Alora remained in the middle of the ground of men. Her clothes were gone and now all the men were fully naked as well.
I ducked back into my shelter and squeezed my eyes shut trying to purge the image of my sweet tour guide taking one man from behind and another in her mouth. If I hadn’t escaped, that could have been me.
My knees almost buckled.
I told myself not to look again. Alora was fine. And no one was paying attention to me now I’d gotten away. I’d go back to the hotel room and figure out . . . something. I could go back to the airport and check for any new flights. I could call home and beg Mom to come to protect me. Or Tyler.
So, I didn’t know why I looked again. Like watching a train wreck, I supposed. Part of it might even have been curiosity. What could one woman manage to do to please multiple guys, especially ruffians like those?
As I watched, the leader of the group grabbed Alora and shoved her against another man. He slipped into her from the front while the man behind her did the same, except he didn’t go between her legs. He went inside her rump, shoving himself right in without a moment’s hesitation.
I put my hand over my mouth to hide my gasp. Of all the things I had seen, nothing was more shocking than witnessing this. There was no foreplay, no lube involved. How could Alora handle that? Moreover, how could she think it felt so good? Her screams were that of pure pleasure.
The men surrounding Alora shoved her with their bodies, thrusting into her back and forth so she swayed like a pendulum between them. She leaned over far to the front and kissed the man standing there.
One of the others stepped over and tapped the leader on the shoulder. I tensed, bracing for a fight. Instead, the two swapped places in a nearly-seamless display of agility. For a moment, Alora’s legs were left spread wide as she was supported by the man behind her. She was so wet that her feminine juices dripped on the sidewalk.
I turned and got out of there, unable to stand watching for a moment longer. I had no idea where I was going. I just ran and ran, fleeing from the debauchery and all the questions it aroused. I kept to the alleys, only sprinting out onto the street when I absolutely had to. Images flashed around me. Beautiful scenery, wondrous and enchanting architecture, happy faces, and body parts slapping and grinding together.
I stopped only when my lungs burned for breath. I bent over with my hands on my knees, panting. A quick look around confirmed nothing was familiar. I was thoroughly lost.
I looked behind me to see if anyone had followed me and saw a sign with a big arrow and words proclaiming Police Station.
If this happened to me anywhere else, what would I have done?
The answer came easy. I’d have gone to the police because what happened in front of that store was unacceptable. Maybe Alora had only given in because she had seen no way out. Thinking of herself as a slut made her think she couldn’t refuse.
A little voice inside my head gave a mocking laugh then said, That woman was enjoying herself. Stop being such a wuss. Admit that there’s no point in this.
I ignored the voice and ran for the building, which was so blocky and brightly-colored it could have come straight from a child’s playset. I leaped up the steps and thrust my way inside.
The interior looked like any other police station in the world. The waiting area was to my left, and there was a desk ahead, manned by a police officer wearing what was best described as the sexy stripper version of a uniform. He looked up as I entered, his eyes gleaming with interest.
There was another room behind the desk area, giving me a view of more desks and four other police officers just lounging about.
I heard a whistle but didn’t know where it came from. The detail seemed unimportant.
I ran up to the front desk and slapped my hands on the counter. “Thank goodness, I found you guys! Please, help me. I need to report a crime.”
The man at the front desk gave me a harder look than before. “What seems to be the problem, miss?”
The others behind him appeared to take notice of me and came over to listen.
My panic subsided, my composure falling back into place. Civilized people at last! I explained what had happened as succinctly as possible and where—not that I knew where that was in relation to here.
The officer stroked the goatee that grew on his strong jaw. “You say those men wanted to fuck you?”
I wouldn’t have said it in so many words. “Uh, yes.”
He looked me up and down in a very calculating way that I wished he would have saved for the criminals. “Well, I can see why they would want to fuck you.”
The blood drained from my face.
“Any man in his right mind would want such a fine piece of ass.” He stood up, towering over me. “I’m sure my fellow officers here will agree with me.”
“She’s got my attention,” another confirmed. “And the attention of my dick.” He grabbed himself.
“Let’s fuck,” one declared.
They came at me as a single unit, approaching from around the desk.
I fell back, choking and gasping. I was so foolish. Had I really thought I’d seen everything there was to see, learned all there was to know about how things worked on this island? I had been so very mistaken. Men were the ones who got to make choices, here. This was not about freedom. It was about dominance.
I was not a visitor. I was a morsel to be devoured.
I cried out, wordless, having nothing to say that would express the horror inside me. For the second time that day, I ran away.
“Hey, c’mon! Don’t go!” The officers weren’t content to merely yell. Footsteps thundered as they all gave chance.
I threw myself out the door and leaped the stairs. I hit the ground hard and stumbled, my ankle giving out underneath me, no doubt weakened by the fall I’d taken at my apartment and all the walking I’d been doing since then. I gave myself no time to rest, jumping up and taking off again. I pushed myself harder, ran faster. I ducked into an alley, zigzagged down the next street, and threw myself into another alley, this one stinking of rotting fish parts. Still, the cops came, shouting after me. I had a head start but they were faster and had been resting.
I had to do something and quickly.
I wracked my brain for something Alora had said that would give me an advantage.
All the talk of dangerous animals returned. Bats, snakes, insects, wild boar. She specifically mentioned them as dangers during the night and no doubt the trails around the city were so well-traveled by humans that no animal with a survival instinct would come close during the day . . . but it was all I had.
I saw a stand of trees and launched myself into it. A cloud of insects surged from the greenery, buzzing and humming, and a whole flock of green birds I hadn’t noticed went squawking and shrieking into the sky.
“She’s over this way,” someone yelled.
“Look in the bushes! We’ll find her fast,”
My pursuers kept coming, growing dangerously near.
This part of the forest was thin, probably near a park or one of the easy walking trails Alora mentioned earlier. The men would be familiar with the area and find me in no time. The same could be said if I returned to the alleys. They had grown up here and no doubt knew all the little passageways.
That left me only one option.
I needed to go deeper.
The jungle was a dense and dangerous place. Running now would do me no good. I had to navigate, be sensible about my movements.
I started, heading for where the shadows beneath the trees grew deepest. Botanist I was not, but a recollection of basic science classes informed me that rainforests could get so deep and thick that plants had a hard time growing. That was what I needed.
As I was not on a trail, and hopefully heading away from any nearby trails, the terrain grew rough. Vines grabbed at my shoes and there was always something to trip over. The ground rose and fell in undulations. Patches of fern and palm-like plants grew at the intersections of t
hose hills, so thickly that it was hard to tell exactly where the ground was.
I came to a river after an hour, maybe two hours. I had lost all sense of time by that point and the sun was hard to see through the trees. I contemplated drinking from it; running water was safer than that from a pool. I changed my mind, deciding not to risk it despite my thirst. I kept going.
I was never alone for a second, though I had long since left the men behind. The bugs were awful, flourishing in the damp. I was insanely glad for my concealing clothing or I would have contracted about ten different diseases from bug bites alone. There were always birds overhead, calling out and fluttering, and whenever a tree branch swayed, I knew a monkey had been there a second before. I only saw the monkeys themselves a handful of times and made sure to stay far away.
The smell of the place was a combination of ditch and dump, mud and rotting vegetation, with an occasional hit of sweetness from flowers and fragrant plants. It was complete and total sensory overload, all of it. And I reveled in it, all the sights and sounds and scents, refusing all the while to think about the reality of what had happened. I couldn’t bear it, any part of this.
What did I think I’d been doing, coming here?
And what was I going to do now?
I had no answers. It hurt to think. So, I didn’t think.
I tromped through the jungle and pretended that the slithering in the grass by my foot wasn’t a snake. I pretended I had a goal I was headed toward. I pretended that I wasn’t hungry and thirsty. I pretended I wasn’t terrified, even as animalistic, instinctual fear crowded the back of my mind.
Eventually, the forest around me darkened with night. Recalling Alora’s words for the briefest of instances before shutting down all memories once more, I hunted for shelter. The dark came fast, plummeting down all around me. Quickly, I could barely see my hand in front of my face. I found what seemed to be a clearing and huddled down in the ferns.
I’m going to wake up in the morning to find this was all a dream. A nightmare within a nightmare.
I tried to sleep.
Something scurried over my hand.
Sleep, I commanded.
I slept.
Chapter 9
A woman’s worth
Something pinched my butt.
My eyes flew open. I reached back behind myself, thinking it was Tyler. I grabbed his hand, but it wasn’t his hand. It was a gigantic green praying mantis. Its bulbous eyes rolled, distended abdomen twitching. Its jaws opened and closed.
I screamed and shook my hand. The mantis flew through the air, tumbling into a patch of underbrush. I jumped to my feet and patted all over my body to check for any other disgusting visitors. Finding none, I came to a stop in the middle of the clearing where I had spent the night.
It was less a clearing and more of a bare patch, hardly six feet in diameter. Immense tree roots wrapped diagonally around the space and other plants abutted against them. Without even knowing it, I’d found what little shelter the jungle had to offer.
I rubbed my eyes and looked around. Green as far as I could see, pierced with morning sun rays. The events of yesterday came back with shocking clarity, ending in a vague blur once I had started hiking through the forest. If my thoughts hadn’t been so clear, I would have thought it all to be a hallucination. The spongy earth beneath my feet and the leaves brushing my fingertips dashed any remaining hope this wasn’t real.
I pulled in a deep breath of the vegetation-scented air and let it out again. Everything around me was so foreign. I couldn’t tell from what direction I had come. I couldn’t recall if I had stumbled over either of the tree roots or not, which at least would have given me a guess as to how to retrace my steps. I was filthy, hungry, thirsty, and lost.
Even so, the temptation to simply ignore my bodily needs was strong. If I stayed out here without moving, no one would ever find me. No one would ever try to have sex with me again.
Look at yourself, I scolded myself. What is wrong with you? Did Mom raise you to give up so easily? Are you going to lie down and let yourself waste away in the forest?
Logic intervened. More than likely, a predator would come across me and finish the job before nature had run its course. If I didn’t want to die painfully at the fangs of a jaguar, I needed to find a way out of here.
I stretched to try and limber up from the long night spent on the ground. My clothes were a little damp from dew and smelled awful. I picked a direction and got walking, subconsciously trying to run away from my body odor.
I walked for a very long time, for hours, with the sun bearing down on me from overhead. I had to remove my cardigan, or I would have melted into a puddle of sweat.
Eventually, I heard the sound of running water and came across a trickling stream. Though I would have done just about anything for a drink, a single sip, I refrained from imbibing from the stream. I followed its course downhill, down steep stretches of mossy rock.
The trees broke wide open in front of me. I jolted to a halt, staring at a long, lonely stretch of road that ran along a rocky black beach. I hurried down onto the road and stood in the middle, looking both ways.
No vehicles, no people. I heard only the constant pounding rush of the ocean as the waves crashed against the beach.
At least this is civilization.
I followed the road, not knowing in what direction I headed. The afternoon sun hung right overhead, preventing me from figuring that out, and I did not feel inclined to wait around for it to move position.
The road angled steadily down while the jungle arched up around me like walls. I was heading into some sort of valley. The road abruptly twisted and then dropped, meandering back and forth down into the valley. I judged the angle to be around twenty degrees, absolutely terrifying. If I tripped, I’d roll to my death.
But what was at the bottom of the valley made it all seem worth it. There was a large building nestled down there in the lush greenery, completely out of place compared with everything else I had seen on the island. This was brown and rectangular, a building constructed purely to be functional.
It looks like a college!
There were other, smaller structures surrounding the main building. Flying on a pole in front of that main building was an American flag.
I hurried down the road, cutting across rather than taking the curve, sobbing with joy at the sight of those red and white stripes. Nothing had ever been as beautiful as that flag, flapping on the breeze.
Coming closer, I saw lettering on the front of the main building, Zion’s School for Liberated Women.
Confusion flitted like a butterfly. Why was such a structure like this out in the middle of nowhere? But my confusion quickly gave way to relief at the thought of help. This was a school, exactly like I thought! There were educated people in there who would sympathize with my plight!
A stone pathway lined with palm trees and exotic flowerbeds led up to the front entrance. I shoved the double doors wide open and threw myself inside, crying out.
The blast of air-conditioning was what struck me first. I spread out my arms and let the cool air dry the sweat on my body. It was so crisp, so unexpected that my teeth chattered and goosebumps prickled on my skin.
I looked up, opening my mouth to call for help, and nearly ran into a massive pair of black breasts. I stumbled back, gaping at the enormous statue depicting a nude woman reclining on her side. One leg bent at the knee, flashing the pronounced lips beneath a shaven mound. Exquisite, careful detail had been given to the texture of her flesh, particularly that of her turgid nipples. Her face was a delicate oval, the chin pointed.
There were other statues, some even larger, displayed all through the grand entrance hall. Artful pieces of furniture were positioned seemingly for a visitor to sit down and have amazing views of the marble and bronze forms. The ceiling was high, faintly reflected on the hardwood floors. The ceiling almost seemed meant to represent the sky, it was so high, and there was a plethora of potted plants, near
ly as many as grew outside.
In my observation of the surroundings, I noticed a sort of office to the side with an open front desk. A buxom woman with rosy cheeks and an ear-to-ear smile sat there, fiddling with a pen and some paper. She wore a bright red suit, the neckline dropping nearly to her navel. She had curves all over and a bit of a tummy to match, but she clearly was at ease.
I rushed over.
She looked up when she noticed me and concern brightened in her eyes. I could have cried at the true, human emotion. “Oh, dear,” she gushed, “what happened to you?”
“There were these men,” I blurted out.
She giggled.
She laughed at me.
I stared at her, stunned, and looked down at what I wore. I was a mess and she was amused by it.
“Say no more,” she said. “A fun romp in the woods, I’d guess. Really fun, by the looks of you!”
I opened my mouth to interrupt her.
She cut me off. “You must be one of the new students.” She gave me no chance to respond, ushering me in front of her, deeper into the building. She pointed to another set of doors. Through the thin windows on the doors, I saw an auditorium and multiple other women, many of which were about my age. “Zion has just commenced orientation, as you can see. If we’re quiet, we may be able to sneak you in before he notices you’re late. My name is Carly, by the way. I’m the one to ask if you need anything.”
Carly patted me on the shoulder and then walked off without another word, her generous hips swaying. I could only stand where she had left me, gaping after her.
Salvation was not here. I needed to leave this school and get back on the road, as Carly had shown me, she had the same attitude as everyone else I’d encountered thus far. However, try as I might, I couldn’t get myself going again. I had come so far. I was at my wit’s end. I needed to rest, and if I had to sit in an auditorium and listen to some person talking to get that rest, I’d do it.
Orientations usually came with refreshments afterward, too. The thought of freshwater or even soda almost had me bawling. I could grab something to eat and slip out before anyone noticed, continue my trek.
Kelly Exposed Page 6
