Not that such trivia mattered much now. Her fettered position — a “kneeling, enhanced hogtie†to the stone, Sandra mentally noted for a future journal entry — ranged from cruelly restrictive to sadistically arousing.
It also reflected their delicious differences — qualities that had led up to this point in their months of working together, and yes, their blossoming friendship.
Sandra couldn’t see Cheryl without twisting around, thus risking more waves of sweet agony. So she just pictured her, relaxing in her folding lawn chair in the shade of the lone maple tree behind them.
Cheryl was young, tall and lanky, with long, dirty-blonde hair and bright blue eyes. Though fair-skinned, her face and wiry arms were tan from working outside on her land, which was just over the ridge.
Even in her role as the town historian, Cheryl favored brown work boots, jeans, ribbed tank tops, and flannel shirts.
A middle-aged Filipino native, Sandra was a few heads shorter than Cheryl. Her dark-brown hair, cut pixie style, had some flecks of gray. Nonetheless, it went well with her round facial features, high cheek bones, black-frame glasses, light olive skin and curvy, compact body.
In Sandra’s present state, all that was on display now.
Except for her blue and black running shoes and white ankle socks, she was naked. As usual, her hands were cuffed behind her back, palms facing out.
The hinged cuffs were wound into the loops of silvery dog chain tightly encircling her waist. The ends of this chain were twisted together and fastened with a brass padlock at Sandra’s belly, then looped around the stone and padlocked again, effectively binding her to it.
Separate lengths of chain, secured with identical padlocks, bound her ankles and thighs together. As with her waist, the ends of Sandra’s thigh chains were looped and padlocked around the stone, further securing her to it.
Because of her position, Sandra had surmised some of this via her senses. And by now, she was well-versed in Cheryl’s materials, skills and best practices in this area.
There were some new things, however — such as the unusual, painfully-pleasurable jaw-locking metal gag in Sandra’s mouth. Sandra had to drop her chin now and again to shed the excess saliva it caused.
This gave her a chance to admire Cheryl’s other innovation — involving her dark blue and white, paisley-pattered bandannas and Sandra’s waist chains.
But that quickly became too much, so she’d have to look back up. As Harry always said, what’s worth savoring is worth savoring slowly.
So Sandra would switch mental gears again, gaze off at the blue Oklahoma sky, and think about other things — like the letter she’d begun months ago.
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Dear Harry, Well, I guess it’s high time I got you caught up on what I’ve been doing with myself lately. I think you’d be surprised at what a wild woman I’ve become.
Though my pension allowed me to retire early, I still felt pretty short-changed by life: specifically, I became bored and lonely.
Online dating turned out to be a bust. Every man I met was either financially or emotionally needy, or clumsy romantically.
One man I met for coffee — George I think his name was — winked and called me a “MILF.†I looked it up on my Iphone when he went to the restroom. Needless to say, I was gone by the time he got back!
Even so, I couldn’t get to sleep that night…the whole encounter had left me out-of-sorts. Then I thought, “what of it?†Crude as it was, didn’t “MILF†mean that he — and probably others — found me attractive?
You may find this strange, Harry, but I got up took off my nightclothes (I just sleep in a long t-shirt now, so it slipped right off), and gave myself a good going over in the mirror. 

Turning this way and that, I saw the truth of me reflected. Even though I was 55, regular walks and yoga had kept me in pretty good shape. I’ve never been generously-endowed, but I was feminine and well-proportioned.
What could I do with this new knowledge? Along with its other negative aspects, online dating felt unsafe. So I decided right then and there that I had to get back out there, in the world, and meet someone in the normal course of life.
The very next day, I called my old colleague Sharon about renewing my CPA license so I could get a job.
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