Would I like what I saw?
As I strained against the ropes they cut into my flesh. Every futile jerk and twist only added to my agony, but I couldn’t stop. At some point it had to end…didn’t it? Or had I figured wrong? Had I just fallen into a nightmare of endless torture?
When I felt the man’s hand on my pussy, I couldn’t stop myself from gasping, nor could I stop the wild cry that lifted into the night when he jabbed my sex with his stiff erection. All that I know is that it was not Alec fucking me. A disembodied spirit, maybe? A real man? Either one made sense on that horrible night, but I knew it was not Alec. The feel of his cock I can never forget.
Those that filled my sex used me hard, taking from my body what they demanded, regardless of the hurt. By the time my attackers disappeared, I was beginning to think that I’d been fucked back to sanity. But then something nipped at my bound feet and I started to scream. Something crawled up my leg, something ruffled my hair, something whispered in my ear. It’s then that the shock of my predicament overwhelmed me.
I awakened to the scent of a woman, to her soft touch and a whispering voice that told me, “He’s here, Evie, waiting for you. He’s here,” the voice went on until I was orgasming to the thought of him, my body bucking on air, my whole crotch tightening as if his cock were inside me to be milked.
He’s here, Evie, waiting for you, waiting for you now…
“No turning back, Evie,” the voice came again, like a sensuous cloud enfolding me in those lovely words.
No turning back, Evie… again and again, the lilting contralto assured me.
Until I suddenly heard the sound of my own voice, I failed to realize that I was repeating back the woman’s words. My body was bucking even harder as another orgasm ripped through me.
“If you’re ready to have him…”
“Yes, yes, I’m ready to have him!” I heard myself screaming at the top of my lungs.
“Shussssssh!”
But it was a man’s voice this time, a man’s lips at my ear, a man’s breath and body I smelled, just as I would have imagined him…
“Quiet, girl,” his whispering voice reverberated through me. “I will see you on the other side.”
Then he moved away and it was Lana’s hands that worked the knots, unbound my body and took me into her arms, where I collapsed sobbing, finally freed from captivity.
“No, Evie, don’t, not now,” she suddenly pushed me back. “We can’t stop now.”
She swept the blindfold away and took my hand, moving from the open area where I’d been bound and diving back into the maze again.
“I don’t want to go there!” I screamed. “Please, please, please…” I panicked, then I took off running in the opposite direction.
Suddenly, I was tackled to the ground, grabbed and mauled and pinned to the rocky soil by Lana’s body, her strength taking all of mine away.
“No, Evie!” She slapped my face. “Come around, damn you! You want the man, then you can have him. But stop the screaming, stop the madness! This is just a game, just a game, darling.” She straddled my waist, her green eyes glaring down at me like some unearthly beast. And she was crying, tears streaming down her face and on to me. Then like she was angry with herself, she wiped them away with her toga, afterwards discarding the soiled slip of fabric so she was naked too. “It’s just a game.” Her voice softened and so did I. “Just a game.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry isn’t enough, Evie. You have to pluck up a little courage and move on with me. Whether you’re ready for what’s going to happen, I can’t say. Just remember, when you want something bad enough and you fixate on it with every bit of strength you have, you’d better be prepared for the results, because you’re going to get exactly what you desire.”
We were back in the maze going nowhere and when I looked up next, I saw the moon appearing on the horizon. Time had passed, no telling how much, but we’d been circling through the hedges and trees and stone walls for what seemed like hours. We heard the other women being taken for sport, getting fucked and beaten and otherwise abused. And yet we saw none of this. In the distance we heard one woman’s cries of pain, a shrill sound that will haunt my mind forever.
Suddenly, with a wild burst of energy, one of the mastiffs was on us, circling, snorting, yapping, clawing until we finally stopped. When we tried to move on, the dog began that bewildered circling once again, as if he defied us to move another step forward.
“I think he wants us to stay,” Lana finally said, as she peered into the mastiff’s forbidding face. “So, is it all right if we bed down here?” she asked him.
The dog whimpered and sat down, waiting for Lana and I to do the same.
I don’t recall when I drifted to sleep. Lana and the mastiff were both snoring softly; even the woods and maze seemed to slumber. Not a scream, not a moan to be heard. For a long while as I waited for sleep to take me, I listened to the quiet, to the sound of the sky and the stars and the silence in our gloomy thicket of hedges and stone.
What seemed like an impossible puzzle at night became a simple contest in the morning. A few quick turns and we stepped into another clearing, this one larger than where I’d been tied to a tree, although I only know that by intuition. Where I was bound, there was space enough for the men to move around me, but it was nothing like the open area where we suddenly found ourselves.
“What is this?” I whispered to Lana.
“I have no idea,” she replied.
“Then you’ve never been here?”
“Never.” She paused. “But don’t worry, this place doesn’t matter. It’s the other side of the maze that does.”
Lana didn’t want to be noticed, so we cautiously slunk back and slowly made our way around the perimeter of the area, darting behind trees and statuary to stay out of sight. My imagination flew all kinds of places as I wondered what was happening.
The center of the area appeared to be a prison for unlucky women who were captured in the maze and brought in, bound at the hands and in some cases hobbled at the knees or feet. In a circular area about twenty feet across were a dozen or more crude and hefty stakes that had been pounded into the ground. One by one, the spoils of this contest were tied against the stakes, each bound as severely as I had been bound to the tree.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it was this place where I was made captive…
I turned to Lana. “Is this where you found me?”
“Shush. No,” she whispered.
Gazing at the amazing scene, I saw men with whips and crops wandering from captive to captive. They drew my fascination, though not Lana’s. I would have hid in a corner to witness the atrocities taking place, but she was relentless about moving on. Though the punishment and torture inflicted on those bound females riveted my eyes, I was torn from the scene again and again, as Lana pulled me on, sometimes tugging, often irritated that I moved so slowly.
Several times we had to dip back into the maze so as not to be seen, then later we tiptoed out and moved stealthy toward the far side in a painstakingly slow trek. And one point, Lana turned to me whispering a terse threat: “We get caught, that will be you bound to one of those stakes, and it won’t be such a pleasure for you as it was last night.”
“That was no pleasure!” I objected—much too loudly.
“Hush!” she quietly came back with two fingers gently sealing my lips. “Learn, girl, learn. What both of us want is dependent on you following me through this…quietly.”
“And what is it you want?” I asked.
“To be free of a man who will put you in chains.”
I pulled back sharply, startled by a reply that immediately generated a dozen questions that would, unfortunately, be left unanswered, as Lana pressed on with me in tow headed toward the far side of the clearing.
We seemed to be closing in on the target, approaching the opening in the maze Lana had been aiming for not more than twenty feet away. But suddenly she stopped again and darted ba
ck into an alcove of trees and shrubs, crouching low. From where we were we could see more men and slaves converge on the scene, more women being bound to the hefty stakes. When I listened I could hear their cries, and when not the cries of women, the sound of dogs whimpering at their feet.
“What is this?”
“An auction.” Lana’s eyes were as fixed on the scene as were mine, watching the bound women and the men stalking them with their whips. Many of the faces were familiar to me, but then there were the others arriving on the scene, men dressed not for sex sports in the woods—in jeans and boots—but in more formal street clothes. The strangers moved from one female to the next, each woman pulled from her post and inspected, her mouth opened, her cunt lips fingered, her body bent at the waist to examine her ass, invasive and demeaning acts that aroused me as much as they made me cringe.
“I’m not ready for that!” Until Lana turned to me, I hadn’t realized that I’d said the words aloud. “I’m sorry,” I mouthed.
“That’s why we need to make it to that far opening in the maze,” she all but mouthed back while pointing in that direction. I understood every word.
However, there was no stealthy creeping toward that goal. With so much taking place at the center of the clearing, and so many people swarming the scene, we needed to wait until the hoopla had calmed down—this I assumed was Lana’s thinking.
An auction. The word went down with a chill, cold as ice, sharp and critical. That was how I saw the buyers as they inspected each naked and shivering female. Each seemed to be treated differently. Some were retied to their stakes—some faced forward, some facing out—and then flogged, or tortured in some other way while the men stood back to watch the woman’s pained response. Some were fucked—tested for endurance by the looks of it. Others endured ruthless interrogations with their accusers’ cruel faces just inches from theirs. The air shrieked with tension, taut and unflinching. I can’t say all the women were brutalized, that all were tortured or inspected in such a vile way—there was just too much to see. But I found my gaze returning again and again to those suffering the most abuse, my eyes unable to look away, or decently appraise what I was seeing.
My palms sweat. My skin began to itch. My emotions were tumbling through me in great waves. I fear that if Lana hadn’t been at my side to calm me I would have retched or worse yet, done something stupid to give away our location.
We watched until our legs began to cramp, though we hardly seemed to notice the discomfort with the spellbinding scene before us playing out to the logical conclusion.
When the auction began, I clamped my hand over my mouth to silence my response.
We heard bids, numbers spit out back and forth, but not in the usual way auctions are conducted with a fast talking auctioneer and gavel in hand. This was a less formal sale of female flesh, which seemed conducted by its own rules. Whoever was in charge was a mystery to me, though there seemed to be someone at the center of the activity who made the final pronouncement. Naked, vulnerable and afraid of capture, we chose to remain hidden, which mean that our view was often obstructed by moving bodies or staked females that prevented us from seeing the outcome of the auction. A few slaves were taken from the stakes and led away. One minute the clearing was a bustling market of movement, the next there were just a few left, most unsold females still rigidly bound to the tall phallic stakes.
Lana nudged me with her elbow, indicating that it was time to move on; in my bones I could feel her anxiety as if we were twins and on some level we thought and believed the same things. Her anxiety became mine as we moved away from the slim safety of our little alcove and made a path toward the opening in the maze. Trusting in Lana’s intuition, I knew that once we slipped between the hedges we would be safe again from harm and well on our way to the final destination. On darting into the murky but comforting confines of the towering foliage, my heart raced excitedly. We grabbed hands and moved at a slow trot spurred by our own inner desires. But suddenly, a fierce something flung us back. A second later we were on the ground grappling for air—though breathing air was not the problem. Much as we struggled to free ourselves, our efforts were fruitless; we were little more than a heap of limbs and frustration, futilely trying to beat our way out of the thick hemp net that had taken us captive.
In the scuffle that followed, a blindfold descended over my eyes and I couldn’t see a thing. When my fractured consciousness finally knit itself back together, I realized that I was bound to a stake, no different than the captured slaves that we’d watched in horrific amazement.
When the blindfold was finally lowered, I gazed around to see the same clearing where we’d watched the auction and I started to cry. It took a bit longer for me to realize that everyone else had cleared out. There was not a soul in sight, save Lana, who was bound with rope to a stake just a few feet to my left.
There was someone else in that clearing; I could sense their presence. I could even catch the scent of some distinct and very masculine perfume. But it took some moments before they revealed themselves to me.
Suddenly, stalking out through the space between Lana and me was the black man of my dreams. I didn’t know whether to feel relief or more fright. I’d never seen him dressed so casually: jeans, boots, a black t-shirt, the muscles of a god bulging from underneath. My heart leapt with longing, my crotch with want.
But I was scared stiff, realizing the importance of this moment.
He moved close to me with an expression on his face so unfathomable that I had not a clue what he was thinking. A bit of wonder, even a feeling of pleasure seemed to emanate from his beautiful face—all focused on me. Was I being naïve to imagine such romantic things at a moment like this? The sensation was so real. But perhaps it was no more than a creation of a fertile mind that for several years had been enthralled by this god-like figure.
He stopped just a few inches away, so close that I could almost sense his heartbeat and feel the tickle of his breath upon my skin. I once feared that I would hate the man if he ever got this close, but that fear was quickly allayed. My longing for him was as constant as the sky above.
“Ah, Evie, at last we meet.” He looked directly into my eyes. “Too bad under such unfortunate circumstances as these. Getting caught is not the point of our labyrinth game, as I’m sure you know. Perhaps you would have been better off to go it alone as follow the instincts of your guide.” He turned to Lana, who with her head thrown back and her eyes closed looking as if she were dozing in the heat of the afternoon sun. “Lana, my darling, I really thought you’d be able to pull this off.” He made up the two steps that remained between them and reached out to take her by the throat. Her eyes opened instantly, though she stared at him without emotion. This seemed startling to me since I could barely contain my own raging nerves. “Shall I bring Alec in to complete the auction, or would you rather wait a bit?”
“You’ll do what you’re going to do,” she replied evenly.
She turned her face enough that I could see tears welling in her eyes.
If she was to be sold, would I be too?
The man then moved back toward me, a hint of a swagger in his hips; something that I’m attuned to—he’d make an excellent dancer. I could almost feel our loins locked together and the music of the ballet rising all around us.
“I should introduce myself to you, Evie, since no one has yet bothered to do so. I’m Mr. D’Lancy. Dominick D’Lancy. And you, Evie, have been coming to my labyrinth, taking advantage of my little miracle, enjoying the spectacle, even allowing it to arouse you. Did you think that you could continue to do so and not eventually be made to pay for the privilege of enjoying my world?” I was speechless, but more than that, I had no idea if I should even open my mouth. He immediately understood this. “It’s okay,” he went on, “there’s no command that you not speak, at least not yet.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I have no idea what to say.”
“How about telling me the truth, as in what is going on inside
your pretty head? How do you happen to be here, in this place, with my slave Lana, running naked through a maze of hedges that is quite impossible to successfully navigate? How does a beautiful and talented dancer like you insert yourself into a world like this and justify it in your mind? What is it that brings you here?”
Until then I hadn’t realized that my mouth was so parched that I could barely get the thing to work, although I doubted that Mr. Dominick D’Lancy would have cared for my excuse at this grave moment. Though I considered his question, my mind was drawing a blank.
“Evie,” he moved a little closer. “When you are in my world there is one imperative that I demand from those who enter, and that is their unwavering honesty. Now tell me, what is it that brings you here?” Though his inherent kindness was keeping me calm in face of all my anxiety, I still had to answer the question.
To my amazement, what finally came out just seemed to spill from my mouth. “You brought me here, sir.”
He stepped back. “Me? How’s that? I’ve never met you.”
“But you have met me. You’ve been in my dreams for years, and in the performance hall, and on the street and in the labyrinth when I’ve come with Mr. West. I swear that you have been calling to me, welcoming me to you. Is that too fantastical to believe?”
How I became so clear thinking and rational in the space of seconds, I’ll never know. But if I were to have had days to think about the answer to his question, I could not have stated my answer any more truthfully or real than what I told him. However, if I expected some congratulations for my brilliant effort, I was kidding myself, because that answer brought a reply that jumped me right back to the issue at hand.
Labyrinth Page 16