Forever Bound. Elizabeth Coldwell

her nephews and nieces.

      ‘You’re aware that we have to be at my parents’ in an hour, right?’ she asked, trying to keep her voice neutral. She wasn’t questioning his judgement; she was just reminding him of something that appeared to have slipped his mind. He wouldn’t take offence at that, would he?

      ‘Very aware,’ he assured her. He grinned at her with the nonchalance that had stolen her heart six years earlier. It still affected her today, after five years of marriage, mostly because she’d come to associate it with their weekend sexcapades. This was the grin he reserved for when he was about to do dirty things to her – the sort of things that tended to take more time than they had at present.

      ‘So … maybe we shouldn’t be doing this now,’ she suggested.

      The grin disappeared, only to be replaced with a frown. ‘Are you being contrary, Em? I thought we had rules about that.’

      Oh, they had rules, all right. Rules which stated that they were equals during the week, but that she was to obey him in everything on the weekends. Generally, she loved obeying him, to the point where looking forward to the weekend had taken on an entirely different dimension since she’d met him. But this was a special circumstance. It was John’s birthday, and she didn’t want to be the person who showed up an hour late for the festivities. Not today. Lord knows she’d done it too many times in the past.

      However, one look at Connor’s increasingly stern face taught her the error of her ways. Whatever he had in mind, he seemed to have set his heart on it and, when Connor had set his heart on something, it was best not to mess with him. Not on a weekend, anyway. Emma had learned that to her detriment on a few occasions. She’d had trouble sitting afterwards.

      With a sigh, she took off the top she was wearing, then the elegant grey trousers she saved for special occasions. Her eyes were focused on Connor’s as she unfastened her bra and stepped out of her knickers. When she was naked, she assumed the position he’d taught her. Standing tall, she pulled her shoulders backwards, thus making her breasts more prominent. She pressed her heels together and did her best to lengthen her neck. Then she put her hands behind her back, assuming that Connor would want to bind them. He usually did.

      He surprised her, though. ‘Lift your arms sideways, feet slightly apart,’ he ordered.

      She obeyed, and watched with bated breath as he uncoiled the rope, a good thirty feet of thickish hemp. Hemp was tricky, she knew. It held knots extremely well, but could be abrasive, even though Connor had done his best to make it less so. She’d sat next to him as he’d burned off loose fibres and had endlessly sanded the rope in order to make it smoother. It was much smoother now than when he’d bought it, but it still irritated her skin when she struggled too much. ‘That’s the idea,’ he had explained to her with a mischievous smile when she’d had the audacity to complain. ‘To teach you motionless submission and prevent you from struggling.’

      She watched a little nervously as he folded the rope in half and slid the loop around her neck. Two inches below her collarbone he tied the two lengths together in a large, flat knot. He then proceeded to tie three more roughly equidistant knots, until the rope reached her pussy, where he re-tied his most recent knot several times before he appeared to be satisfied with it. Then, smiling at her as if it was the most natural thing in the world, he slid the rope between her labia and, stepping behind her, pulled it backwards through her legs. She could feel it tightening in her crotch and arse crack as he lifted it and began to tie more knots in it behind her back. Then he looped it underneath the rope at the back of her neck, leaving her with a vertical line down both her front and her back.

      She knew now what he was making. It was going to be a karada, a decorative rope harness in the Japanese style. He’d practised it on her a couple of times before, on both occasions turning her into artfully trussed meat.

      From here, she knew, the two ends of the rope would be separated again, and each end would be wrapped around one side of her waist, weaving back and forth between the central rope on her front and the one on her back until her skin was criss-crossed with lines. There would be diamond shapes and triangles and interesting geometrical patterns. It would be a veritable piece of body art, one which no one but the two of them would ever see, but of which Connor would be rightly proud.

      As he walked around her, directing the ropes between and underneath her breasts to create a hemp bra, she watched his fingers, so meticulous and assured. With great dexterity, he slipped an end of the rope into the space between two knots on her belly and pulled it backwards again to loop it into a similar space on her back. He repeated this process several times, moving further down with each repetition. She watched transfixed as the diamond shapes began to take form on her belly, luxuriating in the sensual feel of the rope sliding across her skin.

      She’d heard karadas described as rope prisons. She herself didn’t think of them that way. To her, a karada was a caress, a hempy kiss to go with the sweet caresses Connor would occasionally bestow on her neck and breasts as he arranged and re-arranged the ropes. She relished the intimacy of the experience, the perfection of the patterns, the meditative ambience that Connor had assured her was the most important aspect of bondage. Most of all, however, she relished the way the crotch rope shifted each time he looped an end beneath it. It wasn’t long before she found herself responding to the movement, feeling chills of pleasure run up her spine with each subtle shift. And then, suddenly, Connor stopped.

      ‘Aren’t you … aren’t you going to bind my arms?’ she asked a little hesitantly when the harness was complete and Connor had tied the ends of the rope on her back.

      He looked at her, his head cocked to one side. ‘Do you really want me to deliver you at your parents’ doorstep naked and with your arms tied behind your back?’

      She chuckled at the notion, a little embarrassed. ‘No, I guess not. But what …?’ Her voice trailed off as she saw his face.

      ‘You’re going to go to your parents wearing this karada under your clothes, to remind you that you are bound and bonded to me, and that only I can set you free. You’re going to feel my hand on you even when I’m not physically touching you. And wait …’

      He walked to the dinner table and came back with a pair of nipple clamps that he had apparently removed from his toolbox while she’d been busy wrapping up her four bowls of tiramisu. To her relief, they were tweezer clamps, which weren’t too painful. Of course, their relative painlessness did have a downside, which was that Connor often made her wear them for several hours on end, which was uncomfortable.

      She waited patiently as he played with one of her nipples to make it stiff, then attached a clamp and slid the ring sideways to determine the amount of pressure. He repeated the process with the other nipple. Then he stepped back to admire her from a little distance, looking satisfied with his own work. ‘Yes, that will do nicely. Now go and get dressed. The purple skirt, I think. A top that fully covers the harness. No underwear, no stockings. And don’t put up your hair. I want it down.’

      She nodded respectfully and spoke the words he wanted to hear whenever he gave her a direct order. ‘Yes, Connor.’ Once in the bedroom, she found the loose purple skirt he had specified, plus a thick black sweater which she thought would do a good job of hiding the harness underneath. As she slipped into the skirt, the crotch rope dug into her arse crack, an unsubtle reminder of its existence. For the time being, though, the nipple clamps were a greater source of discomfort than the harness.

      When she was fully dressed, she turned around in front of the mirror to see if the rope and clamps were visible underneath her clothes. After satisfying herself that they weren’t, she went back into the living room and presented herself to Connor, who subjected her to an equally thorough examination.

      ‘OK,’ he judged eventually. ‘Now let’s get on the road.’

      As she slid into the passenger seat, Emma once again felt the rope dig into her crotch, a feeling that was both uncomfortable and surprisingly pleasant. With a start, she realised that the bottom knot was right on her clit. No doubt that was intentional. Connor wouldn’t have redone that knot several times