CHAPTER 1
Mark is eighteen, but I have known him since he was five. Since we live right next to each other we are good friends, despite the fact that I am thirty years older than he is. He is a great kid: smart, polite, good sense of humor. He is also a handsome fellow. He was always a little small for his age, but had a nice tight, compact, athlete's body and was good at sports.
About a month ago Mark dropped in for a visit as he often does. I had some friends over and we were playing cards in the kitchen. I had taught Mark to play poker when he was seven so I invited him to sit in on a hand or two. It was penny ante, but he didn't have much cash on him and was soon busted. The evening wore on and my pals departed one by one and soon Mark and I were alone.
We talked about this and that, problems he had, things he wanted to do with the money he was making at his new part-time job at the supermarket, getting ready for college, stuff like that. We had been having impromptu one-on-ones like this since he was ten years old. I was about to put the cards and other stuff away when he grabbed them and said "One more hand! OK?"
"What for?" I asked. "You don't have any money left, Mr. Las Vegas?"
"No sweat," he said. "We'll play for a dare! C'mon. It'll be fun!"
So I agreed.
Five card draw. He opened for one dare and I called. He drew three and I drew two to my three fours. He bet the dare and I called. He had two pair and I had drawn another four. Loser! I enjoyed taunting him and he took it like he always did my teasing--with a smile and shrug.
Pay-up time. I had known since he was about six that he was ticklish as hell, so I told him his dare was to submit to twenty minutes of unrestricted tickling. He balked, but I could tell he didn't want to go back on his bet, honest kid that he is. We bantered back and forth for a few minutes and then he suddenly looked at his watch and said "Oh my god, I gotta get home! My folks will kill me-- it's three AM, man! Oh, shit!" So he left with me ragging him about how he owed me, bigtime! Both of us were feeling pretty good and I certainly didn't hold anything against him for his last-minute chickening out. But I sure did regret that I hadn't had the chance to tickle him.
I didn't think any more about it until the next weekend. I was on my third cup of coffee when Mark comes in the back door, right into the kitchen where I was sitting. He's been letting himself into my place for years, so no big deal.
I could tell he had something on his mind, and it turned out to be our bet. He wanted to pay up as his conscience was bothering him, but he wanted to know if we could change the bet to something like washing my dishes or maybe mowing the lawn. Anything but tickling. Oh, no! I wasn't going to let him off that easy. Twenty minutes of tickling, or he was a welcher. He agreed, but I could tell he was pretty nervous about it.
I took him by his nice firm biceps and steered him playfully down the hall into my bedroom.
"Take off everything but your underpants," I told him. He didn't like that idea, but when I said he could pay up or chicken out he did it. I made him lay down face up on my double bed and then went around from corner to corner and tied his wrists and ankles to the corner posts with old neckties. I gotta say it: he was one pretty picture all spread out there on my bed in nothing but a pair of boxers woith hearts all over them. I teased him about the undies, and he smiled and shrugged as he always did.
I told him I was gonna torture him until he was nothing but a pool of sweat, and the first few delicate swipes at his restrained feet really got him going. He was crazy ticklish on his feet and I knew it. I also knew he was very sensitive on his ribs and tummy. Within five minutes I had him begging and wiggling and a few tears rolling down his cheeks. In ten minutes a sheen of sweat had formed across his trim, nicely tanned chest and belly. By fifteen minutes he was begging and pleading with me to end the torture.
"Please, please! I'll do anything, man! Anything! Just no more! No more torture, man! I can't take it!"
I told him he could take it and would take it and continued, but a little more restrained now that he was so strung out. And I noticed something, too. Poking out of his baggy boxers was a very nice, very firm, circumsized six-incher. He had to know it was there, of course, but didn't let on and neither did I. The twenty minutes was up and I reluctantly stopped tickling him and untied him. He tucked himself in, a little shamefaced I thought, and got dressed. I joshed him a little asbout his begging and pleading, as he expected I would, and he took it well. We talked for a while and then he went home. I was left to reflect on an extraordinary evening.