He eyes flickered open and she gasped in shock. The sound was muted by tape stuck to her lips, keeping her mouth closed. In the pallid light admitted by a small window set near the ceiling of the room, she could see now that she was lying on a concrete floor. She shivered, an involuntary reaction which suddenly made her acutely aware that she was nursing a full bladder. She moaned in discomfort, and tried to flex her arms. They hardly moved.

      As the seconds passed, she started to understand that she was tied up in what looked like a basement. Her wrists had somehow been secured behind her back. She tried to pull her hands to one side in an attempt to see what was holding her wrists, but something prevented the movement. She felt something pulling on her throat, and slowly began to grasp that something encircled her neck. Not metal; something soft. Leather? A dog collar?

      Groping with numb fingers, Lucy probed the bracelets enclosing her wrists, then the short chain connecting them. She came across what felt like a small padlock looped through one of the chain links. But that wasn't all: there was a second chain, and the bar of the padlock had been looped through the end link of this one too. This second chain ran from the small of her back to her neck, and was evidently attached to the back of the collar. The result of this odd configuration was that she could not straighten her arms. In fact, the vertical chain was so short that it prevented her reaching below her waist at all.

      With a groan of despair, Lucy understood that, even if she could get to her feet, she was not going to be able to lift her dress and lower her panties and pantyhose to pee. Nor was she going to be able to reach round far enough to even stand a chance of pulling the tape off her mouth. Adding insult to injury, she discovered that she could not part her feet; rope or something similar had been wound about her ankles, binding them together.

      Who had done this to her? She had a vague recollection of leaving the office and descending to the underground garage; of seeing something move in the shadows, then... nothing. And yet, she could remember events in the office earlier in the day; where she had gone for lunch; the dress and heels she had selected to wear that morning.

      Clearly, she had been here for some time, as evidenced by her extremely full bladder. God, she really needed to pee, but how could she do anything about it without wetting her clothes? She had no desire to do that since she might be trapped like this for a long time; lying there in pee-soaked clothes was an unattractive, not to mention uncomfortable, prospect. She would have to make herself wait until someone came to help her, or until she could get free.

      But how long was that likely to be? Minutes? Hours? She could certainly not hold her pee in for hours. She doubted that she could stop it bursting out of her for longer than another ten minutes! And if it came down to her freeing herself, how was she going to get herself out of handcuffs and padlocks?

      Lucy rolled her body over so that she lay face down on her stomach. The impact was harder than she expected since she could not control her movement with her hands. The jolt made her urge to pee more intense. She squeezed her eyes shut and tensed her abdominal muscles in time to avoid releasing urine into her panties. God, her bladder was nearly bursting! What the hell was she going to do?

      Her muscles burned, screaming out in pain. Her arms were stiff from being locked in the same, unnatural position for what had surely been hours. The modest movement seemed to kick-start her circulation, and her hands and feet began to tingle with pins and needles. The sensation grew so powerful and distracting that it almost made her start to wet herself. She curled her toes inside her shoes, tightening the tendons in her legs. This constriction reached up to her crotch and helped suppress her burning desire to pee, at least a little.

      For several minutes, Lucy lay there letting the feeling return to her tortured limbs, listening to the sound of her strained breathing through her nose. The cold from the floor was seeping into her chest and thighs, just one more factor exacerbating her need to empty her bladder. She tried again to remember how she had been abducted, but the memory continued to elude her.

      Judging that enough feeling had returned to her limbs, she willed her knees to bend until her high heels were touching her bottom. She groped with still partially numb fingers and felt the presence of a knot. She could only work at it if she stretched her arms as far as the restricting chain attached to the collar around her neck would allow. The strain did nothing to ease the burning sensation around the lips of her vagina as she fought not to let go of her pee, but she had no choice but to work on the knot. It was a vital first step in getting herself out of this situation.

      The knot proved to be tight and multi-layered, and even after ten minutes of stretching and tugging, Lucy did not seem to be making any progress in loosening it. Her bladder was now screaming for relief, and she knew that if she didn't free her legs soon, she would lose the battle and soak her dress with piss. Her breaths were fast and shallow through her nose, reflecting the enormous effort it was taking to maintain control.

      After another few minutes of clawing at the knot, Lucy whimpered as she finally felt it give a little. She renewed her efforts, and managed to unloop the first layer of the knot. She made herself keep working, even though her arms were aching abominably by this time, and soon she had released the second layer, then the third. After an eternity of bladder-bursting discomfort, the rope around her ankles slackened, and she was able to kick her feet free.

      Her immediate reaction was to roll back onto her side and cross her legs, squeezing her legs together so tightly that her thigh muscles trembled with the effort. She grunted with relief as the pressure on her bladder eased, giving her a little more time.

      She lay in this position for a minute, until she recovered her breath and abdominal muscle control, and then she started on the next phase of rescuing herself. She bent her left leg and, after several false starts, managed to sit herself up. She then folded her legs beneath her body and struggled to a standing position. She bent double as the desire to pee reached a new crescendo, the urge to release so powerful that, for a second, she started to go. Pee soaked into her panties and started to spread up her backside before she could clamp it off. Lucy's features contorted as she made herself hold on, but now that she was standing, the effort required every last ounce of her stamina.

      Bursting but with just sufficient control to prevent a major accident, at least for the moment, Lucy began to dance from foot to foot, bending her knees. With her eyes wide, she fought the next contraction of her bladder muscles as it forced the inner sphincter to relax. Sheer willpower was all that prevented the outer sphincter from relaxing too.

      Aware that she was almost out of time, Lucy made her way across the cluttered basement to a set of steps. She climbed these, keeping her thighs pressed together as far as possible, until she arrived at a door leading to the house above. If it was locked, she knew she wouldn't stand a chance of getting out. She turned and bent her knees so that her hands could reach the door handle. To her immense relief, it turned and the door moved. She practically fell backwards through the opening as the door swung back.

      Regaining her balance, Lucy found herself in a passage populated by four more doors. Dancing frantically to keep from pissing herself, she hobbled to the first door, turning her back to it and again bending her knees to reach the handle. Beyond this door lay a linen cupboard, and with a moan of frustration, she moved to the second door on the left of the passage. This one opened into a bedroom. The door opposite, when it opened, revealed what she so badly needed: a bathroom, and a toilet with the lid up. Obviously, her kidnapper was a man!

      Lucy hurried into the bathroom, then stood hopping and bending as she struggled not to let her pee go, as she fought futilely with the handcuffs and chains preventing her from lifting her skirt and reaching her panties and pantyhose. There was absolutely nothing she could do to undress herself, so in the last second before her pee exploded out of her, she sat down on the toilet and urinated through her clothes. Despite the filter of panties, pantyhose and dress, however, her pee still managed to sound like a raging torrent as it streamed into the pan.

      Lucy's body sagged with the relief of emptying her tortured, bursting bladder. At first, however, her strained muscles refused to relax, and even after she had been peeing for half a minute, her brain was still receiving signals that her bladder was in imminent danger of exploding!

      She leaned forward until her breasts were resting on her thighs, waiting for the ache to subside. And that was when she caught the sound of a door opening, and knew that her kidnapper had returned.