Female Prey & the Elusive Prey (39 page)

“Ah.” Kimberley nodded. “Your first time?”

“Yes. Why?”

Kimberley sighed. She had gone through her own first-time regrets last year and gotten quite over them, thank you. She didn’t have a whole lot of sympathy for other women’s first-time regrets. They could get over them or not on their own and come back again or not as they wished. But it tickled her to think of the uproar, if tomorrow morning whoever ran this place found the captives gone. She crept over to the looming wall of the barn and began groping around for the keys. Her fingers found a number of nails and splinters sticking out of the wood before they finally closed on the keys.

It wasn’t easy fitting keys into locks in the dark, but eventually the two women were freed. Once outside of their kennels, though, they had no idea what to do next.

“We have no clothes,” the first woman complained. “No shoes.” Her name was Melissa-something. She was a few years older than Kimberley, with long, dark hair, big brown eyes and a worried look. Kimberley had paid attention to first names only and had only introduced herself as Elf-Girl to the other woman, Paula-something. Paula was about 30, with short brown hair, kind of grayish eyes and a beautiful full-lipped mouth. She was a bit plump, but not at all fat.

“Take your blankets, then,” Kimberley had told them.

“But we have no shoes!” Paula had wailed…in a whisper. “And there’s another woman in the barn…”

“And I don’t have any more time,” Kimberley snapped…in a whisper. “I can show you where to find something to wear maybe and shoes maybe, but you have to keep up. Lag behind and I’ll just leave you. Got it?” She carefully relocked the now-empty kennels and held on to the keys. She’d chuck them away somewhere in the woods. Neither woman answered out loud and it was too dark for Kimberley to see if they’d nodded. In any case, they followed her away from the farm. They limped and whimpered a lot, but they followed.

Kimberley stuck to the road. It was too dark to do anything else. She kept on walking in spite of the pleas from Melissa and Paula to stop and rest. They were moving so slowly by now that stopping for a breather would not actually slow them down very much, but Kimberley was adamant. They were terrified of being abandoned out here in the middle of nowhere, so they kept walking too.

Kimberley had guessed that the road she’d seen running from the abandoned buildings connected to this one somewhere in the woods and when she found another road branching off to the left from the one they were traveling, she took it, urging her rescued damsels to hurry along. The sky was just beginning to lighten when they reached those buildings. Kimberley breathed a sigh of relief. “We’re here.” She told the women. “C’mon, I’ll show you where the clothes and shoes are.”

Both Paula and Melissa expressed dismay at the sight and smell of the pile, but dug into it anyway to find something, anything to wear. As they were doing that, Kimberley raided the second bin and found more hash, more canned fruit, more Spam, half a six-pack of beer, and, wonder of wonders, an old can opener hanging from a nail inside the bin. She took what she needed and a bit more for her companions. She also took the can opener before closing and relocking the bin.

She would have to cut loose from them and soon. She was certain that they would be recaptured before the day was out and also certain that they would tell whoever caught them everything, which was what she wanted, after all. But for the moment, she started a fire and warmed up some cans of hash for them and shared out the beer with them while they waited for their meal to cook. They had found clothes that fit and weren’t TOO grungy to wear, and shoes that fit well enough and obviously felt much better now.

They wanted to talk. Well, mostly they wanted to recount their terrible ordeal, both in general terms and excruciating detail. Kimberley let them ramble on without listening too closely to anything they said. Apparently they’d only arrived here three days ago, spent one day at the hotel and then got on a small bus for the ride to the farm. There had been three other women with them. They did not know what had happened to those other women, but the woman they’d mentioned being in the barn was not one of the three. They hadn’t seen her, but they had heard her, and both of them shuddered as they recalled the noises she’d made as the men in there did things to her. As for Melissa and Paula, their own stories were all too familiar to Kimberley—ropes, chains, rough treatment, rough handling, rough sex, both straight and oral. They went on about the sex parts at such length that Kimberley concluded that, in spite of how much they complained about it they’d actually found it rather exciting…especially since eating the warmed-up hash with their fingers didn’t seem to slow their flow of words in the least. As one chewed and swallowed, the other would pick up the slack.

Finally, they’d gotten around to asking Kimberley about herself. She only told them a little of her own story, feeling very much the bold adventurer as they stared at her, open-mouthed.

“You’ve done this before?” Paula was incredulous.

“Well not this exactly, but something like it, yes.”

“And you came back?” Paula was munching a mouthful of hash, so Melissa asked the question.

“Obviously.” Kimberley shrugged. “I expect to get captured again, too. Actually, I want to get captured. But I want whoever does it to really have to work to get me.”

“But…isn’t it just…horrible?” Paula asked as Melissa ate. They both seemed to be enormously hungry.

“Not really.” Kimberley smiled. “It’s rough and brutal and dark and primitive. It’s also very, very exciting. Six months from now both of you will be thinking about your own adventures a lot, especially at night, just before you go to sleep. It won’t seem all that horrible to you then. Trust me on this.”

Neither woman seemed convinced. All they wanted to do was to get back to Gordburg and the safe haven of the hotel as soon as they possibly could. That was fine with Kimberley, but they also wanted her to guide them there, and that was definitely not fine. Freeing some captives would add a little something to the legend of Elf-Girl. She’d freed them and led them to clothing and food. From here on, Paula and Melissa were on their own. There were certainly men out looking for them already; probably a lot of men. Their chances of reaching Gordburg without her help were only slightly worse than their chances of getting there with her. On the other hand, Kimberley’s chances of staying free for a while longer were a whole lot better without these two than they would be with them. She still wanted to be captured…eventually. She just didn’t want to be captured by any men pissed off by having to hunt down the women she’d freed.

Kimberley drained off the last of her beer. It was warm, but it was beer, after all. “You only rent this stuff,” she commented and stood up. “I’ll be back in a little while,” she told them. “In the meantime, you two rest up. It’s a long way back to town.”

She felt a little guilty running off and leaving them there, but not so guilty as to go back. They were easy prey whether she was with them or not. Maybe they’d find being hunted down and recaptured exciting.

That had been yesterday morning. She’d gone back to her hill carrying the cans she’d kept for herself and stashed them there. By then she was feeling tired, so she’d curled up in her favorite hiding place for a nap.

It had been the sound of a helicopter that awakened her, late in the afternoon. She hadn’t heard any aircraft overhead before this and her first thought was that they…whoever “they” were…were using it to hunt her down. She spent an anxious few minutes keeping under cover and trying to determine where the noise was coming from. But the noise never came any closer, and it finally faded away.

Later, towards nightfall, she’d heard the helicopter again. Well, she heard a helicopter. It might not have been the same one. This time, it passed right overhead. As near as she could tell, it was heading towards Gordburg from the general vicinity of the farm. She wondered what that was all about and reached up to touch her ear. Could they locate her using that little chip implanted there? Maybe they could, but that seemed an awful lot like cheating. The noise of the helicopter faded away, and she thought that it might be a good idea to move…just in case. She gathered up her blanket and a couple of cans and slipped away into the woods.

Now it was almost evening of the next day. Her nighttime raid on the farm had broken her usual sleep cycle, and now she felt sleepy almost all the time, no matter how many little naps she took. She hadn’t seen any signs that anyone was looking for her, but instead of easing her mind, that made her feel jumpy. She hadn’t seen anybody tracking her last year either, until they’d sprung their trap and it was too late for her to do anything about it. She was also feeling bored. There wasn’t anything to do out here in the woods, except move or not move and no one to talk to. She kind of missed Paula and Melissa now, but they were probably busy doing other things…or having things done to them. She could picture Paula’s beautiful mouth sucking on some man’s cock right now.

She even missed Lane. That woman was interesting…a little scary, maybe, but she knew her way around another woman’s body. The memory brought a reflexive shudder and a brief warm glow. She sighed wearily and chucked another rock into the stream. She’d been just sitting here on the bank for a long, long time, thinking and brooding and feeling a little sorry for herself. She’d wanted to make a legend as the elusive Elf-Girl, but she’d apparently been a little too good at it. Now she seemed to be in danger of becoming the uncatchable Elf-Girl, if she wasn’t already the too-much-trouble Elf-girl or worse, the completely forgotten Elf-Girl.

Well, however things stood there was no point in just sitting here. She stood back up and stretched, yawning. She wanted a hot shower, but she would settle for the cool bath that the stream could provide. There was a pool on the far side that would serve as a bathtub. She only wished she had some soap, but if the bottom of the pool was as sandy as the bed of the stream, she could use handfuls of sand to scrub herself clean.

She spread out her blanket on a stretch of gravel well away from the water, took off her boots and placed them next to the blanket. As she undressed, she kept looking around. After all this time seeing nobody else at all, it would just figure if some man were to stumble across her…purely by accident…at this exact moment.

Nobody did, though, and Kimberley felt a sense of relief mixed with a little disappointment. She waded into the stream, bringing her clothes with her. They could stand some cleaning, too.

The water wasn’t too cold and near the bank it wasn’t too deep. She knelt down and began washing her clothes first. Actually, she didn’t wash them so much as soak them, wring them out and then repeat the process. As each item of clothing was finished she tossed it onto the bank, close to her blanket.

There. Now it was her turn. She stepped carefully down into the pool. It was a bit deeper than she’d expected. With her feet on the sandy, gravelly bottom, the water came almost up to her nipples. But from just above her knees on down, the water was frigid! Well, there was no help for it. She took a deep breath and plunged completely under.

She came up spluttering and shivering and made her way into shallower and slightly warmer water. She scooped up a handful of sand and began scrubbing…carefully. It was nowhere near as effective or satisfying as soap and hot water, but it was a lot better than nothing. She’d learned this trick years ago from an old Mexican woman in a village, where soap and hot water were both in very short supply.

The last thing she did was go back over to the edge of the pool. She took several deep breaths this time, trying to work up the nerve to brave that cold, cold water. Finally she dove in, head-first this time. She came up with a gasp, her skin tingling from abrasion and cold, facing the opposite bank. The first thing she saw was a pair of boots. Heart pounding, she looked up slowly.

“Hi there.” Greg smiled down at her.

Chapter Thirteen

Kimberley could feel her heart still pounding, but it wasn’t from the chilly water any more.

“Why, hello, Greg!” she smiled back as she slowly edged away from him. She’d only been under the water for a brief moment, and she was sure that the far bank had been completely empty when she dove in. How had he gotten there so fast?

“Good to see you again.” Greg’s smile grew wider. His eyes wandered over her body and then back to her face. He looked tired and dirty and he had a three-day growth of beard that made him look rough and dangerous. No, Kimberley decided. It was his eyes that made him look that way. The stubble only accented his appearance. She edged a little further away.

“It’s good to see you, too,” Kimberley answered. “How have you been?” Well, it was good to see him again…in a way. It meant that she hadn’t been given up on or forgotten. But, on the other hand…that look in his eyes made her feel very small and weak and vulnerable. She backed away another half-step, closer to her blanket, her clothes, her boots and her gear. It was very odd. Only a few minutes ago she’d been pining away for company. Now, Greg was here, looking very determined and powerful and very, very male, and still she was calculating her chances of escaping him. They were increasingly small chances, but she was still contemplating them.

He cocked his head and his smile changed into something more predatory. “Oh, you know,” he shrugged. “Living in the woods, sleeping under the stars, communing with nature.” He took a step forward, his boots just touching the edge of the stream now. “How have you been? I’ve heard that you’ve been a very busy woman.”

“Oh…you know…” Kimberley shrugged in return, still backing slowly away. “A girl’s got to keep herself occupied.” She was almost out of the pool now. Soon the water would be shallow enough for her to try to run. Could the deeper water of the pool slow Greg down just long enough for her to grab her boots and clothes and make a break for the woods?

Greg laughed and came closer. The creek washed over his boots now. He seemed about to say something, but Kimberley didn’t wait to hear it. She whirled and began to run for the far bank. Behind her, she heard Greg roar and then a big splash as he dove headlong for her. She didn’t look back. She just kept running. The sandy creek bottom slowed her. Behind her, she could hear more splashing, and Greg still roaring, a wordless, primitive sound that spurred her on.