Among Friends

The usual caveats: if you are under eighteen, please come back when you can legally read this sort of thing. If you don't find ropes and gags enhancements to lovemaking, you are unlikely to enjoy this; if you do, then you well may.

Please do not post this tale to any other site without permission, and please do not post it as your own work. These stories take labor to produce, unlikely as it may seem, and I enjoy receiving the credit. Alan Katz, this means you!

AMONG FRIENDS

"I beg your pardon?" The baronet looked a bit hazily at his host and friend. "I'm very sorry, I didn't quite catch?"

"No matter," the other man said with a genial smile. "I was just remarking on your handkerchief."

"My hand ..kerchief?" The baronet spoke with a gradually increasing slur. His eyes felt unaccountably heavy, and he looked over at his friend with a vaguely puzzled air. He glanced down at the large silk handkerchief that lolled from the chest pocket of his dress coat in an ample puff. "My hand ...?" His voice faded off, and he slumped down in his easy chair. His host, leaping up quickly, caught the glass of whiskey from the other man's hand before it could fall and placed it on a side table.

"Yes, Sir Andrew," he said softly, with a slow smile, "your handkerchief. I was just remarking how handsome it was, and how handsome you are, and what a fop you are."

Sir Andrew lifted his head with difficulty and stared up at his host. His handsome, bearded features wore an expression that mingled puzzlement, an attempt at a smile, and a vague alarm. Then his eyelids closed and he slipped completely into unconsciousness. It was some while before he woke. SIR ANDREW SLOWLY began to wonder why he felt so strange. His head ached a bit, but it wasn't that. He felt, he did not know what, sluggish, but more than sluggish. As if he were so heavy that he could not move. He could not move, he realized suddenly, or not very much. He lifted his head slightly, his eyes still closed. He felt that he was sitting upright, and yet he felt constricted, pressed close by ... by what? He tried to take a deep breath, but that too was hard, he seemed to feel almost half-smothered. Well, not smothered exactly, he could breathe well enough it seemed but ... but what? He tried to formulate a clear thought, to put into words the vague sensations he felt.

Where was he, anyway? The last thing he could remember was having a drink with Reginald Gregory in his friend's study. And now? Now he was ... what? He opened his eyes and made as if to put his hand to his head. But his hand would not move, his arm would not move, he made the effort, he felt his muscles respond, and yet ... was he tied? He jerked further awake, the foolish thought--it was foolish, wasn't it? why would he be tied?--startling him. But ... he pulled once more at his arm, at both arms and ... he was tied! He pulled harder, and with no result. He swallowed, feeling how hard it was to do so, and realized his mouth was full of something he could not immediately identify or understand. And then suddenly, he did understand, despite the absurdity of it, and despite his inability to account for why or how it could be. He was tied, and he was gagged, too! He was bound up very well, and securely and thoroughly gagged. He strained at his bonds, exploring them, coming to understand them and his position even as he did so.

He was bound with rope into a heavy oaken chair, a chair with arms. Tight coils of rope lashed his broad chest to the back of the chair, and equally tight coils bound his waist to it as well. Tight rope fastened his arms to the arms of the chair, at the elbows and at the wrists. More rope secured his legs to the legs of the chair on either side. All the ropes were skillfully arranged and pulled and knotted off very tightly. He could barely move in their tight embrace, and he was held firmly into the heavy piece of furniture, so heavy that when he tried to jerk it from side to side in his futile struggles, he shifted it not an inch.

He was gagged with brutal effectiveness. A big wad of some soft cloth--a handkerchief? or perhaps two, given the size of the wad?--filled his mouth and spread his jaws. What felt to be another handkerchief, folded narrow and drawn back with pitiless severity through his jaws, bound the gag into his mouth. A very large silk handkerchief was folded wide and bound over his mouth. The thick bandage of slick-feeling silk was fitted carefully between his nose and his chin, the wide wings brought back over his bearded cheeks and drawn into a knot that was cruelly tight and pressed painfully into the back of his neck. He strove to call out, but all the noise he could make through the gag was a much-muffled grunt.

He was still in the study. The same fire still burned--rather lower now--on the hearth. But he was alone. Or he had been until this moment. The door opened, and his friend entered. He paused for a moment at the threshold, and then shut the door behind him. Smiling at his helpless guest, he crossed the room and stood looking down at the other man.

"Mmmmm. Gmmmmph. Hugulmmmmph!"

Sir Andrew struggled with the brutal gag. It took only a moment for him to realize, however, that Gregory was not there to rescue him. Gregory smiled still at his friend, who was now also his captive. With one finger, he reached out and just touched the big handkerchief of paisley silk Sir Andrew wore puffed so ostentatiously from the chest pocket of his dinner jacket.

"As I was saying, Sir Andrew, when you dropped so conveniently to sleep a while ago--that little addition to the whiskey usually does the trick, I find--as I was saying, you really do wear such fascinatingly foppish handkerchieves in your pocket, and this evening your handkerchief was more of a fop's puff than ever. How could I resist, my friend?"

"Mmmmmph! Mmmmmmmm!!" Sir Andrew strained at his ropes and fought his gag. He felt his sex stiffening in his trousers as he realized how helpless he was. It was a secret he very rarely confessed, but being bound and gagged by another man had always excited him immensely. Being bound and gagged this way by Gregory, a man he regarded as a friend, excited him and frightened him in complicated ways he found difficult to explain even to himself. With troubled and yet avid eyes, he watched Gregory reach up, almost absent-mindedly, to toy with the white silk handkerchief puffed in the chest pocket of his own dinner jacket.

At that moment, there was a soft knock at the door.

Sir Andrew grunted into his gag. Gregory, however, merely smiled at the helplessly bound and muzzled man and crossed the room.

"Who is it?"

"It's me, sir, Riley." Riley, Sir Andrew remembered, was the name of his friend's chauffeur.

With a glance at Sir Andrew, Gregory opened the door, and Riley stepped inside, his cap in his hand. He was a tall fellow, strongly and broadly built, about forty, with a bald head, what hair he still had gone quite gray, and a thick mustache. He was dressed in his uniform, of course, tall black boots, black trousers and high collared coat, and black leather gloves. A large handkerchief of white silk was arranged in an ostentatious puff in the chest pocket of his coat.

"Evening", sir," the man said to his employer.

Gregory nodded. "Good evening, Riley. Let's get to work, shall we? I want my friend, Sir Andrew, here out with you in good time."

"Yes, sir."

The two men came to where Sir Andrew sat helpless. Riley glanced at his employer. "You've the supplies, I reckon, sir?"

"Oh, yes. In the chest over there."

Riley looked where the other man gestured and quickly crossed the room. Setting his cap on a chair nearby, he opened the top of the chest and drew out a couple of hanks of thin rope. With a grin, he returned.

"Now, Sir Andrew," Gregory was saying, "we're going to make you ready for a little trip you'll be taking." With a nod to the chauffeur, he and Riley set to work.

Gregory freed the ropes that bound his friend to the back of the chair he sat in. Sir Andrew now realized that his arms were bound close to his sides by a separate rope that had not needed to be untied to release him. In the meantime, Riley took a length of rope from one of the hanks he had retrieved and stood ready. Gregory freed Sir Andrew's left elbow and then his left wrist, and then held the man's hand away from the arm of the chair. Sir Andrew struggled to get his hand loose, but he found that his sexual excitement at being bound and gagged, embarrassing as it was and unwelcome at this time, made his efforts less than hardy, and the other man was surprisingly strong. Riley looped his rope around the man's wrist thus displayed and knotted it off. In the meantime, Gregory had freed their captive's right elbow, and then the two men forced the other man to lean forward in the chair, crushing his chest down to his thighs. Riley twisted Sir Andrew's left arm behind his back.

"Free his other hand now, sir, if you will," Riley said.

Gregory did so, and together they forced Sir Andrew's right arm behind him, and Riley lashed his wrists together tightly. The man was now bound once more, his upper arms lashed closely to his sides, his hands bound securely behind his back.

All through this operation, Sir Andrew had grunted protests into his gag, but all the noises he could make through the wad of handkerchieves stuffing his mouth were feeble and muffled groans.

Gregory and his man now first freed their prisoner's left leg from the ropes that held it tight to the leg of the chair, and then proceeded to bring his left leg close alongside his right and to bind the two together. They then freed his right leg from the rope that lashed it to the chair and they had their prisoner still tightly and helplessly bound but free from his seat. The two hauled him to his feet. Sir Andrew swayed unsteadily on his close-bound heels, held in the two men's grip. They dragged him over to the big leather-covered sofa and lowered him onto it. With a quick motion, Riley pulled the bound man's feet up and behind him and tied them to his bound hands, putting the fellow into a tight hog-tie.

"Mmmmmph! Mugulmmmmph!" Sir Andrew grunted helplessly into his gag.

Gregory had in the meantime taken his friend and prisoner's former seat. After giving a final check to Sir Andrew's bonds, Riley returned to his employer and stood above him.

With a glint in his eye, Gregory looked up at the big man.

"Well, Riley, do your worst."

Riley grinned down at the other man. "That I will, sir."

As the astounded Sir Andrew watched, lying bound, gagged, and helpless on the sofa a few feet off, Riley proceeded to bind his employer into the heavy chair just as Sir Andrew had been bound. He used many coils of rope to lash Gregory's chest and waist to the chair's hard back, pulling the rope taut and knotting it off tightly. He bound each of the man's arms to the chair's arms, lashing his elbows and his wrists to the hard wood and knotting the bindings off with uncompromising severity. Kneeling down in front of his employer, he finished off by binding the man's legs to the chair legs just as Sir Andrew's had been bound. In every instance, he showed no mercy but pulled the ropes tight and knotted them hard. He stood up then, and looked down at the other man.

Gregory tested his ropes, pulling at the bindings, breathing heavily. He nodded.

"Good." He smiled at his servant. "I can hardly move and I'll not be able to wriggle free. Wallis will find me in the morning just as I've planned. Now, gag me. And do a good job of it."

Riley grinned. "Yes, sir. My favorite part, sir."

The big man reached into his back pocket and took out an enormous wad of cloth, red spotted white. Sir Andrew, watching in astonishment, realized it must be made up of two, if not three of the fellow's big bandanna handkerchieves. As the gagged and hog-tied man watched, a thoroughly mystified, utterly helpless, and also thoroughly aroused witness, the chauffeur proceeded to stuff the huge gag into his employer's mouth, shoving it in deep and forcing the whole wad between his jaws.

"Uugummmmph!!" Gregory grunted as the great ball of cloth was thrust into his mouth. Riley smiled at him, reaching inside his coat to retrieve a big handkerchief of black silk, which he opened and then folded diagonally into a thick and wide bandage. Bending over his employer from behind, he bound the silk handkerchief over the man's solidly stuffed mouth, fitting the band of silk carefully under the man's nose, over his thick mustache, and over his lips down to his strong chin. He wrapped the long ends over the man's cheeks and pulled them into a knot at the base of the fellow's skull, drawing the knot mercilessly tight.

"There, sir," he said, and patted the man's silk swathed cheek. "That's a good job of it, isn't, sir?"

"Mmmmmmm. Hmmmmmph. Gmmmmmm." Gregory struggled with the brutal gag, striving to shout. All that made it past the thick wad and the tight binding were a few faint grunts. He nodded then at Riley.

"All right, sir," the man said, "we'll be on our way." With a grin for his employer, he crossed to where Sir Andrew lay helpless. He untied the tether holding the man's feet to his hands and then swung the bound man into a sitting position. Before Sir Andrew quite knew what he was about, the other man had thrust his shoulder into his belly and hefted him up onto his shoulder in a fireman's carry.

"Mmmmmmmpht! Gugummmmmpht!" Sir Andrew grunted a protest, but his gag silenced him effectively.

Riley took up his cap from the chair where he had left it and turned to his employer.

"Till tomorrow then, sir," he said.

Gregory nodded silently.

The chauffeur, seeming to find no trouble in handling his bound and gagged burden, crossed to the door, listened a moment, and then slipped outside, shutting the door behind him.

Gregory sat in his chair. It was late now, and Wallis, his manservant, he had sent to bed more than an hour earlier. He would not be found, he knew, until the morning, when the servant would come looking for him, puzzled at not finding him in his chamber. Gregory smiled to himself, anticipating the look on the old fellow's face when he found him like this, trussed up and gagged. For the pleasure of it, he strained at his bonds and then tried to call out through his gag.

"Mmmmmmmm. Mmmmmmph."

Riley knew his work. Gregory settled back into the chair. His only immediate regret was that he could not get at his stiff and aching cock. But a night spent with his sex at full mast, bound and gagged into complete helplessness, such a night had its own pleasures. He could wait.

TO SIR ANDREW, THE DRIVE had seemed long and the automobile cold. He shifted on the firm leather seat and tried once more, unsuccessfully, to ease the tightness of his bonds. It had been perhaps a quarter of an hour since Riley, his friend's--and now captor's--chauffeur had carried him out of the house.

Sir Andrew remembered that short journey over the other man's shoulder with astonishment. The tall, strongly built fellow had kept him hoisted in position with seemingly no effort. Clamping one long arm over his prisoner's legs where they hung down against his broad chest, tightly bound at knees and ankles, Riley had walked quietly down the long front hall. Sir Andrew had strained at the ropes that held him helpless. Lifting up his head with difficulty, he had struggled with his gag, trying to call out for help. It had all been useless, of course. He was too tightly tied to be able to do more than squirm ineffectually, and the wad of handkerchieves stuffing his mouth reduced his desperate attempts to yell into muffled grunts and mumbles. Helpless and silenced, he was borne out of the house, across the gravel of the front drive, which crunched under his bearer's heavy boots, and brought to his own automobile.

Riley had dumped him facedown, not without some care for his comfort, onto the broad back seat and then produced a short length of rope, which he used to put his captive into a not too tightly strained hog-tie. He had forced his hand, then, into Sir Andrew's front trouser pocket, seeking the keys to the auto. He found them, but he also found that his captive's sex was stiff and hot inside his briefs. He was not particularly surprised. He was well aware that being bound and gagged stimulated some men, his employer and himself among them. He was more than a little pleased to think that this kidnapping was not as unwelcome to his employer's friend as it might have seemed. A man might struggle in his bonds and grunt into his gag, but that, Riley knew from experience, was all part of the game. He had struggled himself against ropes put on him by his employer and striven to yell through a huge handkerchief gag stuffed into his mouth by the same man on many occasions. This baronet fellow might be disconcerted and even frightened at suddenly finding himself bound and gagged and carried off in this fashion. But if he, Riley, knew anything, the man would soon find that being the prisoner for a little while of so handsome and what he would call so talented, in the bedroom sense, a man as his employer was not so bad a thing. He had resisted giving the helpless man's prick a quick squeeze, though he was sorely tempted, and then he had gotten in and driven off, Sir Andrew lying trussed up and gagged behind him.

"Well, sir," the helpless man now heard from the front seat, "I hope you're not too discomforted back there?" The chauffeur gave a quick glance over his shoulder as he spoke, grinning. "I'll be able to ease you a little where we're going, sir. Oh, that big gag will stay in your mouth, sir, certainly, and I'll have to keep you trussed, but I can let you out of the hog-tie and make you a bit more comfortable."

Sir Andrew twisted his neck to look at the other man. All he could see now was the back of his head, his cap pulled firmly down. He could make out trees going past the car windows above him, but the night was dark, and he had now no idea where they might be. They had twisted and turned many times on the road during their journey, and Sir Andrew had been forced to concentrate on not being too knocked about as they did so. He had also been forced to notice that the way he was made to lie on his stomach pressed his privates uncomfortably against the leather upholstery of the seat. His cock, rigid before in half-frightened, half-willing arousal at his being bound, gagged, and manhandled in this fashion, was now stiff and sore with excitement. He was ashamed of his response, but unable to control it.

A man bound and gagged, ever since he was a boy, had always aroused him, and to be that man, helpless, trussed, gagged, was his ideal. He had been bound and gagged for sex a few times in the past, but always with his consent. To have been taken this way, against his will, troubled him and yet it still excited him. He had hoped since first meeting Gregory that the man would prove to be a friend in the most intimate way, and if he had, he had intended, despite his shamed shyness over the matter, to broach the subject of his being roped and gagged by the other man. He had now learned, in an almost brutal way, that roping and gagging him were things that his friend was only too willing to do. His friend? He wondered at his own use of he word, and yet he still thought of the man in that fashion, despite the events of the past hour or so. He was being foolish, perhaps, he thought, but he somehow trusted that the man meant him no real harm. For the moment, unable to do anything else, he gave himself up to enjoying the sensations of being bound and gagged and helpless.

The big car swung once more to the right and then came to a slow stop. Riley turned off the motor, and the night seemed suddenly very quiet. Riley turned in his seat to look down at his captive, who twisted his head around to stare up at him. He looked, the chauffeur thought, quite helpless and quite handsome, both. The man was in his late forties, of medium height, broadly built, with dark hair still thick, and intelligent brown eyes. He wore a well-barbered dark beard, now mostly hidden by the big, white silk handkerchief tied so tightly in a broad swath around his head. Above that tautly knotted seal, the man's gaze was strained and frightened. He was dressed, of course, in black tie, for dinner with his erstwhile host, his clothes well-cut and well tailored, if now a little disarrayed by the man's tightly lashed bonds. Sir Andrew was no longer lying as Riley had placed him, his bound feet tethered up to his bound hands. He had twisted onto his right side, and this revealed the large puff of the silk handkerchief--a densely patterned paisley of black, maroon, and gray--that thrust up from the pocket on the man's broad chest. Riley studied that dandified puff of heavy silk for a moment, a musing smile on his lips. He knew, as he supposed his silenced and helpless fellow occupant of the automobile did not, that the big pocket silks the fellow wore, with his shooting tweeds as well as with his dress coat, in his city suits as well as with his morning coat, were in part a cause of his being where he found himself, trussed, gagged, kidnapped, and about to be held prisoner in a place unknown to him. Riley glanced down at the big white silk puff in his own chest pocket, an accessory to his chauffeur's uniform not unheard of, but on which his employer had always been most decidedly insistent. He smiled again, this time at his captive, and winked at him.

"Well, sir," Riley said, "let's get you inside." He swung back to face front and got out of the car, shutting and locking the door. Then he disappeared for a few moments, and Sir Andrew lay wondering what was to come next. In a moment, Riley returned, one of his big bandanna handkerchieves in his hand. Deftly he folded the handkerchief into a broad bandage on the diagonal, and with this he blindfolded his prisoner, despite the man's feeble struggles and muffled protest.

"Nmmmmm. Hmmmmph."

Riley smiled. "Not much use struggling or protesting, sir. When a man's as tied up as you and gagged as well as you are, he'd best just let things go as the man who's got him tied and gagged intends."

Sir Andrew saw the point of this, but some sense of manly honor seemed to impel him to strain against his bonds and to grunt and mumble into his gag. To fight the gag, especially, he felt was necessary. There was something that made him strive again and again to fight the gag. He knew he was gagged. He could feel very well how the wad of soft cloth stuffed and packed his mouth from far back between his teeth to his lips. He knew all too intimately the bite of the tight bandage that cinched the wad of the gag in place, the knot boring into the back of his skull. He knew also the feel of the enveloping silk handkerchief that sealed up his mouth in a wide swath, half-smothering him and smelling faintly of his friend's cologne. He was gagged, and very thoroughly gagged. He had tried over and over to make some articulate sound, or any sound, to summon aid to him in his plight. All the noises he could make, however, were faint, completely meaningless groans and grunts, stripped of any sense and choked into feeble whimpers by the big ball of soft cloth filling his mouth. He was gagged, and he knew very well that to be gagged was to be thus rendered inarticulate and near silenced. Yet he could not help himself. Still he strove to speak through the cruel and effectual gag. He tried not to let himself be aware that struggling against the gag, and being unable to do more than grunt into the thick plug of cloth in his mouth, stiffened his cock yet more.

"Mmmmmph! Gugulummmmmph!"

"Ah well, sir," he heard Riley respond. "If you will try to yell, sir, go ahead. No one will hear you through that big gag, and I cannot say I don't enjoy those muffled sounds you make."

Sir Andrew wondered hopefully at the man's meaning as he felt himself dragged from the seat and once more hoisted to the fellow's broad shoulder.

WALLIS PAUSED IN HIS READING when he heard what sounded like the front door close quietly downstairs. He rose quickly from his chair and crossed to the window. His room was on the second floor of the house, on the other side of the bath adjoining his master's bedroom. Both rooms were on the front of the house, which was the small--small, that is, in relation to the big house of the former owners of the estate--dower cottage on the property, and both rooms faced the front drive. Cautiously, Wallis looked down. The moon was only a day away from being full, and shone brightly on the gravel drive and the lawn. He saw a figure he immediately recognized as Riley, the chauffeur, walking to where Sir Andrew Hampton's automobile was parked. It was a small but expensive auto, which Sir Andrew drove himself, not liking to keep a chauffeur.

Wallis puzzled at the other man's burden for an instant, and then realized it was the figure of a man slung over the big fellow's right shoulder. A man, Wallis recognized in the next instant, who was bound and gagged. In the bright light of the moon, he could easily see the ropes tying the man's limbs and the broad swath of the white silk handkerchief bound around the man's head. For a second, but a second only, he supposed the man might be their master, but then he saw that the fellow had dark hair and he realized it must be Sir Andrew. He watched as Riley stowed his helpless captive in the back seat of his own car and then got in himself and drove off down the drive.

After a long moment, Wallis left the window and returned to his seat. He took up his book once more and made as if to begin reading, but then he paused. He listened closely, wondering if he would now hear his master's steps in the hall. After a few minutes, with no further noise in the house, he did return to his book. It was his favorite sort of reading matter, a detective novel. He read for some while.

It was perhaps twenty minutes later when he heard the sound of an automobile in the drive. Puzzled, he rose, and once more looked cautiously from his window. It was, he saw, Sir Andrew's automobile. It came to rest across the way, in front of the garage, the house's former stables. Nothing happened for a few moments, and then he saw Riley get out and cross over to open the door which led to his own quarters above the garage. Then the man returned and opened the back door of the auto. He leaned in for a moment and then, as Wallis watched intently, he dragged out the still bound and gagged and now, Wallis saw, blindfolded as well, Sir Andrew. He hoisted the feebly struggling man to his shoulder and marched off with him. Wallis watched as they disappeared inside the open door to Riley's rooms, and the door shut behind them. In a moment, a light came on above, in what he knew were Riley's quarters. And that was all.

After keeping watch a few moments more, Wallis slowly returned to his chair and his book. He read for some time more, a little tense and still half alert to any sounds in or around the house, until he suddenly saw which way the plot of the tale he was reading was headed and let the book drop, taking a deep breath. For a long moment, he sat quietly, and then he put his book aside on the table and rose to cross the room to his dresser.

He stood looking at himself in the glass. He was quite a short man, but wiry, with a head of white hair beginning to thin at the temples and the crown and a dense, neatly barbered white beard. He owed his craggy but not unpleasing features and his bright blue eyes to his Scots ancestors. He was sixty-two. He was dressed for going to bed, in his pajamas, with his dressing robe over them. He glanced down for a moment at the large handkerchief of blue foularded silk he wore in a puff in the breast pocket of the navy silk robe.

Looking up at himself again, he opened the top drawer of his dresser and took out several very large white pocket handkerchieves. He used two of these to form a big wad, opening them, laying them one on the other, and rolling them in upon themselves. A third handkerchief he folded diagonally into a wide and thick bandage. With these he then proceeded to gag himself, watching in the mirror as he did so. He stuffed the big wad into his mouth and tied the third handkerchief tightly over his mouth to keep the gag in place. When he had done knotting the handkerchief behind his head, pulling it as tight as he could manage, he looked at himself once more in the glass. He reached up and gently rubbed the silk puff in his breast pocket between his thumb and forefinger. He had never worn such a thing before he had come to work for Gregory more than twenty years before, hired first to be the fellow's valet by the man's late father, and afterwards coming to be in charge of his house, when he had moved to the estate. Now he wore them every day, and night, at his master's orders. He was not unwilling to please his master in that fashion.

Wallis turned and went back to his chair. Taking up his book, he began to read where he had left off, and, as he anticipated, the handsome and intelligent hero detective made an error of judgement and found himself at the mercy of his enemy and his enemy's henchmen. He was bound and gagged--the author surprised and pleased Wallis by providing an unusually thorough description of that event--and then left to await a worse fate in an abandoned warehouse. Wallis read no further when he saw that the next chapter took up the tale from the point of view of the hero's sidekick, who would presumably find and rescue him. He put down the book and then reached inside the fly of his pajamas. His cock was rigid, had been so since he first had seen his master's guest carried off like that, bound, gagged, and helpless, and he stroked his stiff sex slowly.

He was careful not to allow himself the relief of climax. More than once he brought himself close, and once he almost misjudged his timing, but he managed--just--to prevent what he would have regarded as a sort of minor disaster. He allowed himself the luxury of teasing himself this way for some while before he finally stopped, his breath a little short, a few beads of sweat on his brow. He relaxed for a moment. Then he rose and removed his robe, placing it over the back of the easy chair he had been sitting in, careful to lay it left side up, with the big puff of silk plumping the patch breast pocket prominently exposed. He turned out the light beside the chair, leaving only the bedside lamp lit, and got into his bed, taking his book with him. He began to read the next chapter, enjoying the adventures of the hero's sidekick as he searched for the man he, as the reader, knew lay helplessly bound and gagged and in desperate danger, anticipating the man's rescue. Despite the gag still stuffed and tied into his mouth, and despite the not unpleasant tingling in his privates, he soon drifted off to sleep.

GREGORY LISTENED TO THE CLOCK in the hall outside his study as it struck the hour. The three solemn bongs that finished the chiming died away and the house was quiet once more. He shifted slightly in his seat. The ropes that bound him and the gag that silenced him had not loosened, despite all his struggles over the past couple of hours. Nor had his cock lost its rigid stiffness in response to those bonds and that gag. Gregory was perversely enjoying being the victim this night, a role he had played very infrequently but which he always savored when he did so.

He found his whole situation immensely satisfying. The events of the evening earlier had gone precisely as he had planned. Sir Andrew, the handsome, foppishly silk-puffed Sir Andrew, was a new neighbor and a new friend, having only moved into the area six months before. Gregory had first met him when their paths crossed while both were walking the wooded hills on the border of the immense estate. It had belonged formerly to Gregory's late father and was now owned by the National Trust. Sir Andrew had sparked Gregory's interest immediately, being not only handsome and shyly friendly but also, as Gregory had noted at that first meeting, a dandy and a man who wore large silk handkerchieves in carelessly ostentatious puffs in the chest pocket of his walking suits. Later meetings, and the intercourse of their subsequently developing friendship, had allowed Gregory to observe that the man wore those puffed silks with every outfit he donned, from tweed shooting suits to black tie at dinner.

Gregory had become, to his own slight discomfiture, mildly, and then more than mildly, obsessed with his new neighbor. Fortunately for him, he possessed a pleasing exterior and a charm of manner that allowed him to ingratiate himself with many people, Sir Andrew included. Gregory had enough heart to be touched when he began to perceive that the other man saw him in the light of a close friend. He probed, ever so delicately, into the other man's feelings, and was flattered and chagrined to discover that he was evidently one of the few friends the other man possessed. Handsome, and well off, if not so wealthy as his title (which he himself thought little of) might lead others to expect, Sir Andrew it seemed suffered from a surprisingly low opinion of himself. His only apparent self-approbation was a touch of physical vanity; he knew he was a handsome man, and his foppish attire was an acknowledgement of that. He was grateful for his new neighbor's frequent and increasingly warm attentions. Gregory comforted the pricking of his conscience with the wholly truthful response that he was genuinely very fond of the other fellow, as well as desperate to have him at his disposal, bound, gagged, and helpless.

So the evening had been an entire success, from Gregory's point of view. He had enjoyed a well-prepared dinner with his friend, honestly enjoying his company, as well as the constant observation of the immense silk puff in the man's chest pocket. The anticipation of what he had planned had added spice to the mix, of course. When he had given his friend the drugged whiskey, and watched the fellow slowly sink into unconsciousness, he had been almost too keyed up. Binding and then gagging the man had brought him to a high pitch of excitement. Being bound and gagged himself subsequently, and with Sir Andrew looking on in bound and gagged bewilderment, had had a paradoxically exciting and soothing effect upon him. He had been actually glad to have Riley carry their victim off for safe-keeping while he remained behind, trussed and muzzled, forced to remain inactive, and by the most sensual means he knew: tightly bound ropes, and an immense and securely bound in handkerchief gag.

He had spent the past hours concentrating on his own sensations. He was not unaware of his own good looks. He was a tall man, in his late forties, rather strongly built and in good condition from regular exercise on foot and astride. He had a thick head of formerly fair but now slightly grayed hair, deep-set blue eyes, and regular features. He wore a carefully tended mustache that gave him, in the eyes of some, the look of a former military man, an effect he was not displeased to cultivate, although he had never been in the army. He always dressed well, and like Sir Andrew, he always wore an immense silk handkerchief puffed in his chest pocket, although he was a little more studied and a touch more restrained in his arrangement of the silk than his recently found companion. In short, he knew that he presented a good appearance.

He was, in fact, the sort of man that, from an early age, he had loved to see in his present predicament, that is, as the victim of circumstances beyond his control. He found his height of excitement in the image of an older, well-dressed, and not uncomely man who was utterly helpless, strictly and severely bound up in many coils of tight rope and effectively and brutally gagged with immense wads and thick bandages made from men's handkerchieves. He had enjoyed himself very well during the past hours, glancing down at himself and especially at the big white silk handkerchief amply puffed in the chest pocket of his dinner clothes, excited by the way it dimpled and changed shape in response to his struggles. Those struggles had excited him as well. He had strained against the ropes that bound him, gratified at how useless his efforts proved, unable to loosen the bindings that held him into the heavy chair and barely able to move at all. He had grunted over and over into his gag, even more gratified at how well he was silenced. The thick, soft wad packed his mouth solidly with cloth, and he was unable to loosen the painfully tight bandage of the black silk handkerchief that compressed his lips and cheeks over his gag in a viselike grip, securing the smothering gag in place.

He was bound and gagged and utterly unable to help himself. He savored the sensations without tiring of the immense excitement they instilled in him. Bound and gagged. How he loved those words. Bound and gagged. How he loved even more the reality. To have another man bound and gagged in his arms or to be, as now, himself bound and gagged. He grunted in pleasure into the muzzling gag.

"Mmmmmph! Gmmmmpht!"

WALLIS HAD BEEN DREAMING, in a way he found exciting and yet troubling, even slightly obscene. He was helping his master to dress in a tweed walking suit. He was trying to arrange a paisley silk handkerchief in his master's chest pocket, but the handkerchief refused somehow to stay put. It kept getting bigger and bigger, swelling into a thick lobe, despite all his efforts to stuff it into the pocket on his master's chest. He felt even smaller than usual in front of his tall employer, who inexplicably was now not his employer, but the handsome Riley. Wallis found his own face on a level with the pocket. The handkerchief suddenly seemed to become almost a living thing. It drew itself from the chauffeur's chest pocket and rolled into a huge globe of thick, silken cloth, the size of a football. Then it thrust itself into his mouth as an enormous gag, and Riley as suddenly produced an immense bandanna handkerchief and began tying it over his now hugely stuffed mouth.

He awoke with a grunt, muffled by the gag still stuffed and tied into his mouth. The book he had been reading slipped off his chest, where it had fallen as he went to sleep, and he just caught it before it dropped off the bed. He looked at the clock on the bedside table. It was almost five in the morning. He listened alertly. The house was quiet. He remembered what he had seen and done before falling asleep, and he wondered if his employer had come up to bed while he slept. He sat up, and put the book down on the table, still listening. Then he got up and put on his robe and his slippers and went out into the hall.

With quiet steps, he walked to the door of his master's room and put his ear to the panel. He could hear nothing. After a moment's hesitation, he gently turned the knob and cracked the door open. No sound, and no light. He pushed the door open a little wider and cautiously peered inside. The moon was on the other side of the house now, and the light was dim, but he could see clearly that his employer's bed was unoccupied and undisturbed. There was no light in the bathroom beyond. His master was not there.

Puzzled and vaguely concerned, Wallis stood in the hallway hesitating. Then he shut the door to his master's room and turned away. For a moment, he hung fire, and then he went to the head of the staircase and started down, listening all the while. Before he reached the lower floor, he saw that there was a faint light under the door of his master's study. He paused, uncertain what to do. He listened hard. He thought he heard a faint sound, a muffled noise, like ... like a gagged grunt, he thought suddenly. The sort of sound he made himself when he was gagged, or one of his master's occasional guests made when he and the master were engaged privately in his master's bedroom. He was not, of course, unaware of his employer's tastes. He knew very well that all his master's sexual partners sooner or later--usually sooner--found themselves bound and gagged. But who might it be, he wondered? He had seen Sir Andrew taken into the chauffeur's own quarters for some purpose of either his or the master's by the chauffeur. Riley and himself were his master's only servants. Unless Sir Andrew had been brought back? or was it the master himself? was something going on he should investigate? or was this something he had better not explore?

As the man stood hesitating a few steps up, he again just caught the faint sound he had heard a moment before. It was too faint really to identify. Was he only imagining that it sounded like the muffled, smothered cry of a gagged man, influenced by the sight of Sir Andrew? He paused and then he came down the stairs, noiselessly approaching the study door. He applied his ear to the top panel and listened.

"Mmmmmmph. Mmmmmmph."

There it was again. Very faint, yes, but now unmistakable. The sound of a gagged man.

Cautiously, Wallis tried the knob. It turned slowly, and then, in the silence of the nighttime house, unlatched with a sharp click. Feeling himself committed now, he opened the door a little way and peered around it.

"Ugummph!" He had forgotten the gag in his mouth, and his startled cry was muffled to a grunt by the wad of his own handkerchieves stuffed between his jaws.

Across from him, and facing him, sat his employer, in one of the old, heavy oak chairs he kept in this room and upstairs in his bedroom. And his master was tied to that chair and tightly gagged. Above the tautly bound bandage of black silk that covered his mouth, Gregory was looking at him with a startled gaze.

For a long moment, the two men stared at each other over their gags. Wallis did not know what to think. His master was bound and gagged. Knowing as he did that his master often bound and gagged his sexual companions, Wallis was in some ways prepared for the sight that met his eyes, except that it being his master who sat there, tied and gagged, surprised him. Gregory was equally startled, but for different reasons. He had expected his manservant to find him, and had looked forward to the event. He knew that Wallis was well aware of his tastes, and yet the two had never mentioned the matter. He had decided that he wished to change that, and had used his plan for Sir Andrew to accomplish that goal as well. He had planned on using his manservant's discovery of him trussed and gagged like this as the opening he desired. But he had not expected to be discovered quite so early in the morning. That was not important, of course, but why, he wondered, with immense surprise, was Wallis himself gagged?

The older man slowly came into the room, hesitating and then, from force of habit, closing the door behind him. Slowly, and diffidently, he crossed to stand beside his employer, who looked up at him curiously. Gregory observed that the older man was indeed quite effectively gagged, with what looked to be his own pocket handkerchieves. He noted with satisfaction that the fellow wore, as he had long ago been ordered always to do, a large silk handkerchief puffed in the chest pocket of his dressing gown.

After a long moment, in which the two men stared at each other above their gags, Wallis seemed to come to himself, and he reached up and freed the knot in the handkerchief binding up his mouth. He drew out the wad of handkerchieves that had stuffed his mouth and worked his jaws.

"Are ...are you all right, sir?" he asked hoarsely. It seemed a ridiculous question, but he did not know what else to say.

Gregory nodded.

"Shall I untie you?"

Gregory suddenly took it into his head to see what his servant would do if he said no. He shook his head.

"What shall I do then, sir?" the older man asked.

Gregory raised one eyebrow.

"Mmmmmph! Mmmmmmmph!"

Wallis stared at his employer, at a loss. He looked the man up and down, and he noticed, to his own embarrassment, that his master's sex was stiff and was tenting the crotch of his trousers. He paused, looking up into Gregory's eyes, and then, fascinated, he stared once more at his employer's obvious excitement. Knowing that the man was aroused by bondage, he had often fantasized about the man in this condition. He had never, of course, allowed his employer to know that. But now the temptation was very great. He found himself, under the influence of the night's events, unable to prevent himself. He leaned over his master and tugged open the buttons of the man's trousers. The man's cock, rigidly stiff, sprang out of the fly in an outrageously upright protrusion. The tip was slick with precum.

Wallis slowly knelt down in front of his employer, who watched, trussed and gagged, in extreme surprise mixed with extreme anticipation. When the older man hesitated, Gregory grunted into his gag.

"Mmmmmpht! Um hummmmmpht!"

Wallis looked up at the blue eyes staring into his above the cruel looking gag. Gregory nodded insistently, grunting again into the wad of handkerchieves stuffing his mouth.

"Mmmm hmmmmmpht! Mmmmmph!"

With a slow nod and a slightly wry smile, Wallis said, "Yes, sir. I see what I am to do, sir, and I am glad to do so, sir."

He bent forward and gently took his employer's stiff sex into his mouth. He had barely enveloped the rigid and yet soft shaft in his lips when the man before him gave a yell choked by his gag into a strangled groan and came, the long hours of being bound and gagged erupting into a furious climax. Wallis slid his lips down his employer's pulsing sex and felt the salty sweet cum shoot sharply onto his tongue.

Above him, Gregory almost broke the ropes that bound him as he came, shouting into his gag and feeling every sensation of his climax heightened by having that big gag bottle his cries into his throat. Keen images of himself, silk puffed, tightly bound, brutally gagged, mingled in his head with images of Sir Andrew similarly puffed, bound, and gagged, and with images, to his surprise but not displeasure, of the man before him, loyal and handsome, trussed, handkerchief gagged, and hugely silk puffed. His climax was long, hard, and momentarily, at least, exhausting.

WHEN SIR ANDEW AWOKE, there was a dim light in the room that told him it must be near dawn. He shifted uncomfortably, unable to move very much since he was still tightly bound and still securely gagged as well. He was surprised that he had nonetheless slept for what he supposed must have been several hours, here on Riley's bed, the big man beside him, indeed, holding him, cradling his prisoner's head and shoulders on his broadcloth covered chest. Beneath him now, Sir Andrew felt the slow rise and fall of the man's breathing, a rhythm that told him the fellow still slept. Strangely unwilling to wake his erstwhile jailer just yet, Sir Andrew kept still, ignoring his cramped limbs.

He was no longer really afraid. He had been, still, when Riley had first brought him here. He remembered that second journey over the man's strong shoulder, head down, helpless, trussed up, gagged, and blindfolded as well. The unnatural position, his bonds, the gag, the blindfold at that moment most of all, had disoriented him, and he had been near to panic, despite his arousal. Where had he been taken, what was to be done with him? He had struggled, but his struggles were ludicrously useless. He had striven to shout into his gag, but the wad of handkerchieves had silenced all but the faintest of grunts. He had had to suffer himself to be carted off like a bag of meal, humiliating and frightening as it was.

He had felt the big man mount a flight of stairs, and then he was carried into a room and immediately lowered onto what he thought was a bed. Riley had removed the tether hog-tying him before taking him from the auto, and he now laid his captive flat on his back.

"I'll be back in a moment, Sir Andrew," he heard the fellow say, and he caught, after a moment, the unmistakable sounds of the man taking a leak. He returned immediately, and Sir Andrew felt himself hoisted onto his broad shoulder once more.

"Mmmmmph! Mugulmmmmph!" Startled and, if truth be told, exasperated more than he was frightened, he had protested into his brutally effective gag. Riley had chuckled.

"Oh, I think you'll thank me in a minute, sir," he said. Indeed, when he realized the man's purpose, Sir Andrew was grateful. Riley took him into the bathroom, lowered him, and then, with a strength that amazed his captive, held him steady, took out the man's stiff prick, and managed to coax the bound and gagged man into relieving himself. Sir Andrew was desperate to do so, but his arousal made it difficult. He was surprised by the gentle way his jailer handled him and urged him on, and by the almost tender care he took in helping him to do what was needful. Once he had done his duty, the big man carried him back to the bed. He did not know it, but the fellow stood looking down at him where he lay, helpless in his bonds, gag, and blindfold, for a long moment.

"Well," the big man said in a kind voice, "let me make you a bit more comfortable, sir." He gave a chuckle once more. "'Course, I know you don't really mind those ropes and that gag, sir, given the testimony of your John Thomas there, but I'll make it a bit easier for you to lie on my bed, seeing how you're to do it this long night till Mr. Gregory comes for you."

Sir Andrew wondered what the man meant, but with a mouth full of gag he was in no position to ask. He heard the fellow cross the room and then return after a moment. He was rolled gently over onto his stomach, and he felt the ropes around his wrists loosened. He had no real opportunity to struggle free, of course. He was still bound tightly at the elbows, knees, and ankles, as well as blindfolded and gagged. And Riley had, to his slightly indignant astonishment, expressed in a gag-muffled grunt, gotten up onto the bed and straddled his thighs from behind, pressing him down onto the firm mattress. The man gave him no real chance to free even his hands, in fact. He loosened the ropes, and then he brought his prisoner's right hand down and clamped it to the mattress with his own heavy right knee. Then he proceeded to use the rope still knotted to Sir Andrew's left wrist to bind his hand to his left thigh, pulling the bonds uncompromisingly tight. He then used another length of rope to bind the man's right wrist to his right thigh, effectively trussing him up securely once more, but allowing him, when he got off the bed himself, to roll his prisoner onto his back without forcing him to keep his arms cramped behind him. Sir Andrew was grateful for the change, knowing that he was to be kept tied and gagged for at least the coming night.

"There you are, sir, a bit more comfortable, I reckon?"

Sir Andrew, to his surprise, found himself nodding and grunting into his gag in agreement. Silly bugger, he thought to himself, thanking the man who's making sure you stay bound and gagged. Force of habit, politeness for service, he excused himself, but he knew it was not just that. He refused, however, to openly acknowledge even to himself that he was glad the change would make it possible for him to stay as he was, bound, gagged, and helpless, a state of affairs he was, despite all other concerns, secretly enjoying.

He felt the man sit on the side of the bed. There was a pause, and then he felt his chest pocket handkerchief being fussed with.

"Bit too much out of your pocket, sir, even for you," Riley murmured. "Got mussed up, with you being carried and turned about, I dare say. There."

Beneath his blindfold and gag, Sir Andrew felt himself flush with embarrassment. He knew he wore his handkerchieves rather ostentatiously displayed. It was a part of the look he liked for himself, dandified yet a bit careless, as if he were concerned but not too much so. In fact, knowing that he was a good-looking man, and sometimes feeling that his good-looks and his position were all he had to offer in friendship to such a man as Gregory, he was very careful about his dress, and yet hated to have the fact alluded to. He was surprised at himself, nonetheless. He had been drugged, bound, gagged, manhandled, kidnapped, blindfolded and was still a helplessly trussed and muzzled prisoner in a place he did not know, jailed by his friend's chauffeur, and he was blushing because the man made reference to his dandy show handkerchief.

"Well, sir," Riley said, "I think we could remove that blindfold, too." Sir Andrew felt the man's hands slip behind his head, and in a moment, its knot loosened, the big bandanna handkerchief fell away, and he could see once more.

Riley was sitting very close to him, looking down at him with a slight smile under his thick mustache. His massive torso blocked much of Sir Andrew's immediate view, but he could see that he was in a small room, neatly furnished as a bedroom, and quite tidy and clean. He lay on an iron bedstead, on a patchwork counterpane, his head on two stacked pillows covered in worn but clean linen. There was a small oak table beside the head of the bed, with a lamp, now lit, a stack of paperback novels, and a clean bandanna handkerchief, neatly folded. Across the room was an oak dresser, with a small square mirror above. A heavy oak chair was in one corner. On the walls were several framed prints. He recognized them immediately as prints by "Spy", those slightly caricatured portraits of prominent male figures of the last century. Had he been able to look at them more closely, he might have noticed that each and every one of the men portrayed wore a prominently, one might even say exaggeratedly, displayed handkerchief in his chest pocket. Such idiosyncrasies of dress, often ones looked upon by the public as a trademark of the man concerned, were the details by which the artist had produced his effects. But it was interesting that Riley had only such men on his walls whose pointedly drawn characteristics included the wearing of an ostentatious show handkerchief.

Sir Andrew looked up at the other man, who was watching him attentively. Suddenly the man bent over and tugged off his tall boots. He sat upright for a moment, and then, with a smile at Sir Andrew, he reached over and removed his shoes as well.

"A bit more comfortable," he murmured, by way of explanation. He seemed a bit absent-minded, however, and he tweaked one of his captive's big toes, prompting a startled grunt into his gag from Sir Andrew.

The tall man then hoisted himself up onto the bed, and, after a bit of a struggle, settled himself with his back against the headrail, cushioned by the two pillows, and with Sir Andrew beside him, his shoulders encircled by the big man's strong right arm.

"Comfy?" he said with a wicked grin.

Sir Andrew grunted into his muffling gag, but whether he meant yes or no he was not sure himself. Riley evidently took the gagged sound for agreement and settled back with a sigh. There was a pause. After a moment, Sir Andrew realized that the man was idly toying with the folded bandanna handkerchief he had used to blindfold him. Then, without ceremony, but with a kind of tender intentness, the man bound the broad bandage over Sir Andrew's already tightly swathed mouth. He fitted the thick cotton band carefully between his prisoner's nose and chin, neatly covering the white silk binding, and brought the ends behind the man's head to tie them into a quite mercilessly tight knot.

Then he cocked his head to look at the effect. He nodded, more to himself, Sir Andrew thought, than anything else.

"There," he said quietly, as he settled himself and his prisoner once more, "that's done. Mr. Gregory likes a silk covering on a gag, but me, well, I'm partial to bandanna handkerchieves. There won't be no harm you wearing that extra gag till he comes." He grinned sidelong at his companion. "It'll just keep you that much more quiet, like a gag should, sir."

And then, to Sir Andrew's surprise, the fellow had closed his eyes and gone, in a few moments, gently to sleep.

At first, Sir Andrew had been astonished, and then, he had been he did not know what. He could have struggled, he supposed, but he knew it would have been purposeless. There was no getting free from his bonds or his gag, he knew that. What was the use? And then, he finally began to admit to himself, he was not entirely certain he even wanted to be free. In fact, he knew he did not. For long moments he lay, tightly bound, securely gagged, held close to the bulk and warmth of his present jailer. His mind began to drift.

At one point, he realized that he was staring at the large white silk handkerchief that the chauffeur wore puffed so prominently from the chest pocket of his high-collared coat. It rose up in a thickly rounded and dimpled lobe a good three inches, and stuck out from the man's pocket so that it was the first thing you noticed about the man after you noted his height and his bald-headed good-looks. Sir Andrew had observed the way the fellow always wore such a handkerchief with his uniform, and that he wore big silk handkerchieves displayed in an equally bold fashion in the pockets of his tweed suits, on the several occasions he had seen him out of uniform. Wallis, he found himself remembering, his friend's manservant, also always wore a big white silk handkerchief in his chest pocket, quite unusual for a man in his station. And of course, Gregory himself, his friend, always wore a big silk puff in his chest pocket, whether he was in tweeds, or a city suit, or evening dress. Like himself, he thought. He was trying to puzzle out why this observation so obsessed him as he fell asleep.

WALLIS TWISTED HIS HEAD TO ONE SIDE so he could watch his master across the room. Gregory was arranging a silk handkerchief in the chest pocket of his tweed walking suit, taking his time and smiling to himself. Wallis might have been expected to do that honor, but he could not have done so at present.

Wallis had freed his master from the ropes that bound him into his chair and from the gag that stuffed and sealed his mouth about an hour before. After a brief conversation, and following his employer's orders, he had prepared a bath and then gone into his master's bedroom to lay out a suit and the accompanying shirt and haberdashery in readiness. When he had done, he turned to find his master just coming back into his bedroom from the bath, where he had shaved and cleaned himself. He was wearing his dressing gown, a luxurious robe of thick black silk, with an extremely large black silk handkerchief lolling from the big chest pocket in an ostentatious and puffy lobe. Wallis himself was still in his dressing gown, not having had time yet to change into his proper suit.

To Wallis' complete surprise, Gregory had undone the belt from his own black silk robe and then proceeded to use the wide band of silk to bind Wallis' hands behind his back. The manservant had submitted docilely, of course, startled but acquiescent. Without a word, Gregory had drawn the fellow over to his own dresser. He had taken out some of his own big white pocket handkerchieves and deftly fashioned no fewer than three of them into a very large wad. Without ceremony, he had stuffed the big bolus of soft cloth into Wallis' mouth as a brutal gag, thrusting it in deep and insisting, by his accepting no resistance, that the much smaller man take the whole wad completely between his jaws.

Wallis had put up no fight, but he had had to struggle to take that wad of his master's handkerchieves into his mouth. He was forcefully reminded of his earlier dream by how the great ball of cloth gave him the same sensation of helplessly gagged submission. Of course, his sex had instantly stiffened, tenting the front of his pajamas under his robe, and Gregory had glanced down at that with an amused smile.

His employer had then taken from his dresser one of the extremely large handkerchieves of heavy white silk twill he wore with his evening clothes, and this he had folded on the diagonal into a thick and wide band. Immediately he bound the handkerchief over his manservant's cruelly packed mouth, pressing the thick middle down over the man's bearded lips and wrapping the long wings into a brutally tight knot at the back of his head. He took great care to pull the binding into an extremely tight seal, taut and flat from nose to chin, so tight it seemed a wonder even that strong silk did not tear under the strain.

Gregory had then led his now severely gagged man over to his own bed, and, after indicating his intention with a gesture, helped the bound man as he awkwardly followed his orders to lie down. Gregory jerked the belt from the older man's own robe, and used it to bind the fellow's ankles together and then to bring his feet up and tie them to his bound hands in a tight hog-tie. He had stood looking down at his handiwork for a moment.

A bit makeshift, he had thought, but rather the more exciting for all that, in its way. The old fellow was quite helpless, trussed up like a turkey and brutally silenced with handkerchieves, and that, after all, was the point. He had formulated a new twist to his plan for the morning, now that he had found out that Wallis so enjoyed being tied and gagged. The fellow would stay put and stay quiet. And he looked, well, quite appealing that way. He was a handsome fellow, and trussed up into that hog-tie, his mouth bound up tightly in that very effective and very cruel handkerchief gag, he made an arousing sight. Gregory leaned over the man and gently rolled him onto his right side. He reached down and tweaked the big handkerchief of blue foulard the fellow wore puffed in his chest pocket.

"You have always followed orders well, haven't you, Wallis?" The remark might have sounded unkind, but Gregory spoke in a tone the showed the real fondness he felt for his servant.

Wallis had nodded. "Umm hmmmph." Had he not had that gag stuffed into his mouth, he would have said something modest, but now an acquiescent grunt was all his could manage through the brutally big wad of his master's handkerchieves. Gregory had grinned at the sound, and then he had suddenly plucked the huge black silk handkerchief from his own chest pocket, quickly folded it into a band, and bound it over his servant's already tightly tied up mouth. The heavy silk made a thick swath that completely enveloped the man's face from high under his strong nose to his firm, bearded chin. He looked, as he was, utterly silenced by the strenuous and lavish gag. Gregory had given his cheek an affectionately mocking pat, and then he had dropped his robe and begun to dress.

As he put on and arranged the clothes Wallis had chosen for him, he occasionally glanced over at the bound and gagged man, amused to find the fellow watching him. He dressed with his usual slow care, making sure that every detail was just as he liked it to be. Even when he was dressing for everyday, as he might have been thought to be doing now, he took great care. A good twenty minutes went by before he reached what for him was the final, and most important, point, the placing of the handkerchief in his chest pocket. Often he allowed Wallis to do that for him, remaining an exacting critic every time. His manservant had learned, over the years, just how to place the handkerchief--in an exaggerated puff just this side of overweening foppishness--to please his employer. But Gregory liked to keep his hand in for such matters, and he was deft at arranging silk pocket handkerchieves, his own and those of other men. One of the highlights of his relationship with Sir Andrew had been the day when he had found the opportunity to readjust the fellow's chest pocket puff.

This morning he took up the large square of deep blue, white, and black paisley silk Wallis had selected and arranged it in his usual ostentatiously protuberant fashion in the patch chest pocket of his gray tweed walking suit. He gave the handkerchief a tug or two to make sure it thrust up and out in the way he liked, turning from side to side to examine its placement in the mirror. Satisfied at last that the densely patterned cloth protruded in a great thick lobe of silken color, just as he liked it to do, he turned to where Wallis lay watching, snugly trussed and severely gagged. With a little flourish of his right hand, as if to say, what do you think, he faced the other man who nodded and gave a little muffled grunt of approval into his big handkerchief gag.

"Mmmmph hummmph." Wallis forced the faint grunt of approbation through the wad of cloth that packed his mouth so solidly.

Gregory smiled, his eyes closing sensually. "Ah, my old friend, how I love that sound, the sound of well-gagged man, a man with his mouth crammed as full as it can possibly be of handkerchieves, packed, stuffed, thrust solidly full of gag." He opened his eyes and looked down at his helpless manservant. "That's how it is, isn't it, old friend? You're gagged, aren't you?"

Wallis, feeling his own stiff sex leap with further arousal in response to his employer's coaxing words, nodded, and to both their satisfaction, grunted faintly once more into his smothering gag.

"Ymmmph."

Gregory smiled down at him. "I have an idea for you, my old friend. I do, indeed. You just wait here--you weren't planning on going anywhere just now, were you?--and you'll see."

Wallis, helpless and silenced, stared up at him dumbly.

With a wink, Gregory left the room and headed for the stairs.

SIR ANDREW HAD ALMOST BEGUN to doze off once more when something, he was not sure what, jerked him awake. He glanced across the room and gave a startled grunt into his gag.

"Mmmmpht!"

Gregory stood there, leaning against the door jam, a slight smile under his thick mustache, watching the two men on the bed. He was dressed for walking, in a well-cut suit of gray tweed, with a doeskin vest. His tie was neatly knotted, a navy blue wool, and his shirt was a crisp tattersal in white with navy and a paler blue lines. His handkerchief, silk paisley in blue, black, and white, stuffed the patch breast pocket of his coat to bursting and rose up and out in a great puff. Sir Andrew, remembering his earlier thoughts on the handkerchieves his friend and captor and the man's employees all wore, stared at the big lobe of silk in fascination.

Beneath him, as he studied the huge puff in Gregory's chest pocket, he felt the chauffeur take a sudden deep breath, stir, and then shift on the bed. The man's long arm tightened around the bound man's shoulders, and he realized that Riley had awakened. He twisted his head around to look up at the man's face. He was yawning, his big hand cupped over his mouth. He glanced down at Sir Andrew and then up at his employer.

"Good morning, sir," he said in a lazy voice.

Gagged, Sir Andrew of course could say nothing to Gregory. A slight twitch of fear had returned. He was still, after all, a helpless prisoner of these men, tightly bound and securely gagged. His own arousal in response to his situation was still very high--he could feel his sex stiff in his trousers--but he did not yet know what his friend had planned for him. Surely he did not really intend to kidnap him. The idea, now that he looked at it in the light of day, seemed ludicrous. It had not quite seemed so in the middle of the night, when he first came to from the drug, he admitted that. Finding himself helpless, trussed up to the chair and brutally gagged with handkerchieves, he had been genuinely frightened, even as his erotic excitement had gradually taken over. Now, however, he wondered. Surely it had been play-acting? It meant only, he hoped, that his friend found ropes and gags and mock kidnappings and robberies as arousing as he did himself? He watched as Gregory stood up straight and came to stand beside the bed.

"Good morning, Riley," he said. He smiled at his chauffeur. "Sir Andrew was no trouble, I see."

"No sir," Riley said with a chuckle, "he was not. 'Course, a man trussed up like a bird for roasting and gagged with a wad of handkerchieves the size of a football isn't likely to make himself difficult, sir."

Gregory nodded. Riley rose from the bed, carefully easing Sir Andrew's head and shoulders from his own broad chest to the mattress as he did so, and then he went into the little bathroom, where he could be heard taking a leak.

Gregory sat on the side of the bed opposite, looking down at the bound and gagged Sir Andrew with a wry smile on his handsome lips. He bent suddenly over the man and forced his fingers behind his head. Sir Andrew felt the knot in Riley's bandanna handkerchief loosen, and the outer binding fell away. Its doing so in no way eased his gag. The silk binding was tight, secure, and completely effective.

"You'd better hurry back, and help Sir Andrew, Riley," Gregory called in an amused tone. He was now, to the bound man's surprise and not entirely complete pleasure, loosening the ropes on the fellow's legs. Riley appeared in the doorway, fastening up the fly of his uniform trousers. He gave a tug to his jacket as he crossed to the bed. With a nonchalant ease, the big man hoisted the Sir Andrew, whose arms were still bound and whose mouth was still securely gagged, to his unsteady feet. More carrying him than guiding him, he took Sir Andrew into the bathroom, and, as he had done before, helped the man to relieve himself with tender care.

In a few moments--helping Sir Andrew took a little while, since his unflagging arousal made doing what was needful difficult for him--Riley returned with the bound man, who was now, as feeling in his cramped legs returned, more able to move under his own control. The big man gently pushed him down onto the bed once more.

"Mmmmmph! Mugulummmmph!" Sir Andrew grunted into his gag, but whether he was really protesting this treatment not even he was certain. As he subsided, he found himself once more staring in fascination at his friend's huge silk show handkerchief. Gregory had worn an almost abstracted expression for several minutes, despite his close attention to what transpired, and now he sat for a moment as if in thought.

"I've had an idea, Riley," he said slowly. He turned to look up at the big man. "And I've had a talk with Wallis, early this morning. And besides all that, there is something I want you to see." He smiled with a slight lift of his left eyebrow at Riley.

"Certainly, sir," Riley said. "But what about Sir Andrew, here?" Gregory smiled at the bound and gagged man, who lay back with his head and shoulders supported by the pillows. He lifted his gaze from his concentration on the silken lobe thrusting up from Gregory's chest and met the man's amused eyes.

"Oh, I want my friend to come along with us." He stood up. "You can walk now, don't you think, Hampton?" He looked inquiringly at Sir Andrew, who stared back at him, his eyes rather wide above the cruel-looking gag. After a moment, Sir Andrew nodded. Gregory reached down and carefully helped his friend to stand. He took a moment to neaten the man's clothing, straightening his collar and bow-tie, pulling down his coat, pulling up his trousers, and giving special care to adjusting the big silk paisley puff in his chest pocket. Sir Andrew tucked his chin down to watch especially the careful manner in which his friend tugged and plumped the big paisley silk in his chest pocket, and then he looked with attention once more at the protuberant puff on the other man's chest. Gregory noted this with a gratified smile.

Taking Sir Andrew's arm, Gregory led the man out of the room, through a small parlor, and down the flight of stairs to the outside. Riley came behind. Sir Andrew was surprised when he saw that he had spent the night in the chauffeur's quarters, only a few hundred yards away from the study where he had awakened to find himself trussed up and gagged. He now deduced that Riley had taken him on a wild goose chase of a drive to fool him into thinking he was being driven to some distant hideout. He glanced sidelong above his tight gag at the man who was guiding him across the gravel forecourt. He found his eye caught once more by the big silk puff at the man's chest. Gregory, knowing he had realized the deception, grinned at him but said nothing.

The morning was cold and misty, and the three men walked beneath a low fog that hung over the house and its forecourt, muffling any sound from the surrounding countryside. Sir Andrew found his excitement strangely increased by this walk between the garage and his friend's house. He had never before been taken this way, arms and hands bound, mouth gagged, out into open. He entertained an image of himself as a prisoner in a romance, being marched to some unknown fate, as he and the other two men walked toward the house, their steps crunching on the dry gravel. He found he could not help himself, and, although his real fear had disappeared, he tugged at Gregory's grip on his arm and tried to shout into his gag, as if he were trying to escape.

"Mmmmmph!" Muggummmmmpht!"

He felt his already stiff sex stir inside his trousers at the sound of his own gag-muffled cries. Real escape was the farthest thing from his desire, but to play at it increased his already stiff excitement. As Gregory turned to look at him, an amused smile on his handsome face, the big chauffeur seized Sir Andrew by his bound arms from behind. Gregory stepped close in front of him.

"Mmmmmph! Mmmmmmm!!" He grunted again into his gag.

Gregory grinned and then nodded at Riley, and the two frog-marched their captive, still struggling uselessly and grunting into his gag, into the house. At Gregory's indication, they forced the struggling Sir Andrew up the stairs and into Gregory's bedroom. At the sight of Wallis on the bed, Sir Andrew abruptly stopped his insincere struggles and stood staring. Wallis had turned onto his side as the three men entered the room.

Gregory looked from Sir Andrew to Wallis and then at Riley. He raised an eyebrow at the latter, who gave him a cheeky looking grin in return. Leaving Sir Andrew in the grip of the chauffeur's big hands, Gregory crossed to the bed. He leaned over and released Wallis from the hog-tie in which he had lain for the past half-hour and helped his old manservant to sit upright on the side of the bed. Then he beckoned, and Riley led Sir Andrew over and sat him on the bed beside the trussed and gagged Wallis.

Sir Andrew did not know quite what to think. The sight of Gregory's manservant lying helpless on the bed like that had taken him by shocked surprise, but he was even more shocked by his own reaction. Now he stared avidly at the older man, who looked back at him with a stoic calm. Sir Andrew saw that the fellow was really bound only lightly, his hands trussed behind his back by the silken tie from Gregory's robe. The gag, however, looked very massive and brutal. It was clear that Wallis' jaws were forced wide apart by what was a really large wad of handkerchieves. The double bindings of silk handkerchieves, the white and the black, were pulled with merciless severity over the old fellow's mouth, forming a cruelly snug seal from nose to chin and strained back into what had to be painfully tight knots at the base of his skull.

The sight of the old fellow so cruelly gagged excited Sir Andrew more than he wanted to admit to himself, so much so that he was unable to look away. He found himself examining the gag over and over, thinking obsessively about how effective such a gag must be, even more effective than his own. He realized that he was hoping that he would be gagged in like fashion himself. Finally he tore his gaze away from the older man's big gag and tried to concentrate on what might be about to happen.

Riley and his employer stood looking down at the two bound and gagged men. Gregory, at least, was well aware of his friend's fascination with his servant's massive gag, and he was already planning to make sure the fellow experienced such a gag first hand before another hour passed. He felt his own sex, stiff all this while from the excitement of having Sir Andrew trussed and gagged and in his gentle power this way, stir strongly at the idea of forcing a yet more cruel and more effective gag on the handsome man before him than the one he was now muffled by. But first he wished to accomplish his new idea.

"What do you think of Wallis, here, Riley?"

Riley looked at his employer with some puzzlement. "I'm not sure what you mean, sir." He paused, and then went on, in a shy way that was rather charming in so big a man, "I've always admired him, sir, if that's what you mean. He's a true gentleman's gentleman, sir, and .. " He paused, and then went on, "and a handsome old fellow, as well."

Gregory nodded. "Very true."

Riley grinned, still looking shy. He glanced down at where Wallis sat on the side of the bed, trussed and gagged. "He looks good all tied up and muzzled like that, too."

Gregory nodded again. "Doesn't he? and he is very well gagged, Riley, very well gagged indeed." He turned to look down at his manservant. "Are you not, Wallis?"

Wallis nodded. "Ummm hmmmmph."

Gregory frowned in mock severity. "Come, man, try a little harder."

Obediently, Wallis did. The three others watched as he took a deep breath and then tried to yell through his big gag.

"Hmmmph. Gmmmmm."

The cocks of all four men stiffened further at those pathetically muffled sounds. Even Gregory was surprised at how little noise his manservant could make through the huge gag he himself had stuffed and bound into the fellow's mouth.

"Well, Riley, I thought you might like to know that my loyal man here let me know two secrets he has kept hidden from me for a long time."

Riley looked from the gagged and bound man in front of him to his employer and then back.

Gregory said quietly. "Wallis here has always longed to be bound and gagged, aggressively and very, very thoroughly, especially gagged, by another man. And he would most especially like the man who binds him and then gags him, as cruelly and effectively as that man knows how, to be you."

Riley looked down at Wallis for a moment, a musing expression on his face. Then he turned to Gregory. "Might we two, Wallis and me, be excused for the rest of the morning, sir?"

Gregory nodded.

Riley immediately bent down and took up Wallis in his arms. He did not hoist him to his shoulder, however, as he had carried Sir Andrew, but instead took him up across his chest, as one might carry a child, and indeed, the little man looked almost like a child against the massive Riley's broad chest. Riley grinned down at the older man.

Speaking as if the other two men were not there, he addressed the man in his arms tenderly. "I promise you this, my old friend. The gags will be very cruel, mayhap even crueler than that one in your mouth this moment, for I love to gag men and to gag them very well indeed, but it's only the gags and the ropes that will be cruel, not me." He tightened his grip on the fellow, who lay staring up at him, his eyes burning in their fierce intentness above his gag. Then, with a final nod to their employer, Riley left the room, bearing his fellow servant off to his own quarters.

Both Gregory and Sir Andrew watched them go, Gregory with fondness, Sir Andrew with fascinated interest. Sir Andrew, indeed, stared at the door they had passed through for several minutes, allowing his mind, to his embarrassment, to follow them, and imagining the big chauffeur tenderly forcing the older man to take a yet bigger gag into his mouth. He was startled out of his reverie by Gregory's voice.

"Now," said quietly, "I'm not quite so big as Riley, but ..." and as he spoke, he pushed the momentarily unresisting Sir Andrew flat on his back and lifted his legs up onto the bed, "I intend to be just as tender and just as cruel with you, my friend."

Sir Andrew stared up at the other man, a mixture of responses in his mind. He found himself lying acquiescently as Gregory, taking a couple of lengths of rope from inside his coat, rebound his legs securely at the knees and at the ankles. Then, as the trussed and muzzled Sir Andrew watched from the bed, Gregory crossed to his dresser, took a big stack of his own white handkerchieves and a couple of large deep red silks from the top drawer, and returned. He sat down on the side of the bed and leaned over his captive friend, supporting his weight on left arm on the far side of Sir Andrew. His posture brought his face very close to his prisoner's face, and the two men looked into each other's eyes for a long moment.

Gregory was immensely aroused. The excitement of being himself bound and gagged for most of the night had been assuaged in part by his massive climax with Wallis, but the over-arching arousal he had felt all night and felt even more now was in response to having his handsome and silk handkerchieved friend, Sir Andrew, trussed and gagged and at his mercy in this fashion. He had imagined having the man helpless, secured and silenced, from almost the moment he had met him, and to have him now as he had so longed to have him raised his desire to the pitch of intensity. He stared down at the helpless man beneath him, relishing his good looks, his dandified dress, his bound helplessness, and above all his gagged silence. With an almost hesitant hand, he began to caress the man. He stroked the fellow's dark hair gently, and then, pausing, he cupped the side of his face, swathed in the tight bandage of white silk, and looked into his prisoner's eyes.

For his part, Sir Andrew did not know quite what he felt. His fear was long forgotten, and if he had felt any real anger at his treatment, it too was long gone. For the moment, even his fascination with Riley's and Wallis' tender agreement was absent from his thoughts. He found himself looking up with a strange mixture of emotions at Gregory. He was still, not in fear of what had been done with him, but in fear of the man himself. Not that the fellow would deliberately hurt him. But that he himself might not be worry of the man's attentions. He suffered still from his nagging worry that he had nothing to offer a man he regarded as so handsome and so much more accomplished than himself. At the same time, he felt an aching hope that Gregory would not have staged such an elaborate charade of kidnapping him as he had last night if he did not feel, well, something surely, for him? He was almost as glad for the gag that filled his mouth because it prevented him from begging for the reassurance he longed for as he was glad for the other, less explicable reasons he knew so well.

For he loved being bound and he loved being gagged and he loved even more knowing that Gregory had bound him and Gregory had stuffed and bound the gag into his mouth. He knew that Gregory intended on gagging him yet more strictly and strenuously, and he loved that knowledge and he anticipated the deed with fear and deep desire. He felt a tentative and hesitant joy in supposing that the man hovering so closely above him might desire to bind and gag him, his very self, as much as he desired to be bound and gagged by this very man. He stared up into the other man's eyes, filled with fear and hope and desire.

Gregory sat upright and looked down seriously at his captive. Then with a slight frown, he reached behind the man's head. Sir Andrew felt the knot in the silk handkerchief that had bound his huge gag into his mouth for the last few hours loosen, and then the silk bandage fell away. Then Gregory freed the tight cinch of the handkerchief that cleaved the wad into Sir Andrew's mouth. Then, with gentle fingers, Gregory reached in and slowly drew the big gag of handkerchieves from his friend's mouth. Sir Andrew felt a physical relief at having the cruel gag withdrawn, but he felt a sinking of the heart. He knew that he did not really want to be ungagged, not yet certainly, and in his wilder imaginings, not ever. He looked up at the other man, and the other saw a strange sadness in the fellow's face that he was hesitant to decipher.

For a long moment, the two simply looked at each other. Slowly then, Gregory bent close. He hesitated, and then he kissed his friend on the mouth. After a second of surprise, Sir Andrew responded hungrily, pressing up as much as he could, bound with the tight ropes as he still was. Their kiss was long, and hard. Gregory deliberately pressed his moist tongue over his friend's teeth and tongue and the insides of his mouth, exploring sensually while at the same time giving the man back some of the moisture he had lost to the cruel gag. Then he broke the kiss. Sir Andrew tried to follow his lips with his, but he had to fall back, defeated by his bonds. Gregory smiled down at him, and then kissed him again, again prolonging the contact and feeding his friend with moisture from his own mouth. At last he drew back once more.

Sir Andrew looked up at him, feeling stricken. While Gregory had kissed him, he had felt sure of the man's continued desire. Now, when he pulled back, doubt pained him again. He felt a terrible fear as he saw Gregory about to speak.

"I want to tell you something," Gregory said softly.

Sir Andrew simply stared.

"I want to tell you that you are free to go."

Sir Andrew felt a sharp pain in his chest. Without thinking, he blurted out, "But ... I don't want to."

Gregory looked down at him. He had been frowning, but now he half smiled. "If I untied you?"

Sir Andrew looked at him, his eyes dark with doubt. "Do you want to?"

Gregory shook his head. "What I want to do is ... but what I want you to know is, you can leave. I won't stop you. If you wish me to, I will untie you. But if you stay ..." his voice trailed off, and he gave a smile that was almost sad.

"If I stay?"

"I'll will surely find myself gagging you so tenderly and so cruelly that you will not be able to make a sound as I make love to you the way I have wanted to do for months and months."

Sir Andrew's eyes closed, and he smiled. Then his eyes opened.

"Please, gag me, Reginald." It was the first time he had ever used Gregory's christian name.

Gregory stared at him for a long moment.

Then he slowly mounted the bed and straddled the other man where he lay bound and looking up at him, his eyes wide and strained.

"It's what you want?"

"Oh god, yes!"

Gregory swallowed. Then he took up his handkerchieves from where they lay on the bed and began to prepare a gag. He used his friend's broad chest, opening handkerchief after handkerchief and laying them flat, until he had layered three of the big squares of white linen together. Then he rolled the thick square of cloth in upon itself, forming a huge ball of soft cloth.

Sir Andrew watched with a fascinated gaze as Gregory prepared that gag for his mouth. He was a little frightened, but he was far more aroused. The precum had long ago soaked through his underwear into the crotch of his dress trousers. His cock lifted and strained in the confines of the damp cloth. He watched as Gregory took up that big wad and bent close over him, cupping the back of his head in his other hand.

"I'm going to gag you, now, Andrew, really gag you."

"Yes!" Sir Andrew started to say, but it came out only as "Yugummmmmmph!" for Gregory immediately thrust the ball of soft handkerchieves into his mouth, forcing the great mass in deep. Sir Andrew stared up into his friend's face as that gag was shoved between his jaws, packing his mouth completely and solidly full from far back between his teeth to his distended lips. He had never been gagged like this, and he gave himself up to being gagged at the hands of this man he so desired. He realized that Gregory's using his own big pocket handkerchieves to gag him, to stuff his mouth, to muzzle and silence him, increased his arousal many-fold. To have the man gag him with his own handkerchieves made him feel somehow more possessed by him, and that to belong to the man, be taken and owned by him, was what he longed for. He pushed himself up into the gag as Gregory stuffed it into his mouth, and he moaned into the huge wad of handkerchieves.

"Mmmmmmmmmmmph!"

For a moment, Gregory paused, his hand clamped over Sir Andrew's gagged mouth, the thumb and the fingers on either side of his handsome nose, his palm pressed close over his lips, the edge of his hand brushing his firm chin.

Then he took his hand away and picked up one of the deep maroon silk handkerchieves and he folded the huge square of heavy silk twill into a thick roll. He pressed the middle between Sir Andrew's distended jaws, against the thick wad of the gag. He rammed the roll back between his friend's teeth, and wrapped the long ends behind the fellow's head to pull them into as tight a knot as he could manage. The tight cinch of the silk handkerchief was drawn back into the big gag, pressing it into two thick lobes on either side of itself. The thick roll creased the man's bearded cheeks, which bulged out from its merciless clinch.

Smiling at Sir Andrew, Gregory took two more of his big white handkerchieves and opened and layered them as he had the others, forming a slightly smaller wad. To Sir Andrew's astonishment, and deep, aching arousal, Gregory forced that second soft wad into the man's mouth, working it between his teeth and in front of the tightly constricted cinch of the silk handkerchief. Then he took up the second handkerchief of deep maroon silk, and he folded diagonally into a wide bandage. Bending close over Sir Andrew, he bound the handkerchief over the man's mouth, pressing the thick middle in a tight seal from the man's nose to his chin, pressing hard and then harder still, forcing the gag in deeper and making the handkerchief into a flat, taut band stretched hard over his solidly packed mouth. He folded the wide wings back over the helpless man's bearded cheeks and pulled them yet tighter. Sir Andrew groaned faintly into the brutal gag, staring up in agonized desire and arousal at the man who was so cruelly gagging him. Gregory drew the ends of the handkerchief into a knot, tying it as tightly as he could possibly manage, pulling the ends tight over and over before he twisted them into the final fastening.

Sir Andrew stared up at him, groaning softly into the gag. He tried to make us much sound as he could, but all that he could force past the smothering wads of handkerchieves that filled his mouth was a faint moan.

"Mmmmm. Hmmmmm. Gulmmmmmmmt."

Gregory stared down at the other man. His blue eyes were narrowed, and his handsome face wore an expression of strained arousal, and yet there was a tenderness in the smile on his lips that reassured Sir Andrew. Slowly the other man lowered himself down beside his bound companion, slipping his arms behind him and pulling him close. He stared into the other man's eyes.

"Your mine now, aren't you, my lord?" His voice was soft, caressing, slightly mocking, and yet tender. "My big fop of a lord, aren't you?"

Sir Andrew nodded.

"Ummph hmpht." He struggled to make his surrender known through his cruel gag.

Gregory smiled and closed his eyes. He began to caress the other man, slowly moving his hands up to his neck and throat, his thick hair, his silk-swathed cheeks, then down again, across his sides, along his tightly bound arms. He stroked the other man with a kind of lazy contentment, savoring the time. He had this handsome, willingly surrendered man in his arms now, in his arms and trussed with rope and gagged with his handkerchieves. He smoothed his hands over the man, feeling the strong muscles of the fellow's shoulders and back beneath the brushed broadcloth of his dress coat. He ran his thumb gently along the man's strong, bearded jaw, below the tight swath of the silk handkerchief. He tweaked the tails of the knots in the handkerchieves binding up the man's mouth over his huge gag, and he ruffled up the thick hair at the back of the man's head.

At last, he pulled away a little and opened his eyes. With a sly smile under his brows at Sir Andrew, he gently tugged at the big handkerchief of paisley silk puffed so foppishly in the man's chest pocket.

"Such a big dandy, aren't you?" he murmured. "Such a handsome fop. You know you're handsome, don't you, my lord, and you dress to show yourself off, don't you?"

Sir Andrew looked down in shy embarrassment in response to the other man's gentle teasing.

Gregory let his hands slip further down between them, and he caressed the man's firm belly, grinning wickedly at the other man. Sir Andrew looked up at him and his eyes widened and then narrowed.

"Mmmmmmmph. Mugummmmmmmmph." The bound and gagged man strained at his bonds and moaned into his brutal gag. His eyes pleaded with the other man.

Gregory winked and slipped his hands lower. Gently he pushed his fingers between the other man's legs and pressed his swollen groin.

"Mmmmmmmmph." Sir Andrew groaned into his gag.

"Like that, do you?" Gregory murmured. "Hmmmmm?"

Sir Andrew moaned again into his gag and strove to push his privates against the other man's exploring fingers.

Gregory suddenly raised his eyebrows in a wicked smile, and then he pushed himself abruptly lower on the bed, at the same time rolling Sir Andrew over onto his back. Looking up at the other man over his belly, he pressed his mouth over the crotch of the man's dress trousers, breathing in the smell of his precum while he blew his own warm breath onto the damp cloth.

Sir Andrew writhed in his bonds and moaned into his huge gag.

After a moment, Gregory slowly eased open the buttons of Sir Andrew's fly, and he reached inside gently. He let his fingers just palpitate the other man's swollen cock, barely touching the tender flesh.

"Mmmmmmmm. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmpht."

Sir Andrew moaned into his gag and tried to press his privates into the other man's hand.

Gently, Gregory responded, taking the stiff cock into his grasp and pushing and pulling. He left the stiff member inside the man's trousers for a moment while he tenderly caressed the hardened flesh and then, taking pity on the other man, he slowly drew the man's prick free.

Sir Andrew gave a cry of something like anguish into his muffling gag and jerked and struggled in his bonds. He was, after the long night, almost to the brink of his climax. Gregory hurriedly got up and knelt on the bed astraddle his bound and gagged companion. He reached into his hip pocket and dragged out a huge white pocket handkerchief. Watching the other man, who lifted his head slightly to stare back at him, and who moaned softly into his gag, Gregory hastily undid his own fly and pulled out his own swollen cock. It was standing straight up, its tip red with arousal and a thick stream of precum oozing from the hole. He shook open his handkerchief and then he thrust his own groin down against his watching companion's. Pressing their two cocks together, he wrapped them in the huge square of heavy white linen. He began to pump their cocks against each other inside the sheath of soft cloth.

"Mmmmmmpht! Mugummmmmpht!" Sir Andrew fell back against the bed. He writhed from side to side in the tight ropes that bound him, and he moaned and grunted into his tight and smothering gag.

"That's my lord, that's my fop, yes, come on, my handsome one, come on!" Gregory urged his companion as he rubbed their cocks with greater and greater vigor. Suddenly, Sir Andrew's eyes rolled back in his head, his bound torso jerked up in a taut arch, and he gave a strangled cry into his gag.

"Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmgggggggummmmmmph!!!"

"Yes!" Gregory said in a hoarse whisper and flung his head back as his own climax overtook him. He groaned, still managing to stare down at his bound and gagged companion even as his climax jolted up to his head. He groaned once more and then slumped down. For a moment, he was still and then slowly he sank forward to lie over Sir Andrew. For long moments, the two men lay there, the only sounds Gregory's deep breathing, and the noises Sir Andrew made, sobs that were smothered and half choked by his huge gag. At last, Gregory looked up, and then moved to bend close over the other man. Tenderly, with a slow smile, he began to kiss away the tears that lay wet on the other man's cheeks.

SEVERAL HOURS LATER, Sir Andrew stood in his friend's--no, now his lover's--study, looking out over the garden. He was bathed, shaven, and dressed in a clean suit of clothes brought over by Wallis. There was a look of intense concentration on his handsome features, and it was doubtful if he saw the beauty of the late fall afternoon outside the glass. He turned and glanced when Gregory came into the room, and gave his lover a brief smile, but he turned and continued to stare out the window as the other man approached.

Gregory put his arms around the other man from behind. He held his right hand in front of his lover's face. There was a huge wad of soft white cloth in his fingers; Sir Andrew recognized it with an inward tremble as a huge handkerchief gag, meant, he knew, for his own mouth.

"That's for later," Gregory said softly, as he slipped the big wad inside his lover's coat and tucked it down into an inner pocket. "To stuff your mouth, my lord, my friend, my so handsome lover," he murmured into the other man's ear, "to gag you," and he put a deep emphasis, a stress that made his pleasantly resonant voice seem almost to purr as the said the word "gag." "I have some nice hanks of rope in my pockets, and several big silk handkerchieves, and there is a tree I have a fondness for on the walk I intend us to take this afternoon," he went on, in a low, matter of factly friendly tone, as if he were discussing a tourist sight he wished his friend to enjoy, and not the spot where he intended to bind him as tightly this side of real pain as he could and to gag him as strictly as he knew how.

Sir Andrew turned slowly to face the other man. They were almost of a height and he looked up only a trifle into his friend and lover's bright blue eyes.

"What I want to hear you tell me is, how did you know?"

Gregory smiled. "How did I know what?"

Sir Andrew frowned. "Don't be dense, Gregory. You know what I mean."

"Do I?"

Sir Andrew gave his lover a hard squeeze, half love, half exasperation.

"Please don't tease me."

Gregory looked at him closely. His smile lingered under his thick mustache, but he gazed at his companion with tender eyes.

"You really want to know, don't you?"

Sir Andrew nodded.

Gregory sighed slightly. "Do you remember last Wednesday, when you arrived a little early, and I was a little late coming down?"

Sir Andrew thought for a moment and then a deep blush spread up his cheeks above his thick beard. He looked suddenly most acutely embarrassed.

Gregory smiled and said softy, "Evidently you do." He released his lover and went to one of the shelves of books that lined three walls of the room.

"I came down a little earlier than you realized. You were reading this book, I think it was," and he pulled the volume from the shelf. He let it fall open of its own accord, which it did very readily. "It's one of my favorites, and, as you see, it opens by itself, after many years of being opened by me, to just this chapter." He held out the book, and Sir Andrew took it absently. He only glanced at the page as Gregory went on.

"I came in too quietly for you to hear, the first time. You were, um, rubbing your groin, Andrew. Very sexy. But I was very curious. Fortunately, when I faked my re-entry, you were too startled to put the book back in its place. That told me almost everything I wanted to know. Almost everything."

Sir Andrew looked up at the other man. "What didn't it tell you?"

Gregory smiled ruefully. "I knew you wanted to be bound and gagged. But I didn't know if it was I you wanted to bind and gag you."

Sir Andrew put down the book on a side table. Then he turned, and with a wide smile, he took Gregory into his arms.

"How could you ever have doubted it?" he murmured.

Copyright 2000 David W. Brown Compliments, complaints: tugger049@yahoo.com