Flesh & Blood (5 page)

She fled across the plain, light shift flying about her as she ran pell-mell through the tall grass. Behind her were the screams and shrieks of the other girls and the coarse yells and cries of victory from the raiders. Then, rising above it, the terrifying sound of a horse’s hooves pounding against the earth, and growing closer.

She risked a look back, and cried out in horror to see the horse bearing down on her. She turned and twisted, trying to dodge, searching for any cover that might protect her. Exhausted she ran faster, desperate in her hopeless race.

She screamed as a hand yanked on her hair, the horse up beside her now, slowing, its rider yanking back viciously on its reins. Her hands jerked back behind her, seizing the stout wrist of the hand embedded in her tangled hair. ‘No!’ she screamed.

Mocking laughter replied, and she screamed again as she was drawn up as if weightless, lifted and draped across the shoulders of the powerful horse. A harsh slap across her buttocks made her cry out again as a harsh voice said something in a language she did not recognize.

The horse turned and trotted back, Leah bouncing helplessly, a powerful hand on her neck pinning her down as another roughly pawed her bottom through the thin shift and between her slender thighs.

Her wrists were seized, pulled up together and crossed behind her back, then a rough leather thong was twisted around them to pin them there as the horse returned to the edge of the small village. The cries and moans of pain and fear rose around her as the horse trotted through them, and Leah strained to raise her head, trying to peer through her tangled hair at the fiery remnants of the village, and the bodies littering the streets.

The horse stopped, snorting heavily. There was a harsh grunt of male voices and her hair was cruelly yanked up, causing her to scream, sliding, and then falling back off the horse to be caught by another man. He laughed and filled his hands with her breasts, squeezing painfully.

Another man, hairy and leering, gripping the front of her shift and tore it open and off. Leah screamed in terror, filled with shame and horror as she was flung down on the steps of the church, legs spread wide. The first man knelt between them, and when she tried to twist away he impatiently slapped her with the back of a huge hand, sending her head reeling to one side, blood filling her mouth. He sniggered in drunken delight and tore his cock free of his greasy breeches, then pressed it against her naked sex and thrust deep into her body.

It should have hurt her, yet there was no pain, only the deep, soft, lush feel of her pussy spreading wide and wetly enveloping the thick cock, and pleasure rushed through her. The man’s cock drove deep and then she did feel some discomfort, but it was almost nothing alongside the wondrous sense of delight at being so fully penetrated, so filled with him. Gasping, wide-eyed but horrified, she stared up at her leering assailant, at the half-dozen men standing around them on the steps, goading the grunting man on, awaiting their turn.

The cock retreated, then penetrated deep again, another wonderful rush of pleasure permeating her body and soul. The man lowered his face and gnawed her nipples, growling bites that shouldn’t have made her breasts quiver with delight – but did.

His coarse hands dug into the soft flesh of her backside, jerking her up to meet his bull-like thrusting, and Leah gasped and moaned and whimpered as she was cruelly used, ravished before the leering men gathered around. Dazed, bewildered, she stared up at them, shamed and lost and wondering.

The climax rolled through her with unstoppable power, and she shuddered uncontrollably against him. Her face burned with disgrace as the watchers cackled and pointed; yet she could not control her body’s responses. Her head rolled from side to side as she arched her back repeatedly, gasping in unison with the steady, aggressive thrusting of the rigid cock inside her.

The orgasm rolled on and on, and it was glorious. She dared not breath for fear it would help to dissipate the incredible pleasure sweeping through her. But it relented finally, only to leave her gripped by a terrible need for more.

The man groaned and hurried his pace; his hips hammering down like a piston against her softness. He shuddered and dipped his back, coming inside her, spewing his male seed within her belly. He grunted and slumped away, and Leah laying exhausted and panting as another took his place.

Again she began to moan in time to eager, animalistic thrusts. Again her senses spiraled upward into ecstasy, shuddering as an even more powerful orgasm rocked her.

On and on it went, men shuffling away from the steps drained and satisfied, others arriving to join the lurid onlookers, to wait their turn between her legs. One, less patient, knelt on the top step next to her head and seized her hair, positioning her face as he wanted and sinking his erection into her gasping mouth.

Through her delirium Leah tasted sweat and grime and urine, and gloried in it. Alien tastes that filled her mouth, the bloated cock pressing her tongue down, stretching her cheeks outward and buffeting the roof of her mouth. She sucked as best she could as it began to pump in and out between her stretched lips, her tongue flitting eagerly against the underside of the head.

Her hair was twisted and pulled, her neck aching, yet none of that mattered. She sucked and licked hungrily at the hard male organ, suckling desperately as it exploded within her mouth, filling her with warm, salty liquid.

All afternoon they fucked her, one and two at a time. As the sun set she knelt in the porch of the church, her face and breasts coated with drying semen, her cheek pressed against the aged wood floorboards, her wrists still bound behind her back, her bottom raised as yet another man fucked her fiercely from behind. She was utterly exhausted, drained to the edge of unconsciousness by the continuous physical abuse, rough handling, and emotional overload.

And then she was on her feet, staggering, dragged to face one of the wooden stakes erected in the village square. Her wrists were untied then rebound before her, raised above her and secured to a heavy iron ring set in the stake.

The soft flesh of her breasts pushed uncomfortably against the roughly cut wood, and she slumped there, exhausted, her head lolling back. Despite the pain in her aching body she was still gripped with sexual excitement, tempting her to squeeze her thighs together around the sturdy, uneven post.

A crack of noise and pain made her scream, throwing her harshly against the creaking wooden support.

Her head twisted around and she stared back at the leering man holding the long length of leather, stared in dazed incomprehension as he drew his arm back and then flung it forward again. Her eyes flinched away, her head turning, and then she felt it slash across her shoulders. She screamed and jerked as mocking jeers rose around her.

Another lash across her shoulders… another across her lower back… another across her bottom. Fire laced her pale flesh and spilled tears from her eyes. Yet her inner fires remained hot, some dark side of her mind exulting in being the focus of such shocking and outrageous cruelty.

Welt after welt rose on her back, ugly red lines of fiery pain marring the soft white canvas of flesh. The pain rose, and yet so too did the heat and dark pleasure.

She slouched by her wrists, yet did so in a way that subconsciously or not offered her bottom out towards the bite of the whip. Fire and pain slashed across it again and again and again, and a terrible temptation rose within her to open her thighs.

And then the man was beside her, tugging on her hair, leering down at her. He held the whip, a long, dangerous, ugly looking thing attached to a scarred handle, which he reversed in his hand as she stared at it through glassy eyes. He lowered the handle out of her sight and she felt it probing between her buttocks, and then…

Leah cried out as he penetrated her, as he pressed the braided leather handle into her recently violated sex, as he pushed it deep and began to pump it in and out. The dark pleasure swirled around her as males laughed, and she felt the climax exploding within her with a force she could barely believe.

And then the raiders moved on, wagons heavily laden with plunder, horsemen swaying drunkenly from their saddles. With her arms stretched out before her, wrists bound with leather thongs, Leah trotted dazedly after them, roped to the saddle of one of her captors, naked as she had been all afternoon, panting wearily, her bare feet shuffling through the wet earth of the road on her journey to slavery.

Sun filled the room with light, and Leah moaned and jerked awake, staring wildly around her. A dream, she thought weakly, just a dream. And yet, perhaps it was more.

Though it was chilly in the room the covers were thrown back, and she gasped as her fingers crept between her thighs and lifted away wet and glistening. She stared at them, then down at herself. Her body was coated in slippery fluids, most especially between her thighs. She felt raw aching inside, and her thighs, bottom and breasts felt bruised and tender.

With a cry of revulsion she leapt from the bed and stared down at her body, aghast at the slick, slimy liquid almost covering her face and breasts and stomach, and seeping slowly down her thighs from her sopping pussy.

She hurried into the bathroom, snatching at paper towels at first, trying to rub off the nauseating unguent. She got into the shower, turning it on as hot as she could bear, and winced as her fingers moved tentatively down between her legs, feeling the swollen lips of her sex, trembling as they moved anxiously against them.

How and what were the words that spun through her dazed, confused mind as she soaped herself repeatedly.

And the dream did not fade, as dreams normally did. It was clear and vivid in her mind, like a recent memory. She shuddered as she clutched her arms around her soapy breasts, remembering and almost feeling the harsh fingers digging into them, feeling the broken-toothed mouths chewing and sucking and slobbering. She could still feel their calloused hands mauling her body, still remember the feel of their cocks thrusting into her.

Yet as she stepped out of the shower, her body cleansed and rosy pink, she saw no sign of bruising or welts.

Her breasts felt tender, but there was no focus to the pain.

Her back felt sore, but looking over her shoulder in the mirror showed it was still smooth and unmarked, although she shuddered at the clear memory of the lashes laid across her poor flesh.

But of course it was only a dream. It had never really happened. It had been a strange and twisted dream…

But then Leah froze, unable to understand the slime that had covered her face and hair and body, which she had tasted on her tongue and in the back of her throat, and knew to be semen.

She put on the most diaphanous of silk shifts, one that barely descended below her buttocks, but it was sufficient covering for now. She wrapped her hair in a towel and left the bathroom, suddenly having a desperate need for some caffeine.

With a cup of strong black coffee inside her she felt a little better and returned to the bathroom, removed the towel and dried her hair, letting the hot, comforting air blow through her silken tresses, her thoughts still preoccupied by the bizarre dream. Had it some relation to Morales? She had never really gone for the darker side of sexuality before, or hadn’t thought she had. Yet he’d coerced her into his perverse clutches so quickly and with such contemptuous ease, and despite her normally rigid professional and personal standards she had allowed it to happen… and found it shockingly exciting.

Had the experience awoken some dark side of her nature that hungered for danger… and dangerous men? No, the very thought angered and unsettled her. She had always considered herself a strong, independently minded woman. She was surely not a submissive girl who craved to kneel before a dominant being and beg their favor.

And yet in sexual terms she found the notion of doing so deeply erotic. And hadn’t the bizarre and unexpected thought of prostrating herself in front of Mbweni made her almost breathless with illicit excitement?

It was warm in the bathroom as she set the dryer down, yet the outline of her stiff nipples was clear against the thin silk of her shift. She licked her lips a trifle nervously and tentatively cupped her breasts, feeling the tender buds pressing into the palms of her hands. She was not aroused. No, she was not!

‘What do you say, girl?’

Leah made a face and sat back on the edge of the desk. ‘Odd, I’ll grant you.’

Scott raised his eyebrows from the monitor. It was showing the tape from the building’s security camera, from very early that morning. Samantha Partridge was on the tape, walking out of her parents’ pricey apartment, along the hall to the elevator, down into the lobby, and then out the front door. She walked slowly and calmly, with no apparent concern on her face. Nor, apparently, any worry at being seen. Well, it was the early morning hours. Then again, she was entirely nude.

‘Looks almost like she’s sleepwalking,’ he said.

‘It does kind of, doesn’t it?’ Leah agreed.

‘By all accounts she had no worries, no stress.’

‘And according to her sister she never ever slept in the nude,’ Leah said.

‘Still, there’s nothing else to conclude from the tape,’ Scott decided. ‘Nobody forced her to go out like that.’

‘But where is she? Surely a nude girl walking the streets would be noticed and helped or reported, even in the early hours. Someone would have seen and called us.’

‘Unless the first person to see her snatched her,’ Scott suggested.

‘That would be really bad luck,’ Leah said, somewhat sarcastically, ‘falling into the clutches of a passing abductor when sleepwalking.’

‘Maybe she was in the road and got hit by a car, and now she’s in a hospital somewhere.’

Leah shook her head. ‘No, we’ve checked.’

Scott looked out the window frustratedly. ‘So how’s this for an idea,’ he said after a few minutes, ‘she was hypnotized.’

‘Hypnotized?’ Leah echoed, unconvinced.

‘Just a thought,’ he said, without much conviction. ‘Suppose she was seeing one of those hypnotists who claim to help with bad habits and phobias and he or she planted a suggestion for her to leave home.’