Chapter 37

Valerie stretched her arms out to relieve the ropes’ pull on her wrists. She opened and closed her hands, trying to find even a little slack. The ropes were tight, and not quite painful; and as long as she did not pull on them too hard, there was none of the tingling numbness that would indicate danger.

The lines from the ties around her wrist to the hardpoints were an inch or so too short for her to relax comfortably; if she let her muscles slacken too much, the ropes began to squeeze too tightly. Her shoulders began to tire and ache as she stretched to take the tension off her hands. She felt a sinking, hollow sensation as she realized that there was no comfortable middle ground. She would end up with shoulder muscles anguished and tight from overwork and the bruising squeeze of tight hemp rope around her wrist.

She tried to avoid thinking of this non-choice as metaphor.

Dana returned again and slid gracefully onto the bed, drawing her knees up beside herself. She perched over Valerie’s midsection, leaning across her stomach and facing away from the girl. She worked at attaching something gently, but unhesitatingly, to the girl’s semi-hard dick. Valerie could not see around Dana to make out what the woman was doing.

Her libido, always at least at a low simmer lately, was starting to waken from just the bondage, despite her weariness. Valerie still would have preferred an evening of cuddling and softness, but she knew that Dana would stoke her desire until it was overwhelming— or at least coequal to her exhaustion. As Dana tugged, squeezed, and pulled, Valerie whimpered softly and squirmed as much as she could, bound as she was. She gasped and stilled as Dana slapped her inner thigh. The sting of it was only slightly painful, but she took it as a warning, and a reminder that Dana could treat her to much worse.

“There… it’s so pretty. Worth the wait.”

Dana leaned away from from Valerie, letting her see the results of her labors— a shiny metal chastity cage, organic curves glinting in flickering candlelight as they wrapped, squeezing, around her most sensitive parts. Valerie’s heart hammered in her chest, an incomprehensible mixture of arousal and panic. Her eyes flicked between the cage and Dana; she was terrified the cage was the same sort of permanent as her collar, and her mind deadlocked trying to simultaneously form the question and evaluate whether she would be punished for merely asking it.

Dana simply smiled down at her with her usual wry deviousness. Valerie struggled to get her breathing under control, so that she at least would not hyperventilate. As she did, she became aware that her wrists were hurting and her hands were starting to tingle warningly. She had been unconsciously pulling on the ropes with all her strength— fruitlessly; the steel bed-frame she was bound to had not so much as creaked. She forced her muscles to relax, and grew only more dismayed when she found that all her pulling had not even gained her a millimeter of slack.

“Mistress—” she started, and then yelped, arching her back away from the bed as searing pain lanced across the base of her dick. The shock lasted for two or three seconds before cutting out, and she collapsed back against the bed. She was wide-eyed and sweating.

Dana was holding up a small black remote control, with large “on” and “off” buttons, and smaller buttons labeled with a plus and minus. If anything, her smile had grown both wider and more devious.

“I didn’t give you permission to speak, little toy.”

Valerie’s breath was trembling and uneven. The pain that Dana could inflict, apparently at the press of a button, had momentarily wiped out any conscious thoughts. Her concern about the permanence of the cage trickled back in, an icy terror replacing fluttering panic, but she had more imminent fears.

Dana had made it beyond clear that she would be punished for asking, and — if she even knew what Valerie was panicking about — had no intention of answering. The woman slid smooothly off the bed and returned to her display wall of toys and tools, quiet and thoughtful, a master craftswoman deciding which tools a new task would require.

Valerie tested the ropes again, a subconscious reflex; she did not have even a sliver of hope that anything had changed.

Dana came back with a vibrating wand in one hand and a small bundle of shiny black latex in the other. Valerie could not make out exactly what the bundle was until Dana was kneeling on the bed next to her head, untangling the tight black hood and working it over her face and head. A zipper down the back of the hood pulled the latex tight across her skin; Dana left the integrated blindfold in place, turning dim light into complete darkness; but she had left off the gag, leaving Valerie’s mouth free. The hood muffled sound only slightly; she could still hear her own breathing, and the occasional noise as Dana moved around, but bare feet on gentle hardwood did not produce much noise.

Valerie felt Dana climb on to the bed and kneel beside her, the mattress compressing and flexing under the woman’s weight. She was fearful of what her mistress had planned for her; and she knew she was helpless against whatever it was. Her idle fantasy of an evening held safe in Dana’s arms seemed like a joke.

She jerked in surprise as a hand rested on her sternum; despite that it was harmless, even gentle. She normally craved the warm silk of Dana’s touch, but Valerie had no idea what was going to be done to her, and the touch felt more like a threat than a caress.

“Did you enjoy your time with Lucca, toy?”

The resting hand had become a single manicured fingernail, tracing a lazy spiral around her breast, closing in on the newly-pierced nipple at its center.

Valerie opened her mouth to reply, but closed it again a moment later, staying silent. She worried that even the direct question did not constitute permission to speak; and in any case, she didn’t know what answer to give. Some parts of Lucca’s visit, she had enjoyed, unequivocally. Other parts of the visit— she whimpered without intending to.

Dana’s fingernail closed in and traced along the margin of Valeria’s areola. The girl gave a small gasp at the sensation- stimulating without being painful. A moment later she winced sharply and moaned in pain- Dana had flicked the fresh piercing; not hard, but it was very new and very sensitive.

“I asked you a question.”

“Mostly— yes…” Valerie’s breath was uneven, and her voice quavered.

“I did not give you permission to speak,” Dana replied, coolly.

Valerie’s cage sent another lance of pain through her, and her muscles shook as she pulled against the still-unyielding ropes. She whimpered, pained and plaintive; and she felt even more helpless, not just physically, but with the desperate realization that Dana simply meant to cause her pain; simply meant to play with her— like a toy.

“Did they let you cum?”

Valerie was paralyzed with indecision— certain that speaking without permission would result in punishment, as Dana had already demonstrated; but she was trembling with anticipation. The unanswered question seemed to hang in the air, a threat.

She nodded her head yes; sightless beneath the opaque latex hood, she didn’t even know if Dana was looking in her direction at that point. She whimpered, squirming and tugging at the ropes again, even knowing that there would be no escape.

“Did. They. Let. You. Cum?” Dana spoke again; she punctuated each word with a brief click of the remote, brief sparks of painful shock from the cage’s base ring.

Valerie jerked with each shock, each word. She could feel the conscious part of her mind starting to withdraw; not a retreat so much as a giving up of control— letting herself exist simply as toy, rather than engaging with the apparently impossible task of navigating Dana’s conflicting demands.

“Do you want me to ask a third time?” Dana’s voice held a tone of feigned astonishment, and an edge almost of malice.

“N— n— no, Mistre—” Her voice cut off as her body spasmed, pulling against the ropes and curving her back up away from the bed.

Dana released the button a few seconds later, though Valerie wasn’t sure how many. The pain seemed to hurt more each time, but she wasn’t sure if the intensity was increasing or she was growing more sensitive to it.

“I did not give you permission to speak,” Dana repeated for the third time. “No, you don’t want me to ask again or no, Lucca did not let you cum?”

Valerie’s mind retreated further from the situation— it was becoming harder to assemble thoughts, much less sentences, despite her inclination towards obedience. She sobbed aloud. She wanted to be good for her mistress, but the promise of punishment no matter her actions was like a wrench dropped in the workings of her conscious mind.

“N— no… ask…” she stammered, incoherently.

The shocks started again as she spoke, and amidst inarticulate cries and gasps of pain, she forced herself to continue.

“Y— yes… cum…”

The pain, intense and unrelenting, blossomed bright in her consciousness until it was a white noise blast drowning out any other thoughts.

A short eternity later the pain paused, momentarily. Valerie thought it ended, but a half-breath later it resumed again, albeit a minor encore, a brief moment.

She gasped for breath, shuddering and crying, in the void left by the pain’s absence. Her wrists hurt, still more, and a small part of her registered that the ropes would leave them bruised and sore, another ache for her growing list.

“I specifically forbade that; you’ve been very bad.”

Dana had said nothing of such a rule, Valerie was sure. She had refused the girl release, before Lucca’s visit; but she had said nothing about what Lucca could or could not do. Valerie mewled softly; she felt guilty, irrationally, for breaking a rule even if she didn’t know about it; and fearful of the punishment she expected. She squirmed in an atavistic and utterly pointless attempt to escape and hide.

“Tsk. And here I was going to be gentle with you.”