She found out more than she wanted to know sooner than she expected.

Lunch was still a ways off – Mr. McCluskey hadn’t gotten around to starting the steaks yet. Whatever he’d been thinking of about what happened in the Marines was still with him, and Acacia could tell that something was bothering both him and Helena. Just as a way of diverting the thoughts, she suggested that she and Helena might like to use the pool before they ate, and Helena welcomed the diversion. She’d brought her own swimsuit this time, a one-piece – the burnt orange bikini last weekend had been nice, but had seemed a little immodest – and soon the two were splashing in the pool, having a good time, although Helena could tell that she was in the pool with Miss Rose in her collar – there was a reservation in her roommate that wasn’t normally there.

After a while, Mr. McCluskey called to them that the steaks were almost done, so they got out of the pool, dried off, and sat down to eat. Somehow, the conversation drifted back to shibari. “I guess it’s sort of a summertime thing?” Helena asked at one point.

“I have hung My Lady out to dry, nude, when there’s snow on the ground,” Mr. McCluskey grinned, “but never for very long. Her circulation is limited in some of those positions, and there’s no point in risking hypothermia.”

“My Lord has a hot tub here,” Acacia grinned. “That’s the best way to come out of subspace I’ve ever experienced, drifting from cold to warm.”

“We usually don’t do it outside in the winter, though. Not even all that much in the summer,” Mr. McCluskey explained. “Shibari is not all suspension, where you have to be pretty careful about what parts of the body you’re using for suspension points. For example, in the position My Lady was in when you arrived, it wouldn’t have been very safe to put a rope around her waist. The rib cage can nicely support the whole load her body has to put on it, but it does restrict her breathing. Supporting My Lady by the waist as well would interfere with the use of her diaphragm, and it would have made it hard to breathe. That’s why I made sure the rope was supporting her hip bones.”

“There’s more to it than meets the eye, I guess,” Helena commented.

“Much more,” He agreed. “Now, there are other forms of shibari which don’t require suspension. Many aren’t even terribly restrictive, they’re more like a macrame, an art form where the body is the canvas and the ropes are the paint.”

“My favorite is the karada,” Acacia added. “That means tortoise. It’s really a macrame, that leaves your body in a shell of diamond shapes. It’s very pretty, not restrictive at all, and very comfortable. My Lord occasionally ties one on me and allows me to spend the night in it. It makes for a very pretty pajama.”

“It does on you, My Lady,” he grinned. “Not that you are not already a work of art, but it refines and enhances it.”

“What does this look like?” Helena wondered.

Both of them tried to explain the tie, but Helena just wasn’t getting it. “Perhaps, My Lady,” Mr. McCluskey commented, “After we finish eating, I should tie one on you, just so she can see what we’re talking about. Miss Curtis, I think you would see what I mean that it’s very enhancing and pretty.”

“My Lord,” Acacia suggested. “If Ms. Curtis would permit, perhaps you should tie it on her. That way she could both see and feel it.”

“I don’t know,” Helena cringed. “It sounds a little, uh …

“It need not be,” Mr. McCluskey said. “In its most basic form, the karada is merely a tie upon the torso, leaving the hands free. I think you might enjoy the experience. You will come to no harm, and it might enlighten you a bit.”

“My Lord,” Acacia said. “No joy knot.”

“My Lady, I would not do such a thing, and you know it.”

“Joy knot?” Helena asked.

“I’ll explain later,” he replied. “It wouldn’t make sense if I tried now.”

So, not long after lunch, Helena found herself standing alongside the pool, wearing her one-piece swimsuit, as Mr. McCluskey and Acacia started applying ropes. It really was pretty simple; it started with a long length of doubled rope, with a loop tied about a foot from the end, and several more knots tied a foot or so apart for several feet. Mr. McCluskey ran the doubled rope between her legs, then took the single ends and started threading them between the knots that went down her front, pulling them into diamonds, that went on around her body. It was snug, even tight, but not uncomfortable, and most of the karada had her swimsuit underneath it. In a few minutes, he was done; he’d obviously done this many times before. “All right,” he said finally. “That’s the basic karada. Once you know how, you could tie it on yourself.”

Helena moved her body around a little, and found the karada comfortable, hardly more restrictive than her swimsuit. “You’re right, this is pretty neat,” she smiled. “What’s this about the joy knot?”

Mr. McCluskey blushed a little, but Acacia saved him. “Ms. Curtis, suppose My Lord had arranged the karada so that you had one of those knots in a, uh, very personal place between your legs.”

“Yes,” Helena grinned. “I could see how it could bring me joy.”

“Indeed, it can,” Acacia grinned. “Perhaps you would like to see yourself in the mirror.”

They went into the house and stood in front of a full length mirror. It looked, well, interesting, and yes, the swimsuit detracted from it. It did tend to frame some interesting features. Helena was struck by the thought that it would be fun, sometime in a distant future, to appear in front of a lover wearing only a karada. That could be interesting …

Back out by the pool, Mr. McCluskey was grinning at the sight. “Would you be interested in exploring some enhancements, just for the fun of it? Again, I can leave your hands and feet free.”

“Sure, why not?” she grinned. This really was sort of fun.

A couple hundred feet of rope was wrapped around her legs and body in the next few minutes. While at a glance, it appeared that she was really trussed up, she was still fully free and mobile, although Mr. McCluskey warned that she didn’t want to think about sitting down or it could bind, and worse, ruin the appearance. “It wouldn’t take much to really tie me up,” she commented after a second visit to the mirror. “I mean, there’s a lot of places to tie things.”

“Exactly the point,” Mr. McCluskey grinned. “The classic tie is arms behind, fairly high.”

“It’s not that uncomfortable,” Acacia added. “My Lord usually ties my arms that way when he has me sleep in a karada. If the wrist tie is tied into the rope with the joy knot properly, it’s a most enjoyable way to sleep.”

“I’ll bet,” Helena snickered, putting her arms behind her back to feel it out.

“Ms. Curtis,” Mr. McCluskey said. “Would you be interested in my binding your wrists there, just to see how it feels? I can tie it so that you can release your wrists quicker than you could release the handcuffs you used the other day.”

“Yes,” Helena said, rather distractedly, really wondering how it would feel. “If you would be so kind, sir.”

“Very well,” he said. She felt ropes being wrapped around her wrists, felt him doing something back there, then felt a rope being wrapped around one hand. “You need only yank that rope downward to free your wrists.”

It was kind of interesting. The position of her arms, her wrists, was a little uncomfortable but not disagreeably so. It might not be in a few minutes, but, well, after having gone this far, it might be a good time to find out a little. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll stay like this for a bit,” she said.

“You might wish to go over and lean against that post,” Mr. McCluskey said, pointing at the framework Acacia had been hanging from a little earlier. “It’ll stabilize you a little in case your legs get tired.”

“Sounds like an idea,” she agreed, taking him up on it.

It was shady, cool and comfortable, not as bad as being out in the sun, and she allowed herself to relax, leaning lightly up against the post, slightly to the side, so the ropes on her arms didn’t press up against it. The ropes on her arms, her body, were tight, but not uncomfortably so, and she wondered how long it would take for them to get uncomfortable or even agonizing. There were waves in the pool, and the sun glinted off them. Kind of pretty, they were fun to look at. She focused her attention on the ropes. What was that Acacia had said about the ropes? Let them become one with you, you become part of them. What could she have meant by that? It didn’t make sense, it just sounded like mumbo-jumbo. Maybe she might understand if she’d been hung up uncomfortably, like Acacia had been … in that kata … koreta … Japanese thingie. The ropes weren’t that uncomfortable … she noticed Mr. McCluskey and Acacia sitting on the chairs by the table, drinks in hand, talking about something, but she couldn’t quite hear them, couldn’t make out what they were saying, and it didn’t really matter much to her, anyway. It wasn’t of any importance, after all. The ropes were there, they were constant, digging in a little, a little irritating. Sort of like that brassiere she had. It was a little tight, and very uncomfortable for the first hour or so, but after a while she just quit noticing it until she got home and took it off, and how good it felt to take it off, literally peeling it from her skin, leaving red marks like the ropes had left on Acacia’s body. It hurt a little, but it was a wonderful hurt. Maybe she ought to think about getting a new bra, and getting rid of that one, but it was expensive, and she hated to throw away the money … but how wonderful it felt to take it off …

“Helena?” she heard Acacia say. Somehow she knew that Acacia was right next to her, but she was far from her attention. “Helena?” Acacia said, a little louder. Why couldn’t she just go away, leave her alone, so she could concentrate on how this felt, what it was doing to her … it was very interesting, very enjoyable … the answer was right there, almost there …

“Helena! Are you all right?”

“Go away,” she pleaded. “Let me be.” But no, Acacia stood right there. She could feel someone behind her, holding her wrist with his fingers, not doing anything with the ropes. What was going on? All of a sudden, with a mental snap that was almost painful, she was aware that she was standing there, the light sparkling off the pool was hurting her eyes, it was so bright … now she realized that her arms were a little sore, the ropes had dug into them a little, but someone was untying them.

“Helena, are you all right?” Acacia asked again, concern clear on her voice.

“Why shouldn’t I be?” she said, sorry that she’d been taken from what she was doing. She’d been right on the verge of understanding … “I’ve only been here a couple minutes.”

“You’ve been here well over an hour,” Mr. McCluskey said from behind her, his voice gentle in her ear. “You’ve had a glazed expression on your face, your pupils were dilated and you didn’t even notice when I checked them, your respiration was very slow and your pulse was about half normal, although it’s coming up now. I really would have liked to have put a blood pressure cuff on you, but I was afraid it would have distracted you. Welcome back to Earth, subspace cadet.”

It was a long, long evening, one that seemed to go on forever. Helena was lying face down on her bed, only barely aware when Acacia came home, and that was when the lights in the living room went on, but she noticed the door open in her darkened bedroom when Acacia looked in on her. “Hi, Helena, I’m home,” she said softly.

“I – I thought you were going to spend the night,” Helena said, her voice raw after the hours of sobs.

“Wade and I thought maybe I ought to come back,” Acacia replied softly. “We were worried about you. You left sort of suddenly.”

“I – I had to,” Helena sobbed. “I’m sorry, Acacia, I just did. I was sitting there by the pool, trying to put it all together, and when it hit me, I just couldn’t stay.”

“Put what together?” Acacia asked, knowing full well what the answer was as she went over and sat down on the bed next to her friend.

“The whole thing this afternoon,” Helena sobbed. “Acacia, it just struck me that I liked it. What kind of a per … person does that mean I am?”

“You meant to say pervert, didn’t you?” Acacia asked softly.

“Acacia, I can’t call you … yes, damn it. Pervert, there I said it. You remember that slippery slope that Wade was talking about? I feel like I’m hanging on by my fingertips and I’m slipping whatever I do. I’ve been here crying all evening when I haven’t been praying to God that I’m not … I’m not …”

“Like me?” Acacia said softly.

“Yes, damn it,” she sobbed. “I can’t get the vision out of my head of being chained naked to a post and having someone like Wade whipping me … and liking it!”

“Oh, Helena,” Acacia said softly shaking her head. “It’s not like that at all.”

“Then damn it, what is it like?”

Acacia let out a long sigh. “It is painful. It does hurt. In fact, it hurts a hell of a lot. But the pain is worth it. I don’t know how to say it, but it’s sort of the way we show our love for each other.”

“Funny damn way you have of showing it,” Helena said acidly. “How in hell did he ever drag you into that, anyway?”

“Oh, no,” Acacia said, still trying to be soothing. “Helena, he didn’t drag me into it. If anything, I dragged him into it. Helena, he’s a very gentle man, you’ve seen that. Authoritarian, yes, but gentle. It’s very hard for him sometimes.” She let out another sigh. “Look, think of me as a pervert if you have to, if that’s what it takes. Just remember that whatever you think, I’m comfortable with it, and I don’t think of myself as a pervert. I have a man who loves me very much, and I love him very much. I’m comfortable with what we do. I’m sorry, Helena, that’s the way it is.”

“But how …?”

Acacia shook her head. “If I knew, I’d tell you. It’s just what I am, and I had a lot of trouble accepting it. Helena, I was a little wild when I was in college. Well, more than a little wild. I slept around a lot, and I, uh, did a lot of other things that I’m not very happy about. I had these feelings inside me, and I didn’t know what to make of them, and while I was trying to sort it out, I, uh, fell in with some bad people. It … it wasn’t very nice, Helena, and one day I wound up collapsed in tears on the sidewalk, between two buildings, in the middle of the winter. I just couldn’t take it anymore. Then this guy took me in his arms and tried to comfort me. I didn’t know him from Adam, but it was Wade. Wade hadn’t been out of the Marines long then, and there was a lot of Marine sergeant in him. There still is, in fact. Helena, he helped me pull myself back together, organize those feelings, be comfortable with them.” She let out another sigh. “I guess I realized that what I really wanted was some guidance in my life, someone to obey. Wade had been through a bad experience, I still don’t know very much of what it was, and he needed to pull himself together, too. Like I said, he was a sergeant, and it would help if he had someone to command. We needed each other, Helena. We healed each other. He lets me experience some of what I feel the need for but doesn’t allow me to do it so much that I hurt myself like I did before. It works, Helena. It works too well. We can’t be without each other, and we can’t quite let ourselves be with each other, either. Like Kermit the Frog said, ‘it ain’t easy being green.’”

“Well, if it works for you, I guess,” Helena said tearfully. “But where does that leave me?”

“I don’t know,” Acacia said. “Look, if you want, maybe you should talk to Wade again. He’s very good at explaining this, better than I am.”

“God, after today, I don’t think I’d dare,” Helena said. “Every time I try to understand, I just wind up sliding farther down the slope, like today. Acacia, I’m really scared.”

“I know,” she said soothingly. “Helena, believe me, I know it better than you, although it’s been a while. Look, Wade and I still want you to be our friend. If you’d like to come up again sometime, you’d be welcome. We’ve had people in before and done that often enough, we’re used to it. Divebomber and I can keep My Lord and My Lady out of sight.”

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