The Cult of Tickle Assassins
The Cult of Tickle Assassins II
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
The Cult of Tickle Assassins III: Trainee Syra Rahul’s Final Exam
by Tamira K.
Prologue
22-year-old Giada lay on the family sofa, skimming through Instagram and listening to her friends cavort in the family pool with the lads they’d picked up at the club while her chosen bloke snorted cocaine from her cleavage.
A notification on her phone made her roll her eyes:
VOICEMAIL
From: Mom
She dialled voicemail and listened. The sound was muffled and unclear.
‘Hey……’ she couldn’t remember the bloke’s name and he was too enthused by tits and cocaine to hear. ‘HEY! Turn down the fuckin’ music will ya?’
He looked up, ‘Huh? Oh, sure!’ he rolled back and stretched for a bluetooth speaker but couldn’t reach it, so settled for playing air guitar in a horizontal position.
‘Fuckin’ idiot,’ said Giada and silenced all the speakers with the remote on her phone.
‘Play the music, man!’ called one of the lads in the pool before being dragged into sucking face with her friend.
Giada restarted the voicemail. Through the effects of champagne and tequila shots she struggled to decipher what was being said by the muffled voices. She made out the sound of car doors shutting and her mother’s voice saying, ‘Lead the way.’
She guffawed and paused the message. ‘Hey! Maria! Natale! Get in here!’
Her friends quickly dripped their way from the pool through the patio doors, followed by the obsequious lads.
‘What’s up?’ asked Natale.
‘This is hilarious! My mom’s accidentally drunk-dialled my voicemail with a message of whoever she’s going to fuck tonight!’
‘Cool!’ said one of the lads as Giada replayed the message via the speakers. They all got settled for the entertainment.
The inaudible sound was obviously because her mother’s phone was rattling around inside a pocket or purse. Then the car doors closed and she said, ‘Yeah, lead the way.’
The group smiled at one another and waited eagerly.
‘Who are you?’ said Giada’s mother.
‘What do you mean!?’ said a distant, female voice.
‘She’s with a woman!’ cried one of the lads.
‘Coooool!’ said his buddy.
Giada shot him a look. Maria hit him, ‘Shut the fuck up.’
Interference made the conversation momentarily unintelligible. Then it tuned back in, ‘…you have the exact same ankle tattoo as a woman I executed just this afternoon!’ said Giada’s mother.
Giada hit pause. ‘Dickheads: fuck off!’
The lads began to protest but the three girls suddenly had very different attitudes to the girls they met at the bar. They grabbed their clothes and stumbled from the house.
Giada resumed the message.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ said Giada’s mother.
‘I can’t tell you that.’ said the other woman.
More interference. ‘Come on, for fuck sake!’ shouted Giada.
‘I’m an assassin.’ came the other voice.
‘Yeah, no shit. Who do you work for?’ said Giada’s mother.
‘The cult of RID.’
‘You think this is a time for jokes?’
‘No.’
‘Okay — you’ll be the third one I’ve killed today. Not such a great organisation!’
Two gunshots caused the girls to sit up straight. Then the sound of a struggle.
‘Get the fuck off m—!’ shouted Giada’s mother in distress. Giada’s heart pounded. She felt very sober.
‘Lota: lumina in! Lota: Scamnum!’
‘What’s she saying?’ said Natale.
‘Shh!’ said Maria.
There were further sounds of struggling which caused a prolonged period of interference. Finally it cleared and Giada’s mother could be heard, ‘What do you want?’
‘I told you.’
‘You’re going to try and tickle me to death!?’
The three girls looked at one another. ‘What is this?’ said Maria.
‘Your mom isn’t into some kind of freaky role play is she, G?’
‘Shut the fuck up and listen—!’ said Giada before being interrupted by the full-throated laugh of her mother that burst out so loud that it distorted the sound from the speaker.
For the next twenty minutes the girls listened to the taunting and torture of Giada’s gangster boss mother, Susan Rosetti. The humiliating sounds of begging and impudent laughter from her sparked an inferno of anguish and rage inside Giada.
‘Please!’ her mother pleaded, ‘No more-hore-hore-hore-hore! Enoughhhhhh!’ before a piercing scream of abandoned laughter shook the speaker and the phone cut to silence.
An electronic voice proclaimed: ‘Sent today at 2:34am. To return the call, press star.’
Giada called her mother. The voicemail answered. ‘Mom… Call me back,’ she said, knowing her mother would never hear the message. She dropped her phone to the floor. Maria and Natale sat with her in silence.
Finally, with a voice that carried the weight of new responsibilities, she said, ‘Who are the cult of RID?’
Chapter 1
Senior Agent Syra Rahul was dumbfounded. Sitting across the desk from Mission Supervisor Baker, she confirmed she had heard correctly. ‘You want me to track down Agent Cheryl Pereira because she deserted? And if she won’t come back, you want me to…?’
‘I would suspect it will be very difficult to persuade her to do something she doesn’t want to do. You could try, but you know as well as I do that Agent Pereira is a strong-willed individual. If she’s gone it’s because she has made up her mind to do so.’
‘Why did she go AWOL?’
‘Probably a variety of factors, including the death of Agent Wilson. She went rogue a few days ago and assassinated a target — Susan Rosetti. She told me about it and I informed her of the consequences, which she seemed to accept so I stupidly left her alone while I made a call to the Directors. When I came back she was gone.’
‘Is there no way we can just let her go?’
‘You know there isn’t,’ said Baker. ‘First, we have to set an example; we can’t just have Agents doing as they please and disobeying direct instructions. Second, she knows we can’t just let her go. We can’t take the risk of her giving away secrets about RID in order to gain protection elsewhere.’
‘Is that likely?’
‘No, it’s not likely but this organisation didn’t retain its anonymity for as long as it has by leaving loose ends. The Directors want her back. I want her back. And, if she won’t come willingly and you can’t bring her unwillingly, there’s only one thing you can do.’
After a pause Syra asked, ‘Do we know where she might be headed?’
‘She has family in California. She knows we know that, so she’s likely to avoid going there but it’s probably still the best place to start. No doubt she junked her cell phone, so ask Tech Agent Michaels if he has any way to track her.’
— — —
Syra was the first to board and settle into her first class seat on the plane at LaGuardia Airport. She observed other passengers as they followed. A handsome but over-confident Italian man in the seat directly in front of her smiled at her as he stored a briefcase into the overhead locker. Syra gave no response and looked out the window. Heavy rain made it difficult to see much except the airport lights.
I’m targeting another agent… she thought. I didn’t see this one coming.
Especially not another agent that she had gone through basic training with.
When you’re in training, no matter what the task and how seriously you take it, there’s always the feeling of a safety net; the feeling that if you fail it doesn’t really matter because nobody is supposed to die in basic training. Also, in basic training Syra was the star trainee, but they’d both been through countless missions since then. Now she had no idea what skills Cheryl had picked up along the way.
In hindsight, Syra knew that, as a trainee, she was unbearably arrogant because she had natural abilities. Those abilities were still there, but experience since taught her that over-confidence is a potentially fatal personality flaw. In fact, this was a lesson she learnt the very last time she and Cheryl were in competition, during their final exam…
Chapter 2
Syra was early to the lecture room. She was ready for the final exam despite a restless night of anticipation.
Next in was Trainee Patrick Sloane. He smiled as soon as he saw her. She acknowledged him as politely as she could but was tired of his puppy-dog enthusiasm.
‘Good morning,’ he said.
‘Hi.’
‘You ready for today?’
‘Of course.’
‘Of course,’ he repeated. He loved her hard-boiled confidence. He sat at the desk next to hers and poked her in the waist. She spasmed and instantly grabbed him into a wrist lock. He interpreted it as flirtatious.
‘I told you, don’t do that!’
‘Listen, if we both have a good result today, how about we go out for a drink later?’
She released his hand, ‘Do I have to ensure I don’t have a good result today, then?’
‘Very funny,’ he said.
‘Look, Patrick, we had one night together—’
‘Yeah, and there’s so much more to do…’
The door opened and more students arrived. Patrick winked to indicate that they could continue the conversation later. Not if she could avoid him.
As 9am approached, Senior Skill Instructor Darmoni entered — an experienced agent and ex-Tunisian Special Forces Sergeant. She was around 50 but could have passed for 20 years younger. Her natural charisma and good looks also earned her the distinction that every trainee who passed through the organisation—whatever their gender or sexual orientation—developed a crush on her.
By her side were male Skill Instructors Cooper and Knight. Both had been instrumental in the tutorage of the trainees over the past year.
Last through the door were Trainees Denise Jones and Cheryl Pereira. Patrick smiled a greeting. If Syra and Cheryl hadn’t been on the training course, Denise would have definitely been in his sights — pretty mixed-race girls with piercing green eyes weren’t a common occurrence in his experience.
Cheryl noticed that Patrick had, of course, plonked himself next to Syra. During the first month of training, Cheryl and Patrick had been fairly close and flirted non-stop. Then Syra joined as a late attendee. Cheryl could admit to herself that some envy was stoked by how adept Syra was at every task but the real jealousy came because Patrick immediately switched his attention to Syra. The lapdog manner with which he followed her everywhere led Cheryl to view him with contempt, even though she still thought he had the best body in the whole cult.
Darmoni took her place at the lectern, ‘Good morning, Trainees. An exciting day ahead for all of you: this is your final examination.
‘One of the branches of RID operates year-round as a cover for this exam. It masquerades as a high class BDSM agency known as Veil, specialising in power play and offering dominants, dominatrixes and switches to wealthy members of society for whom it is vital to keep their proclivities secret.
‘We deliberately accept clients who aren’t looking for something specific but have rather foolishly said, “You can do what you want to me.”’ A murmur of amusement rippled across the room. ‘To be clear: this is about interrogation and how far you can take your subject. You are not to terminate them.’
She pressed a remote and a 4x2 grid appeared on the presentation screen on the wall behind her. Each cell contained a photo of a client — four male, four female. Each photo along the bottom row had a number 3 in the corner. Three of the photos on top had a number 4. The last photo of a brash-looking blonde had a number 5.
‘These are the clients. You’ll be wondering why they each have numbers next to them. The answer is that not all targets are made equal! From all the intel we collect, we rate them on how difficult they will be to overcome. 1’s are easiest and 5’s are the most difficult. Obviously, we don’t give you 1’s or 2’s. 3’s are mid-range, 4’s are tough nuts to crack and 5’s earn their number by never having been successfully dominated before. We don’t have many 5’s that come our way.’
Syra raised her hand. Darmoni acknowledged her. ‘What are we trying to get from them?’
‘Information. These people have things they do not want to reveal — it might be their real name, access to a safety deposit box or a wife’s telephone number. They haven’t told us these things, obviously. We do our own background checks and know what their deepest secrets are. Once you are on the way to your appointment, you will receive an envelope containing the information you need to get from them.
‘If you successfully extract the information, you are highly likely to pass. Further marks are awarded for use of the skills you have learnt over the past year as and when necessary. The sessions last a full five hours because the clients have paid for five hours. In the event that you achieve your goal in one hour, you have to stay in character until five hours have passed. And one more thing: you will not have your tools or bondage equipment with you. We want to see how well you can improvise, trainees!’
Denise raised a hand. Darmoni nodded to her. ‘Why are some of them switches?’
‘It’s one of those things,’ said Darmoni, ‘There isn’t an endless supply of people who suit our requirements so, the occasional client wants a little tit-for-tat. Part of what you are graded upon is the ability to get into a position where you dominate them throughout the five-hour session.’ She lifted a glass onto the lectern that contained folded pieces of paper. ‘The selection process is random. I pull out your names and you choose your client.’ Cheryl raised her hand. ‘Yes, Miss Pereira?’
‘Are you able to tell us why that woman is a number 5?’ she asked.
‘Yes, okay. This is Mrs Anastacia Montgomery. She’s 35, works on the stock exchange and she’s very fit. This will be the third time she has been a client. She books us as a switch but she has never been broken because she’s never been in the submissive role. Our psychological diagnosis indicates that she wants to be put in the submissive role but will never consider anyone outside her fantasy realm to be worthy of doing it to her.
‘The last two times she was deliberately picked by our star trainees. Both ended up being dominated and she is a fan of corporal punishment. They arrived back here bruised, roughed-up and—quite frankly—defeated. Neither had the opportunity to lay a finger on her. Both failed their final exams, and if you fail your final exam, you don’t become an agent.’
The trainees looked at one another.
‘What’s the benefit of choosing a 5?’ asked Syra.
Cheryl shot Syra a look. Her arrogance was so predictable. She knew that Syra would choose Montgomery if given the option and she hoped she would get the chance to pick her first.
‘It tells us some things about you, Miss Rahul. That said, because she is ultra competitive and enjoys the humiliation caused by her own victories, she has pledged to give two lots of $5,000 to the person who can extract two pass codes from her. Obviously, she’s very confident that this will never happen.’
‘I’d take her down immediately!’ said Patrick.
‘You’re not allowed to just knock her out and wrap her up in duct tape, Mr Sloane,’ said Darmoni, ‘Part of the assessment is how convincing you can be undercover. It’s no good swinging through the window in a balaclava and combat pants — that tends to give the game away!’
The trainees tittered except for Syra who just shook her head.
‘Now, if there are no further questions, let’s get to it…’
Cheryl sat forward on her seat. Darmoni reached into the glass and pulled out the first piece of paper. ‘And it’s you, Mr Sloane.’
Patrick analysed the faces intently, weighing up the risks of ego and graduation against the kudos of breaking Anastacia Montgomery. ‘I’ll have the number 4 on the far left.’
‘Very well,’ said Darmoni, greying out the chosen cell and pulling another name from the glass. ‘Next is… Denise Jones.’
Denise pointed at the face next to Patrick’s choice, ‘The old guy. Number 4.’
Cheryl willed for her name to be pulled out next.
‘And… Trainee Rahul,’ said Darmoni.
‘Fuck,’ said Cheryl under her breath.
‘I’ll take Montgomery,’ said Syra.
Cheryl was incensed. Pot luck determined that she was chosen last and left with the a number 3 — a bearded, middle-aged, overweight man.
Darmoni referred to a schedule. ‘Obviously we can’t watch all of you at once, so appointments have been scheduled to accommodate that. The first appointment is with Anastacia Montgomery. That’s you, Miss Rahul.’
Syra nodded, eager to get on with the examination.
Darmoni finished reading the itinerary. ‘One last thing before you head out: we have already secretly installed cameras in areas of the house you are to execute your punishment. This will also be in the envelope you receive. We will be watching. Do well, trainees. Salutate mortem cum risu.’
‘Salutate mortem cum risu,’ the trainees responded in unison.
As the group was dismissed, Denise stepped over to Patrick and Syra.
‘Good luck with your number 5,’ Denise said to Syra.
‘Thanks,’ said Syra. From her demeanour it was obvious that she felt she didn’t need any such wishes.
‘Couldn’t resist going for the top prize, eh?’ said Patrick.
‘If you’re going to prove yourself, do it right. Besides, I probably saved the last trainee out the glass from having to take her.’
Although this wasn’t meant as a personal dig at Cheryl, she couldn’t help taking it as one. Syra had a talent for using the word “trainee” as though it only referred to other people. ‘On the contrary,’ said Cheryl from the back of the room, ‘Some of us would be more capable of dealing with her than you assume. I wanted her.’
‘That’s an easy claim to make at this point.’ said Syra.
‘Swap. Now,’ said Cheryl.
Syra dismissed her. ‘I wanted her. I got her. You’ll have to find other ways to prove yourself. I’m sure you’ll do really well.’
Cheryl curled her fist then stormed out of the lecture room.
Syra just shrugged.
Chapter 3
As she sat in the back of a limousine, Syra casually observed the variety of modern, colonial-style houses among the trees of Saxon Woods Road, Scarsdale, New York. This was the first time she’d ever worn latex or leather. Together, they provided a two distinctly novel smells: the rubber, clean and synthetic; the leather, natural and warm. She was aware that people who wore these materials often found the smells to be sexy and supposed this was due to an association with the activities in which they participated while wearing them. She wondered what feelings she would associate with them with in just a few hours’ time.
On the seat next to her laid an open envelope and a sheet of paper that read:
Goal:
• Brother’s phone number. Have a plausible reason for getting it.
Bonus goal:
• 2 x 8-digit codes for Bank of America
Location options:
• Kitchen
• Study
• Master Bedroom
— — —
Darmoni and Cooper sat in leather armchairs in a softly-lit viewing suite at the RID headquarters. Knight arrived with three coffees, handed them out and took a seat. Before them was a wall of screens. Each screen but one displayed a different angle inside the client’s home including the areas that were not on Syra’s objective form. The final screen showed Syra in the back seat of the limousine.
‘She looks calm,’ said Cooper.
Darmoni nodded.
‘Never seen her any other way,’ said Knight. ‘Clinical is how I’d describe her.’
Darmoni leafed through some notes on her lap, ‘Someone who ties up and tortures her boyfriend to death would have to be a little detached, I would say. I wonder if her pulse raises at all when she is at work,’ she sipped her coffee. ‘These next few hours will be very interesting.’
— — —
The limousine pulled into a driveway, the length of which made the grand, 6-bedroom house at the end of it more secluded than the other houses on the road.
‘Here we are,’ said Agent Marquez in his guise as the chauffeur. ‘I’ll park up not far away. I’ll be back in five hours.’ He pulled the car up and observed Syra from the rear-view mirror. She was looking at the house with a blank expression. ‘You’ll be fine,’ he said.
‘I know,’ she said, and got out.
With her hair pinned up and dressed in a black-leather trench coat that modestly covered her purple satin & black lace corset, latex skirt, fishnet stockings and extravagant, strappy heels, Syra strutted towards the front door, aware that every action was being watched. It felt somewhat empty-handed to her to be a dominatrix without even a whip or paddle about her person but knew that every aspect of this exam was devised as a challenge to be overcome. After all, no future mission would ever be plain sailing.
She knocked on the door and for several moments the only sounds she could hear were the limousine pulling out of the driveway and the lonesome call of a peregrine falcon as it soared high overhead.
Then footsteps emanated from a distant part of the house. Syra was weary of proclaiming attributes onto things of which she had no proof but the speed of the footsteps seemed to her to be deliberately cool and intended to intimidate. Syra stood tall and confident as the footsteps came to a stop. She knew she was being checked out through the peephole. The security chain was released in the same slow and deliberate manner and the door opened.
Syra raised her gaze a significant amount to look into the eyes of Anastacia Montgomery. Syra wore four-inch heels. Anastacia’s stilettos were at least six inches, which, Syra estimated, took the woman to around 6’8”. She wore a skin-tight black latex catsuit with large, oval cutouts on each side that showed the skin from her hips to half-way up her ribcage. Her hair was newly cut into a textured, tousled bob and her makeup was dark to suit the occasion.
‘They’ve sent me an Indian one this time?’ said Montgomery with well-practiced neutral pronunciation that hid which part of the States she originated from. She left the door open for Syra and lead the way to the kitchen. ‘What type are you?’
‘Type?’ said Syra, closing the door behind her.
‘Muslim? Hindu—?’
‘I’m American.’
Montgomery smirked.
‘Have you never been taught that the protocol for greeting a Mistress is to politely ask my name and introduce yourself?’ said Syra, removing her coat and laying it onto a chair.
Although Anastacia appreciated how good she looked, she gave no sign of recognition. ‘Oh, my dear, the days of others teaching me things is long gone. Besides, I’m not a grovelling submissive, I’m a “switch”,’ she said, highlighting her distain for abiding by other people’s rules with air-quotes, ‘Didn’t Veil give you any background on me?’
‘What they didn’t tell me I can quickly discover for myself,’ said Syra as she glanced around the oak and magnolia entrance hall and into each room she passed. Evidently, the interior decoration placed more emphasis on impressive antiques than consistency and comfort.
‘Maybe you could provide me with a list of your insights before you leave,’ said Anastacia. ‘Unless you have any now, of course.’
‘Only that you find it empowering to see someone intimidated by you, probably due to insecurities that you’d never admit to; you spend money in the hope that it will change what people think of you and when that doesn’t work you pretend you don’t care; and you probably don’t realise that when you say nobody can teach you anything, you’ll remain at the intellectual age that you were when your ego first expelled that philosophy to the person who gave the impression he was impressed by it.’
As they reached the kitchen Anastacia turned, a smile plastered over her indignation.
‘Of course, if any of this is incorrect, I’ll be sure to apologise before I leave,’ said Syra with her characteristically imperturbable composure, ‘but give me time; I’ve only been here thirty seconds.’
‘What is your name?’
‘Mistress Equinox.’
Anastacia gave a look of disdain, ‘A bit pretentious, no?’
‘If that’s how you see it, Anastacia.’
Syra’s expression remained inscrutable but her words were certainly not. Anastacia hoped that her irritation was not flushing her cheeks. She held out her hand, ‘A pleasure to meet you, Equinox.’
Syra took her hand, which felt abnormally large, even compared to most men she knew. She felt her hand being crushed. The pressure Anastacia Montgomery exerted seemed effortless. Syra had to check her instinct to yank her into a thumb lock and take her to her knees.
‘Likewise,’ said Syra.
Anastacia let go and turned to the kitchen. Syra glanced at her hand and saw creases where there were usually none.
‘Would you like a drink or anything before we get started?’ asked Anastacia.
‘I’m good, thank you.’
From a jug on the marble kitchen counter Anastacia poured herself a tall glass of water flavoured with slices of lime and mint leaves. The catsuit covered her from ankle to neck but the oval cutouts showed enough of her abdominal obliques for Syra to conclude that this woman had a regular personal trainer.
Anastacia’s toned stomach muscles imprinted against the latex as she drained her glass and felt like a magnet to Syra’s fingertips.
‘This way,’ she said as she threw the glass onto the counter. She lead Syra upstairs. They passed several bedrooms of floral decor and dark wood furniture until they reached a door at the end of the corridor. Anastacia took down a key from the top of the doorframe, unlocked the door and paused for dramatic effect. ‘Let’s start in here,’ she said and opened the door into a large dimly-lit room with red walls and a black carpet. An iron bed frame with a black latex mattress stood in the middle of the room, a leather-padded bondage table and a spanking bench sat in the corner and thick iron chains with modern, padded manacles hung from a thick ceiling beam that was installed specifically for the purpose of hanging people from it. Restraints, whips, floggers and all manner of toys sat on shelves or hung from hooks all around the room. Syra could feel the heat of Anastacia’s pride in having created such a well-equipped play space.
Syra considered that her need to improvise had just been dramatically reduced; this was a gift! She considered the locations she had to implement the interrogation, ‘So, this is the master bedroom?’
‘Oh, no. This is the Mistress bedroom. The “master” bedroom is next door. I ask no questions about what my husband does on his little business trips and he asks no questions about what goes on behind this door. The only people who get to see inside here are me and my victims… I mean, “guests”.’
Syra considered the various methods she could use to plausibly get Anastacia from this room into the master bedroom without using any of the martial arts training she had been given at the training centre.
‘Time to begin,’ said Syra. ‘I will tie you—’
‘I’ll stop you there,’ said Anastacia. ‘I will be taking charge.’
‘You asked for a dominatrix, not a submissive. I’ll tell you what to do—’
‘I hate to contradict you, Equinox, but I asked for a switch and, as a repeat paying client, I will be doing what I like in the way I desire to. Now, stand under the chains and remove your clothes.’
Syra wondered how much she could deviate from the pretence of being a professional dominatrix to physically force Anastacia into the position she wanted. As Anastacia stepped over to a heavy wooden box at the foot of the bed, Syra’s eye was caught by a glint from a mahogany coat rack from which hung a range of floggers. Taking a closer look, she could see the heads of four brass screws that secured the rack to the wall, but where the fifth one should have been there was instead a tiny camera lens. RID hadn’t just placed cameras in the rooms where the action was supposed to take place — they were monitoring the entire house.
Syra nodded an acknowledgement to her examiners and could imagine them waving back. She turned to see Anastacia pull out a 6-foot leather bullwhip and decided to act. She needed to knock her onto the bed and so moved silently behind Anastacia and grabbed her waist. Anastacia’s knees buckled and she yelped, dropping the whip to the floor. But instead of falling forward, she twisted on the spot and propelled herself forward, grabbing Syra’s throat and one of her wrists. Syra was pushed quickly back as Anastacia shouted, ‘Don’t do that! What is it with you people? I hate that!’
Syra tried to break free from the grip on her wrist but Anastacia’s strength kept her in place. Again she had to stop herself from using violent methods of self-defence and consider alternatives but, in her hesitation, Anastacia lifted her arm with all the ease of a puppeteer lifting the limb of a marionette, and slung a self-locking steel cuff around it. The marionette image became ingrained in Syra’s mind when her other arm was lifted without hesitation and locked into place.
Syra regained composure, ‘That wasn’t very lady-like,’ she said, pulling at the manacles.
‘Just be happy I didn’t slap your face for touching me,’ said Anastacia, stepping over to the wall and turning a crank handle that pulled the chains through the thick wooden beam.
Syra felt her wrists being lifted. ‘You lose your temper very easily. Don’t you know that the first person a Mistress needs to control is herself—?’
‘I don’t need philosophy lessons—’
‘Of course, I forgot—’
‘…and it was a reaction to what you did. The last girl from Veil did something like that too. Do you think tickling is a BDSM technique or something? This isn’t child’s play!’
Syra couldn’t help but become distracted at how stretched she now was. Her arms were spread high and taught and, just as her heels began to raise off the floor, Anastacia stopped the crank and latched it into place.
Syra felt a wave of regret and humiliation, knowing that Darmoni, Cooper and Knight were watching her in this position. At this point the only thing within her control was her demeanour and it was an unnatural experience to have to make herself appear stoic. This wasn’t going to plan.
Anastacia admired her handiwork but a frown flitted across her expression, ‘I did ask you to remove your clothes. You really do need some lessons in how to obey your superiors.’
‘If any make an appearance, be sure to let me know,’ said Syra.
In response, Anastacia stepped behind her and ripped open the studs of her latex skirt and threw it into a corner. She couldn’t help but appreciate and resent Syra’s naturally firm, round bottom as it appeared in a g-string and the fishnet tights. She stepped to her front and roughly pulled at the corset fastenings in the hope that Syra had breasts she could ridicule. Unfortunately for her, as the corset fell away it revealed the body of a sport-fit young woman with beautiful C-cup breasts. She pulled the pins from Syra’s hair and ruffled it to make it fall messily around her shoulders.
Syra did her best to forget this was being watched. She also had to refrain from kicking Anastacia to her knees and wrapping both legs around her neck until she fell unconscious.
‘Such a nice body. You shouldn’t hide it, Equinox,’ said Anastacia. ‘Equinox is such a mouthful. I’m going to call you Nox…’ she lifted a heavy leather flogger from the wall. ‘What do you think of that?’
‘It’s up to you…’ said Syra.
‘I’m glad you finally realise that.’
‘…three syllables is too much for some people.’
Anastacia was tired of forcing a smile. She performed her deliberately slow walk routine until she was behind Syra.
The room was silent save for the distant tick of a grandfather in the entrance hall.
After some moments the silence was broken by the gentle swoosh of the flogger. It lapped gently at Syra’s left buttock. Then the same again. Time after time the flogger tapped her with lazy swings. The gradual increase in force wasn’t initially noticeable but soon Syra could hear the difference in pitch as it swept through the air. Anastacia was obviously well-practiced; the tails of the flogger hit exactly the same place each time and, as the weight of the flogger delivered more of a thud than a slap, the sensations were not unbearably painful.
Anastacia moved position and did the same to Syra’s right buttock. Syra relaxed into it and found the predictable tempo of each hit fairly calming. Then Anastacia broke the rhythm with one hard thwack that caused Syra to totter on her toes.
‘Now you see why I had to chain you,’ said Anastacia. ‘We can’t have your waif-like self toppling over, can we?’
Syra didn’t answer. She knew that if she was speaking when she got hit like that again she would let out a sound that would undermine her poise. She kept her mouth closed and focussed on a minimalist silver clock on the wall. She still had four and a half hours to play with.
Thwack! A heavy hit struck her on the left buttock. Thwack! Another on the right. Anastacia alternated the strikes as her frustration grew that, despite each hit being strong enough to cause her to lose her balance, this infuriating Indian girl’s expression wasn’t changing.
Syra felt the sting but made a game of maintaining her composure.
Anastacia was breaking a sweat and remembered that she had much more at her disposal than a single flogger. ‘There. Did you enjoy that, Nox?’ she asked.
Syra shrugged in response.
‘That was just a little preparation, so I can take my time over what comes next,’ she said.
Syra’s butt tingled with warmth as as she watched Anastacia replace the flogger and open a cupboard to display a range of canes hanging from the inside of the door. She took down a thick, polished bamboo cane and a long, thin carbon fibre cane. She rested the carbon fibre cane on the bed and stepped behind Syra.
She began with gentle, rapid taps from the bamboo cane that slowed in speed but built in strength. Syra had to focus to control her breathing as the swishing noises from the cane became more rapid and the strikes became more painful.
After Anastacia had completed several repetitions of this on both buttocks she stepped into Syra’s view and gave a humourless smirk as she laid down the bamboo cane and picked up the carbon fibre one. This time Anastacia did not begin with a gentle approach and the cane was so thin that it barely made a noise as it whisked through the air and snapped against Syra’s skin.
Anastacia smiled to herself at the involuntary twitch of Syra’s buttocks as she reacted to the sharp pain that echoed through her body.
Syra closed her eyes and zoned out the pain with meditation. Over time Anastacia’s fun diminished as she noticed Syra reacting less and less despite the strikes increasing in strength. She stopped and stroked the side of the cane up and down Syra’s skin. It travelled an uneven surface of impact welts.
Syra brought herself back into the moment, ‘Are you ready to receive now?’ she asked.
‘That’s not happening,’ said Anastacia as she threw down the cane.
Dropping her mental defences as she adjusted her wrists, Syra felt an uncomfortable sting all over her bum.
‘I don’t really like these fishnets you’re wearing,’ said Anastacia. ‘They look like you bought them from a fancy dress shop. I’ll remove them for you. Then I’ll have unfettered access to your whole ass.’
Syra didn’t respond.
‘But scissors would be boring. I wonder how long it will take me to remove them with this?’ Anastacia said, retrieving the bullwhip.
Syra remained silent; her expression didn’t betray the concern she felt. Darmoni had said that previous trainees returned home “roughed-up”. She said nothing about having their skin slashed open by a 6-foot leather bullwhip.
Anastacia got into position. ‘Stay still now, Noxie,’ she said and cracked the whip with a volume that made Syra’s ears ring. Syra remained relaxed. Anastacia cracked the whip again and again, now more intent on accuracy than impressive volume. With each snap, Syra could feel a tiny rush of air as the cracker exploded nearer and nearer her hot skin. Again, Syra recognised how skilful Anastacia was with the whip. At least she wasn’t unintentionally getting hit and in the wrong places.
Then the whip made first contact. Syra winced and held her breath.
Again, in exactly the same place on her right buttock. A searing pain grew with each subsequent crack of the whip until Syra’s right buttock, hip and thigh felt like they were on fire. She controlled her breathing in the same way as before but she felt beads of sweat forming on her upper lip. She looked at the clock: four hours left.
After a dozen lashes with no result, both in the fishnet material or in Syra’s expression, Anastacia gave one last frustrated attempt, but overplayed her strength. The end of the whip split the tights and was just shy of cutting the skin. Syra felt the sting and bit her lip.
‘Aah!’ said Anastacia. ‘Just another…’ she muttered under her breath as she counted the stitches that would cause Syra’s tights to come apart, ‘sixty or so of those to go. That should absorb the time nicely!’
‘If you’re going to do that…’ said Syra in a manner that gave Anastacia hope that she was about to crack. Syra cleared her throat and spoke with more authority, ‘If you’re going to do that, could you open a window or something? It’s a bit stuffy in here.’
Anastacia lost her temper. ‘Cocky little shit, aren’t you?’
Syra acknowledged the accusation.
‘Well, how cocky will you be if I start whipping you in the same way across your back? Or your inner thighs? Or here…’ she said, poking at the flank of Syra’s tummy.
Syra jerked and pulled away. A smirk flitted across her lips. She quashed the reaction as soon as it arrived but Anastacia noticed it.
There was a moment of silence, during which both women knew what had just happened. Syra hesitated an instant too long before meeting Anastacia’s eye. When she did, there was no doubt what would come next.
Anastacia smirked. ‘Oh, I get it now! You use on me the things that work best on you! You’re a little pain slut, aren’t you? You actually like it! But this…’ she said, prodding repeatedly at the same place on Syra’s waist. Syra tensed her stomach but each prod had more effect than the last.
‘Okay,’ said Anastacia. ‘Let’s do this…’
Chapter 4
Anastacia Montgomery felt refreshed by a new objective as she dropped her bullwhip onto the bed and stepped over to a table that was hidden from Syra’s view behind the cane cupboard.
Syra looked up at the steel cuffs and the thick, strong iron chains that held her in place. She could see the release mechanisms on each cuff but could not think of how to reach them in her current position — arms stretched apart.
The sound of a classical piano solo piece began to play from speakers embedded within the walls. The music was gentle but ominous. Anastacia had chosen her soundtrack for the next four hours. She smiled as she stepped slowly and deliberately towards Syra, who maintained a convincing look of indifference while at the same time being somewhat concerned.
Syra knew she was ticklish but did not really know to what extent. Growing up, she and her sister had play-fights but, as she was the oldest, she was easily able to win or command an end to proceedings when she sensed she was about to lose. Her one and only boyfriend, Jack, never did it to her. The night she spent with Patrick she didn’t let it happen, even though he clearly wanted it to. There were a couple of sessions over the past year whereby trainees practiced on one another but she always found a way to avoid being in the position of having it done to her.
She consoled herself with the thought that Anastacia had already displayed her contempt for the act and so wouldn’t be very good at it. And, although she had never tried when her sister or friends did it do her, she hoped that her ability to “zone out” pain would also work now.
Anastacia stood before her. She said nothing but reached up to Syra’s wrists and began slow, gentle teasing with her index and middle fingernails, analysing Syra’s expression as she did so. Anastacia’s fingernails were long and cut to a very effective almond tip. As her teasing descended Syra’s forearms, Syra felt an overwhelming need to writhe on the spot but she kept it at bay. As the teasing reached her inner elbows, Syra realised she was clenching her teeth.
Anastacia’s fingernails continued down Syra’s inner biceps. The sensations were becoming more and more infuriating. Syra closed her eyes and tried to meditate but she couldn’t relax into it. A sensation almost like fear rose from the pit of her stomach and her body tensed as the fingernails edged lower and lower… She opened her eyes and saw a sadistic grin, more in Anastacia’s eyes than on her lips. With each passing second and each millimetre of skin closer to her armpits the tingling in her stomach lifted further — a kind of warning signal that she was about to lose control and she could do nothing to prevent it.
Then the fingernails reached a point of no return. Syra’s eternally composed expression began to waver. First her nostrils began to quiver. Then her lips.
‘Is there something you want to say, Nox?’ asked Anastacia.
Syra looked at her but said nothing. She knew she wouldn’t be able to open her mouth without losing control. Her eyebrows raised in the middle, signalling that she knew she was in trouble.
The fingernails crossed a boundary into the smooth skin of her underarms. She shuddered and drew a sharp intake of breath as very sensitive nerves were stimulated. Her body began to convulse slightly as mousey breaths of laughter emanated from her nostrils.
Anastacia’s expression grew more sadistic as she could sense the Indian woman’s defences crumbling. She kept the pressure light but scrambled all fingers into the hollows of Syra’s armpit. The tingling sensation rushed from the pit of Syra’s stomach throughout her entire body and it overwhelmed her like a crashing wave. An inelegant giggle rasped from between her clenched teeth and her head dropped in an attempt to hide her defeat.
‘Ohhh!’ Anastacia exclaimed, ‘It looks like the all-powerful “Mistress Equinox” is just a ticklish little girlie!’ She moved behind Syra, pressed her chest against her back and took grip of her underarms, working them with her fingertips. Syra squealed laughter and rocked from side-to-side in an attempt to avoid the onslaught but the pressure on her back and the chains on her wrists left her with no room to move. ‘Cootchie-cootchie-coo, tiny Noxie! Oh my, what ticklish little armpits you have! Cootchie-cootchie-cootchie-coo!’
Syra grimaced in an attempt to stop laughing but her sensitivity undermined her. She hated the trite use of baby-talk in tickling sessions. She had heard it incessantly from her peers over the past year and had concluded that it served no purpose other than to give the tickler a misplaced feeling of dominance. She therefore found it especially aggravating that it was being aimed at her but, due to her laughter, she was unable to tell this woman to shut the fuck up in a way that wouldn’t be received in any way other than trivial.
Anastacia inched her fingers down to the top of Syra’s ribcage, just behind her breasts. Syra squealed again and tried to stamp her feet but she fell off balance. Anastacia held her in place, at the same time pressing her thumbs into the muscles of her back as she considered that there may be places on this young woman that were ticklish that she had never considered before. Sure enough, a blast of surprised laughter from Syra proved that this method worked too.
‘Tell me, tiny Nox, am I finding things out about you that you never knew about yourself?’
‘No… No, you’re not!’ Syra cried between bouts of laughter.
‘Oh, Noxie. I don’t think that’s true!’ she said and grabbed Syra’s waist.
Syra squealed and twisted as much as she could, suspecting that nothing could ever feel more ticklish than Anastacia’s strong fingers felt on her waist right now. She thrashed her head, unable to cope. Anastacia held her waist at arm’s length to avoid being head-butted. She watched the younger woman struggle and writhe; the muscles in her arms and back straining with desperation and laughter; her flawless amber-brown skin beginning to glisten with sweat.
A sudden sexual thrill took Anastacia unawares. Adjusting the pressure of her fingers around her victim’s waist to reduce her level of panic and chance of being hit in the face, she felt compelled to again press her body against Syra’s back and whispered into her ear, ‘Do you feel, at last, how in control of you I am, young lady?’
Syra chose to interpret the question as rhetorical.
‘Tut, tut, Noxie. Ignoring me again…’ said Anastacia and lowered her mouth onto the smooth slope of Syra’s neck, nibbling on her muscles.
‘Wh-what are you doing?’ Syra asked.
In response, Anastacia began flicking her tongue into the dip behind her collar bone. Syra burst into uncontrollable titters and tried to close the gap with her head but Anastacia was immovable. An air of helplessness flavoured Syra’s laughter as gooseflesh ran over her entire body. Most of the time her eyes had been squeezed tight but as Anastacia launched a fresh assault on her waist and lower ribcage, she was shocked into wide-eyed hilarity.
She saw was the rack that housed the spy camera and she couldn’t imagine what her instructors were thinking as they watched her in this position; impudent and humiliated.
Anastacia pressed her groin against Syra’s butt. ‘You know,’ she whispered, ‘I can actually see why you would like this. I’ve never done it before but I think I’m going to do it for the rest of your time here,’ and her fingers massaged circles into the muscles low on Syra’s waist.
Syra’s knees buckled and she collapsed into out-and-out laughter. As she dropped, her breasts slid into Anastacia’s hands. ‘Well, thank you, Noxie. I don’t mind if I do!’
‘No!’ Syra cried and jumped back to her stilettoed feet. She was as surprised as Anastacia was delighted to hear such a plea coming from her own lips but it was a reflex. She knew how sensitive her nipples were and panicked at the idea of that sensitivity being used against her. In the same instant she kicked herself for allowing herself to cry out such a pointless protest, which would only serve to guarantee Anastacia’s focus there, which she did.
Anastacia hummed with delight as she hugged Syra in tight and scurried her lethal fingernails at her nipples. Syra shrieked an uninterrupted torrent of hilarity. ‘Ooh! Such ticklish little titties!’ Anastacia chirped. The sensation on Syra’s breasts felt like a concentrated injection of all the tickling she had felt so far and, amid the torture, her nipples grew hard against her will.
Her head fell back onto Anastacia’s shoulder and they caught each other’s eye. For a split second there was a feeling of warmth between them. Anastacia obviously enjoyed her new discovery and was hugely turned on to be subjecting Syra to it and, as Syra unintentionally rested her head on the older woman’s shoulder and looked up at her, she felt a brief moment of solidarity and understanding for those who are placed in a submissive position.
Syra shook this off and raised her head. Through tears of laughter she could see that there was three hours and ten minutes left — too long to be tied and tickled, but a worryingly short space of time left to turn the tables and get the information she came for.
Chapter 5
Darmoni watched the events in Anastacia Montgomery’s BDSM play room with disappointment.
On the screen Syra Rahul, her student most likely to excel at RID, had not only failed to get her target into a vulnerable position, she was currently being tickled to tears by the target with no prospect of improving her position before the time was up.
‘She’s still the best trainee this year,’ said Cooper.
‘Perhaps we can make an exception if she doesn’t pass this time,’ said Knight, adjusting himself. He noticed Darmoni looking at him.
‘Would you like us to leave the room?’ asked Darmoni.
‘Sorry, Ma’am.’
A new scream of laughter from Syra caused them all to look up. Anastacia had moved from Syra’s breasts, pulled down her fishnet tights and was now tickling her bottom with her fingernails, causing the trainee to dance like a flamingo on an electrified carpet.
‘This is humiliating,’ muttered Darmoni as she made notes. ‘And, no, she can’t make an exception. The best I will offer is for her to retake the whole year again. I expected her to do better than this. What if this happened while she was out in the field? She needs to be able to think on her feet.’
’Speaking of which…’ said Cooper, indicating the screen.
— — —
‘It looks like you need to sit down,’ said Anastacia, as she observed Syra’s shoes and the fishnet tights around her ankles.
Syra swung gently from the chains, catching her breath and barely able to stand. She had now been tickled non-stop for over an hour and a quarter. Her hair clung to her sweat-covered face and neck. Anastacia stepped over to the padded bondage table and began to drag it towards her. She swallowed as she guessed what was coming next.
‘You know, you cannot count yourself as a real Mistress if you’ve never experienced the punishment you dish out,’ said Syra.
‘I heard that somewhere,’ Anastacia replied, ‘but it’s not a philosophy I believe in. I believe that a real dominant is never in the submissive position. I don’t care what other people think, so whether they consider me to be a Mistress or not is of little consequence. Actions are more relevant than labels.’ She dropped the table in front of Syra. ‘Sit on it.’
‘It’s also best practice to release a person’s arms every twenty minutes to prevent them from passing out.’
‘Feeling weak, are you?’ said Anastacia.
‘I’m just questioning the professionalism of your mentors. Then again, you probably never wanted to be taught anything, did you?’
‘Get on the bench, you pathetic tart.’
Syra stood, defiant.
‘Okay then…’ said Anastacia.
Syra struggled at the bonds and let out an involuntary whimper as Anastacia stepped behind her and grabbed her waist. ‘AIEEEE!’ she shrieked in anger and frustration as the intense tickling sensations overwhelmed her and she collapsed into uninhibited laughter. Anastacia swept an arm under her knees and lifted her with almost comical ease onto the bench. She threw a single restraint over both knees and pulled it tight to keep her legs in place. She then unceremoniously yanked off both of Syra’s strappy high heels, tore off her tights and threw them all into the corner with her skirt.
The same tingle of fear that Syra previously felt in the pit of her stomach, she now felt in the soles of her feet. She pulled hard at the knee restraints and heard a rip.
‘Don’t damage my equipment, Nox!’ shouted Anastacia as she grabbed Syra’s right ankle and fastened a leather cuff around it. She then did the same to her left ankle.
‘This is not the agreement you signed with the agency!’ shouted Syra.
‘Oh, my girl. When will you learn? Everything happens on my terms.’ Anastacia stood at the bottom of the table and noticed the even creaminess of Syra’s pristine soles. A fleeting thought occurred to her that it was no wonder Syra kept falling off-balance on her high heels — she obviously never wore them. Syra could do nothing as Anastacia wriggled her fingers towards her soles. Syra instinctively shook her head in a subconscious plea for mercy while she kept her mouth firmly closed to prevent herself from saying it. Anastacia’s sadistic enjoyment of the situation burned bright. ‘Scared? You ticklish little weasel?’
Syra tensed every muscle in her body as she prepared for the inevitable. Anastacia’s fingernails reached Syra’s size five soles with an almighty effect. The tension she held inside exploded with a reaction that was unstoppable and primitive. The upper half of her body twisted wildly as she laughed with hopeless abandon, throwing her head in all directions. ‘NO! NO! NO! NO! NOOO!’ she cried between helpless spells of laughter.
Anastacia was lost in a frenzy of perverse enjoyment. In comparison to spanking and flogging and caning and whipping, how simple it was to torture someone so ticklish with just the movement of her fingernails.
Syra and Anastacia lost track of time over the course of next couple of hours. Anastacia was having too much fun to think about anything else. For Syra it felt like it would never end.
The intensity of the tickling meant that hundreds of unfinished thoughts went through Syra’s mind during this time, from plans of how to escape to abstract concepts induced by an overload of dopamine and a mind that was crazed by desperation.
She knew from her studies that some people grew less sensitive the more a single spot was focussed upon but she now knew, beyond any doubt, that she was not one of those people. Using the measuring system by which the cult graded potential targets, Syra guessed that she was somewhere between 88 to 92 out of 100 on the ticklish scale.
Her body was covered in sweat and her mouth was dry from the constant deep gasps for oxygen when she noticed the clock — she had just thirty minutes left. Her laughter was so forced at this point that it had lost any semblance of humour. She felt her cheeks quivering when any momentary break in the tickling caused her expression to drop into one of exhaustion. Anastacia’s look of enjoyment remained constant; she was aiming to see this through to the end.
Syra felt so physically weak that, even if it was possible to pull a wrist or ankle free, there was no way she could prevent Anastacia from tying it straight back up again. A thought from her subconscious spoke: I wish I could just pass out and wake up when the time was over… pass out… pass out… Then she snapped back into the moment. There was no way she could fake being unconscious because as soon as Anastacia tickled her, she would begin laughing. She thought for a moment, then mustered whatever willpower she had left and threw her head back, as though in open-mouthed laughter. She then held her breath. Her body continued to wriggle and convulse at the relentless tickling on the soles of her feet and she didn’t know how long she could last.
‘Oh, I love how feeble this makes you look, little Nox! Cootchie-cootchie-coo!’ taunted Anastacia.
This stuck-up woman’s continued arrogance gave Syra the determination to hold out just a few seconds longer. Bright white and green flashes sparkled in her vision. A fuzzy, numbing sensation surrounded her and then……
Syra’s head flopped back and her body ceased to respond. Anastacia’s face dropped. ‘Oh, shit,’ she said and quickly unstrapped Syra’s ankles and knees. She quickly turned the crank to lower Syra’s upper body and stepped over to release the steel cuffs. She carried Syra to the bed, laid her on the mattress and lifted her legs.
For Syra there was blackness.
She woke as if from a dreamless sleep. She felt her legs moving but she wasn’t the one moving them. She opened her eyes, expecting to see her bedroom at the RID HQ apartment block. It took her a moment to remember where she was. She looked down to see Anastacia holding her legs.
‘I’ll give you a couple of minutes, but I still have half an hour left,’ said Anastacia without irony.
Syra made a grab for Anastacia’s waist… At least, she thought she did. Where are my fucking arms!? Looking to either side, she saw her arms splayed out on the mattress. They were completely numb and immovable from being strapped up so long.
With swift improvisation, she pulled her legs from Anastacia’s grasp and wrapped them around her waist, locking her ankles and squeezing tight. The air was crushed from Anastacia’s lungs and she dropped to her knees. Syra then shoved her chest with both feet, knocking her on her butt. Syra raced to the door in just her G-string, turned the handle with her knee and ran out onto the landing.
‘Where are you going, Noxie?’ Anastacia called.
Syra darted into the master bedroom. The feelings began to come back to her arms with a painful surge of pins and needles. She slammed the door shut with her shoulder and saw that the lock had a key already in it. She turned it just in time as the handle turned from the other side.
‘Oh, Nox, how tiresome you are! But, unfortunately for you, I have the master key.’
Footsteps moved away from the door. Syra threw the key to one side and scanned the room — a solid superking-size bed with a duvet and no visible places on which to tie anything, a set of heavy curtains with thick tasseled tie-backs, a dressing table, an antique chair in the corner behind the door and a closet. ‘“No bondage equipment allowed…”’ Syra muttered to herself. ‘When am I ever going to be on a mission and not have my equipment to hand?’
Just then she heard the footsteps returning…
— — —
SI Knight appeared frozen in time. He was holding a cell phone, and had been ready to speed-dial Agent Marquez since Syra passed out. Cooper held his face in one hand, cringing at the sight of a semi-naked star pupil running away and hiding from a test subject.
Darmoni held up a hand to prevent Knight from making the call. She wanted to see what happened next.
They watched as Syra muttered something unintelligible, pulled opened the curtains and threw open the window.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ said Cooper, ‘Is she going to jump out now—?!’ he cut himself short as Syra took the tie-backs, tugged the duvet from the bed, rapidly pulled off the cover and kicked the bare duvet into the en-suite bathroom. She held the tie-backs under her arm and used her teeth to rip a 1-foot long hole in seam at the top of the duvet cover, ruffled it up into both hands and leapt onto the chair behind the door just as Anastacia threw it open.
Anastacia reacted to the ransacked room and open window. She half-laughed as she called, ‘Did you actually jump out the goddamn window to escape me?!’ She stepped into the room, ‘If you used my duvet to break your fall you’ll pay for it! That’s Icelandic eiderdown—!’
Syra sprung from the chair and netted the cover over Anastacia’s head, the rip allowing her head to poke through. ‘What the hell—!?’ Anastacia shouted as the cover shrouded her body. She made a grab throw the material but Syra parried both hands and barged her sideways onto the bed, rapidly rolling her over and tying the curtain ropes around her elbows and ankles.
‘What the hell!?’ Anastacia yelled again, her face smooshed into the pillows and utterly confused at how quickly she had landed in this position.
Syra rolled her onto her back and straddled her. She looked directly into Anastacia Montgomery’s eyes and said, ‘Now… it’s my turn.’
‘Well, fuck me till Tuesday,’ said Cooper.
Knight lowered the cell phone.
Darmoni smirked. ‘Just twenty-five minutes to go, Miss Rahul.’
Chapter 6
‘I demand you untie me!’ shouted Anastacia.
‘At the risk of sounding clichéd, you’re not in much of a position to make demands,’ said Syra.
She rolled Anastacia onto her front and went to the closet to rifle through the clothes. She found several makeshift ties, tossing each one to the foot of the bed as she went.
‘I am the client! I refuse to pay for this treatment!’
‘Anastacia, you did pay for this treatment. And, in case you don’t recall, you signed a contract that stated: I am a Submissive or a Switch as defined above. I understand that those who pose as submissives or switches whilst actually being dominant are libel to be sued for breach of contract.’
Anastacia’s mind raced for a moment. She didn’t remember reading such a line but Syra sounded very convincing in her quotation. ‘That’s ridiculous! Whoever heard of an escort agency suing a client?! They wouldn’t do such a thing!’
‘Trust me, this one would. And just think of the embarrassment! Your husband would find out! Your kids, your mother, your father… your brother!’
As Syra suspected, the mention of Anastacia’s brother caused her to try her hardest to escape. She was curious to find out why and mounted the backs of Anastacia’s thighs before she could struggle free.
‘You are right about one thing, though,’ said Syra, ‘unless you choose to let it slide, I am going to owe you for one duvet cover.’ She tore through the cover at Anastacia’s back until she found her arms and, using a handcuff knot, secured her wrists together.
Anastacia seethed with frustration, ‘I am going to kill you!’
‘Well, your personality is poisonous, but I don’t think it’s lethal,’ said Syra as she swivelled around to face Anastacia’s feet. ‘Time for these shoes to come off, I think. Louboutin, huh? How chic…’
She took hold of both magnificent stilettos and wriggled them free despite Anastacia’s toes gripping to keep them in place. The shoes popped off and she quickly had the measure of Anastacia’s soles: size ten and rosey-pink around the toes, balls, edges and heels but with fair-skinned arches. She was obviously no stranger to towering heels but she must also have regular luxury foot care treatments as her skin was smooth but not the soft skin of a young woman, nor the calloused skin of someone who ignores her feet. The skin of her soles had the unsurprising look and, Syra suspected, the feel of the mature, 35-year-old woman that she was.
Syra had an uncanny ability to know exactly where someone else was ticklish just by sight. She could not explain it, but her success rate percentile during training sessions was in the high 90s. Some of the other trainees labelled her The Syranator as they imagined her to be installed with a cyborg scanning technology that locked onto a target’s most vulnerable parts. She didn’t find the nickname particularly flattering but she smiled politely whenever they said it. Right now, her sixth sense was drawing her to the spots around two inches below the pits of the big and second toes, where Anastacia’s pale arches met the rosey-pink balls of her feet.
One area in which Syra knew she needed improvement was vocal taunting. It didn’t come naturally to her but she also knew that it enhanced the feeling of helplessness in a target when used in the right way and was beyond the puerile baby-talk that everyone else seemed to use. She saw this as an opportunity to practice.
‘Are your feet always this sweaty or are you nervous right now?’ she asked.
‘I know what you’re doing and it won’t work,’ said Anastacia.
‘I would be nervous if I was you.’
‘Well, I’m not!’
‘Okay. I’ll ask you again in three minutes.’
Mimicking Anastacia’s initial exploration, Syra began a gentle scratching at the bottom of her heels with just two fingers. Her toes twitched in response and there was silence; she was holding her breath. ‘I know you’re not nervous yet,’ said Syra. She edged her fingernails upward to the centre of the heels, causing Anastacia to wriggle and breathe rapidly. ‘You can’t even be nervous now…’ As she reached the bottom of both arches there were sounds of restrained turmoil from Anastacia as she struggled not to react.
As Syra edged into the pale areas of Anastacia’s arches, she noticed pinpricks of sweat beginning to glisten on the soles. ‘Hmm. It looks like you’re sweating a lot. But I must be mistaken – that would indicate you’re nervous. A tall, dominant pillar of strength such as yourself wouldn’t be nervous to have a young, inexperienced Indian woman playing with her feet…’
Syra’s fingernails scampered into the centre of the arches, the sweat on Anastacia’s large feet assisting with their slick movements. Growl’s of frustration built in Anastacia’s throat. Syra could sense the imminent collapse of her mental defences. She continued to tease, ‘Yeah, not a pathetic little Indian woman like me—‘
‘Oh, shut u—!’ yelled Anastacia, a fearful giggle in her voice. But this was the moment Syra was waiting for: the cork was off the bottle. Syra instantly attacked the weak spots below her toes and Anastacia screamed with surprise. She jerked involuntarily and ineffectively in her floral sheath as her scream of resentful admission folded into vociferous laughter. Syra felt the vindictive expression on her own face as she rode bucking limbs to keep her fingernails focussed on the sensitive spots of Anastacia Montgomery’s soles.
Anastacia buried her face into the pillow to somehow muffle the soundtrack to her own humiliation. She hated to lose control, especially at the hands of someone she viewed as so contemptible. The sensations that undermined her were relentless and maddening. She couldn’t logically work out why she was laughing so hard, perhaps because she had never been tickled as an adult, and only before then by her parents and her twin brother, who used to bully her with it. The fear and frustration she felt at those episodes probably drove her mental hostility towards being tickled but she expected herself to have grown out of being so physically susceptible to it by now.
As though she was reading her mind, Syra said, ‘It seems that the great Anastacia Montgomery is as ticklish as a schoolgirl!’
‘Fu— Fu— Fffffff…!’ Anastacia tried to swear at her but couldn’t even form the first word without laughter stealing the words from her lips.
‘Sorry! Can’t hear you!’ said Syra, unable to prevent a soupçon of childish taunting seep into her methods. She looked at the clock and paused. Anastacia gasped for air in a way that most people do after an hour of torment. ‘I can see why you didn’t want me to do this. You are pathetically ticklish, aren’t you?’
‘Fuck you!’ Anastacia spat out. ‘I’m going to-AIEEEEEEE!’ she screamed as she felt the attack begin again on her defenceless soles. ‘No! Ha ha ha!!! Stop! Ha-heeeek!’
Syra stopped. ‘Yes?’
‘You can’t do this to me!’
‘I think I’m proving that I can. And I think you know that you will tell me the two bank codes before I’m finished with you.’
‘I bloody well will not!’ She looked at the bedside table alarm clock. ‘I can last another twenty minutes!’
‘“Bloody well”,’ Syra repeated, amused at Anastacia’s faux Britishness, ‘And who said anything about twenty minutes?’
Anastacia faltered before she replied, ‘There’s only twenty minutes left of the session.’
‘Officially, yes,’ said Syra, ‘but I don’t have any other clients this afternoon and you had me tied up for around three and three-quarter hours. I’m only just getting started!’ She unleashed her fingers over, between and around Anastacia’s toes, sparking an eruption of renewed hysteria.
— — —
Knight adjusted himself again.
‘Can you stop that?’ said Darmoni.
Knight tried to gloss over his arousal with a question, ‘She’s not allowed to do that, is she?’
‘To go over the five hour time slot? We’ve never explicitly said it’s not allowed. We’ve never had to.’
‘But she’s only got twenty minutes to get the intel.’ said Cooper.
‘Yes,’ said Darmoni. ‘And those codes are only bonus material. The real intel is Montgomery’s brother’s phone number.’
— — —
It wasn’t long before Syra could detect that Anastacia was attempting to say something between her wails of laughter. She eased off the intensity of her onslaught until Anastacia managed to say, ‘Oh!’
‘“Oh?”’ Syra repeated, ‘As in, “Oh, God! I’m so pathetic!”?’
Anastacia’s attempt at anger was overwhelmed by laughter, ‘Z… ZA! Z…. Zaahahaha…!’ Syra eased off a little more. ‘Z-Zero!’
Syra smiled, ‘Carry on!’
‘Zero, ei-eight, ffffour-jay…’ Anastacia paused, mistaking the lull in tickling for an increased resistance to it.
‘Come on!’ Syra shouted with another burst of tickling all over both soles.
Laughter bellowed from Anastacia that left her in no doubt as to her predicament, ‘TH-TH-THREEEEE! Bee, eight, k-kayyy!’
Syra smiled. She was beginning to detect a Texan twang to her client’s voice as her phoney pretences were disintegrated. She reached over and grabbed a ball-point pen from a notepad on the bedside table. Anastacia thrashed in panic as she scrawled 084j3b8k from the heel to ball of her right sole.
‘Next one,’ said Syra.
‘Will you untie me if I tell you!?’ Anastacia panted.
Syra looked at the clock — 12 minutes left. She responded by repeatedly underlining the first code with the ball-point pen. This time Anastacia’s desperate thrashing was accompanied by pure laughter that was bereft of a resistance.
‘OK-AY HAYYY HAYYY!’
‘What is it?’ said Syra.
Anastacia gasped for breath, ‘4y69…ils9.’ She braced herself again and buried her face in the pillow, resigned to helpless ticklish laughter as Syra scrawled the second code onto her left sole, then yelped in surprise as she was yanked over onto her back. She blinked through smeared mascara as she looked up to see Syra—still bare-breasted and with wild hair—straddling her with an expression of undiluted sadism that she had never seen on anyone before. Her first thought was to attempt to match it but she gave up on the idea before putting it into practice – anything she tried would be effortlessly undermined.
‘Please let me go,’ said Anastacia. Her accent was now unmistakably Fort Worth.
‘No.’
‘Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t know there was a clause that said I had to switch.’
‘Now you do.’
‘Yes, but you can’t keep doing this to me!’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m ridiculously ticklish, okay?! Is that what you want to hear?!’
‘No. I want to hear something you’d never say in a million years.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like, why, when I mentioned your brother finding out, did you try so hard to escape?’
Anastacia frowned, ‘Fuck off! I’m not talking to you about that!’
‘I see…’ said Syra. She sat back and ripped open the front of the duvet cover with her bare hands.
Anastacia was speechless.
Syra grabbed the panel of latex catsuit that covered Anastacia’s stomach. She stretched it up and skewered it with the pen. Gouging at it with her fingers, she ripped it open and it sprung apart, turning the catsuit into a two-piece outfit. A sheen of sweat covered Anastacia’s beautifully toned abdomen. As Syra’s peers might say, The Syranator was inundated with possibilities. ‘It looks like I owe you a catsuit too,’ she said.
Physical memories chilled Anastacia’s heart as fresh air met her skin. Her stomach felt frighteningly exposed. She looked on with fear as Syra’s eyes seemed laser-focussed on her stomach and seemed black with evil intent. ‘Look! I have a competitive relationship with my brother, okay?’
‘And you’d hate for him to see you so utterly submissive.’
Anastacia refused to answer.
Syra’s fingers wriggled towards Anastacia’s tummy. Anastacia instinctively began to struggle but before she could open her mouth to protest, fingernails scuttled across her skin. The sensation was more powerful than anything she had experienced before. She gasped in shock and her eyes widened, almost frozen to the spot before her body forced her to explode into peals of laughter.
Syra felt positively turned-on at the reactions she was eliciting from this woman. It almost felt like an out-of-body experience as she found and exploited patch after patch of 110% ticklish skin. Then she remembered the time. Five minutes left.
She paused.
‘PLEASE!’ Anastacia cried, ‘I can’t bear it!’
‘You’re going to bear it for over three hours, sub, unless you give me something that demonstrates to me how much you regret what has happened here today!’
‘Like what!?’
‘Like your brother’s phone number!’
Anastacia looked at her in disbelief, ‘Never!’
Syra’s fingers instantly went back to work but this time wriggled their way under the duvet cover and found Anastacia’s armpits. Anastacia jerked from side-to-side, lost in hilarity but Syra recognised that this was more a self-suggestive response. The rubber of the catsuit prevented her from getting truly satisfying contact with her underarms. The thought flitted across her mind that she would love to get her hands on her bare armpits.
Four minutes.
Syra retracted her hands and began light typewriter prodding of Anastacia’s waist and ribs. Anastacia fell into a frenzied hysteria. There was something inhuman about the laughter that was being forced from her mouth. Syra paused.
‘Had enough!?’
‘I don’t have his number!’ Anastacia pleaded in a shrill voice.
Three minutes.
‘Don’t lie to me!’ shouted Syra, attacking the flanks of her stomach. The contractions caused by her laughter only brought her abdominal muscles into deeper definition. ‘Give it to me! Give it to me! Give it to me! Give it to me! Give it—!’
Though her mouth was stretched with helpless screams of laughter, Anastacia stopped shaking her head and managed to nod emphatically.
Syra stopped, ‘What is it?’
‘It’s in my phone!’ Anastacia cried and averted her head.
Syra remembered seeing a cell phone on the kitchen counter. She ran downstairs to get it and caught sight of the kitchen clock: two minutes.
She raced back to the master bedroom. ‘What’s the code for your phone?’
Anastacia sobbed and shook her head. Syra threw the phone onto the bed, jumped on top of her and pressed both thumbs into Anastacia’s stomach muscles, sending a shockwave through her that made her buck so hard they were both momentarily airborne.
One minute.
Syra kept her pressed against the mattress and leant forward, swirling the tip of her tongue around Anastacia’s shallow belly button.
‘THRAAH-NAAAN-SAVAAAN-WOINNN!’ Anastacia wailed.
Although it initially sounded like gibberish, Syra deciphered this to mean 3971. She grabbed the phone and punched in the numbers. The phone unlocked. She opened the telephone contacts list.
‘What’s your brother’s name?’
‘Sebastian.’
20 seconds…
‘Yeah? Real Texan name! If you’re lying, I’ll be going to town on your abs for three hours non-stop!’
‘Mikey! It’s Mikey!’ Anastacia shouted in defeat.
Syra scrolled through the list and found Mikey. She clicked on the avatar. Mikey’s photo popped up. He had the same scowl as Anastacia.
‘Got him!’ Syra said, holding the phone aloft.
— — —
‘Two seconds left,’ said Cooper. ‘She did it.’
‘Yes, she did,’ Darmoni watched the screen with intent.
‘What are you going to do now?’ shouted Anastacia. ‘Send him a photo of me like this, you crazy bitch?!’
Syra locked the phone and tossed it to one side. ‘No, I just wanted to see how weak you were. Now, we have about three hours and twenty minutes to go!’
Darmoni, Cooper and Knight watched as Syra launched an all-out assault on Anastacia Montgomery’s feet and torso, occasionally squeezing her knees for good measure.
‘What’s she doing?’ asked Cooper.
‘Getting revenge?’ said Knight.
Anastacia’s laughs and cries of desperation began to sound somewhat disturbing. Syra occasionally leant forward as she attacked her waist and hissed something into her ear.
‘NOOOO!’ Anastacia screamed.
‘If she carries on like this, she might kill her,’ said Cooper.
Knight picked up the phone and looked to his boss. Darmoni was silent but concerned.
Anastacia wept and wailed through her laughter. Her cries became animalistic, ‘I’M GOING TO DIEEE-HEE-HEE-HEEEEEE!’
Darmoni gave the nod and Knight dialled Marquez. Marquez answered, ‘Marquez.’
‘Where are you?’ asked Knight.
‘Just pulling into the driveway.’
‘Well get your ass into that house! Our trainee is about to eliminate—’
‘MISTRESS!’ screamed Anastacia. ‘YOU’RE MY MISTRESS!!!’
Syra stopped and sat back with moan of satisfaction.
Anastacia appeared broken, ‘You’re my Mistress, you’re my Mistress, you’re my Mistress…’ she whimpered.
Syra caught her breath and slipped onto the floor. She stepped to the door and looked back at Anastacia. ‘Cootchie-fucking-coo,’ she said and went to the playroom to collect her clothes.
‘What’s happening?’ Marquez asked.
‘Nothing,’ said Knight. ‘Stand down. She’ll be with you in a minute.’
Syra stepped back into the master bedroom, dressed in her dominatrix get-up except for her stockings. She rolled Anastacia over, untied her arms and helped her out of the duvet cover.
With ink scrawled on her bare soles, a tattered catsuit and make-up smeared across her face, Anastacia was not the woman she had been less than an hour ago.
‘You ruined my stockings,’ said Syra as she loosened the curtain ropes at Anastacia’s ankles and stood back.
Anastacia sat meekly on the foot of the bed. ‘You ruined my catsuit. Call it evens?’
‘“Call it evens,” what?’
‘Call it evens, Mistress Equinox?’ said Anastacia, looking up at her.
Darmoni, Cooper and Knight simultaneously slumped back in their chairs.
Chapter 7
Marquez parked the limousine outside the RID headquarters. Syra got out of the passenger seat and saw Cheryl dressed in her dominatrix gear.
‘Going to your exam?’ Syra asked.
‘No, I’m off to the Tonawanda Bowling Tournament,’ said Cheryl as she strode past her.
Syra ignored the sarcasm. ‘I hope it goes well.’
This kind of warm sincerity from Syra took Cheryl by surprise. ‘Hey, Syra…’
‘Yeah?’
‘How did yours go?’
Syra pondered. ‘I should have let you have her,’ she said and headed to her apartment.
Cheryl got into the back of the car, unsure what to make of this comment.
Epilogue
Syra woke from her doze as the plane touched down in Sacramento International Airport.
Suspecting that the handsome Italian man in the seat in front could well ask, ‘So, how long are you in town?’ she made for the exit at her first opportunity. She didn’t have the energy to muster even a curt conversation.
As she headed to the taxi rank she dialled Tech Agent Michaels to see if he had any leads. A taxi pulled up beside her and she got in.
The handsome man took the taxi behind hers, ‘Follow that cab. Don’t lose it,’ he said to the driver and tossed $200 into the front passenger seat.
Giada Rosetti sat in her living room. Her aunt and uncle—her mother’s brother and sister—sat with her. She received a call and swiped her phone to loudspeaker mode.
‘Speak to me, Rocco,’ she said.
‘We’ve landed in Sacramento,’ said the handsome man, ‘I’ll let you know when we get to where we’re going.’
‘Good,’ she said and hung up. She looked to her uncle.
‘We’ve got good people in LA,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get her.’
THE END
The Cult of Tickle Assassins II
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
The Cult of Tickle Assassins III: Trainee Syra Rahul’s Final Exam
by Tamira K.
Prologue
22-year-old Giada lay on the family sofa, skimming through Instagram and listening to her friends cavort in the family pool with the lads they’d picked up at the club while her chosen bloke snorted cocaine from her cleavage.
A notification on her phone made her roll her eyes:
VOICEMAIL
From: Mom
She dialled voicemail and listened. The sound was muffled and unclear.
‘Hey……’ she couldn’t remember the bloke’s name and he was too enthused by tits and cocaine to hear. ‘HEY! Turn down the fuckin’ music will ya?’
He looked up, ‘Huh? Oh, sure!’ he rolled back and stretched for a bluetooth speaker but couldn’t reach it, so settled for playing air guitar in a horizontal position.
‘Fuckin’ idiot,’ said Giada and silenced all the speakers with the remote on her phone.
‘Play the music, man!’ called one of the lads in the pool before being dragged into sucking face with her friend.
Giada restarted the voicemail. Through the effects of champagne and tequila shots she struggled to decipher what was being said by the muffled voices. She made out the sound of car doors shutting and her mother’s voice saying, ‘Lead the way.’
She guffawed and paused the message. ‘Hey! Maria! Natale! Get in here!’
Her friends quickly dripped their way from the pool through the patio doors, followed by the obsequious lads.
‘What’s up?’ asked Natale.
‘This is hilarious! My mom’s accidentally drunk-dialled my voicemail with a message of whoever she’s going to fuck tonight!’
‘Cool!’ said one of the lads as Giada replayed the message via the speakers. They all got settled for the entertainment.
The inaudible sound was obviously because her mother’s phone was rattling around inside a pocket or purse. Then the car doors closed and she said, ‘Yeah, lead the way.’
The group smiled at one another and waited eagerly.
‘Who are you?’ said Giada’s mother.
‘What do you mean!?’ said a distant, female voice.
‘She’s with a woman!’ cried one of the lads.
‘Coooool!’ said his buddy.
Giada shot him a look. Maria hit him, ‘Shut the fuck up.’
Interference made the conversation momentarily unintelligible. Then it tuned back in, ‘…you have the exact same ankle tattoo as a woman I executed just this afternoon!’ said Giada’s mother.
Giada hit pause. ‘Dickheads: fuck off!’
The lads began to protest but the three girls suddenly had very different attitudes to the girls they met at the bar. They grabbed their clothes and stumbled from the house.
Giada resumed the message.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ said Giada’s mother.
‘I can’t tell you that.’ said the other woman.
More interference. ‘Come on, for fuck sake!’ shouted Giada.
‘I’m an assassin.’ came the other voice.
‘Yeah, no shit. Who do you work for?’ said Giada’s mother.
‘The cult of RID.’
‘You think this is a time for jokes?’
‘No.’
‘Okay — you’ll be the third one I’ve killed today. Not such a great organisation!’
Two gunshots caused the girls to sit up straight. Then the sound of a struggle.
‘Get the fuck off m—!’ shouted Giada’s mother in distress. Giada’s heart pounded. She felt very sober.
‘Lota: lumina in! Lota: Scamnum!’
‘What’s she saying?’ said Natale.
‘Shh!’ said Maria.
There were further sounds of struggling which caused a prolonged period of interference. Finally it cleared and Giada’s mother could be heard, ‘What do you want?’
‘I told you.’
‘You’re going to try and tickle me to death!?’
The three girls looked at one another. ‘What is this?’ said Maria.
‘Your mom isn’t into some kind of freaky role play is she, G?’
‘Shut the fuck up and listen—!’ said Giada before being interrupted by the full-throated laugh of her mother that burst out so loud that it distorted the sound from the speaker.
For the next twenty minutes the girls listened to the taunting and torture of Giada’s gangster boss mother, Susan Rosetti. The humiliating sounds of begging and impudent laughter from her sparked an inferno of anguish and rage inside Giada.
‘Please!’ her mother pleaded, ‘No more-hore-hore-hore-hore! Enoughhhhhh!’ before a piercing scream of abandoned laughter shook the speaker and the phone cut to silence.
An electronic voice proclaimed: ‘Sent today at 2:34am. To return the call, press star.’
Giada called her mother. The voicemail answered. ‘Mom… Call me back,’ she said, knowing her mother would never hear the message. She dropped her phone to the floor. Maria and Natale sat with her in silence.
Finally, with a voice that carried the weight of new responsibilities, she said, ‘Who are the cult of RID?’
Chapter 1
Senior Agent Syra Rahul was dumbfounded. Sitting across the desk from Mission Supervisor Baker, she confirmed she had heard correctly. ‘You want me to track down Agent Cheryl Pereira because she deserted? And if she won’t come back, you want me to…?’
‘I would suspect it will be very difficult to persuade her to do something she doesn’t want to do. You could try, but you know as well as I do that Agent Pereira is a strong-willed individual. If she’s gone it’s because she has made up her mind to do so.’
‘Why did she go AWOL?’
‘Probably a variety of factors, including the death of Agent Wilson. She went rogue a few days ago and assassinated a target — Susan Rosetti. She told me about it and I informed her of the consequences, which she seemed to accept so I stupidly left her alone while I made a call to the Directors. When I came back she was gone.’
‘Is there no way we can just let her go?’
‘You know there isn’t,’ said Baker. ‘First, we have to set an example; we can’t just have Agents doing as they please and disobeying direct instructions. Second, she knows we can’t just let her go. We can’t take the risk of her giving away secrets about RID in order to gain protection elsewhere.’
‘Is that likely?’
‘No, it’s not likely but this organisation didn’t retain its anonymity for as long as it has by leaving loose ends. The Directors want her back. I want her back. And, if she won’t come willingly and you can’t bring her unwillingly, there’s only one thing you can do.’
After a pause Syra asked, ‘Do we know where she might be headed?’
‘She has family in California. She knows we know that, so she’s likely to avoid going there but it’s probably still the best place to start. No doubt she junked her cell phone, so ask Tech Agent Michaels if he has any way to track her.’
— — —
Syra was the first to board and settle into her first class seat on the plane at LaGuardia Airport. She observed other passengers as they followed. A handsome but over-confident Italian man in the seat directly in front of her smiled at her as he stored a briefcase into the overhead locker. Syra gave no response and looked out the window. Heavy rain made it difficult to see much except the airport lights.
I’m targeting another agent… she thought. I didn’t see this one coming.
Especially not another agent that she had gone through basic training with.
When you’re in training, no matter what the task and how seriously you take it, there’s always the feeling of a safety net; the feeling that if you fail it doesn’t really matter because nobody is supposed to die in basic training. Also, in basic training Syra was the star trainee, but they’d both been through countless missions since then. Now she had no idea what skills Cheryl had picked up along the way.
In hindsight, Syra knew that, as a trainee, she was unbearably arrogant because she had natural abilities. Those abilities were still there, but experience since taught her that over-confidence is a potentially fatal personality flaw. In fact, this was a lesson she learnt the very last time she and Cheryl were in competition, during their final exam…
Chapter 2
Syra was early to the lecture room. She was ready for the final exam despite a restless night of anticipation.
Next in was Trainee Patrick Sloane. He smiled as soon as he saw her. She acknowledged him as politely as she could but was tired of his puppy-dog enthusiasm.
‘Good morning,’ he said.
‘Hi.’
‘You ready for today?’
‘Of course.’
‘Of course,’ he repeated. He loved her hard-boiled confidence. He sat at the desk next to hers and poked her in the waist. She spasmed and instantly grabbed him into a wrist lock. He interpreted it as flirtatious.
‘I told you, don’t do that!’
‘Listen, if we both have a good result today, how about we go out for a drink later?’
She released his hand, ‘Do I have to ensure I don’t have a good result today, then?’
‘Very funny,’ he said.
‘Look, Patrick, we had one night together—’
‘Yeah, and there’s so much more to do…’
The door opened and more students arrived. Patrick winked to indicate that they could continue the conversation later. Not if she could avoid him.
As 9am approached, Senior Skill Instructor Darmoni entered — an experienced agent and ex-Tunisian Special Forces Sergeant. She was around 50 but could have passed for 20 years younger. Her natural charisma and good looks also earned her the distinction that every trainee who passed through the organisation—whatever their gender or sexual orientation—developed a crush on her.
By her side were male Skill Instructors Cooper and Knight. Both had been instrumental in the tutorage of the trainees over the past year.
Last through the door were Trainees Denise Jones and Cheryl Pereira. Patrick smiled a greeting. If Syra and Cheryl hadn’t been on the training course, Denise would have definitely been in his sights — pretty mixed-race girls with piercing green eyes weren’t a common occurrence in his experience.
Cheryl noticed that Patrick had, of course, plonked himself next to Syra. During the first month of training, Cheryl and Patrick had been fairly close and flirted non-stop. Then Syra joined as a late attendee. Cheryl could admit to herself that some envy was stoked by how adept Syra was at every task but the real jealousy came because Patrick immediately switched his attention to Syra. The lapdog manner with which he followed her everywhere led Cheryl to view him with contempt, even though she still thought he had the best body in the whole cult.
Darmoni took her place at the lectern, ‘Good morning, Trainees. An exciting day ahead for all of you: this is your final examination.
‘One of the branches of RID operates year-round as a cover for this exam. It masquerades as a high class BDSM agency known as Veil, specialising in power play and offering dominants, dominatrixes and switches to wealthy members of society for whom it is vital to keep their proclivities secret.
‘We deliberately accept clients who aren’t looking for something specific but have rather foolishly said, “You can do what you want to me.”’ A murmur of amusement rippled across the room. ‘To be clear: this is about interrogation and how far you can take your subject. You are not to terminate them.’
She pressed a remote and a 4x2 grid appeared on the presentation screen on the wall behind her. Each cell contained a photo of a client — four male, four female. Each photo along the bottom row had a number 3 in the corner. Three of the photos on top had a number 4. The last photo of a brash-looking blonde had a number 5.
‘These are the clients. You’ll be wondering why they each have numbers next to them. The answer is that not all targets are made equal! From all the intel we collect, we rate them on how difficult they will be to overcome. 1’s are easiest and 5’s are the most difficult. Obviously, we don’t give you 1’s or 2’s. 3’s are mid-range, 4’s are tough nuts to crack and 5’s earn their number by never having been successfully dominated before. We don’t have many 5’s that come our way.’
Syra raised her hand. Darmoni acknowledged her. ‘What are we trying to get from them?’
‘Information. These people have things they do not want to reveal — it might be their real name, access to a safety deposit box or a wife’s telephone number. They haven’t told us these things, obviously. We do our own background checks and know what their deepest secrets are. Once you are on the way to your appointment, you will receive an envelope containing the information you need to get from them.
‘If you successfully extract the information, you are highly likely to pass. Further marks are awarded for use of the skills you have learnt over the past year as and when necessary. The sessions last a full five hours because the clients have paid for five hours. In the event that you achieve your goal in one hour, you have to stay in character until five hours have passed. And one more thing: you will not have your tools or bondage equipment with you. We want to see how well you can improvise, trainees!’
Denise raised a hand. Darmoni nodded to her. ‘Why are some of them switches?’
‘It’s one of those things,’ said Darmoni, ‘There isn’t an endless supply of people who suit our requirements so, the occasional client wants a little tit-for-tat. Part of what you are graded upon is the ability to get into a position where you dominate them throughout the five-hour session.’ She lifted a glass onto the lectern that contained folded pieces of paper. ‘The selection process is random. I pull out your names and you choose your client.’ Cheryl raised her hand. ‘Yes, Miss Pereira?’
‘Are you able to tell us why that woman is a number 5?’ she asked.
‘Yes, okay. This is Mrs Anastacia Montgomery. She’s 35, works on the stock exchange and she’s very fit. This will be the third time she has been a client. She books us as a switch but she has never been broken because she’s never been in the submissive role. Our psychological diagnosis indicates that she wants to be put in the submissive role but will never consider anyone outside her fantasy realm to be worthy of doing it to her.
‘The last two times she was deliberately picked by our star trainees. Both ended up being dominated and she is a fan of corporal punishment. They arrived back here bruised, roughed-up and—quite frankly—defeated. Neither had the opportunity to lay a finger on her. Both failed their final exams, and if you fail your final exam, you don’t become an agent.’
The trainees looked at one another.
‘What’s the benefit of choosing a 5?’ asked Syra.
Cheryl shot Syra a look. Her arrogance was so predictable. She knew that Syra would choose Montgomery if given the option and she hoped she would get the chance to pick her first.
‘It tells us some things about you, Miss Rahul. That said, because she is ultra competitive and enjoys the humiliation caused by her own victories, she has pledged to give two lots of $5,000 to the person who can extract two pass codes from her. Obviously, she’s very confident that this will never happen.’
‘I’d take her down immediately!’ said Patrick.
‘You’re not allowed to just knock her out and wrap her up in duct tape, Mr Sloane,’ said Darmoni, ‘Part of the assessment is how convincing you can be undercover. It’s no good swinging through the window in a balaclava and combat pants — that tends to give the game away!’
The trainees tittered except for Syra who just shook her head.
‘Now, if there are no further questions, let’s get to it…’
Cheryl sat forward on her seat. Darmoni reached into the glass and pulled out the first piece of paper. ‘And it’s you, Mr Sloane.’
Patrick analysed the faces intently, weighing up the risks of ego and graduation against the kudos of breaking Anastacia Montgomery. ‘I’ll have the number 4 on the far left.’
‘Very well,’ said Darmoni, greying out the chosen cell and pulling another name from the glass. ‘Next is… Denise Jones.’
Denise pointed at the face next to Patrick’s choice, ‘The old guy. Number 4.’
Cheryl willed for her name to be pulled out next.
‘And… Trainee Rahul,’ said Darmoni.
‘Fuck,’ said Cheryl under her breath.
‘I’ll take Montgomery,’ said Syra.
Cheryl was incensed. Pot luck determined that she was chosen last and left with the a number 3 — a bearded, middle-aged, overweight man.
Darmoni referred to a schedule. ‘Obviously we can’t watch all of you at once, so appointments have been scheduled to accommodate that. The first appointment is with Anastacia Montgomery. That’s you, Miss Rahul.’
Syra nodded, eager to get on with the examination.
Darmoni finished reading the itinerary. ‘One last thing before you head out: we have already secretly installed cameras in areas of the house you are to execute your punishment. This will also be in the envelope you receive. We will be watching. Do well, trainees. Salutate mortem cum risu.’
‘Salutate mortem cum risu,’ the trainees responded in unison.
As the group was dismissed, Denise stepped over to Patrick and Syra.
‘Good luck with your number 5,’ Denise said to Syra.
‘Thanks,’ said Syra. From her demeanour it was obvious that she felt she didn’t need any such wishes.
‘Couldn’t resist going for the top prize, eh?’ said Patrick.
‘If you’re going to prove yourself, do it right. Besides, I probably saved the last trainee out the glass from having to take her.’
Although this wasn’t meant as a personal dig at Cheryl, she couldn’t help taking it as one. Syra had a talent for using the word “trainee” as though it only referred to other people. ‘On the contrary,’ said Cheryl from the back of the room, ‘Some of us would be more capable of dealing with her than you assume. I wanted her.’
‘That’s an easy claim to make at this point.’ said Syra.
‘Swap. Now,’ said Cheryl.
Syra dismissed her. ‘I wanted her. I got her. You’ll have to find other ways to prove yourself. I’m sure you’ll do really well.’
Cheryl curled her fist then stormed out of the lecture room.
Syra just shrugged.
Chapter 3
As she sat in the back of a limousine, Syra casually observed the variety of modern, colonial-style houses among the trees of Saxon Woods Road, Scarsdale, New York. This was the first time she’d ever worn latex or leather. Together, they provided a two distinctly novel smells: the rubber, clean and synthetic; the leather, natural and warm. She was aware that people who wore these materials often found the smells to be sexy and supposed this was due to an association with the activities in which they participated while wearing them. She wondered what feelings she would associate with them with in just a few hours’ time.
On the seat next to her laid an open envelope and a sheet of paper that read:
Goal:
• Brother’s phone number. Have a plausible reason for getting it.
Bonus goal:
• 2 x 8-digit codes for Bank of America
Location options:
• Kitchen
• Study
• Master Bedroom
— — —
Darmoni and Cooper sat in leather armchairs in a softly-lit viewing suite at the RID headquarters. Knight arrived with three coffees, handed them out and took a seat. Before them was a wall of screens. Each screen but one displayed a different angle inside the client’s home including the areas that were not on Syra’s objective form. The final screen showed Syra in the back seat of the limousine.
‘She looks calm,’ said Cooper.
Darmoni nodded.
‘Never seen her any other way,’ said Knight. ‘Clinical is how I’d describe her.’
Darmoni leafed through some notes on her lap, ‘Someone who ties up and tortures her boyfriend to death would have to be a little detached, I would say. I wonder if her pulse raises at all when she is at work,’ she sipped her coffee. ‘These next few hours will be very interesting.’
— — —
The limousine pulled into a driveway, the length of which made the grand, 6-bedroom house at the end of it more secluded than the other houses on the road.
‘Here we are,’ said Agent Marquez in his guise as the chauffeur. ‘I’ll park up not far away. I’ll be back in five hours.’ He pulled the car up and observed Syra from the rear-view mirror. She was looking at the house with a blank expression. ‘You’ll be fine,’ he said.
‘I know,’ she said, and got out.
With her hair pinned up and dressed in a black-leather trench coat that modestly covered her purple satin & black lace corset, latex skirt, fishnet stockings and extravagant, strappy heels, Syra strutted towards the front door, aware that every action was being watched. It felt somewhat empty-handed to her to be a dominatrix without even a whip or paddle about her person but knew that every aspect of this exam was devised as a challenge to be overcome. After all, no future mission would ever be plain sailing.
She knocked on the door and for several moments the only sounds she could hear were the limousine pulling out of the driveway and the lonesome call of a peregrine falcon as it soared high overhead.
Then footsteps emanated from a distant part of the house. Syra was weary of proclaiming attributes onto things of which she had no proof but the speed of the footsteps seemed to her to be deliberately cool and intended to intimidate. Syra stood tall and confident as the footsteps came to a stop. She knew she was being checked out through the peephole. The security chain was released in the same slow and deliberate manner and the door opened.
Syra raised her gaze a significant amount to look into the eyes of Anastacia Montgomery. Syra wore four-inch heels. Anastacia’s stilettos were at least six inches, which, Syra estimated, took the woman to around 6’8”. She wore a skin-tight black latex catsuit with large, oval cutouts on each side that showed the skin from her hips to half-way up her ribcage. Her hair was newly cut into a textured, tousled bob and her makeup was dark to suit the occasion.
‘They’ve sent me an Indian one this time?’ said Montgomery with well-practiced neutral pronunciation that hid which part of the States she originated from. She left the door open for Syra and lead the way to the kitchen. ‘What type are you?’
‘Type?’ said Syra, closing the door behind her.
‘Muslim? Hindu—?’
‘I’m American.’
Montgomery smirked.
‘Have you never been taught that the protocol for greeting a Mistress is to politely ask my name and introduce yourself?’ said Syra, removing her coat and laying it onto a chair.
Although Anastacia appreciated how good she looked, she gave no sign of recognition. ‘Oh, my dear, the days of others teaching me things is long gone. Besides, I’m not a grovelling submissive, I’m a “switch”,’ she said, highlighting her distain for abiding by other people’s rules with air-quotes, ‘Didn’t Veil give you any background on me?’
‘What they didn’t tell me I can quickly discover for myself,’ said Syra as she glanced around the oak and magnolia entrance hall and into each room she passed. Evidently, the interior decoration placed more emphasis on impressive antiques than consistency and comfort.
‘Maybe you could provide me with a list of your insights before you leave,’ said Anastacia. ‘Unless you have any now, of course.’
‘Only that you find it empowering to see someone intimidated by you, probably due to insecurities that you’d never admit to; you spend money in the hope that it will change what people think of you and when that doesn’t work you pretend you don’t care; and you probably don’t realise that when you say nobody can teach you anything, you’ll remain at the intellectual age that you were when your ego first expelled that philosophy to the person who gave the impression he was impressed by it.’
As they reached the kitchen Anastacia turned, a smile plastered over her indignation.
‘Of course, if any of this is incorrect, I’ll be sure to apologise before I leave,’ said Syra with her characteristically imperturbable composure, ‘but give me time; I’ve only been here thirty seconds.’
‘What is your name?’
‘Mistress Equinox.’
Anastacia gave a look of disdain, ‘A bit pretentious, no?’
‘If that’s how you see it, Anastacia.’
Syra’s expression remained inscrutable but her words were certainly not. Anastacia hoped that her irritation was not flushing her cheeks. She held out her hand, ‘A pleasure to meet you, Equinox.’
Syra took her hand, which felt abnormally large, even compared to most men she knew. She felt her hand being crushed. The pressure Anastacia Montgomery exerted seemed effortless. Syra had to check her instinct to yank her into a thumb lock and take her to her knees.
‘Likewise,’ said Syra.
Anastacia let go and turned to the kitchen. Syra glanced at her hand and saw creases where there were usually none.
‘Would you like a drink or anything before we get started?’ asked Anastacia.
‘I’m good, thank you.’
From a jug on the marble kitchen counter Anastacia poured herself a tall glass of water flavoured with slices of lime and mint leaves. The catsuit covered her from ankle to neck but the oval cutouts showed enough of her abdominal obliques for Syra to conclude that this woman had a regular personal trainer.
Anastacia’s toned stomach muscles imprinted against the latex as she drained her glass and felt like a magnet to Syra’s fingertips.
‘This way,’ she said as she threw the glass onto the counter. She lead Syra upstairs. They passed several bedrooms of floral decor and dark wood furniture until they reached a door at the end of the corridor. Anastacia took down a key from the top of the doorframe, unlocked the door and paused for dramatic effect. ‘Let’s start in here,’ she said and opened the door into a large dimly-lit room with red walls and a black carpet. An iron bed frame with a black latex mattress stood in the middle of the room, a leather-padded bondage table and a spanking bench sat in the corner and thick iron chains with modern, padded manacles hung from a thick ceiling beam that was installed specifically for the purpose of hanging people from it. Restraints, whips, floggers and all manner of toys sat on shelves or hung from hooks all around the room. Syra could feel the heat of Anastacia’s pride in having created such a well-equipped play space.
Syra considered that her need to improvise had just been dramatically reduced; this was a gift! She considered the locations she had to implement the interrogation, ‘So, this is the master bedroom?’
‘Oh, no. This is the Mistress bedroom. The “master” bedroom is next door. I ask no questions about what my husband does on his little business trips and he asks no questions about what goes on behind this door. The only people who get to see inside here are me and my victims… I mean, “guests”.’
Syra considered the various methods she could use to plausibly get Anastacia from this room into the master bedroom without using any of the martial arts training she had been given at the training centre.
‘Time to begin,’ said Syra. ‘I will tie you—’
‘I’ll stop you there,’ said Anastacia. ‘I will be taking charge.’
‘You asked for a dominatrix, not a submissive. I’ll tell you what to do—’
‘I hate to contradict you, Equinox, but I asked for a switch and, as a repeat paying client, I will be doing what I like in the way I desire to. Now, stand under the chains and remove your clothes.’
Syra wondered how much she could deviate from the pretence of being a professional dominatrix to physically force Anastacia into the position she wanted. As Anastacia stepped over to a heavy wooden box at the foot of the bed, Syra’s eye was caught by a glint from a mahogany coat rack from which hung a range of floggers. Taking a closer look, she could see the heads of four brass screws that secured the rack to the wall, but where the fifth one should have been there was instead a tiny camera lens. RID hadn’t just placed cameras in the rooms where the action was supposed to take place — they were monitoring the entire house.
Syra nodded an acknowledgement to her examiners and could imagine them waving back. She turned to see Anastacia pull out a 6-foot leather bullwhip and decided to act. She needed to knock her onto the bed and so moved silently behind Anastacia and grabbed her waist. Anastacia’s knees buckled and she yelped, dropping the whip to the floor. But instead of falling forward, she twisted on the spot and propelled herself forward, grabbing Syra’s throat and one of her wrists. Syra was pushed quickly back as Anastacia shouted, ‘Don’t do that! What is it with you people? I hate that!’
Syra tried to break free from the grip on her wrist but Anastacia’s strength kept her in place. Again she had to stop herself from using violent methods of self-defence and consider alternatives but, in her hesitation, Anastacia lifted her arm with all the ease of a puppeteer lifting the limb of a marionette, and slung a self-locking steel cuff around it. The marionette image became ingrained in Syra’s mind when her other arm was lifted without hesitation and locked into place.
Syra regained composure, ‘That wasn’t very lady-like,’ she said, pulling at the manacles.
‘Just be happy I didn’t slap your face for touching me,’ said Anastacia, stepping over to the wall and turning a crank handle that pulled the chains through the thick wooden beam.
Syra felt her wrists being lifted. ‘You lose your temper very easily. Don’t you know that the first person a Mistress needs to control is herself—?’
‘I don’t need philosophy lessons—’
‘Of course, I forgot—’
‘…and it was a reaction to what you did. The last girl from Veil did something like that too. Do you think tickling is a BDSM technique or something? This isn’t child’s play!’
Syra couldn’t help but become distracted at how stretched she now was. Her arms were spread high and taught and, just as her heels began to raise off the floor, Anastacia stopped the crank and latched it into place.
Syra felt a wave of regret and humiliation, knowing that Darmoni, Cooper and Knight were watching her in this position. At this point the only thing within her control was her demeanour and it was an unnatural experience to have to make herself appear stoic. This wasn’t going to plan.
Anastacia admired her handiwork but a frown flitted across her expression, ‘I did ask you to remove your clothes. You really do need some lessons in how to obey your superiors.’
‘If any make an appearance, be sure to let me know,’ said Syra.
In response, Anastacia stepped behind her and ripped open the studs of her latex skirt and threw it into a corner. She couldn’t help but appreciate and resent Syra’s naturally firm, round bottom as it appeared in a g-string and the fishnet tights. She stepped to her front and roughly pulled at the corset fastenings in the hope that Syra had breasts she could ridicule. Unfortunately for her, as the corset fell away it revealed the body of a sport-fit young woman with beautiful C-cup breasts. She pulled the pins from Syra’s hair and ruffled it to make it fall messily around her shoulders.
Syra did her best to forget this was being watched. She also had to refrain from kicking Anastacia to her knees and wrapping both legs around her neck until she fell unconscious.
‘Such a nice body. You shouldn’t hide it, Equinox,’ said Anastacia. ‘Equinox is such a mouthful. I’m going to call you Nox…’ she lifted a heavy leather flogger from the wall. ‘What do you think of that?’
‘It’s up to you…’ said Syra.
‘I’m glad you finally realise that.’
‘…three syllables is too much for some people.’
Anastacia was tired of forcing a smile. She performed her deliberately slow walk routine until she was behind Syra.
The room was silent save for the distant tick of a grandfather in the entrance hall.
After some moments the silence was broken by the gentle swoosh of the flogger. It lapped gently at Syra’s left buttock. Then the same again. Time after time the flogger tapped her with lazy swings. The gradual increase in force wasn’t initially noticeable but soon Syra could hear the difference in pitch as it swept through the air. Anastacia was obviously well-practiced; the tails of the flogger hit exactly the same place each time and, as the weight of the flogger delivered more of a thud than a slap, the sensations were not unbearably painful.
Anastacia moved position and did the same to Syra’s right buttock. Syra relaxed into it and found the predictable tempo of each hit fairly calming. Then Anastacia broke the rhythm with one hard thwack that caused Syra to totter on her toes.
‘Now you see why I had to chain you,’ said Anastacia. ‘We can’t have your waif-like self toppling over, can we?’
Syra didn’t answer. She knew that if she was speaking when she got hit like that again she would let out a sound that would undermine her poise. She kept her mouth closed and focussed on a minimalist silver clock on the wall. She still had four and a half hours to play with.
Thwack! A heavy hit struck her on the left buttock. Thwack! Another on the right. Anastacia alternated the strikes as her frustration grew that, despite each hit being strong enough to cause her to lose her balance, this infuriating Indian girl’s expression wasn’t changing.
Syra felt the sting but made a game of maintaining her composure.
Anastacia was breaking a sweat and remembered that she had much more at her disposal than a single flogger. ‘There. Did you enjoy that, Nox?’ she asked.
Syra shrugged in response.
‘That was just a little preparation, so I can take my time over what comes next,’ she said.
Syra’s butt tingled with warmth as as she watched Anastacia replace the flogger and open a cupboard to display a range of canes hanging from the inside of the door. She took down a thick, polished bamboo cane and a long, thin carbon fibre cane. She rested the carbon fibre cane on the bed and stepped behind Syra.
She began with gentle, rapid taps from the bamboo cane that slowed in speed but built in strength. Syra had to focus to control her breathing as the swishing noises from the cane became more rapid and the strikes became more painful.
After Anastacia had completed several repetitions of this on both buttocks she stepped into Syra’s view and gave a humourless smirk as she laid down the bamboo cane and picked up the carbon fibre one. This time Anastacia did not begin with a gentle approach and the cane was so thin that it barely made a noise as it whisked through the air and snapped against Syra’s skin.
Anastacia smiled to herself at the involuntary twitch of Syra’s buttocks as she reacted to the sharp pain that echoed through her body.
Syra closed her eyes and zoned out the pain with meditation. Over time Anastacia’s fun diminished as she noticed Syra reacting less and less despite the strikes increasing in strength. She stopped and stroked the side of the cane up and down Syra’s skin. It travelled an uneven surface of impact welts.
Syra brought herself back into the moment, ‘Are you ready to receive now?’ she asked.
‘That’s not happening,’ said Anastacia as she threw down the cane.
Dropping her mental defences as she adjusted her wrists, Syra felt an uncomfortable sting all over her bum.
‘I don’t really like these fishnets you’re wearing,’ said Anastacia. ‘They look like you bought them from a fancy dress shop. I’ll remove them for you. Then I’ll have unfettered access to your whole ass.’
Syra didn’t respond.
‘But scissors would be boring. I wonder how long it will take me to remove them with this?’ Anastacia said, retrieving the bullwhip.
Syra remained silent; her expression didn’t betray the concern she felt. Darmoni had said that previous trainees returned home “roughed-up”. She said nothing about having their skin slashed open by a 6-foot leather bullwhip.
Anastacia got into position. ‘Stay still now, Noxie,’ she said and cracked the whip with a volume that made Syra’s ears ring. Syra remained relaxed. Anastacia cracked the whip again and again, now more intent on accuracy than impressive volume. With each snap, Syra could feel a tiny rush of air as the cracker exploded nearer and nearer her hot skin. Again, Syra recognised how skilful Anastacia was with the whip. At least she wasn’t unintentionally getting hit and in the wrong places.
Then the whip made first contact. Syra winced and held her breath.
Again, in exactly the same place on her right buttock. A searing pain grew with each subsequent crack of the whip until Syra’s right buttock, hip and thigh felt like they were on fire. She controlled her breathing in the same way as before but she felt beads of sweat forming on her upper lip. She looked at the clock: four hours left.
After a dozen lashes with no result, both in the fishnet material or in Syra’s expression, Anastacia gave one last frustrated attempt, but overplayed her strength. The end of the whip split the tights and was just shy of cutting the skin. Syra felt the sting and bit her lip.
‘Aah!’ said Anastacia. ‘Just another…’ she muttered under her breath as she counted the stitches that would cause Syra’s tights to come apart, ‘sixty or so of those to go. That should absorb the time nicely!’
‘If you’re going to do that…’ said Syra in a manner that gave Anastacia hope that she was about to crack. Syra cleared her throat and spoke with more authority, ‘If you’re going to do that, could you open a window or something? It’s a bit stuffy in here.’
Anastacia lost her temper. ‘Cocky little shit, aren’t you?’
Syra acknowledged the accusation.
‘Well, how cocky will you be if I start whipping you in the same way across your back? Or your inner thighs? Or here…’ she said, poking at the flank of Syra’s tummy.
Syra jerked and pulled away. A smirk flitted across her lips. She quashed the reaction as soon as it arrived but Anastacia noticed it.
There was a moment of silence, during which both women knew what had just happened. Syra hesitated an instant too long before meeting Anastacia’s eye. When she did, there was no doubt what would come next.
Anastacia smirked. ‘Oh, I get it now! You use on me the things that work best on you! You’re a little pain slut, aren’t you? You actually like it! But this…’ she said, prodding repeatedly at the same place on Syra’s waist. Syra tensed her stomach but each prod had more effect than the last.
‘Okay,’ said Anastacia. ‘Let’s do this…’
Chapter 4
Anastacia Montgomery felt refreshed by a new objective as she dropped her bullwhip onto the bed and stepped over to a table that was hidden from Syra’s view behind the cane cupboard.
Syra looked up at the steel cuffs and the thick, strong iron chains that held her in place. She could see the release mechanisms on each cuff but could not think of how to reach them in her current position — arms stretched apart.
The sound of a classical piano solo piece began to play from speakers embedded within the walls. The music was gentle but ominous. Anastacia had chosen her soundtrack for the next four hours. She smiled as she stepped slowly and deliberately towards Syra, who maintained a convincing look of indifference while at the same time being somewhat concerned.
Syra knew she was ticklish but did not really know to what extent. Growing up, she and her sister had play-fights but, as she was the oldest, she was easily able to win or command an end to proceedings when she sensed she was about to lose. Her one and only boyfriend, Jack, never did it to her. The night she spent with Patrick she didn’t let it happen, even though he clearly wanted it to. There were a couple of sessions over the past year whereby trainees practiced on one another but she always found a way to avoid being in the position of having it done to her.
She consoled herself with the thought that Anastacia had already displayed her contempt for the act and so wouldn’t be very good at it. And, although she had never tried when her sister or friends did it do her, she hoped that her ability to “zone out” pain would also work now.
Anastacia stood before her. She said nothing but reached up to Syra’s wrists and began slow, gentle teasing with her index and middle fingernails, analysing Syra’s expression as she did so. Anastacia’s fingernails were long and cut to a very effective almond tip. As her teasing descended Syra’s forearms, Syra felt an overwhelming need to writhe on the spot but she kept it at bay. As the teasing reached her inner elbows, Syra realised she was clenching her teeth.
Anastacia’s fingernails continued down Syra’s inner biceps. The sensations were becoming more and more infuriating. Syra closed her eyes and tried to meditate but she couldn’t relax into it. A sensation almost like fear rose from the pit of her stomach and her body tensed as the fingernails edged lower and lower… She opened her eyes and saw a sadistic grin, more in Anastacia’s eyes than on her lips. With each passing second and each millimetre of skin closer to her armpits the tingling in her stomach lifted further — a kind of warning signal that she was about to lose control and she could do nothing to prevent it.
Then the fingernails reached a point of no return. Syra’s eternally composed expression began to waver. First her nostrils began to quiver. Then her lips.
‘Is there something you want to say, Nox?’ asked Anastacia.
Syra looked at her but said nothing. She knew she wouldn’t be able to open her mouth without losing control. Her eyebrows raised in the middle, signalling that she knew she was in trouble.
The fingernails crossed a boundary into the smooth skin of her underarms. She shuddered and drew a sharp intake of breath as very sensitive nerves were stimulated. Her body began to convulse slightly as mousey breaths of laughter emanated from her nostrils.
Anastacia’s expression grew more sadistic as she could sense the Indian woman’s defences crumbling. She kept the pressure light but scrambled all fingers into the hollows of Syra’s armpit. The tingling sensation rushed from the pit of Syra’s stomach throughout her entire body and it overwhelmed her like a crashing wave. An inelegant giggle rasped from between her clenched teeth and her head dropped in an attempt to hide her defeat.
‘Ohhh!’ Anastacia exclaimed, ‘It looks like the all-powerful “Mistress Equinox” is just a ticklish little girlie!’ She moved behind Syra, pressed her chest against her back and took grip of her underarms, working them with her fingertips. Syra squealed laughter and rocked from side-to-side in an attempt to avoid the onslaught but the pressure on her back and the chains on her wrists left her with no room to move. ‘Cootchie-cootchie-coo, tiny Noxie! Oh my, what ticklish little armpits you have! Cootchie-cootchie-cootchie-coo!’
Syra grimaced in an attempt to stop laughing but her sensitivity undermined her. She hated the trite use of baby-talk in tickling sessions. She had heard it incessantly from her peers over the past year and had concluded that it served no purpose other than to give the tickler a misplaced feeling of dominance. She therefore found it especially aggravating that it was being aimed at her but, due to her laughter, she was unable to tell this woman to shut the fuck up in a way that wouldn’t be received in any way other than trivial.
Anastacia inched her fingers down to the top of Syra’s ribcage, just behind her breasts. Syra squealed again and tried to stamp her feet but she fell off balance. Anastacia held her in place, at the same time pressing her thumbs into the muscles of her back as she considered that there may be places on this young woman that were ticklish that she had never considered before. Sure enough, a blast of surprised laughter from Syra proved that this method worked too.
‘Tell me, tiny Nox, am I finding things out about you that you never knew about yourself?’
‘No… No, you’re not!’ Syra cried between bouts of laughter.
‘Oh, Noxie. I don’t think that’s true!’ she said and grabbed Syra’s waist.
Syra squealed and twisted as much as she could, suspecting that nothing could ever feel more ticklish than Anastacia’s strong fingers felt on her waist right now. She thrashed her head, unable to cope. Anastacia held her waist at arm’s length to avoid being head-butted. She watched the younger woman struggle and writhe; the muscles in her arms and back straining with desperation and laughter; her flawless amber-brown skin beginning to glisten with sweat.
A sudden sexual thrill took Anastacia unawares. Adjusting the pressure of her fingers around her victim’s waist to reduce her level of panic and chance of being hit in the face, she felt compelled to again press her body against Syra’s back and whispered into her ear, ‘Do you feel, at last, how in control of you I am, young lady?’
Syra chose to interpret the question as rhetorical.
‘Tut, tut, Noxie. Ignoring me again…’ said Anastacia and lowered her mouth onto the smooth slope of Syra’s neck, nibbling on her muscles.
‘Wh-what are you doing?’ Syra asked.
In response, Anastacia began flicking her tongue into the dip behind her collar bone. Syra burst into uncontrollable titters and tried to close the gap with her head but Anastacia was immovable. An air of helplessness flavoured Syra’s laughter as gooseflesh ran over her entire body. Most of the time her eyes had been squeezed tight but as Anastacia launched a fresh assault on her waist and lower ribcage, she was shocked into wide-eyed hilarity.
She saw was the rack that housed the spy camera and she couldn’t imagine what her instructors were thinking as they watched her in this position; impudent and humiliated.
Anastacia pressed her groin against Syra’s butt. ‘You know,’ she whispered, ‘I can actually see why you would like this. I’ve never done it before but I think I’m going to do it for the rest of your time here,’ and her fingers massaged circles into the muscles low on Syra’s waist.
Syra’s knees buckled and she collapsed into out-and-out laughter. As she dropped, her breasts slid into Anastacia’s hands. ‘Well, thank you, Noxie. I don’t mind if I do!’
‘No!’ Syra cried and jumped back to her stilettoed feet. She was as surprised as Anastacia was delighted to hear such a plea coming from her own lips but it was a reflex. She knew how sensitive her nipples were and panicked at the idea of that sensitivity being used against her. In the same instant she kicked herself for allowing herself to cry out such a pointless protest, which would only serve to guarantee Anastacia’s focus there, which she did.
Anastacia hummed with delight as she hugged Syra in tight and scurried her lethal fingernails at her nipples. Syra shrieked an uninterrupted torrent of hilarity. ‘Ooh! Such ticklish little titties!’ Anastacia chirped. The sensation on Syra’s breasts felt like a concentrated injection of all the tickling she had felt so far and, amid the torture, her nipples grew hard against her will.
Her head fell back onto Anastacia’s shoulder and they caught each other’s eye. For a split second there was a feeling of warmth between them. Anastacia obviously enjoyed her new discovery and was hugely turned on to be subjecting Syra to it and, as Syra unintentionally rested her head on the older woman’s shoulder and looked up at her, she felt a brief moment of solidarity and understanding for those who are placed in a submissive position.
Syra shook this off and raised her head. Through tears of laughter she could see that there was three hours and ten minutes left — too long to be tied and tickled, but a worryingly short space of time left to turn the tables and get the information she came for.
Chapter 5
Darmoni watched the events in Anastacia Montgomery’s BDSM play room with disappointment.
On the screen Syra Rahul, her student most likely to excel at RID, had not only failed to get her target into a vulnerable position, she was currently being tickled to tears by the target with no prospect of improving her position before the time was up.
‘She’s still the best trainee this year,’ said Cooper.
‘Perhaps we can make an exception if she doesn’t pass this time,’ said Knight, adjusting himself. He noticed Darmoni looking at him.
‘Would you like us to leave the room?’ asked Darmoni.
‘Sorry, Ma’am.’
A new scream of laughter from Syra caused them all to look up. Anastacia had moved from Syra’s breasts, pulled down her fishnet tights and was now tickling her bottom with her fingernails, causing the trainee to dance like a flamingo on an electrified carpet.
‘This is humiliating,’ muttered Darmoni as she made notes. ‘And, no, she can’t make an exception. The best I will offer is for her to retake the whole year again. I expected her to do better than this. What if this happened while she was out in the field? She needs to be able to think on her feet.’
’Speaking of which…’ said Cooper, indicating the screen.
— — —
‘It looks like you need to sit down,’ said Anastacia, as she observed Syra’s shoes and the fishnet tights around her ankles.
Syra swung gently from the chains, catching her breath and barely able to stand. She had now been tickled non-stop for over an hour and a quarter. Her hair clung to her sweat-covered face and neck. Anastacia stepped over to the padded bondage table and began to drag it towards her. She swallowed as she guessed what was coming next.
‘You know, you cannot count yourself as a real Mistress if you’ve never experienced the punishment you dish out,’ said Syra.
‘I heard that somewhere,’ Anastacia replied, ‘but it’s not a philosophy I believe in. I believe that a real dominant is never in the submissive position. I don’t care what other people think, so whether they consider me to be a Mistress or not is of little consequence. Actions are more relevant than labels.’ She dropped the table in front of Syra. ‘Sit on it.’
‘It’s also best practice to release a person’s arms every twenty minutes to prevent them from passing out.’
‘Feeling weak, are you?’ said Anastacia.
‘I’m just questioning the professionalism of your mentors. Then again, you probably never wanted to be taught anything, did you?’
‘Get on the bench, you pathetic tart.’
Syra stood, defiant.
‘Okay then…’ said Anastacia.
Syra struggled at the bonds and let out an involuntary whimper as Anastacia stepped behind her and grabbed her waist. ‘AIEEEE!’ she shrieked in anger and frustration as the intense tickling sensations overwhelmed her and she collapsed into uninhibited laughter. Anastacia swept an arm under her knees and lifted her with almost comical ease onto the bench. She threw a single restraint over both knees and pulled it tight to keep her legs in place. She then unceremoniously yanked off both of Syra’s strappy high heels, tore off her tights and threw them all into the corner with her skirt.
The same tingle of fear that Syra previously felt in the pit of her stomach, she now felt in the soles of her feet. She pulled hard at the knee restraints and heard a rip.
‘Don’t damage my equipment, Nox!’ shouted Anastacia as she grabbed Syra’s right ankle and fastened a leather cuff around it. She then did the same to her left ankle.
‘This is not the agreement you signed with the agency!’ shouted Syra.
‘Oh, my girl. When will you learn? Everything happens on my terms.’ Anastacia stood at the bottom of the table and noticed the even creaminess of Syra’s pristine soles. A fleeting thought occurred to her that it was no wonder Syra kept falling off-balance on her high heels — she obviously never wore them. Syra could do nothing as Anastacia wriggled her fingers towards her soles. Syra instinctively shook her head in a subconscious plea for mercy while she kept her mouth firmly closed to prevent herself from saying it. Anastacia’s sadistic enjoyment of the situation burned bright. ‘Scared? You ticklish little weasel?’
Syra tensed every muscle in her body as she prepared for the inevitable. Anastacia’s fingernails reached Syra’s size five soles with an almighty effect. The tension she held inside exploded with a reaction that was unstoppable and primitive. The upper half of her body twisted wildly as she laughed with hopeless abandon, throwing her head in all directions. ‘NO! NO! NO! NO! NOOO!’ she cried between helpless spells of laughter.
Anastacia was lost in a frenzy of perverse enjoyment. In comparison to spanking and flogging and caning and whipping, how simple it was to torture someone so ticklish with just the movement of her fingernails.
Syra and Anastacia lost track of time over the course of next couple of hours. Anastacia was having too much fun to think about anything else. For Syra it felt like it would never end.
The intensity of the tickling meant that hundreds of unfinished thoughts went through Syra’s mind during this time, from plans of how to escape to abstract concepts induced by an overload of dopamine and a mind that was crazed by desperation.
She knew from her studies that some people grew less sensitive the more a single spot was focussed upon but she now knew, beyond any doubt, that she was not one of those people. Using the measuring system by which the cult graded potential targets, Syra guessed that she was somewhere between 88 to 92 out of 100 on the ticklish scale.
Her body was covered in sweat and her mouth was dry from the constant deep gasps for oxygen when she noticed the clock — she had just thirty minutes left. Her laughter was so forced at this point that it had lost any semblance of humour. She felt her cheeks quivering when any momentary break in the tickling caused her expression to drop into one of exhaustion. Anastacia’s look of enjoyment remained constant; she was aiming to see this through to the end.
Syra felt so physically weak that, even if it was possible to pull a wrist or ankle free, there was no way she could prevent Anastacia from tying it straight back up again. A thought from her subconscious spoke: I wish I could just pass out and wake up when the time was over… pass out… pass out… Then she snapped back into the moment. There was no way she could fake being unconscious because as soon as Anastacia tickled her, she would begin laughing. She thought for a moment, then mustered whatever willpower she had left and threw her head back, as though in open-mouthed laughter. She then held her breath. Her body continued to wriggle and convulse at the relentless tickling on the soles of her feet and she didn’t know how long she could last.
‘Oh, I love how feeble this makes you look, little Nox! Cootchie-cootchie-coo!’ taunted Anastacia.
This stuck-up woman’s continued arrogance gave Syra the determination to hold out just a few seconds longer. Bright white and green flashes sparkled in her vision. A fuzzy, numbing sensation surrounded her and then……
Syra’s head flopped back and her body ceased to respond. Anastacia’s face dropped. ‘Oh, shit,’ she said and quickly unstrapped Syra’s ankles and knees. She quickly turned the crank to lower Syra’s upper body and stepped over to release the steel cuffs. She carried Syra to the bed, laid her on the mattress and lifted her legs.
For Syra there was blackness.
She woke as if from a dreamless sleep. She felt her legs moving but she wasn’t the one moving them. She opened her eyes, expecting to see her bedroom at the RID HQ apartment block. It took her a moment to remember where she was. She looked down to see Anastacia holding her legs.
‘I’ll give you a couple of minutes, but I still have half an hour left,’ said Anastacia without irony.
Syra made a grab for Anastacia’s waist… At least, she thought she did. Where are my fucking arms!? Looking to either side, she saw her arms splayed out on the mattress. They were completely numb and immovable from being strapped up so long.
With swift improvisation, she pulled her legs from Anastacia’s grasp and wrapped them around her waist, locking her ankles and squeezing tight. The air was crushed from Anastacia’s lungs and she dropped to her knees. Syra then shoved her chest with both feet, knocking her on her butt. Syra raced to the door in just her G-string, turned the handle with her knee and ran out onto the landing.
‘Where are you going, Noxie?’ Anastacia called.
Syra darted into the master bedroom. The feelings began to come back to her arms with a painful surge of pins and needles. She slammed the door shut with her shoulder and saw that the lock had a key already in it. She turned it just in time as the handle turned from the other side.
‘Oh, Nox, how tiresome you are! But, unfortunately for you, I have the master key.’
Footsteps moved away from the door. Syra threw the key to one side and scanned the room — a solid superking-size bed with a duvet and no visible places on which to tie anything, a set of heavy curtains with thick tasseled tie-backs, a dressing table, an antique chair in the corner behind the door and a closet. ‘“No bondage equipment allowed…”’ Syra muttered to herself. ‘When am I ever going to be on a mission and not have my equipment to hand?’
Just then she heard the footsteps returning…
— — —
SI Knight appeared frozen in time. He was holding a cell phone, and had been ready to speed-dial Agent Marquez since Syra passed out. Cooper held his face in one hand, cringing at the sight of a semi-naked star pupil running away and hiding from a test subject.
Darmoni held up a hand to prevent Knight from making the call. She wanted to see what happened next.
They watched as Syra muttered something unintelligible, pulled opened the curtains and threw open the window.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ said Cooper, ‘Is she going to jump out now—?!’ he cut himself short as Syra took the tie-backs, tugged the duvet from the bed, rapidly pulled off the cover and kicked the bare duvet into the en-suite bathroom. She held the tie-backs under her arm and used her teeth to rip a 1-foot long hole in seam at the top of the duvet cover, ruffled it up into both hands and leapt onto the chair behind the door just as Anastacia threw it open.
Anastacia reacted to the ransacked room and open window. She half-laughed as she called, ‘Did you actually jump out the goddamn window to escape me?!’ She stepped into the room, ‘If you used my duvet to break your fall you’ll pay for it! That’s Icelandic eiderdown—!’
Syra sprung from the chair and netted the cover over Anastacia’s head, the rip allowing her head to poke through. ‘What the hell—!?’ Anastacia shouted as the cover shrouded her body. She made a grab throw the material but Syra parried both hands and barged her sideways onto the bed, rapidly rolling her over and tying the curtain ropes around her elbows and ankles.
‘What the hell!?’ Anastacia yelled again, her face smooshed into the pillows and utterly confused at how quickly she had landed in this position.
Syra rolled her onto her back and straddled her. She looked directly into Anastacia Montgomery’s eyes and said, ‘Now… it’s my turn.’
‘Well, fuck me till Tuesday,’ said Cooper.
Knight lowered the cell phone.
Darmoni smirked. ‘Just twenty-five minutes to go, Miss Rahul.’
Chapter 6
‘I demand you untie me!’ shouted Anastacia.
‘At the risk of sounding clichéd, you’re not in much of a position to make demands,’ said Syra.
She rolled Anastacia onto her front and went to the closet to rifle through the clothes. She found several makeshift ties, tossing each one to the foot of the bed as she went.
‘I am the client! I refuse to pay for this treatment!’
‘Anastacia, you did pay for this treatment. And, in case you don’t recall, you signed a contract that stated: I am a Submissive or a Switch as defined above. I understand that those who pose as submissives or switches whilst actually being dominant are libel to be sued for breach of contract.’
Anastacia’s mind raced for a moment. She didn’t remember reading such a line but Syra sounded very convincing in her quotation. ‘That’s ridiculous! Whoever heard of an escort agency suing a client?! They wouldn’t do such a thing!’
‘Trust me, this one would. And just think of the embarrassment! Your husband would find out! Your kids, your mother, your father… your brother!’
As Syra suspected, the mention of Anastacia’s brother caused her to try her hardest to escape. She was curious to find out why and mounted the backs of Anastacia’s thighs before she could struggle free.
‘You are right about one thing, though,’ said Syra, ‘unless you choose to let it slide, I am going to owe you for one duvet cover.’ She tore through the cover at Anastacia’s back until she found her arms and, using a handcuff knot, secured her wrists together.
Anastacia seethed with frustration, ‘I am going to kill you!’
‘Well, your personality is poisonous, but I don’t think it’s lethal,’ said Syra as she swivelled around to face Anastacia’s feet. ‘Time for these shoes to come off, I think. Louboutin, huh? How chic…’
She took hold of both magnificent stilettos and wriggled them free despite Anastacia’s toes gripping to keep them in place. The shoes popped off and she quickly had the measure of Anastacia’s soles: size ten and rosey-pink around the toes, balls, edges and heels but with fair-skinned arches. She was obviously no stranger to towering heels but she must also have regular luxury foot care treatments as her skin was smooth but not the soft skin of a young woman, nor the calloused skin of someone who ignores her feet. The skin of her soles had the unsurprising look and, Syra suspected, the feel of the mature, 35-year-old woman that she was.
Syra had an uncanny ability to know exactly where someone else was ticklish just by sight. She could not explain it, but her success rate percentile during training sessions was in the high 90s. Some of the other trainees labelled her The Syranator as they imagined her to be installed with a cyborg scanning technology that locked onto a target’s most vulnerable parts. She didn’t find the nickname particularly flattering but she smiled politely whenever they said it. Right now, her sixth sense was drawing her to the spots around two inches below the pits of the big and second toes, where Anastacia’s pale arches met the rosey-pink balls of her feet.
One area in which Syra knew she needed improvement was vocal taunting. It didn’t come naturally to her but she also knew that it enhanced the feeling of helplessness in a target when used in the right way and was beyond the puerile baby-talk that everyone else seemed to use. She saw this as an opportunity to practice.
‘Are your feet always this sweaty or are you nervous right now?’ she asked.
‘I know what you’re doing and it won’t work,’ said Anastacia.
‘I would be nervous if I was you.’
‘Well, I’m not!’
‘Okay. I’ll ask you again in three minutes.’
Mimicking Anastacia’s initial exploration, Syra began a gentle scratching at the bottom of her heels with just two fingers. Her toes twitched in response and there was silence; she was holding her breath. ‘I know you’re not nervous yet,’ said Syra. She edged her fingernails upward to the centre of the heels, causing Anastacia to wriggle and breathe rapidly. ‘You can’t even be nervous now…’ As she reached the bottom of both arches there were sounds of restrained turmoil from Anastacia as she struggled not to react.
As Syra edged into the pale areas of Anastacia’s arches, she noticed pinpricks of sweat beginning to glisten on the soles. ‘Hmm. It looks like you’re sweating a lot. But I must be mistaken – that would indicate you’re nervous. A tall, dominant pillar of strength such as yourself wouldn’t be nervous to have a young, inexperienced Indian woman playing with her feet…’
Syra’s fingernails scampered into the centre of the arches, the sweat on Anastacia’s large feet assisting with their slick movements. Growl’s of frustration built in Anastacia’s throat. Syra could sense the imminent collapse of her mental defences. She continued to tease, ‘Yeah, not a pathetic little Indian woman like me—‘
‘Oh, shut u—!’ yelled Anastacia, a fearful giggle in her voice. But this was the moment Syra was waiting for: the cork was off the bottle. Syra instantly attacked the weak spots below her toes and Anastacia screamed with surprise. She jerked involuntarily and ineffectively in her floral sheath as her scream of resentful admission folded into vociferous laughter. Syra felt the vindictive expression on her own face as she rode bucking limbs to keep her fingernails focussed on the sensitive spots of Anastacia Montgomery’s soles.
Anastacia buried her face into the pillow to somehow muffle the soundtrack to her own humiliation. She hated to lose control, especially at the hands of someone she viewed as so contemptible. The sensations that undermined her were relentless and maddening. She couldn’t logically work out why she was laughing so hard, perhaps because she had never been tickled as an adult, and only before then by her parents and her twin brother, who used to bully her with it. The fear and frustration she felt at those episodes probably drove her mental hostility towards being tickled but she expected herself to have grown out of being so physically susceptible to it by now.
As though she was reading her mind, Syra said, ‘It seems that the great Anastacia Montgomery is as ticklish as a schoolgirl!’
‘Fu— Fu— Fffffff…!’ Anastacia tried to swear at her but couldn’t even form the first word without laughter stealing the words from her lips.
‘Sorry! Can’t hear you!’ said Syra, unable to prevent a soupçon of childish taunting seep into her methods. She looked at the clock and paused. Anastacia gasped for air in a way that most people do after an hour of torment. ‘I can see why you didn’t want me to do this. You are pathetically ticklish, aren’t you?’
‘Fuck you!’ Anastacia spat out. ‘I’m going to-AIEEEEEEE!’ she screamed as she felt the attack begin again on her defenceless soles. ‘No! Ha ha ha!!! Stop! Ha-heeeek!’
Syra stopped. ‘Yes?’
‘You can’t do this to me!’
‘I think I’m proving that I can. And I think you know that you will tell me the two bank codes before I’m finished with you.’
‘I bloody well will not!’ She looked at the bedside table alarm clock. ‘I can last another twenty minutes!’
‘“Bloody well”,’ Syra repeated, amused at Anastacia’s faux Britishness, ‘And who said anything about twenty minutes?’
Anastacia faltered before she replied, ‘There’s only twenty minutes left of the session.’
‘Officially, yes,’ said Syra, ‘but I don’t have any other clients this afternoon and you had me tied up for around three and three-quarter hours. I’m only just getting started!’ She unleashed her fingers over, between and around Anastacia’s toes, sparking an eruption of renewed hysteria.
— — —
Knight adjusted himself again.
‘Can you stop that?’ said Darmoni.
Knight tried to gloss over his arousal with a question, ‘She’s not allowed to do that, is she?’
‘To go over the five hour time slot? We’ve never explicitly said it’s not allowed. We’ve never had to.’
‘But she’s only got twenty minutes to get the intel.’ said Cooper.
‘Yes,’ said Darmoni. ‘And those codes are only bonus material. The real intel is Montgomery’s brother’s phone number.’
— — —
It wasn’t long before Syra could detect that Anastacia was attempting to say something between her wails of laughter. She eased off the intensity of her onslaught until Anastacia managed to say, ‘Oh!’
‘“Oh?”’ Syra repeated, ‘As in, “Oh, God! I’m so pathetic!”?’
Anastacia’s attempt at anger was overwhelmed by laughter, ‘Z… ZA! Z…. Zaahahaha…!’ Syra eased off a little more. ‘Z-Zero!’
Syra smiled, ‘Carry on!’
‘Zero, ei-eight, ffffour-jay…’ Anastacia paused, mistaking the lull in tickling for an increased resistance to it.
‘Come on!’ Syra shouted with another burst of tickling all over both soles.
Laughter bellowed from Anastacia that left her in no doubt as to her predicament, ‘TH-TH-THREEEEE! Bee, eight, k-kayyy!’
Syra smiled. She was beginning to detect a Texan twang to her client’s voice as her phoney pretences were disintegrated. She reached over and grabbed a ball-point pen from a notepad on the bedside table. Anastacia thrashed in panic as she scrawled 084j3b8k from the heel to ball of her right sole.
‘Next one,’ said Syra.
‘Will you untie me if I tell you!?’ Anastacia panted.
Syra looked at the clock — 12 minutes left. She responded by repeatedly underlining the first code with the ball-point pen. This time Anastacia’s desperate thrashing was accompanied by pure laughter that was bereft of a resistance.
‘OK-AY HAYYY HAYYY!’
‘What is it?’ said Syra.
Anastacia gasped for breath, ‘4y69…ils9.’ She braced herself again and buried her face in the pillow, resigned to helpless ticklish laughter as Syra scrawled the second code onto her left sole, then yelped in surprise as she was yanked over onto her back. She blinked through smeared mascara as she looked up to see Syra—still bare-breasted and with wild hair—straddling her with an expression of undiluted sadism that she had never seen on anyone before. Her first thought was to attempt to match it but she gave up on the idea before putting it into practice – anything she tried would be effortlessly undermined.
‘Please let me go,’ said Anastacia. Her accent was now unmistakably Fort Worth.
‘No.’
‘Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t know there was a clause that said I had to switch.’
‘Now you do.’
‘Yes, but you can’t keep doing this to me!’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m ridiculously ticklish, okay?! Is that what you want to hear?!’
‘No. I want to hear something you’d never say in a million years.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like, why, when I mentioned your brother finding out, did you try so hard to escape?’
Anastacia frowned, ‘Fuck off! I’m not talking to you about that!’
‘I see…’ said Syra. She sat back and ripped open the front of the duvet cover with her bare hands.
Anastacia was speechless.
Syra grabbed the panel of latex catsuit that covered Anastacia’s stomach. She stretched it up and skewered it with the pen. Gouging at it with her fingers, she ripped it open and it sprung apart, turning the catsuit into a two-piece outfit. A sheen of sweat covered Anastacia’s beautifully toned abdomen. As Syra’s peers might say, The Syranator was inundated with possibilities. ‘It looks like I owe you a catsuit too,’ she said.
Physical memories chilled Anastacia’s heart as fresh air met her skin. Her stomach felt frighteningly exposed. She looked on with fear as Syra’s eyes seemed laser-focussed on her stomach and seemed black with evil intent. ‘Look! I have a competitive relationship with my brother, okay?’
‘And you’d hate for him to see you so utterly submissive.’
Anastacia refused to answer.
Syra’s fingers wriggled towards Anastacia’s tummy. Anastacia instinctively began to struggle but before she could open her mouth to protest, fingernails scuttled across her skin. The sensation was more powerful than anything she had experienced before. She gasped in shock and her eyes widened, almost frozen to the spot before her body forced her to explode into peals of laughter.
Syra felt positively turned-on at the reactions she was eliciting from this woman. It almost felt like an out-of-body experience as she found and exploited patch after patch of 110% ticklish skin. Then she remembered the time. Five minutes left.
She paused.
‘PLEASE!’ Anastacia cried, ‘I can’t bear it!’
‘You’re going to bear it for over three hours, sub, unless you give me something that demonstrates to me how much you regret what has happened here today!’
‘Like what!?’
‘Like your brother’s phone number!’
Anastacia looked at her in disbelief, ‘Never!’
Syra’s fingers instantly went back to work but this time wriggled their way under the duvet cover and found Anastacia’s armpits. Anastacia jerked from side-to-side, lost in hilarity but Syra recognised that this was more a self-suggestive response. The rubber of the catsuit prevented her from getting truly satisfying contact with her underarms. The thought flitted across her mind that she would love to get her hands on her bare armpits.
Four minutes.
Syra retracted her hands and began light typewriter prodding of Anastacia’s waist and ribs. Anastacia fell into a frenzied hysteria. There was something inhuman about the laughter that was being forced from her mouth. Syra paused.
‘Had enough!?’
‘I don’t have his number!’ Anastacia pleaded in a shrill voice.
Three minutes.
‘Don’t lie to me!’ shouted Syra, attacking the flanks of her stomach. The contractions caused by her laughter only brought her abdominal muscles into deeper definition. ‘Give it to me! Give it to me! Give it to me! Give it to me! Give it—!’
Though her mouth was stretched with helpless screams of laughter, Anastacia stopped shaking her head and managed to nod emphatically.
Syra stopped, ‘What is it?’
‘It’s in my phone!’ Anastacia cried and averted her head.
Syra remembered seeing a cell phone on the kitchen counter. She ran downstairs to get it and caught sight of the kitchen clock: two minutes.
She raced back to the master bedroom. ‘What’s the code for your phone?’
Anastacia sobbed and shook her head. Syra threw the phone onto the bed, jumped on top of her and pressed both thumbs into Anastacia’s stomach muscles, sending a shockwave through her that made her buck so hard they were both momentarily airborne.
One minute.
Syra kept her pressed against the mattress and leant forward, swirling the tip of her tongue around Anastacia’s shallow belly button.
‘THRAAH-NAAAN-SAVAAAN-WOINNN!’ Anastacia wailed.
Although it initially sounded like gibberish, Syra deciphered this to mean 3971. She grabbed the phone and punched in the numbers. The phone unlocked. She opened the telephone contacts list.
‘What’s your brother’s name?’
‘Sebastian.’
20 seconds…
‘Yeah? Real Texan name! If you’re lying, I’ll be going to town on your abs for three hours non-stop!’
‘Mikey! It’s Mikey!’ Anastacia shouted in defeat.
Syra scrolled through the list and found Mikey. She clicked on the avatar. Mikey’s photo popped up. He had the same scowl as Anastacia.
‘Got him!’ Syra said, holding the phone aloft.
— — —
‘Two seconds left,’ said Cooper. ‘She did it.’
‘Yes, she did,’ Darmoni watched the screen with intent.
‘What are you going to do now?’ shouted Anastacia. ‘Send him a photo of me like this, you crazy bitch?!’
Syra locked the phone and tossed it to one side. ‘No, I just wanted to see how weak you were. Now, we have about three hours and twenty minutes to go!’
Darmoni, Cooper and Knight watched as Syra launched an all-out assault on Anastacia Montgomery’s feet and torso, occasionally squeezing her knees for good measure.
‘What’s she doing?’ asked Cooper.
‘Getting revenge?’ said Knight.
Anastacia’s laughs and cries of desperation began to sound somewhat disturbing. Syra occasionally leant forward as she attacked her waist and hissed something into her ear.
‘NOOOO!’ Anastacia screamed.
‘If she carries on like this, she might kill her,’ said Cooper.
Knight picked up the phone and looked to his boss. Darmoni was silent but concerned.
Anastacia wept and wailed through her laughter. Her cries became animalistic, ‘I’M GOING TO DIEEE-HEE-HEE-HEEEEEE!’
Darmoni gave the nod and Knight dialled Marquez. Marquez answered, ‘Marquez.’
‘Where are you?’ asked Knight.
‘Just pulling into the driveway.’
‘Well get your ass into that house! Our trainee is about to eliminate—’
‘MISTRESS!’ screamed Anastacia. ‘YOU’RE MY MISTRESS!!!’
Syra stopped and sat back with moan of satisfaction.
Anastacia appeared broken, ‘You’re my Mistress, you’re my Mistress, you’re my Mistress…’ she whimpered.
Syra caught her breath and slipped onto the floor. She stepped to the door and looked back at Anastacia. ‘Cootchie-fucking-coo,’ she said and went to the playroom to collect her clothes.
‘What’s happening?’ Marquez asked.
‘Nothing,’ said Knight. ‘Stand down. She’ll be with you in a minute.’
Syra stepped back into the master bedroom, dressed in her dominatrix get-up except for her stockings. She rolled Anastacia over, untied her arms and helped her out of the duvet cover.
With ink scrawled on her bare soles, a tattered catsuit and make-up smeared across her face, Anastacia was not the woman she had been less than an hour ago.
‘You ruined my stockings,’ said Syra as she loosened the curtain ropes at Anastacia’s ankles and stood back.
Anastacia sat meekly on the foot of the bed. ‘You ruined my catsuit. Call it evens?’
‘“Call it evens,” what?’
‘Call it evens, Mistress Equinox?’ said Anastacia, looking up at her.
Darmoni, Cooper and Knight simultaneously slumped back in their chairs.
Chapter 7
Marquez parked the limousine outside the RID headquarters. Syra got out of the passenger seat and saw Cheryl dressed in her dominatrix gear.
‘Going to your exam?’ Syra asked.
‘No, I’m off to the Tonawanda Bowling Tournament,’ said Cheryl as she strode past her.
Syra ignored the sarcasm. ‘I hope it goes well.’
This kind of warm sincerity from Syra took Cheryl by surprise. ‘Hey, Syra…’
‘Yeah?’
‘How did yours go?’
Syra pondered. ‘I should have let you have her,’ she said and headed to her apartment.
Cheryl got into the back of the car, unsure what to make of this comment.
Epilogue
Syra woke from her doze as the plane touched down in Sacramento International Airport.
Suspecting that the handsome Italian man in the seat in front could well ask, ‘So, how long are you in town?’ she made for the exit at her first opportunity. She didn’t have the energy to muster even a curt conversation.
As she headed to the taxi rank she dialled Tech Agent Michaels to see if he had any leads. A taxi pulled up beside her and she got in.
The handsome man took the taxi behind hers, ‘Follow that cab. Don’t lose it,’ he said to the driver and tossed $200 into the front passenger seat.
Giada Rosetti sat in her living room. Her aunt and uncle—her mother’s brother and sister—sat with her. She received a call and swiped her phone to loudspeaker mode.
‘Speak to me, Rocco,’ she said.
‘We’ve landed in Sacramento,’ said the handsome man, ‘I’ll let you know when we get to where we’re going.’
‘Good,’ she said and hung up. She looked to her uncle.
‘We’ve got good people in LA,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get her.’
THE END
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