0 comments/ 21665 views/ 5 favorites Hope Floats By: Nate_Walis The wheels of the landing gear made an audible screech as they touched down on the runway at La Isabela; it was a sound that was as commonplace as the dull pinging of the buttons that passengers pressed to summon the attention of the harassed cabin crew and nothing to spare even a moment of thought over. But to know that for a fact would require a person to have flown on more than one occasion and as with so many things in life, this was Hope Carpenter's first time in the air on anything that went higher than a playground swing. Her hands went rigid on the arms of her seat as the plane slowed on the runway, which would have been embarrassing enough on its own had they been unoccupied. Of course the arms were already in use and rather than dig her fingers into the inert plastic, she instead drove them into the flesh of the people sitting on either side of her. In retrospect she decided that she was simply lucky those seats were occupied by her friends rather than random strangers. Geoff, sitting on her right sucked air through gritted teeth while Marie on the left let out a sharp cry and turned away from the window to fix her younger companion with a concerned look that quickly turned to one of amusement. "Is the meal repeating on you?" Marie shook her head. "I told you to have the meat instead of the fish!" "Here's a tip," Geoff joined his wife in exacting a small modicum of revenge on Hope for her mauling of his hand, "always push your head further forwards than they tell you, that way when we crash you can be sure to kiss your own ass goodbye." "We've stopped?" Hope ignored their jibes and strained to see out of the window. Marie nodded and bobbed her head as she tried to let Hope get a clear view. "Did you know that this is the first Western settlement in the New World?" the anxiety had drained away from Hope's face as she stared out of the tiny portal. "Columbus himself laid the foundation stone himself." "No," Geoff raised his eyebrows at his wife behind Hope's head, "but I'm not surprised that you do." The stream of informative chatter from Hope continued as they fought through the obligatory round of standing and shuffling to make it off the plane and into the airport arrivals lounge. Geoff and Marie had long since learnt to accept the fact that Hope was a compulsive reader and absorbed all the information she could about a subject that concerned her. It was just one of those little quirks that you had to either deal with in a friend or seriously contemplate pushing them off of the nearest tall building. They sailed through immigration happily without an issue and were soon seated on the designated coach that would carry them the distance from La Isabela to Caliente Caribe. They were no more than ten minutes on the road when Hope began to worry again. "Should I call this Mr Lennox now?" Hope's face appeared over the back of her seat and stared down at her friends. "How should I know," Marie closed the book she had been trying to read since before their plane had taken off some hours ago now, "do you have a signal?" "Just about," Hope brandished her mobile, "but what if he's busy?" "When did he tell you to call him?" "He didn't." "He didn't tell you to call him?" "No," Hope shook her head, "he told me to meet him in the foyer when we got to the clubhouse." "So why do you want to call him?" there was a little exasperation slipping into Marie's voice regardless of how hard she tried to keep things pleasant. "I just thought he might have changed the plan and forgotten to call me, I did that once myself and ended up sitting in a coffee house for three hours while the guy I was supposed to meet was sitting on a bench in the middle of the park just a block away." "Don't worry," Geoff chipped in to save his wife, "I'm sure someone who's responsible for running even a small part of an event like this is far and away from being as scatter-brained as you." "You're sure?" Hope grabbed for the reassurance in his words as what could have been taken as a casual insult passed her by. "I'm sure," they replied, almost in perfect unison. "You must be Hope," the man who came striding across the lobby of the clubhouse with his hand outstretched and a wide smile on his face was not what she had been expecting. Not that Hope really had a mental image of the man she knew only as "Mr Lennox" from a string of emails. But she had not been expecting someone so clean cut and physically intimidating as the man who was now towering over her. "Mr Lennox?" it seemed obvious, but Hope really did not know what else to say. "Of course," Lennox beamed again and crushed her hand in his own. Hope had met many people involved in the fetish community and had to admit that they always seemed to defy the mainstream stereotype, coming from many walks of life. But at what must have been almost six and a half feet in height, broad and full of muscle and sporting a head of hair that was perhaps no more than a fraction of an inch from a shaved pate, Lennox was a new one as far as she was concerned. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt and khaki trousers, which only served to add to the impression that he had just stepped out of the marines and still had no real idea how a civilian dressed. "Good, good," he motioned for her to follow him back across the lobby and towards an open door, barely pausing to see that she was behind him as he almost marched towards his destination. Hope quickly glanced over her shoulder to wave at Marie and Geoff as they were checking in with their luggage and her own. They had agreed that they would collect her room key and keep hold of her bags until she could pick them up some time later in the day. Beyond the door she found herself in a small office that was barely large enough to accommodate a desk and two chairs, competing for space as it was with Lennox's physical presence. He motioned her to the seat in front of it as he sat down behind it and reached for a file that sat on top of a neat pile to his left. "I really am glad you could make it," Lennox spoke as he thumbed through the file and then looked up at Hope, "I trust the flight was without incident?" When she nodded he nodded back. "As I was saying, I really am happy to have you here under these circumstances. We've had some last minute notices of cancellation from some of the performers that we were counting on and having you here in order to fill some of the gaps is a great help." "Happy to be of service," Hope really did not know what else to say once again, something about the unadulterated wholesomeness of Lennox in contrast to the distinctly adult and unrestrained nature of the event he was a part of left her on the wrong foot. "Of course," he seemed none the worse for her lack of wit, "now let's get down to business." This was the part of the conversation that Hope had been anticipating with a mixture of fear and excitement. On her income as a student, there was no way that she would have been able to afford the price of attendance at such a large fetish event as this. But she was lucky enough to have her own fairy godmother in the form of Marie, an older woman who had been on the scene for long enough to know the people who knew the people who organised the whole thing. She had made some calls and bent a few ears before delighting Hope with the news that there was a place for her, free of charge. There was a condition, of course; Hope would be required to spend no more than half of her time at the event working on behalf of the organisers. She had agreed and her place had been booked alongside her older friends, but there had been no mention of just what she would be required to do in order to pay for her vacation. Marie and Geoff had shared anecdotes with her about what went on at the resort when this event was taking place. They themselves had attended on more than half a dozen occasions and the stories made the experience sound to Hope like a world in which all the things that excited her behind closed doors back home happened boldly in the light of day. Immersed as she was in the games and kinks that they mentioned, it still seemed somehow improbable to her that those things could actually become somehow normal and accepted out in the open. Now she was on the brink of discovering just what was in store for her, Hope felt a familiar thrill at the prospect of both the unknown and the possibilities of what lay ahead. "The first thing that we'll need some help with is the opening ceremony this evening," an apologetic tone entered Lennox's voice, "I am sorry to have to press you into service so soon after your arrival, but this is the situation that we find ourselves in." "No," Hope was still stumbling thanks to her being wrong-footed by Lennox and the prospect of being so close to the unknown nature of her employment was making things worse, "it's fine by me...glad to be a help!" "Good," the can do attitude seemed to strike a chime with Lennox and he happily went on, "now tell me, how are you with bondage and latex?" "Fine, not a problem with the former and no allergies to the latter either. Did you know though that some estimate that up to eight percent of the general population do? Have an allergy to latex, that is. Quite a number when you consider that there are more than twelve thousand plants that are known to produce the stuff." "Really?" Hope was amazed that the look on Lennox's face seemed to indicate that he was actually intrigued by her nervous regurgitation of facts. Either that or the military background she was ever surer he came from had equipped him to keep his true feelings from showing through his expression. "You learn something new every day! So you should have no problem with the first job that I have for you then." "You mentioned the opening ceremony?" "Yes," he spread his hands, "it's a few hours in which we get everyone together for cocktails, light refreshments and give them a preview of what the event has in store for them, that kind of thing." "Oh, I can wait tables," Hope was a little deflated that her first job was something so mundane, "I used to have a job doing just that a few semesters back." "We actually have all the waiting staff we need," Lennox waved her comments away, "what we're short of are the tables themselves." It was not long before Hope began to reflect on the fact that she had been totally wrong to think that her first official job would be something perfectly ordinary. She had been escorted straight from Lennox's office to a low building that hid behind a small hill beyond the last of the structures that were really a part of the complex. The silent man in overalls who led the way pointed her inside and promptly turned to leave her standing in front of a pair of utilitarian doors that she presumed would lead her to her ultimate destination. Inside was a scene of organised chaos as a myriad of people hurried to prepare everything that was needed to make a ceremony at a fetish convention so very different to any other event. In her confusion, Hope was not able to make out any real detail of what was actually going on, but she picked up familiar sounds and smells that filled in some of the gaps for her. "Hey," Hope turned to see a harassed woman in green shorts and a black vest top staring at her in irritation, "no guests allowed!" "What...no, I'm here to work...my name's Hope." "Well why didn't you say so," the woman put an arm around her shoulder. "I'm Alison, sort of a combination of hands on manager and animal tamer when it comes to backstage. So what are you here to do, exactly?" "Mr Lennox said something about you needing tables?" "Good, follow me." Alison led her to a corner of the room and behind a screen that hid them from the hubbub of the surroundings. Once they were alone she pointed to what looked like the rudiments of both a bondage outfit and the constituent elements of a table. "Ever been strapped up in one of these before?" Hope shook her head. "Thanks for being honest," Alison started to arrange parts of the outfit on a table in front of her, "there's nothing worse than having to come running to the aid of some fool who's more full of bravado than sense. Now how about you strip off and we'll see how you fit?" Hope, thankful for the privacy afforded her by the screen, began to remove her clothes as Alison talked her through the job ahead. "Basically we cuff your hands and ankles while you kneel with this against your back," she pointed to a metal pole attached to a circular base and fitted with various loops and buckles, "then strap them together so you're pretty much hogtied. Your head goes through this hole in the top of the table after we put the two halves together round your neck and then we cover you, lock, stock and barrel with a skin of latex." "Should I go to the bathroom now?" "No need," Alison held up what looked like a swimming costume made of rubber and fitted with an assortment of familiar devices, "you wear this under the latex and it takes care of that side of things as well as making the whole thing a bit more interesting for everyone involved." Hope was naked by now, her fair skin showing goose-bumps and her hands playing nervously with her tightly curled brown hair. "Looks like you're ready to get started," Alison tossed the inner element of the costume to Hope, who caught it and began to pull the thing on guided by instinct and guesswork. As soon as she had pulled the garment on, Hope recognised its functions in the shape of a set of tubes and bags that would keep her from needing a comfort break and a fairly robust-looking vibrator that was built into the crotch and came to nestle against her intimate parts as she made a few final adjustments. "Perfect fit," Alison beckoned her over to the metal pole and guided her down so that padded hooks on either side came to rest beneath her armpits. Next she steered Hope's knees into a pair of padded cups at the bottom so that she was suspended perhaps four or five inches from the ground. Her wrists and ankles were shackled with cuffs attached to the pole and then pulled together and both strapped together behind her back. Alison slipped strong elastic strips around Hope's middle, pulling them tight against the undergarment and forcing her back to align with the pole. Larger bands of elasticated material were pulled down over her head and onto her doubled over legs making it almost impossible for her to move them. At the same time her arms were strapped together as well so that there was no part of Hope's body able to move freely, save for her head. "Comfortable?" under the circumstances Alison's question seemed quite absurd, but hope nodded all the same. "Good," Alison came into view before Hope, "let's see if everything's working." She tapped something in the vicinity of Hope's groin with the toe of her boot and the next thing the trussed up girl felt was a sudden surge of stimulation as the vibrator came to life for a few seconds. Short as it was the effect made Hope cry out in a short expression of shocked excitement and she was disappointed despite herself when it passed. Alison left Hope to recover for a few moments before returning with a swimming cap that she smoothed Hope's hair beneath before pulling a black latex hood over the top. The hood left Hope's face visible, but covered by a creamy, opaque layer of far thinner latex that followed the contours of her face, but rendered the finer details indistinct and reminiscent of those of a doll. With the hood in place, Alison and a hastily summoned assistant slotted the two halves of the tabletop in place around Hope's neck and then produced a long tube of latex material that would provide the final outer skin for the costume. One end they pinned in place around the hole through which her head emerged before stretching the tube over the tabletop and underneath where a ring around the same hole below pulled the fabric tightly to the shape of the thing. From there the latex was rolled down Hope's body where it made smooth all of the details of the undergarment and emphasized instead the shape of her bound form. A second metal ring gathered the material at the base where the other end was finally pinned in place. Alison stood back and admired her work. "You could eat your dinner off that," she joked to her assistant before they turned and walked away. Hope, for her own part, was surprised to be suddenly left on her own in such a compromising position. After she had been treated with a degree of care by Alison while she was being dressed, the fact that she had suddenly stopped talking to her and instead paid more human attention to her assistant before simply leaving her on her own was unexpectedly hurtful. She turned her head from one side to the other, but could see no sign of anyone else behind the screen. Hope realised that she was very much alone. Left with nothing to do but contemplate the night ahead, she tried as best she could to imagine what being a table would entail. Hope supposed that she would be expected to play along and be nice for the sake of whoever ended up using her that evening, no matter who they might be. It was then that she realised why Alison had stopped talking to her and instead begun to talk about her. As soon as Hope had been secured in the costume she had gone from being a person that was being talked through the process to being an object that the woman was preparing for the evenings festivities. A part of Hope's mind began to protest the treatment and insist that she was being exploited, but then the weight of her thoughts shifted and she recalled the nature of the event she was a part of and the grounds on which she was attending. She reminded herself that she was not attending a conference on the advancement of the feminist cause; rather she was emancipating herself in a different way, celebrating her right to self-determination by choosing to give it up for a short time of her own accord. If she was honest, it had always been the feeling of that small germ of outrage that had attracted Hope to the scene in the first place. She found that there was something liberating and dangerous about the act of freely allowing herself to be used much like an object while her mind still told her that she was being exploited during the experience. Hope found hat the attitude of Alison and her assistant seemed to be the norm for the other people working backstage. They attended to their duties and never seemed interested in taking advantage of someone trussed up as she was. Perhaps they were strictly professional, or maybe the threat of disciplinary action hung over their heads as far as their helpless charges were concerned. Either way they treated Hope in the manner one would have expected a inanimate and yet delicate object to be handled as she was lifted onto the back of a trolley with two other living tables and wheeled slowly out of the room. None of her fellow tables made any effort to speak to Hope or even look in her direction; instead they seemed to be lost in their own thoughts with their heads almost sagging forwards in sleep. From what she had seen of them, Hope was sure that they had been prepared in very much the same way and were distinguished only by their physical differences. The first table was a woman with a figure far fuller than Hope's own, her impressive breasts threatening to make it hard for anyone to fit their own legs under the tabletop. The table in front of Hope was a man whose wiry limbs were picked out impressively by the latex, but her attention was snatched away by the realisation that his penis had been accommodated by the latex and was front and centre for the amusement of whoever happened to be sitting around him. Hope Floats The experience of being treated as an object helped Hope to fill in the gaps as far as what was expected of her and started to fix in her mind the character of the part she was playing. Soon she had accepted the fact that no one spoke to her or asked her permission before they moved her around or placed their hands on her body. She found it harder and harder to pay attention to what was happening around her and more often than not her eyes simply gazed down at her tabletop or slipped shut as if in a doze. The trolley was wheeled out into the warm air of the evening and into a area beside a pool that had been cleared to accommodate a small stage and space for an audience. As she was unloaded from the trolley and moved into position amongst what seemed like dozens of other living tables, all with similarly submissive expressions on their masked faces, Hope accepted the feel of the hands that brushed her body without much in the way of conscious thought. She kept in her mind the image of statues and carvings made to resemble the human form, trying to think of her own body as nothing more than a piece of furniture that happened to have been made in that same shape. By the time barstools had been arranged around her and a number of bowls containing various and sundry snacks placed on her tabletop, Hope had managed to lull herself into a state of mind where the fact that she had been made into a table could not have been farther from her thoughts. All that mattered was that in the here and now was that she was a table and there was nothing more to it. Tables did not have opinions, stories to share or issues with their situation, they just sat there and got on with it. It was only when Hope felt the sensation of something being placed on her tabletop that she realised she had fallen into a light sleep after being put in place and then left alone. Seemingly she had been asleep for some time as the air was now filled with the sound of conversation and people were milling about amongst the tables. Something was happening on the stage, but as she was facing in the opposite direction, her ears muffled by the hood, Hope had no idea of what was taking place up there. Hope blinked to clear her eyes and saw that what had been deposited on her tabletop was a pair of rather over the top cocktails. She chanced a quick scan around and saw the owners of the drinks pulling back the stools that had been placed next to her and felt her heart judder in her chest as she recognised their faces. Marie and Geoff; of all the people at the resort, her own friends were the ones that had chosen to sit at her table. Beneath the hood, Hope's face flushed with embarrassment. She had never even considered her friends seeing her being used as a human table, let alone actually having them sit down and make use of her. "This is new," Geoff eased himself onto the stool and took a sip of his drink, "seems like they're going all out right from the start this year." "You're not kidding," Marie took a moment to glance under the tabletop before she sat down, "should I be jealous that you chose to sit around such a fine female specimen as this one?" "You mean this isn't a man?" Geoff's sarcastic apology made his wife shake her head and laugh, "I really hadn't noticed. We can always move to another table so that you can appreciate the aesthetics more." "No," Marie slipped a discrete hand under the table and caressed one of Hope's breasts through the latex, "this will do just fine; plenty to amuse myself with here." The sudden and unexpected caress took Hope by complete surprise and she bit her lip as Marie's dexterous fingers played with her in a distracted manner, all the time her attention split unequally between conversation and manipulation. She thought at first that her friends were playing along with the idea that she was to be treated as an object and not making themselves known to her as a result. But Hope soon realised that they had simply failed to recognise her beneath the hood and in her current circumstances. Neither of them was unfamiliar with the sight of Hope's naked body, but the combination of holiday spirits, a few drinks and the extreme nature of the bandage in which she was held had rendered her a stranger to them. This new anonymity only served to add to the feeling in Hope that she had become a conscious object, seeing her own friends convinced of the fact as well. There was also an element of voyeuristic intrigue for her as she was able to watch and listen to them as they behaved as though they were pretty much alone. Hope knew that Marie and Geoff were a very open-minded couple and enjoyed this kind of thing immensely, but she was aware that there was always an element of acting in the face that people chose to show even to their friends. To have the chance to see behind it was intriguing, despite the extremes in which that chance had presented itself. The first thing that Hope discovered was the fact that Marie was very good with her hands. During all the time they were sitting around her, there were few times when she was able to recall both of her friend's hands being visible above the tabletop. Hope found that she was straining against her bonds more and more as Marie pinched and stroked her through the latex with the same casual attention that one might have given to sending a text message while eating a meal. All the time the conversation between the couple continued as if nothing out of the ordinary were going on. They watched the stage, commented on other guests and finished their drinks before Geoff rose from his seat and meandered towards the bar to fetch more. As soon as he was gone, Marie slipped her foot out of her sandal and manoeuvred her toes into the vicinity of Hope's groin. She stroked the surface of the latex and watched the reaction on the hooded face in the middle of the tabletop. Hope felt a deeper flutter of sensation than ever and the feeling showed as she raised her chin and closed her eyes with the pleasure of the Marie's attention. She applied more pressure and inadvertently tripped the vibrator lying until that moment inert against the lips of Hope's vagina. Suddenly the vibrations began and both of them were taken by surprise for a moment before Marie laughed and pushed the device harder against the sensitive flesh. Hope's eyes closed as she struggled to keep from crying out and her lips parted as she drew in breath. "What seems to have gotten into our erstwhile piece of furniture?" Geoff placed the new round of drinks on the table and gestured at Hope's head as she moved with the effects of the vibrator. "She comes complete with working parts," Marie could hardly take her eyes off the intimate show that was going on right in front of her, "vibrator in the crotch, very nice." "Those are some oral gymnastics," Geoff seemed to have become hypnotised by the motion of Hope's lips and tongue as she gasped and pouted. "I'd love to put something in there right about now, but I don't think I could get away with that even here!" "Next best thing is to watch," Marie gave him a quick wink before she deftly inserted the first two fingers of her left hand into Hope's half open mouth. With the other hand she discreetly reached over into Geoff's lap and began to stroke his penis through the fabric of his shorts. Hope was in no position to resist as Marie's digits slipped into her mouth and within moments she was pulling them in with an urgency that caught her friend off guard. Though she had been stimulated by the motion of the vibrator and teased by the caressing of her breasts, Hope was a woman who responded with passion to the feeling of penetration. If she could not feel her body entered from below, then the reality of another person's entry above was something she would seize upon for all it was worth. Geoff watched, his throat gone dry after his mouth hanging open, as Hope seemed to try to swallow his wife's fingers whole. All the time Marie's right hand, which had now managed to find its way inside his shorts while hidden under the table, massaged his penis. The effect was not perfect, but it was as close as Marie was able to come to actually serving as a connection between her husband's manhood and the vigorous attention of Hope's eager mouth. Finally Hope's body shuddered enough to shake the entire table and threaten to spill their drinks as she climaxed. The sight of her peak also resulted in Geoff spilling something else seconds later. As Hope sank into a delirious state of near torpor, Marie turned to her husband with a smile. "I think we've had our moneys worth out of this little piece of furniture for the evening. How about we leave her to sleep it off and you think about going to the bathroom to get cleaned up?" Hope hardly remembered the rest of the night and seemed to have sleepwalked through the process of being freed from her restraints and escorted to her room afterwards. The first thing that she truly recalled after the intensity of her orgasm the previous evening was waking up in what she presumed was her bed, her arms and legs still holding the dull memory of her time as a human table in the form of aches and stiffness. She dragged herself out of bed to shower and dress, vaguely aware of the fact that she seemed to have been booked into a twin rather than single room. Somewhere was a recollection of Marie and Geoff filling her in as regards room allocation, but that was soon barged out of the way by the memories of last night and the experience of being used as a toy by her own friends. Hope was surprised to discover that while there was a small amount of cringing associated with the whole thing, for the most part she was rather less than ashamed by what had happened to her. After all they had not known it was her under all that latex and perhaps that meant there was really no guilt or recrimination to associate with their antics. For her own part, Hope had simply accepted the attention as being normal for an object such as she had been. People leaned on doorframes, grasped balustrades and did all sorts of things while sitting on toilet seats. There seemed to be a strange logic that when presented with a table that had erogenous zones all of its own, people might be inclined to stimulate them. There was something so simple and liberating as well in having her element of choice removed from the equation. Hope was not ready to become some kind of submissive slave on a permanent basis, but she could see the appeal of occasionally casting aside the complexities of consent on a moment to moment basis for the understanding that she was ready and willing at any given moment instead. One thing that worried Hope however, was the fact that she had no idea of what had gone on at the opening ceremony beyond her own little adventure into her friend's private lives. While she was okay with the idea of paying for her trip by working, it occurred to her that doing so might mean she missed out on the best experiences that the event had to offer. As she showered and dressed she resolved to track down Lennox and put her concerns to him in the nicest possible way. She figured that she would need to see him anyway in order to find out what else was expected of her and so both issues could be tackled at once. Hope tried Lennox's office, assuming that it was the logical place to start her search, but there was no sign of him and it was deserted. She asked after him at reception and the woman behind the desk offered to call his room on her behalf. Hope decided that it was her only chance to get hold of the man, save for wandering around and asking everyone she passed as to his whereabouts, so she nodded. The call was brief and the woman hung up with a cheery smile before informing her that Mr Lennox would see her in his room and providing the number and directions. Hope located Lennox's room on the upper floors of one of the resorts multi-storey blocks overlooking the main pool and bar. Her knock was promptly greeted with a shout to come in and she opened the door onto a very modest hotel room that could have been unlived in save for the presence of Lennox himself, standing on the small balcony and beckoning her towards him. "Good morning," Lennox was as positive and beaming as ever, "I trust you're recovered from last night's high jinks enough to enjoy yourself today?" "Still a little sore," Hope admitted, "but it's not a problem." "I'm not surprised," Lennox gestured to a jug of water and glasses as he spoke, but Hope shook her head. "I had a little look around myself when things had quieted down and I can tell you that one of those tables would make for quite a conversation piece!" "It was quite an experience, I can tell you." "And I expect you're here to see what job I have lined up for you tonight, eh?" "Not exactly," Hope shook her head. "Oh," for a moment she felt guilty as Lennox seemed to have been wrong-footed by her negative statement, "please go on?" "Well, the thing is that after last night I'm kind of feeling too washed out and used up to really get anything out of what's on offer today. Don't get me wrong, I'm committed to working as we agreed. But I was wondering if I could sort of speed things up, maybe put in more hours now and have more time for myself later in the week?" "Well," the smile had reappeared on Lennox's face, as if the unexpected detour into territory that was not covered in his marching orders was finally over, "that's not a problem of any kind. If you want to work longer and sooner, I can shuffle some paperwork and get you onto something in the next hour or so, if you're willing?" "Sounds good to me," Hope looked out over the resort from the balcony, "need me to be a barstool or a hat-stand?" Lennox smiled; more it seemed to show his appreciation of the effort than to actually express amusement at the joke. "I could get you on down there," Lennox had followed her gaze down to the pool, "not much in the way of demands except for floating around in the water. Might help you to relax into the bargain?" Hope had been watching the people around the pool, in particular those that seemed to be employed to enhance the experience of the guests. Some were just serving drinks while wearing outfits that would have got them arrested in the real world, but around the edge of the pool she had seen some more interesting sights. Lounging on a slope of imitation rocks and man-made waterfalls on a small scale, Hope could see a trio of man-made mermaids who seemed to be doing nothing more than flipping their rubber fins as they basked in the sun. Each was different from the next, the first being covered from head to tail in green latex, the second sporting a blue tail and corset that ended below her breasts and a matching hood and the third wearing only a pink tail, a hood of the same colour with blonde pigtails of hair on either side and pink shells barely covering her nipples. She watched as a guest dressed in swimming trunks walked over and struck up a conversation with the blue mermaid. Whatever he said, she seemed impressed and held her arms up to him as he scooped her off the rocks and disappeared to who knew where. Hope watched the two remaining mermaids for a moment, pondering whether or not she could manage to do nothing more than flaunt herself in a latex tail and shake a pair of shell covered breasts at passers by. Like many women, she had always had a soft spot for mermaids and at least their hands were free. If she admitted it she was also curious as to what was happening right there and then to the blue mermaid. "Sound fine to me," she was already picturing herself with a tail as she spoke. "Okay," Lennox led her to the door, "if we have you on pool duty for the best part of the next two days that should pretty much see you free for the rest of the week. Can you find your way back to Alison and her people from here?" "Of course," Hope hurried out of the door, ready and willing to become a rubber denizen of the seas for as long as she had to endure the agony of simply being adored. Hope stood naked on the cold floor of the prep room and asked herself, for what seemed like the hundredth time since she had walked in the door, why she had not specifically asked just what Lennox wanted her to do before she agreed. Her head had been so full of thoughts of latex tails and worship from men with perfect beach bodies that she had failed to hear Alison when she said the words: inflatable and pool toy. By the time the words had sunk in, Hope was stripped off and being helped into a new rubber garment that would form the inner layer of the costume she would be wearing. At first she could have been mistaken for thinking that she was being dressed as a mermaid after all as the thing lacked separate legs and ended in a pair of flippers, but then she saw the mask that was attached to the front of the hood and noted the snout and whiskers. "I'm going to be a seal?" "What's wrong with that?" Alison asked as she yanked the inner garment up Hope's legs, "they're really popular at those sea park places, people love them." "I suppose." Hope had to sit down as she was eased into the garment as though there were no separate legs to it; the inside of the lower half did have a compartment for each leg within it. When her feet finally reached the bottom and slid into the thick rubber flippers at the base, she raised it up and wistfully thought of mermaids again. Soon her arms were inside as well and her fingers held still in the rigid plastic flippers that ended the sleeves. Alison zipped the suit up her back and all that remained was to secure the hood in place. "I suppose there's some mystique to pinipeds when you think about it," Hope mused as Alison pulled the hood over her head, "some people think that the Loch Ness Monster is actually just a very large leopard seal." "You don't say," Alison shook her head as she sealed the hood in place. Hope now looked like a bizarre blending of seal and scuba diver, the black rubber of the suit covering her from head to toe and the mask and flippers giving her the vague appearance of a semi-aquatic mammal. I can cope with this, she thought. Maybe I'll be something different to the conventional mermaids, something that appeals to a more enlightened eye. "Right," Alison hauled another mass of black rubber towards Hope, "time for the next layer." The hood effectively rendered Hope silent, but her eyes could be read easily even behind the clear plastic lenses of the mask. "Of course there's more," Alison stood Hope up and began to yank the new rubber layer over her head, "without this you'll just sink!" This was a heavier layer than the first and once she was manhandled into it, the thing covered her entire body save for her head and the flippers at the extremities. Hope watched as Alison attached an air hose and began to inflate the entire thing, wide bands of the rubber revealing themselves to be chambers that ran across the width of her body and arms. If she had been restricted by the undergarment, Hope was now all but unable to move as the pressure of the air held her ever tighter inside the rubber. Even her head was forced to move upwards until she was able to do nothing but stare at the ceiling with her arms outstretched and her legs pinned together below. Fully inflated the costume bulged out to three feet in width at its widest point before tapering to no less then two at either end. The effect was completed when Alison and an assistant pulled a final skin of shiny black latex over Hope's new shape and gently lowered her onto her stomach. From there she found that she was able to push herself up on her flippers enough to move around at an achingly slow pace, but apart form that all she could manage was to simply lay prone on her inflated belly. Hope Floats "The suit has an inbuilt tube and bag for your necessities," Alison explained as they loaded hope onto a trolley, "a member of staff will be along to make sure it's changed at night and see that you get fed as well. Plus there are the usual devices for stimulation built into the thing for your use. No reason you can't have some fun while you're out there as well!" As the trolley was wheeled away, Hope wanted very much to ask just what she meant by being changed and fed. To her it sounded worryingly as though this was a twenty four hour affair. Hope's arrival at the pool was greeted with a great deal of interest as the guests crowded round to see what new distraction was being wheeled out for their attention. The sight of her shiny skin and the way she bounced gently up and down with the motion of the trolley sparked a round of comments about the possibilities she represented. She managed to catch snippets of what was said, hearing one man wonder out loud if he could entice her to perform with a few fish. Another male voice commented that he would have liked to feed her something else rather than a few limp sardines. Hope realised that unlike her time as a table, this was going to be time spent out in the open and very much subject to the whims of whoever happened to be at poolside and interested in playing with the toys. More than anything the prospect of being left at the mercy of strangers and having no idea what to expect scared her and she closed her eyes to hide her fear. Lifted off the trolley and placed into the water, Hope found herself floating free on the surface and calmed a little by the experience despite her trepidation. She dared to open her eyes and was rewarded with the sight of two young women looking back at her as they trod water a few feet away. Unable to read the fear in her eyes, the women wasted no time in seizing hold of the new toy and making her the focus of their energetic play. One woman clambered onto Hope's back, causing her to dip down into the water. The weight and the sensation of her body climbing over the air-filled rubber reached Hope in the centre of the costume and pressed down on her yet more. The feeling was unlike any kind of touch from another human being, it seemed to encompass all of her body at the same time and wrap her in a sense of awareness whenever the woman moved an inch. While her companion rode Hope above the water, the second woman dived under and clung to the latex belly beneath. She explored the contours hidden by the latex skin, hands squeezing and massaging as she went until she could hold her breath no longer and returned to the surface. Hope found that for the most part the guests were a mixture of those that were content to play with her gently and those that tended towards the rough, but none were prepared to do anything that truly abused her. She accepted hands that groped and legs that squeezed as part of the job and soon a portion of her mind had floated away as it had when she had become a table. The laughter and comments that accompanied the antics of the guest who first managed to turn on the vibrator in the costume simply washed over Hope as she became more and more immersed in her role as a toy. Before long she found herself greeting the stimulation of the device by clapping her front flippers together as if in gratitude, an action that endeared her to the guests at poolside every time she performed it. Her lack of restraint was helped by the fact that it soon became an accepted part of the deal that before the seal performed; she was offered a straw through which to sample the guest's drink. Before too long Hope was so inebriated and disoriented by the motion of the water and the hands of the guests that she simply went with the experience regardless of what was asked of her. Long after dark, when the last of the guests had deserted the poolside, Hope felt herself pulled to the edge of the pool by an unseen hand and lifted out of the water. She was placed back on the trolley and wheeled perhaps twenty feet to a secluded spot behind the bars that serviced the pool area. The small space was filled with piles of floats, inflatables and stacked loungers, clearly a mixture of storage area and dumping ground. Hope felt herself being lifted off the trolley and tossed on top of a pile of other inflatable toys, the impact as she landed making her take a sharp breath of surprise. At the sound of her breath, the footsteps that had been retreating from the storage area stopped and paused before starting to return. The maintenance worker was quite aware of the fact that one of the pool toys he was removing was very much alive and the sound of Hope's breathing had reminded him of his duties towards her. The noise had also reminded him of his reason for stashing her in the storage area out of sight. The man's face was obscured by a baseball cap as he busied himself rummaging around inside the costume in order to remove the bag holding her waste and fit a fresh one. Deprived of the sight of his face and still under the influence, Hope simply accepted the indignity in silence until he was done. When his hands returned, Hope assumed it was to continue his attentions to her bodily needs and she was taken by surprise when instead he began to grope her inflated form in the same manner as the guests had throughout the day. The man's breathing had quickened as the chance that he had been waiting for throughout the day had finally arrived. After watching Hope's inflated body from a distance, now he was free to indulge himself alone and uninterrupted. He moved to stand in front of her masked face and hastily unzipped his flies, checking again that he was alone as he smoothed a condom over his erect member. Satisfied there was no one to disturb them, the man plunged his penis into the rubber snout of the mask and from there into Hope's mouth. In any other circumstances, Hope would have fought like a banshee and more than likely bitten his member as hard as she could. But she had come to accept her role as a rubber toy and in that state of mind, what was one more humiliation on top of the others? Hope swallowed as much of his penis as she was able and lazily massaged its length with her tongue, her lips putting as much pressure as they were able into the act at the same time. She was too far beyond tired and still too drunk to make any more effort, but the owner of the member in her mouth did not seem to notice. For his own part he was so consumed by his need to commit the act and at the same time so fearful of being caught that the quality of her technique was the last thing on his mind. The entirety of the blow job might have lasted for minutes or been a matter of mere seconds from Hope's point of view before she felt him stiffen and ejaculate into the condom. He wasted no time once he was spent in removing his member from her mouth and hastily stuffing it back into his trousers. As he looked down to avoid snagging his privates on the zipper of his flies, Hope caught a glimpse of his face, illuminated in part by the dimmed lights at the side of the pool. Her mind had cleared a little by now and she was becoming aware of the fact that this could have been an experience to make her enraged beyond reason. But the face she saw was not that of a gloating monster, instead the thin, clean-shaven features were those of a man perhaps no older than she was herself. His expression seemed so filled with guilt and self-loathing that Hope found that she pitied rather than hated him. Perhaps it was the odd nature of the experiences that she had gone through in the past few days, but there was actually a feeling of battered esteem attached to the idea that this man had been so desperate to get his hands on her and the lengths he had gone to in order to make it happen. He was far from unattractive and under any other circumstances Hope realised that she would have been more than happy to be the subject of his attentions. It felt strange and a little sad that they had been placed in their respective situations and not in another where far more might have been possible. But before she could ponder the thought further he disappeared from sight and she was left alone. Hope was about to allow herself to fall into a confused and mixed up sleep, when she remembered that in his eagerness to flee the scene of the crime, the maintenance man had quite forgotten to feed her. Soon the only sound that she could hear was the groaning of her own stomach. Hope's second full day as an inflatable pool toy began much as the first had, save for the fact that she was ravenously hungry when she awoke and only became more so as time went on. She endured the same kind of playful teasing and actually enjoyable attention from guests as the day went by and was granted a small mercy in the shape of the occasional morsel of food offered to her by those who were inclined to do so. The biggest problem was that more often than not the titbits that were fed to her were the pieces of fruit that seemed to be a staple of the exotic cocktails served by the poolside bar. Inevitably these were soaked in the alcohol they had been served with and soon Hope's stomach was roiling with the combined effects of lack of proper food and once again becoming intoxicated. As people squeezed her with their limbs and jumped onto her broad back, Hope prayed again and again that she could keep what little was in her stomach down. She was exhausted by the attentions of the guests, but a large part of her dreaded the idea of being left to her own devices as the infamous puking pool toy. The first real trial of the day came when she realised that the latest in a long string of guests to sit astride her back was actually trying to make conversation with her. "You know," Hope had glimpsed her before she was mounted and so could put a handsome rather than pretty face to the voice and guess that the raven-haired woman was approaching fifty, but looking good with it, "I should have come sooner and seen what was floating around down here, but there's so much to do at these things and so little time." Hope was sure the woman was aware of the fact she could not reply. "My name's Angelina," the way she spread herself out on top of Hope made the younger woman feel as though she wanted to sink into the inflated latex and rubber herself. "It's important that you remember my name, as I want us to be very good friends." There was something about the comment that set off an alarm bell in Hope's mind. She had been subject to the whims and wants of so many people in the past two days that most new encounters seemed to merge into one. But so far no one had made overtures like that towards her and it was the bizarre notion of an offer of friendship in this context that disturbed her. It was at once so at odds with the way in which the relationship with most of the guests had gone so far; Hope had come to accept their impersonal approach to her in tandem with their need to play with her as an object. Somehow the way in which this woman was trying to befriend her was infinitely more worrying than the idea of a stream of people simply making use of her and leaving it at that. The intimacy that Angelina seemed to crave from her made Hope uncertain as to just where the woman was intent upon going. Whatever it was, Hope was sure she would not like it when she got there. At first it seemed that she might have been mistaken as Angelina was content to keep pressing herself against Hope's back in much the same way as other guests had before her. But soon her movements began to become more and more intense as she gripped the sides of Hope's latex body with her thighs. Before long she was riding on the unfortunate pool toy as if there was a bucking stallion beneath her and vocalising her pleasure as loud whoops that filled the air around poolside. Every head within earshot turned at once to seek the source of the hubbub and soon a crowd had gathered to watch as Angelina shamelessly ground her pelvis into Hope again and again. Forced to simply endure the experience, Hope wondered if the sudden attention of so many people would serve to dampen the mad woman's passion. But she was wrong and Angelina continued to become louder and louder no matter how large the crowd grew. After what felt like a lifetime of humiliating treatment, Angelina finally gripped her harder than ever and then slipped off her back and into the water, but not before she had let out a shockingly loud cry with her climax. Hope felt a number of hands grab hold of her and lift her out of the water. They placed her on the edge of the pool and she realised that a number of the onlookers had felt for her enough to remove her from Angelina's immediate vicinity at least for the moment. For her own part she was exhausted from the experience and burning with embarrassment at being made a part of the older woman's showing herself up in public. Picking up bruises was almost impossible within so much rubber and cushioned as she was by air, but most of her body had been left sore by the pounding received in the water. Hope tried to make the most of the respite she had been given and was grateful that most of the guests at the pool seemed to agree she deserved it by leaving her alone. "That was exquisite," suddenly there was a weight pressing down on Hope and her heart sunk as she recognised the voice that belonged to its source, "you're such a find that I simply have to have you all to myself, or else I might die of the disappointment!" Laughter filled the air again as Angelina pounced on Hope's helpless form for a second time, rubbing herself against the latex skin once more. Her victim had no way of knowing that most of the amusement was derived from the older woman making a complete fool of herself before the crowd. It was just more humiliation and abuse that worsened as she tried to feebly drag her body away across the ground with her tormentor firmly attached to her back. The ordeal came to an end when fellow guests dragged Angelina off the unfortunate pool toy and took her away to calm down. But no one thought to comfort or soothe Hope as she lay there at the side of the pool. And after all, why would they? She was just a pool toy. Hope went unnoticed for the short remainder of the day, most of the guests by the pool choosing to leave well alone the toy that had been the subject of such wild attentions. She tried to be philosophical about the whole experience, telling herself that there was nothing personal in the trials she had been forced to endure. These were just people behaving as was natural in an environment that cast off the strictures of modern society and allowed them to go wild for a short time. But while that was all well and good, it did nothing to help her with the aching of her sore thighs and the feeling of being pounded into submission by mad women under the influence of one too many cocktails. As the evening drew on she tried to keep her spirits up with the thought that this was her last day in the seal costume and the rest of the holiday was her own. All she had to do now was make it through the night. Perhaps the maintenance man would be back for more before morning. Perhaps she could get more out of him this time than a panicked cock shoved in her mouth. When she felt a pair of hands gripping her by the flippers that contained her feet, Hope assumed that it was the same man who delivered empty waste bags and oral sex. She was soon proven wrong. "Lucky that I found you out here on your own," Angelina's voice was instantly familiar and filled Hope with a sense of dread, "don't worry, we'll soon have you back to my room!" The strength of the woman amazed Hope as she was dragged with no serious effort from the poolside and all the way to one of the main blocks of the hotel. Angelina had clearly thought her route out well as they encountered no other guests or staff members as they entered the block through a side door and up two flights of stairs. Hope heard a door open and close, and then moments later she felt her rear end hit the floor. "Finally," Angelina sounded triumphant, "alone at last!" To the end of her days, Hope would remember the things she went through that night at the hands of the older woman. There seemed no limits to her mad appetites and erotic energy and Hope was the centre of them all for hours on end. She was squeezed, groped, squashed, nuzzled, prodded, ridden, rolled, bounced upon, fiddled with and eaten off until Angelina finally burned herself out and collapsed on top of her, falling into a deep sleep from which there was nothing Hope could do to rouse her. Hope woke with daylight streaming through the window of the hotel room and assumed that she must have simply passed out where she lay some time after her tormentor. There was at first no sign of Angelina until the sound of running water gave her away in the bathroom. Hope had mercifully been left on her belly and she managed to inch her way over to the door where she was forced to wait until Angelina finished her shower and deigned to pay her attention. "Oh," Angelina seemed genuinely surprised at the sight of her, "are you still here?" She stepped out of the shower cubicle and wrapped herself in a dressing gown. "I really thought that someone would have been along to collect you by now. Well, I suppose you want to be getting along now?" She opened the door to the corridor and motioned for Hope to leave. "Off you go," there was no hint of the mad passion that had infected her the previous day, "we all had our fun and now it's time for you to go back to the pool where you belong." Hope had no choice but to do as she was told and she crawled out into the corridor at an achingly slow pace. She was somewhat stunned by the total change in Angelina's attitude, and while it was some relief to be free of the woman's deranged affections there was also the small matter of being stuck in her costume and so far from the pool. Any choice she had in the matter was resolved when the door to Angelina's room slammed closed behind her once her flippers had made it into the corridor. Hope made as best she could for the building where she knew Alison and her assistants would be located. There was no way she was going back to the pool when she was sure her time in the costume was up. The distance might have been further, but the prospect of being free after so long was too much to bear. That journey was the slowest of her life as she inched her way along the corridor and down the stairs. Guests that she passed reacted as was natural to the sight of a rubber seal passing by, laughing and patting her on the head as if she was an adorable domestic animal. At one point she was forced to cross the busy lobby and attracted a small band of followers who pinched the nose of her mask and lifted her flippers, trying to make her clap them for their amusement. Hope almost died when Lennox emerged from his office to see what all the fuss was about, the look of confusion on his face was almost worse than the attentions of the other guests. Finally she reached the doors of Alison's domain as the last of the guests realised that the show was over and wandered off in search of another distraction. At last, she thought as she crawled inside, some me time. By the time she made it to the door of her room, Hope was weary in both body and mind. The trials of the past forty eight hours combined with the lack of food and sheer amount of alcohol had left her unsure as to whether or not now she had the time to spend indulging herself, she was actually up to the task. When she opened the door she was surprised to be greeted with the sight of a man in hotel uniform already inside. Hope Floats For a moment Hope assumed he was simply there to fix something that had broken whilst she was otherwise indisposed, but then she realised that he was halfway through undressing and the balance of the equation was suddenly thrown off in her mind. At the sound of the door shutting behind her, the man turned and almost jumped out of his skin as he saw her for the first time. "You scared me to death!" he tried to make his discomfort seem less than it was. "I really thought that there'd been some mix up and I got a room to myself!" Hope almost slapped the side of her own head as she recalled the details of the event that Marie and Geoff had confided in her before the trip. This was a strictly no singles event and although guests did not have to register as part of a couple, the organizers would in that event match them with another single guest in a twin room. She had honestly pushed the fact out of her head before arriving and it had become hopelessly lost under the weight of her experiences thus far. "I'm Jack," he was young and nervous, trying very hard to seem anything but a madman in just as awkward a situation as she was right now, "and you are?" "Hope," she made the effort to smile, "looks like we're room mates." Hope supposed she could make the most of the situation, there was no law she had to have anything to do with him and he seemed within the realms of normal for the kind of event they were attending. The only thing was she could not shake the feeling that Jack was familiar somehow. "So where have you been all this time?" Jack asked. "Having so much fun you never got back here?" "Something like that," Hope sat down on the bed she presumed was her own. "I've been too tired to do much," Jack shook his head, "got this deal where I have to work half the time I'm here to pay my way." Hope was about to admit that they had that much in common when the pieces fell into place. She pictured Jack's face gripped with panic again and this time beneath the peak of his cap, which lay on the bed behind him. "You managed to have some fun round the back of the pool the other night though," Hope surged to her feet and was amazed to see Jack back off so hastily that he ended up flat on his back across the bed, "how did that blow job feel, you bastard!" "That was you?" Jack looked as though he was about to die of shock, "I...I'm sorry...I mean, shit!" "What's the matter?" Hope gazed down at the panicked young man. "Don't like women who can tell you to get the hell away from them?" "No...yes...I don't know what I mean," Jack struggled for words. "I know it was low, but they've been working me like a dog here. If you're lucky you get to be part of the action, but otherwise you just end up watching everyone else have fun while you work and sweat the time away. I just wanted to get involved somehow." He turned his face from her as if he was too guilty to look her in the eye. "If you want to turn me in I won't stop you," he shook his head again, "screw it, I'll even admit it." Hope hated the fact that she understood a lot of what he was saying and that he was still making her feel that same misplaced pity for him. "I'm not going to make a fuss," Hope turned away and say on her bed, "at the end of it all you could have done far worse and it's not like you were in any danger of choking me with that thing anyway." "That was the pressure..." Jack stopped talking as he realised he was in no position to defend the stature of his manhood, "...sorry again." "Let's agree to move on," Hope offered a truce, "I have a feeling you don't normally do that sort of thing, so try not to disabuse me of it...okay?" Jack nodded. "I suppose as a starving student who happens to be female I probably had an advantage over you anyway," Hope was starting to remember the fact that Jack was no unattractive, despite herself. "What landed you here and working as a wage-slave?" "I do quite well selling mobile phones back home," he gestured to a large holdall jutting out from under his bed, "I might have afforded the price of a ticket if I hadn't blown so much on that lot." "What do you mean?" As way of illustration, Jack got up and emptied the bag onto the bed. Rather than clothes, towels, sun-cream and all the essentials one might have taken on a holiday; the bag disgorged a plethora of items more commonly associated with the inner workings of a torture chamber than an escape to the Caribbean sun. Hope noted whips, clamps, masks, handcuffs, ball-gags, restraints of various shapes and sizes and glimpsed other things only in a snippet of leather, metal or shiny later rubber. "Never get to use this stuff now," Jack dropped the bag on the floor. "Never say never," Hope shook her head. Her attention was fixed on a pair of latex garments that had unrolled when they hit the floor before being partly buried by the avalanche of bondage gear. They were shiny and patterned with exaggerated patterns of scales, one deep blue the other a rich purple, they ended in thick rubber fins perhaps two feet long by three wide. They were a pair of latex mermaid tails the match of anything Hope had seen the rubber sirens by the pool wearing. "Hoping to catch yourself a pair of mermaids?" "Ah," Jack seemed oddly embarrassed for a man in possession of a bag full of bondage paraphernalia and attending a week-long event built around the chance to use its contents, "not exactly. They're supposed to be for me and a woman." "You're kidding?" Hope walked to where they lay on the floor and picked up the blue tail. "No, I'm really not." "Which one's yours?" "That one," he nodded towards the tail she was holding. "I figured that as I always had a thing for mermaids, this was a place that I might find one. Not that I'm likely to get near the ones down by the pool. You know those women aren't on the payroll like us? They're paying the organisers to play the part for the week, if you can credit that!" Perhaps it was the revelation that she was never going to join the ranks of the official mermaids out by the pool that made up Hope's mind for her. On the other hand perhaps it was the fact she was pretty sure she had Jack ground down to a point where he was unable to fight back. No matter which, she decided that she had had enough of being on the receiving end and there was far more to be gained from exploiting the defeated man in front of her than from simply handing him over and going back to watching a gaggle of rich bimbos playing the part she wanted so badly. "Shut up," Hope tossed the blue tail at Jack as hard as she could, "you owe me seriously for that cock in the mouth and I'm going to see that you pay." She scooped up a leather whip perhaps three feet in length from the floor and jabbed the handle at his face. "You wanted a mermaid, and you're going to get one...problem for you is that she's going to be a monster of epic proportions and you're going to be her bitch. Do you understand me?" Jack nodded, his face flushed with a bewildered mixture of shock and relief to be firmly back in a world of terminology that he understood rather than contemplating criminal charges. "Now take off those clothes and put that thing on," Hope was becoming more comfortable with the idea of dominating him with every moment that passed. A feeling of satisfaction spread through her as she watched him hastily shrug out of his uniform and toss his underwear over his shoulder. He slid his legs into the tail and struggled to pull the thing up while his feet fitted into the rigid mono-fin at the base. Hope watched his progress, threatening him with the whip at any moment he stopped his efforts or happened to look in her direction. She realised that despite his edgy movements, Jack had done this before and soon he was yanking the last few inches of the tail into place at his waist and testing the fit of the costume by flipping his feet to move the fin. The sight of the finished product had washed away a great deal of Hope's burning anger towards Jack and as she maintained her harsh demeanour, she was at the same time coming to the conclusion that she had fallen lucky in some ways if not others. It would have been trite to say that Jack worked out, but it was clear that he did. Above the blue latex of the tail, his torso was sleek and toned like that of an Olympic swimmer. His arms were built with strength rather than bulk and his hands spoke of nimble dexterity. Hope noted again that his face was far from unappealing below his close-cropped hair. If Hope had been asked to describe the body of a merman, he would have come as close as possible to her own mental image. The best thing was that on top of all that he was totally under her power. "Get on the damn floor," she gestured with the whip, "who told you there's anywhere else you could park yourself?" Jack slid onto the floor and kneeled in front of her with his eyes downcast. "That's better," Hope lifted his chin with the whip. "Now I want to be a mermaid," she gestured to the purple tail, "you're a merman, so you should know how to make me into one, right? Or do I have to sell you to a freak-show and buy a vibrator to replace you?" Jack's head nodded desperately and Hope could sense that he was starting to slip into his role as much as she was herself. He crawled across the floor to retrieve the tail and was soon back, kneeling in front of her as if asking for more instructions. Hope pulled off her T-shirt and threw it at the cowering merman, who offered no resistance. She kicked her shoes at him and then unbuttoned her shorts, which she allowed to drop around her ankles before stepping out of them. "Take these off," she nodded to her panties as she unhooked her bra, "and if I feel your fingers touch me once..." Jack's hands trembled as he reached up to inch her last item of clothing down her legs. In all the time it took him to complete the task, Hope could have sworn that he did not draw a single breath until it was over. She pulled a chair into the middle of the floor and sat herself down in front of him like an irate monarch sitting naked on her throne. Legs together and feet pointed towards the submissive merman, Hope silently invited him to approach her with a wave of the whip. Jack did not need to be ordered or cajoled into the task at hand and he quickly slipped the purple tail over Hope's feet, fitting them into the mono-fin and starting to pull the latex skin over her legs. Inch by inch, Hope swore she could feel the effects of the trials she had endured being washed away by the excitement of seeing the costume covering her lower body. Jack's efforts were expert and gentle as he completed the process of transforming her into the mermaid he had hoped to find during his trip and he suppressed a show of glee as he realised the tail fitted her almost perfectly. Hope caught sight of herself in the mirror and smiled as she flicked her tail fin in satisfaction. The effect of the tail contrasted so well with her own naked skin, vivid purple latex against pale flesh, that she felt like she had simply been picked up and dipped in liquid rubber before being moulded into her current shape. Some might have wanted to see the scales merge with the skin to create the illusion that she was a genuine creature of myth made flesh. But Hope was not one of them. She thrived on the feeling of the material under her fingers and the sensation of her legs being pinned together beneath the rubber skin. She flexed her tail and delighted in the fact that the fake nature of her new form was so blatant and obviously man made. Hope had never wanted to be the kind of mermaid that existed in fairy tales; she wanted to be the kind that writhed around while bound in latex and were played with until they could take no more. And there, Hope realised, was a problem. She had never really taken the time to actually think what she wanted to do or have done to her as a mermaid. The whole idea had been so seemingly impossible and wrapped up in so much anticipation that the practicalities of a rubber tail had never been something she had pondered. So now that she was sitting there complete with scales and fins, she found that she was quite at a loss as to what happened next. Hope gazed down at her latex crotch and then at Jack's with a look of disappointment on her face. He was aware of her pause, and catching her attention made a T with his hands to appeal for a "time out" from the roles of domination and submission they had both adopted. Hope nodded to show she was willing to drop the act for a moment. "I think I know where your thoughts are going," he placed a hand on his groin. "I was never planning on being less than intimate with my mermaid. These things have access front for me and rear for you." "You have protection?" "No need," Jack had begun to open a previously hidden opening in his tail, "there's a sheath inside both. Mine goes out while yours goes in, for the obvious reasons." Hope saw what he meant as his penis emerged from the opening, covered tightly in finer latex the same colour as the rest of his tail. He was clearly quite enjoying himself and Hope felt an unexpected feeling of anticipation to be so close to his member in such different circumstances. Hope slipped back into the roll of mermaid dominatrix and seized his penis in her free hand. The feel of the latex was exquisite on top of the warmth of his shaft and she swore the beat of his pulse quickened moments after it was in her palm. She gave him a tug and was amused to see him fall backwards onto the floor, his tail twitching at her harsh attention. "On the bed," she released his penis and pointed with the whip. Jack scrambled onto the nearest bed as fast as he was able, all the time trying to manage his latex tail and erect member as best he could. When he was on the mattress, Hope yanked his tail around so that he was sitting with his fins on the floor and his backside on the bed. She stood and hopped as best she could to present her back to him before lowering herself down onto his lap, trusting him to support her weight and know on instinct what was expected of him. There was a moment of confusion as his sheathed penis sought the opening in the back of the latex and then a rush of sensation as it pushed into her own tail. Seconds later she felt him enter her and she pressed down on him, forcing him deeper into her body. Hope rode him as long as she was able, letting his arms and his lap support her totally and caring only for the pleasure that made her beat her tail fin against the floor and claw at her naked breasts. Soon he could support her no more and they collapsed onto the bed with all notions of dominance and submission forgotten as she sought to press herself into his body and he took hold of her own in a manner that spoke of sheer physical desperation. Unable to straddle Hope, Jack instead simply pinned her tail to the bed with his own and continued to thrust into her from behind. Hope pushed aside the pillows in an effort to avoid suffocation and gasped for breath a mere few seconds before the pressure of Jack's climax forced her own and she literally screamed with satisfaction. Afterwards, Hope rolled on top of Jack's motionless form and propped herself up on her hands so that she could be sure she had his attention. "Get some sleep while I order room service," she had a glint in her eye that worried Jack; "you need to get your strength back as soon as you can." "Why?" he seemed genuinely puzzled. "Because we have at best two more days on this trip; and in that time I want to do as much as I can cram in without taking this thing off. So you'll be spending most of that time carrying me wherever you can't push me in a wheelchair." "Oh," he thought for a moment, "can I still wear mine in the hotel room?" "I'll think about it," she replied while knowing full well that she intended to use him as a built in feature just like the shower or the sink, "based on how well you perform for me." In her head, Hope was already dreaming up uses for a submissive merman that would have made his toes curl.