Cautiously, Amanda opened her eyes. They felt like they had been weighed down, and her tongue felt thick in her mouth. She sat up, and a wave of dizziness came over her. With one hand, she braced herself against the headboard and, with the other, she pushed herself up into a sitting position. The food must have been drugged, she realized.
With a click, the light next to her turned on, and she shut her eyes from the sudden brightness. When she re-opened them, she took in the man who stood before her: Ralph.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “What am I doing here?”
“All in good time,” Ralph said. He sat on the edge of her bed and took on a concerned look. “How are you feeling?”
“Like shit,” she replied, “And I want to know where I am.”
Shaking his head, he “tsk-tsk’ed” her in amusement. “That’s not a nice way for a lady to speak. Come on now. Are you hungry at all?”
Ralph reached out, as if to run his hand along her face, but Amanda pulled back quickly. Too quickly, and the room swam in her vision.
“I want to talk with Ms. Lucy,” she heard herself slurring. “I didn’t sign up for this…”
“Sometimes we get more than we bargained for,” Ralph said. “Haven’t learned that yet, have you? And, unfortunately for you, Ms. Lucy will not be available to speak to you today. Or anytime soon, for that matter.”
“You can’t keep me here,” Amanda said.
“See, that’s the thing,” Ralph said, taking a syringe out of his pocket, and grabbing her leg before Amanda had a chance to move. “I can keep you here for as long as I need to.”
Amanda felt a sharp prick as the needle punctured her upper thigh. He rubbed the spot, spreading the medication further. Right away, a feeling of uncaring swept over her. She knew that she should be concerned about what Tingsly was doing, or when she was going to be allowed to leave. But the need to leave, to escape, didn’t seem quite so pressing anymore. It was like a thought buried far in her mind, lurking in the far recesses, out of grasp.
“This is just a halfway house, until you’re transported to your permanent location. The question is, how do you want to spend your time here?” Ralph asked. “If you’re going to cause problems, I can keep you pretty much sedated, like this. Or, you can just feel good and go with the flow.
“Think about it,” he said, patting her leg as Amanda slid down the headboard and back onto the pillows. “Ultimately, the choice is yours.”
Chapter Fourteen
After Amanda’s disappearance, Reed did some detective work. He’d seen the black limo pull away and part of its license plate. Although he didn’t positively identify Amanda in its backseat, with her missing from the school, he was pretty confident that she’d been kidnapped.
The following day a typed letter had arrived describing a love affair gone awry, but Reed knew better. They hadn’t even been able to consummate their relationship, let alone have a chance for it to go astray. Before he could go any further, he had to approach Ms. Lucy, and would have to ask for help.
The headmistress was less forgiving in her assessment of the situation.
“You’re telling me that you took this job under false pretenses,” she fumed. “And, even while lying about your background and position, we still managed to lose not one, but two, students.”
Although he considered himself a strong man, he felt himself flinch under Ms. Lucy’s direct and accusing gaze. “Not only is Ms. Wilkinson missing, but so is Claire, who I’ve been unable to reach at home. And, you only tell me this now… after she’s been gone a few weeks!”
She placed both hands on the desk, and stood up, peering at him. “And this comes after your sister Willow went AWOL more than a month ago?”
The fire seemed to be extinguished from under her, and Ms. Lucy slumped down in her chair, resting her head in her hands, her red flaming hair strewn out over the desk.
Reed felt like getting up to comfort her, but all his instincts told him to stay put. Finally, she looked back up.
“What do you think we should do?” she asked. “Alert the police? The media?”
“That’s the last thing that I want to happen,” he quickly said. “If you do so, they’ll move the women from wherever they’re being held to who knows where.”
And if that happened, he was afraid to say, then they’d probably be lost forever.
He’d been trying to track the several women who had gone missing from the school. So far, none of the families had heard from them, but usually there was nothing unusual in that. Somehow, each had simply vanished. There were no plane records of the women flying out of San Francisco, and a check of recently issued, official passports, didn’t match up with any of their descriptions. They couldn’t disappear into thin air. He wasn’t sure if they were being sold internationally as sex slaves, or if they were being kept within the United States.
“What can I do to help?” Lucy queried.
He’d run a chase on the partial license plate that he’d picked up on the night in question, but so far it hadn’t led to anything specific.
“Let me look at the school’s private personnel files,” he countered. “I’ve run background checks on all the employees, but you may have more information that I might have missed.”
Seeming to give up any residual fight, Ms. Lucy nodded her head. “Done. What else?”
“Keep your eyes and ears open. Anything about these women that linked them together? Any commonalities? You know them better than me.”
Ms. Lucy paused before answering, and her usually crystal clear blue eyes clouded over: “They were all extraordinary, in their own right, even your sister. So much passion, and so much sexual potential.”
Chapter Fifteen
Light fingers traveled up the side of her stomach, leaving trails of sensation along the way. As they reached her bare breasts, Amanda arched her body upward, begging for contact. A warm palm cupped the underside of her breast, bringing the yearning flesh up to a wet mouth. Tongue lapping over her areola, her nipples instantly became even harder, and warmth began to pulse between her legs. So isolated: Just that twirling tip of a tongue over one nipple was setting her off so quickly. Amanda had been feeling wound tightly, without any release of her pent-up sexual energy and frustration. In the darkness, she couldn’t see her lover’s face, but she imagined it to be Reed.
She wished for more. Yearned to be taken. Possessed. And then another mouth joined the first, suckling on her other nipple. She moaned aloud. She had dreamed of one day making love to more than one person at a time, of having her body lavished with sensual pleasure, all focus upon her, but it had never been a reality until now.
She didn’t often like to share. When it came to loving between the sheets, she usually wanted to be the center of attention. Yet, if her multiple lovers were going to play gorgeous homage to her body, well… more power to them and more pleasure for her.
A hand settled on the inside of her left thigh, and she widened her legs in order to give access to her most private parts. Then, a hand increased the pressure on her right thigh, making her open up even further. If she wanted to shut her legs, she didn’t think that she’d be able to. She was open and on display. Thankfully, the room was so dark that if she couldn’t see, they couldn’t see. All the while, the fondling and sucking of her breasts continued.
With her legs braced apart, she felt someone slightly finger her pussy, just gently teasing her outer folds, testing her wetness and readiness. She was ready enough, she thought, for whatever they wanted to give her, whatever they wanted to do with her. Just as she was about to speak those words, to beg to be taken, someone laid their mouth over hers, and the kissing started. Simultaneously, two fingers plunged into her cunt, providing an aching amount of sensation, but still not enough. She wanted to be stretched open, taken, fucked hard.
A thick tongue filled her mouth, kissing so passionately that her breath was sucked straight from her body. She gasped for her next inhalation, o
nly to find the possessing mouth again, and her next breath came from her lover’s mouth.
The lover between her legs added a thumb slick with her own juices, rolled it coarsely over her clit and Mandi’s body lit up, creating orgasmic sparks of color behind her eyelids. She longed to reach out and touch those in bed with her… were they men, women or a mixture of both? But it was as if her body was completely restrained. She had no control of their actions and little control over her own.
Her hips lifted off the bed as the climax overtook her senses. Toes stretched out tautly, she reveled in the release.
Then, just when she thought that she was done coming, she understood that they – the mysterious nighttime lovers – were not done with her, or with her body. Wave upon wave of pleasure built within her once again, and she whimpered into the mouth of the person kissing her. From the feel of the strong lips, it had to be a male. A woman’s mouth would be softer, fuller, smaller. This kisser knew how to take her simply by the power of the kisses. She willed him to delve further, to plunge into her, for one of the lovers to give her the fulfillment she sought.
Momentarily, maddeningly, all touching, all sucking, all plunging, stopped. She felt herself being turned over onto her stomach, and a rolled up pillow being pulled underneath her pelvic area. She thought she remembered going to sleep in a simple nightshirt without any underwear on. Somehow, at some point in time, she’d lost that solo piece of clothing. Now, a slight breeze blew across her naked body, sending chills along her skin and raising goose bumps. Shivers of anticipation joined the sensation, and she lay there, waiting to feel what would happen next.
Hands pressed on each side of her ass, opening her up. She tried to clench herself shut. This wasn’t the way that she wanted to lose her bottom-cherry. The fantasy was nice enough, but she’d waited this long, and she wanted it to be special. Still, the hands persisted, and, slightly curious to see what was in store, she relaxed a bit. A wet probing sensation circled the core of her ass. The tip of a tongue rimmed her, slicking her up. The sensation was more intimate than anything she’d felt before. She’d never imagined how sensitive the nerve endings there could be.
Something larger pushed into her ass, perhaps a finger. She relaxed her muscles further, letting out a deep breath and remembering the lessons she’d read about to ready herself for anal sex.
But, they didn’t go further, simply a small pressure. She wiggled her ass against the finger, even more ready to be taken. And then it came, the glorious cock. He slid into her pussy fully in one full thrust. She grunted at the pressure, of being pressed down into the bed. Deep thrusts bounced her off the pillows, rubbing her clit into the rough material of the sheets. She’d always loved the feel of texture on her clit, masturbating over her underwear or through a silky nightgown. All the while, that finger stayed right there in her ass, reminding her that she was being possessed, taken, and what could potentially be coming. What if he thought she was ready enough, and slick enough, after the rim job, and with how soaking wet her pussy was? What if he took that thick cock out of her pussy, and placed in… just like that… in her ass?
Would she be ready? Amanda wasn’t sure of the answer. But the thought. The very idea of being taken. Being possessed. Being fucked so royally by Reed because by now, she knew that it was Reed that was in bed with her. It had to be. She’d been thinking of him, wanting him for so long now, that only he could really please her in such a way.
Somehow, everyone else who had been with them earlier had left. And, they’d left Amanda and Reed alone in this room together. He was giving her everything that she had ever wanted. He was fucking her with everything that he had. Everything that she knew he possessed. She was coming. Soaring over the sheets. Over the bed. Clit rubbing against the pillow, ass up in the air, being filled with her dream-lover: She was coming.
Amanda woke from her passion-filled dreams lying on her stomach. One hand stretched beneath her body, fingers touching her clit. Small aftershocks of pleasure traveled through her, and she smiled at the memory of it. In the darkness of the room, she had to think for a moment about where she was. In the house. That’s all she knew. She’d fallen asleep and dreamed that others had joined her in an orgy. She’d awoken alone. Still alone, she resolved herself to playing her captors’ game, but she was even more determined to escape.
Chapter Sixteen
Once Ralph and the other holders thought Amanda was appropriately drugged, they let her roam around the allowed areas of the house. On the first excursion from her “cell,” Amanda swore she saw Claire being led into another room. Over the next few days, she held vigil, keeping an eye out for her friend, but it wasn’t like she could outright ask about her. That type of behavior would let her kidnappers know that she was palming her meds rather than swallowing them.
It wasn’t as if she and the other women had complete freedom, but there were a few areas where they were allowed to comingle. One area, ironically enough, was the library, or reading room. How any of them were supposed to do any reading when they could barely concentrate, Amanda had no idea. And, she knew better than to appear too interested in a text. Heaven forbid one of the guards figured out that she wasn’t drugged out of her mind, and she’d be put under room arrest again.
As the days passed and the medication fully wore off, her boredom and panic increased. She needed out of there. Looking at women like Willow, who rocked themselves and whispered names of saviors, imaginary or not, made her feel even more trapped. She didn’t know quite how long Willow had been at the halfway house. Her loss of reality made her seem like she’d been there the longest of all of them.
This afternoon found Amanda in the library, a copy of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” in her hands. Many found the slow awakening in the book to be a literary masterpiece. These days, the author would be arrested as a suspected child molester, and the book was regularly listed amongst the “most challenged” by the American Library Association. Still, one could appreciate loving the innocence of Lolita, and the young vixen definitely knew how to play up her wild side. Amanda wondered if her kidnappers had ulterior motives for placing the book in the library. Surely, it was a message meant to be interpreted.
Across the room, Willow took up her regular rocking routine. She held a copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” but there would be no escaping into the imaginary world for her. Every day that Amanda saw her, Willow sat in the same spot, holding the same book, and she never saw her turn a page.
“He’ll come for me. He’ll come for me,” Willow chanted more loudly from her chair. “He’ll find me. Find me.”
Disturbed by the repetition, Amanda took in Willow. Hour by hour, day by day, she seemed more withdrawn and gaunt than when she had first seen her. Sure, she would still be described as striking with her tall, thin, runway model-like build, but these days she looked more sickly than stage-ready.
Today, Claire had once again not come out from her room. Amanda wondered where her closest friend was, and if she was all right. She couldn’t very well ask one of the so-called guards where Claire was, because that would mean that, again, she was not drugged up enough. If she’d been taking her pills, she’d be rocking herself on a chair and mumbling like Willow. Or staring out into space like the tall African beauty Shatonda, she thought, turning to take in the sight of the dark-skinned exotic woman who usually sat by the room’s main window, gazing out into the unknown. She, too, looked like she belonged on a runway in Milan, adorned with a flowing designer chemise, rather than locked up in this halfway house to hell. Sometimes, Amanda wondered what exactly Shatonda was looking at: Was it the actual scenery that lay outside in the backyard, or was it some memory from her past that held her mesmerized? Either way, one didn’t get very far talking to her. Amanda had tried.
“He’ll come. He’ll come. Reed will find me,” Willow continued to chat from her corner. The mention of “Reed” brought Mandi’s attention back to the winsome woman. Could she be talking about the
very same Reed she knew? It would be a coincidence, but considering that both she and Claire had come from the university, it wouldn’t be that much of a coincidence. Maybe Willow had a connection to Reed, too.
“Reed is coming. I know him. Love will make him come. He’s coming.”
Willow’s voice grew louder, until she started screeching indecipherable syllables and vowels. The two guards standing on the outside of the library doors stepped in and, silently, mentally, Mandi willed Willow to stop, but unfortunately, she didn’t.
As they drew closer to her, Willow began to shake her head. “Don’t touch me. No, don’t touch me. He’ll come. Reed will save me.”
Each guard grabbed one of her elbows and lifted her out of the chair. As they dragged her across the room toward the hallway, Willow continued to fight them, dragging her bare feet and pulling furiously against the bonds of their strong grip.
Just when she was about to pass Mandi, she turned and looked at her, making direct eye contact. Mandi felt as if she was sending her some sort of message, but she wasn’t quite sure what it was. She wished she knew. “He’ll come… for us,” she whispered.
A chill passed down Mandi’s back. Clouds passed forebodingly outside by the window, casting a dark shadow across the room. Shatonda turned from the window and also looked at Mandi before directing her gaze to the open doorway. No one guarded it at this time. Both of the guards had escorted Willow to her quarters, which meant they were not being watched.
This moment may be it, Mandi thought, the time that I could possibly escape. She wasn’t quite sure where she would or could go, but there couldn’t be a more open invitation than now. And, once she got out, she would make sure that the other women were safe. She possessed more clear-headedness than she had in a few days, and the coast was clear. As Mandi stood up, her legs felt a bit wobbly. Why? It wasn’t like she’d been working out on a Stairmaster for two hours straight; all she’d been doing was sitting her ass on a chair. More like disuse rather than abuse, she thought. That, or nerves for what could be coming.
Physical Education Page 10