Third Time’s the Charm, Part 1
I was introduced to tie-up games by my cousin Beth. Actually, she is not technically my cousin. She’s my mother’s brother’s wife’s sister’s daughter. But our extended family has maintained close ties, and we’ve always thought of each other as cousins.
Beth is a cute, diminutive blonde. She has a nice body and fabulous legs. She keeps her hair cut short, and it tends to be spiky, which gives her a somewhat raffish look, an image she likes to cultivate. She has a sweet face, with delicate features, an impertinent smile, a slightly crooked nose, and dark, expressive eyes from which emanate the most penetrating, intimidating gaze when she turns it on. And indeed, she can be formidable. Behind her engaging visage is a calm self-possession and a sharp intelligence. She has a deceptively self-deprecating style, making little jokes at her own expense, putting herself down, play-acting the bimbo. Those who know her well understand that when she’s not taking herself seriously, that’s when you should take her seriously, because she’s setting you up to put you down. You don’t fool with Beth, unless she wants you to.
Naturally I had a crush on her; but she is six years my elder, and by the middle of my teenage years I had abandoned all hope of entering the temple of Beth. I was still a mere schoolboy, she a postgrad university student. She had gone through, or more likely wore out, a string of boyfriends. She had a couple of girlfriends as well, though I think these were more fashion accessories than serious partners. Beth was not the flighty type, but when it came to relationships she seemed more interested in playmates than soul mates.
I spent a lot of time with Beth while I was growing up. She lived nearby, and when my parents were away on business, which was often, I would stay with her family. Sometimes, however, she would come over to my place instead. In later years she would tease me by calling it babysitting; but we got on well together. We would sit up late into the night talking and scoffing junk food and watching old movies; and we loved to play games, especially chess. When I was old enough, I nearly always beat her. This caused her no end of aggravation, because I was not a gracious winner and provoked her with dumb-blonde jokes. Of course, I was being malicious. At uni she studied advanced mathematics! But when she gets piqued, she becomes animated and intense, which makes her even more exciting... so I have always enjoyed annoying her.
I have no doubt that Beth was aware of my infatuation, but she was too cool to ever make fun of me about it. Even so, when she was staying over, she was charmingly disingenuous in the way she would lounge in the backyard on a sunny afternoon in her bikini, and wear her baby doll nightie around the house in the evening. She was a natural flirt and couldn’t resist an opportunity to get my juvenile heart pumping faster. Hunched over the chess board, she tried to distract me with her luscious, lace-edged cleavage; but masculine pride prevailed over adolescent lust, and I never let her win by such easy default.
On one of those stay-overs, around my eleventh birthday, Beth was in the backyard with her latest boyfriend, a guy named Mick, or Mitch, or something... I didn’t care to get too acquainted with my competition. I was a precocious pre-teen, and my crush was already well-developed. I was inside, brooding upstairs in my bedroom, watching them discreetly from my window. Beth looked as pretty as ever, in a short, flouncy, floral summer dress. It was getting on towards evening, and a chilling breeze wafted across the lawn. Beth started to shiver, and Mick-Mitch-whatever (from now on I shall call him Mick for short) put one arm around her lovely bare shoulders, and ran his other hand up her luscious bare legs, and she shivered even more. Suddenly they were rolling on the ground, laughing and grappling. Beth squealed and I gaped as Mick flipped her onto her stomach and twisted her arms behind her back. When he crossed her wrists, I could see what he was about to do.
While he was distracted, looking about for something to tie her with, Beth managed to wrestle free of his grasp and scrambled away on all fours. He lunged after her, caught hold of her legs and hauled her across the grass. She thrashed about, tore herself free of his grip and leapt to her feet; but instead of making a break for the house, she turned and confronted him. She must have known she didn’t have a hope, and she was quickly overpowered and forced to the ground. She yelled and flailed about more frantically, desperately grabbing the hem of her skirt to preserve some dignity as she was dragged by her ankles across the lawn.
I don’t know if Beth knew I was spying on them, but she screamed “David, help me!†as she was again sprawled onto her belly. Mick had pulled her alongside a large metal tool box which sat beside the garden shed. He rattled the lock, and he was in luck, it wasn’t bolted. He groped inside it, using his other hand to keep the struggling girl down, and pulled out a coil of tattered-looking nylon rope. Beth groaned. She was flat on the ground, arms pinned behind her back, as he dangled the rope tauntingly in front of her eyes.
I wrenched myself away from the window and raced downstairs and out the door. By this time Mick was already wrapping the cord around Beth’s wrists, which were crossed over the middle of her back. Her fists were clenching and unclenching. She looked up at me with a plaintive expression, her pretty face smudged with dirt, flaxen hair bedraggled, flushed cheeks quivering as she puffed and panted and gasped. Yet as she was being bound, she just lay there passively, blinking and pouting, having already given up the struggle... so unlike my indomitable cousin.
Mick saw me standing over them and grinned. Beth frowned; and she grimaced as her captor tightened the rope. They both could see that I had not come to rescue the damsel in distress. I had thought about it, of being the hero, and I thought the better if it. My cousin, prostrate before me, looked so helpless and so sexy. She tried to sit up but was pushed back down. She was still on her stomach, and her dress had bunched up under her trussed hands. Her white panties were grass-stained green. The straps of her dress had come off her shoulders, and when Mick began playing with the zipper on the back of the dress, she writhed and began kicking up her heels. I wasn’t about to put an end to this by interfering.
Beth stopped wriggling when Mick shifted his focus to her feet. She didn’t resist when he clamped her heels together. Then he turned towards me and pointed to one of the pieces of rope he had taken from the box. Beth wasn’t aware of that, and flinched when she felt the second pair of hands. I looped the cord about her ankles several times, cinched it – a refinement which earned me a nod of approval from Mick – and ended with a flourish, a sharp tug that elicited a despairing moan from our captive.
If Mick or I had been more resourceful, or willing to take the consequences later on, we would have finished the job by putting her in a hog-tie, or something equally entertaining. Instead, we left her to squirm in her bonds, straining at the rope, whimpering and pleading as the cold night air closed in around her. When finally we relented and released her, her exultant smile made it look like she thought she had won the day. At the time I assumed that this was just her way of saving face. Only much later did it become clear to me what that look of triumph really meant.
At the time I was too young to really understand what was going on. With her strong personality, despite her small size Beth did not seem like the sort of girl who would submit so easily... unless she chose to. And that’s how I learnt about tie-games. Naturally, as time went on, I began to fantasize, and in my alternate reality I would subdue Beth and carry her off to my lair, although she never surrendered without a fight. And since we spent a lot of time together, I couldn’t keep these fantasies a secret. Sometimes I would show her pictures I had drawn of her, in various forms of captivity, and she would be exasperatingly patronizing. At least I could beat her at chess.