Claimed: A Forced Submission Romance (2 page)

“How’s a beautiful g’el like you travel the world without an escort?” a young fellow asked, standing next to her, almost fraternally, swigging his brew and surveying the group. Sandy explained briefly about her girlfriend jamming on her. “Where’s your boyfriend, then?” he asked, as if that were the obvious next question.

“Oh,” Sandy stumbled, momentarily, “he’s – I – I mean, I don’t really have a boyfriend – I mean, we’re just....” How did she explain simply that she really didn’t expect her relationship with Dennis to survive her trip; quite possibly, she didn’t want it to. But she didn’t need to explain that to a stranger, did she? “He’s still in Ontario – working.”

“Oh.” The chap just shrugged, indicating somehow that it was all beyond him. Staring out into the party, he and Sandy stood side by side, silently. Abruptly, he turned to her and announced, a broad smile warping his face, “He’s a fool, then. I wouldn’t let a girl as sweet as you travel alone, f’you were mine.” Just as suddenly, he grabbed her hand and began pumping. “Jimmy here’d look after you; don’t you mind.”

After an instant of surprised hesitation, Sandy gave him a mischievous grin. “I’ll keep that in mind, Jimmy,” she purred, removing her hand from his grip. It was flattery, of course, but it seemed genuine enough. Jimmy, nodded, and took his leave, soon to be replaced by another grinning lad – then another and another. The reception line seemed to have looped back on itself. This time, she was learning a few names – not that she’d ever keep them all straight. Still, the chatter was light and warm – meaningless fluff, as often as not, but with an undercurrent of something else Sandy couldn’t quite identify.

Sandy basked in the interest and attention, the occasional compliment stroking her ego. Jimmy wasn’t the only one who asked about her boyfriend, nor the only one who offered to escort her through Europe. They seemed like such a really nice bunch of guys. Sandy was touched by the apparent sincerity of their questions and concerns. Of course, a few bottles of the thick local brew didn’t hurt.

Had she already been through the line-up twice? At some unspoken signal, Sandy felt herself being gently steered into the middle of the throng. Suddenly she was the centre of attention. The team was gathering around her, enfolding her into their midst, like one of them. The raucous conversation didn’t diminish, it just, now, included her. Had she passed some sort of test, she wondered to herself, that they no longer needed to handle her with kid gloves?

“So what d’ya do for excitement in Ontario?” someone asked, stretching out the name, “Vaaaaan-coooooover.”

“You mean when I’m not going to school?” she countered brightly, suddenly joining in to the light and playful atmosphere of the party. “This is more like it,” she thought to herself, “after all, I am nineteen.” Aloud she said, “Oh, not much.”

“Aye, c’mon,” someone else chided, “you must do something for fun.”

Sandy couldn’t help but smile. “Of course,” she teased. “We go to clubs, or go to the beach.”

“I can just imagine,” another voice put in. “Tight tops, gyrating to the loud music...”

“Yeah,” someone continued, “bright lights flashing against tight bodies.”

“You make it sound dirty,” Sandy complained, teasingly.

“Yeah.”

“What about the beach, eh?” Sandy could almost hear his desirous imagination colouring his voice. “Skimpy bikinis splashing in the surf.”

“You don’t get much in the way of surf in Ontario,” Sandy laughed. “We just lie about and tan.”

“That all?”

“Yeah, or play volleyball,” Sandy added, nostalgic for a moment, wondering what her friends were up to at home.

She was wrenched back to reality as someone next to her laid a hand against her butt and remarked, “Probably not the only balling you do, eh wot?” The room exploded in laughter. Hiding her shock, Sandy pushed the hand away, and chided, “Now, now, don’t be rude.” Rationalizing, Sandy told herself it was just harmless flirting. And the hand on her butt was not really a grope, just a friendly pat. The hand on her shoulder was not threatening, she insisted to herself, just sociable. “This is the way boys in a group behave. No need for alarm.”

Sandy wondered aloud where the rest of the women were. “Oh, they just popped out for a few things. They’ll be back in a bit.” In the ebb and flow of the conversation, Sandy wondered again and again why she was the only woman there, but her attention was repeatedly redirected by a squeeze or a nudge, as someone cracked another dirty joke or made some suggestive remark. As much as she denied it, Sandy couldn’t help but see that the tenor of the place was becoming increasingly lewd and crude.

Furthermore, the now persistent suggestiveness was becoming more and more focused on her. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so quick to respond to their flirting,” Sandy noted silently. “Now they think I’m just a good-time girl.” Her brow furrowed as she considered her quandary. “I hope I haven’t dug myself too deep of a hole?” Still, Sandy was not willing to even consider what such a hole might contain. “I wish Lindsay would get back.” The conversation swirled around her, its innuendo mounting relentlessly.

Over the top, the rollercoaster plunged madly into the depths, fear and foreboding wrestling her psyche into submission. And if Sandy was already frozen with apprehension then, the next moment petrified her.

“Ever fuck a Scotsman?” asked a voice beside her, a hand gently grasping her bicep.

Fear and surprise seemed to smother her. “Don’t be afraid,” Sandy coached herself. “They can smell fear.” Aloud she just muttered, “Never,” and pulled away. Disoriented, Sandy attempted to move out of the crowd of bodies, heading for the edge of the room. Someone stayed with her.

“Well, we’ll have to do something about that,” came the chortled reply, its voice thick with beer and lust. Sandy could no longer kid herself about that. He suddenly sounded crazy horny. Muscling her five foot six frame through this forest of rugby players would, in other circumstances, have been a joke; still, Sandy shouldered her way past, pushing at them – rubbing against them, she realized in horror – until they reluctantly allowed her passage. She could feel them painting her with hungry expectant looks, as she attempted to escape.

Along with the terror pressing down on her, twisting her smile into a grimace, some sort of resignation settled over her, paradoxically buoying, slightly, the terror. “Now you’ve done it,” someone else said, inside her head. She had an urge to look at her shoulder to see if a little version of her, with horns, a tail, and a trident, sat there chiding her – the dark side of conscience, just like in the old cartoons. “What did you expect?”

Her rational side moaned, “I don’t know. Certainly not this!”

“This?!” her demon laughed, “What’s this? Nothing’s happened yet.” Well that was true. Sandy finally made it to the wall at the edge of the parlour. Now, where was the door to her room? Maybe she could still find sanctuary until Lindsay and the others got back. “C’mon,” the demon in her coaxed, “you love it. It’s exciting, eh?”

“Aye, Lass.” The hand gave her another meaningful squeeze. “Don’t fret yourself. We’re mostly harmless, we lot here.”

“Mostly harmless?” Sandy almost laughed. “Right!”

“Relax. Have another drink.” He must have felt her body quake, for he stepped in front of her and added, with a kind of dopey grin, “There’s nothing to be scared of.”

“Nothing to be scared of?” She shrieked silently. “Are you fucking crazy?” But she just looked at him blankly – steadying her breath, trying hard to calm herself.

As he moved away, apparently in search of another drink for her, she finally let it all seep in. Up till then, she’d tried to keep the menace sub-conscious – insisting to herself it was all in her imagination. Now, she let herself consciously – fully – understand what was actually happening. “Oh, shit,” she murmured, “How did I get into this?” She looked around again, catching her breath. Admitting her situation to herself helped, at least it allowed her to think a little more clearly. “And how am I going to get out of it?” She shivered slightly, a feeling of impending disaster prodding her; then stood straight and proud in an attempt to bolster her courage.

And that was the definitive moment; Sandy remembered with amazing clarity. A frozen silence hung palpable in the air, then almost imperceptibly the voices became audible once more. Faintly at first, then rising. Like a radio, regaining reception after passing around a mountain, Sandy began to detect the odd word, then phrases. The innuendo persisted. The suggestive pall was still in the air. It was odd, she thought. Everyone was still pleasant – no one the least bit nasty – but they were all, every one of them, joining in – persistent and persevering – and lewd. “No,” she muttered in her head, giving it an imperceptible shake, “no, they’re not going to rape me.” She scanned the faces, yet again. All smiling; all friendly; all hungry. “No,” she insisted to herself, “there’s got to be a way out of this.”

“They don’t actually understand,” she explained to herself. “They think it’s okay – what they’re expecting.” Suddenly, she almost felt sorry for them, as if the whole bunch of them were just a little bit too dumb to see the howling error in all this.

But, they
were
the champions – and Sandy, unbeknownst to her, had been chosen, or, at least, had innocently wandered into the feedlot, and was now destined to be offered up, as their perk – as their reward.

Still, Sandy hoped, maybe Lindsay would get back in time to save her. Again, she peered furtively about the room, but apparently none of the woman had sneaked back in I unnoticed. She studied her ‘captors’ intently.

Actually they didn’t look bad – not like actual ‘bad guys’ – just a bunch of twenty and thirty year-olds back from their rugby game. But, they were all watching her. She could feel it, even though most of them were still being marginally surreptitious. Their smiles were all cheerful, and ostensibly benign, but there was something behind it all – something in the air – something she had, perhaps, just begun to decipher – something that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up – something there.

Little by little she felt herself being surrounded again by the expectant host. And even as she stood there unmoving, almost unfeeling, the lewd expectation became tactile. The innocuous touches were suddenly pawing; the innocent squeezes now gropes. Sandy flinched; retreating from each new contact in almost a slow dance – the movement graceful and, inadvertently, alluring – but every twist just moved her into the reach of someone else. There was no escape. Fingers and hands began to roam freely, escalating the spectacle – stroking hands alongside pressed bodies; gripped ass-cheeks, powerfully massaged; palmed tits, gently twisted and squeezed; and all the while Sandy watched and waited – waited – waited – for what? The unknown? No, the inevitable.

Still, Sandy was able to step back into herself. “This isn’t right!” she scolded. “They can’t do this to me unless I let them!” Fixing a smile onto her lips, and mustering her resolve, once again, she began to fend off the unwanted advances. If her resistance surprised anyone, no one let on, and for a while there appeared to be a truce.

“Maybe I’m just imagining it,” Sandy heaved a sigh of relief mixed with confusion, “or maybe I’m sending out some wrong signals!” She looked about warily during the lull. Nothing seemed to have changed; they were all still laughing and carrying on.

The light through the small windows indicated that it was getting on in the afternoon. “Where are Lindsay and the others?” Sandy asked hopefully. They seemed to have been gone a long time.

“Oh, don’t worry ‘bout them,” one of the boys replied, slurring his words somewhat. Sandy noted that they were all getting a little sloshed. “They’ll be along in a wink, I s’pose,” he added, giving an exaggerated wink of the eye. Abruptly he straightened up. Staring into Sandy’s face he said, “Give us a kiss, then, Luv.” Sandy only just turned her face in time to receive the sloppy smooch on her cheek. But that was all it took. The gates had opened.

“’Ere, how’s about me?” “My turn.” “Dunna be so’s shy, Dearie.” Like a pack of wolves they were on her. Sandy managed to turn her cheeks for only the first few, then, turning to avoid one, she caught another right on the lips And along with that, all the groping returned full-force Notwithstanding, the kissing frenzy was short-lived. A momentary calm signaled the eye of the storm. Sandy looked about for an avenue of escape, even though she knew there was none. “I haven’t already resigned myself, have I?”

But before she could even respond to herself, a cry arose from the surrounding natives, “‘Show us yer tits!’ as you Americans say.”

“I’m Canadian!” Sandy replied automatically, kicking herself for her lame response.

But the rest of the team seemed to gather at attention and take up the chant as if it were an anthem. “Show – us – yer tits! Show – us – yer tits!”

And it suddenly struck Sandy as so incredibly juvenile it was funny. A bolt of hope suddenly filled her, manifesting itself as a sympathetic smile on her face. “They’re really just a bunch of boys, playing,” she whispered to herself. “I can get through this.”

“Show us yer tits!” The room echoed with the repeated refrain, but as she straightened her shoulders, it changed. “Take off your top!” “Take it
all
off!” “Strip tease! Strip tease!”

Straightening her shoulders and setting her jaw, Sandy turned to leave. “Boys, boys,” she said, trying to sound strong, and a little impatient. It came out as more of a plea – feeble and helpless. The wall of boys – and, big, big rugby players they were, every one – didn’t part; no one moved to make way for her this time. Her hope fled so swiftly and so completely, it left her shaking. Terrified again, the plunging rollercoaster leaving her stomach, her control, far, far behind, Sandy surveyed the leering crowd, one more time, looking for Alex, hoping for rescue. Every eye was on her. Every shouting face, suddenly silent – grinning with anticipation. And there, in the middle of the group, no better or worse than the rest, was her alleged cousin – his eyes glittering, his mouth virtually drooling.