by S. J. Lewis
Mike smiled crookedly. “Gee, I don't know,” he said. “Screwing with me? Using me? What am I, the first notch on your belt?”
“Look, you screwed with me too,” Alexa pointed out. “We screwed together. I didn't hear you complaining at the time.”
“Well, I gotta say I wouldn't mind doing it again,” he admitted. “Have you had lunch yet? My treat.”
“Okay,” Alexa agreed with a smile. “Just let me get a room for the night first.”
“We could share a room,” Mike suggested.
“Thanks, but just lunch will be fine,” Alexa called back over her shoulder as she headed towards the bar. She laid her package down on it and signaled for the bartender, who was talking with two customers at the other end, to come over.
“I'd like to rent a room, please,” she said to him.
“I'm sorry, ma'am,” he said with a shake of his head. “We're full up for the night.”
“What?” Alexa wailed. “Is there any place else here that rents rooms?”
“One or two,” he replied. “But I expect they're already full up too, since I sent some folks looking for lodgings along earlier.”
“How could this happen?” Alexa asked.
“The season's started,” the bartender replied with a shrug. “It does happen sometimes. There's been talk of opening a rooming house, but it would only get used for about half the year, so it's just been talk so far.”
“Problem?” Mike inquired as he came over.
“Yeah, there's a problem!” Alexa exploded. “There aren't any rooms available!”
“I see,” Mike said. “So what are we going to do?”
“'We?'“ Alexa snapped at him. “What do you mean by 'we'?” You find your own damned room!” She turned back to the bartender and favored him with her sweetest smile. “Isn't there anything you can do to help a girl out?” she asked hopefully.
“Well,” the bartender rubbed his chin. “I can call for one of the proctors, and maybe she could be of some help.”
“Oh, would you, please?” Alexa responded. “It doesn't have to be anything special, just someplace where I can get a good night's sleep.”
“I'll see what I can do.”
Chapter Four
“This sucks,” Alexa complained. She spread a second blanket over the thick layer of straw and looked around for the pillow she'd brought along. She was still dressed as she had been that morning, her newly-bought clothes still tied up in their brown paper package. Putting on fresh clothes without showering first seemed like a waste of time, and in the wilderness with Will she'd had to wear the same clothes for more than one day before. She didn't much care for it, but she could endure it.
“I think you look pretty good in there,” Mike chuckled as he leaned on the door to the stall she was in. “You're a mite overdressed, though. I could help you with that.”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” Alexa snapped. She'd been in a foul mood ever since she'd found out that there were no rooms available, and having Mike tag along with her everywhere she went had not cheered her up at all. Now here she was in the barn where the naked females were kept, fixing up a place where she could sleep. There was a sort of lavatory available, in case she needed to use one, but the only shower available was out back and outdoors. She'd had a look at it, and from the way it was set up and all the chains hanging around it, it was clear that it was used by men to wash their females and show them off to anyone who happened by. She dearly wanted a shower, but not so bad as to use that thing. There was absolutely no kind of screening around it, and no way to rig any up. She was just going to have to rough it for tonight.
“Oh, come on,” Mike went on in an infuriatingly jovial tone. “It's not like I'd see anything I haven't seen already.”
“Will you go the fuck away?” Alexa demanded.
“No,” Mike replied easily. “And according to the proctor, I don't have to. I'm not allowed to touch you without your consent, and I can't harass you with foul language, but as long as I behave like a gentleman there's nothing you can do to send me away.”
Alexa wanted to throw something at him. “Shouldn't you be off finding your own place to stay for the night?” she asked.
“Nah,” Mike answered, shrugging. “I'm not really tired. Had a nice, long nap earlier.” He grinned at her wickedly and Alexa glared back.
“You look real good naked,” he continued. “If you want to raise a fuss, you could strip down and let folks have a look at you.”
“Will you please knock that off?” Alexa asked as she turned away from him to put the finishing touches on her bed for the night. “I'm not taking anything off, for you or anybody.”
“Kind of disappointing to hear that,” Mike said. “I mean, I'm probably your biggest fan. And I really like the way you have your pubes trimmed down to that wide stripe. I'd like to run my fingers through it.”
“Go away.” Alexa ordered.
“Why?” Mike asked. “I'm enjoying myself.”
“Oh, are you?” Alexa strode over to him, so quickly and so determinedly that he actually stood up straight and backed away from the door to the stall.
“You listen to me, Michael Andrew Jackson,” she began, jabbing a finger towards him, her expression a mixture of anger and frustration.. “You're enjoying it all way too much, and I'm sick of it! You're acting like some stupid teenaged boy, and it's not scoring any points with me, you hear?”
Mike just looked at her. “I don't have to score any points, Alexa Marx,” he said calmly. “I just have to catch you. I mean to do just that, and when I do I'm going to put you through your paces, and you'll have to score points with me, you hear?” With that, he turned away and walked out of the barn. Alexa went back to her makeshift bed and laid down. There were naked females in the other stalls, but she was perfectly safe in hers. The proctor who had found her this rough lodging, a woman named Miranda, had scrawled a warning in chalk on the low door to the effect that the occupant of this stall was to be let alone, and no man was to enter the stall without her permission. Will had told her about the incredible amount of authority that proctors wielded so long as they wore their distinct black dresses, the ones that looked like they should be worn by an old-time widow or schoolmarm, and Alexa had no doubts that the scribbled warning would keep her safe, and that no one would dare to try to rub it away.
She laid down on the blankets and squirmed around a little until she was comfortable. It was dark out, but it still felt too early to go to sleep, so she rolled onto her back and looked up at the beams and planks overhead. She'd had a plan when she'd set out earlier today, and she'd actually managed to achieve most of what she'd intended to, but her narrow escape from the Andersons showed her that she'd have to reconsider things and come up with a new plan. She still intended to get to the next two little hamlets along the dirt road. Having Mike hovering close to her was an annoyance at times, but it didn't really worry her. She knew that she could outrun him over a short distance and outpace him over a longer one. It wasn't that he wasn't in shape. No, indeed, he was very, very fit, but too muscular to be a really good runner. The two Anderson brothers, on the other hand, were lean and quick, and had clearly marked her down for further attention. The bartender had been able to give her a little background on them. There were three of them in all, they'd been coming to Gordburg for years, and they advertised themselves as girl catchers. Apparently they came specifically to hunt females who came here to be hunted, and once they'd caught one they gave her a rigorous workout for several days, breaking, training and using her before taking her back to Gordburg for sale at the slave market. While they had a reputation for being rough, and sometimes brutal, they'd never broken any rules, and some of the females they'd put through the mill kept coming back, hoping for another round with them. While she'd hoped to experience something along those lines when she came here, Alexa didn't want to experience it too soon. First she wanted to make her mark. With Will's help, she'd been able to figure out how long she'd ha
ve to run free to break Elf-Girl's official record. That would leave her about a week to be kept and trained as a female slave, with two days left for her to relax and recover at the hotel before heading back to her home and her work. Two days might not be quite enough, but it would have to do.
She curled up on her side, trying to get more comfortable. She saw some men pass by her stall, not pausing but taking quick, sidelong glances at her. She wondered if any of them knew who she was or what she'd done earlier that day. Then she heard a high-pitched feminine whine of protest coming from the other end of the barn and concluded that whether they knew or not they had other things on their minds at the moment. There was a brief silence, and then the whining began again, though it sounded muffled now. It wasn't hard for Alexa to picture what was going on back there.
Two more men passed by her stall, giving her no more than a cursory glance before they went on to whatever female they were going to use and abuse for the night. A little while later, Alexa heard the sound of another female protesting wordlessly, though her voice didn't sound muffled. In her mind's eye, she could see the female on her hands and knees, still chained by the neck to a ringbolt set in the wall, while one of the men took her from behind. She realized that that might not actually be what was happening, but just picturing it was beginning to get her a little moist. She wished that the proctor had warned her about what was likely to happen, but it was possible that the proctor had thought Alexa already knew.
There was absolutely no chance of her getting to sleep this way. Alexa sat up, wondering if there was some kind of curfew on using your female slave in semi-public. She heard an angry, muffled squall from the first female at the same time she heard a deep, satisfied grunt from one of the men, and once again was pretty sure what had just happened. No, she couldn't stay here with all that going on and even hope to get to sleep. She stood up and quietly exited her stall, then went outside. The lone street was dimly lit by what were probably gas lamps. In contrast, the saloon practically glowed with electric lighting. Well, there wouldn't be anything wrong with having a drink or two while she was waiting for the activities in the barn to end. She went up the street and into the saloon. It wasn't crowded, but there were a fair number of people there, mostly men. Three giggly young women sat at one of the tables, all dressed in jeans and frilly blouses, all nursing beers, all enjoying the ardent attentions of about half a dozen men.
“Who are they?” Alexa asked the bartender after she'd ordered a beer of her own, indicating the women.
“Tourists,” the bartender shrugged. He wasn't the same one from earlier. He was a tall, thin, older man with surprisingly thick dark hair and a faint scar on one cheek. “They came in on the afternoon stage.”
“Are they staying here overnight?”
“Yeah. They made reservations,” the bartender replied. He drew a mug of Tecumseh and placed it on the bar in front of Alexa.
“Why did you call them tourists?”
“Well, they come through on the stage and spend some time just looking around. Every so often one of 'em gets a mind to jump in and play, but only for the night.”
“Play?” Alexa was curious.
“Yeah. You know, like a one-night stand.”
“Oh.” Alexa hadn't thought such things were possible here, but why shouldn't they be? She could imagine a woman getting turned on and horny from her surroundings and deciding to get her itch scratched without making a long-term commitment, 'long term' here being anything up to a week. But exactly how would that work? She waited until the bartender wandered near again and asked him.
“It's simple enough,” he said. “She and a guy reach an agreement, they call in a proctor and make the arrangements.” He nodded towards the women's table. “I think that cute little brunette is getting close to making a deal.”
“How can you tell?” Alexa asked after a brief glance over that way.
“I've worked here a while,” he replied with a careless shrug. “I can read the signs. She's squirming a little on her chair and smiling a lot at the two men trying to work her. Her two friends, well, one seems interested in the older gentleman talking with her, and the strawberry blonde just doesn't seem too into any of the men trying to get her attention. She may just be playing hard to get, though.”
“So what happens if a woman makes a deal? I mean, do they sign a contract or anything?” Alexa wanted to know.
“Nothing like that,” the bartender replied. “Usually she just tells the guy, or guys, what she won't do, and the proctor makes sure it's all clearly understood. Then they go off together and have some fun.”
“Is there some special place they go to do that?”
“Back to their room, off to the barn, it depends. Say, you want a refill on that?”
“Huh?” Alexa noticed that her mug was almost empty. “Well... what do you have in the way of harder stuff?”
“Pretty much anything you want.”
“Whiskey on the rocks?”
“Coming right up.”
Armed with her drink, which she could nurse for a long time, Alexa moved away from the bar in order to have a better look at the saloon. Some of the men at the tables called out to her and waved at her. She smiled at them but turned down their invitations to sit with them. They were all dressed like working-class types. That wasn't a deal-breaker with her, since she figured that pretty much everyone who came here dressed like that. You wouldn't wear an expensive suit in order to go traipsing through the woods in pursuit of female prey now, would you? For all she knew, the scruffy-looking older man with a few day's growth of beard might be an investment banker. The one thing she was sure of was that you needed a certain amount of money to be able to come here at all.
She looked over at a corner table and stopped. There was one man seated at the table, lean, dark-haired, goateed and watchful, with penetrating dark eyes. He wore a loose-fitting jacket and loose-fitting pants that looked as if they were made of deerskin. Under the jacket he wore a plain gray shirt. He was leaning back in his chair, taking occasional sips from a shotglass half-full of some dark amber liquid that he held in his gnarled right hand. It was what he gripped with his left hand that drew Alexa's attention, though. She was kneeling on the sawdust-strewn floor, naked, her arms bound behind her at the wrists and elbows with a white cloth gag covering the whole lower part of her face. She was small and slender and the man had a tight grip on her disheveled pale blonde hair as he held her not just in place but bent over so that her breasts were pressed hard against her knees. It didn't look like a comfortable position at all, but the female looked more pissed off than anything else. She had angry, pale blue eyes and a pert little nose that suited her pert little body. If she was allowed to stand up, Alexa guessed that she wouldn't quite reach five feet tall. The man noticed Alexa staring at him and his captive and caught her eye. He smiled at her and gestured for her to come over with his shotglass. Uncertain, Alexa made her way over to him and accepted the seat he offered with another gesture of his shotglass. Up close, she could see that his grip on the blonde's hair had to be painfully tight, which might explain why the female was keeping so carefully still.
“I saw you this morning,” the man said without any introduction. “That was a nice piece of broken-field running.”
“Uh... thanks,” Alexa said. Explaining that she'd been lucky would take too much time, so she let it go at that. “So you know who I am?”
“Yes, I do,” he nodded and took a sip of his drink. “Saw you last year, too, in that cage. You've got a fine body, Alexa Marx.”
“I keep in shape,” she said. “But who are you, and who is she?”
“Ah,” the man said. “Please excuse my manners. I'm Jacob Farmer. I'm a girl catcher, and this here is my latest catch.” He gave the blonde's head a little shake and she made a snarling noise behind the gag.
That was the second time today she'd heard the term 'girl catcher'. Will had never mentioned it to her, and she was beginning to wonder if he'd left
out anything else. He probably had.
“And you're allowed to bring her in here like that?” she asked.
“It's part of her early training,” Jacob replied. “She's a feisty little thing, and she needs to get used to being kept naked in front of men. I cleared it with a proctor. Care to have a better look at her?”
“Uh... no, thanks,” Alexa replied after a moment. There were already plenty of naked females to look at around here.
“Have a look anyway,” Jacob offered. “Up, Anne.” He gave her hair a surprisingly gentle pull, and Anne slowly and gracefully got to her feet, still glaring. Once she was standing, Alexa couldn't help but look. The blonde had an exquisite little body, every bit as trim and toned as hers, but on a smaller scale. Her hips flared out in sweet curves below her waist. She had small, round breasts tipped with coral-colored nipples that looked like fleshy little knobs pointing ever so slightly upwards. Alexa had a sudden impulse to reach out and touch the female's body to see if that peaches and cream skin was as soft and warm as it looked. She managed to resist the urge.
“She was a gymnast,” Jacob said as he slowly pushed Anne back down into her previous pose. “Still keeps in practice.”
“What are you going to do with her?” Alexa asked him, thinking that this would be a very strange conversation almost anywhere else in the world.
“Find a good place to break her down a little, give her some training, then take her back to Gordburg and auction her off,” Jacob replied.
“And... you get paid for her?”
Jacob chuckled. “I get paid in Gordburg credits,” he answered. “And she gets half of whatever she brings credited to her account.. That's how some of us manage to afford coming back again and again.”
“I see,” Alexa nodded. Will had already informed her about how that worked. “But what do you do in real life?”
“Not really any of your business now, is it?”
“Sorry,” Alexa apologized. “This is only my second time here. I'm still learning the customs.” She looked down at Anne. The female was keeping perfectly still, her eyes closed.
