Ricky had had enough!
He bounded up between Franks and the two girls. “Leave ’em alone, asshole,” Ricky swore at the man. “If you need to hit someone, hit me. But I swear. Try it and I’ll ram that stick up your ass and break every one of your stubby fingers.”
Ricky was silently praying that Ashwin didn’t have the gun. He knew he could put Ashwin down. The other men might cause him some grief but with Ashwin gone, and with some help from the girls, he figured he had an even chance. But his hopes were dashed.
Ashwin pulled the revolver from the back of his pants and took serious aim at Ricky’s face. “Well if it isn’t the hero!”
Ricky raised his hands defensively and took a step back.
Ashwin looked over a shoulder. “You men. Get some wire,” he said, while backing Ricky up against the closest tree. Ricky’s arms were yanked behind the trunk and his wrists twisted with wire. Ashwin wrapped wire around Ricky’s head, the strands bound tightly between his jaws. “You ever fuck a nigger-ess?” Ashwin asked the man holding the wire. “Go get her.”
Zoey was dragged forward and tumbled to the ground in front of Ricky who desperately fought his restraints. “No. You bastard.” Ricky tried to form the words around the wire.
Zoey’s chin came up. Their eyes meet and the shame and humiliation rose in Ricky’s face. He turned his eyes away.
“Ricky?” she pleaded, the hopelessness ringing in her throat.
Ashwin pulled Zoey up onto her knees and looked over. “What the hell’s a-matter with you boy?” He unzipped himself. “I mean you’re a good-lookin’ stud. You couldn’t get yourself a nice white girl?” He took Zoey’s head into his hands; rolled it like a fine cigar. “Look, I know niggars are good for the occasional screwing, and Lord knows they love to swallow, but Jesus boy, nobody waits around for the doggy-babies.” He looked down into Zoey’s upturned face. “Open your mouth.”
“No!” Ricky shrieked.
Irene turned away. The sucky sounds, like a plunger in a toilet, invaded her ears and lodged like sludge in her brain.
Later, with the taste of Ashwin still in her throat, Zoey sat safely locked away in the newly constructed pen with arms supporting bare breasts. She was sickened by the sensation of the semen from the others weeping out from between her legs. Two hours passed before they came for her. Two of the men were rejuvenated enough for seconds and Zoey silently lay down on the ground and let them, and when one asked for something tighter, she rolled over onto her knees and lifting her bum, she presented him with round buttocks, dark and shining, like chestnuts, in the pale moonlight. After the men had eased themselves and without a word of protest, Zoey was led away.
Irene, slumbering in her cot, was half-awakened by the creaking sounds. In her sleep-addled mind, she saw the snotty kid from down the block pedaling his tricycle with the bad wheel. Squeak– Squeak– Squeak!
There was an abrupt slushy swack and Irene’s eyes flew back. She thought she had heard a moan. Listened hard for a moment. But no. Only the lonely wind, moving the pine-boughs. Tomorrow she would figure a way out of this mess. She lay her head back and once again blessed sleep took her up in its cozy lullaby.
The next morning, both Ricky and Zoey were gone.
Ashwin proposed pot-roast for the evening meal and got the men busy with the fire. Irene watched him place two pieces of dark red meat with bones protruding, into the soup-pot. She envisioned Zoey’s pretty thighs and turned away, trying to control her stomach. Ashwin smothered the meat with onions, added two cans of tomato juice and a handful of peppercorns. The pot was positioned in the coals to slow cook.
As the smells of roasting meat began to permeate the compound, the girls began to gather in anticipation. If any one of them had suspicions, they, like Irene, were keeping their thoughts to themselves. Ashwin looked about, enjoying the sight of his girls in their shorty team-jackets, all those lovely long legs. Seven girls were left from the original ten volleyball players. He had an idea and laughing out loud, he had one of the men haul over the cargo trunk. “A beauty-pageant,” Ashwin told the man. “We’re going to have ourselves a beauty-pageant.”
“What’s your name, sweetie?” he asked the first girl as he helped her up atop of the trunk.
The girl looked at the men sitting cross-legged on the ground and answered Ashwin’s question.
Ashwin cocked his head. “Ann Arbor? Like in Michigan? Your last name is Arbor?”
The girl turned scarlet. “No. It’s hyphenated. My last name is James. Ann-Arbor James.”
“Very lyrical,” Ashwin remarked dryly. “Okay Annie-Abor, let’s have a look at your tits.”
The girl couldn’t have been more shocked than if she had stuck her tongue into a light socket. “W-wha-da– I can’t. I meant I couldn’t!” She had gone quite pale. “In front of everybody?”
Ashwin spun and brought the end of his billy-club down with a crack across the girl’s toe-nails. Ann-Arbor seethed and lurching back, she misjudged the edge of the cargo trunk. With a shriek, she tumbled off, crashing with a lung-paralyzing jar onto the dirt.
Ashwin was on her before she could snatch a breath.
Dropping the club, he got his hands around her neck and hauled her up onto her knees. With a hand firmly knotted in her hair he reached down with the other and tore open the snaps, releasing two zingy breasts from the confines of her jacket. The men leaned forward to look.
As Ann-Arbor’s lungs heaved her breasts responded, the pink points lifting like kittens at the sound of a can opener.
Ashwin dragged Ann-Arbor to her feet and turned her around. He tugged the bikini bottoms down so the men could examine her ass before pushing her away. She stumbled to a knee, got back up, and clinging to her bottoms with one hand, and with the other clasped to her mouth, she ran; disappearing into the trees. The sound of the men laughing echoed after her.
“Next,” Ashwin called out. “And what’s your name?” He helped her up.
The girl, forewarned, was already undoing her jacket “Dee,” she said. “I’ll show you my breasts.” And she held her jacket open for the men to see.
“My. What’s your cup size?” Ashwin asked.
“I’m a thirty-four C-plus,” Dee responded. Despite the boldness of her actions there was a desperate shyness in her voice.
“Very nice,” Ashwin replied. “And where are you from?”
“Milwaukee.”
“Awfully cold in Milwaukee, Dee. What do you do to keep warm?”
The girl blushed at the implication. Said nothing.
“Tell me, Dee,” Ashwin continued. “You a virgin?”
The scarlet in her cheeks darkened. “No, sir.” The voice barely a whisper.
“I thought not; with a body like that. Tell us what happened. How’d you lose it.”
There was a pause, a moment’s reflection as his words settled. Then: “My girlfriend had an older sister. Their parents were away and the sister had a party. There was drinking. A couple of older guys grabbed me, held me down.” Dee inhaled, let it out slowly. Moisture was gathering in her eyelashes.
“You were raped?” Ashwin didn’t try to hide the glisten of glee.
“Yes, sir.”
“How many guys, Dee. How many guys fucked you?”
The tears finally spilled over. “Four, sir.”
“And did you like it?”
Dee struggled between the truth and what she knew the men wanted to hear. “Yes, sir. It hurt at first. But after, I couldn’t get enough.”
“Enough what?” Ashwin asked, a frankness to his voice.
Dee buried her face in her hands. “Cum.”
“I see. And how old were you when this happened?”
“I was in grade eight,” she whispered from behind splayed fingers. “Not even in secondary school yet.”
Elsa needed no introduction. Everyone knew the Captain and dominate player of the women’s volleyball team. A muscular woman, born to an East German who worked the blast furnaces in Pittsburgh, Elsa had started playing men’s sports practically from the womb. She bounded up on the cargo trunk like she was stepping into the ring and Ashwin figured, in a fair fight, she could take any of the men with just a punch or two.
She bounced lightly on her toes. “Here you go, Ashwin,” she sneered. She not only opened her team-jacket but pulled it off and, rolling it into a ball, she hit Ashwin in the face with it.
Ashwin eyed her defiantly but held his ground. If any of the women were to give him grief, it would be Elsa. And he was afraid of her.
Her plain features were spread across a broad face; her smallish eyes full of fire. The olive skin, a gift from a Spanish mother, was greasy and her breasts, just two rolls of muscle, supported little nipples that looked like scraps of shoe leather. But she had an undeniable animalistic appeal and with a body like spring-steel, she held the promise of a gritty fuck; it had Ashwin wondering how he could get her down long enough to get his dick inside. And it would be the most humiliating thing he could think to do to her. Everyone knew that Elsa hated men and had been eyeing little Pamela with ill intent from the first time she saw the blond bopper serving drinks on the plane.
Ashwin shrugged off the idea. Too dangerous. Screwing Elsa would be like dancing with a chainsaw.
“You ever had a dick in that trapdoor between your legs?”
Elsa grinned. “Why? Thinking of trying it, Ashwin? One squeeze and I’d pop you like a puss-pimple.”
“Here,” he said tossing the jacket back. “I’ve seen goats with more going for them.”
“And fucked a few of ’em, I’ll bet.” She slung the jacket over a shoulder and without bothering to put it on, she jumped from the cargo trunk and strode back to her teammates.
Ashwin pointed to a curly haired blonde. “You. Up on the box.”
The girl meekly took her place.
“I remember you from last night,” Ashwin said. “You got out of the nude dancing, didn’t you? Tonight you and your friend won’t be so lucky.”
The girl cast her eyes about, looking for an escape. “Please…” Her voice was pitifully small and full of dread.
“Open the jacket. The men want to see what you got.”
With long floating hands, she undid the snaps slowly, one by one, but dropped her arms without opening the jacket.
It was enough.
In the gap, Ashwin admired the inner curves of two proud breasts, the nipples just hidden beneath the fabric.
“You’re a pretty girl,” he needled her. “Did Elsa ever come on to you?”
“No.”
Ashwin feinted surprise. “You never licked Elsa’s pussy? I thought that’s how you girls made the team.”
The girl just shook her curls.
“Here’s a math question for you, sweetie: You ever sixty-nine a woman?”
Her eyes widened. “No. Not never.”
“Well how about with a man, then?”
The girl took a steadying breath. “Just once. With a boyfriend.”
“Did you like it?” Ashwin pushed. “Like the feel of it in your mouth?”
“It was alright, I guess.”
Ashwin took a step closer and placed a hand on the front of his jeans. “I’m not your boyfriend but would you suck my dick if I asked?”