How could she have not seen this coming? Well, in truth, she had seen it coming, she’d just averted her eyes. And now she was paying the price.

Rolls of her own flesh puffed out between bands of leather, rope, and green garden string repelled her, but she refused to look away, for once. This is what she had come to. This is what years of averting her eyes had done to her. Here she sat, on the eve of turning thirty, fat, naked, red and not nearly drunk enough to survive this night. Things had to change. She refused to spend the next thirty years tied naked to a damn ugly chair, even figuratively.

But for the present, she was screwed. Not really… her not-so-charming date was passed out on the bed, the waistband of his boxers tugged down to his upper thighs. No screwing from that direction.

Really, if she’d needed a picture drawn for her, they – whoever they were – couldn’t have done a better job. This was just what she needed to put a spotlight on what a mess Gemma Miller had become. Somehow she was going to wrestle herself back into the driver’s seat of her own life and take the wheel. Probably a positive first step would be to stop letting everyone talk her into things all the damn time.

“Paul.” Years of being a certain way were hard to toss in just one moment, so her tone was polite, and that annoyed her. “Paul, wake up. Paul. Paaaaaaaaul.” Her ankles were tied snug to the chair’s legs, so she couldn’t kick the son of a bitch. Even if her legs were untied, it would have been a challenge, as the chair was a good eight feet from the bed, just inside the door to the adjoining living room. The open living room door. The drunk bastard had left it open when he came back with the freaking garden twine.

She had an urge to spit on him, but resisted, of course. Gemma Miller was such a nice girl. “Paul! Wake up!”

“Yeah ho the nope.” Drool dribbled down Paul’s chin and he rolled his head left to right. His eyes stayed firmly closed. Tufts of red hair stuck up all over his head, reminding Gemma of a doll she’d once “beautified” with a pair of safety scissors.

What an ass. She lifted her butt up, chair and all, and attempted one tentative hop toward the bed. Bad move. She toppled instead, and landed on her side. Which was nothing but stupid, as the weight of her body and gravity conspired to pull the bindings tighter into her flesh. Motherfucker. Someone was going to pay.

Oh yes. That would be her.

A sound – other than Paul’s wheezy breathing – demanded her attention. Motherofgodno! Someone was outside the front door. A key clicked in the lock. The lock that stuck – but always, always, opened, eventually. Oh God.

She rocked as forcefully as she could, attempting to move herself out of the open doorway. Instead the chair rolled, and she was laying on her other side, the lumpy naked landscape that was Gemma on display to anyone who might walk through the front door.

The key clicked into place, the knob turned, and Paul’s roommate Jack stood silhouetted against the orange glow of the streetlight behind him. He was talking to himself, trying to juggle keys, what appeared to be a bag of groceries, and the dog’s leash. The dog. Oh, no, please don’t drop the dog’s –

Kerouac woofed joyfully at the sight of her, and tugged free of Jack’s grasp. At first it wasn’t too bad, really, canine kisses all over her face were sort of comforting in a crisis, and the 80 pound Rottweiler/lab mix might actually block her from Jack’s view. But then… being a dog and all… and her being a girl and all… the inevitable happened. Kerouac’s cold, wet nose pressed full-force into her crotch, and Gemma screamed, in spite of herself.

“Jim? What the hell – Kerouac, get back – holy shit. What – do I even want to know?” Jack nudged the dog away, threw his jacket over her and the chair, and squatted down. “Where’s my moron of a roommate?”

She was going to die of a blood pressure implosion. Her face was so red it itched. Probably other bits were red, too, but she refused to think about that. Jack had always been nice to her, with the exception of the dumb nickname thing. He treated her as a person and not just Paul’s “wet spot.” It would’ve been much less painful if Dirk or Vince had found her. They probably wouldn’t have even noticed her lying here. Really, though, no matter. She had no intention of seeing anyone in this house ever again, assuming she got out of this alive. She tried to tip her head to answer his question, and got a mouthful of her own hair. “He’s –” She spit out the strands, “in there.”

Jack pushed up from a squat so he could peer around the door, then hunkered down again. “And a frightening sight he is.” He tucked the jacket her and there, securing it with rather friendly pokes and jabs between her and the chair. He didn’t apologized, just grinned his Jack grin. “I don’t imagine you did this to yourself. Well, probably you did the falling on the floor part, but not the tying. He’s a charmer, isn’t he? I sure hope you’ve realized by now you can do better.”

“Um, could we have the lecture later? For now, I’d be most appreciative if you’d get Kerouac out of my business and free me.” She wasn’t about to admit she had thought Paul was “doing better.”

Jack noticed the dog’s renewed interest in her and grinned. “Kerouac, I know she’s more fun than your rawhide, but you’re not her type. Downstairs.”

The dog whined but trotted off into the kitchen.

“Christ, Paul must’ve been drunk. These knots are not Boy Scout approved.”

“Jack, shut up.” Her voice came out a whiney whisper. She disgusted herself. “Just get me out of this.”

“Please.”

“Please, damn you.”

“You know, you should be nice. I’m your only hope. And if you’re naughty, you’re in a very precarious position. Just think of all the things I could do to you right now.”

Gemma felt the blood rush away from her red face to parts that would normally be south of her equator. Her body was reacting very differently to Jack’s tie-me-up, tie-me-down suggestion than it had to Paul’s. She fought to keep from rubbing her thighs together. “Jack.”

“Shouldn’t that be ‘please, Jack’?” He said it in the same breathy tone her mind was using. Shut up, both of you!

“Jack! Please!”

“Not quite the tone I was hoping for, but I’ll take it.” He went back to work on the ropes and belts and sliced through the string with the edge of a key. The last belt came lose and she fell flat to the floor, ass up. Parts of her that had been without blood too long prickled; another part of her tingled for an entirely different reason. She scooted into a sitting position, clutching his jacket.

“Thank you, Jack. Now, um, could you please go away so I can look for my dignity and get dressed…” The jacket wasn’t quite big enough to cover her Triangle of Female Parts in addition to her spreading hips and flabby thighs, so she settled for the triangle and went deep into denial on the rest.

Jack stood and smiled down at her. It was a friendly smile, not at all mocking, really, and not even too lascivious. Just the right amount of lascivious, in fact, if a person were looking for lascivious. Which she wasn’t. “Personally, I think you should come downstairs and we should try the experiment again, only with functioning brains instead of lame ones…”

“Jack. Go.”

“Spoilsport.” He disappeared through the archway into the kitchen. His voice floated back and she wondered if she imagined it. “Happy birthday, Jim.”