by Van ©2014
		Chapter 4

Day three of class started with Kate diverging from the established routine in three ways.  (1) She tied up all four students, but not to their posts.  (2) She used a different technique for each student.  (3) She tied Jane last, instead of first.

Maura was bound in a box-tie with the shoulder-harness option.  That is, instead of using an under-the-armpits-and-behind-the neck pass to cinch and anchor the horizontal, upper-arm pinning bands, Kate passed the rope across Maura's right shoulder from back to front, took a turn under the lower horizontal ropes and between Maura's breasts, then up and back across her left shoulder to the nexus of rope at the rear.  She pulled out the slack and the lower ropes rose slightly, pinching Maura's boobs between the two horizontal bands.  It was in no way extreme, of course, and didn't impair Maura's circulation.  The fleshy globes retained their proper pinkish-tan hue.

Jane noted that Maura had gained a somewhat more uniform tan during their time at the Colony.  They all had, with the exception of Susie, who had arrived with an allover tan.  Ainsley was next, with her fair skin nearly the same slightly pink shade of white from head to toe.  Then came Maura, with her tan lines nearly faded to nothing.  She was no beach bunny, but did have more color.  Jane's tan-lines were still the most noticeable.  She'd enjoyed sunbathing on the roof of whatever building she'd lived in since she was a teenager, and being in the city, had always worn a string bikini,  Her breasts and pubic triangle had further to go to catchup with the rest of her body.

Anyway, Maura's breasts were squeezed, but not by much—and Jane realized Maura was smiling at her as she stared—meaning observed with clinical interest—her BFF's rope-compressed boobs.  Jane covered her reaction to being caught leering quite well, if you didn't count the blush coloring her cheeks.

Susie was next, and Kate employed the reverse-prayer hands tie.  She tied a "limb-loop" around Susie's left wrist, wound a figure-eight harness around her body, crossing the ropes just above Susie's breasts, then tied a second limb-loop around her right wrist.  Finally, with her hands pressed palm-to-palm behind her back and against her spine, Kate took tight turns around Susie's hands and thumbs, wrapped the remaining rope around the harness ropes, then tied the final knot between her shoulder blades and well away from her already useless fingers.

Next it was Ainsley's turn.  Kate used the carrying-the-rifle technique, binding Ainsley's wrists behind her back, but with her right arm raised.  She tied a limb-loop around Ainsley's right wrist, then took turns around her right upper arm.  She then stretched the rope down and tied a limb-loop around Ainsley's left wrist, took turns around her left upper arm, wrapped the remaining rope around the wrist-to-wrist rope run, and tied the final knot on the far side of Ainsley's right hand.  It was as if the fair-skinned blonde was trying to scratch her back by reaching up and down with her right hand and back and up with her left.  Her right and left index and middle fingers could just touch each other, and all her fingers were free to flutter and grope, but she could untie nothing.

That left Jane, and true to her vindictive and bitchy nature (in Jane's crabby opinion) Kate saved the best for last.  She tied Jane's wrists together in front, raised her hands and pulled her wrists behind her head, then took two tight turn around both of Jane's upper arms and behind her head.  She anchored the bondage with a chest harness that crisscrossed between her breasts, then tied the key knot somewhere in back, above Jane's wrist bonds.  Bitch!

All of the students had watched as the others were rendered helpless.  After all, they were there to learn (supposedly), but in Jane's opinion, Maura took a special interest in her case, meaning Jane's case.  She couldn't put her finger on anything specific.  Maura was smiling, but her BFF was always smiling, except when she wasn't, and there was nothing leering, flirtatious, or salacious about her expression as she watched the conditioned hemp tighten around Jane's body and dimple her flesh, it was just... something.  Jane felt a blush color her cheeks, again, and noticed her nipples were slightly more prominent that usual.  The arms raised and pulled back pose had lifted and flattened her boobs, slightly, and they were compressed by the chest harness, a little, but she didn't know why that should make her nipples point.  None of the others' nipples were at attention—not that Jane's were all that erect.  She confirmed this with casual glances in her fellow students' directions as she tugged on her bonds, testing Kate's handiwork.  She left Maura for last, and—Dammit!—she was sure Maura noticed her inspecting her boobs.  This did nothing to alleviate Jane's blush.

Mistress appeared at last, saving Jane from further embarrassment, and the morning instruction began.

With Kate as her visual aid, Mistress demonstrated the ladder and diamond-hitch methods of binding torsos and limbs, and how they could be applied to folded legs or arms, to bind legs or arms together, and in concert, to make intricate and reliably inescapable patterns.  She also demonstrated various knots, turns, and hitches, as well as "frictions," methods by which tension could be maintained in a bondage pattern to "hold your place" while a different part of the subject's anatomy was dealt with.

It was a lot of information, but it was obvious that Mistress was an experienced teacher.  Jane was sure she'd absorbed most if not all of the lesson.

The session ended with an hour of meditation for the students and their instructors.  The students settled into their customary lotus or cross-legged positions, Kate remained in the contorted ball of limbs and body that had been Mistress' final demonstration, and Mistress settled into a full lotus.

Jane found she was getting better at entering something that at least resembled a trance state, especially when she kept her eyes closed and refrained from stealing glances at Maura's naked, bound, and helpless body to make sure her BFF was okay.  Yes, Jane had decided she was getting better at not worrying about how Maura was handling all this naked bondage stuff.  There was no other explanation.

Anyway, Jane found she could meditate, but it was still difficult.

Afternoon class began with Kate binding all four students in tight box-ties with their legs crossed, their shins and thighs lashed together, and their bound ankles linked to their upper bonds, pulling each of them into a mild crunch.

Mistress made her entrance and the lecture began.  First off, Mistress recapped what she'd already taught them about simple meditation.  Then, she discussed how safe and properly applied bondage could be used as a harmless enhancement to the meditative experience.

Yogis of the more ascetic traditions strove to deny and ignore the body in order to attain spiritual awakening.  They trained themselves to rise above discomfort and pain, to endure the unendurable, and to transcend the physical world.  In that context, some argued that "Shibari Meditation" was a form of cheating.  At the very least, if the student is inescapably bound, the voluntary aspect of denial of the body is compromised.  Mistress and her fellow adherents to the use of the Art of Tight Binding argued that the ropes channelized the experience.  Yes, they added an element of coercion, but the true challenge had always been internal, and it remained so.  The ropes freed the mind and spirit to search for the blessed state.

This led to a discussion of suffering and desire, the impediments to grace.

Japanese bondage techniques had evolved as means for police officials to restrain bandits and other criminals for transport to trial.  If a long journey was involved, the law required suspected miscreants to be transferred from the custody of one prefecture to another until they reached the appropriate court.  Often, the suspect would be untied at the border and retied in the signature style of the next group of officers.  Organized bandits studied police methods, and there was a continuing competition between the criminals and the law, with the prize for the captured criminals being escape and freedom.  The darkest aspect of Japanese methods was their use as torture.  Criminals might be sentenced to hours or days of tight bondage in contorted positions.

In any case, and as with all aspects of Japanese culture, aesthetics were important, and binding techniques retained their utility while they evolved into a recognized art.

Kinbaku or Shibari could cause suffering, either deliberately or by misuse, thus the emphasis on safety and the proper application of the ropes.  In any case, once simple immobility was mastered as an enhancement to meditation, more extreme and difficult to endure methods of binding could be explored.  Once the mind was trained to ignore rope-enforced immobility, bindings that others would consider torture could be ignored as well, just as a trained yogi might recline on a bed of needle-sharp spikes without discomfort.

Mistress emphasized that the present course was basic, and no truly extreme methods would be employed.  Her intent was to present her students with a path.  Further instruction was required if they wished to continue their journeys on that path.

And that brought Mistress to the topic of desire.

Just as pain and discomfort were challenges to be overcome, so was pleasure, especially erotic pleasure.

While delivering her lecture, Mistress had been binding Kate.  She'd used a combination reverse-prayer and box-tie to restrain her assistant's fingers, hands, and wrists against her spine and to pin her upper-arms to her sides.  Then, in her first use of bamboo in the course, she bound Kate in a full split with her ankles lashed to opposite ends of a long pole and ladder-hitches binding her legs to the pole every few inches.  Kate's legs were now splayed as widely as was physically possible, and they would stay that way until she was released by her Mistress.

The students watched in wide-eyed wonder as Mistress strolled to one of the cabinets and returned with a wand-style vibrator.  It was the size of a large flashlight and was cordless, powered by internal batteries.  The business end was the size and shape of a doorknob, and a sliding switch allowed for an escalating intensity of stimulation.

Jane stared as Mistress clicked the wand to its lowest setting, gently placed the knob against Kate's labia, and pressed.

Kate's reaction was—no reaction.

Mistress was babbling about overcoming human frailty and striving for spiritual... something-or-other, but Jane's attention was on Kate, and the vibrator, and Kate's pussy.  And Jane noticed that Maura was also staring.  They were all staring.  The sight of Mistress buzzing Kaye's pussy was... mesmerizing.  Instructive?  Maybe for Maura, maybe for Susie, less so for Ainsley, but for Jane, it was... mesmerizing.  And it was curious how watching somebody get her pussy vibrated could cause sympathetic ripples in ones own pussy.  Jane squirmed as a shiver ran between her legs and up her spine.  Yes... curious.

Jane noticed that Maura's gaze had shifted to herself, to Jane, and her blush returned.  Maura's smile was... knowing... maybe.  Jane heaved a sigh and returned her attention to Mistress' lecture, but she was still finding it difficult to concentrate.

The final hour of class was another meditation session with the four students bound as they had been all afternoon and Kate continuing to endure (and ignore) the vibrator.  Mistress' assistant was still bound with her legs in a full split and lashed to the bamboo pole, but now the wand's buzzing knob was lashed against her labia by a web of hemp cord.

Jane found entering a proper meditative trance to be most difficult, but she succeeded after something like half an hour.

The non-vegan dinner special was salmon cakes with chili-mayonnaise sauce, roasted vegetables, garden salad, and fry-bread biscuits.  The vegan specialty was a heaping portion of Jane-didn't-care.

After dinner, Susie and Ainsley retired to their cabin.  The group had agreed that the Canadian cop and American crime-tech would try hacking the Colony's IT suite to see what, if anything, they could find that linked Mistress and Kate to the Boston robberies.  Illegal?  In a word, yes, but they'd agreed that they had to try something, and the detectives agreed that simply flashing their badges and confronting their teacher and her assistant was a desperate move sure to lead nowhere.  Susie wasn't a world class hacker, but she was pretty good.  Unless she ran into sophisticated encryption and/or multiple firewalls, they ought to learn something.  In any case, Susie had brought her laptop and a folder full of the required software tools was on its hard drive, so she agreed to try.  Ainsley would supervise.

Maura and Jane peeled off at the path to cottage #17 while Susie and Ainsley continued on.  They entered their cottage and Susie made a beeline for the notebook.  She was eager to get started.  So far, her biggest contribution to the investigation had been her knowledge of and contacts in the naturalist scene.  The only problem was... the homework.

Ainsley could tell something was wrong.  Susie kept shifting her attention between the laptop and her course notebook.  Ainsley smiled.  "What?"

Susie leaned back in her chair and heaved a sad sigh.  "I can't concentrate when our homework isn't finished."

"The reading won't take that long," Ainsley chuckled.

Susie shook her head.  "Not the reading.  It's your turn to tie me up."  She nodded at the laptop screen.  "This could take hours."

Ainsley shrugged.  "So, we blow it off—the bondage, I mean."

"No, that isn't right," Susie sighed.  "We should just do it and get it over with.  I won't be able to fully concentrate, otherwise.  Go get the rope and—"

"Tie me up," Ainsley suggested.  "Then you'll be free to hack."

"But it's your turn to tie me," Susie objected.

Ainsley smiled.  "Let me get this straight.  Legally questionable hacking doesn't bother you in the least, but not following every teeny-tiny detail of a homework assignment is a problem?"

Susie gazed at the grinning Detective Constable.  Tying her up two nights in a row was an attractive (and naughty) idea.  "If asked, I suppose we could say we misread the instructions."

Ainsley went to the pile of six neatly bundled coils of rope resting on the seat of one of the easy chairs and returned with two.  "I haven't read the assignment."

Susie smiled.  "I have," she said as she closed her laptop.  She stood, took the coils from Ainsley, and pointed at the carpet.  "Kneel, please."

Jane stood with feet apart and her arms folded beneath her breasts, favoring her BFF with a dubious expression.  "Any way we want?  That's the assignment?"

Maura nodded, her lips curled in a rather coy smile.  "Any way I want, Jane.  It's my turn to bind you."

Jane rolled her eyes.  "Have you considered seeking help for your problem?"

"What problem?" Maura giggled.

"Your OCD," Jane huffed.  "The course is our cover.  We don't have to do the homework at all."

Still smiling, Maura shook her head.  "No, in order to maintain our cover, we have to do all our reading and complete all our homework assignments with meticulous attention to detail."

Jane rolled her eyes, again.  "The things I put up with for you," she sighed, then sat on the floor.  "Do your worst," she muttered.

Maura knelt before Jane and gathered her frowning BFF's hands in front.  She already had a coil of rope doubled, looped, and ready for use.  "I was intrigued by the way Kate tied you this morning.  Do you mind?"  She'd already started binding Jane's wrists.

"Knock yourself out," Jane huffed.

Maura lifted Jane's bound hands, pulled them behind her head, and completed the rest of the behind-head two-hand tie with surprising skill, considering her novice status as a Shibari practitioner.  The tie's chest harness gently squeezed Jane's breasts together, just a little, and the horizontal bands were neat and uniformly tight.  Next, Maura took another coil of rope and tied Jane's folded legs, binding her crossed ankles and lashing her shins to her thighs.  She then took a third coil and tied a diamond-pattern harness around Jane's torso.  This required some lifting, rolling, and turning of Jane's already helpless body on her part, but she managed.

"There's no need to get carried away," Jane huffed as the the ropes tightened, the diamonds opened up, and the strands dimpled her tan skin.

"A job worth doing is worth doing well," Maura stated.  Rather than end the diamond-harness with a between-the-legs crotch-rope that would have cleaved both Jane's labia and her butt-crack, she looped the rope around Jane's upper thighs and leg bonds and left her study-mate's crotch rope-free.

There were varying lengths of free ends remaining from all three coils of rope, and Maura used them to link Jane's arm, torso, and leg bonds into a unified whole.  The final knots were tied well away from Jane's fluttering fingers.

"There," Maura said, easing Jane onto her back.  "That should hold you."

Jane glowered at her grinning BFF.  "No, ya think?"  She watched as Maura folded one of the Colony's saffron-orange scarves into a narrow bandage, then crumpled a second scarf into a tight wad.  "Mau-raaa," she whined.  "C'mon!  A gag?  Mrrrrfh!"

Smiling sweetly, Maura had stuffed the second scarf into Jane's mouth and was tying the first as a tight cleave-gag.  Jane's raised arms complicated matters a little, but only a little.

Jane growled through her gag as the cleaving scarf tightened.  "Mrrpfh!"

"That should do it," Maura giggled, smiling down at her naked, bound, gagged, and very dour BFF.

Jane, in turn, stared the proverbial daggers at her naked, smiling study-mate and captor.

Just then, there was a knock at the cottage door.

"Mrrrf?" Jane inquired.

"Come in!" Maura called.

The door opened and a grinning Penny, burdened with her usual towels, mat, and bottle of massage oil, entered the cottage.

"Perfect timing," Maura chuckled.

Jane decided she had more than enough eye-daggers to perforate two naked women.

"Not really," Penny purred as she strolled to the center of the room, placed the towels and oil to one side, and spread her mat on the carpet next to Jane.  "I was watching through the window."

"You are a puckish scamp, aren't you?" Maura giggled.

"Uh, I guess so," Penny drawled.  "Here, help me get her on the mat."

Jane squirmed and complained as Penny and Maura lifted her and placed her on her back on the mat, but she didn't really try and impede the process.  "Mrrrpfh."  It was infuriating being treated like a sack of potatoes.

"Why don't you cradle her head," Penny suggested.

"All right."  Maura sat cross-legged at the head of the mat.  Then, with Penny's assistance, she eased Jane's head and shoulders onto her lap.

Jane continued expending eye-daggers at a prodigious rate.  She shifted her deadly gaze from her smiling BFF to the tiny, grinning masseuse.  Penny was kneeling at her side and was busily oiling her hands, rubbing them together like a naked, pink racoon.  It was obvious what was about to happen.  Jane concentrated her hostile stare on Maura.  It was also obvious who was behind this unfolding outrage.

"Don't look at me like that, Jane," Maura giggled.  "This will help you relax."

"Yeah," Penny agreed.  "Relax."  She leaned close and began massaging Jane's upper arms and armpits, her glistening hands gliding over the ropes dimpling Jane's biceps, shoulders, and upper torso as required.  "So... how was today's class?"

"Oh, very instructive," Maura responded, "especially the afternoon session."

Dr. Smartypants proceeded to deliver a recap of Mistress' lecture, with special emphasis on the topic of overcoming desire and the use of erotic stimulation as a meditative challenge.

All the while, Penny's oily hands were gliding over Jane's helpless body and she continued squirming and complaining—either that or she was writhing and moaning.  In any case, she'd used up the last of her daggers and her eyes were now closed.  That way she didn't have to stare at her BFF's smiling face and looming breasts.  Just you wait, Jane thought.  She was gonna get even with Maura if it was the last thing she did.

The massage continued... and reached the area between Jane's legs... her lower tummy and upper thighs... and her inner thighs.  And all the while Maura droned on about Mistress' lecture.  She also began naming the various muscles and muscle groups Penny was massaging.  Actually, Dr. Isles and Penny-the-trained-masseuse were comparing notes.  The "puckish scamp," as Maura had put it, already had a fully developed practical and academic knowledge of human anatomy.

And as for Jane relaxing?  That didn't happen.

Susie found her way past the Colony's firewall pretty quickly and found Giselle's and Kate's subdirectories.  The overwhelming bulk of the business records and e-mail correspondence were in Kate's folders, as expected.  The gossip about her running the business end of the course appeared to be true.  Other than that, she found nothing suspicious.

"Now this is interesting," Susie muttered under her breath.  She was taking a closer look at Kate's files for the dates when they took the course to Boston area spas, the dates correlating with the Bondage Burglar robberies, and she noticed something interesting.  A wholesale supplier in Boston was the source of the conditioned hemp rope Giselle used for her course, and early in each visit to the Boston area, Kate placed a bulk order for new rope, but at the same time, she sold a roughly corresponding quantity of used rope to an unnamed address on Mystic Avenue.  Obviously, someone ought to look into that.

Maybe Giselle and Kate's weren't involved in the burglaries at all, other than as unknowing suppliers of the rope used to bind the victims.  There was still the "coincidence" of the victims all visiting spas when Giselle and Kate were in town, but maybe the link was just that, a coincidence.  "Yesssss," Susie purred, staring at the screen.  She liked the idea of Giselle and Kate being innocent, but knew she had to keep an open mind.  Still, it made sense.  Mistress and her assistant didn't seem like criminals, not to Susie Chang, anyway.

Susie e-mailed the new information to Detective Sergeant Korsak, Jane's immediate superior, then gracefully retreated from the Colony's system and shutdown her laptop. She then turned in her chair, focused on her cottage-mate and study-buddy, and smiled.

Ainsley was exactly as Susie had left her, her arms folded behind her back and pinned to her sides in a crossed-wrists box-tie, her legs together and lashed from ankles to waist in a running ladder-tie with each horizontal band cinched between her legs.  Also, Susie had used a third coil of rope to link Ainsley's upper body and ankle bonds and pull her into a loose but very business-like hogtie.  Actually, thanks to the ladder-tie technique she'd used to bind Ainsley's legs, the ropes were all uniformly tight; but the helpless Detective Constable's body was bent in a graceful bow, rather than a compact hogtie.  In a final flourish, Susie had used up the free ends of the bow-hogtie rope by taking two doubled loops around Ainsley's narrow waist, then anchoring the arrangement with a pass through her crotch and back to her wrists.  A pair of strands cleaved Ainsley's labia and butt-crack, of course, but they weren't all that tight... not if she didn't struggle, anyway.

Susie grinned.  Okay, the crotch rope was totally tight.  It was also completely unnecessary, but she really liked the way it added tension to the pose, and Ainsley hadn't objected.  Of course, Susie had already stuffed Ainsley's mouth with one scarf, cleave-gagged her with a second, and blindfolded her with a third before tying the crotch-rope, but Ainsley hadn't objected.

At least, that was Susie's story, and she was sticking to it.  Ainsley was balanced on her thighs, stomach, and mildly squashed breasts, with all of the ropes dimpling her fair skin and enforcing the bow-like pose uniformly taut.  Susie sighed.  She's beautiful, breathtakingly beautiful.

Susie glanced at her travel clock and realized Ainsley's hour of meditation, as prescribed by the homework assignment, had already expired.  In fact, the bound, gagged, and blindfolded blonde was approaching an hour and a half of rope-enforced immobility.

Susie's smile turned wicked.  She lifted and folded her legs, hugging them to her body as she rested her chin on her knees, and gazed at Ainsley's helpless form.  As if of its own accord, her right hand slid down her shins to her crotch, and began slowly, gently sliding its fingers and palm up and down her labia.  Susie decided to wait until the full hour and a half had elapsed before releasing her study-mate.  It fit her sense of proportion, and she was sure Ainsley wouldn't mind.

Ainsley was furious!  Or not.  She wasn't really sure what she was feeling.

She knew she'd let Susie do this to her.  Granted, once she was box-tied, technically she'd been helpless, but all she would have had to do was tell the nerdy American crime-tech to "Knock it off, eh?" and she would have.  Even after Susie had gagged her and added the totally unnecessary blindfold, Ainsley could have made her displeasure abundantly clear.  And as for the crotch-rope...

Obviously, Susie was enjoying herself, and while the ropes were tight and inescapable and the crotch-rope was... intimate... none of the bondage Susie had perpetrated on Ainsley's unsuspecting self was all that excessive.  She could take it, and as Nietzsche had put it, "What does not kill us..."

Also, the course was interesting, both academically and practically.  That is, she found the feeling of being simultaneously helpless and safe to be new and unexpectedly intense.  It would take time to sort out exactly what she found so fascinating about tying up naked women and being tied up by naked women.  It was... complicated.

Ainsley fought the urge to squirm and fidget and roll onto her side.  She also fought the urge to doze off.  She knew she was supposed to be meditating, and for a while there, she had; but now she wanted to think—think about the case, and the course, and what she had learned so far, both about their supposed suspects and from Mistress' curriculum—and most especially she wanted to think about tomorrow night, when it would be her turn to do the binding and Susie's turn to be bound.