12. Audrey
AUDREY
“That’ll do.”
The words, spoken by the guy who’d handed me the clipboard in the holding room, were slow and easy. The words of someone gentling a horse, of a parent soothing a frightened child.
I’d started to wonder if I’d imagined his imposing presence during my long race through the tunnels. If maybe he wasn’t quite as tall or quite as muscular as I’d remembered.
If maybe he wasn’t as terrifying.
But no. Standing between the other two men in the antechamber created by the two metal mazes, he was every bit as formidable as I’d remembered, the massive oak etched into his chest stretching over muscled pecs and strong shoulders, the tree’s trunk rooting over corded abs and under his brass belt buckle.
He stared down at me through the narrowed eyes of his mask, the amber light cast by a single bulb glinting off the hammered copper.
“Welcome home,” one of the men standing next to him said. He was carving a small piece of wood with a knife that looked too big for the job, the mean shine of its blade catching the light.
He was leaner than the Oak Tree, with the muscular body of an athlete: a swimmer or a triathlete. His dark brown hair was just long enough to emerge in tufts from behind his mask, his eyes a dark green that made me think of hidden forests and mossy rocks.
Unlike the other two men, clad in jeans, this one wore dark work pants, the sheath for his knife attached to his brown leather belt along with a carabiner. An array of black-and-gray tattoos played over his chest, visible in the opening of a leather vest that hung from broad shoulders.
I looked around, desperate for someplace to run, but a sheet of metal had slammed down behind me when I’d exited the steel maze, and the one in front of me — across the tunnel floor — was closed, a steel wall preventing me from heading in that direction.
The Bulls had trapped me in a long section of the tunnel by creating a kind of chamber between the two metal mazes.
“Let’s mark her first,” the third man said.
Panic rose like a tide in my chest. “What does that mean?”
The third man shrugged, and I sensed that he was smiling behind the mask even though I couldn’t see his mouth.
“We have to make it official,” he said. “Make sure the other teams know you’re ours.”
There was something familiar in his voice, in the casual way he leaned against the mechanical bull, and for a split second I wondered if I knew him.
Then Oak Tree ambled toward me, removing his knife from the sheath at his waist, and everything but the need to escape vanished from my mind.
I backed up, my body working to get away despite the fact that there was nowhere to go, and felt the wall of the tunnel against my back.
Now I was trapped between the tunnel wall and the giant man standing in front of me, his knife between us, the blade sharp and close enough to my body that I was afraid to move a muscle.
And now that he was closer, I could see that although his body was still strong and fit, he was older than the other two.
Quite a bit older.
My gaze was glued to the knife in his hand. “What are you doing?”
He lifted the knife, and I shrunk away from him, bracing myself for the slice of it against my face, my body.
Instead he sliced it across his own palm. Blood dropped from his hand onto the tunnel floor.
He opened his palm and dragged the fingers of his other hand through the blood, then swiped them over my right cheek before I could register what he was doing.
“What the fuck?!”
I tried to shimmy away from him when he reached for my other cheek, but he clamped his blood-soaked hand around my throat.
“That’ll do, wildcat.” Again the strange phrase, the feeling that I was being soothed despite the fact that there was nothing remotely soothing about the way this massive man held my neck in his hands, the way he painted me with his blood. “This won’t hurt a bit.”
He swiped the blood over my left cheek, then across my forehead.
I gasped when he removed his hand, like he’d been choking me when that wasn’t exactly true.
“There now,” he said. “Time to ride.”
“Time to… what?” Everything was happening so fast. I felt like I’d landed in a dark kind of Oz, a place where nothing was quite as it seemed and strange new dangers lurked around every corner.
“Time to ride, doc.”
This time the words came from the third man, the one who’d sounded familiar.
And now a new thread of fear wound its way through my body, because how could this man know I was a doctor?
I narrowed my eyes at him, my fearful brain turning curious. “Do I know you?”
“Not exactly.”
The man with the leather vest walked slowly toward me, the block of wood and his knife still in his hand. “Take off your clothes now.”
The “now” wasn’t a command. More like a gentle prodding, the way I nudged Ella to put on her shoes for school when she was moving slowly in the morning.
“Take off… what?”
“Your clothes.” Now that he was closer I could make out the tattoos under his vest. Drawn in strong black-and-gray lines, they made up a montage of cedar branches, timber framing, mountain peaks, topographical lines, and something that looked like blueprint line work.
“I’m not taking off my clothes.”
“You will.” It came from the older man, the one who’d marked me, a gentle certainty in his voice that unnerved me more than any command.
“You’ve been marked,” the familiar one said. “You signed the consent form. You belong to us now.”
There was a hint of excitement in his voice, like he was a kid who’d just won a goldfish at the county fair.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m not taking off my clothes.”
The man who’d been carving the block of wood shoved it in his pocket, his knife still in his hand. “We can do it for you, but you might not like that.”
“I don’t like any of this.”
“And yet you signed the consent form,” he said.
I couldn’t deny that much. “Why do you want me to take off my clothes?”
“It’s time to ride, like we said.”
“Ride?”
The older one’s gaze flicked to the mechanical bull in the center of the antechamber.
“You want me to ride that thing? Naked?”
His nod was slow. “That’s right.”
“That’s absurd.”
The familiar one laughed. “We make the rules.”
The seriousness of my situation sunk in all at once. I’d lost the Hunt.
I belonged to these three men — these three bulls — for the next three months.
“So what’ll it be?” the wood carver asked. “Are you going to do the job or are we doing it for you?”
The question was so casual, so sure, it left no room for doubt: these men would strip me, force me on the mechanical bull.
I swallowed my indignation and lifted my chin. “I’ll do it.”
I was a grown woman. I’d given birth for fuck’s sake. If these men expected me to be shy about my body, they were in for a surprise.
I was relieved when the two Bulls standing closest to me — the Carver and the Oak Tree — stepped back to give me room.
I took a deep breath and started with my T-shirt, pulling it over my head and tossing it onto the dirt floor of the tunnel.
The hungry gazes of the men locked onto my tits, rising and falling with my anxious inhale and exhale.
Desire sparked between my thighs, proof that this whole thing — the Hunt, the men, the mechanical bull rising like a beast from the tunnel floor — had sent me into some kind of psychotic break.
I pushed the lustful hunger aside and kicked off my sneakers. Then I unfastened my jeans and pulled them down my thighs, kicking them aside.
The gazes of the men roamed my body, traveling over my tits (thankfully still mostly hidden by my bra), down my stomach, over my underwear-covered mound and thighs.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Happy?”
I didn’t really have to ask. If not exactly happy, their expressions were at least pleased.
Which was why I was surprised when the Carver shook his head. “Not quite.”
“You told me to get undressed,” I said. “I’m undressed.”
The familiar one, still leaning against the bull, looked like he was about to deliver bad news. “The rest of it’ll have to go.”
I looked down at my body and realized he meant my bra and underwear.
They wanted me naked.
Naked, naked.
“Fuck off,” I said.
“A deal’s a deal,” Oak Tree said.
I thought about the consent form. It had specifically said I agreed to be stripped.
“You’re seriously going to make me get naked to ride that…” I looked at the mechanical bull, “… that thing.”
“It’s not going to hurt you,” the familiar one said. “We set it real slow.”
“How comforting,” I snapped.
Oak Tree licked his lips, his gaze honed in on my pussy, still hidden by my underwear. “I’m more than happy to help you with those panties.”
“No, thank you.” I reached behind my back and unfastened my bra, then tossed it to the ground before slipping off my underwear.
“There,” I said. “Now are you happy?”
“Fuck me,” the familiar one said, adjusting his dick — sizable from the looks of it — in his jeans.
Lust flared in the green eyes of the Carver.
He rubbed at his lower lip with his thumb. “I’m pretty fucking happy.”
I leveled my gaze at Oak Tree. “Care to weigh in?”
“You’ll do.”
I didn’t have time to fire off a retort before he continued.
“Now ride that fucking bull.”