Chapter 15 Run! #3
The music changed as a brass note punched through the air, startling her like a fist through glass. The strings faltered, stumbled, then surrendered to a new pace. Her steps did the same, as if somehow tied to the sound.
Chaotic bursts of instruments ruptured the beat. A trumpet’s lazy drawl. A bass line that swung. Softened only by a woman’s thick crooning. Her words were smoke and honey, eliciting amber visions around the botanical scent of gin.
Jazz. These fuckers are playing jazz.
The vintage tempo belonged in a speakeasy from the last century.
Like your clothes.
She looked down at her tattered dress, struck by how easily they convinced their targets to change.
It’s role play to them.
And every single one of them smiled as they complied. Bought for one evening. Transformed into treasures, objects to covet and own.
She looked back at the distant lodge, its blazing windows glowing like tiny golden eyes against the black backdrop of endless sky.
“Gatsby,” she whispered, seeing it now. The whole thing was a set. They were the actors. This was the plot.
A chaotic representation of mere mortals among giants. The powerless pitted against capitalists, in a sepia-toned nightmare that dripped with sins.
1922. Even their numbers seemed intentional.
The dissonance they created was deliberate. Rushed by luxury, to blur morality in the nick of time.
Everything here was intentionally designed to disorient them so they would fall faster into compliance. From the music to the decadent clothes to the abundance of food, every detail was devised to keep them off-balance in every possible way.
A tribute yelled—this one male. A stag.
A scuffle broke out on the lawn as the hunter, equal in size, tried to tumble the tribute to the ground.
“Fuck you, you fat fuck!” The tribute shouted, shoving the hunter back and racing away.
Daisy peeked through branches as the robust hunter labored after him. “Slow down, you bloody puff!”
She smirked as the tribute got away.
Slipping beneath an arch of wisteria, she cautiously traveled further from the fading house. Purple blooms brushed her shoulders like soft fingers, the smell so sweet it carried the dizzying warning of a narcotic.
To her left, a sharp cry cut off before it completed. Terror or pleasure? Daisy couldn’t tell anymore.
This place blurred the fine lines of propriety into a murky smear of taboo grey.
Another bell wailed. The single, resonant gong fell from high above and lingered like an echo in her mind. Who was overseeing all of this? Someone was keeping score.
She looked back at the shrinking lodge. The further she ran, the more it shrank into the earth. A dot in the distance until it was gone. She wandered on, disturbed by the unsettling quiet, accompanied only by the disjointed retro jazz.
She was lost.
“At a boy, Forester!”
Daisy drew back into the shadows as two men passed another hunter with a tribute thrown over his shoulders, her hands tied at her back.
“Thank you, boys.” The hunter slapped the bound tribute’s ass, and she squeaked, but a gag restricted her voice. “This one’s only the first course. I plan to gorge myself by morning.”
The hunters laughed and continued on.
Daisy wondered where the hell they got the rope.
Tiptoeing down the path, she kept to the shadows, always with her back to the gardens and her eyes wide open. Sweat gathered beneath her mask.
She approached a group of men and stilled. She couldn’t move past them, so she tucked her body between a cluster of dogwood trees.
Three men hunched over a woman sprawled in the grass. One thrust his hips while the other two pinned her arms. Grunts and moans collided as the men kneeling by her face took turns feeding their cocks into her mouth.
“That’s a good girl,” they praised. “Open wide for us.”
Daisy’s jaw dropped in shock as the tribute moaned hungrily. The woman wasn’t fighting them. On the contrary, she appeared to be enjoying herself.
Her illicit moans called to more hunters. “What do we have here?” They gathered around as if stumbling upon a market fair show.
Daisy backed deeper into the shadows, far outnumbered now. It was clear they weren’t leaving any time soon.
“Just your classic greedy slut,” the man by her face bragged. “Show the hunters how much you love sucking cock.”
She moaned again, as if excited by his words.
“They’re making out a hell of a lot better than us, Gerald,” one newcomer complained. “All we got was a piece of some doe’s dress.” He waved a strip of emerald silk, and Daisy’s breath caught.
It was the exact color Maggie had been wearing.
Her attention shifted to the screams and moans in the distance. The ongoing bells. Male grunts and flashes of half-dressed people racing by.
What if one of those bells were for Maggie? Her chest ached at the thought. She needed to get to the grotto and find her friend. But she was trapped. Helpless. Hardly able to protect herself, let alone protect—
Her thoughts cut off.
This was war, not a time to make friends. Maggie was just a tribute, just like her. Emotions were a distraction, a liability none of them could afford right now.
But Maggie was the kind of person to worry about others, so Daisy’s mind naturally flooded with concern. It was a weakness. The kind she could only acknowledge and learn to accept.
Needing to keep her wits, Daisy tried to ignore her worries and stay focused on her own safety. If she didn’t, she was going to end up like that woman on the grass.
“Plenty to go around here, gentlemen.” The man between the tribute’s legs bragged. “Isn’t that right, my little fawn?”
The newcomers opened their pants, shamelessly stroking their cocks as they watched the others sate their appetites.
“We aren’t letting her up until she’s dripping.”
The tall hunter between her thighs groaned and pulled out, tugging his cock hard and fast. One grunt. Then another. His head tipped back as he hooted like a cowboy, finishing across her belly and chest.
Daisy had never seen anything like it.
Another man pushed him aside. “My turn.”
The moment he sank into her, the bell gonged.
How many could the tribute take?
Was there a limit?
Every single conquest added up to another million pounds.
Daisy couldn’t believe her eyes, but she also couldn’t look away.
Heat, warm and unwelcome, twisted low in her belly, slithering then throbbing as she watched the men help themselves to every hole. The tribute was no longer pinned down. Now, she held a man in each hand. Whenever one finished, he painted her moonlit skin in a glistening release.
Daisy tried to slip away, but every time she moved, eyes followed. There were five of them. And they weren’t selective.
They smeared their hands over her breasts, pinching and pulling, tugging and praising. Some even fed the proof of their pleasure into her mouth.
“Beautiful.” Another hunter climbed over her ribs to straddle the tribute’s torso, finding yet another way to get off as he held her breasts.
Daisy couldn’t watch anymore. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t bear how her belly pulsed in the most unsettling way, as if... As if there were something tempting about what was happening to that poor woman.
Sickened by her body’s response, she wished she could run, but she was too afraid of being spotted and caught.
“Flip her over, boys, so I can have her ass.”
They rolled the tribute to her knees, hitching up her hips.
One hunter kneeled in front of her, grabbing a fistful of her hair. “Open wide, sweetness.” He thrust into her mouth, and she moaned.
“Fuck, I gotta go find a doe,” another hunter said, rubbing his bulging crotch. “There’s only so many holes a man can fill.” He scanned the gardens, his gaze sweeping over the shadows and arborvitaes where Daisy hid.
She ducked low, her heart beating wildly out of sync. She couldn’t do what that woman was doing. She couldn’t get caught.
The smack of flesh slapping flesh closed in as the tribute’s moans grew to a peak of ecstasy. Was this Daisy’s future? Was there any hope of ever making it out of there unharmed?
Uninhibited jazz shrilled from hidden speakers, as whoops and hollers bled from multiple directions. Primitive calls of men. Overpowered moans of women.
Whatever dignity they had at the start of the night had crumbled into affluent decay. They scented blood and wanted more. This depraved playground of madness was nothing more than a soulless graveyard where innocence came to die.
Deep moans bounced off hedges and surrounding stone walls, multiplying, until the entire garden wailed with primal, carnal yelps of life that were too close to cries of death for Daisy’s ears.
Backing up, deeper and deeper into the overgrowth where the critters nested and wild things crawled, Daisy stumbled. Disoriented by the darkness, she stared up at the tall pines blocking her view. Mud squelched through her pantyhose and between her toes
A woman’s cry belted through the night. Spinning, Daisy found an opening in the branches and spotted a man, sitting on a concrete bench, with a tribute bent over his lap, her gown thrown over her head. He spanked her and grinned with twisted glee.
The tribute cried out, and he hit her again.
No more.
Daisy needed to get out of there.
Rushing toward a grove of silver birch, away from the debauchery on the lawn, into a copse of trees. She staggered to a stop as two bodies entwined ahead. They didn’t see her. Not yet.
She backed away slowly, but there was little cover. The bark of the birch trees glowed ghostly white in the dappled moonlight, their branches reaching overhead like fingers spread in supplication.
She was cornered from all angles. Spanker on the left. Orgy on the right. And a couple up ahead.
Through the trees, she glimpsed movement.
The direction of the lone couple was her safest bet. Two bodies intertwined on a carpet of moss, shadows merging and separating in a slow rhythm. Not nearly as aggressive as the last few.
They were so involved, they didn’t look up as Daisy crept by, even when she stumbled, realizing they were two men.
A hunter and a tribute, or maybe two hunters.
They were both stripped down to their masks and so engrossed with each other, they didn’t notice her—or if they did, they simply didn’t care.
Their dance was a mixture of surrender and conquest, a tango of power over virtue that ended in the truest form of invasion. Or was it surrender?
The distinct difference between passion and fetishism sharpened. Did they know each other? How long they waited for an evening like this, when gender roles dissolved in the darkness and baser instincts were fully accepted?
Here, no fantasy was too taboo.
Society was not always so accepting.
Their moans spiraled upward, ragged breaths colliding until they broke into gut-wrenching sobs.
Another bell tolled far in the distance.
Not seeing anyone on the lawn, she ran as fast as she could toward the crossing ahead.
The gravel had done its work. Her feet ached at the slightest touch. Every step caused painful awareness of just how long one night could be.
She kept moving in the direction of the grotto.
Almost there…
Daisy had no idea if she was pepping herself up with truth or lies. But it kept her from curling into a ball and giving up.
Moving faster now, she burst through a hedge and sucked in a sharp breath, nearly colliding with a marble statue of a female huntress, bow drawn, stone eyes fixed on some invisible prey.
Her eyes narrowed. Even the decorations here were predators. “Stupid statue.”
“Ah-ha!”
Daisy screamed as hands sprang from the shadows and jerked her back.