by Van ©2012
Chapter 4

Kate Beckett and Jane Rizzoli were not bound and gagged in any way.  Even their hands were free, no longer confined by their former duct tape wrappings.  They'd showered together, but neither had cleaned their own body.  To the accompaniment of saucy smirks, teasing smiles, flirtatious giggling, and many stolen kisses, they took turns scrubbing each others skin, shampooing each others hair, toweling each others naked bodies, drying each others hair, and gently brushing said hair until their long, lustrous brown and shining raven tresses were at their best.

Then, they helped each other dress.  It wasn't necessary.  In fact, it significantly slowed the process, but it was certainly fun.  More importantly, like the shared shower and grooming, they knew it would please their absent Mistress.  It had been her order that they make all preparations to depart together.

Boots, slacks, blouses, and jackets—Jane and Kate were ready for the streets of Manhattan.  Their ID/badge cases were in their accustomed places on their belts, as were their holstered weapons and their handcuffs; however, their back-up pieces were on the bed, in a heap with their bras and saliva-soaked panties.  The detectives were going bra-less and commando, again, at Mistress' order.  Outwardly, of course, as they walked the streets of Manhattan, nothing would appear to be amiss.

They made their way to the room adjacent to the main entryway and waited for Mistress to appear.  Meanwhile, they carried out Mistress' final instructions: (1) to embrace, but to be careful not to unnecessarily rumple their clothing or hair; (2) to make out, but avoiding hickeys or chapped lips; and (3) to be sure not to cum.  They were to keep their hands above their fellow-slave's waistline and outside each others clothes.  The squashing of tits together was allowed, but dry humping was not.  It might lead to violations of the first and/or third rules.

The instruction not to cum was almost cruel.  Both slaves wanted very much to cum.  Okay, the orgasmic prohibition was cruel, but it was nothing compared to what was happening upstairs.

Natalie Rhodes was still on the bed and was still naked, bound, and gagged.  There was nothing unusual about that.  Bound, gagged, and naked had been her condition for nearly her entire captivity, both back in the hotel and at her current, unknown location.  What was unusual was the cunningly stringent and overly elaborate nature of her bondage.

First, Rupandra used thin cord—many, many yards of thin cord.  It was braided nylon, between an eighth and a quarter of an inch in diameter.  She bound Natalie's wrists behind her back and her elbows, squeezing them together.  She pinned her arms to her upper body, looping around her torso above and below her breasts and around her arms and torso.  She bound Natalie's forearms to her waist, and additional strands yoked her shoulders.  Natalie's legs were bound together at the ankles, shins and calves, below and above her knees, and around her upper thighs.  In each case, for every grouping of taut, cinched cord, Rupandra employed at least a dozen individual strands.

Natalie's hands remained mummified in duct tape.  In fact, once Rupandra had bound Natalie's wrists with her encased hands palm-to-palm, she used more duct tape to doubly wrap them together.  Short of amputation, Natalie's fingers and thumbs couldn't be rendered more useless.

Something large and spongy was stuffed in Natalie's mouth and a narrowly folded scarf tied to keep it there.  Then, a folded cloth, either a kitchen towel or a washcloth, Natalie wasn't sure which, was placed over her mouth and turn after tautly stretched turn of duct tape was wrapped around her head.  Rupandra didn't stop until Natalie's cheeks bulged and her lower face was as tightly mummified as her hands.  Very little of Natalie's long, brown hair was trapped under the tape, as it was already combed back and plaited into a single, tight braid entwined with cord.

Next, Rupandra used more cord to bind Natalie's breasts.  A dozen strands were looped around the base of each breast and tightened until the now taut globes darkened and took on a mauve blush.  Natalie's reaction as Rupandra tied a web of single strands to further compress the bound melons confirmed their sensitivity.

Then, Rupandra used most of the larger, white nylon rope she used to bind Natalie and her two other slaves.  It was tied to form a network of horizontal and diagonal strands overlying Natalie's cord bonds from her shoulders to her feet.  To describe the resulting web as overkill was the height of understatement.  After tying the final knot, she produced a large package of four-inch plastic cable-ties and began zipping them through the places where the cord bondage met the rope bondage.  As she worked her way down Natalie's prone form, rolling her helpless form as required, the already inescapable bondage became a work or art—a cruel, perhaps even evil work of art.

Rupandra smiled as she went back over each and every junction and snipped off the ends of the ties with a pair of scissors.  "You are so beautiful like this, Natalie," she purred as she completed her work.  "Your perfect physique bundled and helpless, your smooth flesh dimpled by my cords and ropes, your cheeks bulging and your eyes wide with fear... so beautiful."  She leaned close and kissed Natalie's shining forehead.  "I will remember you like this, Natalie, always."  She used the nails of her left hand to tease Natalie's hypersensitive nipples while her right hand slid between the captive's bound thighs and began caressing her labia.

Natalie squirmed in her incredible bonds and moaned through her gag.  Rupandra's hand was working its magic, coaxing, nay extracting yet another orgasm from her tired, sore, aching body.

"I'll feed on your fear one last time, Natalie," Rupandra whispered.  "Then, I'll put you away and my slaves and I will depart.  All is ready.  You can have anything you need delivered in Manhattan, even hardware, and Kate was very happy to make the call and use her card to make her Mistress happy."

Natalie could barely focus on Rupandra's words, but she knew her future wasn't good.  Hardware?

Rupandra continued stroking Natalie's pussy, feeding.  Finally, after several minutes, Natalie went rigid in her bonds and writhed in orgasm.  Rupandra continued to feed, and finally, when Natalie was spent, the smiling redhead licked her fingers.

"One last detail," she said, and pulled a knotted rope between Natalie's labia, slipped the end through her waist bonds, and pulled it tight.  Natalie now had a crotch rope, the only thing that had been missing from her bonds.

Natalie squirmed, and found the crotch rope cleaving her pussy and butt cheeks was tied to her wrist bonds in back.  What more can she do to me? Natalie wondered, and knew she was about to find out.

Rupandra frowned.  "I can't help but think I'm forgetting something," she said.  "This always happens just when you're leaving someplace, never to return, doesn't it?"  Then, her smile returned and she reached for one more coil of cord.  "That's right!  Silly me.  I can't leave you without binding your feet and toes."

Kate and Jane continued sucking face.  They paused when they heard a banging noise echoing from upstairs.  Apparently Mistress—and it could only be Mistress—was pounding some nails.

"The stuff from the hardware store," Kate mumbled through Jane's mouth and around her tongue.

"Yeah," Jane mumbled in agreement.

A couple of wet, slurping minutes passed, then Rupandra descended the stairs.  She'd donned an expensive and very smart-looking business suit—jacket, blouse, skirt, panty hose, and high heels—and was ready for the Manhattan streets.

"Are my warriors ready?" Rupandra asked as she joined the kissing cops.

"Yes, Mistress," the detectives answered, then released their long embrace and began straightening their clothes and hair.

Meanwhile, Rupandra had pulled Kate's iPhone from her pocket and was thumbing a message.  She finished tapping the virtual keyboard and set the iPhone on the floor.  "Okay, time to go.  Don't forget to set the alarm, Kate."

"Yes, Mistress," Kate answered.

They negotiated the entryway heat lock, pausing only long enough for Kate to arm the alarm panel.  And then, the front door closed with a solid thunk and they were gone.  All was still in the townhouse.

Natalie's heart was pounding and her well-roped and corded bosom heaved as she panted through her flaring nostrils.  Her eyes were wide with terror as she stared at the close confines of her prison.  Inches to either side of her bound, gagged, and utterly helpless body were the solid timbers of a pair of floor joists.  Immediately overhead was the sub-floor and the underside of the access hatch Mistress had used to place her in what might possibly be her final resting place.

Well, not her final resting place, but Natalie knew it was a good bet that when eventually discovered, she would be a decomposing corpse.

After binding her feet and toes, the final element of Natalie's inescapable web of bondage, Rupandra had lifted her onto her shoulder and carried her from the bedroom.  It was a short journey to their planned destination.  Rupandra set Natalie's bound feet on the floor, spun her around, and Natalie beheld her fate.  Her eyes popped wide and she screamed through her gag.  "Nrrrrrf!"

There was a linen closet next to the door of the main bathroom.  The closet door was open and the small space was empty but for a column of empty wooden shelves.  The bottom shelf had been lifted from its brackets and was leaning against the wall next to a rectangular gap in the closet floor.  The gap was an access panel, and its wooden lid was also leaning against the wall.

The space below was the space between two floor joists.  A major plumbing junction was revealed, near the back wall of the closet.  Obviously, access to the pipes was the purpose of the hatch.

Natalie continued squirming and mewling, but couldn't prevent Rupandra from lifting her upright body, planting her feet in the open hatch, then sliding her into the space until she was lying on her back.  The cavity continued past the hatch opening.  There might be cross-bracing or strapping further down, but her bound feet encountered nothing but air.

Rupandra leaned down and rolled Natalie's body until she could pull free her braided hair.  She then looped the cord at the end of the braid around one of the pipes and tied a double knot.  Natalie would remain where she was, her bound body framed in the opening from the waist up.  Squirming and wiggling down the joist cavity and away from the hatch was no longer possible—not that there was any rational reason for Natalie to want to explore the darkness beyond her tied toes.

Rupandra smiled, kissed Natalie's nipples—first the right, and then the left—then her gagged lips, and finally, her glistening forehead.  She then tore open a long, thin foil wrapper and pulled out a glow-stick, a plastic cylinder full of chemicals that would emit a greenish light when mixed together.  She snapped the stick to release the internal capsules and gave it a vigorous shake to start the reaction.  She then slid the stick between Natalie's breasts, wedging it under the cord and rope bonds and against her sternum.  Still smiling, she reached for the hatch.

"Nrrrf!"

"Oh, don't beg Natalie," Rupandra cooed.  "As an actress who cut her cinematic teeth her on the genre, you know very well that only a select few of the cast of a Horror movie survive until the end credits."  She fit one edge of the hatch into the opening, that gazed down at her helpless, gagged, terrified victim one last time.  "Good bye, Natalie," she whispered, and closed the hatch.  She then placed the bottom shelf on the floor, across the hatch, and reached for the hammer and nails waiting on the next to the bottom shelf.  She'd already marked positions that would be directly over the joists on either side of the hatch, and began driving nails through the shelf, the floor, and into the joists, three on the left and three on the right.

Below, in the coffin-sized space, Natalie struggled against her incredible bonds and fought the panic threatening to overwhelm her mind.  She knew the bang—bang—bang of the pounding nails spelled her utter and certain doom.

Finally, the pounding stopped.  Natalie panted through her nostrils  The underside of the hatch and the wooden joists to either side of her roped shoulders glowed with the eerie green light of the glow-stick.  How long before the glow faded to nothing?  How many hours before the onset of eternal night?

Rupandra and her two slave-warrior escorts made the long walk through the teeming pedestrian traffic to their destination.  Residential streets gave way to taller and taller buildings as they entered midtown.  The skyscraper canyons of the financial district loomed ahead.

They entered an office tower on 38th Street, made their way across the bustling lobby, and took an elevator to the twenty-eighth floor.  Ahead was a set of double doors with an elegantly engraved brass plaque reading "Lady Irena."  The full name of the establishment was "Lady Irena's House of Pain," but customers would know that and there was no need to offend vanilla passersby.

Lady Irene was, perhaps, Manhattan's premiere dominatrix.  She catered to the masochistically inclined of the city's powerful and successful, mostly men, but Irena and her employees wielded equal opportunity whips.  No sex was involved, as far as NYPD Vice could determine, and all the "services" offered by her establishment were entirely consensual.  Her lawyers had the paperwork to prove it.

Kate took the lead as they opened the doors and crossed the waiting room to the receptionist's desk.  She had encountered Lady Irena a few years earlier when one of her employees was murdered.  The investigation led to the "House of Pain," but it turned out Lady Irene wasn't directly involved in the crime.  Kate flashed her shield.  "I need to see Lady Irena," she told the smiling receptionist.

"Do you have an appointment?" the pretty blonde inquired.

"No," Kate answered, "but it's very important, and she knows me."

The receptionist focused on Kate's ID as she picked up the phone.  "One moment, please, Detective Beckett."  She gestured towards a sofa and a pair of easy chairs on the left side of the room.  "Please, be seated."

Kate, Jane, and Rupandra walked to the conversation grouping and sat.  The waiting room was dark and severely modern: glass panels, polished floor, and indirect lighting.  There were Victorian accents in the form of a hanging chandelier and the style of the seating, but they sounded a grace note rather than clashing with the decor.  Rupandra and the detectives were on the plush side of the room.  The right side held a row of what appeared to be over-sized school desks with hardwood seats and folding writing surfaces.  They were adult in scale but didn't appear to be at all comfortable.

"I imagine that's where naughty boys waiting to see the Head Mistress sit and squirm," Jane muttered under her breath.

Kate smiled, but Rupandra shrugged in disinterest.

The receptionist hung up the phone, then stepped around the desk and gestured towards a side door.  "This way, ladies, if you please."

Kate, Jane, and Rupandra followed the blonde down a long hallway.  The decor was the same as the lobby, but without the Victorian elements.  A series of framed, black-and-white photos graced the walls.  The nude male form was the unifying theme and they were either genuine Maplethorpes or the work of imitators.

The receptionist opened a door without knocking and held it for the others to enter the space beyond.  The door closed with the receptionist remaining in the hallway and they found themselves in an office—a large, modern, and somewhat kinky office.  Three of the of the four walls were clad in black leather padding.  Leather covered buttons formed a diamond pattern.  The fourth wall was an expanse of glass providing an unobstructed vista of the urban landscape.  Underfoot was plush, steel-gray carpeting.  The desk was a granite slab with black, skeletal supports that made it seem to almost float in midair.

Behind the desk was an executive chair that could only be described as a throne, and seated in that throne was Lady Irena.

The dominatrix was appropriately dressed in shining black leather: boots with stiletto heels, a hobble-skirt, corset-top, and opera gloves.  Her hair was long and red and her smiling lips painted a flaming crimson.  She was in her forties... perhaps... and was very beautiful—exceptionally beautiful—stunningly beautiful.  Her pale blue eyes and smirk conveyed the authority of one used to total control.

Rupandra smiled and stepped forward, confident that soon she would be in change.

Irena was focusing on Kate as she rose from her chair and walked around the desk.  "Detective Beckett," she said, "to what do I owe the pleasure of—"  She shifted her gaze to Rupandra as she approached, and her eyes widened with surprise.

"Hush," Rupandra purred as she drew near to Lady Irena.  "I'll do the talking for a while.  Cross your wrists behind your back and kiss me.  I want to taste you.  I want... I..."  Now, Rupandra's eyes were wide as she stared at Lady Irena in astonishment.  "I..."

Lady Irena's smile had returned.  "I think a kiss is an excellent idea," she said, pulled Rupandra into a tight embrace, and planted a deep, wet kiss on and in the still startled Rupandra's open mouth.

After several seconds, Lady Irena broke the kiss and embrace and took a step back.  "Now, youngster," she said, "I want you to stand right where you are.  Don't move and don't speak."  She then walked to Kate and gave her a polite kiss on the cheek.

Both Kate and Jane were staring at Rupandra in confusion.

Irena chuckled.  "There's nothing to be concerned about."  She remained focused on Kate.  "Detective Beckett, just look at you.  You're as beautiful as ever."  She kissed Kate, again, but this time full on the lips.

"W-what's going on?" Jane demanded.

Irena ended her kiss with Kate, embraced Jane, and kissed her as well.  Jane shivered in Irena's arms, and Kate gazed at the Boston detective and the dominatrix with what could only be called a goofy smile.

Irena leaned back and smiled at Jane.  "And who might you be, my raven-haired beauty?"

"Detective Jane Rizzoli," Jane answered, "Boston Homicide."

"Another goddess of justice walking among us," Irena smiled, then returned to Rupandra.

Still frozen in place, Rupandra's eyes remained wide and surprised.  Her arms and hands repeatedly shook with tremors, as if she was trying to move and could not.

Irena was still smiling at the detectives.  "You both look very tired," she said.  "Why don't you lie down on the floor and take a nice nap?"

Kate and Jane smiled and followed Irena's suggestion (order).  Soon both were on their sides on the plush carpet in loose fetal tucks, their eyes closed and lips curled in serene smiles.

Irena shifted her gaze to Rupandra.  The dominatrix was still smiling, but her eyes had become hard.  "You silly girl," she muttered.  "You think you can simply waltz into the Prime Lair of a Seventh-Cycle, Ice-Wolf Elder and take over?  What are you?  What is your clan?"

"R-red Dragon," Rupandra answered, her lips twitching.

"Yes, you smell like a Dragon," Irena nodded, then kissed Rupandra's lips.  Again, it was deep and long.  Rupandra stood passively as Irena's tongue explored her mouth.  She was no longer fighting to control her body.  "You're at the cusp of your first cycle, aren't you?" Irena demanded as she took a step back.

"Y-yes, Mistress," Rupandra answered.

"And you've decided to do it on your own," Irena sighed, "to strike out and establish a lair, to shun the Dragon-Sisters who would shelter and guide you through the change?"

"Yes, Mistress."

"Incredibly stupid.  Incredibly dangerous."  Irena walked behind her desk and pressed a button on her phone.

"Mistress?" a voice answered.

"I need two gurneys and a wheel chair to take three new clients through the wall,"  Irena stated.  "Is the main hallway secure?"

"Mistress Bethany and Mistress Aarti are entertaining clients, but I'll inform them that a transfer is in progress and lock their doors."

"Make it so," Irena ordered, then tapped the button, ending the call.  She then sat in her chair and frowned at Rupandra.  "So, not only do you offend me personally by invading my lair with slaves in tow, but you involve me in a potential inter-clan dispute and who knows what else among the normals."  She stared at Rupandra for several seconds, then sighed, again.  "Obviously, an interrogation is in order.  Not even the Red Dragon, Herself, can fault me for that, as long as I leave enough of you alive for clan discipline.  Strip," she ordered, "and neatly fold your clothing.  Don't you dare make a mess of my office."

"Yes, Mistress," Rupandra whispered.  Her hands once again trembling, she began releasing the buttons of her jacket.