(This is the first of what I hope will be many stories about a quite interesting period of my life. My memory isn't the best, so I'm reconstructing and perhaps conflating different occasions, but it's true in essence. Names have, of course, been changed.)
Michelle was shaking like a leaf.
Partly, she was cold. The thin walls of her apartment did very little to keep out the November evening, and nothing stood between her skin and the chill of the air. My hands left trails of warmth as I ran them up her legs, dancing lightly over her shaven pubis, up past her narrow hips; pinching her erect nipples; tracing the curve of her clavicle; tugging at the D-rings on her collar; rising to chuck her under the chin. She avoided my eyes.
"You're frightened." It wasn't a question, and she made no reply. None was necessary.
Her trembling eased as I began to run the ropes across her chest, framing the slight swells of her small breasts. The slight abrasion as I deliberately let the hemp slide across her sternum was familiar, comforting: her master's touch.
"Present standing." She locked her hands behind her head and let her eyes unfocus. I finished the chest harness, taking my time; checking the knots and the frappings; occasionally pinching her, quick but hard. Each pinch provoked a sharp intake of breath.
I ran the next length of rope through my hands, pretending to check for kinks and damage. I had checked all the rope that afternoon, but it was part the effect I had established so carefully and so amateurishly; conscience and consciousness, assuring her that control, while not hers, was in good hands. Then I began the corset. On a girl like Michelle, it was difficult to keep the lines even, so sharply did her narrow waist come in from her ribcage before flaring out again to her hips. Her breathing was quickening; I stopped briefly to bite her on the upper arm, sucking hard to mark her. She gave a little cry that ended in something like a moan.
At length it was complete: a sheath of rope encasing her entirely from breasts to pubis, with a line of loops leading down from her sternum. The little extra rope I tied to the next length. This was the interesting part. I looped it round under the curve of her ass, running just outside her labia, and then down the inside of her right thigh to her knees, which I tied loosely together, with about six inches of flex, before securing the rope again, taking care that the final knot was directly over her clitoris. It would move slightly as she walked, or rather stumbled. I took a moment to admire and double-check my handiwork. When I looked up, she was looking at me, her eyes wide with something like alarm and something like excitement.
I chucked her under the chin again. "Young lady, you know better than to eyeball me. Grab the arms of the chair; I'll correct you." Her eyes widened further and jerked away from my face, but she turned to her side and bent over gingerly, her movements stiff from constraint. I went to the dresser and selected a curtain rod, the impromptu cane of the poor and kinky.
Swish-crack. "One, sir." The first words she had spoken since she stripped, some time ago - was it twenty minutes? Half an hour? - were low and steady. A double line of red leapt out on her right buttock.
Swish-crack. "Two, sir." I felt strangely detached. How long had it taken me to tie her? The question seemed important. Best to get on with the correction.
Swish-crack. "Three, sir." She was remarkably good at controlling her voice. The worse for her; I judged the effectiveness of correction by her composure. Three cane-welts were now rising on her right buttock, about an inch apart. I switched to the left.
Swish-crack. "Four, sir." Still steady. We existed in a kind of limbo. The cold air, the past, the future, the vague sounds of music from the next apartment, were of no importance. Michelle, and I, and the control that had passed between us; and the swish, and the impact: these were all that existed for us.
Swish-crack. "Five, sir." I had missed my aim with that stroke; the line was skewed, too high, the angle wrong. I was wrong - there also existed my own thoughts, and I had just lost myself in them; well-nigh inexcusable in light of the responsibility I had assumed. I moved around in front of her, grabbed her by the jaw, and kissed her, hard. She returned it eagerly, without moving from her position. It grounded me, brought me back from my pseudo-philosophical musings on the immediacy of the situation to the immediacy itself. I moved back to stand behind her.
Swish-crack. "Six, sir!" Another welt stood out on her skin, but this one crossing the backs of her thighs, just above the hobble. That she hadn't expected, and it threw her. One more, I thought, and a surprise again.
Smack. This one wasn't with the cane, but with my open hand, and it caught Michelle on her left cheek, her blind side. Her head whipped to the right, and her "seven, sir!" was choked and suddenly hoarse. There, I thought. That, she will remember. I traced the line of her left cheekbone with my thumb, pressing gently on her jaw to turn her head.
"There. Now get your shoes on, young lady." As she fumbled with the shoes in question, a pair of four-inch heels that brought her to within a few inches of my own height, I took our coats down from the coatrack. I took my time putting mine on, enjoying the sight of Michelle struggling to bend far enough to fasten the shoes. A reed-slender, dark-haired, dark-eyed young woman of twenty-one, four years my junior. A strong face, frequently wearing a sardonic expression. Her expressions when we were like this were quite different, and it was a difference I relished. At length, she had the shoes on.
"Stand, young lady, and hold out your arms." I helped her on with her coat, and she gasped once more as the thick wool settled over her bare shoulders, rubbing at her nipples and pressing the ropes into her skin.
"Any pinching, tightening, undue motion?"
"No, sir."
I checked my pocket once more - safety gear in place - then moved to the dresser once more, this time for wrist cuffs and a blindfold. As I slipped them on, Michelle began to shake again. I secured her wrists behind her and took a firm grip of her right elbow.
"Come on, young lady. Let's go for a walk."
End Part 1