The Cruel Game of Backgammon

by Ashley B. D. Zacharias

“Why backgammon?”

“Because it has been called a cruel game and I want to play a cruel game.” Leslie smiled at her friend.

“It’s cruel because you’re going to give yourself a penalty for losing?” Craig frowned in return.

“No. The game is cruel in itself.”

“How can backgammon be cruel apart from your self-imposed penalties? It’s just a dice game.”

“It’s cruel because of the element of chance. There’s a lot of strategy behind backgammon, but if you get bad rolls, you lose even if you play well. The cruel part about that is not losing but that it keeps poor players from getting better. They spend their whole lives playing badly and cursing the dice. They don’t even try to learn to play properly.”

“How much does chance matter?”

“It depends. If two people play exactly the same, then the outcome is determined completely by the dice. On the other hand if one player plays really badly and the other really well, then the bad player will almost always lose. But it’s never certain. Sometimes, the dice will be against the better player and it does not matter how brilliantly she plays.”

“Do you think that you play well?”

Leslie smiled. “I think that I play well. Most of the time, I beat most of the people on the Internet who call themselves ‘experts’.”

“But just knowing that you win more often than you lose is not enough to satisfy you?”

“No. It’s only interesting if you care about the outcome.”

“And these envelops will make sure that you care.” Craig nudged the three manila envelopes that were stacked next to the computer.

Leslie’s heart skipped a beat, thinking about the instructions that she had sealed into the envelopes last night. “Yes. I definitely want to win today. I’ll play three matches against strangers on the Internet. If I lose one match, then I’ll suffer the somewhat uncomfortable and humiliating penalty in Envelope One; two matches, the rather painful and decidedly degrading penalty in Envelope Two; and if I lose all three matches… Well, I don’t want even to think about what I put in Envelope Three.”

“And I’ll administer the penalty next Saturday if you lose.”

“Right.”

“Why the six-day delay?”

“If I lose, it will give me ample time to ponder the foolishness of my bet.”

“I’m not sure that I really understand, but, if this is how you want it, then I’ll make it so.”

“Thank-you, Craig. I want you to know how much I appreciate your help. It’s a lot safer having you administer my penalty than trying to do it alone to myself. And I can be a lot more imaginative if I don’t always have to use handcuffs and wait for ice to melt. Not every girl is lucky enough to have someone that she can trust as much as I trust you.”

“I’m glad to help,” he replied dryly. “You know you scared the hell out of me last winter when I found you hanging from that hook in your closet. I though you were dead.”

“I almost was.” She flexed her left hand and massaged it briefly with her right. “I don’t think that I’m ever going to get full feeling back at the base of my thumb. Who would have guessed that the wet string would to stick to the side of the jar after the ice melted? If you hadn’t broken my back window and let yourself in when you did, I wouldn’t have lasted much longer.”

“I never would have done that if your sister hadn’t phoned me from Phoenix and asked me to look for you. When you disappeared for two days like that, you scared her half to death.”

“I’m so grateful for your understanding.”

“I just want to be sure that that won’t happen again.”

“So let’s play, already.”

She clicked on the Play button on the screen. After a moment, a backgammon board appeared. Her unknown opponent rolled a six. The game had begun; she was committed now. Her gut knotted – it would be awfully hard to win three matches in a row – odds were that she’d suffer some penalty for losing at least one match. When she clicked on the image of her die, it rolled to show a one. Her anonymous opponent made her bar point. “Bad start. This is going to be tough.” She rolled a five and six and had to leave a blot. The dice were against her. Her heart started beating even faster. She looked at the envelopes lying beside the computer and licked her lips. If she kept rolling like this, Saturday was going to be a long, long day.

She lost the first match, one game to three. Her opponent played as well as her and she simply could not get the numbers that she needed.

“So you lost one. You’ve earned the penalty in Envelope One at least.”

The penalties that she had sealed in the envelopes were no longer theoretical – she would suffer one of them on Saturday. “Yup. Now I have to win to avoid Envelope Two or Three.”

“Guess I’d better not make any other plans for Saturday if I have to be here watching you torture yourself.”

“Yup.” Leslie did not want to talk about it.

She won the first game in the second match, but only played half of the second game in the second match when her opponent left the game. “Coward. I would have won that one. He didn’t know what he was doing.”

Craig looked at her. “What happens now? When the other player gives up before the match is over?”

“That’s your choice. If you think that he quit because he was losing, then it counts as a win for me. Say, for instance, that I’d had already won a game and was likely to gammon him. But if you think that he still had a good chance of winning, then you can discount it and I’ll play again.”

“And if I think that you would have lost?”

“Then you can call a rematch, but you can’t call it a loss. I only lose if it says so on the screen.”

“What if you quit?”

“Well, then I lose, of course. But that’s not going to happen. When I start something, I finish it.”

“So what do I do now?”

“Rematch. It was only the second game. I’m pretty sure that I would have beaten him, but I wasn’t going to gammon him and he could have been lucky in the third game.”

“Okay. Rematch it is.” Craig thought for a few seconds. “It hardly seems fair if the players who are losing can bail out early and the good players only have to hang in for as long as they are winning.”

“Yup. It’s stacked against me, all right. But that’s the rules I want.”

“Be careful what you wish for – you might get it.”

She glanced at the three envelopes. “I hope that I don’t get worse than I deserve.”

Craig frowned at her. “I don’t think you deserve anything bad.”

She ignored him and rolled the dice. She got a strong start in the second match, gammoning her opponent in the first game, earning two points. But then, in the second game, her opponent doubled her early and she had to accept. Then she played too recklessly, let her men get too spread out, lost three blots to a lucky double three, and got gammoned. Being gammoned on a double game was an automatic loss for the match. She silently berated herself for playing too dangerously.

Craig casually tossed Envelope One to the side. “If I understand your rules correctly, that means two matches lost and Envelope One is off the table. Now you’re playing for two or three.”

“I know,” Leslie whispered, looking at Envelope Three fearfully. When she prepared the contents of that one, she had taken a delicious thrill in making it as extreme as she could imagine. It only had been a fantasy. She did not think that she would ever have to worry about it becoming a reality. After all, she was a good backgammon player – what were the chances that she would lose three matches in a row? Better than she guessed, apparently. Now there was an even chance that she was going to have to suffer the agonies contained within Envelope Three.

Her hand was shaking as she reached for the mouse to start the third match. She won the first game, lost the second to a double and was down two games to one to two. She would to get really lucky to avoid the third envelope. A tear trickled down her cheek. She should have been more careful about what she had put into that envelope.

Craig reached out and wiped the tear away. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

“Yes I do. And so do you. I finish what I start. I’m going through with this, no matter what.”

She rolled the dice.

The game was touch and go, but she managed to clear her inner table while her opponent still had three men on the board. The score was two up and the next game would decide her fate.

She rolled strong dice and, by the end of the game, was well ahead in bearing off; especially as her opponent still had one man trapped in her inner table. Abruptly, a window appeared on her computer saying that the other player had left the game before it was over.

She looked at Craig, fearful that he would make her play a rematch. “I would have won that game and the match. I was way ahead.”

Craig smiled evilly. “I don’t know about that. It’s pretty hard to bear off without leaving a blot and if he’d hit it, he might have won.”

“I had half my men off. It would have been hard for him to come out ahead even if he’d hit me.” She heard herself pleading with her friend. She watched Envelope Three out of the corner of her eye.

His expression softened. “Well, I guess it’s not your fault that he chickened out when the going got rough. You’ve got the win so Envelope Three is off the table. So, you’ve played three matches and lost two. That means that Envelope Two is your penalty, right?”

Leslie nodded silently, not trusting herself to speak.

Craig picked up the envelope with “Two” written on the outside. He looked at her with compassion. “You know, you don’t to go through with this. I’ll just tear up this envelope without even looking inside if you say the word.”

Her expression hardened. “It’s not fair for you to say that. I don’t want to hear it again. Not ever. I made my decision before you arrived here this afternoon. I don’t welsh on a bet. Not even one that I made with myself. I trust you to do exactly what that envelope says without giving me a chance to chicken out.”

“Okay, then.” He waved the envelope. “Should I read this now?”

“No. Keep it sealed. When you come over on Saturday, bring it with you, still sealed. I’ll let you know when to open it.”

“Okay, I’ll bring it back at noon on Saturday. Should I bring anything else?”

“Nope. I have all the equipment that you’ll need. Except, you might want to bring a novel. It’ll take most of the afternoon for me to serve the penalty. It might get boring for you.”

He smiled. “With your imagination? I don’t think you could arrange anything boring even if you wanted to. Have a good week.”

“Thanks.” But Leslie would not have a good week. There was no joy in that envelope; she had intended that it be a penalty when she wrote it and knew that she had nothing to look forward to but a long, painful, humiliating afternoon.

After Craig left, she slowly tore up Envelope Three and threw it away without looking at the pieces. She never believed that she could lose three matches in a row, so she had been excessive when she’d designed the worst penalty. Unrealistic. She had barely managed to win the third match. Next time, she would be a lot more careful about imagining what she could tolerate if she was that unlucky again.

When she finished disposing of the other envelopes, her thoughts turned to the one that Craig had taken with him. Would she be able to bear the pain of the things that she had enclosed there? It did not matter. As long as Craig held up his end, she would pretty much be helpless, unable to stop the penalty until it was complete. On Saturday she would have no choice but to tolerate everything that would happen to her, even if it turned out to be intolerable.

When Craig arrived just before noon on Saturday, he noticed that all of the curtains were closed; no one but Leslie and he would know what happened in her house today. He rang the doorbell; When Leslie answered, she was wearing a sweat suit.

Craig was vaguely disappointed – he had imagined something more exotic – that she would be dressed in leather or rubber or something.

Leslie did not smile. “Hi. Craig. Thanks again for helping me with this.” There was a tremor in her voice; she sounded afraid. She continued, too quickly for him to respond. “Please come in.”

“Thanks.” He stepped across the threshold and she closed and locked the door behind him.

“Have a seat in the living room.”

When he was seated, he waved the envelope in his hand and asked, “Do I open this now?”

“Not yet. I’m going to go upstairs and get changed now. While I’m gone, I’ve got something else for you to read.” She handed him a folded piece of paper. “This is a tricky thing. Please don’t be insulted by it, but it’s something that you have to understand before we can proceed. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

She left the room.

Craig’s hands were trembling as he unfolded her letter. It was handwritten. Her script was clear and neat. She was a highly organized person.

The letter read:

Dear Craig:

We do not have a sexual relationship – we are happy as platonic friends. And I understand that you intend to remain faithful to your wife. I respect your integrity. But I have to be realistic about one thing. In the course of this afternoon, I will make myself helpless and vulnerable. I do not want to be raped; I do not expect to be raped. That is not part of my penalty.

But I have to recognize that you are a man with a normal sexual drive. My vulnerability cannot help but put considerable stress on you. If, despite you best intentions, you find that you are unable to restrain yourself and you exceed my instructions – to be blunt, if you find that you have raped me despite our understanding – then you must realize that there will be no consequences for you. I am taking responsibility for your actions before we begin. It is me who put you in this position and I will never tell anyone, including your wife or my best friend what happens. After all, what could I do about it, anyway? There’s no way that I could ever bring myself to tell anyone that I am such a pervert that I put myself in bondage in your presence.

If, as a compromise, you are compelled to relieve yourself without penetrating me, either in my presence or privately, I will understand and be grateful for your restraint in not going further. Again, to be blunt enough to ensure that there is no misunderstanding, if you feel compelled to jerk off on me, feel free. I don’t expect it and don’t want it, but if you do, I will not think any less of you because it is my fault for having put you in such a hard position (pun intended).

Please take this letter with you and keep it somewhere safe for long enough that you can be assured that there will be no consequence for helping me, no matter what happens.

Your friend,

Leslie.

Craig folded the letter thoughtfully and put it in his shirt pocket. He was mildly insulted that Leslie thought that he would fly out of control just because she was likely to be tied up and naked in his presence. Contrary to the assertions of some radical feminists, most men are not beasts and rapists. And she should certainly know him well enough to know that he was stronger than that. On the other hand, he had to admit that she was right to write the letter. From her point of view, if she had misjudged him and he did rape her when she was helpless, she had to reassure him that it would not be a problem. Otherwise, there was a risk that he might, in a fit of shame and fear, kill her just so to try to hide what he had done. He understood that she had no choice but to give him this letter for her own protection.

Leslie was nothing, if not thorough. Still, even though he could understand and agree with her logic in giving him the letter, he could not help but feel somewhat insulted.

A few minutes later, Leslie re-appeared in the doorway. This time she was fully clothed in a knee-length navy pleated skirt and white blouse - conservative clothing. Incongruously, she was also wearing black hose and black high heels – probably the highest heels that one would find in a normal shoe store – not so high as to be outrageous, but high enough to be impractical. Craig was sure that Leslie, who normally wore athletic shoes, even to work, would find these stilettos decidedly uncomfortable, if not painful, if she had to stand in them for long.

“You should open the envelope and follow the instructions inside when I can no longer speak to you. I can give you a quick outline now, though. My punishment comes in three parts. Each part will last about an hour. With the setup time before each part, the whole punishment will last until about three o’clock. When you do open the envelope, you will find three smaller envelopes inside, marked “Part One”, “Part Two”, and “Part Three”. Obviously the inner envelopes should be opened in order as required. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“We begin in the basement. This way.” She led her friend out of the living room, through a door in the hallway and down to an unfinished basement. She was noticeably unstable on her high heels, but did not appear in any danger of stumbling.

On the stairs, he commented, “Down to the dungeon, my lady,” but she ignored his weak quip.

The basement was unfinished. Her house was new, so the basement had high ceilings. First, Craig noticed two ropes and leather cuffs dangling from a joist in the middle of the room. Then he noticed another two ropes and cuffs laid across the floor. Leslie marched resolutely toward a small table in the corner of the near wall, not far from the stairs. Craig followed.

Assorted items formed a neat line across the table. Leslie immediately picked up the first item, a red ball gag, inserted it in her mouth, and buckled the strap behind her neck beneath her long brown hair. She pulled the end of the strap hard so that it was buckled on the tightest possible hole, the ball forced well past her front teeth and the leather strap stretching the corners of her mouth far back. She was giving herself no mercy.

She could no longer speak – Craig wondered if it was time to open the envelope – but it was clear that there were still things that she could to do for herself. Without a pause, she left Craig and walked back to the centre of the room, turned to face him, bent over and buckled a leather cuff around each ankle. These cuffs were attached to ropes secured on opposite walls – ropes that were too short to allow her to move her feet together; as long as they were cuffed, they would remain spread at least four feet apart. It was an effort for her to buckle them on herself – she looked like she was doing some kind of stretching exercise. The navy skirt pulled halfway up her thigh as she stretched and Craig enjoyed the view of her leg. She had nice legs and Craig, despite being ten years older than her and happily married, did not feel guilt about merely looking at a woman.

When she finished the second ankle, and rose upright, she was left her standing in the middle of the room with her feet spread, ball gagged, and two cuffs dangling above her head. She grabbed the rope attached to the cuffs to steady herself – it was difficult for her to maintain her balance in that position. The natural next step was for her to buckle one cuff about each wrist so that her hands were hanging loosely, just high enough that she could no longer touch her head.

She stood there for a minute, waiting, and then grunted through the gag. Craig got the hint. It was his turn. Leslie was incredibly organized – a letter opener was the next item on the table. Craig used it to slit the envelope and, as promised, found three smaller envelopes inside. He chose the one marked “Part One” and slit it open. A single sheet of paper slid out.

A heading at the top of the paper read, “Stretching and Stripping.” The rest of the page was a list of numbered instructions.

The first instruction read, “Follow the rope from my wrists to the back wall. Hook the loop on the lowest hook on the wall. Take a few moments to enjoy the view.”

Craig walked behind her, then followed the ropes from her wrists up to the joist. They were threaded through pulleys and continued along the ceiling. Halfway across the room they were joined to a single rope that was threaded through another pulley at the corner of the ceiling and back wall. The rope continued down the back wall along a stud with three steel hooks screwed into it. The hooks had safety catches so that, once on the hook, the rope could not slip off again unless the catch was held open. Currently, the loop was hooked halfway down the stud. As instructed, Craig unhooked the rope and tugged it downward until he could fit it onto the bottom hook. There was resistance because he was pulling against Leslie’s arms at the other end of the rope, stretching them upward and forcing them apart so that she could no longer reach the buckles on her wrists. She moaned and stretched as best as she could to help him. When he finished, he turned and saw her with her arms and legs pulled straight, stretching her into a vertical spread eagle. He approached her and walked slowly around, liking the way that the pleated skirt was stretched across her widespread legs. He followed each leg up with his eyes, imagining the magical spot underneath the material where they came together. He looked at the blouse stretched across her breasts. She had an averaged-sized bust, but pulled upward by her up-stretched shoulders and arms, they looked smaller than they were. Even so, they were still full enough to push back against the white broadcloth, forming a pair of satisfying mounds. When he looked at her face, she was a slight shade of pink. He could not tell if that was a result of the strain of her position or if she was blushing under his scrutiny.

He returned to the table and consulted the paper for the next instruction. It read, “Take one of the weights from under the table and hook it to the loop in the rope halfway up the wall, then set the timer for 10 minutes. Turn the timer away so that I cannot see the dial.”

Craig looked under the table. There was a pile of barbell weights stacked there. Each had a rope tied through the centre. A steel hook was tied to the other end of each rope. He lifted the first weight. It was heavy – the number “20” was molded into the side. He carried it back to the far wall and hoisted it up so that he could slip the hook it through a loop that had been tied at eye level in the rope connecting Leslie’s arms. He grunted when he hoisted the weight; she groaned when he released it. Twenty pounds was not so much, but, if the pile under the table were any indication of what was in store, it was just the beginning.

He returned to the table and found a pink plastic kitchen timer. He turned the knob so that the dial was pointing to “10 min.” It began ticking loudly. The ticks seemed to echo in the empty room. Leslie moaned softly through her gag at the sound. Though she was not suffering any real distress yet, she knew that she would not get any relief as long as the ticking continued. He turned the dial to face the wall.

He read the next instruction. “Use the scissors to cut away my blouse and discard it. Enjoy your improved view while the timer runs out.” There was a large pair of tailor shears on the table.

Craig carried the shears back to Leslie. She looked resigned. He thrust the shears through his belt like a dagger so that he could use both hands to untuck her blouse and undo the buttons. It was a wasted effort because he was going to have to cut the material to get it off her outstretched arms. The broadcloth had been opaque and he had not been able to detect the colour of her bra before he actually saw it; when the front of the blouse was parted, he could see black lace peeking through.

Withdrawing the shears from his belt, he opened them and slid them across Leslie’s collarbone to take the first nip of material. She shivered at the touch of cold steel to her warm skin. One snip at a time, he cut the blouse from the top button across her right shoulder and followed her arm up to the cuff. It fell away on that side, dangling from her left arm and shoulder, revealing a lovely expanse of white skin on her chest, arm, and back. He cut the other side and the shredded blouse fluttered to the floor, ruined beyond repair. He looked at Leslie and she looked back, but the ball gag that she had so savagely pulled into her mouth distorted her face. He could not interpret her expression.

A drop of drool overflowed the corner of her mouth and dribbled down her chin. Craig thrust the shears back into his belt, swept the remnant of the blouse from the floor and used it to wipe the drop off her face. It would not matter in the long run – there was plenty more drool where that came from. He dropped the cloth back to the floor. She grunted irregularly through the gag, but he could not tell if she was trying to form a word or not; could not tell if she was trying to say “Thank-you” or “Don’t bother.” Most likely she was merely trying to swallow some of the saliva that was floating freely around the ball.

Looking closely, he could see the outline of an engorged nipple through the black lace cup of the bra.

The timer dinged.

Craig returned to the table and read the next instruction. “Hang the second weight from my rope. Set the timer for another ten minutes. Cut off my skirt. Enjoy the view.” Craig could see the pattern.

It took Craig a minute to pull the next weight out from under the table, hoist it up and carry it back across the basement to the rope on the far side. The second weight bumped against the first with a dull clank. Forty pounds and Leslie groaned a little louder.

He started the timer to ticking for another ten minutes.

When he returned to her, he had to examine her skirt for a minute before he found the button on the waistband at the left side and a hidden zipper tucked behind the pleat below it. He undid both. When the skirt gaped, he saw two wide swatches of black lace against the white skin of her hip. He started cutting the skirt from the hem at her left knee. The material could have been acrylic, but he suspected that he was cutting wool. He guessed that part of the Leslie’s punishment was having to buy expensive new clothing just to have it destroyed the first time she wore it. Brushing his fingers against her thigh as he cut upward, he could feel her muscles taut and straining against the ropes pulling her ankles apart and the weights pulling her wrists skyward. As he cut upward, he avoided the zipper – no sense dulling the expensive shears by trying to cut through any metal parts. When the last bit of cloth at the waistband parted, the ruined skirt fell away to join the remains of the blouse on the floor.

To his delight, Leslie was not wearing pantyhose. Her black stockings were supported by a garter belt. He walked around behind her and noted that the black panty underneath the garter belt was a bikini cut, but not a thong. Her full, round, white cheeks swelled halfway out of the black lace. If he strained, he could make out most of the crack between them. Walking back in front and bending over for a better look, he could see her mound of Venus pressing against the crotch of the panty. There were no stray hairs to be seen – not even stubble – either Leslie had just shaved this morning or she had a recent bikini wax.

Above the panty, there was a slight gap between the garter belt and the skin on Leslie’s abdomen. She had a slight stomach when she was relaxed, but, stretched as she was, her abdomen was pulled taut to the point of being concave between her hip bones.

He looked at her face and saw drool flowing from both corners of her mouth, across her chin and dripping down her chest. Her bra was noticeably wet.

The timer dinged.

The next instruction, predictably, was, “Hang the third weight. Set the timer for another ten minutes. Cut off my bra. I hope you enjoy looking at my tits.”

Increasing the weight to sixty pounds made Leslie groan loudly. When Craig returned to her, he found her eyes screwed tight. She was gripping the ropes above the cuffs and pulling with all her might. The tiny biceps and triceps in her arms were clearly-defined little knots as she strained to pull the weight with her muscles and take the pressure off the ligaments in her elbows. Her chest was heaving from the effort.

He stood beside her and unclasped the bra at the back with one hand, the better to watch her breasts drop loose within the cups when they lost their support. Because she was stretched by the rope and weights, they did not move as much as he expected. The bra had not been supporting much after her arms were raised almost to the ceiling. He used the shears to snip the shoulder straps, one after the other; the scrap of black lace joined the scraps of white broadcloth and navy wool on the floor.

Her breasts were beautiful, the engorged nipples and aureoles a rich rose color against the white curves of flesh. They were heaving with every breath as Leslie she struggled against the heavy ropes that pulled her taut.

She was drooling so much that the saliva flowed around both breasts and began to form drops on their undersides. Just before the timer dinged, a drop let go and a long strand of drool stretched from the bottom of her left breast across the concavity of her abdomen to alight on her left hip.

When he hooked the last weight to the rope, the total increased to eighty pounds, Leslie managed to scream despite the ball gag. Her hands were too tired to keep fighting against the rope and she had to release it to take all the weight with the ligaments in her shoulders and elbows. She was a slight person, she could not weigh more than one twenty, so when she was trying to hold eighty pounds, she was holding more than two thirds of her body weight.

The instruction said that he was to sever her panty at the sides and put it back on the table. He slid the fingers of his left hand underneath the waistband of the panty to grab it while he cut the sides. He could feel hair against the backs of his fingers – she had not shaved herself completely. When the sides of the panty were snipped, it fell away from her crotch and he saw a perfect bikini wax. The skin between the edges of the remaining patch of hair and her groin were tinged red – the waxing had been recent – maybe Friday evening, maybe even first thing this morning. Waxing hurts. She had begun suffering her punishment even before he had arrived.

Craig spent the next eight minutes watching Leslie’s face, fascinated. Her head had dropped forward as though the effort required to keep holding it upright was too much for her. Her long brown hair was half covering her face. She had begun to cry. Copious tears overflowed her lids and down her cheeks to mix with the saliva flowing freely from her mouth. Clear mucus was flowing from her nose over her upper lip and around the ball gag. She was making a loud, rhythmic sing-song sound through the gap between the ball and the corner of her mouth where the leather strap ran.

He watched her breathing carefully, aware that the danger of crucifixion lay in suffocation. Crucifixion could take days, but that assumed that the victim could use his legs to relieve the pressure from his diaphragm for brief periods. Leslie did not have that luxury. The weights on the pulleys kept a constant pressure on her arms and shoulders no matter what she did with her legs. Her breathing was laboured, but she seemed to be getting sufficient oxygen. There was no sign of a blue tinge in her fingernails or lips.

The mucus in her nose and saliva in her mouth worried him a little more. She could drown on her own fluids if she inhaled them. It helped that her head was thrown forward because that helped drain her mouth and nose.

He was also worried about the strain on her joints. He did not know how much weight her elbows, shoulders, and wrists could take for how long before they were torn or permanently damaged. He glanced back at the timer but could not see the dial because it was still turned to face the wall. He hoped that it was about to ding and end this phase.

So did Leslie.

It was the longest ten minutes in both their lives.

He walked to the table and read the next instruction. It said to remove the weights when the timer sounded. Then he looked at the dial. Still five minutes left. He casually walked back to Leslie and circled around her. Then waited. And waited.

When the timer finally dinged, he almost ran to the rope and unhooked the weights, one, two, three, four, as quickly as he could. Leslie groaned with relief, her loudest sound since her scream when he had added the last weight.

He returned to look at her, to make sure that she was all right. He scooped the white broadcloth from the floor and wiped the tears from her face, the saliva from her chest, and then held it to her nose for her to blow.

Then he walked back to the table to read the next instruction. Surely this phase was over.

It was not. The next instruction said that he was to set the timer for twenty minutes and enjoy the view. There was no more stripping. No more weights. Now she was merely standing with her arms up and her legs apart, waiting. No big deal; just boredom.

He picked up his novel, sat in the chair next to the table, and began to read.

But after a few pages, he glanced up at her and realized the subtle cruelty of her new predicament. Her legs were quivering. The four foot gap between her ankles was a huge distance for a person trying to stand upright. In high heels, it was even more difficult for Leslie to support herself. When she had been fresh, almost an hour ago, it had not been a big problem. She had been able to use her arms to help support herself. And then when he had added the weights, they had taken a substantial amount of the pressure off her legs, sixty and then eighty pounds during the last twenty minutes. Now, though, she had to support her total body weight with her thighs and calves with no way to relieve the pressure. The muscles in her arms and shoulders were exhausted from fighting the weights. Her shoulder and elbow joints must be screaming in pain.

As he watched, she tried to pull herself up with her arms, at least to take a little pressure off her thighs, but she screamed quietly behind the ball gag and let her legs take her full weight again.

Her eyes rolled toward the timer, ticking quietly away. Twenty minutes is a long time when you are in pain. Craig looked the dial and saw that only five minutes had passed since he had removed the weights. Fifteen minutes to go.

Craig glanced at the two envelopes that contained instructions for Phase Two and Three of Leslie’s punishment. This was only beginning of her afternoon.

Leslie’s predicament was less boring than he had thought at first; it was certainly more interesting than his novel. He put his book aside and pulled the chair to the middle of the room, only a few feet from her and sat down to enjoy the show.

As time passed, Leslie’s legs quivered more violently and she became less stable on her high heels. They were wiggling and twitching against the floor. The right heel slipped out from under her foot and her calf bunched as she had to support herself on the ball of her foot. She screamed. The heel tapped a staccato beat against the concrete as she fought to get the shoe back into position. Just as she succeeded, the other heel slipped and she screamed again. She fought against the ropes and cuffs that held her ankles apart, trying to get her feet even another inch closer to give her that little bit more support, but the ropes were relentless. They were climbing ropes – strong as hell and no stretch at all to them. Leslie had invested in top quality across the board for today’s sport.

She was not crying any longer – her face showed more frustration and anger than anything else. She had options – pull with her arms, push with her legs, remain still, struggle to get a bit of slack, twist to put one foot or the other in a stronger position – but every option was bad – no matter what she did, she only suffered more – improving one foot or one arm only put more strain on the other foot or thigh in response. Her every action had a painful reaction somewhere else.

But she had to keep doing something to give each part of her some relief when the strain grew too great.

Craig was enthralled. Her breasts heaved, her buttocks clenched, her crotch quivered. Her involuntary dance was better than any girly show. Stretched and stripped indeed. Leslie had turned herself into a stretched, stripped dancer with every part of her available for Craig’s viewing pleasure.

The timer finally dinged, but Craig spent a leisurely minute more enjoying the show. Leslie begged for release with her eyes and unintelligible gargles. Slowly, he rose from his chair and returned to the table to read the last instruction.

“Unbuckle the ankle cuffs and remove the ball gag. Let me stand and catch my breath for a couple of minutes. Leave my hands cuffed. I’ll tell you what to do next.”

He unbuckled the ankle cuffs first. The black stocking beneath the cuff was picked and pulled in places from the friction of her struggles. Leslie immediately pulled her legs together to take the strain off her legs and arms. Even with that, there was not enough slack in the ropes at her wrists for her to put her hand together and release herself. She drew a slow, deep breath through her nose and around the ball gag. He pulled her long hair together and then laid it over her shoulder and down her chest to give himself free access to the buckle. She groaned when the ball was finally pulled clear of her teeth, swallowed a couple of times to clear the excess saliva and tossed her head to throw her hair off her shoulder and down her back. Finally, she commented, “I hope you appreciate how uncomfortable a ball gag can be. This one was slightly oversized. It put just enough pressure on my jaw to be uncomfortable at the beginning and really painful by the end of the hour.”

Craig smiled slightly. That was Leslie. She always wanted to make sure that people appreciated just how thorough she was. It was one of her less endearing traits, but Craig catered to it, anyway. “And the shoes?”

“One size too small, of course. My feet are aching something awful and my toes feel like they’re burning. But they aren’t coming off yet.”

“As you wish.”

“I wish to blow my nose again.” Craig held the remnants of the blouse to her face while she blew three times. For just a second, he felt like one of his daughters had grown young again and he was taking care of her. He wiped the mucus and saliva from her face and chest before dropping the blouse back to the floor.

When her nose was clear and her face was dry, she said, “I guess the sooner we start the next phase, the sooner it will all be over. It starts here, but moves upstairs right away. You can start following the instructions in the second envelope now.

The instruction sheet in the Phase Two envelope was titled, “Fun with Leslie’s Little Tits.”

In Craig’s opinion, Leslie’s breasts could hardly be called “little.” She was no Dolly Parton, but her breasts were big enough and nicely rounded. He considered them the best part of her figure. Too many women have the strange idea that if they aren’t endowed with freakishly huge sagging udders then their breasts are too small. They could not be more wrong.

The first instruction was the longest and most detailed so far. It read, “I’m leaving it to you to gag me because I don’t think I could do this one to myself. Roll the panty that you cut off me into a ball, making sure that the ends are tucked well inside so they don’t end up down my throat. Give me a good long chance to smell them so that I can really appreciate their rich flavor. I’ve been wearing them since yesterday morning and I haven’t been wiping myself after I’ve been peeing. After you are sure that I have truly appreciated their vintage to the fullest, stuff them in my mouth. You may have to hold my nose closed if I’m reluctant to open up. When the panty is completely inside, tape my lips closed inside with the adhesive tape. Paint a cute happy smile on the tape with the lipstick.”

Craig could not resist smelling the panty when he picked it up from the table. It was certainly ripe with a variety of human odors, but he thought that there was a greater smell of sweat and vaginal fluid than urine. He rolled it into a ball, as instructed, making sure that the crotch was on the outside bottom of the resulting ball. No sense doing this if he wasn’t going to do it right. Because it was a bikini panty rather than a thong, it made a reasonably large ball – it would fill her mouth completely.

When he held it up to Leslie’s nose, he made sure that the crotch part of the ball was right in front of her nostrils. She sniffed shallowly, then turned her head away from him. “No, you don’t weasel out of this, dear. He grabbed a big handful of hair at the back of her head and turned her face back to the panty.

“Ow. That hurts,” she complained.

He took advantage of her open mouth to shove the ball half inside. There was no reason to waste an opportunity. If she were going to talk, she was going to be gagged. Because of the way he was holding the ball, only a small rotation was necessary to force the crotch part against her tongue. She gagged on the taste and gave him an opportunity to force the panty all the way inside.

The roll of adhesive tape was back on the table. He had to walk back to get it. As soon as he turned his back, she spit the panty out of her mouth and onto the floor.

When he returned, he said, “That wasn’t wise at all. Now you’ve got dirt on your gag.” He picked up the panty and rolled it back into a ball, again with the crotch on the outside. “Let’s see if we can wipe some of that old dirt off, shall we?” He forced the panty between her legs and slowly rubbed it deep into her crotch. “There. Now it’s all nice and fresh. But I’m warning you, you spit it out again and I’ll wipe your ass with it before I put it in your mouth. You want that?”

Leslie shook her head.

Craig put the panty back underneath her nose. “See, nice and fresh. You like that?”

She shook her head again, but did not open her mouth to speak. She was a fast learner.

“Okay. Open up wide.”

She shook her head a third time, so Craig grabbed he nose and squeezed it shut. Leslie made the classic mistake of trying to hold her breath. After thirty seconds or so, she had to gasp for air and opened her mouth wide. Craig slipped the panty back into her mouth and released her nose. “Remember, leave it inside or I’ll wipe your ass with it. In fact, I’ll wipe my ass with it and that’ll really stink. Understand?” She nodded submissively.

He wasted no time tearing a strip of adhesive tape from the roll and sealing her lips. One strip along the length of her mouth, two short strips vertically to secure that one, then three more long horizontal strips to cover the whole area around her mouth from nose halfway down the chin was probably overkill, but he was absolutely certain that the panty was securely sealed inside when he was finished.

As instructed, he drew a lovely cupid-shaped mouth over the adhesive tape with the scarlet lipstick that he found on the table. It was a new tube, pristine. Leslie did not wear such a bright hue in real life. He gave the corners of the drawn lips a nice upturn so that they were smiling. He knew that Leslie’s real lips underneath the tape had no such smile on them.

The next instruction read, “Handcuffs behind my back. Don’t let me rip out the gag.”

Craig frowned, then carried the handcuffs over to her. “Look, we better review our deal here. You’re asking too much. Originally, the deal was that I watch over you while you restrain yourself. Fair enough. I was just your spotter. Then it has escalated to me applying some of the restraints when you can’t manage. That’s no biggie, either. But now you’re asking me to physically subdue you. That’s not going to happen. If I get into a fight with you, there’s too much chance that someone will get hurt. I’m going to release your hands. If you want to pull off the gag, that’s your business. I’m not going to grab you or twist your arms or anything like that. And I’m not going to replace your gag if you pull it off. It’s up to you to decide how you want to proceed. Understand?”

Leslie lowered her eyes and nodded submissively.

Craig tried to unbuckle the cuffs from her wrists, but he could not – he could not see what he was doing when he tried to reach that high. He released the loop from the hook on the back wall so that she could lower her hands. She immediately unbuckled her own wrists, lowered her hands to her sides and stood waiting for him.

When Craig walked back to face her, she looked down at her shoes, then touched the corner of her gag tentatively. He waited impassively. She closed her eyes, turned around, crossed her wrists behind her and waited for him to snap the handcuffs closed.

He liked it better when she was behaving this way.

“Okay. We continue. What’s next?”

She walked over to the table. As he followed her, he noticed that she was walking more gingerly than before – the time she had spent in an awkward stance in too tight shoes with the too high heels were taking their toll. It was harder for her to balance when her feet hurt and her legs were exhausted; she had to be careful because she knew that if she stumbled, she would not be able to break her fall with her hands cuffed behind her back. Craig made sure that his hand was free if he needed to catch her, but expected that he would not be able to react in time if she fell.

The next instruction said, “Take me up to the spare bedroom on the second floor.”

Craig held her arm protectively as he guided her up the two flights of stairs from the basement to the top floor. Her arm was slick with sweat under his hand. His friend was having a hard day.

He had never been in her house before, but it was easy to guess that the room with the big bed in it was the master bedroom and the other one that was empty, but for two tables and a chair, was the spare bedroom. It helped that assorted leather straps and chains were laid out neatly on the smaller table.

When she entered, Leslie minced directly to the big table in the middle of the room, bent over it, lifted a knee up and began to wriggle and squirm onto it. It was difficult with her hands cuffed behind her, but Craig appreciated the view. After a couple of minutes, she managed to get herself completely on the table. Once up there, she lay on her stomach and drew her legs underneath her so that her ass was sticking high in the air. She rocked backward until she was kneeling upright.

Craig read the next instruction. “Help me get up on the table and into a kneeling position.”

Too late to help her kneel on the table – she had already managed that part by herself. He guessed that she was determined to do as much by herself as possible to keep to the spirit of their agreement.

The next instruction said, “Buckle the belt around my waist and buckle my ankles to the short chains.” He looked at the table of toys. They were arranged in a line again; assuming that the order was from left to right, the first object was a wide, heavy leather belt with a short chain attached to each side. There was an ankle cuff at the end of each chain. Its function was clear. When Leslie was wearing it, her ankles would be held tight against her butt and she would be forced to remain in a kneeling position.

She raised her cuffed wrists so that he would have free access to her waist. She was being completely cooperative. After her ankle cuffs were buckled, she tried to rise, but the chains stopped her before her buttocks were clear of her heels. Craig did not know if she was testing the limits of her bonds for her own sake or if she was demonstrating the consequences of the arrangement to him. He hoped that she was doing it for her own sake because the thought that she might think that she needed to demonstrate the consequences of having her ankles attached to her waist by short chains was a little insulting to his intelligence.

The next instruction was more complex. It said, “Uncuff my hands. Slide one leather harness over each arm up to my shoulders, cuffs to the back. Buckle the opposite wrist to each shoulder. Don’t force anything. This is dislocated shoulder territory if my arms are forced too far.”

The reference to “dislocated shoulder” frightened Craig. He told Leslie, “I’m not sure that I understand exactly what you mean, here.”

Leslie squeaked through her gag and held her wrists toward him. Craig understood the first part of the instruction easily enough. He unlocked the handcuffs with the key that was on the table. Leslie reached her right hand toward the table and made a grabbing motion. He picked up one of the two peculiar little leather harnesses lying there and handed it to her. She slid it up her arm to her shoulder and then turned it so that a short strap and cuff were hanging halfway across her back. Then she gestured for the next one, a mirror image of the first. When he handed it to her, she slid it up the other arm. As soon as they were both in place, she crossed her hands behind her back in a double hammerlock position. Her wrists were positioned near the two cuffs. Craig berated himself. This wasn’t so complex; he should have figured it out without her help.

As he buckled the first cuff around Leslie’s wrist, he examined the harness. It was cut a little unevenly and stitched by hand with irregular stitches. Leslie had probably cut and stitched it herself from her own design. She was a resourceful little thing when it came to torturing herself.

The second cuff was more difficult. It was easy for her to put her first arm in position by twisting her torso. Once in place, though, the second wrist did not reach its cuff completely. She jerked her hand in the direction of the cuff, signaling him to buckle her up, but he remembered the “dislocated shoulder” phrase in the instructions. He picked up her wrist in one hand and the cuff in the other. She nodded encouragement to him. Gingerly, he pulled the wrist toward the cuff. She arched her shoulders back as far as she could to reduce the distance that he had to pull. He found that he could move her hand to the cuff, but he could not buckle it because he did not have a third hand. He told her, “I don’t think that I can do this.”

She pulled her free hand out of his grasp and tipped herself over so that she was lying on her side, her legs still fastened in their kneeling position. Once on her side, she put her free hand back in position. This time, though, she could use her body weight to press her elbow against the surface of the table and move her own hand into position. Craig had no difficulty fastening the cuff now. When he was finished, he lifted her back upright. She was sure working hard to ensure that she would be tortured in exactly the way she wanted. She was not a person to compromise on anything.

Now her bonds forced her to remain in a kneeling position with both hands pinned behind in a double hammerlock; a position that forced to hold her shoulders as far back as possible to ease the tension on her shoulders.  Her naked breasts were thrust straight out by her rigid posture – a perfect position for buckets of “Fun with Tits.”

After all the exertion, her hair had fallen forward over her face. He gathered it together and draped it down her back, out of the way, so that he would have a clear view of her expression.

Then he returned to the table to read the next instruction. “One at a time, clip a clothespin to each nipple.” There were two old-fashioned wooden clothespins on the table.

He carried the first clothespin to the table, held it in front of her face and flexed his fingers to open and close the jaws a couple of times. Her breathing quickened at the sight.

Her nipples were sticking straight out, dark and engorged, making it easy to close the pin on the left one. When he released the pin, her eyes snapped round and wide, she squealed through the gag, twitched a little, then froze stiff. With the clothespin on her nipple, any movement jiggled it around and every jiggle increased the pain. But even when she held herself as still as possible, her chest was heaving as she took deep, fast breathes through her nose. The clothespin bounced a little with every heave. Craig could see her trying to control her breathing to stop the bouncing as much as she could.

He did not wait for her to get breathing under control before closing the second pin on her right nipple. If she wanted pain, then he would give her pain, strictly according to her instructions.  She squealed again and squeezed her eyes shut tight. A single tear trickled out.

The next instruction read, “There is an ordered pile of cards on the table. Follow the instructions on each card in order. After completing each card, move it to the bottom of the deck. Continue rotating through the cards until about forty-five minutes have passed.”

There was a small stack of a half dozen index cards on the table. He turned them over. More instructions. For a totally-gagged woman, she sure was bossy.

The first card said, “Let random interval of more than one minute, but less than three pass; then remove the clip from my right nipple for sixty seconds. Put this card on the bottom of the deck.”

There was a digital alarm clock on the table, turned away so that Leslie could not see it. It said, “1:06.” Craig decided to wait until it reached 1:09 before removing the clothespin from her right nipple.

When the clock clicked over, he squeezed the right clothespin open. She squealed even more loudly through the gag than when he had put the clothespin on. Her nipple was white and flattened where the pin had cut off the circulation. As he watched, it turned pink, then red again.

He put the top card on the bottom of the deck. The next card said, “After one minute, put the pin back on the nipple, but at a different angle. Put this card on the bottom of the deck.”

Easy enough. When the clock clicked over to 1:10, he put the clothespin back. Her nipple was still somewhat flattened, side-to-side, from the first pinning, so this time he attached the clothespin sideways so that her nipple would be crushed top to bottom. The weight of the pin twisted her nipple slightly.

Leslie started squealing through the gag even before he released the pin. Her squeal increased in volume and pitch as she felt the full force of the pin re-crush her tender nipple.

The next card said, “Let random interval of more than one minute, but less than three pass; then remove the clip from my right left nipple for sixty seconds. Put this card on the bottom of the deck.”

And so it went. Over the course of forty-five minutes, each of Leslie’s nipples was crushed eight times, for a period of between three and seven minutes each time, with a one minute interval between each crushing. Craig managed to read a few pages of his novel in between, but could not make much progress because he was removing or replacing a clothespin on one nipple or the other every couple of minutes.

As the torture proceeded, Leslie’s nipples were getting more and more bruised from the mistreatment and more and more tender. During the last thirty minutes, tears were flowing copiously down her cheeks and she was tried to twist away from him when he removed and replaced the clips. Her motion was limited by the severe bondage and she could not bounce or struggle too violently without shaking the clothespins and torturing herself further.

During the last fifteen minutes, she was making choppy, gargling, moaning noises through her gag. Craig could tell that she was begging him to stop, but he pretended not to realize that she was trying to talk and ignored the noises that she was making. She wanted this. She asked for it. He did not doubt that her mistreated nipples hurt like hell, but was not going to cause her any permanent injury – not when he was letting the circulation return to her nipples after such short intervals. She would never be able to accuse him of going soft on her when the chips were down.

It did not help her state of mind that her knees were burning from having to remain in a kneeling position and her shoulders aching beyond bearing from the double hammerlock position. She was visibly trying to arch her back to relieve the pressure on her shoulders, but her arms were pulled too tight to allow her to give herself any slack.

She was far beyond worrying about the foul taste of the dirty panty that was still gagging her mouth.

When the clock clicked over to 1:50, and her forty-five minutes were complete, Craig read the next instruction. “Release my nipples. Ungag me. Unbuckle my restraints. Handcuff my hands behind my back and let me rest for a minute. Then take me to the dining room.”

Craig stood in front of her.  The lips drawn on the gag were still smiling in contradiction to the agony in her eyes. Most of her hair was draped down her back – though she had twisted as much as possible to get away from him when he was clipping the pins on her nipples, her bondage had kept her sufficiently still during the past three-quarters of an hour that only a single stray lock had fallen over her face. He brushed it out of the way and said, “You’re still smiling, dear. He brushed his fingers over the waxy lipstick drawing on the adhesive tape. Maybe we should keep this up until your smile is gone.”

She looked at him with teary eyes and shook her head carefully so that she would not shake the clothespins.

“Let’s look at your real lips, then, and see if they are smiling, too.” Craig slowly peeled the adhesive tape from her lips, one strip at a time, making sure that he did not pull of any skin. When the last piece of tape was removed, she opened her mouth and let him pull the sopping panty from between her teeth. Like overused chewing gum, any flavor had been washed from the material. He dropped the black mass on the table.

When her mouth was clear, she swallowed, then said, quietly, “Thank-you.”

Craig said nothing. He reached out and opened the clothespin from her left nipple. She screamed. Not loud enough to disturb the neighbors, but shockingly loud to Craig after listening to two hours of moaning and squealing beneath heavy gags. Her scream gave him a surprising amount of pleasure.

He unclipped the second clothespin and was treated to a second scream. With both nipples free for the first time since her nipple torture started, she squirmed in her bonds more vigorously, trying to flex her knees at least a little to restore circulation.

“Let’s stretch those legs,” Craig said, and unbuckled her ankles. She immediately unfolded her knees and toppled gently over on her side. “Upsidaisy.” He helped her slide off the table and stand, her arms still hammerlocked behind her.

She grunted. “My legs are asleep.”

“Shake them out. Stomp a bit. You aren’t going to fall over, are you?”

“Nope.” But she looked shaky on her high heels. Craig guessed that she would kick them off if she could, but the style of shoe had straps over the instep and she could not unbuckle them with her arms pinned to her shoulders.

“Well, you let me know if you feel like you might fall.” Craig unbuckled the belt from her waist, stepped over to the table, deposited the belt, snatched up the handcuffs and stepped back quickly, worried that she might fall over despite her assertion that she would not.

He took a minute to enjoy a good look at her breasts. They were her best feature, especially when they were forced up and out by the double hammerlock harness. Leslie looked like she wanted to hunch over to reduce their prominence, to cover them with her hands, even, but the harness ensured that she could do nothing but stand proud in her heals, stockings, and garter belt and let him look. She waited and said nothing.

Finally, he unbuckled her wrists. She lowered her arms gingerly and sighed deeply. She reached up and wiped the tears from her eyes, then lightly massaged her bruised nipples. She was completely unbound for the first time in a long time.

Her freedom was brief – Craig pulled her wrists behind her back and snapped the handcuffs closed without ceremony. He picked the last envelope from the table and waved it at her. “No time to waste. One more to go. Let’s get started.”

Leslie rattled her handcuffs and said, “Bring the key. I only have the two.”

He scooped the handcuff key and the last envelope from the table while she minced gingerly toward the door on the high heels. Craig guided her slowly down the stairs. She limped down one step at a time, leaning heavily against her arm. He did not know what instructions were contained in the envelope or what equipment was waiting in the dining room and his curiosity was gnawing at him.

Leslie knew what the last envelop held – more pain and humiliation – and she was in no hurry to get to it. She limped as slowly as she could.

There was much less equipment in the dining room than had been in the basement or bedroom. The dining room table had been pushed against the wall and all but two chairs had been removed from the room, creating a large open space. Craig’s eye was drawn to the table. There was nothing but a wooden paddle on it.

She rattled the handcuffs and said, “You can unlock me, now.”

When he unlocked her hands, she moved to the chair in the middle of the room, released the tops of her stockings from her garter belt, then unclipped the belt and discarded it. Resting her left foot on the chair, she unbuckled the shoe and removed it as well. She closed her eyes and sighed; Craig could see deep red marks underneath the black nylons where the sides of the too-small shoes had been crushed against her foot. Then she reversed her position and removed her right shoe. Returning her left foot to the chair, she peeled her stocking down her thigh, over her calf, and off her foot. Her position reminded Craig of the poster for the movie, The Graduate. She draped the stocking across the back of the chair, then removed her right stocking in the same fashion.

When she was completely nude, she gestured toward him and said, “You can open the last envelope now. There’s no gag in this scene. I’m trusting that you will be merciless and complete the scene even if I beg you to stop early. If you don’t think that you are up to that, you can go back downstairs and get the ball gag or tape and gag me again.”

Craig looked at the paddle on the table. “You can trust me.”

He opened the envelope. The last page of instructions was titled, “Beat Leslie’s Fat Ass.” The first instruction was, “Use my stockings to tie my ankles and wrists to the chair so that I am bent over the back.”

When he looked up from the paper, he saw her standing against the back of the chair in the middle of the room, holding one of her stockings out to him. She looked shy.

As soon as he took the stocking from her, she positioned her feet against the inside of the back legs of the chair. In that position, she had to bend half way over the back to keep her balance.

The first stocking was barely long enough to allow him to secure her right ankle to one chair leg with one end and her left ankle to the other leg with the other end. When he completed the task and stood up, she handed him the second stocking, then bent completely over the back of the chair and stretched her arms down so that her hands were near the floor. He tied her wrists with the second stocking to the front legs of the chair in the same way that he had secured her ankles to the back legs. When he was finished, he walked around her and inspected his work. And inspected her - she was fully bent, completely exposed – she had no secrets left when he walked behind her. She was completely vulnerable.

Her ass wasn’t all that fat, but it had a nice fullness. Craig never liked anorexic women with skinny men’s asses. Women should have nice plump womanly asses.

He glanced at the paddle on the table, then back at Leslie’s ass. She was presenting a delicious target.

He read the next instruction. “Beat the ass slowly. Take up to an hour paddling my ass to your heart’s content. Not continuously, mix together a variety of rates: sometimes a quick flurry of strokes; sometimes giving me ample time to appreciate each individual stroke; sometimes letting me spend long minutes wondering when the next stroke will fall. Make me count strokes if you want. Make me thank you for each stroke and ask for the next if that would please you. Whatever you want. Amuse yourself. All I ask is that I suffer today and see heart-shaped bruises when I look at my backside in the mirror tomorrow.”

Heart-shaped bruises? Craig inspected the paddle lying on the table. It was a wooden board, not too heavy, a little less than three inches wide, three eights of inch thick and eighteen inches long. It had a leather-wrapped handle for his comfort and a row of a half dozen holes cut into the blade for Leslie’s discomfort; they would lessen the wind resistance when he swung the paddle, ensuring a sharp sting. The holes were heart-shaped, alternating pointing up and pointing down. Craig wondered how hard he would have to swing it in order to ensure that the holes left heart-shaped bruises. She was asking for more than token smacks. An hour with the paddle, even if he delivered less than two strokes per minute on average, would be true punishment.

He had never spanked anyone before. It seemed wise to start with some light experimental strokes to get a feel for the paddle. He walked behind her, stood a little to the side, then tapped her across both buttocks lightly. The fleshy globes jiggled a little. He swung a little harder and they jiggled a little more. He raised his arm higher and brought the paddle down firmly, producing a meaty smack. She felt that one and grunted. He watched her white skin for a minute and saw it turn slightly pink. That seemed about right.

He told her, “Count to ten slowly.”

She said, “One.”

He swung hard enough to bring a second yelp. There was a slight echo of the smack in the room.

“Two.”

He swung again, a little harder, and the paddle cracked sharply against her bottom. Her yelp was a little more sincere.

“Three”

He thought that he was swinging equally hard, but she made no sound this time and the paddle did not crack nearly as loudly against her skin. He had delivered a much lighter stroke. It was difficult to get exactly the same force into every swing.

“Four.”

He tried to swing a little harder, but misjudged his strength and swung a lot harder, putting some wrist action into it for the first time. The paddle whistled through the air and sounded like a small explosion when it hit – she clenched her buttocks and wailed loudly. Oh, well. She asked for punishment, so she couldn’t complain if she was getting punishment.

She paused for a long minute, then said, softly, “Five.” It sounded like she had to force herself to utter the count.

He swung again. Still a little harder than he intended, but not quite as hard as the last stroke. She yelped and twitched, struggling a little against the stockings that bound her to the chair.

She waited for a long minute before saying, “Six.” That was exactly the reason that Craig had asked her to count the strokes before he delivered them rather than after – so that he could get a feeling for how quickly she could make herself accept them.

As soon as she uttered the word, “Six,” he delivered another firm slap of the paddle. She yelped loudly again. He estimated that he was using less than half of his full strength, but that seemed just about right – he did not want to injure her.

Her breathing was uneven; her ass was bruising now and the pain of the stings was accumulating; she was feeling each successive stroke more keenly than the last.

She waited even longer before resuming her count. Craig snapped a sudden quick hard slap of the paddle against her butt and she yelped loudly. “I’m not going to wait all day. Get counting.”

“Eight.”

Craig lowered the paddle. “What?”

She replied, “Eight,” and clenched her buttocks anticipating another blow.

“What happened to seven?”

“You already struck number seven.” Her voice was somewhat muffled because she was speaking from her bent position. Craig stifled a giggle when he thought of himself as having a conversation with Leslie’s ass.

“But you didn’t count it. You count, I hit you. That’s the way it works. I told you to count to ten. I never said that I was going to restrict myself to hitting you only ten times. You earned an extra stroke by making me wait too long.”

“Oh. Okay. Seven.” Her ass twitched.

He did not strike. “Nope. Too late for seven.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told you to count to ten. You messed up the count, so now you have to start over again.”

“You mean at one?”

“Of course at one. Unless you want to start at zero.”

“No. I’ll start at one.”

Craig waited.

She whispered, audibly, “One.”

He struck. She yelped. Her ass quivered.

“Two.”

He struck again. She yelped again. He was getting better at controlling the strength of his blows.

“Three.”

Smack. Yelp. Quiver.

“Four.”

Smack. Yelp. Quiver.

“Five.”

Harder smack. Louder yelp. More quiver.

“Six.”

Hard smack. Yelp. Quiver. Sob.

“Seven.”

Smack. Yelp. Quiver. Sob.

“Eight.”

He paused. Her cheeks quivered when she clenched her glutes in anticipation, then relaxed. Then he smacked them. She yelped a little louder.

“Nine.”

He dialed up the force a notch. The paddle whistled a little on its way down and cracked more sharply against her flesh. She twitched against her bonds and her yelp graduated to a howl. Her breathing was quick, deep, and ragged. That one really hurt.

“Ten.”

He hurt her again and she howled more loudly.

He said, “Good beginning. There’s a lot more where those came from, so get a little rest while you can.”

He pulled the other chair behind her, sat down with his novel and read a few pages. When he looked up again, she looked relaxed. He could not see her face from this angle and was pretty sure that she could not see him. Perfect. He silently closed his book and set it down as quietly as he could. He gripped the paddle and snuck across the floor.

Without warning, he began striking her with hard, fast snaps from the wrist. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Each stroke landing before her ass stopped rippling from the previous stroke. No individual blow was as hard as any in the first spanking, but they were relentless.

He was hitting her so fast and the onset was so unexpected that the paddle was coming down for the third strike before she reacted to the first.

Her reaction was dramatic. She began squirming and writhing in her bonds, shrieking shrilly, verbalizing in response to the blows, now, instead of merely yelping, imploring him to stop. “Ow. Ouch. Please don’t. Ow. That hurts. Ouch. Please no more. Please stop. Ouch. Please. Mercy. Please. Oh, God, that stings. Please. Have mercy…”

She was struggling mightily against the stockings binding her to the chair and flailing her head from side to side, flinging her long hair about, alternately sweeping it back and forth across the hardwood floor in front of the chair. She had nice floors in her dining room.

He had promised merciless and he was determined to fulfill his promise. He ignored her pleas and kept striking, delivering countless blows to her hot red cheeks, continuing until she was wailing too hard to form coherent words.

When he judged that she had enough, he silently returned to his chair, laid the paddle across his lap, collected his book and pretended to read again.

He watched her from the corner of his eye. She was sobbing uncontrollably now. Her hair was hanging limply over her downslung head, covering her face from view. He could see rivers of sweat flowing down her arms. As he watched, she wiped her nose against her bicep and he got a glimpse of tears flowing from her eyes down into her hair. Then she hung her head back down loosely.

He left her like that for almost ten minutes.

When he stood up again, he let his chair scrape on the floor. She whimpered at the sound, knowing what was coming.

“Are you ready for another spanking?”

She muttered something incomprehensible.

“Speak loudly and clearly, my dear. You don’t want to earn an extra punishment for failing to enunciate, do you?”

“No.” That was loud and clear.

“So, are you ready for another spanking?”

“As you wish.”

“No, my dear. As you wish. Don’t forget, this is your wish. This is your wish, so you can ask for it. Go ahead, my dear. Ask for another spanking.”

“What if I don’t?”

“Then I’ll punish you for not cooperating. You earned a good spanking when you lost those two backgammon matches. That’s enough. There’s no need for you to earn any extra spankings, is there?”

He waited for a minute until she relented and said, “Please give me another spanking.”

“Okay. Since you’re asking so nicely, I’ll give you another lovely spanking.” He patted her ass, a gesture of casual familiarity. “This time, you will get twenty-five strokes. To make sure that we get the count right, you will count each stroke after you receive it and then politely ask for another. You understand?”

“Yes. I understand.”

“You can start by asking for the first stroke.”

“Please strike me.”

He laid the paddle on her backside with a good hard blow; one that was about as hard as the hardest blow from the first spanking. He had more confidence in his control now. This blow did more than sting; it caused real pain. She knew that the stroke was coming, but grunted in surprise at the extent of the pain. She had not been spanked since she was a young child, and then not often or severely. As an adult, having been limited to self-bondage, she had not been able to experiment with spanking. Now, in the course of an hour, she was becoming an instant connoisseur of the paddle. This was clearly a spanking of a different vintage than the first two. It hurt more deeply and, she suspected, would ache longer.

Twenty-four more blows like this one would make a lasting impression on her backside.

“One. Please, sir, give me another.” The “sir” was unexpected. Somehow in her present position, it just popped out naturally. She felt even more humiliated when she found herself addressing her old friend so subserviently. But that was part and parcel of her punishment.

And so she counted up until twenty-four, forcing herself to keep asking for another punishing blow as soon as the previous one had landed, certain that if she delayed too long or refused to ask him to continue, he would start again from one. She did not think that she could stand that many blows

By the tenth stroke she was sobbing and by fifteen, she was crying freely. But she kept asking for more blows, forcing the words through her wailing.

When she finally wailed, “Twenty-four, sir. Please give me another,” Craig paused.

He said, “Last stroke. You’ve been a real trooper, Leslie. You deserve a nice light, merciful stroke, don’t you?”

She sniffled, took a deep breath, then said, quietly but clearly, “Do your worst, slugger. Let’s see if you can hit a home run.” She was clenching her ass, anticipating the pain, even as she uttered the words.

If she wanted to see what it would be like to feel his full strength, then he would oblige. “I’m going to bat your ass right out of the park, babe. Prepare yourself because this is going to be brutal.” They both knew that there was nothing that she could do to lessen the impact that was coming.

Her bright red ass twitched mightily in anticipation of the blow, clenching and unclenching, quivering as though it had a life of its own.

Craig tapped the paddle against her buttocks, taking aim, lining up the swing. He had to be sure that he hit her ass dead center because he didn’t want to break her tailbone by hitting her too high or bruise her legs hitting too low. She involuntarily clenched her glutes again when she felt the brush of the wood against her burning skin.

He raised the paddle high above his shoulder and brought it down with all of his strength, putting his full arm and wrist into it. The air whistled shrilly through the heart-shaped holes. He hit her right in the middle of her ass. The impact was explosive, the crack of the wood against flesh echoed back from the farthest rooms in the house.

The force of the blow actually rocked the chair. Leslie’s ass flattened and then quaked up and down, side to side.

For a long second, she made no noise at all, shocked by a whole new level of pain, the intensity of the sensation overwhelming her senses. Then she drew a tremendous breath and began to scream, a constant loud tone like an old fire siren. She struggled against the stockings binding her wrists, trying to stand upright, trying to free her hands to rub her ass, trying to do anything that would mitigate the pain.

Craig watched her struggle for a minute until, finally, she collapsed against the back of the chair, limp, defeated, sobbing quietly, waiting for him to make the next move.

He glanced at the clock. It had only taken half an hour to administer the three spankings, but he had no stomach for torturing her any longer.

He read the last instruction. “Free me.”

Time to untie her. She had been fully and duly punished for losing two backgammon matches. He looked down at her wrists and realized that she had pulled the knots so tight in her struggles that he would never get them untied. “I’ll be back.” He left the room.

He was gone before Leslie had time to ask him where he was going. She hoped that he realized that he could not leave her bent over the chair for much longer – the muscles in her lower back were aching miserably from being stretched over the chair for an hour; and her hands were tingling because the stockings tied around her wrists had worked themselves so tight that her circulation was impeded. If he intended to leave her overnight, there was a serious danger that she would develop gangrene by morning. She was not supposed to lose her hands just because she had lost a couple of backgammon games.

She need not have worried. Craig returned in a couple of minutes, carrying the big tailor shears up from the basement. “I’m going to have to cut you free. Hope you didn’t want to wear those stockings again.”

It only took a couple of snips to free her ankles completely and cut the link between her wrists and the chair legs, but he could not fit the big shears between the skin on her wrists and the stockings, the material was pulled so tight that her skin bulged around it. She pushed herself erect and stepped back from the chair. Craig was amused to see that her first reaction was to ignore the black bands of ruined nylon around her wrists and to try to cover herself, breasts and mons, with her arms and hands – he would have thought that she would be well past modesty, having spent the afternoon utterly exposed to him, but there was no explaining women. Even Freud never figured them out.

She backed a couple of steps toward the door, said, “I’ll meet you in the living room in a few minutes,” then turned and fled as quickly as her aching body would allow – which was not quickly at all. He watched her red ass bouncing as she hobbled out of the door. Her ass must still be hurting like a son of a bitch. For that matter, her nipples must still be tender as hell and every muscle in her body aching. He was amazed that she could move at all. After the wringer that she had put herself through, she should have just collapsed on the spot, curled up into a ball, and stayed there for a week until the pain went away.

He took his book back to the living room to wait for her.

She returned in about ten minutes, dressed in a white terrycloth bathrobe and fuzzy pink slippers. Her hair was wet and her face was shiny; it was apparent that she had taken a quick shower. The wrists that extended from the arms of the bathrobe were free of the nylon stockings, but were encircled with angry red welts.

She saw him looking at her wrists and laughed lightly. “Guess I’ll have to wear long sleeves for a few days.”

As she walked across the room to lower herself onto the couch, she moved cautiously, making him keenly aware that he had hurt almost every part of her during the afternoon. Now that her ordeal was over, he felt an overwhelming wave of tenderness toward her. Though she had asked for everything in detail, though he had only been doing exactly what she had asked, he felt inexplicable guilt about having been a participant in her torture. She had not suffered mere discomfort or torment, he had truly tortured her. And he had enjoyed it more than he would have expected.

As she sank into the overstuffed couch, she said, “Ow. I used to think this couch was soft but I don’t think anyone makes a chair soft enough to suit me right now. It’s going to be hard to accomplish much when I’m sitting in my office chair this week.”

“I’m sorry.” And Craig was. Deeply sorry.

“Please don’t say that. Ever. You were perfect. No one could ever ask for a finer friend. I’ll dream about this afternoon for a long time to come.”

“Well, then, if you’re happy about the way it turned out, then I’ll be happy for you.”

“I’m happy. More happy than you could guess.” She smiled gently. The word, bliss, sprang into Craig’s mind and he envied her. “I’d like to show you my appreciation, Craig. If you want to wait until I get dressed, I’d like to treat you to a steak dinner.”

“That would be wonderful, but I can’t. I have to get back to Mary and the kids. They’re expecting me for dinner.”

“I understand. I’ve already taken up too much of your time today.”

“But maybe we could go to lunch sometime?”

“I’m good for any day this week.”

“Okay. I’ll call you.”

“Thanks again.”

Craig stood up, “Don’t get up. I can let myself out.”

She smiled ruefully. “Thank for that, too.”

“Before I go, would you mind answering one question, though?”

“Anything.”

“This was just Envelope Two and it was more severe than I could have guessed. If you’d lost that last game and earned Envelope Three, what would I have had to do to you?”

She looked at him for a long beat, then lowered her eyes. “Foolish things. I… I was arrogant about my backgammon skill when I made up those envelopes. Envelope Three was so foolish that I don’t think you would have participated if you had read it. This afternoon was about the right level for Envelope Three. I never want to have to suffer more than I did today.” She looked up and smiled impishly, “At least until the next time I play backgammon for a penalty.”

“Next time?”

“Not any time soon. But in a couple of months, when today’s bruises are a distant memory, don’t be surprised if I tell you that I’m getting itchy to throw those dice again. Would you mind?”

“When you want me, I’ll be there.”

He slipped away to his happy marriage to his plain, vanilla Peggy and left Leslie sitting on her couch awash in her own endorphin-induced paradise.