Rhonda was pissed off again.

She had just returned to her apartment house, after another fruitless night on the town, with another self-centered, airheaded lout of a date. His name was Thomas; he was an asshole.

He had taken her to dinner, and as soon as they got in the cab to go to a club, he had begun to slobber all over her. No preliminaries, no kindness, no respect for her feelings; nothing but what she didn't need.

Nobody knew what she really needed.

She had jumped out of the cab while it was stopped at a light. He hadn't even bothered to chase her; the cab just drove off . . .

Jerk!

She had hailed another cab to her home. As she walked down the hall to her apartment, she wondered . . .

Rhonda was one of those rare and wonderful women who had an unusual need . . . the need to tickle men into submission.

It had started in her early years, with her brother, who loved to be tickled. By the time she was 18, it had turned into a full-fledged necessity for her; she needed to tickle a guy half crazy to get off sexually.

She was shy about it, though, and had never asked any of the men she currently was seeing.

She had no problem attracting men. At 25, she was gorgeous. Petite, shapely, with long dark brown hair down to her waist. She kept herself in good shape, and was able to dress to show it. Tonight she had on a white blouse, and a short dark blue miniskirt, which showed off her long legs to some advantage. She was wearing delicate brown sandals on her feet. Her fingernails and toenails were painted bright red.

When she was about 20, she had had a serious relationship with a man her age. She felt as if she were truly in love; she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him.

So she told him.

His reaction was calm. He told her that he could accommodate her. She was excited, and even more in love with him.

He stopped calling. She tried to reach him; his roommate said that he was out of town . . . she left messages.

She never heard from him again.

Five years later, she had been through a series of seasonal romances and one-night stands. She had never told another man about her love of tickling.

Rhonda took her apartment key out of her purse. She inserted it, opened the door . . .

And saw her bedroom light flick off.

She lived alone. No one was supposed to be in her house.

She reached into her still-open purse, and took out a small revolver.

Her father had given it to her on his last visit. "You never know when he might need it," he had said. "There are a lot of crazy people running around this city."

Someone had broken into her apartment. She lived on the second floor; it would be easy for someone to scale the balconies and come in, if the door was unlocked . . . and last night for dinner, she had used her grill, so she probably had left the door unlocked . . .

Gun in hand, Rhonda took a tentative step across the living room.

"Who's there?" she yelled, her voice sounding loud in the silence.

No answer.

"I've got a gun! You better come out!"

No answer.

Feeling more angry than frightened, she stomped into the bedroom and turned on the light.

There, in the far corner, was a man standing with his hands up.

"Don't shoot, lady, please," he said. "I'll leave you alone."

Rhonda's anger deepened. "What are you doing in my house?" she yelled at him. "Were you trying to rob it?"

Frightened, he only nodded. "You-you gonna call the cops?"

An idea was forming in Rhonda's head. She thought of the idiot she had gone out with that evening. She thought of the man who had rejected her five years ago. She knew what she wanted to do to this guy who had made the mistake of breaking into her house. It was the perfect opportunity . . . and she might not ever get another.

She walked over to him, gun pointing at his chest. "Take off your clothes," she said.

"What??" he replied, not sure that he had heard right.

"Do it!" she said, pressing the gun against his left nipple.

"Okay, okay! Sure." He grinned at her. "Are you gonna rape me?"

"What I'm going to do to you is much worse than rape," she said. "Get 'em off!"

The man nearly ripped off his clothes in his haste. He could see she was serious.

"What are you gonna . . . ?" he started to say.

"Shut up!" she screamed, raising the gun to his head. "Get on the bed!"

"Oh, man . . . " the burglar said. He sat on the bed.

Rhonda had taken a scarf out of one of her bureau's drawers. She wrapped it around his eyes.

"I can't see!" said the burglar.

"That's the idea," said Rhonda. She pushed him over so that he was laying down. A minute later, he felt her take his arms and pull them over his head. Something wrapped around his wrists.

"Are you tying me up??" he said. "Please . . . No! I'll go quietly!" It was too late. His hands were firmly bound to the bars on the bed's headboard.

He felt his ankles being pulled on. Within seconds, his bare feet were tied helplessly. He could feel the bars on either side of his ankles, so he knew that his feet must be sticking through the other side of the bars, off the bed.

Rhonda said nothing. She looked at the naked, helplessly bound man on her bed. Soon he would be squirming and screaming for mercy under an onslaught of tickling fingers, but he didn't know that yet. He had no idea what was going to happen to him!

"I'm going to leave you for a while," she finally said. " I want you to lay there and just think . . . how vulnerable you are right now. First, though, tell me your name."

"M-Mark . . . " said the burglar, now truly frightened.

"Well, Mark," she said, putting emphasis on the name. "You just hold on. You're in for a torture you've probably never had before. I'll be back soon."

She left the room.

Mark, left alone, tested the bonds. He was tied up very well. No matter how much he pulled, he couldn't get loose. After a few tries, he gave up, and lay there thinking . . .

This woman is crazy! he thought. What if she's a murderess, and kills me while I'm lying here helpless?

Mark was not a particularly good burglar. As a matter of fact, this was the first house he'd ever tried to rob. He had done it on a dare; a friend of his had challenged him to give it a try. Mark had staked out the apartment building; he had seen when Rhonda had cooked on her grill and forgotten to lock the balcony door. It would be easy, he thought at the time . . .

Now he was regretting his decision.

He heard movement. "Are you back?" he said. "Please, let me go! I won't . . . " He felt something hard slide up the sole of his foot, from his heel to his toes. He jumped.

"What are you doing?" he said. "Are you there?"

This time it was both feet; whatever it was, it started at the top and went to the bottom. His feet squirmed reflexively.

"H-hey!" he said. What's . . . "

This time the sensations started in the middle of his feet and they didn't stop. It tickled like crazy!

When Mark was little, his sister used to hold his feet in her lap and tickle them. He was very ticklish then; he would be hysterical in less than a minute and beg her to stop. He was finding out now that he was still ticklish.

"W-why are you HAHAHAHAHAHEEHEE ST - AHHHAHAHAHA DON'T TICKLE HEEEHEEHEEHOHOHAHAAAAH!" He lost what little self-control he had over his ticklishness, and laughed crazily. He squirmed against his bonds, screamed with laughter, and turned pink in the face. He broke out in a sweat.

Rhonda smiled and kept tickling his defenseless soles with her long nails. This was what she had been waiting for! Her body reacted also; she was getting hot and wet.

She didn't want to stop, but she knew that the poor man would go into convulsions if she kept tickling him so intensely. For a few moments more, she dug her nails into his soft soles even harder and more quickly. His laughter tightened in his throat now, he could barely breathe and he wriggled uncontrollably.

Then she stopped. Mark lay there, catching his breath, still giggling occasionally as if he were still being tickled.

"Looks like you're pretty ticklish, Mark," she said to him.

"Why - why did you do that? I can't stand it!" he replied.

She moved up close to his blindfolded face, and kissed his forehead. "Oh, you're going to have to stand it, Mark," she said. "I love to tickle helplessly tied up guys, you see, and I don't plan on letting you go for a long while."

Mark frowned as he let these words sink in. He was beginning to realize what he was in for . . . and he knew he'd go crazy from any more tickling. He began to plead.

"I - I don't think it's a good idea to tickle me anymore . . . " he said. "I might go crazy or have a heart attack or something. . . "

"Well, Mark," she replied. "You should have thought of that before you decided to break into my house. You're mine, now, dear . . . and I plan to use you as my tickle-slave all night long!"

As Rhonda said this, she gave his ribs a quick tickle with the tips of her fingers. He squirmed, and moaned, "Nooo . . . "

"Yes, Mark, yes!" Rhonda said, and attacked his ribs full force with both hands.

"EEEEEEEE!" Mark squealed, and went into another bout of hysterical laughter. It was all he could do; he could barely move, and he certainly couldn't escape if she wanted to tickle him to death. He squirmed, screamed, wriggled his body, and laughed like he had never laughed before. She continued to torture his ribs, sometimes sliding her hands up to his sensitive underarms, where the ticklish sensations were even more excruciating.

When tears were running down his face and he had no breath left in his lungs, she stopped. He kept laughing for a minute, his whole body shivering with ticklishness.

As soon as he had begun to recover, she moved down to his bare feet again. She held back his big toes, stretching his soles so that he couldn't even wriggle them. She used her nails again, producing such ticklish feelings in his feet that they traveled through his body instantaneously, causing him to feel tickled all over unmercifully. He was practically beyond laughing now; he just lay there, squirmed, and moaned for mercy. She didn't give him any.

She finally stopped. He was so weak that he barely felt her come to his side again.

"I'm going to use a feather now, Mark," she said. "You may actually like this . . ."

He felt something soft sliding up and down his thighs, and under his balls. As exhausted as he was from her unrelenting tickling, he felt his penis start to react. It was growing larger . . .

"That's it, Mark . . .That's what I want now . . ." she cooed.

His cock was as hard as a rock. She kissed the tip of it. He had never, in all his years, felt so stimulated . . . it almost seemed as if all that tickling had had some effect on him. He was dying to come!

She climbed on top of him, parting her vagina and sliding his penis in. She was there for about two minutes when he felt her come, moaning and squirming around on top of him. He was nearly there . . . another second, and . . .

She began tickling his ribs and underarms as hard as she could. He was so surprised, he forgot for a second how stimulated he was, then he lost control and squirmed and laughed again.

She gently withdrew herself, still tickling. He was so frustrated! He had been so close, now she was distracting him and driving him crazy with the tickling!

She tickled again for a long time, driving him hysterical and into tears again. His cock was no longer even hard.

He was so weak now that he couldn't move, even when she untied him. She did so for just a minute, then turned him over on his stomach and tied his hands in front of him. She freed his feet, brought them up to his hands, and tied them there.

This position was no better for Mark. He was hogtied now, and still couldn't defend any of his ticklish places.

She started tickling his feet again. The blindfold had fallen off, but he couldn't open his eyes anyway; he was too busy laughing hysterically as she scraped her nails under his toes and down his ticklish arches.

Mark never could remember how much he was tickled that night. It was all a blur. She tied him in about six different positions during the course of his torture. Once, he was tied to a chair. She lay on the floor underneath his feet and tickled him half to death with a hairbrush. She would frequently stroke his penis, get him to the point where he was about to have an orgasm, and then start viciously tickling some sensitive part of his body again.

By the time she tired of this game, he was a mess. He had a wild look in his eye, his hair hung down in his face, and he knew that, days afterward, even if he wasn't thinking about it, he would feel her tickling fingers on his body still . . .

He was as crazy from the tickling as he was from not being allowed to come. He begged with her, asking her to please let him have an orgasm. Finally, she stopped her torture and considered.

"Mark, if I let you come . . . will you do this again? Willingly?" she said.

Mark was so desperate by this time that he would have promised anything. "Yes! Yes! Anything you want, just do it!"

She nodded. "All right . . . but I'm holding you to your promise."

She began stroking his cock with her hand again. By that time, she had had around four orgasms herself, so she needed no more gratification.

In about two minutes, Mark had the largest, most intense orgasm of his life. His body shivered and shook with the sheer ecstacy of it; he splashed half the room with his semen.

He sat there, tied in the chair, slumped over in exhaustion. Rhonda knew she could get no more from the poor man that night.

She set him free. Rhonda made him leave his telephone number and address. He started out the door, weak from the tickling, with little red marks all over his body that her nails had left.

"Mark?" she said as he opened the door. He turned.

She smiled. "I'll call you tomorrow."