All That Effort

Izzabella Robbins came through the door already complaining.

She had been complaining in her head the whole way over, so it was only a matter of turning up the volume. She had waited. She had checked her phone. She had waited some more, and then she had given up and come here instead, and now she dropped her bag on the nearest chair and let all of it out at once.

Rachel Adams knew her well enough to let it run. She leaned against the wall and listened to the whole thing, nodding in the right places, until Izzabella finally ran out of breath.

"Stood up," Izzabella said. "For dinner. I got ready for this, Rachel. I put real effort in."

"So don't waste it," Rachel said.

Izzabella stopped. "What?"

"That rope. The one we keep saying we'll get around to."

Izzabella knew exactly which rope she meant. They had both had their eyes on it for a while now, both curious, both promising each other they would find an evening. Every time one of them brought it up, the other one's week filled up. Something always came first.

Nothing was coming first tonight.

*[Photo: Izzabella arriving in a huff, Rachel listening with a slow smile]*

Izzabella's mood turned the way it always did with her, all at once and completely. The grumbling was gone before she had even decided to let it go. Her clothes came off and landed wherever they landed, and underneath was everything she had put on for a dinner that never happened: a red bra, panties, a shiny black garter belt, nude stockings smooth all the way down to her toes.

She looked down at herself and laughed. All that effort. At least somebody was going to appreciate it.

Rachel was already running a length of the rope through her hands, feeling it, and when she held some out Izzabella touched it too. It was every bit as nice as they had both thought it would be. Maybe nicer. That was the problem with putting things off, Izzabella decided. You forgot how much you wanted them.

"The bra goes," Rachel said.

Izzabella reached back and unhooked it herself.

*[Photo: Izzabella in red bra, black garter belt and nude stockings, Rachel holding the rope]*

Rachel started at her chest. The rope went around above her breasts first, then below, then back around again, each pass laid neatly beside the last and drawn snug. Izzabella stood still and watched it happen. Rachel worked slowly and carefully, tucking and cinching, stepping back every so often to look, then stepping in again to adjust something only she could see was wrong. The pattern grew wrap by wrap until Izzabella's chest was framed and bound in a configuration that was, she had to admit, really lovely. She could feel it every time she breathed in.

"Okay," she said quietly. "Yeah. This was worth waiting for."

Rachel didn't answer. She was already moving lower.

*[Photo: Rachel knotting the rope around Izzabella's chest]*

The next rope went around Izzabella's hips, wrapped and tied, and then Rachel fed a line down between her legs and brought it up behind her. When she drew it tight, Izzabella let out a small surprised sound, half laugh and half something else, and shifted her weight. The crotch rope shifted with her. It was going to do that every time she moved, she realized. She suspected Rachel had planned it that way.

Then Rachel took her wrists and guided them behind her back.

Izzabella let her. She felt the rope circle her wrists, cross over, cinch down, and when Rachel let go her hands stayed exactly where they had been put. She tested it with a small tug. Nothing gave. She tested it again, not because she expected anything different, but because the testing felt good.

*[Photo: Izzabella standing in the chest tie and crotch rope, wrists bound behind her]*

"Floor," Rachel said.

She helped Izzabella down onto the carpet, one hand on her arm the whole way, because with her hands behind her there was no other way to get there gracefully. Izzabella settled onto her stomach and turned her head to see what came next.

What came next was metal.

Rachel brought out a spreader bar, and Izzabella felt the cold of it before she saw it properly. Rachel fixed one end at one ankle and the other end at the other, and suddenly her nylon feet were held apart, locked at a distance she could not change no matter what she did with her legs. She tried to bring her knees together just to see. The bar answered. It didn't move.

Rachel wasn't finished with it. She ran rope from Izzabella's shoulders back toward her feet and tied it off to the bar, then drew it in. Izzabella felt herself arch as the line shortened, her chest lifting off the carpet and her stockinged feet coming up behind her, until she was folded back into a hogtie with the bar holding her legs wide at the end of it. Shoulders to bar. Bar to ankles. Everything connected, everything held.

She let out a long breath. It came out shaky and pleased.

*[Photo: Izzabella hogtied on the carpet, metal spreader bar between her nylon feet]*

Rachel knelt down beside her face with one last thing: a red ball gag.

Izzabella opened her mouth for it without being asked. The ball seated behind her teeth and the strap pulled snug around her head, and Rachel buckled it off. When Izzabella tried to say something, thank you, maybe, or finally, it came out as a muffled hum that didn't sound like either one.

Rachel seemed to understand it anyway.

*[Photo: Close on Izzabella's face, red ball gag in place, Rachel kneeling beside her]*

Rachel stood and looked her over the way she had looked over the chest tie, checking her work, and apparently found nothing to fix. She smiled. Then she turned and walked out and left Izzabella exactly where she was.

The room went quiet.

Izzabella lay on the carpet in her garter belt and stockings and ropes, and she wriggled. Not to get anywhere. There was nowhere to get, and that was most of the point. She rocked a little against the hogtie and felt the line to the bar tug back at her shoulders. She flexed her fingers behind her and wiggled her nylon toes at the end of the spreader bar, and none of it changed a single thing. The crotch rope reminded her it was there every time she moved. She moved anyway.

The gag did what gags do. She felt the drool gather at the corners of her lips and then felt it go, a slow wet line down her chin and onto the carpet. She didn't mind that either.

Somewhere across town there was a restaurant with an empty chair at a table for two, and a person who had decided tonight wasn't worth showing up for. Izzabella thought about that for about a second.

Then she arched against the ropes again, hummed happily around the red ball, and decided it was their loss.

All that effort, and not a bit of it wasted.