Belonger (An erotic novel): Part One (20 page)

She unclamped the cock plug from her nose and
flung it aside, trailing an arc of spittle.

“
Get off,” she
sputtered
, not waiting
for
Mark
to comply,
pushing
him away
.
She rose to her knees, hurriedly
plucked the cinch from her backside as she fumbled for an oar. Mark
was silent, confused by this sudden unfriendliness.

“
We’re going back,” she
explained. “Start rowing!”

When the flotilla rounded into view Ione
abandoned all discretion.

“
Wake up! Everyone get
up!
We’re moving!”

Heads rose sleepily and
boats pitched from fearful, clambering reactions to this
outcry
, but the women
quickly realized it was Ione shouting and roused themselves in
excitation and alarm.

“
Get
the boats
into formation!” she cried
to Emma and Manassa.
They
had
the convoy in order
and were gathered on the flagship before long.

“
What’s going on?” Emma
breathlessly demanded when they were reunited on the vanguard
craft.

“
It’s
soap
. That’s the flavor
we’re looking for
,”
Ione explained.

“
Of course,” Emma breathed,
appreciating the clever camouflage this offered.

There was a shout and
they
looked back along the convoy.
“We
got skulks coming
!”
Manassa hissed.

F
ar
behind
Ione
could
see boats spilling into view around the curvature of the current.
“Go!”

They drifted forth on the channel, madly
adding velocity with the oars. Behind them the men did
likewise.

Exhorting the women to a
frantic athleticism, Ione quickly got them to the soaped
outflow
Emma had identified
earlier.

“
Make sure!” she ordered the
smaller woman, whose sense of taste was more accurate than her
own.

Emma verified their destination with a slurp.
“This is it!”

“
Look!” Manassa warned. The
trailing vessels of their convoy faced imminent contact with the
enemy.

“
They’ve got a row gnome!”
Emma pointed. Ione saw a big six-sleeper loaded with skulks
churning toward their position at high speed under the oar-wielding
impulsion of a blue-toned man secured at the prow.

“
Get the rope!” she
screamed. “We’re going in!”
From the cabinets
Emma
procured a
thick
coil
of hemp line,
made ready to follow her into the
stream.

“
No,”
said Ione, making an instinctive decision on behalf of her
lover, who did not have her stamina
. “You
stay here, keep things from falling apart.
”
Emma swallowed, nodded bravely.

“
Manassa?”
Ione
squarely regarded
the
other
woman.
She nodded, arms loose, ready
for anything.

Ione
slung the rope around her neck. “Let’s go.”

Manassa leapt over the side
and
dove into the
stream. Ione leaped to follow the big woman’s thrashing
form.

The current
was fast enough to immediately
drag
her back, but Ione kicked hard in
retaliation, measured the result and decided she could temporarily
exceed its velocity.

Manassa’s
huge
legs wrought a
seething wake down the center of the channel and she
followed
at all possible speed.
The
stream
quickly narrowed
to a
claustrophobic radius, became a flooded tunnel, darkened almost to
invisibility. Its surface
was
slippery, impossible to
grasp
if they needed to halt or brace
themselves.
She could taste the soap
marking their route, a bitter adulteration that might guide their
navigation. They chopped their way further in.

The passage forked, granting
a choice evident to Ione only when she had already followed Manassa
down the left flue, which was noticeably sourer on her
tongue.
The bigger woman was heaving like a
force of nature in front of her
, and Ione
knew they were already beyond the point of no return—if they did
not reach air ahead of them they would drown before they could get
out.

They followed the soap
through another trio of branching fissures, avoiding routes that
would eventually narrow to impassability. The
tunnel
darkened to deny anything but
touch, and she thrashed in terror after Manassa as the soap
directed them back and up through an otherwise undetectable
passage.

The resistance built to a
peak. Ione
felt her
will collapsing…

Ahead of her Manassa
lurched
forward
on
a
berserk
impulsion of her mighty legs,
then Ione sense
d
her body go slack.
H
er outflung hand landed on the other
woman’s ankle
, the last flesh she ever
expected to touch.

But Manassa had reached something, was
frantically pulling her along now.

Ione followed her through a
metal-framed aperture in the stone, then up into air, breathing
jaggedly. They were in; she had reached the mighty aquifer from
which all
subterranean waters
originated. A
gnome in the
distance lit the area to a delicate pink hue
.

She swept the rope from
around
her
neck,
quickly
knotted
one
end to a sturdy
protuberance of
stone
nearby and
flung it back into the outgoing current. Waving
Manassa to follow, s
he
filled her lungs and dove after it, was borne at high speed
back to
the flotilla
.

Confusion reigned
there—skulks were harrying the outer radius of their vessels, which
were collected at the mouth of the stream now
.

Manassa hastily coiled the free length of
rope as Ione shouted to Emma. “Get the women moving!”

They began pushing slippers
into the current, directing them to pull their way along
the rope, and
they
fearfully complied
,
hauling for freedom.

Manassa
was
last on the line, just
behind Ione.
They
desperately yanked themselves along, did their best to gather up
the slack
as s
kulks
massed behind them
to give
chase
.

Three swam close as they
struggled after the other women,
b
ut their pursuers couldn’t approach
together in the narrowing cross-section
of
the tunnel
and Manassa dealt them a flurry
of kicks when they tried
.
Hands fumbled at Ione’s legs
and she
did the same,
lent enough leverage by the rope
to strike decisively a few times.
They followed the line through the branching route
of the channel, desperately repelling skulks.

The closest man made a supremely physical
advance at one point and managed wrap himself about Manassa’s legs,
but Ione came to her defense, drubbing him with heels till he spun
free. She took the last place on the line.

They almost lost their
pursuers at the junction of the hidden flue, but one of them saw
her turn through it and the rest followed him. He flailed toward
Ione in the cramped passage and managed to
grab an arm,
almost tearing
her
loose
. The accumulated rope spun back
into the current. She and Manassa stamped ferociously, beating him
back, then scrambled
up
into the reservoir.

“
Untie the line!” Ione
screamed, and
Emma
lunged
over to attempt
this
, but the
skulks clinging to
it back in the
tunnel crimped
the knot. Other fingers
joined hers and they tore at it frenziedly as
men
began to emerge through the
fissure.

“
Clobber’em!” she
wailed.

The
women
kicked, butted and hurled
themselves at their adversaries. Mark swept the whole front line
back with the vast strength of his
body,
scattered
water
in
torrents
as he caught two smaller skulks in
his embrace and stuffed them down the outflow. Manassa overcame
the
ir advances
again and again with colossal implantation
s
of her legs on chests and
buttocks
,
inspiring
other women to the same martial fury, and Emma
harried
them
with unsuspected courage
,
slapping
and
chopping
viciously, poking eyes and yanking
hair
as their enemies raged
incoherently.

“
Get forever who did then
if!”

“
Now and for this if rain
serve yes!”

The fighting intensified and the skulks
threatened to overwhelm the women.

“
Fuck you!” Ione screeched
in hatred, blindly hammering and clawing as more men pulled in on
the rope and attempted to stage a shoulder-to-shoulder bulwark
where it was anchored.

Mark saw a tactical
advantage in this, clambered up a muscular back and lurched erect
above the dense throng of marauders, balancing precariously on
their mass. He hauled on the rope with one hand to relieve the
pressure on the knot and with a heroic, groaning exertion finally
pried it free with the other
.

“
It’s loose!” he roared,
casting it away. “Get’em outta here!”

The women rallied around
this victory, shouting and flailing at the skulks, crowding in with
their collective mass to squeeze them forcibly down the outgoing
current. The men departed in kicked and shoved increments, unable
to anchor themselves with the rope, were swept away with their
reinforcements in the passage beyond. Emma
began
to cry
hysterically when
the last of them
disappeared from view.

Ione dove to the
tunnel aperture, traced its metal frame with her
hands. She
dragged at the gate, felt a
slight movement and redoubled her effort. It slid shut only with a
great exertion and she drew a heavy bolt in place to seal the exit.
To the right a gnome was chained to the chassis, lips spewing soapy
water into the flow to generate the signal they had used to
identify the only open route into the Lap. She dimly descried the
thick rubber hose that emerged from its buttocks to access the
waters outside the reservoir through another flue, a circulation
that was detectable only when a contaminant was present there,
cleverly concealing itself. Ione realized they would never have
gotten in if there hadn’t been skulks around to soap the area in
advance. Pushing the gnome’s left nipple, she deactivated its flow
but left the blue-tinted creature in place, deciding she would set
it up at another gate later. Breath exhausted, she
surfaced to join the others. Emma swam into her
embrace.

The women fell silent, waiting for to
proceed. She turned to the interior of the reservoir, and together
they beheld the Lap sanctuary, cloaked in a numinous calm.

“
Amazing,” Manassa
whispered.

Ione stared with the others, felt a peace
that had eluded her since first awakening with Emma. Mark was next
to her, the lone male in their midst, and Ione met his gaze for a
moment, saw excitement and apprehension there. She wondered what it
would be like to answer the whole expectation of the other sex. He
was going to find out.

“
Let’s go,” she quietly
commanded.

They swam forward into a massive cavern. Its
pitched ceiling hovered low in places, a root-choked firmament that
enclosed a vast maze of natural spaces; a community of aquatic
apartments such as Emma and Ione had once known. But the Lap was
far more extensive than their former home, possessed a grandeur to
humble anything from memory. A thin chatter of excitement among the
women grew to an astonished murmur.

They drifted down an avenue wide enough to
pass a trix of women abreast. The water was waist-deep in most
places, a shallow, lukewarm sea that gently welcomed their tired
flesh.