At length, however, I became aware of Jill’s hands beginning to move.  Her wrists were crossed and bound, making her options limited, for the crossed-wrist position was far more rigid and offered much less scope for hand movement than did palm-to-palm binding. It was also more painful, for any movement put more of a strain on both wrists and forearms.  I sensed Jill searching for knots and finally finding the knot of twine at my knees.  I did not know how this would ultimately help us, but any relief from the severity of my position was welcome. 

It took her a long time to release my toes from the tensioned position the twine created.  Jill was now on her knees, her arms angled down as she struggled with the knot in the blackness, able only to use one hand at a time.  Eventually she managed to undo the knot at my toes, and turned her attention to the tape binding my legs to the post.  This was harder, for she had to find the end of the tape to begin unwinding.  She was too experienced in the game to try pulling at right angles to the tape, for that would only tighten it and make it impossible to undo.

Her hands searched the height of my legs, looking for the start of the duct tape, but apparently without success. It was evidently on the opposite side of the post, away from me.  Her exploring hands dropped lower, brushing over the leather pouch that housed Mr Willy, who was at that moment contemplating the benefits of a long hibernation until the climate was more appropriate.

Nobody, however, had told Jill. Whether it was the remnant frustration of our little turn around the drawing room together, or whether it was a rather sweet attempt to take my mind off things, I don’t know.  Maybe it was something altogether less altruistic.  At the time neither of us were in a position to communicate such thoughts, and I was in even less of a position to repel the advances of her questing fingers.  Before I knew it the pouch was gone and Mr Willy was getting the deluxe preparatory treatment.  Mr Brain decided that Jill was wasting her time, since the Feet Brothers were hogging the limelight at that moment, but this fact had not been passed on to Mr Willy, who liked to think he had a mind of his own.  I could vouch for that fact on numerous occasions, some of which had proved highly embarrassing. 

In this instance Mr Willy basked in the attention and began to distract some of the other parts of my extremely tense body.  Almost as an afterthought I wondered how Jill expected to finish what she had started.  It reminded me of my conversation with Monica on the boat many hours ago, as we prepared each other.  That had come to nothing, as well.  It had really not been a good day for Mr Willy so far. 

I could see nothing in the blackness that was my world.  I could feel the movement of Jill’s arms and body, however, as she got to her knees and slowly worked her way around the post.  I sensed her knees as they edged up to the side of my body.  She paused, then, as if unsure how to proceed.  Now I knew what she was up to, but of course could do nothing to advise, encourage or prevent her.  I had a suspicion this was going to be the third time Jill would have her way with me, the trollope, and in every instance I had been or would be totally helpless.  It was a state of affairs that would definitely have to be rectified at a later date.

I imagined her now with her weight on her right knee, still clutching the post in a tight embrace, raising her left leg and slowly stretching it out across my body like a strange form of bondage tai chi.  I felt a whisper of air as her foot passed over my stomach and reached the floor on the other side of me.  Moments later Jill’s thighs slid over my sweat-soaked skin and her body settled over mine.  Mr Willy sensed what was going on in the sudden yielding contact and started sending out all manner of pleasurable signals. 

Jill began to manoeuvre herself to accommodate my friend – something which was evidently not easily done, simply because of a lack of mobility on my part and a lack of hands on her part.  When she finally made contact and Mr Willy slid inside like a rocket gliding into the mothership, the movement elicited long sighs of pleasure from behind both our gags.  From another part of the room I thought I heard another gagged response – a kind of “Urrr?” query.  It did not get answered.

Jillian moved slowly.  It was another version of ‘wharfie sex’ – the one where the woman ends up doing all the work.  In this instance I could manage a little in the way of pelvic thrust, but not much more.  Jill was similarly hampered with her bound arms, and could only do little knee raises which must have been a terrific strain.  We really should not have done it, not with Emma present and with the four of us still bound as we were.  But after all we had been through we were simply making the best of a necessary situation.  I contend there was little else we could do, Your Honour. 

Between us we managed a little bouncing action that stoked the fires into full flame, and we soon climaxed together, grunting into our gags in unison and heedless of the pain from feet and nipples. 

Whether it was coincidence or whether Monica realised what was going on, as we knelt and lay there panting and enjoying the pleasure of relief, that pleasure disappeared with another sudden shock to our nipples as Monica adjusted her position.  Jill and I jerked simultaneously and grunted into our gags.  I heard a high-pitched squeal from Emma, but none from Monica, who was obviously prepared for it.  She had managed to induce only a single pulse, in this instance, whether by accident or design.

Jill made protesting noises through her nose and resumed her search for the end of the tape, while with the zap Mr Willy suddenly became less interested in earthly pleasures.  Moments later Jill gave a grunt of triumph as she evidently found the end of the tape.

It took perhaps half an hour for Jillian to remove the tape.  After undoing a couple of turns by clambering on her knees over my body, she found she had enough slack in the tape to stand up.  That was when she also found out she was winding the wires to her nipple clamps around the post as well – a fact which meant retracing her steps and then continuing from there.  The fact that she could stand while pulling the tape free was no doubt a huge relief for her, as was the removal of the tape for me.  Her efforts were interrupted midway by a series of shocks which left us all panting hoarsely and emitting muted groans.  I wondered how much more Monica could stand before we were subjected to a continuous zap.

Jill finally pulled the last piece of tape clear and returned to a kneeling position behind the post so that she could undo the ropes at my ankles and knees.  More minutes passed until this was done, and I could squirm away from the post to reach the ring in the floor where the tail of my wrist ropes was tied.  I undid this with difficulty then followed the wires on my nipple clips back to the TENS machine, where I felt around in the darkness to disconnect all the wires I could find.  Only then did I feel able to return to locate Jill as she stood hugging the post.  I held out my bound wrists so that she could now undo these. 

Monica and Emma had clearly sensed my movements and knew something was happening.  I thought I detected a tentative movement from Monica, followed by what I took to be a groan of relief as she assessed what I had done and was then able to bring her legs together and stand up straight.  As Jill finished her work and the last of my wrist ropes had dropped away, I knew I could free the others, but I had a small matter of unfinished business with Jillian.  I was sure I would get a bollocking from Monica but there are some things a man has to do.

I felt my way around behind where Jill stood, still hugging the post, and ran my fingers between her legs.  She squirmed and moaned softly, pushing against my hand.  I moved her legs apart and further away from the post before standing between them and rubbing Mr Willy between her cheeks.  He, of course, needed no further urging, little bohemian that he was, with no sense of appropriateness.  I manoeuvred him between Jill’s legs and into the warm hole that he had only recently vacated.  Jill began to emit little muffled squeaks of pleasure as I moved back and forth. This time he was able to move properly and do justice to the situation, and soon the two of us were panting in unison in the darkness and trying to stifle our gagged moans, while Monica and Emma demanded in equally unintelligible terms what we thought we were doing.  It was either that or they knew exactly what we were doing and were demanding that we stop it at once. 

Jill and I didn’t care.  I was sure we would regret it but there are times in life where the sins of the flesh must be catered for, and we did just this, climaxing together as I gripped Jill’s breasts and ground her against the post, while she thrust back hard against me, bouncing on the balls of her feet.  The pain in my own feet was momentarily forgotten.  I finally held her, hearing at that point only our panting and the pounding of blood in my head.  It was at least a couple of minutes before I reluctantly exited and composed myself enough to undo her wrists.  She immediately undid the gag in her mouth and popped it out with a sigh of relief.  She gave me a hug in the darkness and the steel clips on our nipples clinked together.  I’m sure she would have kissed me, but for the ball that remained locked in my mouth.  Instead she whispered:

“You bastard.  How dare you take advantage of a girl like that? Mmmm? Don’t ever do that again - too often…  Well, okay…maybe now and again…”  Then the moment was over and we were falling over ourselves looking for the light switch.

*   *   *

Monica and Emma were looking pretty sorry for themselves when we untied them.  They, like us, were drenched with sweat from the tension they had been under and the whipping they had received. As they extracted the gags from their mouths I pointed Emma to the rubber ball in my own mouth, locked immovably there by the steel band around my neck.

“Oh Steven, I’m so sorry!  The key’s still in Serina’s backpack!”

“Hym hoh!” I complained.  Yes, Emma, I had already figured that one out.

We checked out each others battle scars.  I don’t know who was most mortified, me at the weals on the girls’ breasts and thighs, or them at the state of my feet.  And of course Jill got an attack of the guilts, given that she felt herself to be the cause of it all as she embraced Emma and the two held the clinch for a long time. There were tears on both faces when they broke apart, and I realised what a terrible ordeal it had been for both of them, in totally different ways.  That was when Jill turned to me and gave me another wonderful hug – at least it would have been wonderful, had it not been for the clash of the clips still locked on our nipples and my inability to speak.

I could do nothing in the meantime other than to make whining noises and try to undo the clips.  I soon found, however, that the more I struggled with them, the more they hurt.  They would not slip off either sideways or frontwards.  Jill was finding the same thing.  They were so simple – just solid clips locked in place with exactly the right shank-length padlock – and totally frustrating.  We could no doubt cut them off but there were no wire cutters or tin snips around to do it with.  I had the feeling we were going to have to endure them for a while longer.  I reckoned Portia would be the key holder.
 

I made motioning noises that never mind the clips – we would get them off somehow, but we should really make our escape.  Emma understood what I wanted but Jill was having none of it.

“Not until I’ve dealt some return favours to Portia!” she stated flatly. 

Was she crazy?  Did she realise what we’d been through to get this far?  Didn’t she understand we could be discovered at any minute?  Hadn’t she grasped that the longer we dallied the greater was the likelihood of discovery?  Sometimes I could not fathom women.

“Urr phoo hhzy?”  I demanded, although I’m sure it sounded faintly ridiculous, if intelligible at all.

“Now, now, Steven,” Emma said soothingly.  “Jill has been through something you can’t even begin to understand.”  Yeah, that was right.  Stick together and don’t confuse a good story with the facts.  And who had just had a most sole-destroying experience anyway?

The girls moved quickly, I’ll say that for them.  I still could not fathom why we were going back into the belly of the beast when every instinct told me to flee while we had the chance.  Monica, Emma and I followed the naked Jillian out into the corridor and back the way we had come, some hours before.  Jill pointed out the bathroom which was the next door along.  Monica pulled rank and went in, obviously keen to divest herself of the plug that she had been wearing since we left the boat.  I wanted to bags the next turn, but my impediment got in the way and Emma beat me to it.

In the meantime we detoured for a couple of minutes into another room off the vaulted corridor which turned out to be a storeroom a bit like our own in Bilboes basement.  Jill grabbed a black lycra skirt and top and slipped into them while Emma stuffed a bunch of restraining implements into a plastic bag.  Jill seemed more comfortable in her clothes, although the tight lycra made the clips on her nipples stick out unnaturally, and must have caused a little more pain.  I looked in vain for something to fit me, but the clothes were mainly female, and I had been there, done that, in a past life, and I did not intend to go down that road again unnecessarily.  The only male stuff that existed – a couple of pairs of leather shorts and a leather waistcoat were way too small.  Damned midget Chinese, I thought.  Monica returned and - while Emma visited next door – donned a black leather skirt, complaining about tiny Chinese waists.

“Hay-hee hor hat!” I volunteered recklessly.

“What?  Did you say I’m fat?”  Monica glared at me.  I shook my head ingenuously and made unintelligible mmph sounds.  Sometimes it was good to play on your own helplessness.  Monica ignored me and pulled on a sleeveless pvc vest which barely closed over her breasts and would not zip up properly. 

When Emma returned I took her place and felt the great relief of expelling the intruder that had bothered me for maybe five hours.  I had no idea what time it was – perhaps one or two in the morning.  I hurried back to the storeroom where Emma had attired herself in a sky blue latex dress that – like Monica’s top – would not zip up over her breasts. She, too, was muttering rude words about petite Chinese women.

“Hum-ohn!” I urged, conscious that the longer we prevaricated the bigger the danger.  I had no idea what sort of security operated here, whether human or electronic.  I just wanted out, although that would clearly only happen when certain chores had been carried out.  At least the anxiety took my mind off my nipples, I thought, not to mention the ache in my jaw.  It was all very well for these girls to go forth on a mission of vengeance, but some of us were still suffering here, but unable to elaborate on the problem.

Up the stone steps we went, leaving only the lights in the corridor behind us to illuminate the way.  At the top of the steps, emerging from behind the main staircase, the foyer had a deserted, almost surreal quality about it.  The lights in the garden were still on, casting enough light through the tall windows each side of the main doors to give a faint moonlit effect. 

We crept upstairs, Jill, Emma, Monica, then me, helplessly gagged and clipped, at the rear.   The light faded as we turned down a corridor with limited windows, but still we could manage our way in the gloom.  The windows on one side appeared to give on to a light well of sorts, while the doors on the other side I presumed to be bedrooms.

We had barely gone a few metres when Jill stopped and I bumped into Monica with a grunt as the clips impacted against her back.

“There’s something there – on the floor!” whispered Jill.  We stole closer and saw a sleeping form on the thick carpet outside one of the doors.  It snored gently and we recognised the Runt, hands cuffed behind him, his mouth taped and his collar attached to the door handle with a leash.

“Looks like Portia has company,” breathed Jill.  “The tramp!”

“Mistress Nightshade must be doing a sleepover,” Emma whispered.

Jolly good, I thought.  Numbers were getting a bit out of hand here.  I tugged at Monica’s arm, motioning that we should be going back.  The girls shook their heads collectively.  The fact that we now had at least five people to deal with didn’t seem to phase them.  They would not acknowledge that things were getting just a tad more complicated.

“Oh shush, Steven!” Emma said quietly, ignoring the fact that I could hardly be vocal anyway. “One thing at a time.”  She indicated the snoring figure.  “First, this slave.” 

Dammit, over-ruled again.  Girls rule and all that.  I couldn’t argue – my logic was effectively quashed by the ball on the steel strap locked in my mouth.  Reasonable discussion was regrettably not an option.

Emma motioned us to be silent as she pulled a roll of duct tape from the bag she carried and tore off a long strip.  She handed the roll to Jill and placed the strip carefully over the eyes of the sleeping Runt.  He woke with a snuffle and grunt behind the tape already over his mouth.  Emma said something to him which sounded really nasty, but then Cantonese is like that almost by definition.  He was obviously used to being ordered about by dominant women, and seemed to put it down to another bizarre game in the House of Wong.  He put up no resistance as Jill bound his ankles with a short length of rope and together we dragged him a short distance down the hall, away from the door, where we finished him off in a hogtie, attaching the tail from his ankle ropes to the handcuffs.  That was not the sort of situation in which one struggled, I had learnt - not unless you want your wrists severely bruised.

With the doorway clear, we assessed the variety of things Emma had brought with her in the bag for the purposes of restraining dear Portia.  There were three pairs of handcuffs and a several of lengths of rope, plus the roll of duct tape and two standard ball gags.  Things were getting just a little complicated in having to deal with two people together, however.

We (that is, the girls) agreed that the most important thing to do was to silence the two women first.  Having your mouth filled unexpectedly – as well as the silencing effect itself – tends to make breathing, and hence resistance, rather more of an effort. 

Monica took charge at this point, deciding that she and Jill would deal with the most exposed of the pair with the tape, while Emma and I would take the other.

Jill eased the door open.  There was a tension between us in the gloom.  I could hear the blood pounding in my ears and more significantly my nipples seemed to hurt more.  It was as though I was suddenly so much more aware of every little sensation – such as really sore feet.  We slipped through the door, hardly daring to breathe.  Only the faint hiss of the air conditioning could be heard.  It was an enormous room, and I wondered what Madam Wong’s room was like.  Through the lace curtain enough light filtered to make out two forms on the huge bed that dominated the room.  The form on the left had thrown back the covers and was half exposed, whereas that on the right was mostly covered.  Monica motioned Emma and I towards the latter inhabitant of the bed, while she and Jill crept around to the left.  I finally recognised the short hair of Mistress Nightshade and concluded that maybe there was some justification in our being there after all.

Monica counted down by folding her fingers into her hand: three…two…one! Monica went first with the tape over Portia’s mouth, with the rest of us pouncing a split second later. I landed on Mistress Nightshade with my full weight, trapping her body under the blankets.  The bed was easily big enough for all of us to have uninterrupted access to our targets, and within a couple of seconds was a mass of heaving bodies. 

I was too preoccupied with subduing Mistress Nightshade to concern myself with what Monica and Jill were up to.  More by good luck than good management Emma succeeded in getting the ball half into the woman’s mouth as she made her first gasp of surprise.  At that point she made sort of glub-grrk –urff! noises as I sat on her stomach and Emma worked the ball behind her teeth with her full weight.  At the same time Nightshade was trying to get her arms and hands free of the covers and Emma had only just finished with the ball when fingernails seemed to come at me from all directions in the half-darkness.  At one point she tried to grip the clamp on my right nipple, which prompted a most undignified exchange of nasal grunts and unintelligible expletives, for my own breathing and elocution was also severely hampered.

When I finally did get the rampant hands under control she insisted on trying to buck me off her.  She was on a hiding to nothing here, simply because Emma and I were too heavy for her.  Between us, we managed to roll the captive on to her stomach, secure the ball gag and tape her wrists together behind her back, at which point we turned on the light.

Portia and Nightshade were hauled out of bed and both made all manner of verbal threats against us, not that we could understand them through the gags.  They were both naked, predictably, and Emma took a moment to warn them that (a) they were in a rather disadvantageous position from which to threaten, and (b) if they tried anything funny that disadvantageous position would rapidly become worse and considerably more painful. 

While Emma was lecturing them, I searched the room and found a set of keys on the dressing table, which mercifully contained those to the steel gag strap locked around my head.  I pulled the dreadful ball from my mouth amidst a runnel of saliva and licked my lips, savouring the wonderful feeling of being able to move my jaw again and utter whole words that made sense.  Pulling open Portia’s top drawer I found a pair of scissors and got Jill to cut the plastic tie securing the leather hood.  It came off with a flurry of sweat and I ventured into the enormous ensuite to towel myself.

“Steven!” Monica hissed through the door.  “We don’t have time for that!”

“We had time for you to get dressed and go to the bathroom!” I retorted.  “If you’d listened to me we’d have been on the boat by now.”  I picked up the key ring again and found that a second, smaller key fitted the padlocks on my nipple clamps.  The locks flipped open and I gingerly took up the tension, squeezing them open.  The pain flowed through the bruised flesh, and I shuddered to think what they would have been like after a whole night.  I passed the keys to Jill and watched as she screwed her face up during the release of the nasty devices from her own breasts.

“I think there’s a better place for these,” she decided, moving across to where Portia and Nightshade stood sullenly watching us.  “You get first choice, Portia,”  said Jill, pinching and tweaking Portia’s nipples into erectness before  releasing the clamps none too gently on to the brown nubs.  Portia whined behind the tape, but knew better than to protest further.  I reckoned she was now starting to regret rather a lot of things that I knew nothing about, but I was sure Jill would have her mental list made up in great detail.

“Madam Wong can have the other pair,” Jill said.

I suspected we had the house mainly to ourselves, save for Serina and Madam Wong. Serina had told us the servants were all quartered in a separate building out the back.  No doubt security still existed within the grounds, but I did not expect to find a bouncer roaming the corridors at night.

“Steven and I will stay here and deal with the other two,”  Monica directed.  “Hopefully they won’t be sleeping together as well.  Jill, do you know where Madam Wong’s bedroom is?”  Jill pointed it out, adding that further guest rooms were in the same corridor.  Jill and Emma then returned to the cellar with their prisoners, releasing the Runt’s legs on the way and ending up with three captives.

Monica and I tiptoed down the darkened corridor to the next bedroom which Jill had identified as the master bedroom – or the mistress bedroom in this case.  Monica opened the door a crack and listened, before slipping through with me on her heels.  Again, there was the distant whisper of air conditioning, with just enough light coming through the drapes to show a single body in the bed.  This time Monica turned on the bedside light opposite the sleeping form which did not stir.  Madam Wong’s features were relaxed on the pale satin pillow as Monica tore off a strip of duct tape, handed it to me, then tore off another one, making an ‘X’ with the two.  Like a well-rehearsed team we landed together, silencing and immobilising the woman.  Which is not to say that our victim didn’t put up a fight.  The naked woman was like a sack full of cats as I held her down while Monica wrapped more tape around her head, covering her mouth and then running some vertical turns to keep her jaw shut firmly.  Madam Wong was going to be in for a rather painful tape-removal session, and I suspected she would need a new hairstyle at the end of it.  This was even more incentive to get out, if the fierce expression in her dark eyes was anything to go by. 

We bound her wrists crossed behind her back and ran the tail of cord through her legs and up her front, tying it off around her neck with a slip-knot.  Too much struggling would be disadvantageous for her breathing – a most encouraging way to secure cooperation, we reasoned.  This done, she was blindfolded with a further piece of tape and was made to sit cross-legged on the floor while we bound her ankles and added a further neck rope to tether her to the rail across the foot of the bed.  She would be going nowhere in the immediate future – certainly while we dealt with Serina.

Serina was in the bedroom two doors further on.  Like Madam Wong and the others, she slept naked and succumbed to the two-on-to-one combination in quick time.  We were getting rather good at this by now and in no time Serina was lying on the floor, trying to make obscene comments through a black rubber ball firmly strapped in her mouth.

“I want to take this one back to the boat,”  Monica said to me.  “How are we going to do it?”  At this point I was busy getting into Serina’s bag, for here I knew my clothes should be, but they had gone.  I opened a closet and found my shorts and tee shirt dumped on the floor, amongst a fair stack of suitcases and travel bags.  Obviously this was the left luggage storage.  I wasn’t going to get into an argument with Monica about why we should bother taking Serina back with us. We might just as well take a paper bag full of live scorpions, but I could tell Monica was not in a receptive mood.  With the pvc top having come fully undone in the struggle, and Monica’s breasts heaving somewhat, she had that determined Boadicea look about her, and woe betide anyone who got in her way.  Then an idea occurred to me.

“What about taking her as hand luggage?” I asked pulling on my clothes over the top of the leather harness. 

“What?” 

I showed Monica the contents of the wardrobe.  She tugged at an errant strand of hair thoughtfully.  “Yes, we could do this.”  She selected a large leather suitcase with a zipper around three sides and an integral extending handle and wheels fitted across the middle of the largest side.  “Beats the old body in the trunk routine,” she said.

“You’ve done that?”

“Live bodies, not dead ones,’ she affirmed enigmatically, but offered no further details.

It took some ten minutes to bind Serina’s elbows and knees, then encircle her with tape into a foetal position, trapping her bent legs against her body and her arms behind her.  Monica completed the accessories with a possibly unnecessary blindfold of duct tape.  This done we lifted her into the opened suitcase, lying her on her side and pushing her head down before doing up the zipper.  It was a bit of a struggle and the pliable nature of the suitcase deformed somewhat around the contents, but all in all it made a satisfactory container.  When we lifted up the handle to tow it behind us, Serina would be in a semi-upright position, but unable to move against the tape wrapping her body in tight swathes.

“At least Chinese girls are light,” I commented, as we headed for the door.

“Which reminds me,” Monica said, barring the door ahead of me.  “Did you say I was fat, when I was complaining about how tight this skirt was?”  She fixed me with ‘the look’ she reserved for special defaulters in her establishment, or special clients.  What was it with women and their weight?  “You were pretty indistinct with that ball in your mouth, but I’m sure you said I was fat.”

“I said, Monica, that you looked good in black.”  She eyed me dubiously for a moment and I wondered whether I would get away with it.  Then she brightened.

“Really?  That’s sweet.”  She gave me a light kiss which somehow became heavier and then we were in a deep clinch that had been threatening ever since we got to Hong Kong but had never found the right time or place.  Not that this was, either, but sometimes these things happen.  The sensation of Monica’s bare breasts, now also equipped with rock hard pointers, pressing against my chest gave Mr Willy another jolt and he popped up to see what was happening.  Monica broke free with an abrupt movement, catching her breath and saying, as if to herself:  “No, this is not the right time.  Dammit Steven.  There ought to be a law against people like you.  And another thing – while I was struggling to keep those wretched balls apart, did you and Jill…”

“What do you mean?” I asked, flushing.

“There were a lot of suspicious sounds coming from you two in the darkness.  I’m sure it wasn’t just Jill exerting herself to get you undone.”  She eyed me with a hint of a smile.  “Really, how could you, in front of Emma?”

“She started it,”  I said defensively.

“I know.  I think young Miss Jillian has the hots for you.  Can’t say I blame her.  You are a bastard, you know that.”

“Why?  What did I do?” I asked, bewildered at this turn of female logic that seemed to be blaming me for every time I got taken advantage of.

“Nothing,” Monica said.  “That’s just it.  Come on, we can’t stand around discussing your deficiencies all night. Business must be done – retribution must be extracted.”

Some things in life would remain mysteries to me until my deathbed, I decided, towing the Serina suitcase after me.