The Bridle Path: Equal Play
Valiente hummed a happy little tune to herself as she finished up the dishes from Sweetie Belle’s lunch. It had once been, as she understood, Rarity’s task to keep home affairs running smoothly at the Carousel Boutique. Under Princess Luna’s guidance, Valiente had been eager to rise to the un-daunting challenge of keeping up a “healthy daily routine”; Rarity’s recovery was progressing far more slowly, and she only spent a few mandatory hours out and about each day before passing the reins back to Valiente.
Housework was menial and tedious, but not onerous. And both of their “progress” made Luna happy, which was what Valiente truly cared about. If she had to name one thing more important to her than sensory and sensual experiences, it was making her owner happy.
What was next? Valiente thought back over her schedule for the day, and remembered.
“Sweetie Belle, dear?” she called.
“Go away, Valiente.” Sweetie didn’t look up from her coloring at the table. Valiente didn’t mind; having a little sister, even a belligerent one who only cared for Rarity, was an interesting experience, though she was more like an aunt to the filly.
“Shortly, Sweetie. Shortly. I’m off to see Applejack in a few minutes, and I shouldn’t leave you here alone.” Valiente rinsed the last glass and shut off the tap, turning away from the sink. “You’ll come along if I promise to leave you and Apple Bloom to your own business for a while, won’t you?”
“I guess.” Sweetie Belle’s tone was grudging, but her haste in closing her coloring book and levitating the colored pencils back into their box betrayed her. “When can we leave?”
Valiente hesitated. She really ought to clean the kitchen some more, but… making her little sister happy was more fun, and either would probably please Luna. It was otherwise a boring weekend, anyway. “Now, Sweetie. We can leave now. Let me just get a hat; it’s looking excessively bright out today.”
The walk was uneventful; Valiente tried a little small talk, and desisted when Sweetie ignored her. The filly would never admit it, but Valiente knew she appreciated the difference from Rarity’s attempts to solve problems of unwanted conversation with more talk. When she arrived at Sweet Apple Acres Valiente let Sweetie Belle go and proceeded to the house, where she knocked.
“C’mon in!” Even Granny Smith’s voice was old and rickety, Valiente thought as she entered. Fortunately, the Apples had been just as hospitable as their reputation when she had finally “returned” to Ponyville; she was always welcome here, Rarity or no.
Granny Smith was in the living room, knitting the beginnings of something, and she looked up as Valiente cleared her throat. “Afternoon, Valiente. What can I do you for?”
“No charge for a friend,” Valiente quipped. But curiosity gnawed at her. “How could you tell? I hadn’t even opened my mouth yet, this time.”
Granny Smith shrugged. “You always walk like a mare who’s looking. I ain’t going to hold it against you, so long as you don’t teach my Apple Bloom to prance about like that.”
“Ugh, no! Of course not!” The unicorn carefully prevented an unpleasant mental image from forming. Rarity could sometimes see those, and it had led to misunderstandings. “No, I came to talk to Applejack. Do you know where I may find her?”
“Dunno why you ask me.” Granny chuckled. It turned into a cough, and she stopped. “She’s always in her room when it’s you coming over.”
“Thank you.” Valiente gave Granny a smile, then turned and headed over to Applejack’s room. This probably wouldn’t take too long. When Applejack asked her over like this, they would usually make some small talk, perhaps enjoy a late lunch, and part with smiles. It was a bi-weekly routine that had been good for their friendship.
As she pushed the door open, it crossed her mind that the polite thing was to knock.
“Granny! It ain’t what it looks like!” Applejack cried.
Valiente blinked. Facing away from her on the bed lay Applejack, her orange coat criss-crossed with white ropes. The earth pony’s legs were bound up in a bundle and her tail and mane were knotted together, forcing her body into an arch and exposing her glistening sex, where a Y-section of rope under her tail was knotted together.
Valiente bit her bottom lip as the sight sank straight into her libido and brought a touch of heat and color to her face. “Well,” she said. Her perverse mind needed little time to understand the situation, and as she spoke she levitated Applejack an inch off the bed to turn her around. “It looks like you’ve been playing with some very high quality ropes and got yourself stuck. It also seems plausible that I’ve been your backup plan, without my knowledge, for the past few months. Is that about right?”
Applejack’s blush, already hot and bright, intensified, making her light freckles truly stand out. “Uh, yeah. I guess it is what it looks like. Sorry, Rarity, I—I kept meaning to say—”
“Quite alright. And it’s Valiente again today.” Applejack looked simply delicious in her bonds, Valiente thought as she levitated her hat over to the dresser. If only somepony else were there to hold her horn on a leash and order her to find out what Apples really tasted like.
Applejack couldn’t keep her friend’s gaze, and she turned her eyes away. “I guess now you think I’m one of them perverts…”
Valiente smiled. “But of course, dear! It’s delightful to know I have a friend who shares my interests. And it’s especially good to know you did have a backup plan.” She forced her tone stern for a moment. “You could have been hurt, Applejack, especially if something had come up and I’d forgotten to come.”
She paused for a moment. Actually, the door hadn’t been locked—she took a moment to reach out with a telekinetic spell and fix that—so it would only have been even more embarrassing. “So promise to tell me next time. It’s not like I won’t enjoy suspecting anyway.”
“Fine, I promise. But dang it, Rares,” Applejack muttered. “You left the pervert in charge?”
"Of course she did." Valiente turned, brushing under Applejack's chin with her raised tail. "And for the moment, I know a great deal more about how to help you in several ways, both immediate and longer-term. Now, I presume you do want help, but you'll have to stop squirming if I'm to get a proper hold of those knots."
“I…” Applejack hesitated, then let out a heavy sigh. “Just get my mane out for comfort’s sake. I reckon I can trust you after… you know.”
Valiente nodded, and charged her horn with a mane-styling spell borrowed from Rarity’s memory. “I’m glad you’re willing to trust me after so little time, but are you quite certain you don’t want out?” Part of her hated the question; Applejack’s situation, and her hesitance to escape it, was a potential avenue for a kind of play Valiente hadn’t enjoyed in far too long. If it were a casual encounter with anypony else, she wouldn’t think twice. But Applejack was one of Rarity’s friends, and one of her own few friends as well.
Applejack’s blush crept all the way up to her ears as she looked away again. “C-consarnit, yes! Quit it with the embarrassing questions!”
Valiente’s lips formed a silent oh, and she unleashed her spell on the orange mare’s mane to begin plucking the knotted and tangled strands apart. Something was definitely going on here; Applejack liked either her or the humiliation of being caught, and unlike Rarity, Valiente wasn’t vain enough to assume the former. As for the latter? Anything to please a friend. She let her smile turn as suggestive as her train of thought.
“That’s delightfully perverse of you, Applejack,” she purred, walking over to the bed and settling into the sheets while her spell worked. She could always excuse it as needing a better angle to see her mane.
“I—I—” Applejack started. She had to pause and breathe to recover herself, and Valiente internally congratulated herself on reading the mare correctly.
“But I’m afraid I just can’t do that,” Valiente continued. She finished separating Applejack’s mane from her tail and ran traces of magic along the other mare’s rope bonds, searching for an end-point. “Why, if I did, a pony could be excused for thinking I was taking advantage of you.”
The very first tie Valiente caressed with her magic was the one that Applejack had made between her hind legs. She gave it a gentle tug in the right direction, rubbing it against Applejack's clit. The bound mare's mouth dropped open for a moment as her legs spasmed, before she could control herself enough to grit her teeth together.
"R-Rares!"
Valiente! Rarity had been silent most of the day, but this seemed to be what it took to get her attention. What are you doing? She trusted us! I need her to remain my friend after this, or at least I need to be able to look her in the eye!
Having fun, Valiente thought back. Rarity dear, I wouldn’t do anything if I didn’t think she liked it. Just look at her face. She might be more than a friend after this, but certainly not less.
"Now, now, I said to stop squirming," Valiente faux-scolded as Rarity backed off. She gave the knot another tug that made Applejack's hind hooves twitch. "If you can't, I'm going to have to help you until you can."
She leaned in close to her friend's ear. "The safeword is ‘Mistress.’ You’ll say it if I cross any lines whatsoever, won’t you?"
Keeping her eyes closed, Valiente finally raised her head, shifting Applejack's to rest across her withers. She didn't move otherwise, however; hidden away in Applejack's bedroom, with the door locked, she wasn't eager to break contact with the rest of her friend's warm, powerful, and surprisingly soft body just yet. Still, she had needs.
"Now that you're free, perhaps you could help me with something."
"What's that, Ra—er, Valiente?" Applejack's tone had mellowed considerably after the second orgasm. All told, the process of reducing her to a happy, twitchy puddle had taken three and a half hours; Valiente hadn't been in a hurry to help. Once the initial awkwardness wore off, Applejack had realized she wasn't in a hurry to be helped, either, but she was finally free.
"I'd love to know how you felt here,” Valiente said, fluttering her eyelashes. “Your ropework is magnificent; imagination simply doesn't suffice."
Rarity stirred in her bonds at the back of her mind, and raised her voice in protest. Valiente! But—But it's my time in another thirty minutes!
Valiente didn't answer, except for a sultry smile. Instead, she pushed the caged mare further back into her mind, until neither of the unicorns could “see” or hear the other.
Applejack lifted her head and looked down at her friend. Until that afternoon, she'd always seen Rarity when she looked at the beautiful unicorn, and Rarity wasn't a pony she thought about that way. But the past few hours had finally hammered it home: Valiente was not Rarity. She had said and done things no fancy city mare ever would.
And Applejack had loved it. She knew it was just the hormones talking, but she could almost fancy the promiscuous mare, despite her own eye for stallions.
She could do this favor.
"Alright." Applejack took a deep breath, closing her eyes for a moment. She wasn't ready for round two, but she still had it in her to make her friend happy.
Within five minutes, Valiente was utterly helpless, caught in a web of knots and ropes that thoroughly immobilized and aroused her. A simple harness around the unicorn’s body was only the base; with that, it was a simple matter to bind her legs in a neat bundle beneath her belly and tie her tail to her shoulders, leaving her exposed just as Applejack herself had been.
The cherry on the sundae was the knot between her hind legs—it was tied far tighter against the flesh than Applejack had done for herself, because this time there was no need to allow any means of escape. It slid along Valiente's folds and bumped up against her clit, producing delighted little gasps every time she so much as breathed. Preventing the unicorn from freeing herself with magic was simple—Applejack had wound a length of rope around and around her horn up to its very point, grounding any spell she tried to cast.
"Applejack—" Valiente had to stop and pant for a breath. "This is wonderful."
"I can think of better than talk to do with that mouth o' yours," Applejack said quietly. She gently pressed Valiente's muzzle against the mattress and drew out another length of rope. Maybe for a stallion, she'd open her legs and take advantage, but this was her friend—with certain benefits, but not quite the same. She wound part of the rope into a large ball, and fashioned the rest into a bridle around it. "Now, I didn't shut myself up, but that was for safety's sake. I reckon you trust me enough that won't be necessary, don't you?"
Valiente didn't have to open her eyes to guess what Applejack had done. She nodded and opened wide, and could have swooned as Applejack worked the huge knot into her mouth before tying off the makeshift bridle in her mane.
Then Valiente let Rarity out of her cage, slipping into the bliss of her internal bondage to rest.
Rarity came around with a start, her eyes opening in a flash. Her muzzle burned crimson as she realized the situation Valiente had left her in.
Valiente! she screamed in her mind. You devious, uncouth—I hate you so much right now!
Valiente giggled. No, you don't. I can feel how wet you're staying.
I... no, I don't. But really?!
Valiente smiled. Have a lovely evening, dear. I don't think Applejack plans to take any less of your time than I did of hers. Then she bit down on the gag her cage had acquired, letting it sink into her muzzle and suppress her tongue. She would be as helpless here as Rarity was on the outside, now; perhaps more so.
Applejack smiled at the grunts coming from beneath the gag she had made for Valiente. "Figured you'd like it, sugarcube." She laid down with Rarity and snuggled up from behind her, looking over the knots. Her work had been flawless; nopony could escape or hurt herself with this level of ropework.
"Try not to have too much fun, now. I—" she yawned "—I really need a nap."
Left to her own devices, Rarity struggled against her bonds. But unlike the bondage in her mind, these ropes were far from chaste. Every move she made drew the a soft knot of rope along her labia and up against her clit. She tried to persist, to resist the pleasure until she could pull herself free to have some very stern words with Applejack about Valiente's behavior.
Panting and groaning into her makeshift gag, she failed, slumping within Applejack's embrace to recover. But the ropes were so close and tight, so sensitive to every movement, that even her own breathing pleasured her. Her dignity couldn't hold out forever—and so, finally, she gave in. She squirmed gently at first, but that only stoked the wet heat in her belly, and soon she couldn't restrain herself from trying to buck her hips.
"Good girl," Applejack murmured drowsily. The words boiled Rarity's face red, and she started to talk back, only to be reminded of the massive knot that pinned her tongue and held her mouth open as wide as it would stretch.
...And that made her buck again, her legs spasming for a moment when the ropes brushed her clit again and sent hot lightning through her nerves. Rarity couldn't hold in a moan any longer. But as undignified as it was, she got nothing but a little nuzzle of encouragement from Applejack.
She was safe. She was supported by one of her dearest friends, who had done this for her to enjoy and who was surprisingly warm and comfortable to snuggle with. And though it had been a trick on Valiente's part, she knew she could count on Applejack's discretion even without blackmail.
Rarity did not fully let herself go, but despite her helplessness, she was able to relax. She writhed with purpose, grinding her clit in a steady, semicircular rhythm against the knot that had been tied specifically for her enjoyment. Her mouth, stretched open by the gag, could not shape her moans; her mewling cries of pleasure sounded softly and wordlessly in her throat as she took on her own terms the pleasure she was offered.
