1
IT’STOUGH TO SCRATCH your stomach when your hands are cuffed to the bed Cynthia Baxter discovered to her intense frustration. She twisted and rolled her naked body, but the elusive itch was an inch or so north of her belly button. Her feet couldn’t reach it, her knees couldn’t reach it; she couldn’t twist itaway.
The sound of metal scratching the mahogany four-poster, which had been handed down in perfect condition through generations of Baxters, only added to the guilt she wasfeeling.
“Walter!” she yelled, but got noreply.
She’d carefully followed the instructions inRaunch Magazine’s fantasy issue in a bid to put some passion into her relationship. Here she was, enacting “Helpless Virgin Ravished by a Dark Dangerous Stranger,” and her fiancé, who should be overcome with lust while performing on her body all the outrageously kinky acts she’d read about in the magazine—and highlighted for him in yellow so he couldn’t miss them—was in the living room, attached to his cellphone.
She listened hard, but couldn’t hear his voice. Maybe he was too put off by her naked body in daylight to comeback.
“Walter?”
Silence.
“Walter!” Her voice echoed through the house. Why couldn’t he hearher?
She took a deep breath, and her nose wrinkled at the smell of the new perfume she’d splashed all over her body. In the department store it had smelled spicy and exotic, but now that she’d been wearing it a few hours, it smelled cheap andcloying.
“Walter! Are youthere?”
Nothing.
A terrible suspicion dawned. He tended to be obsessive about his work, which made him forgetful about other things. Was it possible he’d forgotten her andleft?
Helplessness was part of the fantasy, according to the September issue ofRaunch Magazine.The “sexperts” had been quite clear on that. They gave very specific instructions for fulfilling every woman’s wildest fantasies, instructions that left Cynthia hot and squirming and eager to create “her own personal erotic story, leading to an orgasmic orgy of legendary proportions.” She wasn’t greedy; she’d be happy with a single orgasm. So she’d lapped up the magazine pages with the same eagerness displayed by “Concubine Washing her Master’sPlinth.”
Fortunately, the magazine had helpfully categorized the fantasies into “Boudoir Beginners,” “Intimate Intermediates” and “Erotically Advanced.” Of course she’d read through the advanced pages, but frankly, even if she could afford all the equipment, she didn’t imagine ever wanting to play games such as “Whorehouse Dominatrix and Groveling Schoolboy” or anything that involved a cast of more thantwo.
Exposing her naked body in anything but utter darkness was intimidating enough, even in front of Walter, who didn’t see all that well without his glasses. No, Boudoir Beginners was plenty exciting enough. There wasn’t one scenario that didn’t speak to her in some way, but “Helpless Virgin Ravaged by a Dark Dangerous Stranger” was herfavorite.
In the privacy of her own bedroom who was going to care if she was politically correct? She was free to imagine being imprisoned by an exotic stranger, a masked Zorro or a ruthless pirate. Whoever he was, this stranger was dark, tall, lean and muscular. She was his prisoner to do with what he pleased, and he was veryimaginative.
It was an exciting fantasy. Not that Walter was a Dark Dangerous Stranger, not by a long shot, but then she wasn’t a virgin, either, although some of the stuff inRaunchmade her feel likeone.
She wasn’t a virgin, but she was definitely helpless. Bondage of a more pretend kind—by a loosely tied silk necktie for instance—was heavily frowned on by the sexperts atRaunch,who advised using real handcuffs. Since Cynthia was a person who always followed the rules, handcuffs now boundher.
So far, a kind of determined desperation had pushed her into actually following through with this crazy idea to become sexually exciting. But now that she’d bullied and begged Walter into acting out the fantasy, now that she was actually lying here staked out, naked and helpless, in a respectable suburban neighborhood in the middle of the afternoon, it wasn’t erotic excitement shefelt.
It wasembarrassment.
Who was she trying to kid? No wonder Walter had wandered off. She didn’t look a bit like the models inRaunch,with their breasts thrust upward like mountain peaks, their tiny waists, ever so slightly rounded hips and long Barbie-dolllegs.
Cynthia’s breasts just sort of sat on her chest like lumps of unrisen bread dough with raisins on top, while the rest of her was far from voluptuous. Once she got out of these handcuffs she’d never ever suggest they depart from their standard quick couplings under the sheets in properdarkness.
She yelled a few more times, until her throat hurt and she heard an edge of hysteria in her tone. No use yelling herself hoarse; she’d have to calm down and wait. He’d remember hereventually.
Breathing slowly and deeply, Cynthia contemplated the ceiling. There was a shadowy streak in one corner that looked suspiciously like a cobweb. She’d have to take a broom to it as soon as she had a free hand. Which brought her back to her ridiculous predicament. She had no idea how long she’d been here, but her arms ached. She was cold, she was hungry and she had to go to thebathroom.
Where the hell wasWalter?
She watched the time tick slowly by on the bedside clock while her anger mounted. Friday afternoon dimmed to Friday evening before true fear began to set in. She could starve to death, freeze to death or die of a bladder infection before Walter rememberedher.
After seventeen eons, she heard the sound of gravel crunching outside. But her first thought—that Walter had remembered her and come back—was squelched when she heard the snuffle of a canine nose and the telltale hissing sound among the dahlias under her bedroom window. Thank God, it must be Mrs. Lawrence and Gruber, her overweight poodle, from nextdoor.
Should Cynthia callout?
Embarrassment warred with physical discomfort, but it was a short battle. Her bladderwon.
