Chapter 7

Standing up suddenly, he deposited her unceremoniously on the floor. "Stay there!" he said commanded.

Karin smiled to herself, the tingles in her belly starting already. Her man was back to normal. Or at least, what passed for normal in their short relationship. She didn't want him to be gentle when he needed to be rough. That just made him confused. There would be a lot time for gentleness - for 'normal' sex - later, she was sure. Right now, she wanted him to be her master, her tormentor.

John walked over to a pile of equipment in the back of the room and selected several items. Coming back to where she sat on the floor, he gave her a single hand motion. She stood. He led her out onto the wide porch across the front of the cabin. A twirling of his finger and she turned to face away from him. She had tried to read his face to see what was coming, but he had kept all expression off his face. He had also kept his body between her eyes and the equipment in his hand. Karin sighed and tried to relax, but the excitement kept her dancing from foot to foot.

"Stay still, slave! I'm not going to chase you around the fucking room."

She grinned to herself, teasing him with her swaying hips. He had actually said a swear word! An unfamiliar 'whooshing' sound preceded an incredible stinging pain on her buttocks. She yowled and grasped her burning ass cheeks with both hands. Her eyes were squeezed shut, trying to block out the pain.

Roughly, one of her wrists was grabbed and pulled away from her pointless efforts to ease the pain in her backside. He fastened a thick, wide cuff around her wrist and laced it on, using thick leather laces. It looked more like a bowling glove with a thumbhole but left the thumb and palm exposed. The material, however, was much thicker than a bowling glove. When he was finished, that hand was dropped and the other hand was fitted with a similar glove.

He reached behind him and pulled one of the benches that lined the porch over to them. He roughly manhandled her until she was standing on the bench. Because of her height, her head was close to one of the large crossbeams that held up the roof of the porch. He stood on the chair behind her. A brief squeeze of his arms around her reassured her. She closed her eyes as she leaned back into him. The moment passed quickly.

He shuffled her forward until she was on the end of the bench. He lifted her right arm up and out. He hooked a ring on the back of the gloves to a clip on the outermost crossbeam. She had not noticed the rings on the gloves. Her arm was stretched out wide to the side and to the front. Her left hand was raised and clipped, her arm stretched out wide to the other side. Satisfied she was securely bound in position, John stepped down off the low bench and retrieved another piece of equipment. She felt him step back up behind her.

He ran his hands up her exposed sides deliberately, feeling each rib carefully as he advanced up and around towards the undersides of her tits. The air she took into her lungs went no farther down than his hands. By the time he lightly touched the bottom of her breasts she could barely breathe. Her breath was coming in short gasps. He kissed the top of each bare shoulder until she calmed down. Reluctantly taking his hands from her chest, he pulled her hair back, tilting her face up. Her mouth dropped open.

He gently inserted a large rubber ball into her mouth. It was the same one he had used the night before. He had fashioned it into a ballgag now. He pulled the ends behind her neck and tied them tight. Her mouth was stuffed. He could feel her groaning now that the gag was in place, but he could hear nothing.

John stepped down off the bench. He walked around in front of her, going down the two steps to the ground to do so. Her hips were at the same height as his shoulders. He grasped her around her waist, lifted her feet off the bench and slowly lowered her until she was holding her weight entirely by her gloved wrists. Her bare feet dangled several inches off the ground and out away from the floor of the porch. If she had been aware of it, she had a beautiful view down the mountain towards a deep blue lake in the distance.

He walked back into the cabin, mostly to calm himself. Something about seeing her that way excited him in a way nothing else had. And he hadn't even started whipping her yet. Just the one stripe of the riding crop crossed her perfect white hemispheres. He had to get himself under control, or he could easily hurt her or leave a permanent scar — or several of them. He had, in the past, left his 'mark' on a special woman or two. But it wasn't a scar caused by a poorly wielded whip. He picked up his pipe. He hadn't finished smoking it, as he had been interrupted, albeit, not so rudely as he let her think.

Sitting down in his chair he looped his legs over the arm so that he was looking out the door of the cabin. He re-lit the familiar old pipe, gazing quietly out the door as the aromatic smoke filled the cabin and beyond, calming him. The sight of the naked girl hanging from the roof of his porch pleased him. He had dreamed of doing this with the others he had brought up here but had never done it before. None of them seemed strong enough. The imagery of whipping a naked woman hanging exposed to the wide outdoors appealed to his sense of the twisted and the absurd. It was fantasy come to life. One of his oldest and dearest.

He knocked his pipe against his palm when it was empty to clear the bowl. Thoughtfully he put it back in the sealed humidor to protect it from drying out in the thin mountain air. The moisture-tight seal closed with a 'click'.

Karin heard him move away from her, leaving her hanging by her wrists. She was thankful he had used the wide cuffs. The extra width and strong lacing provided support over a greater area of skin and didn't cut off the blood flow to her fingers. She wiggled her fingers occasionally, and couldn't sense any signs of circulatory distress. She had heard him move away and then there was silence. For a while, the only sounds she could hear were the sounds of her body, her heart beating, the blood whistling through her aorta, the gurgling of gas in her stomach. Then after a while she heard the birds calling out and the buzzing of the millions of insects. She heard the underbrush rustle as something slithered or crawled nearby. The sun heated the boards in the roof and they cracked with expansion caused by the warming. The world of nature, when you get out away from the city, is a noisy place.

She had smelled the smoke from his pipe as it drifted out the cabin door. Its sweet pungent odor enveloped her mind, giving her visions of golden forests, crisp autumn walks hand-in-hand, cheerleaders and football games. The invisible tendrils of smoke wove their magic in her brain, binding her tighter to her mystery man.

The 'click' of the humidor in the silent mountain air sounded like a gunshot. He was moving again! She braced herself as best she could, but she had no idea what was coming. Her only clue was that one stoke of pain that still burned across her butt.

Her arms ached heavily now, the muscles and tendons being stretched more than they were used to. She tried not to kick her feet as any motion of her body tormented her already stressed shoulders and arms. She strained to hear him, to find out where he was, and perhaps that way get an idea of what he was going to do.

John slipped off his loafers, then his socks. The cool stone of the cabin floor felt good against his feet. The bare wood on the porch itched a little as he stepped quietly out of the cabin. He wasn't intending to sneak up on her. He knew that after a while, the pain would focus the mind, much like meditation. He did not want to disturb Karin's focus. Not just yet, anyway.

When nothing happened and no sounds were made to give away his position, Karin's mind wandered to the scene in front of her. She saw the lake in the distance more clearly than ever before. The trees on the shore were so distinct; she could see each needle, each leaf, and each branch. She saw the tiny animals; the ones no one ever sees because they never moved if they thought you were there. Their tiny bodies darted back and forth, as if they needed to be in two places at once. She wondered at the color of their fur, puzzling that it looked so soft and...