November became December. The once or twice a week visits to Wade’s continued. After the Halloween Party and the hours Helena had spent in the katori, it somehow seemed to all of them that her basic training was over with, but there were still plenty of advanced techniques to learn and practice, nuances to develop, and continued practice at the basics, but somehow, now, they were all students, not just Helena. As a result, the days and evenings took on a somewhat different tone.

Helena did not need Wade or Acacia to tell her that while there was still plenty to learn if she wished, she was rapidly drawing closer to the point where she’d need a partner, a master to do it with. For instance, along in November, Helena had mentioned to Acacia that she planned to spend some quality time with the Corvette that evening, and her roommate had suggested an advanced technique that would pay off when she had a man in her bed instead of a device: “It’s really neat if you can learn to hold off coming until he comes,” she giggled. “You know what they say, ‘To go together is wonderful, to come together is divine.’”

“I don’t know how I’d do that,” Helena said. “I mean, it just sort of comes over me.”

“You just have to let yourself get to that point and get the control of your mind to tell it to hang on, hang on hard, until you feel him starting to come and you let it go,” Acacia explained. “Get yourself to that point, and try holding on to it, and see what I mean.”

Helena had tried it, and after several attempts, had begun to get some idea of how it worked, but could only hold on for a few seconds. She reported that fact to Acacia the next day. “I think I could have held on longer,” she said, “But I didn’t know how long to hold it for.”

Acacia had suggested that they try an experiment. That night, she tied Helena spread eagled to the bed, with the Corvette running in high gear. “I’ll just sit here,” Acacia said. “When I see you starting to come, I’ll tell you to hang on to it. You will not come until I say so.”

They tried it. Helena felt the urges rising in her, but through the fog the vibrator put into her mind, she heard Acacia ordering, “Hold on to it Helena … hold on …” for a minute or more, before she said, “All right, let it go!”

By that point, Helena was beyond much thinking. She let herself go, and her body bucked and writhed at the pull of the bindings while a massive orgasm swelled through her mind, leaving her exhausted and sweaty, out of breath and wonderfully aglow in the aftershock. “You’re right,” she panted. “That worked. Oh, my, did it ever work … ahhhh.”

They went through the exercise several more times, each time at the interval of several days, until one memorable night when Acacia held her off for a full five minutes. Having learned from past experiences, Helena was wearing a large ball gag, and it was just as well, for her screams of pure delight would have woken the neighbors, had she not been wearing it.

In the aftermath – and it was quite a while before Helena came to her senses enough for there to be a reasonable discussion – Acacia told her, “We can do that once in a while, now, but I think we better not do it too much.”

Helena asked her why not, and Acacia explained that it was important to learn to hold off until the man came; she didn’t want to get Helena used to the idea of coming at the sound of her voice. His, well, that was fine … but it was better to pick up on him letting loose than it was to depend on voice. “That’s one of the things Wade and I are trying to do,” she explained. “He’s trying to get me to orgasm on his command. I can do it if I’m flying pretty good anyway, but I think he wants to get me to the point where we’re walking through the mall shopping, and he says the secret word in my ear and I collapse on the floor in screams.”

“Your Lord and my Teacher does have some off-the-wall ideas,” Helena grinned. “But I think you’re right. We’d better not push much farther in this direction, although an exercise from time to time would be, well, rewarding.”

“I think you’ll find it much more rewarding with a man, rather than a machine,” Acacia grinned.

“I know,” Helena sighed. “I’m working on it.”

And she was working on it. She and Andy were still only dating casually, usually a couple nights a week, and she had gone out with different guys a couple times, although it was clear neither of them measured up to Andy. A couple nights a week were about all he could manage, anyway, with the press of his MBA classes, but two other times she accompanied him to his parents’ for church and dinner, and things seemed to be progressing nicely. There was going to be a long period, nearly a month, when he’d be on class break over the holidays, and she expected to spend more time with him then, and maybe get to know him a little better. More and more, he began to seem like a candidate, although there were some problems. Mostly, he seemed like too nice a guy. There was a firmness, an authoritarianism, a something that Helena just couldn’t quite put her finger on that seemed to be lacking in him. He might be a jewel of a man, and might make a marvelous husband, but would he make a master?

The sports nut in him that had irritated her in the beginning didn’t seem like an issue, now. After having met his roommate, Curt, on several occasions, she began to realize that Curt really was a major sports nut, and Andy sort of went along to keep peace in the household. He seemed to enjoy taking her out more than he did sitting around the apartment and watching a hockey game. Andy explained that he did play baseball on a men’s league, and liked it, but that actually watching the pros on TV was just a bit boring, although it had been less so back in the summer when it looked like the Cubs might actually have a chance. NASCAR had faded, too, when it became clear that Jeff Gordon didn’t stand a chance of winning the championship again, although a fresh season wasn’t that far off. Somehow, she suspected she might be able to develop other interests in him – if she made up her mind that it was worth the effort, and the jury was still out on that.

And, beyond that, if she decided to go with it, lay the problem of converting him from a nice guy into a master. That seemed like a tougher problem. Really, there were only two ways to go about it – slowly, starting most likely after she’d taken him to bed, which she hadn’t done yet, adding on piece by piece. But it seemed like it might take years to go from a gentle tied-up lovemaking to the sort of relationship Wade and Acacia had, and she’d have to lead him every step of the way. Yet, she ached for the sort of relationship her friends had, even more. She was sorry that it was only a part-time relationship, since it was obvious that both of them wanted to do it full-time but couldn’t work out how. The alternative, of course, was to dump it on him all at once, and hope he wouldn’t run off into the bushes screaming in fear … which might be the simpler way, saving a lot of time, but having to start over. At least it wasn’t a bridge that had to be crossed right away, although it was starting to loom in the distance.

Christmas brought a four-day break at the insurance company. It had been a long time since Helena had been home, and a little longer for Acacia; both of them were really looked forward to heading home, and as soon as they were off work the last day they were heading home, driving late into the night and into the early morning hours to get there. It was indeed good to be home again, to go to her home church with her family, to tell, very judiciously, some of the stories of her adventures on the job over the past eight months, and tell them about her dates with Andy. Crossing her fingers, she even told her family the official, sanitized version of the Halloween Party story, illustrated with a color photo of the three of them in the local paper, of Wade accepting the trophy while she and Acacia were in high kneel beside him. “You’re right,” her father grinned. “That is a little weird. Fits right in with Halloween, though.”

“You’d have to know Wade to know how well it worked, Daddy,” she smiled. “He’s a former Marine, like you, and really a very sweet and gentle guy. As it turned out, Acacia and I were mostly just decorations. He did the acting, and my word, he did it well. He’s quite a guy, and Acacia is a lucky woman.”

More worrisome was the fact that Helena’s younger sister, Sharon was home from college. It had been a long time since she’d seen Sharon, who had gone to a much less strict state school than the private Christian college Helena had attended. Not much was said, but it was clear that Sharon was having some severe guy troubles, and Helena couldn’t help but wonder if the same demon that had been hiding in her was hiding in her sister. Acacia had gotten into a lot of trouble that way, and had been lucky indeed to have Wade come along to help her out.

It was clear to Helena that Sharon needed a little more guidance and supervision than she’d been getting, but there wasn’t much she could do but hope that somehow her little sister would get it. After all, she’d been having troubles there for a while, until a teacher and protector had come along to straighten them out and help her get her own demons under control – but there wasn’t much in those experiences that she dared tell her sister about, for any number of reasons, mostly good ones. After all, when you stepped back and thought about it from the perspective of the bedroom she and Sharon had shared for so long, her own life had developed some really weird points. There was no way she could tell her sister of how wonderful it was to go flying in a katori, to feel the crack of a whip across her backside, to kneel to a master and give him her devotion without her sister thinking that she’d really lost it, big time. And, a year or so in the past, had she been able to look into her life now, she’d have thought the same thing.

As she talked with Acacia on the way back to their apartment, she discovered that Acacia had a corollary problem. Her sister and her husband were having problems – mostly because both of them had it in their heads that they were going to wear the pants in the family. “I almost wish I could have Wade talk some sense into them,” Acacia said. “I mean, leave out the D/s, but if she’d just bend a little and respect him a little, I think he’d respect her a lot. As it is, they’re at each other’s throats all the time. She needs to have him turn her over his knee and give her a good paddling, but she wouldn’t accept it. Damn it, some people never learn. Even if I were to show them how wonderful it is with Wade, they couldn’t see the evidence before their eyes.”

“Yeah,” Helena said. “It’s hard to keep it in the closet, but I think that’s what we just have to do. Like you said, a long time ago, Acacia, ‘It ain’t easy being green.’”

Helena was still mulling the question of how to hit Andy with her secret self – or even if she would – nearly a month later. They’d seen a lot of each other over the holidays, and had continued once his classes began again, if on a slightly reduced schedule, since he had a much lighter load that semester. On this Friday evening, nothing particularly special was planned, just a pizza and a movie, chance to be together. As always, Andy picked her up at her apartment, but at the last minute, they decided to head on up to the Mykonos, sixty miles or so away. In spite of the disturbing experience they’d had there, the food was good, and it would be a little more romantic than a pizza joint.

As they got into town, it happened to cross Andy’s mind that he hadn’t gotten his check cashed yet, and he was a little short on green money. Easily solved; they headed for an ATM machine at a nearby bank. The machine turned out to be broken, so since the bank was still open, they decided to head inside. Helena had almost stayed in the car to wait, but decided that getting out to stretch her legs for a moment would be welcome, so she went inside with him.

It would have been easier if the machine were working; there was some hassle with the teller getting a couple of twenties from the card. They were just turning to go when they heard the words from nearby, “This is a stickup. Give me the money.” Andy glanced up to see an unkempt man, carrying a gun and some kind of whip. He grabbed Helena instinctively, took her to the floor, and protected her with his body.

Things went to hell in a hurry after that, and neither Andy nor Helena were totally able to sort them out afterwards. Several people made it out the door without being injured; someone must have sounded an alarm, a police car drove up with lights flashing, then another, and suddenly what had been a routine holdup became a standoff. It had been slow in the small branch bank; after things settled down, there were only seven people in left in the building: Helena and Andy, another man who had apparently just come in to cash a paycheck, the hysterical woman teller, an elderly lady, and a very pregnant woman – and the robber, of course.

The teller became even more hysterical, screaming in fear, and for whatever reason – to establish his dominance, to quiet her down, the robber had about all he could take, and slashed the whip across her front, ripping her clothes open and leaving a thin bloody streak across her front. That didn’t help; she screamed in pain, screamed in fear, sobbing in a pile on the floor. While the robber’s attention was drawn to her, Andy looked for an opening – but the man was too far away, and he had a gun.

Eventually, the robber pulled some plastic ties from his pocket, the type that cops use for makeshift handcuffs, and had everyone but the other man and the sobbing woman sit down on the floor next to a decorative grill work that set off an office space, and had the other man fasten their hands behind them to the grill work. Thinking ahead, Andy had his hands separated slightly when the man fastened them, and almost from the moment his hands were fastened, he was rubbing the plastic against the grill work, trying to abrade his way through it – if he could get his hands free, there might be an opening somewhere up the line.

Once the four people had their hands tied, the robber had the other man pick up the injured teller and take her outside. He didn’t come back, as if that would be expected. Now there was just the robber, and the four hostages.

Up to this point, little had been said. Andy looked over at Helena, who was looking at the scene – well, he didn’t want to say impassively, since she was clearly frightened, but taking it well. “Hang in there, Helena,” he said hopefully, hoping he wasn’t lying. “We’ll be OK. This probably won’t take long.”

It took hours. It had already been after dark when they arrived, and now the night was punctuated by the continual flashing lights of police cars surrounding the building. Not long after the man and the injured teller left the building, someone from the police got on the phone, and a dialogue started. The robber made many demands, some of them reasonable, some of them outrageous, but mostly that he be taken to the airport and be given a million dollars and a plane ride out of the country. Finally, he said the obvious words: “You’ve got until ten to comply, or I’ll take the whip to one of the women.”

Andy glanced over at Helena, saw her face full of fear, understandably. He mostly was filled with rage, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it, other than work that tough plastic against the grill work some more. Not far from his feet was a stanchion, about the size of a baseball bat but a little thinner, that held a rope used to guide customers to the tellers and keep the lines under control. This one didn’t have a rope attached, and it seemed to be loose in its standard. If he could just get his hands free and get to that stanchion …

Ten came and went. The dialogue on the phone continued, and finally the cornered robber had enough. He headed over to the line of hostages, and bent to cut the tie on the wrists of the pregnant woman – and then heard Helena say in a harsh voice words that would awe him for the rest of his life: “If you’re going to whip a woman, why don’t you whip me?”

“Helena! No!” Andy pleaded, but the die was cast, and he knew it.

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