Howdy, all. I haven't posted a story in a while, but I like how this one turned out. I'm already working on a part 2, which should be the conclusion. Enjoy, and PLEASE leave feedback!
KI
Feather Points Part 1
by
Kid Indy
The Hawk's Feather had run its course for a grand opening, filling every room, every night for a span, and then settling in for steady business. The state of Georgia, eager to keep tax revenues high for the programs that keep citizens happy, had rushed paperwork through the legislature as quickly as governments can, and three new casinos went up faster than the Baptists could counter. The Feather, situated just where urban decay met suburban sprawl, was in the perfect place to make money--close to the poor so they could waste money but not so close that it had to guard too heavily against crime, and close to the middle-class so that they could make the trip easily but not so close that their neighbors would see them going.
On a Friday night at the Feather, the sun had gone down, the senior citizens home. The perpetual pinging of the slot machines never stopped, but it had settled to a simmer, and the card tables were beginning to get crowded. Erin James, walking like air in a little black dress that showed off legs whose shape had made more than one gambler raise a bet, was getting tired and knew that she, unlike her construction worker husband Robbie, had to go to work at the elementary school an hour away the next day, the first day of required planning, and she needed some rest.
"Alright, Robbie. You've got your cash, right?"
"Three hundred bucks, Erin. Don't worry about me. Once they're gone, I'll come up to bed."
"Have fun." Robbie watched as the sexiest girl from high school walked away from him and towards the elevator. Her light brown hair and lightly tanned shoulders topped her slim waist and tight but well-curved behind wonderfully. He glanced up to see a security camera pointed directly at him, took a deep breath, and headed for the Hold 'Em tables.
Robbie had always taken the boys for what they had when the road crew played poker, and tonight he started out in the same form, up a few bucks at a small-wager table after an hour, fifty dollars after two. He goofed up and overplayed one hand and went back down to even, then won another hand not long after. A large, round man joined the table and started to bet on every hand, bleeding chips fast. After playing only an hour the man had to buy more chips. Robbie had not caught a winner from him yet, but he noticed that the man would put down significant bets on high pairs, two-pair hands, and other combos that a good card player would never push.
His turn to take the chump came when Robbie got ten-jack in his hand and saw nine-queen-king in the flop. His face never wavered as he bet strong in each turn and everyone but fat man bailed out. Robbie looked the man in the eye, daring him to keep betting. He did. Before he knew, all three hundred twenty dollars of his chips lay in the pot. When time came for the showdown, Robbie turned his high straight over with a smile.
Then he looked to see the three hearts in the river, then to fat man's two low hearts, and his heart sank. Robbie left the table as everyone cheered his opponent's first victory and went to the nearest bar. Erin said he could only gamble three hundred dollars, but she didn't say anything about drinking.
The bartender took his cash, the green not set aside for cards, and passed him a shot glass. As he fired it down, a man in a suit walked up next to him and put down cash for the next round. Robbie looked at him suspiciously.
"Who are you?"
"I work security for the casino, and I'm on my break. Saw you take that hit at poker, and I thought you needed a drink."
The tension went out of Robbie's face, and he gratefully took down the shot. "Bastard went seven hands without so much as three of a kind, and when I go after him, he goes flush. I just can't win, man!"
"I hear that. You play some poker, don't you?"
"Yeah, I play some poker. With the boys at work, mostly."
"Work, huh? What do you do?"
"Road construction."
"No kidding! A genuine working man! It's almost Labor Day, right? Let me buy another for the working man."
Robbie took down another shot. Robbie kept telling the man about life on the work force, and the security man kept pulling bills out of his jacket pocket and buying drinks. Before long Robbie was quite warm and talking quite loudly.
"How old are you, Robbie?"
"Twenty-two. Why?"
"A young guy like you who can play some cards could really make a killing at the big tables. What kind of money did you come here to win?"
"Whatever I can get, man!"
The security man laughed loudly. "That's right, my man! Bartender! Another drink for a man who'll take what he gets!" Robbie pounded another drink.
"It's the same game wherever you play it, Robbie. The secret is that at those big money tables, someone has to win still, and someone still has to lose. The house gets its cut, but anyone who gets cards has just as big a chance at coming out with the big money."
"You're right, man! It just ain't fair that I ain't got that chance!"
"I'll tell you what, man. That kind of shot is normally only for the high rollers, but I can work something out for you to get you a seat at the twenty grand game on credit. The key is that if you can get ahead, just cash out, pay back the twenty grand, and buy something nice for your girl with what you pocket. You got a girl, right, Robbie?"
He held up a gold band on his left hand. "A wife, man! She's hot..."
"Good. Now here's what you do." He produced an expensive-looking pen and a stapled packet of papers from his jacket pocket. "We'll fill this out, and you sign at the bottom. That gets you fifty grand in credit. I put in a word with the boss for you, and you can play at the twenty grand table."
"Twenty grand? I can play for thirty grand, man!"
"Whoa there, cowboy! Like I said, you get in on that twenty grand game, and take home some bacon, alright?" The security man asked Robbie some questions and filled out the blanks on the form. When they were done, Robbie signed the paper, and the man disappeared into a door by the bar. Robbie waited there, slightly dizzy, and the security man came out alongside a man who looked about forty. He extended a tanned hand in Robbie's direction.
"Robbie James. Good to meet you. I'm Blake Jackson. I own this place." Blake shook his hand vigorously. "You know, of course, that this is real money, right?"
"Fo' sho' man!"
"Good enough for me." Johnson reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic card. "This, Mr. James, is your Feather Card. You can take it to the cages for up to fifty thousand dollars in gaming credit."
"Alright! Just let me at that high-roller table!"
"Well, Rob, just be careful not to make the big money players mad when you take their money, alright?"
Robbie grinned from ear to ear. "No worries there, Mr. Jackson!"
"That's the spirit, kid." Blake shook his hand again and withdrew, and Robbie, still slightly dizzy, made his way towards the cages. He was going to play some poker!
* * * * * * * * * * *
Erin had already packed up everything but a change of clothes for Robbie. He still stunk of hard liquor, and she knew that he was going to spend his day hung over while she got her classroom ready for her first day as a real professional teacher. She wished he wouldn't drink so hard, but now, with Robbie unconscious, wasn't the time to worry about those kinds of things. She just needed to get him to the car so that they could start driving. She only had an hour and a half to report. She shook his shoulder.
"Come on, Robbie. Party's over. I've got to get back so I can go to work." Robbie groaned. She shook him harder. "Robbie! Let's go! We need to check out and go home!" He pushed her hand away and mumbled. Erin sighed loudly and started looking for a glass of water when a knock came at the door. Erin set her own bag down and looked out the peephole. A man, his short brown hair starting to thin, looked back at her from the hallway. Erin could see two other people, each standing to his side.
"Robbie James?"
"Yes, this is his room. Is there a problem?"
"We're with the hotel. We need to talk to him right now." Erin started to worry. Robbie had fallen back asleep already.
"We'll be out and headed down to checkout in just a minute. You can see us then." She turned and began to shake him again. Her anxiety jumped as she heard the electronic lock disengage behind her. The man, a card in hand, took long strides through the door, flanked by two large men in black suits and followed by two more. She attempted to confront them, setting her small feet and attempting to strike an imposing figure with her small frame. "I told you we'd be out in a second!"
The man merely brushed her aside towards the bed and continued through to lay hands on Robbie. He pulled the man by his shirt from his prone position, and one of the men grabbed him from behind to hold him up. At the leader's gesture, two others grabbed Erin and, overcoming her struggles with ease, seated her on a chair next to the bed. The fourth shut the door behind them.
"Robbie James, right?" Robbie nodded. "You seem to have run up some debt last night, Mr. James. Twenty thousand dollars."
Erin's fury turned her voice into a shriek. "WHAT?!? Robbie! You only had three hundred dollars! How the hell did you gamble twenty thousand dollars away?"
To answer, the man reached into Robbie's back pocket and pulled out a plastic card with a stylized picture of a feather. "Your husband applied for a Feather Card, miss James. May I ask your name?"
Erin glared at the man. "Erin."
"Mine's Blake Jackson. I own this place. As I said, he applied for the card on a promise that he would be careful with it. I can see that he hasn't been."
"I'll say. ROBBIE! You stupid jackass! What have you done?"
"What he's done, Miss James, is he's gotten you into a pile of debt with me. Now the interest rate to which he agreed is quite high, but being a man of the people, I do have ways in which you can pay it off interest-free. Boys, let's show her how to earn some Feather Points." With that one of the two men holding her grabbed her ankle and forced it onto the bed. He pulled off her flip flop and tossed it aside. Robbie attempted to stagger forward to defend his wife, but the fourth man grabbed his other arm, and before he knew it, strong hands restrained his arms, one also grabbing the back of his hair and another his chin.
Jackson looked at the clock radio on the nightstand. "Ten seventeen. Keep time, Bill." One of the men holding Robbie nodded. Jackson pulled up another chair so that his knee was directly next to Erin's bare heel. Bill dropped to his knees and put Erin's arms and the back of her chair in a bear hug, and the other man put leverage on her hip and thigh so that she could not put her leg down. "This, Erin, is how you earn Feather Points."
He grabbed her ankle, and she inhaled sharply. "Don't you touch my foot, you creep!"
His other hand drew nearer to her sole. "Why not, Erin? Does your foot have something to hide?"
She strained vainly against her captors. "Keep your hands off my foot, you creep!"
"No." His index finger made contact her sole, moving gently from the ball of her foot, down the smooth midsection, and lifting off the top of her heel. Erin screamed. "Let me go! Don't touch me!"
Robbie stood dumbfounded. Jackson chuckled. "This is going to be more fun than I even imagined." He grabbed her first two toes with his left hand and held them back, stretching taut her sole. She began to scream again, but as the quick fingers of his right hand began to flutter across that smooth flesh canvas, her protest turned into a wordless shriek. She strained against the security men's grips, but they kept holding her body in place, and Jackson's fingers kept sweeping in rapid fire, a row of digits making sweeps every second, making the bottom of her beautiful tan foot their own. Her shrieks turned into one long closed-lip moan. Her eyes closed. He switched again to one finger, this time digging between the tips of her toes and the ball of her foot, twisting and tickling the stems of her toes and the ticklish flesh between. Suddenly her lips opened, and she began to giggle. Blake let up and looked at the clock, then at Robbie.
"You see, Mr. James, now comes the fun part. I only needed two minutes to get your wife to laugh when I tickled her. Now I've got eight more minutes before we talk business. You're going to see her move for me like she moves for noobody else. How do you like that?"
Robbie, snapping out of his stupor, began to strain against his two guards. "Let her go, you bastard! You can't touch my wife that way!"
Jackson smiled a tight-lipped smile at him. "We'll talk in eight minutes." He turned back around to face Erin's foot, this time reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a brown feather. He once again grabbed her toes with his left hand, menacing her sole with the feather's shaft, holding it like a pen between his fingers.
"Robbie! Make him STO-O-O-" Her last word turned into a howl, her short "o" sound bending upward into the long "e" of a tickled squeal. Jackson scribbled the letter X on her sole, zig-zagged across her heel, traced the curve of her instep over and over and over. Now with some abandon, she threw her head back, laughing in spite of herself, but laughing loudly nonetheless. He began to draw even rows up and down her sole, one after another, each pass raise in pitch, only to drop again when he set up for another and to raise again when he drew another row. He made seven passes down her sole, then started over, then again, then again. Tears were drifting down from the corners of Erin's eyes as her humiliation and the sheer physical exertion of the laughing turned her face red. Robbie tried to make a move on his captors, only to get a gut-punch that left him unable to do anything but watch as the casino owner tortured Erin's defenseless, smooth, ticklish sole.
Jackson glanced up at the clock again. "Two more minutes left. I'd better enjoy them." He flipped the feather around so that he was holding the end with the tip, and he changed his grip on Erin's foot so that he only held her big toe but pulled it towards the center of her body and back.
Her toes spread out like a fan, and she screamed. "Stop!" But she had two minutes left before that happened. He quickly slid the feather between her second and third toes, and her ticklish squeal once again lit up the room. He sawed back and forth with all the speed of a master fiddler, and Erin exploded with laughter. She thrashed against her captors, but they remained strong, holding her perfectly in place so that their boss and his feather's vane could exploit that tender skin between those pretty, soft toes. As she squealed and laughed and sweated, he jumped the feather to the gap between her third and fourth toes, mining that soft ground for more laughter. After what seemed an eternity, he took a shot at the gap betwen her pinky toe and the penultimate, and Erin went limp as he withdrew the feather. She attempted to glare at him, feeling in her gut that she wasn't giving a very intimidating look. The men turned her loose and stood once again at Jackson's side.
"Congratulations, Erin. You just earned your husband one feather point. One sole, ten minutes, one point. Each point is worth twenty dollars against his debt. He now owes me nineteen thousand, nine hundred eighty dollars."
Robbie chimed in. "You stay away from her, you bastard!"
Jackson held up a hand to silence him. "If you choose simply to pay by check through the mail, you'll find the interest rates quite punishing. But if you come back here to pay your debt in feather points, there's no interest. I can take it one point at a time, or I can increase the payout. Three hours with your lovely wife, in her underwear, tickling only, will be worth forty feather points."
Robbie tried to look as brave as he could. "I'll pay you back your money, Mr. Jackson, but we're never coming here again. Now let us go, and I'll have your twenty thousand as soon as I can."
"Not quite twenty thousand, Mr. James. If you change your mind, give me a call." He pulled a business card out of his pocket and flicked it to the bed.
The men left the room, and the drive back home was a silent one for Robbie James.
* * * * * * * * * * *
When Robbie came through the kitchen door after a long day of laying asphalt, a drinking glass shattered against the wall behind him, spraying the back of his shirt and forcing him into a defensive crouch.
"Nine hundred bucks, Robbie. Nine hundred bucks! Do you think we have an extra nine hundred bucks a month?" Erin was clutching a folded piece of paper, waving it furiously.
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about your damn poker game, Robbie. The interest is thirty percent, and we have to pay nine hundred bucks every month on it!"
"Look, I'll take some overtime--"
"No, Robbie, this is no overtime problem. We're going to have to sell one of our cars or something."
"We wouldn't get twenty thousand out of either of our cars. Look, we'll think of something."
Erin began to gesture around their small apartment. "Look around, Robbie. We've got nothing to sell. We don't make much money. We were already in the hole from my student loans, and now you've gotten us a nine hundred dollar a month bill."
"Look, I'll figure out something. Just relax, will you?"
"No, Robbie, I'm not going to relax! If we don't declare bankruptcy, we're going to go broke, and if we try to, that casino gangster is liable to kill us! You got us into a hole we can't get out of!" With her last outburst she grabbed a kitchen chair, whipping it against the wall.
"Hey, take it easy. We could both do some overtime."
"You just aren't listening, are you? We can't get out of this."
"So what are you getting at?"
"We need to get in touch with him about those feather point things. It's the only way we're going to make progress."
"You shut your mouth."
"Look, Robbie, he's only going to tickle me. It's nothing. We go back there a handful of times, and we can take care of this."
"I'm not going to let you--"
"Let me what, Robbie? Blow nearly a year's salary on a damn card game? What?"
Robbie's face, now fully red, looked down to the floor. "You'd do that?"
"We don't have any other choice, Robbie. Let's give him a call."
* * * * * * * * * * *
As Erin and Robbie approached the casino's door man, her heart began to pound, and Robbie's face once again began to turn red. The broad-shouldered guard checked their birthdates and allowed them in the door. Robbie, in his standard jeans and polo shirt, shuffled past, and Erin's shorts and flip flops followed behind into the cool air and the noise. As they took tentative strides in towards the main gambling floor, they saw Jackson coming their way.
"Good evening, my lovely couple!" They looked at him but didn't answer. "Robbie, you enjoy yourself for a couple hours." He reached his hand out and dropped some chips into his hand. "Now this time, don't spend what you don't have alright?" Robbie's spine stiffened as his body responded to the insult, but realizing the futility of it, he backed down. As two guards and Blake Jackson led Erin towards the elevator doors, Robbie reached a hand out towards her, then dropped it, then looked for a bar. Poker, hell. These chips might buy him a little forgetting.
Erin, dwarfed by the stately Jackson and his towering bodyguards, looked at the four of them in the elevator's mirrored doors as they rode to the hotel's top floor. The silence began to make her crazy as they ascended, and she blurted out what came to mind. "I'm not having sex with you."
Jackson looked over at her and laughed out loud. "Of course you aren't, kid. It's our first date. I'm not that kind of girl."
The tension broken somewhat, Erin managed a small laugh. Jackson smiled as he looked her in the eye. "I'm glad to see you're taking this well. Just think of it this way--we're going to have some laughs together, you're going to undo some of the damage that your man did, and you'll go home married and I divorced tonight. No more harm than that, right?"
Erin wasn't entirely sure, but she nodded her head. The elevator stopped on the fortieth floor, and Jackson inserted a plastic card into the elevator's control panel. The reflective doors slid open, and Erin and Jackson stepped out into a gigantic apartment. The bodyguards followed. Erin's jaw dropped as she beheld gambling wealth translated into living space. "How much money do you have?"
"More now than ever, though I never was hard up."
Jackson led her to a couch, motioned for her to sit, and sat in an adjacent chair. "You see, I was a football player in Europe before I came back to the states."
"Which team did you play for?"
"One you haven't heard of. But the money was good enough that when I decided that I was too prone to injury, I had enough saved up to buy into a riverboat casino on the Ohio. Made so much money there that I decided to open my own place. And here we are."
"Soccer, right?"
"Pardon?"
"If you played football in Europe, that means you really played soccer."
Jackson laughed again. "You're right, Erin. I'd already forgotten that conversation." Erin laughed at him again. As he caught her smile, he smiled back, and their eyes locked for a moment. Then she looked away.
"So when do you want me to get into my underwear?"
"You're already wearing it, I hope." No laugh this time. "Alright, then. Come into this room, and we'll have our fun." He led her to a door on the far side of the room, a door that led into a dark room with no windows. Jackson shut the door behind them, and she could feel his presence behind her. With a custom switch Jackson brought the lights up ever so slowly so that Erin could see first the boundaries of the dim room, then outlines of furniture, then a clear picture of what she'd entered into. Erin gasped when her imagination began to assign functions to its furnishings: on one side, a sturdy queen size bed, only with thick leather straps attached to the posts. Then a metal frame, not unlike a gymnast's high bar, eight feet tall by her guess, with padded leather cuffs hanging from ropes. Then some kind of cubical steel tube frame with bungee cords hanging from its sides, a piece of furniture she'd never seen before. Its only identifying features were four more padded leather cuffs.
"You've got a room just for..."
"That's right, Erin. You see, when people have the kind of money I have, we can be eccentric. This is my eccentricity." Erin stood as still as a stone, and Jackson took three smooth steps over to the high bar. He began to adjust the leather straps and looked back at her. "Now, if you please, you can strip down to your underwear." Erin looked around the room again, and Jim said, "I've got the only clock in here. Don't worry; you might not feel like time is passing, but I do play fair with the clock." She reluctantly began to take one shoe off, then the other. Jackson's eyes took her in with the anticipation of a hungry animal. Erin lifted her left smooth, thin left foot that Jackson had not yet touched, then removed her shorts, lifting the right foot, which he looked forward to revisiting. She slowly pulled her white tank top over her shoulders and past her head, ruffling her full hair and letting it fall, as it fell to the floor, in a cascade. Jackson beheld a woman's body, clad only in a white bra and white cotton panties, standing before him, and he gestured for her to walk over and join him at the high bar.
"Let's start here---just put your hands in the cuffs. You'll still be standing on the ground, but I'll be able to get to all your good spots." Erin walked haltingly over to the device and turned around, looking up at the frame. "Good. Now lift your hands up, and I'll fasten you in." She took a deep breath and lifted her fingers, haltingly, towards the menacing black bar and the fur-lined cuffs attached to it. Jackson fastened the cuffs quickly and almost without Erin feeling it. He walked proudly behind her and leaned in over her shoulder, talking softly into her ear. "This is one of the best parts, Erin. Enjoying it? You know, without a doubt, that I'm going to start touching you, making you move, in ways that you would never let anyone, even your husband, touch you. Your body, your very skin, is now in my power. Does that excite you?" She shook her head, her eyes shutting in terror. "It should. And it will." He stepped backwards, and Erin could hear a button click. She opened her eyes for a moment to see that the wall in front of her, visible to someone restrained in any of the three devices, she realized, lit up; a section of the wall, probably four feet high and wider than that, was one large flat video screen, and all that the screen showed was five digits and three colons. Jackson's voice and his breath were in her ear again. "It's voice activated. When I say the word, the time starts, and you get to know, minute by minute, how much closer you are to getting your feather points. GO." All five digits changed: 2:59:59.
Two strong fingers dug into Erin's sides just below her ribs, and she jumped in reaction. Those two stayed where they were, rubbing away at the spot that made her jump as two more made contact with the ribs just above and started to knead her skin in circles. The last two pairs, below the middle fingers, mirrored the motion above the anchor points. Erin pivoted her hips, rolling her weight onto the ball of one foot while the other heel came down. The fingers stayed where they were, working away and making her moan a high-pitched moan through clenched teeth. She pivoted the other way, violently thrusting her hip backwards. Jackson moved his feet with her hips, and his fingers kept on tickling her sides. Her moan turned into a scream, and before she could register what was happening, she was laughing. She made a pair of little jumps, not to escape any more but as a protest in behalf of her ticklish ribs. He kept prodding and rubbing and kneading. The delightful, torturous touches kept pressing in on her, and her upper body muscles, reacting again and again reflexively to bring her elbows down to protect those ticklish spots, again and again met the resistance of the cuffs. To her horror, she could actually feel her reflexes give up, and for a few seconds she tried voluntarily to strain against the bonds, knowing full well that she could not bend the steel frame or snap the fresh ropes but striving nonetheless just to let herself know that she was still striving. The tickling went on. As she laughed her delicious giggling laughs, she could feel something in her mind start to give; some part of her, even as she hated the man who was tickling her sides, wanted just to give up, to stop trying to get away. She steeled her mind, promising in an inner voice that started to sound like it was laughing, that she would not give up.
Then he moved his hand to her hip. She needed not to have promised; her muscles jumped into action as he found a spot that drove her laugh into a squeal with its ticklish torment. The other hand, hearing the call of the hunt, jumped down to her other hip, and once again Erin, now sweating, started her ticklish dance. Twist. Twist. Hop hop hop. As her dance slowed down, as she began to gasp between laughs, she felt Jackson's body press closer. He blew gently onto the side of her neck, and the thrill gave her tickled hips new life. She squealed again, hearing her voice as it played the little girl, jumping as his hands squeezed the soft skin along her hip lines. His hands now roamed freely, from ribs to belly to hips, pressing spots, pinching skin. Erin started to perspire just barely, and after a long time being tickled, Jackson's hands took a break. Erin's eyes, closed for much of the torment and unable to focus through her torment, looked up at the screen in front of her. 2:35:17.
Jackson walked out in front of her. "It feels like it's been longer, doesn't it?" Erin nodded assent. "That's the nice thing about having this much time. I can focus on just one part of you that, in normal circumstances, a man would only get to touch for a split second, and I can play you again and again. Has anyone ever tickled your sides for that long?" Erin shook her head in the negative. "I didn't think so. And if I want to spend just a little time, I can do that as well. For instance, your underarms look wonderfully ticklish. Are they?"
Erin shut her eyes tight and tucked her chin as if looking at the floor through her eyelids. "Just do what you're going to do! Stop talking to me!"
"Ah, Erin. You need to learn to enjoy this!" He poked his right index finger into her left underarm, and she twisted away. "We're going to be spending some good time together, and you're going to be laughing through a bunch of it. What better reason to be friendly with me?" He placed the same finger in the soft flesh of her right underarm and wriggled it, making her twist again.
Erin's eyes came up to meet Jackson's, and she managed a surprisingly dignified glare. "I don't want to be your friend. You're doing this to me for money, and that's all I'm here for."
"I'm not doing this for money, Erin. I'm doing it because I like tickling you. You're doing it for money." He used both hands to tickle her underarms, and she squealed just a bit.
"Don't make me sound like some kind of whore. Robbie got into debt with you. Now collect your debt and shut up!"
Jackson leaned in. "You're right. This is not your choice. Your man put you here. Now I'm going to enjoy you." With his face still inches from hers, he reached down and grabbed a handful of his side, making her turn away and moan sharply. "Every time I touch you, it's because he wanted me to. What do you think of that?" As she attempted a response, he grabbed both sides and squeezed, and Erin's knees knocked together as her weight dropped. She squealed, and foolishly, she tried to answer his question through the tickling, making her laughter take on the sounds of consonants even as the fingers denied her speech. With one hand he made a claw and began to work on the center of her abdomen while the other hand found its way back into her armpit, and Erin, though back on her feet, clamped her eyes shut and shrieked in forced glee. His claw hand stayed where it was, pulsating on her ticklish belly, while his own feet moved around to the side of her, drawing his own shoulders perpendicular with hers. His claw arm still stretched out so his fingers could keep working her midsection, he dropped his center of gravity and grabbed her upper thigh, just inches below the panty line, with a cruel squeeze. Her knee shot up, and her giggling gave way to a scream of delight that she tried to experience as outrage. With that scream he stood up, pleased, walked behind her, and let her catch her breath. Once again, he leaned in close to speak softly, though not in a whisper, into her ear. "So what do you think about your husband now? He sent you so that I could find that wonderfully ticklish spot on the back of your leg, and now he's down in the casino, perfectly fine with the fact that I'm going to squeeze it over and over again until you're begging me to stop."
Erin looked up at the clock. 2:25:26. Her eyes were beginning to sting from the sweat. "I'll never beg you, you bastard."
"Never is a long time, Erin. But I see you looking at the clock. You know that perfectly well. Do you think he's thinking of you now?"
"I don't want to talk about Robbie."
"I can see why. Now you know that I know that I've found one of your most sensitive spots, and if I want to, I can work on it for more than two more hours. Two hours! That's a movie, Erin!"
"Just leave me alone."
"Not a chance, sweetie. So how did you and the hubbie meet?"
"Just leave me alone."
"I wanted to talk a bit and give you a break from the tickling, but if you say so..." He grabbed her with a gentle ferocity, eight fingers on the insides of her thighs as two thumbs braced them on the outsides. Erin screamed and jumped, and Jackson took a short step inward so that her body weight, leaning back slightly, was resting on his chest. The palms of his hands bore the weight of her legs, and he kept tickling her as her feet kicked out in the air. Her head rocked back onto his shoulder, he also blew in her ear, adding to the unwanted pleasure an electrifying tightness that turned everything between her knees and sternum into one nerve ending. She found herself moaning an ecstasy into the air that she never wanted this sick man to hear, but they both knew he heard. And his fingers kept digging, prodding, working their way into and over her inner thighs, and her rolling laughter soon covered over any ripples from the moan. One hand kept supporting her lower body's weight as the other moved downward, finding a ticklish spot just above her knee that made her rock herself off of his chest. As her feet hit the ground again, Jackson squatted and started working the backs of both knees, sometimes scratching, sometimes squeezing, never stopping the ticklish touching. Before long her knees gave out, and he kept working the ticklish backs of her legs, making her laugh and giggle and squeal for what seemed an eternity. Long after Erin had stopped trying not to laugh, he stopped and stood behind her. She heard a click, and her feet had to respond quickly to catch her swing. He undid the other hand, and she sat on the carpeted floor and rubbed her tired arms.
1:57:38.
"I can't believe you just tickled me for an hour," Erin deadpanned.
"You should be concerned about the next two."
"What's there to be concerned about? It's going to happen."
Jackson offered a hand. "Would you like to sit on the bed? It's more comfortable there."
Erin, for reasons she could not explain, grabbed the hand and allowed herself to be helped. Jackson sat next to her on the bed. "You said you were divorced?"
"For fifteen years now." Erin looked at Jackson's middle-aged face and realized that he must have been in his twenties or early thirties.
"Any kids?"
"That's what's great about you, Erin. Always thinking about the kids. Yes, we had one son. He's twenty now." Erin was too tired to hide the grimace that came when she realized that Jackson Junior wasn't too much her junior.
"That's why I got married, Erin. An heir to the empire. Once I had that lined up, I could concentrate on running the empire. And, of course, enjoying the fruits of empire."
Erin, not wishing to be spoken of as fruit, especially while she was in her underwear, and especially knowing that this Georgia Emperor was about to tie her up and tickle her, scooted away from him on the bed. "So why did she leave?"
"She didn't. I caught her in our bed with a teammate who was supposed to be on the injured list. He apparently didn't injure everything."
"So have you had girlfriends since then?"
"What could I do with a girlfriend that I couldn't do with you?"
Erin knew exactly what she couldn't let him do, but she wasn't about to speak out loud. But noticing that the clock was still running, she hurried to come up with something to say, to keep him talking. "Certainly you enjoy some companionship."
"I do; you're right. I have had women live with me, but since the divorce, I've always stipulated that if they get bored with me, they just leave. I don't want any of that cheating business. It's not worth it."
"So you're alright with their just leaving?"
"Of course I'm not just alright. I miss them. But people seem to walk into my casinos who like a good laugh. Right?" Erin could not follow up on that one; she turned away, redfaced. "Come on, Erin. It's time to get back to tickling. I only have an hour and forty minutes left with you, and I want to enjoy it. You can choose the bed or the suspension web next, and we're going to do both before you leave. I suggest the bed so that you can rest a bit." Erin nodded and lay down on the bed, and Jackson began slowly to fasten a new set of restraints. Against her indignation she began to feel gratitude for her tormentor who not would move slowly so that she could collect herself. When he finished, she lay on her back, her ankles separated wider than her shoulders, her arms able to bend but her elbows unable to touch her sides.
She looked up at the clock. 1:47:48.
"Let's play a game with this one, Erin. I like to have fun with this, so I'll up your payment from forty to fifty points if you win the game."
Erin could not believe that she felt good about this. "Okay, so what's the game?"
Jackson picked up her shorts where she had dropped them and reached in. "I want the number to this phone, and you can't give it to me. If I torture you into giving me the right number in the next forty-five minutes, you keep your forty points. If you can hold out for that long, you get the extra ten."
Erin thought for a moment and spoke quickly. "Okay, you're on." After all, he was going to tickle her anyway; there wasn't much to lose here.
"Great." He knelt down beside the bed and pulled out a smooth, shiny, dark wood box, about the size of a small suitcase. She craned her neck to see what was inside as he opened it, and she gasped as she saw an assortment of feathers, vials of oil, one electric toothbrush, and a number of other tools obviously collected to use on this bed, on bodies like hers.
Erin stuttered slightly as she asked, "Would you have used this box if we weren't betting?"
"You'll never know, will you, Erin? You see, this is how we casino men get rich." He winked at her and picked out one of the vials of oil. He dropped a small series of drops into her belly button, making her catch an extra-fast breath, and poured out a generous amount into his palm. Recorking the vial, he rubbed his hands together briefly and then began to rub oil on her feet. She inhaled a moan of surprise and elation as his strong hands coated the soles, the insteps, the heels, and the toes with the warm oil. "Remember, you have until the timer hits one hour even to hold out. If the computer dials the number you give me and the phone rings, you lose."
"Alright."
"Now I'll also say that if you lose early, I'll give you an extra long break, so don't feel too bad if you can't take it."
"Is that one of your psychological games to get me to fold?"
"You're the one who just took psychology classes in college. You tell me."
They shared a genuine laugh together before Erin began to steel herself. "Alright. You're never going to get it from me!"
"We'll see, won't we?"
1:44:51.
Jackson dipped his index finger in the small pool of oil in her navel, making her whimper just a little. He began to trace a spiral starting inside her belly button and moving up, slowly, to a pass just an inch outside. He dipped in again, this time tracing a slightly larger spiral. Erin, her mind in game mode, started to giggle as she anticipated his next move, a larger spiral still. Three more oil trails he drew on her midsection, leaving a slick sheen on her feminine flesh.
"Now you're in trouble, Erin. Do you want to give up now and give me your number?"
"No way, Jackson. You don't scare me."
"Not even just your area code?"
"No way!"
"I hoped you would say that." Jackson descended on the slick belly with ten fingers, wiggling them so that their round tips would fly through the thin layer of oil. Erin screamed with laughter, her elbows flying up but her arms caught short by the bedposts. Her knees pumped like a bicycle rider's, and she tucked her chin into her chest as she laughed from the tickling fingers. Soon her head rocked back as she let out one, ticklish, defiant shriek. Jackson's fingers flew like no pianist's could, sliding through the slick that was becoming one with the sweat. Erin's hips began to rise into the air, her heels digging into the soft mattress, her shoulders arching her back. With the suddenness that comes from practice he stopped, pulling all ten fingers back.
"Area code!"
Erin inhaled deeply and opened her eyes, only to see Jackson's body between her and the clock.
"Area code!" She tried to crane her neck around him. "Don't look at that clock!" With that he dug into her belly again, and she squealed as his fingers found sensitive spot after sensitive spot with slickened speed. Her toes curled and flexed, and her back arched again as he wheeled his wrists into all kinds of attack angles. As she shrieked and bucked, he stopped again.
"Area code!"
"No!"
"I hoped you would say that too." Erin looked up to see him dripping more of the oil onto his fingertips. She caught a glance at the clock.
1:38:22.
His slick fingers suddenly migrated north, tickling just above the bra line on each side, and Erin knew that when those fast-moving fingertips hit the hollows under her arms, she would be in all kinds of trouble. Through her laughter she managed to cry out, "No, wait! Area code!"
Jackson stopped. "What is it?"
"Promise you won't tickle my armpits!"
"What is it?"
"Promise!"
"If I get that area code, I won't touch your armpits while you're on that bed."
Erin shouted out three digits. Jackson repeated them loud enough for the computer to hear them. "Oh, that's right, Erin. I can't check whether these are the right digits until you give me the other seven. Could you give me those now?"
"That's not what the deal was!"
"I'm sorry, Erin. I can't know whether it's the right code without them. If I can't verify, I haven't gotten my end of the deal. I'm afraid I am going to tickle those armpits if you don't cough up the rest." He began to lean in, his fingers flexing.
"You sneaky son of a.." Erin's next streak of laughter had the letter B at its beginning. Jackson's fingers, still slick with the oil from her belly, slid over her smooth skin, making her heels dig in to the bed once more and shutting her eyes as she screamed and laughed. She bucked and squealed, giggled and bounced, but would not give Jackson another word. Against her better judgment, she was starting to enjoy this, the game, the withholding from his fingers, the knowledge that she had something that, as yet, he could not get. The feeling of power, even as this sick man had her tied and was making her laugh, was starting to turn her desires in scary directions. Some distant, untickled corner of her mind tried to shout warnings, but her hips and her thighs and her mouth all began to sing their lust. Jackson stopped again. He stood up from the bed and picked up the electric toothbrush.
1:28:57.
Jackson leaned down and spoke directly into Erin's face. She could smell mint on his warm breath. "Alright, Erin. Last chance. If you give me your number now, we can take a good, long break and have a drink of water. If you refuse, I'm going to go to town on those feet of yours, and I'm not going to let up until time runs out. You'll be begging to tell me your cell number, but I won't care. The torture will be worth the chump change to me. Then I'm going to hang you up in the web and tickle until you pass out, then wake you up and tickle again. Now do you want to give up the digits or not?"
Erin's breathing picked up a little, and in a minor panic, she recited ten digits. Jackson repeated them, and the phone on the ground began to ring.
"I win, Erin." He began to unclasp the wrist- and ankle-cuffs, and the two sat on the bed for a few minutes in silence while Erin caught her breath and stretched her limbs. Jackson broke the silence first. "That surprised me a bit, Erin. You didn't seem the begging type."
"I just needed some rest. Robbie got us into this mess in a hurry, but I'm going to have to pay it off slowly."
"So how did you two meet?"
"Why do you care so much?"
"Curiosity, of course. Let me guess, though. You two probably grew up together in small town Georgia, you were a cheerleader for his high school football team, and you waited actually to get hitched until after you graduated UGA."
"Basketball team."
"Oh. He didn't seem that tall."
"So what? Now you've got me figured out in your mind. What now?"
"Oh, just making conversation. Has he always been a gambler?"
"Look, you've had your fun with me tonight. Why do we have to talk about this?"
"Actually I've got another hour of fun ahead of me. But has he always been a gambler?"
"He likes to play cards, yes. Why are you asking so much about Robbie?"
"Just didn't know how a smart, tough-minded, beautiful girl like you ended up with a construction worker gambling addict."
"He's not a gambling addict, he just--"
"Got you so deep in debt that you're letting a strange man tie you up and tickle you to pay the debt off."
"Look, I didn't come here to hear you insult him."
"No, but your presence here is itself an insult of sorts. But I don't mind. I still maintain that you're too beautiful and too smart for his likes."
"You have no idea whether I'm smart or not."
"Sure I do. You came here instead of trying to pay the debt off, so you obviously know how we loan sharks are. And you took the tickling bet, knowing that I was going to tickle you anyway. And now you've used the bet to get yourself a break. That's smart."
Erin paused for just a moment. "I still don't want you insulting Robbie."
"That's fine. I'll let him do it himself." He turned his head to speak to the computer. "Main screen. Scan hold 'em tables." The countdown moved to a corner of the screen, and a poker table from the casino below took over the bulk of the screen. A few seconds later that table disappeared and another appeared. A few seconds later another. On the fourth, Jackson called out, "Stop."
Erin stood up to look closer. Jackson called out, "Zoom in on player in position three." Erin's blood began to boil as she recognized Robbie, a stack of chips sitting in front of him.
"What did you do?"
"What did I do? I've been up here tickling you for an hour and a half. Do you think I gave one thought to your boy down there when I had your ticklish body to play with?" He changed his tone of voice and addressed the computer again. "Current chip count on player in position three."
An automated-menu voice came over a public address speaker. "Fifteen thousand, seven hundred dollars."
Erin wheeled on Jackson. "WHAT? How in the world did he get that much money?"
Jackson smiled hungrily at the sexy, exhausted, angry young woman. "The more important question is how much has he lost tonight." Once again he addressed the computer. "Starting chips for player in position three."
"Thirty thousand dollars."
"What?"
"He must have gotten a replacement Feather Card. One can do that with a valid picture ID."
Erin, enraged, swung a fist at Jackson. He blocked her forearm with a deft motion and stepped in to grab her around the waist. He held her close and spoke softly but fiercely to her. "Hitting me will not get your money back. Now if you'll calm down, I'll let you know how you can." Erin released and took a step back, suddenly firm of foot despite the oil on them, still glaring. "The players at that table are regulars at my casino. They depend on my forbearance for their shady livelihoods. If I tell them to let your boy win some of his money back, say to break even, more or less."
"And what's it going to cost me?"
"See? I knew you were smart. I can send the message out as soon as you take off your bra and climb into the web frame."
"You said you were going to tickle me in my underwear."
"I was, and I did, and now I'm making you a new offer. Forty feather points and a good hour of poker for your man."
The video image of the casino disappeared, leaving once again just the countdown. Erin scowled as she reached behind for the clasp on her bra. Jackson picked up a phone and talked to the head of security. "Tell the gentlemen at table four to be kind to our guest for the next hour. He breaks even with acceptable margin either way."
1:04:23.
Jackson helped to boost Erin up onto the web of bungee cords. As he strapped her in, she realized that the web was shaped to suspend a human body (a woman's body), making her effectively weightless. She would be face up, reclining as if on a low sofa, only suspended a few feet in the air. Her arms were cuffed to one of the steel pipe cube's upper edges so that she could not lower her arms. Her cuffed calves, pulled towards the vertical edges by bungee cords, were extended, she knew for easy use of her soles. Her legs, her sides, and her armpits would all be accessible from behind, and her full front face would be likewise from the front. Jackson could step in right against her hips, she realized, and get to almost anything on her front face. She looked down at her naked body, save for those white cotton panties, and gritted her teeth for the tickling that was to come. When she got ahold of Robbie for this...
Jackson smiled at his nearly naked prize and once again picked up the oil. "You see, Erin, your walking about has rubbed the oil off that I applied so carefully. Aren't you sorry for that?" She only scowled. He once again put oil on his hands and grabbed her foot. This time, as she squirmed, her whole body bounced through the air. His hands did not waver. He had done this before. He coated both feet with the sweet-smelling oil and stepped back to admire what he had wrought.
58:34.
To Erin's surprise, Jackson did not immediately begin touching her breasts. Instead he knelt in front of her right foot. "This is how we first met, Erin! Don't you remember?"
"Let's just get this hour over with."
"I'm going to make it last as long as I can, Erin." He began to use his oily fingers as he had on her belly and armpits, but on the already smooth and already sensitive sole of her foot, the touch was more than she had prepared for. In a split second her existence ran out of room for anger as squealing laughter erupted from her mouth and her body became a wriggling, giggling mass of nerve endings. Even as her sole became the only part of her body, she could feel strong fingers wrapped around her ankle so that no matter where the rest of her body went in this funhouse box, he would have a foot still for tickling. In this contraption her body could thrash in any direction without hitting anything solid, and her whole body swiveled as if on a pivot, her shoulders and her hips moving in counterpoint as Jackson tortured her slick, smooth sole. He turned her sole loose and followed her foot, now moving with her legs, with both hands, tickling instep at the same time as heel, ankle simultaneously with toes. Erin twisted and bobbed madly, his fingers touching only her feet but making her whole body pulse with a desire that once again she fought to suppress. Jackson stopped work on that foot and stood up.
53:12.
Jackson stood up and began to unbutton his shirt.
Erin, though breathless from those five intense minutes, began once again to worry. "What are you doing?"
"Taking off my shirt, of course. You've got yours off! Why should I worry about losing mine?" He cast it aside, revealing a body that was no longer a soccer midfielder's but looked better than most forty-three-year-old men's. "You really seemed to be into that. I might not even get to your breasts if your feet are this much fun."
"I just want this to be over."
"So you can go home to Robbie and release some of this energy you've built up?"
Erin snapped at him. "What are you talking about?"
"Don't deny it, Erin. I've watched your face. You need some sexual release in a bad way."
Erin's face, red already, deepened a shade. "Just... just... just..."
"Oh, I will, Erin. I'll just and more. But I've still got a foot to tend to." Erin, completely speechless, let out a grunt of protest. "Oh, and Erin? Your shirt is off. It's not hard to see how hot you're getting." She looked down, and in her embarrassment she simply stopped talking. But that could not last as Jackson started working on her left foot. With her forbidden desire now named and open, every time he stroked and tickled that sole, she could feel it almost as intensely in her only remaining private place as she could on her foot. After only a few minutes of tickling that sole (47:21), he brought the intense tickling to a slow, one-finger-at-a-time, slow stroking from the ball of her foot to the heel. The anticipation of each stroke, paired with the sensitivity that he had built up, stacked on top of the sensual oils that not only coated but had permeated her already soft skin, made each metronome stroke a brick in a tower, and with each brick added she threatened to topple, to explode. The finger went from top to bottom.
"Do you want me to tickle your breasts now, Erin?" Erin was silent until another stroke, from top to bottom, drew from her a moan of pleasure.
"Do you want me to?"
"Please... just stop..."
"Ah, begging. I like to hear begging." Another stroke, from top to bottom. As his fingertip passed over the center of her sole, she could feel her entire abdomen contract, culminating in an intense sexual pleasure. Erin shuddered. Another stroke, from top to bottom. "I think you're going to have to beg me to tickle your breasts." Then in his computer command voice, "Bookmark."
"Please..."
"Please what, Erin?" Another stroke, from top to bottom. Another moan.
"Please touch me!"
"Touch you where, Erin?" Another stroke, from top to bottom.
A quiet voice: "Tickle my breasts."
Another stroke, from top to bottom. "Say it louder, Erin!"
"Tickle my breasts!" Another stroke, from top to bottom. Another moan.
"Beg me, Erin! Beg me as loud as you can!" Another stroke, from top to bottom.
Finally Erin started begging loudly, begging through her own pleasured moans. Jackson just kept stroking that foot, one near-explosion after another, until she begged for what seemed hours. Jackson took a step back, reached into the box. He produced two, long, brown feathers. "These are genuine Hawk's feathers, Erin. I named the place after them. And now I've got thirty minutes to run them over your breasts. Get ready for the time of your life!"
32:14.
* * * * * * * * * * *
As the timer expired, Erin could feel the wetness in her panties. She knew that her body, not her heart but definitely her body, was begging for the release that this wicked man might grant or release. But when the timer expired, he simply stopped with the feathers. Erin's head flopped back, partly from exhaustion and partly wishing someone would get her off, partly from shame for wishing that.
Jackson turned back towards the computer. "Restore bookmark." Erin resented her torturer as they watched her begging to have her breasts touched.
"So you wanted to show me when I started begging, huh?"
"I'm certainly not above that, but the real reason I'm showing you this is because we need to understand the terms of this agreement. You see, your boy actually came out a few hundred ahead on the night. Your balance is down to nine hundred thirty-nine feather points."
"What does that have to do with the video?"
"Your boy can never know that we saw him playing, much less that we helped him to come out ahead. If you ever tell him that, I'm going to send him a high-resolution DVD that starts with your begging me to touch your breasts. You can try to explain your way out of it, but he'll have pictures. Sharp, undeniable pictures with exquisite sound, and they're going to culminate with that halfway orgasm you had on me."
Even suspended, Erin's fists began to clench, but she knew that Robbie would never understand. "Alright."
"Now that I have your cell number, I'll just call you the next time I want you to come and work off some points." He began to unfasten her restraints. "Remember, what happens in the Feather stays in the Feather. All or nothing."
Discarding her underwear, Erin began to put her clothes on. "All or nothing."
KI
Feather Points Part 1
by
Kid Indy
The Hawk's Feather had run its course for a grand opening, filling every room, every night for a span, and then settling in for steady business. The state of Georgia, eager to keep tax revenues high for the programs that keep citizens happy, had rushed paperwork through the legislature as quickly as governments can, and three new casinos went up faster than the Baptists could counter. The Feather, situated just where urban decay met suburban sprawl, was in the perfect place to make money--close to the poor so they could waste money but not so close that it had to guard too heavily against crime, and close to the middle-class so that they could make the trip easily but not so close that their neighbors would see them going.
On a Friday night at the Feather, the sun had gone down, the senior citizens home. The perpetual pinging of the slot machines never stopped, but it had settled to a simmer, and the card tables were beginning to get crowded. Erin James, walking like air in a little black dress that showed off legs whose shape had made more than one gambler raise a bet, was getting tired and knew that she, unlike her construction worker husband Robbie, had to go to work at the elementary school an hour away the next day, the first day of required planning, and she needed some rest.
"Alright, Robbie. You've got your cash, right?"
"Three hundred bucks, Erin. Don't worry about me. Once they're gone, I'll come up to bed."
"Have fun." Robbie watched as the sexiest girl from high school walked away from him and towards the elevator. Her light brown hair and lightly tanned shoulders topped her slim waist and tight but well-curved behind wonderfully. He glanced up to see a security camera pointed directly at him, took a deep breath, and headed for the Hold 'Em tables.
Robbie had always taken the boys for what they had when the road crew played poker, and tonight he started out in the same form, up a few bucks at a small-wager table after an hour, fifty dollars after two. He goofed up and overplayed one hand and went back down to even, then won another hand not long after. A large, round man joined the table and started to bet on every hand, bleeding chips fast. After playing only an hour the man had to buy more chips. Robbie had not caught a winner from him yet, but he noticed that the man would put down significant bets on high pairs, two-pair hands, and other combos that a good card player would never push.
His turn to take the chump came when Robbie got ten-jack in his hand and saw nine-queen-king in the flop. His face never wavered as he bet strong in each turn and everyone but fat man bailed out. Robbie looked the man in the eye, daring him to keep betting. He did. Before he knew, all three hundred twenty dollars of his chips lay in the pot. When time came for the showdown, Robbie turned his high straight over with a smile.
Then he looked to see the three hearts in the river, then to fat man's two low hearts, and his heart sank. Robbie left the table as everyone cheered his opponent's first victory and went to the nearest bar. Erin said he could only gamble three hundred dollars, but she didn't say anything about drinking.
The bartender took his cash, the green not set aside for cards, and passed him a shot glass. As he fired it down, a man in a suit walked up next to him and put down cash for the next round. Robbie looked at him suspiciously.
"Who are you?"
"I work security for the casino, and I'm on my break. Saw you take that hit at poker, and I thought you needed a drink."
The tension went out of Robbie's face, and he gratefully took down the shot. "Bastard went seven hands without so much as three of a kind, and when I go after him, he goes flush. I just can't win, man!"
"I hear that. You play some poker, don't you?"
"Yeah, I play some poker. With the boys at work, mostly."
"Work, huh? What do you do?"
"Road construction."
"No kidding! A genuine working man! It's almost Labor Day, right? Let me buy another for the working man."
Robbie took down another shot. Robbie kept telling the man about life on the work force, and the security man kept pulling bills out of his jacket pocket and buying drinks. Before long Robbie was quite warm and talking quite loudly.
"How old are you, Robbie?"
"Twenty-two. Why?"
"A young guy like you who can play some cards could really make a killing at the big tables. What kind of money did you come here to win?"
"Whatever I can get, man!"
The security man laughed loudly. "That's right, my man! Bartender! Another drink for a man who'll take what he gets!" Robbie pounded another drink.
"It's the same game wherever you play it, Robbie. The secret is that at those big money tables, someone has to win still, and someone still has to lose. The house gets its cut, but anyone who gets cards has just as big a chance at coming out with the big money."
"You're right, man! It just ain't fair that I ain't got that chance!"
"I'll tell you what, man. That kind of shot is normally only for the high rollers, but I can work something out for you to get you a seat at the twenty grand game on credit. The key is that if you can get ahead, just cash out, pay back the twenty grand, and buy something nice for your girl with what you pocket. You got a girl, right, Robbie?"
He held up a gold band on his left hand. "A wife, man! She's hot..."
"Good. Now here's what you do." He produced an expensive-looking pen and a stapled packet of papers from his jacket pocket. "We'll fill this out, and you sign at the bottom. That gets you fifty grand in credit. I put in a word with the boss for you, and you can play at the twenty grand table."
"Twenty grand? I can play for thirty grand, man!"
"Whoa there, cowboy! Like I said, you get in on that twenty grand game, and take home some bacon, alright?" The security man asked Robbie some questions and filled out the blanks on the form. When they were done, Robbie signed the paper, and the man disappeared into a door by the bar. Robbie waited there, slightly dizzy, and the security man came out alongside a man who looked about forty. He extended a tanned hand in Robbie's direction.
"Robbie James. Good to meet you. I'm Blake Jackson. I own this place." Blake shook his hand vigorously. "You know, of course, that this is real money, right?"
"Fo' sho' man!"
"Good enough for me." Johnson reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic card. "This, Mr. James, is your Feather Card. You can take it to the cages for up to fifty thousand dollars in gaming credit."
"Alright! Just let me at that high-roller table!"
"Well, Rob, just be careful not to make the big money players mad when you take their money, alright?"
Robbie grinned from ear to ear. "No worries there, Mr. Jackson!"
"That's the spirit, kid." Blake shook his hand again and withdrew, and Robbie, still slightly dizzy, made his way towards the cages. He was going to play some poker!
* * * * * * * * * * *
Erin had already packed up everything but a change of clothes for Robbie. He still stunk of hard liquor, and she knew that he was going to spend his day hung over while she got her classroom ready for her first day as a real professional teacher. She wished he wouldn't drink so hard, but now, with Robbie unconscious, wasn't the time to worry about those kinds of things. She just needed to get him to the car so that they could start driving. She only had an hour and a half to report. She shook his shoulder.
"Come on, Robbie. Party's over. I've got to get back so I can go to work." Robbie groaned. She shook him harder. "Robbie! Let's go! We need to check out and go home!" He pushed her hand away and mumbled. Erin sighed loudly and started looking for a glass of water when a knock came at the door. Erin set her own bag down and looked out the peephole. A man, his short brown hair starting to thin, looked back at her from the hallway. Erin could see two other people, each standing to his side.
"Robbie James?"
"Yes, this is his room. Is there a problem?"
"We're with the hotel. We need to talk to him right now." Erin started to worry. Robbie had fallen back asleep already.
"We'll be out and headed down to checkout in just a minute. You can see us then." She turned and began to shake him again. Her anxiety jumped as she heard the electronic lock disengage behind her. The man, a card in hand, took long strides through the door, flanked by two large men in black suits and followed by two more. She attempted to confront them, setting her small feet and attempting to strike an imposing figure with her small frame. "I told you we'd be out in a second!"
The man merely brushed her aside towards the bed and continued through to lay hands on Robbie. He pulled the man by his shirt from his prone position, and one of the men grabbed him from behind to hold him up. At the leader's gesture, two others grabbed Erin and, overcoming her struggles with ease, seated her on a chair next to the bed. The fourth shut the door behind them.
"Robbie James, right?" Robbie nodded. "You seem to have run up some debt last night, Mr. James. Twenty thousand dollars."
Erin's fury turned her voice into a shriek. "WHAT?!? Robbie! You only had three hundred dollars! How the hell did you gamble twenty thousand dollars away?"
To answer, the man reached into Robbie's back pocket and pulled out a plastic card with a stylized picture of a feather. "Your husband applied for a Feather Card, miss James. May I ask your name?"
Erin glared at the man. "Erin."
"Mine's Blake Jackson. I own this place. As I said, he applied for the card on a promise that he would be careful with it. I can see that he hasn't been."
"I'll say. ROBBIE! You stupid jackass! What have you done?"
"What he's done, Miss James, is he's gotten you into a pile of debt with me. Now the interest rate to which he agreed is quite high, but being a man of the people, I do have ways in which you can pay it off interest-free. Boys, let's show her how to earn some Feather Points." With that one of the two men holding her grabbed her ankle and forced it onto the bed. He pulled off her flip flop and tossed it aside. Robbie attempted to stagger forward to defend his wife, but the fourth man grabbed his other arm, and before he knew it, strong hands restrained his arms, one also grabbing the back of his hair and another his chin.
Jackson looked at the clock radio on the nightstand. "Ten seventeen. Keep time, Bill." One of the men holding Robbie nodded. Jackson pulled up another chair so that his knee was directly next to Erin's bare heel. Bill dropped to his knees and put Erin's arms and the back of her chair in a bear hug, and the other man put leverage on her hip and thigh so that she could not put her leg down. "This, Erin, is how you earn Feather Points."
He grabbed her ankle, and she inhaled sharply. "Don't you touch my foot, you creep!"
His other hand drew nearer to her sole. "Why not, Erin? Does your foot have something to hide?"
She strained vainly against her captors. "Keep your hands off my foot, you creep!"
"No." His index finger made contact her sole, moving gently from the ball of her foot, down the smooth midsection, and lifting off the top of her heel. Erin screamed. "Let me go! Don't touch me!"
Robbie stood dumbfounded. Jackson chuckled. "This is going to be more fun than I even imagined." He grabbed her first two toes with his left hand and held them back, stretching taut her sole. She began to scream again, but as the quick fingers of his right hand began to flutter across that smooth flesh canvas, her protest turned into a wordless shriek. She strained against the security men's grips, but they kept holding her body in place, and Jackson's fingers kept sweeping in rapid fire, a row of digits making sweeps every second, making the bottom of her beautiful tan foot their own. Her shrieks turned into one long closed-lip moan. Her eyes closed. He switched again to one finger, this time digging between the tips of her toes and the ball of her foot, twisting and tickling the stems of her toes and the ticklish flesh between. Suddenly her lips opened, and she began to giggle. Blake let up and looked at the clock, then at Robbie.
"You see, Mr. James, now comes the fun part. I only needed two minutes to get your wife to laugh when I tickled her. Now I've got eight more minutes before we talk business. You're going to see her move for me like she moves for noobody else. How do you like that?"
Robbie, snapping out of his stupor, began to strain against his two guards. "Let her go, you bastard! You can't touch my wife that way!"
Jackson smiled a tight-lipped smile at him. "We'll talk in eight minutes." He turned back around to face Erin's foot, this time reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a brown feather. He once again grabbed her toes with his left hand, menacing her sole with the feather's shaft, holding it like a pen between his fingers.
"Robbie! Make him STO-O-O-" Her last word turned into a howl, her short "o" sound bending upward into the long "e" of a tickled squeal. Jackson scribbled the letter X on her sole, zig-zagged across her heel, traced the curve of her instep over and over and over. Now with some abandon, she threw her head back, laughing in spite of herself, but laughing loudly nonetheless. He began to draw even rows up and down her sole, one after another, each pass raise in pitch, only to drop again when he set up for another and to raise again when he drew another row. He made seven passes down her sole, then started over, then again, then again. Tears were drifting down from the corners of Erin's eyes as her humiliation and the sheer physical exertion of the laughing turned her face red. Robbie tried to make a move on his captors, only to get a gut-punch that left him unable to do anything but watch as the casino owner tortured Erin's defenseless, smooth, ticklish sole.
Jackson glanced up at the clock again. "Two more minutes left. I'd better enjoy them." He flipped the feather around so that he was holding the end with the tip, and he changed his grip on Erin's foot so that he only held her big toe but pulled it towards the center of her body and back.
Her toes spread out like a fan, and she screamed. "Stop!" But she had two minutes left before that happened. He quickly slid the feather between her second and third toes, and her ticklish squeal once again lit up the room. He sawed back and forth with all the speed of a master fiddler, and Erin exploded with laughter. She thrashed against her captors, but they remained strong, holding her perfectly in place so that their boss and his feather's vane could exploit that tender skin between those pretty, soft toes. As she squealed and laughed and sweated, he jumped the feather to the gap between her third and fourth toes, mining that soft ground for more laughter. After what seemed an eternity, he took a shot at the gap betwen her pinky toe and the penultimate, and Erin went limp as he withdrew the feather. She attempted to glare at him, feeling in her gut that she wasn't giving a very intimidating look. The men turned her loose and stood once again at Jackson's side.
"Congratulations, Erin. You just earned your husband one feather point. One sole, ten minutes, one point. Each point is worth twenty dollars against his debt. He now owes me nineteen thousand, nine hundred eighty dollars."
Robbie chimed in. "You stay away from her, you bastard!"
Jackson held up a hand to silence him. "If you choose simply to pay by check through the mail, you'll find the interest rates quite punishing. But if you come back here to pay your debt in feather points, there's no interest. I can take it one point at a time, or I can increase the payout. Three hours with your lovely wife, in her underwear, tickling only, will be worth forty feather points."
Robbie tried to look as brave as he could. "I'll pay you back your money, Mr. Jackson, but we're never coming here again. Now let us go, and I'll have your twenty thousand as soon as I can."
"Not quite twenty thousand, Mr. James. If you change your mind, give me a call." He pulled a business card out of his pocket and flicked it to the bed.
The men left the room, and the drive back home was a silent one for Robbie James.
* * * * * * * * * * *
When Robbie came through the kitchen door after a long day of laying asphalt, a drinking glass shattered against the wall behind him, spraying the back of his shirt and forcing him into a defensive crouch.
"Nine hundred bucks, Robbie. Nine hundred bucks! Do you think we have an extra nine hundred bucks a month?" Erin was clutching a folded piece of paper, waving it furiously.
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about your damn poker game, Robbie. The interest is thirty percent, and we have to pay nine hundred bucks every month on it!"
"Look, I'll take some overtime--"
"No, Robbie, this is no overtime problem. We're going to have to sell one of our cars or something."
"We wouldn't get twenty thousand out of either of our cars. Look, we'll think of something."
Erin began to gesture around their small apartment. "Look around, Robbie. We've got nothing to sell. We don't make much money. We were already in the hole from my student loans, and now you've gotten us a nine hundred dollar a month bill."
"Look, I'll figure out something. Just relax, will you?"
"No, Robbie, I'm not going to relax! If we don't declare bankruptcy, we're going to go broke, and if we try to, that casino gangster is liable to kill us! You got us into a hole we can't get out of!" With her last outburst she grabbed a kitchen chair, whipping it against the wall.
"Hey, take it easy. We could both do some overtime."
"You just aren't listening, are you? We can't get out of this."
"So what are you getting at?"
"We need to get in touch with him about those feather point things. It's the only way we're going to make progress."
"You shut your mouth."
"Look, Robbie, he's only going to tickle me. It's nothing. We go back there a handful of times, and we can take care of this."
"I'm not going to let you--"
"Let me what, Robbie? Blow nearly a year's salary on a damn card game? What?"
Robbie's face, now fully red, looked down to the floor. "You'd do that?"
"We don't have any other choice, Robbie. Let's give him a call."
* * * * * * * * * * *
As Erin and Robbie approached the casino's door man, her heart began to pound, and Robbie's face once again began to turn red. The broad-shouldered guard checked their birthdates and allowed them in the door. Robbie, in his standard jeans and polo shirt, shuffled past, and Erin's shorts and flip flops followed behind into the cool air and the noise. As they took tentative strides in towards the main gambling floor, they saw Jackson coming their way.
"Good evening, my lovely couple!" They looked at him but didn't answer. "Robbie, you enjoy yourself for a couple hours." He reached his hand out and dropped some chips into his hand. "Now this time, don't spend what you don't have alright?" Robbie's spine stiffened as his body responded to the insult, but realizing the futility of it, he backed down. As two guards and Blake Jackson led Erin towards the elevator doors, Robbie reached a hand out towards her, then dropped it, then looked for a bar. Poker, hell. These chips might buy him a little forgetting.
Erin, dwarfed by the stately Jackson and his towering bodyguards, looked at the four of them in the elevator's mirrored doors as they rode to the hotel's top floor. The silence began to make her crazy as they ascended, and she blurted out what came to mind. "I'm not having sex with you."
Jackson looked over at her and laughed out loud. "Of course you aren't, kid. It's our first date. I'm not that kind of girl."
The tension broken somewhat, Erin managed a small laugh. Jackson smiled as he looked her in the eye. "I'm glad to see you're taking this well. Just think of it this way--we're going to have some laughs together, you're going to undo some of the damage that your man did, and you'll go home married and I divorced tonight. No more harm than that, right?"
Erin wasn't entirely sure, but she nodded her head. The elevator stopped on the fortieth floor, and Jackson inserted a plastic card into the elevator's control panel. The reflective doors slid open, and Erin and Jackson stepped out into a gigantic apartment. The bodyguards followed. Erin's jaw dropped as she beheld gambling wealth translated into living space. "How much money do you have?"
"More now than ever, though I never was hard up."
Jackson led her to a couch, motioned for her to sit, and sat in an adjacent chair. "You see, I was a football player in Europe before I came back to the states."
"Which team did you play for?"
"One you haven't heard of. But the money was good enough that when I decided that I was too prone to injury, I had enough saved up to buy into a riverboat casino on the Ohio. Made so much money there that I decided to open my own place. And here we are."
"Soccer, right?"
"Pardon?"
"If you played football in Europe, that means you really played soccer."
Jackson laughed again. "You're right, Erin. I'd already forgotten that conversation." Erin laughed at him again. As he caught her smile, he smiled back, and their eyes locked for a moment. Then she looked away.
"So when do you want me to get into my underwear?"
"You're already wearing it, I hope." No laugh this time. "Alright, then. Come into this room, and we'll have our fun." He led her to a door on the far side of the room, a door that led into a dark room with no windows. Jackson shut the door behind them, and she could feel his presence behind her. With a custom switch Jackson brought the lights up ever so slowly so that Erin could see first the boundaries of the dim room, then outlines of furniture, then a clear picture of what she'd entered into. Erin gasped when her imagination began to assign functions to its furnishings: on one side, a sturdy queen size bed, only with thick leather straps attached to the posts. Then a metal frame, not unlike a gymnast's high bar, eight feet tall by her guess, with padded leather cuffs hanging from ropes. Then some kind of cubical steel tube frame with bungee cords hanging from its sides, a piece of furniture she'd never seen before. Its only identifying features were four more padded leather cuffs.
"You've got a room just for..."
"That's right, Erin. You see, when people have the kind of money I have, we can be eccentric. This is my eccentricity." Erin stood as still as a stone, and Jackson took three smooth steps over to the high bar. He began to adjust the leather straps and looked back at her. "Now, if you please, you can strip down to your underwear." Erin looked around the room again, and Jim said, "I've got the only clock in here. Don't worry; you might not feel like time is passing, but I do play fair with the clock." She reluctantly began to take one shoe off, then the other. Jackson's eyes took her in with the anticipation of a hungry animal. Erin lifted her left smooth, thin left foot that Jackson had not yet touched, then removed her shorts, lifting the right foot, which he looked forward to revisiting. She slowly pulled her white tank top over her shoulders and past her head, ruffling her full hair and letting it fall, as it fell to the floor, in a cascade. Jackson beheld a woman's body, clad only in a white bra and white cotton panties, standing before him, and he gestured for her to walk over and join him at the high bar.
"Let's start here---just put your hands in the cuffs. You'll still be standing on the ground, but I'll be able to get to all your good spots." Erin walked haltingly over to the device and turned around, looking up at the frame. "Good. Now lift your hands up, and I'll fasten you in." She took a deep breath and lifted her fingers, haltingly, towards the menacing black bar and the fur-lined cuffs attached to it. Jackson fastened the cuffs quickly and almost without Erin feeling it. He walked proudly behind her and leaned in over her shoulder, talking softly into her ear. "This is one of the best parts, Erin. Enjoying it? You know, without a doubt, that I'm going to start touching you, making you move, in ways that you would never let anyone, even your husband, touch you. Your body, your very skin, is now in my power. Does that excite you?" She shook her head, her eyes shutting in terror. "It should. And it will." He stepped backwards, and Erin could hear a button click. She opened her eyes for a moment to see that the wall in front of her, visible to someone restrained in any of the three devices, she realized, lit up; a section of the wall, probably four feet high and wider than that, was one large flat video screen, and all that the screen showed was five digits and three colons. Jackson's voice and his breath were in her ear again. "It's voice activated. When I say the word, the time starts, and you get to know, minute by minute, how much closer you are to getting your feather points. GO." All five digits changed: 2:59:59.
Two strong fingers dug into Erin's sides just below her ribs, and she jumped in reaction. Those two stayed where they were, rubbing away at the spot that made her jump as two more made contact with the ribs just above and started to knead her skin in circles. The last two pairs, below the middle fingers, mirrored the motion above the anchor points. Erin pivoted her hips, rolling her weight onto the ball of one foot while the other heel came down. The fingers stayed where they were, working away and making her moan a high-pitched moan through clenched teeth. She pivoted the other way, violently thrusting her hip backwards. Jackson moved his feet with her hips, and his fingers kept on tickling her sides. Her moan turned into a scream, and before she could register what was happening, she was laughing. She made a pair of little jumps, not to escape any more but as a protest in behalf of her ticklish ribs. He kept prodding and rubbing and kneading. The delightful, torturous touches kept pressing in on her, and her upper body muscles, reacting again and again reflexively to bring her elbows down to protect those ticklish spots, again and again met the resistance of the cuffs. To her horror, she could actually feel her reflexes give up, and for a few seconds she tried voluntarily to strain against the bonds, knowing full well that she could not bend the steel frame or snap the fresh ropes but striving nonetheless just to let herself know that she was still striving. The tickling went on. As she laughed her delicious giggling laughs, she could feel something in her mind start to give; some part of her, even as she hated the man who was tickling her sides, wanted just to give up, to stop trying to get away. She steeled her mind, promising in an inner voice that started to sound like it was laughing, that she would not give up.
Then he moved his hand to her hip. She needed not to have promised; her muscles jumped into action as he found a spot that drove her laugh into a squeal with its ticklish torment. The other hand, hearing the call of the hunt, jumped down to her other hip, and once again Erin, now sweating, started her ticklish dance. Twist. Twist. Hop hop hop. As her dance slowed down, as she began to gasp between laughs, she felt Jackson's body press closer. He blew gently onto the side of her neck, and the thrill gave her tickled hips new life. She squealed again, hearing her voice as it played the little girl, jumping as his hands squeezed the soft skin along her hip lines. His hands now roamed freely, from ribs to belly to hips, pressing spots, pinching skin. Erin started to perspire just barely, and after a long time being tickled, Jackson's hands took a break. Erin's eyes, closed for much of the torment and unable to focus through her torment, looked up at the screen in front of her. 2:35:17.
Jackson walked out in front of her. "It feels like it's been longer, doesn't it?" Erin nodded assent. "That's the nice thing about having this much time. I can focus on just one part of you that, in normal circumstances, a man would only get to touch for a split second, and I can play you again and again. Has anyone ever tickled your sides for that long?" Erin shook her head in the negative. "I didn't think so. And if I want to spend just a little time, I can do that as well. For instance, your underarms look wonderfully ticklish. Are they?"
Erin shut her eyes tight and tucked her chin as if looking at the floor through her eyelids. "Just do what you're going to do! Stop talking to me!"
"Ah, Erin. You need to learn to enjoy this!" He poked his right index finger into her left underarm, and she twisted away. "We're going to be spending some good time together, and you're going to be laughing through a bunch of it. What better reason to be friendly with me?" He placed the same finger in the soft flesh of her right underarm and wriggled it, making her twist again.
Erin's eyes came up to meet Jackson's, and she managed a surprisingly dignified glare. "I don't want to be your friend. You're doing this to me for money, and that's all I'm here for."
"I'm not doing this for money, Erin. I'm doing it because I like tickling you. You're doing it for money." He used both hands to tickle her underarms, and she squealed just a bit.
"Don't make me sound like some kind of whore. Robbie got into debt with you. Now collect your debt and shut up!"
Jackson leaned in. "You're right. This is not your choice. Your man put you here. Now I'm going to enjoy you." With his face still inches from hers, he reached down and grabbed a handful of his side, making her turn away and moan sharply. "Every time I touch you, it's because he wanted me to. What do you think of that?" As she attempted a response, he grabbed both sides and squeezed, and Erin's knees knocked together as her weight dropped. She squealed, and foolishly, she tried to answer his question through the tickling, making her laughter take on the sounds of consonants even as the fingers denied her speech. With one hand he made a claw and began to work on the center of her abdomen while the other hand found its way back into her armpit, and Erin, though back on her feet, clamped her eyes shut and shrieked in forced glee. His claw hand stayed where it was, pulsating on her ticklish belly, while his own feet moved around to the side of her, drawing his own shoulders perpendicular with hers. His claw arm still stretched out so his fingers could keep working her midsection, he dropped his center of gravity and grabbed her upper thigh, just inches below the panty line, with a cruel squeeze. Her knee shot up, and her giggling gave way to a scream of delight that she tried to experience as outrage. With that scream he stood up, pleased, walked behind her, and let her catch her breath. Once again, he leaned in close to speak softly, though not in a whisper, into her ear. "So what do you think about your husband now? He sent you so that I could find that wonderfully ticklish spot on the back of your leg, and now he's down in the casino, perfectly fine with the fact that I'm going to squeeze it over and over again until you're begging me to stop."
Erin looked up at the clock. 2:25:26. Her eyes were beginning to sting from the sweat. "I'll never beg you, you bastard."
"Never is a long time, Erin. But I see you looking at the clock. You know that perfectly well. Do you think he's thinking of you now?"
"I don't want to talk about Robbie."
"I can see why. Now you know that I know that I've found one of your most sensitive spots, and if I want to, I can work on it for more than two more hours. Two hours! That's a movie, Erin!"
"Just leave me alone."
"Not a chance, sweetie. So how did you and the hubbie meet?"
"Just leave me alone."
"I wanted to talk a bit and give you a break from the tickling, but if you say so..." He grabbed her with a gentle ferocity, eight fingers on the insides of her thighs as two thumbs braced them on the outsides. Erin screamed and jumped, and Jackson took a short step inward so that her body weight, leaning back slightly, was resting on his chest. The palms of his hands bore the weight of her legs, and he kept tickling her as her feet kicked out in the air. Her head rocked back onto his shoulder, he also blew in her ear, adding to the unwanted pleasure an electrifying tightness that turned everything between her knees and sternum into one nerve ending. She found herself moaning an ecstasy into the air that she never wanted this sick man to hear, but they both knew he heard. And his fingers kept digging, prodding, working their way into and over her inner thighs, and her rolling laughter soon covered over any ripples from the moan. One hand kept supporting her lower body's weight as the other moved downward, finding a ticklish spot just above her knee that made her rock herself off of his chest. As her feet hit the ground again, Jackson squatted and started working the backs of both knees, sometimes scratching, sometimes squeezing, never stopping the ticklish touching. Before long her knees gave out, and he kept working the ticklish backs of her legs, making her laugh and giggle and squeal for what seemed an eternity. Long after Erin had stopped trying not to laugh, he stopped and stood behind her. She heard a click, and her feet had to respond quickly to catch her swing. He undid the other hand, and she sat on the carpeted floor and rubbed her tired arms.
1:57:38.
"I can't believe you just tickled me for an hour," Erin deadpanned.
"You should be concerned about the next two."
"What's there to be concerned about? It's going to happen."
Jackson offered a hand. "Would you like to sit on the bed? It's more comfortable there."
Erin, for reasons she could not explain, grabbed the hand and allowed herself to be helped. Jackson sat next to her on the bed. "You said you were divorced?"
"For fifteen years now." Erin looked at Jackson's middle-aged face and realized that he must have been in his twenties or early thirties.
"Any kids?"
"That's what's great about you, Erin. Always thinking about the kids. Yes, we had one son. He's twenty now." Erin was too tired to hide the grimace that came when she realized that Jackson Junior wasn't too much her junior.
"That's why I got married, Erin. An heir to the empire. Once I had that lined up, I could concentrate on running the empire. And, of course, enjoying the fruits of empire."
Erin, not wishing to be spoken of as fruit, especially while she was in her underwear, and especially knowing that this Georgia Emperor was about to tie her up and tickle her, scooted away from him on the bed. "So why did she leave?"
"She didn't. I caught her in our bed with a teammate who was supposed to be on the injured list. He apparently didn't injure everything."
"So have you had girlfriends since then?"
"What could I do with a girlfriend that I couldn't do with you?"
Erin knew exactly what she couldn't let him do, but she wasn't about to speak out loud. But noticing that the clock was still running, she hurried to come up with something to say, to keep him talking. "Certainly you enjoy some companionship."
"I do; you're right. I have had women live with me, but since the divorce, I've always stipulated that if they get bored with me, they just leave. I don't want any of that cheating business. It's not worth it."
"So you're alright with their just leaving?"
"Of course I'm not just alright. I miss them. But people seem to walk into my casinos who like a good laugh. Right?" Erin could not follow up on that one; she turned away, redfaced. "Come on, Erin. It's time to get back to tickling. I only have an hour and forty minutes left with you, and I want to enjoy it. You can choose the bed or the suspension web next, and we're going to do both before you leave. I suggest the bed so that you can rest a bit." Erin nodded and lay down on the bed, and Jackson began slowly to fasten a new set of restraints. Against her indignation she began to feel gratitude for her tormentor who not would move slowly so that she could collect herself. When he finished, she lay on her back, her ankles separated wider than her shoulders, her arms able to bend but her elbows unable to touch her sides.
She looked up at the clock. 1:47:48.
"Let's play a game with this one, Erin. I like to have fun with this, so I'll up your payment from forty to fifty points if you win the game."
Erin could not believe that she felt good about this. "Okay, so what's the game?"
Jackson picked up her shorts where she had dropped them and reached in. "I want the number to this phone, and you can't give it to me. If I torture you into giving me the right number in the next forty-five minutes, you keep your forty points. If you can hold out for that long, you get the extra ten."
Erin thought for a moment and spoke quickly. "Okay, you're on." After all, he was going to tickle her anyway; there wasn't much to lose here.
"Great." He knelt down beside the bed and pulled out a smooth, shiny, dark wood box, about the size of a small suitcase. She craned her neck to see what was inside as he opened it, and she gasped as she saw an assortment of feathers, vials of oil, one electric toothbrush, and a number of other tools obviously collected to use on this bed, on bodies like hers.
Erin stuttered slightly as she asked, "Would you have used this box if we weren't betting?"
"You'll never know, will you, Erin? You see, this is how we casino men get rich." He winked at her and picked out one of the vials of oil. He dropped a small series of drops into her belly button, making her catch an extra-fast breath, and poured out a generous amount into his palm. Recorking the vial, he rubbed his hands together briefly and then began to rub oil on her feet. She inhaled a moan of surprise and elation as his strong hands coated the soles, the insteps, the heels, and the toes with the warm oil. "Remember, you have until the timer hits one hour even to hold out. If the computer dials the number you give me and the phone rings, you lose."
"Alright."
"Now I'll also say that if you lose early, I'll give you an extra long break, so don't feel too bad if you can't take it."
"Is that one of your psychological games to get me to fold?"
"You're the one who just took psychology classes in college. You tell me."
They shared a genuine laugh together before Erin began to steel herself. "Alright. You're never going to get it from me!"
"We'll see, won't we?"
1:44:51.
Jackson dipped his index finger in the small pool of oil in her navel, making her whimper just a little. He began to trace a spiral starting inside her belly button and moving up, slowly, to a pass just an inch outside. He dipped in again, this time tracing a slightly larger spiral. Erin, her mind in game mode, started to giggle as she anticipated his next move, a larger spiral still. Three more oil trails he drew on her midsection, leaving a slick sheen on her feminine flesh.
"Now you're in trouble, Erin. Do you want to give up now and give me your number?"
"No way, Jackson. You don't scare me."
"Not even just your area code?"
"No way!"
"I hoped you would say that." Jackson descended on the slick belly with ten fingers, wiggling them so that their round tips would fly through the thin layer of oil. Erin screamed with laughter, her elbows flying up but her arms caught short by the bedposts. Her knees pumped like a bicycle rider's, and she tucked her chin into her chest as she laughed from the tickling fingers. Soon her head rocked back as she let out one, ticklish, defiant shriek. Jackson's fingers flew like no pianist's could, sliding through the slick that was becoming one with the sweat. Erin's hips began to rise into the air, her heels digging into the soft mattress, her shoulders arching her back. With the suddenness that comes from practice he stopped, pulling all ten fingers back.
"Area code!"
Erin inhaled deeply and opened her eyes, only to see Jackson's body between her and the clock.
"Area code!" She tried to crane her neck around him. "Don't look at that clock!" With that he dug into her belly again, and she squealed as his fingers found sensitive spot after sensitive spot with slickened speed. Her toes curled and flexed, and her back arched again as he wheeled his wrists into all kinds of attack angles. As she shrieked and bucked, he stopped again.
"Area code!"
"No!"
"I hoped you would say that too." Erin looked up to see him dripping more of the oil onto his fingertips. She caught a glance at the clock.
1:38:22.
His slick fingers suddenly migrated north, tickling just above the bra line on each side, and Erin knew that when those fast-moving fingertips hit the hollows under her arms, she would be in all kinds of trouble. Through her laughter she managed to cry out, "No, wait! Area code!"
Jackson stopped. "What is it?"
"Promise you won't tickle my armpits!"
"What is it?"
"Promise!"
"If I get that area code, I won't touch your armpits while you're on that bed."
Erin shouted out three digits. Jackson repeated them loud enough for the computer to hear them. "Oh, that's right, Erin. I can't check whether these are the right digits until you give me the other seven. Could you give me those now?"
"That's not what the deal was!"
"I'm sorry, Erin. I can't know whether it's the right code without them. If I can't verify, I haven't gotten my end of the deal. I'm afraid I am going to tickle those armpits if you don't cough up the rest." He began to lean in, his fingers flexing.
"You sneaky son of a.." Erin's next streak of laughter had the letter B at its beginning. Jackson's fingers, still slick with the oil from her belly, slid over her smooth skin, making her heels dig in to the bed once more and shutting her eyes as she screamed and laughed. She bucked and squealed, giggled and bounced, but would not give Jackson another word. Against her better judgment, she was starting to enjoy this, the game, the withholding from his fingers, the knowledge that she had something that, as yet, he could not get. The feeling of power, even as this sick man had her tied and was making her laugh, was starting to turn her desires in scary directions. Some distant, untickled corner of her mind tried to shout warnings, but her hips and her thighs and her mouth all began to sing their lust. Jackson stopped again. He stood up from the bed and picked up the electric toothbrush.
1:28:57.
Jackson leaned down and spoke directly into Erin's face. She could smell mint on his warm breath. "Alright, Erin. Last chance. If you give me your number now, we can take a good, long break and have a drink of water. If you refuse, I'm going to go to town on those feet of yours, and I'm not going to let up until time runs out. You'll be begging to tell me your cell number, but I won't care. The torture will be worth the chump change to me. Then I'm going to hang you up in the web and tickle until you pass out, then wake you up and tickle again. Now do you want to give up the digits or not?"
Erin's breathing picked up a little, and in a minor panic, she recited ten digits. Jackson repeated them, and the phone on the ground began to ring.
"I win, Erin." He began to unclasp the wrist- and ankle-cuffs, and the two sat on the bed for a few minutes in silence while Erin caught her breath and stretched her limbs. Jackson broke the silence first. "That surprised me a bit, Erin. You didn't seem the begging type."
"I just needed some rest. Robbie got us into this mess in a hurry, but I'm going to have to pay it off slowly."
"So how did you two meet?"
"Why do you care so much?"
"Curiosity, of course. Let me guess, though. You two probably grew up together in small town Georgia, you were a cheerleader for his high school football team, and you waited actually to get hitched until after you graduated UGA."
"Basketball team."
"Oh. He didn't seem that tall."
"So what? Now you've got me figured out in your mind. What now?"
"Oh, just making conversation. Has he always been a gambler?"
"Look, you've had your fun with me tonight. Why do we have to talk about this?"
"Actually I've got another hour of fun ahead of me. But has he always been a gambler?"
"He likes to play cards, yes. Why are you asking so much about Robbie?"
"Just didn't know how a smart, tough-minded, beautiful girl like you ended up with a construction worker gambling addict."
"He's not a gambling addict, he just--"
"Got you so deep in debt that you're letting a strange man tie you up and tickle you to pay the debt off."
"Look, I didn't come here to hear you insult him."
"No, but your presence here is itself an insult of sorts. But I don't mind. I still maintain that you're too beautiful and too smart for his likes."
"You have no idea whether I'm smart or not."
"Sure I do. You came here instead of trying to pay the debt off, so you obviously know how we loan sharks are. And you took the tickling bet, knowing that I was going to tickle you anyway. And now you've used the bet to get yourself a break. That's smart."
Erin paused for just a moment. "I still don't want you insulting Robbie."
"That's fine. I'll let him do it himself." He turned his head to speak to the computer. "Main screen. Scan hold 'em tables." The countdown moved to a corner of the screen, and a poker table from the casino below took over the bulk of the screen. A few seconds later that table disappeared and another appeared. A few seconds later another. On the fourth, Jackson called out, "Stop."
Erin stood up to look closer. Jackson called out, "Zoom in on player in position three." Erin's blood began to boil as she recognized Robbie, a stack of chips sitting in front of him.
"What did you do?"
"What did I do? I've been up here tickling you for an hour and a half. Do you think I gave one thought to your boy down there when I had your ticklish body to play with?" He changed his tone of voice and addressed the computer again. "Current chip count on player in position three."
An automated-menu voice came over a public address speaker. "Fifteen thousand, seven hundred dollars."
Erin wheeled on Jackson. "WHAT? How in the world did he get that much money?"
Jackson smiled hungrily at the sexy, exhausted, angry young woman. "The more important question is how much has he lost tonight." Once again he addressed the computer. "Starting chips for player in position three."
"Thirty thousand dollars."
"What?"
"He must have gotten a replacement Feather Card. One can do that with a valid picture ID."
Erin, enraged, swung a fist at Jackson. He blocked her forearm with a deft motion and stepped in to grab her around the waist. He held her close and spoke softly but fiercely to her. "Hitting me will not get your money back. Now if you'll calm down, I'll let you know how you can." Erin released and took a step back, suddenly firm of foot despite the oil on them, still glaring. "The players at that table are regulars at my casino. They depend on my forbearance for their shady livelihoods. If I tell them to let your boy win some of his money back, say to break even, more or less."
"And what's it going to cost me?"
"See? I knew you were smart. I can send the message out as soon as you take off your bra and climb into the web frame."
"You said you were going to tickle me in my underwear."
"I was, and I did, and now I'm making you a new offer. Forty feather points and a good hour of poker for your man."
The video image of the casino disappeared, leaving once again just the countdown. Erin scowled as she reached behind for the clasp on her bra. Jackson picked up a phone and talked to the head of security. "Tell the gentlemen at table four to be kind to our guest for the next hour. He breaks even with acceptable margin either way."
1:04:23.
Jackson helped to boost Erin up onto the web of bungee cords. As he strapped her in, she realized that the web was shaped to suspend a human body (a woman's body), making her effectively weightless. She would be face up, reclining as if on a low sofa, only suspended a few feet in the air. Her arms were cuffed to one of the steel pipe cube's upper edges so that she could not lower her arms. Her cuffed calves, pulled towards the vertical edges by bungee cords, were extended, she knew for easy use of her soles. Her legs, her sides, and her armpits would all be accessible from behind, and her full front face would be likewise from the front. Jackson could step in right against her hips, she realized, and get to almost anything on her front face. She looked down at her naked body, save for those white cotton panties, and gritted her teeth for the tickling that was to come. When she got ahold of Robbie for this...
Jackson smiled at his nearly naked prize and once again picked up the oil. "You see, Erin, your walking about has rubbed the oil off that I applied so carefully. Aren't you sorry for that?" She only scowled. He once again put oil on his hands and grabbed her foot. This time, as she squirmed, her whole body bounced through the air. His hands did not waver. He had done this before. He coated both feet with the sweet-smelling oil and stepped back to admire what he had wrought.
58:34.
To Erin's surprise, Jackson did not immediately begin touching her breasts. Instead he knelt in front of her right foot. "This is how we first met, Erin! Don't you remember?"
"Let's just get this hour over with."
"I'm going to make it last as long as I can, Erin." He began to use his oily fingers as he had on her belly and armpits, but on the already smooth and already sensitive sole of her foot, the touch was more than she had prepared for. In a split second her existence ran out of room for anger as squealing laughter erupted from her mouth and her body became a wriggling, giggling mass of nerve endings. Even as her sole became the only part of her body, she could feel strong fingers wrapped around her ankle so that no matter where the rest of her body went in this funhouse box, he would have a foot still for tickling. In this contraption her body could thrash in any direction without hitting anything solid, and her whole body swiveled as if on a pivot, her shoulders and her hips moving in counterpoint as Jackson tortured her slick, smooth sole. He turned her sole loose and followed her foot, now moving with her legs, with both hands, tickling instep at the same time as heel, ankle simultaneously with toes. Erin twisted and bobbed madly, his fingers touching only her feet but making her whole body pulse with a desire that once again she fought to suppress. Jackson stopped work on that foot and stood up.
53:12.
Jackson stood up and began to unbutton his shirt.
Erin, though breathless from those five intense minutes, began once again to worry. "What are you doing?"
"Taking off my shirt, of course. You've got yours off! Why should I worry about losing mine?" He cast it aside, revealing a body that was no longer a soccer midfielder's but looked better than most forty-three-year-old men's. "You really seemed to be into that. I might not even get to your breasts if your feet are this much fun."
"I just want this to be over."
"So you can go home to Robbie and release some of this energy you've built up?"
Erin snapped at him. "What are you talking about?"
"Don't deny it, Erin. I've watched your face. You need some sexual release in a bad way."
Erin's face, red already, deepened a shade. "Just... just... just..."
"Oh, I will, Erin. I'll just and more. But I've still got a foot to tend to." Erin, completely speechless, let out a grunt of protest. "Oh, and Erin? Your shirt is off. It's not hard to see how hot you're getting." She looked down, and in her embarrassment she simply stopped talking. But that could not last as Jackson started working on her left foot. With her forbidden desire now named and open, every time he stroked and tickled that sole, she could feel it almost as intensely in her only remaining private place as she could on her foot. After only a few minutes of tickling that sole (47:21), he brought the intense tickling to a slow, one-finger-at-a-time, slow stroking from the ball of her foot to the heel. The anticipation of each stroke, paired with the sensitivity that he had built up, stacked on top of the sensual oils that not only coated but had permeated her already soft skin, made each metronome stroke a brick in a tower, and with each brick added she threatened to topple, to explode. The finger went from top to bottom.
"Do you want me to tickle your breasts now, Erin?" Erin was silent until another stroke, from top to bottom, drew from her a moan of pleasure.
"Do you want me to?"
"Please... just stop..."
"Ah, begging. I like to hear begging." Another stroke, from top to bottom. As his fingertip passed over the center of her sole, she could feel her entire abdomen contract, culminating in an intense sexual pleasure. Erin shuddered. Another stroke, from top to bottom. "I think you're going to have to beg me to tickle your breasts." Then in his computer command voice, "Bookmark."
"Please..."
"Please what, Erin?" Another stroke, from top to bottom. Another moan.
"Please touch me!"
"Touch you where, Erin?" Another stroke, from top to bottom.
A quiet voice: "Tickle my breasts."
Another stroke, from top to bottom. "Say it louder, Erin!"
"Tickle my breasts!" Another stroke, from top to bottom. Another moan.
"Beg me, Erin! Beg me as loud as you can!" Another stroke, from top to bottom.
Finally Erin started begging loudly, begging through her own pleasured moans. Jackson just kept stroking that foot, one near-explosion after another, until she begged for what seemed hours. Jackson took a step back, reached into the box. He produced two, long, brown feathers. "These are genuine Hawk's feathers, Erin. I named the place after them. And now I've got thirty minutes to run them over your breasts. Get ready for the time of your life!"
32:14.
* * * * * * * * * * *
As the timer expired, Erin could feel the wetness in her panties. She knew that her body, not her heart but definitely her body, was begging for the release that this wicked man might grant or release. But when the timer expired, he simply stopped with the feathers. Erin's head flopped back, partly from exhaustion and partly wishing someone would get her off, partly from shame for wishing that.
Jackson turned back towards the computer. "Restore bookmark." Erin resented her torturer as they watched her begging to have her breasts touched.
"So you wanted to show me when I started begging, huh?"
"I'm certainly not above that, but the real reason I'm showing you this is because we need to understand the terms of this agreement. You see, your boy actually came out a few hundred ahead on the night. Your balance is down to nine hundred thirty-nine feather points."
"What does that have to do with the video?"
"Your boy can never know that we saw him playing, much less that we helped him to come out ahead. If you ever tell him that, I'm going to send him a high-resolution DVD that starts with your begging me to touch your breasts. You can try to explain your way out of it, but he'll have pictures. Sharp, undeniable pictures with exquisite sound, and they're going to culminate with that halfway orgasm you had on me."
Even suspended, Erin's fists began to clench, but she knew that Robbie would never understand. "Alright."
"Now that I have your cell number, I'll just call you the next time I want you to come and work off some points." He began to unfasten her restraints. "Remember, what happens in the Feather stays in the Feather. All or nothing."
Discarding her underwear, Erin began to put her clothes on. "All or nothing."
