After (46 page)

“You've had my kiss, Dorset. Now I want yours.”

The prisoner's chin dimpled and quivered as he pressed his lips to Artel's mouth, as he forced his tongue to answer Artel's tongue. Then there was a long, soft, deep, wet kiss, Artel's breath a panting growl, speeding, while Dorset snuffled sporadically. It went on for a long while, that tender kiss bought with such a violent threat. Then their wet lips and tongues parted, and Artel put his mouth by Dorset's ear and growled,

“Now, Dorset, you're going to give me an A-plus cock-sucking.”

The fresh expression of horror on Dorset' face flushed her with a nauseating thrill.

“If you're going to say anything, Dorset, say it now, so I don't stand up just to have to get back down to cut your dick off.”

Artel tapped the flat of the knife against the stretched length of flaccid cock, and Dorset just looked—in golden silence—between his threatened manhood and the other's face with tears and snot running down his face.

“So you want to suck me?” Artel growled. Dorset's chin dimpled up and his mouth twisted down, his bottom lip shiny with drool. “If you don't tell me, Dorset, I won't know which you'd rather have: my dick in your mouth, or your jewels in a jar by my bed. So if you want to suck me, Dorset, you'd better let me hear you say it.”

“I want to suck you,” Dorset bawled, stuttering and shuddering.

“Mmmm. I like the way you say that, Dorset. You want to taste my cock, don't you Dorset.”

A small, wet “yes” gurgled out.

“Tell me.”

“I want to taste your cock.”

In a kind of elated horror, then, she watched Artel rise to his feet, undo his belt, and open his fly with the scratchy noise of metal zipper teeth releasing. She saw Dorset recoil and turn his face away as Artel bared his rigid cock and curved his fingers almost tenderly against the scraggy jaw of the kneeling man to turn his head forward again.

“I won't prod you again, Dorset. Get eager, or I'll get on my knees, and your dick comes off,” Artel lulled in a terrifying, sweet voice.

Fat tears dripping down his cheeks Dorset opened his mouth and closed his lips just behind the head of Artel's cock. Dorset's body convulsed, like he was dry heaving, as he slid his mouth an inch or two down.

“There you go,” Artel cooed, gently petting and stroking the head of the man fellating him.

She was shaking. Her gut rolled and clenched spastically and her throat had that wet, salty feeling. But she couldn't turn away. Fuck, she didn't want to turn away. Why should this make her sick, anyway? She should be fucking clapping. Shouting. Like they did.

“That's nice, Dorset. But use your tongue a little. Underneath. You know where it feels nice.”

She half wished Artel would give the fucker a good throat-raping. But in a way, this was more cruel.

“Good. Like that,” Artel groaned softly, still stroking and petting the other's hair, his cheek. “Now, take me in, all the way. Just relax and take it slow,” he soothed when Dorset gagged and coughed around Artel's cock. “All the way down, Dorset,”

Artel's caressing hand slid around to the back of Dorset's head and pulled him against his pelvis, forcing the length of his cock all the way into the other's mouth. As she stood there, frozen, staring, Artel made the guy do everything he'd described making her do a few minutes earlier: he held him down on his cock until she wondered if he'd pass out, he'd been deprived of air for so long. Then he let him have just two gasps before he forced him down again. And again. Dorset's face had gone reddish purple and water streamed down from his eyes. Then he made him suck his balls, and something about that made Dorset start to dry heave again. But at least the oxygen was circulating again and he stopped looking like a hairy eggplant.

“Now, Dorset,” Artel said especially tenderly, “take a few good, deep breaths.

Good. One more. Now, try to stay relaxed, but keep your lips nice and tight on my cock.”

Artel started pumping between the other's lips, and Dorset began making some little muffled animal-like sound and huffing and sputtering as he desperately sucked at the air every time Artel's cock left his throat. She could see from the way his body had gone rigid, the way his breaths were quick and shallow, that Artel was close, and she was anticipating what noise, what face Dorset would make when the thick, pungent warmth spurted into his mouth.

“Fuck, Dorset,” Artel growled, “your mouth is like a hot, tight cunt.” Artel's hips thrust at the other's face a few more times, then: “I'm going to feed you my cum now, Dorset. Don't swallow. And don't spit. Hold it in your mouth for me.”

Then Artel grunted and pumped his hips and growled and thrust, then took a fistful of the other's hair to hold him still as he drew back and let out a long, guttural moan. A soggy sound came from Dorset's throat and his eyes, shut through everything, wrinkled into a hard squint. Artel let out a long, low sigh and pulled his dick out of Dorset's mouth, and as Artel stroked his cock, two final spurts of cum glopped onto the other's hair and cheek.

Artel took his time tucking away and doing up his pants before he said in his usual, indifferent voice, “Alright, Dorset. Let's see.

Dorset opened his mouth just a little.

“Wider.”

She knew his jaw was stiff and sore. He opened wider.

“Tongue out.”

His tongue was battered with cum.

“Alright. You can swallow now.”

His adam's apple bobbed, but it took a few tries before he managed to swallow.

He retched noisily a couple times, but managed to keep it all down. Or at least in.

“He's all yours,” Artel said with a glance over his shoulder, in a drained voice.

The foreboding retching sounds had stopped and the guy looked small now, all crumpled at Artel's feet, with the sort of destroyed, shell-shocked look she'd seen on so many faces, but never on a man's.

“Probably you've been given to men before,” Artel said, low, somber, when some time had gone by and she had neither moved nor spoken. “Now I'm giving this man to you. But this,” he held his knife out to her, glinting in the open palm of his hand, “is just a loan.”

She reached out to take the knife, anticipating the feel of its weight, the cool smoothness of the polished handle in her grip. His throat would open in a too-wide grin that would laugh, sputtering red. Or better, he'd scream, a shriek indistinguishable from that of a woman or an animal as she sliced the blade through the thin sack of skin holding his balls, then through the thick, meaty flesh of his cock.

Her hand still hovering over the knife, her second words to Artel were: “He'll be switches now?”

“If they find him like this, yeah.”

Better. Let him see what it was like to be thrown to the animals, day after day, like a gnawed bone. Meanwhile, she didn't want to do anything to take his mind off what had just been done to him. A knife blade cutting had a way of diminishing the aftertaste of semen.

Now what she wanted was on the bed. Artel was quiet and still as she plucked the prisoner's pocketknife from the blanket, still and quiet as she dropped it into her pocket and waited for Artel to protest. But Artel just pocketed his own knife and brought forth the three keys he'd gotten from Dorset.

“I'm getting out tonight. I'd say the chances are fifty-fifty. Maybe better. Come, if you want.”

No better chance was going to come.

* * * *

“Think anyone's following?” he asked her when they'd run a mile or more.

She went very still, looked back, waited for their breathing to quiet, listened.

“No.”

“My plan is to head east. There's an abandoned farm, three miles from the nearest populated town.”

“You'll be safer on your own.”

“You won't.”

She had her doubts. “Why risk getting caught with a subvert?”

“I'd miss your conversation.” There was something like a smile bending his mouth. After a long quiet, he added, “My word can't mean much, I know, but I'll never make a claim on you.”

“I'll make my own way.”

“Alright. Be safe, then.”

“Thank you.”

He headed east and she went north, wondering for a moment if he'd understood that those two words hadn't been for his parting wish, thinking how she'd lost the ability to express thoughts in words. Words failed her.

Then her mind turned toward a destination. Away from there was no destination.

Another was needed. Fingering the knife in her pocket, she wondered why it was so hard to end a life so full of pain, so empty of anything else. Death would make a fine destination. A place no one could burn down, from which no one could drag her away. A place she could choose for herself and stay forever. But it was impossible and far; her life swelled too big and hot in her veins.

Where, then?

Hot blood pumping into her muscles decided for her, even before reason acknowledged the sound of voices, of booted feet hammering the earth and shattering leaves and fracturing twigs. She ran. She always ran. Never away. Always toward.

Toward the laughter. The hate-heavy shouts. The grunting noises men always make when they are beating or raping.

Crouched low, she crept, silent, and found them. Seven ringing someone on the ground. The seven were spitting curses, kicking, stomping. Twice, the person on the ground knocked someone from the seven down. Then the sounds changed—whoops for the spunk of the victim, taunts for the felled comrades.

By now, normally she'd be there, too, risking everything the victim was suffering, or about to suffer. By now, normally, one or two of the seven would be dead by her hand. But she knew. It was not a woman they had. It was Artel.

He was one of them. Soured, maybe. Even repentant. But probably he didn't deserve to live. Even if he'd let her kill one. Even if he'd tortured and condemned that other.

She fingered the knife in her pocket. Their laughter and howls pitched up to frenzy. Below, the faint groans of the man under their boots.

Invisible in Artel's fatigues, she crept toward the orgy, her blade out. The first one or two were always easy, like this. The pigs were so loud they never heard her; so full of their power, seven on one, being hurt was beyond the distance of their imagination.

The first was always the same. A stab in the back. A fierce jerk between two vertebrae. His scream, even his fall unnoticed amidst the grunts and howls and brawling.

The second. Two quick swipes severing tendons at the backs of knees.

As the third whirled to find the attacker, she sprang at him and slit his throat before his eyes had even picked her out from the still dark.

Now, there were just four. And Artel was up. He caught one on his way to her, and dispatched him in seconds. The last three woke up to the uncertainty of their power and started reaching for their guns, but too late. Certainty of victory, a lifetime of being the one with the advantage in weapons and number never bred good soldiers.

She was cut, but if it was bad, she hardly felt it. But when the last man fell, when she'd plucked from his twitching hand the gun he hadn't had time to use, when she'd put a bullet in his head, and done the same to all the others and collected their weapons and ammo, she had to drag Artel back onto his feet. She half carried Artel all the way to his abandoned farmhouse.

“You're bleeding,” he said when she'd found and lit a few candles.

She shrugged. “You're the wounded one.”

His face was bruised and bloody, but all that could wait. She undid the first button on his shirt, and his hand clamped the fabric closed.

“I dislike the idea of you seeing my body,” he said quietly.

But then he unclenched the defending fingers and let his arm fall to his side.

“It's such a hard body,” he went on as she undid the next button. “A violent body.

A body made for hurting and killing.”

He was quiet for a while. She finished unbuttoning, pulled the shirt open, baring a chest and abdomen carved like a Roman plate of armor excepting raised scars, slid the shirt down heavily muscled arms.

“It's good that you should see it, though. Just like I'm glad you saw what I did to Dorset, even though I hated for you to see it. It's good that you know what I am.”

“A raper of men.”

“Yes. Well, a raper of rapists. If a distinction can be made.”

When she washed the blood away from the wound under his arm she found it not too deep.

“I'm not a good man. I take pleasure from feeling my power over another. A perverse pleasure. Erotic. Compelling. The only difference between me and Dorset, me and all of them, is who we choose to hurt. It eases my conscience to think I'm punishing people who deserve it. But I won't pretend what I've done—what I do—is only about justice.”

“So you choose them for what they've done. Not because...”

“Yes. Not because I don't desire women. You should know that, too.”

“Try to lie still,” she admonished as she helped him to lie down on the narrow, spartan cot. “The cut wasn't bad, but you might have internal injuries, the way they were stomping and kicking you.”

“Yes, doctor.”

“Nix.”

If they were going to hole up together, he might as well know her name.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“It's really lovely. This place,” Artel murmured from his sick bed.

“Yes.”

“You don't like it here.”

“No.”

“No one else will want it.”

“I know.”

“I doubt the camp will be sending anyone else out. We've been too expensive to them already. Makes them look bad. All we have to worry about is general sweeps.”

Still, the farmhouse was so lovely she hesitated to stay. Living anywhere that might start to feel like a home meant risking fresh loss. The less one had to lose, the easier it was to fight.

“If they come, we'll say you're my wife.”

She leveled a look at him, and he met it.

“I don't say you are. I told you I'd never make a claim on you. I only suggest we have a story ready.”

“You think that'll make a difference this far from town?”

“If it doesn't, we'll fight.”

“Yes.”

No matter which way one went—north or east, with the flow or against it—there was always a fight.