Kajirus of Gor Chapter Twenty One

 

The captive woman began to scream hysterically as she was lain down on her belly over some heavy packing crates. One man gripped her long hair and held her head down while a second man seized her ankles and held those firmly in place. The third man, Hawkins, then produced a hunting knife and set about cutting away the girl’s shirt, cut off shorts and then discarded the ruined fabric. He then removed her hiking boots and thick socks, leaving her with only a matching set of blue panties and bra. 

 

I felt I should do something, but I also knew I stood no chance against these three men, two of whom were armed with rifles and the third carried a hunting knife. 

 

The girl was then lifted up and dragged kicking and screaming to a length of chain that hung from a pulley attached to the steel beams supporting the roof. There was a winch that could raise and lower the chain. Her wrists were untied from behind her back, only then to be secured in a set of tight shackles attached to the free end of the chain.

 

“Please don’t do this! Please! I didn’t see anything! I won’t tell anyone! I swear!”

 

The girl was then slowly hoisted to her feet, her arms suspended above her head now as one of the men turned the wheel, shortening the length of chain until the girl was now forced to hang there with her toes barely touching the cement floor.

 

“Pretty little thing, ain’t she,” said Hawkins. “You one of them man hating lesbians, Miss?” he asked the girl. “A rug muncher? Keen on eating beaver?”

 

“Please don’t hurt me, please don’t hurt me!”

 

Hawkins slapped her hard across the face, causing her to scream again and rotate from the point of the chain suspension, her toes barely making contact with the cement floor.

 

“Asked you a question, Miss. You’d do right to answer me.”

 

“I’m not a lesbian,” she sobbed.

 

“You dress like a rug muncher. Except for these pretty panties though.” He hooked his finger into the elastic and took a peek at what lay beneath, before snapping the elastic back in place around her hips.

 

“I won’t tell anyone!” she cried again.

 

“Damn right about that, Missy.” He placed his right hand on the cup of the girl’s right breast. It was confined by the lacy blue bra but offered a glimpse of cleavage. “Quite the handful,” he said. “So you like men, then?”

 

“Please don’t hurt me. Please.”

 

“You get hot for men, huh? You some sort of hot slut, out there in the gullies with your wyld wymen sisters?”

 

“They’ll know I’m missing. They’ll come looking for me!”

 

“Bad news for them if they try. We’ve been looking for an excuse to put them in their place. No, Miss, you strayed over the fence. Broke the rules, that’s what you did, and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. That makes you a snooping little bitch as well as a trespasser. That means we get to decide what happens to you now.”

 

I had seen enough. If I wasn’t going to intervene – and how could I without any authority or a weapon – then I was going to at least find Chelsea and tell her what was going on in the name of her family. She did have authority – these ranch hands obeyed her. She could put a stop to this.

 

I moved quietly away from the set of outbuildings and back up the pathway towards the main house. I could only hope that nothing truly terrible might happen to that poor girl in the time it took me to find Chelsea and get her to act. 

 

I was perhaps thirty metres from the house when I suddenly saw the distant figure of Chelsea hurrying down a parallel path, through a section of the sprawling garden, away from the building. The slim female figure, dressed in the long 1920s dinner gown, appeared briefly between stone garden sculptures. Her right hand held the fabric of her gown at the thigh, lifting the hem just sufficiently so that it didn’t drag on the grass. What was she doing? Where was she going? Had she heard the girl’s scream as far back as the house? I wouldn’t have thought the girl would have been audible as it had taken me close to ten minutes to get back this far, and the men would hardly have acted with impunity if there was any realistic chance of sound travelling this far back.

 

I broke across the open ground of the spacious garden lawn and hurried to intercept Chelsea before she might disappear from view. She was hurrying between a series of hedges now, so again I only caught occasional glimpses of her body as I closed the distance between us. She was moving with determination, but not very quickly. 

 

Finally, I caught sight of her pretty ankles skimming by, as the gown’s hem fluttered about them, as Chelsea rounded a decorative garden arch, and I caught hold of her wrist. “Chelsea, where are you going?!”

 

“Chelsea?” She turned round, and only now did I realise I’d caught sight of, and caught the left wrist of, Felicity Emery.

 

It wasn’t Chelsea.

 

“Felicity?” I pulled her to the side, beside the wall of the garden arch, under the shadow the dim moonlight where I could clearly see her delicate features. The outbuildings had to be close, for Felicity had travelled some way before I had caught up with her. 

 

“Roland!” she gasped, and for a moment our contact pressed us together, but then she pulled away, to the extent she could. “Why are you looking for Chelsea?”

 

I ignored her question for the moment. “Where are you going? You can’t go down there. It’s not safe. There’s some very bad shit going down.”

 

“I was looking for you,” she said, her eyes wide. Her mouth trembled and then she looked angry. “You punched Dexter! He’s angry, furious, incandescent with rage. He says he’s going to have his lawyers sue you for every penny you own! Roland - why were you expecting to find Chelsea out here? Is it true?”

 

“Is what true?”

 

“You and Chelsea! You’ve been rubbing my face in it all evening! I didn’t know you hated me so much.”

 

“What?” Any thoughts I had for the girl chained to the iron beam in the outbuilding were thrust temporarily aside as Felicity’s eyes seemed to well up with tears.

 

“Why did it have to be Chelsea?” she said. I felt her pull her hand away from my grasp. “You could have dated anyone! Why Chelsea!”

 

“I’m not… what are you talking about?”

 

Felicity sniffed and wiped some wet tears from her cheek. “When I heard you were going to be here this weekend… oh, I feel so foolish.”

 

“Felicity. You’re not making sense.”

 

“I have feelings, you know! If you don’t ever want to see me again, fine, but you didn’t waste any time chasing after Chelsea, did you?! Was this your plan, ever since Saratoga?”

 

“I’m not dating Chelsea Frick!”

 

“Don’t lie to me, Roland.” She pressed her hands together in prayer and held them cupped against her nose, as she half closed her eyes. “Please respect me enough not to lie to me. You never acknowledged my letter. You made no attempt to speak to me. Now I know why.”

 

“Your letter?”

 

She nodded, choking back some tears. “I opened my heart out to you in it. And told you things I’ve never told any man before. And from you, nothing back.”

 

“I never received any letter. I didn’t hear from you. I tried phoning. Your phone was dead.”

 

“My phone isn’t dead. I never got any calls from you.”

 

“It is. It’s a dead line.”

 

She reached for her clutch bag and angrily produced her phone. I recognised it as the same model from when I used to escort her about town. She tapped in her password and held it up. “Ring me then. Show me it’s dead,” she challenged me.

 

I produced my own phone, found her contact details and dialled. Within seconds Felicity’s phone rang.

 

“That didn’t happen before…”

 

She said nothing, but simply returned her phone to her clutch bag. The implication in her face was obvious – that I had lied to her. And then she gasped and almost fell. Quickly, I reached out and caught her and she fell into my arms. She looked exhausted, ill.

 

“Felicity, what is it? What’s wrong?”

 

“I can’t breathe. I hurried through the garden too quickly.” Her face looked flushed and she was perspiring. “It’s this corset. Granny tied it impossibly tight. I was looking for you, Roland. Granny won’t loosen it. I feel like I’m going to collapse. I can only take small gasps of air. Please…”

 

“What do you want me to do?”

 

Felicity supported herself with her hands on my chest and then she turned round. “Please, please, Roland, loosen these laces before I suffocate!”

 

“I don’t know how to tie a corset”

 

“It’s just laces. Just undo them and retie them again.” Again she stumbled and nearly fell. Again I caught that lovely light body and held her briefly in my arms. And then I felt the return of all those emotions I’d bottled up and tried to ignore.

 

“Felicity… I did try to contact you. I swear.”

 

“Why are you visiting Chelsea, then?”

 

“She invited me.”

 

“I’m sure she did.” Her eyelids fluttered. She was having trouble taking deep gulps of air. I watched as she took small sparrow breaths, her diaphragm unable to expend very far. “Please, Roland, I beg you.”

 

It was dark, but I undid the clasps of Felicity’s dress and with some fumbling, got her out of the garment. She stood there, trembling from the cool air that now brushed her bare skin. She wore elegant stockings, delicate bikini cut panties, a garter belt and the corset that gave her an impossibly narrow waist. I felt with my fingers at the back of the stiffly boned corset and found the ties. She looked so lovely, in her underwear, in the dim moonlight. I touched her bare shoulders and felt her tremble.

 

“Is it wrong for me to still feel such joy when you touch me, Roland?” she said. 

 

“Felicity, I don’t know why I didn’t receive your letter, and I don’t know why I couldn’t ring you, but I’m not dating Chelsea Frick, and I haven’t stopped thinking about you since the day you said goodbye to me. You’ve got inside my head and I can’t deny the feelings I have for you.”

 

“Roland?” she turned round with hope in her eyes. “Is this true?” I felt her hands about my waist and that lovely mouth with its rich lipstick looked up to me, inches from my own lips. “Are you just saying this? Is this another cruel manipulation of my feelings? You gave me so many mixed signals.”

 

“I gave YOU mixed signals?”

 

She nodded. “I always hoped you would make a move on me. You seemed to want me, but always you stayed away. And then when you wouldn’t speak to me again…”

 

I felt her lovely body press against mine. She was shivering from the cool night air. There were tiny little goose bumps now on her arms and her light down of hairs lifted. Some locks of her hair had come loose from her upswept arrangement. I kissed her softly in the solitude of that garden and I felt her respond with demure but enthusiastic passion. When we broke apart she was crying.

 

“I want you, Roland. I’ve always wanted you, since that day we first met.” She seemed so shy and broken. And she was still gasping for air.

 

I turned her about and began to fumble again with the knots. Granny had tied them, and they seemed to be intricate and difficult to figure out.

 

“She called it her signature knot,” said Felicity. “You have to know how to retie it, otherwise it will be obvious to her that someone else undid her handiwork, and she’ll be cross.”

 

“I don’t know how to tie her signature knot.”

 

“Never mind that now. Just loosen this corset, please, before I faint.”

 

And I did. The knots came loose, I expanded the constriction of the corset, and I felt and heard Felicity gasp softly with relief. “How can Chelsea live with this thing on her,” she said. “Oh God, I never knew a lung full of fresh air could taste so sweet.”

 

And then, after she had got her breath back, we kissed again, with me running my hands around her waist, about her shapely ass, and along her thighs.

 

“Swear to me,” she said, between kisses. “Swear to me that there’s nothing going on between you and Chelsea?”

 

“There isn’t. But what about you and Dexter? You’re engaged to him! How could you do that?”

 

“What choice did I have?” she said, angrily, as she pressed herself to my body again. God, but she felt lovely. I traced my fingers down her thigh to where her stocking tops began. “My father pressured me to spend some time with Dexter. And you weren’t there! You stayed away!”

 

“Are you in love with Dexter Bannon, Felicity?”

 

“No! Of course not!” She urgently kissed me and then broke away from that kiss. “How can you even think that?!”

 

“You didn’t have to get engaged.”

 

“You have no idea what it’s like for me. My father’s demands if I want to have any say in the businesses I own. I thought you would save me from all of that, but you cast me aside.”

 

“I didn’t cast you aside. You walked away, Felicity. I couldn’t phone you.”

 

“You didn’t try very hard, did you?” She tossed her head and gave me an insufferably desirable look. I wanted her so badly. “Of course I walked away. That’s what women do. But you’re not supposed to take no for an answer. Or didn’t you want me?”

 

“Oh, I want you all right, Felicity Emery. You have no idea.”

 

“I don’t care about Dexter Bannon. I’m glad you hit him. Roland, what are we going to do now?”

 

I suddenly recalled the woman hiker. God knows what was happening to her right now. Whatever it was it wouldn’t be good. “Felicity, there is something bad going down. We need to get back to the house and find Chelsea, urgently.”

 

“Roland,” she began, “I want you to know that I…” she choked back her emotions. “I…”

 

A torch light came on suddenly, about fifteen metres away.

 

“Anyone there?” said the recognisable voice of Hawkins. I dropped Felicity to the grass and covered her mouth without warning. I felt her wriggle beneath me, dressed only in her stockings, shoes, garter belt, panties and uplift corset. Ordinarily this would feel lovely to have her like this, but Hawkins had heard something, and I knew he mustn’t find or hear us.

 

“Don’t move, don’t make a sound,” I whispered into Felicity’s ear. “Not a sound.” Her wiggling subsided and she held herself still beneath my body. Good girl. She knew enough to trust me right now.

 

And then a second torch beam appeared, and then a third.

 

“We know there’s someone out there,” said Hawkins. I watched the arc beams trace the shape of the hedges and the stone sculptures and trail along the lawn. There was the sound of a rifle bolt being drawn back. “We can do this the shooting way if you folks prefer. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.”

 

I felt Felicity wriggle again and seem to protest beneath me. I slowly, carefully, released her mouth and she leaned towards my ears and whispered “What’s going on?’

 

“These are bad men,” I said back. “This isn’t good.”

 

I watched the torch beams arc around the lawn until one of the beams caught sight of Felicity’s dress, draped carefully on a low hedge. Quickly, all three beams triangulated on that point and began to sweep the vicinity. Seconds later the torch beams found us.

 

I looked up, eyes squinting, as a beam of intensely bright light practically blinded me, but I just about made out the shapes of the men, moving in a wide arc formation towards us. 

 

“Well, well, what do we have here?” said Hawkins as he cocked a rifle towards my body. “Two little love birds getting all romantic in the serious moonlight.”