by Van ©2021
		Chapter 2

Noreen opened her eyes.  It was morning.  The sun was shining brightly through the open drapes of the east-facing windows and... something was wrong.  Something was very, very wrong.

The mistress of the house blinked her green eyes, tried to throw back the covers so she could get out of bed—and only then realized that there were no covers, and she was tied up—"Mrrrmpfh!"—and gagged!  She was also naked!  Noreen twisted and squirmed and rolled and realized she was very tied up indeed!

Also, although given the circumstances it was a minor point, the covers were, indeed, missing.  The bed had been stripped, leaving only the bottom sheet.  The pillows, top sheet, light blanket, and bedspread were nowhere to be seen.  Why Noreen was even noticing such a trivial thing as missing bed linen she had no idea.

As for the details of Noreen's bonds, tight bands of thin, twisted, natural-fiber rope encircled and crisscrossed her body every few inches from her shoulders to her big toes!  Her arms had been folded behind her back, her forearms raised, and her wrists, thumbs, and hands lashed together, palm-to-palm, between her shoulder blades with her fingertips just below the nape of her neck!  Additional ropes pinned her upper arms and forearms to her torso, passed above, below, and between her breasts—encircled her waist and dove between her legs, cleaving her crotch—then continued down her legs, encircling her mid thighs, her lower thighs, just above her knees and just below her knees, her calves and shins, ankles, feet, and the aforementioned big toes.  And all the ropes were tightly cinched, between her arms and torso and between her legs.  Also, a diamond-shaped pattern of single strands traveled the length of her body, from shoulders to toes, linking all of her bonds together.  And all the ropes were tight enough to dimple her flesh.

Noreen continued struggling and squirming, and discovered that her bonds acted as an integrated whole.  That is, if her efforts created a little transitory slack at one location, it came at the cost of increased pressure somewhere else.  Her bound fingers brushed against the twisted strands, but encountered nothing she could diagnose as a knot.  And oh-by-the-way, the ropes cleaving her crotch were knotted, and those knots she could definitely diagnose.  They rubbed against some of her most sensitive nerve endings whenever she tried to move.

"Mrrrrr!"

As for the gag, something soft, pliable, and substantial had been stuffed in her mouth.  A sponge?  Maybe.  Taut, horizontal bands of some kind of tape encircled her head, covering her lower face from her nose to her chin.  Almost all of her tousled hair was free of the tape, and her ginger curls fluttered and shook as she struggled and tossed her head.  Whatever the materials employed by her unknown captor, it was a truly effective gag.

There were two final details.  A single strand of rope traveled from her big toes down to the foot of the bed, then was tied to the lower bed frame in some manner.  This became manifestly obvious when she tried lifting her bound legs.  A second strand traveled from the ropes at the nape of her neck, up to the headboard, then down to the floor where it was also tied off.  She could feel its tug when she tried moving her upper body.  There was enough slack to allow a little rolling around on the mattress, but Noreen was tethered.  She was on the bed to stay, until she was released.  And wiggling her way out of her elaborate bonds on her own would be totally impossible.

Noreen suppressed the rising tide of panic threatening to engulf her mind and willed herself to lie still.  Further struggling would be as useless as it would be painful.  She lifted her gagged-head, shook the red curls from her face, and gazed down her nude body, examining her bonds with as much objectivity as she could muster.  Noreen knew nothing about the practice of rope bondage, other than it was something of a minor art form in Japan.  She'd attended a Kinbaku exhibition at a Soho gallery a few years ago, and her current bonds were similar.  The pattern of the ropes was elaborate, symmetrical, and... dare she even think it... elegant.  If this was a simple kidnapping, would the perpetrator have gone to all this trouble?  And why was she still here, in her cottage bedroom?  Why hadn't she woken up in the back of the proverbial windowless van, rolling down the highway on her way to her kidnappers' hideout?

And what about Caitlyn, Erika, and Crystal?  Had they also been kidnapped?

Noreen squirmed in her bonds in frustration and distress.  What the hell is happening?

And what about Caitlyn, Erika, and Crystal?  All three had opened their eyes to find themselves naked, bound, and gagged in their respective bedrooms.  Like Noreen, their beds had been stripped, leaving only the bottom sheets.

Caitlyn was hogtied and lying on her stomach with her gagged face facing the foot of the bed.  And it was a very tight hogtie!  Her wrists were lashed to her ankles, her elbows and knees tied together, her calves lashed to her thighs, and her arms to her torso.  And all her bonds were cinched and linked into a unified web by a tight, diagonal, crisscrossed network of taut strands.  A knotted crotch-rope cleaved her labia and butt-cheeks and was linked to her wrist/ankle bonds.  Finally, her ginger hair had been braided, folded back on itself, then tied to her big-toes by a single, punishingly taut strand of hemp cord that lifted her chin and greatly restricted her ability to move her head!  Caitlyn squirmed, wiggled, rocked on the mattress, and fought her bonds without effect, other than to cause herself significant discomfort.

Erika was in a stringent ball-tie.  Her arms were folded behind her back and her forearms lashed together from wrist to her elbow in a tight box-tie.  Neat, well-cinched bands of rope crushed her breasts against her knees and her thighs against her flat stomach.  Her big-toes, feet, and ankles were lashed together and linked to her crotch-rope, stretching her feet in a permanent on pointe position.  A network of lateral and diagonal strands encircled her entire body and was hitched and cinched through her other bonds, further ensuring she would remain in a compact bundle.  All the ropes were tight enough to dimple her peachy-pink skin.  Trapped on her left side, Erika's only options were to flutter her fingers, attempt to writhe and squirm her body as best she could, and toss her gagged head in a vain attempt to free her face from errant strands of her tousled ginger hair.  Rolling up onto her knees or all the way over onto her right side was patently impossible.

Crystal found herself in a stringent shrimp-tie (not that Crystal was familiar with bondage terminology, of course).  Her legs were folded in the lotus position, with each thigh lashed to its respective lower-leg, and her crossed ankles were tied together.  Her arms, wrists, hands, thumbs, and fingers were bound in a reverse-prayer box-tie (like Noreen, her beloved employer), and a knotted crotch-rope cleaved her labia and butt.  Finally, taut ropes linked her ankle and leg bonds to her box-tie bonds, forcing her to bend forward at the waist in a severe crunch.  Finally, Crystal was trapped on her back like a turtle.  She could roll to either side, until one of her knees touched the mattress, but heaving herself onto her side or all the way over onto her knees and face was as impossible as it would be pointless and unpleasant.

As the minutes passed and slowly turned into an hour... all four captives squirmed, struggled, and mewled through their stringent gags.  They made zero progress escaping their elaborate and inexplicable bondage.

Time continued to pass, and answers were still not forthcoming.

Noreen's best guess was that she'd been naked, bound, gagged, and squirming on her bed for at least three hours.  Other than her own gagged mewling, she could hear no noise coming from anywhere in the cottage.  She could hear no extraneous noise at all... other the faint, distant surf and the plaintive cry of the occasional seagull.  For all she knew, she was completely alone in the cottage... naked, bound, and gagged.  Where were her daughters?  Where was Crystal?  Where was whoever had done this to her?  She continued squirming and groping for knots... without success.  It remained obvious that she was not going to free herself.

Suddenly, the door opened and a woman entered the bedroom.

"Mrrrf?"

The woman was tall.  Not towering, but from Noreen's perspective on the bed, she looked tall.  Her hair was flaxen-gold and pulled back in tight ponytail that swayed behind her back.  The blonde was dressed in skintight, black, spandex pants with knee-pads and thigh pockets, a black tank-top, and no bra.  From what Noreen could see, the blonde's skin was smooth, firm, and richly tanned.  Her muscles were well-defined, and her figure athletic and curvaceous and feminine.  As for her features... they were hidden behind a matte-black, androgynous mask of hard plastic.

Noreen made the logical assumption that she was staring at her kidnapper.

The masked blonde stood over the bed and stared down at Noreen.  Her eyes were blue, visible through the eye-holes of her expressionless mask.

"Well..." the blonde said finally, "aren't you a treasure."  It was a statement, not a question, and the blonde's voice had been electronically altered, presumably to render it unrecognizable.  "We're going to have a lot of fun," the blonde added, then knelt at the foot of the bed.

The rope tethering Noreen's big-toes to the bedframe went slack, and she realized it had been untied.  The blonde stood, strolled to the right side of the bed, rolled Noreen onto her side, and untied the tethering rope at the nape of her neck.

"Nrrk?"

The blonde ignored Noreen's muffled, garbled question, climbed onto the bed, reclined next to her prisoner, and pulled Noreen's naked, elaborately bound, and well-gagged body into a cozy, full-body embrace, wrapping her spandex-clad legs around Noreen's rope-bound legs.

"Nrrr!"

"Quiet, gorgeous," the blonde chuckled as she ran her black-gloved hands over Noreen's breasts, hips, and stomach.  "Yes... you and I are going to have a lot of fun."

With the distortion of the vocorder-type device (which apparently was built into the mask), the kidnapper's voice was decidedly eerie and sinister.

"Sorry to have left you all alone for all this time," the blonde added as she continuing groping Noreen's helpless body and squeezing her rope-framed breasts.  "We've been busy entertaining your lovely daughters and delightful servant-girl."

Noreen's green eyes popped wide.  "Nrrr!"  'We?'  There are more of them?

"I said quiet," the blonde purred, and gave Noreen's right nipple a firm pinch.

Noreen squeezed her eyes closed, whined through her gag—"Mrrr!"—and shivered in distress.  She then glared at the blonde when she released her nipple, but was prudent enough to keep further well-muffled complaints to herself.

"I'll show you what I've been up to shortly," the blonde buzzed, "but first..."  The blonde reached into her thigh pocket and produced a seven-inch, blunt-tipped cylinder clad in dark-pink latex.

It took a couple of seconds for Noreen to realize her masked kidnapper was holding a torpedo-style vibrator.  Then, her eyes popped wide and her bound body froze and became rigid.

"How about a nice orgasm to lighten the mood?" the blonde inquired, twisted the base of the vibrator to turn it on, then began using the pink torpedo's buzzing tip to tease Noreen's right nipple, the nipple that had just been pinched!

"Mrrrm!" Noreen screamed through her gag, squirmed in her kidnapper's embrace, and pointedly ignored the admonition to keep quiet.  The blonde's spandex-clad legs were still around Noreen's legs and her left arm holding her bound torso close, so Noreen was not only helplessly bound and well-gagged, but under her captor's complete control.  The masked blonde could do whatever she wanted with the quivering vibrator—and what she wanted was to continue teasing Noreen's nipples and breasts!  Then, the blonde slid the tip of the torpedo down Noreen's stomach, tracing a sinusoidal path, and shifted her attention to Noreen's rope-cleaved private parts!

"Nrrrrrr!"

Despite her vigorous but futile resistance, both physical and mental, after several minutes of skillfully orchestrated stimulation, Noreen's body began responding to the buzzing, vibrating torpedo.  She couldn't help herself.  It was a physiological reaction.

Eventually... inevitably... Noreen shuddered and spasms of pure pleasure rippled between her legs, up her spine, and throughout her entire body.  She panted through her gag, her rope-framed breasts heaved, and a patina of sweat glistened on her flushed, captive body. 

Finally, the masked blonde clicked off the vibrator and returned it to her thigh-pocket, but she continued holding Noreen close as the prisoner's breathing slowed and her body returned to normal—meaning the new normal of being a naked bound and gagged captive.

"I'll give you a few minutes," the blonde said quietly (with her eerie, electronically altered voice), "then we'll see what your girls have been up to."

Noreen's eyes popped wide, again.  Caitlyn!  Erika!  Crystal!  "Mrrrpfh!"

Continuing her embrace, the blonde gave her red-haired captive a gentle squeeze.  "Hush.  Rest."

Noreen's heart continued pounding.  Anything even superficially resembling normal rest was impossible.

For the next few minutes the blonde periodically squeezed Noreen's breasts and slid her palm up and down Noreen's stomach, which did not help her relax.  Finally, she released her embrace, then untied Noreen's big-toes, feet, and ankles, as well as the ropes crisscrossing her legs.  Next, she retied Noreen's ankles, this time hobbling them about eight inches apart.  Noreen's upper legs remained bound tightly together, just above her knees and at her mid-thighs.

"Mrrrf!" Noreen complained as the blonde lifted her from the bed and planted her hobbled feet on the floor.  Her kidnapper then looped a rope around her neck and tied a non-compacting knot, improvising a rope collar and leash.

"You have to learn to be quiet when I tell you to be quiet," the blonde purred as she led Noreen from the master bedroom.  "Otherwise, I'll stop being so nice."

Noreen was too frazzled and worried to process what her captor was saying.  She was having enough trouble simply walking, and the blonde was setting a normal pace.  Noreen frantically shambled in the blonde's wake through the cottage.  Finally, they came to a pair of French doors that led out onto the back deck.  Beyond were the vegetation covered dunes, and beyond that, the beach.

It was a beautiful day, with blue skies and a gentle sea breeze, not too hot and not too cold.  All in all, a perfect day... if you weren't the naked, bound, and gagged kidnap victim of a masked blonde.

The blonde in question led Noreen to the edge of the deck and pointed to the stretch of grassy lawn between the cottage and the dunes—and once again Noreen's eyes popped wide.  "MRRRF!"

A few feet from the deck, Crystal was lying on the grass on her back with her arms and legs outstretched in a full spread-eagle!  Each wrist and ankle was bound by something like a dozen tight turns of rope, then tied to a steel ring protruding from the lawn.  Noreen assumed the rings were attached to steel stakes pounded or screwed into the sandy soil.

It was a stringent spread-eagle with no real slack.  The only visible knots were at least three feet from Crystal's fingers or toes, tied to the metal rings themselves.  It was obvious Crystal could barely squirm or even tug on the ropes, much less free herself.  Her muscles were stretched and prominent, including her abdomen, and her breasts somewhat flattened.  Her dark skin glistened in the sun.  She stared up at Noreen with her big brown eyes, and her lower face was covered by the taut, overlapping, horizontal bands of a silver-gray duct-tape gag.

"MRRRRR!"

That was both captives in unison, screaming through their apparently identical tape-gags.

"Isn't she magnificent?" the blonde inquired in an aside to Noreen.  "We could have used one of the many bottles of sunscreen that are lying around," she continued, "but decided to use extra-virgin olive oil from the kitchen.  It gives her brown skin more of a high gloss.  Magnificent.  Don't you agree?"

Noreen continued staring at her naked, bound, and gagged assistant.  Crystal's brown skin, was, indeed "high gloss," gleaming in the bright sun.  She was beautiful, but then, Crystal was always beautiful.  However, escape was what was important, escape for Noreen and all three of her girls.  Unfortunately, regaining their freedom remained as elusive a goal as ever.

"I'd like to do that to one of your daughters as well," the blonde purred in her eerie, altered voice," but even with sunscreen she'd burn to a crisp.  "Your lovely assistant, on the other hand, can stay like that all day... and into the night."  She gave Noreen's rope leash a tug, pulled her close, and draped her right arm over her shoulders.  "Not to worry," she said.  "There are lots of fun things we can do to a pale-skinned redhead."

Again, the masked blonde had used the term "we."  So, she has an accomplice, Noreen thought.  There's at least one more kidnapper to contend with.

Suddenly, there was a sputtering sound... a pause... then several evenly spaced sprinkler-heads popped out of the grass and began watering the lawn.  They were also watering Crystal as well, and in only a few seconds her spreadeagled form was glistening with oil and beaded with water... and soon it was dripping with water.

"Oh, good," the blonde chuckled.  "My partner figured out how to override the sprinkler timer."

Coming from the ground, the water had to be cold.  Noreen didn't know if Crystal had found the initial soaking to be a refreshing.  She was staked out under the hot sun, after all.  But Noreen was sure that eventually the nonstop pelting would become annoying at best.  She turned her gagged head to stare at the blonde.  'My partner,' her kidnapper had said.  There are two of them.

The blonde released Noreen's shoulder but was still holding her rope leash.

"Let's check in with your daughters," she suggested.

Caitlyn!  Erika!  My babies!  Noreen looked back over her shoulder as they crossed the deck.  She could no longer see Crystal, but the sprinklers were continuing their unscheduled soaking of the lawn.  Oh by the way, her reflection in the glass of the doors had revealed that the tape mummifying her lower face was, indeed, silver-gray duct-tape, like Crystal's gag.  The exact nature of her mouth-stuffing remained unresolved.

They reentered the French doors and made their way through the cottage to the lounge overlooking the pool area.  The masked blonde opened yet another set of French doors, they exited the cottage, and strolled (or, in the case of Noreen, shuffled) around the pool.  As they approached the pergola and its flowering clematis vines, Caitlyn and Erika came into view, and—"MRRRPFH!"—they were naked, bound, and gagged!

Noreen was in no way surprised to find her daughter's tied up and helpless, but she was greatly distressed by the way in which they were tied up and helpless.

The Flanagan sisters were centered under the canopy of purple blossoms and green leaves and standing up on their toes and the balls of their feet with their legs together.  Facing each other, they were bent forward at the waist with their arms behind their backs and raised in the classic strappado pose, and were bound at the ankles, just above their knees, their elbows, and their wrists, with the same kind of natural fiber rope binding their mother.  Vertical and diagonal doubled strands traveled from their wrists, elbows, and rope-bound ginger locks up to the timbers of the pergola overhead, enforcing the strappado and preventing the sisters' from dropping their chins and allowing their heads to loll.  They were gagged by overlapping tight layers of silver-gray duct-tape in the same manner as Crystal and Noreen herself.

Being naked and strappado-bound was bad enough, but their kidnappers had made a decidedly cruel addition to the sisters' predicament: their nipples were captured in the spring-loaded jaws of clover-clamps, and the clamps' connecting chains were tied together by a length of heavy-duty braided fishing line!  And the chains and cord were stretched as taut as the proverbial fiddle-string, stretching Caitlyn and Erika's modest breasts into pink cones!  Noreen could tell that her daughters were up on their toes, leaning forward, and straining the limits of their strappado bonds in vain attempts to lessen the pressure on their nipples!

"MRRRPFH!"

This time the gagged protest came from all three Flanagans, Noreen in reaction to her daughters' mirror image strappado-nipple-clamp predicament, and Caitlyn and Erika to their mother's naked, bound, and gagged appearance.

"Beautiful," the blonde sighed, her blue eyes smiling through the eye holes of her sinister black mask.  "And they'll only get more beautiful with every passing hour."  She turned her head to gaze at Noreen.  "Don't you agree?"

"MRRRF!"

Noreen was in a frenzy!  She turned and threw her bound body against their blond captor!  Unfortunately, the attack was as ineffectual as it was ill advised.  Hobbled and knee-bound, kicking was impossible.  And thanks to her reverse-prayer bonds, Noreen's attempt to shove her upper body against her kidnapper and possibly knock her down probably caused more pain to her own shoulders than anything more that a minor annoyance to her target.

"Silly girl," the blonde laughed.  Her left hand took a firm grip on Noreen's rope leash, close to her rope collar, and her right hand clutched Noreen's tousled ginger curls.  "I think you need to cool off."  And with that, she dragged Noreen's squirming, stutter-stepping form to the pool... and gave her a shove!

"MRRRRR!"—Splash!

Noreen's naked, bound, and gagged body plunged into the deep end of the pool.  The water was cool, blue, and bubbly, but given the circumstances, Noreen found it in no way refreshing.  She sank into the depths... then began to slowly drift upwards.  Noreen kicked her bound legs, but wasn't at all sure it helped her rise any faster.  Finally, her head broke the surface, she inhaled through her nose, then shook her hair from her gagged face.  Noreen was an excellent swimmer, so, despite her bonds, she managed to tread water, after a severely rope-restricted fashion.  Anyway, she was managing to keep her head above water.

Back at the pergola, the masked blonde had stepped behind Caitlyn and Erika and was standing between the suffering pair.  As Noreen watched in horror, their kidnapper lifted her gloved right hand, extended her index finger, paused... then tapped the taut cord connecting the girl's nipple-clamps.

"Mrrm!" Noreen complained as she struggled in the water.  Her daughters shivered in their bonds.

"I've gone to a lot of trouble to arrange our time together," the blonde announced, her altered voice loud enough to be heard by Noreen.  "There will be no more pathetic heroics, no further attempts to ruin my fun."  She tapped the cord, again, and the girls winced in response.  The blonde focused her masked gaze on Noreen's bobbing head.  "Understand?"

Noreen nodded as best she could.

"Good," the blonde responded.  "Now... slither and kick your way to the shallow end."

The order was for Noreen, of course, and she set about the arduous, rope-impaired task of swimming the length of the pool, if you could call it swimming.  By the time she arrived at the point where her toes touched the bottom and she could start hopping, the blonde was already waiting at the far end, next to the hot-tub/spa sunk into the deck.  Noreen continued hopping, and eventually reached the steps leading from the pool.  Hop after precarious hop followed, then the blonde grabbed her dripping body and lifted her onto her shoulder.

Dripping wet, face down and facing the pool with her hobbled feet to the front, her kidnapper carried her back into the cottage.  With her sopping hair plastered to her head with tangles clinging across her gagged face, Noreen wasn't able to catch more than a glimpse of her naked, bound, gagged, and suffering daughters back under the pergola before they were through the doors and inside the cottage.

Noreen Flannagan was used to being the one in charge, the one who called all the shots, and was in the depths of despair.  She was the prisoner of a sadistic madwoman!  And her daughters and poor Crystal were her fellow prisoners!  What was the blond fiend going to do to them?  And what about the supposed second kidnapper?  What were they going to do to them?

The immediate answer, at least with respect to the masked blonde, was to carry Noreen back to the master bedroom.  The blonde tossed her onto the bed, then lifted a solid, heavy, wooden, straight-back chair positioned next to the wall near the walk-in closet, and carried it to the center of the room.  Then, without a word, she left the bedroom.

Noreen considered her options.  She could squirm to the edge of the mattress, plant her hobbled feet on the floor, struggle to stand on said hobbled feet, and flee... but what was the point?  She wouldn't make it very far before her captor (or her captor's unseen partner) caught up with her.  And then, some sort of punishment would almost certainly ensue.

The dilemma became moot when the blonde returned.  It was too late for Noreen to make an "escape attempt."  The black-clad kidnapper was carrying a black duffle-bag of ballistic nylon.

Noreen watched as the blonde dropped the bag on the floor next to the chair, zipped it open, and pulled out several coils of hemp rope, identical to her current bonds.  Then, the blonde's mask and blue eyes turned in her direction.

"Time to make you a little less comfortable," Noreen's kidnapper announced.