by Jeff Sinclair

Illustrations by Tarsis

Originally published in  Bondage Life , No. 34, November 1988

Stories Codes: M/f, bondage, cons, tied, rope, gag, blindfold, vibe, insert, X

--One of my favorites - guardian46w

Petula Anders rubbed her right cheek against the damp pillow to blot away the sweat and tugged once more at the fetters on her slender wrists and ankles.  It was a futile gesture, the most recent in an endless progression of similar gestures, but it was her only means of expression.

She rolled her head the other way, drying her left cheek and tasting salt on her ripe lips as sweat trickled over them.  Her bit gag sundered her mouth to the tent's humid heat as she raised her head to peer down over her heaving, sweat-slick breasts at the sole garment she retained, a sheer half-slip, so sweat-soaked it was transparent.  A bright red extension cord stretched under it, running between her sweating thighs and ironed feet to the humming gray box beside her in the hot sunlight hammering through the thin tent roof.  The air was hot in her lungs as her head fell back.  Her long brown hair was plastered to her skull, and the sweat on her upper lip was so thick her panting sucked salt into her nostrils.

She twisted, and her parted thighs strained against the denial of her chains in efforts to caress one another.  Her lips spasm as the beautiful, terrible inferno of unslaked lust burned, but she could not assuage it.  She could only shudder and moan, gasping until the vibrator abruptly stilled once more and the unendurable spire of hunger slagged down into the slowly seething magma at her core.

Petula Anders was remarkably pretty, not beautiful in any classical sense, but with her own special loveliness.  She had a proud nose with would have dominated her face but for the brilliant brown eyes which were almost too huge for her face, and yet exactly the right size.  Expressive eyes, which could dance with wicked laughter, flash with anger, or melt with tenderness.  Her skin was brunette, dusky over delicate bones and a slim, lithe shape.  In her teens, Petula had been depressed by her boyish figure, but it had blossomed.  She would never be voluptuous, but opulence would have been misplaced on her dainty bone structure, and her flowing, understated curves were exactly right for her.

At twenty-four, she had a brand-new doctorate in physics and a well-deserved reputation for intelligence and determination.  Three different research firms were vying for her services, but it had been a long, hard fight to get her degrees, and she had done it almost entirely on her own.

All of which, she supposed, would have made it difficult for most people to understand her relationship with Jared Stoddart.

It had surprised her when she realized how she had come to feel about him.  He was four years older than she, and not exactly handsome.  He was tall and sturdy but no athlete, and his face had been assembled out of some spare parts.  Its features were fine in isolation, but they just didn't seem to mesh.  Indeed, he was downright homely, if she were honest...  until you saw the laughing zest in his eyes.  His face was almost ugly when he slept, but it became oddly, compellingly attractive when he was awake.

He was quiet and gentle, and she liked that.  She'd been a bit like a flighty sparrow at eighteen, but Jared had never been a threat.  At first he'd been the brother she never had, but after almost five years of friendship, she had realized that her feelings for him had become decidedly un-sisterly.

It had been embarrassing, especially since Jared, now an associate professor, went right on being his usual self even as she came to suspect that she just might have fallen in love with him.  But, Petula approached her problem with her admirable logic only slightly impaired by emotion.

First she analyzed her own feelings, and the most rigorous examination only confirmed her initial hypothesis.  She loved him.  Having determined that, she proceeded to the next logical step and told him she loved him.  And, to her amazement, he had admitted that he rather thought he was in love with her, too!

There had been no sky rockets, no first magic meeting of eyes, no sudden realization that here -here! - was the one for whom she had been destined by Fate, yet it was all the sweeter for that.  Nor, had the slow growth of their love lessened their passion one iota.  She wasn't all that experienced, and there had been the usual, inevitable fumbling and tentativeness of first-time lovers, but then everything snapped suddenly into focus.  They had come together as one, each fitted perfectly to the other, and it had been such a lovely, happy thing!  Jared had wrought soft magic upon and within her, and she knew with simple, joyous pride, that it had been just as good for him.

Their relationship was wonderful, once they admitted that they had a relationship.  Petula knew he had been with other lovers, but she would far rather be the last than the first, she thought tenderly.  She never had any sense of competing with the ghosts of past lovers.  She knew, knew deep inside, that she had found the man with whom she would spend her life.

She knew Jared felt the same way, but seemed curiously unready to make it "official". They dreamed together of the future, and somehow marriage was implicit in all their dreams yet never discussed.  It was as if he was waiting, holding some tiny scrap of himself back.  He wasn't cold, and certainly not distant, and Petula was willing to wait.  She moved in with him at his suggestion, and she wondered if he was one of those people who need to ease into things gradually.  Perhaps it was his way of testing the water, which might mean he was preparing for the plunge.

It was a hope which made the shock worse when she opened a cabinet four months after moving in with him, and discovered his bondage library.  It stunned her.  She sank into a chair and stared at the neatly arranged magazines and books, and the carefully catalogued videos and artwork.  Why, he must have been collecting them for years!  This was Jared!  This was her sweet, gentle friend and lover!  What was he doing with...  with... ?

Her first impulse was to slam the cabinet door like Bluebeard's wife and pretend she had never opened it, but she didn't.  She examined its contents, instead, and her eyes grew huge and round as she did.  It was so neatly arranged, so precisely, so... lovingly.  And she had shivered when she found the album of photos of Jared with other girls.

There were at least a dozen girls, and all bound.  She recognized Samantha Prentiss, the girl Jared had dated during Petula's junior year.  She was in Oregon now, married to someone else, but her picture was still in his album.  Petula swallowed as she peered at the pictures in shock, the pictures which proved Jared did more than read about bondage.  He practiced it!

The photography was excellent.  That was her first detached thought, but then she noticed another quality.  The girls were bound in ways that ranged from the virtually nonexistent to ropes which would have shamed a mummy, and many of the pictures were very sexually explicit, but without the dirty-fingered, smutty feeling she had always assumed was part of bondage.

It dawned on her, slowly, that it was because of the girls themselves.  They looked...  happy.  That was the word.  Un-gagged mouths smiled, eyes twinkled, bound bodies preened for the camera.  There was no fear, no subservience in their faces.  They enjoyed what was happening to them!  She even found photos which had been autographed, and her lips quirked involuntarily at some of the pungent witticisms his "captives" had penned.

She shut the album guiltily, then closed the cabinet and stole away.  She didn't mention her discovery to Jared.  She had to try to understand her feelings before she confronted him, if she confronted him.

She thought about it a lot, and none of it made much sense.  Jared was sweet and gentle, and he had never even mentioned bondage to her.  The last picture in the album was at least a year old, dating from just before they finally admitted their feelings.  Had he given up bondage?  But he'd kept his collection, did that mean he didn't want to give it up?  The whole feel of his lovingly assembled memorabilia argued that he didn't.  Too much of him was evident in the photographs, the light in his captives' eyes, his own face when he was in the photos.  Yet if he didn't want to give it up, why had he never mentioned it?  Because he didn't want to frighten her?  Because he thought of her differently?  Because he was afraid she would reject him if she knew about his desires?  Was this the reason he seemed so curiously unready for the marriage they both felt in their future?

Her questions were like dragons' teeth.  Each one she asked only spawned two more.  If it was important to him, could he be truly happy if he gave it up?  And did she want him to give up something that made him happy?  How would she have responded if he had ever suggested bondage to her?

It was the last one which shook her to her heels, for she truly did not know.  If he had unexpectedly suggested one evening that he tie her up, what would she have said?  And, even more intriguing and sobering, how would she have reacted to being tied up?  Would fear have destroyed her love?  Would she have felt demeaned or cheapened?  Or would she have partaken of whatever had put those sparkling eyes, those smiling faces, into his photo album?

She examined her feelings carefully.  She pondered long and hard, and she could not categorize her emotions.  She knew it frightened her, yet she also felt a strange little edge of fascination.  She couldn't call it eagerness, but perhaps it was...  curiosity?  Or perhaps it was more than that.  Perhaps it was attraction, in a way, for she could not deny a peculiar excitement at the notion of being bound.  But even that attraction might not be entirely her own, for there was Jared to consider.  She loved him, and part of her wondered how it would feel to do this thing for him.  Not to be subservient to him or because he had made her.  He hadn't even asked her, for goodness sake!  No, it was because she wondered what it would feel like to give him the gift of herself.  Of her freedom, she supposed it must be called, for such it would be.  Or perhaps it was more a matter of trust than freedom.  For whatever brief period she was his captive, she would be his captive, powerless in truth, as well as play, and she felt a shudder and shiver at the thought of trusting anyone, even her Jared, that much.

But, whatever she felt defied resolution.  It refused to crystallize.  It chattered in her brain, confusing her, slipping away like quicksilver when she tried to pin it down.  And the more she sought an answer, the more the scientist in her wondered how she could expect answers without data.

"Jared?" The voice was soft, almost tentative.

Jared Stoddart looked up from a stack of exams, a red pencil poised, and froze.  Petula stood in the door of his study, but not Petula as he had ever seen her.  Her brown eyes were huger than ever, lit by a curiously dark glitter, and she wore a white satin and lace teddy he had never seen.  The satin was a dazzling flame, slashed by darker, sensual highlights where the dusky cream of her skin showed through lace panels.  That alone would have been stunning on her sleek loveliness, but his eyes were drawn inescapably to her hands.  Hands which held a coiled rope.

He stared at her wordlessly, and she stepped slowly into the room.  Her eyes were on his face, reading his utter surprise, and she smiled timidly.

"I found your photo album," she said softly.

He started to speak, but her gently raised hand stopped him.  "Wait," she said, and he sank back in his chair.  "I looked through it.  It...  shocked me, but it wasn't anything like I'd have thought it would be.  I've tried to understand it, but..." she shrugged.  "Those other girls, Samantha and the others, I've known you had other lovers, Jared, and it never bothered me, but I didn't know what you'd been doing with them.  Tell me, why isn't my picture in your album?"

"Because..." he cleared his throat.  "Because I never loved them as I love you," he said finally, and set his pencil down carefully.

"Does that matter?" she asked, and he felt absurdly as if she were one of his students, utterly confident in his ability to explain all mysteries.

"Yes," he said.  "Petula, not everyone enjoys bondage." He looked away for a moment.  "People don't understand.  They think it has to be, well, hostile, a put-down.  That you can't really love anyone you want to tie up.  And the other side, the idea that you can't really enjoy being tied up unless there's something 'wrong' with you.  I...  didn't know how you'd react?"

"But, you tried it with other girls," she said, and there was a tiny wounded edge to her voice.

"Yes," he said again.  "I could risk it with them.  I won't pretend I don't love bondage, because I do, but I love you more.  I couldn't risk telling you.  I...  might've lost you."

Her eyes softened at his painful admission.  It was as she had half-suspected.  He still loved bondage, but he had not dared to tell her for fear of her reaction.  She smiled at him tenderly.

"But, Jared, how can I know how I'd react," she asked gently, and his eyes met hers as she paused.  "Unless I try it," she added.

"Of course I do, silly," she said softly, and extended the rope.  "Show me about bondage, Jared.  Then ask me what I think."

He rose and took the rope, and his eyes were brilliant.  She saw the familiar glow of lust in them, but it was the gentle lust of her lover.  The brilliance was melting tenderness, awakened by her own love.

"Are you sure?" he asked quietly.

"Of course I am," she said, but her breathing was a little faster and she licked her lips.  "I love you, and I trust you."

"Thank you," he said very softly, and his arms enfolded her.  She savored the hot, sweet taste of his mouth, and it was like their first kiss, but her heart beat faster.  She had told him the truth.  She did love and trust him, but that could not still the urgent throb of anxiety within her.  Yet anxiety was overlaid by smoldering heat, a fiery, nervous excitement that burned in her nipples and woke a hot, moist swelling between her thighs.

He led her gently into the middle of the room, and she followed wordlessly, her hand limp and trusting in his.  She wanted no more words.  She needed no soft endearments or reassurances, not from her Jared, and she wanted to taste her emotions in silence, undistracted from their immediacy.

He moved slowly, as if gentling a restless filly, and the rope tightened with exquisite care.  He wove a band about her wrists, then looped the end between her forearms and around the band, cinching it delicately taut.

Her hips twisted involuntarily as the rope nibbled at her skin.  It didn't hurt, but there was an inescapable finality to it.  Her hands had been taken.  The rope made them his, not hers, and the fact that she had surrendered them willingly made it no less true.  A spike of fire burned in her belly as she tasted the helplessness a few feet of rope had inflicted upon her.  Not even her total trust that Jared would never, never harm her could ease her sudden acute vulnerability, and she moaned softly.

"Too tight?" She drew a deep breath, her heart melting as he stopped instantly.  His concern soothed her tiny spurt of atavistic fear, and she leaned against his chest.

"No," she said, and the breathless tension in her soft soprano voice startled her.  "No, it's fine," she said.  "W-What next?"

"Sit down, honey," he said, and eased her to the rug.  She needed his help, for she felt curiously incomplete with her arms pinioned.  He seated her solicitously, then knelt and crossed her ankles to bind them.

She watched his familiar, beloved hands render her captive.  They moved with smooth experience, and they were so gentle!  The care he took to avoid pinching her skin, to distribute the tension of the cord evenly, was evident in every moment, and it soothed her fear even while he tied a square-knot and sat back on his heels, his eyes tender, and a sudden daring aroused within her.

"Jared?"

"Yes, honey?" he answered lovingly.

"I saw...  I saw gags and collars and stuff in a lot of your photos."

"I know," he said.  There was not a trace of pressure in his voice, but she saw the glow in his eyes, and her purpose firmed as she realized he would never push her to accept more than she wished.

"I, I think we should try those, too," she said, and his smile of joy repaid her gift of trust a thousand fold.

"If you're sure," he said gently, and she nodded.  He kissed her, his tongue fluttering within her mouth until she moaned is soft, passionate response.  Then he broke the kiss quickly and left without a backward glance.

She sat on the rug, staring at the cords on her ankles, savoring her helplessness and trying to understand.  The sensations surging through her defied analysis.  Love; tenderness; vulnerability; a tiny, unconquerable edge of fear; and over it all a shuddering glow of excitement made all the brighter by a sense of the different, the forbidden, and the unexplored.

He returned shortly, and she raised her head willingly, swallowing nervously but meeting his eyes with a smile of love as he slipped the stiff collar about her slender neck.  He buckled it snugly, and when she swallowed again her bobbing throat felt the constricting kiss of leather.

And then, it was the gag.  She drew a deep breath.  Once gagged, she would be truly helpless.  She would lose her ability to tell him what felt good or what felt bad.  She couldn't even stop him if he hurt her!  But the same loving trust which had brought her this far, opened her soft lips wide.

He worked the ball into her mouth gently, and a tingle of wantonness went through her as her tongue felt the indentations of other captive teeth.  His other lovers had sucked this same ball deep, yet she felt no jealousy, only a stab of bright lust, a sudden urge of her inner fire at the reconfirmation that she was not his first captive but his last.  The one for whom he had been willing to let this gag gather dust forever.

He buckled it behind her head, and the strap tugged at the corners of her mouth.  It didn't hurt, but it felt so strange!  She sampled the gag, whiffing experimentally into it, and the muted sniffle of her voice drove such a raging burst of lust through her that she squirmed.

"Now, Petula," he said softly, "this is important.  The gag means you can't talk, and that's good.  It makes you even more aware, sharpens your senses."  She nodded hotly in confirmation, and he chuckled.  "And, it means I have to read what you're feeling from your body language," he went on wickedly.  "But, it also means you can't tell me if I do something wrong."  He looked into her eyes, and she felt her soul melt into his through her liquid gaze.  "If anything hurts, if your hands go to sleep, or anything seems to be going wrong, I want you to hum the first few bars of any song."  Her eyes twinkled as she imagined humming the national anthem into her gag, and he smiled back.  "I'm serious, honey.  If I hear you humming, I'll know to stop whatever I'm doing.  It'll be a signal to me."

She leaned forward to stroke her gagged cheek against him lovingly.  He had banished her fear without disturbing her strangely appealing vulnerability.  She had given him her trust and freedom as a gift, and he had given her a promise of the gentleness with which he treasured her gift.  But, her gagged silence felt soft and weak as he proceeded.  It was a strange sensation for one who treasured her independence and capability, but it was oddly soothing.  It was by her own choice.  Independence had not been ripped from her.  It had been surrendered, shelved for a space, the better to enjoy her softness and her man's desire for her.

He tied a rope to the front of her collar and looped it around her ankles, and she gasped as her feet were drawn back and her spine bent sharply but gently downward.  Excitement tingled through her as he went on tightening the rope, implacably but so tenderly!, until her chin almost touched her ankles.  She squirmed with the tension in her body.  There was a stretchy strain to it, an edge of velvet iron, and she felt her folded belly flutter as she panted.

But he wasn't done, and more rope circled her upper arm, just below the armpit, then her thighs, just above the knee.  He cinched it carefully, and she sighed with a strange sense of triumph as her shoulder touched her knee.  He repeated the procedure on her other knee, and she knew herself helplessly pent, folded in a sharp, semi-lotus position.  He stood back and smiled down at her as she arched her neck to raise her head against the collar.

"There," he said lovingly.  "This is one of my favorite 'helpless' positions, Petula.  It's better than a hogtie, because I can keep you in it longer, and you're just as helpless.  Go ahead and wiggle."

"Now," he went on teasingly, "you need a little time to absorb this, so I'll just finish grading these papers.  It'll probably take a few hours, so feel free to try to get loose, that's part of the fun, seeing if I left a loose end you can work against, and remember I'll be right here.  Not," he added with a wicked twinkle, "that I'll lay a finger on you while I'm working!"

She twinkled back up appreciatively, all apprehension banished by the gentle love humming between them, and then he walked over to his desk and sat back down.  She lowered her head, feeling her long hair sweep over her bound legs like silk, and sighed as his grading pencil scratched again.

The next couple of hours were unlike any she had ever experienced.  The little fountain within her never stopped bubbling.  She had never imagined such protracted lustfulness, and she blushed happily as the scent of her arousal wafted through the quite room like some rare incense.  Her breasts felt hot and heavy, and the snap crotch of her teddy was soupy with the wet, sweet flow of her excitement.  And over all was the patina of helplessness, the knowledge that she was bound and pent, unable to satisfy her own hunger, and totally dependent upon Jared for release and the final pleasure she knew awaited them both!  It made her feel inexpressibly precious, as if she were a treasure he had placed carefully under lock and key, and it was all the sweeter because he had never attempted to constrain her in any other way.  It was a role, yet not a role.  They were who they had always been, yet they were wanton strangers, as well.

The slow minutes of her silenced bondage trickled past, broken only by the rustle of exam papers and her own occasional moans.  They started slowly, but they grew.  They were soft and passionate, and she sensed how they affected Jared.  She raised her head from time to time, panting with tension, her eyes liquid with loving excitement, and sometimes surprised his eyes upon her.  The emotion within them was sweet beyond words, and she crooned to him.

But finally he finished the papers, and she wiggled in excitement.  She had found unexpected joy in her bonds, and she felt a twinge of unhappiness that she must now be unbound for their loving.  It startled her, for she had meant to do this as a gift to him she had not anticipated the effect it would have on her!  Her passion was both gentler and far more urgent than anything she had ever felt, and she didn't want to be untied.  She knew she must be, yet it made her almost petulant.  She didn't want it to end!

But, he surprised her, again, for he did not untie her.  Instead, she gasped in astonishment as he eased her gently onto her back and her cords drew her feet high and her bent spine lifted her bottom gently from the floor.  He opened the crotch of her teddy, and she wiggled her hips, giggling through the gag as she offered herself to him.  Her petals were engorged and wet, her cleft winked saucily, and she sighed in anticipation of his cleaving hardness.  Only, she whined in bliss as his lips touched instead!  She wailed and warbled through her gagged mouth, vibrating as his tongue and teeth caressed her with shrewd, gentle cunning.  She squealed as her lust sparked suddenly higher, exploding like gasoline at the touch of a match.  It was incredible!  She had never responded so quickly, so wantonly, so passionately!  She sobbed in delight, and then orgasm struck like a viper.

She screamed, fighting her cords.  Not to escape, but to feel them hold her tight.  Bliss roared through her belly like a freight train.  Ecstasy crested like an ocean wave, and the comber curled, thundering down upon her to pound her shuddering flesh against the burning beach of orgasm and smash her into wailing, shuddering darkness and sweet delight.

♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥♥

And, in all honesty, she knew he would come soon.  Before nightfall, anyway.  They'd need their rest tonight, for they had an appointment in church tomorrow morning.  She knew how lovely she would look in her wedding gown, but that was for the world to see.  The true beauty of her trousseau would be shared only with Jared.  The leather thigh cuffs and chains hidden by her long train.  The cuffs she would wear because it was her own idea, because she loved them.  The cuffs she would wear for herself, but also for him.  The cuffs that proclaimed the joy she had found in the bondage she had tried for love of Jared.

THE END