TickleMantis
4th Level Red Feather
- Joined
- May 5, 2001
- Messages
- 1,981
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Hello Friends!
Has it truly been over a year since the last installment of Tickle Tutor? My goodness. I thank you all for your patience, these stories are a great deal of work and I do hope worth the wait!
If this is your first exposure to this series, fear not! You can find previous stories right here in my TMF archive. And as a first for this series I've gone ahead and written a "Previously..." section right at the beginning of this story for both new and long time readers alike! Normally I like to note that every new installment can be easily followed without having read any of the previous entires, however that is a claim that is getting harder to make as the various plotlines thicken. Still, even for a first timer there is plenty of hot, torturous tickle-action to enjoy!
Also! For anyone who may have missed it and would like to know more about the world of Tickle Tutor please check out 'Tickle Tutor International'. Tickle Tutor International is a collection of six short stories that I posted throughout the 2021/2022 holiday season and covers a wide variety of characters both big and small to the events surrounding the core series.
And that's enough blathering from me! As always please do leave a comment or fire off a PM, it's a great treat to hear from folk and I love hearing all your thoughts.
Have a great holiday season and stay safe out there!
'Mantis
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Tickle Tutor #7: A Hard Study
By TickleMantis
MF/f
Raised to be one of the world’s finest and most exclusive slaves, a nameless teen is purchased by a new master. Harold Deveno Senior, billionaire construction mogul and secret fetishist gives the girl a name: Jai Lin. The latest addition in Harold’s harem of involuntary young women, Jai Lin quickly becomes her master’s new favourite, much to the chagrin of the domineering housemistress, Madam Ui. Caught between Harold’s unwanted affections and Madam Ui’s cruelty, Jai Lin can do nothing as she suffers their every sadistic whim.
Years into her life of torment and seeing no way out, Jai Lin uses her cunning to seize a bold opportunity. Befriending Harold’s new head of security, the stoic Samuel Lucas, Jai Lin quickly raises herself to the top of the pecking order among Harold’s slave-girls, even managing to usurp Madam Ui. The good life is short lived however, when news of Harold’s weak heart -and the intentions for his vast fortune- reaches Jai Lin’s ears.
Threatened by a massive shift in the power structure, Samuel and Jai Lin act quickly to force events in their favor. With Harold and Madam Ui soon out of the picture and billions of dollars now in their pockets the two unlikely friends head out into the wider world.
Many years later, rookie journalist Emma Clark leaves her New York apartment and returns home. Four years out of high school and Emma can’t shake the shame of her greatest sin; leaving fellow classmate Wendy Starr to be tortured by the duplicitous duo of their math teacher and the school’s star quarterback. Back home, Emma and another former student –Deena Tripp- set about looking into the strange goings on of their senior year. What they uncover goes far beyond any depravity either of the two young women could have imagined.
Caught up in a conspiracy going back decades Emma’s inquisition sends a shockwave of trouble through her hometown’s twisted underbelly. With the damage spreading faster than Emma can manage, Wendy and Deena both find themselves at the hands of their sadistic adversaries. After a narrow escape Emma is captured too, tortured first by local law enforcement and then by the captivatingly villainous Jai Lin. Save only for the bravery of Jai Lin’s long-suffering assistant, Emma is set free.
Driven by a determination to return and rescue her friends, Emma swears to see every last bit of Jai Lin’s mad world burned to ash…no matter the cost.
Harry Deveno Junior stood as he often did, back straight and hands behind, looking down from his indoor office window to the atrium below. Across the expansive area of open floor the billionaire’s employees scurried from one office to another, each eager to make their mark and gain the approval of the man upstairs. He made for an impressive figure, Harry ‘Silver Fox’ Deveno, a nickname the 40-something year old insisted came from his cunning mind and not the stylishly pushed-back hair atop his head.
“Who’s that down there?” Deveno glanced back over one shoulder, his obscenely expensive suit barely wrinkling as he turned.
Hannah Quist stepped up beside her imposing boss. After three months as his personal assistant the buxom twenty-six year old still didn’t find Harry’s towering frame any less intimidating. Standing at a relatively petit 5’3ft Hannah often felt daunted to be so close to the man as he loomed over a foot taller than her. Following his eyes she searched the floor below for whomever it was might have caught her employer’s attention, which didn’t take long.
“She’s new.” Hannah narrowed her focus on a busty young blonde woman, unsurprised at the subject of Mr. Deveno’s interest. “Just started this morning in legal, I believe.”
Sporting long blonde locks herself it had become quickly apparent to Hannah that the heir to the Deveno billions had a particular type. It was undoubtedly part of the reason she had got the much sought after job as his P.A, beating out hundreds of other applicants. Where Hannah had generous curves the new girl was a little thinner, less round in the face and straighter hair. They both wore sensible office attire, blouses and tight fitting skirts, though where Hannah wore flats for all the running around she had to do it seemed the young lady from legal was content to suffer in heels.
“Name?” Mr. Deveno glared down at her.
“Reid. Something Reid. One moment…” Hannah slid two fingers into her skirt pocket where her phone made a rectangular bulge.
“You don’t remember?”
“I do, it’s Mindy or Lindy-“ She fumbled the phone, hurriedly looking for the correct name.
“Don’t use that.” Snatching the phone with lightening speed, Mr. Deveno turned away from the window and toward his apparently flustered assistant.
“It’s…it’s one of those ‘indy’ names, if you’ll just let me-“ Hannah made a halfhearted attempt to grab for her phone but the silver haired man quickly slipped it into his own pants pocket.
“Seems I need to jog your memory.”
“No no, I-I’ll just look it up-” The bosomy girl took a step back as she watched her boss raise both of his large hands slowly toward her. “If-if you’ll just give me my phone…” She stammered.
And therein lay the other reason, the main reason in Hannah’s humble opinion, that Harry Deveno Jr. made for such an intimidating presence. From practically her first day on the job the demanding magnate set about finding any reason, no matter how flimsy, to put his hands on her. And when Mr. Deveno couldn’t find a reason he’d simply create one. It began with a gentle poke here and there, a cheeky pinch to her side, each tiny touch eliciting girlish squeals as she’d flinch and jump to the older man’s amusement. By the end of Hannah’s second day her new boss had discovered the poor girl’s greatest fear; she was devastatingly, uncontrollably ticklish.
“M-Mr. Deveno…please!” Hannah backed away, the leering smirk that was spreading across Mr. Deveno’s handsome face doing nothing to encourage her hope of avoiding his eager fingers.
“You better hurry up and remember…” He teased, stalking toward the cowering girl with slow, deliberate steps.
The sight of Mr. Deveno’s fingers starting to wiggle in the air made sure Hannah couldn’t help but feel the involuntary urge to giggle. Despite her best efforts to push the bubbling laughter back down it was clear from her tightly pursed lips and furrowed brow that the comely girl was fit to burst, and he hadn’t even touched her. Truth be told in any other job she’d have quit on the first day, but this was one assignment Hannah couldn’t wriggle out of. All she’d overcome, all she’d fought for to get where she was, all of it threatened to come undone by making her feel like a little girl chased around the playground.
“Nono, I’ll remember!” Hannah was nearing the wall of the billionaire’s enormous office. She should have rounded the huge desk or even one of the chairs, put something between herself and the subject, at least maneuvered toward the door. Instead any tactical thought had been instantly replaced by the dread of being tickled. With the floor-to-ceiling window to one side and the wall behind her the anxious P.A had literally backed herself into a corner. “J-just give me a second t-to think!” She tittered with laughter as she spoke, her protruding butt gently bumping into the wall a second later.
“You need to think better under pressure, Miss Quist!” Deveno lunged, swiftly shooting his hands through her shaky defenses and directly onto her sides.
“Ehee! Ahano!” Hannah shot upright, her hands snapping down around the big man’s wrists as she danced awkwardly in place. “Eeiiieheehee! Ohnohoho! Mr. Deveno!”
Caught between Harry Junior’s bulk and the unforgiving wall, the voluptuous girl shook her head from side to side, her long blonde locks whipping across her bouncing bosoms. Try as she might to pry his hands from her convulsing sides the fitful girl couldn’t have fought him off on her best day. Hannah wasn’t Mr. Deveno’s only personal staff member after all, the handsy owner and CEO had a whole team of loyal assistants, not the least of which was his physical trainer. As she’d seen for herself almost daily, under the expensive suits and stern gaze was the muscular and well toned physique of a Greek statue. Of course when it came to being tickled it hardly took an Adonis to turn Hannah Quist into a befuddled mess of giggles.
“A second! Eehehe! I just neeheed a second!” Looking up with wide, pleading eyes the gasping girl’s cheeks were already turning a light shade of pink. “Sir pleiiease! Ehee! I can’t think! Eeheiihee!”
His fingers crawling speedily back and forth around her frantically twitching sides, Harry Jr. said nothing. Through the thin cotton of her blouse Hannah could feel each of her bosses’ ten fingertips stroking and poking at her soft flesh. Any attempt to push herself free was met by a rapid pinching, the alarmed girl squealing and darting back into the corner each time. Though she pawed and clutched at the offending digits, shoved at his arms and even managed the odd uncoordinated slap, nothing Hannah did seemed to slow the attack, let alone stop it.
“I’m not going to stop until you give me a name!” Mr. Deveno teased before digging his thumbs alarming deep into the blonde’s lower abdomen.
“AHAA!” Hannah squawked, doubling over and colliding the top of her head with the muscular man’s chiseled stomach. Hunched over in that brief second as she was, Deveno took the opening to tickle her from behind, reaching over her shoulders and running his devious fingers down her supple ribcage. “Ahahanoho!”
Shock jabbing her down either side the buxom girl reared up. Narrowly missing the big man’s chin with her head Hannah shot forward a single panicked step and pressed herself right up against Mr. Deveno. Twisting hard to her left the frazzled young woman found herself engulfed by the older man’s arms, his fingers darting all over her heaving tummy. Doubling over once again Hannah felt her heart sink as her knees turned to jello. With a defeated cry that was quickly overwhelmed by laughter the floor came up fast, Deveno’s weight following close behind and ensuring she ended up a pile of spasming silliness on the lavish rug.
Curling herself into a writhing ball on one side, Hannah bucked and kicked. With her hands clamped over her tummy the gasping girl would shoot one out to slap weakly at the man. Every effort to fight him off only resulted in part of her not being covered, Deveno always targeting any unprotected area with frightening accuracy. As he leaned over her, Hannah plead through schoolgirl laughter, each new second of anguish causing the pink of her cheeks to grow a little darker.
“That’s it, laying around on the job!” Harry Jr. wormed an index finger into his assistant’s underarm causing her to squeak especially loud. “Is this what I can expect of you, Miss Quist? Perhaps you need some lessons in work ethic as well as that memory-jog!” He wiggled four fingers into the nape of her neck and she snapped her shoulder up with a high pitch yowl. “Should I cancel all my appointments for the day, hmm?” Fingers kneaded into Hannah’s tummy and she curled even tighter, her long hair flailing across her flushed cheeks. “Spend all my time doing this? How would you like that?”
“Please no! Aiieehahaha!” The struggling girl’s words came out in a breathless rush. An outlandish tease though it may have been the thought of being tickled for more than the minute or two she’d already suffered sent Hannah’s mind spiraling with horror.
Harry had tickled her a few times like this before, a few awful minutes of helplessness here and there over the last twelve weeks. She’d started to develop something of a sense for when one of his attacks were about happen, not that it ever did any good. In the past Hannah would do much the same, end up on the floor and after a few long and terribly ticklish minutes Mr. Deveno would relent. Somehow this time felt different, that keen sense the curvaceous girl had was telling her something much different now, something much more alarming. Perhaps it was the look in his eye or maybe it was just the new and atrocious idea of being tickled all day, whatever it was Hannah’s internal warning system was screaming that her new boss had no intention of stopping any time soon.
“Appointment! Aeeihahaha!” She managed to gasp out just before her eyes burst open wide from a harsh drilling between two of her ribs. “Tenahaha! Ten! Eiehehaaa! Tenoclock! Ahahaplease! Stopahaha!”
“What’s that? Speak up!” Harry scribbled five fingertips across the small of Hannah’s back and she thrust herself forward sharply.
“Iiiieeheee! Y-yourahaha!” Fingers ran menacingly around the sputtering girl’s tummy and she slapped madly while trying to wrangle her thoughts. Keeping track of a coherent idea was hard enough, making her forcefully smiling lips contort enough to communicate was another mammoth task entirely. “Tehehehe! You’retenoclock!” Hannah whooped in a squealing burst of air.
“Ah…” Standing back to his full height, Mr. Deveno pushed back one of his sleeves with a discerning look. “That time already.” He glanced at the shimmering silver wristwatch that probably cost a year of Hannah’s salary. “Very good Miss Quist, seems there’s hope for you yet.”
As if he’d just completed some mundane task, Harry Jr. strolled over toward his heavy wooden desk. Catching her breath, Hannah let out a long sigh of relief as she pushed herself upright on wobbly arms. Part of the shapely girl’s blouse had untucked itself from her skirt, a slither of creamy white belly showing before she promptly covered it again. Pouting out her bottom lip the mildly disheveled P.A blew a strand of hair from out her reddened face as she tried to settle her heart rate. Harry was prodding at a key on his laptop, eyes fixed firmly on the screen as Hannah stood somewhat shakily to her feet. Brushing the wrinkles from her lower blouse where the man’s fingers had roamed wild, it occurred to her that Mr. Deveno still had her phone.
“That girl we saw-.” Deveno spoke before Hannah could figure out how to ask for her phone back without it turning into another deathly ticklish attack. “-Reid whatever. She’s in legal you said?”
“Yes sir. A paralegal.”
“Good then.” He shut the laptop and started toward the door. “Make sure she’s at the Lottlin meeting this afternoon, will you?”
“Of course.” Hannah hurried to catch up.
“And one more thing.“ Harry Jr. stopped with one hand on the door handle and turned just enough to look his anxious assistant up and down. The glare sent a shudder up her spine. “Do get her name for me, or I predict the next one-on-one meeting we have is going to last much longer.” Hauntingly, Hannah believed him.
Chapter Two: Ends of The Earth
Fifty dollars or thereabouts, more like forty and change, was all Emma Clark had left in the world. She’d been evicted three months ago, not that she was there to see it. Evan, her dimwitted yet well-meaning neighbor, had been kind enough to gather the petit redhead’s things before the landlord let himself in. A major life event for some people, getting kicked out of their home, but for Emma it was just a blip on the radar out of the last six months. Six months of searching and spending every penny she had.
She’d been in Japan during the fall and spent most of winter in Cambodia, then Vietnam. Spring had sprung in the south of China and the humidity did Emma’s frizzy hair no favors, nor did riding a bike. It was all she could afford by then, a beat up old bicycle that the determined twenty-three year old had hauled on trains and rickety buses all the way from Nanning to Yinchuan, northward and beyond. Where she found herself now was about as far from home as the freckle-nosed American could imagine, but it wasn’t the mountainous geography that held Emma’s thoughts. She couldn’t go home, not yet, and if her next stop didn’t bear fruit then it was truly the end of the line.
Leaning her bike against a stone pillar the tiny girl took in her surroundings. A trickle of sweat ran down the back of Emma’s neck, it had been a hard trek up the dirt road to get to the remote bathhouse. Even with a cool fog settled in the valley she felt warm, her tight beige shorts and damp white t-shirt clinging to milky white skin. Pulling her water bottle from the ragged backpack hooked on the back of her bike, Emma took a much needed gulp as she surveyed the old stone structures. Vegetation grew up the high outer walls and cracked stone stairs ran up between the pillars. If it was in fact the bathhouse the young journalist was looking for it wasn’t like any she had ever seen, the place looked more like a temple.
“End of the line…” Emma whispered to herself as she secured the bottle back in place. Dragging her well-worn running shoes across the dusty ground she made her way toward the steps. This had to be the place. It had to be.
Standing at the entrance Emma surveyed the apparent bathhouse. Inside the walls was a courtyard at the center of which was a gnarly old tree. Roots bore up from under the cobbles and uncaring statues of unknown figures stared on from the outer edges. The place hardly looked like much of anything at all anymore, abandoned for years as far as Emma could tell. Plodding further inside, each small step falling with a swell of disappointment, the defeated girl stopped to see a dark doorway at the far end of the yard. No good would come of going in there, she thought, and turned back toward the entrance.
“Nínhǎo.” Came a timid voice from behind, it seemed the only sound for miles.
“Hello?” Emma whipped back toward the darkened door. Her mouth opened a little and for one exhausted, silly second the normally very sensible girl wondered if she was seeing a ghost.
“No tourist.” Said the short Chinese woman. She was older than Emma, late thirties maybe, and stood barely an inch taller. Shoulder length black hair hung straight around her shoulders. Stepping further out of the darkness Emma could see she wore a loose fitting white dress with red floral decorations. A cloth belt was tied tight around her slender hips and as she strolled the slippers on her feet barely made a sound.
“I uh, I’m not a tourist…exactly.” Emma paused, unsure what it is she was anymore. Half a year ago she’d been a journalist but she hadn’t written a word for months. For as sensational a story as Emma had on her hands she often found her thoughts leaning more toward vengeance than exposing the crimes of her enemies. “I’m…a journalist.” Her voice hardly held a tone of conviction toward the claim.
“You go.” The svelte woman approached hurriedly and put one hand on the redhead’s shoulder, guiding her back toward the stairway.
“I-no…wait…” Emma shuffled backward, stammering to explain herself. “I’m looking for someone, a woman.” Her unwelcoming host had both hands raised, pushing her open palms in the air. “I just want to speak to Madam Ui!”
The woman’s hands dropped slowly and her eyes narrowed. “Ui?”
“Yes! Yes, you know her? I have to tell her- to ask her about Jai Lin.”
While the neatly dressed woman made an expression of overt suspicion, Emma tried not to get her hopes up. The last chunk of money she’d spent had been a bribe, paying off a member of one General Qiānfān Suo’s staff. Based on a shred of information that could barely be called a rumor Emma learned that the good General Suo did perhaps know a woman who may in fact be the Madam Ui she was looking for. This particular Ui was the proprietor of a little known and very remote bathhouse, the kind of exclusive establishment known only to China’s most rich and powerful. Apparently, according to Suo’s double-dealing member of staff, the top military man liked to frequent a hidden house of luxury a couple of times a year far in the northern mountains. Had Emma been the praying sort she’d have prayed in that moment.
“My name is Yumao.” The small woman’s eyebrows rose before she pivoted back the way she’d come from. “Follow me.”
Through the dark entrance were more stone steps, narrower than the ones Emma had climbed and thankfully leading down. While the stairs seemed to disappear into pitch darkness Yumao moved with confidence, a small gap spreading between them as the redhead’s eyes adjusted. As she was lead deeper into the mountainside Emma picked up her pace, catching up with her guide just as they reached the bottom. A heavy metal door stood at the bottom, the space barely lit by what little light managed to beam down from outside.
“Shoes.” Yumao stopped just shy of opening the door and glared down at the younger woman’s dusty runners.
“Right…sorry.”
With a metallic creak Yumao shifted the heavy door, her nose wrinkling with effort. Emma felt a little guilty for not helping as the door dragged. She was no expert on doorways but if she had to guess Emma suspected this was not one that got used very often. It was a short-lived train of thought and when the next room was revealed through the open frame the once-eager journalist forget all about her door-centric ponderings. Yumao gestured for her guest to enter and started the arduous process of closing the door again once Emma walked by.
“Wow.” Emma whispered to herself as she examined the large room, the space hardly seeming like the same decrepit building as the one she’d just left behind. With a high ceiling and beautifully tiled floors, large round pillars stood spaced out down either side of a wide rectangular pool. Ornate artwork climbed each pillar, the skilled craftsmanship of whoever built this place obvious in across every inch.
“Wait here.” Yumao secured the door with a definitive click.
“I…” Emma began before realizing doing as she was told was her only sensible course of action. “Okay.”
With her phone back in her bag, and her phone bill very much overdue anyway, Emma had no way to tell time. It was perhaps ten or fifteen minutes before Yumao returned, the time mostly spent feeling a sense of anxious hope and cautious relief. Relief at perhaps finally finding Madam Ui and relief that she was no long peddling up a winding, dusty mountain road in the middle of nowhere. When Yumao walked back in from an entranceway on the far end of the room she did so with a white fluffy towel folded nearly in her arms. Atop the towel was a small cloth and pair of slippers not dissimilar to Yumao’s own. She stopped halfway down the right hand side of the pool and placed the assorted items gently on the floor near the edge.
“You wash.” Yumao stood upright.
“Uh…” Emma wasn’t against the idea of getting clean, far from it, however despite her recent history she did remain somewhat sheepish about strangers seeing her unclothed. “I don’t have a swimsuit.” She gave a small smile to try and pass off the joke, Yumao’s own expression remaining quite plain in response.
“No wash, no see Ui.”
Emma sighed, bashfulness wouldn’t stop her from getting the story. Or getting revenge, whichever it was she was after now. Hooking her thumbs under her beltline the curvy girl wiggled her hips, sliding her shorts down over her well-rounded butt. As she let the shorts fall by her knees Emma glanced up to see Yumao still standing halfway along the poolside. “Are you…going to stay there or…?” The apparently concise older woman stayed silent, her sharp features giving nothing away as to her thoughts.
Stepping out of her shorts Emma figured she’d been in less clothes in much worse situations than this. Leaning over she pinched the end of one small white sock and pulled it off, her tiny barefoot cool against the tile when she put it down. After plucking off her other sock Emma stood upright and started to slowly tug up her shirt, her cheeks warming with a gentle blush as her midriff came into view. Up and over her bra, Emma’s freckled cleavage ballooned up, her large bosoms squished together behind each cup. Only then did the nearly nude girl remember which panties she was wearing, a frilly pink pair that mismatched with her plain white bra. She tossed the shirt down into the pile and felt a little bad for the mess, then took a step toward the invitingly calm water.
“Ah.” Yumao held up one disapproving index finger, which stopped Emma in her tracks. That same finger dropped slightly, the tip pointing back and forth between the scantily clad girl’s tight-fitting bra and lacy panties.
“Do you think you could turn around maybe or…” Emma trailed off into defeated silence as she looked down at her voluptuous, creamy white body. Reaching awkwardly behind herself and arching her back a little, she fumbled at her bra clasp. Whatever her reservations about getting undressed in front of a complete stranger, Emma had to admit the feeling of relief across her chest as the bra snapped loose was almost worth the embarrassment.
Sliding the shoulder straps down her arms, Emma dropped the well-worn bra into her other well-worn clothes. A small showing of goosebumps spread across her newly naked breasts as the open air felt chill against the sweat-slicked undersides. Left in only her panties Emma did much the same as she had with her shorts, hooking her thumbs under each side and slipping them downward. With a butt as shapely as hers she had to reach back a little, pulling the lacy underwear down passed her thick thighs before letting them drop. Cupping one hand over the short red hairs between her legs, Emma looked to Yumao for approval and felt a peculiar flutter in her lower tummy upon making eye contact with the unflinching woman.
Yumao nodded ever-so-slightly and Emma shook off that odd flutter as she made way for the pool. Walking slowly, small dimples formed on the outer sides of her bare butt with each step, Yumao’s eyes following the naked journalist intently. At the edge the fully nude girl gingerly stepped down onto a small set of stairs, the second step dipping her tiny toes into warm water. Feeling the soft caress of the pool Emma closed her eyes, Yumao could watch all she liked for all she cared, it was the most relaxed she’d felt in weeks. Moving further into the pool the water rose up her thighs, every inch washing away the weeks and months of hard travel.
“Mmm…” Emma cooed softly as she moved toward the middle of the large pool, the water lapping gently under her collarbone. She spread her arms out and lifted one foot, only just standing on the tips of her toes as she floated without a care. Scarcely a moment later two young women strolled in through the far door, both of them entirely naked.
Yumao gestured one open palm toward the nude girls. “Luli and Wei.” The pair of them started down the steps into the water, each one carrying a small white cloth, the tiniest hint of a smirk at the corner of each girl’s lips. “They will help you wash.”
“Help me…? Oh-oh no, that’s okay.” Feeling decidedly a good bit more uncomfortable than she had a second before Emma put one hand up, waving it in a polite decline.
As Luli and Wei slinked their slender bodies into the water small ripples spread across the surface. Once touching down on the pool floor one girl smoothly drifted left while the other eased to the right, their eyes locked on their guest like sly sharks. Emma could feel herself blushing again, her cheeks flushing hot as she shifted focus rapidly back and forth between the advancing girls. That strange flutter reared itself again, lower this time, so low in fact it could barely be considered in the area of her tummy anymore. Slowly starting to back away Emma swallowed, the thought of Luli and Wei putting their hands on her shapely body doing nothing to calm the flutter between her thighs.
“You must be very clean for Ui.” Yumao said as the slow pursuit continued throughout the pool. “Ui will see no dirty guest.”
“I-I-I’ll get clean!” Emma stammered, surprised at how effortlessly fast the new arrivals were cutting through the water. “I swear, I don’t need help, really!” Luli and Wei were so close she had to turn her head back and forth to look between them. “I-I’m serious, really, no help necessary!”
Wei, or Luli, whoever it was on her right moved up to Emma’s side. With barely a couple of feet between them the redhead turned, her hands raised and palms open. Emma smiled, doing her best to stay polite as she stepped back, Wei coming toward her with the little cloth in one hand. Deep down the frustrating flutter took a turn for the worse as it upgraded to a titillating tingling sensation, the whole scenario causing the frizzy haired girl no end of confusion. With the gap closing quickly between her and Wei, Emma tried to push backward a little faster, only to feel a sudden brush against one side.
“Eeii!” Tensing upright the surprised girl snapped her elbows down by her sides and shot a look back behind her. Luli, smiling eagerly, waved her small washcloth just above the surface. “S-seriously, seriously!” Emma turned between the two girls, both index fingers raised at the pair. Until that quick touch it somehow hadn’t occurred to the hopelessly sensitive journalist that having the two girls touch her might tickle, and the realization dropped on her like a ten-ton weight.
“Deeii!” Emma squealed again when Wei sneakily swept a corner of her cloth just above the flinching girl’s hip. “Yumao!” She looked to the older woman standing at the pool’s edge, her expression unmoved by the shameful lack of composure before her. “Yumao tell-tell them no, tell them not to!” A familiar panic was speeding up the redhead’s heartbeat, there was no way she could get through being washed by these two nubile girls without losing her mind.
“They only want to wash you.” Yumao said plainly. “Stay still, let them do their job.”
“I can’t! I cahan’t!” Jumping from a gentle stroke across her back the buxom girl dashed forward, her hefty breasts breaching the surface before splashing back down. “Really, please, I’m telling yoohoohooeehehe!” Both girls poked their cloths into Emma’s sides making her squirm and wriggle like a buffoon.
“What is wrong with you?” Yumao frowned. “Are you drunk?”
“No, no I’m just-“ Emma spun about, she couldn’t bring herself to say the word. After everything she’d gone through, the things she’d seen and the things that had been done to her, it was a fact she kept well buried. Seeing there was no immediate way to outrun Luli and Wei, Emma puffed her freckled cheeks out with a deep breath and dived under the water.
Other than the gentle sweeping of her own limbs, silence hit the nude girl’s ears. Never the athlete, Emma wasn’t a strong a swimmer, still she only needed a little distance. Enough of a gap between her and the cloth-wielding girls to think straight, enough to explain why she needed no assistance, or at least explain without really explaining. Damn that tingling between her thighs, Emma thought as she pushed on, her legs spread as her arms thrust forward to a point and pushed back. Something touched the back of her thigh and Emma swam faster. Another touch poked her right butt cheek far sooner than she expected and small bubbles escaped her pursed lips.
“Mm!” Emma jerked her hips when something brushed along the front of her right thigh, almost instantly followed by a soft stroke against the left of her abdomen. “Mm! Mmm!” Her muffled whine grew louder under the water, a reaction she couldn’t stop as the random prodding escalated to speedy pokes up both her sides. “Eiieeeheehee!” Emma burst from the water, arms flailing as her involuntary grin let out the last of her air in a spasm of high pitch giggles.
“You are drunk.” Yumao was still frowning.
“Eeehaha! Eeeinoho!” Emma twisted and turned, her big bosoms jiggling as she bounced around between the two perky girls. “I’m not drunk!” She squealed through panicked laughter, Wei and Luli pressing in close as they fondled her lower torso. “Ahaha! Stop! Stopstopahaah! I’m ticklish! I’m tiheeheeheeno!”
Crushingly the confession, hard as it was to make, fell on deaf ears. Maybe Luli and Wei simply didn’t understand, though in her splashing fervor Emma suspected Yumao probably got the message. There was no diving away now, the bosomy girl couldn’t have taken a deep breath for all the money in the world. Pokey washcloth corners and rogue fingertips were everywhere around her, darting along her lower ribs and trailing around her tummy. Emma’s soaked hair whipped across her reddened face, her glistening boobs bouncing wildly as she slapped at the water.
Grabbing at the younger girls’ swiftly moving hands was proving to be an almost impossible task. Emma had never been much good at defending herself from tickling on dry land, some might even say terrible. Uncoordinated as she was in her fitfully giggling state the water made fighting back painfully worse, any offending wrist or finger she did manage to snag easily slipped free a split second later. Caught between Luli and Wei and their four arms and twenty fingers poor Emma was rapidly turning from world-weary traveler to giggling moron. Every bit of determination, anger and guilt, all of it chased away and it only took a few light pokes to send her mind reeling.
“You silly girl.” Yumao shook her head, her disdain going unnoticed by the frantic redhead in the pool. “This is no place for foolish games.”
“Please! Eheehaha!” Emma gasped, spinning helpless from Luli to Wei and back again as the girls pinched her abdomen and stroked their cloths across her hypersensitive skin. “Not-ahahano! Notagame! Eeiehestop!”
To match her blushing cheeks the pleading girl’s forehead was rosy red too, all of it a result of what Emma hoped was nothing more than disastrous indignity. Trapped there between those slyly smiling younger women, the squirming redhead was trying and failing to ignore a growing warmth between her thighs. Tickling, of all things in the world, Emma dreaded it with the deepest of anxieties. To be tickled was to lose all control, her studious mind and horrifically sensitive body, it stripped her of all she was and turned her into a mindlessly laughing twit, a side of her she never wanted to know. It was about the worst torment Emma could imagine, until the witch Jai Lin had shown her otherwise.
Under Jai Lin’s devastatingly skilled fingers Emma was wrenched into a world of suffering beyond any she thought herself capable of surviving. Six months ago almost to the day Jai Lin had turned the freckled girl’s body into a playground of nightmares, made her scream and laugh and cry and beg for mercy that would never come. It was by no contest the most degrading and hellish experience of Emma’s life. And, to the young journalist’s infinite remorse and confusion, it had also been the most dreadfully erotic.
Before that day the thought of getting aroused from being tickled would have been absurd to the extreme, but she had lived it. Against every ounce of willpower Emma had been pushed to the edge of ecstasy and beyond, her own body used against her in torturous seduction. Jai Lin had done something to her that day, awakened or created a terrible thing that once let loose could not be caged. Every time Emma woke up soaked in sweat and wet between her thighs from another nightmare she would curse Jai Lin’s name. As Wei and Luli’s quick fingers pinched at her naked body Emma found once again reason to curse the witch.
“Ohplease! Ehehee! Ohpleasestopahaha!” Emma’s normally frizzy hair whipped in straightened water-heavy locks, her pink nipples noticeably swollen as she splashed. “Make them stop!” She starred wide-eyed to the stoic Yumao, her voice cracking with high-pitched laughter. “Mahayaheehe! Makethemstahahap!”
“No English.” Yumao said with what might have been the barest hint of a smile.
Though she wasn’t able to wipe the contorting grin from her face, Emma couldn’t imagine what there was to smile about. Her face twisted wildly from furrowed brows and wide-mouthed misery to a look of desperate surprise and bimbo-like giddiness. Behind it all was an ever-growing frustration, the anger Emma felt from being powerless and forced to laugh no matter how hard she tried to suppress it. Why anyone would want to cause those awful feelings in another human being she couldn’t understand, though it was clear Luli and Wei must have found some appeal as their nimble fingertips found the squishy sides of Emma’s breasts.
“Eeiiieheeheenoho!” Crisscrossing her arms to cover herself the busty girl knocked their hands away, only for five fingers to dive down each side and pinch playfully at her ribs. “Yihaha! Ohnopleahahaha!”
With a howl Emma leapt forward, more fingers finding her tummy and sending her recoiling backward. Luli’s nails –or maybe they were Wei’s- danced up one butt cheek and made her squeal, the hectically giggling girl almost leaping halfway out the water. Falling back with a large splash into the waiting hands of her attackers Emma would have sooner leapt into a pool of piranhas. In the fraction of a moment before their fingers were on her again Emma noticed the washcloths, both discarded and floating aimlessly away. Evidently the pretense of being bathed had been dropped entirely, a fact reinforced by Wei and Luli’s twenty combined fingers rushing straight toward her naked body.
“EIIEHEE!” Emma wailed, throwing herself about madly as the two girls clawed at her from either side. She wished at the very least they had trapped her while clothed, then perhaps the alarm bells of being so atrociously vulnerable wouldn’t have been blaring quite so loud. Perhaps the quivering between her thighs might not have been so intense either, or her stiffened nipples maybe not so rigidly aroused.
In her feverish state some part of Emma’s whirling mind thought maybe being fondled by Wei and Luli wouldn’t have been altogether terrible, if it weren’t for the tickling. They were very pretty, their toned bodies pressing and brushing against her, their flirty little smiles making her heart skip. Then again it might have all been Jai Lin’s wickedness confusing her, it wasn’t like Emma ever had an intimate interest in girls before that demoness had her way with her. As one of Wei’s teasing fingertips whisked across the redhead’s puffy areole a terrible idea occurred to Emma. Maybe it no longer mattered who was doing the tickling, but that the tickling itself was the very thing sending her libido into orbit.
“I cahaha! I can’t!” Emma squawked, her fruitless efforts to protect herself quickly becoming even more pitiful. Frolicking fingers seemed to be everywhere at once, poking her belly and wiggling across her ribs. For all her reaching and squirming, for all the spinning around desperately to catch hands that were already somewhere else by the time she got there, none of it mattered. Luli and Wei had Emma at their mercy and the increasingly delirious girl was losing her ability to reason, all the while her unruly levels of lust had long since spiraled out of control.
Emma wanted to sink, to drop to the pool floor and stay there. If nothing else the sweet embrace of the water might give her some brief respite from the nonstop onslaught of fiendish fingers. Letting her kicking legs out from under her the bewildered girl started to drop, only for Luli and Wei to press in against her from either side. Keeping Emma afloat the two girls squished themselves up to her sides, their arms hugging around her midsection and fingertips crawling around her back and heaving stomach. Caught between them, the helpless girl’s legs flailed uselessly, her curvaceous body shaking as she laughed and plead.
Before Emma could even begin to think of a way out she felt a diabolical caress against her left ear. With a shrill yelp the surprised girl snapped one shoulder up to cover that side of her head, only for a similarly cruel sensation to accost her right earlobe. Shrugging both shoulders high like a poor impression of a turtle, Emma giggled loudly as Luli and Wei both nibbled at her ears, the two-sided tease driving her into wide-eyed lunacy. She tried rocking forward but with arms wrapped around her there was nowhere to go, and jerking backward held no more success. With hot breath against her upper neck the poor girl shook her head, shrieking wordlessly when the very tips of Luli and Wei’s tongues slipped around the backs of her ears.
“EIIEEHEEHEE!” Emma’s legs were kicking out in front of her, her entire spasming body held up by the wicked pair of attackers. Fingers explored down her trembling thighs and around her midriff, the crazed girl’s face beet red and her eyes almost permanently aghast. With every crippling stroke across her defenseless skin Emma found it more and more difficult to create words, those few she did manage broken and cracked by laughter. “EEEHEENAH! PLEEEHEEASE! PLEHEEHEEASE!”
Ignoring their catch, Wei and Luli each let the hands they had around Emma’s front wander higher. Pinching and playing over her supple ribs, their sharp little nails soon found the undersides of her bouncing breasts. In unison the two girls let their fingers dance around, gradually moving up the outer sides where they poked and prodded. By the time the playful pair found the sprinkling of freckles across the top of Emma’s chest she was livid with laughter, thrashing like someone had dropped a high voltage wire in the pool. As their five fingers atop each bosom shifted downward toward her achingly swelled nipples their other hands did not sit idle. Hugging Emma around her back, Wei and Luli each kept a hand at her lower ribs, their fingertips constantly drilling into the soft spots between.
Sizzling hot to the point Emma feared the water might boil around her, the helplessly amorous girl squealed with wordless agony as fingertips feathered across her nipples. Her weakly slapping hands reached up to stop them but every time she did Luli and Wei would claw viciously at her ribs with their other hands. At the sides of her head the devious girls continued to nibble Emma’s preposterously ticklish ears, their darting tongue-tips licking around her upper neck. Mindless with laughter the manic girl couldn’t tell what was worse, the tickling or how distressingly horny she was.
“You are supposed to be getting clean!” Yumao snapped when the triple-pronged tickle attack abruptly stopped. “Even from here I can see you are filthier than when you arrived!”
“Uhh…uhh…” Emma wheezed, a single tear trickling down one of her fiery hot cheeks. Soaking locks of hair matted to her face and neck, her sides and abdomen were pink where the girls’ fingers had run wild and free. Were it not for Luli and Wei holding her at the elbows Emma would have sunk like a tickle-addled stone.
“Bring her to me.” Yumao said sternly.
“N…nuh…no…” Emma writhed weakly as she felt hands press against her back, the two girls guiding her toward the side of the pool. Even the gentle touch Luli and Wei’s hands against her skin made the redhead’s stomach tighten with arousal, their firm grips around her forearms turning her on even more. Looking up at Yumao, Emma had no idea what the older woman had in mind for her but she knew it couldn’t be good. “P-please…” She stammered still trying to catch her breath and reassemble her fractured thoughts. “I…I just…want to talk…”
“Mm, so you said.” In one elegant motion Yumao kneeled down by the poolside. “You will talk to me now.”
“N-no…what are you doing?!” As the two girls lifted her arms out of the water Emma struggled, twisting her hips and putting her feet against the wall of the pool as they dragged her near. “Eii!” She squeaked when Luli poked a single fingertip just above her hip, the nude prisoner’s feet slipping from the wall. “I-I’ll talk! I’ll tell you anything you want to know!” Emma winced as her arms were stretched out of the pool, her big cushy breasts ballooning as they pressed against the edge.
Yumao took hold of the redhead’s slender wrists, her grip surprisingly strong as she pinned Emma’s hands to the floor. “Few enter the way you did. Who told you of this place?”
“I-“ Emma hesitated, a good journalist never gives up a confidential source, though given the consequences she was more than willing to break that particular rule.
“Tickle her.” Yumao said before Emma could spill the beans.
“No waiHEYHEHEE!” She bucked, tugging hard at her trapped arms as Wei and Luli each wriggled a single index finger into her defenseless underarms. Throwing her head back, Emma wailed with laughter, her shapely ass dancing beneath the water as her bare feet fought in slippery panic to push against the wall. “PLEASEI’LLTALK! EEEHEEHEE!”
“What do you want with Ui?” Yumao demanded when the two girls stopped, both of them looming close.
“Please! Please I just-“ Emma blubbered, the fear of being tickled again making her wince as she tried hurriedly to compose herself. Yumao simply nodded, and Luli and Wei set their fingers to work again. “EEEIIHEE!”
Clawing helplessly at the floor between Yumao’s knees, Emma kicked violently while teasing nails danced around her bare ass cheeks. As her hefty bosoms pressed and squished into the wall, water squirted up across the squealing girl’s freckled chest. Of all the places she had ever been tickled her shapely butt was one of the most sensitive, and as a result one of the most intolerably arousing. Part of Jai Lin’s curse, Emma was discovering in her fervor, the more painfully ticklish something was the more it seemed to turn her on. She had hoped over the months that such a thing would be restricted to her nightmares, yet now she was living one.
“I just…a second….just a second…to think!” Emma gasped, rubbing her thighs together without thought. Luli and Wei stood poised for more and the ever-present threat caused an unintentional giggle to bubble in the redhead’s heaving chest.
“No think, only talk.” Even Yumao’s stern tone had become a cause of titillation, Emma was a catastrophic mess of lewd torment.
From either side Luli and Wei pounced, their twenty fingers running amok. Nowhere was safe, rolling from side to side as best she could against the wall there was no move Emma could make that gave her any respite. Fingertips roamed her convulsing tummy and darted up her sides, ribs were pinched and underarms were burrowed into. At no point in the latest round of menace was there a singular second one of the girls wasn’t stroking Emma’s bouncing butt cheeks. Squealing herself into a frenzy the ravaged girl could feel her sanity slipping, the prospect of answering Yumao’s question going right along with it.
“You work for Jai Lin!” Yumao barked after a full minute, or maybe it was ten.
“No! No I-“
“Tickle her!”
“AAAHAHAAA!” Emma wailed, in part from Yumao’s crushing accusation. One of Wei’s deft fingertips drilled into her belly button. Luli moved behind and set about clawing with particular viciousness at Emma’s ribs. The thought she could be free if they’d only let her explain ricocheted madly around her mind.
Luli’s rib assault dug savagely deep, her sneaky digits jabbing frequently into the ballooning sides of Emma’s breasts. Where Wei kept that one finger drilling dutifully into the shrieking girl’s navel her other hand had even wickeder torments in mind. Stealthily Wei’s free hand dived down, scribbled across the redhead’s lower tummy and delved between her thighs. Five tiny fingertips danced through the short fiery hairs and Emma crossed her legs in a clumsy, flailing attempt to protect her excruciatingly sensitive pussy.
“Confess!” Yumao ordered.
Emma could barely see straight, let alone think. Tears started to blur her vision and the rapidly increasing danger of her libido erupting made everything worse. Breathless, the poor girl had to speak up, had to clear the air and-
“You come for Jai Lin!” When the older woman spoke Emma’s toes curled, each shrill command and accusation as terrifying as they were arousing. “How do you know about this place?!”
“I swear!” Emma wheezed. “I don’t- I-“
“Tickle her feet!”
“NO WAIT!” In unison Wei and Luli dropped beneath the surface, their eager hands immediately pawing at Emma’s ankles. “PLEASE PLEASE! You don’t understand!” She looked up to Yumao with wide, pleading eyes and found a pitiless stare in return. Kicking as she begged, Emma tugged and twisted while the girls under water wrestled her lower legs into their arms. “I don’t work for Jai Lin! I’ll swear on anything!” She stressed, her voice cracking at the thought of what Luli and Wei were intending to do.
“That is exactly what an agent of Jai Lin would say.” Yumao said in the same moment both Luli and Wei came up behind Emma, a struggling leg each wrapped under one arm.
“Noho! Nono!” Emma chocked back a sob, her naked body stretched back through the water as both her ankles were held in the crooks of the young women’s arms. “I’m not an agent! I’m not anything! I want to stop her!”
“Maybe you do, maybe you don’t.” Yumao leaned in a little closer. “Soon we will know for certain.”
“NO AWNO PLEA-“ Emma shook, jerking madly at her legs, her bare butt cheeks bobbing up from under the water and glistening in the light. As nimble fingers wiggled softly across both her trapped soles the frenzied girl would have confessed to anything in the world. “-EEIIIGGHAHAHAHA!”
Thick tears streamed down Emma’s stretched cheeks as screaming laughter echoed around the lavish room. Arching her back hard, the hysterical girl splashed furiously in her captive state, the feeling of five tiny fingers racing around each bare foot driving her completely mad. Every tiny stroke propelled Emma’s fuming libido to new heights, her nipples swollen to the point of pain. From her marshmallowy soft heels Luli and Wei raced their devilish fingers downward, scouring their victim’s silky soles and raking cruelly across the tender balls of each foot.
“Tell the truth!” Yumao demanded, the words going unheard by her tickle-crazed prisoner. “Tell me! Tickle her harder!” Somehow Emma did manage to catch that last bit and the thought sent her careering straight to the very edge of inevitable climax.
Ever obedient, Wei and Luli followed Yumao’s command with devastating results. Skillful digits frolicked along the bottoms of Emma’s tiny toes. Bucking almost entirely out of the water, the wanton redhead let out a piercing screech, her toes spreading wide. Taking the opening as an invitation, the two cunning water-nymphs dug their fingers directly under Emma’s toes, wriggling mercilessly while she spasmed and splashed. Flexing her bouncing ass tight, thigh muscles squeezed and a storm of tingles crackled up the maddened girl’s spine. Emma’s shrill laughter was interrupted by hoarse moans as she braced for her nightmares to become reality, then the tickling stopped.
Yumao bent forward, her lips stroking against Emma’s ear as she spoke softly. “Why…are…you…here?”
“Pleeaheeheese!” Emma giggled, turning her head uselessly. The question meant nothing, she was beyond the point of no return and the only thing that mattered now was how horrendous the carnal display would be. “Y-you have to stopeehehee!”
“I have to do no such thing…”
“Nohoho!” Emma’s pussy throbbed, she could feel the distinct warmth of orgasm swelling between her thighs. “You don’t understaahahand!” They had to let her go, they had to. She wanted to run and curl up in a dark corner somewhere. “I’m-I’m gonna! Awhh!” A squeaky moan escaped Emma’s lips as she writhed, tugging weakly against all those hands holding her naked body against in place. “I’m gonna c-“
Fingers spidered up and down Emma’s upturned feet. The sudden excruciating shock let loose a thunderous orgasm, primal pleasure ravaging her struggling body. Emma’s scream was so loud even Yumao winced, though it didn’t slow Wei or Luli. Deft digits sped wildly around the thrashing redhead’s bare feet, her laughter locked in fierce battle with a cacophony of unhinged moans. Every cruel stroke across her soles was like tossing TNT onto a raging fire, the severity of Emma’s orgasm growing with every second. Her tiny toes curled tight, her soles wrinkling and receiving only more tickling for their trouble. Emma’s ass cheeks flexed hard and her thighs trembled, the explosive fit of torturous bliss causing her body to become outrageously more sensitive than just a few short moments before.
Luli and Wei continued tickling, merciless in their fiendish assault across Emma’s soles. That first orgasm rolled into a second and that one careened unforgivingly into a third, the snowball effect turning quickly into an avalanche of mind-bending delirium. Thick beads of sweat coated Emma’s bright red forehead, the soles of her painfully sensitive feet pink where fingers had run wild for minutes on end. By the time the two girls finally relented their diabolical game Emma was trembling, twitching mess of orgasmic jello.
Hands grabbed at her and lifted, the disheveled journalist cooing weakly as the three women dragged her out of the pool. They lay Emma on an open towel, it’s small fluffy fronds like feathers against her inhumanly sensitive skin. “I…don’t…” She said with what miniscule strength she could muster, her voice a mousy squeak between raspy breaths. “I don’t…work…for Jai Lin.”
Yumao sat on her knees and leaned down. “Okay.” She kissed Emma gently on the forehead. “I believe you.”
As the big-wigs shuffled in, all smirking and impressed with themselves, Hannah stood at the head of Harry Deveno Jr.’s enormous boardroom. To the right of her was a door, then a giant TV that could retract back into the wall. To the left, floor to ceiling windows with a view of San Francisco’s downtown core. A few feet ahead sat the obnoxiously long boardroom table, around it a dozen uncomfortable looking, obscenely expensive chairs. The executives and analysts and lawyers and whatever other stuffed-suit-men filed in from the far end of the room. Hannah did her best to look sure of herself, and ignore each fellow’s shameless gaze as they looked her up and down.
The last to enter was Harry’s closest advisor, John Quieter. A stern man in his late 60s, John had been Harold Senior’s top lawyer until the elder Deveno’s somewhat mysterious passing many years before. Junior had gone on to make Quieter the head of his corporate legal department. He sported a fine dark suit and bushy grey eyebrows. Tailing nervously behind the top legal mind of the Deveno Corporation was the new paralegal, Cindy Reid. Cindy had no business being at a meeting of this magnitude and everyone knew it, but what Harry Deveno Junior wants, Harry Deveno Junior gets.
Some assistant or secretary closed the door behind the last of the men to arrive. A few conversations took place among the suits as they took their seats, a couple were business related and one fellow whined about his wife. As best Hannah could tell most of them men either boasted about their golf game or made fun of someone else’s. Suitably, John Quieter took his position to the immediate right of the head of the table. Harry Deveno’s right hand man, as ever. Cindy Reid sat beside the old lawyer, her eyes fixed on the tabletop.
“Gentlemen…” Harry sauntered in from the door beside the TV. The large room fell silent and all eyes turned to the man who owned the building. “Not that I don’t like you all, but I’d sooner be out on my yacht.” The whole room laughed, a couple of the men much louder than was warranted. Even the anxious paralegal managed a halfhearted smile. Harry ran a hand through his well-kept hair and scratched the back of his head, his tone turning a good bit more serious. “You all know what we’re dealing with here. I want this deal to go through and I want it today. I’m told Gwendolyn is just about set up on her end, right?” He turned to Hannah and she nodded. “Good. We won’t be able to tame the dragon but let’s at least see if we can get it to behave for once.” The room laughed again.
A few minutes later Harry’s stepmother called. Gwendolyn Deveno had been Harold Senior’s fourth wife, much to his son’s chagrin. The list of things about Gwendolyn that angered Harry Jr. was long indeed, not the least of which was that they were practically the same age. Number one on the list however, was that the long time widow owned exactly fifty percent of the family business. No big decision could ever get made without both Harry and Gwendolyn agreeing on it, a feat so monumental it was a wonder they hadn’t gone bankrupt twenty years ago.
“Gwen.” Harry said, hardly managing to hide his disdain.
“Junior.” Gwendolyn smiled sweetly on the TV screen. She was a striking woman, a fact emphasized by the fact she sat with her feet up on a sun-lounger by some poolside. In what was no doubt a calculated look for a room full of leering men the bosomy blonde wore a loose fitting wrap, her hefty cleavage and long legs putting on quite a show. A pair of sandals sat idle beside her chair, her bare feet just off screen. Gwendolyn sat up slightly and pulled back the sunglasses from her face, blue eyes looking right into the camera. “I don’t know why you’re bothering with all this.” She said. “You know my decision.”
“Well-“ Harry feigned a welcoming demeanor. “-we hope to convince you otherwise.”
What followed was forty-five minutes of back and forth between Harry and his small army, and Gwendolyn who appeared to have no one beside herself. The topic of debate was the potential purchase of Lotlinn Shipping and Logistics, a much sought after Dutch company, which Harry believed could net them enormous profits. Gwendolyn thought otherwise, and without her signing off there would be no purchase and none of the giant stacks of money Harry was envisioning. While a lot of the conversation went over Hannah’s head, in her amateur estimation it seemed as though Harry and Co. were making a compelling case. In fact as far as the young P.A could tell it seemed the only reason Gwendolyn wasn’t agreeing to the deal was because she knew it would enrage her stepson.
“Look, I’m sorry gentlemen-“ Gwendolyn interrupted one of the analysts who was tapping enthusiastically on a graph. “-I can see you’ve all worked very hard on this, but I’m just not seeing it.”
“If my father were alive-“ Harry began, one fist clenched hard behind his back.
“Well, he’s not.” The unwavering woman cut him off. “He entrusted us to see the business right because he knew we’d be strongest when we agree. This Lottlin deal isn’t going ahead, Harry, and that’s the end of it.”
“I was going to say…” Harry said sharply. “If my father were alive I’m certain he would be able to change your mind.”
“And as I said, our dear Harold isn’t here. It’s a moot point, Junior.”
Gwendolyn looked like she was about to say something else but Harry talked first. In the second before he spoke, Hannah noticed her boss’s body language shift. His fist unclenched and his shoulders relaxed. An odd calm replaced his temper, which had looked like it was about to boil over just seconds before. “You remember how good he was at changing your mind, don’t you Gwen?” Harry’s tone turned mildly smug.
“We’re done here-“
“One moment,-“ Harry put up a single finger. “-hold on. Perhaps we should meet in person, don’t you think? Just you and I. It’s been a few years. I could convince you, the way my father used to.”
Gwendolyn scoffed. “Really Harry, if this is what it’s come to…don’t embarrass yourself.”
“Oh, I’m not embarrassed!” He shrugged, making quite a show of it as he wandered slowly toward the right hand side of the table. “In fact, I daresay if I were tell all these fine men here how my father used to go about changing your mind so effectively you’d be the one blushing, don’t you think?”
“Good bye, Harry.” Gwendolyn waved a dismissive hand to someone off screen. “Gentlemen.” And then the TV went blank.
“Hm.” Harry stared at the dark screen, a look of mild amusement across his face. He wandered behind John Quieter and came to a stop right behind the sheepish paralegal. “Not to worry. While my esteemed partner there might think negotiations have ended I promise you all, they are very much ongoing.“ Harry bought his hands up and gently placed a large palm over each of the young paralegal’s shoulders.
Cindy tensed up and Hannah caught herself cringing with sympathy. She recalled just a few short hours before when those very same hands had been crawling all over her. Cindy can’t have known about Harry’s unusual handsy games, Hannah thought, the pair hadn’t even met before that moment. Instinct maybe, Hannah thought, or being one of only two young women in a room full of older men. It was intimidating enough, to say nothing of having the man they all looked to single you out.
“You see gentlemen-“ Harry continued, his grip firm around the busty younger woman’s shoulders. “-my so called stepmother, Mrs. Deveno, happens to suffer from an extraordinary affliction not entirely uncommon among some people. My father in his wisdom was quite adept at using that affliction to his advantage.” Harry leaned down and put his lips uncomfortably close to Cindy’s ear. “Can you guess what the affliction is, Miss Reid?”
Cindy tilted her head away slowly, not wanting to look like she was recoiling too fast. “N-no?” She said shakily.
“Take notes gentlemen-“ Harry stood upright, his hands still cupped over the girl’s shoulders. “-for the next time your mistress is threatening to tell your wife-“ All the men laughed. “-I shall demonstrate how to change her mind!”
As Harry’s left hand slid down the paralegal’s bicep, Hannah cringed. She knew exactly what was about to happen to the poor girl but there wasn’t a thing in the world she could do about it. At least whenever Harry had decided to get handsy with her there hadn’t been an audience, Hannah thought. Cindy’s only hope was that she wasn’t half so sensitive as Hannah.
“Eii!” Cindy jerked sharply to her right as one of Mr. Deveno’s fingertips prodded gently into her upper ribcage. By the look on her face it seemed she’d have jumped clean out of her chair were it not for that large hand pressing down on her shoulder. In an instant Cindy’s cheeks blushed bright red, her fists clenched in front of her as she sat tense.
“Have you guessed the affliction now, Miss Reid?” Harry’s hand darted down behind the table and goosed quickly at Cindy’s side.
Her eyes shot wide and loud giggles poured from her full lips as she wriggled. Twisting awkwardly in her chair, Cindy clamped both hands down to defend against Mr. Deveno’s roaming fingers, his other hand easily holding her in place. As a pained expression contorted across her laughing face Cindy’s large bosoms bounced beneath her blouse, every pair of eyes in the room fixed squarely upon her. With her long hair flicking every which way it appeared there was little room for saving any dignity or composure, Cindy’s every ounce of effort put toward stopping the large man standing behind her.
For Hannah’s part it was all she could do not to run out of the room. The sense of second hand embarrassment she felt for the squealing paralegal came in just behind her own dreaded fear. As Cindy squeaked and struggled the atmosphere in the room was quickly shifting, the previously stuffy bunch of men gradually starting to look more like a frat party than a business meeting. They were sitting up, leaning closer, making no attempt to disguise their already transparent gazes. To say Hannah was uncomfortable would have been an understatement for the ages. She felt a trickle of nervous sweat run down the back of her neck as she took a half step backward, pressing her back into the wall in an impossible attempt to disappear right through it.
“Any luck, Miss Reid?” Harry teased and slid his other hand off the frazzled girl’s shoulder and down to other side.
“Eiieeha!” Cindy spun about as she was tickled from both sides, her back arching and her hands slapping loudly against the tabletop. “Ehahaha! M-Mister Devenohohaha!” The distressed girl shook, dancing clumsily in her seat and crashing back and forth between the table edge and her chair. “N-no more eeheehee!”
She couldn’t escape and the dozen men were leering in earnest, even John Quieter wasn’t being shy about watching the terrible show beside him. Hannah wanted to say something, to put a stop to this madness but she couldn’t imagine how Mr. Deveno would respond. Worse still, she dreaded how Mr. Deveno might treat her once they were alone. For all the humiliation and pity she felt for Cindy, Hannah simply couldn’t risk having everything come undone.
“See how she fights it?” Harry flashed his boisterous grin around the room. “Get yourselves a lady like Miss Reid here and she’ll fulfill your every desire! And if not-“ His wiggling fingers turned to crushing lobster claws and he dug in hard just above Cindy’s gyrating hips.
“EIIIHEE!” She sat up fast and threw her head back as she squealed loudly, collapsing back down again and grabbing at Harry’s hands. “Stop! Ahahaha! Stoppleeheeheese!”
Without thinking Hannah brushed her own side, her skin tingling with sympathy. One of the men, a sneering slick-haired executive, had one arm propped up on his elbow and was wiggling his fingers in the air in Cindy’s direction. Most of them were grinning as they watched her laugh and plead for the indignity to end, one had half his bottom lip between his teeth and an eyebrow raised. The analyst with the graph was busy nudging the guy next to him, the pair of them evidently thrilled by Cindy’s helpless suffering.
Harry took a big step backward, rolling the chair and Cindy away from the table. “And if she doesn’t do what you want right away boys, just keeping tickling until she does!”
He spun the chair a full 180 degrees and caught the arms, the hapless blonde flailing around as she came face to face with Mr. Deveno. With the table no longer obscuring her view Hannah could see Cindy wore sheer nylon stockings, a fact made clear as she was only wearing one shoe. The other heel, it seemed, had come off somewhere under the table during the struggle. Before Cindy could gather herself from the spiraling ride Harry had dropped to his knees right in front of her, his hands snapping out and clawing wildly at her cotton covered tummy.
“Nohoeeeieee!” She buckled over, her legs kicking spasmodically as she clutched at her tummy.
Two of the men on Hannah’s side of the table stood up for a better view, the others leaning left or right to see around the man opposite him. Thinking about it, Hannah started to wonder what might have happened if Mr. Deveno hadn’t seen Cindy wandering across the atrium floor that morning. It was plain as day the cunning older man had planned this display of power should negotiations not go his way. A way to release the tension, Hannah suspected, someone powerless for Harry to take his frustration out on. Someone who couldn’t do anything to stop him, unlike Gwendolyn Deveno. Hannah feared it may very well have been her laughing desperately had it not been for Cindy. Looking at the two standing men and the large bulges at the front of their pants, she feared things may still take a turn for the worst.
“Mister Deheheehe! Pleheese! Mistahaha!” Cindy squawked, her whole face bright red as she wriggled further and further toward the edge of her chair.
What happened exactly it was hard to say, to Hannah it looked like Cindy had tried to stand up, or maybe she just collapsed, either way the chair shot back out from behind her. As the back of the chair hit the table, more or less back where it had started, Cindy dropped like a hopelessly ticklish sack of potatoes. Floundering on the carpet in a pile of anguished giggles, the wide-eyed girl curled up one side as Mr. Deveno leaned right over her. Mercilessly he kept kneading at her sides, abdomen and ribs, Cindy’s squeaking pleas falling on the ears of an audience increasingly keen to hear more.
Within a few seconds of hitting the floor Cindy’s other heel was sent flying, her stocking-clad legs kicking aimlessly. Much to Hannah’s horror and the admiration of everyone else, all the fitful movement was causing the poor paralegal’s skirt to ride up. A few kicks later and what was already a very revealing piece of office attire had risen so high it revealed the very bottom of Cindy’s shapely butt right butt cheek. As she shook and squirmed the crease where her thick thighs met her bottom flexed. Falling further upward, the skirt showed off the lower curves of both creamy white cheeks and what was obviously a pair neon pink g-string panties.
“Get yourself a ticklish woman boys!” Harry squeezed one of Cindy’s knees and she screamed. “After a few minutes she’ll be putty in your hands!” He ran that same hand up her thigh and danced the fingers around the rim of her stocking. Cindy grabbed for his hand as she jerked her leg away, not noticing that the sly fellow’s other hand had started plucking at the bottom of her blouse. “Isn’t that right Miss Reid?” Mr. Deveno scurried five fingers up and under her shirt, his wicked touch stroking directly against Cindy’s skin.
“NOHOIIIEEE!” She thrashed and tried to roll away, stopped immediately when Harry’s other hand landed squarely into the small of her back.
“Tickle her boss!” One of the men cheered. “Get her good!” Called another, pumping his fist in the air.
Hannah couldn’t tell if she was trying not to move or just frozen with fear. The door Harry had entered through was just a couple of steps away and the way things were going a quick exit was becoming more tempting by the second. Up to that point all the men remained fixed on Cindy, but the last thing Hannah wanted was to move and catch their attention. She could picture it in a dreadful daydream; one of them turning with a perverse look in his eye, one or two more looking around to see what their buddy was after. Hannah doubted very much that Mr. Deveno would leap to her defense as numerous hands might grab and paw at her. The men on her side of the table were starting to move closer to the action and though it was a guilty thought Hannah couldn’t help but feel a slight relief as she remained still as a statue.
On the other side of the room Harry had allowed Cindy to roll on to her back, only for the big man to immediately straddle her hips. Pinning the much smaller girl in place, her legs kicking furiously out behind him, Mr. Deveno easily sent both hands onto the soft flesh of Cindy’s convulsing abdomen. With her skirt ridden up as it was several of the men behind Harry were treated to a full view of the cackling blonde’s panties, only obstructed at random by her quaking thighs. Though she grabbed and slapped at Mr. Deveno’s hands there was little Cindy could do as he pushed her blouse higher, her heaving ribs and terribly ticklish tummy all out in the open.
“ICAN’TBREAHTE!” Cindy wailed, curling herself up toward the man holding her in place before crashing back down in a mess of involuntary laughter. Held tight between Harry’s knees all the rolling and struggling got her nowhere fast, her nylon feet slipping uselessly across the carpet as she strained to buck him off.
The crowd had gathered around in a bustling, shuffling circle of horny testosterone. Over the tabletop and through the thin gaps between the men Hannah could see Cindy flailing, her top concern undoubtedly the ten fingers running amok across her midriff. They were like a pack of hungry dogs, none making a move of their own as their leader ate his share but all eager to get fed just the same. Hannah could feel that sweat trickling down her neck again, as much as she feared for herself she feared for Cindy almost as much. There wasn’t a man among them who might have had the moral fortitude to stop it, a fact Hannah suspected was very much by Harry’s design.
“Look closely gents!” Mr. Deveno reached back with one hand and pinched cruelly at Cindy’s knee, his other hand digging viciously into her ribs. “I want you all to pay very close attention!” He swung back around and clawed savagely up her sides, both hands shoving their way under the strained material of her shirt. Cindy howled in ticklish horror as Deveno’s fingers dove into her underarms, the bottom of her lacy pink bra showing along the undersides of her jiggling breasts. “Tonight, you all have a very special assignment!” He kept his hands there as Cindy’s biceps clamped around them, her laughter very nearly drowning out Harry’s words. “When you go home to your wives or your girlfriends or your ladies on the side-“ The men laughed and Cindy laughed though the reasons were very different indeed. “-I want to ask them for something! Something you know from experience they will not say yes to! Ask your wife to cook dinner at midnight! Ask your girlfriend for a threesome with her sister! Whatever it is, make sure she says ‘No!’”
Hannah could see where this was going and the thought sickened her. Over the three months as his personal assistant she’d got a keen sense of the man; stern and stubborn, demanding and fearsome. Morally, Hannah supposed, Harry Deveno wasn’t much worse than the rest of his ilk. A little more handsy than most, perhaps, a little unorthodox at best and a little perverse at worst. The tickling was strange she had to admit, but Hannah had mostly written it off as an excuse to feel her up from time to time. Now, seeing Cindy tormented in front of a full boardroom for minutes on end and hearing his latest demand, Hannah was starting to think she’d only seen the tip of Mr. Deveno’s depravity.
“And when your wife or your girlfriend or your mistress tells you ‘No!’-“ Harry’s voice boomed like he was rallying the troops for battle. “-what are you gonna do?!”
“Tickle her!” A few of the men yelled.
“I can’t hear you!” He drilled his fingers a little deeper into Cindy’s underarms causing her to shriek.
“TICKLE HER!” All the men roared, even John Quieter who was quite red in the face.
“And when you tickle her, are you going to stop?!”
“NO!”
“Are you going to let her go?!”
“NO!”
“Are you gonna tickle every inch of her until she gives you everything you want?!” Deveno had the men a fever pitch.
“YEAAAAAAH!” They jumped and shook their fists and yelled in each other’s faces and poor Cindy’s laughter could barely be heard among the clamor of it all.
Hannah thought of all the women that evening that would suffer at the hands of the men in that room and hoped some of them weren’t ticklish. She hoped each of the dozen men would find only disappointment later that day and not a one of them would get what they wanted. She hoped maybe one or two among them would ignore their boss’s orders and treat their wives well, but they were small hopes. There wasn’t a man among them who would disobey Harry Deveno. The chances of all twelve wives or girlfriends not being ticklish was hopeless, some would surely suffer tonight.
To the raucous cheering of the men and the anguished, laughing pleas of Cindy Reid, Hannah slowly moved toward the door. She pressed the handle down without taking her eyes off the crowd and opened a gap just big enough to slip through. A lot of women would be tickled tonight and Hannah was determined not to be one of them.
Emma was fed and given a bed for rest, which was frankly the least they could have done after what happened in the pool. Yumao woke her some hours later and gave Emma fresh clothes; loose fitting beige pants and a long-sleeve shirt and a pair of sinfully fluffy slippers. Before getting dressed she was left to shower, thankfully alone, and when all that was done with Yumao lead her to meet the apparently notorious Madam Ui.
In an enclosed space between buildings sat an idyllic garden. It was the kind of place Emma would have adored losing herself in a good book, small waterfalls lazily trickling away and wooden wind chimes gently clunking together in some far off corner. Yumao lead her down a couple of steps from the surrounding buildings and along a winding cobbled path, the sky overhead stark blue with mountain sky. Rounding a blooming magnolia tree rich in pink flowers, Yumao and Emma came to a wooden gazebo, the roof curved on all four sides and sweeping up at each corner.
“Ah…our uninvited guest.” Said a woman sitting poised elegantly inside the gazebo. She placed a dainty looking teacup down on an equally dainty looking table.
“Madam Ui...” Emma was barely able to hide her relief. Six months of searching and one god-awful aquatic torture session later, she had finally found her.
Much like Jai Lin, Madam Ui made an immediate impression. There was a properness about her, a grace that veiled something terrible just behind the eyes. She was fifty, maybe, by Emma’s estimation, and smaller than expected. Donned in all black, tight-fitting clothes, the sleek pants and long-sleeved top accentuated Ui’s well-toned figure. Dark hair hung stylishly around her shoulders, framing an expression that was equal parts welcoming and dangerous.
Emma bowed, as Yumao had showed her how to do not two minutes before, and as she did noticed Ui’s rather bulbous breasts beneath the thin material of her top. Wide hips above a slender waist too, Emma noted, and plump full lips. Why she was noticing these things the budding journalist had no idea, they were not features Emma would normally pick up on another woman. Not until six months ago, at least. Madam Ui reached for her tea again and her long, sharp nails made a gentle tinkling sound against the fine china cup which sent a tingle up Emma’s spine. Suddenly and through no conscious doing of her own, Emma was imagining herself being mercilessly tickled by the older woman. Naked, restrained, back arching, sweat dripping off her as those long nails ran wild across her skin and she cried for mercy.
“Please, sit.” Madam Ui gestured to a spot just to the other side of her small table. As Ui took a sip of her tea Emma shook the obscene thoughts from her unruly mind. “No one has called me ‘madam’ for many years.” Ui paused to take a sip of her tea while Emma sat. “In fact the last people who did are the very people you’re here to ask me about…is that right?”
Emma nodded solemnly. “Yes. I was hoping to ask you about a woman you might have known once…”
“Jai Lin.”
Emma nodded again. The name certainly carried a weight with it, even all the way out in the far reaches of the world.
Ui set her cup down and leaned back. She stared at her fiery haired guest for a moment, thinking what Emma couldn’t begin to guess. “I can tell you all about Jai Lin, but first…you must tell me why. Why you’re here, why you’re interested. Everything-“ She emphasized the word. “-that lead you to me. You can’t leave anything out. If I think you’re lying or trying to trick me…“ Ui gave Yumao a meaningful glance before looking back to Emma. “Do we understand each other?”
Oh, she understood all right. It wouldn’t be an easy tale to tell but there was no sense holding back now. Even if the threat of more time in Yumao’s pool wasn’t looming over her, Emma stood nothing to gain by being sheepish. They’d already seen her nude, already heard her scream and beg and laugh and cum her perverse little brains out. Whatever Ui knew about Jai Lin, whatever advantage it might give her in her quest for vengeance, was finally in Emma’s reach. All she had to do was talk at length about all the worst things that ever happened to her.
At some point during the telling of it all, Yumao slinked away. Alone with the woman formerly known as ‘Madam’ Ui, Emma talked for over an hour. Jason Whitmore was the obvious place to start, senior year of high school, under the bleachers where the handsome boy she thought was charming showed his true nature. Then later in the AV room, his failed attempt to bind Emma to a table and her subsequent escape that gave Jason a busted hand. The pride she spoke with of leaving Jason inured quickly disappeared when Emma reached the part about poor, tragic Wendy Starr.
Holding back tears Emma recalled listening to Wendy’s torture at the hands of Jason and the math teacher, Mr. Lucas. Ui’s eyes narrowed the tiniest amount at the mention of Mr. Lucas’ name, but Emma thought nothing of it in the moment. Feeling no less guilty after the confession, Emma skipped ahead to her time in New York and the hometown news article that compelled her to jump on a plane back home. She talked about Wendy and the girls from the mansion and how strange it was that the same girl who she’d failed to help back in high school was once again finding herself at the hands of people intent on tickling her.
Before Emma got to the part about sleuthing with Deena Tripp, Yumao returned with a light snack. Emma had some tea herself and took a deep breath as she readied to explain the really crazy stuff, which was saying something given everything that had already been said. Mr. Lucas’ house on the hill and the girl in white he tortured, another victim Emma did nothing to save. They followed the car with the girl in it after she was spent, Emma and Deena finding the secluded mansion far outside of town. More girls in white had chased them through the woods and dear Deena was caught in the kerfuffle, another sacrifice to Emma’s self-loathing incompetence. Not long thereafter Emma got herself arrested and looking back she wished she’d never stopped the car, held down the damn accelerator until she was back in New York.
The local sheriff and his deputies, corrupt and working for Jai Lin, Emma explained, took her to an abandoned building. There the last deputy revealed himself, none other than her personal high school nightmare Jason Whitmore. Much to his delight Jason tickled her and tickled her while his colleagues looked on, the deputies and sheriff alike all equally unfazed by the cackling, pleading girl bound before them. A phone call put a stop to the torment and Emma wished she could have said that was the end of it. Instead they bundled her half naked into a car and delivered her like a prize ham to the woman behind it all.
“She showed me a video…” Emma put her hand over her mouth. Maybe if she didn’t say it aloud it wouldn’t be true, maybe she could trick herself into thinking it was just another bad nightmare. “A live feed of somewhere else in the mansion. It was Deena and Wendy, they had them…they had them-“
“I can imagine.” Ui said without emotion, though Emma was grateful for the mercy to not relive it any further. “Jai Lin, she tickled you too then?”
Emma looked far away and whispered. “…Yes.”
“And yet, here you are.”
“I had help. There was another woman, she was Jai Lin’s assistant or…or something. Aleena. I don’t even want to think about what they did to her after I got away.”
“I remember Aleena.” It was Ui’s turn to look distant. “Jai Lin really kept her all these years? My god, the cruelty of that woman.“ She turned back to Emma. “I was…not kind in my youth, Emma. But Jai Lin, she and that bastard Samuel Lucas, they are of a different breed. They are not human.”
“Aleena told me about you. All I had was a name.”
“And here I am.” Ui got a thoughtful look about her. “I’ll tell you about Jai Lin and the man you thought was a math teacher, of all things. I’ll tell you all of it, my whole story, then you can figure out what to do with it.”
If it hadn’t been for her own story, Emma wouldn’t have believed a word of what followed. The Kanpekina School and the billionaire Harold Deveno Senior. The secret hideaway in Japan where Harold kept a harem of slave girls, each one handpicked from around the world for a short list of very specific, very ticklish traits. Ui hadn’t always been the Madam at Harold’s hideaway of course, she’d spent years suffering under the sadistic man’s wiggling fingers. Emma cringed at the idea of being held prisoner and tickled for so long, and to her eternal shame found she was not insignificantly turned on.
When the time came to talk about Jai Lin, Ui’s tone soured considerably. Perhaps, the former Madam admitted, she had been too harsh on the new girl, too eager to impress their master and prove she still held worth. “I don’t regret it, really.” Ui said at one point. “I only regret that I lost.”
It was a sobering comment, Emma thought. Over the few hours they sat there Ui was mostly quite pleasant to talk to, despite the topic of discussion. Polite, confident, intimidating in a confusingly attractive fashion. But then every so often the older woman would say something that bought Emma back to reality, back to recognizing exactly who Ui was and what she was capable of. With a snap of her fingers the mistress of the spa house could have had Emma stripped and bound, tickled out of her mind again for who knew how long. Based on how the rest of their conversation panned out, Emma realized, she was in very real danger of that happening.
Just when Emma was starting to think she’d heard all the most vile, wicked and evil ways a person could be made to suffer through tickling, Ui explained exactly how Jai Lin had gone about usurping the madam’s power. Aleena, the very same woman who’d helped Emma escape, had been the lover of one of Harold’s slaves, a girl named Hania. The girls, young at the time, sent secret messages to one another as they plotted Hania’s escape, a plot that was sadly discovered. Naturally Ui took to torturing Hania, but the girl held out, refusing to reveal how the messages were getting to the outside world.
“But...?” Emma said nervously, not sure she truly wanted the answer.
“Jai Lin, of course.” Ui tapped her nails across the tabletop and it sent a flutter through her guest’s lower tummy. “She swayed Samuel Lucas to her side. His men searched the town and found Aleena. That was Jai Lin’s trick you see, the thing she understood before anyone else; if you can’t attack the body, attack the heart.”
“Are you telling me…Jai Lin has had Hania and Aleena prisoner…all this time?”
“No.” Ui shook her head. “Just Aleena. They let Hania go.” A humorless smile crossed her lips. “It was a guard, incidentally, who’d been helping get the girls’ notes back and forth. No one ever saw him again.”
Emma sat, mouth half open, saying nothing. She’d had the thought before, more than once, that there was no end to the cruelty, no bottom level to this hell. Still the minds of people like Jai Lin and Mr. Lucas surprised her, still she found acts that were so reprehensible it was difficult to believe another human could concoct them. “They killed him…the guard?” Her voice squeaked and somehow murder still didn’t sound like Jai Lin’s worst sin.
“I can’t say for certain. If they did it wasn’t Samuel Lucas’ first, I can promise you that.”
“Deena…Wendy, they-“
“Oh, don’t worry.” Ui waved a dismissive hand. “They wouldn’t have hurt your friends. Driven them out of their minds, almost certainly. For all the evil in them I don’t believe Samuel Lucas or Jai Lin would ever hurt someone they could have more fun with alive.”
That sent a shudder up Emma’s spine.
“After that, I became a ghost in my own house. I lost all respect among the girls. Worse, I lose their fear. Then, a few years later, Harold’s heart gave out…”
Though Ui hadn’t known it at the time, she later found out that Harold Deveno Senior had set up an account in her name. Per Harold’s wishes, Ui only learned about the account after his passing. Unfortunately the total monetary value of the account was exactly zero dollars, with only two transactions on record. The first transaction was a deposit of several billion dollars, the second a withdrawal of the same amount. Ui’s reward for her years of suffering, gone before she even knew it existed.
“His son, Harry Junior told me all this, rather gleefully in fact.” Ui’s jaw tightened a little. “They left me there for him to find and when he did….he did what they always do.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Ui lifted her head, the despondent look on her face shifting to one of mild pride. “That was the last time. There hasn’t been a single person since who’s put their hands on me without my permission.”
“That explains the houses…the cars.” Emma frowned. “The police that work for them. All their money, it was meant for you.”
“Not according to Harry Junior it wasn’t. He was…perturbed, to put it mildly, that his father had left so much money to someone he considered nothing more than a plaything. I dare say he tried to track it down after he finally realized it wasn’t me who took it.”
“So Harold’s son, he has no idea that Jai Lin and Mr. Lucas are still out there?”
“I don’t know.” Ui’s lips perked up with a tiny smile. “After Harry was done with me I left and never looked back. I had nothing to my name. There were a lot of hard years, but eventually-“ She gestured around at the garden. “-I was able to build this place. I have a good life here and it belongs to me. I built it, it was all me. Jai Lin, Mr. Lucas, Harry, they can keep their money. Harold’s money.”
“You’re not upset? You don’t want to get back at them for everything they did to you?”
“Look…if I was to hear that Jai Lin’s world fell apart tomorrow, I won’t lie and tell you the news wouldn’t bring me joy-”
“-Then help me.” Emma’s voice was stern with determination. “Help me stop them, help their victims and people who will be their victims.”
“No.” Ui said plainly. “Jai Lin and Samuel Lucas were hardly much older than you are now when they ruined my life. I learned my lesson and you should too. They’ve had years of practice since, and are doubtlessly an even greater beast together than they were back then.”
Emma huffed loudly. “I can’t say I blame you.” She shook her head. “Harold Junior then, the son? If I go to him-“
“-You can’t do that either.” Ui cut her off. “Believe me when I tell you, Harry is worse than his father ever was in every way. If you go to him he may very well go after Jai Lin, but not before he’s chewed you up and spit you out a dozen times over. And he won’t do it because you annoy him or because he doesn’t like you, he’ll do it just to do it.”
“But you said he tried to find them before, didn’t you?”
“I said I didn’t know. He probably tried to find the money, wouldn’t you? Clearly if he did make any attempts they failed.”
“He’ll be interested to know where it is then. And a man like that, as bad as you say he is, he might be the best chance we have of putting a stop to Jai Lin for good.”
“Emma-“ Ui put one hand gently on Emma’s knee and looked her dead in the eye. “I know you want revenge. Believe me, I understand, but going to Harry Deveno –it is not a good idea.”
Trying to ignore the flustering feeling of Ui’s hand on her, Emma blinked tears of frustration from her eyes. “Who am I kidding?” She slumped back, defeated. “Even if I was going to talk to him I couldn’t afford to get there, wherever he is.” Her voice warbled with self-pity. “They just-they just do whatever they want and get away with it! Six months of running and searching and the nightmares, the god damn nightmares!” Emma’s volume was rising as her emotions took hold. “As if the tickling wasn’t bad enough! Jai Lin she-she gets in your head! I don’t even know what she did to me but I feel like I’m going crazy everyday thinking about it! And Wendy and Deena and all the others I just…I just…” Tears ran down her cheeks and her shoulders shook.
“Alright…alright…shh.” Ui rubbed Emma’s thigh and that didn’t help any. The older woman sighed. “I want my name to stay out of it. This place, my place, they must never find it, if that happens…you and I will no longer be friends.”
Emma looked up through tear-blurred eyes. “What are you saying?”
“The best I can offer is money. You can’t go to Harry Junior, you just can’t, but I can afford to back you for whatever else it is you want to do. I’ll fly you back to the States and then you use my money and only my money to stop Jai Lin.”
“Are-are you sure?”
“Not remotely, no.” Ui took her hand from Emma’s leg. “If you’re caught you’ll tell them where I am. Yumao, my girls, we’ll all be ruined. I am taking an extraordinary risk even just letting you walk out of here.”
“I won’t let you down.” Emma cleared her throat and wiped her cheeks dry.
“You had better not.” Ui stood up and walked slowly toward the steps. “Because if you fail everything you’ve been through so far will seem like a wonderful dream.”
Chapter Five: The Masseur
Like most days in Harry Junior’s employ, Hannah’s work ended somewhere around 9pm. Some days ended later, very few finished earlier. Of course she’d known going in that her chosen career was never going to have normal working hours. Even so, thirteen hours around a man like Mr. Deveno took more of a toll than any job Hannah imagined doing growing up.
The street was still busy when she walked out into the courtyard, the Deveno Tower looming high behind her in the night sky. Eager to get home and collapse into bed, Hannah moved quickly by the enormous water fountain where a tall statue of Harold Deveno Senior stood proud. She made it almost halfway between the fountain and the street when her phone rang. Hannah scrunched her nose, she should just ignore it. Pretend she didn’t hear it, let it go to voicemail. Against her better judgment the tired P.A fished into her bag and pulled out her phone. Unsurprisingly, there was ‘Mr. Deveno’ displayed across the called I.D.
“I need you back up here.” Came his voice through the phone. “My office.” And with a click he was gone. No hello, no goodbye, no explanation and definitely no room to argue. If Hannah could have she’d have quit on the spot. Long, unpredictable hours and the random tickling, those two things alone were more than enough to walk away. Threats of more tickling hardly endeared her toward the job and after the madness of the Lottlinn meeting she knew those threats were not idle. Hanging her head, Hannah turned back toward the tower.
She set her bag down against the wall outside Harry’s office and stood upright. Aside from a security guard in the foyer Hannah hadn’t seen a single other person on her way back to the top floor. Likely there were a few lowly drones still plugging away in some cubicles somewhere. Certainly none of the bigwigs from the Lottlinn meeting stayed late, they were all off tormenting their wives and girlfriends. Hannah cringed at the thought as she took hold of the door handle and braced for whatever it was Mr. Deveno wanted now.
Inside, Harry sat on a chair in front of his desk, one leg propped up casually on the other. It wasn’t Harry that caught Hannah’s focus however, as her eyes shot immediately to the far left corner of the room. Sat cowering against the wall and the enormous window that overlooked the atrium was Cindy Reid, a black piece of cloth between her teeth. The cloth appeared to be pulled quite tight, tied firmly behind her head, though Hannah couldn’t see the knot. Dumbstruck, Hannah stood with the door half-shut as she surveyed the rest of the poor paralegal’s plight. Cindy’s arms were behind her back and it didn’t look like she held them there voluntarily. Her knees were up in front of her as she sat curled, her ankles bound together with a thin white thread just a little thicker than a shoelace. Other than the makeshift gag and bindings, the petrified blonde was entirely naked.
“Shut the door will you?” Mr. Deveno said irritably.
Without taking her eyes off Cindy, Hannah slowly let the door click shut behind her. “Mr. Deveno…” She managed to say, her voice little more than a whisper. “What uh…what’s happening here?”
“A demonstration, Miss Quist.” He clapped loudly, the sound snapping Hannah’s attention to him. “This is Izan.” Harry pointed a thumb at the opposite corner.
To Hannah’s surprise there stood a young man, or at least a man who looked young. Rookie mistake not checking all the corners, she thought sourly. He was tall, well dressed and on the wiry side, the man who might have been twenty or a youthful thirty. Tidy dark hair, quite handsome. Latino maybe, Hannah guessed, though it was difficult to tell, truthfully he could have been from a thousand different places. Izan stepped out of the corner and smiled in a strange way, his lips moved as they should have but his cheeks, his eyes, the rest of his face didn’t light up the way one’s expression normally would.
“Hello.” He said calmly, no accent immediately obvious in the one word.
Hannah’s eyes darted to Mr. Deveno, to Cindy, back to Izan. “Hi…?”
“Izan’s a freelancer-“ Harry folded his arms. “-comes highly recommended. If I like what I see today I’ll be keeping him on retainer for…various tasks.”
“Mr. Deveno I, uh…” Hannah couldn’t quite figure out where to begin, the two men were acting as if there wasn’t a naked woman bound in the corner. “I’m not sure I should be part of whatever this is.”
“Nonsense. If I’m going to be working with the man, you’ll be working with the man. You are still my assistant, aren’t you?”
Hannah wished very much the answer wasn’t “Yes but-“
“Delightful.” Mr. Deveno’s said definitively, like punctuating the end of the conversation. “Izan, if you would.”
“Yes sir.” Izan’s oddly emotionless eyes fixed on the gagged girl on the other side of the room. He strode toward Cindy with purpose and she trembled, pushing her bare feet against the carpet in what looked like an attempt to push herself through the wall.
Standing dumbly just inside the doorway, Hannah’s mind whirled with thoughts of what was about to happen. Bad as her day had been it seemed Cindy’s Reid’s was much worse by a measure Hannah couldn’t quite fathom. She’d always known the job would come with challenges but this one hit a little too close to home. Tied up, nude, absolutely vulnerable and exposed, Hannah could hardly imagine the terror Cindy must have felt. Hannah liked to think of herself as brave by most standards, though if she’d found her and Cindy’s roles reversed she knew that wouldn’t be true anymore. Still, something had to be done.
“Sir…?” Hannah approached Mr. Deveno gingerly, pausing to swallow hard. “Sir this…I don’t know what’s going on here but Miss Reid, she…well I’m going to need to know she’s consented before this goes any further.”
“Consented?” Harry chuckled. In the same moment Izan bent over and took hold of the binding around Cindy’s ankles, the helpless girl whimpering as her legs were pulled away from her.
“I don’t mean any disrespect, but I don’t think she’s enjoying this very much at all.”
“No, I shouldn’t say she is.” He didn’t take his eyes off the nude girl as she was dragged squirming away from the wall. “You on the other hand should count yourself lucky.”
With one hand between her ankles, Izan pulled Cindy out into the open floor of the large room. For the several feet she was dragged the shapely girl tugged and jerked, rolling in an effort to get free. When Izan stopped it was more or less in the same spot where Mr. Deveno had bullishly teased Hannah earlier in that same day. Izan set her feet down and just as Cindy started to twist herself over, the almost-robotic man dropped down and planted his knees either side of upper legs. Squeezing his thighs together, Izan straddled Cindy just below her hips and held her firmly in place.
“I can’t watch this.” Hannah muttered and turned for the door.
“You’ll watch.” Mr. Deveno’s tone stopped Hannah in her tracks. “If it weren’t for Miss Reid there it’d be you pinned down under Izan right now. That was my original plan, you know? Weeks in the making, this was. It was only your good fortune that we happened across her at the eleventh hour.”
Hannah pictured herself in Cindy’s place, powerless and exposed. Knowing she had come so close to being there made it all the worse. As Hannah turned back toward Mr. Deveno she was wishing, really wishing, she had ignored that phone call out on the street. She looked at her boss to gauge his demeanor but he didn’t look at her, his eyes were set squarely on Izan and Cindy. His jaw was tight and his eyes were narrowed. Deveno was always a fairly intense man to be around and it seemed far more so now, more than Hannah had ever seen before. Escaping the Lottlinn meeting was a triumph of stealth, or so she’d originally thought. It occurred to Hannah that perhaps she only made it out of that boardroom because Mr. Deveno allowed her to, and got the distinct impression that if she tried another daring disappearance now it wouldn’t go so well.
“Ahem.” Hannah cleared her throat and shuffled herself back and off to the side of Mr. Deveno. Out of his sight, at least, in case his attention did soon turn to her.
“Whenever you’re ready, Izan.” Harry leaned back into his chair and intertwined his fingers.
“Mmhm! Mmhm!” Cindy shook her head, her desperate protests muffling against the cloth in her mouth.
Izan held his right hand out to the side and his five fingers started wiggling with alarming speed. The sight of those quick digits and all of Cindy’s unprotected skin caused Hannah’s toes to curl inside her shoes. In a blur Izan whisked his fingertips up the bound girl’s side, a loud squeal breaking against the gag. Cindy spasmed and flinched sharply as far away as her dire position would let her. She started saying something no one could understand, though the tone of it was clear as day, all high-pitched and strained with fear. Izan did it again, five fingers racing in a split second up the side of Cindy’s midriff, her bound feet bouncing against the floor as she yelped.
Hannah closed her eyes and heard the sorrowful paralegal squeak again. Each time it happened Cindy would talk faster, dismal pleas morphed into unintelligible babble by the gag. She wouldn’t have faired any better, Hannah thought, she’d have been as big a mess as Cindy, if not more so. Tickling, she even hated the word let alone the act. Until a few moments ago the worst Hannah could have imagined was being chased around that same office by Harry. Before that it was her ex-boyfriend, a cheerful dog-handler who would occasionally wrap one of his arms around her ankles and tickle her feet while she wheezed and slapped him. The depravity of it, the unbelievable cruelty of tying someone up to tickle them shouldn’t have surprised Hannah, but it did.
“MMM!” Cindy squealed particularly loud and Hannah looked back. Izan was using both hands now, running five fingers up either side of the girl’s tummy. He’d stop for a few short seconds to let her beg, all wide-eyed and quivering as she awaited the next attack. When the ten digits scurried over her sensitive skin Cindy curled upward, her big bare breasts bouncing as she whined.
“You don’t like being tickled, do you Cindy?” Izan said in that same eerily plain way he’d greeted Hannah. There was an accent, South American maybe, but Hannah couldn’t pick exactly where.
“Mm mm!” Cindy shook her head without taking her eyes off the man sitting atop her.
“That’s good.” He held up one index finger and curled it into a slight hook. “Because this would be so boring otherwise.” Lowering his hand slowly, Izan started wiggling that single finger toward the center of Cindy’s tender tummy.
“Mmm! Mhm!” She stared at the encroaching finger, her eyes flashing over to Hannah with a look of sheer panic.
Hannah’s mouth opened as if to say something and her jaw moved, saying nothing. Cindy looked back to Izan’s hand, his finger just a few inches from her belly button. She stared terror-stricken to Hannah again and all the frozen P.A could muster was to silently mouth the words ‘I’m sorry’. Less than a second later Cindy screamed into her gag.
“MMMM! MMFFF!” She wailed, bucking mindlessly as Izan’s fingertip swirled deep inside her agonizingly sensitive navel.
In unison Cindy’s tied legs kicked, her bare feet flailing as they jumped up and down off the carpet. Throwing herself from side to side, her whole upper body tried to roll one way and then the other, never getting far enough. No matter how much Cindy struggled her tormentor’s finger was lodged tight, her uncontrolled laughter a sure sign of the turmoil within. As the seconds wore on Hannah couldn’t stop herself from gently covering her own belly button with one hand. Watching Cindy’s long blonde hair whip wildly about as she fought for the tickling to stop, it was easy for Hannah to picture her own hair whipping at her face as she would certainly do the same.
Much to Hannah’s ever-increasing dismay the navel assault didn’t end after a few quick, teasing seconds. Unlike when Izan would run his fingers up Cindy’s side and pause, his belly button finger-hook remained ongoing. Each passing second of squealing terror caused Hannah to feel exponentially more uncomfortable, Cindy’s cheeks blushing pink around her gag. She couldn’t stop it, there was absolutely nothing she could do. Powerless as Hannah felt when someone tickled her there was always at the very least some sense of hope that she could fight her way free. Tied up like that, not able to speak, to try and negotiate or talk her way out of it, not knowing when it might end, it must have been maddening.
When Izan stopped after what was almost a full minute, Mr. Deveno switched the way he had his legs crossed. Other than that the stoic man barely moved, his focus on the naked girl breathing heavily on his office floor. Cindy was trying to say something, muffled pleas no doubt, as she tried to catch her breath. Sadly catching her breath was going to have to wait as Izan held his hands over her, curling each one into the gnarled shape of a lobster claw. Cindy’s muted begging increased in volume, her petit frame squirming beneath the pitiless man above her.
“Ngh! Ngh! Nkff!” She shook with more vigor as Izan’s hands lowered toward her, his gradual descent clearly designed to heighten Cindy’s horrid anticipation.
A demonstration, Mr. Deveno had said before, yet seeing it in action Hannah found far more questions than answers. Whoever Izan was it was obvious this wasn’t his first time wrangling an unwilling victim. Finding it difficult to think straight as she watched Cindy brace for the inevitable, Hannah tried to recall what else was said. A freelancer, whatever that meant. And retainer, Deveno wanted to keep Izan around but to do what? Torture more paralegals? The self-titled Silver Fox would have no problem tickling any number of young women if that’s what he was after. In fact the list of things Harry Deveno Junior couldn’t do should he so desire must have been quite short indeed. Izan had to be there to do something Harry couldn’t, but what that was exactly Hannah had no clue.
“NNNFFF!” Cindy’s screech broke Hannah’s train of thought as Izan’s wicked claws dug viciously into the bound girl’s supple ribcage.
His fingertips bore into the soft spots between each rib. Cindy’s eyes were open so wide Hannah could see white all the way around her blue irises as she screamed with laughter. Plain faced, Izan worked the bosomy paralegal’s sides, his fingers wiggling as they stroked back and forth over her each rib. As her pinkened cheeks grew a darker shade Cindy rocked madly in the mysterious man’s hands, the bottoms of her large breasts slapping against the tops of his hands. While his fingers continued driving into her heaving ribcage, Izan crept his thumbs higher, burrowing beneath the fleshy undersides of Cindy’s breasts. Wiggling the tips of his thumbs, Izan prodded savagely at her hidden skin there, Cindy’s gagged laughter doubling in raucous volume.
Over a minute into the hellish display and Cindy’s cheeks were more red than pink, her forehead and neck both rosy too. Her nostrils flared and when it seemed like she might just about run out of air Izan let his hands scurry down to her sides. With his fingers wrapped around Cindy’s tummy Izan kept up the same level of intensity he’d used on her ribs, four fingers poking speedily into either side while his thumbs dug into the outer edges of her abdomen. Cindy’s laughter jolted into a more rapid, higher pitch panic as she flopped helplessly upon the carpet, her eyes fixed with what looked like a crazed sense of disbelief.
“NNNGH! NNF! NF!” Cindy arched her back, the top of her head rolling onto the floor when Izan’s hands spidered all the way up her sides. He slipped two fingers from each hand in between her biceps and underarms, his other digits drilling into the ballooning sides of her jiggling bosoms. She thrashed left then right, her arms flexing hard against the bindings behind her back.
If Hannah thought she’d been uncomfortable a few minutes before she was bordering on nauseas now. The suppressed sounds of ticklish anguish bellowing from Cindy caused a knot in the pit of Hannah’s stomach. She could handle a lot of things, the anxiety of her teen years rarely ever rearing up in adulthood, but it was returning with full force in that office. Watching the naked paralegal’s underarms get assaulted, Hannah suddenly became very conscious of her own hollows. A nervous sweat, cold against her underarms, was starting to show through the P.A’s blouse. Willing herself to calm down, Hannah couldn’t help but imagine Izan’s fingers running unimpeded under her arms, a thought that continued to tighten the knot in her tummy.
Izan lifted himself slightly, loosening the vice-grip of his legs. An opportunity to wriggle away perhaps, not that Cindy would have gotten far. Instead the wheezing girl didn’t even seem to realize she wasn’t being tickled anymore, still twitching and letting out half-moaned laughter. Taking hold of one of her shoulders, Izan easily forced Cindy to roll over, sitting back down across the backs of her thighs the second she fell face down. It was then she tried to worm away, thrusting her bare ass into the air, but Izan squeezed his legs around her’s and the attempt was thwarted before it began. Straddling her thick thighs, Cindy’s shapely butt protruded up between Izan’s knees and he started wiggling his fingers once again.
“MEEEFFHH!” Cindy squealed, her bound hands reaching down blindly with open palms when Izan scribbled five digits across her right butt cheek.
Easily sliding around her feeble efforts to protect herself, Izan danced his fingertips along the underside of Cindy’s ass. Both cheeks tightened as the fiendish fingers ran along the crease where buttock met thigh. Deep dimples caved in on the outer sides of Cindy’s bottom, her squealing laughter growing more hectic by the second. As the tickling sped dangerously close to her crack Cindy’s fingers spread wide, desperately trying to cover as much of her hopelessly sensitive behind as possible. Predictably, heartbreakingly, the frenzied girl’s defenses amounted to all but pointless as Izan frolicked his fingertips up into the right side dimple.
Cindy threw herself right, her big boobs squishing and ballooning beneath her as she rolled. Before falling fully back on to her stomach, Izan’s other hand joined the fray, five equally merciless fingers running wild across her left cheek. Bouncing her hips, Cindy screamed into her gag, a torrent of insuppressible laughter following immediately after. Accosted by ten fingers roaming around her behind, there was no way for the trapped girl to fight off both at once. Shooting her tightly tied hands one way left the other direction wide open for attack, and Izan took every opening offered to him. Once or twice he even stroked quickly across Cindy’s open palms causing her arms to recoil upward and leaving the entirety of her peach-shaped butt without a shred of cover.
What the state of Cindy’s mind must have been after so much tickling, Hannah could only guess. There had been a time a while back when Hannah had stepped out of the shower and her dog-handler ex quickly ran a couple of fingers across her bare butt. She must have leapt six feet across the bathroom before turning to see a cheeky grin plastered across his face, fingers still wiggling away. When he lunged forward she’d run, speeding naked and soaked into the bedroom where he’d caught her by the bedside. Again he’d stroked her butt and again Hannah just about shot through the roof, scrambling up onto the bed to escape him. Fortunately what followed was a tumbling, slippery and satisfying event that left their duvet quite messy indeed, but Hannah never forgot how explosively ticklish those brief strokes across her rear end had been. Watching Cindy endure long minutes of having her ass tickled, it was unsettling to think what might have happened had the post-shower event gone another way.
“NEEEIIHHPH!” Cindy screeched as Izan’s fingers wiggled along the undersides of her cheeks, his hands zooming toward one another where they almost met in the middle. Again he would do it, and again, each time Cindy’s thighs would squeeze tight and her cheeks would clench. He tickled her palms and her hands shot away, his fingers swiftly feathering up between her butt cheeks, all the while she spasmed violently.
If Izan was going to stop he showed no intentions of it. For that matter he didn’t seem to show much of anything. Hannah liked to think she was pretty good at reading people, it was a useful skill in her line of work, but Izan was a like a book without words. He switched techniques from light strokes to devilish pinching and his expression remained the same, as nonchalant as someone waiting for a bus. It had to be worse, Hannah thought, being tickled by someone more akin to machine than human, no telling what they might be feeling, or if they felt anything at all. Certainly Izan had no pity, that much was devastatingly clear.
Cindy’s entire face was just starting to turn beet red when Izan’s hands grabbed at her sides. With the speed of a viper he abandoned her well-tickled butt and launched an all out tickle-assault directly onto her midriff. Roaring laughter shook Cindy’s curvaceous frame, her entire upperbody twisting and straining to break away. Behind Izan, Cindy’s lower legs slammed up and down, her upturned feet kicking against the carpet together. With her bound hands she would try to grab either one of his hands, never quite reaching far enough to do much more than graze his wrists. Izan’s fingers explored higher, well beyond Cindy’s grasp as his fingertips poked playfully into the sides of her milky white bosoms.
A light sheen of sweat was starting to glisten across Cindy’s back when Mr. Deveno looked back over one shoulder. “Thoughts?” He said, glaring back at Hannah.
She let out a shuddering breath, hoping the sound of her fear was drowned out by Cindy’s torment. “He’s…effective.” Was the nicest thing Hannah could think to say, though she hardly meant it as a positive.
“He is, isn’t he?” Mr. Deveno turned back to watch the sadistic demonstration. “And from what I hear of his work, the best is yet to come.”
Hannah closed her eyes again, of course it was only going to get worse. If Cindy remained sane after this nightmare was over she’d have been shocked. The distraught girl may already have lost her mind, it barely seemed possible for a person that unbearably ticklish to maintain any mental stability. Certainly Hannah didn’t think she could have kept herself together for more than a couple of minutes, not while stark naked and inescapably bound. When she opened her eyes Hannah’s jaw tensed, Izan had hooked his index fingers under Cindy’s shoulders and was wriggling them mercilessly into the tight gaps between her biceps and underarms.
“MMMF! MMF! MFFMFFMFF!” Distressed laughter tore from Cindy’s voluptuous body. Every part of her was reduced to a toy to be used for the amusement of Harry and his peculiar guest. Her obvious anguish was nothing to them at best and a delight at worst, Cindy’s inhumane suffering all part of their terrifying fun.
Izan leaned back, shrill giggles bursting from Cindy as he danced five fingers down the full length of both her sides. Twisting to reach one arm behind himself, he grabbed a hold of the binding around her ankles. As Izan pulled Cindy’s lower legs up toward him, his other hand spidered up onto her ass and ran quickly back and forth across the undersides of her cheeks. Hannah could see Cindy’s leg muscles trembling with strain to put her feet back on the floor but she was in a such a fit of laughter from the butt tickling there was no hope. As her bare feet were pulled closer to Izan her knees spread apart. Just as Cindy’s heels were about to touch his back Izan shifted his weight onto one knee. With well-practiced swiftness he lifted his other leg and shot it back down between his captive’s quivering thighs, planting his knee solidly between her’s, straddling the back of one thigh.
“Oh god.” Hannah whispered to herself, covering her mouth with one hand as she realized Izan’s next intended target.
Keeping hold of the binding with one hand, Izan’s free hand frolicked over Cindy’s butt crack. Squealing loudly and bouncing wildly on the carpet, her trapped hands batted weakly against her tormentor’s fingers. Drained from the endless assault, Cindy’s ability to fend him off appeared even more useless than just a few minutes before. More or less with free reign over her ticklish backside, Izan’s nefariously light touch ran up and down, teasing from the tip of her tailbone to the outer most edge of her taint. After a minute of that madness the light coating of sweat across Cindy’s skin was turning to visible droplets, hot beads drizzling down her sides and forehead.
Thought difficult to see through all the crazed movement and flailing hair, Hannah could have sworn she saw tears begin to well in Cindy’s eyes. Couldn’t blame her, Hannah would have been crying too, especially when Izan’s relentlessly wiggling digits dived down between Cindy’s thighs. With Izan kneeling between her legs there was no way for Cindy to close the gap, giving him open access to stroke devilishly all over her atrociously sensitive taint. Cindy’s back arched and her fingers spread wide, her legs kicking helplessly in place as she shrieked with laughter. Sure enough thick tears started streaming down her beet red cheeks, every part of the poor girl fighting mindlessly against the invasive torture.
Hannah found she was squeezing her thighs together out of a deep sense of empathy. She could almost feel Izan’s fingertips prodding between her own legs and the sense of it horrified her. How ferociously Cindy fought, all her thrashing and pained cries, all her willpower amounting to nothing as it was callously tickled away. What exactly Izan did next was difficult to tell but the sound his victim made wasn’t like anything Hannah had ever heard from another human being before. It was a piercing, animalistic wallow that sent Cindy berserk, her naked body seizing violently as Izan’s fingers did whatever terrible thing they were doing down there.
She must have had the endurance of an Olympian, Hannah thought. How Cindy’s lungs managed to keep up was a mystery unto itself, the intensity with which she laughed made it sound like she would pass out at any second. Falling unconscious would have been a great mercy no doubt, and Hannah started wishing the luckless paralegal could at least find that way to escape. Slick sweat shone across Cindy’s back, the sides of her squishing boobs glistening as beads trickled down across into the creases of milky white skin. Her shapely ass was similarly painted, steaming sweat making her buns glossy as they bounced and flexed. Long strands of hair were starting to stick to Cindy’s upper back, her neck just as dark a shade of red that coloured the agonized expression across her face.
“Uhff…uhh…uffhh…” Cindy whimpered between gasps when at long last when Izan removed his hand from between her thighs. His fingers were strangely wet, and even from where Hannah stood they appeared much too soaked for it to be sweat. Before getting a better look, Izan was grabbing at Cindy’s body.
Pulling his leg free from between the heavily panting girl, Izan clutched at Cindy’s sides and squeezed rapidly. Instantly bursting with girlish laughter, Cindy rocked from side to side and with a little assistance from her tickling assailant was rolled onto her right. Spasming in a twisted version of the fetal position she continued to laugh uproariously as Izan kneeled next to her and his open hand came clawing down directly onto the center of her exposed midriff. Bucking crazily on her side it was clear Cindy was doing everything she could to roll facedown again. Thought she’d faired very poorly indeed on her stomach it seemed the tummy tickling undid any shred of logic, all that mattered was making it stop.
Rolling backward wasn’t an option for Cindy either as Izan’s knees were directly behind her. After a few seconds to establish the new hell she was in, her personal demon bought his other hand into the mix, his fingers crawling up her spine and into the nape of her neck. Cindy snapped her head to one side and by the time she’d bought her shoulder up for protection Izan’s wickedly wiggling digits were already moving elsewhere. Over the side of her jiggling breast, he lightly ran his fingertips down around Cindy’s puffy pink areole and it was then Hannah noticed how alarming erect the bound girl’s nipples were.
Struck by disbelief Hannah didn’t it think it even remotely possible but a quick glance down to Cindy’s inner thighs sure made her question reality. Certainly she understood that the human body could have all manner of outlandish reactions to stimuli, nonetheless seeing the sordid amount of wetness spread across the paralegal’s pussy defied even the most outrageous possibilities. As Izan’s nimble fingers swept across Cindy’s stiffened nipple the look on her face seemed to confirm Hannah’s bizarre suspicion. Among the lunacy of laughter from having her tummy kneaded, Cindy’s eyes rolled back and her jaw dropped. Her gagged mouth formed an uncomfortable O-shape before she broke into fits of helpless laughter once more. It was a blink-and-miss-it moment and for a few seconds Hannah doubted her own eyes. Only when it happened again did it finally dawn on her that Cindy was alarmingly, feverishly turned on.
For the briefest of seconds Hannah wondered if she’d been taken for a fool, if Cindy had been a willing participant this entire time. After all, how could anyone under such circumstances become so obliviously aroused without wanting to, there was no way. Again the cringing P.A found her assumptions challenged as she watched Cindy’s face contort between fleeting seconds of lust and excruciating torment. Her muffled pleas had become rarer the more her torture had gone on but to Hannah’s ear Cindy’s desperation certainly sounded genuine. If she were acting it was a hell of a show, next stop Broadway for that girl because faking a look of terror like that in one’s eyes was worthy of the stage. No, Cindy was no volunteer yet somehow Izan had still managed to force her into a perverse response. Perhaps that was the one thing Mr. Deveno couldn’t do that Izan could, even with his vast fortune that level of power over a person was priceless.
“Mmmphh! Mmmphph!” Cindy wept, breathing heavily after several prolonged minutes. Izan’s fingers had flickered back and forth between each of her large breasts, feathering across her rock hard nipples and driving her utterly mad in the process.
When Izan finally took his hand from her midriff Cindy’s tummy was a light shade of pink. A pained expression furrowed her brow as he rolled her onto her back, and it was there Hannah noticed the frazzled prisoner was lewdly grinding her hips. Cindy winced and gasped and more tears fell down her furiously red cheeks, her thighs quivering as she undoubtedly feared whatever heinous act would come next. Izan turned, facing away from Cindy’s head and swung one leg over her hips, straddling the girl. As he started inching forward Cindy lurched up with sounds of protest, her eyes bugging out more than Hannah had seen yet. She shook her head ‘no’, her eyes boring daggers into Izan’s back as he crept further down her legs.
“EASEFF! EASEFF NFF!” Cindy cried, sobbing as she tried to worm away, her hips rolling and legs tugging violently. It was the most coherent thing to come through the nude girl’s gag all evening, though Hannah couldn’t quite make it out until she looked to where Izan was heading. As he slid down Cindy’s shins, his legs squeezing tight around her’s, Hannah noticed the girl’s bare feet crossing back and forth over one another. It was then Hannah understood Cindy’s words perfectly, and why if she had been in the same position she too would have been screaming ‘please no’.
Locking his knees either side of Cindy’s ankles, Izan used his straddling-position to keep a vice grip around her lower legs. Completely vulnerable save for the meager protection they could afford each other, Cindy’s tiny bare feet trembled nervously in their captive squeeze. Behind him, the alarmed girl was throwing herself back and forth, clawing at the floor with her bound hands and bellowing distorted begging into her gag. She sat up, bouncing on her bare ass as she tried to pull away, looking forlornly at Mr. Deveno and Hannah. Someone, anyone, do something, her eyes plead. No one moved. Deveno didn’t care, or he did but in the entirely wrong way. Izan showed no more mercy than he had from the beginning. And Hannah, Hannah couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted to. Her feet were frozen to the floor, as she was suddenly very conscious of all that stood between them and tickling fingers were a pair of thin socks and sensible flats. Far, far more protection than Cindy had.
“EAAASSEEFF!” Cindy wailed, her stifled voice cracking with terror.
Izan’s response was to hold his hands out either side of himself, a move made purely so his despondent victim had a full view as his fingers began to wiggle. Cindy glared at Hannah again with those big, desperately urgent eyes. Hannah shook her head the tiniest amount and furrowed her brows apologetically. She could only hope Cindy understood why leaping into a daring rescue wasn’t a good idea, or why running for the door would most likely end with both of them being tortured. With that in mind, Hannah wasn’t the least bit convinced she would escape the evening unscathed even if she did obey Mr. Deveno’s every command.
Moving his right hand out of Cindy’s view, Izan extended his index finger. With that single fingertip he drew a winding line across the carpet leading up to the whining girl’s soles. As Izan’s first touch caressed the back of Cindy’s heel all her thrashing halted, her whole body tensing from head to toe. Barely grazing the silky soft skin, his fingertip traced slowly up the outer side of her pink heel, her other foot struggling to lean far enough over to stop the sensation. Cindy whined loudly, a prolonged high pitch cry that vibrated her upper body. Izan continued on at his painstaking pace, dragging the lone fingertip around the front of her heel and stopping directly above it. She breathed rapid, panicked breaths, flinching and twitching as the finger held still. Making her wait was a torture unto itself.
“NNHHFF! NFFH! NNNNHHHFF!” Spasming out of control, Cindy exploded into deranged laughter the instant Izan’s finger began moving. With a tiny movement he moved his fingertip gently from side to side. Izan’s miniscule stroking hardly looked enough to bother a fly, yet Cindy was thrown into immediate pandemonium.
After those first few hysteric seconds Izan introduced his other index finger, landing the frighteningly adept tip just above her other heel. Like lightning an almost deafening screech tore through Cindy’s laughter, both her feet crisscrossing hurriedly over each other. No matter how much she wanted it to end there was no way for either of her hyperticklish soles to reach that exact spot, a fact Hannah strongly suspected Izan was well aware of. As her toes curled tight and Cindy’s forlorn howling grew more frantic it occurred to Hannah she had never seen anyone laugh quite like that. So loud, so joyless, it was almost a stretch to even call it laughter anymore. But laugh Cindy did, a muffled riot of senseless squealing that would have sounded more at home in a psych-ward than a corporate office.
Two more fingers found their way onto Cindy’s tender heels, Izan’s middle digits wiggling away. Soaked in sweat, her big naked bosoms bounced as she rolled helplessly around behind him. Hair stuck to her anguished face as Cindy grew more berserk by the second, a look in her eyes that said Cindy Reid was no longer home. Maybe she was way back in there, buried deep, but as far as Hannah could see it looked like the poor girl had been reduced to nothing more than an object of pure, unbridled ticklishness.
Just when Hannah thought Cindy had surely reached some sort of limit and might actually pass out, Izan entered his thumbs into the mix. Scratching lightly at her wrinkling arches made her jolt violently, screeching laughter renewing the strength of her hectic struggles. Sadly for Cindy her ambitious feet couldn’t fight Izan’s thumb-tips off either, his deft movements never allowing her even a split second of rest. As the six-digit torment went on Izan’s expression never once changed, his apparent indifference a fact Hannah found more unnerving than any amount of baby-talk or childish taunting could have. Equally horrifying were Izan’s remaining fingers, the four waiting tools of ticklish destruction that were being purposely held back for their time to shine.
“AUUHHH-” Cindy arched her back and her chest rose as she started to draw an especially large gasp of air. Well before she’d filled her lungs Izan scribbled all ten fingertips wildly around both her creamy soft soles. “EEEEIII! MMFFF!” Her tiny toes spread wide as her entire torso bounced six inches off the floor before flopping back down.
Cackling mindlessly, Cindy’s petit feet flicked back and forth, no amount of crisscrossing would do them any good now. Up her taut arches and onto the tender balls of her feet, Izan’s merciless fingers left nowhere unscathed. When not spidering all over Cindy’s soles, Izan would swipe a digit under her toes and she’d instantly curl them tight. A quick flurry of strokes down her instep would see her toes spread wide again, an opening the relentless man never let go to waste. For the sake of sadistic variety his techniques were frighteningly numerous. Izan never settled on one movement for long, even if he did bounce unpredictably back to previous inhumane methods. Fingertips drilled between each of Cindy’s toes, danced across the thin skin along the tops of her feet and skated wistful circles around her heels, all the while she fell further into madness.
While Hannah knew her and Cindy’s two situations were barely comparable, she couldn’t help but feel she too was being subjected to a certain kind of torture. Forced to stand and watch such wretched misery required it’s own form of endurance. Then there was the ever-present thought that had it not been for Cindy it would have been Hannah wallowing nude on the carpet, to say nothing of the looming threat that it could still happen. Like a preview to one’s own personal hell, she thought it might be better having known nothing if it was going to happen. Even if it didn’t, even if Hannah made it out of the tower untouched the memory of Cindy Reid’s ticklish destruction would surely give her nightmares for years to come.
Every second was more harrowing than the one before it, though how long Hannah had been standing there she couldn’t have said. Certainly however long it felt must have been a million, billion times worse for Cindy. By the time Izan started tapping his fingertips across the tips of her toes the ravaged girl was so disheveled she looked like she’d spent a few hours tumbling around inside a giant washing machine. Sweat practically poured off her, Cindy’s huge breasts gleaming in the office light. Her face was soaked along with most of her hair, much of which stuck to her glistening skin. Cindy’s arms were red from the shoulders down, a result of all the rolling, her neck and face many shades redder. The gag was soaked through and drool drained from one corner of her mouth and her plump bottom lip. All the while Cindy struggled valiantly, her reeling squeals cracking as she wheezed into longer and longer bouts of silent laughter.
When it seemed like the frazzled paralegal wasn’t going to come back from her latest descent into soundless suffering, Izan reached one hand back behind himself. While his left crawled down under Cindy’s toes, raked over the balls of her feet and started spidering back and forth across her arches, his right hand crept up her quivering thigh. Without looking back, Izan made a C-shape with his thumb and index finger and set the wicked claw to exploring the crease between Cindy’s upper leg and sopping wet pussy. Lurching up with a banshee’s shriek the volume of her laughter was renewed, her hips bucking so hard they’d have put the finest rodeo rider to shame.
Howling and huffing for gasps of air, Cindy continued to try and sit up and each time she did Izan’s clawing hand would whip out from her thigh and pinch wildly across her tummy. After her sixth or seventh attempt to get herself up Izan switched techniques, either for the sake of it or as some form of twisted punishment. With his left hand still running riot all over her bare feet the effortlessly evil man wiggled one fingertip deep into Cindy’s belly button. She fell back and screamed, throwing herself onto one side and then the other, no direction free from the demonic digit drilling into her painfully ticklish navel. Izan kept her in that state of rolling madness for what had to have been nearly five full minutes. When he finally removed the finger, he traced the tip directly down toward her throbbing, bald pussy.
Twisting his hand around, Izan slid the offending finger down between Cindy’s labia, another finger joining the descent in between her thighs. As her back arched sharply and her teary eyes burst open wider than they already were, a soul-shattering gasp forced air into Cindy’s lungs. Her jaw dropped as her voluptuous body tensed, shuddering violently in that contorted position. Though Cindy squeezed her thighs to the point it looked like she might break his hand, Izan continued to work his fingers apparently unhindered. Like a woman possessed, she thrashed harder than ever before, the laughter from her unending foot tickling constantly interrupted by deep guttural moans.
With one final damning look, Cindy froze for a split second to stare at Hannah directly. She lay with her top half on one side, her defenseless feet and helpless pussy still being unapologetically toyed with. Hair dangled in her face and her cheeks puffed exhaustively. Her nipples were so swollen they had to be sensitive beyond belief, and whether Hannah believed it or not she knew what about to happen. Cindy glared right at her but it wasn’t a look that plead for rescue, or even a look to ask for pity. If it meant anything at all, Hannah thought, it was the look of someone who knew they were truly lost.
“AUUUUFFF!” Cindy’s body snapped backward, her muscles and tendons all tensing as she moaned hoarsely. With Izan’s hand jammed between her quaking thighs the flood of her orgasm blew back. Thick drops sprayed messily across her bouncing hips and lower tummy, the deluge of forced carnality drenching Izan’s hand in the process.
Hannah just about fainted as she watched Cindy spasm and holler. Throughout the loud release Izan continued tickling the paralegal’s vulnerable soles. The idea of being put through two such starkly different and severe sensations at once nearly broke Hannah’s brain. Watching Cindy cum so forcefully and endure the fingers dancing around her feet was like staring at the night sky for too long, her mind simply couldn’t fathom it all. In something of a befuddled daze, Hannah only snapped out of it when Izan finally stood up.
“Well done.” Mr. Deveno got up from his chair, looking quite pleased indeed.
Izan closed the few steps between the two men, leaving Cindy a steaming hot mess on the carpet. She writhed weakly, lacking even the strength to roll herself over. As Mr. Deveno gave Izan a respectful nod, Cindy continued to twitch and moan, cooing huskily as the remnants of her orgasm kept her tiny toes curled. “I’m glad you like my work.” Izan said, though his deadpan expression didn’t seem to agree.
“One of the best I’ve ever seen-“ Harry grinned. “-and believe me, that’s saying something. You’re free to go, I’ll be in touch very soon with the details.”
Izan gave a single, quick nod of his own and turned for the door. Even though there was a couple of feet between them when he walked by Hannah felt a fearful skip of her heart having him get so close. She watched him closely as he stalked across the length of the room, not trusting for a moment that he wouldn’t turn back and come after her. Izan opened the handle with his dry hand and slinked out through the door, shutting it almost silently save for a barely audible click. For a hesitant moment Hannah felt like she should be relieved, only to realize that she had foolishly turned her back on Mr. Deveno. Spinning about quickly, she was no less panicked to see the billionaire was still standing exactly where he was a moment before.
“You can go too.” Mr. Deveno had one sleeve rolled up and was working on bringing up the other. “Don’t bother coming by the house in the morning, I’ll meet you here.”
Resisting the urge to flee immediately, Hannah turned her eyes to the bound, panting young woman in the middle of the floor. “I should...um-I should probably take her home or…?”
“Never mind that. Miss Reid’s evening is far from over.”
“But sir, she-“
“Unless you’d like to switch places?”
She should have said yes, that would have been the heroic thing to do. Sacrifice herself for an innocent, jump in the line of fire. That would have been brave, that would have been courageous. All the things Hannah hoped she’d be when faced with terrible danger. Or in this case terrible tickling, though as she saw it the two were one in the same.
“…I’ll see you in the morning, sir.” Hannah said sheepishly and began turning for the door.
Out the corner of her eye she saw Mr. Deveno start moving toward Cindy. Keeping the exit firmly in her line of sight, Hannah couldn’t bring herself to look back. Halfway there and she heard the paralegal’s muted whines begin and Deveno growling hungrily. The sounds of a shuffling struggle started right when Hannah grabbed the door handle and guilt struck her chest like cutting steel. Good god how she hated herself, the least, the absolute bare minimum she could do is take one look. One glance to punish herself for leaving Cindy in the hands of that monster, to see what horror she had thrust upon the shattered girl.
Stepping out the door and almost closing it behind her, Hannah peaked back through a thin sliver. Cindy was face down again with Mr. Deveno straddling the backs of her thighs, just as Izan had done much earlier. He raised his hands, all ten fingers wiggling as she squirmed and squeaked beneath him. Hannah closed the door shut tight just as her boss started to lower his hands. Hanging her head, she could hear the first of what would surely be many desperate giggles. She picked up her back and started walking away, Cindy’s laughter growing louder despite the increasing distance. Of all the tiring days in Mr. Deveno’s employ, this had surely been the longest.
Has it truly been over a year since the last installment of Tickle Tutor? My goodness. I thank you all for your patience, these stories are a great deal of work and I do hope worth the wait!
If this is your first exposure to this series, fear not! You can find previous stories right here in my TMF archive. And as a first for this series I've gone ahead and written a "Previously..." section right at the beginning of this story for both new and long time readers alike! Normally I like to note that every new installment can be easily followed without having read any of the previous entires, however that is a claim that is getting harder to make as the various plotlines thicken. Still, even for a first timer there is plenty of hot, torturous tickle-action to enjoy!
Also! For anyone who may have missed it and would like to know more about the world of Tickle Tutor please check out 'Tickle Tutor International'. Tickle Tutor International is a collection of six short stories that I posted throughout the 2021/2022 holiday season and covers a wide variety of characters both big and small to the events surrounding the core series.
And that's enough blathering from me! As always please do leave a comment or fire off a PM, it's a great treat to hear from folk and I love hearing all your thoughts.
Have a great holiday season and stay safe out there!
'Mantis
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Tickle Tutor #7: A Hard Study
By TickleMantis
MF/f
Previously…
Raised to be one of the world’s finest and most exclusive slaves, a nameless teen is purchased by a new master. Harold Deveno Senior, billionaire construction mogul and secret fetishist gives the girl a name: Jai Lin. The latest addition in Harold’s harem of involuntary young women, Jai Lin quickly becomes her master’s new favourite, much to the chagrin of the domineering housemistress, Madam Ui. Caught between Harold’s unwanted affections and Madam Ui’s cruelty, Jai Lin can do nothing as she suffers their every sadistic whim.
Years into her life of torment and seeing no way out, Jai Lin uses her cunning to seize a bold opportunity. Befriending Harold’s new head of security, the stoic Samuel Lucas, Jai Lin quickly raises herself to the top of the pecking order among Harold’s slave-girls, even managing to usurp Madam Ui. The good life is short lived however, when news of Harold’s weak heart -and the intentions for his vast fortune- reaches Jai Lin’s ears.
Threatened by a massive shift in the power structure, Samuel and Jai Lin act quickly to force events in their favor. With Harold and Madam Ui soon out of the picture and billions of dollars now in their pockets the two unlikely friends head out into the wider world.
Many years later, rookie journalist Emma Clark leaves her New York apartment and returns home. Four years out of high school and Emma can’t shake the shame of her greatest sin; leaving fellow classmate Wendy Starr to be tortured by the duplicitous duo of their math teacher and the school’s star quarterback. Back home, Emma and another former student –Deena Tripp- set about looking into the strange goings on of their senior year. What they uncover goes far beyond any depravity either of the two young women could have imagined.
Caught up in a conspiracy going back decades Emma’s inquisition sends a shockwave of trouble through her hometown’s twisted underbelly. With the damage spreading faster than Emma can manage, Wendy and Deena both find themselves at the hands of their sadistic adversaries. After a narrow escape Emma is captured too, tortured first by local law enforcement and then by the captivatingly villainous Jai Lin. Save only for the bravery of Jai Lin’s long-suffering assistant, Emma is set free.
Driven by a determination to return and rescue her friends, Emma swears to see every last bit of Jai Lin’s mad world burned to ash…no matter the cost.
Chapter One: New Staff
Harry Deveno Junior stood as he often did, back straight and hands behind, looking down from his indoor office window to the atrium below. Across the expansive area of open floor the billionaire’s employees scurried from one office to another, each eager to make their mark and gain the approval of the man upstairs. He made for an impressive figure, Harry ‘Silver Fox’ Deveno, a nickname the 40-something year old insisted came from his cunning mind and not the stylishly pushed-back hair atop his head.
“Who’s that down there?” Deveno glanced back over one shoulder, his obscenely expensive suit barely wrinkling as he turned.
Hannah Quist stepped up beside her imposing boss. After three months as his personal assistant the buxom twenty-six year old still didn’t find Harry’s towering frame any less intimidating. Standing at a relatively petit 5’3ft Hannah often felt daunted to be so close to the man as he loomed over a foot taller than her. Following his eyes she searched the floor below for whomever it was might have caught her employer’s attention, which didn’t take long.
“She’s new.” Hannah narrowed her focus on a busty young blonde woman, unsurprised at the subject of Mr. Deveno’s interest. “Just started this morning in legal, I believe.”
Sporting long blonde locks herself it had become quickly apparent to Hannah that the heir to the Deveno billions had a particular type. It was undoubtedly part of the reason she had got the much sought after job as his P.A, beating out hundreds of other applicants. Where Hannah had generous curves the new girl was a little thinner, less round in the face and straighter hair. They both wore sensible office attire, blouses and tight fitting skirts, though where Hannah wore flats for all the running around she had to do it seemed the young lady from legal was content to suffer in heels.
“Name?” Mr. Deveno glared down at her.
“Reid. Something Reid. One moment…” Hannah slid two fingers into her skirt pocket where her phone made a rectangular bulge.
“You don’t remember?”
“I do, it’s Mindy or Lindy-“ She fumbled the phone, hurriedly looking for the correct name.
“Don’t use that.” Snatching the phone with lightening speed, Mr. Deveno turned away from the window and toward his apparently flustered assistant.
“It’s…it’s one of those ‘indy’ names, if you’ll just let me-“ Hannah made a halfhearted attempt to grab for her phone but the silver haired man quickly slipped it into his own pants pocket.
“Seems I need to jog your memory.”
“No no, I-I’ll just look it up-” The bosomy girl took a step back as she watched her boss raise both of his large hands slowly toward her. “If-if you’ll just give me my phone…” She stammered.
And therein lay the other reason, the main reason in Hannah’s humble opinion, that Harry Deveno Jr. made for such an intimidating presence. From practically her first day on the job the demanding magnate set about finding any reason, no matter how flimsy, to put his hands on her. And when Mr. Deveno couldn’t find a reason he’d simply create one. It began with a gentle poke here and there, a cheeky pinch to her side, each tiny touch eliciting girlish squeals as she’d flinch and jump to the older man’s amusement. By the end of Hannah’s second day her new boss had discovered the poor girl’s greatest fear; she was devastatingly, uncontrollably ticklish.
“M-Mr. Deveno…please!” Hannah backed away, the leering smirk that was spreading across Mr. Deveno’s handsome face doing nothing to encourage her hope of avoiding his eager fingers.
“You better hurry up and remember…” He teased, stalking toward the cowering girl with slow, deliberate steps.
The sight of Mr. Deveno’s fingers starting to wiggle in the air made sure Hannah couldn’t help but feel the involuntary urge to giggle. Despite her best efforts to push the bubbling laughter back down it was clear from her tightly pursed lips and furrowed brow that the comely girl was fit to burst, and he hadn’t even touched her. Truth be told in any other job she’d have quit on the first day, but this was one assignment Hannah couldn’t wriggle out of. All she’d overcome, all she’d fought for to get where she was, all of it threatened to come undone by making her feel like a little girl chased around the playground.
“Nono, I’ll remember!” Hannah was nearing the wall of the billionaire’s enormous office. She should have rounded the huge desk or even one of the chairs, put something between herself and the subject, at least maneuvered toward the door. Instead any tactical thought had been instantly replaced by the dread of being tickled. With the floor-to-ceiling window to one side and the wall behind her the anxious P.A had literally backed herself into a corner. “J-just give me a second t-to think!” She tittered with laughter as she spoke, her protruding butt gently bumping into the wall a second later.
“You need to think better under pressure, Miss Quist!” Deveno lunged, swiftly shooting his hands through her shaky defenses and directly onto her sides.
“Ehee! Ahano!” Hannah shot upright, her hands snapping down around the big man’s wrists as she danced awkwardly in place. “Eeiiieheehee! Ohnohoho! Mr. Deveno!”
Caught between Harry Junior’s bulk and the unforgiving wall, the voluptuous girl shook her head from side to side, her long blonde locks whipping across her bouncing bosoms. Try as she might to pry his hands from her convulsing sides the fitful girl couldn’t have fought him off on her best day. Hannah wasn’t Mr. Deveno’s only personal staff member after all, the handsy owner and CEO had a whole team of loyal assistants, not the least of which was his physical trainer. As she’d seen for herself almost daily, under the expensive suits and stern gaze was the muscular and well toned physique of a Greek statue. Of course when it came to being tickled it hardly took an Adonis to turn Hannah Quist into a befuddled mess of giggles.
“A second! Eehehe! I just neeheed a second!” Looking up with wide, pleading eyes the gasping girl’s cheeks were already turning a light shade of pink. “Sir pleiiease! Ehee! I can’t think! Eeheiihee!”
His fingers crawling speedily back and forth around her frantically twitching sides, Harry Jr. said nothing. Through the thin cotton of her blouse Hannah could feel each of her bosses’ ten fingertips stroking and poking at her soft flesh. Any attempt to push herself free was met by a rapid pinching, the alarmed girl squealing and darting back into the corner each time. Though she pawed and clutched at the offending digits, shoved at his arms and even managed the odd uncoordinated slap, nothing Hannah did seemed to slow the attack, let alone stop it.
“I’m not going to stop until you give me a name!” Mr. Deveno teased before digging his thumbs alarming deep into the blonde’s lower abdomen.
“AHAA!” Hannah squawked, doubling over and colliding the top of her head with the muscular man’s chiseled stomach. Hunched over in that brief second as she was, Deveno took the opening to tickle her from behind, reaching over her shoulders and running his devious fingers down her supple ribcage. “Ahahanoho!”
Shock jabbing her down either side the buxom girl reared up. Narrowly missing the big man’s chin with her head Hannah shot forward a single panicked step and pressed herself right up against Mr. Deveno. Twisting hard to her left the frazzled young woman found herself engulfed by the older man’s arms, his fingers darting all over her heaving tummy. Doubling over once again Hannah felt her heart sink as her knees turned to jello. With a defeated cry that was quickly overwhelmed by laughter the floor came up fast, Deveno’s weight following close behind and ensuring she ended up a pile of spasming silliness on the lavish rug.
Curling herself into a writhing ball on one side, Hannah bucked and kicked. With her hands clamped over her tummy the gasping girl would shoot one out to slap weakly at the man. Every effort to fight him off only resulted in part of her not being covered, Deveno always targeting any unprotected area with frightening accuracy. As he leaned over her, Hannah plead through schoolgirl laughter, each new second of anguish causing the pink of her cheeks to grow a little darker.
“That’s it, laying around on the job!” Harry Jr. wormed an index finger into his assistant’s underarm causing her to squeak especially loud. “Is this what I can expect of you, Miss Quist? Perhaps you need some lessons in work ethic as well as that memory-jog!” He wiggled four fingers into the nape of her neck and she snapped her shoulder up with a high pitch yowl. “Should I cancel all my appointments for the day, hmm?” Fingers kneaded into Hannah’s tummy and she curled even tighter, her long hair flailing across her flushed cheeks. “Spend all my time doing this? How would you like that?”
“Please no! Aiieehahaha!” The struggling girl’s words came out in a breathless rush. An outlandish tease though it may have been the thought of being tickled for more than the minute or two she’d already suffered sent Hannah’s mind spiraling with horror.
Harry had tickled her a few times like this before, a few awful minutes of helplessness here and there over the last twelve weeks. She’d started to develop something of a sense for when one of his attacks were about happen, not that it ever did any good. In the past Hannah would do much the same, end up on the floor and after a few long and terribly ticklish minutes Mr. Deveno would relent. Somehow this time felt different, that keen sense the curvaceous girl had was telling her something much different now, something much more alarming. Perhaps it was the look in his eye or maybe it was just the new and atrocious idea of being tickled all day, whatever it was Hannah’s internal warning system was screaming that her new boss had no intention of stopping any time soon.
“Appointment! Aeeihahaha!” She managed to gasp out just before her eyes burst open wide from a harsh drilling between two of her ribs. “Tenahaha! Ten! Eiehehaaa! Tenoclock! Ahahaplease! Stopahaha!”
“What’s that? Speak up!” Harry scribbled five fingertips across the small of Hannah’s back and she thrust herself forward sharply.
“Iiiieeheee! Y-yourahaha!” Fingers ran menacingly around the sputtering girl’s tummy and she slapped madly while trying to wrangle her thoughts. Keeping track of a coherent idea was hard enough, making her forcefully smiling lips contort enough to communicate was another mammoth task entirely. “Tehehehe! You’retenoclock!” Hannah whooped in a squealing burst of air.
“Ah…” Standing back to his full height, Mr. Deveno pushed back one of his sleeves with a discerning look. “That time already.” He glanced at the shimmering silver wristwatch that probably cost a year of Hannah’s salary. “Very good Miss Quist, seems there’s hope for you yet.”
As if he’d just completed some mundane task, Harry Jr. strolled over toward his heavy wooden desk. Catching her breath, Hannah let out a long sigh of relief as she pushed herself upright on wobbly arms. Part of the shapely girl’s blouse had untucked itself from her skirt, a slither of creamy white belly showing before she promptly covered it again. Pouting out her bottom lip the mildly disheveled P.A blew a strand of hair from out her reddened face as she tried to settle her heart rate. Harry was prodding at a key on his laptop, eyes fixed firmly on the screen as Hannah stood somewhat shakily to her feet. Brushing the wrinkles from her lower blouse where the man’s fingers had roamed wild, it occurred to her that Mr. Deveno still had her phone.
“That girl we saw-.” Deveno spoke before Hannah could figure out how to ask for her phone back without it turning into another deathly ticklish attack. “-Reid whatever. She’s in legal you said?”
“Yes sir. A paralegal.”
“Good then.” He shut the laptop and started toward the door. “Make sure she’s at the Lottlin meeting this afternoon, will you?”
“Of course.” Hannah hurried to catch up.
“And one more thing.“ Harry Jr. stopped with one hand on the door handle and turned just enough to look his anxious assistant up and down. The glare sent a shudder up her spine. “Do get her name for me, or I predict the next one-on-one meeting we have is going to last much longer.” Hauntingly, Hannah believed him.
Chapter Two: Ends of The Earth
Fifty dollars or thereabouts, more like forty and change, was all Emma Clark had left in the world. She’d been evicted three months ago, not that she was there to see it. Evan, her dimwitted yet well-meaning neighbor, had been kind enough to gather the petit redhead’s things before the landlord let himself in. A major life event for some people, getting kicked out of their home, but for Emma it was just a blip on the radar out of the last six months. Six months of searching and spending every penny she had.
She’d been in Japan during the fall and spent most of winter in Cambodia, then Vietnam. Spring had sprung in the south of China and the humidity did Emma’s frizzy hair no favors, nor did riding a bike. It was all she could afford by then, a beat up old bicycle that the determined twenty-three year old had hauled on trains and rickety buses all the way from Nanning to Yinchuan, northward and beyond. Where she found herself now was about as far from home as the freckle-nosed American could imagine, but it wasn’t the mountainous geography that held Emma’s thoughts. She couldn’t go home, not yet, and if her next stop didn’t bear fruit then it was truly the end of the line.
Leaning her bike against a stone pillar the tiny girl took in her surroundings. A trickle of sweat ran down the back of Emma’s neck, it had been a hard trek up the dirt road to get to the remote bathhouse. Even with a cool fog settled in the valley she felt warm, her tight beige shorts and damp white t-shirt clinging to milky white skin. Pulling her water bottle from the ragged backpack hooked on the back of her bike, Emma took a much needed gulp as she surveyed the old stone structures. Vegetation grew up the high outer walls and cracked stone stairs ran up between the pillars. If it was in fact the bathhouse the young journalist was looking for it wasn’t like any she had ever seen, the place looked more like a temple.
“End of the line…” Emma whispered to herself as she secured the bottle back in place. Dragging her well-worn running shoes across the dusty ground she made her way toward the steps. This had to be the place. It had to be.
Standing at the entrance Emma surveyed the apparent bathhouse. Inside the walls was a courtyard at the center of which was a gnarly old tree. Roots bore up from under the cobbles and uncaring statues of unknown figures stared on from the outer edges. The place hardly looked like much of anything at all anymore, abandoned for years as far as Emma could tell. Plodding further inside, each small step falling with a swell of disappointment, the defeated girl stopped to see a dark doorway at the far end of the yard. No good would come of going in there, she thought, and turned back toward the entrance.
“Nínhǎo.” Came a timid voice from behind, it seemed the only sound for miles.
“Hello?” Emma whipped back toward the darkened door. Her mouth opened a little and for one exhausted, silly second the normally very sensible girl wondered if she was seeing a ghost.
“No tourist.” Said the short Chinese woman. She was older than Emma, late thirties maybe, and stood barely an inch taller. Shoulder length black hair hung straight around her shoulders. Stepping further out of the darkness Emma could see she wore a loose fitting white dress with red floral decorations. A cloth belt was tied tight around her slender hips and as she strolled the slippers on her feet barely made a sound.
“I uh, I’m not a tourist…exactly.” Emma paused, unsure what it is she was anymore. Half a year ago she’d been a journalist but she hadn’t written a word for months. For as sensational a story as Emma had on her hands she often found her thoughts leaning more toward vengeance than exposing the crimes of her enemies. “I’m…a journalist.” Her voice hardly held a tone of conviction toward the claim.
“You go.” The svelte woman approached hurriedly and put one hand on the redhead’s shoulder, guiding her back toward the stairway.
“I-no…wait…” Emma shuffled backward, stammering to explain herself. “I’m looking for someone, a woman.” Her unwelcoming host had both hands raised, pushing her open palms in the air. “I just want to speak to Madam Ui!”
The woman’s hands dropped slowly and her eyes narrowed. “Ui?”
“Yes! Yes, you know her? I have to tell her- to ask her about Jai Lin.”
While the neatly dressed woman made an expression of overt suspicion, Emma tried not to get her hopes up. The last chunk of money she’d spent had been a bribe, paying off a member of one General Qiānfān Suo’s staff. Based on a shred of information that could barely be called a rumor Emma learned that the good General Suo did perhaps know a woman who may in fact be the Madam Ui she was looking for. This particular Ui was the proprietor of a little known and very remote bathhouse, the kind of exclusive establishment known only to China’s most rich and powerful. Apparently, according to Suo’s double-dealing member of staff, the top military man liked to frequent a hidden house of luxury a couple of times a year far in the northern mountains. Had Emma been the praying sort she’d have prayed in that moment.
“My name is Yumao.” The small woman’s eyebrows rose before she pivoted back the way she’d come from. “Follow me.”
Through the dark entrance were more stone steps, narrower than the ones Emma had climbed and thankfully leading down. While the stairs seemed to disappear into pitch darkness Yumao moved with confidence, a small gap spreading between them as the redhead’s eyes adjusted. As she was lead deeper into the mountainside Emma picked up her pace, catching up with her guide just as they reached the bottom. A heavy metal door stood at the bottom, the space barely lit by what little light managed to beam down from outside.
“Shoes.” Yumao stopped just shy of opening the door and glared down at the younger woman’s dusty runners.
“Right…sorry.”
With a metallic creak Yumao shifted the heavy door, her nose wrinkling with effort. Emma felt a little guilty for not helping as the door dragged. She was no expert on doorways but if she had to guess Emma suspected this was not one that got used very often. It was a short-lived train of thought and when the next room was revealed through the open frame the once-eager journalist forget all about her door-centric ponderings. Yumao gestured for her guest to enter and started the arduous process of closing the door again once Emma walked by.
“Wow.” Emma whispered to herself as she examined the large room, the space hardly seeming like the same decrepit building as the one she’d just left behind. With a high ceiling and beautifully tiled floors, large round pillars stood spaced out down either side of a wide rectangular pool. Ornate artwork climbed each pillar, the skilled craftsmanship of whoever built this place obvious in across every inch.
“Wait here.” Yumao secured the door with a definitive click.
“I…” Emma began before realizing doing as she was told was her only sensible course of action. “Okay.”
With her phone back in her bag, and her phone bill very much overdue anyway, Emma had no way to tell time. It was perhaps ten or fifteen minutes before Yumao returned, the time mostly spent feeling a sense of anxious hope and cautious relief. Relief at perhaps finally finding Madam Ui and relief that she was no long peddling up a winding, dusty mountain road in the middle of nowhere. When Yumao walked back in from an entranceway on the far end of the room she did so with a white fluffy towel folded nearly in her arms. Atop the towel was a small cloth and pair of slippers not dissimilar to Yumao’s own. She stopped halfway down the right hand side of the pool and placed the assorted items gently on the floor near the edge.
“You wash.” Yumao stood upright.
“Uh…” Emma wasn’t against the idea of getting clean, far from it, however despite her recent history she did remain somewhat sheepish about strangers seeing her unclothed. “I don’t have a swimsuit.” She gave a small smile to try and pass off the joke, Yumao’s own expression remaining quite plain in response.
“No wash, no see Ui.”
Emma sighed, bashfulness wouldn’t stop her from getting the story. Or getting revenge, whichever it was she was after now. Hooking her thumbs under her beltline the curvy girl wiggled her hips, sliding her shorts down over her well-rounded butt. As she let the shorts fall by her knees Emma glanced up to see Yumao still standing halfway along the poolside. “Are you…going to stay there or…?” The apparently concise older woman stayed silent, her sharp features giving nothing away as to her thoughts.
Stepping out of her shorts Emma figured she’d been in less clothes in much worse situations than this. Leaning over she pinched the end of one small white sock and pulled it off, her tiny barefoot cool against the tile when she put it down. After plucking off her other sock Emma stood upright and started to slowly tug up her shirt, her cheeks warming with a gentle blush as her midriff came into view. Up and over her bra, Emma’s freckled cleavage ballooned up, her large bosoms squished together behind each cup. Only then did the nearly nude girl remember which panties she was wearing, a frilly pink pair that mismatched with her plain white bra. She tossed the shirt down into the pile and felt a little bad for the mess, then took a step toward the invitingly calm water.
“Ah.” Yumao held up one disapproving index finger, which stopped Emma in her tracks. That same finger dropped slightly, the tip pointing back and forth between the scantily clad girl’s tight-fitting bra and lacy panties.
“Do you think you could turn around maybe or…” Emma trailed off into defeated silence as she looked down at her voluptuous, creamy white body. Reaching awkwardly behind herself and arching her back a little, she fumbled at her bra clasp. Whatever her reservations about getting undressed in front of a complete stranger, Emma had to admit the feeling of relief across her chest as the bra snapped loose was almost worth the embarrassment.
Sliding the shoulder straps down her arms, Emma dropped the well-worn bra into her other well-worn clothes. A small showing of goosebumps spread across her newly naked breasts as the open air felt chill against the sweat-slicked undersides. Left in only her panties Emma did much the same as she had with her shorts, hooking her thumbs under each side and slipping them downward. With a butt as shapely as hers she had to reach back a little, pulling the lacy underwear down passed her thick thighs before letting them drop. Cupping one hand over the short red hairs between her legs, Emma looked to Yumao for approval and felt a peculiar flutter in her lower tummy upon making eye contact with the unflinching woman.
Yumao nodded ever-so-slightly and Emma shook off that odd flutter as she made way for the pool. Walking slowly, small dimples formed on the outer sides of her bare butt with each step, Yumao’s eyes following the naked journalist intently. At the edge the fully nude girl gingerly stepped down onto a small set of stairs, the second step dipping her tiny toes into warm water. Feeling the soft caress of the pool Emma closed her eyes, Yumao could watch all she liked for all she cared, it was the most relaxed she’d felt in weeks. Moving further into the pool the water rose up her thighs, every inch washing away the weeks and months of hard travel.
“Mmm…” Emma cooed softly as she moved toward the middle of the large pool, the water lapping gently under her collarbone. She spread her arms out and lifted one foot, only just standing on the tips of her toes as she floated without a care. Scarcely a moment later two young women strolled in through the far door, both of them entirely naked.
Yumao gestured one open palm toward the nude girls. “Luli and Wei.” The pair of them started down the steps into the water, each one carrying a small white cloth, the tiniest hint of a smirk at the corner of each girl’s lips. “They will help you wash.”
“Help me…? Oh-oh no, that’s okay.” Feeling decidedly a good bit more uncomfortable than she had a second before Emma put one hand up, waving it in a polite decline.
As Luli and Wei slinked their slender bodies into the water small ripples spread across the surface. Once touching down on the pool floor one girl smoothly drifted left while the other eased to the right, their eyes locked on their guest like sly sharks. Emma could feel herself blushing again, her cheeks flushing hot as she shifted focus rapidly back and forth between the advancing girls. That strange flutter reared itself again, lower this time, so low in fact it could barely be considered in the area of her tummy anymore. Slowly starting to back away Emma swallowed, the thought of Luli and Wei putting their hands on her shapely body doing nothing to calm the flutter between her thighs.
“You must be very clean for Ui.” Yumao said as the slow pursuit continued throughout the pool. “Ui will see no dirty guest.”
“I-I-I’ll get clean!” Emma stammered, surprised at how effortlessly fast the new arrivals were cutting through the water. “I swear, I don’t need help, really!” Luli and Wei were so close she had to turn her head back and forth to look between them. “I-I’m serious, really, no help necessary!”
Wei, or Luli, whoever it was on her right moved up to Emma’s side. With barely a couple of feet between them the redhead turned, her hands raised and palms open. Emma smiled, doing her best to stay polite as she stepped back, Wei coming toward her with the little cloth in one hand. Deep down the frustrating flutter took a turn for the worse as it upgraded to a titillating tingling sensation, the whole scenario causing the frizzy haired girl no end of confusion. With the gap closing quickly between her and Wei, Emma tried to push backward a little faster, only to feel a sudden brush against one side.
“Eeii!” Tensing upright the surprised girl snapped her elbows down by her sides and shot a look back behind her. Luli, smiling eagerly, waved her small washcloth just above the surface. “S-seriously, seriously!” Emma turned between the two girls, both index fingers raised at the pair. Until that quick touch it somehow hadn’t occurred to the hopelessly sensitive journalist that having the two girls touch her might tickle, and the realization dropped on her like a ten-ton weight.
“Deeii!” Emma squealed again when Wei sneakily swept a corner of her cloth just above the flinching girl’s hip. “Yumao!” She looked to the older woman standing at the pool’s edge, her expression unmoved by the shameful lack of composure before her. “Yumao tell-tell them no, tell them not to!” A familiar panic was speeding up the redhead’s heartbeat, there was no way she could get through being washed by these two nubile girls without losing her mind.
“They only want to wash you.” Yumao said plainly. “Stay still, let them do their job.”
“I can’t! I cahan’t!” Jumping from a gentle stroke across her back the buxom girl dashed forward, her hefty breasts breaching the surface before splashing back down. “Really, please, I’m telling yoohoohooeehehe!” Both girls poked their cloths into Emma’s sides making her squirm and wriggle like a buffoon.
“What is wrong with you?” Yumao frowned. “Are you drunk?”
“No, no I’m just-“ Emma spun about, she couldn’t bring herself to say the word. After everything she’d gone through, the things she’d seen and the things that had been done to her, it was a fact she kept well buried. Seeing there was no immediate way to outrun Luli and Wei, Emma puffed her freckled cheeks out with a deep breath and dived under the water.
Other than the gentle sweeping of her own limbs, silence hit the nude girl’s ears. Never the athlete, Emma wasn’t a strong a swimmer, still she only needed a little distance. Enough of a gap between her and the cloth-wielding girls to think straight, enough to explain why she needed no assistance, or at least explain without really explaining. Damn that tingling between her thighs, Emma thought as she pushed on, her legs spread as her arms thrust forward to a point and pushed back. Something touched the back of her thigh and Emma swam faster. Another touch poked her right butt cheek far sooner than she expected and small bubbles escaped her pursed lips.
“Mm!” Emma jerked her hips when something brushed along the front of her right thigh, almost instantly followed by a soft stroke against the left of her abdomen. “Mm! Mmm!” Her muffled whine grew louder under the water, a reaction she couldn’t stop as the random prodding escalated to speedy pokes up both her sides. “Eiieeeheehee!” Emma burst from the water, arms flailing as her involuntary grin let out the last of her air in a spasm of high pitch giggles.
“You are drunk.” Yumao was still frowning.
“Eeehaha! Eeeinoho!” Emma twisted and turned, her big bosoms jiggling as she bounced around between the two perky girls. “I’m not drunk!” She squealed through panicked laughter, Wei and Luli pressing in close as they fondled her lower torso. “Ahaha! Stop! Stopstopahaah! I’m ticklish! I’m tiheeheeheeno!”
Crushingly the confession, hard as it was to make, fell on deaf ears. Maybe Luli and Wei simply didn’t understand, though in her splashing fervor Emma suspected Yumao probably got the message. There was no diving away now, the bosomy girl couldn’t have taken a deep breath for all the money in the world. Pokey washcloth corners and rogue fingertips were everywhere around her, darting along her lower ribs and trailing around her tummy. Emma’s soaked hair whipped across her reddened face, her glistening boobs bouncing wildly as she slapped at the water.
Grabbing at the younger girls’ swiftly moving hands was proving to be an almost impossible task. Emma had never been much good at defending herself from tickling on dry land, some might even say terrible. Uncoordinated as she was in her fitfully giggling state the water made fighting back painfully worse, any offending wrist or finger she did manage to snag easily slipped free a split second later. Caught between Luli and Wei and their four arms and twenty fingers poor Emma was rapidly turning from world-weary traveler to giggling moron. Every bit of determination, anger and guilt, all of it chased away and it only took a few light pokes to send her mind reeling.
“You silly girl.” Yumao shook her head, her disdain going unnoticed by the frantic redhead in the pool. “This is no place for foolish games.”
“Please! Eheehaha!” Emma gasped, spinning helpless from Luli to Wei and back again as the girls pinched her abdomen and stroked their cloths across her hypersensitive skin. “Not-ahahano! Notagame! Eeiehestop!”
To match her blushing cheeks the pleading girl’s forehead was rosy red too, all of it a result of what Emma hoped was nothing more than disastrous indignity. Trapped there between those slyly smiling younger women, the squirming redhead was trying and failing to ignore a growing warmth between her thighs. Tickling, of all things in the world, Emma dreaded it with the deepest of anxieties. To be tickled was to lose all control, her studious mind and horrifically sensitive body, it stripped her of all she was and turned her into a mindlessly laughing twit, a side of her she never wanted to know. It was about the worst torment Emma could imagine, until the witch Jai Lin had shown her otherwise.
Under Jai Lin’s devastatingly skilled fingers Emma was wrenched into a world of suffering beyond any she thought herself capable of surviving. Six months ago almost to the day Jai Lin had turned the freckled girl’s body into a playground of nightmares, made her scream and laugh and cry and beg for mercy that would never come. It was by no contest the most degrading and hellish experience of Emma’s life. And, to the young journalist’s infinite remorse and confusion, it had also been the most dreadfully erotic.
Before that day the thought of getting aroused from being tickled would have been absurd to the extreme, but she had lived it. Against every ounce of willpower Emma had been pushed to the edge of ecstasy and beyond, her own body used against her in torturous seduction. Jai Lin had done something to her that day, awakened or created a terrible thing that once let loose could not be caged. Every time Emma woke up soaked in sweat and wet between her thighs from another nightmare she would curse Jai Lin’s name. As Wei and Luli’s quick fingers pinched at her naked body Emma found once again reason to curse the witch.
“Ohplease! Ehehee! Ohpleasestopahaha!” Emma’s normally frizzy hair whipped in straightened water-heavy locks, her pink nipples noticeably swollen as she splashed. “Make them stop!” She starred wide-eyed to the stoic Yumao, her voice cracking with high-pitched laughter. “Mahayaheehe! Makethemstahahap!”
“No English.” Yumao said with what might have been the barest hint of a smile.
Though she wasn’t able to wipe the contorting grin from her face, Emma couldn’t imagine what there was to smile about. Her face twisted wildly from furrowed brows and wide-mouthed misery to a look of desperate surprise and bimbo-like giddiness. Behind it all was an ever-growing frustration, the anger Emma felt from being powerless and forced to laugh no matter how hard she tried to suppress it. Why anyone would want to cause those awful feelings in another human being she couldn’t understand, though it was clear Luli and Wei must have found some appeal as their nimble fingertips found the squishy sides of Emma’s breasts.
“Eeiiieheeheenoho!” Crisscrossing her arms to cover herself the busty girl knocked their hands away, only for five fingers to dive down each side and pinch playfully at her ribs. “Yihaha! Ohnopleahahaha!”
With a howl Emma leapt forward, more fingers finding her tummy and sending her recoiling backward. Luli’s nails –or maybe they were Wei’s- danced up one butt cheek and made her squeal, the hectically giggling girl almost leaping halfway out the water. Falling back with a large splash into the waiting hands of her attackers Emma would have sooner leapt into a pool of piranhas. In the fraction of a moment before their fingers were on her again Emma noticed the washcloths, both discarded and floating aimlessly away. Evidently the pretense of being bathed had been dropped entirely, a fact reinforced by Wei and Luli’s twenty combined fingers rushing straight toward her naked body.
“EIIEHEE!” Emma wailed, throwing herself about madly as the two girls clawed at her from either side. She wished at the very least they had trapped her while clothed, then perhaps the alarm bells of being so atrociously vulnerable wouldn’t have been blaring quite so loud. Perhaps the quivering between her thighs might not have been so intense either, or her stiffened nipples maybe not so rigidly aroused.
In her feverish state some part of Emma’s whirling mind thought maybe being fondled by Wei and Luli wouldn’t have been altogether terrible, if it weren’t for the tickling. They were very pretty, their toned bodies pressing and brushing against her, their flirty little smiles making her heart skip. Then again it might have all been Jai Lin’s wickedness confusing her, it wasn’t like Emma ever had an intimate interest in girls before that demoness had her way with her. As one of Wei’s teasing fingertips whisked across the redhead’s puffy areole a terrible idea occurred to Emma. Maybe it no longer mattered who was doing the tickling, but that the tickling itself was the very thing sending her libido into orbit.
“I cahaha! I can’t!” Emma squawked, her fruitless efforts to protect herself quickly becoming even more pitiful. Frolicking fingers seemed to be everywhere at once, poking her belly and wiggling across her ribs. For all her reaching and squirming, for all the spinning around desperately to catch hands that were already somewhere else by the time she got there, none of it mattered. Luli and Wei had Emma at their mercy and the increasingly delirious girl was losing her ability to reason, all the while her unruly levels of lust had long since spiraled out of control.
Emma wanted to sink, to drop to the pool floor and stay there. If nothing else the sweet embrace of the water might give her some brief respite from the nonstop onslaught of fiendish fingers. Letting her kicking legs out from under her the bewildered girl started to drop, only for Luli and Wei to press in against her from either side. Keeping Emma afloat the two girls squished themselves up to her sides, their arms hugging around her midsection and fingertips crawling around her back and heaving stomach. Caught between them, the helpless girl’s legs flailed uselessly, her curvaceous body shaking as she laughed and plead.
Before Emma could even begin to think of a way out she felt a diabolical caress against her left ear. With a shrill yelp the surprised girl snapped one shoulder up to cover that side of her head, only for a similarly cruel sensation to accost her right earlobe. Shrugging both shoulders high like a poor impression of a turtle, Emma giggled loudly as Luli and Wei both nibbled at her ears, the two-sided tease driving her into wide-eyed lunacy. She tried rocking forward but with arms wrapped around her there was nowhere to go, and jerking backward held no more success. With hot breath against her upper neck the poor girl shook her head, shrieking wordlessly when the very tips of Luli and Wei’s tongues slipped around the backs of her ears.
“EIIEEHEEHEE!” Emma’s legs were kicking out in front of her, her entire spasming body held up by the wicked pair of attackers. Fingers explored down her trembling thighs and around her midriff, the crazed girl’s face beet red and her eyes almost permanently aghast. With every crippling stroke across her defenseless skin Emma found it more and more difficult to create words, those few she did manage broken and cracked by laughter. “EEEHEENAH! PLEEEHEEASE! PLEHEEHEEASE!”
Ignoring their catch, Wei and Luli each let the hands they had around Emma’s front wander higher. Pinching and playing over her supple ribs, their sharp little nails soon found the undersides of her bouncing breasts. In unison the two girls let their fingers dance around, gradually moving up the outer sides where they poked and prodded. By the time the playful pair found the sprinkling of freckles across the top of Emma’s chest she was livid with laughter, thrashing like someone had dropped a high voltage wire in the pool. As their five fingers atop each bosom shifted downward toward her achingly swelled nipples their other hands did not sit idle. Hugging Emma around her back, Wei and Luli each kept a hand at her lower ribs, their fingertips constantly drilling into the soft spots between.
Sizzling hot to the point Emma feared the water might boil around her, the helplessly amorous girl squealed with wordless agony as fingertips feathered across her nipples. Her weakly slapping hands reached up to stop them but every time she did Luli and Wei would claw viciously at her ribs with their other hands. At the sides of her head the devious girls continued to nibble Emma’s preposterously ticklish ears, their darting tongue-tips licking around her upper neck. Mindless with laughter the manic girl couldn’t tell what was worse, the tickling or how distressingly horny she was.
“You are supposed to be getting clean!” Yumao snapped when the triple-pronged tickle attack abruptly stopped. “Even from here I can see you are filthier than when you arrived!”
“Uhh…uhh…” Emma wheezed, a single tear trickling down one of her fiery hot cheeks. Soaking locks of hair matted to her face and neck, her sides and abdomen were pink where the girls’ fingers had run wild and free. Were it not for Luli and Wei holding her at the elbows Emma would have sunk like a tickle-addled stone.
“Bring her to me.” Yumao said sternly.
“N…nuh…no…” Emma writhed weakly as she felt hands press against her back, the two girls guiding her toward the side of the pool. Even the gentle touch Luli and Wei’s hands against her skin made the redhead’s stomach tighten with arousal, their firm grips around her forearms turning her on even more. Looking up at Yumao, Emma had no idea what the older woman had in mind for her but she knew it couldn’t be good. “P-please…” She stammered still trying to catch her breath and reassemble her fractured thoughts. “I…I just…want to talk…”
“Mm, so you said.” In one elegant motion Yumao kneeled down by the poolside. “You will talk to me now.”
“N-no…what are you doing?!” As the two girls lifted her arms out of the water Emma struggled, twisting her hips and putting her feet against the wall of the pool as they dragged her near. “Eii!” She squeaked when Luli poked a single fingertip just above her hip, the nude prisoner’s feet slipping from the wall. “I-I’ll talk! I’ll tell you anything you want to know!” Emma winced as her arms were stretched out of the pool, her big cushy breasts ballooning as they pressed against the edge.
Yumao took hold of the redhead’s slender wrists, her grip surprisingly strong as she pinned Emma’s hands to the floor. “Few enter the way you did. Who told you of this place?”
“I-“ Emma hesitated, a good journalist never gives up a confidential source, though given the consequences she was more than willing to break that particular rule.
“Tickle her.” Yumao said before Emma could spill the beans.
“No waiHEYHEHEE!” She bucked, tugging hard at her trapped arms as Wei and Luli each wriggled a single index finger into her defenseless underarms. Throwing her head back, Emma wailed with laughter, her shapely ass dancing beneath the water as her bare feet fought in slippery panic to push against the wall. “PLEASEI’LLTALK! EEEHEEHEE!”
“What do you want with Ui?” Yumao demanded when the two girls stopped, both of them looming close.
“Please! Please I just-“ Emma blubbered, the fear of being tickled again making her wince as she tried hurriedly to compose herself. Yumao simply nodded, and Luli and Wei set their fingers to work again. “EEEIIHEE!”
Clawing helplessly at the floor between Yumao’s knees, Emma kicked violently while teasing nails danced around her bare ass cheeks. As her hefty bosoms pressed and squished into the wall, water squirted up across the squealing girl’s freckled chest. Of all the places she had ever been tickled her shapely butt was one of the most sensitive, and as a result one of the most intolerably arousing. Part of Jai Lin’s curse, Emma was discovering in her fervor, the more painfully ticklish something was the more it seemed to turn her on. She had hoped over the months that such a thing would be restricted to her nightmares, yet now she was living one.
“I just…a second….just a second…to think!” Emma gasped, rubbing her thighs together without thought. Luli and Wei stood poised for more and the ever-present threat caused an unintentional giggle to bubble in the redhead’s heaving chest.
“No think, only talk.” Even Yumao’s stern tone had become a cause of titillation, Emma was a catastrophic mess of lewd torment.
From either side Luli and Wei pounced, their twenty fingers running amok. Nowhere was safe, rolling from side to side as best she could against the wall there was no move Emma could make that gave her any respite. Fingertips roamed her convulsing tummy and darted up her sides, ribs were pinched and underarms were burrowed into. At no point in the latest round of menace was there a singular second one of the girls wasn’t stroking Emma’s bouncing butt cheeks. Squealing herself into a frenzy the ravaged girl could feel her sanity slipping, the prospect of answering Yumao’s question going right along with it.
“You work for Jai Lin!” Yumao barked after a full minute, or maybe it was ten.
“No! No I-“
“Tickle her!”
“AAAHAHAAA!” Emma wailed, in part from Yumao’s crushing accusation. One of Wei’s deft fingertips drilled into her belly button. Luli moved behind and set about clawing with particular viciousness at Emma’s ribs. The thought she could be free if they’d only let her explain ricocheted madly around her mind.
Luli’s rib assault dug savagely deep, her sneaky digits jabbing frequently into the ballooning sides of Emma’s breasts. Where Wei kept that one finger drilling dutifully into the shrieking girl’s navel her other hand had even wickeder torments in mind. Stealthily Wei’s free hand dived down, scribbled across the redhead’s lower tummy and delved between her thighs. Five tiny fingertips danced through the short fiery hairs and Emma crossed her legs in a clumsy, flailing attempt to protect her excruciatingly sensitive pussy.
“Confess!” Yumao ordered.
Emma could barely see straight, let alone think. Tears started to blur her vision and the rapidly increasing danger of her libido erupting made everything worse. Breathless, the poor girl had to speak up, had to clear the air and-
“You come for Jai Lin!” When the older woman spoke Emma’s toes curled, each shrill command and accusation as terrifying as they were arousing. “How do you know about this place?!”
“I swear!” Emma wheezed. “I don’t- I-“
“Tickle her feet!”
“NO WAIT!” In unison Wei and Luli dropped beneath the surface, their eager hands immediately pawing at Emma’s ankles. “PLEASE PLEASE! You don’t understand!” She looked up to Yumao with wide, pleading eyes and found a pitiless stare in return. Kicking as she begged, Emma tugged and twisted while the girls under water wrestled her lower legs into their arms. “I don’t work for Jai Lin! I’ll swear on anything!” She stressed, her voice cracking at the thought of what Luli and Wei were intending to do.
“That is exactly what an agent of Jai Lin would say.” Yumao said in the same moment both Luli and Wei came up behind Emma, a struggling leg each wrapped under one arm.
“Noho! Nono!” Emma chocked back a sob, her naked body stretched back through the water as both her ankles were held in the crooks of the young women’s arms. “I’m not an agent! I’m not anything! I want to stop her!”
“Maybe you do, maybe you don’t.” Yumao leaned in a little closer. “Soon we will know for certain.”
“NO AWNO PLEA-“ Emma shook, jerking madly at her legs, her bare butt cheeks bobbing up from under the water and glistening in the light. As nimble fingers wiggled softly across both her trapped soles the frenzied girl would have confessed to anything in the world. “-EEIIIGGHAHAHAHA!”
Thick tears streamed down Emma’s stretched cheeks as screaming laughter echoed around the lavish room. Arching her back hard, the hysterical girl splashed furiously in her captive state, the feeling of five tiny fingers racing around each bare foot driving her completely mad. Every tiny stroke propelled Emma’s fuming libido to new heights, her nipples swollen to the point of pain. From her marshmallowy soft heels Luli and Wei raced their devilish fingers downward, scouring their victim’s silky soles and raking cruelly across the tender balls of each foot.
“Tell the truth!” Yumao demanded, the words going unheard by her tickle-crazed prisoner. “Tell me! Tickle her harder!” Somehow Emma did manage to catch that last bit and the thought sent her careering straight to the very edge of inevitable climax.
Ever obedient, Wei and Luli followed Yumao’s command with devastating results. Skillful digits frolicked along the bottoms of Emma’s tiny toes. Bucking almost entirely out of the water, the wanton redhead let out a piercing screech, her toes spreading wide. Taking the opening as an invitation, the two cunning water-nymphs dug their fingers directly under Emma’s toes, wriggling mercilessly while she spasmed and splashed. Flexing her bouncing ass tight, thigh muscles squeezed and a storm of tingles crackled up the maddened girl’s spine. Emma’s shrill laughter was interrupted by hoarse moans as she braced for her nightmares to become reality, then the tickling stopped.
Yumao bent forward, her lips stroking against Emma’s ear as she spoke softly. “Why…are…you…here?”
“Pleeaheeheese!” Emma giggled, turning her head uselessly. The question meant nothing, she was beyond the point of no return and the only thing that mattered now was how horrendous the carnal display would be. “Y-you have to stopeehehee!”
“I have to do no such thing…”
“Nohoho!” Emma’s pussy throbbed, she could feel the distinct warmth of orgasm swelling between her thighs. “You don’t understaahahand!” They had to let her go, they had to. She wanted to run and curl up in a dark corner somewhere. “I’m-I’m gonna! Awhh!” A squeaky moan escaped Emma’s lips as she writhed, tugging weakly against all those hands holding her naked body against in place. “I’m gonna c-“
Fingers spidered up and down Emma’s upturned feet. The sudden excruciating shock let loose a thunderous orgasm, primal pleasure ravaging her struggling body. Emma’s scream was so loud even Yumao winced, though it didn’t slow Wei or Luli. Deft digits sped wildly around the thrashing redhead’s bare feet, her laughter locked in fierce battle with a cacophony of unhinged moans. Every cruel stroke across her soles was like tossing TNT onto a raging fire, the severity of Emma’s orgasm growing with every second. Her tiny toes curled tight, her soles wrinkling and receiving only more tickling for their trouble. Emma’s ass cheeks flexed hard and her thighs trembled, the explosive fit of torturous bliss causing her body to become outrageously more sensitive than just a few short moments before.
Luli and Wei continued tickling, merciless in their fiendish assault across Emma’s soles. That first orgasm rolled into a second and that one careened unforgivingly into a third, the snowball effect turning quickly into an avalanche of mind-bending delirium. Thick beads of sweat coated Emma’s bright red forehead, the soles of her painfully sensitive feet pink where fingers had run wild for minutes on end. By the time the two girls finally relented their diabolical game Emma was trembling, twitching mess of orgasmic jello.
Hands grabbed at her and lifted, the disheveled journalist cooing weakly as the three women dragged her out of the pool. They lay Emma on an open towel, it’s small fluffy fronds like feathers against her inhumanly sensitive skin. “I…don’t…” She said with what miniscule strength she could muster, her voice a mousy squeak between raspy breaths. “I don’t…work…for Jai Lin.”
Yumao sat on her knees and leaned down. “Okay.” She kissed Emma gently on the forehead. “I believe you.”
Chapter Three: The Lottlinn Meeting
As the big-wigs shuffled in, all smirking and impressed with themselves, Hannah stood at the head of Harry Deveno Jr.’s enormous boardroom. To the right of her was a door, then a giant TV that could retract back into the wall. To the left, floor to ceiling windows with a view of San Francisco’s downtown core. A few feet ahead sat the obnoxiously long boardroom table, around it a dozen uncomfortable looking, obscenely expensive chairs. The executives and analysts and lawyers and whatever other stuffed-suit-men filed in from the far end of the room. Hannah did her best to look sure of herself, and ignore each fellow’s shameless gaze as they looked her up and down.
The last to enter was Harry’s closest advisor, John Quieter. A stern man in his late 60s, John had been Harold Senior’s top lawyer until the elder Deveno’s somewhat mysterious passing many years before. Junior had gone on to make Quieter the head of his corporate legal department. He sported a fine dark suit and bushy grey eyebrows. Tailing nervously behind the top legal mind of the Deveno Corporation was the new paralegal, Cindy Reid. Cindy had no business being at a meeting of this magnitude and everyone knew it, but what Harry Deveno Junior wants, Harry Deveno Junior gets.
Some assistant or secretary closed the door behind the last of the men to arrive. A few conversations took place among the suits as they took their seats, a couple were business related and one fellow whined about his wife. As best Hannah could tell most of them men either boasted about their golf game or made fun of someone else’s. Suitably, John Quieter took his position to the immediate right of the head of the table. Harry Deveno’s right hand man, as ever. Cindy Reid sat beside the old lawyer, her eyes fixed on the tabletop.
“Gentlemen…” Harry sauntered in from the door beside the TV. The large room fell silent and all eyes turned to the man who owned the building. “Not that I don’t like you all, but I’d sooner be out on my yacht.” The whole room laughed, a couple of the men much louder than was warranted. Even the anxious paralegal managed a halfhearted smile. Harry ran a hand through his well-kept hair and scratched the back of his head, his tone turning a good bit more serious. “You all know what we’re dealing with here. I want this deal to go through and I want it today. I’m told Gwendolyn is just about set up on her end, right?” He turned to Hannah and she nodded. “Good. We won’t be able to tame the dragon but let’s at least see if we can get it to behave for once.” The room laughed again.
A few minutes later Harry’s stepmother called. Gwendolyn Deveno had been Harold Senior’s fourth wife, much to his son’s chagrin. The list of things about Gwendolyn that angered Harry Jr. was long indeed, not the least of which was that they were practically the same age. Number one on the list however, was that the long time widow owned exactly fifty percent of the family business. No big decision could ever get made without both Harry and Gwendolyn agreeing on it, a feat so monumental it was a wonder they hadn’t gone bankrupt twenty years ago.
“Gwen.” Harry said, hardly managing to hide his disdain.
“Junior.” Gwendolyn smiled sweetly on the TV screen. She was a striking woman, a fact emphasized by the fact she sat with her feet up on a sun-lounger by some poolside. In what was no doubt a calculated look for a room full of leering men the bosomy blonde wore a loose fitting wrap, her hefty cleavage and long legs putting on quite a show. A pair of sandals sat idle beside her chair, her bare feet just off screen. Gwendolyn sat up slightly and pulled back the sunglasses from her face, blue eyes looking right into the camera. “I don’t know why you’re bothering with all this.” She said. “You know my decision.”
“Well-“ Harry feigned a welcoming demeanor. “-we hope to convince you otherwise.”
What followed was forty-five minutes of back and forth between Harry and his small army, and Gwendolyn who appeared to have no one beside herself. The topic of debate was the potential purchase of Lotlinn Shipping and Logistics, a much sought after Dutch company, which Harry believed could net them enormous profits. Gwendolyn thought otherwise, and without her signing off there would be no purchase and none of the giant stacks of money Harry was envisioning. While a lot of the conversation went over Hannah’s head, in her amateur estimation it seemed as though Harry and Co. were making a compelling case. In fact as far as the young P.A could tell it seemed the only reason Gwendolyn wasn’t agreeing to the deal was because she knew it would enrage her stepson.
“Look, I’m sorry gentlemen-“ Gwendolyn interrupted one of the analysts who was tapping enthusiastically on a graph. “-I can see you’ve all worked very hard on this, but I’m just not seeing it.”
“If my father were alive-“ Harry began, one fist clenched hard behind his back.
“Well, he’s not.” The unwavering woman cut him off. “He entrusted us to see the business right because he knew we’d be strongest when we agree. This Lottlin deal isn’t going ahead, Harry, and that’s the end of it.”
“I was going to say…” Harry said sharply. “If my father were alive I’m certain he would be able to change your mind.”
“And as I said, our dear Harold isn’t here. It’s a moot point, Junior.”
Gwendolyn looked like she was about to say something else but Harry talked first. In the second before he spoke, Hannah noticed her boss’s body language shift. His fist unclenched and his shoulders relaxed. An odd calm replaced his temper, which had looked like it was about to boil over just seconds before. “You remember how good he was at changing your mind, don’t you Gwen?” Harry’s tone turned mildly smug.
“We’re done here-“
“One moment,-“ Harry put up a single finger. “-hold on. Perhaps we should meet in person, don’t you think? Just you and I. It’s been a few years. I could convince you, the way my father used to.”
Gwendolyn scoffed. “Really Harry, if this is what it’s come to…don’t embarrass yourself.”
“Oh, I’m not embarrassed!” He shrugged, making quite a show of it as he wandered slowly toward the right hand side of the table. “In fact, I daresay if I were tell all these fine men here how my father used to go about changing your mind so effectively you’d be the one blushing, don’t you think?”
“Good bye, Harry.” Gwendolyn waved a dismissive hand to someone off screen. “Gentlemen.” And then the TV went blank.
“Hm.” Harry stared at the dark screen, a look of mild amusement across his face. He wandered behind John Quieter and came to a stop right behind the sheepish paralegal. “Not to worry. While my esteemed partner there might think negotiations have ended I promise you all, they are very much ongoing.“ Harry bought his hands up and gently placed a large palm over each of the young paralegal’s shoulders.
Cindy tensed up and Hannah caught herself cringing with sympathy. She recalled just a few short hours before when those very same hands had been crawling all over her. Cindy can’t have known about Harry’s unusual handsy games, Hannah thought, the pair hadn’t even met before that moment. Instinct maybe, Hannah thought, or being one of only two young women in a room full of older men. It was intimidating enough, to say nothing of having the man they all looked to single you out.
“You see gentlemen-“ Harry continued, his grip firm around the busty younger woman’s shoulders. “-my so called stepmother, Mrs. Deveno, happens to suffer from an extraordinary affliction not entirely uncommon among some people. My father in his wisdom was quite adept at using that affliction to his advantage.” Harry leaned down and put his lips uncomfortably close to Cindy’s ear. “Can you guess what the affliction is, Miss Reid?”
Cindy tilted her head away slowly, not wanting to look like she was recoiling too fast. “N-no?” She said shakily.
“Take notes gentlemen-“ Harry stood upright, his hands still cupped over the girl’s shoulders. “-for the next time your mistress is threatening to tell your wife-“ All the men laughed. “-I shall demonstrate how to change her mind!”
As Harry’s left hand slid down the paralegal’s bicep, Hannah cringed. She knew exactly what was about to happen to the poor girl but there wasn’t a thing in the world she could do about it. At least whenever Harry had decided to get handsy with her there hadn’t been an audience, Hannah thought. Cindy’s only hope was that she wasn’t half so sensitive as Hannah.
“Eii!” Cindy jerked sharply to her right as one of Mr. Deveno’s fingertips prodded gently into her upper ribcage. By the look on her face it seemed she’d have jumped clean out of her chair were it not for that large hand pressing down on her shoulder. In an instant Cindy’s cheeks blushed bright red, her fists clenched in front of her as she sat tense.
“Have you guessed the affliction now, Miss Reid?” Harry’s hand darted down behind the table and goosed quickly at Cindy’s side.
Her eyes shot wide and loud giggles poured from her full lips as she wriggled. Twisting awkwardly in her chair, Cindy clamped both hands down to defend against Mr. Deveno’s roaming fingers, his other hand easily holding her in place. As a pained expression contorted across her laughing face Cindy’s large bosoms bounced beneath her blouse, every pair of eyes in the room fixed squarely upon her. With her long hair flicking every which way it appeared there was little room for saving any dignity or composure, Cindy’s every ounce of effort put toward stopping the large man standing behind her.
For Hannah’s part it was all she could do not to run out of the room. The sense of second hand embarrassment she felt for the squealing paralegal came in just behind her own dreaded fear. As Cindy squeaked and struggled the atmosphere in the room was quickly shifting, the previously stuffy bunch of men gradually starting to look more like a frat party than a business meeting. They were sitting up, leaning closer, making no attempt to disguise their already transparent gazes. To say Hannah was uncomfortable would have been an understatement for the ages. She felt a trickle of nervous sweat run down the back of her neck as she took a half step backward, pressing her back into the wall in an impossible attempt to disappear right through it.
“Any luck, Miss Reid?” Harry teased and slid his other hand off the frazzled girl’s shoulder and down to other side.
“Eiieeha!” Cindy spun about as she was tickled from both sides, her back arching and her hands slapping loudly against the tabletop. “Ehahaha! M-Mister Devenohohaha!” The distressed girl shook, dancing clumsily in her seat and crashing back and forth between the table edge and her chair. “N-no more eeheehee!”
She couldn’t escape and the dozen men were leering in earnest, even John Quieter wasn’t being shy about watching the terrible show beside him. Hannah wanted to say something, to put a stop to this madness but she couldn’t imagine how Mr. Deveno would respond. Worse still, she dreaded how Mr. Deveno might treat her once they were alone. For all the humiliation and pity she felt for Cindy, Hannah simply couldn’t risk having everything come undone.
“See how she fights it?” Harry flashed his boisterous grin around the room. “Get yourselves a lady like Miss Reid here and she’ll fulfill your every desire! And if not-“ His wiggling fingers turned to crushing lobster claws and he dug in hard just above Cindy’s gyrating hips.
“EIIIHEE!” She sat up fast and threw her head back as she squealed loudly, collapsing back down again and grabbing at Harry’s hands. “Stop! Ahahaha! Stoppleeheeheese!”
Without thinking Hannah brushed her own side, her skin tingling with sympathy. One of the men, a sneering slick-haired executive, had one arm propped up on his elbow and was wiggling his fingers in the air in Cindy’s direction. Most of them were grinning as they watched her laugh and plead for the indignity to end, one had half his bottom lip between his teeth and an eyebrow raised. The analyst with the graph was busy nudging the guy next to him, the pair of them evidently thrilled by Cindy’s helpless suffering.
Harry took a big step backward, rolling the chair and Cindy away from the table. “And if she doesn’t do what you want right away boys, just keeping tickling until she does!”
He spun the chair a full 180 degrees and caught the arms, the hapless blonde flailing around as she came face to face with Mr. Deveno. With the table no longer obscuring her view Hannah could see Cindy wore sheer nylon stockings, a fact made clear as she was only wearing one shoe. The other heel, it seemed, had come off somewhere under the table during the struggle. Before Cindy could gather herself from the spiraling ride Harry had dropped to his knees right in front of her, his hands snapping out and clawing wildly at her cotton covered tummy.
“Nohoeeeieee!” She buckled over, her legs kicking spasmodically as she clutched at her tummy.
Two of the men on Hannah’s side of the table stood up for a better view, the others leaning left or right to see around the man opposite him. Thinking about it, Hannah started to wonder what might have happened if Mr. Deveno hadn’t seen Cindy wandering across the atrium floor that morning. It was plain as day the cunning older man had planned this display of power should negotiations not go his way. A way to release the tension, Hannah suspected, someone powerless for Harry to take his frustration out on. Someone who couldn’t do anything to stop him, unlike Gwendolyn Deveno. Hannah feared it may very well have been her laughing desperately had it not been for Cindy. Looking at the two standing men and the large bulges at the front of their pants, she feared things may still take a turn for the worst.
“Mister Deheheehe! Pleheese! Mistahaha!” Cindy squawked, her whole face bright red as she wriggled further and further toward the edge of her chair.
What happened exactly it was hard to say, to Hannah it looked like Cindy had tried to stand up, or maybe she just collapsed, either way the chair shot back out from behind her. As the back of the chair hit the table, more or less back where it had started, Cindy dropped like a hopelessly ticklish sack of potatoes. Floundering on the carpet in a pile of anguished giggles, the wide-eyed girl curled up one side as Mr. Deveno leaned right over her. Mercilessly he kept kneading at her sides, abdomen and ribs, Cindy’s squeaking pleas falling on the ears of an audience increasingly keen to hear more.
Within a few seconds of hitting the floor Cindy’s other heel was sent flying, her stocking-clad legs kicking aimlessly. Much to Hannah’s horror and the admiration of everyone else, all the fitful movement was causing the poor paralegal’s skirt to ride up. A few kicks later and what was already a very revealing piece of office attire had risen so high it revealed the very bottom of Cindy’s shapely butt right butt cheek. As she shook and squirmed the crease where her thick thighs met her bottom flexed. Falling further upward, the skirt showed off the lower curves of both creamy white cheeks and what was obviously a pair neon pink g-string panties.
“Get yourself a ticklish woman boys!” Harry squeezed one of Cindy’s knees and she screamed. “After a few minutes she’ll be putty in your hands!” He ran that same hand up her thigh and danced the fingers around the rim of her stocking. Cindy grabbed for his hand as she jerked her leg away, not noticing that the sly fellow’s other hand had started plucking at the bottom of her blouse. “Isn’t that right Miss Reid?” Mr. Deveno scurried five fingers up and under her shirt, his wicked touch stroking directly against Cindy’s skin.
“NOHOIIIEEE!” She thrashed and tried to roll away, stopped immediately when Harry’s other hand landed squarely into the small of her back.
“Tickle her boss!” One of the men cheered. “Get her good!” Called another, pumping his fist in the air.
Hannah couldn’t tell if she was trying not to move or just frozen with fear. The door Harry had entered through was just a couple of steps away and the way things were going a quick exit was becoming more tempting by the second. Up to that point all the men remained fixed on Cindy, but the last thing Hannah wanted was to move and catch their attention. She could picture it in a dreadful daydream; one of them turning with a perverse look in his eye, one or two more looking around to see what their buddy was after. Hannah doubted very much that Mr. Deveno would leap to her defense as numerous hands might grab and paw at her. The men on her side of the table were starting to move closer to the action and though it was a guilty thought Hannah couldn’t help but feel a slight relief as she remained still as a statue.
On the other side of the room Harry had allowed Cindy to roll on to her back, only for the big man to immediately straddle her hips. Pinning the much smaller girl in place, her legs kicking furiously out behind him, Mr. Deveno easily sent both hands onto the soft flesh of Cindy’s convulsing abdomen. With her skirt ridden up as it was several of the men behind Harry were treated to a full view of the cackling blonde’s panties, only obstructed at random by her quaking thighs. Though she grabbed and slapped at Mr. Deveno’s hands there was little Cindy could do as he pushed her blouse higher, her heaving ribs and terribly ticklish tummy all out in the open.
“ICAN’TBREAHTE!” Cindy wailed, curling herself up toward the man holding her in place before crashing back down in a mess of involuntary laughter. Held tight between Harry’s knees all the rolling and struggling got her nowhere fast, her nylon feet slipping uselessly across the carpet as she strained to buck him off.
The crowd had gathered around in a bustling, shuffling circle of horny testosterone. Over the tabletop and through the thin gaps between the men Hannah could see Cindy flailing, her top concern undoubtedly the ten fingers running amok across her midriff. They were like a pack of hungry dogs, none making a move of their own as their leader ate his share but all eager to get fed just the same. Hannah could feel that sweat trickling down her neck again, as much as she feared for herself she feared for Cindy almost as much. There wasn’t a man among them who might have had the moral fortitude to stop it, a fact Hannah suspected was very much by Harry’s design.
“Look closely gents!” Mr. Deveno reached back with one hand and pinched cruelly at Cindy’s knee, his other hand digging viciously into her ribs. “I want you all to pay very close attention!” He swung back around and clawed savagely up her sides, both hands shoving their way under the strained material of her shirt. Cindy howled in ticklish horror as Deveno’s fingers dove into her underarms, the bottom of her lacy pink bra showing along the undersides of her jiggling breasts. “Tonight, you all have a very special assignment!” He kept his hands there as Cindy’s biceps clamped around them, her laughter very nearly drowning out Harry’s words. “When you go home to your wives or your girlfriends or your ladies on the side-“ The men laughed and Cindy laughed though the reasons were very different indeed. “-I want to ask them for something! Something you know from experience they will not say yes to! Ask your wife to cook dinner at midnight! Ask your girlfriend for a threesome with her sister! Whatever it is, make sure she says ‘No!’”
Hannah could see where this was going and the thought sickened her. Over the three months as his personal assistant she’d got a keen sense of the man; stern and stubborn, demanding and fearsome. Morally, Hannah supposed, Harry Deveno wasn’t much worse than the rest of his ilk. A little more handsy than most, perhaps, a little unorthodox at best and a little perverse at worst. The tickling was strange she had to admit, but Hannah had mostly written it off as an excuse to feel her up from time to time. Now, seeing Cindy tormented in front of a full boardroom for minutes on end and hearing his latest demand, Hannah was starting to think she’d only seen the tip of Mr. Deveno’s depravity.
“And when your wife or your girlfriend or your mistress tells you ‘No!’-“ Harry’s voice boomed like he was rallying the troops for battle. “-what are you gonna do?!”
“Tickle her!” A few of the men yelled.
“I can’t hear you!” He drilled his fingers a little deeper into Cindy’s underarms causing her to shriek.
“TICKLE HER!” All the men roared, even John Quieter who was quite red in the face.
“And when you tickle her, are you going to stop?!”
“NO!”
“Are you going to let her go?!”
“NO!”
“Are you gonna tickle every inch of her until she gives you everything you want?!” Deveno had the men a fever pitch.
“YEAAAAAAH!” They jumped and shook their fists and yelled in each other’s faces and poor Cindy’s laughter could barely be heard among the clamor of it all.
Hannah thought of all the women that evening that would suffer at the hands of the men in that room and hoped some of them weren’t ticklish. She hoped each of the dozen men would find only disappointment later that day and not a one of them would get what they wanted. She hoped maybe one or two among them would ignore their boss’s orders and treat their wives well, but they were small hopes. There wasn’t a man among them who would disobey Harry Deveno. The chances of all twelve wives or girlfriends not being ticklish was hopeless, some would surely suffer tonight.
To the raucous cheering of the men and the anguished, laughing pleas of Cindy Reid, Hannah slowly moved toward the door. She pressed the handle down without taking her eyes off the crowd and opened a gap just big enough to slip through. A lot of women would be tickled tonight and Hannah was determined not to be one of them.
Chapter Four: The Dark History of Everything
Emma was fed and given a bed for rest, which was frankly the least they could have done after what happened in the pool. Yumao woke her some hours later and gave Emma fresh clothes; loose fitting beige pants and a long-sleeve shirt and a pair of sinfully fluffy slippers. Before getting dressed she was left to shower, thankfully alone, and when all that was done with Yumao lead her to meet the apparently notorious Madam Ui.
In an enclosed space between buildings sat an idyllic garden. It was the kind of place Emma would have adored losing herself in a good book, small waterfalls lazily trickling away and wooden wind chimes gently clunking together in some far off corner. Yumao lead her down a couple of steps from the surrounding buildings and along a winding cobbled path, the sky overhead stark blue with mountain sky. Rounding a blooming magnolia tree rich in pink flowers, Yumao and Emma came to a wooden gazebo, the roof curved on all four sides and sweeping up at each corner.
“Ah…our uninvited guest.” Said a woman sitting poised elegantly inside the gazebo. She placed a dainty looking teacup down on an equally dainty looking table.
“Madam Ui...” Emma was barely able to hide her relief. Six months of searching and one god-awful aquatic torture session later, she had finally found her.
Much like Jai Lin, Madam Ui made an immediate impression. There was a properness about her, a grace that veiled something terrible just behind the eyes. She was fifty, maybe, by Emma’s estimation, and smaller than expected. Donned in all black, tight-fitting clothes, the sleek pants and long-sleeved top accentuated Ui’s well-toned figure. Dark hair hung stylishly around her shoulders, framing an expression that was equal parts welcoming and dangerous.
Emma bowed, as Yumao had showed her how to do not two minutes before, and as she did noticed Ui’s rather bulbous breasts beneath the thin material of her top. Wide hips above a slender waist too, Emma noted, and plump full lips. Why she was noticing these things the budding journalist had no idea, they were not features Emma would normally pick up on another woman. Not until six months ago, at least. Madam Ui reached for her tea again and her long, sharp nails made a gentle tinkling sound against the fine china cup which sent a tingle up Emma’s spine. Suddenly and through no conscious doing of her own, Emma was imagining herself being mercilessly tickled by the older woman. Naked, restrained, back arching, sweat dripping off her as those long nails ran wild across her skin and she cried for mercy.
“Please, sit.” Madam Ui gestured to a spot just to the other side of her small table. As Ui took a sip of her tea Emma shook the obscene thoughts from her unruly mind. “No one has called me ‘madam’ for many years.” Ui paused to take a sip of her tea while Emma sat. “In fact the last people who did are the very people you’re here to ask me about…is that right?”
Emma nodded solemnly. “Yes. I was hoping to ask you about a woman you might have known once…”
“Jai Lin.”
Emma nodded again. The name certainly carried a weight with it, even all the way out in the far reaches of the world.
Ui set her cup down and leaned back. She stared at her fiery haired guest for a moment, thinking what Emma couldn’t begin to guess. “I can tell you all about Jai Lin, but first…you must tell me why. Why you’re here, why you’re interested. Everything-“ She emphasized the word. “-that lead you to me. You can’t leave anything out. If I think you’re lying or trying to trick me…“ Ui gave Yumao a meaningful glance before looking back to Emma. “Do we understand each other?”
Oh, she understood all right. It wouldn’t be an easy tale to tell but there was no sense holding back now. Even if the threat of more time in Yumao’s pool wasn’t looming over her, Emma stood nothing to gain by being sheepish. They’d already seen her nude, already heard her scream and beg and laugh and cum her perverse little brains out. Whatever Ui knew about Jai Lin, whatever advantage it might give her in her quest for vengeance, was finally in Emma’s reach. All she had to do was talk at length about all the worst things that ever happened to her.
At some point during the telling of it all, Yumao slinked away. Alone with the woman formerly known as ‘Madam’ Ui, Emma talked for over an hour. Jason Whitmore was the obvious place to start, senior year of high school, under the bleachers where the handsome boy she thought was charming showed his true nature. Then later in the AV room, his failed attempt to bind Emma to a table and her subsequent escape that gave Jason a busted hand. The pride she spoke with of leaving Jason inured quickly disappeared when Emma reached the part about poor, tragic Wendy Starr.
Holding back tears Emma recalled listening to Wendy’s torture at the hands of Jason and the math teacher, Mr. Lucas. Ui’s eyes narrowed the tiniest amount at the mention of Mr. Lucas’ name, but Emma thought nothing of it in the moment. Feeling no less guilty after the confession, Emma skipped ahead to her time in New York and the hometown news article that compelled her to jump on a plane back home. She talked about Wendy and the girls from the mansion and how strange it was that the same girl who she’d failed to help back in high school was once again finding herself at the hands of people intent on tickling her.
Before Emma got to the part about sleuthing with Deena Tripp, Yumao returned with a light snack. Emma had some tea herself and took a deep breath as she readied to explain the really crazy stuff, which was saying something given everything that had already been said. Mr. Lucas’ house on the hill and the girl in white he tortured, another victim Emma did nothing to save. They followed the car with the girl in it after she was spent, Emma and Deena finding the secluded mansion far outside of town. More girls in white had chased them through the woods and dear Deena was caught in the kerfuffle, another sacrifice to Emma’s self-loathing incompetence. Not long thereafter Emma got herself arrested and looking back she wished she’d never stopped the car, held down the damn accelerator until she was back in New York.
The local sheriff and his deputies, corrupt and working for Jai Lin, Emma explained, took her to an abandoned building. There the last deputy revealed himself, none other than her personal high school nightmare Jason Whitmore. Much to his delight Jason tickled her and tickled her while his colleagues looked on, the deputies and sheriff alike all equally unfazed by the cackling, pleading girl bound before them. A phone call put a stop to the torment and Emma wished she could have said that was the end of it. Instead they bundled her half naked into a car and delivered her like a prize ham to the woman behind it all.
“She showed me a video…” Emma put her hand over her mouth. Maybe if she didn’t say it aloud it wouldn’t be true, maybe she could trick herself into thinking it was just another bad nightmare. “A live feed of somewhere else in the mansion. It was Deena and Wendy, they had them…they had them-“
“I can imagine.” Ui said without emotion, though Emma was grateful for the mercy to not relive it any further. “Jai Lin, she tickled you too then?”
Emma looked far away and whispered. “…Yes.”
“And yet, here you are.”
“I had help. There was another woman, she was Jai Lin’s assistant or…or something. Aleena. I don’t even want to think about what they did to her after I got away.”
“I remember Aleena.” It was Ui’s turn to look distant. “Jai Lin really kept her all these years? My god, the cruelty of that woman.“ She turned back to Emma. “I was…not kind in my youth, Emma. But Jai Lin, she and that bastard Samuel Lucas, they are of a different breed. They are not human.”
“Aleena told me about you. All I had was a name.”
“And here I am.” Ui got a thoughtful look about her. “I’ll tell you about Jai Lin and the man you thought was a math teacher, of all things. I’ll tell you all of it, my whole story, then you can figure out what to do with it.”
If it hadn’t been for her own story, Emma wouldn’t have believed a word of what followed. The Kanpekina School and the billionaire Harold Deveno Senior. The secret hideaway in Japan where Harold kept a harem of slave girls, each one handpicked from around the world for a short list of very specific, very ticklish traits. Ui hadn’t always been the Madam at Harold’s hideaway of course, she’d spent years suffering under the sadistic man’s wiggling fingers. Emma cringed at the idea of being held prisoner and tickled for so long, and to her eternal shame found she was not insignificantly turned on.
When the time came to talk about Jai Lin, Ui’s tone soured considerably. Perhaps, the former Madam admitted, she had been too harsh on the new girl, too eager to impress their master and prove she still held worth. “I don’t regret it, really.” Ui said at one point. “I only regret that I lost.”
It was a sobering comment, Emma thought. Over the few hours they sat there Ui was mostly quite pleasant to talk to, despite the topic of discussion. Polite, confident, intimidating in a confusingly attractive fashion. But then every so often the older woman would say something that bought Emma back to reality, back to recognizing exactly who Ui was and what she was capable of. With a snap of her fingers the mistress of the spa house could have had Emma stripped and bound, tickled out of her mind again for who knew how long. Based on how the rest of their conversation panned out, Emma realized, she was in very real danger of that happening.
Just when Emma was starting to think she’d heard all the most vile, wicked and evil ways a person could be made to suffer through tickling, Ui explained exactly how Jai Lin had gone about usurping the madam’s power. Aleena, the very same woman who’d helped Emma escape, had been the lover of one of Harold’s slaves, a girl named Hania. The girls, young at the time, sent secret messages to one another as they plotted Hania’s escape, a plot that was sadly discovered. Naturally Ui took to torturing Hania, but the girl held out, refusing to reveal how the messages were getting to the outside world.
“But...?” Emma said nervously, not sure she truly wanted the answer.
“Jai Lin, of course.” Ui tapped her nails across the tabletop and it sent a flutter through her guest’s lower tummy. “She swayed Samuel Lucas to her side. His men searched the town and found Aleena. That was Jai Lin’s trick you see, the thing she understood before anyone else; if you can’t attack the body, attack the heart.”
“Are you telling me…Jai Lin has had Hania and Aleena prisoner…all this time?”
“No.” Ui shook her head. “Just Aleena. They let Hania go.” A humorless smile crossed her lips. “It was a guard, incidentally, who’d been helping get the girls’ notes back and forth. No one ever saw him again.”
Emma sat, mouth half open, saying nothing. She’d had the thought before, more than once, that there was no end to the cruelty, no bottom level to this hell. Still the minds of people like Jai Lin and Mr. Lucas surprised her, still she found acts that were so reprehensible it was difficult to believe another human could concoct them. “They killed him…the guard?” Her voice squeaked and somehow murder still didn’t sound like Jai Lin’s worst sin.
“I can’t say for certain. If they did it wasn’t Samuel Lucas’ first, I can promise you that.”
“Deena…Wendy, they-“
“Oh, don’t worry.” Ui waved a dismissive hand. “They wouldn’t have hurt your friends. Driven them out of their minds, almost certainly. For all the evil in them I don’t believe Samuel Lucas or Jai Lin would ever hurt someone they could have more fun with alive.”
That sent a shudder up Emma’s spine.
“After that, I became a ghost in my own house. I lost all respect among the girls. Worse, I lose their fear. Then, a few years later, Harold’s heart gave out…”
Though Ui hadn’t known it at the time, she later found out that Harold Deveno Senior had set up an account in her name. Per Harold’s wishes, Ui only learned about the account after his passing. Unfortunately the total monetary value of the account was exactly zero dollars, with only two transactions on record. The first transaction was a deposit of several billion dollars, the second a withdrawal of the same amount. Ui’s reward for her years of suffering, gone before she even knew it existed.
“His son, Harry Junior told me all this, rather gleefully in fact.” Ui’s jaw tightened a little. “They left me there for him to find and when he did….he did what they always do.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Ui lifted her head, the despondent look on her face shifting to one of mild pride. “That was the last time. There hasn’t been a single person since who’s put their hands on me without my permission.”
“That explains the houses…the cars.” Emma frowned. “The police that work for them. All their money, it was meant for you.”
“Not according to Harry Junior it wasn’t. He was…perturbed, to put it mildly, that his father had left so much money to someone he considered nothing more than a plaything. I dare say he tried to track it down after he finally realized it wasn’t me who took it.”
“So Harold’s son, he has no idea that Jai Lin and Mr. Lucas are still out there?”
“I don’t know.” Ui’s lips perked up with a tiny smile. “After Harry was done with me I left and never looked back. I had nothing to my name. There were a lot of hard years, but eventually-“ She gestured around at the garden. “-I was able to build this place. I have a good life here and it belongs to me. I built it, it was all me. Jai Lin, Mr. Lucas, Harry, they can keep their money. Harold’s money.”
“You’re not upset? You don’t want to get back at them for everything they did to you?”
“Look…if I was to hear that Jai Lin’s world fell apart tomorrow, I won’t lie and tell you the news wouldn’t bring me joy-”
“-Then help me.” Emma’s voice was stern with determination. “Help me stop them, help their victims and people who will be their victims.”
“No.” Ui said plainly. “Jai Lin and Samuel Lucas were hardly much older than you are now when they ruined my life. I learned my lesson and you should too. They’ve had years of practice since, and are doubtlessly an even greater beast together than they were back then.”
Emma huffed loudly. “I can’t say I blame you.” She shook her head. “Harold Junior then, the son? If I go to him-“
“-You can’t do that either.” Ui cut her off. “Believe me when I tell you, Harry is worse than his father ever was in every way. If you go to him he may very well go after Jai Lin, but not before he’s chewed you up and spit you out a dozen times over. And he won’t do it because you annoy him or because he doesn’t like you, he’ll do it just to do it.”
“But you said he tried to find them before, didn’t you?”
“I said I didn’t know. He probably tried to find the money, wouldn’t you? Clearly if he did make any attempts they failed.”
“He’ll be interested to know where it is then. And a man like that, as bad as you say he is, he might be the best chance we have of putting a stop to Jai Lin for good.”
“Emma-“ Ui put one hand gently on Emma’s knee and looked her dead in the eye. “I know you want revenge. Believe me, I understand, but going to Harry Deveno –it is not a good idea.”
Trying to ignore the flustering feeling of Ui’s hand on her, Emma blinked tears of frustration from her eyes. “Who am I kidding?” She slumped back, defeated. “Even if I was going to talk to him I couldn’t afford to get there, wherever he is.” Her voice warbled with self-pity. “They just-they just do whatever they want and get away with it! Six months of running and searching and the nightmares, the god damn nightmares!” Emma’s volume was rising as her emotions took hold. “As if the tickling wasn’t bad enough! Jai Lin she-she gets in your head! I don’t even know what she did to me but I feel like I’m going crazy everyday thinking about it! And Wendy and Deena and all the others I just…I just…” Tears ran down her cheeks and her shoulders shook.
“Alright…alright…shh.” Ui rubbed Emma’s thigh and that didn’t help any. The older woman sighed. “I want my name to stay out of it. This place, my place, they must never find it, if that happens…you and I will no longer be friends.”
Emma looked up through tear-blurred eyes. “What are you saying?”
“The best I can offer is money. You can’t go to Harry Junior, you just can’t, but I can afford to back you for whatever else it is you want to do. I’ll fly you back to the States and then you use my money and only my money to stop Jai Lin.”
“Are-are you sure?”
“Not remotely, no.” Ui took her hand from Emma’s leg. “If you’re caught you’ll tell them where I am. Yumao, my girls, we’ll all be ruined. I am taking an extraordinary risk even just letting you walk out of here.”
“I won’t let you down.” Emma cleared her throat and wiped her cheeks dry.
“You had better not.” Ui stood up and walked slowly toward the steps. “Because if you fail everything you’ve been through so far will seem like a wonderful dream.”
Chapter Five: The Masseur
Like most days in Harry Junior’s employ, Hannah’s work ended somewhere around 9pm. Some days ended later, very few finished earlier. Of course she’d known going in that her chosen career was never going to have normal working hours. Even so, thirteen hours around a man like Mr. Deveno took more of a toll than any job Hannah imagined doing growing up.
The street was still busy when she walked out into the courtyard, the Deveno Tower looming high behind her in the night sky. Eager to get home and collapse into bed, Hannah moved quickly by the enormous water fountain where a tall statue of Harold Deveno Senior stood proud. She made it almost halfway between the fountain and the street when her phone rang. Hannah scrunched her nose, she should just ignore it. Pretend she didn’t hear it, let it go to voicemail. Against her better judgment the tired P.A fished into her bag and pulled out her phone. Unsurprisingly, there was ‘Mr. Deveno’ displayed across the called I.D.
“I need you back up here.” Came his voice through the phone. “My office.” And with a click he was gone. No hello, no goodbye, no explanation and definitely no room to argue. If Hannah could have she’d have quit on the spot. Long, unpredictable hours and the random tickling, those two things alone were more than enough to walk away. Threats of more tickling hardly endeared her toward the job and after the madness of the Lottlinn meeting she knew those threats were not idle. Hanging her head, Hannah turned back toward the tower.
She set her bag down against the wall outside Harry’s office and stood upright. Aside from a security guard in the foyer Hannah hadn’t seen a single other person on her way back to the top floor. Likely there were a few lowly drones still plugging away in some cubicles somewhere. Certainly none of the bigwigs from the Lottlinn meeting stayed late, they were all off tormenting their wives and girlfriends. Hannah cringed at the thought as she took hold of the door handle and braced for whatever it was Mr. Deveno wanted now.
Inside, Harry sat on a chair in front of his desk, one leg propped up casually on the other. It wasn’t Harry that caught Hannah’s focus however, as her eyes shot immediately to the far left corner of the room. Sat cowering against the wall and the enormous window that overlooked the atrium was Cindy Reid, a black piece of cloth between her teeth. The cloth appeared to be pulled quite tight, tied firmly behind her head, though Hannah couldn’t see the knot. Dumbstruck, Hannah stood with the door half-shut as she surveyed the rest of the poor paralegal’s plight. Cindy’s arms were behind her back and it didn’t look like she held them there voluntarily. Her knees were up in front of her as she sat curled, her ankles bound together with a thin white thread just a little thicker than a shoelace. Other than the makeshift gag and bindings, the petrified blonde was entirely naked.
“Shut the door will you?” Mr. Deveno said irritably.
Without taking her eyes off Cindy, Hannah slowly let the door click shut behind her. “Mr. Deveno…” She managed to say, her voice little more than a whisper. “What uh…what’s happening here?”
“A demonstration, Miss Quist.” He clapped loudly, the sound snapping Hannah’s attention to him. “This is Izan.” Harry pointed a thumb at the opposite corner.
To Hannah’s surprise there stood a young man, or at least a man who looked young. Rookie mistake not checking all the corners, she thought sourly. He was tall, well dressed and on the wiry side, the man who might have been twenty or a youthful thirty. Tidy dark hair, quite handsome. Latino maybe, Hannah guessed, though it was difficult to tell, truthfully he could have been from a thousand different places. Izan stepped out of the corner and smiled in a strange way, his lips moved as they should have but his cheeks, his eyes, the rest of his face didn’t light up the way one’s expression normally would.
“Hello.” He said calmly, no accent immediately obvious in the one word.
Hannah’s eyes darted to Mr. Deveno, to Cindy, back to Izan. “Hi…?”
“Izan’s a freelancer-“ Harry folded his arms. “-comes highly recommended. If I like what I see today I’ll be keeping him on retainer for…various tasks.”
“Mr. Deveno I, uh…” Hannah couldn’t quite figure out where to begin, the two men were acting as if there wasn’t a naked woman bound in the corner. “I’m not sure I should be part of whatever this is.”
“Nonsense. If I’m going to be working with the man, you’ll be working with the man. You are still my assistant, aren’t you?”
Hannah wished very much the answer wasn’t “Yes but-“
“Delightful.” Mr. Deveno’s said definitively, like punctuating the end of the conversation. “Izan, if you would.”
“Yes sir.” Izan’s oddly emotionless eyes fixed on the gagged girl on the other side of the room. He strode toward Cindy with purpose and she trembled, pushing her bare feet against the carpet in what looked like an attempt to push herself through the wall.
Standing dumbly just inside the doorway, Hannah’s mind whirled with thoughts of what was about to happen. Bad as her day had been it seemed Cindy’s Reid’s was much worse by a measure Hannah couldn’t quite fathom. She’d always known the job would come with challenges but this one hit a little too close to home. Tied up, nude, absolutely vulnerable and exposed, Hannah could hardly imagine the terror Cindy must have felt. Hannah liked to think of herself as brave by most standards, though if she’d found her and Cindy’s roles reversed she knew that wouldn’t be true anymore. Still, something had to be done.
“Sir…?” Hannah approached Mr. Deveno gingerly, pausing to swallow hard. “Sir this…I don’t know what’s going on here but Miss Reid, she…well I’m going to need to know she’s consented before this goes any further.”
“Consented?” Harry chuckled. In the same moment Izan bent over and took hold of the binding around Cindy’s ankles, the helpless girl whimpering as her legs were pulled away from her.
“I don’t mean any disrespect, but I don’t think she’s enjoying this very much at all.”
“No, I shouldn’t say she is.” He didn’t take his eyes off the nude girl as she was dragged squirming away from the wall. “You on the other hand should count yourself lucky.”
With one hand between her ankles, Izan pulled Cindy out into the open floor of the large room. For the several feet she was dragged the shapely girl tugged and jerked, rolling in an effort to get free. When Izan stopped it was more or less in the same spot where Mr. Deveno had bullishly teased Hannah earlier in that same day. Izan set her feet down and just as Cindy started to twist herself over, the almost-robotic man dropped down and planted his knees either side of upper legs. Squeezing his thighs together, Izan straddled Cindy just below her hips and held her firmly in place.
“I can’t watch this.” Hannah muttered and turned for the door.
“You’ll watch.” Mr. Deveno’s tone stopped Hannah in her tracks. “If it weren’t for Miss Reid there it’d be you pinned down under Izan right now. That was my original plan, you know? Weeks in the making, this was. It was only your good fortune that we happened across her at the eleventh hour.”
Hannah pictured herself in Cindy’s place, powerless and exposed. Knowing she had come so close to being there made it all the worse. As Hannah turned back toward Mr. Deveno she was wishing, really wishing, she had ignored that phone call out on the street. She looked at her boss to gauge his demeanor but he didn’t look at her, his eyes were set squarely on Izan and Cindy. His jaw was tight and his eyes were narrowed. Deveno was always a fairly intense man to be around and it seemed far more so now, more than Hannah had ever seen before. Escaping the Lottlinn meeting was a triumph of stealth, or so she’d originally thought. It occurred to Hannah that perhaps she only made it out of that boardroom because Mr. Deveno allowed her to, and got the distinct impression that if she tried another daring disappearance now it wouldn’t go so well.
“Ahem.” Hannah cleared her throat and shuffled herself back and off to the side of Mr. Deveno. Out of his sight, at least, in case his attention did soon turn to her.
“Whenever you’re ready, Izan.” Harry leaned back into his chair and intertwined his fingers.
“Mmhm! Mmhm!” Cindy shook her head, her desperate protests muffling against the cloth in her mouth.
Izan held his right hand out to the side and his five fingers started wiggling with alarming speed. The sight of those quick digits and all of Cindy’s unprotected skin caused Hannah’s toes to curl inside her shoes. In a blur Izan whisked his fingertips up the bound girl’s side, a loud squeal breaking against the gag. Cindy spasmed and flinched sharply as far away as her dire position would let her. She started saying something no one could understand, though the tone of it was clear as day, all high-pitched and strained with fear. Izan did it again, five fingers racing in a split second up the side of Cindy’s midriff, her bound feet bouncing against the floor as she yelped.
Hannah closed her eyes and heard the sorrowful paralegal squeak again. Each time it happened Cindy would talk faster, dismal pleas morphed into unintelligible babble by the gag. She wouldn’t have faired any better, Hannah thought, she’d have been as big a mess as Cindy, if not more so. Tickling, she even hated the word let alone the act. Until a few moments ago the worst Hannah could have imagined was being chased around that same office by Harry. Before that it was her ex-boyfriend, a cheerful dog-handler who would occasionally wrap one of his arms around her ankles and tickle her feet while she wheezed and slapped him. The depravity of it, the unbelievable cruelty of tying someone up to tickle them shouldn’t have surprised Hannah, but it did.
“MMM!” Cindy squealed particularly loud and Hannah looked back. Izan was using both hands now, running five fingers up either side of the girl’s tummy. He’d stop for a few short seconds to let her beg, all wide-eyed and quivering as she awaited the next attack. When the ten digits scurried over her sensitive skin Cindy curled upward, her big bare breasts bouncing as she whined.
“You don’t like being tickled, do you Cindy?” Izan said in that same eerily plain way he’d greeted Hannah. There was an accent, South American maybe, but Hannah couldn’t pick exactly where.
“Mm mm!” Cindy shook her head without taking her eyes off the man sitting atop her.
“That’s good.” He held up one index finger and curled it into a slight hook. “Because this would be so boring otherwise.” Lowering his hand slowly, Izan started wiggling that single finger toward the center of Cindy’s tender tummy.
“Mmm! Mhm!” She stared at the encroaching finger, her eyes flashing over to Hannah with a look of sheer panic.
Hannah’s mouth opened as if to say something and her jaw moved, saying nothing. Cindy looked back to Izan’s hand, his finger just a few inches from her belly button. She stared terror-stricken to Hannah again and all the frozen P.A could muster was to silently mouth the words ‘I’m sorry’. Less than a second later Cindy screamed into her gag.
“MMMM! MMFFF!” She wailed, bucking mindlessly as Izan’s fingertip swirled deep inside her agonizingly sensitive navel.
In unison Cindy’s tied legs kicked, her bare feet flailing as they jumped up and down off the carpet. Throwing herself from side to side, her whole upper body tried to roll one way and then the other, never getting far enough. No matter how much Cindy struggled her tormentor’s finger was lodged tight, her uncontrolled laughter a sure sign of the turmoil within. As the seconds wore on Hannah couldn’t stop herself from gently covering her own belly button with one hand. Watching Cindy’s long blonde hair whip wildly about as she fought for the tickling to stop, it was easy for Hannah to picture her own hair whipping at her face as she would certainly do the same.
Much to Hannah’s ever-increasing dismay the navel assault didn’t end after a few quick, teasing seconds. Unlike when Izan would run his fingers up Cindy’s side and pause, his belly button finger-hook remained ongoing. Each passing second of squealing terror caused Hannah to feel exponentially more uncomfortable, Cindy’s cheeks blushing pink around her gag. She couldn’t stop it, there was absolutely nothing she could do. Powerless as Hannah felt when someone tickled her there was always at the very least some sense of hope that she could fight her way free. Tied up like that, not able to speak, to try and negotiate or talk her way out of it, not knowing when it might end, it must have been maddening.
When Izan stopped after what was almost a full minute, Mr. Deveno switched the way he had his legs crossed. Other than that the stoic man barely moved, his focus on the naked girl breathing heavily on his office floor. Cindy was trying to say something, muffled pleas no doubt, as she tried to catch her breath. Sadly catching her breath was going to have to wait as Izan held his hands over her, curling each one into the gnarled shape of a lobster claw. Cindy’s muted begging increased in volume, her petit frame squirming beneath the pitiless man above her.
“Ngh! Ngh! Nkff!” She shook with more vigor as Izan’s hands lowered toward her, his gradual descent clearly designed to heighten Cindy’s horrid anticipation.
A demonstration, Mr. Deveno had said before, yet seeing it in action Hannah found far more questions than answers. Whoever Izan was it was obvious this wasn’t his first time wrangling an unwilling victim. Finding it difficult to think straight as she watched Cindy brace for the inevitable, Hannah tried to recall what else was said. A freelancer, whatever that meant. And retainer, Deveno wanted to keep Izan around but to do what? Torture more paralegals? The self-titled Silver Fox would have no problem tickling any number of young women if that’s what he was after. In fact the list of things Harry Deveno Junior couldn’t do should he so desire must have been quite short indeed. Izan had to be there to do something Harry couldn’t, but what that was exactly Hannah had no clue.
“NNNFFF!” Cindy’s screech broke Hannah’s train of thought as Izan’s wicked claws dug viciously into the bound girl’s supple ribcage.
His fingertips bore into the soft spots between each rib. Cindy’s eyes were open so wide Hannah could see white all the way around her blue irises as she screamed with laughter. Plain faced, Izan worked the bosomy paralegal’s sides, his fingers wiggling as they stroked back and forth over her each rib. As her pinkened cheeks grew a darker shade Cindy rocked madly in the mysterious man’s hands, the bottoms of her large breasts slapping against the tops of his hands. While his fingers continued driving into her heaving ribcage, Izan crept his thumbs higher, burrowing beneath the fleshy undersides of Cindy’s breasts. Wiggling the tips of his thumbs, Izan prodded savagely at her hidden skin there, Cindy’s gagged laughter doubling in raucous volume.
Over a minute into the hellish display and Cindy’s cheeks were more red than pink, her forehead and neck both rosy too. Her nostrils flared and when it seemed like she might just about run out of air Izan let his hands scurry down to her sides. With his fingers wrapped around Cindy’s tummy Izan kept up the same level of intensity he’d used on her ribs, four fingers poking speedily into either side while his thumbs dug into the outer edges of her abdomen. Cindy’s laughter jolted into a more rapid, higher pitch panic as she flopped helplessly upon the carpet, her eyes fixed with what looked like a crazed sense of disbelief.
“NNNGH! NNF! NF!” Cindy arched her back, the top of her head rolling onto the floor when Izan’s hands spidered all the way up her sides. He slipped two fingers from each hand in between her biceps and underarms, his other digits drilling into the ballooning sides of her jiggling bosoms. She thrashed left then right, her arms flexing hard against the bindings behind her back.
If Hannah thought she’d been uncomfortable a few minutes before she was bordering on nauseas now. The suppressed sounds of ticklish anguish bellowing from Cindy caused a knot in the pit of Hannah’s stomach. She could handle a lot of things, the anxiety of her teen years rarely ever rearing up in adulthood, but it was returning with full force in that office. Watching the naked paralegal’s underarms get assaulted, Hannah suddenly became very conscious of her own hollows. A nervous sweat, cold against her underarms, was starting to show through the P.A’s blouse. Willing herself to calm down, Hannah couldn’t help but imagine Izan’s fingers running unimpeded under her arms, a thought that continued to tighten the knot in her tummy.
Izan lifted himself slightly, loosening the vice-grip of his legs. An opportunity to wriggle away perhaps, not that Cindy would have gotten far. Instead the wheezing girl didn’t even seem to realize she wasn’t being tickled anymore, still twitching and letting out half-moaned laughter. Taking hold of one of her shoulders, Izan easily forced Cindy to roll over, sitting back down across the backs of her thighs the second she fell face down. It was then she tried to worm away, thrusting her bare ass into the air, but Izan squeezed his legs around her’s and the attempt was thwarted before it began. Straddling her thick thighs, Cindy’s shapely butt protruded up between Izan’s knees and he started wiggling his fingers once again.
“MEEEFFHH!” Cindy squealed, her bound hands reaching down blindly with open palms when Izan scribbled five digits across her right butt cheek.
Easily sliding around her feeble efforts to protect herself, Izan danced his fingertips along the underside of Cindy’s ass. Both cheeks tightened as the fiendish fingers ran along the crease where buttock met thigh. Deep dimples caved in on the outer sides of Cindy’s bottom, her squealing laughter growing more hectic by the second. As the tickling sped dangerously close to her crack Cindy’s fingers spread wide, desperately trying to cover as much of her hopelessly sensitive behind as possible. Predictably, heartbreakingly, the frenzied girl’s defenses amounted to all but pointless as Izan frolicked his fingertips up into the right side dimple.
Cindy threw herself right, her big boobs squishing and ballooning beneath her as she rolled. Before falling fully back on to her stomach, Izan’s other hand joined the fray, five equally merciless fingers running wild across her left cheek. Bouncing her hips, Cindy screamed into her gag, a torrent of insuppressible laughter following immediately after. Accosted by ten fingers roaming around her behind, there was no way for the trapped girl to fight off both at once. Shooting her tightly tied hands one way left the other direction wide open for attack, and Izan took every opening offered to him. Once or twice he even stroked quickly across Cindy’s open palms causing her arms to recoil upward and leaving the entirety of her peach-shaped butt without a shred of cover.
What the state of Cindy’s mind must have been after so much tickling, Hannah could only guess. There had been a time a while back when Hannah had stepped out of the shower and her dog-handler ex quickly ran a couple of fingers across her bare butt. She must have leapt six feet across the bathroom before turning to see a cheeky grin plastered across his face, fingers still wiggling away. When he lunged forward she’d run, speeding naked and soaked into the bedroom where he’d caught her by the bedside. Again he’d stroked her butt and again Hannah just about shot through the roof, scrambling up onto the bed to escape him. Fortunately what followed was a tumbling, slippery and satisfying event that left their duvet quite messy indeed, but Hannah never forgot how explosively ticklish those brief strokes across her rear end had been. Watching Cindy endure long minutes of having her ass tickled, it was unsettling to think what might have happened had the post-shower event gone another way.
“NEEEIIHHPH!” Cindy screeched as Izan’s fingers wiggled along the undersides of her cheeks, his hands zooming toward one another where they almost met in the middle. Again he would do it, and again, each time Cindy’s thighs would squeeze tight and her cheeks would clench. He tickled her palms and her hands shot away, his fingers swiftly feathering up between her butt cheeks, all the while she spasmed violently.
If Izan was going to stop he showed no intentions of it. For that matter he didn’t seem to show much of anything. Hannah liked to think she was pretty good at reading people, it was a useful skill in her line of work, but Izan was a like a book without words. He switched techniques from light strokes to devilish pinching and his expression remained the same, as nonchalant as someone waiting for a bus. It had to be worse, Hannah thought, being tickled by someone more akin to machine than human, no telling what they might be feeling, or if they felt anything at all. Certainly Izan had no pity, that much was devastatingly clear.
Cindy’s entire face was just starting to turn beet red when Izan’s hands grabbed at her sides. With the speed of a viper he abandoned her well-tickled butt and launched an all out tickle-assault directly onto her midriff. Roaring laughter shook Cindy’s curvaceous frame, her entire upperbody twisting and straining to break away. Behind Izan, Cindy’s lower legs slammed up and down, her upturned feet kicking against the carpet together. With her bound hands she would try to grab either one of his hands, never quite reaching far enough to do much more than graze his wrists. Izan’s fingers explored higher, well beyond Cindy’s grasp as his fingertips poked playfully into the sides of her milky white bosoms.
A light sheen of sweat was starting to glisten across Cindy’s back when Mr. Deveno looked back over one shoulder. “Thoughts?” He said, glaring back at Hannah.
She let out a shuddering breath, hoping the sound of her fear was drowned out by Cindy’s torment. “He’s…effective.” Was the nicest thing Hannah could think to say, though she hardly meant it as a positive.
“He is, isn’t he?” Mr. Deveno turned back to watch the sadistic demonstration. “And from what I hear of his work, the best is yet to come.”
Hannah closed her eyes again, of course it was only going to get worse. If Cindy remained sane after this nightmare was over she’d have been shocked. The distraught girl may already have lost her mind, it barely seemed possible for a person that unbearably ticklish to maintain any mental stability. Certainly Hannah didn’t think she could have kept herself together for more than a couple of minutes, not while stark naked and inescapably bound. When she opened her eyes Hannah’s jaw tensed, Izan had hooked his index fingers under Cindy’s shoulders and was wriggling them mercilessly into the tight gaps between her biceps and underarms.
“MMMF! MMF! MFFMFFMFF!” Distressed laughter tore from Cindy’s voluptuous body. Every part of her was reduced to a toy to be used for the amusement of Harry and his peculiar guest. Her obvious anguish was nothing to them at best and a delight at worst, Cindy’s inhumane suffering all part of their terrifying fun.
Izan leaned back, shrill giggles bursting from Cindy as he danced five fingers down the full length of both her sides. Twisting to reach one arm behind himself, he grabbed a hold of the binding around her ankles. As Izan pulled Cindy’s lower legs up toward him, his other hand spidered up onto her ass and ran quickly back and forth across the undersides of her cheeks. Hannah could see Cindy’s leg muscles trembling with strain to put her feet back on the floor but she was in a such a fit of laughter from the butt tickling there was no hope. As her bare feet were pulled closer to Izan her knees spread apart. Just as Cindy’s heels were about to touch his back Izan shifted his weight onto one knee. With well-practiced swiftness he lifted his other leg and shot it back down between his captive’s quivering thighs, planting his knee solidly between her’s, straddling the back of one thigh.
“Oh god.” Hannah whispered to herself, covering her mouth with one hand as she realized Izan’s next intended target.
Keeping hold of the binding with one hand, Izan’s free hand frolicked over Cindy’s butt crack. Squealing loudly and bouncing wildly on the carpet, her trapped hands batted weakly against her tormentor’s fingers. Drained from the endless assault, Cindy’s ability to fend him off appeared even more useless than just a few minutes before. More or less with free reign over her ticklish backside, Izan’s nefariously light touch ran up and down, teasing from the tip of her tailbone to the outer most edge of her taint. After a minute of that madness the light coating of sweat across Cindy’s skin was turning to visible droplets, hot beads drizzling down her sides and forehead.
Thought difficult to see through all the crazed movement and flailing hair, Hannah could have sworn she saw tears begin to well in Cindy’s eyes. Couldn’t blame her, Hannah would have been crying too, especially when Izan’s relentlessly wiggling digits dived down between Cindy’s thighs. With Izan kneeling between her legs there was no way for Cindy to close the gap, giving him open access to stroke devilishly all over her atrociously sensitive taint. Cindy’s back arched and her fingers spread wide, her legs kicking helplessly in place as she shrieked with laughter. Sure enough thick tears started streaming down her beet red cheeks, every part of the poor girl fighting mindlessly against the invasive torture.
Hannah found she was squeezing her thighs together out of a deep sense of empathy. She could almost feel Izan’s fingertips prodding between her own legs and the sense of it horrified her. How ferociously Cindy fought, all her thrashing and pained cries, all her willpower amounting to nothing as it was callously tickled away. What exactly Izan did next was difficult to tell but the sound his victim made wasn’t like anything Hannah had ever heard from another human being before. It was a piercing, animalistic wallow that sent Cindy berserk, her naked body seizing violently as Izan’s fingers did whatever terrible thing they were doing down there.
She must have had the endurance of an Olympian, Hannah thought. How Cindy’s lungs managed to keep up was a mystery unto itself, the intensity with which she laughed made it sound like she would pass out at any second. Falling unconscious would have been a great mercy no doubt, and Hannah started wishing the luckless paralegal could at least find that way to escape. Slick sweat shone across Cindy’s back, the sides of her squishing boobs glistening as beads trickled down across into the creases of milky white skin. Her shapely ass was similarly painted, steaming sweat making her buns glossy as they bounced and flexed. Long strands of hair were starting to stick to Cindy’s upper back, her neck just as dark a shade of red that coloured the agonized expression across her face.
“Uhff…uhh…uffhh…” Cindy whimpered between gasps when at long last when Izan removed his hand from between her thighs. His fingers were strangely wet, and even from where Hannah stood they appeared much too soaked for it to be sweat. Before getting a better look, Izan was grabbing at Cindy’s body.
Pulling his leg free from between the heavily panting girl, Izan clutched at Cindy’s sides and squeezed rapidly. Instantly bursting with girlish laughter, Cindy rocked from side to side and with a little assistance from her tickling assailant was rolled onto her right. Spasming in a twisted version of the fetal position she continued to laugh uproariously as Izan kneeled next to her and his open hand came clawing down directly onto the center of her exposed midriff. Bucking crazily on her side it was clear Cindy was doing everything she could to roll facedown again. Thought she’d faired very poorly indeed on her stomach it seemed the tummy tickling undid any shred of logic, all that mattered was making it stop.
Rolling backward wasn’t an option for Cindy either as Izan’s knees were directly behind her. After a few seconds to establish the new hell she was in, her personal demon bought his other hand into the mix, his fingers crawling up her spine and into the nape of her neck. Cindy snapped her head to one side and by the time she’d bought her shoulder up for protection Izan’s wickedly wiggling digits were already moving elsewhere. Over the side of her jiggling breast, he lightly ran his fingertips down around Cindy’s puffy pink areole and it was then Hannah noticed how alarming erect the bound girl’s nipples were.
Struck by disbelief Hannah didn’t it think it even remotely possible but a quick glance down to Cindy’s inner thighs sure made her question reality. Certainly she understood that the human body could have all manner of outlandish reactions to stimuli, nonetheless seeing the sordid amount of wetness spread across the paralegal’s pussy defied even the most outrageous possibilities. As Izan’s nimble fingers swept across Cindy’s stiffened nipple the look on her face seemed to confirm Hannah’s bizarre suspicion. Among the lunacy of laughter from having her tummy kneaded, Cindy’s eyes rolled back and her jaw dropped. Her gagged mouth formed an uncomfortable O-shape before she broke into fits of helpless laughter once more. It was a blink-and-miss-it moment and for a few seconds Hannah doubted her own eyes. Only when it happened again did it finally dawn on her that Cindy was alarmingly, feverishly turned on.
For the briefest of seconds Hannah wondered if she’d been taken for a fool, if Cindy had been a willing participant this entire time. After all, how could anyone under such circumstances become so obliviously aroused without wanting to, there was no way. Again the cringing P.A found her assumptions challenged as she watched Cindy’s face contort between fleeting seconds of lust and excruciating torment. Her muffled pleas had become rarer the more her torture had gone on but to Hannah’s ear Cindy’s desperation certainly sounded genuine. If she were acting it was a hell of a show, next stop Broadway for that girl because faking a look of terror like that in one’s eyes was worthy of the stage. No, Cindy was no volunteer yet somehow Izan had still managed to force her into a perverse response. Perhaps that was the one thing Mr. Deveno couldn’t do that Izan could, even with his vast fortune that level of power over a person was priceless.
“Mmmphh! Mmmphph!” Cindy wept, breathing heavily after several prolonged minutes. Izan’s fingers had flickered back and forth between each of her large breasts, feathering across her rock hard nipples and driving her utterly mad in the process.
When Izan finally took his hand from her midriff Cindy’s tummy was a light shade of pink. A pained expression furrowed her brow as he rolled her onto her back, and it was there Hannah noticed the frazzled prisoner was lewdly grinding her hips. Cindy winced and gasped and more tears fell down her furiously red cheeks, her thighs quivering as she undoubtedly feared whatever heinous act would come next. Izan turned, facing away from Cindy’s head and swung one leg over her hips, straddling the girl. As he started inching forward Cindy lurched up with sounds of protest, her eyes bugging out more than Hannah had seen yet. She shook her head ‘no’, her eyes boring daggers into Izan’s back as he crept further down her legs.
“EASEFF! EASEFF NFF!” Cindy cried, sobbing as she tried to worm away, her hips rolling and legs tugging violently. It was the most coherent thing to come through the nude girl’s gag all evening, though Hannah couldn’t quite make it out until she looked to where Izan was heading. As he slid down Cindy’s shins, his legs squeezing tight around her’s, Hannah noticed the girl’s bare feet crossing back and forth over one another. It was then Hannah understood Cindy’s words perfectly, and why if she had been in the same position she too would have been screaming ‘please no’.
Locking his knees either side of Cindy’s ankles, Izan used his straddling-position to keep a vice grip around her lower legs. Completely vulnerable save for the meager protection they could afford each other, Cindy’s tiny bare feet trembled nervously in their captive squeeze. Behind him, the alarmed girl was throwing herself back and forth, clawing at the floor with her bound hands and bellowing distorted begging into her gag. She sat up, bouncing on her bare ass as she tried to pull away, looking forlornly at Mr. Deveno and Hannah. Someone, anyone, do something, her eyes plead. No one moved. Deveno didn’t care, or he did but in the entirely wrong way. Izan showed no more mercy than he had from the beginning. And Hannah, Hannah couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted to. Her feet were frozen to the floor, as she was suddenly very conscious of all that stood between them and tickling fingers were a pair of thin socks and sensible flats. Far, far more protection than Cindy had.
“EAAASSEEFF!” Cindy wailed, her stifled voice cracking with terror.
Izan’s response was to hold his hands out either side of himself, a move made purely so his despondent victim had a full view as his fingers began to wiggle. Cindy glared at Hannah again with those big, desperately urgent eyes. Hannah shook her head the tiniest amount and furrowed her brows apologetically. She could only hope Cindy understood why leaping into a daring rescue wasn’t a good idea, or why running for the door would most likely end with both of them being tortured. With that in mind, Hannah wasn’t the least bit convinced she would escape the evening unscathed even if she did obey Mr. Deveno’s every command.
Moving his right hand out of Cindy’s view, Izan extended his index finger. With that single fingertip he drew a winding line across the carpet leading up to the whining girl’s soles. As Izan’s first touch caressed the back of Cindy’s heel all her thrashing halted, her whole body tensing from head to toe. Barely grazing the silky soft skin, his fingertip traced slowly up the outer side of her pink heel, her other foot struggling to lean far enough over to stop the sensation. Cindy whined loudly, a prolonged high pitch cry that vibrated her upper body. Izan continued on at his painstaking pace, dragging the lone fingertip around the front of her heel and stopping directly above it. She breathed rapid, panicked breaths, flinching and twitching as the finger held still. Making her wait was a torture unto itself.
“NNHHFF! NFFH! NNNNHHHFF!” Spasming out of control, Cindy exploded into deranged laughter the instant Izan’s finger began moving. With a tiny movement he moved his fingertip gently from side to side. Izan’s miniscule stroking hardly looked enough to bother a fly, yet Cindy was thrown into immediate pandemonium.
After those first few hysteric seconds Izan introduced his other index finger, landing the frighteningly adept tip just above her other heel. Like lightning an almost deafening screech tore through Cindy’s laughter, both her feet crisscrossing hurriedly over each other. No matter how much she wanted it to end there was no way for either of her hyperticklish soles to reach that exact spot, a fact Hannah strongly suspected Izan was well aware of. As her toes curled tight and Cindy’s forlorn howling grew more frantic it occurred to Hannah she had never seen anyone laugh quite like that. So loud, so joyless, it was almost a stretch to even call it laughter anymore. But laugh Cindy did, a muffled riot of senseless squealing that would have sounded more at home in a psych-ward than a corporate office.
Two more fingers found their way onto Cindy’s tender heels, Izan’s middle digits wiggling away. Soaked in sweat, her big naked bosoms bounced as she rolled helplessly around behind him. Hair stuck to her anguished face as Cindy grew more berserk by the second, a look in her eyes that said Cindy Reid was no longer home. Maybe she was way back in there, buried deep, but as far as Hannah could see it looked like the poor girl had been reduced to nothing more than an object of pure, unbridled ticklishness.
Just when Hannah thought Cindy had surely reached some sort of limit and might actually pass out, Izan entered his thumbs into the mix. Scratching lightly at her wrinkling arches made her jolt violently, screeching laughter renewing the strength of her hectic struggles. Sadly for Cindy her ambitious feet couldn’t fight Izan’s thumb-tips off either, his deft movements never allowing her even a split second of rest. As the six-digit torment went on Izan’s expression never once changed, his apparent indifference a fact Hannah found more unnerving than any amount of baby-talk or childish taunting could have. Equally horrifying were Izan’s remaining fingers, the four waiting tools of ticklish destruction that were being purposely held back for their time to shine.
“AUUHHH-” Cindy arched her back and her chest rose as she started to draw an especially large gasp of air. Well before she’d filled her lungs Izan scribbled all ten fingertips wildly around both her creamy soft soles. “EEEEIII! MMFFF!” Her tiny toes spread wide as her entire torso bounced six inches off the floor before flopping back down.
Cackling mindlessly, Cindy’s petit feet flicked back and forth, no amount of crisscrossing would do them any good now. Up her taut arches and onto the tender balls of her feet, Izan’s merciless fingers left nowhere unscathed. When not spidering all over Cindy’s soles, Izan would swipe a digit under her toes and she’d instantly curl them tight. A quick flurry of strokes down her instep would see her toes spread wide again, an opening the relentless man never let go to waste. For the sake of sadistic variety his techniques were frighteningly numerous. Izan never settled on one movement for long, even if he did bounce unpredictably back to previous inhumane methods. Fingertips drilled between each of Cindy’s toes, danced across the thin skin along the tops of her feet and skated wistful circles around her heels, all the while she fell further into madness.
While Hannah knew her and Cindy’s two situations were barely comparable, she couldn’t help but feel she too was being subjected to a certain kind of torture. Forced to stand and watch such wretched misery required it’s own form of endurance. Then there was the ever-present thought that had it not been for Cindy it would have been Hannah wallowing nude on the carpet, to say nothing of the looming threat that it could still happen. Like a preview to one’s own personal hell, she thought it might be better having known nothing if it was going to happen. Even if it didn’t, even if Hannah made it out of the tower untouched the memory of Cindy Reid’s ticklish destruction would surely give her nightmares for years to come.
Every second was more harrowing than the one before it, though how long Hannah had been standing there she couldn’t have said. Certainly however long it felt must have been a million, billion times worse for Cindy. By the time Izan started tapping his fingertips across the tips of her toes the ravaged girl was so disheveled she looked like she’d spent a few hours tumbling around inside a giant washing machine. Sweat practically poured off her, Cindy’s huge breasts gleaming in the office light. Her face was soaked along with most of her hair, much of which stuck to her glistening skin. Cindy’s arms were red from the shoulders down, a result of all the rolling, her neck and face many shades redder. The gag was soaked through and drool drained from one corner of her mouth and her plump bottom lip. All the while Cindy struggled valiantly, her reeling squeals cracking as she wheezed into longer and longer bouts of silent laughter.
When it seemed like the frazzled paralegal wasn’t going to come back from her latest descent into soundless suffering, Izan reached one hand back behind himself. While his left crawled down under Cindy’s toes, raked over the balls of her feet and started spidering back and forth across her arches, his right hand crept up her quivering thigh. Without looking back, Izan made a C-shape with his thumb and index finger and set the wicked claw to exploring the crease between Cindy’s upper leg and sopping wet pussy. Lurching up with a banshee’s shriek the volume of her laughter was renewed, her hips bucking so hard they’d have put the finest rodeo rider to shame.
Howling and huffing for gasps of air, Cindy continued to try and sit up and each time she did Izan’s clawing hand would whip out from her thigh and pinch wildly across her tummy. After her sixth or seventh attempt to get herself up Izan switched techniques, either for the sake of it or as some form of twisted punishment. With his left hand still running riot all over her bare feet the effortlessly evil man wiggled one fingertip deep into Cindy’s belly button. She fell back and screamed, throwing herself onto one side and then the other, no direction free from the demonic digit drilling into her painfully ticklish navel. Izan kept her in that state of rolling madness for what had to have been nearly five full minutes. When he finally removed the finger, he traced the tip directly down toward her throbbing, bald pussy.
Twisting his hand around, Izan slid the offending finger down between Cindy’s labia, another finger joining the descent in between her thighs. As her back arched sharply and her teary eyes burst open wider than they already were, a soul-shattering gasp forced air into Cindy’s lungs. Her jaw dropped as her voluptuous body tensed, shuddering violently in that contorted position. Though Cindy squeezed her thighs to the point it looked like she might break his hand, Izan continued to work his fingers apparently unhindered. Like a woman possessed, she thrashed harder than ever before, the laughter from her unending foot tickling constantly interrupted by deep guttural moans.
With one final damning look, Cindy froze for a split second to stare at Hannah directly. She lay with her top half on one side, her defenseless feet and helpless pussy still being unapologetically toyed with. Hair dangled in her face and her cheeks puffed exhaustively. Her nipples were so swollen they had to be sensitive beyond belief, and whether Hannah believed it or not she knew what about to happen. Cindy glared right at her but it wasn’t a look that plead for rescue, or even a look to ask for pity. If it meant anything at all, Hannah thought, it was the look of someone who knew they were truly lost.
“AUUUUFFF!” Cindy’s body snapped backward, her muscles and tendons all tensing as she moaned hoarsely. With Izan’s hand jammed between her quaking thighs the flood of her orgasm blew back. Thick drops sprayed messily across her bouncing hips and lower tummy, the deluge of forced carnality drenching Izan’s hand in the process.
Hannah just about fainted as she watched Cindy spasm and holler. Throughout the loud release Izan continued tickling the paralegal’s vulnerable soles. The idea of being put through two such starkly different and severe sensations at once nearly broke Hannah’s brain. Watching Cindy cum so forcefully and endure the fingers dancing around her feet was like staring at the night sky for too long, her mind simply couldn’t fathom it all. In something of a befuddled daze, Hannah only snapped out of it when Izan finally stood up.
“Well done.” Mr. Deveno got up from his chair, looking quite pleased indeed.
Izan closed the few steps between the two men, leaving Cindy a steaming hot mess on the carpet. She writhed weakly, lacking even the strength to roll herself over. As Mr. Deveno gave Izan a respectful nod, Cindy continued to twitch and moan, cooing huskily as the remnants of her orgasm kept her tiny toes curled. “I’m glad you like my work.” Izan said, though his deadpan expression didn’t seem to agree.
“One of the best I’ve ever seen-“ Harry grinned. “-and believe me, that’s saying something. You’re free to go, I’ll be in touch very soon with the details.”
Izan gave a single, quick nod of his own and turned for the door. Even though there was a couple of feet between them when he walked by Hannah felt a fearful skip of her heart having him get so close. She watched him closely as he stalked across the length of the room, not trusting for a moment that he wouldn’t turn back and come after her. Izan opened the handle with his dry hand and slinked out through the door, shutting it almost silently save for a barely audible click. For a hesitant moment Hannah felt like she should be relieved, only to realize that she had foolishly turned her back on Mr. Deveno. Spinning about quickly, she was no less panicked to see the billionaire was still standing exactly where he was a moment before.
“You can go too.” Mr. Deveno had one sleeve rolled up and was working on bringing up the other. “Don’t bother coming by the house in the morning, I’ll meet you here.”
Resisting the urge to flee immediately, Hannah turned her eyes to the bound, panting young woman in the middle of the floor. “I should...um-I should probably take her home or…?”
“Never mind that. Miss Reid’s evening is far from over.”
“But sir, she-“
“Unless you’d like to switch places?”
She should have said yes, that would have been the heroic thing to do. Sacrifice herself for an innocent, jump in the line of fire. That would have been brave, that would have been courageous. All the things Hannah hoped she’d be when faced with terrible danger. Or in this case terrible tickling, though as she saw it the two were one in the same.
“…I’ll see you in the morning, sir.” Hannah said sheepishly and began turning for the door.
Out the corner of her eye she saw Mr. Deveno start moving toward Cindy. Keeping the exit firmly in her line of sight, Hannah couldn’t bring herself to look back. Halfway there and she heard the paralegal’s muted whines begin and Deveno growling hungrily. The sounds of a shuffling struggle started right when Hannah grabbed the door handle and guilt struck her chest like cutting steel. Good god how she hated herself, the least, the absolute bare minimum she could do is take one look. One glance to punish herself for leaving Cindy in the hands of that monster, to see what horror she had thrust upon the shattered girl.
Stepping out the door and almost closing it behind her, Hannah peaked back through a thin sliver. Cindy was face down again with Mr. Deveno straddling the backs of her thighs, just as Izan had done much earlier. He raised his hands, all ten fingers wiggling as she squirmed and squeaked beneath him. Hannah closed the door shut tight just as her boss started to lower his hands. Hanging her head, she could hear the first of what would surely be many desperate giggles. She picked up her back and started walking away, Cindy’s laughter growing louder despite the increasing distance. Of all the tiring days in Mr. Deveno’s employ, this had surely been the longest.
Continued...