I could feel the trap closing. The supply ship that brought the mail was still a week away. Crossly, I said to the girl I adored, “Elizabeth, why don’t you grow up? If Naomi gets you naked and handcuffed, there’s no telling when you’ll be free again, if ever! The same goes for me. We’d best both go down to the jetty and stay there until some sort of ship gets near the island. Perhaps we can signal it.” I turned a venomous glance at our hostess, “Naomi, I think you’re being a bitch. Please phone for that water taxi thing. We’ll get right out of your hair.”
“I’ve told you. Miss Durrant, that if I phone at all, it will be to Uncle Andrew.”
I stood and held out my hand to Elizabeth. I could tell she was disappointed over the way things had gone but would not betray me. She grasped my hand and the two of us marched from Naomi’s office and the big house so much like that other Rockley. When we were beyond it’s gardens, Elizabeth tried to make amends. “I really am sorry, darling. Gosh, what a blooper I made! This seems a glorious little island but with you and Naomi being enemies, we should have stayed away. It’s all my fault. Oh, damn!”
“Do you really want to see me naked and chained and whipped? Elizabeth, I love you.”
“And I love you, darling. But I’m still a beautiful bitch with a fantasy. You’re my fantasy, and you know what I want. Sorry, sweetheart, but I guess I’m just a plain bad girl.”
I could never be mad at her for long. And my spirits were raised by the stand I had taken in Naomi’s office, and the fact that Elizabeth and I were both fully clothed and still free of the Plessious handcuffing of girls. We would get off the island anyway. I could go to New York where I could once again be a self-respecting member of the legal profession. Suddenly I felt better.
The jetty had lonely isolation. Elizabeth and I set down our suitcases and searched the ocean for a sign of life. There was none and my spirits fell accordingly. But Elizabeth was as ebullient as ever. “We couldn’t expect one to be waiting for us, darling,” she pointed out reasonably. “We’ll probably have to sleep under some bushes tonight and spend tomorrow looking out to sea.” She sighed in mock dolor, “And just to think that I could be sleeping comfortably in the guest bedroom in the big house. With you beside me in the bed!”
“Likely with me locked in a cage or dungeon, or a chain and collar on my neck somewhere.” I retorted. “It’s all right for you, darling, but I should never have come here.”
“Maybe I’d be in a cage with you. That would be nice.”
“Elizabeth, for pete’s sake, stop being silly! You’d hate being locked in anything and so would I.”
Elizabeth wasn’t listening. Something had caught her attention.
“What’s that little shed over there?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. I expect it’s for storage.”
The shed had a sturdy lock and key but was empty. It was illuminated by a couple of porthole effects. Thoughtlessly I went inside.
It was my own fault, of course. Elizabeth’s closing of the door and snapping of the lock told me all I needed to know of a hazard I should have foreseen. Her laughing features were soon at one of the small windows which I could open from inside but which were no way big enough to provide exit. “Nice little prison, darling,” she said happily. “I think you’re in trouble.”
The sea air flooded through the porthole and improved the stuffiness of the shed. But what I was more interested in was Elizabeth who peered in at me happily to remark. “You sort of walked into this one yourself, darling. I suppose you know what you have to do to get out?”
I could guess but said with all the authority at my command, “Don’t be a bitch, Elizabeth! Let me out of here, this isn’t giving me a sporting chance.”
“You can’t possibly expect a sporting chance, darling. Would you like me to dictate terms?”
“Don’t bother. But I’d like to know which side you’re on and what you’ d do to me if you got me helpless.”
“You mean, after you’re nicely naked and properly handcuffed, dear?” Her tone was as a parent with a child.
I was breathing heavily in alarm. Elizabeth was unpredictable and had found on this lovely island an atmosphere conducive to fantasy. I was afraid of Naomi, but Elizabeth was not. I had been able to discern some sort of pixie rapport between them back in the office. I was the odd girl out, a discord in Eden. Snappishly I said, “All right, what do you want?”
“Darling, you know what I want. Strip yourself naked and pass everything through this window to me. I’m so glad the window isn’t large enough for you to try and slide through, you can’t possibly but it’s perfect for everything else.”
“And if I refuse?”
“You can stay here, dear, while I go back to the big house and tell Naomi how difficult you are.”
“All the thanks you’ll get for that is a good whipping. Let me out of here, Elizabeth, and somehow or the other we’ll get off this damned island.”
“I think it’s a lovely island, and I think you’re being silly. We know the way it is with Naomi and her girls, and if she wants us the same way. I can’t see any harm in it. We can have the most glorious vacation before someone catches up with us.”
I sighed and felt deflated. Unwillingly, I asked myself what harm it would do to give Elizabeth her way and share her fantasy. We loved each other and surely she would allow no harm to come to me. All I’d have to put up with was a great deal of humiliation. But even there it wasn’t as though I’d never been naked and handcuffed before! But no matter what my reasoning. I loathed the thought of being led back to Naomi in that condition ... I’d be so damned ashamed!
Elizabeth was equal to the occasion, and, because she either didn’t care or didn’t believe Naomi, she was thoroughly enjoying this possible fulfillment of her own dream of possessing me. Reasonable, she pointed out, “Diane, darling, don’t let’s go in for that silly business of pleading and threatening or appealing to reason, and all that stuff. It will be so much nicer for both of us if you simply take off your clothes and shoes and hand them out to me. Honest. I’ll love you to bits.”
The nice thing about Elizabeth and I was always knowing each other’s thoughts. And I knew damned well I might as well surrender now instead of making an idiot of myself with pleadings and threats. Obviously it wouldn’t kill me to be in the same condition as Naomi’s three girls, even if I was almost twice their age. There was also the matter of the familiar shivering up and down my spine as my eyes met those of the girl on the outside. My fingers were strangely eager as they reached for the fastenings of what I wore.
How the mighty have fallen!
5
Indigo
If this had been my first time, I couldn’t have handled it so well. But with Elizabeth watching through the port, my spine and sex responded in an excited approval of my surrender. As I stripped. I was further shamed to find myself fighting down the first stages of an orgasm. When I passed the bundle of coverings out beyond recall, I supposed I had reached a nadir of shame, but I’d forgotten the handcuffs. “Give me your left hand, darling,” Elizabeth commanded, her voice loaded with sexual excitement.
Once more I knew the futility of argument. That’s the trouble with being a lawyer, you see things too clearly. Without a word of protest, I stuck my arm out of the small, round window.
Elizabeth unlocked one cuff and tightened the other a single click. “There’s a box in there you can stand on, darling, so you can raise both your hands up in back so I can attend to them.” Her voice was sweetly soothing.
“Elizabeth, please! Not behind my back!”
“Yes, dear. They’d scarcely bother you in front at all, they’d just be pretty bracelets. Come along, you have to.”
My spine was dancing sarabands in the moonlight. My sex was juicy and telling me to do as I was told. Betrayed by my flesh. I stepped up on the box, leaned forward and thrust my hands as close to the porthole as I could contrive. Elizabeth reached inside and a moment later I felt the loss of freedom within cold, steel circles around my wrists. I stepped off the box and thrust it angrily aside with a bare foot.