in a way that made her feel distinctly improper. But that didn't make sense either, he was never so bold as this, and his hands had been wrinkled like parchment paper. "Do I feel like Anto?" asked the voice, giving her breasts a jiggle that made her feel like such a spectacle for the crowd. Their faces were blurred and indistinct, but among them she could make out snatches of grins and crow's feet where their eyes were creased in horniness and rank amusement. "N-no..." she stuttered, her face by now all hot and flushed with something wicked and indecent. "One last try," the voice purred. "Then, I think, we tear that skirt off."

Benedetta couldn't stop herself from bucking excitedly like an eel at the prospect, but after a moment, she settled down for long enough to gather her wits about her and think again. Who would see fit to punish her like this? Who might heap such disdain upon her and invite others to do the very same? Who...

Her eyes widened, her jaw dropped. It had to be, who else but the man who'd known her the longest and seen so much of her he didn't like. "Is... is it..." for some reason, she found herself raising her hips, as if presenting her bottom for his appraisal. "D-d-daddy?" Even as she said the words, some part of her must have known they were wrong. Perhaps that was why she'd given him easier access to fulfill the promise he'd just made. "In every way except the one you mean," the voice laughed, and just then she heard the sound of tearing, and felt the sudden movement of fabric alighting from her hips. Benedetta squealed, the crowd went wild...

And she woke up red and breathless in her bed, legs parted, something warm and sticky pooling onto the sheets beneath her nightie, half-wishing that those people had been real, that the man with the baritone voice and the velvety hands truly had her at his mercy, and that she was really, honestly, shamefully in the nude before them all.

[Author's Note: I always enjoy and appreciate feedback in terms of what's working and what isn't, so please feel free to like and/or leave comments!]