"Engine's still hot," Spence muttered. "They know we're close." He glanced at the thick Asian jungle that gave us cover, a little steam rising off the floor in the afternoon heat.
My heart had to be bruising my ribs at the rate it was bouncing against them. I'm a congressional aide, for crying out loud, not an Army ranger. How did I wind up on my belly on the jungle floor? It smelled rich, loamy, actually not all that unpleasant – kind of like tricked-up tropical coffee. But I could hear tiny, crisp things crawling around in the mash looking for someone to bite.
Thank God for Spence. I glanced at him, more from the corner of my eyes than a turn of my head, and saw the lean, fit bush pilot running his thumb lightly across the edge of his upper teeth, his eyes darting around, looking to account for everything. Looking for an out. And then he slowly, silently pulled a pistol from a side holster, handing it to me.
It felt nice. I have fairly small hands, even for a girl, and prefer one of the carry Glocks, a compact 19 or 23, but right now anything that shot lead really really fast felt fine.
"Sig Sauer P228," I whispered. "A nine. I should be able to handle the kick."
"Yeah, that's what I was thinking." He looked me, curious. "Were you in the military?"
I shook my head. "My papi was a cop."
Spence reached to his other side, lifting a sleek, compact machine pistol that looked like a chic little Mitteleuropa art deco version of an Uzi.
"A Skorpion," I said. "Czech, right? Rich man's MAC-10?" I flushed at the look at admiration Spence gave me, thinking about just how damned good looking he was (thinking that not for the first time).
"Where'd your daddy police, Rosales? Beirut?"
"Worse," I said. "South Central LA."
Spence grinned, the pilot’s crows-feet at the corners of his eyes crinkling with a certain craggy appeal, then looked back at the squad. "Okay, here's the drill," he said. "You lay low, I'll lead them off. Somebody from base should check on us when we don’t return. They'll come here in force and they'll come ready to clear the LZ. You stay out of the way until it's clear, then come out."
He started to get up, hesitated, his eyes scanning my face with a sort of one-last-time longing that confirmed what I’d suspected these three days of working with him.
He wanted me.
Under other circumstances, I’d have been thrilled. But we were laying on the moldering jungle floor of the Golden Triangle, that special little spot where the Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam borders wrap together. It’s a warlord’s paradise, guns, girls, gold and dope produced or traded with abandon, and my boss needed some film for a congressional hearing. It was his committee, his platform to rail against this evil, and I was here to get it for him. Have Spence (with all his shady connections) fly me over in his little chopper with the sky cam, get the film – and get the hell out of the Triangle, which was a bit redundant. How do you get the hell out of Hell?
As for Spence, he was as much a creature of this area as the cobra he cooked and ate the first night back at the Thai Army forward base where we hooked up. He was in his forties, been here twenty years plus. This was his home, now. He was going nowhere. Whereas I was a little D.C. career gal. I was going places, certain places, and none had cobras. No way were we hooking up long term, and I just don’t do casual. Not that I haven’t been asked. Plenty.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think I’m stuck up, just realistic, when it comes to my looks. Men have catered to me, fawned over me since I was thirteen. I’m small but proportioned, nice breasts (not huge but think: "cheerleader," which I was, thank you very much), tight waist, and long toned burnished brown legs that in men's eyes seem to take up five feet of my five foot two inch height. I’ve got that Shakira / J-Lo boom-boom Latina ass that both los vatos and the brothers cross town both love, but it's toned and tight enough it has cross appeal for you dough boys, too. The requisite jet black chica hair, full and tangled down to my shoulders and a little below, a few strands over my eyes -- eyes with that subtle almond shape taken from my Aztec ancestors. And then there's those bee-stung lips of mine that seem to draw stares (almost) as much as my ass, especially from you white bread mayo gringos.
But again – I’m not conceited and I’ve never used my looks to get ahead. Not much, anyway. Maybe here, maybe there. Maybe a little. But frankly, these days, it takes out-and-out sleeping with a guy to really get him on your side, and I don’t do that. And if you don’t, you’re out of luck, because there’s plenty of Hilton-brained skanks who will, just for a dinner, let alone a promotion. Hell, just for a drunken thrill. Paris is queen, and her fashion is the law. Whoredom, skankdom – it's D.C., baby. New York. Probably Springtown, too.
Now, look: I had a couple-three boyfriends in college and grad school, and I’m not a prude. I gave them all the affection they could expect. My dear abuelita from Hermosilo would have been scandalized by the things we did, and by the protection I insisted on using. (Catholic, you see.)
But those were boyfriends, each of them sweet and funny and kind and loyal while we were together. I was single again, now, putting in eighteen-hour days for the Congressman. As a good Catholic girl, on a casual basis, I stick to flirting now and then if it helps. Otherwise, I’m all business.
Spence rubbed the top of his head, his sandy hair tight in a G.I. crewcut. Then he gave me a quick thumbs up and a rueful grin as he slipped into the tropical forest round us. I looked back at the little squad of men who had been waiting for us when we came back to the field from searching for the two associates of Spence’s who lived there. Spence had found them out in the jungle. I hadn’t seen them. He said they were dead and I took his word for it. We realized how lucky we had been when we got back and found the place occupied. They couldn’t have missed us by five minutes, that’s how quickly Spence found his buddies.
Now Spence was moving with expert silence. The crackling flames from the burning field’s fuel tanks helped cover any sound he did make. We knew there was trouble when we saw those tanks burning on approach from the air, but we didn’t have enough fuel to get back to base. We were “leap frogging” fuel stations to get into the heart of the Golden Triangle, where the Sap Ruak River gives birth to the Mekong.
When Spence started shooting, I almost jumped out of place. Almost. If I was at six o’clock, he had moved to the nine o-clock position of this rounded clearing. His shots took out three guys immediately, and the others took cover, blasting away until it struck them Spence wasn't firing back. And then, apparently, he had waited in place until they stopped shooting, just so they could hear – and chase after – him crashing through the jungle leaves.
Spence, I decided, had been very supportive indeed. A real feminist hero, advancing my career. Live or die, I’d mention him to the Congressman, maybe get him a citizen’s medal, or at least – definitely -- a plaque. In D.C., we are all about plaques.
Meanwhile, I needed to get the hell of this little Asian Dodge and I didn’t want to wait for a phantom rescue mission. I knew there was a radio in the little shack at the edge of the clearing; Spence had spoken to his buddies by radio a half hour before we arrived. The soldiers had chased off after Spence leaving me a broad path to that radio and an early exit.
I was ruminating on how stupid this warlord’s soldiers where when one of them proved me wrong. He did this by placing the cold steel point of his rifle against the back of my head before I’d even realized he was there. I bumped my head on the barrel and rolled over, crying out as he kicked my nine from my hand. I recognized him as the one who in the clearing had seemed to be giving orders.
He did not look like he’d just won the lotto. He looked like he had just lost three of his best friends, which was a real possibility. I lay there, my heart pounding, pretty sure that saying sorry just wouldn’t cut it.
“Why you film my country?” he asked, pointing with his pouched lips at the helicopter with the camera slung beneath. “Who for you spy?”
“Tourist,” I said. “I have a visa.” I stated to reach for it, but he knocked my arms away with the butt of the rifle. Knocked ‘em away hard, leaving 'em numb. I heard more soldiers rustle up behind him. He stepped back and they looked down at me, leered actually, while chatting among themselves in a couple of distinctly different dialects.
My captor, the officer, kept looking off in the direction that Spence had gone. Worried looks were all he sent that way, and I surmised they hadn’t caught him.
Good.
I was hauled to my feet, my hands were bound behind me with plastic ties, then I was shoved through some thin dirt paths for roughly ten minutes to reach a flat dirt road. I was loaded into the back of a truck where several soldiers sat. They welcomed me aboard with leers while the officer made a call on a very thin, very now sort of mobile phone. He punched out and told me I was going to "command compound."
In the meantime, he assured me, they did not want me to dehydrate. He rummaged around in a tin box on the floor of the truck and came up with a steel flask that had Chinese writing on it. He insisted I drink, so I did. Tinny tasting water that made me a little dizzy, is what it was, but since he held a little pistol on my chest, I drank it all.
I sat back and closed my eyes, trying to go somewhere else – anywhere else – in my head. My little retreat into darkness made the helpless sensation of having my hands tied behind my back all the more acute. I’d had a boyfriend once, I’d let him tie me up a couple times while making love – it was fun just because of how excited he got and the vigorous work out he gave me. A liquid swirl of heat came into my belly when he tied me up; I liked it more than I let on. Losing myself in that memory, I felt the swirl start up again, tickling my belly. I forced myself back to the unpleasant reality in which I sat now.
I was, I supposed, officially a hostage. While I knew Spence was just an independent contractor, everyone who had gotten me to the point of shaking his hand was either Consular Services or CIA. I was reasonably certain that if I could just last out the next few hours, I'd be going home. The Congressman had influence from D.C. to Pluto.
I would be all right.
Seriously.
That’s what I kept telling myself.
Apart from the hardware, it looked like a small but high-tech corporate office campus, roofs bristling with dishes, antennae and arrays. Security cameras were everywhere. Armed, uniformed soldiers were everywhere but they kept to their stations, quiet and disciplined. The little staging camp outside Kamphaeng Phet where I'd been choppered from Bangkok had nothing on this place at all, K-Phet's CIA & NSA assets notwithstanding.
Somehow this frightened me much more than if I’d wound up in a rowdy pirate’s cove. Still, I was rather calm, and wondered if the water I'd been given by at the clearing had contained a bit of alcohol or something, as I also felt slightly numbed since drinking it.
We went inside one of the larger buildings, entering beneath a sign that said in several languages, including English: “Police.” The wooden floor was smooth to my bare feet. The soldiers had taken my boots and socks off on the way over with grins all around and the taunting admonition: "No running!" I had the impression they thought this would inhibit me in some way, but I grew up in a modest middle class Angelino Latino neighborhood that was like a little village, where all us kids ran barefoot from house to house all day long, mock stern abuelas shushing us.
Now I was told to sit on a plain wooden chair in a very barren room whose only other contents were a couple of other chairs and a smashed-up Gameboy on the floor. I was pretty sure this was not the greeting room for honored guests, especially after they strapped a heavy leather collar around my throat. Not that I'd worn one before, but the collar seemed thick, laden with things sewn into it. I was relieved to sit, at least. Since drinking that tin-tasting water in the truck, my mind had been drifting a bit dizzy, a bit dreamy.
All sorts of horrible movie images of interrogation flashed through my mind. In between the imagined crack of rubber hoses and sickly sweet sizzle of electro-shock, I was trying to figure out how to lie.
Seriously.
Like the song says, it don't come easy. Not to me. I am a cop's daughter from a strict Mexican family, a good Catholic school girl who grew up believing in following the rules, telling the truth and obeying authority above all.
I know, I know; what the hell was I doing in politics? The truth is I thought America was too important to leave to the crooks. I thought good people could make a difference. That’s why I joined my Congressman’s staff – he was a rock-ribbed conservative, an elder in his church, a leader of his party and scion of the Southern Baptist Convention. Even if he seemed a bit uncomfortable with Catholics, he was absolutely hell on sinners. He was against crime, corruption, and Cadillac liberals. Unlike socialists, Democrats, movie stars and other drug addicts, he truly loved freedom. True freedom. He understood what freedom truly was -- the right to behave the way you're supposed to behave. No more; no less.
It was why I was willing to climb into a little helicopter, fly over an Asian jungle and try to get him information he could use against dope peddlers and skin merchants. He was for the truth, and I was there to get it for him, so that he could fight against those who hated freedom. People like his Democratic opponent in the current election -- a man funded, we believed, in part by the drug-runners who originated in this place.
But now I was their captive, and thus came the paradox. I needed to lie to protect good people. My boss had said he had inside sources placed with the local warlords. I didn’t want those people hurt, which they might be if I said anything to tip off that an investigation was underway. And it occurred to me, no-one had thought to school me a bit on how to do that, how to get through interrogation without giving up too much. My friends in the State Department got some hostage training to be diplomats. Couldn't someone have schooled me a bit for this job?
Just a little bit?
And for whatever reason, right now obeying authority -- any authority -- seemed especially compelling. Fish out of water, I told myself. Reaching for new rules with the old ones gone. Stay focused, I thought, but my thoughts seemed to drag up through mud.
I had fifty different terrifying notions of who might enter the room next, and not one of them came close to the scholarly young Anglo who did. Not that he was milquetoast. He was buff with a rock edged jaw. But he wore wire frame glasses like that Beatle that was killed back before I was born. Although they hadn't carried a good CZ knock-off like the Israeli forty mill he had strapped to his thigh, nor the Russian Bizon sub he slung off his shoulder and lowered carefully to the floor -- well, apart from those details, he might have been matriculating in the English department with a thesis on Lord Byron. He had a thoughtful expression as he began flipping through the pages in a manila file, and he reminded me of fellow grad students I’d known at Stanford.
The three guys with AK-47s who filed in behind him, however, were from central casting, whistled up for one of the 70’s chicks-in-chains Third World prison flicks. Bad-ass, ill-tempered, and mean-spirited toughs in fatigues who sent my stomach twisting in on itself as they eyed my body up and down with such intensity I wondered if there was a test later.
“I’m Special Agent Roger Stephens,” the scholar said, closing the file and staring hard into my eyes. "I’m an investigator for the Republic of Sop Ruak. I'm going to ask you a few questions. You will want to tell the truth. For each lie, there will be consequences."
“What’s Sop Ruak?” I blurted out, voice shaking.
He didn't answer immediately, looking me over starting at my bare feet on up to my tousled black hair, his eyes warming with each inch. “We are a sovereign national state centered around the confluence of the Sop Ruak and Mekong rivers.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“Hardly surprising. You're an American. The United Nations refuses to recognize us. Your national media refuses to cover us. Your nation says we don't exist. We occupy a key niche in the world economy, but no one in the world likes to acknowledge that. But as you’re learning, that doesn’t mean we don’t exist.” He drew a chair to a point directly in front of me and sat down. “And we do intend to defend our sovereignty from espionage.”
Espionage? I was the good guy here! I was the investigator. I was investigating him! "This is ridiculous. You're saying you run the Triangle? This -- Sap Rock?"
"Sop Ruak. And yes, this is our sovereign territory."
"I see. So, I guess, what? The Kuomintang is just gone? SUA -- they got nothing to say about it?"
He shrugged. "We've reached a power share agreement with both the Nationalist Chinese and with the Shan Burmese."
"We? You sound American."
"Don't be insulting," Stephens smiled. “I'm Canadian. I immigrated two years ago to the Republic of Sop Ruak.”
“So from a country that barely exists,” I said. "You've gone to one that doesn't exist at all."
“You’re going to find we’re very real, indeed.” He leaned forward, his eyes like lasers. He had an air of authority to him so strong it seemed to succeed out of its own assumption of power. “What’s your name?”
I hesitated – but what could that hurt? “Anita.” His stare kept burning until I added. “Anita Rosales.”
He smiled, nodding. “Good girl,” he purred. “Very good.”
My collar buzzed pleasantly, and after a quick but relatively painless prick of my neck beneath it I sensed a little tide of endorphins surfing through my blood. Mild, but sweet; nice. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad, after all.
He went on in the same honeyed voice. “And who sent you?”
“Sent me?” I tried a sincere frown. “I’m just a tourist.”
His smile twitched. “And what sights did you hope see here in Sop Ruak?”
“I … well, the tropical forests. I have a deep commitment to environmentalism and –“
What stopped me was not the expression on Stephens’s face, which didn’t change, but the agonizing bolt of electro-shock that spiked from the collar down my spine and on down into the floor. I arched in the chair and then fell back, gasping for breath, sweat broken out fresh on my brow. He leaned forward, patting my forehead with a handkerchief in his left hand.
“Bastard!” I spat at him. He leaned back, holding up a little remote in his right hand.
“I told you, lies have consequences,” he said.
“I’m not lying!”
“Not well, no,” he chuckled. “Let’s try again. Why are you spying on my country?”
“I told you. I’m just a tourist.”
Another searing white blast, harder and longer, made me scream and left me quivering, a tear running down my check, a bead of sweat drawing a line down my spine. I drew a rattling breath and exhaled, “Pleeease ….”
“Yes,” he said. “Please. Please stop lying. I am not a sadist. I don’t enjoy hurting anyone. But I have a job to do, and part of it involves getting the truth from you. And I don’t understand why you would keep lying, anyway. I can tell you’re a good girl, someone for whom lying is hard. Lying to the police authorities of my country should be much more difficult for you – if you are the sort of woman I think you are.”
His face was neutral but it was obvious the three thugs standing around him were enjoying this greatly. I couldn't stop trying to twist the pain and the fog of dope out of my body, and Stephens' eyes roamed up and down my curves.
Stephens stood and bent over me, his fingers lightly stroking my hair where sweat matted it against my eyebrows. “There are alternatives, though,” he said. “Consequences that don’t involve pain. That help you correct your behavior in a more indirect way. Wouldn't you prefer that?” He rubbed the back of his fingers against my full lips.
“Sure,” I snapped back, his fingers flying away. “Why not?”
“I’d prefer you just stop lying,” he said, “but we’ll adjust the consequences as you request. So tell me, who were you to report to when you got done photographing our country from the sky?”
"No one." I swallowed hard, closed my eyes, even as a voice in my head told me just how much a liar that made me appear. But then, it was the truth: I was a liar, right now. “No one. I’m just a tourist.”
I braced myself for a shock that didn’t come, and my muscles shook a bit as I relaxed, eyes open and wide, staring at him.
“Stand up,” he said, quiet and firm.
The see-saw went on: this could hurt, but how could that? That could hurt, but this ... what could it hurt?
I stood up and he smiled again. “Good girl. But you’re still lying. You know lying is a sin. And in this Republic, it is also a crime, when you lie to a state’s investigator. Consequences?” He paused for effect. “Take off your shirt.”
Take off my shirt? Right here? In a bare room surrounded by three leering strangers and a guy whose clinical calm was unnerving?
"You are proving to be a liar, and thus you must provide utility to our humble Republic in some other way than the truth," Stephens said. "I'd say entertainment is the next most logical slot. Entertainment of one type or another." He raised his little remote and wagged it in the air, his lips lined tight. The three goons moved a bit closer, the fat one licking his fat little Mao Tse Tung lips, the creep.
Creep with an AK-47. One of three in the room. A lurch of belated pleasure from the drug and auquent waft of fog in my brain drained any other resistance.
“Damn you,” I muttered, unbuttoning the shirt as quickly as I could. No way I was turning this into a strip tease. I yanked it off and tossed it to the floor, noticing how my creamed coffee skin contrasted against the sensible white bra I’d put on that morning. I realized we were now probably heading into the place this “interview” was going all the time. Being a female captive, helpless in the hands of an enemy – I had little doubt what that might mean. And considering I was a hot little twenty-four year old at the mercy of mercenaries left no doubt.
I stood trembling in the room, suddenly a little bit cold, very much scared and more than a little bit angry, the three yokels with AKs shuffling their boots and all but bursting into song. These dirty little backwater criminals had no right to do this to me. I was an aide to a respected Congressman, a leader on the national American scene!
“Your pants,” Stephens murmured. I gave him a fuck-you glance off his forehead, noting as I did that a glaze had come over his eyes. Bastard was no different than any of the three guards, from any man, I suppose. Having this sort of power over a beautiful woman, using it so cool and casual like, was a major shot of aphrodisiacs straight into the loins, where all his thinking was now likely being done. So much for the “scholar.”
“Go to hell,” I said to the floor.
I heard him flip a switch and braced myself – but it wasn’t a shock. It was that endorphin drip, this time much stronger. It even felt thicker in my blood, and my head began to sway a bit. My God, it felt good, and this time the feeling lingered. No -- grew. Licked up from my belly, over my ribs, a hot sticky sap that numbed my nerves.
“That was for obeying,” he said, “with the shirt. Now – the pants, Anita.”
I’m not sure why I reached languidly down to open and then drop my cargo pants into a bundle around my feet. My eyes were half-closed, and with an alacrity so swift it made my stomach toss a bit, I felt like I dropped in a dream. The endorphin drip, I thought. Holy hell, it felt good. And another little gush came from my collar just then, a syrup of pleasure sliding down slowly.
“Very … very good,” Stephens said. I opened my eyes fully, fought my brain back into go-mode, and realized I had been stroking my flat belly up to my breasts and back down again to the top of my plain white panties.
“What the fuck is in that drip you keep shooting into me?” The words echoed hard in my ears.
“It’s to help you,” he smiled. “Help you be the good little obedient girl you really are.” His words echoed, too, but from a foggy distance.
I sat slowly down in my chair, slumped back, my bare legs held close together. Sitting seemed to help my head stop spinning, and now modesty returned with a burnt-rose blush that flashed from my throat to my toes. “I want my clothes back,” I said. “And then I want to see the American ambassador.”
The guards laughed while Stephens gave me an amused look.
“You’re supposed to be a real country? Then act like it. I am an American citizen you have detained and I want to see the ambassador.”
“I told you, your country does not recognize us. There is no ambassador. And you’re not just an innocent detainee. You’re a spy. A terrorist. My country’s intelligence arm having made that assessment, your own country has established its opinions on the legalities involved. The rules of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo apply.”
“Shock me, strip me, humiliate me – whatever. At the end of it all, you’ll have a tortured American tourist on your hands, and hell to pay.”
His scorn waved over me like a blast of heat. “I very much doubt anyone will even note your absence.”
That did it. Anger forced me to focus enough to shout. “Look, you jerk! People are going to come looking for me. People with a lot more firepower than your little tin pot, jackass, would-be government will ever have.”
His eyes said: checkmate.
“I'll consider that a confession,” he said.
“Consider whatever you want. For me, this interview is over. You’re learning nothing from me.”
"Ms. Rosales, this little interview was for your education, not ours. Consider it the start of your training." He had picked up that manila folder with the file inside.
"Training?"
He looked inside the file. “Anna Maria Rosales Monterey," he said. "Born and raised, Los Angeles, California. Master's degree in history with honors from Stanford, on a full scholarship. Currently on the staff of a powerful Congressman being groomed for a run at the White House next time around, or perhaps the time after. Impressive, chica. Not bad for a policeman's daughter from east L.A."
He looked up. “I have, here, your California driver’s license number. Social security number. Bank account numbers. In case you’ve forgotten them.” He handed me a single sheet from the file. It had all that information and plenty more besides. The addresses of siblings, for example – work and home. The point was clear: this people knew I was coming. And they were prepared. A chill shot through me when I saw the address of my grandmother, my dear abuelita. Someone had actually gone to that much trouble, to track down the address of a diminutive little Mexican grandmother living in the provinces.
They didn't want the information so they could send flowers, I was sure.
I dropped the page, feeling like the entire world had been pulled out from under me like a rug, only there was no floor to fall on, just stark empty terror. I stared down where the sheet had indeed hit a floor, focusing on that as a little concrete fact to hang on to.
“This isn't the work of a tin pot drug lord,” I whispered. "Who are you people?"
He took his seat opposite me again. “You came here to learn that and report back to your Congressman, yes? I am sure he appreciates having such a dedicated and … lovely … assistant. You will learn what you want to know in ways much more real and details greater than you could have gotten from your little sky cam.” He was tickling little spurts of that endorphin drip into me, like soft caresses, not on my skin but on my brain, then squeezing my heart from the inside, controlling the thump thump thump.
“And then you can report to your Congressman,” he went on. “You see, Ms. Rosales, I will help you do your job dutifully and much more completely than you could have had we not … met.”
“Had I not been captured, you mean.”
“Apprehended,” he corrected me.
The drip was accumulating in my system, and for the first time, I realized the sensation of pleasure in my belly was matched by a itchy cry for attention from other parts of me. The “fun parts” as an old boyfriend once said. I kept my hands balled up in fists, aware that my breasts were swelling slightly, their tips peaking. I was glad the plain “battle ax” bra I wore was too thick to betray that.
“The dope,” I said. “You can’t … you can not do this to me.”
“I can do anything I want,” he said. “You are the spy, and the liar, and the criminal, here in this Republic. You see, we are the world’s first, honest narcostate. We don’t lie. We say who we are and how we make our money. And we offer other products, as well.”
“What else?”
Silence, then: “Take off the rest of your clothes.”
I shook my head, a line of sweat plastering my bangs to my forehead.
"Or," he sighed, "you could simply join us."
"Excuse me?"
"I read your thesis, on the munitions trade and its role in the inter-war politics of East Asia, in the 1930s. You've got a very good grasp on the kinds of things we do here. If you'd submit to some significant psychological 'surgery,' detailing out that bourgeois conscience of yours, you could be an excellent associate."
"Never."
"Of course, not. And yet, with that very bourgeois guidance system in your head, you do want to please me,” he said. “I'm in charge. Every molecule of your body has been trained to obey the one in charge. I know that deep down, you’re a good girl. You understand there is a natural order. There are natural laws. There are rules established that must be followed, authorities that must be obeyed, or all is chaos.”
I heard my voice say, “Yes ….”
"Yes! You see, my drugs and my conditioning, they can not make you what you can not be, but they can help you become one of the possibilities you have kept in the shadows of fantasy and fear," he smiled.
"Are you a new country?" I asked. "Or a league of pop psychologists?"
“My country believes foremost in order, and we have allies all across the globe, preparing to take their rightful place in re-establishing good order after the inevitable collapse of the current regimes. We are the first nation state of a new world order.”
“Why,” I licked my lips, which suddenly seemed parched. “Why tell me?”
“You are intelligent,” he said. “Educated. You represent an interesting experiment for me. And to have you fully aware of the circumstances will comport with the experiment.”
“Experiment?” A low throb was starting in between my hips, his dope kicking in on lower and lower levels, literally and psychologically.
“In submission, my dear. Village girls and street urchins are one thing we have in abundance. But as our plans progress, it will be increasingly important to know how to deal with women of your strengths. And I dare say, we could rapidly develop a specialized market in that right now which would be most profitable. But I need a subject.”
He talked more, droning odd chains of numbers and mashed up words. His voice turned into my head, presumably into my subconscious. His voice became a low drone and my head began running at a low hum, at a level I associated with that weird sleep that you sleep when totally exhausted, the kind that is always arriving but never really comes.
He snapped his fingers, and I fell into the room mentally, head clear and eyes dry. Suddenly, I missed the numbing comfort of the fog. Every nerve in my body was achingly taut in the silence of that bare room.
“Now, finish for us, my dear,” he said. "Strip yourself naked."
The drip; the fear; the sense of having been completely cut off from my own world with nothing but his words to guide me; all kinds of things drove me to my feet. I unclipped my bra even though I was shaking my head, full of tumbling numbers and whispers. I hated him, and I despised his three goons. But I felt more bound than I had when they’d tied my hands behind my back, and that thought in turn stirred up that hot liquid swirl in my tummy. My nipples began to swell, and this drew Stephens out of his chair to stand and flip them with his thumbs. I moaned, and a hot blush of shame coated me fast as a flame on gasoline. He squeezed and I rubbed my legs together, desperate to keep the oil that suddenly leaked there a secret.
"Most responsive," he said, "and wonderfully submitted, eh?" That drew laughs from the other three, but thankfully, they didn't step closer. Stephens began to massage my breasts with the back of his hands, the knuckles rolling and kneading at my firm, taut flesh, squeezing a nipple now and then between two knuckles.
"Just one thing," he murmured. "The one thing we don't know. Why, exactly, ARE you here? Why have we drawn your congressman's eye?" He nuzzled my neck, smelling -- surprisingly -- wonderful, the heat from his throat mixing with the little hot gasps I gave as he pinched a nipple between two knuckles, once, twice, and then again harder.
Could the "why" really betray anyone? I stalled for time, trying to think that one through the vines of pleasure, anger, flame and sticky hot oil tangled through my entire body, focused not so much on my head anymore as my quivering thighs, where his fingers trailed up and down, down and ... up. Not quite there, but near enough as to send a wave up my belly. Damn it, and damn me! I had never been this hot, at least not without getting fucked and loving it, and the notion that this notion was in motion in my head under these capital "B" Bizarre Circumstances infuriated me almost as much as it scared me shitless.
“Is this how your beloved country does interrogations?” I muttered. Temper flared in my head, anger at my helplessness masquerading as willful submission. This smug criminal was using me as his little plaything, obviously getting off on it, and I couldn’t stop it. Worse, I couldn’t even stop reacting to it, stop the dampness from gathering in my panties. His free hand now roamed up and down my rib cage, every down a little lower, squeezing and obviously enjoying the tight curve at my hip and then the firm ass below. I was a plaything playing literally into his hands.
“Humiliation is a key technique for securing submission,” he said. “And I have to think that a beautiful young woman like yourself, a political player, has to find this … distressing, at least. Being reduced to a toy for the people you came here to harm. Hating it, resenting it – the drip allows you to keep that much autonomy. But not enough to keep yourself from obeying us – and enjoying it on an animal level.”
I felt cold steel on my bare thigh -- the back of a combat knife. A chill trailed up, and then the blade slid on its side against my hip, under my panties. Stephens gave it a quick snap! and the left side of my panties ripped loose.
"I'm glad you'd rather not join us," he whispered, lips brushing the lashes of my closed eyes, his tongue tickling where my upper teeth held my lower lip back. His roving hand took hold of the panties by the back and ripped them off completely. "You've chosen Fate Number Two, one we'll both enjoy a great deal more, whether you like it or not. But first, I have to persuade you to tell me that little thing, remember? Why it is your Congressman is interested in us? Think on it a moment, and then let me in on the big secret."
It was not thought he stimulated, though. His palm cupped my sex, pumping it gently, squeezing that lemon until the juice ran down my leg. I'd heard that in a half dozen blues tunes ... and as my mind drifted just a bit off on that note, I caught one rational thought flitting through my mind like a leaflet in the wind. I turned it in my mind's eye and saw the face of the man I'd been trying to remember.
Spence.
I could stall with that little bit of information they wanted. Stall ... as long as I could. Give Spence time to -- woah!
I had buckled over, squirming now, my lips pressed tight, my chest balled up, holding in a moan and Stephens worked me good, slow and hard-soft-soft-hard. I bent over his hand farther, my face at his waist, ignoring the hot beaming smirks I sensed from all four faces around me, my own hands gripping his wrist as his palm pulped me, wet, mushy, slow, then hard, and wetter. Shameful. Shameful! And --
God-damn! I wanted to come. I cut lose the imaginary leaflet, let it twitter through the wind and into the fire burning me up from the middle out.
"No," he said, pulling back quickly.
"Noooo!" I crumpled to my knees in front of him, then knelt there, naked, sweating, panting. "Goddamn you," I rasped. Chill ran through the sweat coating my body, and I looked up at my gloating interrogator. "That dope's good," I said, my voice shaking. "Makes me do things ... feel things I wouldn't if ...."
"It lets you feel things you fear," he replied, voice infuriatingly calm. "And it is easing you into a new life. Now -- come with me."
I shook my head.
"Come on," he said, voice casual, but the command seemed to spike through my will. I stood unsteady on my feet. He led me out followed by Larry, Curly and Mao. I wasn't crazy about stepping into a public passageway while naked, but between three Kalashnikovs at my back and a head full of Stephens' snow job my bare feet padded obediently along. Outside, I found yet another grinning soldier waiting.
The guy who had caught me. The guy's whose friends had died on my behalf.
"So," he said. "You've chosen the slave's path?"
Flaming with humiliation, I tried to fold my naked body in on itself, just fold myself right up into a three inch square bit of non-descript flesh. Stephens yanked hard on my arm, forcing me to stand straight, albeit with one arm across my nipples and the other arm trailed down my belly to cup my sex with a palm.
Stephens stared down at the little officer with a mixture of amusement and distaste. "Not just yet, Mr. Chuang," he said. "And I'll be handling this account personally, in any event." He took my arm and started to pull me past the soldier, but the latter stuck a fist against his chest.
"She kill three of my men," Chuang said. "One, my brother. I will want my piece."
"And you'll have it, if you're a good boy," Stephens told him. "Now I've got business to attend to."
He took me into another cell, this one padded, as I suppose they had taken into account the very real possibility that I'd lose my mind soon. I had been stripped naked, hypno-doped, and seriously groped, none of which I'd particularly enjoyed – and yet, my body was still having a blast. Like that chica in "Hot Blooded," you could check it and see: I had a fever of a hundred and three. Face it, baby; you can't do more than that. When Stephens snapped the door shut, the light switched to a witchy moon ultra-violet fog.
Larry, Curly and Mao were putting leather cuffs on my wrists. They latched them high above my head to a chain depending from a ring hanging from a pulley in the ceiling, which the boys obligingly began to raise higher. The boys were in over-salivation mood, yellow drool all over their chin as they drew me up on to my tip toes in this new cell, my brown body swaying like a taut satin void in the blued red haze. Each took his time surveying my curves and sampling the wares, their calloused hands pressing and swirling until it felt like someone had run sandpaper over my hips, tits and -- down there.
Yet for all the "tender romance" they brought to the moment, I was wet -- down there.
I couldn't help it. My body had turned into one big juiced up swollen nipple, and every poke, prod or (God help me, Stephen now and then threw in a) caress sweated a wave of pink hot blush and puckered flesh behind it.
Don't think I was having fun. The ick factor had mushroomed through the roof into a cloud of pure yuck. The fact that my body was in heat and taking that lower half of the brain with it only made things worse. I hated myself almost as much as I hated them.
"Is this where you whip me?" I said, but the scornful courage I'd tried to throw into my voice dried up and came out vapor.
"Some of our clients find whipping amusing," Stephens said. "I don't. A woman twisting in pain is a sickening sight. A woman writhing in passion, on the other hand ...." He cupped my breast with his palm, working the nipple, smiling as my stomach quivered and I gulped air.
"Don't flatter yourself, buddy," I rasped. "This is dope, not passion."
"Chemistry is as chemistry does." His palm flattened, ran down my rib cage, firm, warm, cupping here and there, a gentle squeeze that whirled pleasure around my waist to settle in my hips. My squirming hips – which his hands now gripped, thumbs pressing in slightly just below my belly. "Who was it that flew you here? What's his name?"
From speakers tucked in the walls, a deep voice perfect for luxury car commercials calmly recited words for my benefit, the same words ("obey, slave girl") reapted in various number with a smooth Corinthian leather sway. I focused on the pattern, something familiar tingling there, focused harder, trying to keep some logic in the middle of the gooey puddle in my head that matched the slick, sticky flow down my thighs. Something about the sequence --
Got it!
The words were being spoken in a particular sequence, specifically a Fibonacci sequence. The Fibonacci sequence builds each number by the sum of the two proceeding numbers: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and so on.
It's much more than a parlor trick; it seems to be encoded into our reality matrix and has amazing elasticity in application. There's a form of technical analysis of stocks, for instance, that relies in part on reviewing trends against Fibonacci patterns. It has a mathematical relationship with the "golden ratio" that defines the exact measure of aesthetic beauty in a building, in music, or in a person's face. It's been attributed to the exteriors of the Great Pyramid of Giza. From that perspective, I felt a little bit honored by this attention. I was, I realized, being turned into a work of submissive art.
I forced my eyes as open as they'd go, which was just enough to show the room a half-lidded slut, her thighs slip-sliding away. I looked around wildly, and noted that the three stooges leaning against the wall, their own eyes heavy-lidded.
"Obey slave obey slave slave girl girl girl obey obey obey obey obey slave slave slave slave slave slave slave slave girl girl girl" -- you get the idea? Way I remembered it, the sequence ran up to twenty eight thousand and change, so I was pleased that they didn't run full sequence. I suspect that "slave" or "obey" said twenty eight thousand times might have gone from hypnotic to silly and on into liberating laughability. Thirty four iterations of "slave" and then the thing reversed on itself, marching back down the sequence and then up again like a flat iron mobius strip pounding on my brain.
Well -- no. My brain was already mashed. This beat was driving that mash into my soul where starched lust waxed it into a warped form of will. A pounding will to serve sexually, and revel in sexual service. All around me, the world warped in beat with my will.
No doubt the drugs helped in that regard, as did the . I was at a loss to explain the walls, otherwise, because the walls were moving. Writhing might be a better way of putting it. Fucking would be more precise. With me in the middle of the mash. A hot, liquid stew and I was the slowly broiling meat.
The ceiling and the floor were making eyes at each other as well. The entire room was living sex, shadows twisting with the light. Ambient music wafted down from above -- female moans, male laughter amid chains clinking together and the occasional snap of a whip. Added to the very real wrap of leather cuffs around my wrists, the chain intertwined in my fingers, it made the moans in my throat seem familiar, reminded me of those two evenings when I let Billy tie me up, back in college.
The incantation took on a baroque quality, the sequence running from different points in different voices, like a tantric sing-along at a camping trip for sexually wired zombie monks and monkettes. The male voice was joined by a female voice, then another, and while the guy chanted "obey obey obey obey obey" the other was chanting "slave slave slave" and her little friend whispered "girl" over and over, and I was turning in the rhythm, turning, pressing myself against the pair of arms that wrapped around me.
Stephens' arms; he leaned down and took a deep, hard kiss. "Why'd you come here?" he said. "Why'd your boss send you?"
From some little pocket wrinkled in my soul, I found just enough strength to push back. "You're Canadian," I said. "How can you work for these barbarians?"
"Their culture was literate when yours, and mine, was scratching at bricks with sticks," he said. "My work for them is important."
"So what's this, fringe benefits?" I ground my teeth. "No wonder you signed up."
"Just doing my duty."
"This is duty? Punishment must really be hell."
"Let me show you," he leaned into me, smelling delicious, whispering, "Twenty one ... thirteen .. eight .. five .. five ... eight .. thirteen ...."
And he probably said twenty-one. All I heard was his voice gear up, and then I tumbled head-long into a splash of cool pleasure, instantly heated, that turned to sweet steam around me. I was moaning, laughing, crying – I was fucking the air around me while the bastard stood back, arms folded, smiling.
"Please," I grunted. "For the love of God!"
He stepped up just to trace a fingertip from one tweaked nipple down to my clit, which he tickled before moving back.
"Oh, God, please!" I begged. "For God's sake, Stephens, let me go."
He watched me twist in on myself, desperately trying to find some way of punching the right buttons down there, but in the end, just putting on a dance for him that he seemed to really enjoy.
"Why did your boss send you?"
I bit my lower lip, eyes flooding, and shook my head, all the while my body twisting in place, glistening now with a thin, cold sheen of sweat. The effect of shaking my head seemed to cause a flare of heat in my belly, and I bent down as far as I could, the chains at my wrists rattling together.
"Who flew you in here? What's his name?"
I shook my head again, and this time the flame down below almost exploded. Oh … my … God, I thought. Awful enough to writhe naked in front of four calm clothed men, worn enemies enjoying both my struggle and my beauty. But now, to come in front of them? Let them watch me thrash about in orgasm, for their puerile pleasure? Surely I could be spared that, I prayed.
Stephens sidled up to me again, his fist in my thick hair, pulling my head back as he stared down into my eyes. "You don't know you said that out loud, do you? I'm sorry, bonita, but right now, I am your god."
He kissed me hard, then harder, and pinched a nipple blue, until I got the point and kissed him back. At first, there was nothing in my reply but submission, which pleased him. And then the tide in my belly whipped up a froth and I was kissing him back, kissing him wildly, our tongues twisting against each other.
I felt the slightest pin prick in my arm.
A brightly colored bird swallowed my thoughts of freedom and fluttered in front of my face. In the place of all other thought was a vision that led all feeling into raw lust. A horny little lizard crawled from the bottom of my brain, perched on my nose (it tickled, and smelled like sex), then ate the bird alive -- everything but the wings, which it mounted on itself. It turned in the air, leering at me, and I realized it was male. Very male. Hung like a T Rex and flying at full mast.
All this and something was tearing at my ears.
The top of my brain gave birth to a monkey that scampered down my limp form and bowed in submission position, ass in the air, frightened female eyes limpid and gazing over her shoulders.
The something at my ears got worse, more ragged, and then broke through.
I was screaming.
Darkness fell, silence, and then I was a void.
I opened my eyes.
I was lying on the matted floor, the cuffs gone, collar on. I was still naked. And sticky. Down there. Moonlight poured through a high window.
Dried sweat crusted up when I bent my neck, trying to loosen the muscle knots, the edge of the heavy leather collar scratching at my chin. Stephens was sitting beside me, holding the water bottle, his grin glowing with the moon like a light I wanted to punch out.
"You're interesting," he said.
I sat up, covering my breasts with both arms, fingers splayed wide.
"I'm fascinated by your mind," he went on.
"That wasn't what you were groping."
"True," he said. "but it is what I was actually playing with."
I stared at him but he had nothing to add. "If that's your idea of foreplay," I said, "I can see why you need dope to get laid."
"No one got laid. That was an interrogation."
I snorted. "Got a lot of info, didn't you."
He looked puzzled. "You don't remember?"
I shook my head, which mixed a dirty water swirl in my brain -- the new stuff, the drink I just add, must have been kicking in.
"You broke," he said.
"No," I whispered. "No!"
"A thousand times no?" he smirked. "Afraid so, my little windup doll." He leaned forward. "You are interesting, though."
I leaned back, closed my eyes, tried to get my head steady. "Interesting," I muttered. "Seems to be the word of the day."
"The numerical sequencing, for instance," he said. "You snapped into it so quickly. And the phrase that was so clear to you -- 'obey, slave girl.' It's as if your absolutely perfect material for my program."
"Your speakers were pretty loud. The words were hard to miss."
"The speakers didn't say that. Your head did."
"Excuse me?"
"Well, think about it. We train all kinds of languages here, but only a few girls whose primary language is English. No, what you heard was a tonal array carefully calculated to affect your subconscious in particular ways. Which, I must say, you grasped readily."
"The background sounds certainly helped!" I snapped.
"The background was Symphonie Fantastique," he said. "Hector Berlioz. What you made of it was the result of how you processed the tonal array of psychological manipulation."
"Berlioz," I grunted.
"What?"
"Oh, just --- figures, that's all. God only knows what old Hector got up to in his spare time. The stories about his involvement in the Parisian occult scene were legion."
The bastard actually smiled at me like I was a prize pet. "You are all over this, coming and going. You could have been somebody around here, instead of a fuck toy, which is what you’ll be turned into. It's a shame you've taken the road you've taken."
"Said the butcher to the lamb."
He laughed, infuriating me by laughing as if I honestly meant to amuse him, his witty little concubine.
"This is MK-ULTRA shit, is that what we've got going on here?" I pressed. "If I recall my history right, when the kitchen got too hot in D.C., the CIA moved MK-ULTRA experiments up to Canada. Is that where you got onto the mind control gravy train?"
He looked impressed. "My father," he said quietly, "was a great man. Had so-called democracies implemented his technology back in the last century, we'd not have had all the troubles we've had since then."
"Mind control," I dripped out the sarcasm, "would produce oil?"
"Yes, it does, in a sense," he replied, very deliberately looking at the sticky smears atop my thighs. "But what I had in mind was social order."
"You're ridiculous," I muttered. "You're working for tin pot warlords. You want to kidnap women, strip us and fuck us -- just say that. Just be what you are, instead of pretending your little narcocracy is some sort of noble rogue state."
He sighed, shaking his head slowly. "I haven't fucked you," he said. "Yet."
"Depends on what you call 'fucked', I'd say."
He gave me a dopey smile, infuriatingly innocent, as if this was a normal sort of situation and conversation. But then I supposed it was, for him.
"I didn't break," I said. "I just passed out."
"Spence."
A chill shot down my back.
"What?"
"The guy who flew you here was an American named Spence. You hooked up with him through U.S. government contacts. He does contract work here for them. We had you look at about a dozen photographs of the local bush pilots. You picked him out instantly." He shrugged. "Our patrols should have him in hand soon enough. Especially if he tries to make it back to his little hut, down there outside Kamphaeng Phet."
I opened my mouth, felt it shake, and closed it again, eyes filling with sandy frustration-anger-"damn you!" tears.
"You broke," he said quietly. "On the bright side – for you – I am convinced now that it's pure coincidence you've shown up just now. Others suspected it was tied to a deal we're doing in the next few days. But you seem to have no clue about that."
"Goody," I croaked.
"Goody, indeed. If you'd been assessed otherwise, we'd have moved on to more intensive measures. Chemicals that would turn your mind to mush. We'd have gotten the truth but you'd be a vegetable, useless to us, buried out in the jungle."
"So now I go to Disneyland instead?"
He laughed. "For what it's worth, you were a tougher break than I've handled for some time. Expected, of course. Highly educated, arrogant American bitch like yourself ...." Face gone somber, he went on, "You have choices, though. You've got a lot of skills I'd found useful here, quite apart from what you'll learn to do with that delicious little body of yours."
He drank me in, head to toe, and opened his mouth but a tweet-tweetle sound cut him off. He yanked a cell phone from his shirt pocket and had a brief, hushed exchange before clapping it shut. "My apologies, dear lady," he said. "I'll have to step out for now. Take the time to rest. I plan on keeping you up all night."
"Where are you going?" I blurted out.
"Spence," he said. "They've just brought him in. Thanks, by the way, for the tip off."
I moaned, leaning back against the wall as he slammed the door shut. Spence was caught in the teeth of this little monster, and it was my fault. A little dope in my blood, some slobbering guards getting handsy, and I spill my guts -- without even remembering it!
I sat, head spinning, the chill of the cell enveloping me even as heat grew moist down there and swelled up through my belly, into my breasts. I could feel my throat flush red. If anything, this was stronger dope than before. I lost track of the time that drifted through the air like smoke. If I could grab it I thought, I could stop it. Reel it back in, maybe make it go backwards. All of that made sense for one long brittle breath, and then I was laughing, a laugh more like a cough than the high side of a chuckle, sounding crazy to my own ears.
The door groaned open and in walked my second least favorite person in the world just now -- Mr. Chuang, the patrol leader who wanted a piece of me in the worst way (and in every conceivable sense of the phrase).
"Get bitch up," he snapped. The guards yanked me to my feet by the arms, immediately half-walking, half-dragging me out of the cell -- obviously privy to a plan that was a terrifying mystery to me.
Naked in a public hallway again! How public, I wondered, shouting, "I want the American ambassador!"
"And I want fish juice!" shouted Chuang, causing the guards to laugh aloud and me to assume I'd miss something in the translation. They took me past several closed cell doors, then through one open. I was cuffed up and yanked to my toes by a chain from the ceiling before I could fully register the entire selection of whips and crops hung on hooks in a side wall.
My head had cleared and I regretted it. It wasn't hard to guess what was coming and now I craved the dope that might cloud my thoughts and distance me from the pain. Looking at my feet, I saw that the cement floor declined slightly toward the center of the room, not far from my toes, a drainage hold in the middle of the floor. Seems like they used dope for everything except on-coming pain.
Chuang pulled my head back by the hair, steaming his garlic drowned shrimp breath into my eyes. "You guilty of spying against my beloved country," he said. "And proof traitors in our midst. You tell me conspirators’ names ... soon. First, you pay for death of my men."
He went to the wall I faced and chose a several bladed flogger, handing it to one of his men, who beamed with gratitude. Then he nodded at someone behind me.
The water hit me with a sheet of surprise that wrapped chills all over my body. It was as much the fact that the water was completely unanticipated as it was that the water was cold. Goosebumps teased my skin up and down, then as the man with the hose came around to face me, my nipples chill-puckered, his thumb sharpening the stream into a rod of hard hitting water that pounded my breasts. He eased off and let the water flow from my crown on down, my hair sopping, my eyes blinking hard to get the water out as my fingers wrapped tight around the chains that held my wrists helpless.
The hose was tossed down, water still spouting out, running quickly into the drain near my feet. The men eased back on their heels with a visible group sigh and drank in the gleam of my soaking wet body. I knew the effect from days on the beach back home, back in Cali. I’d come out of the surf and feel like a goddess. My soft brown skin would shade differently as the sun played in the water, copper and bronze and then warm earth brown, tight and lined with curves. It had been fun watching those poor boys salivate – not just boys, but old men, too. Right on their face you could see the inner ache for what they maybe never had, and certainly would never have the rest of their lives. I’d gotten a kick out of the obvious pain in their eyes whenever I twitched a little muscle in my ass or swung it wide turning a corner. Such power in a little flash of flesh!
But now my body was stretched taut, a hanging bauble toy. Taunting the lion had turned into serving as tussled meat. I wondered if they’d skip the whipping and go straight to the groping. They’d get there anyway, so –
A sharp whistle behind me, and I knew not everyone was standing in front of me. Instinct started my head to twist but the hard sharp snake snapped my back before I could look behind me. Pain jolted me, white light flashing through my head as I rolled it back with a scream. My back went from numb to screaming pain just before the second stroke of the whip flamed against it.
Pain blurred time while tears blurred my sight after that, my lungs burning from useless screams. Still, I was aware of their leers, the laughs, the little pauses when I sobbed and shuddered barely noticing the groping hands. And then a much longer pause, followed with another hose down that drew quavering gasps through my raw throat before I passed out.
I woke up to the pleasant scent of cinnamon, my blurred vision clearing to see a stunningly beautiful woman staring down at me. She pressed a moist rag to my forehead. She was sitting on the large bare bed on which I lay, dressed in silk harem pants, her bare perfect breasts defying gravity with upturned little brown nipples, above a flat tan belly. I glanced around and saw we were in a cell, not a room, at least by the spare but pleasant furnishings. A sweet but full bodied aroma filled the room, not exactly like the haze of marijuana, but certainly reminiscent of what I’d always found in the dorm rooms down the hall at college. I thought I was shocked when she brushed the back of my nipples with her knuckles, but when she started top ull back they arched like tiny kitten heads and I heard myself purr.
We still weren't in Kansas, but it beat the hell out of a wet whipping.
"My name is Kim Tuyen Tien," the half-naked girl smiled gently. "I take care of new slaves."
“My back?" I asked, the question plainly being: shouldn't it hurt like hell right about now? I shifted on the bed, luxuriating in a warm liquid glow that lightly coated me – pretty much everywhere.
“I’ve taken care of it, love,” she said. She lifted a plain glass jar, dipped in two fingers and drew out an amber lotion. "This heals as much as it arouses," she said, "and I have warmed your skin with it while you rested." She arched her eyebrows and tossed her head, stray bangs falling over her almond eyes as she indicated the light blue smoke around us. “I dare say the herb has eased the pain, yes?”
Well – yes. Something sure had. I wiggled my fingers at the haze. “What is that, anyway? Opium?”
“A special mix of my making,” she smiled with gratitude for my implied compliment rather than pride in her accomplishment. “Not opium, although the poppy figures heavily in it.”
Poppy. I need to get a plan together to get out of a Chinese maze of a prison in the middle of a part of the Southeast Asian jungle no one bothers to try to claim to rule (other than the wackos holding me prisoner), and after a bucket of god-knows-what dope they'd already pumped into me, this Viet chick was tickling my nose with poppy smoke.
Think, anyway! I told myself. By now you're known missing; the Congressman will put that pasty little dough boy Tompkins on it, he handles foreign affairs. He'll love it. He's been wanting to handle me for two years. But he will know how to cut to the chase and chase me down – even out here. He arranged the damn mission to begin with. I just have to last it out.
“Chuang?” I demanded. “Is he coming back?”
“I very much doubt it,” she turned to soak the rag in a water bowl, and as she was ringing it out, she added, “He’s dead, you see.”
Past the charming lilt made from both the sibilance of the Vietnamese tongue flowing through obviously British schooled English, she looked about my age, her round face and high cheekbones a lovely stage for those large brown eyes, framed by oil black hair falling thick to her shoulders and on down to the top of her ass. She turned back to me, this time bringing the cool relief of the rag to my throat. I noticed her flawless saffron skin, her forearm brushing against my nose.
She was what smelled like cinnamon. I say that her arms, and torso, and breasts, were coated with that same golden lotion that pleasantly warmed my skin. It shone in the tight curve of her bronze hip. Warms more than arouses, she had said. More, not instead.
“Chuang is dead?” I smiled.
“Mr. Stephens returned to your cell and found it empty. When he found Chuang with you, he took … disciplinary measures.” She brought the rag back to my forehead and pressed sweet cool water over my eyebrows. “Mr. Stephens believes whipping to be a barbaric custom, and one that fails to produce magnificence in slave girls. Quite right, that, I think!”
“Stephens … killed Chuang?”
She hesitated, a flash of fear in her eyes. “Eventually.”
Acid bit at my stomach. She frowned.
"You wanted him dead," she said. "You told Stephens as he took you down from the chains. You don't remember?"
I shook my head. But I had to admit I felt the first bit of triumph in a while at the thought of the hateful little man dead. Painfully dead, it sounded like, and I was quite happy about that.
"You're the American spy, aren't you?" Kim murmured. "Poor baby. They'll really want to see you twist. You’re quite a prize."
"Twist?" I squinted at her, remembering all too well twisting for Mr. Chuang. "You said Stephens doesn't whip girls."
"He finds no pleasure there. Others …" she shrugged. "But by twist, I meant –"
My hips hopped up from the bed, a blue hot bolt slamming from my nether lips as she deftly, gently, stroked them apart, just once, and then sat back, smiling at me conspiratorially. A back draft of nervous shock ran from my head to my toes, and I could feel a blush burn my brown skin burgundy.
Okay, so -- when did I start liking me some girl?
"You see?" she said. "Despite your whipping, the Serpent's Tongue is licking at you." At my frown, she added, "No doubt you've already guessed that there is a drug involved in Mr. Stephens' work?"
I started to say yes, and wanted to say another girl had never touched me like that, but all these thoughts slammed into a pane of glass shock as I realized that I had somehow, perhaps willfully, failed to see that Kim's throat was encircled with a ring of heavy steel. She saw my eyes fix on the collar, which she caressed briefly with her fingertips.
"Yes," she said. "I am a slave, too. What did you think? That free women here are kept naked?"
"You have – those."
She smiled down at the filmy harem pants so neatly outlining her long toned legs and finely turned ass. "Yes," she said. "But that's not quite the fashion of our citizens. More a fantasy of our men. A slave's garment. I'm allowed clothes because of my … special status."
She reached down again, this time leaving the rag in the bucket. She brought back up that a small glass jar of thick amber lotion.
"Wha-what is that?" I asked, my voice weaker than I wanted.
Her eyebrows arched gracefully, and then she smiled, eyebrows descending slowly. "Golden Angel," she said, screwing the top off with the tips of her slender brown fingers. She licked her upper lip slowly, too -- very, very slowly, the lip pulping out a bit as she tucked the tip just under her button nose. "Angel gold for us women," she clarified. "Softens the blows."
“From the whipping?”
“No, I mean – in the head. Mr. Stephens’ blows. Golden Angel opens your mind's eye to every conceivable pleasure, instead. Opens … all of you.” Her eyes drifted down my body, not erotically, but methodically, like a doctor's. I realized I had tented my hands over my sex. "I'm sorry, little sister," she said. "I should have realized ...."
Kim stood, yanking down her harem pants. This first awkward thing she'd done in my presence was softened in effect by the sweet smile she gave me.
And then nude, her smile widened to a grin. "There now. Don't be embarrassed! We're both just sisters, just sister slaves. Equal."
Equal? I thought. Thanks for the compliment! Kim's short slender body was a sinuous flow of tight curves from a graceful neck down past two perfectly shaped grapefruit breasts, a flat tummy framed with the hard curves of a hard body waist. She was spectacular, a kama sutra statue come to life.
She stood, leaning over me, her ripe little breasts plump against my nose, their swollen mahogany nipples then tickling down my belly as she rubbed more Golden Angel lotion over my breasts and hips.
More dope! I thought, feeling the lotion work through my skin. But this wasn't like Serpent's Tongue. This didn't hop me high into the sex jitters, fingers twisting. This was the opposite, causing me to relax to the max, my body going loose and my pussy wet and open, fingers flexing … reaching. My breathing sped up gently, my eyes slit to stare up at the woman who had been the first to touch me – like that.
I had never been into girls. But THIS girl – or was it just this Golden Angel talking? Whatever it was had my blood simmering. Was it any wonder this woman was enslaved? How could men ... or women, for that matter ... look at her and not think sex, twenty-five hours a day? How could anyone not pant to have her sexuality freely at hand? How could you not want to own such breathing beauty?
Imagine, I thought. To have her kneeling before you. If you could, if it was in your power to have her deepest passion at your beck and call, how could you resist?
And then -- quicker than you could say Blackadder -- "you", sir, was "me", sir.
I tried to stop all these sweet forbidden thoughts, but it was like trying to put juice back in a grape, you try and you end up just wanting to lick your fingers until the tips wrinkle. The juice turned to wine, as my head swam in pleasure, my heart thumping harder, faster.
Her face turned, luminous, joyful with a sweet smile sliding wide. "You see?" she whispered. "Our angels wrap their wings around us, save us from the demons of men."
Of course she summoned angels as protection. Because men wanted her. Had to have her. Not just have her – plow her. Devour her.
My entire body was breathing, every pore, and I forced away the thoughts of Stephens, or captivity, of slavery, by focusing on Kim. Focusing so hard, I didn't even notice when I reached for her down-stretched arms. I just found my hands at her elbows, pulling her down, my own smile so wide it tickled my cheeks. A moment later my palms were brushing over her swollen nipples while she returned the favor to me.
Then it was her mouth on my mouth, and my first thought to turn away turned way back in on itself as I crushed her lips against her fine pearl teeth. I pulled her body hard against mine, violent as love gone mad. A hard electric buzz cut a Mohawk pattern from my mouth back over my head, then ran an ice chill thrill right down my spine, repulsion boiling off and leaving a cool vapor of sweet satisfaction.
Kim trailed three warm fingers down my tummy and between my legs, tickling me into a tight wound spring, legs clenched tight on her hand. "Let go," she murmured. "You have a long road ahead. Relax now."
I eased the grip of my thighs on her hand as she slid her fingers into my body, my hips bucking wild left and curly right, my lips curling my smile back for a rattling moan that made my teeth tickle the gums.
Okay, so -- when did I start loving me some girl?
I didn't know, but I did know I didn't want to stop any time soon. It was like rediscovering sex all over again, only this girl-girl sex was more like swimming with a dolphin than wrestling a lion. Slick smooth slips of palms trailed by tickling fingers, hot breath steaming sweet coo-coos into our ears, Kim and I turned all clocks to sand and wrote our own little dream. I shivered as I reached the point where the light inside bursts into stars, realizing for one long instant where my pleasure dangled over the tip of a blade, that to quit now was to let something die inside, but to push forward was to give birth to someone new in my skin. Someone inside who had taken what was beyond me and made it our own. One push and I was lost. I was reborn.
I pushed.
She pulled away.
No – she was pulled away. Her eyes wide with shock, she gagged a bit as Stephens pulled her back by the metal collar as if she was nothing more than a bitch in heat. He stared down at my nude, sweetly sweating body with a lust whose vulgarity was insultingly intended to piss me off.
The shock that hit me would have taken me completely out of the hot little envelope in which I kept writhing thanks to the reinforcement on my system of the dope. I felt chilled, then hot, then chills again ran over me, a battle for every pore of my skin, open, closed, open, as waves of humiliation and need raced over me.
"Beg," he said, shaking Kim's head by the collar a bit as she reached her small hands up, grasping at his grip, her eyes screwed tight, one tear running down her cheek. Her breasts were still covered in a sheet of blooded flamed skin, her little nipples pert and stiff.
"Fu …" I twisted a bit on the bed. "Fuck you."
I blinked, trying to turn lust into fury or fear, but all that burned in me was the primordial demand that I bond right now with my lover's body.
Now.
Kim's expression changed, her face going taut, chin tilted back, and from her squirms and what I could see of Stephens activity I realized he was shoving – something – into her ass. She mewled as it slipped in, gasped when Stephens punctuated his move with a little slap on her ass.
"No reason to leave you on your own, Kim," he said. "I think that should set you right again."
Kim licked a bead of sweat off the tip of her nose, her eyebrows arched over lightly closed eyes that fluttered with the fire of pleasure fucking pain to rest. "Thank you," she rasped, "master."
I closed my eyes so I wouldn't have to see Stephens' smirk, my hips twisting and bucking, and snaked one hand to my pussy lips. I was surprised he gave me that relief, then realized it wasn't relief at all. I only stoked the fires hotter, without killing the need to bond. With Kim.
Now.
"All you have to do," he said soothingly, "is beg for what you want." With that, he let go of her collar, and poor little Kim landed on top of me without ceremony but plenty of need of her own.
Grace was damned as we scrabbled our bodies together with a clash of arms and legs. I was aware that Stephens helped moved us into joined commas describing the number 69, aware that his hands kept roaming over my ass and legs and back and tits and I did not care, not one whit – it simply didn't matter. All that mattered was a rush a fever, tongues and fingers plunging wildly between swollen wetness, then two violent catches of breath, and then the starburst flood of pleasure that set both Kim and myself into a writhing wound-down that landed us in a pool of our sweat, drowsy but teasing each other lightly with fingernails and whisper kisses.
I could have stayed in that haze forever, but Stephens gave me two minutes, tops. Then he barked an order in Mandarin, and shadows in the corner became a single uniformed guard who picked Kim up in his arms. She lay supple and surrendered, her head on his chest, arms around his neck.
"I'll want her tonight," Stephens said in English. "Go clean her up and chain her by the neck to my bed. Pop another hot-shot in her ass and leave her there." I closed my eyes and heard them move away.
Then Stephens grabbed my chin. He smeared something wet and sticky against my lips, and before I could take a breath he crushed my mouth with his, a savage's kiss that left my lips feeling pulpy and raw as he drew back, first shoving some of the wet sticky into my mouth with his tongue that he drew back, flickering at my lips, then swallowed into his grin.
He held up the shallow cup to show me a dark red mash within. "Blood," he said. "Chuang." He raised his eyebrows slowly, mocking me. "You did want him dead, didn't you?" He took my chin, forcefully turning my head, and whispered into my ear, "Here, wishes become reality. What scares you right now is that you're having to face the reality of what wishes you've always had."
"What have I done?" I muttered. I was supposed to be the trusted congressional aide to the man who represented moral rectitude for true Americans! But what was I, in fact? A wanton libertine? A pervert?
Maybe even a Democrat?
Oh my God! Had I become a … liberal?
I knew how those people behaved. I'd seen all the campaign ads my boss' church had paid for on his behalf. Had I sunk that low? Was I now a cowardly gay socialist treasonous liberal Democrat out to destroy the moral fabric of our society?
But then, this wasn't our society I was in. I shoved myself up against the wall, rubbing at my forehead. That was the point, wasn't it? Here I wasn't judged by the same rules. Oh, I was judged, but by very different rules, indeed.
I rubbed at my arms, hugged myself tightly, face pressed down into the swell of my own breasts. Here I'd been led, let myself or by force, it didn't even matter, did it? I'd had sex with another woman, something I'd never have thought possible. I wasn't who I thought I was, not here, at least. I wondered who I really was, and then I got it.
Here I was what they made me.