R. Preston

Ryan

Chapter 1

I knew, almost as soon as I'd met him, that Ryan was going to be my first serious challenge to rule number one, but while it's no excuse, in my defense, he wasn't really a client. He was still too young to be one.

In this part of the country, for now at least, kids can't be charged with an offense, put on probation, or sent to a juvenile detention center until they turn twelve. While he was more then deserving of any of those, Ryan still had a few months to go, but through an unofficial agreement between the police, his mother, and myself, he came to see me once a week, just like he would if he was on probation.

Right from the start I realized that Ryan was different, and it wasn't just his age. I had plenty of clients not much older than him; in fact the vast majority of my caseload was juveniles. But while their standard response was to deny any wrongdoing, even when caught red handed, Ryan would admit to, and even seem genuinely remorseful about any trouble he got himself into. Often times he would even tell me about things he'd done wrong that he must have realized I never would have known about otherwise.

That's not to say that he confessed to everything, in fact he vehemently denied being involved in some of the things he was accused of. I couldn't figure out at first why he would confess to some things, but lie about others, until one day I noticed that one of the offences that the police seemed certain he had committed, and had attributed to him in their weekly report that they sent to me for each of my clients, occurred on the other side of town at the exact time he was at his appointment with me.

I realized then that Ryan had earned the unenviable position of "usual suspect". Much the same way that the police tend to label unsolvable serious crimes as either drug or gang related as a quick and easy way to clear them off the books, any minor crimes, vandalism and the like, that didn't have any witnesses or leads, automatically got labeled as "Ryan did it".

I knew then that in at least some things, Ryan tended to tell the truth, but when it came to keeping his promises…well that was another story altogether. Every week he promised to try and behave and stay out of trouble, and every week his police and school report would show that he hadn't changed, or even worse, done just the opposite, on one occasion, even getting busted less than an hour after giving me his word that he'd be good. It was frustrating to say the least, but in this line of work, you either get used to being disappointed, or you don't last very long.

It probably would have just continued along as it was, with Ryan going off to juvie as soon after his twelfth birthday as the police and courts could arrange for him, but then I had a bad day. No, that's too mild, I'd had bad days before with little effect on how I did my job, this was the mother of all bad days, starting with me waking up at 3am to the sound of spraying water and my water meter clicking away at free flow speed.

Great, a water leak! Naturally, the shut off valve was limed up enough, that while greatly decreasing the flow, it was still dripping at a steady, and rather rapid pace. The next four hours where spent in the basement, mopping up the floor where the original leak had sprayed and swapping pails under the still dripping copper pipe. I had a torch, and knew how to do the repair myself, but naturally, while I tried to keep a collection of fittings around for just this type of emergency, I had everything except the one I needed.

I was there waiting when the owner of the local hardware store arrived to open up for the day, and he far too cheerfully sold me the eleven cent coupling that had just cost me most of a nights sleep. By the time everything was back together, it was too late to even think about going back to bed, in fact, I had to hurry just to make it to work in time.

Having shut off the gas at the water heater while the main line was off, I had to take a lukewarm shower, followed by an even more unpleasant cold shave, but I did manage to get to the office with only a couple of minutes to spare. I didn't really have to worry too much as it was just a satellite office under the main office in the nearest city and I was the only one who worked there, but I frowned on my clients being late for appointments, so it wouldn't look good for me to be the one who was late.

It was a Friday, and my first appointment of the day was an adult parolee, who had an "on call" part time job, which often meant that he had to reschedule appointments when he got called to work at the last minute. Naturally, today was one of those days, and instead of being met by him at the office, I was met by the flashing light on the answering machine, and his message from last night that he had to work and would call to reschedule.

That pretty much set the tone for the whole day, another cancellation for the appointment right after lunch and a third for the one before Ryan's. That hour wasn't a total waste however, as my supervisor, an obese multi-chinned cow of a woman who was only in it for the power the job gave her over others, not to actually try to help anyone, decided to call and check up on me. Naturally when she found out that I had a free hour, she used most of it to lecture me for being too lenient with my clients.

When I finally got rid of her, I saw that Ryan's weekly reports from the school and police where waiting in the fax machine, and scanning them quickly, I wasn't surprised to see he hadn't changed, and if he had, he was actually getting worse instead of better. I seriously thought for a second of giving up on him, just locking up and going home, but right then the buzzer sounded, letting me know that someone had come through the outer door into the waiting area.

I knew that I was in no mood to deal with him, or anyone for that matter right then, but I was pretty much trapped, with no way to avoid it, so after closing my eyes for a few seconds and taking a few deep breaths in a mostly unsuccessful attempt to calm down, I opened the door and let him into my office. He was as cheerful as ever, and even though it was often frustrating, usually talking to him was the highlight of my week, but this day I interpreted his normal smile as a smirk, as if he was laughing at me for being such a dupe.

"You've been busy I see." I said once we'd both taken our respective seats.

I slid the two faxes across his desk and he picked them up and scanned them. His lack of protest told me that the reports where indeed accurate.

"I thought you promised me that you'd try to be good." I snapped.

"I told you I'd try, and I did, but I couldn't help myself." He said quietly as he continued scanning the reports.

"What does this mean?" He asked, holding up the police report and pointing to a note across the bottom of the typewritten page where someone had scrawled in big letters "37 days and counting".

"That's how long it is until you turn twelve and they get to lock you up in juvie to get you out of their hair."

That seemed to have at least a slight sobering effect on him, but I knew that getting sent there wasn't all that much if a deterrent for a kid like Ryan. Sure he couldn't come and go as he pleased, but at least he had regular meals and a clean warm bed, something that was never a sure thing for him at home. Just last week I'd shown and explained to him a report of how dismal of a job the juvenile system was doing, and how, once in the system, far too many of the kids never got out of it and the adult system until well into their twenties or early thirties. It seemed to worry him some, but apparently not enough to keep him out of trouble, even for a day or two.

"Can't we do anything to stop them?" he asked.

"I doubt it." I admitted, "I've tried everything I can think of but you never seem to listen, in fact, I'm strongly considering just giving up too."

"But you can't." he pleaded, "You're the only one who cares what happens to me."

I wanted to tell him he was wrong, but unfortunately that would have been a lie. His mother seemed to be finally getting her addictions under control, but the stress and long hours of multiple low paying jobs just to keep a roof over their heads didn't leave her much time for him and it was hard to argue that her life wouldn't be much easier without him around. The police could sure do without all the grief and paperwork he caused them, and his teachers would be more than happy to have one less kid in their already overcrowded classroom, especially when it was one who was a distraction and only served to drag down their average class scores.

"Well then what do you suggest we do?" I asked, feeling some sympathy for how alone he looked at that moment. "None of my ideas seem to be helping you any."

He thought for a minute before angrily mumbling. "If only my stupid father hadn't died…"

This was a common excuse with him. He often blamed his lack of a father, who I understand he hardly knew, or to be more exact, he blamed his father for not being around to discipline him when he screwed up.

"We've been over all this before, remember?" I said bluntly.

"Yeah, I know." He said gloomily, "But I still think that if I knew I was going to get a really bad whipping for it I might be able to stop doing dumb things all the time."

I'd heard it all before, and was getting frustrated again and let it show by saying.

"Right now I'm so disappointed in you that I'm tempted to give you a good whipping myself."

He gave me what I took to be a really shocked look, so I quickly added, "Oh don't look so worried, I don't even own a whip."

I realized that things where going downhill fast, and it was best to just end the interview as soon as I could, so after telling him to keep trying to come up with anything that might help his behavior and pleading with him yet again to try to stay out of trouble I let him leave early.

On my walk home, I had a chance to, as I often did, reflect on my day, and knew it had to be among my all time worst. Even though I usually hated cancellations and the rescheduling problems that came with them, I was actually glad that I had had so many today. As it was, I was sure I owed Ryan an explanation and apology when he came back next week, in fact, I wouldn't blame him a bit if he never showed up again after my performance today.

At least things got better when I got home. The repair had held, as I was sure it would, and the basement had dried out nicely with no apparent damage. I lived alone in my own detached house in what I considered the best part of town, close enough to downtown that I could walk there to work or for shopping, but far enough away that the lot sizes where considerably larger, allowing at least some privacy.

I was what would be labeled as something of a loner, the type that nobody seems to notice until they go on a shooting spree, but I hadn't done so yet, and had no plans to in the future. While it had it's down side, I just liked the freedom that came with keeping to myself, and one of those freedoms was being able to do pretty much whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and on that particular afternoon what I wanted most was a nap.

About two hours later I woke again, feeling much better, popped my supper into the oven to defrost and hopped into a hot shower to make up for the tepid one I'd suffered through that morning. It was while I was showering, that, much like the morning after a bad drinking binge, embarrassing snippets of my conversation with Ryan began coming back to me, and I reaffirmed to myself that I owed him a big apology if he showed up next week.

As it turned out, I didn't have to wait that long, because no sooner had I got dressed again, when I was surprised to hear the doorbell ring. I very rarely had visitors, and the rare occasion when someone did come calling it was never on the weekend, when people had better things to do. Walking toward the door I couldn't see anyone through the pane of glass in it, and was beginning to think I was hearing things, but as I got closer I began to see the top of a mop of black hair that could only belong to Ryan.

As I opened the door I half expected him to start yelling at me for being such a prick earlier, but he was smiling and being his usual cheerful self.

"Hey, I'm glad to see you, I was just thinking about you." I said as I opened the door and let him in.

"Really? What did I do wrong now?" He asked suspiciously,

"No, nothing like that." I reassured him, "I was just thinking I owed you a big apology for acting like such a jerk today."

He just shrugged and said, "Oh, I didn't notice."

Ouch! I know by the way he said it that he didn't intend his comment to be a cheap shot, not that I didn't deserve one, but it sure sounded that way to me at the time. It's bad enough to have a bad day and act like a fool, but to do it and have no-one notice anything different really hurt. Maybe it was time to re-examine my whole technique.

"Well, I didn't treat you right today, and I'm really sorry about it." I said sincerely.

"It's ok, I thought you done good." He said, obviously uneasy about being apologized to, something I'm sure didn't happen to him very often.

Right then the timer on the oven rang, so I said, "At least let me buy you supper. Are you hungry?"

"A little bit I guess." He said as we headed toward the kitchen.

I was never much for cooking, so I'd gotten into the habit of buying the cheaper family sized frozen meals rather then the pricier single serving ones, cooking them up on the weekend, and saving the leftovers to warm up for my meals during the week. Needless to say, there was enough lasagna defrosted for both of us.

Ryan had been to my house before. Shortly after he started coming to see me I decided that a part time job might be good for him, give him a little spending money that would hopefully cut down on his stealing, and at least keep him busy for a few hours so he couldn't be out committing other crimes. My intent was to have him look after the lawn, but he was just way too scary the way he handled the power equipment and I had to call it off before he hurt himself.

I noticed that he was carrying a plastic shopping bag with him, so, just to make conversation, as I reached up to get us some plates from the cupboard I asked,

"Have you been shopping?"

"Yeah." He said holding up the bag to show me. "I got some things for you."

I didn't know where this was going, but I had a feeling that it wasn't good.

"You didn't steal anything did you?" I asked, probably subconsciously trying to delay what I was getting a bad feeling about.

"I knew you'd say that." He said, and after fishing around in his pocket for a few seconds he held up some strips of paper and added "See, I kept the cash register things to prove it to you. Mom said she wasn't going to be around much this weekend, so she gave me money, and I used some of it. I even made sure I went to stores I wasn't kicked out of."

"You shouldn't spend your money on me." I said as I got the hot food from the oven and set it in the middle of the table.

"Well, it's kinda for both of us." He admitted as he reached into the bag and came out with something that, while rather crudely made, was easily recognizable as a multi tailed type of whip.

"What am I supposed to do with that?" I asked, dreading the answer I knew was coming.

"Well… today you said you'd whip me, but you didn't have one, so now you do."

"I can't whip you." I said as sternly as I could, but knowing deep down that I wouldn't change his mind that easily.

"But you said you wanted to." He countered.

"I already told you that I wasn't myself today and apologized for it, and anyhow, if I remember right, I said I was tempted to, not that I wanted to."

"Well, that's almost the same thing."

"I still can't do it."

"But you gotta!" he pleaded.

"Why do I gotta?" I asked, using his own slurred version of the word.

"Cause if you don't I'll end up in juvie."

"I thought you told me you weren't afraid of going to juvie. You thought it didn't sound too bad." I said.

"I don't, but that other stuff you showed me… I don't want to wreck my whole life."

"Well, if you're worried about that, why don't you just stop getting in trouble?" I asked, hoping I was finally recovering some from being on the losing side of the argument.

"I hoped it would stop me, but it's too far away, I need to know something bad is going to happen to me really soon or I can't stop myself."

I have to admit I was impressed. For such a hair-brained idea, even though he was having some trouble expressing himself, he'd obviously put a lot of thought into it.

"I still can't do it!" I said again. "Do you have any idea how much trouble I would get into?"

"I sure won't tell anybody, and even if I did they wouldn't believe me anyhow." He countered.

I had to admit, he was probably right again. A few years ago, any sort of accusation was taken very seriously and automatically believed, but after a few high profile cases of false convictions involving overzealous prosecutors and kids making things up, the bar on cases like that had been raised considerably. With Ryan's credibility he would have a very hard time getting anyone to believe him, even if he tried.

We continued the back and forth all through supper, with me coming up with reasons why his idea wouldn't work, and him countering, often using my own words against me.

By the time we finished eating I'd exhausted all of the arguments I could come up with, and he was pleading with me, looking very much like he was about to break out in tears.

"You've got to." He begged. "I'm sure it'll work if you'd just try it."

"What makes you so sure?" I asked, not really to argue with him, but more out of curiosity.

"Well…you know that feeling I told you about?" He said.

He'd on occasion tried to describe a feeling he got that made him go ahead and do things that he knew he shouldn't, but I'd pretty much just written it of as an excuse on his part, a kind of a "devil made me do it" defense for his actions.

"Yeah, I remember." I said.

"Well… when I was buying this stuff, and putting it together, and all the way over here, I had the exact same feeling, only it was more stronger than ever."

"But I've told you over and over again that there are better ways than corporal punishment."

"Yeah, and we tried all your better ways and none of em worked! Now I'm going to end up in Juvie and wreck my whole life just cause you won't listen to me!" He said, letting his own anger and frustration show for the first time as he scolded me.

The rest of his arguments may have worn me down, but that was the statement that broke me. I was sure that I was right, and he was wrong, but in the end, if I was making a mistake, it was his life that got ruined, not mine.

"Alright. We'll try it your way. But if it doesn't work, you have to promise me that you'll try my way again, ok? I said. I almost said 'when' it doesn't work, but at that point, even though I didn't really think it would help him, I didn't want him to give up on anything that might keep him out of the juvenile system.

"I promise, but I just know we won't have to do that because this will work if you do it right."

It was then that I realized, much to my horror, that not only was I going to have to do this to him, I was going to have to do whatever he asked me to, exactly as he wanted it, or he would blame me for it's failure. Total control of the whole event was going to be his, and for me, that was more than a little troubling.

After he'd cleared the dishes into the dishwasher and I'd divided up the leftovers and put them into the fridge, I said,

"Let's get this over with. How do you want it?"

"Well, first I gotta take off my shirt." He said as he peeled it over his head and tossed it onto the table.

"You want it on your back do you?" I asked.

"Yeah, little kids get it on the butt, but whenever I see a grownup on TV getting it, it's on the back so I think it must work better that way."

I'd never really thought about it that way, but obviously he had. At least it seemed I wouldn't be crossing the line of seeing him naked below the waist, not that it would matter much to the judge.

"Then what?" I asked.

"Then you gotta tie my hands up like this." He said, as he raised his hands over his head and spread them so his wrists where about twice his shoulder width apart.

"What if I don't have anything to tie you with?" I asked in a final attempt to get out of this.

"I bought some just in case." He said, reaching into the bag he'd brought with him and bringing out a length of soft braided sash cord.

"And then you hit me with this." He said as he held up his homemade whip. "I got them at the shoe store, I think they're leather shoe laces or somethin', but they where kinda long so I folded them over. I got two pairs first, but it didn't work too good, so I went back and bought two more. It's real nasty now."

"You tried it on yourself?" I asked.

"Yeah, just to make sure it worked, but it was pretty hard to do real good. It hurt some, but see, the marks are gone already." He said as he turned around and showed me that there where indeed no marks visible on his back. I was glad to see that he actually had much more of a tan on his back than I expected. At least it seemed that any marks that, by the sound of what he had in mind, were sure to be there, wouldn't be quite as obvious as they would if he was fair skinned.

It was then that I realized that I'd never really paid much attention to just how he looked, aside from his longish mop of straight black hair, and his dark brown eyes that seemed to bore right through me sometimes when he was trying to explain something to me. He was probably a little tall for his age, and seeing him shirtless for the first time I could see that all of his baby fat was long gone, replaced with a narrow waist and flat hard stomach. Not a six-pack, but one of those randomly rippled stomachs that some kids have naturally. His shoulders that where on the broad side and stronger than average chest made him look like someone I wouldn't want to mess with if I was his size, but strangely enough, fighting seemed to be one of the few offences that never turned up on his sheet.

"You got a spot we can do it?" He asked, either getting a little impatient, or more likely wanting to get things happening before I had a chance to change my mind.

I wanted to say no, that I didn't have a place that would work, but that would have just been stupid as there had to be dozens of places in the house where he could be tied up the way he wanted, with enough space to swing the whip, so after going over the options I could think of right away, I said,

"Down in the basement I guess."

There were no functioning windows down there, I'd covered them all with insulation and plywood in an attempt to lower my winter heating bills some, so at least I wouldn't have to worry about any eyewitnesses to what was going to happen.

There was no way to get his ropes over the floor joists, but there where X shaped braces between the beams that would do the trick. Taking his coil if new rope, I made a quick estimate of how much length I would need to tie around his wrists and reach the braces, and cut two lengths. I was no boy scout, but after a couple of tries I had one end of each length tied around each of his wrists, and after he raised his arms where he wanted them, tied off the other end to the appropriately spaced braces. There was a bit of rope left, so I decided to wrap it around his legs near his ankles a couple of times, just in case he had a sudden change of heart and decided to start kicking. He was left with a bit of slack, but he wasn't going far.

Up to that point in my life, if I'd been asked to categorize my sexuality, I think that the most honest answer I could have given was un-sexual. I was never all that interested in women or men, and certainly not kids, but as I stepped back to inspect my handiwork, seeing him stretched out like that, and knowing what he was willingly about to put himself through, even though I didn't want to, I had to admit, looked pretty hot.

He was pulling down on the ropes, taking up what little slack he had, tensing the muscles in his back and sides, preparing himself for what was soon to come. That caused his upper back to flare out at the sides, tapering down to his waist, that in that position was so thin, that his jeans, that were probably bought for him to grow in to but by the look of them would be long worn out before then, were riding low and in serious danger of sliding right off him.

Picking up his whip and swishing it through the air a few times, I decided that it felt about right, not that I really had any experience what a whip should feel like, but it seemed like it would do the job. They must have been work boot laces that he bought, because even folded in half, and taped about a quarter of their way up with electrical tape to form the handle, the free strands were still where almost as long as my arm. After a few more trial swings I asked him,

"Are you ready?"

He didn't answer, just nodded his head and pulled down even harder on the ropes.

My first attempt was feeble to say the least, barely having enough speed to even make contact, which brought an immediate protest from him saying,

"You'll have to do it a lot harder than that!"

"I will." I promised, "But you have to give me a chance to learn how to do it. They don't exactly teach this in P.O. school you know."

"Maybe they should!" He said bluntly.

The fact that my first attempt hadn't exactly drawn blood, or left a mark for that matter, gave me some confidence to lay the second one on considerably harder, still not as hard as I'm sure he would eventually demand, but either it was enough to keep him satisfied for now, or he realized that he would have to be patient with me. Whichever it was, he gave no comment after it, so I started giving him several more about the same strength, while I observed his reaction to learn what worked and what didn't.

The first thing I learned was, that while most sports that used a similar swinging motion called for a follow through, this was different. I noticed almost immediately that when I did give a complete swing, it tended to drag the tails of the whip across his back causing light red stripes to appear almost instantly, but from his reaction, it seemed that it didn't sting as much as if brought the whip arching toward his back and stopped the handle of the whip as soon as or just before it made contact, allowing the tips to come snapping down a split second later. He would flex his back muscles quite a bit more when I did it that way, and it left much shorter and lighter marks so I abandoned the follow through and stuck to the second method from then on.

The next thing that I noticed was that all the areas on his back weren't equally sensitive. When the tips hit on his upper back near his shoulders it didn't seem to be as painful to him as when they landed in the small of his back, and if I let them wrap around his sides and snap him there, not only did they sound like they were landing harder, they seemed to really hurt. He also seemed to be able to take it better if I kept the lashes coming at a steady predictable pace. If I varied the timing so he couldn't tell when it would land, it seemed to affect him more.

'I think I'm getting the hang of it, do you want to try it a little harder now?" I asked.

He didn't say anything, just nodded his head and pulled down even harder at the ropes securing him.

I didn't increase it too much, but it was enough that I'm sure he could tell the difference, and I could tell that he was starting to feel some serious pain, so after about five I asked him,

"Is that enough, do you want to stop now."

He was struggling so hard to fight the pain and remain silent that it took him a few seconds to find his voice, but when he did he gasped, "Give me twenty like that."

I knew he had to be getting close to his limit, so I kept the lashes away from his most sensitive area, and once the twenty where given, I hopefully asked,

"Have you had enough?"

It took him even longer that time, but he eventually blurted out, "Ten more, just a bit harder."

The end seemed to finally be in sight, so in an attempt to help him decide to stop, I landed the final and hardest of the ten lashes in the small of his back, where I knew he was particularity sensitive. When it hit, he let out a bit of a quiet squeal that was pretty much the first sound he'd made since we'd started.

"I think that's about enough, don't you?" I asked, hoping it would encourage him to quit. His only response was to nod his head and sag forwards, exhausted, hanging limply from the ropes on his wrists.

It was quite a learning experience, and I had to admit to myself that it wasn't as hard to do as I thought it would be, and was nowhere near as bad as the sensationalized, if accurate, potential headlines reporting it that kept popping into my head as I was doing it.

Spankings and the like, as I pictured them, and I imagine they usually happen, where violent affairs, with a raging out of control parent flailing away at a screaming, struggling and crying child, but this didn't resemble that at all. I certainly wasn't angry, in fact once I got over my initial feelings about what I was doing, I felt almost unnaturally calm as I concentrated on giving him what he wanted the best I could.

For his part, if I had to describe how he took it in one word it would be stoic. I could tell from the occasional look that I got of his face that he wasn't enjoying it at all, but he was accepting it, as if it was something he felt that he had to do, and while he couldn't move too far, he didn't even use up what slack he had to try to avoid the lashes. He would arch his body forward occasionally when a particularly painful lash landed on his back, or squirm one way or the other slightly when one bit into his side, but he always returned to his original position to wait in silence for the next lash to fall.

His feet weren't tied all that well, so I got them undone quickly, and with them free, he stood up straight and held his arms up for me to undo. Unfortunately, I'd tied them better, and because of how hard he had been pulling down on them, the knots had tightened up to a point that they would take a long time to undo. The way his hands looked, I wanted to get them off as soon as possible, so I resorted to using the knife that I had used to cut the rope into three pieces originally.

As soon as I cut his second wrist free he spun around so quickly that I didn't have time to do more than think about protecting myself from what I assumed was going to be an attack, but instead he wrapped his arms around me in a hug, buried his head into my chest, and started quietly sobbing.

I may have been unprepared for a punch, but I was even less prepared for what I did get. I had no idea whether he was crying because I'd hurt him too much, which I tended to believe more than the possibility of them being tears of joy or anything like that, but I knew instinctively that right then wasn't the time to ask. I just but one hand on the back of his head, and the other carefully on his back and held him while he cried himself out, trying occasionally to calm him some by telling him things I thought would make him feel better like how tough and brave of a kid he was, in the most soothing voice I could muster.

He stopped crying surprisingly quickly, which gave me hope that if, as I expected, he was crying because I hurt him too much, at least maybe it wasn't too bad. Eventually I could feel him easing his grip on me, so I did the same, allowing him to lean back some, before looking up at me with tear stained eyes and saying,

"You can't really think I'm brave. Look… I'm crying like a stupid baby."

"I'm sure any other kid your age, or even ones a lot older than you taking that much pain would have started to cry long before you did." I reassured him, relieved to see that it brought a bit of a smile to his face.

"But I don't even know why I'm crying. I made it through the whole thing ok, but then I felt so relieved that it was over and you actually did it for me. I just know I'm not gonna end up in juvie now!"

"Well, I hope you're right." I said not yet really believing he was, but after seeing what he'd just put himself through, I wasn't a hundred percent sure anymore.

"I am." He said confidently, "But you gotta promise to give me at least a hundred just as hard those last ten if I get in trouble again."

"I don't know, they were pretty hard." I said, recalling how firmly I'd laid them on.

"But you gotta, or it won't work." He pleaded.

"Ok, I promise, but only if there's some proof that your idea is working," I said, feeling quite certain that would keep me from actually having to do it.

"It will, I just know it." He said with renewed confidence

"How's your back doing? It feels pretty hot, you want me to see if I can find something to put on it to cool it down?" I asked, having noticed that it had felt pretty warm when I was resting my hand on it.

"No, I don't wanna be any more trouble." He said sheepishly.

"No trouble at all. After all, I did it to you; the least I can do is try to make it a bit more comfortable for you now. Go see if there's anything you like on TV, while I see what I can find that might help."

I stopped at the linen closet on the way to the bathroom and picked out the softest hand towel I had. After wetting it with cool water in the sink I checked the medicine cabinet above it for something that might help. All I had that seemed like it might help was a big jar of clear green gel that I'd bought last summer for my first sunburn that I could remember getting since I was a kid. I knew it was quite soothing on sunburn and it had aloe in it, so I figured it was probably the best I had for the job at hand.

When I got to the living room he was standing in the middle of the room, with the remote in his hand watching the onscreen viewing guide. When he saw me, he asked,

"How long can I stay? There's a good movie starting soon."

"That's up to you." I said, "I don't have any plans made. When does your mom expect you home?"

"I dunno, she's got a new job or a new boyfriend or something, she's always gone all weekend lately, so it doesn't really matter when I go home, Sunday sometime maybe."

"Well, you're welcome to stay as long as you want." I said, for several reasons, not the least of which was I didn't really want him out and about with his back all welted up the way it was right then. I trusted him that he wouldn't show it to anybody, but what happened if he had an accident or something. The odds of it where low, but I still felt better if he stayed around until it at least faded some.

I sat down on one end of the sofa, and thought he would sit or lay beside me so I could tend to his back, but I had an admittedly not unpleasant surprise when he came over and lay right across my lap, stretching his arms out over the low arm of the sofa, the remote still clutched on one hand, ready for action.

"So, you wanna watch that movie? I hear it's real scary." He said as he squirmed a bit before finding a comfortable position and settling in.

"You like scary movies do you?" I asked.

"Yeah! They're my favorite. Sometimes, if they're really good I get that feeling I told you about some, but I know that they aren't real, and nothing's really going to happen to me, so I just get it a little bit."

If nothing else positive came from this night, at least I now realized that this feeling he'd tried to unsuccessfully to describe to me wasn't just an excuse as I'd wrongly thought. It seemed to be something much different from that, and possibly even the key to helping Ryan overcome his apparent addiction to trouble so I vowed to try to figure out more about it in the near future. Not now though, he'd been through enough for one night, so after warning him that it might be cold, I unwrapped the wet towel and gradually lowered it across his reddened back.

As the cool terrycloth made contact with more and more of his back he tensed and squirmed some, but once it had made full contact and warmed up for a few seconds he settled back down with a loud, happy sounding sigh.

"You like that do you?" I asked.

"Yeah, a little cold at first, but it feels awesome now." He said, sounding like he was thoroughly enjoying it.

Before long, the moisture was almost all gone, and what was left was warmed up enough that it wasn't doing much, so just before the movie started I asked,

"Is that enough, or should I wet it down for you again?"

"But then I'd have to move." Was all he gave as an answer.

I gently peeled back the towel, and was glad to see that while there where still lots of faint lines showing, most of the overall redness was gone. Setting the now just damp towel aside I picked up the jar of gel and holding it where I though he could see it asked,

"You want me to put on some of this stuff now?"

He seemed so relaxed that I don't think he even looked up at the jar, and there where no questions from him about what it was, would it sting, or what it would do, it seemed he just trusted my judgment and said.

"Sure."

"It might be cold again at first." I warned as I took a large dollop from the jar with my fingers and, setting it aside with one hand, moved the other toward the waiting back laying across my lap. He tensed again for a second, but quickly relaxed as I began slowly and gently spreading the gel over the worst looking parts of his back and sides. He was a little ticklish in spots, and would squirm sometimes when I ran my fingers over them, but other than that, he made no protests at all, and seemed to have no qualms at all about me touching him, in fact, when I did finally stop and lift my hand away, he pleaded,

"No…Please don't stop. It feels really good. I like it a lot!"

I wasn't about to complain, I liked it too. Even in it's current state the skin on his back felt amazing, and I was really enjoying gently running my hand over it, feeling its smoothness and all the muscle and bone structure beneath. I could easily do it all night. The only reason I'd tried to quit when I did was because I thought that too much contact might make him uncomfortable. After all, once the gel was spread and rubbed in I didn't really have a good reason to still be touching him the way I was, but either he was willing to allow me my little indulgence, or more likely, he was simply enjoying it every bit as much as I was.

Horror flicks where never my thing, so while he was absorbed in it, I started thinking about some of the things he'd done and said that night, hoping that something might give me a better idea of what made him act the way he did. Before that night, although I didn't think it could happen to someone so young, I thought there was a slight chance that he had a masochistic side to him, but seeing the look on his face while he was being whipped, I could tell he wasn't getting any pleasure from it at all.

Nothing else I could think of seemed to fit, so I turned my thoughts back to his mysterious feeling that he had tried to tell me about. He hadn't really been able to describe it well enough for me to understand, but he had mentioned how it got stronger and weaker, depending what he was doing or thinking about at the time, so I hit upon the idea of trying to have him make a graph of how intense it got when he was in different situations. It seemed like a good plan, and I really wanted to share it with him right then, but I could tell he was fully absorbed in his movie, which was by then nearing it's gory climax, so I didn't interrupt his enjoyment of it.

Toward the end of the movie, I'd looked at the screen once to see what all the screaming was about, and noticed one of those annoying "up next" lines at the bottom of the screen announcing that there was another horror film on after this one, so I wasn't too surprised when as the credits rolled for the first movie he looked up at me and asked,

"I really wanna see the next one too. Can I stay the night?"

"I guess, as long as you're sure that your mom won't worry about you."

"She probly won't even be there, and even if she was she wouldn't spect me to be there. Not on the weekend."

"Ok then, but can I get you to do something for me before the next movie starts, it won't take long."

"Sure. Anything." He said, looking up at me with a grin and a gleam in his eye that made me wonder just what he thought I was about to ask him to do.

"Well, the first thing you're going to have to do is get up!" I said, as I raised my hand off his back for the first time in two hours and brought it down playfully on his upturned butt.

"I'm gettin!" He said grumpily as he squirmed around some before eventually getting to his feet.

I told him to grab a spot at the kitchen table, while I scrounged up a sheet of paper and a pencil.

"Do you know what a line graph is?" I asked, as I pulled up a chair beside him.

"Yeah, we have to do them in school sometimes."

"Well, I want you to think back on some of the things you did today and make a graph of how strong the feeling was for each of them. Start on the left side of the page and draw a line towards the right as you tell me what you remember. If the feeling was weak, move the line lower, and if it was strong, move it higher. Do you think you can do that?"

"I guess so."

When he picked up the pencil. I noticed how sore his wrist looked and said, "It looks like we'd better put some of that gel on your wrists when we get back."

"Yeah, they do hurt a bit, but don't worry, if the marks don't go away I got some sweat bands at home I can wear til they do."

His line showing how strong his feeling was started out quite low, as he explained he wasn't feeling it much earlier in the day, but when he was at his appointment with me, and he thought I had agreed to whip him, it rose some, and continued to rise while he was buying the leather laces and rope and coming to see me. It dropped off sharply when I said I wouldn't, but then rose higher than ever when he finally got me to agree to it and we went downstairs where I tied him up.

Up to that point, there was nothing too unexpected, but I was surprised that when he started to actually get whipped, the line moved downward some, but spiked back up again when he asked for twenty more, and went right to the top of the page when he asked for the ten really hard ones at the end. It seemed that he always drew the line higher as he said he was asking for more to be done to him, and then lower again when it actually happened.

"After that, it mostly went away, but I felt really good. Better than ever." He summarized, having run out of paper to draw further.

"You did great. I think this will help me a lot." I said as I took the page from him and set it aside. At that point I was still far from understanding what he was feeling, but it seemed apparent that the anticipation was more important to him than the actual event, something I would have to explore as I tried to figure out what made him tick.

The rest of the weekend was pretty uneventful, we watched the second movie, and even though his back was, all things considered, looking pretty good, he still insisted that I put a bit more gel on it and rub it in "real good" all through the film. When it was over, I showed him to the spare bedroom and bid him goodnight before retiring to my own.

It wasn't until I was in bed myself that I fully realized just how much of an effect the previous few hours had had on me. I'd noticed, with some annoyance all night that I had been popping wood off and on like a horny teenager, but as I lay in bed, rehashing the day's events, the damn thing wouldn't go away, and when I finally decided to do something about it, the feelings and eventual outcome where far more intense than any previous time I could remember.

The amount of shame I felt immediately afterwards was massive, but I had to admit that I had really enjoyed having Ryan lying over my lap all night as I rubbed his bare back. Even the flogging that should have left me horrified, not only wasn't as hard to bring myself to do as I thought it would be, in retrospect, actually had me wondering if I didn't have a bit of a sadistic streak hidden deep within me that was only now being brought to light. It was only the memory of how content Ryan had seemed all night that allowed me to finally put the guilt aside long enough to get to sleep.

The next morning, his back was looking pretty good, with most of the marks having already faded into his tan, but he insisted on leaving his shirt off all day as he helped me out doing some odd jobs around the house. He was still a little scary with tools at first, but I found that with a little instruction he would quickly learn how to use them properly, and was actually quite good with his hands.

By the time he left on Sunday afternoon, though his wrists still had some discoloration, the rest of him had almost returned to normal. All that still showed where couple of small random spots where strands of the whip had happened to cross several times on different lashes, but even they where faint and looked more like the result of a normal childhood bump or scrape than the result of the whipping that had actually caused them.

Soon after he'd gone, I was quite surprised to find myself missing having him around. I'd been living on my own for a few years by then, and had never felt the need for companionship, but while conversations with Ryan had been, for the most part, somewhat juvenile in nature, it was really relaxing to talk with him. Unlike speaking to another adult, conversations with him were easy. He would simply say what was on his mind and I new that, for the most part, I could take it at face value. I didn't constantly have to translate what was being said into what was really meant like was always a necessity with mature participants.

I spent much of my free time the next week rehearsing in my mind what I would say to Ryan to explain why his idea hadn't worked out, and how to console him and get him back on track with the more regular routine. By the time Friday afternoon rolled around, I had it pretty well worked out.

It was almost time for Ryan's weekly appointment, and I knew his school and police reports would be waiting in the fax machine, but I dreaded picking them up and looking at them. At that point, I would have bet money that there would have been no noticeable improvement in his behavior, and I knew Ryan would be devastated that his idea hadn't worked out. When I did finally get up the nerve to go look, I was shocked by what I found.

While what the reports showed would have been enough to get most kids in serious trouble with their parents, for Ryan they where a huge improvement from normal. His teacher, while she couldn't bring herself to say anything positive about him, couldn't come up with a single specific example of anything he did that was bad. Usually she had no trouble finding at least ten or twenty events every week and dutifully reported each and every one of them in enough detail that I could tell she was enjoying every second of it.

His police report, that some weeks required a second or even third page to fit everything in, was a mere two items, the first of which, he supposedly did last Friday night. I realized right away that he was lying across my lap watching a movie and getting his back rubbed at the time, so I knew it was another false accusation. The other one however was a different story.

It seemed that just the afternoon before, probably on his was home from school; Ryan had come across an unattended freshly poured section of sidewalk. I had to admit that most kids would have at least some trouble passing on a tempting target like that, but for Ryan, it was apparently irresistible. He had just finished scratching his name into the still wet concrete when a patrol car happened by, catching him in the act.

I was still in a bit of shock by how good, for him at least, his report was, when the buzzer sounded announcing his arrival in the waiting area. While I was still unsure of it's long-term effectiveness, I had to admit, in the near term at least, his way seemed to be working for him much better than anything I'd managed to come up with so far.

"It looks like you had a pretty amazing week." I said as I let him into my office and he sat down in his usual spot.

All he did was grin sheepishly, and possibly blush a little, so I slid his school report across the desk for him to look at. By the time he'd read through it and slid it back to me, his grin had grown into a broad smile. He looked so proud of himself that I hated to bring him down, but knowing there I had little choice, I slid his police one to him, turning his smile into a frown almost instantly.

"I didn't do that." He protested after reading the first incident.

"I know that, but what about the second one, what happened there?" I asked.

"Well, I saw it there, and I knew I shouldn't do it and walked right by, but the feeling got real strong, and it sorta make me think that you wouldn't really give me a hundred like you said you would, so I went back, but if you really give it to me like you said, I'm sure it won't happen again." He explained nervously.

I doubt I'll ever know for sure whether that's really why he did it, or if it was just a way to put me into a position where I had little choice but to whip him again. Scam or not, I was left with no real alternative but to give him what he'd asked for like I'd promised. If I didn't, and he ended up in the juvenile system, it would be, in his mind, and I'm sure mine as well, my fault, and that's something that I'm sure I couldn't live with.

So I guess that means that I can expect a visitor again this weekend." I said after figuring out that I was somewhat trapped.

"What time?" he asked, his broad smile once again on his face.

"I've got to pick up a few things before I go home, but I shouldn't be too long, what do you feel like for supper tonight?"

"Whatever you want." He said, before adding, "What we had last time was good."

"Ok, I shouldn't be too long, probably an hour, maybe a little more."

"I'll be there" He promised, seeming much too cheerful about it all things considered.

"I guess that since I'm going to see you all weekend, there's not much sense keeping you here for your full hour, but try to stay out of trouble. I don't think your back is big enough to give two hundred on."

"Don't worry, I will. I don't think I'll ever get in trouble again now." He said as he left. It was a statement made with a degree of confidence that I wish I shared, but I was still hopeful that he was right.

After closing the office I walked the half block to the main street and began looking for… well… I wasn't really sure, but I knew that I needed something that he could use on his wrists instead of the bare ropes he'd had the last time.

Being a small town there weren't many choices in the way of stores, and certainly no kinky toy shops that would carry things that were made specifically for the purpose I had in mind. The hardware store had plenty of things that would work great for securing someone, but most would cause at least as much, probably even more damage than the ropes had.

I was beginning to lose hope, when I wandered into their pet department, and noticed their selection of dog collars, in particular, some very wide and strong looking ones that were definitely not designed with poodles in mind. There were some fancy studded ones that caught my eye, and they would have looked great on Ryan, but I quickly realized that the studs would make them really hard to shorten. I looked a little more and found two matching plain black ones that looked to be plenty wide enough not to dig into his skin, had heavy D rings intended for the leash to attach to and could easily be trimmed to the much shorter length I needed.

I thought it might seem weird buying two collars at once for such large dogs, and quickly came up with a lame, but plausible cover story, but as it turned out, the clerk seemed totally indifferent as he rang them up, took my money and bagged them for me.

I half expected Ryan to be waiting for me when I got home, but he wasn't. Even if he didn't show up, and I was sure he would, I still had to make supper, so I started to work defrosting another large foil tray of lasagna.

Before long, Ryan appeared at the back door that entered into the kitchen, and seeing me inside, came right in. He was carrying a large bag with him, prompting me to ask.

"What you got there?"

"I figured if I was going to stay here sometimes, I should keep a few clothes here if it's ok with you."

"Won't your mom wonder where your clothes disappeared to?" I asked, knowing that he didn't have many, so even a few would probably be missed.

"Naw, these are old ones that she was going to throw out anyhow, but I think there might be something I can still wear."

"Well, you're welcome to keep them here in your room."

"My room?" he asked, grinning as if he really liked the sound of that.

"Well, it's actually the guest bedroom, but since you're the only guest I ever seem to have, I guess that we can call it your room."

"Have I got time to put them away now?" he asked.

"Sure, supper will be another hour defrosting. Sort through them and we'll throw out what you can't use."

"When do I have to get the hundred?" He asked, suddenly sounding much more somber than he had.

"Not until later." I said. I'd figured out from his graph the previous week that his feeling seemed to thrive on anticipation, so I decided to drag it out and give him as much of it as I could.

He started in the direction of the stairs, but then stopped short and asked,

"You got any scissors?"

"Sure, but what do you need them for?"

"I got some old jeans in here." He said gesturing toward the bag he was carrying, "They're pretty beat up, but I though I could make some shorts with them."

"Here." I said as I handed him a heavy set of shears that I kept in the kitchen, "Be careful with them, they're really sharp."

"I will." He promised, "How high should I cut them?"

"I don't know. I guess that depends how sexy you want to look."

"Cool!" He said, with an evil grin that instantly made me regret my choice of words, but before I could say any more, he turned and ran, with scissors in hand, toward what now appeared to be his room. That one simple act told more about Ryan than I could fit into a full page of text.

Supper was taking care of itself, so while Ryan was putting his stuff away, I took the time to get out the dog collars and have a closer look at them. They seemed like they would shorten up without much difficulty, but I could see a potential problem under the buckles where there could be bare metal contacting his skin. With a bit of thought, and some experimentation, I decided that I could probably glue some of the extra leather that I would have to trim off the length onto the inside of the remaining loop and have it act as a flap to protect his wrists.

I was so intent on what I was doing that I didn't even know that Ryan had returned until he was directly across the table from me and I heard him ask.

"What are those for?"

He was shirtless again, as he had been for most of last weekend, and I could see that he had on a much tighter pair of jeans that I assumed where the new cutoffs, but the way he was standing, I could only see the top part of them that was showing over the top of the table.

"We'll have to modify them some first, but I thought we could put these on your wrists and tie the ropes to them so you wouldn't get marks there like last week."

"Cool, can I try them on?"

"Sure, I have to find out how much to cut off them anyhow." I said holding one beside me so he could come around and try it on.

When he cleared the edge of the table I almost dropped the collar I was holding. He must have cut out the front pockets, because if he hadn't, I'm sure that at least half of them would have been sticking out the new leg openings, and if he'd chopped them off any higher in the crotch, he would have made a skirt, not shorts. If shorter equaled sexier, he obviously wanted to look very, very sexy, which raised a whole new batch of questions in my mind.

My surprise must have been pretty obvious, and I'm sure it was anticipated, because almost immediately he held his hands out a bit from his sides to give me an unobstructed view as he slowly spun around to show the full effect before he cheekily asked.

"Do you like them?"

"Like them? They're positively obscene." I roared in laughter, grinning ear to ear, and hoping it wasn't looking too much like the leer it was. "I hope you don't plan on wearing those to school."

"No way! They're just for you."

Most of me may have been hoping that he'd just misspoken and actually meant that they would be for him to wear only here around the house, but there was a tiny part of me, that a week ago I didn't even realize existed, that hoped that he had conveyed it exactly the way he intended. Either way, I think we both blushed slightly right after he said it.

Our mutual embarrassment left us both eager to change the subject, so we quickly returned to the restraint fitting, and by the time supper was ready, we had both of them shortened with new holes punched into them and the extra flaps glued in with contact cement. He loved them and insisted on trying them on as soon as they were finished, not taking them off again until he was about to go home on Sunday.

I certainly wasn't about to make him take them off. When I bought them, even though they weren't really expensive, they seemed like a bit of a waste of money. As far as I knew they would probably only be used once, but seeing him all weekend wearing nothing but them and his super short shorts was something that made it well worth it.

While we were eating supper, I learned that the now modified collars would be getting much more use than I had anticipated.

Ryan knew that I was interested in his mysterious feeling, and surprised me by telling me that he had tried to keep track of how strong it was at different times throughout the week. As he told me how it had felt while he had done different things, I compared it to how I expected it would be, and the two matched reasonably well, making me hopeful that I was getting closer to figuring him out a little better, but one thing about his whole scheme still bothered me so I asked him,

"I can see how knowing you would get whipped for it might help to keep you from getting into trouble, but how do you plan on keeping your feeling satisfied?"

He looked like he was deep in thought, but there was something that told me it was just an act. Whatever his answer was going to be, he already had figured out, and because he felt the need to appear innocent about it, I knew he must have thought I wouldn't like it. After a few minutes of faux thought, followed by a look of equally artificial inspiration he tentatively said,

"I guess, if it's alright with you, I could come over every weekend and you could do something to me. I think that would do it."

I was shocked, but admittedly not as upset as I would have been if he hadn't prepared me for the worst with the act that he'd just put on for my benefit.

"So you want me to have you come over every weekend and whip you." I asked, not too happy about the prospect, but not really angry with him. After all, he was just trying to get what he wanted, or possibly even needed. I was disappointed more at myself for getting outmaneuvered again by a preteen, even if it was one who I was rapidly learning was much more clever than I had given him credit for.

"I guess it wouldn't have to be whipping every time, it could be anything that hurt or any kind of stuff that was real hard or scary to do. If I didn't know how bad it was going to be, I think it would give me the same feeling." He said, beginning what I was sure was a well-planned, pre-prepared argument.

My recent track record for winning debates with him was dismal at best, so given the fact that doing it to him wasn't nearly as horrible I thought it would be, and I really did like having him around, I decided that rather than have a long argument that I would probably lose anyhow, I just said,

"Ok, I'll do it for you."

At that moment he reminded me of a telemarketer or salesman when you say something unexpected that throws them off their well rehearsed shtick. The confidence he'd had when he started his pitch disappeared, and he was at such a loss for words, all he could come up with was an astonished sounding,

"Really?"

"Yes really!" I said, and while I still had the rare upper hand, I added, "But you have to promise to keep trying the other ways we talked about. I found out last weekend that I really like having you around, but I don't know if I want to spend every weekend for the rest of my life with you."

"I promise." He said, and then I'm sure he reverted back to part of his prepared script and added, "It don't have to be every weekend, as long as I don't know before."

"You got any more of these surprises in store for me?" I asked as we started to clear the table.

"A few," He admitted, giving me an evil grin, "But they're a different kind, I think you'll like them better."

"Like what?" I asked, not really sure he would tell me, and equally unsure if I actually wanted to know.

"Like this." He said, as he stepped directly in front of me and putting his arms around me, gave me a hug that I gladly returned.

"I guess I can handle that kind of surprise." I said as he backed away.

"That's good, cause there's lots more where that came from." He said cockily.

"You going to give me the hundred now?" He asked nervously as I put my leftovers into the fridge.

I wanted to make him wait as long as possible, to let the anticipation build, but at the same time, I wanted to leave as much time as I could for the marks to fade, but we were ahead of schedule from the week before, so I said,

"Not yet. It's a nice day out, what do you say we catch some rays before the backyard gets shaded."

He seemed disappointed by the delay, but I could also tell that making him wait was having its desired effect on him.

"Ok I guess." He said, said in a somewhat agitated tone.

"Look at it this way, the more of a tan you get, the quicker the marks on your back will disappear, so I'll be able to give you even more." I said, successfully making it sound like a much better idea to him.

"Ok" He said again, in a much more cheerful tone.

"I put the furniture out last week. You go get started and I'll change and meet you out there."

I would have been concerned about having a boy out in my yard with such revealing cutoffs; but one of the advantages of buying an older house was that a combination of tall fences and dense mature hedges surrounded the backyard making it totally private back there.

I opted for cutoffs too, and although I'd always thought the pair I chose to put on to be reasonably short, compared to his, they looked downright prudish. Once changed, I stopped to check myself out in the mirror. I may not eat all the healthiest foods, but not owning a car and walking all the time kept me in far better than average shape for someone about to turn thirty as I was, and I thought that my inherited near total lack of chest hair made me look even younger. I couldn't help but cringe when halfway down the stairs I realized that I had just been critiquing myself to decide if I looked good enough for a not yet twelve-year-old boy.

He had moved one of the resin chaise lounges into the sun for himself, and had its twin placed in an equally sunny spot right beside him. I wasn't a bit surprised that he was laying face down, tanning his back, but what did surprise me, was that even with his new cutoffs, that were so short that the lower part of his butt cheeks were visible, he didn't appear to have a tan line. When he saw me beside him he looked up and asked,

"So… what time are we going to do it?"

"As soon as the sun is blocked out by the hedge." I said, knowing that it would take about a half hour, and also give him a good visual countdown to build his feeling of anxiety, or whatever it was, that he seemed to need so much. If anything, it worked too well, and he was getting a little too agitated, so to make conversation and help take his mind off it I asked him.

"How do you manage to get such a good tan so early? Spring isn't even half over yet."

"I tan real fast." He said, "And the roof on our building is flat and there's like a low wall around it that stops the wind and makes it so nobody can see you. Nobody ever goes there so I go up there a lot, just to be alone and think. If it's warm enough, I take off some of my clothes and get some sun too."

"I think you must take them all off, because I don't see a tan line, even with your new shorts." I said before asking. "Isn't it still a little chilly up there this time of year?"

"It always seems warmer up there. At first I thought it was because it was closer to the sun, but our teacher said once that black heats up faster so I guess that's why, cause the roof's black." He said, answering my question first before adding, "I tried taking everything off once, but I was afraid I'd fall asleep and get a sunburn where I was whiter so I usually keep at least my undies on. Mom worked at some store for a while, til she got fired, and they had all these really small ones that wouldn't sell no how and they were going to throw them out so she brought home boxes of them and makes me wear them."

"If she has to make you wear them, they must be really tiny." I said, thinking that with the way he's cut off the jeans, he wasn't exactly what you would call bashful.

"They are, but mom says it's them or nuthin." He admitted, "I'll show them to you some time. I'm just glad I don't have to take gym no more."

I knew that the Phys. Ed. teacher had declared Ryan too rambunctious for gym, and made him stop going before he hurt himself, or I'm sure much more of a concern to him, accidentally hurt one of his classmates.

My back yard was actually quite sunny in the summer, considering how private it was, but still being spring, the lower sun was soon casting shadows of the hedges on us and it was time to give Ryan his first punishment for getting into trouble. For a couple of reasons I hoped it was also his last. It seemed that I was still going to have to do similar things to him, at least until I found a working alternative, but it wouldn't be anything predetermined, leaving me more flexibility to quit whatever I was doing to him whenever I thought he'd had enough to satisfy his need. More significantly, he was fast running out of time before he became old enough to get caught up in the juvenile system, and before long, any run in with the law might well put him there.

Considering what he knew was coming, I was impressed how incredibly brave he was when the time came and he made his way back into the house, down to the basement, and stood with his arms up, waiting for me to tie the new wrist cuffs to the ropes that where still hanging there from the previous week. As soon as he was secured I saw him testing the modified collars, pulling down hard on them, apparently testing them for both strength and comfort.

"Do those work better?" I asked.

"A lot better!" he said, and then to prove his point, he bent his legs until his tied feet came right off the floor, unwittingly giving me my first idea for a future non whipping ordeal for him. He hung by his wrists for several seconds before regaining his footing and stating,

"They hardly hurt at all!"

"That's good, but I'm afraid that this still will." I said as I picked up his whip.

"That's ok, give it to me good." He said, sounding much braver than I think he actually felt right then.

I still had a reasonably good recollection of how I had swung the whip for the last ten the previous week that I was supposed to be duplicating, but knowing I wouldn't have it exactly right, I erred on the side of caution and started out with what I knew were slightly softer lashes, but within five or six strokes, I could tell from his reaction that I had it about right. He took them about the same as he had the last time, occasionally bowing his back one way or another and almost continuously flexing his muscles by pulling down hard on the ropes. He was fighting the pain, but never trying to escape it.

By the time he had taken the first fifty both his back and sides where welted up enough that I was running out of clear skin to land the tails on. When they did overlap, I could see that they hurt him considerably more, so I decided to pause for a few minutes, let him catch his breath, and hopefully forget enough about how hard each lash had felt that I could take a bit of the last fifty without him noticing. It seemed to work, because when I started up again, even though he was probably feeling as much or more pain than he had from the earliest lashes, I was actually hitting him considerably easier.

It was while he was twitching and straining under those last fifty lashes that I came up with a plan that might help me understand him a little better. If it was anticipation of bad things to come that drove him to this, then that was what I was going to give him.

I was keeping careful count, and he must have been too, because when the hundredth lash finally bit into his lower back, he bowed forward for a second, as he often did when they landed there, but instead of returning to his standing position, he let his knees give out and hung from his wrists, exhausted, and no doubt glad the ordeal was over. He hung there for almost a minute before standing up again and waiting for me to untie him.

Rather than doing as he expected, I put my own plan into action. Stepping closer to him so I could better see his reaction, I began gently rubbing his back as I said,

"That was the hundred for getting in trouble, but I think you should get at least another fifty for thinking I wouldn't do this to you when I promised you that I would. After all, don't you think that's just like you calling me a liar?"

The look of surprise and fear on his face when it snapped up and he looked at me was almost enough to make me call off my plan, but almost instantly his look of terror turned to one of shame as he realized that he had at least implied that I had lied to him, and he nodded his head in agreement.

"I'll let you have a break for a few minutes before we start, but since your back and sides are so red, I guess you'll have to take these ones on your chest and stomach, but don't worry, I'll make sure that they're just as hard as the ones on your back."

He shot me the look of terror again, but like before, it almost instantly faded, and with more resolve than I thought humanly possible, he just nodded his head a couple of times before letting it drop down, showing his reluctant acceptance of what I had proposed.

I left him alone with his thoughts, and went upstairs for almost ten minutes, just to add to the suspense for him, and when I returned he was still standing head down, just as I'd left him.

"Ready?" I asked as I picked up the whip again.

He nodded just once and let his head drop again.

"You might want to raise your head up so I don't get your face." I suggested and he brought it up so he was looking straight ahead.

I raised the whip much higher and more menacingly than necessary, allowing the tails to disappear behind my shoulder for a moment before letting go of it, and swinging my then empty hand toward his unprotected, but tightly flexed stomach at full speed Had I still been holding the whip, it would have surely drawn blood, and lots of it.

When he saw how fast my arm was swinging Ryan slammed his eyes shut and cringed as he tightened up his muscles so much that I think he may have actually lifted his feet of the floor. About a second after the blinding stripes of pain he was expecting didn't come, he relaxed his face slightly and peeked with one eye first, before daring to open both, and look up at me. In the moments that followed I think I saw every emotion possible on his face as he tried to figure out what had just happened.

"Don't worry, you're all done. I'm not going to give you any on your front side today. Next time though…" I said, letting him know he was finished for now, but leaving the door open to possibly do it in the future.

The knots holding the ropes to the D rings had tightened up even worse than they had the week before. I had to cut them again, leaving them even shorter, and making me realize that since it seemed we were going to be doing more of this, I was going to have to come up with something better to use.

As soon as he was free, I wasn't too surprised to get another hug, but the way he did it was a bit of a shock. Rather than just hugging me around the waist as he had last time, he jumped up, wrapping his legs around my waist, and his arms around my neck, leaving me little choice but to support him with both hands on his semi clad butt. He wasn't finished with the surprises just yet though, and as soon as he knew I had a hold of him and wasn't going to drop him, his next one came in the form of a kiss.

The way he tended to show affection by giving hugs so freely, a little peck on the cheek may not have been too unexpected, even a quick kiss on the lips, but this was neither. It was a full on, tilted head, eyes closed, open mouth, lip crushing, tongue darting kind of kiss, and while I could tell by the awkwardness of how he was doing it that he probably hadn't actually done it before, he definitely knew what it was that he was trying to do.

"Where did you learn how to do that?" I asked, when he finally gave me back control of my mouth.

"I heard some of older kids talking about it, so I though I'd try it."

I knew that he often hung around with older kids late at night after his friends that were more his own age had to go home, and had assumed that that was where he came up with some of the ways he got into trouble, but it seemed that an education in petty crime wasn't the only thing he was picking up from them.

"Did you like it? Did I do it right?" He asked with an anxious look as he waited impatiently for my reaction and evaluation.

"It was quite a surprise, but it was pretty good." I said, understating the initial shock, and overstating his talents slightly, but not wanting to embarrass him over his lack of skill at it.

"See, I told you." He said smugly.

"Told me what?" I asked.

"That most of the surprises I got left are ones I think you'll like." He said, grinning.

'What other surprises am I in for?' I thought to myself, with a mix of excitement, tempered with more than a little anxiety and apprehension.

It seemed that the horror double feature was a weekly thing, so naturally he wanted to do it again. Aside from the fact that he was now wearing nothing but wrist cuffs, and a remarkably short, tight pair of cutoffs the first feature went pretty much the same as the week before. I sat with him face down across my lap, him watching the film, and me tending to his back. When the credits for the film finally started to roll, he rolled over slightly and said,

"If you want me to do another graph, you're going to need a lot higher paper."

"Why's that" I asked, once I figured out what he meant.

"Cause when you said you were going to do my front, and then left me there…one piece of paper isn't high enough to show how it felt."

"You'd better watch out, I think I'm finally starting to figure out what makes you tick." I said, trying to sound as sinister as one of the villains in his movies, but smiling enough that he would know it wasn't any kind of a threat.

"I figured out it wouldn't be all bad though." He said defiantly.

"How's that?" I asked.

"Well, if you whipped my front, then you'd have to rub me there too." He said with a grin.

"Did you ever think of just asking?" I asked, having been more than willing, but afraid of making him feel uncomfortable.

He still didn't ask, but at that point he knew he didn't really have to. He just squirmed around and rolled over, and after a few adjustments so he was comfortable, but could see still see the television, he settled in to watch the next movie as I slowly ran my hand over his chest and stomach. When it was over we once again went to our separate rooms for the night, but not before he laid another of his open mouthed kisses on me, although this time he seemed much less nervous and far more relaxed about it, actually doing pretty good job of it.

It was the following morning that I finally got onto the right track to figuring him out a little better, and it came more by accident than by any great skill on my part. We had just got up, and I was in the kitchen getting ready to start some breakfast for us when I heard him call to me from the living room, where he was channel hopping,

"Awesome! Come here! You gotta see this!"

"This" as it turned out, was a semi-documentary story, being used as filler on one of the local stations that was showing and discussing a new fad that they called extreme sports, or more accurately, they spelled it Xtreme sports. There wasn't really much new about any of the particular disciplines themselves, most had been around for years, but they were now being taken to higher levels, and being grouped together under this new label.

The activities themselves, while sometimes amazing, didn't really interest me too much, but what did, was Ryan's reaction to them. As the show progressed, I kept hearing the participants being referred to "adrenalin junkies", and I began to realize that the term probably described Ryan, who was almost drooling with envy as he watched the dangerous looking stunts, better than anything else I'd managed to come up with.

While I had been under the mistaken belief that he may have been something of a masochist, I had done some research on the subject, and had learned that the conventional wisdom was that masochists metabolized the endorphins caused by pain differently than others, making it something that they craved instead of avoided. I began to wonder if Ryan didn't have something similar happening inside, but rather than endorphins, it was the adrenalin caused by fear of bad things to come, that made him get into trouble and do dangerous and painful things.

Possibly the only difference between Ryan, the little troublemaker, and these superstars of Xtreme sports was that their greater age and finances allowed them to find less destructive and illegal outlets to give them their adrenalin "fixes", while Ryan had to get his the only way he knew, and could afford. At that point, it was just a theory, but it certainly seemed plausible and at the very least, worth trying to find ways to investigate it further.

All through breakfast, Ryan couldn't stop talking about the show, and while he seemed to want to try all of it, he kept coming back to the bicycle stunts that he had seen, probably because he could relate to it better than jumping off a bridge with either a parachute or glorified rubber band as the only thing to save you.

"Can you even ride a bike?" I asked as we were finishing up, having never seen him on one.

"Yeah, sure, mom bought me a couple, but she always got the cheapest ones she could find, and they broke real easy. Now she won't even talk about buying another one."

"Oh?" I said, thinking that even the cheapest bikes should hold up reasonably well if they weren't abused too much, "Are you sure you weren't a little hard on them."

"Well, maybe a little." He said guiltily, as he seemed to be thinking over the demise of each in his mind. "But I didn't do nothing worse than those guys on TV, and theirs didn't break."

"So…. What are we going to do today?" He asked cheerfully as we finished putting things away after breakfast.

"I don't know, what do you want to do?" I asked, having nothing pressing on my agenda.

"Maybe we can make something again." He said.

He had liked helping me in the workshop part of the basement the week before, and I admit that I enjoyed teaching him how to use the various tools, even though he was a bit scary with them at first.

"What do you want to make?" I asked.

"I dunno, how about something we can use when you do stuff to me?"

"Like what? I asked, not sure at all what he had in mind.

He thought for a moment before saying, "How about one of those wood things with the holes in it for locking people up, maybe we can make one for my legs so you don't have to tie them together every time."

It took me a while to figure out what he meant, but I eventually decided he meant stocks

"We can do that if you want." I said after thinking what was involved. I would have to pick up some hardware, but I knew I had a heavy piece of leftover hardwood that would be perfect for the job.

I wanted it to be as much of a learning experience for him as possible, so I only helped occasionally as he measured his ankles and laid them out on the centerline of the thick plank, before deciding to add a third hole for his neck in the center. I'd show him how to do each step, and once he seemed to have it under control, I'd start getting the tools ready for the next, and before long, he had the holes jig-sawed out, and the sharp edges rounded over with the router.

Leaving him alone to sand and file the holes smooth before we ripped it down the center to make the two halves, I headed off again to the hardware store, for a hinge and hasp to complete the project. While there I looked around for something to replace the ropes we'd been using that had been cut enough times that they were probably too short to use again. Eventually I found some plated chain that would work well and bought more than enough to do the job. It was much heavier than it needed to be, but the lighter types didn't have true links, and looked far less ominous than the one I bought.

He'd asked for a lock for the hasp on the stock he was making, but rather than buy just one, I found a four pack that were keyed alike, and bought it instead, giving me some to lock his shortened wrist collars to the new chains. Having not seen the clerk who had looked after me the previous day, I quickly ducked into the pet section and got the wide studded collar, thinking that the way Ryan liked the wrist ones, and hadn't taken them off since we finished modifying them, he might like one for his neck too. If he did, I knew it would look really hot on him, and it was the vision of him wearing it that made my trip home, that normally would have been quite a chore with the weight of all that chain and padlocks, seem like nothing.

It may have seemed like a bad idea to leave a felon in training like Ryan alone in my home, but all the times he was ever there, I never found a single thing missing, and more than once he even scolded me for what he considered was my bad habit of leaving money laying around.

He had the holes well smoothed out when I got there, so, not being ready to trust him with the table saw yet, I ripped the plank in two, and helped him to attach the hardware I'd bought. Considering how little time it took him to make, it turned out pretty well, a little snug on his ankles, but still tight enough to not allow his wrists to slip through when it was locked around his neck. He was justifiably proud of himself, and eager to try making other things.

As with most things, he thought the chains and padlocks were "awesome!" and commented that they were "Just like in a real dungeon." which it seemed at least part of my basement was rapidly turning into. I really should have bought a new hacksaw blade while I was at the hardware store, but he didn't seem to mind that it took probably twice as many strokes for him to hack his way through the links we had marked to give us the right lengths to replace the ropes.

Naturally, for Ryan at least, he wanted to try out the whole ensemble, so I helped him replace his wrist cuffs that he had briefly removed to try the stocks on, and locked them slightly higher than usual on the new chains. By the time he spread his feet far enough that I could close and lock his new stock around his ankles, he was stretched out quite tightly, with just his toes touching the floor. For several seconds he squirmed around, trying to find even a little slack, but eventually gave up having found almost none.

"This is really tight! You could do anything to me, and I wouldn't be able to stop you." He said, the last part more of a taunt than a simple statement.

Although I was sure that he'd felt much more pain last night than the week before, his back looked far better then it had then. I had corrected many of my mistakes from the first time, most notably, I had tried, and for the most part succeeded, in spreading the lashes around more and didn't have the tell tail welts where several lashes had landed in the same place. Even so, whipping him on Saturday afternoon, just twenty-four hours before he went back home didn't seem like a very smart idea.

I realized then that if this was going to keep happening, as it seemed it was, I would have to learn some new things to do to him other than just whippings. As I hadn't yet, I decided to just play around with him some, after all, if I was right about him, the thought of what might happen was equally or possibly even more powerful to him than the actual event.

"I guess I could, couldn't I." I said, as for added effect, I lightly ran a fingernail down the center of his back, all the way from his hairline to the top of his shorts.

"Your back doesn't look too bad today, maybe I should give you another hundred there, maybe even try two or three."

When I said that, I could see him tense up, and shudder slightly, but he didn't say a word to try to change my mind, so I continued to torment him.

"I guess that three hundred would be too many for just your back." I said, as I stepped forward, reached around his waist, and as clumsily as possible, tried, and after much longer than necessary succeeded in undoing the button on his shorts before adding "Maybe I should drop your shorts so I can whip you all the way down.

He had wiggled around a bit more, trying in vain to keep my hands off the button, but again made no vocal complaint about the idea, so leaving them unbuttoned, but still in place, I moved around to the front of him to continue my verbal assault.

I have to admit that from the first time I saw them, I was attracted to his nipples, so naturally, they became my next faux target for abuse. They weren't the translucent little boy nipples that so many kids seem to have. These were fully formed slightly smaller versions of older teen nipples that even on his nicely tanned chest were impossible not to notice. If they were any bigger, they would have looked out of place, but as they were, they were perfect for him.

Taking one between each of my thumbs and forefingers I slowly began rolling them, not enough to cause him any great amount of pain, just enough to let him know that the potential was there.

"I could even see how hard of a punch in the gut you can take." I threatened as I released his nipples, causing him to instantly tighten up his stomach muscles so much, that I didn't even bother to fake a punch. I'm sure that by that point he was pretty sure that I wasn't actually going to do anything too serious to him, so I decided to end it by saying,

"Maybe I'll just tickle torture you."

From rubbing the gel on him, I knew he wasn't particularly ticklish, but being tied and helpless, with is arms raised over his head, left him vulnerable, and before long, he was giggling uncontrollably, and squealing,

"Stop! Stop! I gotta pee!"

I carried on as long as I dared, not really wanting to have to mop the basement floor two weeks in a row, and when I thought he couldn't hold out any longer, I finally stopped. I took my time unlocking the stocks on his ankles, and let him dance around, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as I intentionally fumbled with the locks on his wrist cuffs. As soon as the final lock unsnapped, he took off up the stairs, as fast as his legs would carry him, which with all the practice he got running from the cops, was pretty impressive.

He took longer than I thought he would, and at first I thought that maybe I'd gone too far and he had to change his clothes or something, but he was still wearing the same shorts, and rather than complaining to me for making him pee himself, he just asked,

"Can we make some more stuff?"

"Sure." I said, happy to see that he seemed to enjoy using his hands to build things. "What do you have in mind?"

"How about one of those stretchy things?" He asked, quickly enough that I knew he had already been thinking about it.

"I don't think we can, they need a special kind of rubber band to make them, and if it isn't strong enough… well, it wouldn't be pretty." I said, thinking that he wanted to make one of those bungee jumping outfits we'd seen on TV earlier.

He looked at me like I was from another planet for a few seconds, before figuring out what I was talking about, and clarifying,

"No, not one of those! The things they have in movies, you know, for stretching people on."

"Oh, a rack." I said, relieved that we were both finally talking about the same thing, "Yeah, we could probably make something that would work, but I'll need a little time to come up with a plan."

"Cool, maybe we can make one next weekend."

"Yeah, I think I should come up with some ideas by then." I said, mentally adding it to my growing list of things to learn more about that week. "We'd better clean up our mess from this week first though."

I'd forgotten all about the collar I'd bought him, until, as we were cleaning up the shop, he picked up the bags from the hardware store and was about to throw them out when he noticed the extra weight, and took a look inside.

"What's this for?" He asked, holding it up for me to see.

"I got it for you at the store, I thought you might like it." I said, beginning to think it was a bad idea as he frowned some and wrinkled up his nose as he inspected it closer.

"I don't know." He said as he looked it over, "Those steel things look like they'll really hurt bad."

"It's not to hit you with, it's for you to wear!" I said, bringing an instant look of relief to his face. "I thought it would look good around your neck, you know, to go with your wrist ones that you never seem to take off."

"Cool, try it on me." He asked excitedly, handing it to me and stretching out his neck for me to buckle it onto.

It fit and looked as good as I thought it would. I didn't even have to punch a new hole in the tongue of it, as the shortest one was just about perfect for him, leaving it snug enough to make him hold his head up a little straighter than normal, but with plenty of room to allow unobstructed blood flow and let him breathe normally. All I did was trim the excess so it wouldn't be flopping around all the time.

As soon as I had it trimmed and back onto him with the large D ring turned to the front, he bolted upstairs again to see how it looked. I could hear the loud "Awesome!" all the way in the basement. The shop was looking pretty good by then, so I shut off the lights and went upstairs. At the top of the stairs, I was met by one very happy boy, and was treated to another one of his jumping hugs, as well as one of his kisses, which by then, he was getting pretty good at.

"You like it do you?" I asked rhetorically when he finally let me come up for air.

"It's awesome! It's kinda like the collars they put on the slaves in a movie I saw once."

I really hadn't had any other reasons for getting it for him, other than the fact that I thought he'd probably like it, and it would look really good on him, but he seemed eager to attach more significance to it than that, saying,

"I guess that whenever I have this on, I'm gonna be kinda like your slave, and you can make me do anything."

There was that word 'anything' again. It wasn't the word itself that was troubling to me, it was the way he said it. While the first time he had used it, I thought he was just being naive, and didn't have a clue just what 'anything' could entail, after his first open mouth kiss, I began to seriously wonder just what he really had in mind whenever he used it.

Chapter 2

It did seem like many of the male tortures centered on their genitals, so I ignored those ones. For now at least, despite running around the house all weekend with as little clothing as you can wear without being naked, Ryan didn't seem prepared to go any farther, and I wasn't about to ask him to.

"Xtreme sports" and "adrenaline junkies" turned up even more Web-rings, but most concentrated more on the various skills and tricks than the psychology behind it that I was looking for. Whenever I did come across anything about how the participants felt about the stunts they did, and once I figured out more or less what words like "gnarly" and "stoked" meant, their mind-set did seem to match Ryan's feelings of challenging and conquering fear that led him to do the things he did.

Much of my spare time that week was spent picking up and modifying everyday items to use on Ryan. I even managed to come up with a preliminary plan for the rack he wanted us to make. I had built a heavy duty, and just plain heavy, Cyprus wood chaise lounge for my patio, before the much more comfortable, and far easier to bring inside for the winter resin ones had come along. With a little modification, I though it would be almost perfect for what he had in mind.

I thought that an old blade from my table saw would work well for the latching mechanism, so, being not quite ready to let Ryan loose on my lathe yet, I went ahead and turned a cylinder for the stretching ropes just slightly smaller in diameter than the lowest point on the teeth. He was becoming competent enough with most of my other tools, so I left the rest for us to do together.

When Friday afternoon finally rolled around, I was far less apprehensive as I retrieved Ryan's reports from the fax machine. He hadn't completed some of his homework, but he hadn't caused any trouble at all in school. Even his police report was blank, I'm sure helped at least partly by the call I'd made to the chief complaining about the charges that had been made against Ryan the weekend before when he was with me. I had a viable story ready just in case it was needed, but he never asked what Ryan was doing with me, and I sure wasn't about to tell him.

At that time, when his behavior improved so quickly, I was worried that his teachers and the police would question his amazing turnaround, but as it turned out, I didn't have to worry at all. Both groups were far too busy taking credit for it, which was fine by me. Not only did it have the obvious advantage of them not asking questions, there was the added bonus of making them much more willing to forgive Ryan and far more interested in seeing him succeed. They stopped automatically blaming him for everything that they couldn't find the real culprit for, causing the unwarranted complaints, bad reports, and accusations from them to cease much quicker than I think they would have otherwise.

I could tell by his extra cheerful attitude when he arrived that he knew he had done well, so I didn't even bother to show him the reports, I just said,

"You did a great job of keeping out of trouble this week."

"Yeah, I know." He said with a smug look, and then quickly becoming concerned he added, "You're still going to do something to me this weekend, right?"

"You bet! I've got lots of nasty things planned for you."

"Like what?" He asked.

"Like your homework. I want you to bring it along. I'll help you with it if you need me to."

"Ok, I will, if I can still get into the school to get it.." He promised, "But we're still gonna do other stuff too right?"

"Unlike you, I did my homework this week," I said, unable to resist one last barb on the subject. "And I came up with a few new ideas I think you'll like, or more likely hate, if you catch my drift."

"Like what?" He asked, sounding both excited, and at the same time a bit unsure if he really wanted to know.

"It's a secret." I said in my most defiant tone, trying to let him know that he would have to wait to find out, and knowing that the suspense would be good for him.

"Well I might have a surprise for you too." He said in a mock pout.

"Oh? What is it?" I asked innocently, knowing full well that he wouldn't tell me, but giving him the chance to have his revenge.

"It's a secret!" He said, in exactly the tone of voice I knew he would, before softening it considerably and adding. "But I think you'll really like it."

I let him go early again so that hopefully he could make it back to the school before it was locked up for the weekend, and after closing up the office, I made my way home. He showed up not much later, carrying a backpack that looked like it had spent most, if not all of the school year crumpled up in the bottom of his locker.

All through the time we were preparing and eating supper, he kept quizzing me about the new things I was going to do to him, but I wouldn't get into anything specific with him. All I would tell him was that it would be really hard, making it sound as bad as I dared, trying to give him the maximum amount of dread without going too far and having him too scared to go through with it.

By the time we were finished, he was pretty anxious, so I didn't make him wait any longer. It worked out well, because while what I had in mind for him wouldn't physically be as painful as what he had gone through the week before, it would be quite a bit more time consuming, and I'm sure he wouldn't want to miss the beginning of his movies.

The new things we had made the week before worked well, and in no time he was stretched out in his usual standing spread-eagle position. I knew he was going to be there for quite a while this time, so I locked his wrists slightly lower on the chains, allowing him a bit more slack. He could stand flat-footed, but he still wasn't going far.

"What's that?" He asked as I brought out my first surprise of the weekend and showed it to him.

"A blindfold." I said. I'd bought yet another dog collar, this time a much longer but thinner one, and using some of the leftover leather from the earlier collars, I'd made what I hoped would be a very effective blindfold for him.

It worked as well as I'd hoped, and in no time, with no resistance from him, I had it snugly buckled around his head, leaving him totally blind to what was going on around him.

"Now what?" He asked, obviously not really seeing the point to it all.

"Now I'm going to whip you, but unlike the other times, you aren't going to know when or where I'm going to do it. They could land anywhere, and might be a second apart, or several minutes. They could be hard ones, or they could be easy ones, you won't know until you actually feel them." I explained, adding a light lash across his bare back for emphasis, which brought a surprised yelp from him.

For a little over an hour we battled one another, him trying to anticipate what was coming, and me doing my best to catch him off guard, and for once, I seemed to be winning, although I'll admit that the deck was severely stacked in my favor. Not only was almost his entire body bare for the lash, and I could vary the timing and strength of the lashes to whatever I wanted, I had the advantage of being able to watch him. I could tell what he was anticipating by how he would flex and bow his body to prepare for what he thought was coming, and would naturally deliver either something completely different, or wait until he relaxed again before giving him the next one.

His front side, that I hadn't ever whipped before got a good bit of attention this time, and I would often five him a lash across his stomach or chest whenever he bowed too far forward anticipating a lash on his back. His bare legs also got an occasional taste of the lash, and while not overly responsive, I did notice that his inner thighs were extremely sensitive. They were quite hard to hit in the position he was, but I did make a mental note to possibly try it in the future sometime when his legs were spread wider.

Eventually, he seemed to just give up, and as much as humanly possible, quit trying to anticipate and avoid what was coming. In doing so, he got about as much if a victory as was possible for him, as it took almost all of the fun out of it for me.

I had other plans for him later that night, so I decided to quit with the blindfolded whipping soon after he had given up trying to anticipate, but rather then release him as I normally did, I unlocked his wrist cuffs from the chains, and then padlocked them together to the large D ring in his collar that I had rotated so that it was behind his neck before undoing the stock and finally removing the blindfold.

"How was that?" I asked him once he was as free as he would get for a while.

"Awful, but not too bad I guess." He said before asking, "Did I miss the movie?"

"No, there's still about half an hour before the first one starts." I said, after checking my watch to make sure.

"Wow, it seemed like I was getting it for hours. I thought for sure I was missing them."

"No, I know better than that." I said.

"What's with this?" he asked, gesturing with his head towards his elbows that were forced upwards and to the sides by the position his wrists were locked in.

"I told you… I did my homework, and I've got a new idea I want to try, but you can do it while you're watching TV."

I followed close behind him as we went back up the stairs, not wanting him to lose his balance and fall backwards with his arms locked the way they were. Once we were in the living room and settled on the sofa he asked.

"So, what are you going to do to me now?"

"Nothing right at the moment." I said, "But when the first movie is over, I thought you might like to try these."

I picked up a pair of plastic spring clothespins from the coffee table and showed them to him. It didn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out that they where going to be pinching him somewhere, but just where was a little more uncertain so he asked.

"Where are you going to put those on me?"

"One is going here." I said, touching his defenseless right nipple, and then brushing the left one I added, "And the other one goes here."

"No way! That'll really hurt won't it?"

"Yeah, it'll probably be quite painful, but I'm sure you can take it." I answered.

"Oh man. Do I have to?" He whined.

"No, of course not, I'll only put them on you if you ask me to."

"And what happens if I don't?" He asked, knowing that there had to be some kind of a catch.

"Nothing will happen. There won't be any kind of a penalty at all." I said, "I'll just know you aren't quite as brave as I thought you were."

It was a rotten trick on my part, but I think that as soon as I said it he realized that no matter how painful it might be, he would be asking me to put them onto him at the intermission between the two movies.

"I'll think about it." He said, as the commercials finally ended and first movie began.

Normally he watched his movies laying across my lap, with me rubbing his chest or back, but with his arms secured the way they were, that wasn't working, but after trying a few different positions, I eventually slid back as far into the sofa as I could, and he sat between my spread legs. I couldn't really see the movie that well, but I wasn't actually all that interested in it anyhow, and had other things to keep myself occupied, namely his nipples.

They had attracted me from the first time I saw him shirtless, and while I'd had some contact with them before, I could never give them as much attention as I would have liked, but now I had a plausible excuse to play with them. I'd read that stimulating them to full erection before applying the clips would make them easier to attach the pegs to, and also make them more sensitive, making the pressure even more painful. I figured that the first reason would be adequate if he asked, and wasn't about to tell him the second one.

As it turned out, I didn't need an excuse. As soon as I reached around his sides and started to gently rub and tweak them, rather than complain or ask why I was doing it, he moaned and relaxed back into me, seemingly enjoying it even more than I was. Whether it was from having his nipples played with, or because he was thinking about what was to come, he was much quieter during the movie than he usually was, with not much more than the occasional moan telling me that he was even still awake. As the movie started to wind down and the end became imminent, he sighed and asked,

"Will you do that to me again once I've done the clothespins?"

"Well, I don't really think you'll like it, they'll probably be too sore, but I'm sure there will be lots of other times, and I'd be happy to do it for you then."

"Okay, let's get it over with then." He said as "The End" appeared in dripping blood font on the screen.

I helped him to his feet and once standing I said,

"These will probably really hurt at first, but if you can stand it long enough it shouldn't feel quite as bad. I want you to brace yourself like you do when you're getting whipped."

He did as I asked, spreading his feet about a shoulder-width apart and tightening his muscles as well as he could with his arms bound in that position. He even tightened up his stomach and chest muscles, and while I don't know if it was really going to help him or not, but he sure looked good standing like that.

"What are you waiting for?" He asked after he had been standing like that a little longer than necessary. I had been distracted by how hot he looked, but quickly recovered and said,

"You haven't asked me to put them on you yet."

I could tell that he wanted to complain about having to say it, but after a brief pause said,

"Put those clothespins onto my nipples." And then as an afterthought added 'Please"

He held his breath, and tightened up even more as the first peg approached a nipple, and as I clamped it into place, he exhaled so rapidly I thought he was going to scream, but instead the only sound was the air rapidly leaving his lungs. The second one followed, and brought a similar, if slightly more muted response. After giving him a while to appreciate the full effect I asked,

"So, how do they feel?"

"They hurt like hell!" he admitted through clenched teeth before adding, "How long do I have to keep them on?"

"That's up to you." I said. "How long do you think you can take it?"

"I don't know." He hissed, "'Til the next movie starts, maybe a little longer."

By the time the intermission had ended, it was obvious that, while they were still painful, they weren't as bad as they had been, and saying he could stand to keep them on for a while longer, we sat back down the way we had been for the previous film. Eventually, aside from when I'd give the clothespins the occasional bit of a tap with my fingertips, they appeared to be not causing him much discomfort, so about half an hour into the film during a commercial break I said,

"I guess that's long enough, do you want me to take them off now?"

"Do I ever." He admitted.

The sentiment was short lived, as he quickly found out that the first few minutes of having them removed hurt as much or more than when I had put them onto him, but by the time the ads were over, he had settled back down again. I'd unlocked his wrists, but he chose to keep sitting the way he had been, although as I had expected, nipple play was off the table for the rest of the night. By the time the film came to it's gory conclusion, he claimed that they were almost back to normal, although I could see that they still looked quite red.

The next day was divided between working on his rack, and doing his homework. The schoolwork went relatively quickly once I had explained some of it to him, the rack on the other hand was taking much more time than either of us had expected, but we were both having a good time working on it together. It seemed like no time at all and we were both heading off to our separate bedrooms for the night.

I had just taken my shirt off when I noticed him standing in my doorway, clad only in his underwear, that where every bit as tiny as he had said. It was little wonder that they didn't sell, I could see maybe a very few boys liking them, but I couldn't imagine any mothers, who tended to make such purchases, buying them for them.

"I just remembered, I said I would show these to you some time." He said, giving a slow spin to give me the full three sixty effect of both the tiny briefs, and the obvious erection that they were only just hiding.

"Pretty sexy." I said, not really knowing what else to say.

He stood there for a moment, and seemed to have something else on his mind causing me to ask,

"Was there somethin else you wanted?"

He took a little too long to answer, but after the pause he just said, "No, I just wanted to show you these." and trotted back to his own room.

The next weekend, I decided to not do anything painful to him at all. His birthday was almost there, coming on the following Friday, and, even though he wasn't really expecting his mother to even remember it, he still seemed excited about it, and being a kid, couldn't help but remind me of the date often enough that I could tell that he was really hoping that I would get him something, or at least have something special planned. I did both, and it turned out, that he had quite a surprise in store for me too.

Chapter 3

After wasting an hour, half listening to her royal pudginess exert her authority by telling us assembled underlings noting that we didn't already know, I headed off to one of the bicycle shops that I knew had been in business in the city for years. I knew from the web pages that I had seen that what I wanted was a BMX bike, but what I didn't know was how expensive they could be.

Fortunately the owner of the shop took pity on me and directed me to a moderately priced one that he promised was just as good, if not better then the pricier ones, but the company didn't spend huge amounts of money on advertising like the high dollar ones did. I knew Ryan wasn't up on BMX enough to know what names were supposed to be the "must have" ones, so I didn't think he would really care what name was on it, as long as it didn't fold in half on him in the first week.

Knowing Ryan as I did, a helmet was in order, and following the advice of the owner I chose one that was actually a full-face moto-cross type. It cost a bit more, but as he said, it offered better protection and more importantly didn't look quite as dorky as he admitted the regular bike helmets they had did. As he put it, the helmet wouldn't do much good if you couldn't get the kid to wear it. It was a good thing that BMX biker are small, because even disassembled and boxed, it barely fit into the econo-box that I had rented for the day.

Next I went shopping for a cheap set of tools to give to Ryan. No matter how good the bike, I knew it was still going to require some maintenance, and he seemed mechanically inclined enough that I was sure with a little help, and the right tools he could do it all himself.

My final stop was in the seedier part of town, at one of the many sex shops there, just to look around and see if I could see anything that looked interesting to use on Ryan. Despite the underwear show he had given me a few weeks earlier, he hadn't shown any sign of wanting me to see him naked, so that eliminated most of the goodies I saw in the store. I did end up buying a purpose made set of nipple clips that were joined together by a short light chain, a gag, consisting of a ball to go into his mouth, and a strap to go around his head to keep it in place, and a rather nasty looking riding crop.

My whole surprise was almost blown when Ryan, as he did on the rare occasion, showed up unexpectedly at my house on Thursday night, but fortunately the bike and helmet were both already hidden away in the basement, and the tool kit was already wrapped and ready to be given to him.

He didn't stay long, he just wanted to tell me that his mother and her boyfriend had something big planned for the weekend, and that he would be at my place on Friday as usual. I could tell he was disappointed that she was putting herself ahead of him, but I'm sure he wasn't surprised. He stuck around just long enough to drop a few more hints and reminders about his birthday before heading home. He said that he had some homework he had to do, and while I wouldn't have believed him just a few weeks ago, according to his teacher he was now getting it done at least most of the time.

The police didn't even bother to send a report on Ryan any more, and his school one that Friday was quite positive, it seemed like Ryan had improved enough that he might actually pass the year, rather than just being moved into the next grade as they all too often did with kids like him.

It was close to a tie which one of us was the more excited when he arrived for his weekly appointment. He was pretty sure that I was getting him at least something, which was more than he was used to, and I was excited to see his reaction when he saw his new bike. I had an idea of how to keep him guessing, and had taken the new nipple clips to work that day. I knew he would be hounding me about what I had got for him, and I thought that if I made him think it was all things to cause him pain, he might be even more surprised hen he learned otherwise. I didn't have to wait long, because shortly after he came into my office he reminded me that it was his birthday and asked,

"Did you get me anything?"

"I might have got you a few things, but I don't think you'll like them" I said coyly.

"Like what? I'm sure I'll like whatever you got me, I always like presents." He said excitedly.

"Well, I might have one of them here 3;" I said, playing him along as long as I could.

"Really! Where? Can I see it now?" He asked, getting even more wound up.

"Well, I guess so, but if I give it to you now, you have to wear it until we get home."

"Not clothes 3;" he said, obviously disappointed.

"No, not clothes." I said, mocking his tone, "But you might end up wishing it was clothes."

He thought about it for a moment, but his curiosity got the better of him and he finally said,

"It's probably something painful, but okay, I'll wear whatever it is until we get to your place."

I slid open the front drawer of my desk and tossed the clips and chain to him. He caught them and looked at them for a moment, figuring out what they were, before groaning and saying,

"I knew it was going to be something that hurt."

"You don't really have to." I said, feeling bad about being mean to him on his birthday.

"No, I said I would, so I'll do it, as long as I can wear my shirt over them so nobody knows."

"Of course you can, that was the whole idea and only you and I will know they're there."

"It's kind of a cool idea actually." He admitted.

"Well, I don't think there's any reason for us to hang around here any more, you ready to get clamped up and head out? You never know, there might be more presents waiting for you."

"Cool!" He said as he raised his shirt over his head and took it off. I had him sit on the desk, and took the time to play with his nipples and exchange a few kisses before looping the chain behind his neck and one at a time attaching the clamps to his erect nipples. He hissed slightly as each one went on, but after a few seconds to get used to them he said,

"These look scarier, but they don't really hurt as bad as the clothespins."

The chain was just the right length; it didn't really tug on the clips, but was tight enough that there wasn't any extra slack in it. Once he put his baggy tee shirt back on they were unnoticeable, except for the chain around his neck, and it just looked like a large gauge necklace, something that wasn't too out of place on a kid his age.

"I forgot to tell you, I have to stop at the bakery on the way home." I said as I locked up the office, getting a loud groan from him. They may not have hurt as much as the clothespins, but he wasn't happy about having to take any longer than necessary to get home.

The birthday cake I had ordered for him was ready, and as I was waiting for my change, I rested my hand on the back of his neck. I'm sure it looked innocent enough, but I was actually giving little tugs on the chain, causing the clips to tug in his nipples. The first little jolt of extra pain caught him off guard, and I could feel him get a little shorter, but by the time the woman behind the counter looked back up from the till he was back to normal height and acting as if nothing was happening.

"That was awesome! She didn't have a clue what you were doing to me," he said as we got back out onto the street.

"I thought you might like it." I said with a grin. I had a feeling he would appreciate the thrill of having to appear normal while secretly having something done to him.

Back at the house I expected him to want me to tale off the clips right away, but as soon as we were inside, he scooted up to his room to get changed into his weekend 'uniform' of very short cutoffs, collar and cuffs and not much else.

"Don't you want to take those off?" I asked when he returned still wearing the clamps on his now bare nipples.

"They're okay for now. Besides, I kinds like it when you tugged on the chain 3;" he said as he stepped closer and tilted his head up for a kiss.

As our lips met, I reached behind his neck and gave the chain a few little tugs, causing him to kiss even more passionately.

"Wow." He said as we finally broke from what had probably been our longest and most intense kiss ever.

"I agree." I sighed.

"So, did you get me anything else?" He asked, destroying the mood in an instant.

"Oh, a few things." I said, "What would you like first, the things you won't like, or the things you will like."

He thought for a moment and said. "Lets do the bad things first and get it over with. Then it'll be all good."

"Okay then, I need you to close your eyes, and open your mouth as wide as you can." I said.

He obeyed immediately, and stayed that way while I retrieved the ball gag from the kitchen cabinet where I had put it after carefully washing it. With a slight push it popped into place, causing his eyes to shoot open immediately, but before he could figure out what was happening and try to eject it, I had it buckled in place. He mumbled something that I think was "what is that" so I said,

"It's a gag. If you ever decide you want to do something really hard, it'll keep you from scaring the neighbors, and if you ever start to talk too much and get on my nerves, well, you get the idea 3;"

He nodded his understanding, but didn't look too happy so I said,

"Just one more unpleasant thing, and then we get to the good stuff."

He liked the sound of that, and almost appeared to be trying to smile despite having the gag distorting his mouth. The smile quickly disappeared when I showed him the crop, but he obediently leaned over the kitchen table, and spread his legs wide so I could give him a light birthday spanking with it on his inner thighs and the bit off his ass cheeks that showed below his cutoffs.

"Well how did you like those?" I asked after I tugged the ball gag from his mouth.

He worked his jaw a bit before saying. "Pretty good, but how come you just tapped me with that whip? I can take it a lot harder than that."

"Birthday spankings are supposed to be fun, I'm sure you'll feel it's true bite soon enough." I answered.

"Thanks for the presents." He said as he leaned up and gave me a quick kiss.

I gave him the gift wrapped tool kit next, and while he tried his best to look really happy, I could tell he was confused by it and more than a little disappointed, causing him to eventually ask.

"What's this for?"

"Well, you never know when you might need to fix or build something."

"Like what?" He asked. "I got nothing to use tools for."

"Sure you do, have a look in the box in front of the workbench downstairs." I said with a grin.

He ran as fast as he could for the basement, and by the time I got there, he was already tearing the flaps of the box open. When he realized what was inside he let out a shriek that made me wish I'd left the gag on him. The amount of hopping around he was doing must have been hurting his still clamped nipples, but I'm sure he didn't even notice. After what seemed like an hour of sheer happiness on his part, he finally walked over to me and with tears in his eyes asked,

"Is it really mine?"

"You bet it is." I said. "But you have promise to take really good care of it."

"I will 3; I got tools now 3;" He said with a huge grin, finally putting together the connection of the two gifts.

"Lets get these off of you and you can get your tools and put it together." I said as I unclipped the clamps from his nipples. In spite of how long they'd been on, and how much they usually hurt when they were removed, he was so excited he didn't stop grinning when they came off and the blood rushed back into his flattened nipples.

He ran back upstairs for his new tools while I extracted his new bike from it's carton, and in no time, with some instruction from me, he had it assembled, adjusted, and ready to go. I carried it up the stairs for him, and set it on the back patio, saying,

"Before you start to ride, I bought one more thing for you. Wait here and I'll go get it."

"Cool!" he said when he saw me returning with the helmet.

I set it on his head, gave it a thump on top to send it home, and after showing him how to buckle it up, I turned him loose on my back yard that I was sure would never be the same again. I watched him take a couple of laps around the yard, hopping and jumping over the terraces there, and seeing that everything seemed to be working properly, went inside to order the pizza I had planned for supper and get his birthday cake ready.

He was still doing laps when the pizza arrived, and was looking even more confident than he had been earlier, getting even more height off the terraces and landing much smoother. After our supper and the whole cake and candles thing, he surprised me by asking me for a rag and permission to use the garden hose so he could wash his bike saying,

"I'd really like to ride it more, but I want to make sure I have it all cleaned up before it's too dark It's the best present I've ever had and I want to keep it looking new for as long as I can."

I gave him a couple of soft rags and turned on the hose for him and he spent almost as much time cleaning the bike as he had riding it. By the time he was finished meticulously cleaning it, it looked like new again.

He insisted on putting it in his room when he was finished, and after all the work he had put into cleaning it, I couldn't refuse. Even though it was extremely strong, it was very lightweight, and he had no trouble making it up the stairs and into his room with it.

He had been so excited that he had completely forgotten about his horror movies, and missed the first one completely, and as we settled into our usual viewing positions he looked up at me and asked,

"When's your birthday?"

It was a couple of months off, and I told him the date and asked why he wanted to know.

"Cause, this was so great, I'm gonna have to give you something really special for your birthday."

I went through the whole "worth it just to see him so happy" and "not owing me anything" argument but he wasn't buying it, and insisted that he was going to give me something really special just like I had done for him.

The rest of the night he was even more affectionate and wanted to cuddle and make contact even more than usual. He always seemed happy when he was here, and we were together, but that night, he was more content and loving than I had ever seen him before.

All to soon the night was over, and after a long kiss goodnight, we went to our separate rooms. I must have been on quite an emotional high of my own, because as soon as I fell asleep I started for the first time having erotic dreams involving Ryan, culminating with a dream about him being in bed with me and giving me the most mind blowing blowjob imaginable, but as I started to wake, probably to avoid a wet dream, I gradually realized that I was mistaken.

NEXT PART