Howdy, all. This will be the last part of Feather Points, though I might bring Blake Jackson back--I've come to enjoy his character. Heck, Erin might just be back too. But I'll have to do something different with them. Those of you familiar with my stories will no doubt guess where they might pop up next.
As always, please leave feedback once you've read!
Catch part one at this thread before you read this one:
http://www.ticklingforum.com/showthread.php?t=113486
Feather Points, part 2
by
Kid Indy
Three weeks had passed, and one particular silence was deafening. Erin went through her days teaching third grade with all the hurry and worry of any first-year teacher, and she and her husband Robbie lived their evenings with all the comfortable happiness of a couple married just over a year. But even when they were in bed together, neither would bring up the cloud hanging over them. Both knew that she had been apart from him for three hours, and both knew that she had been in a room with a man who was not Robbie. Both knew that she had not had sex with the man, but both knew that he had his hands on her.
But Erin knew more than Robbie, and his failure to make known what she already knew, along with her inability to speak its reality, ate at her day to day. Erin knew that Robbie, after she got in the elevator with the casino's owner, Blake Jackson, had drawn chips for thirty thousand dollars, that he would have lost a year of her salary had not Jackson called off the professional card players that surrounded him. She also knew that only he could reveal this, as any hint that she knew would result in Jackson's revealing her own shameful concession of that night. As the days passed, and as Robbie's construction job dried up with no replacement in sight, that silent betrayal and the night that followed, the three hours that made her very soul ticklish, continued to occupy her mind.
Every day, sometimes even as she worked as a teacher, she could remember the moment when those feathers had made first contact with her feet. She thought that his tickling her feet was the most awful thing that could ever happen, and it had been the most intense, pleasurable-but-hated sensation that had ever held her for as long as it did. While he had her foot in his clutches, he had the rudder to her ship.
But when he drew the blade of that feather along her breast for the first time, she experienced what had never come into her imagination and what terrified her to remember. She had loved Robbie since they started dating in high school, loved the way that he needed her. When the basketball team lost, when a test proved too hard for him, when his parents divorced because of his drunk cheating father, all of these times he had turned to Erin as a strong shoulder to lean on. When they became intimate, their love continued in the same vein--Robbie needed Erin, and Erin was at her happiest when she was giving him everything he needed. Her desire for Robbie was always coupled with her will to be what he needed, was nearly identical to her role as his provider.
With Blake Jackson's feather, it was different. Erin had never before felt any desire for Jackson, the man with a son Erin's age. And she was there against her will. And Jackson had no need for Erin, neither to support his seemingly unshakable confidence nor to give the man who seemed to own his world anything in that world. But when that feather drew slowly for the first time across her nipple, need had nothing to do with anything. With each successive pass, Erin had no illusion that she was satisfying anything like a need for this powerful man. He was making her body catch fire just because he wanted it to catch fire. And as one pass turned to one on each breast, as the feather licked her, slowly, agonizingly, ticklishly, she knew but could not believe that her will was worse than irrelevant. Each feather tickled a breast, the sensations no less torturous than his fingers in her hips, but there was something more: every additional slash of a feather's blade was making her a little less able to laugh because of the moans of pleasure that she heard herself moaning but would not believe it. And by the time fifteen minutes had passed (at his slow pace, she could watch those last thirty minutes go by), she was not a passive fire, stoked by the feathers' strokes, but felt her hips leaning into him, pulling him to her with a force field, desiring nothing more than the man who tormented her. For fifteen minutes he knew, she could feel it, that her body and her will, all of her being, was not only his to command but his to deny, to hold at bay as they blazed and thirsted and lusted for him.
Erin snapped from her reverie as her assistant principal poked his head in her classroom's door and asked how she was doing. After a brief and perfunctory conversation, the principal left, and she returned to her reflection: Robbie had put her through that ordeal, and yet he lacked the common courtesy to admit the deed that had put her there, put her in the awful situation of having to surrender those most sensitive breasts to that pitiless soul. Erin was sure that one of Jackson's men had liquored him up and convinced him to go back to the high roller table, so she couldn't blame him entirely. (Well, she could, but she wouldn't.) But to keep his indiscretion-- one that he knew could land her back in Jackson's tickling room over and over again-- a secret was more than she could bear. Three weeks now he had sat on the secret, and she began to wonder what else he was keeping secret these rainy days when he could not work road construction.
She looked at her watch and realized that she only had ten minutes until her kids got back from art class. Math was next. She looked over her notes and made sure that her dry-erase marker was working. Suddenly her phone chimed, a sign that a text message had come in. "I've got to set that thing to silent," she thought, and when she checked her text message, she ducked away from her classroom's door and read it again, just to make sure she wasn't imagining things:
TAKE TOMORROW OFF. COME TO THE CASINO FOR THE DAY. BRING YOUR BATHING SUIT. 200 FEATHER POINTS ON THE LINE IF YOU SHOW UP AT 9:00.
"On the line" sounded ominous; she knew now that the rules of the game could change at any moment, and Jackson no doubt had more devious ways to mix mind games with tickling in store. "But then," she thought, "Robbie won't be there, so he won't be getting us into more trouble with his gambling. And four thousand dollars is a heap of money." She began to plan how she might get out of the house the next day, Thursday, without Robbie knowing that anything was going on.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Erin's alarm clock went off at 6:00 the next morning. Moving as quietly as she could, she took her cell phone out on the front porch and phoned in sick. She showered and got ready for work as nonchalantly as she could, effecting the unnatural ways of a person trying to look natural. She had already stuffed a two-piece bathing suit in her teaching bag the night before, and she was just about to grab it and head out the door when Robbie blocked her way. He was still wearing what he had slept in.
"Hey, Erin?"
"What is it, Robbie?"
"Since I don't have any work to do today, I figured I'd take off for home and watch the Florida State game with the boys. You mind if I come in late?"
Erin could not tell if she sighed her relief audibly, but she knew that "home" was two hours in the opposite direction of where she was headed, and she knew that he would come in well after midnight if he came in at all--he had crashed at "the boys'" house before after a long night of drinking and football.
"That's fine, hon. Just be sure to drive carefully."
"You're not mad that I don't have any work right now, are you?"
"I'm sure you'll find ways to handle our money. You always seem to."
* * * * * * * * * * *
Erin arrived at the Hawk's Feather at 8:45 and called Blake Jackson using the text message's return number.
"I'm here."
"Good. I was hoping we could spend the day together. How long can you stay?"
"That depends on how many feather points you can pay me."
"That's my girl."
* * * * * * * * * * *
A daytime security guard (they didn't strike Erin as anything close to the intimidating night guards) let Erin into the nearly empty casino. A few senior citizens plunked nickels into slot machines, and a handful of businessmen played some blackjack at the one open table before their day of corporate training (or whatever) started, but the place was just a different place before the sun went down. Jackson, dressed in khaki pants and a short sleeve button-down shirt, greeted Erin as they crossed the casino floor.
"It's good to see you, Erin. No Robbie?"
"Don't play with me, Mr. Jackson. You wanted me in the daytime knowing perfectly well that Robbie works in the day."
"So he's working?"
Caught in Jackson's awkward question, Erin changed the subject. "As late as you must work, how are you up this early?"
"I'm the owner, Erin. Call me Blake, by the way. I'm the owner, so I can work and sleep when I want. I usually work from some time in the afternoon till some time in the early morning, then sleep until I wake up, so I can shift my sleep schedule around when I have a beautiful woman coming to call."
Erin blushed in spite of herself. "So are we going up to your room?"
"Don't be in such a hurry, kid. We'll have that fun when it's time. Right now I want to have a swim. You did bring your suit, right?"
"Do I get points for swimming?"
"That's my girl. Always has her eye on the brass ring. You get a hundred feather points as long as you stay until three or so, about the time you'd normally get off work. That's just for spending the day with me."
"And the other hundred?"
"Hundred nothing. The sky's the limit when you stick around me, kid." He put his arm playfully around her neck, and they walked towards the outdoor swimming pool. "Speaking of which, I want you to write your dress and shoe size down. After we swim for a while, I've got a political luncheon to attend, and you're going to be my date."
"Is that why you brought me here?"
"I brought you here to have fun, Erin. But if I can get you to be the pretty girl on my arm, I'll take that benefit as well. Now let's go swimming, why don't we?"
After she jotted down her measurements and handed the card off to a courier, Jackson let her into an empty room to change her clothes, and she headed out towards the swimming pool while he did the same. She waded down concrete steps, noticing the pleasant coolness, and began to walk towards some deeper water. She went deeper until all but her neck and head were out of the still-warm September sun. She looked around at the luxuriant landscaping and the fountains pouring clear water down into the end of the pool, and she realized that she was the only person in a gigantic, expensive pool. She imagined herself the Queen of Georgia for a moment, then she heard the door to the casino open and once again beheld Blake Jackson with his shirt off. His plain black trunks offset his athletic body, and she could not help but imagine, for a moment, that she was Queen to his King. She shook her head and dove underwater.
When she came up, Blake was cutting a brisk lap down the pool and back. She could tell that he was used to swimming, his smooth motion and toned muscles exhibiting some degree of discipline. Erin, not much of a competitive swimmer, paddled around in the water.
Jackson began making his way over towards her. "This lonely multimillionaire stuff really is all it's cracked up to be. I get up early one morning, and there's a beautiful woman waiting for me in my pool!"
"Do you always have to get your beautiful women as credit card payments?"
Blake threw back his head and laughed. "Apparently I do if I want the really interesting ones. How do you like it?"
"It's nice."
"Nice? You must have come from some privileged parts if all you can say is 'Nice!'" He splashed a little water her way.
She splashed some back at him. "Not hardly. I'm the first in my family even to go to college. You probably wouldn't ever even see the parts of Georgia I'm from."
"Oh, I could tell by your sweet Southern girl accent. It makes your laughter irresistible." Now he had closed within arm's length, and he reached out underwater and squeezed her hip.
Erin twisted away and grabbed his wrist, flashing her best coquettish grin. "I might be irresistible, but I am a married woman."
Jackson let his knees bend so that only his head remained above water, level with her chest. Erin kept hold of his wrist. "You never did tell me about that. Why did you marry that kid?"
"You can stop calling him 'kid' any time now. He's my husband. We love each other. What else is there?"
"You never met anyone more interesting at college?"
"Didn't want to."
"And now here you are, bailing him out of debt by keeping a dirty old man at bay. Erin James, that's positively noble of you. Worthy of a Canterbury Tale."
"I don't think Chaucer had too many of those about men tickling women their sons' ages."
Suddenly Jackson's wrist took on a life of its own in Erin's hand, shooting from her grasp and wrapping itself around her waist as she released it. Erin's face and Jackson's were inches apart. "Maybe he should have." He reached underwater with his free hand and squeezed Erin's knee, making her scream and jump in the water. "You are a ticklish girl, Erin. I picked a good one."
Erin pushed his hand away but remained close to him. "What do you mean, picked?"
"What, do you think that your boy just randomly got fifty thousand dollars in casino credit? I had been watching you all that night, imagining getting my hands where I've got them now."
Erin stared him down from inches away. "That was our first anniversary."
"Sometimes we make mistakes that last a year."
"You're not going to get me to marry you, Mr. Jackson."
Jackson turned her loose and began to float loosely in the water, only his head above water. "Who said anything about getting married? I already tried that. It doesn't end well."
"Well, mine will."
"Sure, if he doesn't pimp you out to any more dirty old men. Or worse." He began to edge closer again.
"I'll just have to keep him and myself away from people like you, once I've paid off this debt."
Jackson was right next to her. "Well, I might as well enjoy making you pay, then!" Erin let out a screech as he dove under water. She leapt up, trying to keep her feet off the bottom of the pool. She could feel the water move as he swam underneath her, and as she twisted around, he surfaced behind her. As she tried to turn, her elbow came up and nearly smacked him in the face, but his athletic hand caught her elbow and held it up at her shoulder level. His other hand snaked quickly around, wrapping around her waist tightly, and began to tickle her hip. He turned her elbow loose and shot that quick hand around her waist the other direction. She squirmed and squealed in the water, laughing as he held her body close to his with crossed arms. His head rested on her shoulder from behind, and his quick fingers danced all over, his thumbs and his fingers pressing ticklish spots. Her own hands pressed down on his forearms but to no avail: she was in his strong arms, and his hands were having their way with her ticklish hips and sides. As she writhed against him, she could not deny the pleasure of being pressed against him and being the object of his ticklish attentions. And she could feel, through his trunks, that even as his hands turned her body to jelly, her body turned other parts of him to stone.
When she finally broke free of his arms, she wheeled and giggled through a taunt: "You're really enjoying that, aren't you?"
He began to move through the water at her again, making her giggle. "What, did you think I was doing this because I don't like it?"
"No, but I had no idea you were getting off on it that way."
He reached a hand out at her, which she batted away playfully. "Let me get my hands on you, and you know you'll get hot too." He reached in again, and she swatted another hand away.
Erin smiled mischievously in spite of herself. "You got lucky the other night. It was just nerves."
"Oh, I know about nerves. I'm going to tickle just the right nerves until you're begging for more!" He dove under the water again, and this time Erin froze in playful, terrified joy. This time he didn't even wait to surface before he grabbed her knee, making her start a frenzied underwater dance to avoid those submarine hands. When he did surface he came up behind her again, this time grabbing the backs of her thighs and lifting her up as he had when she was hanging on the tickling bar, once again using his palms to support her water-lessened weight and his fingers and thumbs to make her thrash wildly. This time, though, she wasn't tied up, and she pushed on his forearms, launching herself off of his palms in a twisting plunge. He followed in as she made her way through the water.
She moved as quickly as she could, still slowly, through the pool away from him as she giggled. "Do you do this with every girl who comes through your door?"
"Nope. Only the smart, beautiful, ticklish Southern Belles whose husbands I can catch in the spider's web. You're one in a million, Erin!" He put a hand on her side and tickled slightly, but she slipped away. With a lunge at her, he caught her in his arms and pulled her close. "You really are one in a million, Erin."
"I am that."
* * * * * * * * * * *
Erin's dress fit like a dream, and although she was too shy to ask after the price, she knew that it cost as much as at least half of her closet at home. As she walked in, her hand on Jackson's jacket sleeve in true Southern promenading style, she could almost feel the heads in the room turning as they entered. Some gave Jackson some good-natured "You old dog" looks, while others scowled disapproval. Others yet simply took in Erin, the vision of youth and beauty coming in on the arm of the image of will and power. Cameras snapped, but Erin was worried only for a moment, knowing full well that Robbie was no newspaper reader.
The event was a fundraiser for a Republican lieutenant gubernatorial hopeful, and Erin admitted to herself that she was excited to get this close to real power after spending her young years taking what Tallahassee and later Atlanta handed down but never seeing the hand that did so.
His education policy ideas weren't bad either.
As his speech ended and he began to walk to his car to make his next campaign stop, a synthesizer track, Erin guessed from the eighties, blared over the PA system.
"What in the world is that?"
Jackson laughed. "You're probably the only one in this room too young to remember it. You know how he ended his speech saying that his policies were going to rocket Georgia into the future?"
"Sure."
"The track is called 'Rockit.'"
"That's an awful lot of setup for a musical joke."
Blake poked her in the side playfully. "It loses something in explanation." He looked around to make sure that nobody was listening to him, then leaned in and whispered to Erin, "It'd make good tickling music, wouldn't it?" He feinted several pokes at her to the rhythm of the drum machine. Her arms involuntarily tried to shield her belly, and they both laughed.
* * * * * * * * * * *
When they had driven back to the Feather, it was 12:30.
"I've got to get the place ready for night business in a little while, so why don't we do some of what I like to do so much?"
"For someone who's seen me in my underwear, you sure do talk around things!"
"I've touched you in your underwear, my dear. And I've feathered you without."
Erin blushed.
"So let's go up to my place, shall we? School will be out soon, and I'd hate to lose our entire afternoon." They boarded the elevator and began to ride upwards. Jackson stepped away from Erin and looked her up and down. "I can just imagine how mad the Ralph Reed set is just now."
"I thought we were at the other candidate's lunch."
"Of course we were. But they got our picture in the Atlanta paper now. They're going to see that they're up against casino money, American casino money."
"I thought the Christian Coalition was against all gambling."
"When they're on the record, yes. But when they turn the microphones off, they're getting big money from the Indian casinos over towards Alabama. Now they're going to see yours truly at the opponent's function, and with a young beauty on his arm."
"Why isn't any of this in the papers?"
"It will be, doll. My campaign contribution isn't the only benefit that the future lieutenant governor is getting out of me. And when Mister Christian Coalition goes down in the flames of Indian casino money, Atlanta will know who to thank for it." Jackson slid his ID card into the reader, and the elevator opened into his apartment. He walked over to the kitchen sink and filled a drinking glass with water. "I bet those Coalition boys would just die of they knew what we were about to do."
"No, I don't guess they'd approve of it."
"Approve of it? They'd be having wet dreams about it for a month!" He led her into the tickling room and shut the door. He set his water down on the nightstand next to the tickling bed.
"Are you going to set a timer?"
"Not today. Not a three hour timer, anyway. I'll stop soon enough that I can get myself together and go to work. I also don't want you to strip down just yet. You look so good in that dress, it'd be a pity not to tickle you in it."
"How are you going to do that if I'm not tied up?"
"Come on now, Erin. Didn't you think I'd think of that? Let me ask you this. What's even stronger than ropes and chains?"
"Rock?"
Jackson laughed and sat down on the bed, patting the bedspread next to himself as a sign for her to sit down. "No, you literal-minded nymph! What force in the world makes people move and keeps them where they are?"
"Fear?"
Jackson smiled at her and took her knees in his hands, swinging her legs into his lap. "Not quite. You see, fear is too open. People can decide to be brave. There's something that is even more powerful than violence."
"Who told you that?"
"Karl Marx, of course. If someone wants to learn about capitalism, he's the man. No illusions in Kapital. Makes it the best handbook for businessmen." He began to take off one of her shoes, letting the hose underneath breathe in the cool air. "You see, Karl knew that slaves can rise up violently against a rule that's imposed on them. But if the slave becomes a worker and signs a contract, then his own sense of justice keeps him working harder than a slave ever would, and if he ever complains, the owner just shows him the contract and reminds him that he, the worker, volunteered for this. It's brilliant, really."
"So you think I'm just going to sit here with my feet in your lap and let you tickle me because my husband owes you money?"
"No, that's his contract. It's the one that got him to send you up here in the first place. Remember, gambling is its own contract. A gambler sets down a bet, and that's just as good as a signature. When the dealer reaches down and robs him, the gambler, a million times out of a million and one, won't object in the slightest. A man takes his money, right in front of his eyes, and he doesn't object."
"So you've got a bet for me."
"You bet I do. That's how I make money at this." He took the other shoe off and dropped both of them on the floor. "And here's the bet, if you want to take it. I'm going to set a five-minute timer. And then I'm going to hand you this glass of water." She had wondered why he never took a drink. "If you make it five minutes without spilling, you'll get twenty more feather points. If not, I get to take you all the way down to your panties for the next two hours."
"And my bra, right?"
"Did I say that?"
"So for you, four hundred dollars are on the line. For me..."
"You and I both know. We'll get to see just how much a case of nerves I can give you."
"And you only get to tickle my feet?"
"Only your feet. For five minutes I'm going to do nothing but tickle your feet. And if that glass touches any object in the room, or if you spill a drop of it, I win."
Erin could not help but thrill at the prospect. The money was a drop in the bucket Robbie had emptied, but she wanted so badly to show Blake that he couldn't get the best of her that she agreed promptly. "And when the five minutes are over, you have to admit that you couldn't win this one!"
"We'll see. Here's the water." Erin took the water in her right hand, since she was right-handed, and took a deep breath. His firm hand grasped round her ankle. Jackson spoke an order to the computer. "Five-minute countdown. Start now."
Erin closed her eyes, but nothing happened. She waited as a child waits for a jack-in-the-box that never rises. She opened her eyes to see Jackson grinning at her. "You'd better tickle me."
"Now you're virtually asking me to tickle you. And who's getting off on this?"
Erin smirked. "You know full well that aieee!!!" She screamed as he suddenly began to scribble his fingers along her soles. A growing, darkened spot on the bedspread revealed that he had won his bet, and in only forty-five seconds. He kept tickling her stockinged foot. "Stop! Stop! You won your bet!"
"I said for five minutes I'm going to tickle your feet, and you agreed!"
Erin laughed as his fingers excited the sheer hose, electrifying her feet underneath. "You big bully!" She threw the water in his face, splashing all over his clothes. His fingers never stopped moving. Dropping the water glass onto the bed, Erin fell backwards, laughing hysterically both at the situation and because her feet in those panty hose seemed twice as ticklish as her feet in the open air. Jackson shifted his grip, wrapping an arm around both of her calves. Erin tried to get some leverage, but before she could resist, he began again with his quick fingers, dancing over the surfaces of both soles. Her feet rocked and moved, not being restrained, but he followed them with merciless accuracy, scratching away at the sheer hose and making Erin thrash in delight on the bed.
"This has to be worse," she thought, "than being tied up. I want to get out, and I know I should be able to, but it tickles so badly!" Jackson's lock on her legs never lost its tension, and his fingers worked and worked on her soles and toes and heels, and she giggled and squealed and twisted for five solid minutes. As the timer expired, Jackson let her legs loose.
"Let's try another bet, Erin, and let's make this one really interesting."
Erin panted on the bed, sweating in her expensive dress. "Is there any chance of my winning this one?"
"There's always a chance. That's what makes gambling so interesting. You had a chance to win that last one."
"You didn't tell me that hose would make my feet so much more ticklish."
"You didn't ask. Besides, that's what makes my place money. The odds are always on my side, and given enough bets, I'll always come out on top, but there's always a chance you'll beat the house this time. And that's what keeps people betting."
"So what's the bet this time?"
"I want you to hang on the high bar. No clothes or bra, of course. If you can hang there for ten whole minutes without dropping off, four hundred feather points."
"Eight thousand dollars? That's almost half our debt! I could be done with half our debt in ten minutes?" Erin looked at the cube frame, the spider web. "I'm assuming you get to tickle me."
"Of course. With whatever tools I have."
"And if I lose?"
"Off come the panties. I get to tickle you the rest of the afternoon completely naked."
"No sex, right?"
"No sex, but I do get to tickle you everywhere."
Erin gulped. She had done a fair bit of gymnastics in high school, and she knew her grip could hold out much longer than ten minutes in normal circumstances. But he knew where her most ticklish spots were, and they both knew what he could do to her with those feathers... eight thousand dollars... feathers...
"You're on."
She began to strip down, taking off the dress and folding it carefully before putting it on the bed. "Do you want me to keep on the hose or take them off?"
"Your choice--you remember how that felt." She took them off. Once more unhooking her bra for this man, this time for Robbie's foolishness but also because she thought she could undo it more quickly, she found herself making eyes at Jackson, the kinds of smoldering, smiling eyes that only came out when she was trying to get a man to do what she wanted. When she remembered the moment later she knew rationally that Blake was in control of the situation the whole time, but nonetheless she felt as if she had him now.
"Would you like a boost up, or would you like to jump?"
Erin bent her knees and sprang up, grabbing the bar and remembering its feel on her palms. "Alright, Blake. Start the timer. You're mine this time."
Blake ordered the computer to set up a ten minute countdown. "It looks to me like you're mine." He walked to the bed and pulled feathers from his wooden box, then walked over to Erin. "Begin."
Erin had expected Blake to begin with her underarms, to try to loosen up her grip on the bar. Instead he began to twirl one of the feathers like a drill bit in her belly button. She clamped her eyes shut and began to giggle, and before long at all, he had moved down, sweeping the feather along the top of her panty line, paying special attention to her hip bones. A pulsing surge came and returned and returned again through her lower body as the muscles of her abdomen tensed in ticklish reaction and brought with them everything--her ass and her thighs and the region that only Robbie had explored. Back and forth the feather traced, and her knees in vain pushed together, only tensing her abdomen more and making the sensations more awful. Erin was already beginning to let out tortured moans between giggles. When the other feather whipped across her breast, there was no moan to let out; she had become one, erotically charged moan, and only when the feather departed to prepare for another pass did giggling Erin come back out again. Its preliminary work done, the other feather came up and started to stimulate and overstimulate the other breast. Her fingers shook, but she would not give this victory to her torturer. Her body was turning into one solid field of ticklish lust, but she would not let Jackson have that last bit of power over her.
Swipe.
Swipe.
Swipe.
Swipe.
Erin forced her eyes to open and look at the clock. Four minutes left. She could feel a drop slide down her inner thigh out of the corner of her underwear, but still she held on.
Swipe.
Swipe.
Swipe.
Swipe.
Her breasts pushed her nipples forward, volunteering them for more of the wonderful and terrible sensations. She giggled and shrieked like a madwoman, but her fingers refused to surrender. Two more minutes left.
Swipe.
Swipe.
Swipe.
Swipe.
One minute. Jackson leaned in. "You've almost won your bet. Would you like me to take your underwear off anyway?"
Through her moan, Erin nodded.
Jackson stopped. Erin's body convulsed as the intense sensations suddenly ended, her nerve endings in a momentary and fierce withdrawal. But her fingers held on.
Three.
Two.
One.
"You win." She dropped off the bar and hugged herself, the sensual overload making her moan like the ghost of a ticklish woman.
"If you want to take your panties off, the next stop is the bungee cube."
She flung the wet undergarment to the ground and offered her wrists and calves with the manic eagerness of a fanatic. Jackson strapped her in, then picked up the feathers again. He leaned close to her ear as he trailed one feather's tip from her chin, touching her neck, down between her breasts, through the center of her belly and navel, and all the way down to the bottom of the patch of glistening hair. Erin's reaction to the bisection, the perfect geometric split between the sides of her body, made her body Jackson's, his in this grand erotic moment, not filling a need but need itself. Erin's body pulled on the cords, a fly in a web, waiting for the loving and tickling touch of the spider.
Jackson began to whisper. "If you do have a full orgasm, you're going to be twice as ticklish as you ever were before. And when you do, I'm going to tickle every one of my favorite spots until you want nothing in the universe but another. And then I'm going to tickle every one of your spots again. Do you like that, Erin?"
Erin nodded.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Just as she had dried off from the shower and put back on her teaching shirt, Erin's cell phone rang; it was Robbie calling. In a panic, she dashed around a corner to the quietest spot she could find. She flipped the lid open. "Hello?"
"Hey, doll." Why were the men in her life calling her doll today? "I think I'm just going to stay here tonight and drive back tomorrow morning. I'll go look for jobs just as soon as I get home."
"Alright, Robbie. Just get some rest so you drive safe."
"You don't mind?"
"No; I'll just try to get some work done tonight. Take care, Robbie. I'll see you tomorrow." She hung up the phone hurriedly and cursed herself for lying to him. "But then again," she thought, "he still hasn't told me about the thirty thousand. I can stay here tonight and go straight to school from here in these clothes as long as I don't mess them up. And maybe he'll put me..." She cut her own thought off, knowing full well what she wanted more of.
Jackson rounded the corner to find her stuffing the phone into her purse. "Phone call?"
"Wrong number. When do you have to go to work?"
"About half an hour. Why?"
"If I stick around until tonight, can I earn some more points?"
Jackson's smile lit up. "What kind of fool would I be if I turned down a woman volunteering to be tied up so I can tickle her some more? I'll knock off around nine, and we can have some more fun. When do you have to be home to your boy?"
"If it's alright, I figured I could sleep on one of your couches until morning."
* * * * * * * * * * *
That afternoon, Jackson made sure that Erin got some new clothes from the designer store in his casino's shopping center and complimentary massage treatment at the casino's spa and a pedicure after that. She knew full well what the pedicure was for, but she knew it was for the sake of her marriage, and she found herself anticipating with little thrills of excitement just how ticklish Blake was going to make her when he got done working that night. He really was making her love her time as his toy, as much as she hated herself for that. She ate supper on the house at the casino's seafood restaurant, and in the evening she took in an early set by a standup comedian. More than once during his show did she note how ironic it was that she chose to let a stranger make her laugh for her evening's entertainment. At around 8:30 she returned to the fortieth floor.
When Jackson returned to the penthouse, the clock on the wall read 9:10. Erin, feeling more and more comfortable with the man who was renting her body, asked, "Are you ever going to get tired?"
Jackson closed a video phone. "Never of you, Erin."
Surprising herself, she suggested, "So back to the tickling room?"
"Not just yet. I have a surprise for you." He led Erin into the elevator and pressed the button for the fifteenth floor.
"What's on that floor?"
"Someone I want you to meet."
"A friend of yours?"
"No, not Billie. I wouldn't trust her enough to call her friend."
"She? Someone else you've tickled?"
"No, not anything like that. More of a business acquaintance."
The elevator door opened, and Jackson led Erin to room 1520. He opened the door slowly with his master key and motioned to Erin to remain quiet. That lasted but seconds. Erin crept into the room only to behold a naked man on top of a naked woman. But not just any man.
"ROBBIE!!"
Her husband quickly dismounted and scanned the floor frantically for his clothes. The woman continued to lay on her back, though she did prop herself on her elbow. Jackson's voice came like a thunder from behind the shocked Erin.
"And did he put more money on the card?"
The woman on the bed barely turned her head to acknowledge Jackson. "Maxed it out."
Erin's world became a yawning pit. "Robbie--you--what have you done?"
Robbie, now pulling clumsily on a pair of blue jeans with some intent of covering his shame, stammered. "I didn't think--I only just--I didn't mean..."
Erin ran out of the room.
Jackson stood like a god and made his decree. "Billie, you've done well. Your payment will be through usual channels, and I'll expect some news from Ralph Reedville some time soon."
"I'd be on his ass by now if I hadn't been wasting my time with this shit the last three weeks."
"And for that personal favor I thank you. There's plenty of time between now and the primaries. I have all the confidence in the world that you'll do well for me. Now you may go." She showed her momentary lover a concealed pistol in her purse before she started to get dressed, and Jackson turned his attention to Robbie, who had finally pulled on his T-shirt. "And you, boy, you'll be hearing from some lawyers soon. I don't imagine you'll be married for long, so you're going to have to find some other way of paying off your--how much debt do you have now?"
"Fifty thousand, sir."
"Fifty thousand dollars. Unfortunately for you, I don't find the prospect of touching you appetizing in the least. Fortunately for you, I'm in need of a man with small morals. No previous competence required. Been to Athens much, Robbie?"
"No, sir."
"No worries there. We'll take care of your little divorce, and then after we've sold what possessions that leaves you, I'll be in touch with you."
Jackson turned and walked out of the room. Erin had not even made it to the elevators. He could hear her sobbing and found her curled up next to the Coke machine. He squatted down and put a hand on her shoulder, which she quickly pushed away.
"You set him up, you monster!"
"You're right. I did. And a good man would have done the right thing in a setup. No?" Erin did not answer. "The fact of the matter is that if you had been with him long enough, you wouldn't have been able to babysit him forever, and all this might have happened after you'd been married ten years and had three kids. I'm just showing you the truth before all that gets involved."
Erin looked up at him, torn between wanting to believe him and wanting to kill him.
"Your keys are in my place. Let's go up there and get you a glass of water, and then I'll give them back." Erin nodded.
They walked slowly together towards the elevator, Erin still in shock. As they rode up once more, Jackson posed the question that he had to pose: "So are you going to leave him?"
"Is that what you want? You want to marry me?"
"No, Erin. I've done marriage, and mine ended just like that. I'm never going to be married again. I just wanted you to know that I'll front the money for your divorce lawyer. There's no reason that boy should keep your house or anything else, and I'm going to make sure that he, not you, has to pay for every penny of his gambling debt."
"Then where do I go?"
"You can go back to teaching if you want, but I have a better idea."
"What, be your little girlfriend? Live in the casino?"
"Precisely, but that's not all." The elevator door opened, and they entered his penthouse. "We'll get you a leave of absence from the rest of this year of teaching, and you won't renew your contract. Sell your house and move out here."
"I'm not going to be your eye candy forever, Blake."
"Of course not. Some day you'll get bored with me and with this life. And when you do, you tell me you're leaving, I set you up wherever you want to go next, and that's it. No strings. In the meantime, I want you to take some business classes, to help me run things. And then what you've been doing today--come with me to public events, and have a little tickle fun every once in a while. Instead of paying debts with tickling, you'll be saving up money. The longer you stay with me, the bigger I'll set you up. Then you can find yourself a man who can take care of himself, and you can teach or publish textbooks or do whatever you want to do."
"How can you be so sure about the divorce? I have been up here with you, after all. And you did make me..."
"I know I did. And I'd like to do that to you again and again, if you stay. But remember this about the evidence: I control the video in this place, and I've got lawyers and technicians good enough that the court is only going to see what I want them to see. Your attorney is going to have a slam dunk case in his hand when he walks into divorce court."
"And all this for tickling?"
"Well, we might want to do some more now. I know you want it, and now I can give it to you as often and however you like it. You're a single woman now."
Erin could not help but smile. "I am that."
* * * * * * * * * * *
Ten months later, Blake Jackson kept an eye on CNN as he went from the tables to the cage to his office. Ralph Reed was going down just as he had hoped (and planned), falling victim, as hypocrites often do, to the revelation of what he hoped would forever be hidden. And with the Republican governor's immense popularity, Jackson knew that he would soon have a man in Atlanta when he made his move on Athens.
He saw Erin Walters (formerly James) come into the casino in a pair of blue jeans, rolled at the bottom so that he could see her feet in flip flops; a tank top that did not quite come down to cover the bottom of her cute little belly, and a hooded pink sweatshirt. He walked briskly over to her to greet her with a kiss. "How was orientation?"
"Fine, Blake. I think you're right about business school. With some startup money, I can get some real teachers together to write some really good curriculum. I won't be in the classroom, but I'll be helping out the people who are."
"And you won't be beholden to the schmucks in Atlanta when they decide to play principal to the state."
Erin play-punched her new man and gave him a flirting, naughty look. "What would you know about Atlanta politicians?"
Jackson darted a quick hand inside her sweatshirt and gave her flank a quick squeeze, and his faithful tickle doll returned a quick giggle. "Unless there's a bigger fish that I don't know about, it looks like our guy is going to be lieutenant governor. So in about six months, you're going to be starting to use those business skills for me. We're making a killing in Atlanta, and now I want Athens. So study hard, doll."
"Will do, Blake."
"Oh, Erin?" She turned. "I'm going to be in a very good mood if this goes my way, so let's plan on having one of our little dates around eleven tonight, shall we? My place." Erin responded with a smile to melt iron as she made her way towards the elevator.
Erin boarded and began to head for the thirty-eighth floor, not a bad grad apartment for an MBA student. She pondered to herself, "Athens. I wonder what in the world he wants with Athens."
As always, please leave feedback once you've read!
Catch part one at this thread before you read this one:
http://www.ticklingforum.com/showthread.php?t=113486
Feather Points, part 2
by
Kid Indy
Three weeks had passed, and one particular silence was deafening. Erin went through her days teaching third grade with all the hurry and worry of any first-year teacher, and she and her husband Robbie lived their evenings with all the comfortable happiness of a couple married just over a year. But even when they were in bed together, neither would bring up the cloud hanging over them. Both knew that she had been apart from him for three hours, and both knew that she had been in a room with a man who was not Robbie. Both knew that she had not had sex with the man, but both knew that he had his hands on her.
But Erin knew more than Robbie, and his failure to make known what she already knew, along with her inability to speak its reality, ate at her day to day. Erin knew that Robbie, after she got in the elevator with the casino's owner, Blake Jackson, had drawn chips for thirty thousand dollars, that he would have lost a year of her salary had not Jackson called off the professional card players that surrounded him. She also knew that only he could reveal this, as any hint that she knew would result in Jackson's revealing her own shameful concession of that night. As the days passed, and as Robbie's construction job dried up with no replacement in sight, that silent betrayal and the night that followed, the three hours that made her very soul ticklish, continued to occupy her mind.
Every day, sometimes even as she worked as a teacher, she could remember the moment when those feathers had made first contact with her feet. She thought that his tickling her feet was the most awful thing that could ever happen, and it had been the most intense, pleasurable-but-hated sensation that had ever held her for as long as it did. While he had her foot in his clutches, he had the rudder to her ship.
But when he drew the blade of that feather along her breast for the first time, she experienced what had never come into her imagination and what terrified her to remember. She had loved Robbie since they started dating in high school, loved the way that he needed her. When the basketball team lost, when a test proved too hard for him, when his parents divorced because of his drunk cheating father, all of these times he had turned to Erin as a strong shoulder to lean on. When they became intimate, their love continued in the same vein--Robbie needed Erin, and Erin was at her happiest when she was giving him everything he needed. Her desire for Robbie was always coupled with her will to be what he needed, was nearly identical to her role as his provider.
With Blake Jackson's feather, it was different. Erin had never before felt any desire for Jackson, the man with a son Erin's age. And she was there against her will. And Jackson had no need for Erin, neither to support his seemingly unshakable confidence nor to give the man who seemed to own his world anything in that world. But when that feather drew slowly for the first time across her nipple, need had nothing to do with anything. With each successive pass, Erin had no illusion that she was satisfying anything like a need for this powerful man. He was making her body catch fire just because he wanted it to catch fire. And as one pass turned to one on each breast, as the feather licked her, slowly, agonizingly, ticklishly, she knew but could not believe that her will was worse than irrelevant. Each feather tickled a breast, the sensations no less torturous than his fingers in her hips, but there was something more: every additional slash of a feather's blade was making her a little less able to laugh because of the moans of pleasure that she heard herself moaning but would not believe it. And by the time fifteen minutes had passed (at his slow pace, she could watch those last thirty minutes go by), she was not a passive fire, stoked by the feathers' strokes, but felt her hips leaning into him, pulling him to her with a force field, desiring nothing more than the man who tormented her. For fifteen minutes he knew, she could feel it, that her body and her will, all of her being, was not only his to command but his to deny, to hold at bay as they blazed and thirsted and lusted for him.
Erin snapped from her reverie as her assistant principal poked his head in her classroom's door and asked how she was doing. After a brief and perfunctory conversation, the principal left, and she returned to her reflection: Robbie had put her through that ordeal, and yet he lacked the common courtesy to admit the deed that had put her there, put her in the awful situation of having to surrender those most sensitive breasts to that pitiless soul. Erin was sure that one of Jackson's men had liquored him up and convinced him to go back to the high roller table, so she couldn't blame him entirely. (Well, she could, but she wouldn't.) But to keep his indiscretion-- one that he knew could land her back in Jackson's tickling room over and over again-- a secret was more than she could bear. Three weeks now he had sat on the secret, and she began to wonder what else he was keeping secret these rainy days when he could not work road construction.
She looked at her watch and realized that she only had ten minutes until her kids got back from art class. Math was next. She looked over her notes and made sure that her dry-erase marker was working. Suddenly her phone chimed, a sign that a text message had come in. "I've got to set that thing to silent," she thought, and when she checked her text message, she ducked away from her classroom's door and read it again, just to make sure she wasn't imagining things:
TAKE TOMORROW OFF. COME TO THE CASINO FOR THE DAY. BRING YOUR BATHING SUIT. 200 FEATHER POINTS ON THE LINE IF YOU SHOW UP AT 9:00.
"On the line" sounded ominous; she knew now that the rules of the game could change at any moment, and Jackson no doubt had more devious ways to mix mind games with tickling in store. "But then," she thought, "Robbie won't be there, so he won't be getting us into more trouble with his gambling. And four thousand dollars is a heap of money." She began to plan how she might get out of the house the next day, Thursday, without Robbie knowing that anything was going on.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Erin's alarm clock went off at 6:00 the next morning. Moving as quietly as she could, she took her cell phone out on the front porch and phoned in sick. She showered and got ready for work as nonchalantly as she could, effecting the unnatural ways of a person trying to look natural. She had already stuffed a two-piece bathing suit in her teaching bag the night before, and she was just about to grab it and head out the door when Robbie blocked her way. He was still wearing what he had slept in.
"Hey, Erin?"
"What is it, Robbie?"
"Since I don't have any work to do today, I figured I'd take off for home and watch the Florida State game with the boys. You mind if I come in late?"
Erin could not tell if she sighed her relief audibly, but she knew that "home" was two hours in the opposite direction of where she was headed, and she knew that he would come in well after midnight if he came in at all--he had crashed at "the boys'" house before after a long night of drinking and football.
"That's fine, hon. Just be sure to drive carefully."
"You're not mad that I don't have any work right now, are you?"
"I'm sure you'll find ways to handle our money. You always seem to."
* * * * * * * * * * *
Erin arrived at the Hawk's Feather at 8:45 and called Blake Jackson using the text message's return number.
"I'm here."
"Good. I was hoping we could spend the day together. How long can you stay?"
"That depends on how many feather points you can pay me."
"That's my girl."
* * * * * * * * * * *
A daytime security guard (they didn't strike Erin as anything close to the intimidating night guards) let Erin into the nearly empty casino. A few senior citizens plunked nickels into slot machines, and a handful of businessmen played some blackjack at the one open table before their day of corporate training (or whatever) started, but the place was just a different place before the sun went down. Jackson, dressed in khaki pants and a short sleeve button-down shirt, greeted Erin as they crossed the casino floor.
"It's good to see you, Erin. No Robbie?"
"Don't play with me, Mr. Jackson. You wanted me in the daytime knowing perfectly well that Robbie works in the day."
"So he's working?"
Caught in Jackson's awkward question, Erin changed the subject. "As late as you must work, how are you up this early?"
"I'm the owner, Erin. Call me Blake, by the way. I'm the owner, so I can work and sleep when I want. I usually work from some time in the afternoon till some time in the early morning, then sleep until I wake up, so I can shift my sleep schedule around when I have a beautiful woman coming to call."
Erin blushed in spite of herself. "So are we going up to your room?"
"Don't be in such a hurry, kid. We'll have that fun when it's time. Right now I want to have a swim. You did bring your suit, right?"
"Do I get points for swimming?"
"That's my girl. Always has her eye on the brass ring. You get a hundred feather points as long as you stay until three or so, about the time you'd normally get off work. That's just for spending the day with me."
"And the other hundred?"
"Hundred nothing. The sky's the limit when you stick around me, kid." He put his arm playfully around her neck, and they walked towards the outdoor swimming pool. "Speaking of which, I want you to write your dress and shoe size down. After we swim for a while, I've got a political luncheon to attend, and you're going to be my date."
"Is that why you brought me here?"
"I brought you here to have fun, Erin. But if I can get you to be the pretty girl on my arm, I'll take that benefit as well. Now let's go swimming, why don't we?"
After she jotted down her measurements and handed the card off to a courier, Jackson let her into an empty room to change her clothes, and she headed out towards the swimming pool while he did the same. She waded down concrete steps, noticing the pleasant coolness, and began to walk towards some deeper water. She went deeper until all but her neck and head were out of the still-warm September sun. She looked around at the luxuriant landscaping and the fountains pouring clear water down into the end of the pool, and she realized that she was the only person in a gigantic, expensive pool. She imagined herself the Queen of Georgia for a moment, then she heard the door to the casino open and once again beheld Blake Jackson with his shirt off. His plain black trunks offset his athletic body, and she could not help but imagine, for a moment, that she was Queen to his King. She shook her head and dove underwater.
When she came up, Blake was cutting a brisk lap down the pool and back. She could tell that he was used to swimming, his smooth motion and toned muscles exhibiting some degree of discipline. Erin, not much of a competitive swimmer, paddled around in the water.
Jackson began making his way over towards her. "This lonely multimillionaire stuff really is all it's cracked up to be. I get up early one morning, and there's a beautiful woman waiting for me in my pool!"
"Do you always have to get your beautiful women as credit card payments?"
Blake threw back his head and laughed. "Apparently I do if I want the really interesting ones. How do you like it?"
"It's nice."
"Nice? You must have come from some privileged parts if all you can say is 'Nice!'" He splashed a little water her way.
She splashed some back at him. "Not hardly. I'm the first in my family even to go to college. You probably wouldn't ever even see the parts of Georgia I'm from."
"Oh, I could tell by your sweet Southern girl accent. It makes your laughter irresistible." Now he had closed within arm's length, and he reached out underwater and squeezed her hip.
Erin twisted away and grabbed his wrist, flashing her best coquettish grin. "I might be irresistible, but I am a married woman."
Jackson let his knees bend so that only his head remained above water, level with her chest. Erin kept hold of his wrist. "You never did tell me about that. Why did you marry that kid?"
"You can stop calling him 'kid' any time now. He's my husband. We love each other. What else is there?"
"You never met anyone more interesting at college?"
"Didn't want to."
"And now here you are, bailing him out of debt by keeping a dirty old man at bay. Erin James, that's positively noble of you. Worthy of a Canterbury Tale."
"I don't think Chaucer had too many of those about men tickling women their sons' ages."
Suddenly Jackson's wrist took on a life of its own in Erin's hand, shooting from her grasp and wrapping itself around her waist as she released it. Erin's face and Jackson's were inches apart. "Maybe he should have." He reached underwater with his free hand and squeezed Erin's knee, making her scream and jump in the water. "You are a ticklish girl, Erin. I picked a good one."
Erin pushed his hand away but remained close to him. "What do you mean, picked?"
"What, do you think that your boy just randomly got fifty thousand dollars in casino credit? I had been watching you all that night, imagining getting my hands where I've got them now."
Erin stared him down from inches away. "That was our first anniversary."
"Sometimes we make mistakes that last a year."
"You're not going to get me to marry you, Mr. Jackson."
Jackson turned her loose and began to float loosely in the water, only his head above water. "Who said anything about getting married? I already tried that. It doesn't end well."
"Well, mine will."
"Sure, if he doesn't pimp you out to any more dirty old men. Or worse." He began to edge closer again.
"I'll just have to keep him and myself away from people like you, once I've paid off this debt."
Jackson was right next to her. "Well, I might as well enjoy making you pay, then!" Erin let out a screech as he dove under water. She leapt up, trying to keep her feet off the bottom of the pool. She could feel the water move as he swam underneath her, and as she twisted around, he surfaced behind her. As she tried to turn, her elbow came up and nearly smacked him in the face, but his athletic hand caught her elbow and held it up at her shoulder level. His other hand snaked quickly around, wrapping around her waist tightly, and began to tickle her hip. He turned her elbow loose and shot that quick hand around her waist the other direction. She squirmed and squealed in the water, laughing as he held her body close to his with crossed arms. His head rested on her shoulder from behind, and his quick fingers danced all over, his thumbs and his fingers pressing ticklish spots. Her own hands pressed down on his forearms but to no avail: she was in his strong arms, and his hands were having their way with her ticklish hips and sides. As she writhed against him, she could not deny the pleasure of being pressed against him and being the object of his ticklish attentions. And she could feel, through his trunks, that even as his hands turned her body to jelly, her body turned other parts of him to stone.
When she finally broke free of his arms, she wheeled and giggled through a taunt: "You're really enjoying that, aren't you?"
He began to move through the water at her again, making her giggle. "What, did you think I was doing this because I don't like it?"
"No, but I had no idea you were getting off on it that way."
He reached a hand out at her, which she batted away playfully. "Let me get my hands on you, and you know you'll get hot too." He reached in again, and she swatted another hand away.
Erin smiled mischievously in spite of herself. "You got lucky the other night. It was just nerves."
"Oh, I know about nerves. I'm going to tickle just the right nerves until you're begging for more!" He dove under the water again, and this time Erin froze in playful, terrified joy. This time he didn't even wait to surface before he grabbed her knee, making her start a frenzied underwater dance to avoid those submarine hands. When he did surface he came up behind her again, this time grabbing the backs of her thighs and lifting her up as he had when she was hanging on the tickling bar, once again using his palms to support her water-lessened weight and his fingers and thumbs to make her thrash wildly. This time, though, she wasn't tied up, and she pushed on his forearms, launching herself off of his palms in a twisting plunge. He followed in as she made her way through the water.
She moved as quickly as she could, still slowly, through the pool away from him as she giggled. "Do you do this with every girl who comes through your door?"
"Nope. Only the smart, beautiful, ticklish Southern Belles whose husbands I can catch in the spider's web. You're one in a million, Erin!" He put a hand on her side and tickled slightly, but she slipped away. With a lunge at her, he caught her in his arms and pulled her close. "You really are one in a million, Erin."
"I am that."
* * * * * * * * * * *
Erin's dress fit like a dream, and although she was too shy to ask after the price, she knew that it cost as much as at least half of her closet at home. As she walked in, her hand on Jackson's jacket sleeve in true Southern promenading style, she could almost feel the heads in the room turning as they entered. Some gave Jackson some good-natured "You old dog" looks, while others scowled disapproval. Others yet simply took in Erin, the vision of youth and beauty coming in on the arm of the image of will and power. Cameras snapped, but Erin was worried only for a moment, knowing full well that Robbie was no newspaper reader.
The event was a fundraiser for a Republican lieutenant gubernatorial hopeful, and Erin admitted to herself that she was excited to get this close to real power after spending her young years taking what Tallahassee and later Atlanta handed down but never seeing the hand that did so.
His education policy ideas weren't bad either.
As his speech ended and he began to walk to his car to make his next campaign stop, a synthesizer track, Erin guessed from the eighties, blared over the PA system.
"What in the world is that?"
Jackson laughed. "You're probably the only one in this room too young to remember it. You know how he ended his speech saying that his policies were going to rocket Georgia into the future?"
"Sure."
"The track is called 'Rockit.'"
"That's an awful lot of setup for a musical joke."
Blake poked her in the side playfully. "It loses something in explanation." He looked around to make sure that nobody was listening to him, then leaned in and whispered to Erin, "It'd make good tickling music, wouldn't it?" He feinted several pokes at her to the rhythm of the drum machine. Her arms involuntarily tried to shield her belly, and they both laughed.
* * * * * * * * * * *
When they had driven back to the Feather, it was 12:30.
"I've got to get the place ready for night business in a little while, so why don't we do some of what I like to do so much?"
"For someone who's seen me in my underwear, you sure do talk around things!"
"I've touched you in your underwear, my dear. And I've feathered you without."
Erin blushed.
"So let's go up to my place, shall we? School will be out soon, and I'd hate to lose our entire afternoon." They boarded the elevator and began to ride upwards. Jackson stepped away from Erin and looked her up and down. "I can just imagine how mad the Ralph Reed set is just now."
"I thought we were at the other candidate's lunch."
"Of course we were. But they got our picture in the Atlanta paper now. They're going to see that they're up against casino money, American casino money."
"I thought the Christian Coalition was against all gambling."
"When they're on the record, yes. But when they turn the microphones off, they're getting big money from the Indian casinos over towards Alabama. Now they're going to see yours truly at the opponent's function, and with a young beauty on his arm."
"Why isn't any of this in the papers?"
"It will be, doll. My campaign contribution isn't the only benefit that the future lieutenant governor is getting out of me. And when Mister Christian Coalition goes down in the flames of Indian casino money, Atlanta will know who to thank for it." Jackson slid his ID card into the reader, and the elevator opened into his apartment. He walked over to the kitchen sink and filled a drinking glass with water. "I bet those Coalition boys would just die of they knew what we were about to do."
"No, I don't guess they'd approve of it."
"Approve of it? They'd be having wet dreams about it for a month!" He led her into the tickling room and shut the door. He set his water down on the nightstand next to the tickling bed.
"Are you going to set a timer?"
"Not today. Not a three hour timer, anyway. I'll stop soon enough that I can get myself together and go to work. I also don't want you to strip down just yet. You look so good in that dress, it'd be a pity not to tickle you in it."
"How are you going to do that if I'm not tied up?"
"Come on now, Erin. Didn't you think I'd think of that? Let me ask you this. What's even stronger than ropes and chains?"
"Rock?"
Jackson laughed and sat down on the bed, patting the bedspread next to himself as a sign for her to sit down. "No, you literal-minded nymph! What force in the world makes people move and keeps them where they are?"
"Fear?"
Jackson smiled at her and took her knees in his hands, swinging her legs into his lap. "Not quite. You see, fear is too open. People can decide to be brave. There's something that is even more powerful than violence."
"Who told you that?"
"Karl Marx, of course. If someone wants to learn about capitalism, he's the man. No illusions in Kapital. Makes it the best handbook for businessmen." He began to take off one of her shoes, letting the hose underneath breathe in the cool air. "You see, Karl knew that slaves can rise up violently against a rule that's imposed on them. But if the slave becomes a worker and signs a contract, then his own sense of justice keeps him working harder than a slave ever would, and if he ever complains, the owner just shows him the contract and reminds him that he, the worker, volunteered for this. It's brilliant, really."
"So you think I'm just going to sit here with my feet in your lap and let you tickle me because my husband owes you money?"
"No, that's his contract. It's the one that got him to send you up here in the first place. Remember, gambling is its own contract. A gambler sets down a bet, and that's just as good as a signature. When the dealer reaches down and robs him, the gambler, a million times out of a million and one, won't object in the slightest. A man takes his money, right in front of his eyes, and he doesn't object."
"So you've got a bet for me."
"You bet I do. That's how I make money at this." He took the other shoe off and dropped both of them on the floor. "And here's the bet, if you want to take it. I'm going to set a five-minute timer. And then I'm going to hand you this glass of water." She had wondered why he never took a drink. "If you make it five minutes without spilling, you'll get twenty more feather points. If not, I get to take you all the way down to your panties for the next two hours."
"And my bra, right?"
"Did I say that?"
"So for you, four hundred dollars are on the line. For me..."
"You and I both know. We'll get to see just how much a case of nerves I can give you."
"And you only get to tickle my feet?"
"Only your feet. For five minutes I'm going to do nothing but tickle your feet. And if that glass touches any object in the room, or if you spill a drop of it, I win."
Erin could not help but thrill at the prospect. The money was a drop in the bucket Robbie had emptied, but she wanted so badly to show Blake that he couldn't get the best of her that she agreed promptly. "And when the five minutes are over, you have to admit that you couldn't win this one!"
"We'll see. Here's the water." Erin took the water in her right hand, since she was right-handed, and took a deep breath. His firm hand grasped round her ankle. Jackson spoke an order to the computer. "Five-minute countdown. Start now."
Erin closed her eyes, but nothing happened. She waited as a child waits for a jack-in-the-box that never rises. She opened her eyes to see Jackson grinning at her. "You'd better tickle me."
"Now you're virtually asking me to tickle you. And who's getting off on this?"
Erin smirked. "You know full well that aieee!!!" She screamed as he suddenly began to scribble his fingers along her soles. A growing, darkened spot on the bedspread revealed that he had won his bet, and in only forty-five seconds. He kept tickling her stockinged foot. "Stop! Stop! You won your bet!"
"I said for five minutes I'm going to tickle your feet, and you agreed!"
Erin laughed as his fingers excited the sheer hose, electrifying her feet underneath. "You big bully!" She threw the water in his face, splashing all over his clothes. His fingers never stopped moving. Dropping the water glass onto the bed, Erin fell backwards, laughing hysterically both at the situation and because her feet in those panty hose seemed twice as ticklish as her feet in the open air. Jackson shifted his grip, wrapping an arm around both of her calves. Erin tried to get some leverage, but before she could resist, he began again with his quick fingers, dancing over the surfaces of both soles. Her feet rocked and moved, not being restrained, but he followed them with merciless accuracy, scratching away at the sheer hose and making Erin thrash in delight on the bed.
"This has to be worse," she thought, "than being tied up. I want to get out, and I know I should be able to, but it tickles so badly!" Jackson's lock on her legs never lost its tension, and his fingers worked and worked on her soles and toes and heels, and she giggled and squealed and twisted for five solid minutes. As the timer expired, Jackson let her legs loose.
"Let's try another bet, Erin, and let's make this one really interesting."
Erin panted on the bed, sweating in her expensive dress. "Is there any chance of my winning this one?"
"There's always a chance. That's what makes gambling so interesting. You had a chance to win that last one."
"You didn't tell me that hose would make my feet so much more ticklish."
"You didn't ask. Besides, that's what makes my place money. The odds are always on my side, and given enough bets, I'll always come out on top, but there's always a chance you'll beat the house this time. And that's what keeps people betting."
"So what's the bet this time?"
"I want you to hang on the high bar. No clothes or bra, of course. If you can hang there for ten whole minutes without dropping off, four hundred feather points."
"Eight thousand dollars? That's almost half our debt! I could be done with half our debt in ten minutes?" Erin looked at the cube frame, the spider web. "I'm assuming you get to tickle me."
"Of course. With whatever tools I have."
"And if I lose?"
"Off come the panties. I get to tickle you the rest of the afternoon completely naked."
"No sex, right?"
"No sex, but I do get to tickle you everywhere."
Erin gulped. She had done a fair bit of gymnastics in high school, and she knew her grip could hold out much longer than ten minutes in normal circumstances. But he knew where her most ticklish spots were, and they both knew what he could do to her with those feathers... eight thousand dollars... feathers...
"You're on."
She began to strip down, taking off the dress and folding it carefully before putting it on the bed. "Do you want me to keep on the hose or take them off?"
"Your choice--you remember how that felt." She took them off. Once more unhooking her bra for this man, this time for Robbie's foolishness but also because she thought she could undo it more quickly, she found herself making eyes at Jackson, the kinds of smoldering, smiling eyes that only came out when she was trying to get a man to do what she wanted. When she remembered the moment later she knew rationally that Blake was in control of the situation the whole time, but nonetheless she felt as if she had him now.
"Would you like a boost up, or would you like to jump?"
Erin bent her knees and sprang up, grabbing the bar and remembering its feel on her palms. "Alright, Blake. Start the timer. You're mine this time."
Blake ordered the computer to set up a ten minute countdown. "It looks to me like you're mine." He walked to the bed and pulled feathers from his wooden box, then walked over to Erin. "Begin."
Erin had expected Blake to begin with her underarms, to try to loosen up her grip on the bar. Instead he began to twirl one of the feathers like a drill bit in her belly button. She clamped her eyes shut and began to giggle, and before long at all, he had moved down, sweeping the feather along the top of her panty line, paying special attention to her hip bones. A pulsing surge came and returned and returned again through her lower body as the muscles of her abdomen tensed in ticklish reaction and brought with them everything--her ass and her thighs and the region that only Robbie had explored. Back and forth the feather traced, and her knees in vain pushed together, only tensing her abdomen more and making the sensations more awful. Erin was already beginning to let out tortured moans between giggles. When the other feather whipped across her breast, there was no moan to let out; she had become one, erotically charged moan, and only when the feather departed to prepare for another pass did giggling Erin come back out again. Its preliminary work done, the other feather came up and started to stimulate and overstimulate the other breast. Her fingers shook, but she would not give this victory to her torturer. Her body was turning into one solid field of ticklish lust, but she would not let Jackson have that last bit of power over her.
Swipe.
Swipe.
Swipe.
Swipe.
Erin forced her eyes to open and look at the clock. Four minutes left. She could feel a drop slide down her inner thigh out of the corner of her underwear, but still she held on.
Swipe.
Swipe.
Swipe.
Swipe.
Her breasts pushed her nipples forward, volunteering them for more of the wonderful and terrible sensations. She giggled and shrieked like a madwoman, but her fingers refused to surrender. Two more minutes left.
Swipe.
Swipe.
Swipe.
Swipe.
One minute. Jackson leaned in. "You've almost won your bet. Would you like me to take your underwear off anyway?"
Through her moan, Erin nodded.
Jackson stopped. Erin's body convulsed as the intense sensations suddenly ended, her nerve endings in a momentary and fierce withdrawal. But her fingers held on.
Three.
Two.
One.
"You win." She dropped off the bar and hugged herself, the sensual overload making her moan like the ghost of a ticklish woman.
"If you want to take your panties off, the next stop is the bungee cube."
She flung the wet undergarment to the ground and offered her wrists and calves with the manic eagerness of a fanatic. Jackson strapped her in, then picked up the feathers again. He leaned close to her ear as he trailed one feather's tip from her chin, touching her neck, down between her breasts, through the center of her belly and navel, and all the way down to the bottom of the patch of glistening hair. Erin's reaction to the bisection, the perfect geometric split between the sides of her body, made her body Jackson's, his in this grand erotic moment, not filling a need but need itself. Erin's body pulled on the cords, a fly in a web, waiting for the loving and tickling touch of the spider.
Jackson began to whisper. "If you do have a full orgasm, you're going to be twice as ticklish as you ever were before. And when you do, I'm going to tickle every one of my favorite spots until you want nothing in the universe but another. And then I'm going to tickle every one of your spots again. Do you like that, Erin?"
Erin nodded.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Just as she had dried off from the shower and put back on her teaching shirt, Erin's cell phone rang; it was Robbie calling. In a panic, she dashed around a corner to the quietest spot she could find. She flipped the lid open. "Hello?"
"Hey, doll." Why were the men in her life calling her doll today? "I think I'm just going to stay here tonight and drive back tomorrow morning. I'll go look for jobs just as soon as I get home."
"Alright, Robbie. Just get some rest so you drive safe."
"You don't mind?"
"No; I'll just try to get some work done tonight. Take care, Robbie. I'll see you tomorrow." She hung up the phone hurriedly and cursed herself for lying to him. "But then again," she thought, "he still hasn't told me about the thirty thousand. I can stay here tonight and go straight to school from here in these clothes as long as I don't mess them up. And maybe he'll put me..." She cut her own thought off, knowing full well what she wanted more of.
Jackson rounded the corner to find her stuffing the phone into her purse. "Phone call?"
"Wrong number. When do you have to go to work?"
"About half an hour. Why?"
"If I stick around until tonight, can I earn some more points?"
Jackson's smile lit up. "What kind of fool would I be if I turned down a woman volunteering to be tied up so I can tickle her some more? I'll knock off around nine, and we can have some more fun. When do you have to be home to your boy?"
"If it's alright, I figured I could sleep on one of your couches until morning."
* * * * * * * * * * *
That afternoon, Jackson made sure that Erin got some new clothes from the designer store in his casino's shopping center and complimentary massage treatment at the casino's spa and a pedicure after that. She knew full well what the pedicure was for, but she knew it was for the sake of her marriage, and she found herself anticipating with little thrills of excitement just how ticklish Blake was going to make her when he got done working that night. He really was making her love her time as his toy, as much as she hated herself for that. She ate supper on the house at the casino's seafood restaurant, and in the evening she took in an early set by a standup comedian. More than once during his show did she note how ironic it was that she chose to let a stranger make her laugh for her evening's entertainment. At around 8:30 she returned to the fortieth floor.
When Jackson returned to the penthouse, the clock on the wall read 9:10. Erin, feeling more and more comfortable with the man who was renting her body, asked, "Are you ever going to get tired?"
Jackson closed a video phone. "Never of you, Erin."
Surprising herself, she suggested, "So back to the tickling room?"
"Not just yet. I have a surprise for you." He led Erin into the elevator and pressed the button for the fifteenth floor.
"What's on that floor?"
"Someone I want you to meet."
"A friend of yours?"
"No, not Billie. I wouldn't trust her enough to call her friend."
"She? Someone else you've tickled?"
"No, not anything like that. More of a business acquaintance."
The elevator door opened, and Jackson led Erin to room 1520. He opened the door slowly with his master key and motioned to Erin to remain quiet. That lasted but seconds. Erin crept into the room only to behold a naked man on top of a naked woman. But not just any man.
"ROBBIE!!"
Her husband quickly dismounted and scanned the floor frantically for his clothes. The woman continued to lay on her back, though she did prop herself on her elbow. Jackson's voice came like a thunder from behind the shocked Erin.
"And did he put more money on the card?"
The woman on the bed barely turned her head to acknowledge Jackson. "Maxed it out."
Erin's world became a yawning pit. "Robbie--you--what have you done?"
Robbie, now pulling clumsily on a pair of blue jeans with some intent of covering his shame, stammered. "I didn't think--I only just--I didn't mean..."
Erin ran out of the room.
Jackson stood like a god and made his decree. "Billie, you've done well. Your payment will be through usual channels, and I'll expect some news from Ralph Reedville some time soon."
"I'd be on his ass by now if I hadn't been wasting my time with this shit the last three weeks."
"And for that personal favor I thank you. There's plenty of time between now and the primaries. I have all the confidence in the world that you'll do well for me. Now you may go." She showed her momentary lover a concealed pistol in her purse before she started to get dressed, and Jackson turned his attention to Robbie, who had finally pulled on his T-shirt. "And you, boy, you'll be hearing from some lawyers soon. I don't imagine you'll be married for long, so you're going to have to find some other way of paying off your--how much debt do you have now?"
"Fifty thousand, sir."
"Fifty thousand dollars. Unfortunately for you, I don't find the prospect of touching you appetizing in the least. Fortunately for you, I'm in need of a man with small morals. No previous competence required. Been to Athens much, Robbie?"
"No, sir."
"No worries there. We'll take care of your little divorce, and then after we've sold what possessions that leaves you, I'll be in touch with you."
Jackson turned and walked out of the room. Erin had not even made it to the elevators. He could hear her sobbing and found her curled up next to the Coke machine. He squatted down and put a hand on her shoulder, which she quickly pushed away.
"You set him up, you monster!"
"You're right. I did. And a good man would have done the right thing in a setup. No?" Erin did not answer. "The fact of the matter is that if you had been with him long enough, you wouldn't have been able to babysit him forever, and all this might have happened after you'd been married ten years and had three kids. I'm just showing you the truth before all that gets involved."
Erin looked up at him, torn between wanting to believe him and wanting to kill him.
"Your keys are in my place. Let's go up there and get you a glass of water, and then I'll give them back." Erin nodded.
They walked slowly together towards the elevator, Erin still in shock. As they rode up once more, Jackson posed the question that he had to pose: "So are you going to leave him?"
"Is that what you want? You want to marry me?"
"No, Erin. I've done marriage, and mine ended just like that. I'm never going to be married again. I just wanted you to know that I'll front the money for your divorce lawyer. There's no reason that boy should keep your house or anything else, and I'm going to make sure that he, not you, has to pay for every penny of his gambling debt."
"Then where do I go?"
"You can go back to teaching if you want, but I have a better idea."
"What, be your little girlfriend? Live in the casino?"
"Precisely, but that's not all." The elevator door opened, and they entered his penthouse. "We'll get you a leave of absence from the rest of this year of teaching, and you won't renew your contract. Sell your house and move out here."
"I'm not going to be your eye candy forever, Blake."
"Of course not. Some day you'll get bored with me and with this life. And when you do, you tell me you're leaving, I set you up wherever you want to go next, and that's it. No strings. In the meantime, I want you to take some business classes, to help me run things. And then what you've been doing today--come with me to public events, and have a little tickle fun every once in a while. Instead of paying debts with tickling, you'll be saving up money. The longer you stay with me, the bigger I'll set you up. Then you can find yourself a man who can take care of himself, and you can teach or publish textbooks or do whatever you want to do."
"How can you be so sure about the divorce? I have been up here with you, after all. And you did make me..."
"I know I did. And I'd like to do that to you again and again, if you stay. But remember this about the evidence: I control the video in this place, and I've got lawyers and technicians good enough that the court is only going to see what I want them to see. Your attorney is going to have a slam dunk case in his hand when he walks into divorce court."
"And all this for tickling?"
"Well, we might want to do some more now. I know you want it, and now I can give it to you as often and however you like it. You're a single woman now."
Erin could not help but smile. "I am that."
* * * * * * * * * * *
Ten months later, Blake Jackson kept an eye on CNN as he went from the tables to the cage to his office. Ralph Reed was going down just as he had hoped (and planned), falling victim, as hypocrites often do, to the revelation of what he hoped would forever be hidden. And with the Republican governor's immense popularity, Jackson knew that he would soon have a man in Atlanta when he made his move on Athens.
He saw Erin Walters (formerly James) come into the casino in a pair of blue jeans, rolled at the bottom so that he could see her feet in flip flops; a tank top that did not quite come down to cover the bottom of her cute little belly, and a hooded pink sweatshirt. He walked briskly over to her to greet her with a kiss. "How was orientation?"
"Fine, Blake. I think you're right about business school. With some startup money, I can get some real teachers together to write some really good curriculum. I won't be in the classroom, but I'll be helping out the people who are."
"And you won't be beholden to the schmucks in Atlanta when they decide to play principal to the state."
Erin play-punched her new man and gave him a flirting, naughty look. "What would you know about Atlanta politicians?"
Jackson darted a quick hand inside her sweatshirt and gave her flank a quick squeeze, and his faithful tickle doll returned a quick giggle. "Unless there's a bigger fish that I don't know about, it looks like our guy is going to be lieutenant governor. So in about six months, you're going to be starting to use those business skills for me. We're making a killing in Atlanta, and now I want Athens. So study hard, doll."
"Will do, Blake."
"Oh, Erin?" She turned. "I'm going to be in a very good mood if this goes my way, so let's plan on having one of our little dates around eleven tonight, shall we? My place." Erin responded with a smile to melt iron as she made her way towards the elevator.
Erin boarded and began to head for the thirty-eighth floor, not a bad grad apartment for an MBA student. She pondered to herself, "Athens. I wonder what in the world he wants with Athens."
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