Shameless Exposure

by Robert Fanshaw

  “Wait,” shouted Regina, who had not lost sight of the significance of the proceedings. “The seed must be spilt inside the vagina. Wimples, get him out of the stocks. Jocasta, your words, now.”

  Jocasta looked up to recall the senseless words she had been told by Regina:

  “Um… Come to me, leopard of the mountain. Bluebell the voracious vixen will never be satisfied by you alone.”

  Freed from the stocks and shocked by her words, Robert grasped the helpless Jocasta, as if possessed by the spirit. He lifted her off the ground and onto his engorged cock. She sighed heavily as she slid down its length. He cupped her reddened buttocks in his hands and she swung her legs behind his back, locking her feet together and drawing him further into her.

  She grabbed the chains of the manacles to gain purchase, and rode up and down his ramrod. He tensed. He groaned. She felt his penis erupt and shoot jets of come deep into her. She cried out in joy, shaking as her own climax rippled through her from toe to fingertip. They remained locked together for a long moment, breathing heavily. Then Jocasta whispered into his ear:

  “Thank you, Robert. That was beautiful. At last I have felt something deeply again.”

  “Don’t thank me. I don’t know what came over me. Did I hear you right? How do you know about Bluebell?”

  “The words were given to me by the spirit.”

  Their audience didn’t know whether to clap or cheer at the climax to the show, but Regina broke the awkward silence:

  “The bad spirit has been expelled. The seed has been spilt. The ceremony is complete until the next full moon. May the vagina spirit be with you.”

  “May the vagina spirit lead us to eternal ecstasy,” they responded.

  Ten

  Caroline had sampled everything the Copacabana Palace Hotel had to offer and was ready to venture out into the world outside. The day had started beautifully with a spectacular sunrise over the bay viewed from her suite facing the ocean. Now, after a morning trying out the hotel pool, a massage in the spa, and a coffee in the bistro, it was time to explore the beach playground which lay just across the Avenida Atlantica.

  First though, she would need a bikini. This being a work trip, she hadn’t packed one. The one-piece Speedo, which always travelled with her since the skinny-dipping debacle in Spain, hung dripping in the bathroom.

  The huge bath was in the living room, not in the bathroom. Lounging in it the previous evening, she wished she had someone to share it with. She could easily imagine Robert enjoying this languorous luxury, ordering a bottle of champagne from room-service, taking her down to dinner and enjoying the sight of every man’s head in the restaurant turning in her direction. They would finish with a brandy and then make love in the bath, laughing at the indulgence of it. She felt all warm in her stomach and soaped herself between her legs.

  Or what if she had allowed Erik to come with her? The thought of him staring at her with his cool, critical, artist’s eyes as she assumed a number of poses in the oil-scented water sent a wave of excitement through her body. He would have her lie still like a modern day Ophelia, her red hair fanning out in the water. He would make some sketches without a smile. Then, when it seemed he didn’t care for her at all except as the raw material for an image, he would hand her a towel, touch her gently on the waist, and she would be consumed with uncontainable lust. She reached for the knobbly natural sponge that bobbed in the water and used it to stroke her clit.

  Then Robert appeared again, stroking her breasts and offering his penis to her mouth. She imagined his familiar taste, delighting in exciting him while Erik licked her to a wet orgasm. Yes, in an ideal world, she would have them both, like she had those two young men at the party. Of course it could work. Perhaps Robert would agree to try a ménage a trois in return for her promising never to moan again about the football?

  Her fantasies, as she bobbed in the warm bubbles, did not involve her dynamic boss. Oh, no. It was a relief to spend some time away from always-on Andreas and she hadn’t argued when he had offered to fly to the meeting in Sao Paulo alone, a day trip by plane. The hotel was nice, but she had been shocked by the drive to Rio from the airport.

  Even in a chauffeur driven limousine it was impossible to ignore the poverty and squalor lining the main road, a breeding ground for the crime she had been warned about. Julia Sinbad’s risk assessment of the trip had flagged up a particular kidnap risk for business people in Sao Paulo. She didn’t fancy being kidnapped. Rio was okay as long as you didn’t get lost or talk to the wrong people, and she was happy not to talk to anybody. Hardly anyone spoke English, anyway.

  “You deserve a day off,” said Andreas. “It’s been seven days non-stop travelling and meetings. Have an afternoon on the beach. Just make sure you stay close to the hotel and the lifeguard station – and don’t take anything valuable with you to the beach.”

  “I have travelled before, you know.”

  “Of course, but it’s different here. You can’t tell if someone’s a crook until it’s too late. The people seem friendly then – bang! - your wallet’s gone, or your watch.”

  He had an annoying tendency to patronise her. The past few days had been exhausting. Not only the endless smiling at suits and enthusiasm for medical devices, but also the emotional expenditure of keeping Andreas at arm’s length without being overtly hostile.

  It had been a big mistake to respond to his stupid text games. It was obvious he didn’t just want to know the colour of her knickers; he wanted to get inside them. He’d been trying everything to get her to drop her guard – plying her with drink, taking her to fancy restaurants when a quick meal in the hotel would have been fine; and that nightclub he took her to yesterday was inappropriate, even for a racy city like Rio. She was no prude, but work was work and simulated sex between a large black man and a chained white woman had no place in business entertaining, or in her disturbing dreams.

  However, she had held firm without slapping him and now she was going to take her e-reader onto the beach and get lost in some trash. She asked at reception to borrow a beach towel and where she could buy a bikini.

  They directed her to the Rua Santa Clara, a couple of blocks down the Avenida and told her to look for a shop called Kitanga. She found the shop easily enough, but finding the right bikini out of the hundreds on display was another matter. She engaged the help of a pretty little shop assistant who measured her carefully and said something about her bottom in Portuguese, which Caroline guessed from her gestures was complimentary. The assistant returned with armfuls of the latest designs.

  She chose a plain white one. It had more fabric than most and reminded her of the ones film stars wore in old films. Caroline tried it on, the assistant peeking round the door and smiling encouragement. It was a glamorous design. The lycra mix supported her boobs elegantly and the tie-sided bottoms were not too low-cut.

  “How much?” asked Caroline, gesturing at the tag.

  “Is most expensive in shop,” said the assistant, laughing. “But good. No fall off in water.” Caroline checked her bum in the full length mirror and smiled back at the assistant, nodding that she would buy this one.

  She had felt an edge of nervousness walking through the unfamiliar streets to the shop, but having successfully made a transaction, adding a bottle of sun cream at the cash desk, she felt confident to tackle the beach. She scooted across four lanes of traffic, dodged two bicycles, a scooter and a skateboard on the cycle track, and made it in one piece to the promenade.

  The black and white stone pattern of the promenade seemed to stretch for ever in both directions. After ten minutes walking and gazing in amazement at the beach scenes, she left the joggers and promenaders to kick off her shoes and join the throng on the beach.

  She loved beaches; she loved the way people behaved on beaches. This one was on a grand scale, even by the standards of Newquay in August. Although the bay was nicely framed by green promontories, the long sweep of yellow sand went on for miles. She turned and
picked out her hotel to get her bearings. She stood and watched a dozen bronzed young men play a fast game of volleyball, displaying a level of skill way beyond her childhood experience of beach games. Further down the sand past a clump of palm trees, there were sets of full sized goal posts and a sizeable crowd was watching a football match. Hundreds of people were swimming or playing in the surf, and a little way off the beach a flotilla of small boats bobbed around.

  She spotted a fixed lifeguard station and lay her towel down in sight of it. Everywhere she looked there were attractive young people sunbathing, some of them groups of women with tiny bright bikinis, wearing the smallest of thongs to get their bottoms brown. There was obviously not too much concern about nudity, so she got undressed without fussing and put on her new outfit, taking great care to apply plenty of sunscreen before wriggling into the bikini.

  When she looked up from fixing the hooks of the bikini top, hidden under the bow at the front, the two lifeguards both appeared to be looking straight at her through high-powered binoculars, the lenses glinting red in the bright sunshine. She gave them a wave and stuck her tongue out, in case they really were looking at her, though she couldn’t imagine why they would be with all the South American beauties of every size and skin tone anywhere they cared to look.

  She made a neat pile of her clothes and made sure her purse was pushed deep inside her bag. She took out her e-reader and settled back on the beach towel to read chapter ten of the novel that everyone was talking about, but no-one dared speak its name, let alone buy it in paperback, wrapped as it was in a suggestive cover.

  It was a preposterous story. People, especially women, did not really behave that way; but it was fun to speculate how the heroine would resolve the mess she had got herself into by trying to relive the past with an old flame. Would she really turn her back on her solid and reliable husband for a bit of excitement, a hint of perversion, a notion of romance? It was corny and predictable, obvious that the heroine would eventually fall for the charms of the rich and charismatic boss. He would turn out to have hidden depths and a wife in a long-term mental institution. Or would the real love of her life drag her back from the edge of her own idiocy? She would have to read on and find out.

  She heard the whirr of a lens and the snap of a shutter and looked up to see a young man, a boy really, with two cameras around his neck, taking close-ups of her. She shook her head and wagged her finger. He gestured to her to turn over for another angle. She frowned and put her arms into an x shape. He clicked away.

  “Stop it. Why me? There’re plenty of other women on the beach.”

  “Redheads only.” It wasn’t much of an explanation but she decided to ignore the brat and carry on reading. That seemed to work, and the lanky lad gave up pestering her and continued down the beach in search of other redheads. She applied more sun cream and closed her eyes for a moment, letting the healing power of the sun relax her whole body. She listened to the drowsy rhythm of the surf, the backbeat to the happy hubbub of people playing on the beach.

  Some time later she felt a shadow fall over her and when she opened her eyes two muscular men, one black, one white, were blocking the sun. The white man, bald, his head shiny with sun screen, waved an eight by ten glossy print and nodded.

  “This is her,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, half sitting up. “I don’t want a photo.”

  “A hundred dollars, gringo,” said the black man, smiling in a threatening manner.

  “I don’t have any dollars,” said Caroline. “I’m not American.”

  “Then why did you agree to buy a picture from the boy?” asked the bald man, blocking out a bit more of the sun.

  She looked towards the lifeguard station and waved towards them, concerned that this proposed transaction was not going the way she wanted it to. The lifeguards’ lenses were trained out to sea. The smiling black man grabbed her arm.

  “You come with us.”

  In seconds they had scooped up her bag and clothes and lifted her, one arm each, so that her feet were off the ground. They must have been well over six feet tall and built like boxers. They frog marched her into the surf. She screamed and kicked her legs, but if anyone was looking they would have seen the kind of playful scene that happened all the time on the beach, as cool water hits hot skin.

  By the time she was up to her waist in the water they were alongside a white speedboat. They bundled her into it, and climbed in after her. The bald man sat on her in the bottom of the boat while the black man took the wheel and raced the boat out into deeper water.

  “You’re wasting your time,” she shouted, trying to be heard above the scream of the engine. “I have nothing of value and my cards are in the hotel room. And can you please get off me? I can hardly breathe.”

  “You can breathe well enough to talk,” said the bald man. “Shut up and do what we say. Throw me the zip cuffs, Michael.”

  “You weren’t supposed to use my name, Junior. Here, catch.” Junior caught the plastic ties with one hand and began securing her hands behind her back.

  “Look, there’s absolutely no need for that,” said Caroline. “If you want me to buy a photo I’ll buy a bloody photo. Just take me back to my hotel and I’ll get some money. I’ll even get dollars if you insist. They’re very helpful at reception.”

  He threaded the strip through the ratchet and pulled it tight. As he moved towards her feet, she managed a well aimed kick between his legs. He doubled up in pain.

  “Arghh… you bitch.” He slapped her hard on the behind and it stung.

  “Junior, what you doin’? He said we mustn’t hit her.”

  “Well, she hit me first.” He pulled the plastic cuff tight around her ankles, leaving no room for movement. They were the kind of devilishly difficult to undo plastic clips used in the packaging of large items. Caroline had no idea what fate awaited her, but certainly hoped she wasn’t for sale. She thought back to the management briefing last year at Monsaint on crisis resolution. She mentally flipped through the morning and afternoon sessions before realising that the training had assumed the crisis had happened to someone or something else and you had to manage the fall-out. She would have to make it up herself.

  The boat bucked noisily across the swell for fifteen minutes and headed round the promontory to where trees came almost down to the sea. Michael cut the engine and they drifted towards a shingly shore. The boxers unloaded their human cargo, carrying Caroline onto dry land and pushing her into the back of a white van which was parked near the water’s edge. Her captors in the cab made a phone call, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying. A few minutes later she heard the engine start up and the van began climbing up into the wooded hills.

  The vehicle swung from side to side round tight corners and a familiar feeling of nausea began to rise up from her stomach. She wriggled up to the front of the van and kicked the partition between her and the driver’s cab to attract the attention of her captors. The van screeched to a halt on a steep hill and Michael opened the rear doors.

  “You better be glad it’s me, ‘cos Baldy’s in a bad, bad mood.”

  “I’m going to be sick. I suffer from travel sickness. I don’t want to be sick in your nice van.”

  “Yuk, no. You better get out.”

  “You’ll have to take the ties off. I can’t move.”

  Michael produced a long gleaming knife from the sheath under his trouser leg. He climbed into the van and advanced towards her. He showed her the knife.

  “You better not try any funny business,” he said, cutting the cuff from her ankles, but leaving her wrists fixed behind her back. She tried not to look at the red weals around her ankles. Her skin always showed every mark. She moved towards the doors on her bottom and Michael helped her out onto the side of the road. She bent over and tried to be sick but didn’t want to get in her hair.

  “Look, if it’s not too much trouble, could you hold my hair back, Michael.”

  “You ain’t suppose
d to use my name.” He did, however, sweep her red locks back from her face and held them in a temporary ponytail. He stood very close behind her and she edged away from what felt like a large stiff prick that pressed against her bikini bottoms. That gave her an idea, and when he moved closer again she grabbed his balls and squeezed as tightly as she could.

  He yelled and pulled away in pain. She ran off down the rough road, praying that another vehicle would appear. It didn’t, so she jumped across a ditch and into the thick forest. Michael shouted to Junior, who had been following the scene closely in the wing mirror and had already jumped out of the van. She knew they would run after her so she pushed on into the forest, oblivious to the scratches the undergrowth inflicted on her feet and legs.

  She came to a small clearing which allowed a beautiful view over the bay but she didn’t have time to admire the scenery. She dived behind a thick tree trunk and watched as her confused pursuers tried to guess which way she had gone. Baldy pulled out a phone and sought some advice, talking to someone in English. She guessed they would try to search the area so she cut back towards the road, coming out fifty yards below where the white van was stopped.

  It was hard walking barefoot along the rocky road with hands behind her back, but she thought there might be something sharp in the cab of the van which she could use to free her hands. Her heart pounded with exertion as she made her way up to the van. She managed to open the driver’s door and wriggled up onto the seats. She turned onto her back to use her fingers on the glove box, but she couldn’t reach the catch. She rolled over and tried to use her teeth, but it wouldn’t open. Then she saw her pursuers in the wing mirror, coming back to the van. She flipped over again and managed to depress the button on the handbrake.