Free Bound and Initiated by Emily Tilton Page A

had been going when he left his office.
    Sarah felt more desperate to know what all of it meant than she had ever felt to learn anything in her life.
    “Rise, columba,” Claudia said, with what seemed at least a little bit of approval. “You do well not to ask useless questions. I may tell you, though, that Pater Robert will be your pater from now on. That means that for you he stands at what we call the first degree, and also at the last.”
    Did Claudia say it just to make Sarah even more curious? Sarah rather suspected she did. What could the talk of degrees be if not a way to keep the initiate mystified? How many degrees? What did it mean, to ‘stand’ at one?
    Sarah rose, and Claudia walked before her to the end of the hall, and opened the last door to reveal what seemed a normal medical gynecological examination room, with an exam chair to which plastic stirrups were affixed. With a thrill of fear, Sarah noticed that those stirrups seemed to have Velcro cuffs attached to them, and then that there were similar cuffs that must be for the patient’s wrists, to either side of the back of the chair.
    “Go ahead and get undressed,” Claudia said, “and then hop up onto the chair. I’m going to secure you to it to get you ready for the examination. Then the doctor will come in.”
    Chewing on the inside of her cheek, Sarah complied, reaching back to unclasp her bra, then shrugging it from her shoulders. Claudia took it from her. “Lovely,” the elegant woman murmured, then, “And the panties, Sarah. I’ll be taking your underwear now; you won’t need it again.”
    Her face hot once again, Sarah tugged the thong down, wincing a little as the fabric brushed against the welts Claudia had left with the strap. She bent and stepped out of the panties. Then she stood, looking down at the tiny garment in her hand, thinking about how, when she had bought these panties she had imagined a man—no specific man, just a hot, well-dressed one—lifting her skirt someday to reveal them, and understanding without needing to be told that though Sarah was a virgin, that was just because he hadn’t yet come along to discover that she wore lacy black panties. It was the kind of thought she imagined that the author of Forever Girl would have, really, but she had excused it to herself at the time, as she played with herself to the accompaniment of the fantasy, because Sarah herself had made the decision to buy the lingerie.
    Claudia took the panties from her now. Sarah looked into the woman’s dark eyes, and saw in them that Claudia found Sarah pleasing. Distressed that the knowledge sent pleasure running through her nervous system, centered as always in the bud between her thighs that Sarah was increasingly coming to regard as treacherously independent of her rational mind, she turned to the exam table and, with the help of a footstool, clambered onto it.
    She turned, but she kept her eyes lowered, unable to meet Claudia’s gaze. “Into the stirrups now, Sarah,” she said, and as the continual heat renewed itself in her cheeks, Claudia opened her, guiding first her right, then her left ankle into the cuffs, which she fastened securely. She looked down between Sarah’s legs. “Very cute,” she said. “Almost a shame to take away those golden curls.”

Chapter Nine
     
     
    “Oh,” Sarah said in voice that sounded very forlorn to her own ears.
    “Surely, Sarah,” Claudia said as she wrapped the other cuffs around Sarah’s wrists securely but not uncomfortably, “you’ve wondered what you would look like if someone should decree that you be bare down there.”
    “No?” Sarah whispered. The way Claudia put it seemed so provocative that she didn’t know how to answer. She supposed she had imagined it, but she certainly hadn’t imagined that someone might decree such a thing.
    “That sounds like more of a question than an answer, Sarah. Of course you’ve wondered about it. Every girl understands deep down that she