It was a stoner's laugh. A slow, ha-hah you hear from lit surfers or baked beatniks.
The Rohypnol kicked in, and kicked in hard. It kicked Maddox's ass, too. And it kicked it HARD.
Ha-hah.
Chapter Sixteen
SOFIA
Call me paranoid or whatever, but even though Maddox was virtually comatose, I still didn't trust him. There was no way to predict how long the effects of the roofies would last, so I needed to move as fast as I could.
He did have the common courtesy to pass out against the palm tree, which was good. When he woke up, I'd have to thank him for that.
The tree didn't have a particularly thick trunk, yet it still took two pairs of handcuffs to secure his arms behind him. This may have been the most difficult part of the operation. Not only were his arms thick and muscled, they were dead weight.
“You work out, Maddy?” I asked him.
His head lolled forward.
He wasn't going to be a great conversationalist right now. But, oh, the things we were going to talk about.
I got the manacles around his wrists, and locked the pairs together.
There. That should do it.
I tugged on the little chains, just to make sure. Nope. He wasn't going anywhere, not until I decided he should. And I wasn’t sure I would ever come to that conclusion.
I unsheathed the boa knife, and laid the tip against the emblem of his shirt – that precocious, embroidered polo player swinging his mallet upon a galloping steed. I always hated that logo. It just screamed money bag dick head.
Just the tip, I chuckled to myself, and cut off his shirt. I tore a strip of it away, balled up the rest and put it aside. It would make great kindling for later.
The fire popped and crackled behind me as I relieved him of the rest of his clothing. Pants, boxers, socks and shoes. I stashed all of it next to the kindling pile.
I took the strip of his former shirt and wrapped it around his head, gagging his mouth. I didn't want to hear his shit when he came to.
I wanted to see the look in his eyes. I wanted to see the confusion, then shock, then realization. Mostly, though, I wanted to see fear.
“With any luck, right?” I said, and cozied up in my blanket, on my side of the fire.
Step one was in place. The bastard was exactly where I wanted him, and it had gone so well it called for a celebration. I treated myself to a piece of chocolate.
Chapter Seventeen
MADDOX
Shanna Ryon sat across from me, her blouse unbuttoned to her navel, a plate of live trout bouncing in front of her fabulous, round breasts. She took a long, seductive sip of wine, and winked. She didn't seem to know, or notice, the fish flapping around on her china, clattering about. Shanna only had eyes for me, I was certain.
“Is Martin married?” she asked, putting her napkin in her lap.
We were back at the Huntsman's Cove. The taxidermied heads surrounded us – their plastic eyes bulging from their heads, their tongues licking out from between their painted, black lips.
“Martin…?” I questioned, looking down at my own plate. Just one goldfish cracker. I was sure I ordered more than that just a single goldfish cracker. “Yeah, he's married. Sometimes,” I continued and she cut me off.
“That's too bad. I find him attractive. More attractive than I find you, Maddox.” Shanna took up her fork, and stabbed the flailing trout straight through center. “I don't believe in catch and release, either. Just catch.”
I didn't know what she was talking about. I shook my head, and reached for my cracker, but came to the stark realization that my hands couldn't move. My arms were paralyzed.
Shanna put down her wine, and stood up. She was naked from the waist down, and as she made her way to my end of the table, she undid her last remaining button. Spread her shirt wide open, and dropped it to the floor.
“Do you think he'd like these?” she asked. Her breasts were perfect. Perky. Very expensive, too.
“I like them,” I said, and tried to stand, but my legs weren't working either. I needed to get up from my chair, though. I had to. I needed to take Shanna's arms, pin them behind her, take her down right there on the floor of the Huntsman's Cove.
Her trout flinched. Both it and the fork flopped off the plate, and when I looked up, Shanna was gone. The dining room was growing darker, a slow fade, and I still couldn't move.
“Just catch, Maddox. No release,” her voice came from the shadows. But it wasn't her voice at all.
Something sharp slid against my chest. It felt a lot like the tip of a knife. Ah, fuck. She was going to kill me. She was going to stab me right through the heart, right through my lungs. I had to get the hell out of here. But… I couldn't move. Not a twitch, not a muscle. I could barely struggle, let alone get my ass up and out of this chair.
My body must be broken. I'd hit my head earlier – I didn't remember where or how – is there such a thing as delayed paralysis?
The knife's tip pressed harder against my skin. I wasn’t bleeding yet, but it wouldn’t take much more until I was.
I tried to call out. Cry for help, demand someone take action!
My voice wasn't working, either. Oh, it was there, but couldn't make its way past my lips. There was a barrier. Some kind of, what, a napkin?
You'll regret this, Shanna. You picked the wrong guy to fuck with, I thought, as the light started to come back on in the dining room.
Too much light, though. It was too bright, and when I opened my eyes, it was as if someone was aiming the sun directly into my face. The light hurt, it hurt so much, and when I tried to bring my hands to my eyelids to rub the hurt away, I couldn't.
Was I… was I awake? Dreaming that I wasn't asleep...?
I'd had those dreams before, the kind that happen between varying states of consciousness and can't decide which plane they want to be on, but this was different. Somehow different. Nocturnal paralysis, maybe? I'd read about that, it never happened to me, but there's a first time for everything, I guess, and good fucking god why did my head feel like it was encased in paper mache?
Assessment. I must assess the situation, but it was so hard to think… and if I was awake, why was there still that prick of pain on my chest?
Why was there still a napkin on my face? No, in my mouth. Was I eating napkins in my dream?
C'mon, Petersen. For the love of fuck. Get to the bottom of this, because this is absolute bullshit.
I forced my eyes open. Had to keep them at a squint, because the sun was a beacon of anguish. If only I could do the same with my ears.
Waves crashed and rolled and crashed against the shore. Each time they hit, cannonballs fired in my brain. There was a salty taste in my mouth, there was something in my mouth, and I had to pull it out.
My arms were pinned behind me.
That's why I couldn't move.
On the one hand, that was good. I wasn't paralyzed. On the other, that was totally fucked, because why in the shit would I be tied to a… a palm tree?
Oh, mother fucking ass. The boat. The Insatiable. There was a shipwreck. That crazy bitch ran us aground, and –
– and the knife point burrowed further into my flesh.
“Roofy hangover's a bitch, isn't it?” Sofia said. Her voice was flat. Emotionless. She was looking at my chest, her knife laid against it. That was one motherfucker of a knife. A miniature machete. “You've been out for a while. What did you dream about?”
I jerked my arms, or attempted to. A familiar jingling came from behind the tree. I wasn't tied. I was cuffed.
“Rohypnol gives you weird fucking dreams. I didn't know that, until recently,” she said, and took the knife away. She sliced off a small piece of fish, and took a bite. That explained Shanna's dream trout.
An insane reality that couldn't be real at all started getting clearer and clearer. She set her plate to the side, and repositioned her blade against me.
“I could cut the fuck out you right now, Maddy. Tell m
e why I shouldn't.”
I can't talk, god damn it.
“Oh, that's right. You've got a gag in your mouth. Oops, it makes speaking really difficult,” she chuckled. “Duh,” she said, rolling her eyes and chuckling at her own statement to the obvious.
She adjusted herself, kneeling beside me, and started tracing patterns against my skin. The tip of the blade was warm, and slithered from my collarbone, to my abdomen, gradually making its way to my groin.
Oh, son of a….
I was naked.
Naked?
How the fuck did that happen?
How'd she get my clothes off?
I glanced to the side. There they were, folded neatly in a pile beside her supplies. Along with my shaving kit. My suitcase, too.
I looked back to her, my face asking a thousand questions that my voice could not. As for the knife, it was now nestled in the crease of my thigh. One wrong move, one wince, and –
Sofia leaned close to me. Not too close, just enough so that I could smell her sunscreen and get a slight whiff of coconuts. I didn't like coconuts, but they were food, and my stomach growled at the thought. I was starving.
A sneer curled her lip upwards.
“There are so many directions we could go here, Maddy,” she said, still sneering, drawing the tip of the blade closer to my scrotum. “But I'm going to take those gut gurgles to mean you're hungry? How about thirsty? Are you thirsty, too? Probably hella thirsty. Like, 'kill me now if I can't have something to drink' thirsty. Know how I know?”
The knife was directly beneath my balls, lifting them ever so slightly.
“I know because that's what roofies do to you. Your mouth feels like a big bag of cotton balls after you wake up, after you've been raped, or whatever. You use those funny little pills to rape girls, Maddy?”
I shook my head. I’ve never once used them to get laid. Never needed to. Sofia was the first, and looking at my situation right now...? She would be the absolute god damn fucking last.
“You think I believe you? That's hysterical.”
She jerked her arm at the shoulder. Every nerve in my body locked. I went rigid, expecting the burn, the warm rush of blood to spew from my ball sack.
She wanted to castrate me, right? Isn't that what all women want, secretly, deep down?
Sofia thrust the knife directly in between my legs, into the sand.
“Hah-hah,” she winked. “Gotcha.”
I started breathing again. I didn't realize I'd been holding my breath this entire time. I wanted to take in more air, but the gag didn't allow for such. It tasted of sea salt, there was sand in it, and it stank with the smell of my own saliva. I struggled to swallow over the grit in my throat. It was as if I'd been eating nail files all night.
“Tell ya what,” Sofia said, tapping the tip of the knife against her nose. “I've got something for you, okay? Something I'm sure you're going to like.”
She crawled over to a cache of camping equipment.
Where did she get all that stuff?
What the hell?
I watched her rummage through it, a sea green canvas bag with the word “Insatiable” embroidered on its side. Oh. Oh, okay. It was an emergency kit, in case of shipwreck, break glass. The boys at Atlantic Charter certainly thought of everything. Everything except a functioning GPS system in their god damn dinghy.
Sofia found what she was looking for and I had no idea what it was. She pulled out a cylindrical tube about the size of a paper towel roll, with plastic tubing attached to it. A straw, I think.
She took the straw from the cylinder and stuck it into a half-full bottle of Arrowhead. Then made her way back to me, on her knees, holding the bottle with one hand and her fucking boa knife in the other.
“Here we go,” she sang, put the tip of the knife on the top of my gag, and brought it down just enough to expose my lips. She aimed the straw at my mouth.
The sneer came back to her expression – this time with what I could only describe as lunatic happiness.
“Suck it,” she said.
“You th–” I started to say, but the words wouldn't come out. My voice was stuck somewhere in my larynx. It couldn't make it up and over the cotton field my throat had become. I wanted to tell her – you think you’re so cute. And you are cute, Sofee. Just not very smart. I know what you’re trying to do. And I’ve got something you can suck on.
“Not thirsty?” Sofia asked, cocking her head to the side. She wrapped her lips around the straw, slowly, and took a dainty sip.
I watched the water – the cool, wonderful water – travel up the straw and into her mouth.
She watched me watching. Swallowed. Took the straw away, and waved it at me.
“It's really good,” she continued. “So, so wet. You like it wet, don't you?”
I could try to best her, make her believe I didn't want it. What would that prove, though? Succumbing to massive dehydration wouldn't get me out of here. Well, it would, but in a body bag. I saw myself laid out on a Coast Guard stretcher, and the zipper sealing me safely inside. My lips were blue, drawn back. I was sure I looked a heck of a lot like a corpse right now. I shook the image away, and opened my mouth.
Sofia set the straw on my tongue.
“...suck it...” she whispered.
As I drank, as the life giving liquid trickled down my throat, she kept whispering. Kept telling me to suck it. Suck it deep. Suck it hard. Suck it all the way down, which I did, until the bottle was empty. Not because she was telling me to. I was drinking because I wanted to.
She set the straw and bottle aside, rose up on her knees, and began to reinsert the gag.
I threw my head to the side. I didn't want that back in my mouth. It was dirty, and disgusting, full of sand and bugs.
“What's the matter?” she asked, gripping the rag with both hands and jamming it in between my teeth. It tasted and smelled twice as awful as before, and as she tightened its knot behind my head, she straddled me, her knees on either side of my hips.
“I thought you liked stuff like this.”
I glared at her. She needed to knock this shit off. I wasn't a plaything. Nobody, allow me to reiterate, nobody fucked with me like this. The loca señorita was really, really pushing her limits. And as we were going to be stuck here for God knew how long, keeping the stronger sex, the more powerful sex, locked to a god damn palm tree was a stupid fucking move to make.
She eased herself down on my pelvis and brought her hands to her shirt – my shirt, god damn it – and began unbuttoning it, smiling as she did so.
“Yeah, Maddy likes the dirty stuff. The naughty stuff. He's a bad, bad man.” She undid the rest of the clasps, and spread the shirt open. Just enough to reveal the cusps of her breasts. “He likes these, too” she said. “Maybe a little too much.”
She pulled the shirt down from her shoulders, cupped her breasts, and leaned forward.
I had no idea what she was doing, what she had in mind. All I knew was throughout this entire ordeal – the shock of the crash, the absurd reality of being marooned on a deserted island with a crazy woman, the dehydration, hunger, all those factors – did nothing to sway my carnal desire. The twitch I felt below my waist surprised even me.
“That,” she said. “Is like a super power.” She lifted her hips slightly away from mine, giving me an even better view of her expansive, and God save me, beautiful chest. “You're a mutant, aren't you, Maddy?”
Stop calling me 'Maddy', I thought, looking at nothing else but her toned, naturally brown skin. Her nipples were softly erect… between her fingers. They grew harder at her touch, my groin doing the same. Her fingertips brushed their pink tips.
“They're so pretty, don't you think?”
A slight, gravelly moan escaped me. Her crotch was inches above mine. Mine, growing harder, reaching up toward her sex. Yearning for it.
The head of my cock brushed against the soft fluff of her pubic hair. I clenched my teeth. She wasn't wearing any panties. I hadn't p
acked any for her.
I jerked forward, forgetting for just a moment that I wasn't able to grab her, roll my body on top of hers, and take her. The cuffs pinched against my wrists, not giving an inch. I threw my head upward as much as I could, the muscles in my neck straining, my breath becoming deeper, heavier. I pinched my eyes shut.
She began to giggle. Not the sweet, light chuckle of a playful sex partner. Her laugh had an essence of self-satisfaction, with a hint of madness beneath it.
“You want me, huh, Maddy? You want me bad,” she said, and the downy softness of her womanhood lifted away from me. Replaced with the cold edge of her blade. “You want this, too?”
My breath caught in my chest. My eyes flew open, I looked down, and saw her knife resting against my shaft. I couldn't draw another gulp of air, the manacles would not allow me to move, there was nothing I could do except pray to God she wasn't going to do what I thought that madness may have wanted her to.
She dismounted, still keeping the razor-sharp edge against me, and put her other hand beneath my chin. She shoved my head back up against the trunk of the tree.
I didn't want to keep my eyes open.
I didn't want to see it coming.
“Look at me, Maddy,” she said.
I kept my eyelids pressed together and clenched my teeth hard as I felt the blade press against my cock a little harder.
“I said look at me.”
I sucked in another breath, and opened my eyes. She was so close, I could smell her breath. Warm, and rushing over my cheek. And her eyes were twinkling. Madness, yes, but also confusion accompanying a quiet trace of puzzlement.
“You'd think this would be a hard-on killer,” she noted, rocking the knife back and forth, micrometers away from cutting me open like a bratwurst. “But you're special. Very, very special.”
Her eyes narrowed. The twinkle, the confusion, it all instantly disappeared. Now, there was nothing but pure hatred staring back at me. Unabashed, total detest.
Forbidden Sensations: A Dark Romance Page 14