WITH A LITTLE YELP FROM MY FRIENDS
Published by Severin Rossetti at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 Severin Rossetti
Smashword Edition, Licence Notes
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She was a woman who knew her own mind and no sooner had the commission been described to her than she was voicing her reservations, shaking her head vigorously, saying, 'No, no, no! I am not sure that this is the sort of commission I would enjoy!'
There was a little trace of an accent but she spoke with that perfect pronunciation, employing that particular over-abundance of words, which suggested that English was not her first language. Tall, with a full figure which bordered on matronly, lush black hair and an olive complexion, a person might have guessed at Mediterranean origins.
'You dismiss the engagement so quickly, Dona Isobel?' asked the agent. 'But why?'
'Your singer's talent you describe as 'raw' but 'promising', yes? Suggesting that the talent in question is young, then? Would that be correct?'
'Young-ish,' the man conceded, with a see-saw motion of his hand.
'So what young-ish person will submit to a rigorous classical training?'
'Charlotte Church? Russell Watson?' the agent ventured, plucking names from the top of his head, but already Dona Isobel was waving him down.
'No, no, no!' she said, with extravagant gestures which enhanced the Mediterranean connection. 'Do not try to deceive me! The only thing a young person wants to be is a rock singer!'
'Very well, so a young person wants to be a rock singer. Does his voice still not require some training?' the man argued.
'Indubitably, from what I have heard of the caterwauling in these times,' Dona Isobel grimaced. 'And what I have heard persuades me that I do not want to hear any more.'
'Not even as a service to music? It would be a challenge.'
'No.'
'Not even-' Here the agent scribbled briefly on his business card, then turned it for her to see. 'Not even if the reward was such a rate per hour?'
He saw Dona Isobel's eyebrows raise, was gratified to hear her say, 'Well yes, perhaps it wouldbe a challenge, and so I will rise to it. And the reward will be as much in the taming and cultivation of one more caterwailer as in the stipend so generously offered.'
'Of course,' the man smiled. 'Of course.'
*
The sound of the car as the engine died was an angry discordant growl, a deep reverberating bass which made the windows of Dona Isobel's house rattle in their frames.
Frowning, she crossed the sitting room floor to look out, saw a sleek silver projectile of a vehicle parked outside, noted the dark scars it had gouged in the gravel drive and the heat haze which rose from the bonnet, the engine beneath still burning hot enough to blister the paintwork.
What manner of man would take pride in driving such a machine? What manner of beast was she admitting into her house and hoping to tame?
No castrato, she realised, as she watched the driver extricate himself from the machine. No innocent choirboy with the voice of an angel. This man's voice would be as abrasive as the sound of his vehicle; tyres crunching gravel, gears grating against each other, a raw harsh assault on the senses.
He was tall and slim, wore tight leather trousers and a loose fitting shirt which seemed more like a blouse, an unseemly number of buttons open to bare his hairless chest. He had an abundance of tousled blonde hair which he tossed back over his shoulders in an arrogant way, as if full of his own self-importance, and there was a cocksure confidence in his step as he strode towards the house, perhaps a promising sign -any singer of stature needed confidence- or perhaps something he would need to be cured of.
'We shall see, Isobel, and just think of the challenge,' she told herself, as she went to the door to greet him, though if the truth of the matter was known she was actually thinking of the money.
'You'll be, er-?' he began, in something like a drawl as she opened the door to him.
'Dona Isobel,' she smiled, offering him her hand. Before he could accept it, though, she drew it quickly back, said, 'You are chewing? Gum? Kindly be rid of it.'
He seemed startled by the instruction, or maybe by the way she snatched her hand back from him, as if he was contagious. Then, after looking at her blankly for a moment, he took the wad of gum from his mouth and held it delicately between finger and thumb.
'Follow me,' Isobel told him, turning and leading him along the hall to the music room at the rear of the house, where she pointed him first to a waste bin, then to a hand towel, draped over the music stand, on which to wipe his fingers.
'Good,' she said, when the gum was disposed of and his hand was dry, and positioned herself by the side of the piano, one hand resting on it. 'Now, I am to teach you to sing, to sing in tune. It may be an easy task, it may be less than easy, but I promise you I will succeed. That hand towel you hold will be sodden with your perspiration, or even your blood, but I willsucceed.'
'I can sing,' he insisted, so sure of himself.
'In tune? To my satisfaction? We shall see! We shall hope so! For if not-!'
*
'Yes? What will you do if I sing out of tune?' Freddie challenged, rocking from foot to foot, his tight leather trousers emphasising the slimness of his legs, long hair falling in light curls about his shoulders.
The woman eclipsed his slender frame, had the build of a diva -full breasts, broad hips, firm stomach- was almost a caricature of a singing tutor, even down to the way she held herself so proudly, her hands clasped lightly before her. And such strong hands she had, such muscular arms. This woman who had introduced herself as Dona Isobel was a formidable creature, for all her size there was a power there too, nothing at all flaccid or glutinous about her.
'If you sing out of tune? Why I would beat you,' she answered quickly. 'Beat you until you sing the right notes. Mynotes. The ones I demand of you.'
Freddie laughed, though a little uncomfortably.
A real character he'd found himself with this time. Being a singer in a band and doing a couple of dozen gigs a month was hard on the voice, his agent had suggested that his needed training, but unfortunately the best the skinflint could come up with was this crazy stereotype.
'Are you really Italian?' Freddie asked. 'You don't sound it, your English is very good.'
'Shit no chuck, I'm not Italian! I come from Manchester!' she laughed, her accent thickening. 'But I can sing as good as those sluts from La Scala, and can train you to sing that way too.'
'Like a slut?' he joked nervously.
'Maybe,' she frowned. 'Now give me a scale.'
'A scale from one to ten?'
'A musical scale, you dolt!'
Freddie inhaled, let his chest fill and stretch the soft silk shirt he wore, sang, 'Doh-rey-me-'
'From deeper,' Isobel told him, stepping behind him to embrace him, wrapping her arms just below his ribs.
'Doh-rey-me-fah-so-' he tried again, and she nodded, squeezed him to silence him.
'Better!' she said, and laughed. 'So fah so good! Now sing for me. I am a woman, you are a man, sing to me as a man would to a woman.'
The woman considers herself a diva, Freddie thought, and I am a rock star, so one thing she will not expect is...
'La donna e mobile...,' he began.
'Woman is fickle?' she exclaimed, silencing him with a vicious slap across the buttocks. 'Do not insult my sex by suggesting such a thing!'
'Shit! That stung!' complained Freddie, feeling his flesh burn.
'Yes, leather is a good transmitter of pain,' Isobel smiled, her large hand now patting his buttock lightly. 'So continue, with a little more respect.'
For the next hour Freddie went through a repertoire of ballads and love songs, though never quite managing to finish any, for his performance was punctuated by frequent prods and pokes from Dona Isobel, her fist digging into his stomach to tell him to keep it firm, rapping his chest to tell him to fill it.
'Keep your head up, your back straight,' she instructed, her hand beneath his chin, but quickly his shoulders slumped.
'Can't we take a break?' he asked wearily. 'I'm knackered.'
Dona Isobel tutted and regarded him sadly, as if he was a weakling, but took pity on him, saying, 'Very well, a fifteen minute break. Perhaps a glass of cognac might soothe the throat and lubricate the chords.'
She gestured for him to take a seat on the couch while she crossed the room to fill two glasses, returned and sat beside him.
'Cheers,' said Freddie, accepting the glass she offered him and toasting her before taking a sip. 'Ah! That's better!'
Dona Isobel regarded him silently as she tasted her own drink. Even seated she seemed stately, a woman conscious of her power and her own importance, her back held erect, her chin slightly raised to give a certain haughtiness to her attitude.
Made uneasy by her dark gaze, Freddie shifted awkwardly, almost squirming, finally said, 'I really do think I'm feeling the benefit already.'
'Of the cognac?' she asked, inclining her head curiously.
'No!' Freddie laughed. 'Of the tuition! I think my voice is improving already.'
'Then an abysmal voice it must have been before you came to me,' Dona Isobel responded, with not the slightest hint of humour. 'I have heard sweeter sounds from a child in a cot who has soiled its nappy.'
Poor Freddie looked quite crestfallen but she did not relent, did not retract her words nor even soften them with some faint praise.
'Your neck is weak,' she continued, stroking the back of her fingers along it. 'It is as slender as a swan's but a swan's has strength where yours does not. Your chest is fragile, your belly flabby, and your shoulders-' Her hand shot out suddenly, fingers clenching his long blonde hair. '-your shoulders are too puny even to support this extravagant coiffure! Stand!' she told him, getting to her feet and drawing him up with her. 'The lesson continues!'
'For fuck's sake!' Freddie cried, his hands reaching up for hers, trying to break her fierce grip.
'By your side! Keep your hands by your side!' Dona Isobel insisted, twisting her fingers painfully in his hair, tugging at the scalp until he complied. 'Now sing for me! Just the one note! Me, me, me!'
'Me! Me! Me!' Freddie sang, then cried out in pain as a cane struck hard across his buttocks. 'Ouch! For God's sake woman!'
'The note faltered, wavered, and so the cane punished it,' said Dona Isobel, resting the instrument on his shoulder so that he could see its slender tip. 'Now, try again.'
Again Freddie sang, that single monotonous note, and again the cane cut across his buttocks while her fingers clenched in his hair kept his head up, his back straight.
'Bring the notes up from your belly, your bowels, dig deep for them! Find some feeling!'
'Me! Me! Me!' Freddie chanted.
'Me! Me! Me!' Dona Isobel echoed.
Sweat began to pour down Freddie's cheeks, his leather trousers felt damp against his thighs and his buttocks burned from the repeated blows of the cane.
'Better! And I sense a little passion now, also?' said Dona Isobel, and she released her hold on his hair, wrapping both arms around him to pull him into her, her hands meeting at his belly, then slipping down to cover his groin. 'Oh yes, most definitely some passion!' she chuckled, feeling his erection.
She then began to sing his notes for him, her lips at his ear, her tongue trilling against it.
'Sing with me,' she encouraged him, her fingers kneading his groin. 'Sing sweetly enough and maybe that passion will spill out even more.'
'Oh! Oh! Oh!' he sang, shuddering in her embrace.
'Not quite right, but still rather sweet for all that,' said Dona Isobel. 'There is pain and there is pleasure, those are your incentives, what you must always bear in mind if you are to be my favourite student.'
His cock was hard inside his trousers now, straining against the tight leather, and Dona Isobel's hands pressed it firmly as she said, 'You doso want to be my favourite student, don't you?'
She was old enough to be his mother, his aunt, she had years in age and pounds in weight on the girls he fucked backstage after gigs, but still Freddie heard himself saying, 'Yes! Oh yes!'
Sharp nails scratched at his groin as fingers rose to his waist, unfastening his trousers, peeling down the zip, and when his burning cock was released it seemed to shiver erect, pulsing in her cool grip. She stroked him lightly, slowly, her groin pressing hard against his buttocks while her full breasts flattened themselves against his back.
'Get hard for me darling, harder still,' she coaxed him, licking at his neck, nibbling at hiis ear.
Freddie felt that his cock could not get any harder, never before had he had such a raging erection and he wanted to turn in her embrace, rub it against her, force it into her. He wanted to come, needed to come, more than ever before in his life.
She was too strong for him, though, her grip too fierce, and embracing him from behind she walked him forward, towards the couch.
'The teacher takes precedence over the pupil,' she told him, her body arching over his, her weight bringing him to his knees and forcing him against the couch.
With him pinned there she released his cock, tore the shirt from his back, tugged his trousers down to his knees. Her nails tapped lightly down his dimpled spine, her fingers dug into his shoulders, her teeth savaged his neck and her breath scorched his cheek.
Then suddenly she was gone, he was free, her weight lifted from him.
'Time's up dear, I have another student due,' she told him.
*
'Dona Isobel!' Freddie said, reaching out to take her hand, raising it to his lips and pressing it lightly to them in the most reverential of kisses.
'Darling Freddie,' Isobel smiled, pleasantly surprised by the deferential overture which was so much in contrast with their first meeting. 'Come in dear boy,' she said, not releasing his hand as she drew him into the house but holding it slightly aloft, as if they were about to dance a minuet.
'Have you been well?' he asked. 'Have you been busy?'
'Ah, I have had my usual succession of chanters and charlatans,' she sighed, as if her week had wearied her. 'Some performed passably well and were rewarded, others were abysmal and had to be chastised.' Releasing his hand on reaching the music room, she turned to smile darkly at him, said, 'Which will it be for you today, I wonder?'
'I will do the best that I can and accept whatever Dona Isobel thinks I deserve,' Freddie replied, with what might almost have been mistaken for a blush.
'Good boy!' Isobel laughed, clapping her hands. 'Now, let us see if you have been doing the exercises I gave you. Give me a scale.'
Squaring his shoulders, holding himself more erect than he ever would on stage, Freddie filled his lungs and sang out a scale.
'Mm,' said Dona Isobel, walking around him, looking him up and down as she touched a finger to her crimson lips. 'The sound is sweet, but is the posture correct? It is hard to tell.'
He wore loose linen trousers rather than the tight leather ones of before, a baggy shirt which disguised his slim musculature, and she shook her head as she clicked her tongue against the back of her teeth.
'No, the arrangement of the body I cannot see,' she said. 'Please lose the shirt and the trousers.'
Such an instruction on his first visit would have caused Freddie to laugh in disbelief, but now, remembering how that first visit had progressed, he was only too willing to comply, was soon standing before her in only his cotton shorts.
'Better, much better, now I can see the diaphragm,' said Isobel, running her fingers down from his chest to his belly. 'Fill it, dear, and sing for me again.'
The scale Freddie sang was purer than the life he had lived and Isobel nodded her approval as the flat of her hand pressed against his bare flesh, felt the notes rise from deep inside him.
'Good! Much better than when we first met! I think you are learning your lessons well!'
Then her hand shot up to clamp on his throat, for a frightening moment he thought she was about to choke him as her grip tightened, before she said, 'And once again dear, so I can feel how those sweet notes exit.'
He sang his scale again and her grip relaxed, her fingers stroked his long neck as if coaxing the notes out, caressing the vocal chords as she felt them reverberate beneath her touch.
'And now a song for me, give some expression to those notes,' she said, moving behind him and resting her hands on his shoulders. 'Just this once I will permit you to sing of how woman is fickle. It will be a good test of you. Begin.'
Freddie took a deep breath, held it a moment, and then began to sing. 'La donna e mobile...'
'Good, good,' Isobel encouraged him softly, and pressed her body against him, nudging him forward. 'Now move, so that you are not a statue singing but an artist performing. Give some life to your body and it will come out in your music.'
As she walked him slowly around the room Freddie felt the heat of her body against him, her full curves caressing him, and it was an effort to concentrate on the notes, to keep them as pure as she demanded.
'Too stiff! Too stiff!' she scolded, wrapping her arms around him and gripping him by the wrists. 'Move the arms! Let us have some expression.'
Like a puppeteer with a marionette she manipulated him, forcing his hands to make expansive gestures, passing back and forth in the air before him. Finally, as he sang his last notes, she drew his hands down and crossed them before him.
'Stiff still, stiffer than ever,' she commented, for her fingers clutching his wrists were pressed against his groin, and he lowered his head as if ashamed of the erection she could feel. 'Is this because of me or because of the passion of the music?' she asked, and when he offered no answer she curled her fingers around his balls, said, 'Give me a note again! Sing 'fah' for me!'
'Fah!' he sang, and then louder, more tortured, as her grip tightened. 'Fah! Fah! Fah!'
'The note was weak and wavered,' she told him, releasing him and giving him a sharp slap across the buttocks. 'Get on your knees.'
Slowly Freddie knelt as Isobel walked around to stand before him, his head lowered, his eyes to the floor. He seemed sweet in his shame, in his obedient submission, but Isobel also sensed something duplicitous about his manner.
'I wonder,' she said, her foot tapping, then pivotting on the shoe's slender heel so that her toes pointed towards him, 'I wonder if Freddie's notes wavered unavoidably or intentionally?'
'Dona Isobel?' he mumbled innocently.
'Look at me!' she snapped, and as his back straightened at her command, as he lifted his face, she rested the tips of her fingers beneath his chin, tilting his head back so that she could look into his eyes.
Yes, she understood, his notes wavered because it was her punishment he needed as much as her approval. Some thrived on congratulations, others on chastisement.
'Bow down and kiss the floor!' she ordered, already striding across the room to get her cane, returning with it swinging from way back behind her shoulder as his buttocks presented themselves to her.
The stinging blow made him cry out loud, sing in a high falsetto, was so fierce that it drove his body into the floor as if he wanted to fuck it.
'Don't you dare come there!' Isobel told him, striking him a second time. 'Come on the floor and I'll have you lick it up, then beat you to make you hard again! Hard for me! You understand?'
'Yes Dona Isobel!'
'Try 'mistress'. It is more respectful, more submissive.'
'Yes!' Freddie sobbed. 'Yes Mistress!'
Isobel smiled to herself, rested the cane against his arse, threatening to pierce the flimsy fabric of his shorts and rape him with it.
'Turn over, onto your back, and pull those shorts down as you do so,' she told him, and the tip of her cane flicked at his erection as it rose beneath her.
'Ah!' Freddie gasped. 'Oh!'
'No! It should be 'me' that you sing!' Isobel corrected him, lifting her skirt and revealing her thick thighs, her bare groin. 'Me! Me! Me!' she insisted, standing astride him and then lowering herself onto him.
'You! Only you!' Freddie agreed, as he felt the fat lips of her cunt mould themselves around his cock.
'I come before you do, do not forget that,' Isobel warned him, as her weight settled on top of him. 'And remember that this is what comes of you singing out of tune; your pain and my pleasure.'
Any response, any promise Freddie might have been about to make was lost, his words smothered as Dona Isobel lent forward, crushing her breasts against his face.
*
It had been a monster concert, their best gig yet. Freddie and the Creamers had driven the audience wild, the driving bass lines thrilling them to their very core, the ethereal guitars lifting them to heights of ecstasy.
And above all this there had been Freddie's vocals.
He made a deep bow, his arms spread wide, then clasped his hands to his heart as he straightened to accept their adulation.
'Thank you! Thank you!' he said, taking the mike from its stand and holding it close to his lips. 'And now, to finish, a very special song for a very special person, our version of... With A Little Yelp From My Friends!'
As the applause and the cheers and the whistles rang about the auditorium, as he waited for them to die, he glanced across to the wings of the stage, saw Dona Isobel with her cane, lightly tapping it against her palm as if already counting out his mistakes.
He smiled at his audience then, his fans, began to sing, in a frail and wavering voice: 'What will you do if I sing out of tune...?'