UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

Prologue

Mohammed Al-Utaibi was having a very bad day, not that day or night meant much to him anymore.  He still had headaches from the explosion that had killed most of men with whom he had worked.  His concept of time had vanished in the weeks since the Special Forces unit had put a hood over his face and taken him from Baghdad to Camp Anaconda to Balad Air Force Base, and from there to an underground cell at an undisclosed location.  Though the passport was false, his Geiger counter was real enough and members of Task Force 124 had immediately understood his potential significance.  They did not employ invasive throat and anal search.  They had a scanner in the beginning that did it all.  Inch by inch, it was run over his body in case it bleeped, meaning that he had a non-body tissue substance.  Only his mouth caused it to bleep.  They forced his mouth open and examined every filling.  Otherwise nothing. 

Centcom runs U. S. military operations across the Middle East.  Together, Centcom and the CIA ran TF 124.  Within hours of being captured, word had reached senior officers at both organizations and by the time the sun rose the next day, the President had been informed.  Before noon, an executive order had been signed designating Mohammed as an enemy combatant, Category Red-1. 

The United States had used the Red-1 nomenclature less than twenty times since 2001, when it began exempting terrorist detainees from the safeguards that the Geneva Convention offered the more typical prisoners of war.  Legally, the designation meant that the American government had determined that Mohammed might have knowledge of immanent (Category Red), large-scale (Level 1) terrorist attacks.  As a result, Mohammed would be immune from both the rules defined in Geneva and the rights that the Supreme Court had recently designated for prisoners held in Guantanamo.

In more personal terms, the designation put Mohammed in shit up to his ankles.  The problem was that they’d thrown him in headfirst.

Of course, the nations of the international community did not condone torture, even for prisoners like Mohammed.  Civilized nations do not torture captives, but torture had been rather narrowly defined in the manual that specified permissible interrogation techniques for Red-1 detainees like Mohammed.  Called the ‘Black Book’ or “BeeBee” because of the color of its cover, the manual alerted interrogators to carefully calculate the harm inflicted on detainees against the potential danger from terrorist acts.  What this meant in practical terms was that interrogators could do anything that did not cause ‘serious and lasting’ injury.  The conjunction was italicized so that the manual’s point would be clear.  Serious injuries were allowed as long as they were not lasting.  In the same way, psychotropic drugs were banned only if they produced ‘serious and lasting’ brain injury or mental illness.  The same rule applied to sensory deprivation, restrictive confinement and denial of food and water.

The acolytes of the Black Book also were informed that pain was subjective, differing from one person to another.  Thus, just about any amount of pain within reason was allowed as long as it did not produce ‘serious and lasting’ injury.  The BeeBee also ironically noted that “…pain should not necessarily be substituted for more accepted methods of interrogation.  The threat of being hurt is often more effective than the pain itself.”

Mohammed’s journey had begun in Baghdad.  Even while still on his knees and ears still ringing, a man in an American military uniform had zip-tied his hands behind his back, pulled a hood over his face and then tightened it around his neck.  The world went black…..the hood was too tight….he couldn’t breathe.  One shallow breath after another, he fought to breathe and soon he was panting like a dog.  His throat tightened as he began to panic; he was going to pass out.  His breaths came faster and faster, until he was hyperventilating and gravity ended, the floor seeming to fall out from beneath him.

Stay calm, Mohammed told himself as he lay on his chest.  They wouldn’t kill you this way….relax….breathe.  He slowed down his breathing.  And after a few minutes, he realized that he was still alive.  He focused on what his other senses were telling him; the pain of his wrists, the smell of cordite burning his nostrils, the shouting of men around him, the rough fabric of the hood as it touched his face, the moist areas where saliva had trickled onto the inside of the hood.  He was tossed in a vehicle and it took almost an hour to get him to his first destination.  He spent an hour sitting on a chair in a room that shuddered to the nearby hits of at least two mortars.  Suddenly, he was grabbed on either arm and marched to a second vehicle.  A man sat on either side of him and this ride took only about fifteen minutes---or was it an hour?  From here he was marched into what his senses told him was another small room and he was left alone for another long period of time.

Two men grabbed him on either side and pulled him up.  Even though he stumbled and was helpless, a moment later he felt an unexpected and hard punch in his thick stomach---then more.  He grunted and fell, the pain and surprise of the blows had been total and now he found it difficult again to breathe.  He rubbed his face against the floor, hoping to could drag the bag off of his head.

“Allah.  Allah,” he said, just before he felt the stick of a needle in his leg.  A silvery-white peace slowly spread to his brain and his fear vanished, then the blackness overtook him.  When he awoke he found the nightmare hadn’t ended after all.  He opened his eyes and saw nothing, nothing but the most profound blackness possible.  He seemed to be swimming inside it, bathing in a sea of ink.  The hood; he must still be wearing the hood.  He tried to pull it off…..and realized that his hands were still bound behind his back and now he’d been manacled to the floor. 

And he could tell that his no-longer firm buttocks were exposed to the cool air, for he sat upon a chair; it had no seat and his pants had been removed.  Also, there was an odd feeling of pressure on his right index finger as if an alligator clip had been attached.  There was what seemed to be a Velcro strip around his ankle too.  He tried to rub them off, but found he couldn’t.  And he was thirsty, very thirsty.  He licked his lips with a dry tongue.  “Hello.  Salaam alaikum,” he tried, his voice raspy.  The hint of an echo, but no answer.

He tried again, more loudly this time.  “Alaikum salaam.  Hello.”  And now finally a real shout, “Allahu akbar.”

But no one answered, and Mohammed suddenly realized that he could hear nothing at all.  It was as if he were already in his grave.  Not a sound.  Not the creak of a tree in the wind or the chirp of a bird or the hum of traffic.  No inside sounds either, no air conditioning or water pipes.  It was like his ears had been filled with cotton, but they hadn’t.  Could the Ameriki have forgotten him here, wherever he was?  Would he die of hunger or thirst?

Mohammed pulled himself together, he knew that he needed to stay focused.  I am a scientist he thought, I must use my mind.  Now began a litany, an attempt to rally his courage and maintain his sanity.  My name is Mohammed Al-Utaibi.  The kafirs have taken me prisoner.  How long ago?  I don’t know.  Where am I?  I don’t know.  They drugged me, put me to sleep and then moved me somewhere.  Fine, I’m not in Iraq anymore.  He concentrated on steadying his breathing and quickly realized that they had cut a hole in the mask that allowed him to breathe more easily.  Good.

Why are they doing this to me?  They want to know about the Geiger counter.  Of course.  He should have left it in the room, even though the Ameriki would have found it anyway. 

He tried to relax.  He wasn’t an illiterate peasant like the others.  They’d been cannon fodder and had served their purpose.  And he knew the Yankees had rules; they could make him wear the hood, but they couldn’t hurt him too much.  They would ask questions, he would refuse to answer and then they would send him on a plane to Guantanamo.  If they asked him about the Geiger counter, he would say……he would say that he didn’t even know what it was.  But first he knew that he needed a new name.  A Shia name would be best……Ali, then.  He would call himself Ali.  As long as he didn’t tell them who he was or what he was doing in Iraq, he would be fine. 

Even though he had despised the Ameriki for their weaknesses, now it reassured him that they had rules that they had to follow.  He just had to stay calm and he could beat them.  But staying calm got harder as the seconds stretched into hours.  He thought of his wife, of his sons, of the filthy concrete and dirt floor of the lab where he had worked, of the Kaaba, which he hoped to visit some day but had never seen except in photographs.  Of the glorious moment when he had met the Sheikh, Sheikh bin Laden and of the less than wonderful instance when he’d met the butcher of Iraq before he’d been betrayed and assassinated by the Ameriki and their Shia lackeys, of the long wait for the peasants to smuggle the enriched plutonium waste from the Ukraine through Iran and into Baghdad.  He smiled to himself at that thought, but his thirst pulled him back into the bleak room.  His bladder was full….what if he needed to move his bowels?  Was that why they’d cut his pants off?

“Bastards.  Swine!  Pigs!!” he said aloud.  “Kafirs.  My name is Ali.  Ali Al-Hauwaj.”  His voice rose, “Let me go!”  He repeated himself a dozen times, a hundred times, until his voice cracked and his face grew red and shiny. 

Someone had to respond….but no one did.  Perhaps the Yankees really had forgotten him.  No, that would be impossible.  This was a game.  They were toying with him, but Allah would protect him.  And so he waited, fighting his fear, licking his dry lips, slowly counting to five hundred and back down again.  But his dread deepened in the continuing silence, along with his thirst.

“Please,” he repeated quietly.  “Please.”

Later, he couldn’t tell how much later, a torrent of water suddenly drenched him.  Freezing water, painfully cold, stinging him through his hood and his clothes.  So cold.  Yet Mohammed turned his head up to drink, thankful for even this, for any sign that they knew he was there.

“Allahu Akbar,” he mumbled to himself.  He had asked and Allah had provided for his imprisoned son.  He drank and continued to drink, afraid that the water would stop and the thirst return.  But the water continued to fall and his relief soon turned to a different misery.  He wiggled as best he could, but couldn’t escape the falling water.  The water quickly saturated his clothes until they were soaking wet.  Water trickled from his stomach into his crotch and down his legs, off of his feet.  He could feel it pool on the floor and rise to his ankles.

He began to shiver.  He hadn’t realized how blessed he had been just a few minutes ago---just to be dry.  How he hated these Ameriki and their tricks.  They were laughing at him somewhere, he knew this.  He knew he should be angry, but he was only afraid and cold.  How long would they leave him here and what would they do next?  “Allah,” he said, “I beg your forgiveness.”

Later, a needle jabbed into his lower back.  Almost before he felt it, blackness had come again.  He woke up next on a sagging cot in a small room made of gray concrete, a thin blanket over his body.  He sat up.  He was naked, but he could see.  His hood had been taken off and the room was lit by a dim ceiling bulb.  His hands were cuffed in front, but his feet were free.  A pile of clothes lay on the floor in front of him, a loose shirt and soft sweatpants with an elastic waist.  They had realized that there was no use hurting him.  So he had survived the infidels….he hoped.

He shivered as a cough shook his soft body.  He sat on the cot and tried to think.  He was tired and hungry, slightly feverish, but otherwise okay.  The Ameriki wanted to scare him, but he wouldn’t give in.  He waited a few more minutes.  Then feeling as though he had no choice, he stood up and tugged at the door.  Surprisingly, it opened.

***

Mohammed had kept them waiting.  Which fit his profile, The Interrogator thought.  They could see him on the monitors as he sat on the cot, digging at his behind.  He was rattled and becoming ill; the various body monitors showed that he had reacted badly to his time in the hole, although he had slowly brought himself under control.  The Interrogator was not surprised.  Mohammed was a scientist, not a killer like many of the others.  The hole was dreadfully stressful to anyone who wasn’t flat-out psychotic. 

But The Interrogator had learned not to underestimate these guys, especially the takfirs.  Every one was highly motivated and their faith gave them extra strength.  They never broke all at once, not the really important ones.  They gave up a little and then they started lying again.  Getting everything took time.

He was the lead interrogator in Task Force 124, a Delta Force major with Master’s degree in Abnormal Psychology and another in Clinical Psychology, both from North Carolina.  Before he had signed on for Diego Garcia, an old Delta operator had told him to view this job of breaking people as a test of endurance, a rite of passage into true manhood.  He said that in addition to doing what was needed, a tour here would be a love affair---exotic and intoxicating---and that The Interrogator would be changed in some fundamental, almost spiritual way.  And that just when this hostile paradise had seduced him, he was going to have leave and hate doing so. 

Like hell he would.  From day one he couldn’t wait to get off of this sand pile.  Especially after learning that the old Delta guy back in the real world had duped damned near everyone else currently in this unit. 

He’d served six years in a small Civilian Affairs/PsyOp’s reserve unit before he’d obtained his advanced degrees.  Even while in school, he stayed in the reserves for the extra cash.  Upon graduating, he continued building the small company he’d started so long ago.  But 9/11 had changed everything.  Itching for revenge, he had gone on active duty then; soon he’d been awarded the necessary clearances for Delta.  But what he did now changed a man.  And he’d changed a lot, not necessarily for the better.

His past had hardened him even before Delta: a lying, cheating, gambling father raised him, and then left him and his mother to fend for themselves.  He put himself through school collecting and paying bets at a gaming tables.  “There are two kinds of people in the world,” he always said, “croupiers and gamblers, wolves and sheep.”  The statement implicitly asked the question of everyone he met, “Which one are you?”

His had always been a voracious intellect, but it was now more rapacious than ever.  He had studied Islam and its offshoot, the Wahabbi fundamentalists.  He studied the Salafi’s; the true believers that wouldn’t drink or gamble or smoke or fraternize with women.  These were the suicide bombers and the ones that wanted to take the world back to the great golden age of Islam, the foot soldiers of the Taliban.  These were the ones that were immediately identifiable with their dress and behavior. 

Then there were the ultras---the real ultras---the Takfirs.  These were the ones that adopted every single custom of the West, however much they might loathe them, in order to pass as fully westernized and therefore harmless.  They were clean-shaved, went to the gym, dressed in suits and were fully educated.  The ultimate chameleons, the takfirs were full of hatred precisely because they had sullied themselves in order to pass unnoticed among the enemy.

But none of them fooled The Interrogator.  First he watched his subjects and then he read about them.  Soon that person would be in his dreams and then somehow he’d begin to….resonate….with that person.  The predatory part of his mind would then take over, refined and cold and in full pursuit, and then he would know, he would just know that person’s Achilles' heel.  He also knew that this ability came not from age and education, but from wit and deepening perception.

He knew too that he pushed the limits of the Black Book.  Even some other interrogators were uncomfortable around him, worried that his methods crossed the line into…..the T-word…..a word and an idea that bothered him less and less.  Sometimes after a particularly grueling session, he looked in the mirror and thought he might see Josef Mengele or someone equally infamous.  The worst part was that he didn’t care anymore, didn’t care what his parents or few friends would think if they saw what he was doing on CNN or Fox News.

But The Interrogator had never killed any prisoners or even hurt one in a way that wouldn’t eventually heal.  He pushed the limits and stretched them until they almost broke, but if he wasn’t clear on whether a procedure was permitted, he still asked one of the military lawyers that were permanently attached to TF 124.  At their request, the questions were never written; they didn’t want to end up on CNN either.  Still, it was hoped that their presence would check the worst impulses of the interrogators.  And the prisoner’s health was closely monitored, if only to make sure that they were successful.  The interrogators of TF 124 had questioned over a hundred prisoners and only one had died; a massive heart attack that probably would have killed him soon anyway. 

TF 124 interrogators had other restrictions too.  They always worked in pairs and they took six-week long breaks twice a year.  While well-educated, his partner was still a mean shit; they worked well together.  Once a year they were interviewed by military psychiatrists and took long personality tests.  The rules were supposed to prevent them from developing God complexes---this was a real risk, he knew.  Having this much power over another human being, not just the power to kill but the government sanctioned power to break and to hurt with impunity---it could be intoxicating.  He had been taught in school that nothing could be more repulsive to the civilized man.  Yet The Interrogator understood the urge all too well; the twisted delight in making another bare his soul when that was the last thing they wanted to do, the sick yet undeniable thrill of making another human being cringe and beg when the pain became too much. 

Yes, he was on a slippery slope.  The worst part was, he knew it but didn’t much care anymore.  In the past, he’d broken the rules just enough to get the information that he’d needed.  But now the balance now was……disturbed.  He’d come to enjoy his work too much---he rarely had moral qualms about it anymore.  Recently, the nightmares had stopped and the dreams become more seductive. 

He had broken multiple terrorist leaders and disrupted several attacks, saving perhaps hundreds of civilians.  He didn’t know the names of the lives that he’d rescued and didn’t care to know them.  They would never know his either, but they were real to him nonetheless.  And that was what drove him on.  But he also knew that even he was done after this one; he was burned out and there was nothing left to be salvaged.  He was ready to go back to inactive duty, back to the small company that he’d founded in Georgia and which was basically being run by his secretary. 

And what of the men he questioned, the men he broke, the Mohammed’s of the world?  They weren’t innocents caught up in some Kafkaesque nightmare.  They weren’t farmers and simple shopkeepers caught in too-tight dragnets and taken to Guantanamo.  They were terrorists, real ones, who knew the risks they had chosen to take.  The Interrogator had nothing but contempt for the Amnesty International types who whined that any coercive tactic was unfair  If those weaklings believed that men like Mohammed would give up their secrets over brownies and ice cream, they were even more naïve than he thought. 

As for the argument that his tactics shouldn’t be used because they didn’t work, he could only shake his head in amusement.  Of course they worked….they worked too well; in fact, that was why they couldn’t be used by the police.  After a few days or a few weeks alone with him, even the motivated people would tell him their deepest secrets and admit to anything, do anything that he wanted, simply to make him stop. 

But The Interrogator wasn’t trying to solve crimes---he was trying to stop them.  He wanted information on attacks that hadn’t yet occurred.  The location of hidden bombs and sleeper cells.  Real names and addresses.  Concrete information that could be verified and acted upon.  He didn’t care how much they lied to him, as long as he got the truth or the subject obeyed him in the end.  Lies only drew out the pain, making it linger oh-so-much longer.  Eventually every detainee understood that and when they did, they always gave him exactly what he wanted. 

***

Mohammed walked out of his cell and into a larger room with a table in the center.  Two big men walked into the room.  “Sit,” one said in English.  Mohammed saw no reason to pretend that he didn’t understand, so he sat.  One man stood out of sight behind him, while the other manacled his legs to the chair.  They brought out a plate of bread, a small bowl of hummus and a glass of orange juice.

Mohammed felt his mouth begin to fill with saliva.  He could never remember being so hungry.  As he wondered if the food was safe, one of the men dipped a piece of bread into the hummus and ate.  At that, Mohammed dipped his head towards the table and shoveled food into his mouth with his cuffed hands.  The wonderful food filled his empty belly and he felt a momentary rush of gratitude towards his captors, but he stifled the reaction immediately.  Don’t thank the kafirs, he told himself, that’s what they want. 

After he finished, the men cleared away the plates and walked out, leaving Mohammed alone.  Suddenly he felt strangely tired.  He wanted nothing more than to put his head on the table and sleep, and only a few minutes later he did just that.

Snap!  The lights came on and woke Mohammed.  He tried to shake the fuzziness from his head.  A new man stood over him.  Someone else shook him from behind.  Why had he fallen asleep and for how long had he been asleep?  The hummus must have been laced with something!  He felt like a fool as he tried to wipe off a line of drool trickling from his mouth.

“Wake up,” the man said.  He was tall, with dark hair and a neatly trimmed goatee.  He set a thick folder on the table, but Mohammed ignored it.  Mohammed shook himself desperately, he needed to be clearheaded.

To Mohammed, the man typified a predator; sinuous and quick, remorseless.  Nothing about him was gentle except his movements.  The man sat across from Mohammed and took out a pack of Marlboros.  He lit one for himself, but didn’t offer one to Mohammed. 

The man looked at him for a long moment, “What’s your name?”

“Ali.  What’s yours?”

“My name doesn’t matter.  And I think that you’re lying to me.  What’s your name?”

“Ali.  Ali Al-Hauwaj,” Mohammed said.  “I’m a farmer from Basra.  This is all a mistake.”

“You’re not even Iraqi.  Don’t insult me.”  The nameless man smiled a small cold smile.  “For the last time, what’s your name?”

“I told you,” Mohammed said as sincerely as he could.  “Ali.”

“Do you want to go back in the hole?”

Not that, Mohammed thought.  Please, not that.  He swallowed hard and tried to keep his composure as his interrogator tapped another cigarette from the pack on the table.  Mohammed tried to avoid looking at it.

The man asked, “Cigarette?”

“No,” Mohammed said.  Even though he badly wanted one.

The man shrugged, “Do you want to go back in the hole?  Yes or no?”

“Of course not,” Mohammed said.  “But my name is Ali.”  As long as he stayed calm, he could outsmart this Ameriki.

Now, The Interrogator thought to himself.  Show this bastard who’s in charge.  He opened the folder.  “Your name is Mohammed Al-Utaibi,” he said.  “You were born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.  You attended the University of Hamburg as an exchange student.  You received a bachelor’s degree in physics and then an advanced degree.  Upon your return to Saudi Arabia, you were hired by the government.”

The tall man seemed to stop for a moment.  “Hamburg,” he said almost as if to himself.  Then he shook his head, “We’re going to have to do something about that snake’s nest some day.  I mean the Germans and us.”

Now he started listing off names, important names that were all too familiar to Mohammed, for all were martyrs, killed in glorious battle against the Crusaders.  “Mohammed Al-Tewhi, Ibrahim bin Abha, Firaz Khan, Mohammad Al-Nasr….”

Mohammed shook his head at the last.  Al-Nasr had been his university roommate at Hamburg.  More than that, he’d been Mohammed’s best friend.  Mohammed hadn’t the education to attend a university like Hamburg, but he’d struggled hard nonetheless.  He’d finally been killed in Madrid when an apartment he’d been hiding in was blown up after it was surrounded by the Caribineri and BOEL (Bandera de Operaciones Especiales de la Legion).  His thoughts were interrupted as The Interrogator continued.

“They’re all here, all singing like canaries.  Everyone swinging dick.  You’ll be joining them soon.  You won’t be able to talk to them, but you’ll see them.  And you’ll know that I’m telling you the truth.”

Mohammed was shocked and his mind raced.  The information that this pig had given him was incredible.  All of the presumed martyr’s were alive, and if the Ameriki was telling the truth, they were talking, giving up precious secrets.  But perhaps worst of all was that of Al-Nasr---being a student had only been his cover in Europe; in addition to helping plan actions in North America and Western Europe, he’d actually been the highest level coordinator of a network of European recruiters---which meant that he had all sorts of names and procedures in his head.  If the kaffir wasn’t lying, this intelligence was of supreme importance and must be relayed back to the Sheikh.

Mohammed realized now that he had been foolish to carry a Saudi passport, even one with a fake name.  Saudi Intelligence had certainly identified him and revealed his past to TF 124, though probably only in the vaguest terms.  The Saudi’s didn’t talk much about their fledgling nuclear weapons program, certainly not to the Ameriki.  But the Saudi silence didn’t matter; once the CIA knew Mohammed’s real name, the agency could dig up enough for a psychological profile of him.  Mohammed knew that the goal was to make him believe that they knew everything about him and that lying would be a waste of time.  To their subjects, the best interrogators appeared all-seeing as well as all powerful.

Mohammed’s head snapped back as the man read aloud.  He had to fight to keep from retching.  How could the Yankee know all this?  “My name,” he said desperately, “is Ali.”

The man with the goatee stopped reading, stood and slapped Mohammed across the face.  Mohammed yelled, as much from the surprise as from the pain.  To be slapped like a woman was intolerable, yet Mohammed knew somehow that he deserved the punishment for telling such a stupid lie.

“Don’t pretend to be such a dimwit.  Your name is Mohammed Al-Utaibi, of the Al-Utaibi tribe in the western province.  Your tribe is very important and yet, even though you come from the dry branch, you still lost your government job in 2000.  Would you like me to tell you why?”

Mohammed said nothing, but inside he shook.  His tribe was wealthy beyond belief, and it WAS important in Saudi politics.  But his side of the family had no wealth, not like that of the others and that was why it was mockingly called ‘the dry branch’.  A sense of doom hovered over him, how could this infidel know all this?

“It doesn’t matter,” the man said.  “I already know.  I know your height and your weight---you are overweight and out of shape.  You have a resting heart rate of approximately 90 beats a minute, and your blood pressure is 170 over 115.  You’re in poor health and you have reacted badly to the stress you have faced so far.  The very minimal stress that you will receive here.”

“Allahu akbar,” Mohammed muttered to himself.  His blood seemed to have left his body and he could not control his shivering.

The nameless interrogator took a deep drag on his cigarette.  “Yes.  God is great,” he said.  “But God has nothing to do with this.”  He leaned over Mohammed, holding his lit cigarette close to the prisoner’s face.  “Mohammed, you’re a smart man.  An educated man,” he said.  “You know the United States has a prison camp and Guantanamo Bay.”  He waited.

“Yes,” Mohammed rasped.

“And it is no secret that detainees at Guantanamo are treated well.  They receive three meals a day.  They pray freely.  You may even have heard that they have lawyers….yes?”

“Yes.”

“But you are not going to Guantanamo Bay.”

“No.”  Mohammed shrunk back in his chair, blinking furiously.

“I’m glad you agree.  No.  You are not going to Guantanamo.”  The man took a last puff on the cigarette, then stubbed it out against the table and flicked it away.  “I don’t want to hurt you, Mohammed,” he said.  “But you need to tell me the truth.  And you will.  You’re going to tell me everything that I want to know.”

Mohammed found his voice.  “There are rules,” he said.  “You can’t…”  But even as he said it, he knew he was wrong.

“I’ll tell you something I probably shouldn’t,” the Ameriki said.  “There is one rule……I’m not supposed to kill you.  Not on purpose, anyway.”  Then he smiled.

The expression on the man’s face scared Mohammed more than anything that had happened so far.  The man was a devil, a devil in human form.  Please, Mohammed almost said, I’ll give you everything.  I’ll tell you about the box I got from Dmitri.  I’ll even tell you about the biggest secret of all; where the box is now.  Anything to make this man leave him alone.  Then Mohammed reminded himself that he must not fear.  But maybe he could give this man a little---anything to make the smile disappear.

“Mohammed, are you listening?”

Mohammed nodded.  He hated himself for answering the man, but his will seemed to have wilted away. 

“I’m not supposed to kill you.  But I am allowed to make you wish you were dead.”

The Ameriki walked out.  Even before the door was closed, he felt the hood coming down over his head.  “No,” Mohammed said.  “Please.  Ask me something.  I’ll tell you.”  His voice became a shout.  “I’ll tell you.  Please!”  But the room went dark, and Mohammed knew that the hole waited. 

The next few weeks were much the same.  As the interrogations continued, Mohammed’s experiences in confinement became even more terrifying; he was shot up with adrenaline until his heart raced so fast that he believed it would explode.  He was bound in uncomfortable positions and left alone for hours.  He was slipped LSD and left to chase his mind around the silent room.  When he tried to sleep, lights were always left burning and he was awakened by being hit and kicked by men he could not see.

Meanwhile, The Interrogator lengthened the stretches that Mohammed spent outside of solitary confinement, in order to make the contrast between the hole and the world even sharper.  He wanted Mohammed to feel the power over him that he had; he could save him or destroy him, could turn day into night, white to black.

One time Mohammed had said something that for some reason rattled him.  The memory of it later made him uneasy, but he didn’t know why.  For a moment, he’d been tempted---sorely tempted---to get it out of Mohammed then and there, throw him up against the wall if need be.  But only his training had stopped him.  Never, never let a detainee see that they’ve got you rattled, the instructors used to say.  Nothing they tell you comes as a surprise because you’re omnipotent, all-knowing---at that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

The lessons were effective and Mohammed began to crack quickly, divulging new secrets each time they met.  The Interrogator reported back to his superiors that once started, it was like watching Boulder Dam give way.  Mohammed told them how he’d met bin Laden.  How he had recruited employees at Pakistan’s nuclear program.  How he had met an American agent for al Qaeda who was being sent back to the United States for a major attack.  He gave away over fifty Al Qaeda agents.  And finally, he talked about the plans for a dirty bomb.  The Interrogator hadn’t expected Mohammed to give up so much so soon; he simply wasn’t as tough as Khalid Mohammed or other senior al Qaeda lieutenants, who had taken months to break.  Still, The Interrogator felt that Mohammed was holding back, there was something that even now he wasn’t willing to talk about. 

But it simply didn’t matter anymore.  He was being replaced at his own request.  Going back to Georgia.  He was getting out of the active service; he’d more than served his time.  Back to a normal life, where people didn’t do these kinds of things to each other.  Hopefully, he would be able to slot back into his life without any lasting major head trauma.  He’d learned things about himself over the last few years that he didn’t like very much.  The dreams that just wouldn’t stop---they just became continually more seductive---until he saw himself as if in a mirage doing things to other human beings that no civilized man could ever accept.  And the worst part was that he was always enjoying himself when he did these things.

He knew that he was burned-out and that his exit interview with the Task Force psychiatrists would be a real hurdle.  Guys like him just weren’t allowed to quit when they felt like it.  Especially if they’d requested it.  There were protocols and he’d have to fool the best to escape therapy.  Hopefully, he’d be out on the streets again soon.  No VA hospitals or analysts.  Clean.

***

It was 9 AM and The Interrogator was preparing for terminal leave from the active military.  He was in the stairwell of a multi-story parking garage near Walter Reed hospital, getting ready for the first of his exit interviews.  He’d parked on the ground floor next to a small, red sports car driven by a twenty-year old secretary.  Beautiful young thing; long, wavy, lustrous brown hair, tiny waist, dark blue tight skirt and sheer white blouse, wearing tennis shoes over her stockings and carrying her heels for comfort.

She made him automatically think of the last woman that he’d had, in his mind running his eyes over her body as he appreciated again her thighs and the curve of her breasts, allowing himself to indulge in another of the dark fantasies that he knew how to keep from the prying psychologists.  But fantasies were okay, as long as they remained just that…….fantasies.

He was climbing a stairwell to access one of the third-story walkways, still indulging himself in his daydream; as he was approaching the second level, he met a small dark skinned man coming down.  The man wore dark glasses which was odd in the gloomy stairway.  Watch the eyes.  He tried to see the man’s eyes like his instructors at The House had taught him, but it was impossible.  He felt an odd trickle of electricity race down his spine, but knew that there was no real reason for the frisson of fear. 

If the subject makes any sudden move, assume it is hostile and react immediately.  The man above made a move, but it wasn’t sudden; it was slow and even graceful.  He reached inside his jacket and suddenly The Interrogator’s neurotransmitters were passing frantic messages about a gun.

Afterward, he will not be sure if he saw a gun or heard it first.  There is a lot he will not be sure about at the subsequent enquiry.  The individual details are clear enough, each one perpetually etched in his memory.  It is the sequence that eludes him.

He’d begun to react when the sound of the first explosion coincided with a hammering blow to his chest.  He was pushed backward by the impact of the bullet, but the stairway was narrow and he was still on his feet.  In his mind he watched again in slow motion as the man took aim and attempts to shoot a second time.  The next bullet jammed and The Interrogator lost count of the number of times the man worked the slide in an attempt to clear the pistol. 

Suddenly he found himself lying on his back on the stairs and he is aware of the sounds of men yelling and nearby traffic.  Above it all, he is aware of the grunted exertions of the man now standing over him beating him on his skull with the butt of his otherwise useless Browning. 

The Interrogator knows that he somehow put his hands over his head, for both thumbs and seven fingers are broken.  What he will vividly recall is the feeling of weight as the man comes down on top of him.  The feeling of the man’s elbow in his throat and his manicured fingers gouging into his skin.  The small man now stands again and leans against the wall to maintain his balance while he methodically stamps The Interrogator’s chest and abdomen with the heel of one of his hand-made boots---he remembers the pain as being tremendous.

Then the man goes to work on his face, the heel of his boot raining down blows with the cold indifference of a jackhammer.  The Interrogator loses consciousness, though not for long if his memory is correct.  He recalls for the inquiry lying backwards like a broken doll with his head down the stairwell, tasting his own blood and the gritty enamel of his shattered and jagged teeth, smelling his own urine and listening to the sound of footsteps running away. 

***

While emergency surgery quickly repaired the abdominal damage, it took them almost a year to re-build his shattered face.  Surgery and then weeks to recover, before it started all over again.  When he began to recover from his first surgery, he went to a mall one afternoon.  The looks from the children he scared were enough to make him stay in the hospital for the rest of the convalescence.  Photos that recorded the progress of the painful work were not pretty.  He looked into a mirror only once a week during that period.  The livid scars that never seemed to go away and the perpetual bruising under the eyes, it all just added to the psychological trauma that he had endured long before the stairwell.

He didn’t need to go through the exit interviews after all.  Instead, the board of inquiry exonerated him of any blame.  No one was ever arrested for this assault---it seemed that Al Qaeda had somehow found out what he did---was that what had bothered him about Mohammed? ---and some unknown believer had taken their revenge.  The physicians had performed near miracles in rebuilding his jaw and implanting crowns to replace the missing teeth.  They had slowly reconstructed his nose and his cheekbones, and then other surgeons had covered up that surgery with grafts of skin.  And when they had finished, they had sculpted a mask that was a faithful replica of the original.  But the headaches were with him all the time now. 

The skeptical doctors and psychiatrists and gray men that had watched from the background and evaluated his mental fitness however, had missed the hidden damage.  And no one could repair this damage, because The Interrogator never admitted that it had occurred…and he hadn’t lied because he knew that he was flawed before the stairwell.  He was fine, he said, but it was not true.  He’d already known that he was getting out and in the end, it didn’t matter.  Nothing mattered anymore.  He just wanted out and to go home to Georgia.

Chapter 1: Blessed be pain.  Loved be pain.  Sanctified be pain. . . Glorified be pain!: Josemaria Escriva.

He stood in the middle of the sterile white room, watching his latest girlfriend slowly squirm on the bed.  Her hair was the color of burnished copper, polished and shining, normally hanging down from the top of her head for the first few inches before turning into a mass of naturally wild curls that flowed down around her pale shoulders, almost long enough to cover her breasts.  The breasts themselves were perfectly shaped and not too large, round and smooth skinned with only a small scattering of freckles on the upper surface of each mound; the nipples a pale translucent shade of pink usually seen only on the hidden inner surfaces of some exotic seashells.  Her arms were long and stronger looking than might be expected from a woman who was barely five foot six.  Her hands were delicate; the fingers long and thin as a child’s, the nails neatly clipped and short.

Her rib cage was high and arched beneath the breasts; the stomach flat, pierced by a teardrop shaped navel above her pubis.  The hair covering her there was an even brighter shade of hot copper; and in the way of most redheaded women, it grew in a naturally trimmed and finely shaped wedge that only just covered the soft secret flesh between her thighs.

Her back was smooth, sweeping down from the long neck that was always hidden by the flowing hair.  At the base of her spine there was single pale red dime-sized birthmark in the shape of a horn, resting just above the cleft of the small muscular buttocks.  Her legs were long, the calves strong, her well-shaped ankles turning down into a pair of small, high-arched and delicate feet.

The face normally framed by the cascading copper hair was almost as perfect as the body.  The forehead was broad and clear, the cheekbones high, the mouth full without artificial puffiness, the chin curving a little widely to give a trace of strength to the overall sense of innocence that he’d noticed the first time he’d seen her.  Her nose was a little too long and narrow for true classical beauty, topped by a sprinkling of a dozen freckles across the bridge.  Her eyes, at least to him, were stunning; large and almost frighteningly intelligent, a deep jade green.

But right now, her facial beauty could not be seen.  Lying on her back, she was naked except for a pair of shiny, black pumps.  They’d been together for quite awhile tonight and he knew that she had to be uncomfortable, hog-tied as she was; her wrists were cuffed behind her back while her ankles had been cuffed together and then pulled tightly back and bound to her wrist cuffs.  Lying on her back as she was, her ass rested on her feet.  She finally accepted the ache this caused, but to him it was wonderful it because it pushed her hips into the air and laid her wonderfully hot pussy right where he wanted it.

Her narrow waist was emphasized by the heavy nylon belt to which her wrists and ankles had been locked in back.  Although seemingly going along with him at first, she didn’t seem to like his toys now---but that didn’t matter.  With the black, three-inch wide belt buckled in front and her efforts to move severely restricted by the way she was bound, all of her attempts to achieve freedom were in vain. 

Her head was encased in a shiny, tight, black rubber helmet that perfectly replicated the contours of her face and head.  After cuffing her wrists, the hood had gone on next, then the gag.  The rubber covering zipped shut in the back and there was a small hole at the top for her hair to protrude from the fitted hood.  When her hair was tied into a pony tail like it was now, it extended almost to the middle of her back.

Saliva drooled out of the center hole in a three-inch long penis gag that was buried in her mouth and held securely in place by straps that velcro’d to the sides of the mask.  She was new to this game and had never admitted a gag like this into her mouth before; it had taken awhile to become comfortable and accept the hard, cold black rubber.  A small, triangular opening in the mask by her nostrils allowed her to breathe and once she’d recovered from being fucked so hard, she again was breathing normally through her nose.  She’d been in her dark prison for a long time now; perhaps he’d kept her there too long?  He knew that she must be exhausted, for her thigh muscles continually quivered now from fatigue; but he couldn’t help himself, he always wanted more.  And the best part was that it appeared that she had finally accepted the role that they both knew she was born to play.

He thought back to when he’d first decided that he wanted her to do this.  Actually, it was nothing new---he had always demanded this of his girlfriends.  It was just that it had taken him longer than he had thought it would to convince her of the depths of his needs; but after an initial hesitation, she had meekly accepted the handcuffs and donned the hood and gag.  Almost passive by this point in their relationship as she accepted his dominance, she laid on her back with her knees spread wide and offered him everything in her now limited world---after some time spent manipulating her there with his fingers, his tongue and then his mouth, he had finally accepted her gift for the first time. 

His weight on her hips and belly must have caused her bent knees considerable pain, because she cried out softly as he lowered himself onto her.  He remembered how tight she had been.  He knew that this too must have been painful for her at first; his current lover was not a large woman and wasn’t equipped by nature to easily handle large cocks.  Even though he knew that he had hurt her with his initial penetration, she reacted like a professional, resolutely and stubbornly accepting him inch by inch until she her vaginal muscles had stretched enough to finally accommodate his totality.  Buried in her up to his nutsack now, he started giving her long, slow, deep strokes with his hips.  She began to let down her love juices, and at the end he’d been sliding in and out with ease, slamming into her soft body like an iron jackhammer designed in flesh.  He had finally cum deeply in her vagina, jetting a full load of scalding hot semen almost into her cervix.  The way she jumped and shuddered beneath him when he came the first time, he knew she was enjoying it.

Her lower back and hips forced into an arch off the bed by the way he’d tied her feet underneath her buttocks, she bucked like a maniac at the end, grinding her hips and belly into his at the moment of his ejaculation, thus making up for her previously uninspired behavior.  And when he relaxed on her sweaty abdomen to catch his breath, he discovered that she had difficulty breathing with his weight resting on her chest and belly; but at that exact moment at least for him, all was well with the world.  It had been great sex, and even if she hadn’t responded as enthusiastically as he would have liked in the beginning, he knew that the end she had taken great pleasure in being thoroughly fucked by him.

***

He reveled in the now familiar tired feeling in his groin---he had enjoyed her helplessness several times already and it was time to savor her body one last time before the night ended.  He was curious now because he never knew where relationships like this would end.  There was always something missing, but he never for sure what it would be.  It might be conversation or a companionable silence or it might be something cruel; something…..oriental.  He was just never sure until it happened.

He approached the bed and gently touched her between her thighs.  In an attempt at coyness, she did her best to keep her knees together, but bent and arched as she was, it was almost impossible for her to keep them tightly closed for long.  She was fatigued and her knees shook a little from the strain of keeping them together; he easily pushed them apart.  He imagined the triangle between her legs, the thick hot red hair that had been so soft and silky at first, but which now was matted and a darker red color, wet and sticky both with her fluids and his semen as it had drained from within her.  The area begged to be touched again and he did; and as he stroked her there, her breathing suddenly changed as he knew it would from smooth, long inhalations to the quick, shallow gasps of anticipation. 

After a moment, she slowly opened up more for him, spreading her thighs as far apart as her bound ankles would allow.  He stroked the insides of her thighs with his left hand as his right explored the delights she hid beneath her pubic hair.  She made small, animal-like noises of enjoyment between each quick breath as he continued to touch and stroke her there.  Then he mounted her like a raging stallion and slow-fucked her for at least twenty minutes before cumming a third time in her over-flowing pussy.  He knew she had trouble breathing with all of his weight on her, so he rolled off of her belly and chest at the end this time.  He lay next to her gasping; finally his breathing slowed down as he got his wind back.

His new girlfriend had tonight played modest at first, her body language insisting that she had not particularly wanted to play the full game of sex with him.  And she had teased him with her supposed reluctance as he had prepared her for their tryst.  Her clothes now in tatters on the floor, she had assumed her initial bondage on the bed only with difficulty; the position was complicated and apparently she was not as flexible as they had at first supposed she might be. 

Even naked, wrists cuffed behind her back and the hood on, she still tried to be the tease as he laid her on the bed that first time.  This annoyed him because he’d gone to a lot of trouble to ensure that everything was perfect for tonight; he’d finally been forced to bring out The Discipline to ensure that she understood how serious his needs were.  The Discipline was a cord-like whip which resembled a narrow sheet of macramé; and after he flipped her onto her stomach and used it on the sides of her buttocks, arms and upper back for a couple of minutes, his girlfriend had again regained her enthusiasm for him and an appreciation for the preparations he had made.

After the way that he fucked her earlier, the anticipation in his belly and sense of urgency in his mind was gone now; the last time he had ploughed her had been a slow and easy fuck in order that she might appreciate it too.  Even bound as she was, he had felt her body tense beneath his in expectation as his steel hard erection had been slowly immersed in her belly, gradually burying itself inch by rock solid inch in the hot, moist crease between her legs.  Soon he was stopped only by the mysterious fleshy folds at the top of her vagina; but even as he continued pressing and pushing at the very pinnacle of her womanhood, she continued to groan with satisfaction.  This last fuck-session had gone on and on and on.

But he’d caught his wind now, and after fucking her a third time, it was time to experiment a little.  She was susceptible to his persuasion and after a few short moments of his urgings, she consented to the insertions.  He rolled her over onto her belly and worked on her for a few minutes.  When he was finished, all that remained to be seen was a thin, wide base plate that prevented her anus from totally engulfing the plug.  She really did not like this and seemed to have changed her mind, having tightly clenched her butt cheeks from the beginning in a futile effort to prevent his success.  However, he was unrelenting in his slow, irresistible insistence; and forced into immobility, her body had shuddered all over as the final protective ring of anal muscles that defended her there had eventually given in to his dominant will.  He was thrilled at her response, for once her ultimate defenses had been violated, she made either high-pitched squealing sounds or soft moans the whole time he had been slowly burying the long rubber butt plug deeply inside her rectum---it seemed the numerous one and half inch wide rubber balls on the rod were what had caused most of her opposition, but he didn’t care at this point. 

But he wasn’t yet finished.  Her pussy had been a little sloppy after the last fuck; so even though her body language let him know that she really wasn’t too happy with this either, in the end it had been easy to completely introduce her to the vibrating dildo too.  As a result of his second insertion, she was currently enjoying a fully buried eight-inch long penis shaped vibrator that was an inch and a half in diameter.  Here too, she’d been almost painfully shy at first, but had finally accepted all of it.  The length was perfect as it pretty much seemed to fill her pussy, but he was a little disappointed in that he’d hoped to be able to provide a wider shaft for her pleasure.  However, this was the best he could do on so short a notice.  There were multiple soft rubber projections along its length and the two ‘D’ batteries that were stacked inside it one on top of the other ensured her long-lived pleasure as it ran at the slower of two available speeds. 

It was then that he had decided to run a one-inch wide nylon crotch strap tightly between her legs.  It was firmly secured between her legs, hooked in back to the waist belt and pulled tightly along the crack of her ass with enough force to separate her butt cheeks.  From there it went over her vagina, snugly enough to push apart her labia to either side, and then it buckled to the waist belt in front just below her sexy belly button.  

The inside of the crotch strap was graced with multiple connections for attachments, located and spaced to ensure perfect placement over each body opening.  His girlfriend had not really wanted this between her legs or perhaps more realistically, what she felt it probably represented for the next several hours; but after wearing it for several minutes, she had finally calmed down. 

His girlfriend’s perineum was rather small so he had been forced to use the rear snap closest to the middle to ensure that the butt plug had remained firmly seated.  The other two snaps in front were positioned so that they could hold a vibrator in place and he’d used the one on the end to keep that toy firmly anchored.  The strap worked beautifully, for now as his hand slid up the inside of her thigh and approached that special place between her legs, he could feel the firm muscles of her interior upper thigh vibrating at a strong, steady rate in sympathy with the big vibrator that now filled her vagina. 

She was young and healthy, and even after being fucked three times, she had over time still fully responded to his advances upon being plugged and strapped.  This in spite of the way that it seemed she had initially tried to reject this particular circumstance.  It seemed either that she had extensively leaked from her pussy or she’d cum at least one time.  To him it didn’t matter which it was, for he caressed the now sopping nylon crotch strap that secured the vibrator and butt plug so firmly and so deeply in her body cavities.  Both toys had performed as desired; even so, he still tugged on the wide strap one more time to ensure that it was tight.  And as he did so, she gave out an intensely personal moan that seemed to come from somewhere deep in her chest. 

Her skin glistened with perspiration as he watched her begin the latest struggle to reclaim from him her vagina and anus; those orifices which he had conquered and now kept artificially filled for his own satisfaction.  But as with every other attempt, she failed this time too; and with that failure and the helplessness that it represented, he desired this woman even more.  She was his girlfriend; she was defenseless and vulnerable, she was perfect and she was his. 

Her beautiful chest gleamed with a fine dew of sweat as he leaned over and slowly licked the soft skin between her full breasts.  With that salty taste still strong on his tongue, he slowly took her left nipple into his mouth.  She moaned in anticipation, but without vision could not know what he planned next.  Working the nipple until it was erect, he lifted the thin chain that rested by her side and laid it on softly her chest.  On both ends of the chain were clamps made vicious by small, yet sharp teeth; these he carefully positioned near each target nipple.  He grabbed her left breast again and with multiple smooth, firm milking motions his cupped hand slowly progressed to her nipple in a way that made her full breast even more engorged with blood and the light pink nipple painfully more erect. 

Her nipple now huge, he firmly squeezed until it was almost flat and then rolled it several times between his forefinger and thumb.  He knew that she liked this part because his girlfriend moaned even louder and arched her back to present him even better access to her breasts.  Finally, he pinched hard and then applied the clamp to the waiting nipple; her flesh was as secure now as if he had her in a vise.  He was disappointed at her muffled scream of pain, but not surprised---it was okay; even though she was ALMOST perfect, he knew she wouldn’t want to see him again after this.  And as much as it pained him to admit it, the reality was that she was like so many of his previous girlfriends in that she just didn’t appreciate his needs.

With one nipple captured, it was the work of only moments to bring her other nipple first to attention and then to heel as he squashed it with the second clamp.  Both nipples now decisively imprisoned in a jail that only he controlled, he stood back and watched as she arched her back again and again, trying to declare to him the throbbing, wonderfully overwhelming sensations she felt.  With the gag in her mouth preventing her from fully proclaiming her emotions, it must have felt like every sensation she perceived was dammed up inside her body, continually building pressure as they was unable to find release or freedom; soon she was twisting from side to side as she sought a means to express her passion, but the wrist cuffs held her securely in the position that was the most provocative for him.  She even rolled onto her stomach at one point in an attempt, he thought, to perhaps rub and put more pressure on the clamps she wore.  He cautioned her at this point for he did not want her to permanently injure herself.  The jaws of the clamps were tight and the teeth sharp enough that she could inadvertently remove a nipple if she continued.  

Finally regaining control of her emotions, she rolled onto her side and within moments she was on her back again; huffing for air through her nose and waiting for him with knees spread wide, offering herself to him once more.  Only her head moved now, the faceless black hood making deliberate and rhythmic back and forth movements that were as cadenced as a clock slowly running down.

His girlfriend was bound and helpless now and he knew that what he planned next would be taking advantage of this situation----and it definitely wouldn’t win him another date.  On the other side of the room, a six-foot long piece of medium-thickness manila rope lay coiled under a double-pulley that had been discretely anchored in the ceiling about two feet from the wall.  A relatively thin nylon line was already threaded through and the part hanging down from the pulley ended in a small metal hook.  The other end of the nylon rope from the pulley was tied off on the wall below.  Next to it, a four-foot long piece of one-inch thick polished maple wood with metal hooks on one end leaned against the wall, along with two short pieces of wood that had been connected at one end by a set of jawed hinges. 

He quickly unhooked the crotch strap from between her legs and then gently removed the two moist and slick toys that had been buried from his sight inside her for so long.  Her now huge nipples showing darker bruises from the clamps, he grabbed his girlfriend under her armpits and dragged her off of the bed, carrying her over to the wall where he left her lying again on her back near the hemp rope.  He now ran the coarse rope under her right armpit from the back and around her chest above her breasts before running it back under her left armpit from the front.  Turning her on her side, he tied the loose end to the rope at his girlfriend’s back, resulting in a fairly loose loop around her upper body with the free end in back. 

Taking this free end, he now made a strong loop in the end of the rope and connected it to the metal hook of the rope that ran through the pulley in the ceiling.  Untying the thinner nylon line from the wall, he pulled on the rope and raised his girlfriend almost off of the floor before he tied the rope to the waiting wall hook.  Grimacing in no little pain, he made a mental note to buy thicker rope for the pulley next time since it would be easier on his hands. 

She was now facing the wall and even though her feet were pulled back and tied to her wrists, she was on her knees as most of her body weight was supported by the rope around her chest.  Her knees were spread in an attempt to maintain her balance against the rope; standing in back of her, he now took the four foot long piece of wood and ran it between her thighs from the back and angled it up so that he was able to hook the far end into the brackets on the wall that began almost a foot higher than her waist.  Taking a deep breath, he now lifted up the free end of the wooden piece that ran between her thighs until he could get the foldable legs of the sawhorse settled in under it to support the end of the horizontal beam that he held---with this single move, she had joined a very select club and had begun her ride on a journey that only a few women have ever truly appreciated. 

Her knees now off the ground, his lover’s body was uncontrollably leaning forward as she wobbled on the beam supported only by the rope that ran around her chest to the pulley; he quickly untied this rope from the wall and pulled on it to remove any slack.  Still leaning a little forward, this effort raised her upper torso enough that it now forced the front-center of her crotch to rest directly on the horizontal board.  As her full weight finally settled onto the thin, polished board and brutally pinned her genitalia, she inhaled mightily through her nose.  As he watched her chest continue to expand with air seemingly forever, he somehow sensed a charged pause as if the room itself had sucked in its breath waiting for her reaction---suddenly her head snapped back involuntarily and she erupted in a penetrating scream that, even though mostly stifled by the gag, in its intensity still reminded him of the concussion from a white hot napalm explosion as it traveled around the room cutting the charged atmosphere like a whip.

His girlfriend was a strong woman.  Surprisingly impassive up to this point behind her concealing mask of thin rubber, she was suddenly not aloof or emotionally removed from what they now did together.  She was instantly committed---her torso was drenched as rivulets of sweat immediately flooded her white skin and bubbling screams constantly gushed forth without conscious control as he next tied a rope to her ankles and ran it back to the sawhorse legs.  When he tied it off, it was the exact length to ensure that she was always leaning forward in her rope harness, always just on the verge of viciously pinning her clitoris against the hard wood.  But the length of the rope ensured too that she always had a little hope---that if she were just somehow strong enough, she could always clamp the insides of her thighs against the polished lumber and perhaps use this anchor to rock back far enough on the board to spread the majority of her weight over the rear of her pelvis---and as long as her muscles didn’t give out, she could spare her genitals the public humiliation of at least some of the pain. 

In counter-point to the rope around her ankles, he now connected a thin elastic line from the wall in front of his date to the middle of the chain that hung from each of her nipples.  The length of the line had been calculated with exquisite intent; if she leaned forward as the rope around her ankles dictated, the full weight of her body crushed her clitoris and labia against the wood.  But the more she leaned back in an attempt to gain freedom for her sex from the wood, the more brutally her nipples were pulled almost from her breasts. 

He watched her lean back to the point that her beautiful breasts were dragged out grotesquely by the elastic line as it stretched from the wall.  This must have caused her too much pain for she suddenly leaned forward to take all pressure off of her nipples.  But now she crushed the front of her vagina under her pelvis and this too must have been extremely painful, for suddenly she gave out a soft, strangled cry and leaned back on the board and stretched her tits out of shape again.  He watched her go back and forth a couple of more times until suddenly she stopped about half way between the extreme of both positions and now rode the board without moving.  She was totally occupied in doing her best to achieve an acceptable emotional, psychological and physical balance. 

He could hear the short, heaving snorts for air that she took through her nostrils and he watched the sweat ran off her body in torrents.  His girl was smart and she had learned to remain motionless fairly quickly, but he continued to watch for he knew what inevitably came next.  After a couple of minutes, he could hear a long, sobbing heartfelt groan emanate from deep within the bound woman and then a shudder ran through her whole body.  At this point in her ride, he knew the pain had begun to approach a crescendo and even though the immediate physical demands were made only on the flesh between her thighs and the nipples on her breasts, her every slightest movement now brought new complaints from each nerve in her body.  Now she just sat and shuddered with every other breath. 

With a start, he realized that she was no better than the others.  He’d helped quite a few females become familiar with this, his favorite ride; and despite their initial objections, none of them had ever really been much the worse for wear—perhaps a little sore for a day or two at the most.  In fact, a fortunate few were often much more amenable to partying after they’d had a little taste of the lumber.  But just like the others, this one had started bucking as soon as there’d been a little pressure from the wood on her pussy---he wondered how she’d handle half an hour or so of riding time. 

But at least for now, she settled down and while she wasn’t moving around like before, she was now covered in sweat and quivering all over, shaking like a newborn foal.  Sometimes she would rock back and forth a little, before becoming motionless again.  Even the slightest shift she made on the timber was now accompanied by a moan.  Her head hung on her chest from a neck no longer strong enough to provide support and at this point, the only visible movement was the shuddering heave of her clamped breasts as she took one slow breath after another.  He knew the insignificant rocking motion of her hips was a feeble attempt to find some release from the pain, and he also knew that it wouldn’t work.  Whether or not she was one that appreciated the psychological aspects of pain, she had reached that level on the ‘exquisite ride’ which begged her to delve into the restricted areas her mind had erected, forcing her to investigate and explore their limits.  Think of the empty spot in your gums after the last trip to the dentist and the way you found your tongue exploring the area again and again seemingly without conscious control, always sucking on the unfamiliar gap even though you already knew that it ALWAYS made the pain greater……  This is where she was now, but times a thousand.

He thought back as he watched; he had actually only met his current girlfriend just a few hours before.  He haunted the parking lots of 24-hour restaurants and convenience stores in a thirty mile range and was good enough to determine exactly where the security cameras had gaps in their coverage.  He had first seen her at a truck plaza about a week ago, walking out of a McDonalds.  She was wearing a short white and green print summer dress with flat sandals; her hair had been a raven’s nest of curls that cascaded down her back.  Her pretty face had shown her good nature.  Like the predator he was, he’d gone back several times since then hunting her and this evening she had been back again. 

This time she was wearing tight low-rising jeans that accentuated her long shapely legs, pumps with stiletto heels and a tight pale green top that emphasized her flat stomach and high, full breasts.  He watched her through the restaurant windows while she ordered her food; he watched her gather up her hair into a frizzy pony tail as she waited in line and then capture it with a black nylon scrunchie she pulled from her bag.  Then she pulled out a green no-name baseball cap and slipped it onto her head, pulling the ponytail through the opening at the back.  She had a smile on her face as she exited, ponytail swinging from side to side as she walked; she was going home after work and was in a good mood from her banter with the clerk.  It turned out that she was twenty-eight years old and married---but that didn’t really affect his needs. 

It was slightly after dusk and she’d parked about fifty yards from the burger palace in a darker area under some trees.  He watched her park her older Japanese car and had backed his car up against the front of hers, using her car to block the view of his.  She had her fast food now and wasn’t paying much attention as she walked around the back of her car into the deep shadows; it took only seconds for the taser to knock her to the ground, her muscles cramping and spasming and her whole system shutting down as he hammered her with the low amp, high voltage electricity. 

He waited a moment, popping his car trunk open with the remote, then gave her the juice again.  Her body arched a second time on the parking lot and her arms and legs played helplessly like a marionette with the strings cut.  Her bag of food had spilled away from her car and he could hear the soft, mewling noises she made.  Within ninety seconds of first frying her nervous system, she was in the trunk of his car lying on a cheap plastic painter’s tarp; she was blindfolded, bound and gagged less than two minutes after that.  And with this, he took his new girlfriend home.

He eventually realized that these dates weren’t always about the sex, although like any healthy man he appreciated knocking off a good looking piece of ass fairly regularly.  No, it wasn’t just about the sex, but rather it had to do with seeing how far he could push each of his girlfriends into jumping over the increasingly complex and bizarre sexual and psychological hurdles that he set for them.  Having total control over another human being was as addictive as the worst drugs; there was no twelve-step program for him and it was a monkey that he had yet to kick.

But now it was time to end their date.  As usual, he untied the ankle and nipple lines before he grabbed her around her chest and lifted her off of the horse, lowering her to the floor on her stomach.  She cried out softly as he lifted her because he had inadvertently ground the clamps even more into her nipples.  He untied the rope from around her chest and unhooked her wrists and ankles from each other and from the wide belt that girdled her waist, lightly straightening out her cramped legs.  There was no fight left in her now; he easily rolled her unresisting body over before he removed the nipple clamps from her breasts.  She moaned in appreciation as he carried her back to the bed and gently laid her on her stomach.  After he had warned her to cooperate, he removed her pumps; it was then a matter of seconds to completely free her ankles.  From here, he slowly straightened out each of her legs all the while accompanied by screams of pain that were muffled by the gag.  Finally, he uncuffed her wrists and then cuffed them at her side to the belt that she still wore.

She lay on her stomach now and he sat down beside her.  Using oil lightly scented of cinnamon and clove, he began to massage her muscles, rubbing the backs of her cramped thighs and calves in a manner that informed her that he knew exactly what he was doing.  He worked a long time on her knees; massaging and rubbing the joints and the ligaments and cartilage that connected to the muscles above and below.  He rubbed the bottoms of her feet and the backs of her calves before he began on her neck, arms and her upper and lower back and then her butt.  The tight, finely pored skin of her back and ass was a brighter red and lightly raised where he’d been forced to whip her---he massaged the healing oils in here too.  And when he was done he ordered her to rollover, and when she did, he began on her thighs and feet and abdomen.  When it came to her breasts, he was gentle, his hands soft and knowing.  For here too, her skin was bruised and tender.

She was blind and immobilized, helpless before this man and everything that he did to her.  Although she had tried to be strong, it was when he began to massage the ravaged area between her thighs that she began to sob uncontrollably.  She was bleeding a little from her vagina and as gentle as his hands were there, the obscene way that they explored and fondled her labia; softly rubbing the bruised femininity that he’d taken by force as his own---the way his fingers mixed the innocent oil that would normally smell so good to her with the devil’s own seed now draining onto the mattress from where he had first left it in her belly---it all became too much for her.  Unaffected by her tears, he continued his massage and let her cry herself out. 

After thirty minutes of massaging her body, the rapist helped the woman stand while he stripped the bedding and rubber mattress cover off of the bed upon which he had so brutally taken her multiple times and threw it in the washing machine.  All bedding removed from the mattress, he now led her over to the shower stall.  Head still covered in rubber and her hands bound to the belt around her waist, he stood in the stall beside her under the needle spray.  Although her legs were shaky, he made the woman stand with her legs spread while he liberally soaped her body twice, thoroughly cleansing her of any evidence he might have left on or inside her.  He paid special attention to her vagina, running his soapy fingers deeply inside her numerous times before he used something that felt to her like a large turkey baster and performed a quick and dirty douche, flushing her with a diluted vinegar solution that he knew would both sting and feel like an astringent.  Now to her final humiliation, he began on her rectum.

When finished, he led her out of the shower stall and toweled her off before making her sit on the edge of the bed while he dried and then dressed himself.  All fight now gone from this woman, he now easily fitted her pumps back on her feet.  After wiping her shoes to ensure that he had left no fingerprints, he then patiently walked around the room and gathered up all of her clothing.  Checking the room one more time, he donned an inexpensive pair of leather gloves and put her clothes in a plastic garbage bag.  The man picked up the bag containing her clothes and led her naked out of his house and into the dark night.  After giving her a final warning to cooperate, he used pieces ripped from a disposable roll of duct tape to bind her elbows together behind her back before he removed the handcuffs.  Standing behind her, he taped her wrists together before he removed the rubber hood and gag, and then quickly inserted a cheap two-inch rubber ball in her mouth.  He now used multiple short pieces of duct tape to cover both her mouth and eyes. 

The man had previously purchased an inexpensive terry cloth robe and he now draped this over her shoulders and tied the belt around her waist before leading her to the trunk of his car, where he gently laid her down on the cheap plastic tarp.  Closing the trunk and throwing the bag that contained her clothes into the back seat, he started the car and drove forty miles to a dark stretch of secondary road where he left her slumped over bonelessly on a deserted bus stop bench. 

He thought about the beautiful redhead for a second and gave her a fleeting glance as he left, then he never again thought about his nameless ‘date’.  There was nothing of him on or in her, she had never met him before or seen his face and she had no idea where he had taken her.  And even as he let her go free, he knew that she would always be his prisoner from this night on.  The evening this beautiful woman had just experienced ensured that he would always be alive inside her, crawling to the surface at any moment, resurrecting yet again everything she had endured under his guidance.  She had seen a lot of darkness tonight in a short period of time, but his experience and training told him that there would be dreams and nightmares.  And when they came, they would be a part of her for a long time---of this he had no doubt.  Depending upon how strong she was, he knew he would be fucking her every night for much of the rest of her life; her mind would guarantee that.  But he could care less.

As he left her slumped over in the darkness, he marveled at how relaxed he felt.  He was becoming tired now as he slowly came down from his endorphin high and he felt an enjoyable feeling of fatigue in his groin from the strenuous sexual activity.  Driving aimlessly, he stopped at a 7-11 twenty miles from where he’d dropped her off and purchased a coffee before throwing the bag containing her clothes into the open trash dumpster on the side.  Twelve miles further down the road, he stopped at another convenience store and purchased a second cup of coffee.  Along the way, he had thrown the cheap leather gloves and the roll of duct tape out of the window and into heavy bushes on the side of the road.  At the second coffee shop, he disposed of the plastic that had lined his trunk. 

Famished, he finally stopped at a local pancake house for a well-deserved breakfast; there he ate a full stack with bacon and eggs on the side, along with three cups of coffee.  He thought about the night’s activities.  He knew that while he might be thought extreme and deviant by some, he was not unsophisticated either.  And while many of his acts might be considered predatory, he was also well acquainted with the more accepted concepts of adoration and love, hunger and lust, giving and taking.  He was, if the truth be known, no less sexually opportunistic than most other men his age wanted to be with a beautiful woman.  It went with the territory, as does being a closet romantic; and to him only ideologues would see a contradiction between the two.

Pleasantly exhausted now, he was ready to sleep the weekend away after he cleaned up the room back at home, hosed the floor down, and put the gag and rubber hood into disinfectant to soak for a day.  The room had been designed with ease of cleaning foremost in mind and he was thankful for his foresight.

Chapter 2: We are the people that our parents warned us about; Jimmy Buffet.

My given name is Christian and that’s ironic, given my past.  I’m forty-five years old, unmarried and a private investigator.  There’s little excitement in my life now and I like it that way.  I own a small detective agency a little west of Savannah and this is the story about a woman that does a few things that are considered illegal and how her life, and mine, end up being changed forever. 

My office faces out of the ground floor of a two-story building in a low-rent part of the suburbs.  It’s me and Freddy, the junior partner that I feel like I’ve been training for half my life and Nan, a secretary/receptionist that’s been with me since I started. 

My business is generally built around wealthy older women; men still chase them for their money and believe it or not there are quite a few divorces at that age.  To me the world is linear, concise, symmetrical.  I don’t do the unconfirmed fuzzy-logic trail that is created by an ethereal trip through the data banks imprinted on the servers of a thousand search engines; rather it was the faded ink-on-paper truth of real history that interested me.  I hire temporary help as I need it to tail unfaithful companions, investigate the backgrounds of new or potential partners, etc.  One thing that I’ve begun to notice is that some of my clients, many in their upper seventies, are just too well built.  As Dustin Hoffman had been advised in The Graduate, “Plastics.”  Just a different kind.  I had nothing against cosmetic surgery, but past a certain age, discriminatory or not, it was beginning to creep me out.

Some of my elderly clients learn of me through word of mouth.  Others wind up going to city employees for help, but they rarely get it.  Because of my work, I’ve developed a few good contacts in various parts of the city government; the Department of Transportation, the City Comptroller, the Courts and the District Attorney’s office.  This is how a guy like me scares up a significant part of my business with the older women.  A paid someone tells us early on about a troubled someone or perhaps even one with just a few questions to which she can’t get straight answers; we get in touch and offer to help.  Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t; and even if it does seem a little like ambulance chasing, we still make enough to eat and pay a few bills.

Generally, I only pay for information on cases I take.  Sometimes however, I pay for information that I know I won’t be able to use professionally, because every now and then I have been known to apply a little pressure to a dirtbag on the side---like I say, I’ve got to eat. 

I’ve got a good education, but I do what I do because I like working alone and I hate being told what to do by others….that and I know that I’m still not right from what happened a couple of years ago.  I’m pretty self-sufficient and I know that I’m considered manipulative; I’m generally not very social and although not particularly confrontational anymore, I don’t take a lot of crap from people either.  I’ve done some things for which I still pay, mostly at night.  And if there is such a thing as karma, it’s going to take me a long time to pay off the debt I’ve built up.  Society draws certain lines in order to keep civilization working; my strength and my weakness is that I’ve found that I’ll cross in a heart beat most lines that define civilized behavior.  So far, there have only been few that I won’t---or at least I haven’t----broken yet.  The problem is that as I cross more and more lines, the less humanity it seems remains inside me.

Even though I have done some awful things to people innocent and guilty, as odd as it may sound, I still consider myself as still retaining the vestiges of an old-fashioned honor.  I have collected many women and they will testify that I’ll fuck them in a heartbeat and I’ll fuck you over too if necessary, but if I give you my word, I do the best I can to keep it.  Needless to say, I look at this as a definite weakness and try not to indulge it too often.

One of my best contacts is an old man that works as a clerk in the DA’s office.  I throw him a few bucks every now and then---you might call this a left handed retainer---and he calls when he thinks that he has something that might be interesting.  If it pans out, Christmas for him comes early.  One day a while ago he called with some details that he overheard about a case that the DA’s office was considering.  It involved a female teacher that was rumored to have had sex with at least one young male student.  Nothing had broken yet, and the investigation was about half over; there was talk now about bringing her in for interrogation; and depending upon the answers they got, they would consider pressing charges.  According to what he was hearing, the suspect was young, attractive and guilty as hell.

To me, from the little that I’d been told, this particular situation didn’t seem like it was anything with which we’d get involved professionally---it sounded like she needed one hell of a good lawyer, not a PI.  But for some reason, his story about the wandering teacher interested me personally.  I didn’t ask him anymore questions---if I followed-up, digging for more information, I’d have had to pay him a little something…and I didn’t want him to think that I had any interest in this case.  So I thanked him and let it go; instead asking him about another case on which he’d been feeding me information. 

In a way, I felt like a shark that had sensed just the slightest whisper of blood in the water; for some reason, this woman’s difficulties intrigued me….a lot.  If even half of what he told me was true, she’d put herself in a tough situation.  I knew that this would be considered taking advantage, but my antennas were up and I was intrigued.  With any luck, I had enough from my conversation with the old man that I could find this teacher on my own.  A young, attractive woman in trouble?  I knew that what I was contemplating was just as low as any other thing I had recently done.  But like I said, my morals are nothing if not flexible, so I thought I’d spend a few hours and check her out on my own time.

***

A little more about me; I’ve owned my own house outside of the big city for over a decade now.  I live on fifteen acres of land that backs up to a medium-sized lake near a small town just west of Savannah.  The closest neighbor is over a quarter of a mile away and I have a good reputation with the few people that knew me semi-well.  My face is fucked up, I have a 100% disability from the government and there is a thirty month or so gap ending about a year ago in which I had to lease out the house, but that hadn’t attracted any attention as far as I could tell. 

My town isn’t a tourist trap.  The reason I live here was because I felt an affinity for the place.  It seemed to embrace the complexities of the soul---the contrary aspects within most of us that are linked inextricably to the human condition.  Subcultures of all kinds flourished here, from witches of every persuasion to tattoo artists to gays to musicians.  Outsiders were insiders here.  Marginality ruled.  It was a great place to live for people of my….bent.

I had to work in the city, but I didn’t have to live there.  How do people live like that?  Cheek by jowl.  Sounds of their lives commingled into one vast blare.  Everyone knowing their business and them knowing everyone else’s, without one minute’s privacy or peace.  They all must have developed a zoo-animal like mentality, I decided, living their lives as their instincts compelled them without caring who saw what.

I had realized one thing by the time I was released from the military hospital; after everything I’d seen over the past few years, I was more than ready to settle down.  Although I also recently realized that I was tired of being alone, I had also come to appreciate that I was also damned unlucky in finding my soulmate. 

The problem is that during that two and a half year hiatus, I discovered that I had personality ‘glitches’; I was considered ‘demanding’ and had a few ‘violent’ streaks.  I have many, many flaws and these were some of those things that I have trouble talking about.  But these defects always got in the way of any relationships that I might try to develop with women. 

I generally avoided the BDSM groups in town because the cops watched them a little closer than normal.  While I have the same problems that a lot of guys these guys have, I think I just understand them better than most.  I’m sexually dominant and experienced enough to show this only to willing ladies that have the same interests---or those who have no other option except to join in.  I can play neutral for weekends or perhaps even a little longer, but for long term relationships---this is an issue.  Many women that are initially interested---or even willing to be experimental---still aren’t ready for what I want.  And I had never found one that made me want to change.

In addition to certain one night ‘dates of duress’, over the last year I also used my professional abilities to pick up a few women on the side.  I have collected only the finest examples available to a man in my position.  I have a private museum in my head of all of these women.  Of the women I gathered, some were fantastic and some were unusual; and they all either surrendered or screamed; a few times both.  But all performed to my rigorous standards. 

It is true that these relationships ended badly, with the majority of the women acting as if I was an animal, but to me this was a slander.  For I felt I was more like honey bee---all that I asked was a little sweet nectar from each flower I collected, with no lasting harm offered to almost anyone.

The truth is that I wasn’t looking for a wife, just a body to help me find release.  All of these women were beautiful to me.  But because of the very way that they came to my attention, I knew that many were flawed in their own right.  I took no sense of pride in the fact that I had used a little, shall we say ‘pressure’ to ensure their uninhibited cooperation---and their silence afterwards.  But after being alone for most of my adult life, I had finally decided that if I couldn’t find my forever and ever love, I would take what I wanted---when I wanted it.  And this teacher might very well be my next Barbie Dream Date.

Chapter 3: I have found little that is "good" about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think; Sigmund Freud.

It took me a week to find the right school.  It was full of rumors, of course, but hard information was difficult to obtain.  And since I was working part-time and keeping a low profile, even with the old man’s initial clues it still took me another couple of weeks to get her name.  The cops were certainly investigating now and the last thing I wanted was to have my name being bantered about in the cop’s locker room.  Besides, once I had her name, it didn’t take long to get pretty much everything else that was available on her. 

According to her colleagues she was competent and authoritarian, a controlling woman that always had to be in charge.  But her personality had changed over the last six months or so.  Her confidence seemed to have fled and she didn’t act quite as sure of herself as she had earlier---it was as if she were under a lot of pressure or something.  Not particularly religious before, she also began attending church again fairly regularly. 

Even as she sometimes came off as a little distant to her colleagues, the male teachers to a man found her both disturbing and captivating at the same time.  One of the men said that while she was still young, she reminded him somehow of the older women in the business world that always tried to downplay their sensuality.  As a result, she emitted controlled vibes of extreme attractiveness, but which were oddly vacant of sexual overtones.  My mother, I’m sure, would have simply said that he was describing a strong willed, well-bred lady who believed that there was a time and a place for everything.

In any case, most of the female teachers that knew her wouldn’t talk initially, for from the first moment that they met her, they hated her.  Most women did instinctively.  To a woman, they described her as being beautiful, but as also being totally aware of how far her beauty could take her.  They felt as though she could take whatever she wanted, or whoever she wanted, and they had no defenses.  I don’t think she was necessarily a bad person, but rather the women had been afraid that she was about ready to get rid of her husband; and if this happened, every married teacher with whom I talked had feared that her husband would be served up next on the barracuda’s plate.

This woman was organized to a fault; I had no doubt that she was the type that at eighteen would’ve had her future planned to the n’th degree.  Attractive, ambitious, educated and manipulative, she had the choice of just about any man to marry.  But after graduating from the university at Lexington, she eventually settled on an attractive guy five years her senior.  He was described by most of the people that knew him as nice enough, but weak; a man that would be easily manipulated by a woman like her.  A lawyer, apparently she figured him as a superstar, a fast riser in the corporate world.  But drugs had sidetracked any visions of an early partnership and eventually he was asked to leave.  Now he was a legal hack; quite a comedown in just three or four years.  As a result, legal positions were tough to find and even tougher to keep; they’d moved twice in the last five years, both of them changing jobs each time.

Even though she came from what I could call an ‘average’ background, her history read like an interesting mix of middle class values and trailer park trash, something that might have been written by a novelist with less than mediocre skills.  Retired now, her parents had been hard workers, owned their own home and had attended church regularly, as did she until her mid-teens.  Extremely naïve as a young girl into her mid-teens, before graduating from high school, she had also made a couple of appearances as a model in biker magazines. 

***

It’s funny how people can plant ideas in your head.  As a young girl of fourteen, I remember looking down at my legs, crossed neatly under the school cafeteria table.  I remember seeing them, crossed primly at the ankles, and thinking; what do nice legs look like?  I smoothed down my skirt and moved my knees apart so that I could see my thighs a little more clearly.  I turned them so that I could see the calf and the little tautness when I flexed my feet.  I wondered if ‘nice legs’ looked anything like my legs.  .

My mother was no help in this subject area.  I was young and you don’t have to understand sex to want to do it.  So say the birds and bees.  At 16, I was the worst combination you could imagine---ignorant of the nuts and bolts and fascinated as the day is long. 

At first the doctors tried to get me to say that it had been a rape.  Why else would a girl of sixteen allow five teenage boys to do something like that to her, if it hadn’t been rape?  Unless she was crazy, of course.  I listened to this with a dreamy sort of puzzlement.  Why were they focusing on that part of what happened?  Was that part wrong too?  In the end, I’d have saved myself a lot of problems if I agreed with them and said it had been rape.  But that would have been a lie.  I let them do it to me.  I’d wanted it maybe more than the boys did.  I’d welcomed them into that van, parked down the country lane. 

It was one of those misty summer evenings and in the back of the van the old tartan blanket smelled of grass and engine oil.  I took off all of my clothes and lay down on it and opened my legs.  One by one, they got inside and took their turns, making the van creak on its rusty axles. 

“Didn’t anyone talk about protection?” the nurse wanted to know.  But I wasn’t going to tell her the truth, that I really didn’t know what a contraceptive was, that I hadn’t known it was wrong, that my mother would have rather died than talk to me about these things.  And I wasn’t going to let her go on and on about my stupid ignorance. 

The doctors said it was all about self control.  “We all have impulses, everyone has urges.  They are what make us human.  The key to a happy and balanced life is learning to control them.” 

But there wasn’t much I could do then about putting things right.  You can’t mend something without practicing, and I knew I wouldn’t have opportunity for that for awhile.  I didn’t dare tell the doctors how much I wished I could have a boyfriend, someone to go to bed with: I knew if I said anything, they’d tell me my outrageous impulses were the root of a greater evil, that I was walking around with a wolf inside me.  I listened to all of the lessons about personal dignity and about self-respect, all the complex stuff about consent and self-control.  But as soon as they let me go and I wasn’t being watched every five minutes, I began my own guilty experiments.  I soon knew how to make myself cum, and although I never squatted over a mirror, I was sure that no girl on earth ever had got to know the dark tract between her legs the way I knew mine.  Sometimes I’d wonder about the wolf.  I was afraid that one day I’d reach down there and my fingers would brush over its wet nose. 

***

How she’d hooked up with grease like that was anybody’s guess, but I’m sure that she’d gotten whatever it was that she was after.  It seemed that that was the way she was---as she got older, she’d want something and then she’d go out and get it.  Since that time, she’d matured and become more careful about everything she did, even to the point of buying back the negatives to most of her earlier photo shoots. 

Another time, she posed for a cheesy home video wearing nothing but skimpy underwear and thigh highs.  She’d tried to recover that too; good luck---it was already on the internet.  Lucky for her it was dark and grainy, and didn’t show any more of her face than the typical homemade soft porn movie.  Now she’d somehow jumped the rails again, but this time it was different and she was in way over her head.  It was like a screw had come loose and she’d gone diagonal to her previously well-controlled life.

From the little that I had been able to find out so far, this woman was clearly unhappy, maybe even emotionally disturbed.  I didn’t know why she hadn’t already divorced her husband and moved on; hitched to a man that now embarrassed her and that had no prospect of ever giving her the things she felt she deserved, a man she didn’t love and didn’t respect, her life had taken turns on which she had not planned.  I don’t know, perhaps that was part of the reason that she’d stooped to offering herself to her students.  After I stumbled across a student that liked hash, I’d even figured out with whom she was supposed to have done the wet and nasty.  The more I learned of this woman, the more complicated she became.  She soon became a challenge and I began to spend more time than I had planned digging into her past.

In the course of my investigation, I had been able to obtain a copy of the school’s previous yearbook.  This gave me the opportunity to see a couple of pictures of this woman.  Wow!  Most of the pictures were black and white; the only color photo was of the girl’s JV soccer team where she had been one of the assistant coaches.  The first picture in the yearbook made her look like one of those cold Nordic-type blondes.  Later photos showed her smiling and she looked like a different person. 

Into sports, she had shapely, strong looking legs and a nice athletic build.  Wearing a baseball cap in the single color shot of her in the book, her face was shaded.  While it was taken from too far away to tell for sure, I imagined icy-blue eyes to go along with all of that white-blonde hair.  All in all, a very attractive woman in her mid-twenties with a look on her face that told the world she was just starting out with her life.  A pity she’d already fucked it up big-time.

Chapter 4: Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well; Samuel Butler.

It was 10 AM on a Wednesday early in December and I was finally ready to talk with her.  The weather was cold and blustery and threatening rain.  The wind was blowing and heavy storms were forecast for the weekend and early next week. 

I knew in the back of my mind that I’d already delayed setting up our first meet longer than I should, since I imagined that the DA was just about ready to indict her.  I’d had her cell phone number for a couple of weeks now, but had held off calling until I had all of the facts and everything was ready.  Really, I knew that this had just been an excuse to delay.  It was safer and much more enjoyable thinking about this odd woman than in putting my plan into action.  Despite what my past might imply, I was not the macho type that rushed headlong into dangerous situations.  Rather, I was the type that planned and schemed, only acting when everything possible had been accounted for.  I think she and I were a lot alike in many ways.

I knew from her schedule that she was between classes right now, so I dialed from one of the few public pay phones that still existed.  A female answered in low tones on the third ring.  The voice on the other end was distinctive: precise and educated, a pleasant yet cool voice that carried both authority and intelligence---it reminded me somehow of a young Katherine Hepburn.  “This is Rebecca Denholm.”

“Ms. Denholm,” I went on, “my name is George Langhorn.  I’m a partner in the legal firm Fisher and Beane and I have a proposition for you that I feel would be most beneficial to you.  Perhaps we could meet for lunch today and we could----“

Her voice now took on that cold impersonal tone that tells you the other person is just going through the act of being courteous; that they have already forgotten you and proceeded to the next subject in their busy life.  “I have no idea,” she cut me off, “of what you are talking about and have no need to meet with you or anyone else.  I’m not sure what you’re selling, but I’m sure that you can find someone else to listen to a proposition from you.  But I assure you that I am too busy and in no mood to meet with you today or any other day.  Thank you and good day, Mr. Langhorn.”

Her voice was low now and firm, that of a person not accustomed to being interrupted or questioned.  This was the payoff.  If she responded, then the rumors were true and she was in a shitload of trouble even if she didn’t yet know it.  “Ms. Denholm,” I cut in before she could hang up, “it will take ten seconds for you decide whether or not you need to know more.  Please listen carefully.  Right now, the District Attorney is preparing to file suit against you for having sex with a minor.  If this charge is untrue, then please hang up on me.  But if this charge has any merit at all and you want to beat it, then I suggest that you listen to me.” 

There was silence on the phone for over half a minute.  Then she came back, “I’m…..I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  There was no outrage here.  Instead her voice had changed, now taking on an uncertain quality.  I would later realize that for the first two days that we were together, this was perhaps one of the few times that she did not seem to be an Alpha in every detail.

Okay, I thought to myself, guilty as charged.  “Ms. Denholm, I think that my office can help you in this matter.  I’d like to meet you for lunch today and we can discuss your situation.”

There was silence for a moment and she had recovered her composure when she came back, “I already have plans for lunch today, Mr. Langhorn.  Tomorrow would be better for me.”

I wasn’t in the mood to wait and I wanted to see how far I could push ‘Becky’.  I smiled to myself because I knew that this was a woman that would hate to be called Becky.  “Ms. Denholm, I’m sorry, but it’s either today or we can’t help you.”

After another awkward moment of silence, she answered, “Uhhhmmm, okay.  I guess I can cancel my lunch plans for today.  How do I recognize you?  Where do we meet and when?”  Again, the tone of voice and the way she asked the questions made it clear that she was used to being in charge and wanted me to feel that she was doing me a favor by meeting with me.

I gave her directions and the time to meet and then hung up.  Even if she wanted to, I didn’t think that I’d given her enough time to go to the police with a complaint about me before we met for lunch.  And she certainly wasn’t going to be telling any of her co-workers about our meeting. 

This could get interesting, I thought to myself as I wiped my fingerprints from the phone.  We’ll see where this went at lunch and I’d play it from there.  Since I didn’t want anyone to know that I’d met with her, I’d chosen to meet Rebecca in a small, out of the way café that was about a thirty minute drive from the school on a good day. 

I drove to where we were to meet and it was a glorious day to be outside.  Although cool and a little breezy, the sun was shining like it had just been created.  I hit green all of the way and as I fiddled with the radio dial, I kept hitting all of my favorite songs.  It was that kind of day.

The café was far enough away that it was inconvenient for teachers from her school to use for lunch, and it was quite crowded with young housewives mixed with the not-yet fully successful business types on a quick lunch break; the background noise was loud and quite appropriate for my needs.  There were neither security cameras at the café nor any nearby ATM’s or parking garages from which security video might be pulled---it was perfect. 

I was seated in a small private area off to the side; the nearest tables were vacant and my seat was such that I could watch the entrance.  The windows were mirrored so that while I could see out, no one could see inside the café.  Handling only the edges to avoid leaving my fingerprints, I’d already put one of the phony business cards that I’d had printed between her table setting; the card indicating that I was a partner at Liebnowitz and Fisher, a medium-sized liberal law firm in Savannah that specialized in unorthodox and often unpopular legal cases. 

The cell phone was a throwaway, the kind you can buy in cash with a false name and toss away after you use up your minutes.  No way to trace it back to me.  It was this phone number that I had put on the fake card.  And if she called the Liebnowitz and Fisher number that I’d given her to check on me, I was pretty sure that I would be able to fool her over the phone.  My briefcase was placed fairly close to the chair that I wanted her to take; inside was a tape machine that would record everything that we said.  While I knew that there had been no time for her to go to the police, I didn’t feel like taking a chance on her thinking too clearly right now either so I planned to push her fairly hard, keeping her panicked and a little rattled. 

Chapter 5: Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together: Petrarch.

I’d gone through two coffees (cream, no sugar) when I finally saw her park her car and walk towards the café.  I leaned over and turned on the tape recorder in my briefcase.  The breeze in the parking lot blew her hair.  As she entered, she stopped and removed her overcoat and shook her head to re-arrange her hair.  Finally she looked around for me.  I stood and waved and she started towards me.

Because of my investigations, I’d been prepared for the ‘Denholm lilt’.  While not apparently aware of it herself, Rebecca’s walk was a rhythm of beauty to every man that saw it.  Even though her shoulders never varied from facing squarely in the direction in which she moved, everything around her belly and hips went from side to side in an intensely erotic sway; every male at the school had discussed it at one time or another, even coming up with a name just to describe it.  From the front, it was just an amazing gliding motion.  From the back, it was mesmerizing.  Words failed me for the view from the sides.  Everyone to whom I had talked agreed that the young girls at school had spent countless hours trying to copy it with little success.  Most men could not watch her walk without thinking of her naked beneath her clothes.  Most women felt her walk should not be allowed.  It was totally natural, and she never thought twice about it---but ten billion women would kill to have it.  But I could have told them, either you had it or you didn’t.

She was one of these people to whom the camera added ten or fifteen pounds, so that in person she was always a little more slender than you first thought.  Don’t get me wrong.  If she was not the most attractive woman I’d ever met, certainly she was one of the top two or three.  But it was only in a photo that her looks took on the quality of a goddess. 

I knew she normally tended to wear more conservative clothing to work, and today was no different.  She wore a rich-looking dark blue woolen skirt suit that consisted of a short slim skirt that was vented up the back and a matching jacket over a rather sheer white blouse. 

As she smoothly worked her between the tables, I could see that the jacket was fitted to emphasize her slim waist and the skirt was tight enough to emphasize her full, muscular buttocks.  I am aware that deep within their brains, there were programmed into Homo sapiens certain body ratios that were associated with fertility.  Men seemed to equate these hour-glass figures with mating behavior; God knows, I certainly knew that I found hers inspirational in that regard.

Her jewelry consisted of long gold earrings that dangled and flashed in the sun, a faux-pearl necklace and a simple gold wedding band.  Her legs were bare to the weather and the only acknowledgement to being a working woman seemed to be dark blue pumps with sensible two inch heals. 

She was perhaps as beautiful a woman, in an unusual way, as any I have ever seen.  Her blouse was little inappropriate for a teacher and I am sure she never took her jacket off while in the classroom.  While her bosom was of average size, her breasts appeared firm and rode high on her chest.  She had a tiny waist and a flat belly, all leading to very long, shapely legs.  It was winter and her skin seemed almost as pure a white as her shoulder length hair, which was parted down the middle.  She was wearing sunglasses, but gave off nevertheless, an immediate impression of vitality and contained energy. 

She draped her jacket over a spare chair and stood at the table for a minute viewing me behind her sunglasses without moving so that I could get a good look at her.  I think that she did this on purpose; I think that she was quite vain of the way she looked. 

***

He’d shaken my hand as I arrived at his table.  I felt a quick flutter of nervousness in my stomach as I looked at Mr. Langhorn.  The way that he had pointed to the chair that he wanted me to occupy made me think for no good reason that he was one of those men that always had to make a point of appearing in control no matter where they are.  He was a big man, about six-two, and looked like he was in good shape.  Dark hair, neatly cut, a good-looking all-American face, what looked like well-developed arms, trim, neat, clean-shaven.  No obvious tattoos or piercings, he must have been somewhere in his early to middle forties, but it was hard to tell because of the smoothness of his face and the way that he wore his hair.

I put my coat over a spare chair and stood for a moment, trying to get my composure back.  The revelation that he knew anything about my private life---indeed, that he’d been able to learn anything about my private life almost made me gag.  I suddenly felt cold and somehow soiled, as though I’d come into my bedroom and found him picking through my underwear.  But if there was a chance that he could help me get out of the fix that I had so stupidly gotten myself into, then I was ready to listen.

I knew that cheats always looked for some sort of justification or rationalization for their actions more than anything else.  And I knew that they usually found a way out in their own mind so that they could justify not feeling any guilt.  But I couldn’t do that anymore.  I was in trouble---everything was my fault and I knew that I would have to live with it.  How could I have been so stupid again?  Even though I was a sensual person and at one time had loved having sex with men, I had never been the type of woman that thought with my pussy.  But I couldn’t believe how much of a mess that I’d made out of my life because of sex and cheating. 

I had been frustrated with my husband, but that was no excuse.  I’d had a little too much wine to drink after work and had gone back to school to grade some papers.  One of the boys had come in late and we had talked; what started as a one-time physical release had unfortunately led to a couple of other times.  Then I’d shut it down and it was over, but that didn’t make a difference because the gossip was never done.  I think I loved teaching, but I felt so detached from that world now, one that was once my home away from home.  How simple it would be to attempt to merge back into that world and pretend that nothing had happened.  But I couldn’t.

I couldn’t justify my actions; and even as I had achieved release in that classroom, I knew that I was making a mistake.  Cultural taboos generally existed for a reason, and I kept telling myself that breaking this one didn’t bother me too much.  Intellectually, I knew that the guilt that I did feel was the result of nothing but the middle-class morals with which I’d been raised, but that didn’t matter---we’re all victims of our parent’s beliefs in one way or another---and no matter what I told myself, the guilt still felt just as real to me.  So, I’d just have to work my way through it. 

And the boy hadn’t been harmed.  My God!  He was considered a hero by the students that knew.  And that was the thing that I hated the most---the knowing eyes of some of the students.  I could lie to myself all day long making what I had done insignificant, but it wouldn’t change a thing; I knew that what I had done was wrong and that was all the mattered.  I didn’t want to go to jail.  And while I didn’t necessarily believe in God’s vengeance anymore, in a very real way I believed that went around came around; that in the end I would someday, in some way have to pay for what I had done.

I had a younger brother and sister.  Raised in a small rural town in northern Georgia, the three of us had had a good start.  Even though we didn’t have as much as a lot of the other families, my parents had raised us in a stable environment.  Even so, I feel like I’ve been alone my whole life.  My father was always the one that I most wanted to love me.  I thought of the only photo of the two of us alone that I had kept.  In it, I was twelve and trying to catch up to my father while I walked in his footsteps in the mud.  I had felt like he was all that I had, but he didn’t even know I existed.

I guess it was at this time that I developed the need to acquire things as a symbol of success.  Growing up, I was about as average physically as a person can get---I didn’t become attractive to boys until I was about sixteen and started to fill out a little.  But I compensated by always being smart, very smart; but even there I didn’t quite qualify as truly brilliant for I’ll never forget the guidance counselor that had once described me as ‘marginally gifted’.  Not strongly religious, but as good rural southerners, we’d still gone to church every Sunday nonetheless.  I guess that the religious training had taken root more than I would ever have believed, because I was a mess. 

I’d been seeing a psychiatrist for the last couple of months about depression and only with the greatest difficulty had I finally been able to reveal to him the existence of what he called my ‘longstanding, relatively profound, sadomasochistic sexual fantasies’.  I hated the word sadomasochistic; it was his word, not mine.  He was an ass!  I had never acted on any of my fantasies.  Even though I found the dreams very exciting at the moment, I felt shamed by them afterwards.  What was quite remarkable to my therapist was that, as opposed to other patients he had seen with sadomasochistic relationships, my fantasies were to him ‘overtly, extraordinarily fluid.’  What he meant was that it was often impossible for me to be sure if I was the masochistic victim or the sadistic perpetrator in the fantasy.  And this was what HE piled on top of my guilt.  God, I was a mess.

I found it impossible to talk honestly with him; even though I assume he did his best with me, I found that I could only talk about my feelings of worthlessness without describing why I felt this way.  I knew that I hid things from him---it was almost impossible to give him the whole truth.  It wasn’t just that I was afraid of going to jail; I had done some wild things when I was growing up so I wasn’t naïve, but I found to my surprise that I just really felt bad about what I had done.  It was a hopeless circle that I couldn’t force myself break; I was afraid that if I told the doctor of what I had done, he would feel nothing but contempt for me.  But he couldn’t help me if he didn’t know the truth.  And if I talked about my feelings of guilt after a total confession, I knew that his contempt would only intensify for me.  I already felt more than enough self-loathing; several months ago in desperation, I had even tried to talk to my mother about these feelings.  But she refused to understand my oblique references and so I had given up. 

Soon after my affair I started having this recurring dream.  It was dark and I was lying alone on a stone table that I think might have been in a church; women hurried to strip, touching themselves in prelude.  Breasts were touched with consent by soft hands.  Nipples were plucked, pubes were stroked.  A ring of naked flesh glistened starkly in the heat of the midnight chapel.  Moans merged with a sacred litany.  Before the great stone alter, an orgy ensued---random sweating bodies joined to form an entity of its own.  Swollen, perfect breasts jutted, their beautiful bodies glazed in sweat and moonlight.  Legs were splayed and buttocks were parted.  Sweat-sheened abdomens sucked tensely in and out as genitals were bared to descending mouths.  Arms were wrapped around backs; bare hips fidgeted in a desperate plea for deeper penetration. 

The firelight raged as the festival drew on; young boy’s bleak faces were sat upon as dominant women in macabre glee…….  The flurry of hands roved over sweating skin, stroking tight, heaving bellies.  Hot mouths licked off the rivulets of perspiration; then voracious tongues trailed up my legs, up my thighs, to the radiating, wet inlet to my womb.  My orgasm jolted me, and it was followed by a string of smaller, yet longer ones.  It felt as if every inch of exposed flesh was either being caressed, licked, kneaded or sucked.  In the background, forms of other figures seemed to squirm on the stone floor, coupling legs wrapped around backs, faces buried between legs.  I arched again as my own orgasms pulsed down and the contractions began to shrink. 

The images wrenched me; they were obscene, revolting.  Wake up!  Wake up!  I always commanded myself.  But I could not move, could not speak.  Worse, my orgasm was obvious, a wet, lewd and clenching irony in time with the very chant of the non-existent group.  I would always awaken suddenly, out of breath.  My nightgown stuck to me; I felt doused in slime and the very coldness of my sweat had shriveled my nipples.  I had cum in my sleep.  The wetness, the acute vaginal sensitivity upon waking left no doubt.  Worse, these dream orgasms had proved to be my only orgasmic release for some time.  Even though we continued to have sex, I hadn’t had an orgasm with my husband for over a year.  I had become very good at faking it for him, and he never suspected.

I remember my last meeting with Dr. Mintner like it was yesterday.  He said that the abstractions---the bizarre setting, the emblems, the firelight, etc---were what he called ‘subconscious detritus.’ “Dreams,” he said, “are the outwardly symbolic subjectivities that surround a concrete point.  These are coded encryptions and you are here to find a way to expose and identify them, after which we can determine how they relate to the central notion of the dream.”

But giving him too much information allowed him too close to my hidden shame and so he went blindly on.  “There’s a lot of guilt in you, Rebecca.  You feel guilty that you’ve put your job before your husband, because if you did the opposite you would satisfy your parent’s convictions of occupational failure.”

I was pretty sure that I didn’t buy that.  Nevertheless, it was possible and I was smart enough to feel stupid for not thinking about it. 

“Since the day you left home, you’ve been torn between opposites.  You want to be right in the traditional sense, and you want to be right for yourself.  You want both ends of the spectrum.”

No, I wanted absolution for what I had done. 

“You’re very unhappy,” Dr Mintner said.

I know, I thought to myself.  Pretty obvious call there, Doc.  “I need a solution; the nightmare is ruining me.  I’m not getting enough sleep, my work at school is slipping and I’m always in a bad mood when I get home.  Don’t you have some wonder drug I could take?”

“Yes,” Dr. Mintner said.  “But that wouldn’t solve any of your problems; it would only cover them up.  You’re having the nightmares for a reason.  We must identify that reason.”

Dr. Mintner was right, there was no quick fix.  Especially when I wasn’t about to give him all of the facts; the truth about what I had done.  “What am I going to do?”

“The first thing you must do is be patient.  You are a very complex person.  Understanding your problems will be a complex affair.”

Tell me something I didn’t already know, Doc.

“The images and ideas expressed in dreams function in two basic modes,” Dr Mintner went on.  “One, the evident mode, relates to the content as it occurs to the dreamer.  And two, the concealed mode, which is the dream’s hidden or symbolic qualities.  Clearly, the dream is about you at an orgy.  There are dark, hooded figures and cryptic words.  The dream sounds almost satanic.  Dreams of devils often signify a rebellion to Christianity.  Are you a Christian?”

“I’m not sure.  I’ve started attending services again, but I’m not anything really.”

Then he asked a bit too abruptly, “Have you ever had a lesbian experience?”

“Of course not.”

“Have you ever wanted to?”

“No.”  I was starting to get pissed.  Really pissed, Doc.

“You’re sure?”

I could feel myself blush.  “Yes, I’m sure.”  I knew that I had snapped at him then.

“Your dream is rife with overt sexual overtones; that’s the only reason that I ask such questions.”

“Yeah, and what might it, or any of the dream, have to do with lesbianism?”  Now the teacher in me was giving him a question that I knew he couldn’t answer.

But he did answer it, by making me answer it.  “The voices you heard, were they male or female?”

“Female.  I already told you.”

“And the figures touching you, caressing you, were---“

“All right, yes, they were female.”  That’s what I get for trying to play games with a shrink.

His next observation disturbed me the most.  “It’s interesting that you take such aversion to questions pertaining to lesbianism, or potential lesbianism.  It’s interesting too, that you are now exhibiting a guilt complex about that.”

“I’m not a lesbian,” I said.

“I’m quite sure that you’re not, but you’re so strong, you’re afraid that I might think you are.”

“How do you know?”

“I know a lot of things, Rebecca.  I know a lot of things just by looking at you, by assessing the way you structure your replies, by your facial inflections and tics, your body language, and so forth.”

“I think you grabbing for shit, Doc.”

“Perhaps.  And it certainly wouldn’t be the first time a psychiatrist had been accused of such.  What I mean is that no mode of rapport between a doctor and a patient is more important than openness and honesty.”

“You think I’m not being completely honest with you?”

“No, Rebecca, I don’t think you have been.  You’re outwardly rebellious and defensive, which is a sure sign of a deep sensitivity.  You haven’t been fully open to me about the dream, have you?”

Of course I hadn’t---there was a lot I hadn’t told him.  But what was I supposed to say now?

“Are there any men in the dream, Rebecca?”

“I think so.  Only a few.  But they’re all in the background, chopping things, chopping wood.  Most are younger.  Boys, really.”

“Wood.  On a fire.  But you say that the males are in the background?”

“Yes.”

“And the figures in the foreground are women?”

“Yes.”

“And who is the center of attention to these women?”

“Me.”

“You.  Naked.  On a table inside a chapel.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you find it interesting that the active participants of the dream are women, while the men remain in the background, clearly symbolizing a subordinate role?”

“I plead the fifth,” I replied.

“My conclusions will make you mad.”

“Doc, I’m already mad.  You’ve accused me of withholding information.  What conclusion?”

“You already know.”

I felt my eyes boring into him.  But, he was right.  I already did know.  “Tell me,” I said.

“What you haven’t admitted to me is that the dream aroused you.  Outwardly, you were repelled, but inwardly, you were stimulated sexually.  Am I right or wrong?”

I somehow answered him, “You’re right.”

“You were aroused and you had an orgasm.  Right or wrong?”

My throat felt dry.  “Right.”

I hadn’t told him this, among many other things I’d left out.

“Are you experiencing an orgasmic dysfunction at home, with your husband?”

I laughed bitterly.  What difference would it make?  “Yeah,” I said.  “Sex has never been a problem for me.  I’ve always been….orgasmic.  Until now.  Since I’ve been having this nightmare, I haven’t had good sex with my husband.”

“But you do have an orgasm in the dream?”

“Yes, every time.”

“You’re afraid that an aspect of your past will ruin your future.”

The words seemed to echo in my ears, hovering around my head. 

Dr. Mintner went on, “Do you---“

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” I told him.  “I really don’t.”

“Why?”

“I don’t feel very good right now.”

“You have a lot of fixations, the most paramount of which is fear of seeming weak to others.  You associate being upset with being weak.  It’s not though.”  He was silent for a minute.  “I think it’s important that you keep coming here.”

I nodded.  And then I left, never to go back.  And so I struggled on alone, never confronting my shame and guilt, and never feeling any relief from it.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my feelings and have discovered two things.  The first is that there is a hidden nature to shame.  I am speaking of genuine shame, not some false modesty.  I hadn’t lived up to the expectations of my family; and even though I knew they looked upon me as promiscuous, grasping, materialistic and far too willing to cut corners to get what I wanted, they would still never have expected this from me.  But this is who I am; I am this way without thought and without effort.  Worse, I too have recently come to resent these ‘qualities’ in me; I am humiliated that I am this way, and even more horrifying, I seem to have no choice in the matter.  But I can’t help myself.  And my worst fear is that this humiliation is or will soon be seen by everyone. 

Second, I have found that shame is the most intolerable of feelings because it is about the self.  And since it’s an all or nothing experience, I knew that I didn’t deserve to be happy in any way.  I was a failure as a woman, as a wife and as a teacher.  There was no help for me, I was totally worthless from head to foot and even though no one else knows what I have done, I fully recognize how much of a failure and how unalterably bad I have become---and I fear, I know that they will soon understand it too.  I often feel like my recognition of how repellent I am will give me a smell or look that somehow alerts others---look closely, here goes a bad person, here strides wickedness.  But people see with quick, careless eyes and even then only notice the most superficial qualities.  And so they miss the real me; not only ugly on the inside, but also the fact that I am beyond the possibility of redemption.

I wish that I could somehow rescue myself; that I could make everything go back to the way it was.  But nothing about me will ever change and so that can never be.  I have had these veiled needs for as long as I can remember.  First a young teenager’s deepest hidden desires and then those forbidden ones of a married woman.  I fought them as best I could, but in the end when my marriage failed I succumbed.  Ironically, the more modern and successful I thought myself; it turned out the further I was distanced from the very beliefs that might have saved me.  Worse, the more I drifted the less means I had with which to secure the forgiveness that I needed.

I have made mistakes in my life, but I have always in the past had the strength to recover.  I had been a strong woman, always the one in charge.  But now my confidence in myself was gone.  Even though I still acted capable and in control, inside I felt weak and helpless---and this was so unlike me.  A painful hidden embarrassment that was almost a sickness of the soul festered inside me.  At the same time, I felt anger towards the boys with whom I’d had sex.  Why hadn’t THEY stopped it?  Why had they ALLOWED it to happen?  I’d asked myself this a thousand times and in the end I knew that I was only attempting to transfer my guilt to them---they weren’t at fault.

This was the final thing to break my marriage.  I felt torn, ambivalent.  My marriage was a failure and my husband was weak, but he didn’t deserve this.  I knew these deeds had made me unsuitable for a decent person to love.  And while I could kid myself that I was likable and could even perhaps convince myself too that I was even lovable, deep inside I knew that this was not true.  I knew inside that no matter how much good I might do from this point on, at the same time I was also still capable of causing great harm.  Given my flawed genetic character, in the end this was the reason that I decided to not have children.

I knew that good people sometimes get seduced into doing wrong things by situational forces, but that was no excuse for what I had done.  And I knew that given half a chance, I could be a good person again.  In some way, I’d let my personal beliefs and values get suspended in some kind of moral disengagement, and then because of these failures it seemed that I was lost, forever.

Sometimes I thought that justice would be better served if I just died.  I wasn’t the type that would ever consider suicide, but it was one way that my problems would be gone, forever.  I snorted to myself; more objective over-analysis on my part.  I couldn’t seem to stop.  My stomach churned with acid just as it had for over half a year.  I hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in months.  Every time the phone rang or someone knocked at the door I jumped, expecting to be led off in handcuffs.  I faked it well, but I couldn’t handle the stress anymore; I just wanted it over.  If this meant going to the police and confessing, then so be it.  But the shame of it all!  I honestly didn’t know if I could handle the shame of being known as a sex criminal, a pedophile, a pervert.  What would my family think?  My God, what had I been doing?

And then he’d called.  If this man had a way to help me, then I would cling to him like a drowning woman to a life preserver.  I was so tired of trying to handle this all by myself.

I wished that I could be like others I knew; the if you didn’t speak of it, it didn’t exist and if you didn’t think of it, it went away school of behavior.  Instead, I looked like hell.  I had bags under my eyes from lack of sleep and they were red from constantly crying.  I couldn’t eat; I’d lost weight and my clothes didn’t fit anymore.  But the worst part was my marriage; ours had been a loveless marriage from almost the beginning, and it was entirely my fault---I’d been too needy, too grasping of material things, too enamored of success, both his and mine, and of what it could bring.  Finally, I knew that several years ago we’d both crossed a line over which we could never go back; it was only a matter of time from that point before we divorced.  I was terrible to him; back when we’d still cared about each other, we’d fought all the time about money---vicious fights during which I said awful, taunting things.  And now it was my turn to pay; if he discovered this about me before we divorced, he would ensure that he left me with nothing.  And perhaps that was only right?

All this ran through my mind in tenths of seconds as I stood there.  I finally shifted my attention to the unfamiliar man in front of me.  If this was to work, I would have to be firm, right from the beginning.  I knew that my rather clipped style of speaking was intimidating, making my words sound even more severe to many men, but I did not have the time to play nice.  I needed to get my point across before the man in front of me had made any judgments of his own.

After a couple of seconds, my stomach had finally calmed enough that I was able to sit down.  I tried not to let him know how scared I was, but for the first time in a long time even as I sat with this man, I felt a little hope.  But first I needed to find out what he knew.  “What,” I asked him, “do you want to talk about?”

***

I shook her hand.  She had a strong grip and gave me a dignified look; I was pretty sure that the ‘stern schoolteacher’ image worked well in her job.  Finally, she moved into her seat as smooth as melted butter.  This woman, who had perhaps the best posture I had ever seen, turned her swanlike neck towards me and gave me a small smile.  “What,” she asked in a low, arrogant voice that was as slick as barbed satin, “do you want to talk about?”  She radiated a sense of clarity and self-assurance.  Anyone meeting her would come away believing that she’d been born when the world began, so impressive was her apparent confidence.  I didn’t underestimate this woman….despite the effort she put into making a striking female presentation with her hair and eyes and flawless makeup, she could hold her own in any battle of wits.  She was letting me know that she didn’t need me and that it was I that had asked for this meeting.

It was interesting how she had made me seem to be the supplicant with just one sentence.  The thought ran across my mind; women somehow scare men and then for some reason, but this one was like Cleopatra and could easily rule a million men.  I have never ceased to be amazed at how most women seem to be able to do this to us at will; to exude a crystalline-cold front which confounds and immediately puts us on the defensive.  Irregardless of how they might actually feel, it seems that almost any female has this ability from birth and when they use tricks like hiding behind sunglasses, they present a front that is virtually impenetrable to the male of the species.  But this one was special; where most women burned with a thousands watts, she blazed with a million.  That’s what this woman tried to do to me, but I just cocked my head and looked at her.  After we had stared silently at each other for a minute, she finally took off her sunglasses.

***

I watched the back of the man’s neck turn red.  In another situation, I might have chosen to be gentler, smiling more and being less firm.  But the current circumstances called for a whip, and it was important that I set the tone of the relationship.  The man’s initial familiarity did not seem good for our beginning a relationship beneficial to me.  I knew I had to be in total control.  In a situation like this, that was how I felt most comfortable.

I could tell that the man didn’t like me, but I was used to that.  That was okay, I hadn’t come here to be his friend.  When I was in high school, until the end it had been my bearing and intelligence that had always drawn the stares and speculative eyes.  In college, it was my looks: the angles of my face, my hair, the way that the boys said my skin seemed to glow.  Now at work, it was the….other things that I had done.  It was always something, but never the real me.

***

I was right; her face was spectacular.  She had good teeth, a generous mouth and while tired–looking, her large eyes were so light a blue that in any other type they would have appeared almost colorless.  She stared at me and I just let her beautiful eyes draw me in.  A man could drown in those cool, icy pools.  Luckily, I knew how to swim.

She wore little makeup but it was beautifully applied; her face looked almost scrubbed clean.  I could see that her complexion was flawless and her skin was the smooth, unblemished fineness of youth and was literally vibrant in its pure, radiant, almost porcelain whiteness of winter.  She had high cheek bones and a finely chiseled aquiline nose; her eyebrows were just enough darker than her hair that they could easily be seen.  As I looked at her, each feature seemed more delicate than dramatic.  The way her eyelashes brushed down when she lowered her gaze.  The healthy sheen of her hair, the single silky curl that rested against her jaw.  The blush of cold or perhaps weariness on her cheeks.  This woman was achingly beautiful. 

Chapter 6: The most ingenious men continually pretend to condemn tricking—but this is often done that they may use it more conveniently themselves, when some great occasion or interest offers itself to them; François Duc De La Rochefoucauld.

Suddenly, for some reason, this woman disturbed me more than any other woman with whom I had ever been.  She seemed to emit a vibration that I picked up almost like a psychic harmonic, something that pulsed at me with each beat of her heart.  I felt a sudden shiver go down my spine, and I cleared my throat to give me a second to think.

My throat felt dry and I sipped my cold coffee before I answered.  “You, Mrs. Denholm are potentially in a lot of trouble.”  I’d seen the ring she wore so I could now promote (demote?) her from Ms. to Mrs.  “But I think that with the right kind of legal help, you can fight this thing.  It will entail a lot of work and your reputation might well be shredded when we’re done, but I think that I can keep you out of jail.  Interested?”

She gave a refined Katherine Hepburn-like sniff of doubt.  “Mr. Langhorn,” she replied after taking a quick glance at my face, “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, and I certainly have no need of legal help right now.”

“Rebecca---may I call you Rebecca?”  I continued before she could answer and I leaned towards her over the table in an attempt to establish a feeling of earnest professional intimacy.  My earlier feeling of union with her was gone and I was on a roll again.  She was on my ground here and I was in charge; it wouldn’t hurt to remind her of that.  “Here’s what I know.  You’ve had an illegal sexual relationship with a minor.  Not only a minor, but a minor that was in your charge at school.  That is felony and if convicted of this charge in this state, it makes you a sexual predator, a pedophile.  If you cannot at least credit me with a modicum of intelligence, then this conversation is over and you go to jail---straight to jail.  The inmates and guards would love to get a woman like you behind those walls.”

The beautiful woman sitting across from me was shaken.  It only showed in her eyes and it only lasted for a second, but it told me what I needed to know.  She cleared her throat to answer and just then our waiter showed up.  She ordered green tea to drink and we both took menus.  There was a long uncomfortable silence while we both pretended to read what was printed there.  I watched her menu and saw it shake slightly as she held it up.  Finally, our waiter came back with her drink and we both ordered salads.  Me because I like to keep my weight down and watch my cholesterol; she I think because suddenly something had upset her stomach.

With what appeared to be a nonchalant air, she began again.  “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but let’s say that I was interested.  Let’s say that if this had happened, it happened because someone drugged me.  How would you help me?”

This was a question that I’d thought about a lot.  “Well, first I would talk to you and get your side of the story---try to figure out what really happened.  You would have to give me ALL of the details.  Then,” I continued, “we would investigate the kid.  We’d dig up every piece of dirt on him that was available.  Even though he’s a minor, he’s not without responsibility---especially if he drugged you.  But if that was all we did, you’d still be in jail for good one day after the trial started.  We would also try to come up with reasons to justify your actions, or at least excuse them.”

“This means investigating your co-workers and friends, your work environment and your home life; it will be tough on them and your husband.  You would also have to see a psychiatrist; clearly your defense would both take time and cost money.  Finally, we’d show you as contrite and as accepting responsibility for any errors you might have made.  In the end, if you’re lucky and we do our job, you’d be found not guilty but your reputation would be gone; you would have to offer to accept some kind of extended counseling and of course, you would resign from the teaching profession.  Hopefully, soon this would die down and you could begin to live your life again.”

***

He said suddenly in a quiet voice, “Do you know?  To conceal the past is not such a hard  trick.”

“What?”

He regarded me thoughtfully, as if he was thinking about a million different things.  I stared back at him, my face getting redder and redder. 

“What did you say?”

“It’s not such an unusual thing.  It’s a trick that relies only on silence.”

”I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  But he ignored me for awhile now.

“Fine,” I said.  He was an idiot and I wondered if I had been wasting my time.

***

I was silent for a minute, “But if you lie to me or if we are even just unlucky, it’s six or seven years in jail for you---maybe a little less with good behavior.”  I felt kind of bad putting it to her like this, but I needed to keep her anxious and under pressure.  She was one of those women that are always calculating the angles in things, and she was smart enough that if I didn’t use maximum leverage to keep her mentally off-balance, she’d figure out that my story had more holes in it than Swiss cheese.

“Being incarcerated,” I continued, “is not like in the movies.  Think about being in an eight by twelve cell with one other person.  Little fresh air or sunlight, and working at a job that a moron could do.  The male and female guards, always checking you out, just waiting to get you alone.  And the other inmates will be sure to take up whatever time you have left over.  It’s not a pretty picture.”

Here pale blue eyes flashed for a second.  “Please don’t play your silly games with me, Mr. Langhorn.”

I looked this beautiful woman straight in the eyes and snorted.  “I’m not,” I lied.  “Like I said, this is going to cost you a lot of money and almost surely your reputation.  But if we get started right away, without delay, I think we have an excellent chance of keeping you out of prison.”

“Mr. Langhorn,” she asked, “how do you know anything about me?”  If it’d been me, my mind would have been swirling with panicky thoughts and fears at this moment and I wouldn’t have been able to think of a coherent question.  I was right, this was one smart woman and she was stalling for time in order to get her thoughts in order and her composure back.

“Well, actually I heard about you from a friend in the DA’s office.  She,” I didn’t want to get my source in trouble should Denholm eventually tell the police about me, “felt that you were getting a raw deal.  They are about finished investigating you and will be indicting you in the next few days.  You don’t have much time to make up your mind.”  I didn’t actually know this for a fact, but it never hurts to keep up the pressure on your mark.  “And the longer you take, the less time we have to help you.”

The waiter delivered our salads.  I dug into mine while she just pushed her lettuce around.  Her voice seemed to crack and I fancied that I heard a light tone of underlying desperation.  But then again, I’ve always been bad at that sort of thing and for all I knew she might just be feeling a little indigestion. 

“I…I don’t know what to say.”  She seemed to pull herself together now and continued with the cool façade that I had come to admire.  “This is all so sudden….without admitting anything, let’s say that I may need someone’s help, that this is something that has been tearing me up for months…..the problem is that I have no money at the moment.  I couldn’t afford to pay you anything.”

I looked at her for a second.  “What about your husband?  Doesn’t he have money?”  I already knew that they were both in debt up to their ears.  Living beyond their means from paycheck to paycheck, five credit cards maxed out between them and they had only a little more than a thousand dollars in their joint checking account.  This was going exactly according to plan.

She looked at me for a second and then her eyes seemed to get even colder.  With a vicious note in her voice, she said, “That spineless bastard!  There’s nothing he’d do to help me, he’s nothing to me but backwash now.  We’re always fighting about money as it is, and with something like this, he’d divorce me like that (she snapped her fingers) and do his best to take everything that I have.”  I noticed that everything that they had together was hers alone.

Then she hesitated and her face changed, becoming softer as she said, “God, how I hate reacting to things without thinking.  He’s not a bad man.  He doesn’t deserve to be described like that.  He’s not what I thought he was when I married him, but he’s not like I just described him either.  But that doesn’t matter, we don’t have the money.”

After several minutes of silence she continued, speaking to her plate, never looking me in the face.  “And how do you know,” she asked, “whether or not I even want to be saved from whatever it is you think I’ve done?”

“Well, Mrs. Denholm,” I said with a doubtful tone in my voice, “without a retainer, I don’t think that there is much that we can do for you.  And so we would never know, would we?  A pity.  I’m pretty sure that we could have kept you out of jail.”  She was tough, but the quickly hidden look of desperation on her face told me what I needed to know.  The confident, cool and contained Rebecca Denholm had departed with the arrival of tea and by the time the main course was delivered, and she had been replaced by a distracted, desperate woman hiding behind a weak façade held in place only by worry and doubt.  This was an anxious woman that saw a horrific disaster looming in front of her; I’d offered her a lifeline and now I was taking it away.  It would be interesting to see how desperate she was and how far she would go to obtain my help.

Chapter 7: Seduction isn’t making someone do what they don’t want to do. Seduction is enticing someone into doing what they secretly want to do already; Waiter Rant.

She leaned forward over the table towards me.  The front of her blouse opened more and I was pretty sure that it wasn’t an accident.  Her complexion was so light that I could see the delicate blue tracery of veins just below the skin of her cleavage.  As I raised my eyes, she looked directly into them as she said, “Let’s say that I did need help…isn’t there any way that I could get you to defend me?  I swear to God that I will repay anything that I owe you, and I would sign anything you want me too.  Isn’t that good enough?”

“I’m sorry,” I shook my head as I finished my salad.  “We don’t do charity work, and we certainly wouldn’t take on your case pro bono---it’s, shall we say, a little too high profile.  We have clients that might walk if we took your case, and you want us to defend you for nothing?  Sorry.  Can’t do it.  Please finish up, Mrs. Denholm, the lunch is on me.”  My tone was brusque and made it clear that we had nothing else about which to talk.

***

His voice was light and educated and easy, and did not belong to the face; it did not belong to the new eyes.  During the last few years, when I felt like every strength had been scraped out of me, I had learned a trick.  Around my hollowed interior, I shaped a façade of confidence, the mask of a woman unafraid, who could not be fooled or taken advantage of.  A woman who had nothing to lose.  I dropped this over me now, like a shield.

I had once been where he was now---everything that he did, he did for money or power or just because he could.  I wished that I could somehow express what I felt to the man before me.  The intensity of emotions and the frustration at my inability to make him appreciate my need made me feel as if I were hopelessly lost, speaking a different language from him as I asked him to help me save my soul.  I leaned forward in emphasis, as if my physical nearness alone could make him feel my desperation and how much I needed his help.  But when he told me that our lunch was over, I felt as if someone had just shot me through the heart.  His eyes had changed; the once eager look altered, becoming harder, more cynical and cold-blooded.  I couldn’t help myself and I started crying again.  Even then, I knew that I couldn’t tell him the truth.  God, how I hated being so weak in front of a man like this!

***

I looked across the table at my beautiful dining companion.  From across the dining area she would still appear composed, even regal; but from across the table her eyes were tearing.  And although facing me, she wasn’t seeing me.  It was the only real moment of weakness that I saw at lunch.  “My God,” she said in a soft toneless voice directed at no one, “one time.  It only happened one time---during a special after-school study session that I had with him---it was math.  And I think that he gave me some drugs in a coke.  I was so embarrassed; I thought if I just ignored it, it would go away.  I can’t believe that this is happening to me.”

I was pretty sure that I had most of the facts---and I knew that she was lying through her teeth.  I looked at her and decided to offer the bait.  “If what you say is true, it offers mitigating circumstances.”  Now we would see just how desperate a woman she really was.  “Rebecca, you say that you have no way to pay for our services.  This is, how do I say it, highly irregular.  But there may be one way that you could retain my firm and me.” 

She looked at me quickly like I was already her savior.  I hesitated for a second, “There is one way that we can perhaps make this work, one way that you can retain me.  It’s highly unusual, but I’m willing to try it if you are.  There is a weekend coming up.  And…I’m embarrassed to even say this,” I tried to play the bumbling fool that was now too shy to even continue with his indecent proposal.  “But if you should choose to go away for the weekend and if by coincidence, I should happen to be at the same place, why I am sure that something could be arranged.”

Rebecca Denholm: wife, teacher, cold-hearted woman and likely felon-to-be; she looked at me for a second as if she had just lifted a rock and found something disgusting beneath it.  Then a small smile quirked across her face.  It seemed obvious that she felt that we had moved from dangerous legal territory and on to ground in which she felt much more comfortable.  Her posture now became more relaxed and she leaned back in her chair; at the same time, her face again resumed its initial look of cold, rock-hard assurance and poise.  But this time, there was an added patina of calculation.  This alone told me that the woman was a man-eater and was very experienced in getting her way with men.  With my last comment, she was definitely back on familiar ground.

***

My looks meant nothing to me.  But all he saw was the superficial and he was willing to trade his time for this?  I couldn’t believe it; would I be able to get out of this terrible mess as easily as this?  All he wanted was to take me to bed; to fuck me a couple of times and then he’d help me?  It seemed too good to be true; I was afraid of some kind of a trick.  Nothing in my life as important as this could ever be that easy to make go away.

What would I have to do?  Probably whatever he wanted.  This man, I sensed, was the sort of man who felt that staking a claim in a woman’s vagina also locked up the rest of her as well.  A risky assumption, but fortunately for me, not a rare one.  If necessary, I’d work this to its limits with this predator.  This whole scenario seemed so typical of men like him.  A weak man that wasn’t capable of finding a woman on his own, but instead waited until a potential victim was at the lowest point in her life in order to take advantage---how low could a person get? 

A man like this was despicable and couldn’t be trusted; he deserved nothing of me, or of any real woman for that matter.  But we both knew that I was desperate.  I felt nauseous as I picked up his card and looked at it again---a chill went down my spine for I knew that I was considering his offer even as part of me said, don’t do it.  My head felt like it was spinning and I couldn’t think.  I would do almost anything to get out from under my past.  And if this was what it took, then I could do it.  But I hated the thought of it.

Men have always considered me attractive.  I’ve known this since I was sixteen; so many men have propositioned me in so many ways that I’ve lost track of the number years ago.  But this was different.  He wanted money from me and I desperately needed what this man offered, but since I couldn’t pay him money, he would take his pay in flesh.  Even as he manipulated others, this kind of man begged to be manipulated in turn.  I knew immediately that if he could defend me from my past, it would cost me little of myself to give him what he seemed to want---and I also knew that deep inside I had already decided to cooperate with him, once.  But first I needed to make sure that I knew exactly what he wanted and what he offered in exchange.  And that if we were successful, I would finally be free of the worry that so hounded me now.

***

Her voice was cold now, cold as ice.  “Why Mr. Langhorn, I do believe that you have just propositioned me.”

I shook my head, “No, Rebecca.  All I did was mention that there was a way to pay your legal fees.  One that you could afford, and having met you now, one with which you might not be entirely unfamiliar.”  This last was perhaps pushing the envelope a little far, but I wanted her to see that even I, the bumbling idiot, could understand a woman like her.

Rebecca flushed at my last comment and her eyes flashed her displeasure at my impertinence, but I was impervious.  Yes, I was the buffoon that was out of my depth; the loser that was making one last attempt at grabbing the winning lotto ticket.

“Let’s say that I did need to be defended.  There is no way on earth that your firm would handle me with that kind of down payment.”  She looked at me in the eyes as she said, “I may not be familiar with legal firms, but I am not that gullible either.”

“Rebecca,” I began, “our lawyer/client relationship would necessitate a close, even intimate affiliation between us.  While I am the one that would bill the firm and can therefore control most of the legal costs, you are correct in that there would be other times at which significant amounts of money would be required from you.  Should you decide that you liked the arrangement that I think we might have just reached, then I would in turn be more than willing to ‘lend’ you the money you will need.  Of course, that means that other ‘payments’ will be required of you at later dates.”

She looked at me for a minute without saying a word.  Then in an icy tone, she said, “Fine.  Let us be blunt about this offer of yours.  I let you fuck me and when I’m your whore, you and your firm will act on my behalf if I need to be defended in a court of law?” 

Okay, I’d struck out on this one.  So much for the time I’d wasted on this bimbo; the way she put it let me know just exactly what she thought of me and my scam.  I was ready for her to get up and slap my face as she departed the table when she suddenly said, “Yes, I’ll do it.  I hate to owe anything to anybody.  And since I can’t pay you the money you want, but I will pay my own way, like I always do.”  Rebecca just stared into my eyes for a second, “In my own currency.”

***

I dropped my head then because a smile was spreading across my face and I didn’t want him to see it.  My shoulders were quivering and I had to put my thumb and forefinger on either side of my nose and shake my head, relief popping like laughter bubbles in my ears.  At last, when I had stopped smiling, I dropped my hand and looked at him.  What an amazing thing.  To enter into a deal with a man like this.  Isn’t it a constant surprise the things that people will do for peace of mind? 

We sat for what seemed ages looking at each other.  And then I answered.  “Yes,” I said quietly.  “Yes.  I’ll do it.”

***

In a matter of fact voice, she continued.  “I think that perhaps I can get away from my husband for perhaps one night next week.”  Now the bitch was negotiating!  She felt comfortable enough to try to take control of the situation.

I couldn’t believe the audacity of this woman as I shook my head slowly.  “Not good enough.  This would be far more dangerous for me than it would ever be to you.  You are on the verge of losing everything, but I’m not.  If you want my help staying out of jail, I want it to be worth my while, I want the whole weekend, Friday evening to Sunday evening.”  I hesitated, then plunged in completely.  “We’ll spend the weekend at a place of my choosing, and you’ll do everything that I say and give me everything I want, willingly.  No negotiations with this---take it or leave it.” 

Here was the crux of the matter.  Either she bought into my line or she shied away.  While I waited for her to make up her mind, I guess that it’s about time that I shared a little secret that only a few others knew; I wasn’t married, but I liked married women---I liked them a lot, especially the beautiful ones.  I’d invested a lot of time in Rebecca Denholm.  Hell, I could have purchased a prostitute for the whole weekend for a lot less than just the time that I indulged on this woman. 

But for some reason, taking a woman like this and putting her in a position where I controlled everything; a position in which she was forced to willingly give herself to me for the weekend---it all felt incredibly empowering.  Every one of the women that I had used like this before had something to lose, and that’s how they had all behaved.  Some cried a little and then performed like a trained seal.  Still others fought me before I broke them and a few were like a tame doe, eerily resigned to their fate from the beginning.  But one thing was for sure; if you found the right lever, they all caved in the end. 

I knew that I was a manipulative bastard, but even so, I reflected back upon the last year with pleasure.  Knowing that they belonged to another man when they delivered themselves to me under these conditions; that there were no limits---that I could do anything that I wanted to them---it was all very heady stuff.  But the best part was that at the end of the weekend, I could kick them out of the motel room or deliver them back to their car or their home or their apartment and then just disappear; but they were left to lick their wounds and bruises, repair their shattered egos and dignity, and then face hubby.  What did they say?  How did they explain the discolorations, the marks, the sore areas on their body and the changed personalities that magically appeared after a supposedly innocent weekend? 

I know that this was sick, but I couldn’t help myself.  I could always use whores, but somehow that didn’t seem to satisfy me nearly as much.  I had often talked to my secretary about finding a wife and even dreamed about it sometimes, but the reality was that I needed to manipulate a woman, a new someone that each time would bring fresh emotions, unscarred needs and untouched weaknesses to the liaison.  It was these things that I needed, not the companionship a wife might provide.

Suddenly Rebecca intruded into my reflections; she closed her eyes for a second and when she opened them, a smile lit her face.  Only it was the smile of a tiger looking at its next meal.  Who was manipulating whom here, I wondered.  “One weekend.  One weekend only.  That,” and now the smile on her face broadened even more, “is our deal?  And with this, you will defend me from the charges from the school?  All charges, no matter how long it takes?”

“Yes,” I assured her.  “The charges will be handled after we have finished.”

She didn’t seem to pick up on my carefully parsed sentence.  “I’m sure that I can convince my husband that my school has a weekend seminar for teachers.  Perhaps one of the scheduled attendees is ill and I’m an emergency replacement---yes, I think that would work.”  She was speaking aloud softly as she thought it through. 

“Where do we meet?”  She didn’t seem at all upset by my offer and obviously seemed a lot more familiar with doing this kind of thing than most wives I had met.  Interestingly, she now appeared ready to depart.  Her tone at the last had been impatient, as if the serious negotiations were done and I was a slow-witted employee that was wasting her valuable time.

I had given her question a lot of thought.  I wasn’t sure how far the DA and the police had gotten with building their case against Rebecca, and I certainly didn’t want to be seen with her at this point should they be tailing her.  I told her that I wanted her to meet me directly after school on Friday.  She was to keep her cell phone with her as she drove though the parking garage of a large shopping mall with which she was familiar.  She was to enter from the Market Street side and then depart directly using the 15^th street exit.  I didn’t tell her that I’d be there watching to see if anyone followed her through.  If she was followed, I would just cancel everything---at that point she’d be on her own. 

Next, I gave her the location of a run-down strip mall that was about a block from the bus station.  I told her to park in front of the strip mall and take her luggage with her as she walked to the corner.  There she was to turn south down Connecticut Avenue and I would meet her before she had gone a hundred yards. 

She looked at me and raised an eyebrow, “Luggage?”

I looked at her and smiled, “Well, you can’t just wear nothing the whole weekend, can you?  Besides, I want you to wear a dress.  Wear it when we meet on Friday.  Bring a pair of jeans and at least four dresses or skirt and blouse combinations, and heels to match---if you have a nice cocktail dress, bring that too.  We might be going out to dine.”  She just shook her head as she looked at me, but didn’t say anything.

“Oh, and by the way,” I continued in an overly casual tone of voice, “bring a thousand dollars in cash too.  This will be the only time that you will actually need to pay for my services.”  If I purchased anything for her to wear, I was going to make sure that it was her money that paid for it.  She didn’t like the part about bringing several changes of clothes and really didn’t like the part about bringing money, but she didn’t argue with me.  I guess that I was a lot more persuasive than I’d originally thought I was?

***

I was ready to leave the smug bastard right where he was sitting.  I thought back to my teenage years.  Even while attending church as a teenager, I had been fascinated by that dreaded evil thing, sex.  I’d been young and vigorous and found that I liked sex, and that I liked being in control when I was with a man.  To me, even though I’d had a couple of bad experiences, sex was still a natural and wonderful activity.  I valued it and I was careful; and just because I had chosen to indulge as a teenager, even then I was not stupidly promiscuous.

But honestly, the thought of having such a tawdry affair with this particular man made me sick to my stomach.  But the worst part was that I knew that I was more than willing to give him what he wanted if it gave me back my freedom, my peace of mind.

I stood up and looked at him for a minute.  I always loved having sex with a strong man that I could control, but I had not had good sex with my husband in the last nine months now; I really hadn’t had any kind of meaningful sex at all in more than seven months.  But even as I knew that I would go through with this, I also knew that I was sick of men right now; the thought of being pressured into having sex with this man horrified me. 

I just wanted it all to go away.  But it was clear that he’d put all sorts of thought into it and had all sorts of plans already made.  The exact route and the clothes and the overnight suitcase; it all made me wonder if I knew what I was letting myself in for.  But in my desperation, I knew that I had no better chance at keeping my freedom.  Finally, I confirmed with him one more time my understanding of our deal and then I could stand it no longer---my skin was crawling and I had to get outside before I threw up.  I turned and left him without looking back.

***

Rebecca was obviously ready to leave.  She stood up and after she had put her sunglasses on, she looked down on me for a short period without speaking.  Either she was re-thinking her agreement with me or perhaps I was supposed to feel like I was the stable help and a minor royalty was dismissing me.  For some reason, I felt like it was the latter and that this tableau was rather symbolic to her; I mean the whole ‘her-looking-down-on-me’ thing.  Then she confirmed the deal one more time, “I pack enough clothes for the weekend, bring the money and meet you.  Then you will handle my legal issues?  That’s all I have to do, right?”

I nodded, “Correct.”  She had no idea what I had planned for her.  This weekend had been about a month in the making and Rebecca might be a little busier than I had described, but she didn’t need to know this right away.  She turned on her heel and picked up her coat as she left, and I have to admit that I enjoyed every minute of the view.  It was then that I noticed that her departure was also being watched by every other heterosexual man in the café; that was the problem with meeting a woman that looked and walked the way she did---no privacy!

Chapter 8: Sensuality takes planning and work; Mason Cooley.

I left using the rear entrance and walked the block back to where I had parked my car.  The wind from my open window blew my hair as I drove to my office.  There, I told Freddy and Nan that I would be taking an unplanned vacation next week.  They didn’t blink an eye because they were used to this happening at least four or five times a year, regular as clockwork---I really did like married women.  Next I drove home and did a quick walk through.  I looked at the living room and the cherry book cases, the solid wood furniture and the few Persian rugs that I could afford.  I looked out at the combination balcony/deck that ran the full length of the back of the house.  I went into my computer room and checked out all of the recording equipment.  I toured the small but functional kitchen and then I walked into the room where I would be entertaining my guest for the weekend. 

My bedroom was large and open.  One door led to the deck in back.  Next to it was a closed door hidden behind a large Persian rug that I had hung on the wall like a tapestry.  A third door led to a large walk-in closet.  I had a king sized bed; across from the bed was a large television in an antique armoire.  In the corner, separated from the master bedroom by a four foot high stone wall there were two sinks, a toilet, a two-person whirlpool tub and a large shower.  Laid out on a chair near the bed were a few items that I thought might come in handy.  Some soft ropes and neckties, a set of handcuffs and a silk scarf that could double as either a makeshift gag or a blindfold.  It was always best to start out slow.

I looked and assured myself for the hundredth time that the three camera lenses could not be seen.  One looked down from the ceiling directly over the bed, a second had a great view looking down at the bed from directly over the television set and the third was located on the stone dividing wall at a height of about four feet on the right side of the bed.  All in all, I figured that I had pretty good video coverage of anything that we might do together. 

I then walked through the hidden closed door into the new room that I’d just added.  This was a serious play room and I had no plans to bring Rebecca here---at least not yet.  She and I would have a nice light, ‘consensual’ weekend together---heavy bruising was optional---and then she’d be out of my hair.  I entertained a whore every now and then in this room, but it was definitely off-bounds for my weekend dates.  The Denholm woman wasn’t exactly what I would call inexperienced, but if I tried to use some of the toys that I kept in here on every housewife that I had to pressure to get a weekend with…well, I just wasn’t willing to risk it.

My playroom was attached to the master bedroom, but you had to go through a small, closet-like room to enter it---I called it my ‘airlock’.  Two metal doors with electric security locks allowed access to this room; one was concealed behind the tapestry and led into this small cubicle, while the other locked door allowed entrance into my new addition. 

The interior of the 25’ by 25’ add-on was spare and Spartan, looking like the room of a crazed priest.  An austere white on the walls and ceiling, the paint was the rubberized type.  The floor consisted of concrete upon which heavily glued pergo laminate had been laid---there were four easily cleaned drains in the floor and everything in the room was easily washed.  There was one additional door in this room that led out to the deck in back.  It too had an electric lock that could only be opened by its own unique code.  The keys for all three doors were different combinations of five numbers and letters and it would be impossible to open any of them without knowing the codes ahead of time. 

The few windows in the ‘White Room’ were narrow and wide, and located high in the wall.  Each window consisted of rows of four-inch thick glass bricks.  The walls were filled with material that completely baffled and soaked up sound.  I’d told the builder that I wanted a room in which I could practice my music without bothering anyone and the whole design had made perfect sense to him. 

The room had its own air-conditioning unit with enough capacity to chill a side of beef in two hours if you so desired.  There was a double bed up against a wall with a tight wooden box that fit beneath it.  A toilet and enclosed shower took up one corner, while the rest of the room was filled with my playthings.  One corner contained a stationary bicycle and a treadmill; both pieces of equipment had been purchased second hand with cash and for some reason I’d taken the time to remove the serial numbers.  I can honestly say that I am not sure why I did that.

There were four pulleys set in the ceiling and numerous rings anchored in the walls and floors at various places.  There was also a T-shaped metal track that I myself had recessed into the ceiling after the builder had finished.  The top of the T ran along the far wall and this in turn was bisected in the middle by the body of the T.  One arm of the T ran over the bed and the other arm led over to the toilet and shower.  The body of the T went down the center of the room allowing access to the exercise equipment and my other toys. 

These included a large wooden X-frame anchored against one wall, a nicely finished sawhorse and a wooden chair that I’d special ordered from a local ‘artisan.’  The last item was firmly secured to the floor. 

The sawhorse was my own design.  The horizontal beam was four feet of polished oak that was about four inches wide and slightly more than half an inch thick---all the edges on the beam had been lightly sanded.  On the wall, beginning two feet off of the floor there was a three foot high series of strong metal clips screwed into a 2” x 4” wall stud, each one about six inches apart.  One end of the horizontal beam had a wide metal hook-like piece screwed into it which would fit into one of the wall clips.  This supported one end of the horizontal bar and took the place of one set of sawhorse legs.  There were also several different sets of normal sawhorse legs of varying heights for the other end.  These legs were hinged so that the horizontal beam could be dropped in from the top and two butterfly screws would then fix the beam to the legs.

Finally, there were racks against one wall that held various leather, rubber and steel pieces to which my ‘date’ would eventually be introduced.  Several prostitutes had already received a taste and I had been informed by them that there would be no repeat business.

As with my bedroom, there were camera lenses placed discretely throughout the White Room.  I had an excellent overall view from two angles, and a good aerial view of anyone using the toilet and the exercise machines.  There were four camera lenses covering the bed and nothing could happen there that wasn’t recorded in living Technicolor. 

I went to sleep that night and dreamed of satyrs and succubae and orgies.  I got up the next morning and although I didn’t really feel rested, I kept busy all day.  I made calls and found more people from her youth.  I contacted one man that had known her in college.  After a few minutes of conversation about Rebecca, I finally asked him, “Did you sleep with her?”

There was a hesitation for a moment, then he reluctantly admitted, “Yes, I did, but I wouldn’t say that we were lovers.  I don’t think that she thought of me that way.  She just wanted sex, but no accountability.  No relationships.  I wasn’t about to turn down an opportunity.  She was beautiful.  She was fun.  And she asked me for nothing.”  He wouldn’t say much more about her after that. 

I thought about Rebecca and what I had learned about her.  As a teenager, after she’d started to break loose, she was always looking for the ultimate experience, the doorway to something greater and she seemed to feel that one experience or another would get her there.  That seemed to mean drugs, sex with men that had serious character disorders, extreme fasting, extreme exercise, meditation---anything and everything that kissed the possibility, even if it were dangerous.  Her brushes with various substances had gotten her into some trouble, but nothing that she couldn’t handle by herself.  Then she changed, becoming even more serious about what she wanted from the world. 

I now knew much of her history and knew that she hadn’t been truthful with me at our lunch.  Some of it was pretty obvious.  But it was as much what she didn’t say as what she did.  I don’t know how I knew that, but I was sure of it.  I thought that I’d left that analytical part of me behind, but obviously not.  There was a connection to her inside me at a level that I don’t think I’d ever experienced before.  It would be interesting to see how the weekend went and how much she would open up to me.

I didn’t get a call from Rebecca on Thursday, but I didn’t sleep very well that night either.  I was up early Friday morning and ready to go.  Somehow I felt energized by what I hoped would happen and the day passed quickly. 

I was parked in the mall garage early that afternoon waiting for Rebecca to pass by.  I hoped that everything would work out, but as usual I was also prepared to abandon my scheme at anytime.  Although she was a little late, Becky finally drove by and as best I could tell she was without a tail.  That didn’t mean anything since the police could have put a GPS tracking device on her car if they had decided to follow her discretely from a distance.  But I had to assume that this meant that she was still surveillance-free at this point. 

I had the feeling that I was really pushing the timing with the police and DA a little too close, but at this point I just didn’t care.  Have you ever had that compulsion to do something even though you knew continuing through could lead to total disaster---but somehow the consequences didn’t matter, if you could just make it payoff?  That’s how it was with this woman; I really wanted her for the weekend.

I waited a couple of more minutes.  After no one else came by, I pulled out and took a shortcut that put me ahead of her again.  I was waiting as she drove by still following the route that I had laid out for her.  Things looked good.  I took another shortcut and waited where I could see her park by the strip mall.  Rebecca got out, opened the trunk of her car and took out a medium-sized suitcase on wheels.  She locked her car, looked around once and walked briskly to the corner and disappeared around it. 

Where she had parked forced me to look directly into the setting sun and I knew that this was one part of the plan that I had screwed up.  I watched as best I could for another couple of minutes, but no one moved or looked suspicious, so I pulled out and within two minutes Rebecca was throwing her suitcase into my back seat. 

As usual, the weather forecaster had gotten it wrong; the weather was warmer than predicted, overcast and a little muggy; she’d left her coat behind, or perhaps it was in her bag. 

As I had requested, she was wearing a dress today.  Rebecca now wore a black knit dress that buttoned up the front, but which she had opened (for me?) to display an eye-catching plunge at the neckline.  She showed what might be considered an indiscrete amount of cleavage for a teacher---apparently she wasn’t concerned about playing nice for the school right now. 

Tight on top, it flared out at the waist and accentuated an already slender torso and shapely hips before it dropped to about two inches above her knees.  Her legs were bare again and she had obviously changed shoes from work, because Rebecca now wore a pair of black pumps with what looked like three and a half inch stiletto heels.  They were sexy and she looked good, but it still was not what I wanted to see. 

She looked over at me as I pulled away from the curb and I could see the same superior look on her face that I had seen two days ago---God, how I wanted to rip that look away from her.  I drove around aimlessly for fifteen minutes looking into the rear-view mirror before I headed over to a new outside mall that had just opened.  I parked in the lot away from any buildings and turned to Rebecca.  I held out my hand and said, “Give me the money.”

She slowly opened her purse and pulled out a thin envelope.  She looked at me for a second, and then grudgingly handed it to me.  I got out without counting the money and motioned for her to follow me---this wasn’t a date and I sure wasn’t opening the car door for her.  She exited her seat like poured syrup and followed me.  We walked along the front of the stores; I was about two or three feet in front of her and it didn’t look like we were together.  I stopped at a shoe store and pointed out in the window a pair of sexy black strappy sandals with five inch heels and a pair of black sling-back sandals with four inch heels, then walked on. 

Around the corner, I told her to go back in and buy herself several pairs.  I pulled from my pocket the envelope that she had given me and handed her enough money to buy the shoes that I’d liked, and then I told her to be sure to leave a good tip for the salesman.  Her lips were as thin as nails as she jerked the money from my hand and flounced around the corner and into the store.  Even though she knew exactly what she was going to buy, it still took her over twenty minutes to make the purchase.  Sometimes I think that women are constitutionally incapable of buying anything quickly---either that or she was trying to punish me in a passive/aggressive sort of way. 

***

I didn’t like the fact that he made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse---or that I appeared so weak that I leaped at the chance to prostitute myself to him if it would give me even part of my life back.  The smug look on his face told me that he felt that he’d thought of everything.  And I was angry that this man took the last money that my husband and I had and made me use it to buy something that only eighteen year old sluts and whores would wear.  I hated everything about this whole affair and wondered if I would ever learn to protect myself from predators like him.  How ironic was that---me calling him a predator?  The worst part was that no matter what I said to him, there were certain parents that could always make these same charges against me.  I….I just wanted it over so that I could go someplace new and begin my life over.

It was a high-end shoe store that he chose for me.  I walked in and saw with a sinking feeling that there were only two male clerks working there.  One of them immediately came over and offered to help; when I pointed out the shoes that I wanted and gave him my size, he couldn’t move fast enough.  He brought the shoes back along with others of the same style in two other colors.  The clerk, who couldn’t have been two or three years older than the boys I taught in school, insisted on taking off my pumps and fitting the new shoes on my feet.  He went way too far, not missing a chance to stroke my ankles, check out my thighs or try to look up my dress, but I felt like I was at least a century older than him and just wasn’t in the mood to play games with children anymore.  What is it about me that attracts children?

I gritted my teeth as I paid for the new heels with MY money that he’d given back to me and then wore the strappy sandals for him when we met outside.  I had not walked with the sling backs yet, but the expensive strappy sandals he chose for me were meant much more for display than walking.  They were difficult to get used to and it took me a few seconds to regain my balance as I started to walk.  And within only a few minutes of putting them on, my feet and the backs of my legs had already begun to ache.  I hated these things.

Chapter 9: Women have a hard time of it in this world. They are oppressed by man-made laws, man-made social customs, masculine egoism, the delusion of masculine superiority.  Their one comfort is the assurance that, even though it may be impossible to prevail against man, it is always possible to enslave and torture a man; H. L. Mencken.

Now I was ready, even if she wasn’t.  I had to admit, she looked great.  This wasn’t the kind of woman that you wanted to spend the night with, this was the kind with which you wanted to spend a leisurely week or a month.  We went back to my car separately; I walked behind and enjoyed the view.  The new heels forced her to throw her pelvis a little more forward than was normal for her and it looked erotic as hell.  The always provocative hip movement inside the tight knit dress and the sexy high heels all contributed to my feeling of impending well being.  She was a beautiful woman that knew exactly what I was doing and seemed to throw an extra amount of hip action into her walk at the end. 

The windows in my car are heavily tinted and no one can see the occupants inside.  I opened the door for her and after she got in, I handed Rebecca a large, finely-made black cotton sleeping mask and told her to put it on.  She glared at me like I was an idiot and flatly refused to comply with my request.  I looked at her for a second and then told her to get out.  I was immediately pissed at this point and wasn’t very gentlemanly as I grabbed her bicep and began to drag her out of her seat.  She quickly struggled with me for a second before she apparently changed her mind.  After saying, “Fine.  Okay, OKAY!” she carefully slid the mask over her eyes and then sat stiffly upright in her seat. 

I closed her door and then walked back around and got in on my side.  “The mask,” I said, “stays on until we get to where we’re going.  You have no need to know where we’re going and if you try to figure it out by peeking, the deal is off and you can defend yourself in court.  Clear?”

“Whatever,” she said in a soft, silky tone.  It was clear that she was really saying, fuck you.

Have you ever noticed how once you commit to something that’s important to you, you tend to stick with your decision even past that point where things aren’t going like you had planned; how you’ll unthinkingly stay the course as if you had a kind of tunnel vision, even if you know that it more than likely will end in disaster?  I think that it was like this for her.  I mean, I wasn’t taking her to a hotel and she had to know this by now; worse, she truly didn’t like the mask I made her wear.  I think that she realized somewhere in her subconscious that this probably was not appropriate behavior for a man with whom she was going to spend a weekend, and for a moment she may have even toyed with the idea of calling the whole thing off.  Perhaps if she’d had time to think it through, she might even have bailed on me right there.  But finally, I could see Rebecca nod her head and lean back in the seat in an attempt to relax.  This was all part of the first time that I actively challenged her Alpha status and she didn’t like it at all.

I drove around for almost an hour before I entered into my driveway and parked in my garage.  She hadn’t said a word the whole time.  After I closed the garage door with the remote, I got out, walked around and opened her door.  I carefully removed the mask without mussing Rebecca’s hair and offered my arm as support for her to get out.  She ignored me and got out on her own, showing me a sexy expanse of thigh in the process. 

When she finally stood next to me, I leaned down to kiss her and she turned her face away sharply as she angrily asked, “What do you think you’re doing?”

I was totally surprised by her reaction.  “I was going to kiss you.”

“I don’t kiss like that with men like you,” she said.  “That’s far too intimate for me.” 

***

I was so angry.  He’d made me wear a mask for over an hour.  I had no idea what was going on, but it certainly didn’t seem like something a lawyer would do. Even though I was desperate for his help, I swore to myself that I would make him pay for this.  When we finally got to our destination, he parked inside a garage and when he got out, he tried to kiss me.  I had no idea what he thought might be going on, but this was purely a business arrangement with me.  I’d do what I had to do with him, but there was no way that he could make me enjoy it.  There was no way that he could force me into that place in my mind and I think that he knew it because suddenly, he became much more of a gentleman.

***

I couldn’t help myself; I looked at her like she was crazy.  I was going to be fucking her in a little while, but kissing was ‘too intimate?’  Okay, we’ll see about that, I thought to myself.

After I retrieved her suitcase from the backseat, I escorted Rebecca from the garage through the kitchen and into the living room, where I offered her a drink.  She looked bored as she agreed to a scotch and water.  A woman that drinks scotch can’t be all bad, and I made both a little heavy.  From the living room we walked out and sat down on the balcony-type patio that ran most of the length of the back of my place.  The nearby door to our left led into my bedroom and the one next to that to my playroom.

It had finally cooled off again, the weather was nice and it was pleasant out back.  The sun was setting by now; her hair was down and it looked like a soft feather boa.  Her face looked unmarked by any signs of age in the dwindling light and she looked younger than her twenty-seven years.  It was at this point that I think she felt the need to assert boundaries or some kind of control over our ‘relationship’.

“Since you’ve taken my case, there are things you should know.”  She was a smart woman, but obtuse in surprising ways.  I am sure that there was much which would have given my plan away, but these subtle clues passed her by and she actually still thought that she could pay for a lawyer’s time with her body.  As I looked at her, it was obvious that she enjoyed having my undivided attention.  It was like she was onstage and I was her audience.  But this persona was different from that of the troubled teacher.  Now she acted like she was addressing a young man she had seduced and over whom she felt some amount of control.

She continued, “There are things that I have not told anyone, not even my husband.  ESPECIALLY my husband!”  I thought to myself, keep talking my dear while I get it all on tape.  She turned in her chair and I noticed that at this angle, even with a bra I could see much more cleavage.  It was interesting, I thought to myself.  The dress she was wearing really did seem to be an anomaly.  From everything that I had been able to discover about her, Rebecca was actually a woman that dressed rather conservatively by nature.  Whether because this was truly what she liked or it was some kind of camouflage to hide her true nature, I had yet to determine. 

She sipped her scotch and looked at me over the rim of the glass.  I thought that I detected a combination of both anticipation and confusion, only the last of which made sense in this situation.  Did I see a flicker of interest?  Her pupils were dilated; could she be looking forward to this?  I wondered how much time I’d have with her before she realized that she’d been had?

***

I wanted him to know exactly what I expected out of this.  I kept getting the feeling that he had contests planned within games and it bothered me.  Finally, I couldn’t help myself.  I wanted to know what he expected out of this weekend and I began to ask him simple questions.  He was a man and I wasn’t surprised at his answers; not surprised at all.  A little verbal foreplay, a little truth and a little flattery and he was like any other man that I’d ever known.

***

“Do you like lingerie?” she asked.  “I mean as opposed to just nudity.  Most men, of course, take pleasure in a nude woman.” 

I think that this might have just answered my last question.  “Sure I like lingerie; I’m like most men I guess.  But you’re toying with me right now,” I replied.

“Of course I am.  That’s why you brought me here, isn’t it?  Some men think I am very good at it.  Would you like to choose some lingerie for me, for tonight?  Perhaps a long black silken robe or even a teddy?”

“Yes, I think so.  I think I would like that---a lot.”  Even when I felt that I should be in control of the situation, she had somehow surprised me and put me on the defensive again.  The inexperienced school boys she seduced stood no chance against her.

“I’d like that too,” she continued.  “I like dressing up and being appreciated by a man.”  Then she changed the subject on me. “You are surprising.  You seem a smart man and I’ll bet you are good with money.”

Her flattery might have worked with another man not attuned to her nature, but I was already on guard.  There was no doubt in my mind---this woman could bewitch a man if he wasn’t careful.  “Is this just your opinion or have you talked to someone that knows me?” I asked.

“This is my own observation.”

I looked at her for a moment, “You truly are a fascinating woman.”  This was an understatement by at least half.

“Men find that I am intriguing.  Many women find me….unacceptable.  Those are usually the women whose husbands want to sleep with me.”

“And what do the husbands think?”

“I think that they are attracted to any beautiful stranger.  The more mysterious, the better.  They can’t help it.  I guess it’s like a disease in a way.”

“You are definitely more attractive than you seem to think you are.”  I didn’t know if she was looking for a compliment or just…deeper than I had expected.

“For a man,” she replied, “you have good judgment.  But there are things about me that you don’t know.”  Now she laughed.  “Intelligence doesn’t take the edge off of what you crave right now……does it?”

“No.  Actually, it sort of gets in the way; it’s more like an annoyance where sex is concerned.”

“You put it well.  You can see it happening to you, even watch it unfold, but still you feel the desire.  We both get something that we want.  You, sex, me…..help.  That’s why I agreed to come with you.  And I think it is not at all bad.  It’s just the way you feel, and sometimes a person should live in the moment.”

“My grandmother would have said that this was Satan’s lie,” I allowed myself a smile.

She was silent for a moment as she tried to figure out what I meant.  She switched subjects, “My feet are cold, and they ache from the heels you seem to like me to wear.  Would you  rub them for me?”

“Of course.”  I stood up and offered her my arm.  She took it and I led her from the patio directly into my bedroom.  We went inside and she took a quick look around and then turned to me with a smile.

“Let me get ready.”  She quickly sat on the edge of the bed and removed the new heels I’d made her purchase.  She stood up as she pulled her dress up to take them off.  She had on the slimmest of underwear, a small thong, and her butt was muscular and beautiful---even with just a quick glimpse.  The thong was tiny in front; she obviously trimmed her pubic hair.  When she sat down again, she let her dress ride high, but I could no longer see her upper thighs and it frustrated me.  Then I felt a sense of panic; I was losing control.  Even as it happened, I knew that it was happening to me, but the reality of it was like a drug rushing through my body.  This woman was dangerous, she was a criminal and she manipulated men like toys. 

***

I was of two minds.  I was disgusted that I had to play this kind of game.  I had been forced into a similar situation once before when I had tried to retrieve some photo negatives and didn’t ever want that again.  At the same time, I admit to feeling some satisfaction in being able to get him to do what I wanted; he was single minded in his pursuit and as long as he got what he thought he wanted, he didn’t seem to care if anything was real here---but I knew that everything I ‘gave’ him was false. 

I admit that I played it up and by the time I finished, he was wriggling like a puppy.  He wasn’t bad looking and after so long without a man, I have to admit that his attentiveness was flattering to my ego.  He also seemed like he was a man that might not have been with a woman in a long time----he couldn’t take his eyes off of me---it almost felt like he was a voyeur or something.  It had been so long for me too.  I wasn’t sure what to think---if I had to have sex with a man, I guess that it could have been a lot worse than with him.  I think that if I could just close my mind to it all, perhaps this wouldn’t be quite as bad as I had feared, and besides, it did feel good to have someone rub my feet again.

***

She looked at me as she said, “It is most unattractive to stare at a woman like that.  I feel like you’re drooling over me.”

I laughed as I replied, “If you didn’t want me to watch, you’d have gone into the bathroom.”

“Who said I didn’t want you to watch?”

When she had herself situated on the bed, I knelt and began to give her a foot rub.  The irony of being on one knee in front of this woman did not escape me nor did the physical discomfort.  Her knees were spread a little as I rubbed her foot and the view of the insides of her thighs was slightly better.

“Have you told anyone else about what happened?  What you’ve done?”

“No.  No one,” she replied.

“Why not,” I asked, “at least tell your husband?”

Her voice took on the husky taint of contempt that I had heard before.  “We don’t get along now.  Besides, he doesn’t have the imagination to put himself in my position in an attempt to understand me.”

“As your lawyer,” I began officiously, “I have to know all of the facts.  Is this boy the only one, or were there others?  And did he really give you drugs?”  I knew that there was more than one boy and pretty sure that no drugs had been involved.  But I wanted to see what she had to say.

She moved uncomfortably on the bed for a second and then looked at me.  “Do we have to talk about this right now?” she asked in a little girl voice.

I hate it when grown women do that!  Why do they think that it is cute?  “I’m not trying to change the mood, but I need to know how difficult this case will be.”

“You know everything you need to know.  Why are you waiting?”

Indeed, why was I waiting?  “You,” I replied truthfully, “are very beautiful.”

She looked at me as she said, “Do you want the dress off or not?  You are shy.  I don’t know how you ever get what you want.”  This was the first time in about twenty-five years that I could remember being called shy.  She stood and unbuttoned her dress all the way down the front.  With a shrug of her shoulders, she let it drop to the floor, then sat on the edge of the bed again. 

Rebecca wore a shear bra that showed off a firm, high set of breasts with small light brown aureoles and light rose nipples.  But she still had her half-slip on and I knew without a doubt that it was going to be very nice when she took that off---and her panties.

She now changed her thoughts again and her voice was strong. “I want you to beat these charges against me, to get me off completely.  Don’t underestimate me on this.  I want this badly.  Do you understand?”

I looked up at her and lied smoothly, “Don’t worry.  We have time now to prepare your defense.”  God, she was so needy that I could have told her anything and she would have believed it.  I continued rubbing her feet and saw her face finally begin to relax.

She sighed, “That will be good.  It wasn’t entirely my fault, but what I did was stupid; I would like this situation behind me.”

It seemed that I had earned my reward.  Rebecca now shifted on the bed, revealing a firm thigh.  “Would you like me to take off my slip now?”

“Yes, I would.”  My heart was beating hard as she teased off the top of her slip and slowly slid it down her legs.  I felt my throat constrict and I became fully erect.  She leaned forward and pulled me towards her even as I was running my hand across her upper leg. 

Even as I spoke, I felt like I was in a fog.  All of my predatory instincts warned me to take care with this woman.  I felt I knew her so much better than any of the others that I had brought here before because I had spent so much more time investigating this woman.  I knew her likes and dislikes, her strengths and weaknesses, her history with her husband and before that in college and high school.  I knew enough about her to respect her for both her beauty and the intelligence to use it to her best advantage.  And yet, when she arose and slipped off her bra and laid it on the bed, I felt it draw me like a mouse to cheese.  Rebecca’s bare chest rose and fell in front of me.  I found the movement hypnotic.  Playing with her thong, she teased me as I undressed for her.  When I was nude, she pulled me onto the bed beside her.  She removed her thong and I could see that she was absolutely hairless there; from the way she normally dressed, I would not have predicted this in a million years.  It was obvious that she was aroused, her vagina was moist and her labia already somewhat engorged. 

I had never seen this before in a woman and could not believe how sexy it was to see her vaginal lips exposed to my view like that.  Rebecca had terrific lips, and this pair was the best.  If the genetic cards had been cut the other way and she’d been born male, she would have been hung like a horse.

Now she began to use her hands on me, giving me tremendous pleasure as she pulled a condom out of her purse and put it on my raging erection.  Somewhere deep in my mind, a thought flashed; why am I allowing this?  It should have been different---all the others were. 

The she sat down astride me and the sight of her made my throat dry.  She grasped me and played with me, using her body and her hands until I felt like I had reached the outer limits of desire.  I wasn’t inside her yet, but I ached to achieve that release.  Instead, I reached around and grabbed two full handfuls of her ass.  After I had held them for a moment, I reached around with my left hand and began to draw a tight circle around her anus.  Soon, I had begun to insert my finger inside her rear. 

***

Men are all alike.  I hate it when they played with me like that---I wasn’t their personal toy.  I was pretty sure that I could get him to do what I wanted, but I think that was because he really wanted this weekend.  In any case, like him I had enjoyed the preliminary rounds, but I also made it very clear that I wouldn’t go any further unless he was wearing protection.  I don’t think he liked that, but since he could tell that I was serious, it didn’t seem to be too much of a problem to him.

***

Rebecca stopped all motion and looked at me with a completely flat look on her face.  “Stop that,” she said.  “I don’t like men doing that, playing with me like I’m a Barbie doll or something.” 

This woman was a total mystery to me.  Professionally asexual at work, but sexy as hell now; yet at the same time there were oddly definite lines over which she would not venture.  It was all very strange, but I was patient because I somehow knew that we were embarking on a journey that would end with her investigating those lines---and many more forbidden limits after that. 

This was without a doubt the most beautiful woman I had ever been with.  She was here willingly, even if under false circumstances.  If this were fiction---the kind the author wants you to believe---I would tell you that everything was drowned out by the completely overwhelming physical sensations of what we were doing together.  That this gorgeous female had perfected unnameable skills and delights, and was an Olympic champion of sex.

I realized afterwards, she was okay.

For the first time on a purely physical level, a little better than okay.  Little of the initial awkwardness.  She knew all the things an experienced woman should know, and did them well.  Nothing she did startled me and she was quite direct about asking what I wanted.  She neither hid nor seemed to inflate her enjoyment, and was perhaps a little less vocal than most of the women that I had collected over the last year.  She came fairly quickly, but did not make a big squealing deal of her orgasm.  And yet, while she was not self-conscious, she was to some extent self-involved, removed.  I understood this but felt a tang of resentment nonetheless, for even if she was not here willingly, she still needed what she thought I could give her.

Suddenly she moved to the side and began to use her tongue on my scrotum and lower stomach, while at the same time she stroked my erection with her hand.  She made me feel young, and yes, powerful because even while she was in trouble, she had still chosen to accept me as her protector.  I realized that THAT was the power that she held over men.  And even as I felt myself falling into Rebecca, I knew that if I wasn’t careful she would try to make a chump out of me too.  Wanting to totally possess a woman like her was a classic personality flaw; but at the same time, I knew that it would be wonderful too.

And then with one move of her hips, she sank on me---I was in her and she was moving on me, moist and hot and tight.  The sensations of her moving against me, her ass on my thighs, her flesh engulfing mine, her muscles grasping me and then letting go, it all sent me into a daze. 

But as intimately as we were joined, parts of us were still separate.  She missed subtle clues.  Some of the clues that she gave must have been too subtle for me to follow.  Twice my cock slipped out of her vagina because she zigged when I zagged.  I could not totally leave my skull, my body, my identity---partly because I could tell that she was still in hers.  I could feel it in a barely perceptible tension of the skin, and see it in her eyes.  I could almost see her straining against the insides of those remarkable eyes, trying to break out.  The eyes of a wolf.

I felt her touch my shoulder and I understood that she wanted me to roll.  In a flash, I was on top and she pulled her legs up and ran them along my flanks.  I pounded into her as hard as I could and she either grunted or gave out a deep groan with every move of my hips. 

My hands found their way to her throat and I applied a light pressure, choking her at the same time as I fucked her.  Her nails remained digging into my shoulders, never fighting me as her face began to get more and more flushed.  I wouldn’t let her breathe and soon her head was moving back and forth on the pillow; suddenly she surprised me when she reached around and clenched my balls in her hand as I was thrusting into her.  I looked down into her arctic blue eyes---they were slitted and gleaming, and I felt like I had conquered all.  I let go of her neck and raised myself up on my elbows to look down on her as she continued to stroke and fondle my scrotum.  I was huge and as hard as a bar of iron…..I pounded into her like a stallion, never stopping, never slowing.  I think that I pounded her for hours and days, and the fury in my loins continued to build and build until I thought the top of my head would explode.  Suddenly I couldn’t keep it inside me anymore and I poured into the condom.  I could feel her abdominal muscles convulse under my belly again and again as she appeared to cum at the same time too.  And at the end, she milked me with her vaginal muscles, draining every drop of seed that I had in me.

I learned a great many things about Rebecca in a short period.  Some were of small consequence, like the highest note that her alto voice could reach.  It seemed to go on for countless hours this time, and be over before it had begun.  Compared to hers, my completion was thunderous and abrupt.  The ‘afterglow’ period of delicious brainlessness could be measured in microseconds, and then wham, I was back in my own skull, meditating on well, that wasn’t as good as I hoped nor as bad as I feared.  She’ll be doing better soon.

***

God, it felt good.  Our bodies fit together perfectly even though I was a little rusty.  But his love-making had been smooth, practiced and knowledgeable.  His erection was long and heavy, his flesh rigid and I had the perfect place to put it.  I didn’t know him, so I was determined that he would always wear protection.  There would to be no chance of a child and no chance of disease with this man.  I had smoothed the condom over him with no argument; it did little to take away the immediate pleasure of the sensations he gave me.  When I sat on him that first time, I instantly knew that this would be a good weekend.  I would begin to see the solutions to my problems and come away relaxed, perhaps even finding my first satisfaction in over nine months.  God, how I had missed that with my husband.

I moved my hips once just a little and he disappeared inside me.  There was some discomfort---it was a tight at first since he was rather large and I was a little out of practice.  A little out of practice?  I was a lot out of practice.  But I could feel myself stretching to accommodate him in the lubricated rubber and knew that everything would be fine.

I soon got tired of doing all of the work, so let him know that I wanted him driving.  When he drove into me for the first time from on top, I could feel his thick cock pushing against the inside of my vagina; the veins bulging from his penis as if they had been carved on the outside of a thick rod of marble.  He laid high on my belly and looked me in the eyes, and every time he slammed into my pussy, there was an amazing friction as he rubbed my clit.  It was wonderful. 

As his hands closed around my neck, I felt the sheer animal passion building inside me.  The need for air in my lungs continued to build more and more, but I didn’t care---the wave was coming and it was carrying me with it.  I knew that I should feel some guilt about this, but it felt too damn good to worry right now.  I hadn’t enjoyed a man in so long that I almost couldn’t remember the last time, and that definitely wasn’t like me.  Finally, to make sure that he gave me what I wanted, I grabbed his sack and massaged it while he hammered into me.  At the end, he was bent over sucking on my breasts and I was so close.  And yet….and yet…it was not to be. 

I had a small, rather long orgasm but pretended to something greater that first time.  At the end, I grabbed him with the muscles in my vagina.  This ability was a gift that I have had from the beginning, and when I finished extracting every drop of semen from him, he had a shell-shocked look on his face that I have come to know well.  Every man that I have ever fucked will take that memory with him to the grave.  The skin from his back was under my nails and I know that I hurt him, but he didn’t seem to mind too much.  God, I still hadn’t really cum myself like I knew I needed, but the weekend was not finished yet.  It was wonderful enough and enormously satisfying, but always it seemed I performed with the distance and loneliness of someone who could never quite give all of herself.  All I knew was that it felt good to get rid of the sexual tension that I had felt for so long. 

***

That evening, all we did was screw.  By midnight, we were both exhausted.  I fell asleep with this new woman in my arms.  Later, in an asymmetrical way, my body woke up before my mind.  Have you ever awakened to find that you are making love?  And that you have been for some indeterminate time, under the impression that you were dreaming?  An indescribable experience. 

My mind’s awakening was a slow, sequential process---a series of cumulative steps.  I am fucking.  I live.  I am a mammal.  I’m in my home.  This is nice.  This is good fucking I’m getting.  Things like that.  I became aware of Rebecca’s existence almost in the same instance that I became aware of my own.   My next thought was I’d like to keep her here doing this for another week. 

She was bent over my groin and although she never touched me there with her lips, she was taking deep strokes with her hand.  Again, she put another condom on me and we fucked like tomorrow would never come and then, totally fatigued, I fell into an exhausted sleep.  My last thought was that my penis ached from all of the sexual demands that this woman had made upon me over the last nine hours.

Chapter 10: Beauty makes us dream of both reverence and rape; Mason Cooley.

For some reason, I awakened the next morning as suddenly as a cork’s pop from a champagne bottle.  I jerked to a sitting position in bed, uncertain as to what had aroused me.  The bed next to me was empty.  Panicking, I looked around and finally noticed that she was in the shower.

In some odds ways, what we had done last night better defined the barriers between us and made us even further apart then when we had begun.  Under her professionally manufactured calm, she was terrified, scared right down to her bones.  It seemed as if she needed sex, to calm her nerves.  And it wasn’t helping as much as she had hoped.  But that didn’t matter to me now.

This morning was it; she had not resisted when I had choked her last night.  Now I planned on pushing this woman until I discovered her limits---or at least the ones that interested me.  The brain, which is the sole organ for each of us that truly experiences pleasure and pain, is deluged with sensory data.  To make order out of the incoming sensory chaos, we have what is called a 'pain gate'.  This doorway functions as a threshold, limiting incoming sensory data to what is necessary to process for perception.  At the same time, this gateway also organizes sensory components, ensuring that no sensations are left unrecognized.  All of this is automatic, thus leaving it to the more evolved cerebral centers to accept or reject, perceive or ignore what is let through.  In most, but not all people, pain and pleasure are finely balanced against each other, maintaining an almost reciprocal relationship to each other.

But just as excess pleasure can easily begin to be eventually experienced as pain; a surplus of pain can also begin to simulate increasing pleasure.  Over time, the pleasure/pain pathways can sometimes begin to merge perceptually/experientially without the individual realizing that this has even happened.  So, in a lucky few, when pleasure approaches a maximum potential on its own, painful stimuli may then be added to increase the sensation of pleasure far beyond what the gate can admit at one time.  In these cases, almost no matter what is done, you may know it as pain but everything is perceived as pleasurable. 

Soon Rebecca stepped out of the shower stall and onto the tiled floor.  As she dried her self off, she moved the towel over her body as if in a peep show.  I couldn’t help it; as soon as the now more familiar parts of her body were first uncovered, then covered by the towel once more, I was hard as a rock again.  Even as my erection stood straight up, my cock ached from all of the unaccustomed exercise.

When she glanced down and saw my erection, she hesitated for a second and then let out a big sigh.  She now reached for me and pushed me back a bit.  She settled down on me after she’d put a condom on me.  As with last night, she was very tight at first as she hunkered down, but after she’d grabbed me with her vaginal muscles, she began to move slowly.  Finally, I was completely buried inside her and within minutes, the tightness of her muscles and the softness and moist heat of her vagina had aroused me near to orgasm.  Her back became taut and I could feel the muscles like steel bands above her buttocks as she carefully orchestrated the level of friction between us with her pubic bone. 

My eyes traveled up her splendid nude body; she was wearing the smile of the canary that had swallowed the cat.  Spontaneously, we began rocking together even harder.  God, it was as if her body were a suction cup pulled tight to mine.  Her breathing became strong and I tasted the salty new sweat between her breasts.  When her nipples were hard and the size of thimbles, I took the right one into my mouth and used my tongue so that she shuddered and moved even harder down on me.  Then I took her breasts, one in each hand and made a continuous milking motion as I stroked their magical softness. 

Even as I became totally lost inside Rebecca, I began to work on her body.  Trying my best to lock out what I was feeling in my groin, I took both of her nipples between my thumbs and forefingers and slowly pressed them almost flat before I began to twist them.  At first I only turned them a little, but as she continued fucking me without response to what I was doing to her breasts, I became more and more aggressive.  Soon, I was squeezing and rotating her nipples almost 180 degrees.  I knew that this was quite painful to most women, for it was at this point that they would pull back and demand that I stop.  If I didn’t, I was often slapped in the face. 

But every now and then I found a woman that was wired a little differently, ‘gating’ the pain as pleasure rather than ache.  Even when manipulated into an unforgiving situation as I had just done with Rebecca, these few women were the ones that not only accepted pain, but used it to take them towards ever greater heights of pleasure and satisfaction.  The undefined boundaries that each of these particular women possessed and which we explored together led to continually higher plateaus of pure sexual gratification.  In the end, these women generally wound up having few limits or restrictions on what they would allow me to do to them; the lines over which I might erroneously cross were almost nonexistent.  It was a powerful and sweet and heady sexual experience.

Rebecca moaned once as I began to twist her nipples, then she closed her eyes, arched her back and let her head roll on a neck that was suddenly slack.  Her hands dug into my shoulders as she leaned into me and suddenly she began making a series of small, quick adjustments on me with her hips.  Even through the condom, I felt a tremendous moist heat enclose my cock as her vagina grasped me even tighter and her hips continued to grind into my belly with her jerky moves---even as I crushed her nipples, she was experiencing the small climaxes that led up to the big explosion.  Her luscious lips assumed a moue of total abandon as she closed her eyes to concentrate on what just she alone was experiencing.

Appearances, as they say, can be deceiving.  Sexually, Rebecca could only accept what she allowed; and by this act, she felt she was always in control.  Eternally cool and beautiful on the outside, when women like Rebecca were finally awakened, they were as hot as lava on the inside; wanton and lusty and abandoned when forced beyond their self-imposed boundaries.  Pain is like an aphrodisiac to some women and it made them go places that they didn’t want to go.  The woman on top of me was like that.

Now I pulled her down by her red and swollen nipples and put them in my mouth.  The slickness of her flesh made a giant quivering in my thighs and I could feel her perfect rhythm, now like a galloping horse hard on to the finish line; and then she moaned deep and long, and I let myself cum and I felt strong.  So strong.

***

I lay awake in bed beside him for an hour before I moved.  Smelling like a prostitute, I decided to take a quick shower.  Even though I didn’t really want to be here with him, I had made a deal to be his temporary whore so that he would help me; and I would keep the bargain I had made.  Thankfully, he was a fairly considerate lover and easy to satisfy.  Last night had been like almost every other night in my life few years when I was with a man----I hadn’t cum myself, but I faked it a lot and had been VERY good to him---he was exhausted.  I think that explains why he never once moved when I got up and took a shower.  But he was sitting up in bed with an odd expression on his face when I had finished.  Sooooo, I admit to taking a few liberties with the towel as I dried myself and when I was finished, I wasn’t particularly surprised to see the obvious tent pole that he couldn’t hide beneath the sheet.

I had just cleaned myself and wasn’t really in the mood to get dirty again, but it was clear that my host was.  And since I was his ‘guest’ and that had been part of the deal, it appeared that I didn’t have a lot of say in the matter.  I sighed to myself and it began again; after I had protected myself from him with the rubber, I mounted him just as I had last night.  I had no time to prepare myself and was painfully dry.  But the condom was lubricated and after I parted myself with my left hand, he was able to enter me without too much difficulty.  As before, he easily filled me and…..it felt good.  I settled on his hips and continually rocked as I rode him; he liked this and groaned in obvious pleasure.  We were doing the same old thing the same old way and if I wasn’t bored, I was, let us say ‘currently not interested’, but at least he’d get what he wanted.

I stayed on top and even as I maintained complete control of our lovemaking, he suddenly surprised me.  My nipples are super-sensitive.  Every man that I have ever been with has quickly figured this out and while most have tried to use this to give themselves (and sometimes me if they were thoughtful) pleasure; for me there have only been a few truly memorable rides---only a few times in my youth that I had felt safe enough, uninhibited enough to give myself to a lover that was also skilled enough to give me what I needed. 

But instead of rubbing my nipples between his finger tips or rolling them between his fingers or even sucking on them like most men would do, instead he was brutal.  This man mashed them together quite hard and then he rolled them between his fingers.  He did this to both of my nipples at the same time; it was sheer agony and it literally took my breath away.  This kind of existential pain was new to me and the feelings were so intense that it was quite shocking at first; I couldn’t believe that my first instinct was not to scream and slap his face.  Instead…….I can’t explain what I felt, except to say that suddenly I felt daring and alive again and every nerve in my body felt like it was firing overtime.  He was still hurting me and I definitely felt the pain, but my whole body seemed to shudder and then my consciousness became focused around what this strange man was doing to me. 

The pain in my breasts as he brutally crushed them, the way he attacked my nipples without mercy, the fullness I felt inside as I rode his rigid pole, it was all connected somehow and it felt totally overwhelming.  I still felt like I was perhaps in control, but at the same time I could feel a wave of pure abandon crashing throughout me.  I knew that I didn’t want that with him, not with this man, not in his bed and not on this morning.  But sometimes we have little choice in what happens to us---you can’t choose the ways in which you are tested.  I felt paralyzed as he impaled me, unable to move as he pulled and crushed and squeezed and fucked me.  And even as I recognized this last thought, the little control over my body that still remained to me fled. 

My body tingled and buzzed all over.  There was no up or down with what he did to me, no getting close to the edge and backing off.  He kept me on the verge, continually floating, hovering on the brink until I was the one that threw myself over the precipice with complete disregard for what it might mean.  And for the first time in as long as I could remember, I abandoned myself to my body’s delights.  Much, much later, as I was still drifting in a haze of post-orgasmic delight, I found that I was able to begin thinking again.  But still, half my thoughts kept wandering back to the warm liquid feeling in my stomach and the faint iron memory of him as he slowly pushed into me—it was wonderful.

***

Much of the pleasure I get out of sex is oral and Rebecca had beautiful breasts.  Each about the size of two fists, they were perfectly proportioned for her build; they were firm, identical in size and she was young enough that they still rode high on her chest.  Her aureoles were small and a light pinkish-brown in color, while her nipples were a lighter pink color and absolutely huge when erect.  I had never met a woman who was capable of becoming more quickly turned on by having her breasts manipulated and touched than she.  When I controlled her in a rough manner through her nipples, she fought me for only a short second and then with a look of total surprise, suddenly gave herself to me with wild abandon. 

Regardless of how a man may feel about himself, most assume their sexual prowess as a given.   And like most women, Rebecca was an excellent actress in bed.  I could never be sure how well I had satisfied her on our first night.  But now I knew for sure.  She couldn’t be that good of an actress.  And for the first time since we were together, I knew that Rebecca was not faking an orgasm.  Once I had started her on the long journey down this path, she couldn’t stop on her own….and I wouldn’t let her.  I could literally get her off multiple times by just taking slow, easy advantage of her sensitive buds.  She would shudder and scream and then cum.  And then I would start over and make her scream and cum again and again.  Her chest and face took on the tinge of the softest rose as blood permeated next to the surface of her skin.  Soon, if I allowed it, she would then become more pale again as it was later flushed away.

After I had made her cum numerous times, she sat upon me exhausted.  I began to roll up on one elbow, with a view towards walking my fingers down her belly and diddling her.  She pushed me back flat on the bed and continued to sit astride me.  I had both palms full of her buttocks and coaxed her a little more forward.  “Magnificent,” I said with great sincerity as the sweet knurled pinkness was brought more into my view.  I reached around her thighs and took each of her lips between forefinger and thumb and tugged them gently up and out, opening the orchid---and for the first time I truly understood what that symbol is that we call a heart, even though a heart looks nothing like that; it was like understanding what we admire in the butterfly.  Like gossamer butterfly wings, I tugged them down towards me, pursed my lips and blew a stream of cool air up and down the channel they formed.  Rebecca hissed with pleasure.  I heard her murmur something too soft to hear.  The bouquet was rare, the sauce piquant, the meaty petals delicious---both separately and together.  I feasted.  Rebecca’s fingers explored my hair and guided me….  Her clitoris, proportioned to match those labia, was like a miniature penis under my tongue.  I experimented; she gulped air.  It was a working miniature.  Her thighs clamped my ears, I tasted a trace of…….

Her cues were unmistakable.  For the first time this morning, she wanted to be on the bottom and have me plowing into her.  She spread her knees continually wider and always begged for more at the end.  All control was gone.  And when I sucked on her nipples after she’d cum multiple times, they had a taste that was quite different than before; a unique, erotic musky flavor that I tasted only on the back of my tongue and which originated only from women that were truly orgasmic.  It was a flavor that drove me wild.

Rebecca seemed to somehow sublimate for a time her need to control her partner; we clicked into a world of our own, never getting out of bed that Saturday except to eat.  My cock ached from the unending physical need.  But at the end, she too had had enough, begging me to stop---she was so sensitive all over her body now that my attentions had finally gotten too intense for even her.  The early evening had turned warm enough that we now sat naked making small talk on the balcony in back, drinking wine and eating cheese.  We were exhausted and at the end I served her multiple strong coffees.  This made her visibly less pale, but something about it struck me false, like the temporarily alert feeling you might get from amphetamines. 

The last rays of the setting sun covered everything in a cast of blood.  God, she was beautiful.  Blonde-white hair ensnaring the heavens in a warm blanket, her face the hardness of the mountains and the softness of the fields---she was beautiful and terrifying and comforting all at the same time.  Her expression was one of sleepy-lidded contentment----Buddha after a heavy meal.  We talked a little, but not too much.  Rebecca didn’t seem to fit the usual mold as regards small talk---I don’t know, perhaps it was the situation.  And finally, when it got too cold, we went back in my bedroom and screwed some more. 

***

Saturday still remains much of a mystery to me, but I do know that I have never cum like that before.  All I remember is him being on top of me and then I was on top of him.  I remember the pleasure and the ache as he did things to me, and how I tingled all over my body time after time.  I felt almost a sense of euphoria when we were done.  We ate in the afternoon and then we fucked some more.  And then we fell asleep, our arms and legs intertwined.

***

I didn’t open my eyes, but I smiled and stretched on the expensive sheets, making a happy kitten noise.  I had slept well in his bed and I was so perfectly comfortable that I just didn’t want to get up.  I could smell a soft hint of his cologne.  He waited patiently for me to rouse myself---I had needed to be spoiled and he was so good for this.  He lifted my arm and kissed the back of my hand.  I finally opened my eyes to see him sitting on the edge of the bed looking down at me.  I had felt him get up some time earlier, but he was still wearing nothing.

***

Sunday morning, I decided to have her dress up and we would go out to eat as if returning from church.  Rebecca acted differently towards me now.  Most of the reserve seemed gone and she laughed more; it seemed she might even be honestly enjoying herself.  As for me, I think that in a way she had bewitched me, for at this point, I honestly didn’t care if she knew where I lived or not.  I asked her to model the clothes that she had brought with her.  As she laid out her things, it quickly became clear that the only choices suitable for our excursion were the black dress that she had worn on Friday and a sexy, short black cocktail dress.  Knowing that no one would believe that she had worn the second dress to church yet not caring, I told Rebecca that I wanted her to wear the short black dress.

I went into the guest bathroom and showered.  She was just getting out of the shower in my bathroom when I returned.  After she had dried herself off, she rubbed baby oil into her skin all over her body, but especially concentrating on her legs and feet.  She positively glowed at the end.  For the first time, I noticed that her toenails were painted a light pink color.  I have to admit that I enjoyed just sitting and watching her do this.  It was maybe a little too domestic, but at the same time it somehow also felt satisfying and relaxing. 

She sat on a stool, her feet planted slightly apart and dropped her head between her knees, spraying her hair so that when she sat up, it was heavy and glossy against her white skin.  Then she began applying her makeup; with her coloring, she generally didn’t use bright shocking colors, but after she put on a light base, this time she chose a deep red lipstick and put on heavier than normal eye makeup.  Whatever she’d done to her eyes, she was bewitchingly beautiful. 

Except for a few quick glances, she had ignored me the whole time she was getting ready, but that was okay because I was busy setting out clothing for her to wear.  When she finished her makeup, she let the towel drop and automatically began to put on a pair of thongs.  I looked at her and said, “I want you to wear these with your dress.”  ‘These’ were a black lace garter belt and sheer black hose. 

She looked at me and laughed softly, “You naughty boy.” 

As a man, I guess that I don’t appreciate the efficiency of pantyhose.  I know that they are more comfortable to women than stockings, but pantyhose have also deprived we males of some truly beautiful sights.  At the same time, I also don’t appreciate thigh-highs either.  They seem too….self-contained for me.  I like the openness, the vulnerability that is implied by a piece of lace snugly fitted around a woman’s waist, the thin elastic straps hanging down and supporting sheer perfection as it caresses a woman’s ankles, calves and thighs.  And every one of these things leads up to and only emphasizes the beauty that a female holds between her legs.

I admit to having been a leg man for as long as I can remember; my life has been a nylon delight of voyeurism.  I have numerous stocking vignettes, but catching a glimpse of the stocking welt under a woman’s dress is at the top of my list of totally erotic sights; and watching a woman put on stockings is one of the most visually erotic encounters that I could ever experience.  Rebecca proved this to me as she stood up and removed her thong without a trace of embarrassment, and then picked up the garter belt.  It was black and had lace designs on the inch-wide belt, while the garters themselves were fairly plain and unadorned with any detail.  She stepped into the garter belt, and pulled it up around her waist and then tightened it a little.  Next she shortened each garter to make sure that there would be good tension on the top of her hose.  I had not yet seen her wear stockings of any type, but it was obvious that she had worn hose like these before.

I had a selection of new satiny evening weight sheer stockings in a box.  She chose sheer toe and heel hose that were a light nude color because of her fair skin.  The nylons had a slightly darker lacy welt that was about three inches wide.  Fine designs of a darker color were worked into this.  I love seeing ultra sheer stockings on a woman because they ‘glimmer’ so much more when the light reflects off them, and they feel so very smooth to the touch when I run my hands up and down their legs.  Also, the sheer stockings give a quiet "swishing" sound that drives me nuts whenever she walked or rubbed her thighs together.

Rebecca sat down on the edge of the bed and after she had rolled one of the stockings into a bunch in both her hands, she pointed her right foot and reached down to insert her arched toes into the hose.  Working slowly to avoid snags, she pulled the stocking up her leg, first around her ankle and then up her calf.  Rocking her hands a little, she coaxed and dragged the stocking to the top of her thigh.  Still seated, she stretched her leg out straight and pointed her toes, then tugged on the top of the nylon again to make sure that she had it up as high on her thigh as it would go.  Finally, she fastened the two garters on her right side to the heavier lace top of her stocking, one garter at a time. 

Finished with her right leg, she began the same procedure with her left.  When both her legs were finally encased in nylons, she reached over and picked up the heels that I had provided.  They were the strappy black sandals with five inch stiletto heels that I had made her purchase on Friday.  Two thin straps criss-crossed over her toes and another strap rose from around both side of the heel of her foot.  The straps that rose from her heels were met in back by four thin ankle straps which wrapped around her ankle and then buckled around the front to keep the sandals on her feet.  I could see her painted toenails through her stockings.  The sheer hose combined with the high-heeled sandals gave Rebecca’s legs a sleek and elegant look and made a great pair of legs look fabulous.

***

He urged me to put them on, but it had been long enough now that I had almost forgotten the feeling of stockings like these.  I had begun to avoid pantyhose and stockings because they made my legs feel so hot.  I hated the sweaty confined feeling they gave me.  But if this made him happy…….

On the floor was a small box containing ‘my’ stockings, all packages still unopened.  I knelt on the floor and tipped the box open with one finger.  I took one to the bed and tore the cellophane.  For a long time I sat with the sheer stockings unrolled across my lap, my hands resting lightly on the translucent fabric.  They were as fine and light as a spider’s web, and without thinking what it would mean, I finally pulled them on, allowing myself to remember the luxury of their soft, gloved protection.

***

The heels on her shoes were so high that it took her a moment to be able to balance on them before she could move.  Rebecca now did one of the sexiest things I have ever seen a woman do.  She was aware of my presence, but studiously ignored me.  I watched in rapt fascination as she put her right foot up on the bed, slowly bent over from the waist and then wrapped both of her hands around her ankle.  Keeping her left leg straight, she slowly began to slide her hands up her right leg, pushing any excess nylon ahead of her hands.

When her hands had finally slid to the top of her thigh, she put her foot on the floor, unsnapped each garter one at a time and then re-hooked it again after tugging on her stocking and pulling up any excess material from around her leg.  She then repeated this with her left leg.  My control was almost gone; the look of her bare ass pointed into the air while she took care of the stockings on her legs had been almost too much for me to resist.

As Rebecca leaned over to re-attach her garters to her stockings, her hair hung down and covered her face.  Her breasts bobbed as she moved, pushed together by her arms as she concentrated on her legs, creating deep shadows in her now exaggerated cleavage.  It was another amazingly erotic sight, one that I would never forget.  What a beautiful woman!

We’d been fucking so much that I really hadn’t had a chance to fully appreciate Rebecca.  She had incredibly long legs.  Her toes were straight and well formed, her feet small and her ankles were shapely; her legs were slim yet well muscled, her calves seductively emphasized by the heels she wore.  I watched the smooth interplay of muscles on her legs, especially the small, fine ones around her ankles and behind the knees.  In my mind, I sampled the small shadows that played on her legs when the silky fabric of her hose caught the late morning light.  I love the shine and luster, the luminosity continually reflected by a woman’s nylons; shades of darkness and pale pastels, elegant reflections of flowing light which incessantly change as compact muscles play under soft, yet firm skin.

When she turned her back, it seemed that it was only to flaunt her beautiful, muscular ass to me.  An athlete’s ass, round and firm and high, nothing detracted from its compact and solid beauty.  Now Rebecca had turned to face me again as she looked at herself in the mirror and my eyes traveled up from the brooding lips of her naked vagina to her narrow waist and flat belly.  I realized suddenly that I was staring; if one thought of her stocking tops as horizontal lines, the garter straps as vertical lines and then the garter belt as a top horizontal line…..well, in the middle they perfectly framed heaven. 

At other times and on other women, I have perceived these identical things not as lines, but rather curves---the fit of the garter belt around the waist and the curve of the stocking tops as they are clasped.  And if they have the proper tension, these curves represent to me the ultimate in femininity.  At the same time, the tension of the suspenders also sometimes suggests a feminine tumescence...

The sheer variety of textures and colors that can co-exist under a woman’s skirt (stretchy garters and the buttons on the clasps, the differing length of the welt hinted at as the top of the stocking presses tightly into firm thighs, the two-toned nylon color and the exposed skin above), they all bewitch men and combine to create a sense of the stage.  They make you feel a hushed expectancy as you wait for the curtain to rise on the most unpredictable of sets; and yet, and yet……. 

I was always somehow disappointed in the soft pornography that pushed these things into my face---this was far too obvious and never for me.  I was always more interested in an authentic or unrehearsed human experience, which I think is much harder to find---unless you had the luxury of planning the encounter, as I did.

I shook these thoughts out of my head and sighed.  From the ecstasy that could be framed by either lines or curves, my eyes quickly moved to her breasts, and I knew that they were perfect.  Damn, I thought to myself; what a waste on a young boy that could never truly appreciate the perfection of a woman like this.

I have collected many beautiful women, but this was the first time that I had a woman in my home with her kind of beauty.  The lines of her legs, the curve of her belly, the pouty hairless lips between her thighs, the tight lines of muscle in her thighs, these all were incredibly sexy to me.  But none of these things mattered to Rebecca, for she accepted these as her right.  Heels and stockings now on to her satisfaction, Rebecca now slowly walked back to the bed and picked up the thong and a clean bra.  I shook my head no and said, “You only get to wear the garter and stockings under the dress.  No panties and no bra.  My rules this weekend.  Remember?”

Rebecca smiled at me like I was an adolescent boy-child and shook her head.  Then she picked up her dress, raised both arms and pulled it over her head; it first covered her firm breasts and then she tugged it on down to her waist where it bunched a little.  Thin spaghetti straps held the dress up as it barely cupped her breasts and then daringly dived in back.  She pulled on the bottom of the dress and wiggled her hips seductively; it settled snugly on her body.  She turned and asked me to zip up the little remaining fabric that covered her back.  Reaching into her overnight bag, she pulled out a black faux pearl choker and had me fasten it in back.  The dress showed significant cleavage and it was obvious that she wore no bra.  What wasn’t so obvious was the garter belt and lack of panties underneath.  Finally, she took out a tiny black sexy jacket and put that over her shoulders.

I couldn’t help myself as I looked at her again.  At first glance, her face seemed unreal, like something molded out of pure porcelain.  Her cheekbones were like Colorado ski slopes and her eyes the color of an over-chlorinated swimming pool.  Her long blond-white hair flowed down around her shoulders, a glowing contrast to her tiny black dress.  Looking at her, I realized that Rebecca had that innate ability to dominate a room---or a conversation---without saying a word; was that why she had this effect on me? 

She looked like royalty, but there was no trace of haughtiness in her eyes at the moment.  She was beautiful…and she was mine.

***

I could feel his eyes on my all but naked back as I walked over to the full-length mirror on the closet door and looked at myself.  The dress held me closely, touching me, making me want to push back at it in places.  I felt more comfortable around him now and the whole moment was so perfect.  Men were like children; they were so easy when sex was involved.  That was good because even though I had had perhaps the best sex of my life yesterday, I was still conscious of the fact that he had forced me to do this for him in order to obtain his help.  If I had met him a few years ago under different circumstances, I think I could have liked him and things might have been different.  But we hadn’t and they weren’t.

Mindful that I was making this more erotic just for his benefit, I shifted my weight and performed a quick turn on the impossible heels that he seemed to like.  Light as a feather, the dress floated out away from my thighs and it seemed almost transparent at that moment.  He seemed transfixed by my breasts as they seemed to bob with my slightest move.  Personally, I liked the way the darker stocking welts showed at the tops of my thighs beneath the dress when I moved too quickly---men are so visually aroused and this would make him helpless.  As he watched me, it became apparent that he had another erection and could do nothing to hide it.  The dress had been exactly the right choice.  Thank God for little black dresses.

I knew that this man must by nature be a pig---he wouldn’t have put me in this situation if he wasn’t.  I stopped for a second…..that hadn’t been fair.  He was still a pig, but I knew that my situation was entirely my fault, not his.  He couldn’t have done anything to me if I hadn’t set it all up for him in the first place.

I hated to admit this, even to myself---but it had felt so good to be really fucked again by a man that I had turned on; I hadn’t realized how much I had missed it.  He was an attentive lover and I still felt tingly all over my body; last night had been real, not the shallow, quick, slam-bam in and outs that I had become so used to.  And my orgasms at the finish had been deep and real and fulfilling.  I smiled at him as I put the small hat on.  When I wore this, I almost felt like I was going a masquerade party, the kind of party where no one knows anyone else.  I loved those parties and the feeling of absolute abandon they allowed me; I was known for this.

Very carefully, I blotted my lipstick, took out a small patent-leather clutch bag, and walked towards him, my shoulders back, my head held high.  I was ready.

Chapter 11: An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit; Pliny the Younger.

She seemed ready to leave, but for some reason she stopped and reached into her suitcase again.  After a second, she pulled out a small black pillbox type of hat with what appeared to be a short sheer black veil in front.  I hadn’t seen anything like this in years, but it would work.  I guess that she too had been worried about being recognized. 

She walked over to the mirror and began to put it on.  When finished, she turned to me and laughed gaily, “I look like the Black Dahlia.”  Then she reached up and pulled the veil down over her remarkable eyes.  It worked; once her eyes had been concealed, she could have been any one of a thousand attractive women.  She knew as well as I that her eyes were what anyone would first notice.  And she did something about it; by wearing this hat and using the veil when with people, it was the veil that would draw the eyes of onlookers, not the woman behind it.  Intelligent as well as beautiful; we would go unnoticed.  She walked towards me in that incredibly slinky way she had, and we were ready.  I smiled as I escorted her to my car.

There was a tiny country school about fifteen miles from my house and we drove by it on our way to the buffet.  But suddenly Rebecca would have none of that.  With an odd, teasing smile, she insisted that we go back.  Sunday service was about to begin in the small gymnasium and as we parked in the lot, I could see a few late couples and families hurrying in.  As I watched, I happened to notice a small building in back, about a hundred feet from the school.  It was probably the place where they kept lawn mowers and that sort of thing. 

We sat there for a couple of minutes and then I looked at her.  Rebecca’s veil was up, she looked back at me and quirked her eyebrow.  With this as impetus, I got out and went over to her door, opened it and helped her out.  She grabbed my hand and led me towards the shed in back.  I couldn’t help it; even though I knew that I was the one that should be setting the agenda, I felt like I was under her spell.  And the more dangerous the act, the more satisfying it seemed to be to her.  Still holding my hand, she led me around the back of the small building where we would be out of sight.  She had difficulty walking on the grass since her stilettos kept sinking into the turf.  But once we there, I didn’t know what to do.  I wanted see if anyone had seen us so I started to lean past her to peek around the corner of the building, but she shifted and I almost ran up against her. 

I didn’t know what to say.  I stood where I was, mere inches from her face, listening to her breathe, smelling her and the touch of perfume that she wore.  Her veil was up and I was conscious of her blue eyes, her soft white skin.  I moved towards her and our bodies touched.  It was like a sudden electrical contact.  We both stood that way a moment, then I leaned forward and our lips met for just a moment before she turned her face away.  I could feel her unconfined breasts pressing against me and I lost all control. 

I pushed her up against the side of the building and slid my hands up her arms until I had her wrists pinned above her head against the building.  I leaned in against her body and ground my hips against her groin, but she didn’t seem upset at all.  In fact, she spread her legs and pushed back with her hips and I knew that she could feel my erection as it pushed against her belly.  I could barely stand the rush of arousal that engulfed me and I fought for breath as my lips slid to her chin, kissing her, and then down her neck and over her shoulder.

She struggled for a second and I released her wrists.  As soon as I had done this, she shifted, sighing.  I could feel her hot breath move across my cheek as she took my earlobe between her teeth and bit down, first gently, then more sharply.  She pulled me towards her as she kept her hips locked against mine. 

I reached up and fumbled with the front of her dress and as I saw her breasts finally swing free, I felt myself grow even harder.  Her hands dropped from my shoulders, tracing a line down my chest, my stomach, then to the waistband of my pants.  She unbuckled my pants and loosened my zipper, then slowly eased me free.  Now her hand began to stroke me, slowly---within seconds I was in jeopardy of cumming in her hand.  Being the expert in this that she was, she quickly recognized my peril and pulled out another condom from her small purse.  This time she gave it to me and in frustration, I quickly put it on---it was like pushing a raincoat down a telephone pole.  Now she gently pushed me away, but I immediately pressed her back up against the shed again. 

I gasped involuntarily as I reached for the hem of her dress, then slid my hand underneath it and stroked from the top of her stocking to her moist, naked vagina.  The front of her dress now lay bunched between our bellies and our hips.  Her thighs had automatically parted for me and I slid into her with the lubricated ease of one that had done this a thousand times before.  Rebecca staggered a little as I entered her, then compensated by thrusting her hips forward while arching her back, bringing me deep inside her. 

For a moment, we remained like that, eyes locked.  Then her lips parted and her head sank backwards, exposing her neck; she let out a groan of pure desire.  She was excited by what she had made me do and her labia were moist and hot and swollen as they engulfed me, inflamed and engorged by the blood pulsing through them.  I could tell that she wanted this perhaps more than I, if that was possible; there was no way that her craving could be faked.  It felt wonderful.  The sensations were nuggets of pure joy as the ecstasy clicked into focus.  This was perfection.  This was nirvana. 

I wrapped my arms around her beautiful ass and stood between her thighs and lifted as I drove up into her with all of the force that I could muster.  I slid into her again and again, at first gently and deliberately, and then more forcefully and finally with wild abandon.  I pushed and she would be forced to rise up on her toes to accept it all, then I would pull out and we would start all over again.  I noted as if from far away that as I pulled out one time, she accidentally hooked me in the ankle with her high heel in the process of wrapping her left foot around my leg.  But as I pushed into her again, she was forced back onto her toes in order to accept all of me as I finished slamming into her.

….And then, in a sudden flood of pleasure, it was over.  I bit her neck and she began to softly cry out in ecstasy.  Within seconds I had my hand over her mouth as I muffled her ever louder screams of sexual release.  She was a creature of pure instinct at that moment, perfectly in tune with her nature in every way; and even if under false pretenses, she was mine for now.

Finally, I began to cum.  As an ejaculation, it was insignificant, but subjectively it was the fiery re-birth of the cosmos; my consciousness fled in all directions at once.  As I blistering hot semen was pushed into the bulbous tip of the condom, I somehow felt split, as of two minds.  This woman seemed like both a magnet to me and a centrifuge.  Her body and the ease with which she handled her sexuality attracted me like a moth to flame; while her sheer carnality, the pure morbid sexual desire with no limits that she showed me this morning both alarmed me as well as excited me.  If only I could harness this woman’s sexuality and keep it mine forever.

It seemed hours before my body required my consciousness.  Bliss gave way to pleasure, then to simple euphoria and then to a dreamy, slow awareness of my surroundings.  It was going to be a fine day.

I had released her and she held me close now, her hands an ecstasy of fumbling; breathing hard in my ear, her beautiful hair wild, her legs wrapped around me, muscles contracting and relaxing in slowing spasms.  I leaned against Rebecca’s chest as I caught my breath, then I slowly pulled out of her body.  We both stopped as we caught our breath for a second.  But then she didn’t even look at me as she began to repair herself: fixing her breasts back inside the dress before pulling tissues out of her small purse; now holding her dress away from her loins, she first cleaned her vagina and then she wiped the insides of her thighs where clear drops of her secretions had run.  When finished, she threw these tissues to the ground at my feet.  Then she tugged the dress down on her hips and re-arranged her bosom again.  When she was done, she looked at me with a quizzical smile as if wondering what was delaying me. 

I leaned against the wall for a minute to recover my blonde-addled wits.  Perhaps I was reading too much into it, but the symbology of her act, the expressionless face, the cool composure so quickly regained after the heat of our encounter, the lack of emotion as she wiped her vagina and then discarded the used tissues at my feet as if that was all that I deserved, all of this awakened me abruptly and shook me to my core. 

She began to walk back to the car and I could see that she had laddered her stockings against the building.  Suddenly, I realized that I still stood there with my limp condom-covered penis hanging out of my pants.  I rolled the skuzzy thing off and wrapped it in my handkerchief along the tissues that Rebecca had discarded at my feet.  I kept this with me and after zipping up my pants and buckling my belt, I walked back to the car where she was already waiting for me.  I avoided Rebecca’s eyes as I got in.  Or maybe she avoided mine.

I was arrogant, never once thinking about the possibility of my being in error; never considering the chance that I might have poorly interpreted the visual cues she gave.  And from that comes the rest of the story---for as they say, it was all downhill from there.

Chapter 12: All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill.  He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and he will say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior; Sarah M. Grimke.

Suddenly, I was angry.  I was furious at myself for acting so foolishly over a woman like this, and even more angry at her for being…..I guess for being the way she was.  I realized that I had stood in the shadow of this woman all weekend; and I also knew that I was tired of doing so.  And for some reason, this last act had made me feel like I must be done with the charade.  Within ten minutes of first meeting her, I knew that she had withheld much from me and now I wanted it, whatever that might be.  And I wanted it to be something about which she cared deeply and would fight me for; it had to be something important, I didn’t want her to give up easily.  More than that, I wanted to humiliate and hurt her as I took it from her.  No, that didn’t nearly begin to describe how I felt---I wanted to ruin her, to debase and disgrace her.  I wanted nothing to be easy with this woman.  But right now, I just needed time to think. 

I told Rebecca that I had suddenly developed a headache.  She nodded her understanding and we drove back to my place.  I brought her back into my bedroom and she laughed lightly as she entered it.  It seemed that I was all too predictable to her.  She turned forcefully upon entry, making her dress swing wide as she turned to faced me.  Rebecca knew exactly what she had done as she looked into my eyes. 

“I think,” she said, “I will take a short nap.” 

With that, she began to push me from my own bedroom.  I was astounded and didn’t know what to say or how to act.  Like an idiot, I stuttered something inane and allowed this woman her own way, AGAIN!  What was it about her?  Why did I feel so stupid and act so weak when I was with her?  Furious and embarrassed, I walked into my study where I turned the television on with a vicious slap at the remote.  I muted the TV as I walked over to fix myself a drink.  It was now noon and the television was tuned to a local channel. 

As I finished making myself a scotch, I looked at the TV set and saw Rebecca’s face there.  Quickly, I turned on the sound and saw the local news anchor interviewing an old-looking Savannah police lieutenant.  I listened for a second, then quickly walked over and slid a video cassette in my old VCR.  And after flipping through channels to find a news program where the full report had not yet been broadcast, I began taping the show.  Finally, it was on; the police had gone to her house Friday evening to bring her in for questioning.  But she was gone.  Her husband told them that she was at a weekend teaching seminar, but the school denied having anything planned.  By Sunday morning, they found her car near the bus station and discovered that she had made multiple ATM withdrawals on Thursday and Friday to clean out her bank account.  When they discovered that she’d fled, they issued a warrant for her arrest.  She wasn’t considered dangerous, he concluded and they were confident that they’d find her shortly. 

I looked blankly at the TV as it went to commercial.  Chills ran up and down my spine.  I couldn’t believe how close I had come to getting involved in her mess.  And for all I knew, I still might be.  I must have looked at the television and shook my head in disbelief for at least a minute.  But suddenly, I realized that this gave me incredible leverage with the woman now asleep in my bed. 

Rebecca lay awake upon my bed in her black dress, shapely legs crossed at the ankles and her arms down by her sides as I walked into my bedroom an hour later.  She gave me a small smile and patted the mattress beside her.  “Are you feeling better?” she asked.  “We only have the afternoon left together, so what do you want to do?”  Her whole posture suddenly became coquettish, which is rather difficult when you are lying down. 

I looked at her and a let small smile show.  “What do you think I’d like to do to you?”  It must have appeared to her that my small headache was much better now.  Men are sooo predictable, don’t you know?

“I have no doubt at all about what you want from me,” she laughed gaily.  She moved to the side of the bed, swung her legs over and stood.  Turning her back to me, she began to unzip her dress.  “You are a sexy man and I have enjoyed this occasion with you.  But we have time for one more and then I must go home.”

I nodded my understanding and walked into my closet.  There I picked out the piece that I had wanted her to wear all weekend.  It was a black and crème silk corset with three garters on each side to support her hose.  Cupless, it pushed up and supported her breasts, exposing them for all to see.  It was heavily boned for additional support around the waist and I had desperately wanted to see this on Rebecca.

Silently, I handed the piece to her.  She looked at it for a second and then looked at me with an arched eyebrow.  “I was wondering,” she said, “when it would get to this.  I am surprised that it took you this long.  After all, I gave you entrée to this yesterday.  You really are shy, aren’t you?”

Without another word, Rebecca finished stripping and walked over to the sink to give herself a whore’s bath---how appropriate I thought to myself.  From there, she went to the mirror where she freshened her makeup.  She was one of the few women that I have ever known that could have acted totally natural as she did this in front of a man that she had known for less than 48 hours; a woman that had no doubts about her Alpha sexuality, with pride in her body and no fear of being naked in front of others.  Finished with her face, after getting out a fresh pair of sheer black nylons, she then loosened the drawstrings in back and stepped into the corset.  Without a word she presented her back to me and I pulled on laces until the corset was comfortably tight around her (if that could ever be the case).  She now sat down and put on the stockings, after which she finished by putting on the same black heels she’d worn earlier. 

Rebecca now stood up and walked over to me.  She stopped in front of me and put her palms on my chest and looked into my eyes.  After a moment she asked, “Like what you see?”

All I could do was groan.  I pulled her hands off of my chest and led her to the bed.  I’d fucked her until I was black and blue.  I was physically exhausted from all of the sex that we’d had; my penis ached and throbbed from all of the abuse it had suffered.  But it was flesh over mind and I had a huge erection again.  I put on the condom myself.  This time our sex was hard and brutal, and it lasted a long time before I could finally get off.  We were both covered in my sweat and she was rather annoyed at the end since she didn’t get off this time herself.  I rolled off of her now sweaty belly and lay beside her, panting as I looked at the ceiling. 

Once I caught my breath, I got up without a word and handed her some tissue with which to clean herself.  I then went into the kitchen.  I poured us both a glass of red wine and after I had made one minor addition, I brought the glasses and bottle back into the bedroom with me.  I gave Rebecca her glass and clicked hers with mine, toasting us as a way of making silent amends for my previously brutish behavior.  She smiled and we both took deep drinks, and then lay back upon the bed. 

I began to ask her a few questions about her case, and as we talked I watched her eyes.  Soon she tried to say something, but her words were slurred.  Within a couple of more minutes, she began nodding and soon after that, she was out.  Roofies will do that to you.

Chapter 13: Power is the great aphrodisiac.  Power can be taken, but not given. The process of the taking is empowerment in itself; Gloria Steinum.

The next morning broke clear and beautiful.  Her purse lay emptied on my kitchen table.  It contained the usual garbage; nothing of importance but her billfold, car keys on a ring, a small digital camera, a tiny shampoo from a Holiday Inn and some tampons. 

I held a cup of coffee and stood out on my back porch wearing only a robe.  The waters of the lake at the rear of my property were so azure and still that it seemed that God’s own paintbrush had been dipped into royal blue to paint it.  I knew that my face was clear as I looked out over the water. 

Rebecca had kept many things from me.  While this I guess would be considered natural, for some reason I knew of the importance of these things to her like I knew my own face in the mirror.  With a small smile, I wondered if that was perhaps not the best analogy to use.  I didn’t yet have the details, only being able read her like a novel you had glanced at once quickly.  But these would come in time.  Like all of us, this woman communicated in multiple ways; telling me about herself in essentially non-verbal terms of which even she was not aware.  And when she did speak, she couldn’t help but unconsciously communicate the existence of deeply buried desires and phobias. 

But to understand the book that was Rebecca, I simply needed time to make her talk.  And even if she chose to not respond, her body would speak its own language to me.  If given enough time, I would be able to translate her deepest needs and fears into conscious forms, something that I understand and use.  When I finally understood what she said in metaphoric form, I could work with her images to bring about changes I desired.

I thought about what Rebecca had said over the weekend, and about what she had not said.  This last was the key I knew, the key to breaking Rebecca.  Too, I thought about my earlier anger and the irrational urge I’d felt to shame and humiliate this woman---I smiled grimly to myself and tried to be brutally honest, this morning I felt that need more strongly than ever.

I felt a thrill of anticipation as I sensed myself falling back into my old predatory persona.  This really wasn’t about sex now.  I said this to myself again and again, but did I lie?  I think that I actually believed, at least temporarily, that I wouldn’t be having much sex with her in the near future.

But I really wasn’t thinking about a woman becoming physically and emotionally capable of enjoying the lifestyle for which I yearned; a woman totally addicted to the very same elements of pleasure and pain that I found so attractive.  I didn’t picture a woman who went weak in the knees, leaked pussy juice down her thighs, and moaned in my ear as I tweaked and twisted her nipples—a true slave and a prospective pain slut, should I wish to push her to that end.

Rather, what I felt was the thrill of an upcoming hunt.  Something I had truly missed; the delight of forcing open every secret place my weaker prey might possess, and then destroying them in the light of day.  The plans I now made concerned a woman in trouble and the power that gave me over her.  This was about an impulsive curiosity and my desire to learn what she kept from me.  I wanted her secrets---all of them; the secrets of her mind and the secrets of her body.  This was about the incredible joy of being able to play at being God-like one last time.  But this time with a woman I knew deserved the horror I would bring her---and my challenge was about being able to make Rebecca bare her soul when that was the last thing she wished to do. 

But mostly, this was about a woman that had dominated me for two days with the sheer force of her personality and then had behaved badly towards me at the end; embarrassing me and acting as if she were better than me.  This would be a wonderful opportunity to punish and debase her---to give her what she, and I, so richly deserved.  I wanted to humiliate her and humble her; destroying her belief in herself as independent and free.  Perhaps when I was less annoyed with her later, I would look at this differently.  But right now, taking advantage of her weaknesses to shame and break her was all I cared about.

I was impatient for the ‘good stuff’ and hoped that I wouldn’t have to spend a lot of time breaking her.  Rebecca was mentally tough and given what I had learned about her so far, she might be surprisingly resilient---but that really didn’t matter, because I was prepared to take as long as necessary to penetrate this woman’s defenses and then crush her.  I was going to force her to acknowledge the changed rules in her life.  In the process I would show that she now existed in my world---and that at least for one in her position, my world was a society with all of the stops off.  She would swiftly learn that she was at the bottom now and that I got what I wanted, when I wanted it. 

And with the leverage that I had, when I was finished and was ready to discard her like a broken toy, there would be nothing that she could do about it.  Maybe she would accept it and maybe not, but that really didn’t worry me too much right now.  All I knew was that in the long run she would be forced to recognize my power over her and that was all that mattered.  Once I started like this with a subject, I would never be able to stop until one of us had given up completely.  But that was her problem now.

***

I was one of those morning people that always awoke immediately alert and was totally aware of my surroundings.  But when I finally became aware of being awake, things were somehow different this time.  At first, my head felt almost like it was insulated with puffy cotton; I was so confused and disoriented, it almost seemed like I’d lived through some kind of a dream.  With a coppery taste in my mouth and an aching head, I felt as if this were happening to someone else.  I tried to remember what had happened.  I’d been lying in bed and a heavy feeling had come over me that had started somewhere in my mind.  I’d fought it, trying to remain alert but it was no use.  My head had gone loose on my neck and I lost all sense of time and place.  I’d felt the pinch of something and then the close embrace of the man next to me, but I couldn’t fight it.  Before I could ask him what he wanted and why I was so numb, I was flooded with a honeyed sense of enveloping darkness.

This was the first instance that I could ever remember in which I had no feel for the passage of time; I couldn’t say whether it was still that afternoon, that evening or even the next morning.  Worse, I had no idea what had happened, but I knew without a doubt that something had happened. 

A terrible, terrifying woolliness enveloped my thoughts.  My mind was cotton and hay…..and rags, rags of memories.  Everything was fuzzy and I had what felt like the beginning of a great headache; for some reason it was not just my head, for I ached all over.  It was dark where I was and I could tell was I was sitting on a chair.  Nauseous, I leaned my head forward as far as I could to try to calm my stomach.  As I put my head down towards my knees, I somehow sensed that I was still wearing stockings.  But for some reason, my feet were tucked up under the chair and I couldn’t move them. 

Suddenly, I remembered the corset as being the last thing I’d had on.  I still seemed to be wearing it, but now it was so tight around my waist and diaphragm that I could barely breathe.  I couldn’t know for sure, but it felt like it was forcing me into a seventeen or eighteen inch waist---I was slim, but this was still far too tight for me.  At the same time, my torso felt as if it swelled and then relaxed with each beat of my heart.

I tried desperately to think and slipped away into a feathery limbo again.  After I sat there for a couple of more minutes trying to breathe, my head seemed to clear a little and the pain suddenly stopped swirling around all over my body, suddenly coming into a horrifyingly clear focus.  While it seemed to localize somewhere between my hips and pelvis, it was most definitely centered on my anus.  This was the first time that I could ever remember experiencing the strange, brassy taste on my tongue that is the taste of fear.

Suddenly, my chest and waist felt even more constricted and it was even more difficult to breathe.  I opened my eyes and strained to focus.  Nothing.  I realized at last that something had been put over my head---that was why it was so black.  I tried to lean forward again, when suddenly a strange rippling sensation ran up my spine, then spread down my arms and legs.  I froze, then tried to move again.  As I stirred a second time the feeling came again, a strange internal heaviness accompanied by what felt like a twisting and a forced inflation of my rectum that had gone hideously too far. 

My head snapped up involuntarily; I finally realized the ache had always been there out on the fringes of my consciousness.  I was so busy trying to figure out my surroundings that it hadn’t registered as real pain.  But now the hurting flashed strobe-like through my head.  And as my senses returned, I finally understood what he’d done, why I hurt so terribly; the core of my body felt abnormally full, no---over-filled, and my rectum dreadfully stretched and distended, as if something small and inflexible had somehow been shoved inside me and then inflated and magnified beyond what my body could endure.  It didn’t just ache; God, it hurt terribly because the massively alien object had been driven so deeply inside my lower body.  I tried to scream and grip my stomach, little darts of pain racing across my abdomen while my vision exploded inside my eyelids with red mist.  But I couldn’t move my hands.  And even as I tried to move my pelvis to relieve the pain, I could feel the terrible force mount and twist within my body with each shift I made, and then it all went black as the internal abdominal pressure became unbearable.

Suddenly I was back, and this time wakefulness was just as blurred and confused.  Well, perhaps a fraction less so.  For now that I realized what was wrong, I panicked for a second and tried to stand up.  The more I was ruled by my fear, the more I tried to struggle.  I strained to expel the attacker until I could feel the pressure of my blood surging within my veins; until I could actually hear the blood rushing through my body, my labored grunts to eject the intruder going unheard in the quiet room.  The more effort I exerted, the more my muscles wrenched themselves and pulled at the invader, attempting to grab onto and force out what was causing so much pain.  But I wasn’t strong enough to either banish the enemy from my body or escape by standing and suddenly I was forced to stop, arched and frozen in mid-motion as a tearing, burning pain ripped through me from diaphragm to anus. 

I knew that I couldn’t continue like this; my lips contorted into a grotesque grin of pain and tears streaming from my eyes, I tried to force myself to remain calm as I slowly relaxed my thighs and gave up the precious little freedom from the trespasser that I had gained in my struggles.  Thigh and back muscles strained and fatigued, the awful feeling of extreme fullness within my abdomen and over-extended anus slowly increased again as I hunched bit by bit deeper back into the chair. 

Besides the pain, the worst part was that to me everything had occurred almost instantaneously.  I had no time to build up my determination to resist, no moment in time to build my psychological defenses; I was alert and awake, and then unconscious.  And when I next awoke, the chair had been presented as an accomplished fact---I had already been crucified and left to suffer.  There were no degrees of penetration here; it was black or white, on or off, virgin territory and then not.

Closing my eyes and taking long deep breaths seemed to help a little, but the transfixing pain never went away, no matter how much I tried to ease the strain that tore at my anal ring.  Face smarting under the cover, I gathered the last shreds of my courage.  A whimper arose in my throat.  The vanishing of a small hope that I had not even known was there until it was gone, the hope that I could somehow rescue myself from this thing, left me with truly nothing. 

Finally fully seated again, unbidden, another sensation washed through me like the summit of an ocean swell, taking me to yet another subtle plateau of awareness of being in which I could almost see myself from outside my body.  Along with a heightened perception of the senses, I began to experience a luminous sense of feminine anguish, as if everything that made me a woman were somehow lit from within.  But strange as it was, I felt no apprehension or anxiety.  Only wonder.

Then, like the pop of a bubble, that feeling was gone and I was wholly and completely back inside my body, suffering greatly again.  But the internal light was still too strong for my eyes and I felt my whole body trembling. 

I tried to think.  The soft focus sharpened as the violating pain, the chair, and the darkness within the bag blurred and almost disappeared.  The universe of the moment had shrunk to me sitting on this awful stool.  Like a spark in my mind popped an image of the man.  I remembered being with George and then nothing.  George!  He’d done this to me!  He’d tried to amuse himself with me once like this and I’d snapped at him.  Whatever he’d done to me now had to be from pure spite; I tried to say something to get his attention and it was then that it cut through to my fogged brain.  My wrists were bound behind my back, handcuffed, and there was something tight around my neck; it was attached to the back of the stool I upon which I was sitting and it wouldn’t allow me to move forward off of the seat.  And worst of all, my feet were immobilized. 

Immediately, my fury beat its way through my sheer physical discomfort.  He hadn’t gagged me so I wasn’t completely helpless.  Throwing my head back, I howled in manic rage.  I began what I thought would be a constant screaming and in my anger, I rocked my body back and forth once in an attempt to free myself.  But I froze in mid-move as I re-affirmed again that any motion of my body only increased the ripping, tearing pain that I felt in my rectum. 

The rage evaporated suddenly, replaced by an all-consuming fear.  I continued struggling, but weakly and more carefully now, trying to get my hands or my feet free.  The pain quickly became my master.  It never left and it was a learning pain; one that quickly taught me how to move my upper body and which ways to avoid.  For the wrong movement always brought the terrible ache that threatened to shred my behind or rupture me internally.  Too, when I struggled, I found that I couldn’t get enough air to fill my lungs.  The bag over my head and the over-tight corset accounted for part of that restriction, but being impaled as I was had a lot to do with it too.  Even trying to be still, I had to move when I breathed, and it just caused too much pain to inhale deeply.  I began to hiccup uncontrollably.

“George?”  I whispered his name softly between hiccups as if it meant nothing to me; there was a part of my brain that still refused to make the connection between the man whose company I had enjoyed earlier and the pain I felt now.  The answering silence was both deep and profound.  “George?”

I didn’t know how long I sat there, but it felt like it must have been hours.  It seemed as if I had just run a marathon; I was covered with sweat and every muscle totally exhausted.  I was hot and thirsty, my lips parched.  Finally, I just whimpered as I sat alone with my pain and my fear.  I knew then that I was abandoned by him, that I would probably die here of internal bleeding.  Oh God, why had I been such a fool to trust him? 

I had always been independent, but for the first time in my life, I knew what it was to feel totally alone, isolated in my discomfort with only my thoughts to keep me company.  I tried to be strong, but the pain was not linear, rather it was cumulative.  It didn’t reach a plateau and level off, but the longer I sat there, the worse it got.  It just kept coming and the accumulation wore me down; soon, I was consumed by it.  I cried in my agony, rocking gently in spite of the additional pain each move brought.  This new pain was acceptable because it was somehow different, and anything new seemed to give my mind an anchor to grasp.

I read a lot and I had always felt that I was the strong type that would hold up well under physical duress.  But I had finally reached a point now where I would have agreed to anything, would have done anything to be free of this….thing.  It was a huge shock when I realized that I was no tougher or harder than anyone else; that despite my toughness and intelligence, I too was as vulnerable to being manipulated and forced into unwanted directions as was the weakest of my students.  Depression now settled on top of my capitulation; all of it piled in turn upon pre-existing guilt and shame.  I truly was a worthless human being.

Eventually, I sensed the presence of someone standing nearby.  And even though the silence between the two of us seemed to stretch on for an eternity, in the end he had out-waited me, for I began to beg him to let me go.  I begged again, but to no response.  Nothing happened for what felt like quite a long time and then suddenly, I was drowned in a deluge of excruciatingly cold water.  It was a ferocious waterfall at first, but it quickly subsided to a thin, steady flow. 

My body had reacted to the sudden cold and in reflex I tried to move to the side.  My anal muscles having reached an initial accommodation with the intruder, the original tearing pain of the impaling spike had finally subsided just a little.  But that agony was re-awoken by my sudden move; now I sat immobile under the shower of water and accepted its chilled caress in an attempt to soothe again the pain in my rectum.  Finally, I raised my face to the falling water and sucked on the fluid that permeated through the material of the bag that covered my head. 

Soon, I was no longer thirsty, but I was getting very cold, my body was now covered with goose bumps.  But the slow, steady trickle of cold water never stopped and I soon went from being inconvenienced by it to dreading it.  I tried to suck in a breath, but the freezing water filled my ears, my nose, my mouth.  I couldn’t breathe!

And still the flow never stopped.  Somehow I was still alive.  I was sure that the air conditioning had been turned on and the room seemed freezing for now I was shaking all over.  I screamed again, then begged for what must have been at least half an hour for either my freedom or at least to stop the water---but there was nothing.  For what seemed like hours there was nothing but the frigid water, and soon I found myself gasping for air like a fish, muttering about the cold and how unfair it was.  I was sure that he was in the room and that he could hear me, but there was silence except for the rush of blood in my ears.

Soon, the water temperature changed, going slowly from cold to lukewarm.  Gradually getting hotter, soon I began to worry that he might plan on scalding me now.  Again, the almost too hot water continued until it seemed like torture.  I was sweltering; I felt stifled and it was far too hot now to have the sopping hood over my head, and suddenly, like before I found it more and more difficult to breathe.  But this was a different kind of torment, even though like before it too seemed to go on for hours.  And as before, suddenly the temperature of the water began to change and within minutes, I was shivering under a freezing downpour again.  Then it stopped again.

I could feel the cold steel around my wrists; I could smell the wet hood and feel the dampness of the air around me, hear the dripping of water somewhere nearby.  The taste of fear in my mouth made my tongue dry, despite the drenching I had just received.  I knew this man; I could identify him.  He could not afford to let me go.  The thought terrified me.

A LOVE STORY, TO BE CONTINUED