'Gag him,' Xavion commanded.
Dee heard the scuffle but she wouldn't look. She had to concentrate, to think past the fear. To Xavion she said, 'I'll need my watch.'
'Here.' He passed her a banana leaf parcel. 'Peter left this for you.'
Dee fumbled it open and found, not her own Rolex, but a delicate gold wristwatch that appeared to be a genuine antique. She slipped it onto her wrist. A perfect fit.
And the perfect adornment for a naked woman fleeing from violent rapists, she thought, and laughed softly. But within the laughter bubbled hysteria. She cut it off, looking Xavion in the eye. 'Ready.'
The sound of struggling behind her faded as she followed Xavion behind the wall hanging and through a narrow passage into the sunlight.
She squinted, then stared around in surprise. 'It's a forest. A eucalypt forest.' She shaded her eyes and tilted her head, then gasped. 'A kookaburra. There's a kookaburra up there!' She looked back at Xavion. 'I thought we were on an island.'
'We are. Never Land is an island.'
'But eucalypts don't grow — '
'Listen,' Xavion said, and she did.
The sound of waves breaking came from somewhere to her left. She looked back at him in awe. 'A beach.'
He nodded.
She remembered there were islands off the coast of Queensland that supported native forests. Small forests, but this could be one of them. She mustn't be far from home.
'You have fifty-seven minutes, Wendee,' Xavion said, effectively cutting off her thoughts. 'Five minutes until we come after you.'
She stared at him for a moment, then turned and fled.
Chapter Thirteen
'Come on, Wendee, wouldn't you prefer us, to Mack?'
'Yeah, come out, Wendee. We won't hurt you.'
Lying on her back, Dee forced herself to breathe softly through her mouth, her body completely still and only her eyes moving in a random pattern as she searched out their shapes through the layers of fern fronds swaying above her. The smell of crushed bracken beneath her back was cloyingly intense and, combined with the scent of her own fear, claustrophobic.
She itched to lunge up to them and give herself away but she didn't. She'd decided she would only give herself up to Christophe. Twenty minutes into the chase she'd heard him calling her in a low, desperate voice but at the time there'd been other noises between them and she'd been forced to move on.
'Wendee!' One of the twins, she wasn't sure which, was becoming impatient. 'I know you're here somewhere. I can smell that pussy pie. Now be sensible and come out.'
She risked a slight movement to glance at the watch on her wrist. Ten minutes to go.
'Fuck this, man. She must have moved on.'
A foot came down less than a metre from where she lay and Dee held her breath, her heart jumping into overdrive.
'Stupid bitch. If Mack gets her, he'll give her more than just the rough fuck we want.'
Dee trembled, poised to leap up and let them have her, but something held her back. Pride? Confidence in her ability to win? Only another nine minutes.
The foot near her moved off and when they were both gone, she let out a soft, but audible sigh.
A second later there was a crash in the ferns beside her and she screamed.
Mack had dropped out of the tree above to land in a crouch by her waist, his glinting knife poised in front of her eyes.
She heard feet thundering through the undergrowth and Christophe's voice. 'No. Please, God.'
'Hey man, go easy,' said one of the twins.
Dee was staring at the blade as it lowered and pressed flat against her lips, effectively holding her while he lifted her arm and glanced at the watch.
'Seven minutes,' Xavion said from somewhere to her side as Mack brought one leg over to kneel astride her thighs. The knife came away from her lips but Dee remained in catatonic immobility, her wide eyes following the glinting steel as the tip lowered to prod at one of her nipples.
She swallowed, incapable of speech, even to beg.
The tip scraped across her chest to the other nipple leaving a stinging path, then the knife moved on and the sharp pressure eased.
There was a snap and she flinched, but it was only the knife being returned to its sheath on hip. Then slowly, in an obscene parody of striptease, his thick fingers loosened the strings of his loincloth. And tore it off.
A gasp caught in her throat. She jerked her attention back up to his face, his eyes, but their cruelty repelled her and she looked instead to his mouth which was oddly sensual, and the faint cleft in his chin. Anything to keep her thoughts away from the shaft of flesh she'd seen rising from that bed of luxuriant blond hairs.
Thick — it had been almost as thick as her wrist, but thankfully not long. Stocky, like the man himself, and undeniably cruel. How she could say a penis looked cruel she wasn't sure, but that was the impression she'd gained.
His hands returned to her breasts, his fingers clawing them, then lower, testing the strength of her ribs, and lower still, his thumbs gouging into the unprotected cavities.
Did he want to reach in and squeeze her very organs?
If the intent was there, she didn't want to see it in his eyes. She kept her attention on his mouth and the way his sneer had intensified, his lip curling up over small white teeth that looked as sharp as his knife.
Her ears started buzzing and she realised she was holding her breath. She eased it out, feeling her shoulders droop, and it was in that moment of distraction that Mack took her by surprise, twisting her over. Hair lashed her eyes and her hands landed awkwardly as he pulled her haunches up to meet his fleshy weapon.
She heard a grunt and felt the blunt tip of his penis poking at her a second before he plunged into her unready depths. She cried out, not only in pain, but in fear.
His merciless fingers squeezed her hips as he jabbed into her a couple of times in quick succession, then he paused.
Dee panted, trying to accustom herself to the size of his penis and to sort through the myriad sensations she was experiencing.
'Six minutes.' Xavion.
There was a snick and she tensed, looking along the underside of her body to where the tip of his knife brushed her public hair. She held her breath.
His thick penis jabbed into her again and she shuddered. The knife moved up over her belly, the tip scraping her skin but not drawing blood.
'Xavion, please,' Christophe whispered from above her, but Dee was looking past the knife, past her belly and the shadow of her pubic hair to the enormous testicles in their vulnerable casing that swayed between her parted thighs. Their size was so grotesquely large as to appear more animal than human.
His penis withdrew and stabbed into her again, and this time she identified the explosion of sensation. It was his pendulous sac with its heavy contents slapping against her stretched and tender sex flesh. At the same time the edge of the blade scraped her nipple and there was pain, but it only added to the sharp pleasure that slap had produced.
Her body was in over-stimulation. Internal and external nerve-signals vied for attention, yet despite the chaos inside her mind, there was something about the pain she was experiencing and the sight of those huge testicles that was awakening a long-forgotten memory. A memory of…
The bull.
