Read Online The Bottom Line by Emma Savage - Free Book Online

climactic effort, I remember the tears on her cheeks as I lifted my face from between her thighs.
    I can’t remember what we had for dinner that evening, but I know it was very good, that we had a bottle of a fragrant local rosé, and that we took a leisurely stroll through the village before going back to our room quite early. In bed we cuddled, totally at ease with each other, and fell asleep.
    In the morning we took our time getting up, refreshed and relaxed, and went down to breakfast. The proprietor was standing at the entrance to the breakfast room, greeting his guests, and it seemed to me that there was more than just a twinkle in his eye as he bid us good morning and asked the usual question, ‘ Vous avez bien dormi ?’
    Â 
Justine’s Story: Trouble in Store
    Â 
    Â 
    â€˜How does she get away with it?’ asked Terry.
    â€˜What do you mean?’ asked Billy.
    Terry was a trainee manager of Shopportunities , and a former electronics technician to a computer company, while Billy was in charge of household goods. ‘She’ was Justine, personnel manager in the same superstore, a lady of daunting proportions and equally daunting character.
    â€˜I thought it was illegal to punish people, you know, like she does,’ continued Terry, ‘and besides, why do the girls put up with it? Why don’t they tell her to get lost, or refuse to take it? I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them turned on her eventually.’
    â€˜It would take more than one to handle Justine,’ Billy commented. ‘You wouldn’t catch me messing with her. Anyway, she’s too careful and too clever.’
    â€˜How do you mean, too careful and too clever?’
    â€˜Well, to start with, she never punishes anyone without getting their permission. They’d rather face a tanning than get the sack.’
    â€˜Yes, but even so,’ interrupted Terry, but Billy cut in again.
    â€˜She films them on close circuit TV,’ he continued, ‘and makes sure they know all about it. Bear in mind she has access to the security cameras. And she’s very good at knowing just when to stop, just when they can’t take any more.’
    â€˜How do you know all this?’ asked Terry.
    â€˜Because I used to go out with Caroline,’ Billy explained, ‘and she got a tanning once. She said she was going to make sure it never happened again.’
    â€˜Bloody hell,’ said Terry, ‘did she show you the marks?’
    â€˜Yes, she did as a matter of fact,’ Billy admitted. ‘She’d had twelve with a leather thing. I think she called it a paddle, and you could see all the edges where she’d been hit.’
    â€˜Bloody hell,’ said Terry again, his vocabulary already stretched by these new concepts with which it was having to cope. ‘But I still don’t understand why they take it,’ he persisted. ‘Couldn’t they get another job instead?’
    â€˜Perhaps,’ said Billy, ‘but the conditions here are very good. You think about it. We’ve got a good canteen with a decent choice of meals, all free. We have a social club with no membership fee. We’ve got the gym and sports facilities and we have a first class pension scheme. You’d be a fool to give all that up just to avoid a bit of discipline. Anyhow, that’s what Caroline said. And she said it wore off by the next morning, so it wasn’t really that bad, though she said Samantha couldn’t walk properly for three or four days. She got the cane.’
    This revelation was enough to bring a third ‘bloody hell!’ from Terry, whose interest in the disciplinary procedures favoured by Justine was growing exponentially with each additional disclosure. ‘What happens to the videos?’ he asked. ‘Have you ever seen any?’
    â€˜As far as I know, nobody except Justine ever sees them,’ Billy answered. ‘She keeps them as a sort