The Novice Prey & the Daring Prey

by S. J. Lewis

  “You can’t put this off, female,” Will said as he stepped away from her.

  “Y’all done, buddy?” the driver of the ATV that had towed the trailer here asked.

  “Yes,” Will answered. “Sorry. I know you’ve got other places to go.”

  “No problem,” the driver smiled as he looked at Alexa, naked, collared and cuffed. “Have a nice day, folks.” He put the ATV in gear and drove off, trundling along a forest trail that was just barely wide enough for the vehicle. Alexa watched him go. Emma had told her about the ‘forest bus’ last night while they were cuddling together for warmth on the carpet. That was how she and Stan had gotten to Smith’s without needing packs. She wondered how Emma was doing now that Stan wasn’t ‘holding back’. She was probably enjoying herself.

  “Nervous, Alexa?” Will asked quietly. He pointed. “The main street is just beyond those bushes.”

  “Yes,” Alexa replied.

  “You can still bail out. Any time.”

  “I know. You keep telling me that.” With just the two of them here, and him calling her by her name, it didn’t seem as if she needed to call him ‘Master’. That would change once they walked into Gordburg. She wasn’t sure if she could deal with what was coming. “Do you want me to quit?” she asked.

  “Think about it,” Will said. He shouldered his air rifle. “For the past couple of days it’s all been about what I want. What do you want?”

  “I want to win,” Alexa replied after a moment. “I want to fucking win for once, and rub all their noses in it!”

  “Okay. You’re already in the lead, since you were the last one taken. Now all you have to do is stick it out.”

  “I know.”

  “So, are you willing to do whatever it takes to stick it out? Whatever it takes?” Will loomed over her, so close that she felt like taking a step back. He was holding the end of her leash, but there was enough slack in it for her to do that. Instead she stood her ground and looked up at him, her eyes steady. She felt a thrill go through her. It was as if she was daring him to do his worst.

  “Yes,” she said, without any hesitation at all.

  “I believe you,” Will smiled. “So now I’m gonna tell you something. Sit down if you want. It’ll take a little while to tell.”

  “I’ll stand,” Alexa said.

  “Suit yourself,” Will shrugged. He sat down with his back against a tree, still holding the end of Alexa’s leash. “You know I was after that tall blonde, right?”

  “You told me so yourself.”

  “Yeah. Well, I tracked her down all right. Caught up with her at one of the trading posts. ‘Course, she was inside the limits, so I couldn’t do anything ‘til she left. I figured I had a pretty good chance, since she seemed to hardly even know I was there. She was too busy talkin’ to two other hunters. So I just settled down in a handy chair and acted like I was takin’ a nap. Surprisin’ what you can overhear that way.”

  He looked Alexa over as she stood in front of him. His eyes were intense whenever he did that. Originally, it had made Alexa uncomfortable. Now she found that she rather liked it. She even shifted her feet apart to give him a better view.

  “Anyway,” Will went on, “seems like those two fellas were after that cute little surfer, Naomi, but they had you down as a secondary target. The volleyball blonde was tryin’ real hard to get them to go after you first. I’m not sure why she was doin’ that, but it struck me that she was maybe a little bit worried about you as her competition. It all sounded kinda underhanded to me, and the guys she was talkin’ to didn’t seem to be buyin’ her sales pitch all that well. She got a little vehement about it, and then changed her tack without so much as an eyeblink. I couldn’t see much without movin’ my head and showin’ ‘em that I wasn’t really asleep, but I did see her lean way forward over the little table they were sittin’ around and start talkin’ so low that I couldn’t hear. The two fellas leaned forward too, partly to be able to hear her and partly so’s they could look down her blouse at the same time. That female does have an impressive rack.”

  Alexa stood still and didn’t say anything. She felt an anger starting to smolder in her.

  “There was a little back-and-forth I couldn’t make out and then she gets up from her chair and saunters out the front door, swingin’ her hips. I could see she’d left her pack behind, so I wasn’t worried she was leavin’ at all. The two guys just sat at the table for all of thirty seconds and then got up and followed her. They left their stuff behind too. So I gave them another thirty seconds. I didn’t go out the front door like they did. I headed for the back of the building. There’s windows back there, and a door, so I figured if they’d gone around back I’d be able to see what they were up to, and if they’d gone somewheres else I’d be able to slip out the door and find ‘em.”

  He looked up at Alexa and chuckled.

  “They didn’t go that far. One of the windows was open, and I could hear ‘em just outside. I got a good look. That blonde was on her hands and knees with her jeans pulled down and her shirt pulled up, with one of the two fellas she’d been talkin’ to givin’ it to her hard and fast from behind while his buddy kept a watch out for anybody comin’ along that way. She sure sounded like she was enjoyin’ herself. There was just enough light to see by for me to know that bitch was built just as sweet as I’d thought: Full, round tits, jigglin’ while the guy fucked her, long, narrow waist, pretty, round ass and those long, strong legs. When the guy finished with her, he gave that pretty round ass a hard smack before he pulled out, and it sounded like she liked that too. His buddy moved in on her right away, and she never missed a beat.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Alexa asked bitterly.

  “Hush, female,” Will replied. “There’s more. Now, while I’m watchin’ this quick and dirty sex show, I start realizin’ that no matter how good this blonde bitch looks, I’m losin’ interest in her. She’s usin’ her pussy to bribe a couple hunters to go after someone specific, and I start thinkin’ about how many others she might’ve pulled this on. No rules against it, and if I bagged her I could still have her all to myself until it was over, but I just wasn’t interested any more. But I had a predicament. She was my primary, but I didn’t want her any more, and my secondary had got herself taken way earlier. What was I gonna do?”

  “You came after me,” Alexa said.

  “Yep. Kinda liked you from our first meetin’ when you were tryin’ to get along just in your socks. But see, I couldn’t try to bag you until after the other two females got caught. So after I drifted back and picked up your trail, I just kinda shadowed you ‘til you were the last one left.”

  “And then you shot me.”

  “Told ya. After all the stuff I had to go through to get permission, I was gonna shoot some female in her pretty little ass. So here we are.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Alexa repeated. “Why are you telling me this now? You could have told me as soon as you…um…bagged me.”

  Will’s smile turned sly. “Hell, I didn’t have to tell you a damned thing, Alexa Marx. But I thought I prob’ly should once I saw how determined you were to go through to the end. There’s some hard and rough stuff comin’ up that might’ve made you think twice about your choice. So I gave you some mad to hang on to whenever you started doin’ that.” He looked her up and down. “I wouldn’t mind seein’ the blonde bitch lose. But I bagged you, and I’d kinda like to see you win. I’d feel all vindicated.”

  “You sonofabitch,” Alexa glared, though she didn’t entirely mean it.

  “No, you can thank me later,” he laughed as he got to his feet. “Now, when I walk you down that wide, sandy street, you’re gonna keep your short-haired head up and your shoulders back so that everybody can see what a fine female specimen you are.”

  “And if I don’t?” Alexa asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Then I’ll put these on you,” Will answered quickly. He took a pair of handcuffs out of his pocket and held the
m up for her to see. “On your arms, just above your elbows.”

  Alexa looked at the cuffs. They appeared to be exactly the same type as were already shackling her wrists.

  “That would really pull my shoulders back,” she said, still looking at the shiny steel.

  “Yep,” Will agreed. “Might even start to hurt after a while too. How limber are you?”

  “Let’s find out,” Alexa said. She quickly turned her back to him. “Do it,” she said.

  Will didn’t hesitate, or ask her if she really meant it. He simply put the cuffs on her and turned her to face him again.

  “Let’s go, female,” he said. He led her away down the trail. Alexa winced once she didn’t think he could see. She was flexible enough so that having her arms pulled back like that didn’t hurt too much, but it certainly wasn’t comfortable. She looked down at her breasts. Her posture made them stick out proudly. She could see and feel her nipples slowly swelling, just enough for them to stand out a bit.

  It seemed as if one moment they were on a forest trail and the next they were on the main street of Gordburg, just inside the mock old-Western part of the town. Will never looked back to see how she was doing. Alexa found that the wide, sandy street was easy for her to walk along in bare feet, and wondered if that was why they kept it that way. Men and women, but mostly men, stopped to watch as she was led past them. More men, and a few women, came out of the wooden buildings to get a better look. Alexa tried to ignore them, but having so many strangers see her like this made her want to walk hunched over, trying to hide as much of her naked body as she could. The cuffs above her elbows made that impossible, and she was glad that she had asked her master to put them on her.

  She heard some whistles from the watching bystanders, followed by some whoops and hoots, all in excited male voices. Now she wished that she had asked Will to gag her as well, because suddenly she had to fight an almost overpowering urge to smile. She gritted her teeth, but started putting one bare foot in front of the other as she walked. She knew it would accentuate the movement of her hips. More whistles, whoops and hoots rose from the watching men, and she had to clench her jaws all the more tightly. Those men were looking at her. They were cheering her. They were looking at her naked body and lusting after it. Just in front of her, towing her along at the end of her leash, her master walked along as if there was nothing at all unusual about the scene, and somehow that enabled her to enjoy this very unusual but very flattering experience.

  They came to the wide side street that led to the slave market. Will turned, and Alexa followed. She’d been in that huge, barnlike building once before, but that was during her orientation, when she was a woman, clothed and free. Now she was entering it as a female, naked and chained. Doubts began prodding at her. Her step faltered, but Will neither looked back nor gave her any slack. She stumbled for a moment, regained her footing, and followed her master. Behind her, she could still hear the occasional shrill whistle.

  There was a small crowd gathered in the slave market, composed almost entirely of men. They parted to let Will and Alexa pass. As they did, Alexa saw that one row of the slave cages had been removed and replaced with four very different cages, each on its own stand, and each one on a slightly different level. She saw Martina in the nearest cage. It was more than long enough to let her stretch out, wide enough for her to turn around, but the solid wooden top of it was far too low for her to stand, or even sit upright. She could get up on all fours, and that’s the pose she was in now as she glared angrily at Alexa. The cage next to Martina’s was empty, and sat higher than the others. To the right of it was an identical cage, set lower than Martina’s. Naomi was in that one. And furthest off to the right, Alexa could see Lynette lying on her side. Her cage was only a foot or two above the floor. Something about the arrangement struck her as familiar, but she didn’t realize what it was until Will made her stand facing the highest cage and began removing the handcuffs from her arms. Then she knew: The cages were set at different heights to imitate the little stages that winning athletes stood on as they were awarded their medals. Number one always stood on the highest part, number two on a lower part, and number three on the lowest. They’d had to add a fourth cage for this. She managed to keep herself from grinning as she realized that she was going to be put into the highest-standing cage.

  As Will removed not just the handcuffs on her wrists but her leash and collar as well, one of the older men who worked at the slave market opened the door of her cage. It was too high for her to climb into without help, so another man brought a hay bale for her to use as a step.

  “Get on in there, female,” Will ordered. Alexa worked her shoulders for a moment before she put her foot on the hay bale. It tickled. She got up onto the bale, and it tickled her other foot. She could climb into her cage easily now, but the thought of the view she’d present to all the people standing around made her hesitate. Will slapped her ass.

  “Get in,” he ordered. Alexa clambered into the cage as quickly as she could. There was some sort of thin pad on the floor, covered in black vinyl. She heard the cage door clang shut behind her and turned to face the crowd.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Will said loudly as he also turned to face them. “I present Alexa Marx, the last female captured in this contest!”

  There was some applause, more whistling, and a couple of cheers. This time Alexa wasn’t sure who they were for.

  “All you have to do for now, missy,” the older man who had opened her cage said to her as he now locked it, “is keep movin’ around so that folks get a nice, complete view of you. You can rest some times, but do it too much and you’ll be punished.”

  Alexa looked at him through the solid iron bars and nodded. She saw Will leaving without any word and had a moment of panic. She wanted to call out to him, but that was something that would probably call for punishment too, so she held her tongue. She saw a number of men fall in with him, clapping him on the back and talking excitedly. Maybe they wanted to buy him a drink.

  In the cage next to hers she saw Martina prowling back and forth on her hands and knees like an angry, caged tigress, her long blonde hair hanging loose. Every so often she would glare at Alexa again, and the look in her eyes was unnerving. Alexa crawled over to the side of her cage furthest from Martina. Naomi was also moving around on her hands and knees, but she looked worried and maybe even a little scared, very unlike Martina. Lynette was lying on her side with her back to the slave market entrance, but people were free to move around the row of cages and have a look from either side, so Lynette wasn’t actually able to conceal much.

  Alexa turned and came face to face with an older woman who was peering at her closely. There were also some men staring at her, but she hardly noticed them. The woman had intense green eyes and long, curling dark red hair. She appeared to be somewhere in her mid-thirties. For a long moment, she and Alexa simply stared at each other.

  “What an absolutely lovely specimen,” the woman said. “So very, very fit. I can see why she was captured last. Who brought her in?” She continued gazing at Alexa, but her eyes were roaming over her body now.

  “That’d be Will Longstreet, ma’am,” one of the slave market workers replied.

  “Really?” the woman kept looking at Alexa, who turned full broadside to her and arched her back. If she was going to be put on display for a while, why not actually put on a display? All the same, she kept away from the bars and also out of the woman’s immediate reach.

  “I’ll have to speak with Mr. Longstreet,” the woman said. “It can’t have been easy to bring this one in.” She smiled at Alexa and gave her an enigmatic wink, then moved on.

  Men came to stare and speculate. Many of them stopped at Martina’s cage first. Martina did nothing to encourage or discourage any of them. Whenever she wasn’t taking a short break she simply kept up that slow, catlike pacing back and forth on her hands and knees, giving off sparks of restless energy. She managed to seem incredibly desirable and subtly
menacing all at once. During her own breaks, Alexa studied her. She could see what the blonde volleyballer was doing, and how it attracted so much attention, from both men and women. But, dammit, she was in the cage reserved for first place, not Martina! She should be getting most of the attention, shouldn’t she?

  After that first irrational burst of anger passed, Alexa realized that Martina was engaged in another form of competition, one she was smugly sure she could win. And, really, there was no way to successfully compete in exactly the same way, and if she tried she’d just look like a jealous copycat. But this contest was about attracting attention, not attracting attention in a particular way. Alexa smiled as Martina turned once more in her slow, smoldering pacing and presented her shapely ass to Alexa’s view. She knew what to do now.

  Alexa yawned widely enough for anyone to see as she curled her pink tongue in imitation of…well it was either a dog or a cat. It didn’t matter which. Then she slowly stretched first one leg, then the other, then each of her arms in turn. Lastly, she arched her back and yawned again before crawling slowly around her cage. She kept pausing to stretch, or work her neck as if it was stiff or her shoulders as if they were stiff…which they still were, a little, from when Will had cuffed her arms. And while Martina kept glowering past the people who came to look, Alexa kept catching their eyes, if only for an instant before moving on to the next pair of eyes. It was absolutely shameless behavior, she knew, but she’d gladly suck her master’s cock right through the bars of her cage in front of the whole damned town if it drew attention away from that long-legged, long-haired treacherous blonde bitch. Besides, this exhibitionism thing was starting to be fun. And it was working, as people began crowding around her cage. Trying to think up new moves rather than just keep repeating a routine, she remembered something Will had told her. She started to turn around, then stopped with her ass and pussy aimed straight at the crowd. She looked back over her shoulder at them for a moment before finishing the turn. That seemed to work especially well. Martina could see what she was doing, but if she tried to copy Alexa’s moves it would be obvious that that was what she was doing. In any case, while their cages were the same size, Martina was so much taller that she just didn’t have enough room to copy Alexa if she wanted to.