Chapter 1

I almost missed her. I'd stepped away from my bedroom window just long enough to pee even though she'd told me I had to be there, watching, every evening from six until eight. She was already through her gate and was just rounding the corner of her house, heading for the kitchen door when I got back.

And, most importantly of all as far as I was concerned, she was wearing a red dress. We'd pre-arranged that signal during the summer: a white dress or blouse would mean she'd changed her mind and couldn't go through with it, a green dress would mean she'd decided on the milder fantasy in her bedroom. And red meant she'd chosen the whole enchilada; the trip to the basement that we'd spent so much time preparing and several days at my mercy.

The mere thought of it had my heart racing as I grabbed the gym bag that contained the kit the two of us had put together and raced down stairs and outside, thankful as hell that Mom had chosen today to stay late at the office so I didn't have to try to sneak out or come up with an excuse. I paused, just inside her back yard to gently close the gate and open the bag. On top was the mask – more of a hood, really - when I pulled it on it covered my entire head, except small holes for my eyes and a much larger one that exposed my mouth from the bottom of my nose to my chin, before forming the wide strap across the top of my throat that, along with the zipper down the back, held it in firmly place.

My head was filled with the smell latex as I pulled out the other items in the kit: a pair of supple leather gloves that fit my hands like, well, gloves; a set of handcuffs, which I stuck in my back pocket; a red ball with a leather strap running through it, which went into my other back pocket; a vicious looking combat knife; and a single key. Leaving the empty bag on the ground I crept to the back door.

She was expecting me, but the stealth was part of the fantasy she'd laid out during her several visits that summer. The key turned smoothly and silently in the lock, as I knew it would after all of the graphite I'd pumped in there. Just inside was a tiny little entryway, with an open door to the kitchen, to my right, and a closed door hiding the stairs to the basement, straight ahead. The kitchen lights were off but a pale light came in through the opposite doorway.

I followed the indirect glow, tiptoeing in across the tile floor until I could peer around into the family room. Her suitcases were there, at the end of the sofa, but she was nowhere to be seen, so I continued to follow the light, which I now saw was coming from the ceiling fixture in the hallway. I froze after a few steps when I heard a toilet flush, then pressed my back up against the wall beside the bathroom door and waited, listening as she washed her hands.

She was Elizabeth Connor, a tiny woman, about my mother's age, with fair skin, freckled cheeks, red hair and the most beautiful breasts I'd ever seen: high and firm with pink areolae an inch and a half in diameter that were barely darker than her ivory white skin and pert little nipples that just begged to be sucked. I'd memorized every detail of Elizabeth's breasts, including the crescent moon shaped birthmark on the outer curve of the left one, when she'd shown them to me, once, to convince me that she was serious about the arrangement she was suggesting. That had been it, at the time, the rest she'd wanted to save for later – for now.

She opened the bathroom door and was walking past me when she gasped and jerked. Fortunately, this was one of the capture scenarios we'd practiced and I knew my part well. I grabbed her by the throat with my left hand and pushed her in the direction she'd already started moving in until I'd pinned her against the far wall, crouching to put my face on an even level with hers and holding the knife up between our faces.

As I said, Elizabeth was a tiny woman; about five one and very slim, she couldn't have weighed much more than a hundred pounds. I, on the other hand, took after my mother's family. I was six feet, four and a half inches in my socks at my last physical, a little taller than my two uncles, Mom's brothers, though they outweighed me, significantly; I weighed just less than two hundred pounds and they'd both passed four hundred years before. Of course, that was mostly because they were in their forties and I was still six weeks from my sixteenth birthday, but I also took pains to eat healthy food and get plenty of exercise, having seen where my genes could lead me.

Elizabeth had told me that it was my size that inspired her to approach me about helping her fulfill her fantasies. I was more than a foot taller than her, nearly double her weight and had hands big enough to almost completely encircle her neck with just one; if this were a legitimate attack, I'm sure she would have been terrified. She knew who I was and what was happening and she was still staring at me, wide eyed, and shaking like a leaf.

"Hello, Lizzie," I hissed.

"What ... Who are you?"

That was one of the questions we'd rehearsed. I gave the canned answer. "Right here, right now, as far as you're concerned, I'm the only person in the world."

"What are you going to do to me?" She sounded even more pitiful than during practice.

"Everything!" Again, I gave the practiced answer, trying to sound dramatic like that movie from the eighties when the actor from Beatlejuice said, "I'm Batman."

"Oh, God!" Elizabeth moaned and closed her eyes.

"Turn around," I demanded.

"What?"

"Turn around. Face the wall."

She gave me a desperate look, but not quite as desperate as some of the ones she'd given during rehearsals, and, when I waved the knife in her face, turned slowly around to face the wall.

I'm pretty sure I would have cut myself open when I slid the knife into my belt if I hadn't spent so much time dulling the edge but she didn't see my error, so after a momentary pause I continued to play my part, pulling the cuffs out of my pocket with my right hand while holding her face against the wall with my left. She jerked when I snapped one cuff around her right wrist but didn't struggle like I expected and I only had to tug her arm violently back to the center of her back once, after she let it drop back to her side after I pulled it there the first time. Then she stayed obediently in position, shaking and breathing heavily with damned realistic fear, when I released her so I could use both hands to finish cuffing her wrists together, behind her back.

"Please..." she started to say, but I cut her off by pushing the ball gag into her mouth.

The gag had been the hardest thing for Elizabeth to convince me to use. It just seemed like a bad idea, since it meant she'd be unable to call the fantasy off by using her safe-phrase, "Red light." In the end, she'd compromised by agreeing that I wouldn't do anything more extreme than carrying her down stairs and restraining her before removing it. "Even if I change my mind, I think I can survive that much, knowing you'll let me free as soon as you finish."

It was a good thing she'd spent so much time reassuring me because, for some reason, she decided to really start struggling as I was buckling the gag strap. Otherwise, I would have unbuckled it right there and asked if she was really OK. As it was, I fully expected her to call it off, as soon as she had a chance.

But that was several minutes and thirteen stairs away. In the mean time, I had to pull off the most physically demanding scene. I spun her around by her shoulders and, before she could recover, bent and heaved her over my shoulder. Now, I'm naturally pretty big, and I worked hard on staying in shape, but Mom had read somewhere that boys shouldn't work at strength conditioning until they were at least sixteen, so weights had been off-limits as far as my workouts were concerned, so the first few times I'd tried to left a hundred pounds of redhead, I'd failed miserably, even though she was cooperating. But practice makes perfect; I only had to shift her weight slightly to get her into a solid fireman's carry and, even though she struggled and kicked, I was able to hold her in place with my arms wrapped around her thighs.

I moved carefully, but quickly, through the kitchen, made my way down the stairs and carried her into the dungeon.

The dungeon had been my big project, working with wood and steel in ways that they hadn't taught in shop class. Elizabeth would show up on a Tuesday, a load of parts would show up on Wednesday and, between rehearsals, we'd read through the plans together, to be sure I had all the tools and understood all the techniques I would need. Then she'd go away on business again, for a week or two, leaving me behind to do the actually assembly and installation.

As planned, I moved directly to the first piece I'd built – pieces, really, with two heavy pulleys bolted into the floor joists, overhead, and two more anchored into the concrete floor.

I slid Elizabeth off of my shoulder and managed to lower her to the floor without dropping her and physically pushed her down to her belly, sitting on her thighs while I buckled the manacles into place on her wrists, then holding her down with both hands on her ass while I turned to repeat the procedure on her ankles, using my superior weight to keep her from doing more than scuff the toes of her shoes as she struggled to kick at me.

I'd left the handcuffs in place and, when I hauled on the arm ropes, Elizabeth was forced to struggle to her feet and then bend over into what she had previously told me was a strappado position – forced to bend at the waist by having her arms raised above her back. She moaned and struggled, futilely, as I pulled the leg ropes tight enough to force her feet to spread about two feet apart. That ensured that there wasn't enough slack for her to kick me when I released the handcuffs – she'd assured me that the struggle was a key part of her fantasy and she'd really be trying to kick, and otherwise lash out at me if I gave her the slightest chance.

With the cuffs off, Elizabeth was able to stand up straight, with her hands at about shoulder height, but I didn't give her much time to struggle – I quickly pulled them into position stretched toward the ceiling, angled out towards the pulleys, leaving her just enough slack so that I could pull the leg ropes farther apart and still leave her feet on the floor. Then, when all four ropes were tightened and tied off and the slack ends looped neatly on the floor or hanging from the hooks in the overhead joists I'd put there for just that purpose, I stepped away.

I closed the heavy drapes, which we'd both demonstrated were sufficiently sound deadening, along with the acoustic foam I'd covered the ceiling and small basement windows with, so that neither of us, standing in the driveway could hear more than a murmur when the other was in the dungeon screaming at the top of their lungs.

Which I half expected Elizabeth to do when I removed her gag; it was what she'd usually done during practice. When she didn't, I fully expected her to use her safe word. But when she did finally speak, she'd clearly decided to continue.

"Why are you doing this?" She whimpered, quietly, keeping up her role, perfectly.

This was another question we'd rehearsed, after a fashion, but only loosely. She'd told me she'd ask this question, but hadn't coached me on an answer at all and wouldn't let me tell her what I planned to say. I'd given my answer a lot of thought, over the two and a half months since she first approached me.

"How could I possibly see something as beautiful as you and not do everything I could to own it?"

"O ... Own?" Her eyes went wide and her cheeks started turning pink.

"Yes. You, dear little Lizzie, are my present to myself. Now, let's get a closer look."

"Own?" Lizzie moaned the word, again, dragging it out over two syllables, as I was walking away from her, and I paused for a moment, half expecting her to call out, "Red light," and end her fantasy just as it was getting started. But all she did was to mumble, "Own," again. She didn't even say, "Yellow light," to stop things, temporarily.

I realized, as I stood there, that as much as she'd talked about being at my mercy, about being powerless and in my control, she'd never mentioned anything about being owned or a slave. I'd started reading stories on the internet about bondage, since she'd first explained her fantasies to me, and slavery and ownership was a common theme, so I'd naturally started thinking in those terms. Clearly Elizabeth hadn't been, and, since the last thing I wanted to for her to end her fantasy early, I wouldn't use them anymore.

These thoughts ran through my head as I stood next to the bank of switches I'd installed along one of the interior walls before, holding my hands horizontally so that I could flip every switch at the same time, I turned them on.