He came back, walking carefully, as naked as she was, and crawled in next to her. It made for a snug fit, but Alexa loved the closeness. She slid her arms around him, and they lay still for a while.
“Why are you doing this?” Will asked.
“Master?”
“Why are you doing this, Alexa?” he asked again. “They must have figured you could handle it, because they let you in, but, come on. You’ve never done anything like this before? Never had a lover tie you up for sex?”
“No.”
“Ever fantasized about it?”
“Not really. Maybe a little.” Alexa yawned. She didn’t know where this was going, and she really just wanted to sleep now.
“So what made you sign up for this?” Will demanded.
“Is that important now?”
“It is to me because I want to know,” Will replied. “Why would four female athletes who’ve never been here before suddenly decide to make a contest out of being hunted down by strange men in the woods? And you’re not even an athlete, are you?”
“I compete,” Alexa said defensively.
“In what?”
“Mountain biking,” she said. “Snowboarding. Marathons.”
“So do lots of other people. That doesn’t make them athletes. How did you get included?”
Alexa hesitated. “There’s a group of us,” she said at last. “We decided to do this last year. Not all of us got in.”
“Go on. Are the others all athletes, including the ones who didn’t make the cut?”
“Well, yes.”
“So how did you get included? Are you a trainer of one of them?”
“Sometimes,” Alexa answered.
“That’s not much of an answer,” Will commented. “Why are you here?”
“What?”
“Why are you here, Alexa? Why did you decide to be part of this?”
Alexa hesitated, bit her lip, and sighed.
“Tell me,” Will ordered.
“I wanted to beat them,” she said, her voice barely audible.
“What?”
“I wanted to beat them!” Alexa snapped.
“Well, that sounds like the truth,” Will said. “Why is beating them so important to you?”
“Because I never could,” Alexa answered. “I never could. The best I ever did was to come in fourth. I wasn’t ever strong enough, or fast enough, or skilled enough.”
“Well, you beat them this time,” Will pointed out. “They were all bagged before you were. Hell, you even beat the unofficial record.”
“Unofficial record?” Alexa lifted her head to see if he was serious.
“You’ve heard about Elf-Girl, haven’t you? You must have. She’s a local legend.”
“Yes, I have,” Alexa said.
“Well there’s the official record of when she was taken, and the unofficial one.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The hunter who finally took her had his chip reader crap out, so he couldn’t register her capture until he got her back to a town. That’s the official record. The unofficial record is when he said he caught her. You beat that by a little over an hour.”
“I did?” Alexa asked.
“Yep. So you not only beat your friends, you beat Elf-Girl. Well, unofficially, anyway. That’s pretty good for your first time out. You could call it quits now.”
“Uh…not really,” Alexa said.
“What do you mean?”
“We made kind of a bet.”
“Tell me about this bet.”
Alexa told him. She expected him to laugh, but he didn’t. In fact, he didn’t even say anything. She raised herself up on an elbow to peer at his face. It was hard to be sure in the dark, but he seemed thoughtful.
“You really are a novice at this, aren’t you?” he said as he looked at her.
“Master? You know I am.”
“No, no. Your inexperience goes way deeper than that. Do you know what you just did, Alexa?”
“I answered your question, Master.”
“Yes, and when you did that you just handed yourself over to me on a platter.” Will chuckled. “I’m guessin’ that it would really pinch if you lost the bet, wouldn’t it?”
Alexa gulped. She hadn’t been thinking far enough ahead. “Yes, it would, Master,” she answered. Now what was he going to do? All sorts of painful scenarios suggested themselves to her. And Will was silent, obviously doing some speculative thinking himself.
“Master?” Alexa said nervously. “Will?”
“Hold on,” he replied. “I’m not quite done enjoyin’ this situation.”
Alexa remained propped up on her elbow, watching Will. She didn’t quite understand what he meant, but she felt a bit less anxious. She waited for him to say something more, or to do something.
“You really want to win this thing, don’t you?” Will said at last. “And you really need to win it too, right?”
“Yes. I told you.” Alexa started feeling nervous again. It seemed that the deep end might have monsters lurking down in the darkness, waiting.
“In a way, what you told me doesn’t change anything,” Will said to her. “You can still bail out any time you like. But now I know I can push you harder, and further, than I thought I could at first. I almost feel like I really own you. Does that scare you, Alexa Marx?”
“Yes,” Alexa replied. “A little.”
“Good.” With that, Will turned over onto his side, his back to her. He didn’t say anything more.
Alexa could only lie there and look at him. She was painfully aware that it was just the two of them out here in the woods, and that he was stronger than she was, and that she had just given him something that he could hold over her for as long as this lasted. But she wasn’t truly scared by the prospect. Apprehensive, yes, concerned, yes…but not scared. But she wasn’t so not-scared that she couldn’t use a little reassurance. She cuddled up close behind Will and put her arm around him.
“Will?” she said timidly. “Master?”
“What is it now, Alexa?” He sounded sleepy and annoyed.
“I told you the truth,” she said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I did. Could you please tell me something now?”
Will turned over inside the sleeping bag so that he was facing her. She saw him yawn before he spoke.
“What do you want to know?” he asked.
She had intended to ask him if he really thought she was attractive, but that question sounded not only trite but silly under the circumstances. So she asked him a different question.
“Why were you after Martina?” The moment she asked it, it sounded just as silly as the question she hadn’t asked.
Will laughed. “Alexa, almost
everybody
was after her. She was pretty much the ultimate prize from day one: Tall, strong, blonde and gorgeous. There wasn’t a single hunter who didn’t dream of baggin’ her. But if you want to know my reasons, I’ve had a thing for tall women for a long time.”
“Even when they’re taller than you?”
“Yeah. You want to know why?”
“Yes, Master.”
“And after I’ve told you you’ll let me get to sleep?”
“Yes, Master.”
“All right.” Will got on his back and put his hands behind his head. He looked up at the night sky for a moment, as if gathering his thoughts.
“I was a young guy,” he began. “Just twenty-two, and I’d been runnin’ my own business for two years.”
Alexa started to ask him what that business was and thought better of it. She waited for him to continue.
“It was, and is, my dream job,” Will said. “I’m a wilderness guide. City people come to me and pay me money to take them hiking and teach them a little something about survival skills. I don’t have to fight traffic to get to an office or a factory, I don’t have to punch a time clock, and I don’t have to answer to some idiot in a corner office. Of course, you have to chase after customers. I was havin’ a little trouble along those lines when I got an e-mail from some CEO saying that their company was interested in booking week-long outings for their executives to…shit, he used a lot of big words, but what it boiled down to was that somebody in a corner office thought that this would be a swell way to get their execs to work together. They wanted to ‘evaluate’ me and asked if they could send someone up and have me give them the tour. I said sure. One customer was better than no customers, and maybe something more would come of it.”
He yawned again, stretched, and then pulled Alexa closer. “So two weeks later,” he went on, “Sykes’ floatplane pulls up to my dock early in the mornin’ and
she
steps out of it like she’s getting out of a limo. First thing I noticed was that thick mane of dark brown hair and the dark sunglasses she was wearing. She was dressed for the outdoors, but everything she wore looked brand new and expensive, like she’d ordered it out of a high-end catalog. She saw me standing there, prob’ly with my mouth hangin’ open, smiled, took off her sunglasses, held out her hand and introduced herself. I’d been expectin’ them to send some out-of-shape older guy. I shook her hand and maybe managed to introduce myself without droolin’ on my shoes. She had great eyes, dark and piercing. She let me and Sykes get her luggage off the plane like it was a privilege for us. As Sykes was taxiin’ away from the dock, I told her I had a cabin ready for her and asked if she’d like to settle in and get started next mornin’. She just smiled at me…she had a great smile, too…and said that time was money so why didn’t we just get started now?”
Alexa snuggled closer and murmured softly so that he’d know she was listening.
“She had all the gear she needed, includin’ a little nylon tent. I remember thinkin’ how tall she was, maybe an inch taller than me, and how fit she had to be to carry all her stuff as easy as she did. I had a six-day trek all planned, three days out and three days back by a different route. I started out wonderin’ if she’d be able to last the whole six days, but by sundown I was a lot more interested in figurin’ out how to get into her pants. She had almost twenty years on me, besides that inch, but I didn’t give a damn. I was young, I was horny, and she was right there. But I held back, ‘cause I sure could use the business she could send my way. I didn’t know how to approach her anyway. I tell you, it was frustratin’ as hell.”
Alexa murmured again and rested her head against him. She began stroking the hairs on his chest with her fingertips.
“We were two days out,” Will said. “Pitched camp near this small lake and slept in our separate tents. I got up in the mornin’ and saw that her tent was empty. I called out for her, worried that maybe she’d wandered off on her own and got lost. I didn’t hear an answer, so I started lookin’ around, and then I saw her. She was swimmin’ in the lake, and now she was comin’ back to shore. I guess my jaw hit the ground when I saw her come out of the water stark naked and walk over to me like a cat closin’ in on a mouse. She stood right in front of me, not tryin’ to cover herself at all. ‘That water is cold,’ she says to me, like I couldn’t tell that myself from how her nipples were stickin’ out. ‘It always is,’ I said, tearin’ my eyes away from all the other stuff there was to see and lookin’ into her eyes. I could see she was havin’ fun playin’ with me, but I couldn’t tell if she had anything more in mind. So I didn’t make a move, and after a minute she says to me: ‘I need to be warmed up,’ and brushes past me on the way to her tent. She gets down on her hands and knees to crawl into it and stops to give me a long look back over her shoulder before she does. That’s a picture I’m gonna carry in my mind ‘til I die. Her hair was all wet and tangled, and she had her knees apart so I could get a real good look. She crawled into her tent, but she didn’t zip it up. I did my best not to run over to it, but I do recall I moved at a good brisk walk. I got down on my hands and knees and stuck my head in. Next thing, I feel like a juicy bug that wandered too close to a trapdoor spider’s hole. She grabbed me and dragged me in and started havin’ her way with me.”
Alexa saw him smile at the memory.
“I didn’t put up any kind of a fight,” Will sighed. “Still, it got pretty vigorous. I don’t know how we didn’t bring that little tent down on our heads. She dug her nails into me and rode me hard. When we were done, she just collapsed next to me, breathin’ hard and grinnin’ like she’d just had the time of her life. I think we both fell asleep for a bit. I remember wakin’ up when she started getting’ on top of me again, all huffin’ and puffin’ and hungry. That first time had been great fun, but the scratches were feelin’ kinda painful now, and this time I wanted to be on top. It started out like playful wrestlin’, but she kept fightin’ me harder and harder so after a bit it wasn’t so playful any more, but she never tried to call it quits, just kept strugglin’. I was so worked up by then that I was gonna have her no matter what it took. I think that’s how she wanted it all along. Finally, I was on top of her in that tough little tent, straddlin’ her. I had her hands pinned down over her head, and by now both of us were all hot and sweaty. She was lookin’ up at me with those big, dark eyes, pantin’ through her open mouth when she finally quit strugglin’. I could smell how excited she was, and she could see how excited I was. ‘All right,’ she says between gasps. ‘You’ve got me. You’ve got me. Now what? What do you want to do to me?’ She said that last part like she was darin’ me. I moved up a little on her. I kept her wrists pinned over her head with one hand, took a fistful of her hair in my other hand, pulled her head up and made her suck my dick. She acted like she didn’t like it at all, but she didn’t really try as hard as she could have to make me stop, so I just kept goin’. She shut her eyes and made a noise when I came in her mouth. Almost sounded angry.” He chuckled.
“We wound up stayin’ by that lake until it was time to head back. I tied her up a couple times, and she liked it. A week after she went back to the city I got a nice, fat contract in the mail. I’ve had a thing for tall women ever since. Now go to sleep, Alexa. You’ve got a hard day in front of you tomorrow.”
He turned away from her onto his side and was silent. Alexa had so many questions to ask him. She wanted to know the woman’s name, and if he had seen her again, even if she’d sent any of her friends to him so they could get a taste of his special wilderness survival training too. But she was tired herself now, so she held her tongue, cuddled close against him, and went to sleep.
They were on their way to Smith’s trading post. Alexa hoped that they would get there soon. She followed along behind Will at the end of a chain leash he had clipped to the collar he’d put on her that morning. Her hands were cuffed behind her, and she was naked. Walking through the forest barefoot was even more challenging than doing it with socks on, but Will had taken her boots off of her once they had gotten to the narrow trail they were on now. When she had complained, he had shown her the panties he had ripped off of her yesterday and promised to gag her with them if she didn’t shut up.