by Van © 2020
			Chapter 1  FEATURING AN ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATION BY Turk!

Skye Gilroy was in BIG TROUBLE!

To elaborate, Skye was naked, bound, gagged, and locked in a fully equipped torture chamber!  (At least she assumed the door was locked.  If she'd been in charge she would have locked the door.)

Skye's unarguably curvaceous, slender, physically fit, and highly attractive young body was glowing, meaning she was sweating in a most unladylike manner.  This was thanks to the general air temperature and the many small spotlights mounted on a track system overhead, at least a couple of which she strongly suspected were of the infrared variety and directly focused on her bound and gagged self.  It was tragic.  Her gorgeous ginger curls, one of Skye's finest assets, were damp, slightly dark, and somewhat limp.  Also, her fair, freckled skin was flushed.

Her bonds were braided, conditioned hemp rope, and it was high end material, Kinbaku/Shibari-grade.  And Skye knew all about rope, even if she couldn't afford the good stuff.  Most of her collection was of the cotton clothesline variety, and what hemp she did own had been purchased at the local "home improvement" warehouse stores and she'd had to condition it herself.

More details: the ropes were uniformly tight, the pattern elaborate, and were proving to be quite inescapable, despite her best efforts.  All the way down Skye's helpless body, every six inches or so, paired strands yoked her shoulders, pinned her upper-arms to her sides, and lashed her legs together, including her big toes.  Technique-wise, it was a box-tie combined with a ladder-tie combined with a karada (or diamond-hitch) web.

And oh-by-the-way, multiple vertical ropes traveled from the nexus of the box-tie behind her back and up to a large carabiner clipped through a steel ring set in one of the hefty wooden rafters overhead.  The ropes were keeping her semi-suspended, preventing her from collapsing to the floor, but only at a stiff price.  A decidedly insidious element of "bondage predicament" was involved.

Skye was standing upright, balanced on the balls of her feet and toes, and with her heels off the floor.  And while there was sufficient slack for her to come down off her toes and stand with her feet flat on the floor, if she did so, the crotch-rope incorporated in her bonds would tighten significantly, and a cunningly positioned knot would press against her clitoris with great enthusiasm!  Skye had exactly two choices: (1) stand with her heels off the floor and punish her toes, or (2) stand flatfooted and punish her hoo-haw.  It was a cruel dilemma, and she knew that eventually muscle cramps and toe-pain would overrule her pussy's reluctance to ride the crotch-rope and that would be that.

As for Skye's gag, it was a top-of-the-line black leather model of the panel variety.  The main strap buckled at the nape of her neck and twin rows of tiny secondary buckles tightly pressed the panel against her lower face from ear-to-ear and nose-to-chin, and the panel incorporated a rather unusual mouth-filling plug.  It might be described as a large egg of silicon rubber foam combined with a medium density foam top and bottom set of bite-protectors.  Once inserted and allowed to expand, it filled Skye's oral cavity to capacity, more-or-less locked her jaws in place, and together with the tightly buckled panel, made for a stunningly effective gag.

As for the aforementioned torture chamber, the setting of Skye's predicament, it was equipped with all the expected furnishings and accoutrements, such as:

●  A padded steel chair with an open seat and dangling straps to secure its hypothetical occupant at the ankles, thighs, wrists, forearms, waist, chest, neck, and forehead.

●  A St. Andrews Cross, a vertical, X-shaped wooden frame with wrist and ankle cuffs, as well as other straps to secure its victim at the knees, waist, upper torso, and upper arms.

●  A horse, a wedge-shaped wooden box that would require its rider to settle her full weight on its slightly rounded but distressingly narrow horizontal top ridge.

●  An actual rack, a long, narrow table with ankle stocks at the foot and a drum-like winch with a pair of padded wrist cuffs at the head.

●  A pillory, an upright, rectangular wooden frame with a sturdy base.  It would require its standing victim to lean forward with her wrists and neck trapped in its circular openings.

●  A "puppy cage" of shining steel bars with a padded top.  It was approximately 4' x 3' x 3' and could either incarcerate a damsel in its cramped interior or serve as a spanking bench.

●  Steel shop cabinets painted fire engine red, the kind usually used for tool storage, but Skye suspected they held various instruments of torture and not tools.

●  And finally, dangling from various hooks and pegs were steel cuffs, leather straps, bundled coils of rope, whips, crops, floggers, and lengths of chain.

Everything Skye could see was modern, not historically accurate reproductions of medieval devices and restraints.  Also, the chamber was spic and span.  There were no cobwebs in the lighting tracks and chain hoists overhead, dust bunnies in the corners, or dirt on the floor.  The walls were cinder block, painted a flat, light-absorbing black.  The floor was covered in a very attractive checkerboard pattern of Cotswold-limestone-gold and laurel-green vinyl tiles.

All things considered, the torture chamber was clean, stylish, and tasteful.  It let Skye concentrate on her horrific situation and uncertain fate without being offended by the decor.

Skye had been in her naked, bound, gagged, sweaty and worried predicament for at least a full hour... sixty minutes... 3,600 seconds... and her toes and calf muscles were making increasingly cogent arguments that letting her crotch ride the ropes for a while might not be such a terrible idea after all.  She'd never know until she gave it a try.  Right?

And then... Skye heard the sound she'd been waiting for (and dreading): boot heels tapping on tiles.  She turned her head and confirmed that Mistress had returned!  And she was HOT!  And not because the thermostat was set too high and infrared lamps were focused on her body.  Mistress was a stunningly erotic sight.  Also, scary as hell.

The details of Mistress' look included:

 ●  A truly magnificent sleeveless catsuit of gleaming, chamois-thin, black leather, with generous cutouts covered by black mesh fabric.

●  What Skye had decided to call black leather "opera-bracers" covering her arms from wrists to mid-upper-arms.  They were more-or-less opera gloves without gloves.

●  A pair of stiletto-heel knee-boots, also in gleaming black leather.

●  Everything was skintight, hugging Mistress' athletic and very feminine curves.  And the leather was thin enough to reveal a pair of leather pokies and a camel-toe between her legs.

●  Her longish, raven's-wing-black hair was loose about her shoulders, framing her beautiful (and evil), perfectly made-up face.

Skye was willing to concede that all or part of Mistress' costume might be synthetic "pleather," not expensively tanned and cured cowhide, but thought it probably was leather.  Almost certainly leather.  And its gleaming-but-not-shiny black finish and ever-so-slightly pebbled texture went well with Mistress pale, fair, ivory complexion and raven-wing hair.

Yes, Mistress was HOT!  She strolled forward, a devastatingly seductive and wicked-scary smile curling her lips and her pale, cornflower-blue eyes flashing.  She examined Skye's worried, gagged face, sweaty, peachy-pink, freckled body, and tight ropes for several seconds.

Skye gazed back, her green eyes wide and frightened (as much as she tried to suppress the feeling), and her rope-framed breasts heaved as she panted through her flaring nostrils.  Her nipples were erect and throbbing, but Skye assumed that was because they were eager to escape.

"There was no reason to continue gagging you," Mistress purred in her husky, alto, very sexy voice.  "No practical reason, anyway.  This chamber is completely soundproof.  A potential rescuer could stand in the outer basement and hear nothing, no matter now loudly or persistently you might scream for help.  Psychologically, an effective gag can have a devastating effect, taking the feeling of helplessness to a higher level.  You're unable to beg for mercy or do anything to influence unfolding events."  Mistress' smile became a dread-inspiring smirk.  "Except by making whimpering, whining, well-muffled, and highly entertaining noises, of course."

Skye watched as Mistress spun on her boot-heels and (swinging her undeniably sexy hips) sauntered to a row of whips, riding crops, multi-tailed floggers, paddles, and canes hanging from a row of steel hooks.  Skye continued wiggling in her incredible rope bondage, panting and sweating.  Understated sarcasm, voiced or unvoiced, was something of a Skye Gilroy trademark, but at the moment, some pithy, nonchalant observation regarding Mistress' obvious interest in the hanging instruments of torture arrayed before her was not forthcoming.  What was filling Skye's very worried consciousness, however, was the phrase Oh-my-god! running in a continuous loop.

After several seconds, Mistress selected a bundle of twenty or more individual canes with a handle of tightly wrapped braided cord, a sort of cane-flogger!

"There's an art to flagellation," Mistress lectured.  The cane-flogger was in her hands but she continued staring at the hanging implements.  "Any ham-fisted amateur can flail away until her victim's flesh is reduced to hamburger, but it takes training and experience to cause exquisite pain without also causing lasting damage."  She turned back to face Skye.  "A rosy pink blush is to be expected, and with proper aftercare, it will fade quickly, but if the flagellator knows her craft, the agony can still be unbearable... or rather would be unbearable if her victim wasn't bound in place."

Mistress' turned and her smile became even more disquieting and maleficent, something Skye hadn't thought possible.

"And don't worry," Mistress purred as she stepped forward, "the ropes won't get in the way.  You're in expert hands, Skye."

Yes, without a doubt, Skye Gilroy was in BIG TROUBLE!

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Several days earlier, on a Friday evening...

Jodi Gilroy sipped her tea and gazed at the black and white screen of the security camera monitoring the sales floor of Plumeria, the fashionable clothing boutique she co-owned with her best friend, Kanoa Anuhea.  She was in the office, dealing with the endless paperwork that went with a successful retail business.  There was a lull in the action, meaning at the moment there were no customers, and the three shop-girls on duty were standing together having a friendly chat.  The twenty-something employees in question were Skye (Jodi's daughter), Pallavi (Kanoa's daughter), and Harper Wilson.  Jodi focused on the low-resolution image of her darling daughter... and heaved a sigh.

Skye Gilroy's kindergarten report cards had cautioned that while she did, in fact, "play well with others," she also had an alarming propensity to "run with scissors."  The "teachers' remarks" on her elementary through high school report cards had been in a similar vein, only using more sophisticated prose.  That said, Skye had also been rated as hardworking and intelligent, and her grades in all academic subjects had been excellent.  She was, however, recognized as something of a troublemaker.  Nothing serious, mind you, but Skye could be a handful when she wanted to be.  This was not news to her mother.

As for university, the campus police found no cause to open a dossier on Skye's shenanigans, refer her to the disciplinary committee, or to notify her guardian (Jodi).  There were a couple of close calls Jodi heard about that had been let slip by Pallavi, but Skye graduated from Lewis & Clark University (Go Explorers!) with solid grades and a clean record.  Pallavi as well.

And now, sheepskins in hand, Skye and Pallavi had returned to the jobs they'd first taken as a teenagers: clerking at Plumeria.

Oh-by-the-way, Kanoa was practically Skye's co-mother, and Jodi felt the same way about Pallavi.  The co-daughters in question, Skye and Pallavi, basked in the loving affection of their "elderly" maternal units; and by "elderly" the girls were referring to that fact that both their mothers were over forty!  (And Kanoa might even be a tad older!)  The daughters conceded that Jodi and Pallavi kept themselves in excellent shape by means of running, swimming, and yoga, but they were getting up there in years.  Jodi and Kanoa thought the girls' teasing about their "advanced age" was very cute and only pretended to be annoyed.

Anyway, in high school Skye and Pallavi had started helping out at the store, providing excellent customer service to Plumeria's many regular customers.  And now, as newly minted college grads, the girls' responsibilities had expanded.  They didn't just wait on customers, but pitched in on the ordering, receiving, and bookkeeping... but Pallavi more so than Skye.  Skye liked the sales floor... and that was the source of Jodi's problem.  Skye was happy, but she lacked ambition.  That was her mother's opinion, anyway.  And then there was the other thing.

Pallavi and Skye had been inseparable playmates since they were both running with scissors.  In fact, they were BFFs, and while Skye had grown up to be a magnificent redhead with freckles (like her mom), Pallavi had become a multiracial goddess (like her Hawaii-born mom).  Pallavi topped off at 5' 3½" (slightly taller than Skye's petite 5' 2"), and she had a killer body (in both Skye's and their mothers' objective opinions), as well as long, straight hair with a propensity to streak and lighten from its natural black when exposed to the sun.  But while Skye's boobs had blossomed into pert adorableness, Pallavi's breasts had had the discourtesy to keep growing into C-cup, and then D-cup territory.  That was Skye's disgruntled opinion, anyway, which Jodi and Kanoa found to be adorable and amusing.

And then there was Harper Wilson, another clerk at Plumeria.  Skye, Pallavi, and Harper had all been born within days of each other, but Skye and Pallavi had only met Harper their junior year in high school when Harper's family moved into town.  Harper was a very pretty blonde (dark-blond, actually) who shared Skye's tendency to freckle.  The three clerks hit it off immediately and soon became fast friends.  In fact, they became an inseparable trio, and this continued after all three went off to Lewis & Clark.  That meant Harper also found herself susceptible to Skye's "hobby," the main cause of Skye's worry and discontent.

Okay, enough pussyfooting around.  Skye was into bondage!

At an early age, the ginger-haired terror had discovered she very much enjoyed tying people up, mostly of the female persuasion, but more than a few of her male playmates had spent a lazy summer afternoon squirming in tight cotton clothesline and gagged with a couple of cotton handkerchiefs.  Young Skye had delighted in pretending to be a Dread Pirate, Barbarian Shield Maiden, International Criminal Genius, Renouned Adventuress and Captain of her very own private Airship/Submarine (it could both fly and submerge), Notorious Bandit Queen, etc., etc., and regularly cut a swath through the neighborhood, leaving bound and gagged playmates in her wake.

Skye got caught many times binding and gagging her little friends, but the neighborhood moms' consensus was that girls-will-be-girls and Skye Gilroy was actually a very nice youngster (when she remembered to untie her "victims" so they could go home for supper).

And on a less innocent, less recreational level, as Skye and Pallavi blossomed into adolescence, Jodi suspected Skye's fascination with knot-tying had taken things to a more personal level.

They never got caught, meaning on the countless times Skye and Pallavi had sleepovers, when Skye tied up her BFF and they cuddled together, their moms didn't notice (officially).  A little casual smooching and fondling had happened, but their girlish games were mainly about the tying and the helplessness and didn't seem to constitute an actual romance.  Anyway, Skye and Pallavi never got caught doing explicitly naughty things together.  And so, thankfully, their mothers didn't suspect a thing (as far as the girls knew).

Oh-by-the-way, as far as Jodi was aware, Skye was always the one that did the tying.  Skye never got tied up herself.  Pallavi wasn't submissive (not by the formal definition of the word), but she consistently allowed herself to be Skye's practice dummy.  And once the final knot was tied, Pallavi always did her very best to escape.  And if a gag was involved, she did her best to summon help (quietly).  Thus far, she'd failed, every time, meaning she neither escaped nor succeeded in summoning rescue.

Skye was dedicated to her "hobby," diligently studied her "secret library" of reference books, and repeatedly viewed the best of the how-to videos available on the internet.  Her skills continued to improve, and Pallavi's odds of wiggling out of her ropes decreased exponentially.  Nonetheless... Palavi did her best.  It was expected.  A damsel-in-distress who didn't try to escape wasn't holding up her end of the bargain.

Anyway, Harper joined the "festivities," which continued when they all went off to Lewis & Clark.  And although Harper lacked Skye and Pallavi's long history and thus hadn't achieved unqualified BFF status (yet), the three students/shopgirls were a solid trio.

Jodi and Kanoa knew all of that, but both agreed their daughters were free to live their own lives, as long as things didn't get out of control.  (And besides, Jodi and Kanoa had their own secrets to keep.)
.
Jodi heaved another sigh, drank the last of her tea, and returned to reconciling Invoices Received with Outstanding Orders.

Meanwhile, out on the Plumeria sales floor...

Harper pouted and frowned at her two friends.  "No!" she stated emphatically.  "Out of the question.  Not gonna happen.  No way.  No how."

"No one will know you're there," Skye pointed out.

"No one will even suspect," Pallavi agreed, smiling and nodding.

"That's beside the point," Harper huffed.  "I don't want to be there, and certainly not like that."

"It'll be an adventure," Skye argued.

Harper remained unconvinced.  "I've got all the adventure I require at the moment, thank-you-very-much."

Skye and Pallavi exchanged smiles, then refocused on Harper.  "Too much is never enough," they quoted in unison, then giggled.

"Hillarious," Harper murmured, and almost succeeded in suppressing the smile curling her lips.

Skye changed tactics.  "You know you want to," she purred, nudging Harper's ribs with her elbow.

"Stop!" Harper objected.  "No, I don't."

"She wants to," Pallavi told her BFF.  "She's playing hard-to-get 'cause that's what kidnap victims are supposed to do."

"You're delusional," Harper retorted.

"Enough of this nonsense," Skye huffed.  "We have your sister, and if you don't want something truly horrible to happen to her, you'll do as we say."

Harper rolled her eyes.  "I don't have a sister," she noted.

Pallavi was also smiling.  "That doesn't mean you'd allow something terrible to happen to her, right?  And I'm talkin' Jigsaw-level, cruel and unusual, damsel-in-distress peril.  Really nasty stuff."

"Hypothetically," Skye added.

Harper shifted her gaze from Pallavi... to Skye... and back.  "Okay," she conceded, "point taken... hypothetically."  And with that, she accepted her impending doom.

The suburban home of Jodi Gilroy and her lovely daughter was a charming, suburban Arts & Crafts cottage painted in very pretty earth-tones of moss-green and cedar-red.  It wasn't huge.  In fact, it was arguably cozy, but it had a generous backyard bordered on all sides by dense, tall, evergreen hedges that afforded total privacy.  The venue was perfect for alfresco yoga and nude sunbathing, activities both mother and daughter engaged in on a regular basis—season and weather permitting, of course—and with regularly replenished sunscreen to strike the proper balance between UV protection and freckle cultivation.

The house also had a full, unfinished basement with walls and floor of poured and transparently sealed concrete.  A few widely spaced window-wells set high in three of the four walls struggled to provide at least a little natural light during daylight hours, and four regularly spaced four-inch support columns of gray-painted steel helped support the weight of the cottage.  There were two means of ingress/egress: (1) a set of wooden stairs against the window-less wall and leading up-and-down and to-and-from the kitchen; and (2) a set of concrete steps in the opposite wall leading up to the underside of a solidly bolted and padlocked bulkhead door of thick steel.  The usual household utilities and laundry facilities were grouped together near the kitchen stairs, and a pair of steel shelves held a dozen or so cardboard boxes and plastic storage tubs.  The Gilroys were anything but hoarders, which meant there was plenty of room in the rest of the basement for all sorts of nefarious activities.

Speaking of which...

Skye's mom was out of town for the weekend, visiting a spa-resort she patronized on a semi-regular basis.  That meant there would be zero chance of parental discovery, the Gilroy's Cozy Cottage would be a suitable venue for Skye to do horrible things to poor Harper, and Pallavi wouldn't get in trouble for watching.  The girls trooped down the kitchen stairs, crossed the basement, and stood in a group, more-or-less in the center.

"Okay, strip," Skye ordered, smiling brightly at Harper.

Harper did not smile back.  "It's cold down here," she observed.  That was a bit of an exaggeration, of course, but damsels in the process of being kidnapped are supposed to complain.

Pallavi strolled to an electric space-heater tucked under the stairs, turned it on, and returned.  "Not for long," she grinned.  The trio could just hear the heater's very quiet fan and its heating elements were already beginning to glow bright orange.

All three girls were wearing sneakers, anklets, jeans, tank-tops or t-shirts, blouses, and the usual bras and panties; but in the case of Harper, not for long.  She glowered at Skye and Pallavi for several long seconds... who continued smiling back... then heaved an exasperated sigh and began unbuttoning her blouse.

Soon, all of Harper's clothing were in a neatly folded stack resting on the seat of an old wooden straight-back chair.  She was naked, as ordered.  All three of the twenty-something youngsters were in excellent condition, by the way, but while Skye's extensive freckle collection was evenly distributed thanks to her nude sunbathing habit, Harper's was not.  Harper had tan lines.  Triangular, pale, and totally freckle-free bra cup and bikini regions contrasted with her otherwise healthy, dappled tan.

"Excellent," Skye smiled, then pointed to one of the steel support columns.  "There," she ordered, then turned, strolled to one of the shelves, and returned with a bulging duffel-style gym-bag of black nylon ballistic cloth.  Harper hadn't moved.  She was still glowering and was still naked.  "Well?" Skye demanded.

Harper heaved another sigh, then stomped (padded) to the indicated column, turned, placed her back and butt against said column, and resumed glowering.

Skye unzipped her bag, pulled out a modest coil of soft, well-conditioned, ¼", white cotton clothesline, released its retaining hitch, and prepared it for use by doubling it and finding the center.  She'd already decided it was a post-tie sort of evening, so in only a few minutes, Harper was standing against the cool steel with her wrists crossed and bound behind the column.  And that was far from all.  Neat, tight, horizontal bands of clothesline bound Harper to the column above and below her breasts, her waist, her thighs, above and below her knees, her shins, and her ankles.  Everything was tight enough to dimple her skin, just a little, cinched between her body, limbs, and/or the column, and there were no knots anywhere near her groping, fluttering fingers.  Harper was tied up.

"That should hold you," Skye remarked (gloated) as she unzipped one of the gym-bag's side pockets and pulled out a 2"-wide roll of white medical tape and a pair of bandage scissors.

Harper watched with sullen resignation as Skye ripped and snipped three seven-inch strips of tape and tacked them by one corner to the column, somewhere above her head.  She locked eyes with her "kidnapper."

 Skye smiled and held out her right hand, palm up.  "Panties," she purred.

Pallavi scurried to the chair holding Harper's clothes, returned with the prisoner-of-the post's neatly folded panties, and dropped them onto Skye's palm.

Harper sighed as she watched Skye crumple her undies into a tight wad.  "You know I hate it when you—m'rrrpfh!"

Skye had stuffed the silky lump into Harper's mouth, mid-sentence.  "Did I ask for any famous last words?" she drawled.  Her left palm was across Harper's stuffed mouth, preventing her from spitting out the panties and continuing her thought.  "Hair," Skye ordered.

Still smiling, Pallavi stepped behind the column, reached around from both sides, gathered Harper's dark-blond hair atop her head, and held it there.

Skye applied the three strips of tape, tightly covering Harper's lips, mouth, and lower face from ear-to-ear and nose-to-chin, smoothing the tape to make sure the adhesive had a firm grip.

Pallavi released Harper's hair.  It fell in a tousled tangle, but both of her alleged friends used their fingers as combs to set things right and soon it framed her beautiful, tape-gagged, and annoyed face.

"Mrrrfff!" Harper complained, squirming in her tight bonds for added emphasis.  She was now tied up and gagged.

Pallavi stood next to her BFF.  It was a shared gloat.  "Good job," she grinned.

Skye shrugged.  "It's a start."

Pallavi glanced down at the open gym-bag.  It still contained several bundles of neatly coiled clothesline.  "You're gonna tie her up some more?"

Skye's smile turned mischievous, an expression Pallavi recognized all too well.  "Don't be ridiculous," she chuckled, then looked her BFF up and down, from her now slight worried but still smiling face... to her sneaker-clad feet... and back again.  "Strip," she ordered.

Pallavi's eyes widened and her smile faltered.  "Huh?"

"You heard me," Skye purred, still smiling (smugly).

Pallavi stared at her BFF for several seconds... then heaved a sigh, pouted, and began unbuttoning her blouse.

Meanwhile, back at the column, above her tight, well-adhered, and quite effective tape-gag, Harper's eyes were crinkled in a happy smile.