The Chase (complete)

She thought about unbuttoning the top buttons of her blouse, but that seemed like cheating.  Like saying, "Here I am, you don't have to work hard at this."

"Mahalia."  She practiced her safe word, wondered if she'd want to use it, wondered if she'd be able to keep from using it.  What if she said it so loud now that they called it off?  "Mahalia."  Her voice sounded tinny, like a long-distance call.  She had a safe word, but he didn't care.  His erection didn't care.  She wouldn't say cock.  "Mahalia."  No, she wouldn't use it.  If he showed up.

She had picked him out, but not his face.  She had made Elizabeth cover all the faces in the book so she couldn't see them smiling, couldn't pick the man out of a crowd now.  Stocky, dark, maybe white, maybe not.  It didn't matter, except it would bother Robert more if he knew, if her X-man (she called him that in her head) were Hispanic or black or some beautiful combination.

Elizabeth had seemed pleased at her choice.  "I'm glad you are considering one of our specialists," she said.  "I think it would be best if you see the nude photographs."



She had blushed and ducked her head.  Stupid.  By this time Elizabeth knew her secrets.  "No, thank you."

Elizabeth studied her for a moment.  "The factor you have chosen is eminently suitable for your wants, however I would encourage you to see the nude photographs."

She had agreed.  It felt strange to reject it, and then the pictures were in front of her and she knew Elizabeth's worry.  "He's fine."  She cleared her throat.  "He's, yes.  He is my choice."

Elizabeth beamed at her and she beamed back, feeling like a kindergartner who managed so spell Connecticut.

He wasn't coming.  Elizabeth had told her the timing would be a surprise.  There was a churning panic in her belly, as if professional wrestlers were staging a tag-team match in there. 

She didn't drink, but she wanted one.  She didn't drink.  She was going to start.

She did unbutton the top button of her blouse, staring at herself in the mirror.  Then she did it up again  Maybe later.

The bar was quiet.  The bartender smiled at her.  "Here's a lady who wants a little umbrella in her drink," he said with a grin.  He leaned against the bar, his hip cocked and jaunty.

"I don't even know what drink I want in my drink," she said with a nervous smile.  The bartender was stocky, swarthy, with straight dark hair and eyes that sparkled at her like the glasses on the shelves behind him. 

Could it be?

"Would you like something strong?" he asked.

Could it be?  "... Yes.  I think something strong would be good.  Something... manly."

He gaped slightly.  "Ookay."  He spun a short glass onto the bar and poured a hefty measure of scotch into it.  "Manly as hell."

She hoisted the glass and drained it in one gulp.  A small bomb went off in her throat and stomach and she gasped in pain then started coughing.  The bartender was too obviously trying to hide his laughter as she rested her head on her arms.  With her head turned and her eyes streaming, she saw that the bar wasn't as empty as she had thought.  A man sat in the corner at a small table, facing the corner.  She could see only the back of his bald head as he bent it over his newspaper.  Her coughing didn't seem to bother him.  He never turned to see what was going on behind him.

As she watched, he stood and she saw that he picked up a cane before he walked out.  She turned away before he could catch her staring but she saw him leave from the corner of her eye.

The bartender had taken her glass and was busy with a blender.  He had slid a packet of tissues to her side and she plucked a few from the packet to blow her nose and wipe her eyes.  This time, he pushes a tall, creamy drink in front of her, yes with an umbrella and a slice of pineapple.

***

She staggered slightly on the path.  Her head was spinning but she had refused an escort from the bar.  She was drunk.  She had never been drunk before and she loved the feeling of release it gave her.  The bartender had kept the drinks coming.  Only a few other people ever came into the bar, and none of them stayed long.

She stumbled again and fell this time, barely managing to catch herself before she landed on her face.  She hung her head down for a minute, hoping it would stop spinning, and when she looked up again there were legs in front of her.  A man stood athwart the path, his arms akimbo.

"Hello, Daria."

She gaped at him.  "How..."

"Don't be stupid."

Of course.  She tried to get to her feet but he stepped forward and put his foot square on her right hand as she pushed against the path.  She couldn't think.

"I thought you would be the bartender."

His chuckle had something mean in it.  "Hardly.  But he does my bidding.  He gives drinks as he's told.  He loosens 'em up, I guess you'd say."

"Loosens 'em up," she said.

"I guess you'd say," he repeated.  He crouched down in front of her, his foot pressing harder on her hand.  It didn't quite hurt, but it was uncomfortable.  It felt as if she would have to break her hand to get it free.  "Were you watching for me, Daria?"

"I thought you might be the man with the cane.  I thought you might be in disguise."

He chuckled again.  "So she was out looking for her man, was she?"  His hand wrapped around her throat and forced her head back.  "Afraid I wouldn't show?  Afraid you came all this way for nothing?"  Their eyes met and she shivered at what she saw in his.  "Did you think I would miss this, Daria?  Did you think I would turn down having complete power over you?"  He forced her head back harder.

"Mahalia," she gasped.  "Mahalia."

He stood up abruptly and backed away a few steps.  His hands returned to his hips as she felt her throat and worked her jaw and her stepped-on hand.  She was relieved, intensely relieved.  This was a mistake.  Now she could go home and...

"Daria."

She looked back at him, startled.  She had expected him to disappear, or to change over into hotel-employee mode, anything but him still standing there, menacing and powerful, staring at her. 

Very slowly, he pulled something out of his pocket and held it casually in front of him.  With a click, a blade flipped out of the handle and glittered in the moonlight.

"Run, Daria.  Run."

She ran.

As she ran, she fumbled for the emergency bracelet she had been told to wear, but she suddenly had a vision of it lying next to the bathroom sink.  She had taken it off to shower.  A sly voice in the back of her head wondered if she really wanted rescued.

Though the coral path was smooth and solid, Daria found herself tripping over shadows splaying across the walk.  The sly voice wondered if she wanted to be caught.

She was.  As she stumbled yet again, a hand clamped around her elbow and kept her from falling--or getting away.

"You follow instructions.  Good."  The fingers around her arm were hard and bruising but his voice was very soft.  She shivered.  "Did you lose your bracelet?"

"I... I left it in my room."

He pulled her hard against him, her arm twisted behind her back.  It didn't hurt, but it felt like it could start any second.  "Oh, such a pity.  Such a pity.  You never know what sort of emergency you can run into, even at a world-class resort.  You should be more careful.  After I'm done with you, I'll certainly help you look for it."

She couldn't help herself.  She giggled.  He twisted harder on her arm and the giggles died, quickly.

"That's better.  I don't rape little girls."

She gasped and stumbled again right as they came to the doorway to a room.  He let her fall, standing over her as she sprawled awkwardly on the entranceway tiles. 

"Here?  Not exactly the setting I would have chosen, but..."  He crouched and forced her onto her back, the knife resting just below the point of her chin.

The urge to giggle was gone.  Something trickled down her throat, but she didn't know if it was blood or sweat.

"Mahalia."  Please let it be sweat.  Please let it be sweat.

"Wrong answer."  He flicked the knife then held up the button he had just cut from her blouse.  When she gaped at him, he dropped the button into her open mouth.  She nearly swallowed it in her surprise, but her gag reflex prevented it from going down. 

"A gagger," he said.  "I love a gagger."

She wanted to spit the button into his face, but something told her that would be an extremely bad idea.  Eliza Doolittle.  She would just imagine she was Eliza Doolittle.  Another hysterical giggle threatened to pop out, but she stifled it somehow.

He started humming something as he slipped his knife through the other button threads.  One by one, he held them above her lips, wordlessly demanding that she open her mouth so he could drop them in.  The last button he popped into his own mouth, then lowered his face to hers, the knife pressing again at her throat.  "Take it."

Her lips opened and his mouth met hers almost gently.  The button dropped into her open mouth and then her blouse was spread and her bra cups dragged down to expose her breasts.  Her sharply indrawn breath nearly made her swallow a button, so she was again gagging as his fingers tweaked her nipples.  She could tell they tightened under his fingers, that they probably looked like pink jellybeans balanced on the tiny saucers of her areolae. 

She tried to crab-walk away from him then, her blouse sliding down off her shoulders to her wrists.  He stood and watched her struggle until she was a few feet away, then he put his right foot between her legs and stepped on the hem of her skirt as it dragged along the floor. 

"That's your escape strategy?  The door is that way."  He pointed back over his shoulder at the still-open door.

She wanted to curse at him, to spit her mouthful of buttons, but she couldn't.  She cried instead.

He knelt at her side and brushed his thumb tenderly against her cheek.  "Tears?"

She nodded and cried harder.

He bent closer, until his breath puffed in her ear like a glaucoma test.  "You know what I love, Daria?  I love fucking a crying woman.  God, I'm hard as a rock right now."

She tried to shrug him away from her, but he slipped a hand to her nape to ball the hair there into his fist.  She hung like a kitten in his grasp, weakly thrashing as he guided her into the bedroom.  He left the bedroom door open behind them and shoved her face down onto the bed.  She started to push herself up but he grabbed her wrists and pulled her arms behind her and up, driving her face into the mattress and her ass into the air as she desperately tried to keep her pace with her arms.  She started thrashing in earnest, panicking as she fought to breathe through the mattress and the buttons still in her mouth, but he could hold both of her wrists in one hand at that angle.  His other hand slid her skirt up over her hips and dragged her panties down.

Abruptly, he let go of her arms.  She scrambled away from him and across the bed to the far side, away from the door, trying to pull her remaining clothing back to cover her body.  There were no bedclothes or she would have dragged them over herself.

He laughed.  "You always seem to running away from the door, Daria.  Why is that?"  He pulled his shirt over his head, exposing his thick arms and solid torso.  He was a deep, coppery brown all over, lightly covered with black hair.  He undid his belt and pulled it slowly from his belt loops.  Her eyes widened even further, but he just chuckled and dropped the belt to the floor.  His pants followed, then his boxers, leaving him naked and circling the bed toward her.

She couldn't take her eyes off him.  He wasn't tall but he was powerfully built and completely relaxed, his heavily-muscled arms swinging loosely, as if he were walking around the park.  Naked.  She tried to keep her eyes on his face.

As he came around the corner, she jumped onto the bed, but he grabbed her ankle and she crashed to the mattress.  She kicked back with her other foot, but it was like kicking a wall and he grabbed that ankle as well.  With her feet high off the bed, she could do nothing with her arms but clutch at the mattress, but he dragged her back toward him anyway like a large, awkward fish.  Then he was kneeling between her wide-spread legs, his elbows hooked under her knees, and he had one wrist in each hand again.  He pushed her legs up harder as he bent forward and kissed her, swirling his tongue through the flurry of buttons she still carried in her mouth.  With his tongue, he fished out each button and dropped them onto her throat and breasts.

"Did you see my cock, Daria?  Did you see how hard I am for you?"  He sounded so casual, like he was talking about the weather.  Like he was saying there was rain in the forecast and not "See the freakishly large penis I intend to damage you with?"

"No."  Of course she had seen.  Elizabeth had made her look at the pictures, but the reality was more intimidating.

"Liar."  He twisted his hips so she could feel his thick hardness slide across her labia.  "You saw it in pictures and wanted it for yourself."

"No."  It wasn't true.  She hadn't seen him naked before picking him out.  This was so unfair.  Remembering his reaction to tears, she fought back the sob that was building in her throat.

"Liar."  He ground his cock hard against her until her hips bucked, then bent and bit her erect nipple. 

She felt a pulling in her belly, like a hand was gathering up her innards and clenching inside her.  His mouth, his hands, his thighs, everything about him was hard, unyielding.

"Please."

"Please what?"  He moved to the other nipple with his biting mouth, dragging her hand down to rub big circles on her abandoned breast.  It was wet and the nipple was like a pebble under her palm.  Or maybe that was a button.  She didn't know.  She didn't do this.  She wasn't doing this.

"I was drunk.  I would have gotten away but I was drunk.  I changed my mind.  I didn't want this.  I don't want this."

He met her eyes.  "He gave you half a shot of watered scotch and three virgin coladas.  You weren't drunk."

As she gaped at him, he slid lower, licking along her ribcage and across the slight curve of her belly, then back up between her breasts, sliding buttons aside with his nose and tongue.  He pushed one button up the curve of her throat and onto her chin, then settled his weight down heavier on her.

"I like these buttons," he said.  "I wonder what they would feel like in your pussy, churning around in there against my cock."  He flexed his hips against her and she shook her head.  "No?  You don't like that idea?"

"No."

"No, what?"

"No, I don't like that idea."

"You don't like what idea?"

"What you just... the idea you just said."

"What was that?  I forget."  He plucked the button off her chin, then started feeling around for others.

"With the buttons in my... in me."

"Say it."

"In my vagina."  She felt a blush cascading across her face.  After all this, she felt stupid for blushing at a word.

"In your vagina."  He pushed a little harder against her.  She could feel him at the entrance to her vagina, like a battering ram at a gate.  "My cock is going to be in your vagina.  No, my cock is going to be in your wet little cunt."  She gasped, both at his words and at the stretching sensation he was causing.

"I hate that word," she said, trying again to wrench at least one wrist out of his grasp.  He just slid in a little further.

"My cock.  Your cunt," he said again.  "The cock that you chose will be in your cunt, your hot, tight, wet little cunt.  This is the cock you wanted."

"I didn't know what it meant!" she cried.  He kissed her hard and shoved his cock the rest of the way into her.

"Now you know."  At least he didn't sound like a weather man any longer, she thought.  She felt split in two, almost but not quite hurting.  Pinned like a bug, oh god her brain always went places it shouldn't.  His cock... no, his penis, god that was even worse, his erection was in her... no.  She wouldn't think about it.  She could see his pulse in his neck and wanted to touch it, to kiss him but he was pulling away, sliding out of her slowly, almost as slowly as he entered and she thought she would cry for real, not those almost fake tears earlier but desperate tears.  But he didn't pull out all the way, just nearly, and back in, faster this time, and his hand was down there too, skimming along her clitoris, no she could say clit, that would be okay, and the clenching feeling was back in her belly and a feeling like a hiccup in her clit and she surged up off the bed and realized her hands were free and had been free and wrapped her arms and legs around him to draw him closer and to scratch at his back and bite the side of his neck and try hard not to scream right in his ear as waves of some indescribable sensation crashed over her and she was sobbing.

"Shh," he said.  "It's okay.  That's what's supposed to happen."

"No, it isn't."  He started to pull back and she clutched him closer.  "Don't leave."

"I'm not leaving.  Shh."  He shifted his weight to his elbows and rained light kisses across her eyes and the bridge of her nose.  "I won't leave until you want me to go."

Her mouth found that tempting pulse in his neck and he felt his cock throb inside her.  He started to thrust again, gently and pulled her hand down to her clit.  She looked scandalized, which made him struggle not to laugh at the thought of this woman, impaled on his cock and in the waning throes of her first, belated orgasm, worrying about the propriety of touching herself.

"Touch your clit," he said.  "It will feel good."

Her eyes widened.  "I can't feel any better."

This time he did chuckle as he dragged her hand back down.  "Touch your clit."

He guided her fingers at first then let her figure things out on her own as he thrusted into her pussy, slowly and deeply, letting her feel the fullness and the friction.  When she came again, he was more than ready to let go and hte deep spasms in her pussy and the little yelps she didn't seem to know she was making sent him over the edge.  As he spasmed inside her, she ground her pelvis up against his cock until he collapsed, half on her and half beside her, both of them breathing heavily.

"You were married how long?" he asked.

"Ten years."

"And that was your first orgasm."

She looked startled.  "How did you know?"

"Lucky guess."