Jared had suggested that it might be a nice day for a walk, and it had been phrased in a tone of voice that Samantha knew meant he really waned out of the current situation.  She couldn’t blame as she, too, could use a reprieve from Jared’s parents.  It wasn’t so much that they were difficult people as it was a difficult state of affairs.  Jared was, after all, their only child and here he was for the first time ever serious enough about a girl to bring her home to meet the parents.  Granted, the wedding-word had so far only been hinted at, but regardless, a good deal of judgment had already occurred this weekend, and it was only Saturday morning.

A walk, therefore, sounded excellent.  Samantha agreed out loud that it seemed a marvelous day for it, and then excused herself from the icy gaze of Jared’s mother to don a pair of sandals and join her lover at the back door.

"Show her the pond," his father suggested from behind his newspaper, "and the orchard."

"Oh, Jared, you should show her that clubhouse you and your friends built when you were little," his mother commented, before pursing her lips and daintily sipping her coffee.

"We didn’t actually build it," Jared started to explain. 

"Oh, honey, sure you did.  Well, remodeled it anyway."

Jared didn’t respond, just opened the door and ushered Samantha outside.  An Irish setter bounded up to snuffle their hands, and then found a spot beneath a bush to nap in.  "Ah," Jared said; a touch of cynicism coloring his words "life at the ancestral home."

The family house wasn’t exactly enormous, just ancient and imposing.  It was, however, situated on 140 acres of land, as Jared’s father had not hesitated to inform Sam upon their arrival the previous night.

Jared took Samantha’s hand and led her on a tour.  They started with the typical farm things including the barn, full of horses, then on to the now unused spring house.  Then he led her into the woods.

"I used to spend all my time out here," Jared reminisced.  "And with so much land, my parents could never find me."

"Did living out here make you lonely at all?" Samantha asked, thinking of her own boisterous childhood, growing up with four siblings and surrounded by similar families.

"It could have," he admitted.  "But just down this way," he pointed through the trees towards a valley, "are about four houses.  They each had kids my age growing up."

"I bet these woods were perfect for hide and seek."

"And cowboys and Indians," Jared agreed.

They walked on, following a path that had clearly fallen into disuse over the years.  A few minutes later the trees parted to reveal a rundown cottage, obviously abandoned.  Some of the windows were boarded over, but it seemed in good shape architecturally.  Across the front in now-fading letters someone had painted NO GIRLS ALOWED.

"So your pre-adolescent self couldn’t spell?" Samantha laughed.

Jared smiled and the memory.  "Buggy Sanderson painted that.  And trust me, school was not his forte."

"Why was the warning necessary?  Were you guys beating girls off with sticks?"

Jared looked as though he had a snarky comment to make, but after a second’s hesitation he just shook his head.  "No, in those days we were those weird guys who liked science and electronics."

"And in high school?"

"Same thing, really.  Only then we wanted dates and couldn’t get them."

"I can’t imagine that," Sam said seriously.  She tugged on Jared a bit then leaned up to kiss him.  He ran a hand through her shoulder length hair.  He was pressed against her enough that she rather thought he must be contemplating what she was, and she wondered if there was a suitable surface in the cottage.

"So, can I see this mighty clubhouse of yours?"

"I would love to show it to you.  But sorry, no girls allowed."

"But I’m a woman," Sam pointed out.

"I have to go with the spirit of the law, Sam, not the letter.  I owe the guys."

"And there’s no way around the rule?"

"Well," Jared said in a playful tone, "There is one way.  But I don’t think you’d like it."

"Try me"

Jared ran a hand through his hair.  "Well, the idea was that we didn’t want girls touching any of our stuff."

"Cooties," Samantha nodded with mock solemnity.

"So the only way for a girl to go inside was if her hands were tied."

Samantha’s mind went spinning in a million different directions, many of them dark and tempting.  Was he serious about this kids’ stuff or was it all just an excuse to try some bondage?  Had he noticed the small collection of erotic literature in her apartment and he was humoring her, or was he really into it?  Did it matter?

"Bring on the rope," Samantha joked.

Jared raised an eyebrow then nodded.  "I’ll be right back."  He disappeared into the clubhouse for a moment, and then returned with a hank of rope. 

You guys were prepared to entertain the cootie-bearers, eh?"

"We were all boy scouts.  ‘Be prepared’ was the motto."

Samantha held out her wrists to Jared.  "All right."

"The rules were very specific.  Put your hands behind your back."

Samantha hesitated only a moment before turning away from Jared and placing her wrists behind her.  Immediately, Jared began wrapping them in rope.  Samantha could feel him tying it all off, but he kept the ends from her fingers.  She laughed a bit nervously.  "And of course boy scouts are good with knots, too."

"Very."  Sam could hear the grin in Jared’s voice.

"All right then.  Let’s go to the infamous clubhouse."

"We’re not quite ready."  Jared stopped her from striding forward, one hand on her arm.

"There’s more?" Even as she asked, Jared was stacking rope around her elbows, pulling them closer together.  Her back arched to accommodate the strain.  "Stickler for rules, were you?"

"Of course."

"Sounds like you were all troubled youths," Samantha muttered.  "And I don’t think I fit the role of teenage fantasy."

Jared crossed in front of her.  "You fit the role of my fantasy."

Samantha blushed, and smiled happily. 

Jared turned and started for the clubhouse door.  A little clumsily, Samantha followed, her mind and senses whirling.  So far this set up was like something out of one of her fantasies, yet the realist in her pointed out that unlike fantasy, the ropes really were inescapable.  And she really was alone in the woods, tied up and with a man.  Sam did her best to squash those thoughts.  After all, that man was the man she loved.

She stepped through the open door and found a typical teenage boy’s treasure house.  This front room might once have been a living-room, but the boys had built shelves into every wall.  Each held prizes of youth: baseball cards and airplanes and all the flotsam and jetsam of boyhood.  Intrigued by what the objects might tell her of Jared, Samantha studied them all as well as she was able without picking any of them up.

After her turn around the room, Sam nodded towards a closed door.  "What’s behind door number two?" she asked with a smile.

Jared, who had been leaning against the wall, his arms folded, denied her.  "Sorry, you can’t go in there."

"What?  After all this?"

He shrugged.  "The rules are the rules."

"Is there an exception to that one, too?"

"Well, yeah."  He shifted uncomfortably.  "You have to remove your sandals and shorts."

If Samantha had any doubts about where this was going, that effectively killed them.  She stepped up to Jared.  "All right."

Once again he gave her that raised eyebrow as though he couldn’t’ believe she was agreeing, and then knelt to unbuckle her sandals for her.  She stepped out of them and pushed them aside.  Jared moved behind her, then, and reached around to undo her shorts.  For a moment, Samantha leaned into him, but knew that it would be best for both of them if they played this game to its natural conclusion.

When Sam stood ready in just her black panties, black tank top, and the rope around her arms, Jared opened the door.

This next room held bookshelves, mostly.  A closer inspection revealed that they were mostly cheap sci-fi paperbacks.  Two beanbag chairs provided places for readers to relax.

Jared opened a window and a breeze slithered around Samantha, caressing her bare skin and reminding her of her situation -- as though the ropes let her forget.  Again she wondered for whose benefit they played this game.  During sex Jared often held her hands down, or on occasional rougher experiences tugged her hair, but otherwise she’d had no inkling that bondage interested him.  If she had, she would have brought it up long ago as something to try.  The only reason she hadn’t was the fear that he’d try something for her sake.  She didn’t want a reluctant Dom.  But what if, a little voice asked, Jared had just been waiting for the right moment?  Could she really be that lucky?

With a start, Sam realized that Jared had been talking about books in his childhood, and she’d been so busy with her internal dialogue that she’d not heard any of it. She nodded in agreement, then poked around the room some more, as best as she was able.

She was so busy looking up at the top shelf -- as everyone hid their guilty secrets on high shelves -- that she tripped over a box and nearly fell.  Jared helped right her, but not before she saw the top magazine cover inside.  Sam stared at the photograph of a tightly bound and gagged woman and suspected she had her answer. 

She turned quickly.  "So what’s behind door number three?" she asked with a grin and a flutter of eyelashes.