Not all sexual, but a part of it. I wanted to see her lips wrapped around my cock even if she didn’t want them there. I took a deep shaky breath.
“The Daintree?” Andreas said it quietly, like it was somewhere interesting and this was a normal holiday chat.
“Yes.”
“I always wanted to go there.”
“Me too.” I turned up the air-con. I didn’t want Kat getting heat stroke. Despite the autumn weather, the box might become a sauna if the tropical sun heated the car.
“We’ll have to stop to get petrol along the way. And I’ll find somewhere isolated, off the road, where we can let her out to go to the toilet. But I’ll have to watch her. To make sure she doesn’t get away.” I eyed him briefly then went back to looking at the road, then back to him again for a moment.
He swallowed and kept his gaze focused ahead. “Okay. When we get there, you and me, we have to talk.”
“Sure.”
I was beginning to wonder what Andreas was thinking about all this. Like any man, he’d have his little fetishes. We all had something dirty we’d like to do, even if we suppressed the ideas. But give us half a chance and a willing…or unwilling victim…most of us would do some damn kinky things to a woman. For some that meant coming on their faces or tearing off their panties and gagging them with them. For others it was ass sex, or milder things. Few men had the guts to let loose the dark beast inside them.
Me, I had a million ideas. Most I’d done at some time, to someone.
Part of Kat’s appeal was the challenge. She’d never submitted to anyone properly. Not that I’d ever seen. Bitch Queen was her true name. She’d never even let me fuck her. I wanted to bring her low, so low she would kiss the dirt for me.
She was going to find out how hard-ass I could truly be when there was nothing stopping me.
Part of it, and just musing on this made that red scintillating
need
slither through me, part was I just wanted to hurt her and see her take it because she had no choice. Fucked up? Yeah. But it was a beautiful sort of fucked up. I wondered why I always imagined it as a red need? The link to blood probably. Red had a certain distinction to it.
Pain – red.
Fear – black.
Graphic novels followed that sort of color scheme.
Which made sadism a mix of both? There’d be no green though, definitely. Or blue. Screams, in a comic, should be orange. Crap. I was going a bit crazy with this.
Maybe I shouldn’t be imagining what I was planning to do while I was driving?
In those few crystal clear times between us, I was sure I’d seen in Kat a yearning, like she wanted something she couldn’t quite reach. The dominant and submissive relationship, even the malformed one we had shared, let me see things she wanted to hide from everyone. It was a matter of listening hard enough, and paying attention.
In a perverse way, I was sure she wanted someone to make her do what she didn’t want. That was common in submissives, and the Dom’s role is to show them how to let go of control. The difference was that Kat never did let go. She clung to the edge with both hands.
Well, I’d pried away those fingers, and now she was going to learn to fly.
It wasn’t until I was on my feet and standing in the prickling grass that I could think. Everything swirled; my legs shook; my stomach rebelled. I opened my eyes. Nothing. And tried to open them again. Then remembered, again. Blindfold.
“You’re somewhere hidden, Kat,” Chris said, his tone managing to be both dry and thickly evil at the same time. “No one can see us.”
Oh, you bastard.
I blanked out his words while I fought nausea again. Tired, so tired.
Someone took my elbow and I jerked my head up, swaying as I attempted to focus on blackness. Blindfold. Stoopid.
“Go to the toilet.” They didn’t let go of me.
“Here?” Such croaky words. I’d spoken! No gag. Surprise, surprise. When had they removed it? I imagined my questions lined up like crows on a power line in my head. My lips seemed worn out and slick from constant dribbling. I licked them.
They…or
he
, had me, somewhere outside. Where was the car? Birds chirped nearby. Grass stalks scratched the soles of my feet. Could I kick him? Could I run?
There wasn’t a chance in hell I could escape. Not right now. I tried to concentrate and still the slosh of thoughts and sensations filling my head. If I could just think…properly. The blackness before my eyes surged with color splotches, with random sparks of panic, of fear, of what the fuck is happening.
Focus! Think, think, think.
I leaned sideways, off balance, and everything turned to mud.
I bit back a moan.
“Kat. Last chance.” Chris again. “If you need to go, go. Counting to ten. One, two…”
I did need to go. Someone had given me sips of water earlier, in the car. But they’d be watching. My shorts and underwear were gone. My hands were free but my arms were so heavy I couldn’t lift them. Trembling, borrowing strength from the unknown hand, I lowered myself. The only thing that freed me to do this was the knowledge that watching women pee wasn’t one of Chris’s kinks. Halfway done, at the tightening of his hand on my arm, I remembered that humiliation was, sometimes.
I’d bet he was getting off on this.
When I was hefted up and loaded back into the box, the world in my head was too busy spinning to and fro for me to do more than weakly tug against their grip. Two sets of hands. The man who handled my upper torso clipped my wrists down. Metal clicked and I blindly turned my head seeking whoever was there. Fingers locked my chin within a rough hand. I gasped.
“You have no idea how much this pleases me. Seeing you at my mercy like this.”
Though I tried to summon spit even that was beyond me.
Let him think I’m cowed.
Genius.
I mocked myself. Couldn’t squash a bug.
After a moment he let me be and lowered my head.
Bastard.
The engine started and the car rocked. The tires cracked over gravel, then came a jolt, then we hummed over smooth road.
I was supposed to be on holiday right now. Instead I was here, a prisoner, being taken somewhere far away from home for Chris and his friend to do god knew what to me.
Tears leaked into the blindfold.
Our trip continued with little drama. Kat behaved so well I was almost dreading her misbehavior. The woman was akin to an unexploded bomb. Continuing to drug her to the eyeballs with valium wasn’t an option. What would she do when she ‘woke up?’ The anticipation might not kill me, but it was giving me a severe case of blue balls. I sincerely prayed it would be good.
Nearly five hundred kilometers after leaving Magnetic Island, we reached the Daintree River, crossed it by ferry then went on to Cow Bay. North of here, very few roads penetrated the deep tropical rainforest, and wandering too far afield might land you in trouble with crocs or shotgun-wielding entrepreneurial growers of weed. I slowed and pulled over to the side of the road at the outskirts of the tiny town.
Andreas roused. “Why are we stopping?”
“This is where I get the keys to the house I’m borrowing. A man called Scrim should be meeting us here. Keep an eye on her.” Not that I needed to tell him that. We’d lowered the flap on the box.
“Fuck. This is crazy,” he whispered.
As if anyone would hear us.
Years after my uncle had introduced me to doing the accounts for a friend of his, that had led to me helping Vetrov, a man I’d never met, with
his
dirty laundry. Crime paid me well. I kept my distance, though. My only contact with Vetrov was David, one of his employees, and emails. I did the money for him and never asked questions unless they involved numbers.
But some things I learned along the way, like a sponge mopping up blood. On the rare occasions we went for a drink together, David had dropped info. After a few drinking sessions, I’d wanted brain bleach. Some of his stories had made me wonder if there was something wrong with me, because they’d sent me into a sexual haze. Things I’d long imagined had been made real. A few times, in the beginning, I’d wanted to back out, to maybe even go to the cops, but I hadn’t. I was young, my family was involved, and I was just a small player on the periphery. I let it go. But the lodge, that info I’d tucked away for a time like this.
I creaked open the door and jumped out. My boots crunched over loose rocks on the bitumen.
From beneath a huge spreading fig tree a man emerged, a duffel bag slung across his shoulders. I assessed him. Compact. Efficient. A man who’d reached his thirties and learned how to handle himself physically. All these came to mind. Already, I didn’t like him. Scrim was one of the boss’s lesser henchmen. I’d met a few over the years but they’d never seen me as more than the accountant.
Today was different. Surely he’d been told very little? I just needed to get the keys to the lodge off him and go.
Late afternoon. The heavy shadows beneath the trees were gathering coolness.
He nodded and shifted the bag off his shoulders, letting it hang from his big fist. His smile creased around his mouth but did nothing to soften the squareness of his face. The skin under the grey to black bristles on his chin and scalp showed lines – old cuts and a gouge that dug deep above his right eye then swerved down to his cheekbone.
“How’s it going? I’m Scrim. Chris, yeah?”
“Yes.”
His free hand came up and we shook.
“You’ve got the keys to the lodge? David told you I was coming?”
“Yup. I’ll show you the way. Do you want me in the front? Otherwise I can direct you from the back seat.” He gestured toward the Toyota.
I nodded, as if agreeing. He wanted to come with us? “I thought I’d just be getting keys from you.”
“No. I guess you could say I’m the caretaker. I just got off the plane at the Cow Bay airstrip. You want to use the lodge? I’m there too. It’s part of the deal.”
Fuck.
“Don’t worry. There’s two houses.” He nodded toward the vehicle. “You’ll have your privacy. There’s a Range Rover in the garage at the Lodge. I’ll keep out of your hair.” He winked. “No matter what you get up to.”
What had David told him? Not everything, surely? I didn’t want a stranger watching and listening to what I was going to do to Kat, no matter how involved Scrim might be. The Lodge wasn’t just a vacation house for the man who’d employed me on the side for the past five years. Scrim must know that too. But that didn’t mean I wanted him anywhere near me or Kat. Or Andreas.
His gaze hadn’t left my face and the crinkling around his eyes said he guessed something of my dilemma. He leaned in and said quieter than before. “Don’t worry, mate. I’ve got orders not to interfere.”
He knew. Knew a lot. Bugger David. Maybe I should have simply put out an ad for the world to see.
Anger simmered to the surface. “No. You won’t.”
We locked eyes for a moment before he shrugged.
“The front seat,” I added.
Sometimes I cut loose from my controlled surface persona. It was best to be clear where we stood. A long way away from each other, I hoped. If not, I might have to have a word with Scrim. When he tossed the duffel bag in through the rear doors, metal clinked. Andreas slipped into the back to sit behind the box and he took Andreas’s place in the front.
I assumed Andreas would be having kittens inside his head. He must be scared shitless Scrim would discover Kat was in the box. I managed to signal calmness to him and his subtle eyebrow gestures stopped. Hilarious, if it wasn’t so serious. I’d have to concoct a good story for him.
There was only one possibility so far that fitted what I knew we would find at the lodge. I’d tell him Scrim was just a kinkster and the lodge a place he and his friends used.
As I slammed shut the rear doors, I eyed the bag where it nestled beside Andreas’s backpack. Did he have a weapon in there? One of Vetrov’s underlings would likely be armed, somewhere, somehow.
The shit was getting a little deeper.
On the winding route to the lodge, Scrim did little more than point or say when I needed to turn. If he understood what was in the box, and he must, he didn’t show it. Only once did he show some emotion. As we passed a battered, red Rav 4 going the other way, he cursed and stared out the window.
“Fucking weed merchants. I told them not to grow anything near us.”
I raised an eyebrow then went back to steering round the potholes. The summer rains here must have washed out the road.
“Drugs,” he muttered. “Can’t stand the little shits who get into that.”
With what I knew of him and his boss – my boss – drugs were almost a picnic in the park. Everyone has their foibles.
The turn onto an even narrower paved road carried us deeper into the green world of the Daintree. Down here we seemed far from civilization – precisely the best place to do what I intended to do to Kat.
And for that day when she finally admitted in her mind that she was mine, I had brought with me the right gear to symbolize her submission.
I kept my forearm laid across the box to steady myself as the 4WD weaved along the last of the road. When I’d first done this, I’d been overcome by a strange feeling, as if by doing this I was protecting her. The more I learned, the more I dreaded what Chris intended to do. Yet there was no man I called a closer friend. Maybe in a few days, I’d be renouncing that. I fucking hoped not. It would tear me apart.
The jolts of the moving vehicle and the monotonous surge of the engine would soothe me then I’d snap back. There was a woman inside the box beneath my hand. I had to get her away from here…without hurting Chris. If I talked to him enough, maybe he’d see sense. If not, did I have the guts to help her escape?
I drummed my fingers on the box.
We rounded a corner. Beyond the veil of the tree ferns, the sleek green umbrella trees, and the vine-wrapped tree trunks, the lodge appeared. The engine idled as Scrim and I pushed open a pair of steel and corrugated iron gates. After Scrim directed Chris to the most distant of two houses on stilts, I traipsed along behind the vehicle.