textfiles/sex/EROTICA/T/the_game.txt

                       THE GAME

Jim stood in the doorway beaming.

"Oh, Jim, you got the promotion!" Alicia threw her arms
around him and dragged him into the house, her lips
locked on his. She felt a bump against her back as Jim
clumsily tried to hug her and hang onto the champagne
bottle.

"Mmmph --- Lish, lemme get some glasses." He broke
off the hug and started looking through kitchen cabinets.
The champagne glasses were in the second one he
tried.

"Got anything to go with it, Lish? I want to go out to
dinner later, but I need something to soak up the booze."
He was waiting for the bubbles to die down so he could
top off the glasses.

"Got nacho chips. That's about it. I haven't had any
time for groceries lately."

"Champagne and nachos. Isn't that a tradition somewhere?"

She kissed him and giggled. "We could make it one here."

He handed her a glass and lifted his own. "So what'll we
drink to?"

"Duh! To Associate Professor Starrell. An American
academic success story."

He raised the glass to his lips, and stopped. "Wait, maybe. . .
to Professor and Mrs. Starrell. The life of the department
Christmas party."

She wrinkled her nose at him. "One of these days I'm going
to take you seriously and drag you off to a wedding chapel
before you know what's hit you."

"You don't think I'd marry you, Lish?"

"For tax reasons, I bet. You're so romantic."

"Shit." He took a deep draft of champagne, and reached
for a handful of nachos.

Alicia had no idea which of them wanted marriage more,
or which was more afraid of it. On her own part, she had
reasons to be wary of marriage, having burned her fingers
on it once before. At least she had come out of it with a
big house, but sometimes had lengthy arguments with
herself as to whether it had been worth it. She had resisted
the relationship with Jim for months, aware of her habit
of giving herself completely to a man and then having the
rug pulled out from under her.

In ten minutes the bottle was empty, the remaining nachos
were a debris of bits at the bottom of the bowl too tiny to
carry flavor. Alicia put down her glass and held him close
again, liking the bristly feel of his cheek against her smooth
one.

"Wanta play, Lish?"

She knew what that meant, and giggled. "Okay, lemme take
a leak first. Champagne always goes straight through me. I
don't know why I don't just pour it straight in the toilet and
forget the middleman."

"Hey, I paid fifteen dollars for that bottle. See if I get you
champagne anymore."

"You know I was just kidding, honey. Besides, it does
leave a great buzz behind."

"Helps with the game. We both need to be pretty goofy to
want to play it."

She got up and headed for the bathroom. "Let me know when
you're not goofy. I want to watch." She disappeared inside.

He told the bathroom door, "I'll get you back for that. It's
my turn, isn't it?"

He heard the toilet flush. The door opened, and she said,
"Special occasion. I'll flip you for it."

He fished out a coin. "Call it."

"Tails."

"I win. See, it's my turn."

They walked down to her bedroom, holding hands. They
kissed in front of the bed, then he bent down to get the
gear out from under the bed while she started undressing.
In a minute the bed was littered with handcuffs, chains,
padlocks, and a few other odds and ends.

Once she was naked, he fastened a pair of padded cuffs
around her ankles, and temporarily chained the cuffs to
the bed. "So you don't follow me."

"Hey, when have I followed you? I don't cheat."

"Okay then, let's say I plan to keep my wife naked and
chained to the bed."

"Ha! Only way you could keep a wife, I bet."

He thumbed his nose at her and disappeared into the
hallway.

Livingroom, he decided. He didn't like to the leave the
keys in plain sight, and after some thought he dropped
them behind the couch. They'd have to move an end-table
out of the way and pull the heavy couch out from the wall
to get at them, but he experimented with moving the
couch and decided it wasn't too heavy.

He came back into the bedroom and took his own clothes
off. "Feels a lot better to be naked. It's too hot out there
today."

"I know. It's getting cooler now. I left a couple of windows
open so we'd get a breeze blowing through."

He looked at her. "Windows? Open?"

She squeezed his chin and kissed him. "You're
always such a worrier. They aren't windows anybody's
going to see through. What do you think, I want the
whole neighborhood to watch?"

"I guess having your neighborhood watch wouldn't be
much of a problem." The house sat on an estate of
several acres; the nearest neighbor, currently away on
a skiing trip, occupied a house a quarter of a heavily-wooded
mile east when he was in town. "I could call over some 
people from mine."

He sat next to her on the bed, amid the tangle of bondage 
periphernalia, and they grappled with each other, giggling, 
trying to kiss each other's neck as if in some grown-up 
version of "tag." Breathing hard, he said at last, "Want 
to get started?"

" 'Kay." He unlocked the chain holding her feet, leaving
the cuffs joining them in place, and put his right leg
between hers, his left leg under her right; he thrust his
left foot in between her lower legs then, and rested his
right shin on top of her left. Contorting himself to reach his
feet without untangling their legs, he put a pair of padded
cuffs around his own ankles and locked them in place.
They were both already feeling the excitement, conscious
of their four legs being intimately and irrevocably twined
together. By now she was taking two lengths of chain
and locking one around each of their waists. Since it had
been his turn and he had hidden the keys, she blindfolded
him and put the ball-gag in his mouth. By feel he took a 
pair of handcuffs, the pair with a chain about two-and-a-half
feet long attached, put his arms around Alicia and locked
the cuffs on his wrists, behind her back. He fed the chain
through a ring on the chain around her waist, located
in the small of her back, and then Alicia took over
for the rest: pulling the chain through her own crotch
and then his, up through a ring on his waist-chain
similar to hers, and joined another pair of handcuffs
to the chain at the link nearest the ring. The chain
was taut through their crotches, but not painfully so.
With her arms around him, she locked the cuffs on
her own wrists.

She pulled gently with her ankles and wrists, feeling
them held securely. "You ready?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"Okay, let's go."

Together they wriggled towards the edge of the bed,
their feet hanging off the end and slowly settling
to the floor. With a great deal of care, and with her
laying on top of him for now, they contorted their
bodies to let his butt slide off the bed and ease
down to the floor. Once there, she rolled off of him
and they lay embracing side-by-side on the floor.

"Okay, the bedroom door is directly behind you
now. We'll start turning that way when I say
three. One, two. . . " With cooperation of movement
they had worked out with much experimentation
and a lot of giggling in the past, they struggled
to get turned so their heads pointed towards the
doorway.

"Straight ahead, now. Jimmy, did you leave the
keys in the diningroom?"

"Mmm-MMM-Mmm," he responded in a quizzical
"I don't know" cadence. 

She sighed and rubbed his cheek with hers. "Okay, you
nut, let's just start by getting out in the hallway first."
He wasn't usually very informative until after his first
orgasm.

It was just another repetition of what they referred to
as "The Game." Early in their relationship, due to a
chance remark by one of them, they didn't even remember
which, they had discovered a mutual fascination with
bondage, an almost orgiastic joy in contemplating
being held by ropes and chains. Neither had previously
known anyone else with the same fascination, and
it soon bound them together with more than just
metal links. They had sex often, but it rarely came
up to the standards of the excitement of The Game.

At this point in The Game's evolution, it consisted of
a Hide-and-Seek premise, one person hiding the keys
that would free them both, then being blindfolded
and gagged so he or she could offer only minimal
assistance in locating them. Usually each of them
had more than one mind-bending orgasm along
the way.

With alternating movements of a few inches at a
time along the floor, they made it out into the hallway.
"Okay, now you know we need to turn the way your
head is facing." It was the only direction to go, from there.
"Jimmy, you'll tell me if it's in the diningroom when
we get there, won't you?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"Okay, that's good enough. Let's start going that way."
They inched along the hallway, which soon opened up
into the diningroom. For each of them, the feeling of
the other's leg pressed against the crotch, with a chain
pulled tight running in between, was one of the primary
sources of sexual tension for the moment. Just short of
the diningroom their movements began to get seriously
out of synch, each growing more interested in rubbing
against the other along the lengths of their bodies,
tightening their arms around each other. Jim usually
came first, but today it was Alicia, suddenly gasping
and tightening her legs like a vice around Jim's,
pushing her crotch tightly against him as waves of
pleasure flooded her body. The additional tension
sent Jim over the edge quickly, and they both
moved against each other as semen sprayed onto
Alicia's hip and tummy.

They rested a few minutes, and at last Alicia kissed
him and said, "Okay, Jimmy, we're almost in the diningroom.
Is it in here?"

They both jumped in surprise as a sudden breeze flowing
between open windows at opposite ends of the house
blew a door shut. Alicia could feel both their hearts
thundering in their pressed-together chests, and looked
around to see what had happened. She listened
intently, but no other sounds ensued.

"It's okay, Jimmy, it's just the wind from outside.
There's nobody in here. You know nobody's going
to sneak into a house and then slam a door." She
patted his butt reassuringly, as much to convince herself
as him. She listened a little longer. Still nothing.

She took a deep breath and let it go. "So is it in
here, Jimmy?"

His sexual energy was sufficiently drained from the
orgasm that he was willing to work at trying to get free.
"Hmm-mm," he shook his head. With a jerk of his head
he indicated farther down the hall, towards the livingroom.

"Is it the liv-" She froze in horror. "Oh, God, Jimmy, is it
the livingroom?" She was shaking with anxiety.

That was the door that had blown shut.

Jim twisted around making questioning sounds.

"It is the livingroom, isn't it?"

Jim, suspecting the cause of her fears but not wanting
to believe it, slowly said, "Mmm-hm." Yes.

She buried her head between his head and shoulder. She
mumbled against his neck, "The door's closed, Jimmy.
What are we going to do?"

She felt a huge emptiness inside her, a pit threatening
to swallow her whole. She had come to depend on
Jim for the big decisions, enjoyed following his lead.
She wanted desperately for him to take over now, to
explain in his quiet, professional voice what their options
were and what their strategies should be.

Jim hmmmm'd and made motions with his head. She
couldn't quite decifer what he was trying to say, but
it seemed he might be motioning towards the livingroom
door.

"You want to go there anyway? Oh, yeah, maybe the latch
didn't catch. Straight ahead Jimmy. You ready?" He made
assenting noises, and they began inching further down the
hallway.

"Stop here. Okay, the door's behind me. We need to roll
over so I'm facing it. I want to get my fingers under the
door and see if I can pull it open." She twisted her neck 
around to look behind her, estimating the distance, and
looked the other direction, behind his back. "I can't roll
over you, there's not enough room behind you. I'll pull
you up and over me. Ready?" He grunted, and she said,
"Okay, go."

It tested her strength, trying to get his heavy body off
the floor, with him not able to offer much help: once he
was off the floor, he had nothing to push against. She
gritted her teeth and finally managed to wrestle him
upwards until he was fully on top of her, then turned
to let him drop with a thump on the other side.

"Okay, now we need to move just a few inches back
behind you. We're almost there. One more. Good, I've
got it." She slid her fingers under the door, and pulled.
Her heart sank as she felt the resistance. She pulled
harder, feeling the strain on her fingers curled around
the hard corners of wood, jerking again and again until
her fingers screamed with pain. The door remained
closed, like a man with his arms folded across his
chest, ignoring her efforts.

From behind the door, the phone rang. She snatched 
her fingers from the door as if she had received a shock, 
her heart racing. The burring of the phone continued. 
She wondered what friend, relative, or salesman was 
on the other end, nearly laughed at the caller's complete 
inability to imagine what was happening at the call's 
destination.

She knew she couldn't answer the phone, but it occurred
to her the phone could still get them out of this. Besides
the phone in the livingroom, she had another back in her
bedroom. "Jimmy, what if we call somebody?"

He shook his head vehemently. "Hmm-mm! Hmm-mm!"

"Lookit, Jimmy, I know it'd be embarrassing, but I think
you're shielded from getting a feeling for how serious
this problem is. Everything looks fine to you from
behind that blindfold, but we can't get at the keys. I don't
have anything we could reach that'll cut through chains.
We're too far from anybody to yell for help. If we don't
call somebody, what else are we going to do?"

He was silent. Finally he made an indecisive hum.

"Who could we call? Gena?" One of Alicia's closest
friends.

"Hmm-mm." Jim shook his head.

"What about Richard?" He was a fellow faculty member
in Jim's department.

Jim shuddered in horror. "Hmm-mm!"

"Dr. Weldon?" The department head. Jim snorted,
shook his head violently.

"Come on, who, Jimmy? What if we call the fire department?"

Jim hesitated, and shook his head.

"We've got to call somebody. Humiliation won't kill us.
We don't know anybody in the fire department. Maybe we'll
just end up as a story they tell around the firehouse, and
they won't even remember what our names are. Fire departments
are always getting calls like this, I've read stories about them."
Oh, way to go, Alicia, she told herself. That'll really sell him
on the idea. "Please, Jimmy, please, we've got to do it!"

He hesitated for a long time, finally nodded.

"Okay, then, let's go. Oh, God, there isn't enough room to
turn around here. We'll have to back up." Moving in the
direction their feet were pointing wasn't something they
had done very often, only enough to know how hard it
was.

They started backing down the hallway. They were
nearly back to the diningroom when she felt Jim
stiffen against her, and looked down in time to
see a long spray of semen landing across her side
and stomach, followed by several shorter bursts. Jim
was breathing hard, slowly relaxing his vice-like
embrace.

She kissed his cheek. "You men never stop thinking
about it, do you? I'm flattered, I guess, but I'm going
to be needing your strength more than your love
right now. Oh, God; I wish we could clean up before
the firemen get here. Oh, well. Are you ready to move
again?" She wished she could read the expression on his
face. He simply nodded.

Once they had backed into the dining area, at least
they had a wider space to work in, and turned
around before heading back down to the bedroom.
When they finally arrived, sweating, at the bedroom
door, she looked up towards the cradle that held
her cordless phone.

It didn't.

She froze in stunned silence, trying to think where
it could be. She often wandered around the house
with it, setting it down wherever she was when the
call ended and forgetting to put it back. Where had
she been on her last call?

She finally remembered: Jim himself had called
about a half-hour before coming over, being very
mysterious and getting her excited. He wouldn't
hint about whether he had got the promotion, and
she'd been afraid to ask. She'd gone out to the
kitchen to see if she had anything, and then ---

Yes, then she'd gone out to the livingroom and
sat down on the couch. She remembered, now,
leaving the phone there and going back to the
kitchen, trying to decide whether she had time
to go to the store before he arrived. She'd decided
against it, went to the bathroom to check her
make-up.

That was where it had ended up. Two phones
in the livingroom. Really useful now.

She started to cry, and the floodgates seemed
to open up. She hadn't cried this hard since Tom
had left her. Behind her she felt Jim patting and
rubbing her butt, trying to make reassuring noises.

Between sobs, she managed to get out, "Oh, Jimmy,
the --- phone's not --- h-here. I l-left it --- in --- the
livingroom. Jimmy ---" Her throat tightened up now
too much to continue speaking.

The only part of her mind working was the one telling
her she needed him to take over somehow. She
worked to stifle her sobs and fought for breath
through her runny nose. "Jimmy, turn your head
way around. I'm going to see if I can get the gag
untied." She stretched her neck to get directly
behind his head as he turned it. 

Her heart sank as she saw how well she had done
the job without really looking. At one point in the
history of the game her blindfold had come off
accidently, so from that time they had begun
wrapping an end of the cord holding the gag
around the knot of the blindfold. The back end of
the blindfold was prevented from sliding up along
the head of the person wearing it. As it was now,
the blindfold knot had the gag-cord wrapped tightly 
around it in several loops that would effectively make 
it impossible to untie it, and the knot securing the
gag-cord had slipped around behind the blindfold knot,
This happened sometimes, and in the end it was
fairly easy to tease the knot out from its hiding-place
with fingers. She tried for several minutes to do it
with her teeth, but she couldn't get it out. In mounting
frustration she bit into the side of the blindfold
and tried to slide it up and over his head, but it
fit too snugly to yield to pressure at a single point.

She stopped, perspiring heavily. She felt the tears coming 
on again. To completely give up at this point seemed the 
proper response. She felt inadequate as she had so often 
in the past, and willing to let a man pat her head and take 
over.

But the man couldn't take over. He couldn't even pat
her head. The situation, as she saw it, went well
beyond the scope of her personal instruction manual.

She closed her eyes tight and hugged him close. I need
you, Jimmy, she thought to herself, but you can't help
me. You can't even help yourself. The awareness that
someone she cared about deeply was now depending
on her swept across her like a curtain opening to
reveal a new, unsuspected world.

She tried to clear her mind with a series of deep breaths. 
In her mind's eye she placed an image of an open meadow 
on a Spring day, a memory of an picnic outing from her 
childhood that never failed to relax and strengthen her.

"Listen, Jimmy. We've got to get standing up somehow. 
I know we've never done that before, but there's got to 
be some way." She looked around the bedroom, trying 
to judge distances between things.

"Let's move into the room first. . . okay, stop. Now we need 
to turn partway, clockwise. . . good, stop here. We're 
between the bed and the wall, at a little bit of an angle. We've 
got to move deeper in. Imagine a line drawn along your body 
coming out from your head, and another line at a right angle 
going behind you. We've got to move in a direction halfway 
between those lines. You see what I'm saying?" He nodded. 
"Okay, let's go." They wriggled into the space between the 
bed and the wall.

"Stop here. The bed and wall are about four feet apart here. 
Your head's just a couple of inches from the bed. Feel it 
behind you?" He moved his head back gingerly until he felt 
it in contact with the bed, and brought it back.

"Now, we need to start turning counter-clockwise. Bend your 
legs first, so we'll have room." She bent her own knees, 
sliding her calves upward along his until they were near his 
knees, and bending at the waist as she felt him doing the 
same. "Start turning now." They were perpendicular to the
bed now, their feet a few inches from the wall.

"Okay, Jimmy, here's the hard part. What I'm trying
to do is get us up on the bed. We're both going
to push against the wall with our feet, and walk up
the side of the bed with our heads. We can use our 
lower shoulders to anchor us. Now push. Hard!"

It didn't seem to be working at first. It was hard to dope 
out the series of movements that would make anything 
happen. But at last they both managed to get their heads 
a few inches up the side of the bed, and jammed their 
shoulders against the side of the bed to hold themselves
there as their head sought a higher level. They were both 
breathing in gasps and shaking with tension when Alicia 
felt the edge of the bed at last, letting her head slide up 
onto the covers. As Jim also got his head up and over, they 
both slid ahead suddenly until their shoulders arrested their 
motion with a jarring bump against the side of the bed.

"We've just got to get our shoulders over the edge now. 
Push down with your head to lift yourself up higher." 
Both of them grunting, their shoulders gradually slipped 
higher along the side and finally up onto the plateau.

"Keep pushing! We don't want to lose it. Let's get farther 
onto the bed. Straighten your legs out completely." They 
slid on their shoulders to a more secure position. They had 
their elbows up on the bed now, and there was little
danger of falling off.

She hadn't really thought ahead to decide how to reach a 
standing position, and realized from here that she couldn't 
visualize a means of getting upright now. Her heart sank, 
but it occurred to her suddenly they didn't really need to 
get up quite that high. 

"Look, now we just need to get up on our knees.
Bend your legs again, farther than before. You need
to get your ankles past my knees. And don't slide
off the bed. Okay, do it."

It was awkward all right, their upper bodies perched
on the bed, their entwined legs resisting their
contortions, but they finally managed it.

"Now, we just need to get standing on our knees.
Push off hard with your elbow on the count of three,
and try to get upright. One. . ."

With twin grunts they pushed off at the same time,
almost made it, and fell back on the bed with a
bounce, beginning to slide downward then along
the edge. "No, oh no, Jimmy, dig in with your
elbow, we've got to. . ." She broke off as their
slide halted, their elbows nearly at the edge. If they
had fallen off she didn't think either of them had
the strength left to get back up.

"Let's try again. We've got to get back where we
were first." They wiggled up into their previous
position on the bed. "Okay, we're here. Push off
with your elbow again, on three, harder!"

Again they shoved themselves outward from the bed,
reached a precarious balance as they struggled to keep
upright, and this time she could feel the balance swing
in their favor, and they settled into a kneeling position
on the floor next to the bed.

She held him tightly against her, kissing his chin and
cheek in the excitement of success.

"We've got to start walking now. Let me think. . . Okay, move
your left knee outward, and let me catch up with it then.
That'll work, I think." They managed a few inches, and
suddenly Alicia made a careless move that nearly pitched
them over sideways.

"Oh, God, it's hard to stay balanced. We need to get next to
a wall pretty soon. We need to turn now too, to move
towards the door. Try moving your other knee out, and I'll
move mine the other way. I think that'll start turning us."

With several minutes of tense experimentation while 
struggling at the same time to keep from falling over,
they learned how to turn. Alicia got them headed to the
door and out into the hallway.

For all her wishing to have walls to lean against, it
didn't work out that way. They could only travel sideways;
to move in a direction directly ahead or behind had proven
impossible. The walls were always in front or behind
them, and while she could brush a wall with her feet,
it was still too far behind her to lean on. All the way down
the hallway they moved carefully, each movement having
the potential to bring them crashing to the floor, requiring
them to return to the bedroom as the only place the
furniture was arranged so they could use it to get up. And
she knew their exhaustion had passed the point where
a repeat of that effort was possible. She could feel tiny
rivers of sweat tickling her sides, her back, her legs as
they rolled down her body, reminding her she had to
be getting close to serious dehydration.

When they finally arrived at the livingroom door, she said,
"We're here! We need to turn clockwise now. I want to
get next to the doorknob."

In a minute she was close enough to rub against the 
doorknob with her chin. The sweat on her cheek coated
the doorknob, and her skin slid along the knob without 
turning it. She gave a high-pitched sigh of frustration. To 
be so close. . .

"Jimmy, is your hair dry? No, not very. Let me try it
anyway. Wait, let me try to dry the doorknob
first." She rubbed it with her own hair, then brushed
her cheek against Jim's own sweat-soaked hair. 
Eventually she managed to get most of the biggest
drops off her cheek. She tried again, hoping to turn
the knob quickly before the sweat could build up again.
She pushed her face hard against the knob and bore
downward. She could feel the knob turning! Encouraged
to try harder, she lost concentration on the placement of
her knee and it twitched towards the door. The world 
seemed to go upside-down as she felt their balance go, 
and she screamed as they fell to the floor with a heavy 
thump that knocked the wind out of both of them.

She fought for breath and her paralyzed diaphragm
finally agreed to get on with its job. "Oh my God oh
my God. Jimmy, I turned the knob, but I couldn't
tell if I got the door open. I still can't tell from
here. Let's turn clockwise WAIT, don't straighten your
legs, you'll kick the door. Just turn right here, go."

They turned on the floor, meanwhile succeeding in
getting his feet out of range of the door.

"It's back behind you now. Back up slowly, just a little
bit at a time, you don't want to bump it when you
get there."

Several tentative wiggles later, she said, "Stop. Let me
see if I can reach it from here." She stretched her
fingers as far as they'd go, both of them feeling
the chain through their crotches digging deep into the
skin. "Can't quite get it yet. Move just the tiniest
bit farther back. . . a little more. There, let me try
again."

Again she strained outward with her fingers, feeling she
had to reach it this time, that she couldn't manage one
more shimmy of her body to get any closer. The chain 
pulled even harder this time through their crotches, and 
she gritted her teeth and tried to reach just a fraction of 
an inch farther. Her middle finger made contact with the 
underside of the door, and carefully, not wanting to 
accidently latch the door, she pulled it towards her.

With a creaking of hinges, the door opened as the
latch slipped past the jamb with a click.

"Ohmigod Jimmy we did it we did it we did it!"
She pulled him towards her convulsively and
kissed every part of his face she could reach,
Despite his exhaustion he responded, holding her 
tightly and moving his hips against her as the fires 
built up inside. She could feel his arms tightening 
rhythmically, and at last another streamer of semen 
coated her stomach where his previous offerings had
dried. She laughed wildly as she hugged him again.
"You men'll just do it anywhere."

Ten minutes later she felt like strangling him when
he finally got across the idea of where the keys
were, and they had fought with the end-table and
heavy couch to finally locate the keys. She unlocked
her cuffs first, letting her cuffs loose from the chain
that had held his own wrists tightly against her back.
She reached down and unlocked the shackles around
her ankles, and pulled herself free from him.

She found herself thinking in a way that would have
been alien to her before. "I might just leave you
that way for awhile. You've been a bad boy, getting
Momma in so much trouble. You can just stay here
while I take a long, hot bath."

He extended his hands supplicatingly to her.

"You don't want to stay here, is that it?"

He nodded his head.

"You do want to stay here?"

He shrugged his shoulders in frustration.

"Well, maybe you can come take a bath with
me. Here, get up on your feet and you can hop
there." She held her arm around him and
kissed him periodically as she walked and he hopped
towards a warm, heavenly bath.