Chapter 8: Sunday morning
I woke up long before Martin. I had not slept much, but all in all quite well, and I felt refreshed. Unlike the morning before, I knew with no hesitation where I was and why I was tied up. As well as who was the great looking guy who was sleeping soundly next to me. I blessed my bonds without which it would have been difficult not to caress him, or even more.
It lasted a long time until he finally woke up. He too seemed to find it natural to have a guy next to him tied up from head to toes. It's true, after all, what's more normal?
He asked me if I had slept well. Remembering the rule of silence, I answered with a nod. He took the time to stretch in just about every possible direction, before loosening the ties that bound my feet and my shoulders to the bed, and helping me sit up. He untied me completely, made me undress and, once again, made sure I couldn't use my right hand for the five minutes he allowed me to use the bathroom.
When I was done, he picked up a clean teeshirt from his dresser, made me put on the pair of sweatpants I had already been wearing the day before and picked out a sweater from his wardrobe. I could tell he didn't choose at random. He opted for a red sailor sweater, those French sweaters that button up on the left shoulder. This was imbued with a fresh smell of cleanness. The wool of these sweaters is very tight, and anything but soft. In short, everything I love.
Finally, he dressed up himself, with a pair of jeans and a heavy ribbed dark blue turtleneck.
Before breakfast, he tied my hands in front, and I was allowed to use them to drink my coffee and eat my slices of bread, which he had admittedly buttered and spread with jam for me.
Then he took me to get a large wicker basket in which all the team's rowing sweaters were crammed. I knew we had to wash them, but if I could, I would have spent a few hours in that basket, buried under this fragrant wool.
He untied my hands so that I could carry the basket, and took a bag that he had brought down from his bedroom. He walked me out to a barn across a cobbled courtyard, behind the main house.
There were stored tools of all kinds, the use of which I could hardly have guessed, and, above all, in the middle, an imposing basin made of wooden slats assembled in the same way as a barrel. Or more exactly half a barrel. The basin was to be one meter in diameter and one in depth. Two garden hoses plunged into it finished filling it, one with cold water and the other with hot water. Apparently someone else had been asked to prepare the basin.
The cider press, some time before it was converted into a sweater washing machine
Martin put his bag next to the basin and dipped a hand into the water to check the temperature. This seemed satisfactory to him. He turned off the taps that fed the pipes and rolled them up to store them.
Hhe took the rowing sweaters out of the giant basket. Nine in total. He inspected each of them, especially the inside of the neckline where a tag was sewn with its owner's name.
When he identified his own, he handed it to me:
- Mine, I want you to wash it on yourself. Come on, take off your clothes, even if they’re actually mine, put that on, grab the soap and get into the cider press.
That was what the basin was, or had been before it was turned in something I was supposed to jump into wearing my captor's sweater and about to wash it and eight others.
I did what I was told, and of course, putting on that dirty jumper he had rowed and sweated in, and in which I had also spent a night, did not leave me indifferent. But the barely tepid temperature of the water (wool must be washed in cold or lukewarm water, in case you're interested) made my arousal pretty much invisible.
So I started to soap the wool on me. It was getting heavier and heavier and clinging to my body in a way that was both unpleasant and exciting. I rinsed it, still on me, then made the gesture of taking it off. Martin motioned for me to keep it on me and tossed the other sweaters at me, one after the other, giving me time to wash, rinse and wring them well.
When he had the last sweater in hand, he undid the tag with a pair of dressmaking scissors:
- This one will be yours. When a rower leaves the team, he leaves his sweater to his successor. Now take off mine and put on yours so I can find out how it looks on you. You'll have to sew your tag on it.
Taking off Martin’s waterlogged sweater was no easy task. I made sure to wring it out well before putting mine on my wet body. It was difficult in these conditions to tell if it fitted me or not, but Martin seemed to be satisfied:
- Perfect, wash it on yourself, since this one too, you will wear it often.
That last sentence, which he accompanied with a wink, made me blush. Something was really going on.
Anyway, the jumper certainly needed to be washed. I would probably never know its previous owner, my predecessor, but the latter had chemical factories where you and I have sweat glands.
After I had washed what would become my own rowing sweater, I got out of the water that had become soapy, took off the soggy garment, wrung it out, and put it to drip with the others on the edge of the basin. Hoping that I had got it rid of his foul odor. Martin took a towel out of his bag to dry me off. Then I put my – well, his - dry clothes back on again and we piled the still soaked sweaters into the basket.
Next to the cider press was a ladder that Martin made me climb before passing me the basket through the trap door and joining me. The place we were in was a sort of attic cluttered with a complicated frame. Shelves made of spaced wooden bars were arranged along the length of the attic: this is probably where, in the old days, apples were left to ripen. Martin and I spread the sweaters out on the shelves. Openings at each end of the attic let a current of air flow through which the apples ripened faster and the sweaters would dry faster too.
The attic above the barn
Within moments, though, the place was filled with that rich smell of wet wool. I thought Martin had understood how much I liked it. Anyway, that's what I thought when I saw his smile.
But I quickly realized that this smile hid something else. He indeed pushed me gently but firmly against a vertical beam of the frame. It was quite easy for me to imagine what was to follow.
From his bag, he pulled out several coils of rope. He attacked my ankles first, tying them to the mast. Then he progressed from bottom up: knees, thighs pelvis… I felt myself swallowed up by a slowly rising tide of ropes, Martin checking every stage of his work with the same care as a NASA engineer checking every stage of his launcher. Or even better. And it was not before ten or fifteen minutes later that I was tied up from toes to shoulders.
Much to my disappointment, he didn’t use the sweater he was wearing to wrap my head. Instead, he sealed my lips with tape and blindfolded me with a scarf. At least, the scarf was also in wool, but hey...
The good thing was that the scarf didn't clog my nostrils and let me fully enjoy the scent of nearly ten thick, dripping woolen sweaters. I filled my lungs with relish, knowing that among them was Martin's and the one soon to be mine.
Martin gently patted me on the shoulder before stepping back down and letting the trap door fall on him. I found myself once again alone and strictly tied up. As on the bench, I experienced again this unrivaled, unmatched, unmistakable feeling of being secured to a fixed support, which is way above just being tied up. Much more intense. I tested my bonds, but mostly for the pleasure of testing their strength. I knew I had no chance to break free, and that was fine with me.
How long was it before I heard someone walk into the barn and then the trap door being lifted? I first thought it was lunch time and Martin was coming to free me.
Wrong!
Instead, I felt a hand move over me, first over my chest and then over my crotch. The hand ventured under my sweatpants and did a good job there. Not sure who was giving me this treatment - Martin or another, maybe the one who had visited me in the locker room on my first night in captivity -, I tried to resist the mounting excitement. The hand paused for a moment, and both my nostrils were crushed. Not being prepared for it, and my lips hermetically sealed, it only took a few seconds for me to start choking. So only one finger released only one nostril, below which had been placed a vial of poppers. I took a deep breath of it before both of my nostrils were blocked again. This was reproduced several times, to the point of making me drowsy, after which I was given a break during which I felt the guy move, move air, take off a piece of clothing. He resumed his vicious game, pinching my nose even longer: the last inhalation was therefore even deeper, more desperate, more abundant, and he amplified its effect by crushing some cloth over my face. I immediately recognized this to be a sweater, therefore the one he had just taken off. Did he, too, know about my fetishism, or was he just using his sweater quite utilitarian to control my breathing? Either way, breathing control and fetishism did their work, and my excitement, again encouraged by his hand, touched dangerous heights. So the hand would stop, everything would stop, the sweater would disappear. Then it all started again.
How many times has he manhandled me like this? Three, four times ?
This edging was torture. It ended of course without relieving me, when I felt my torturer move again, move more air, probably put on his sweater, before hearing the trap door reopen and close.
The ordeal left me exhausted, panting, an unbearable tension in my crotch. Was I going to be able to endure daily edging for seven days in a row, without a moment to relieve myself? Did Martin know what was going on? Because, I was sure of this, it wasn't Martin: the sweater that had been pressed on my face wasn’t his heavy ribbed turtleneck.
Take my word for it: if there's anything I know, it's sweaters.