Association

My head hit the floor as my body collapsed. Before passing out, I silently whispered a plea for absolution.

"Sorry."

--GEOFFREY--

"Nice move, you fucking idiot," I yelled at myself when Sabrina's body slumped over sideways. "Maybe they wouldn't leave you if you didn't fucking try to kill them."

I quickly unlocked her ankles, then her mouth. Relieved that she was still breathing, I lay her on her side and loosened all the lacings on the hood, binder, corset and boots.

"Come on, Sabrina, come back to me," I pleaded to her ashen, silent face with no small degree of urgency.

"Don't do this, Sabrina--Earth to Sabrina--"

I debated whether to start CPR or mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. I guessed I didn't have any smelling salts. What else do you do when someone faints? No blood, not even back there; I knew I had stretched her anus more than adequately over the past two weeks to accommodate me. Pulse, check. Heartbeat, check. Give her air, check. Loosen her clothing, check. How about remove her clothing? Can't get much looser than naked. Who's her next of kin anyway? I wonder if she's allergic to anything? The lube? Eyes still closed, pupils dilated; is that good or bad?

I was starting to debate whether an ambulance would be faster than driving her to the hospital myself. What would Jesus do? Oh great, I admonished myself, this is a really dumb time to get religion.

Well, the carpenter's son would probably kiss her. Hey, it always worked in fairy tales for frogs, which pretty much summed up my rung on the evolutionary ladder right about now.

I leaned over and placed my lips gently against hers.

"C'mon, Sabrina, time to wake up. Please please please. At the very least, give us a smile."

Much to my astonishment, she did. Stranger still, she returned my kiss with one of her own. Then she finally opened her eyes.

--SABRINA--

Lips on mine. Soft. Warm. Such a nice touch. I returned Geoffrey's kiss at the same time as I regained consciousness. When I opened my eyes, his face, so close to mine, expressed relief and surprise, but no anger at all. But I couldn't help feeling guilty.

"I'm so sorry," I whispered again.

"Hush, don't be silly," he gently told me, "I'm the one who's sorry."

"No, really, I wanted you to go on. I don't know what happened. I've gone through worst than that before, haven't I?"

"Well, I guess you have. I don't know. It's sometimes hard to tell where someone's limits are. Or maybe it was an accumulation of things. A way for your body to say enough is enough."

I agreed. Yes, maybe my body didn't follow the insane pace we had subjected it to. But then what? Did it mean I wasn't fit for this?

When I asked him, he laughed.

"Sabrina, you're as fit as can be. Don't expect me to dismiss you because you passed out once. You're not rid of me yet!"

I smiled. I sure didn't want to get rid of him. Even if I had to pass out every once in a while. At least the wake-up kiss was worth it.

"So," he went on, "I guess we're gonna call it a day, as we seem to have exceeded our fun quota. Can you stand?"

Leaning on Geoffrey's arm and shoulder, I nodded while I tried to get up. My legs were still trembling, but if he stayed close, I would make it to the bedroom.

After turning off the lights on the ground floor, he followed me up the stairs; when I stopped in front of the door to my room, he motioned me to continue further, bringing a smile to my face.

Once I was lying on his huge bed, he circled my wrists with two fleece-lined leather cuffs he retrieved from a drawer. Next, he tied them loosely above my head, giving me enough slack to bring my hands close to my face, just like he had done a couple of nights before.

He always knows what to do, I reflected while he made a quick visit to the bathroom. Tying me up to keep me in the right mood, but allowing me the comfort of a good night's sleep. Just what I needed.

While he was gone, I wondered what he'd do next. The night was still fairly young; despite my physical failure, I wasn't ready to sleep yet.

--GEOFFREY--

I went downstairs to pour myself a drink before returning to my bedroom and Sabrina. As the VSOP flowed into the crystal snifter, I reflected on her words and reactions after she regained consciousness. No anger. No recriminations. Hell, she actually apologized to me, despite her obvious innocence in the situation. Definitely not standard operating procedure.

Armed, if not quite yet fortified, I climbed the stairs and opened the door to my bedroom, fully expecting Sabrina to be sound asleep. Instead, she was practically squirming on the bed, her eyes bright and mischievous.

"You don't look like you're quite ready for the sandman. In fact, if I didn't know better, I'd say you were game for another round. Luckily, I have just the solution. Close your eyes."

I dug in my dresser until I found the ankle cuffs and blindfold that were part of the set with the fuzzy wrist restraints. I remembered suddenly that these were my first bondage purchases so many years ago. I had quickly learned that they were a bit useless for anything beyond implied restraint, but tonight, they were perfect for the job.

I slipped the blindfold over her head, rolled her onto her back, gently pushed her legs apart, wrapped and locked the leather around her ankles, and tied the cuffs loosely to the bedposts.

"No gag tonight," I whispered into her ear. "But no words, either. Does that work for you?"

"Yes, please," she whispered back in a voice scarcely louder than her heartbeat.

"Don't worry," I said soothingly. "No more pain tonight."

I picked up his glass of cognac and dribbled a few drops directly into her navel. When the tiny crease was filled, I bent over and began lapping it up ever so softly with my tongue.

The glass and its smoky contents eventually progressed to her breasts, then the insides of her thighs, then her sex. When it was empty, I went downstairs to fetch the dusty bottle.

--SABRINA--

When I heard Geoffrey return to the room, I was torn between the desire to feel him continue his agonizingly sweet treatment forever, and the urge to have him inside me right there, right then. When more drops fell between my breasts, their liquid touch gliding down to my navel, I knew he had enough patience for the both of us, and I blessed him for that.

As his tongue flickered against my skin, I sighed and moaned in delight. No words allowed, but there were many other ways to express my growing lust. My whole body was doing the talking; toes pointing, knees bending, thighs stretching to lift my ass up. The slow wave continued to roll and passed my hips, chest, and shoulders. Then it rolled down again, this time crashing on my twitchy sex, so eager to be touched, caressed, filled.

He was now lapping in the tiny crease of my throat. From there he moved to my ears. Then my breasts again. And down to my thighs. Very, very slowly, he was building my pleasure with the care of an artist. One touch here, one touch there. Not rushing at all.

How wrong I had been to consider this dominance/submission thing, even bondage itself, as macho justification of sexual abuse. He was giving so much. And better still, he was forcing me to receive his gift without guilt or shame. By tying me up, he was liberating me from much uglier bonds, the mental cuffs we attach ourselves.

When Geoffrey pressed his tongue in the folds of my labia, I felt small puddles of tears cover my eyes, draining the excess emotions I could no longer contain. The blindfold concealed them, but not for long, as the puddles soon overflowed and dribbled down my cheeks.

Oh, Geoffrey, please do come in me, I pleaded in silence while my vagina was eagerly grabbing at nothing but air. I want you in. I need you in. Please.

How could he refrain for so long when I had already interrupted his own pleasure when I fainted? Surely he needed relief as much as I did.

Finally, perhaps because the bottle was empty, or because he could no longer resist, Geoffrey entered my very wet vagina and pressed his groin against mine. I clenched around his cock, holding him with all my strength. For ten seconds. Then he pulled out, and pushed back in. Again and again. Bringing me to a state where nothing mattered but his hard shaft and his pubis rubbing my clit in the same motion.

I knew it wouldn't take long for me to come, but then I remembered the rule he had imposed. So I tried to last as long as I could, hoping he wouldn't tease me too cruelly this time.

He didn't. When I thought I would lose it again, he said the words I longed to hear:

"Come with me."

His spasms triggered mine, and time stopped for the both of us as wave after wave of pleasure washed over us.

When he lay down next to me, I turned my head to his side. I thought I wanted to share my emotions, but even if he gave me permission to speak, I wouldn't. Seconds later, I was sleeping deeply.

***

DAY 15--GEOFFREY

I was really starting to enjoy our morning romps in the ring; Sabrina's long hair flapping rhythmically against her back as she diligently practiced canters, stops, turns and gallops, her hoofed feet kicking up thunderclouds of dust, clips jumping with every clop.

While she showered, I assembled the morning's arsenal and brought it to my study.

"Time for some more bookkeeping," I announced as she cautiously entered the room, all naked and freshly scrubbed, the stripes and discolorations from various attacks on her flesh faintly glowing based on their age and relative force, her eyes downcast in the shameful gratitude of an errant puppy.

"Come. Here."

Her eyes followed my hands as I pinched each nipple in turn between a pair of jet-black chopsticks held together at each end with tightly- twisted rubber bands.

"Turn around and stick out your arms."

I slid the sleeves of the straightjacket over her wrists and up to her shoulders, then buckled the heavy black leather around her torso.

"You're going to need a little more practice," I said to the back of her head as I pushed a short, wide plug into her ass before securing the crotch belt with a padlock.

"Sit down at the desk."

When Sabrina had comported herself in the heavy wooden chair, I kneeled to cuff her ankles, then pulled them back with rope to the leg bracing beneath the seat. The leather sheaths for her hands dangled down from her wrists, followed by the straps, which I tied to either end of the desk, giving her just enough slack for her fingers to reach the computer's keyboard.

Day gag. I liked the sound of that. I yanked and knotted the lacing under her chin, then tightened the thin belts that webbed the top part of her head, the bottom obscured in a creamy blackness that was solely punctuated by the silver teeth of the still-open zipper across where her mouth should be.

I left her to watch the computer's start-up sequence while I fetched one of a dozen CDs in a drawer to her left and inserted it into the burner I had installed myself in my Frankenstein-approved PC. "Ambra," it proudly proclaimed on its dingy casing. I loved how IBM had named its ill-fated fling with the consumer market after a porno starlet.

"These files are a mess. Sort them into categories, and rename them something useful. I'll be back in a...well, soon."

--SABRINA--

Pretending to forget the pinching on my nipples and the plug forcing open my still-sensitive anus, I concentrated on the task at hand. First, I had to reach the mouse on my right. My fingers could move freely, but there was barely enough slack in the sleeves around my arms to touch the mouse, not grab it. Pulling hard on the leather restraints, I finally managed to pinch the sides between two fingertips and slowly pull it across its pad to my hand.

Once the screen filled with dozens of tiny icons, I opened the first one and gasped at the picture that appeared. Lying on a wooden floor, a red-haired woman was bound in a severe hog-tie, her face encased in a trainer gag. One of the many black straps held her hair in a ponytail, which was tied to the intersection of her four limbs, forcing her head up. Her only clothing was a black corset laced tightly around her hips, pushing her ample breasts away from her torso as if they were taunting gravity.

Strangely enough, this was the first bondage picture I had ever seen, and despite my recent experience in the field, I found it extremely unsettling, not to mention arousing. My heart beating a little faster, I opened the second picture and observed a close-up on the same woman's gagged face.

So this is how I look like when Geoffrey gags me? I didn't find it particularly pretty, but I couldn't deny it was sexually attractive. All that leather on the woman's face put an emphasis on her wide-open eyes where curiosity was mixed with fear.

I knew that feeling well, and squirmed on the chair at the recollection of so many similar moments.

I opened the next set of pictures, which were shots of the same scene taken from various angles. After that, I discovered a new series with the same woman wrapped up in chains and suspended from an intricate iron frame.

I recognized the structure; the picture had been taken in Geoffrey's studio, right on the stage where I had already spent so much time and spilled so much sweat. How many women had he tied up in his life? How many had been willing? How many had fought back? How many had he fucked?

I returned to the files and counted them. Fifty pictures in the first file folder. And there were about fifty folders on the CD. And the drawer was full of disks. Perhaps not all these pictures were Geoffrey's, but he sure had a nice collection.

A collection I was supposed to sort and rename, I suddenly remembered.

What exactly did he want me to do? Just renaming each picture wouldn't really help him find what he was looking for. First, I had to create directories and subdirectories for each session and scene, but most importantly, what he needed was a small database where each picture would be categorized according to a series of criteria. Leather vs. rubber. Ropes vs. chains. Outdoors vs. indoors. Ambra

vs. Bettie.

I created a spreadsheet and classified the fifty pictures in the first folder. I was hoping he would check on me so I could ask if he liked the idea, but decided to proceed anyway. If he wanted something else, he would tell me, and I would try again. This could take forever, but linear time wasn't always important in this house.

I continued my work unperturbed, except for my sex, which was increasingly aroused by this feast of new bondage ideas. I wanted to try them all. But I didn't need to worry about that. He most probably would. And add some more, too.

--GEOFFREY--

An hour should be plenty of time for Sabrina, I decided after I finished setting up the morning's first photo shoot. I glanced at the computer monitor that was mirroring her screen activities upstairs via the house's internal network. Still messing with database structures. She's quite good at this. A nice surprise.

Speaking of which...I put down my camera and jogged up the stairs to my study.

As I entered the room, I wondered when she would start accessing the Internet during these sessions on the PC. I had set up my account so she didn't have to enter a password to log on. I doubted she would be clever enough to delete the cookies and cached files that would accumulate from her surfing, but even if she knew all the tricks, I could still watch her online activities on a remote monitor I had set up in the studio.

"Hands off," I barked, making her jump a little in her chair. I untied the straps holding her wrists to the sides of the desk, then stuffed her hands into the leather casings, pulled her arms across her chest, and tied them tight behind her back.

"Hmmmm...not bad," I pretended to scowl. "The database categories look good, but you need to be much more detailed in your descriptions of the photos. Think keyword search; for example, if there's a gag, rope and chains, that needs to be in the file name. Ditto the location, the position, and any items of clothing. Like this one should read something like 'Ambra_black_corset_hogtie_leather_straps_trainer_gag_hair.jpg.' You have 254 characters for your file names. Use them all."

I skipped through the rest of Sabrina's work with an occasional nod.

"You can continue this later," I said as I stooped down to untie her feet. "There's something else I want you to concentrate on for a while."

When I was finished, I had retied her legs so they were plastered together with rope around her ankles, above and below her knees, and many, many coils encasing her thighs, a multi-speed vibrator pressed firmly between them whose tip didn't quite touch the leather strap protecting her sex.

I unzipped her gag, gave her a sip of water, then filled her mouth with a rubber ball before pulling the metal tab across her mouth.

"Something to inspire you," I said as he slipped a shiny disk into the second CD drive. "I've been dying to give this new DVD player a whirl."

I reached over to the control box next to her legs and turned the knob to its lowest setting.

"Two thumbs up, I'm sure," I remarked as the opening credits filled the screen. "See you at intermission."

--SABRINA--

When I heard the muffled sounds of Geoffrey's steps climbing up the stairs, I was so restless I was afraid the chair would tumble over from my squirming. There would be no surprise this time; I was so alert, I could hear spiders spinning cobwebs in the corners. The porn was predictably stupid, but all those bondage and whipping scenes, coupled with my own situation, awakened my horny desires, as evidenced by the sticky dampness between my tightly-bound thighs.

A dampness which Geoffrey was pleased to observe, if I could judge from his grin when, after untying my legs, he removed the vibrator, soaked in sweat and my more intimate emissions, produced in such abundance that they had leaked out of their leather confinement.

His grin turned wicked when he took aim at the chopsticks that had squeezed all the blood from my nipples a long time ago. Fascinated and horrified at the same time, I watched him unknot the rubber bands around their ends, then closed my eyes to absorb the terrible pain that followed. I let out a cry, barely contained by the gag, while my fingers madly dug in my chest bones through the layer of leather.

The pain subsided, but my sexual hunger increased. I thought, I hoped, I prayed Geoffrey would do something about it, but he only asked me to stand up and follow him downstairs to the kitchen, where he tied me to yet another chair, using less rope, but losing nothing in terms of efficiency.

When lunch was ready, he removed the gag to feed me, but let me enjoy the leather gloves until he decided he needed my hands again, which would only be much later, when we were back in his study.

During the meal, he told me he wanted to finish his printer photo shoot and then develop the film so that he could send contact sheets to his client first thing tomorrow morning. When the implication of his words hit my brain, I realized I didn't want to be left alone again. Not now. Not in this state. Besides, how could I possibly do intellectual work when I was so distracted by the constant clenching of my vagina and obsessed with the idea of filling it?

Let me stay with you, I pleaded silently. Tie me up to the ceiling, gag me, but please, let me watch you work. Let me be there.

Unaware of my unspoken plea, he added that, all in all, his work would take him three or four hours, and I could use that time to work on his picture database.

Telepathy is a hoax, I decided while, twenty minutes later, he was tying me up again to the chair behind his study desk. I felt playful and mischievous, but the game was not mine to start. Or finish. The decision was his, and his alone. This was more than a little annoying. And highly arousing.