Abduction (31 page)

A fresh blush of shock burned my cheeks.

"What?"

"You heard me, Devan."

"No Conrad," I whispered, "please. You do it."

I'd almost prepared myself to repeat the routine Conrad and I had, but wasn't ready to masturbate in a room full of strangers.

"Not tonight, Devan. We want to watch you make yourself come. Now do as I've asked.

Blushing unbearably, I reached a trembling hand down between my legs and lightly stroked my mound. I felt my sex responding to my fingers, telling them where to go next. I saw that I could give myself incredibly intense sensations by stroking over the base of my clit, or I could cause a warm, easy pleasure by lightly cupping the whole area in my hand, or running a light stroke around the outside of my lips. As I caressed myself I continued my story. After a short while, Conrad's voice broke into my monologue.

"Now, Devan, put your hand inside your panties. Let us watch you rub your wet slit."

I know I was shaking as I pressed my hand flat against my stomach, slipping it down into my panties. I couldn't imagine what those men could be thinking of me. I didn't know what to think of myself. I tried to push all self-recrimination from my mind, to enjoy the touch of my fingers, to bask in the dark thrill of their anonymous gazes. I felt the smooth contours of my sex, pressed one finger gingerly between the lips. I yielded to myself, my finger felt the slippery wetness of my slit. I began to move my hand lightly back and forth between my legs. Then I heard a clatter of belt buckles, the zing zing zing of three zippers going down. Then I knew they were jacking off to the sight of me masturbating.

"That's lovely, Devan, dear. Now, pull your panties down. Show us that wet little pussy."

I ceased my narrative for a moment, tugged my panties down to my knees, then over, and off over my feet behind me.

"Spread your legs wider, darling."

My heart pounding, my cheeks burning, I opened my legs farther, giving them all a clear view of my wet, swollen cunt. When Conrad told me to, I went back to masturbating, sliding my fingers between my lips, back toward my vagina, then forward, over the clit, and back again. Then, at his command, I put my finger inside myself, feeling the strange texture of my vagina. It was an odd feeling, registering all the information being recorded by my fingertips, and at the same time remarking all the sensations they created on my body. I put two fingers inside myself, started fucking 275

myself. My embarrassment was completely gone, and it seemed like my whole body was throbbing with arousal.

"You've got the boys pretty worked up here, love. Why don't we give them a peek at those gorgeous tits of yours, hmmm?"

I felt Conrad's fingers at my chest, unbuttoning the little buttons of my blouse. My heart beat faster as I felt the fabric part, as he tugged the shirt down to release and reveal my breasts. Then he was gone. I was on my own, on the bed, breasts bared, the cool evening air tickling my hot skin, making my nipples tingle and harden.

As I finished the story, I replayed the final climactic images while I slid my finger slowly but with a desperate urgency inside myself, then out, between the sensitive, wet folds of my sex, against my throbbing clit, and back again, feeling that unbearable pressure, that aching yearning swelling, building, second by second, dying for it, terrified I'd somehow fail to bring it on as Conrad always had, aching, aching, and finally I cupped my hand over myself, letting two fingers nestle deep between my wet folds, and desperately writhed against my fingers, rubbing my clit needfully against the heel of my hand and finally bringing myself to delicious orgasm, crying out with a joyful moan of release as I came. In darkness and silence I knelt, listening to the waning echoes of my pulse as the throbbing in my sex slowly subsided.

After a moment Conrad came over, pulling my skirt down over my legs, then putting an arm around my shoulders and planting a soft, lingering kiss on my cheek.

"That's my good exhibitionist," he whispered in my ear so the others could not hear.

"Button up now, love." I pulled my blouse closed over my breasts and began fastening the little buttons.

Then I felt, or heard, a sudden movement, scuffling and knocking, a grunting sound. Panicked, I jerked the blindfold from my eyes. A man's face filled almost my whole field of vision. I glanced to the side and saw, for a tiny second, Conrad struggling with someone, as hands grabbed my shoulders from behind and jerked me down on my back.

"Just take it easy, now," I heard the man struggling with Conrad say. I turned from the sight of the huge man looming over me toward Conrad, where he seemed to be in a choke hold in front of a man much taller and broader than him. "There's three of us, and one of you. And even little Peter there's got to have a good thirty pounds on you. Now, you can do the smart thing, and let us have our fun. Or you can be stupid, and try to stop us." He looked at his big, muscley friends and started to laugh. "But I guess we'd just stomp you,"

I watched, astonished, terrified, as one of Conrad's little grins appeared, and he answered in a cool voice, "So dramatic, Tom. Really, all you had to do was ask. The tavern brawl was hardly necessary."

Tom looked down at Conrad, choking in the crook of his elbow.

"I don't need to ask you nothin'."

"No, clearly you're right there. All I meant was that the dramatics of the wrestling match are just…ahem…a waste of precious energy."

"You mean, you'd just
let
us fuck your little girlfriend."

"To tell you the truth, Tom, she isn't really my girlfriend. She's just girl I've been fooling around with a little. Go ahead. Have your fun with her. Don't mind if I stick around and watch, do you?"

"Shit," Tom said, releasing his hold on Conrad, "you're an even dirtier bastard than we gave you credit for."

It was all slowly coming together for me, what was about to happen. And beneath my terror I felt a crushing sort of pain at the idea that Conrad would just stand there, grinning, and watch it all.

The one in front of me shoved me down onto my back again and starting climbing over me. When I hit him and tried to get out from under him, the one behind me grabbed me by the wrists and pinned my arms down by my head.

"I supposed you've talked it all over? Planned it all out?" I heard Conrad say to the man beside him.

"The, er, pecking order, you mean? Course, I'd be goin' first, but, eh, I think I'll be havin' a go at that little ass of hers, when they're done with her."

The one on top of me yanked my blouse back open, baring my breasts as I struggled futilely to break free of the other's grip on my arms.

"You might be interested to know," I heard Conrad saying, "that she's a virgin."

"You're fucking shittin' me. With that mouth on her?"

"I promise you, Tom."

"You guys hear that? Our little Jezebel there's a virgin!"

"Bullshit!" The one holding my wrists blurted in a disgusting chuckle.

"We'll know soon enough, won't we darlin'?" the one on top of me breathed in my face as he roughly pawed my breasts.

He sat back on his heels, flung the hem of my skirt up over my hips and started undoing his belt. Hard and fast as I could I kicked him in the side of the head. Before I 278

could land another blow he wrenched my knees apart, so wide and so hard I thought he'd torn ligaments in my legs, and slapped me so hard across the face my ears rang.

"Want to play rough with me, do you?"

He raised his arm again, but Tom leapt forward and grabbed the man's forearm.

"Don't get her all bloodied up, huh, Peter."

Tom stood there, looking down at me.

"You hear what Connor said? She's a virgin. Maybe we ought to rethink things a little."

"What difference does that make?" the one on top of me whined defensively. "If she's a virgin, you can bet her ass is virgin, too. You're not losin' anything.

"Hey," the one behind me called over to Conrad. "She ever suck your dick?"

"Nope," Conrad called back, his revolting grin intact, his eyes avoiding mine.

"Heh heh," the third chortled as he clutched my wrists painfully, "we could have her well broken in by the end of the night."

"What the fuck's wrong with you, Connor? What you been doin' with her all this time?"

Tom's question went unanswered, but maybe it was rhetorical. He stared down at me for another moment, his eyes roaming over my face, my breasts, my bared sex, so violently exposed between my splayed thighs.

"All right, Petey. You go ahead and pop her cherry. Just don't rough her up so much that she's not still lively when we have our go, 'kay?"

A big, nasty smile split the face of the man on top of me as he yanked open his fly and pulled out his hard penis. I was paralyzed, wanting to close my eyes but unable to look away from what he was about to do to me.

"What the fuck?" Tom hollered, reeling around, swatting insanely at his neck.

What the fuck!"

Then Peter yelled and jumped up. A moment later the hands on my wrists jerked free. I jumped up, fast as I could. Tom and Conrad were wrestling. I thought maybe I saw a gun. The other two stomped into the fray, Pete stumbling and struggling with his jeans.

I ran. I ran out of that room, toward the door, and out, down the steps, into the woods. As I charged into the trees, running as fast as I could, I heard gun shots.

After wandering for days in the woods, yesterday I found this little cabin, where I am, at the moment, as I write. I don't know where it is that this cabin is situated, whether I am half a day's walk from a town where I could get help, or whether, if I try to find a way out, I'll end up lost for days in the woods. I guess maybe there's a chance I won't get out. But tomorrow or the next day, when I'm feeling better, I'm going to try.

I don't know if Conrad is dead or alive. I don't know if he really shot that man, and maybe the others, or whether one of them shot him. All the time I was in the woods I felt I was being hunted. But whether by Conrad or by those other men I don't know.

Probably it was only my imagination, fueled by the trauma of everything that's happened.

I dream about Conrad every night. Sometimes he's like a rescuing angel who finds me, loves, me, cares for me. Other times he's a kind of horrible demon who 280

terrifies and tortures me. Though while I was with him I let him lull me into submission, a submission that went beyond obedience to a twisted kind of trust, and even affection, now that I'm out of his reach, out from under his spell—away from his gaze, his words, his touch—I …I don't know. I guess I hate him.

Day 3 at cabin

It seems a significant coincidence that, after all that has happened to me, I'm here, alone in this little cabin in the wilderness. Instead of escaping captivity and returning to a familiar world that might have helped me back to normalcy, I am left here, alone with my memories of Conrad, his words, the things he did to me, the things I did for him, and the realization that between the episodes of fear, Conrad, my kidnapper, gave me moments of pleasure more intense than any I'd imagined in my most perverted fantasies.

If I had gone back to Seattle, back to school, maybe I would have focused on other things, distracted my mind from the impact Conrad has had on me. But here, despite the hours of distraction I get from reading novels borrowed from the stranger who is unknowingly hosting me, I dwell endlessly on the thrill, beyond my previous imagination, that I felt at telling my fantasy aloud to him while he touched me. And, though I can't recall the little cabin and those men without a pang of terror, sometimes I can look back, past the moment when things seemed to slip out of Conrad's control, and recall how deeply aroused I was to be masturbating in front of strangers, touching myself in front of them while revealing a fantasy I had, for a long time, felt guilty for even creating in my mind. Conrad released me from that shame, I think.

Day 4 at cabin

The owner showed up here today. At first, when I felt the cold air reach me through the open door, and turned to see him standing, I thought it was
him
—Conrad.

The microsecond of relief I when I saw it wasn't was shattered by his look of hatred. I didn't understand, didn't think or try to understand why a man, a different man, had broken into the cabin where I'd taken refuge. I was operating on the pure instinct of self-preservation.

I thought he was there to hurt me, only for that. I tried to get away, but he caught me. I thought, when he forced me down in the mud, and later when he made me change clothes in the shower, and yet again when he pushed his gun between my legs, that he would rape me. Not like Conrad, not by getting inside my mind, stripping my most secret thoughts bare, but a violent, physical rape.

This man, Vaughn, didn't plan this, our strange encounter here. It happened to him, as it happened to me. I sense him struggling, caught between a need to protect himself and the effort to restrain himself. I sense that if the balance tips, if he decides I am really some kind of threat, that he might really hurt me. Kill me, I mean—brutally, violently, in blind rage.

Day 11 at cabin

Over the last few days as we have lived our uneasy coexistence, Vaughn has tried to stay away from me. I know he still doesn't trust the accident of my arrival, that he resents my intrusion here. Maybe, too, he's afraid that he'll relapse into his initial violent 282

tendency toward me. I don't understand how, but I sense that I frighten him. And, even though I find myself…drawn to him, he still frightens me.

Vaughn's so quiet. His melancholy brooding is such a contrast to Conrad's grinning loquacity. And he seems so…still. Even though I've seen him angry, even enraged, even though I'm always a little on edge, waiting for that rage to surface again, I feel like the quiet stillness is his true nature. That he's very gentle, almost delicate, inhabiting this incongruously enormous body.