Chapter 13

Lang backed away from him, hissing like a stepped-on snake. Lang held his right hand cradled tenderly in his left; so far, he had only kicked Steve in the body. He looked at Aaron Mercer and said, "My knife; do I get to use my knife?"

Jill saw that her husband's jaws were locked; he creaked them open to say, "All the way, Gertrude. See if you're any better than the Cong."

Mercer looked at Jill and she said from the couch, "Steve was captured by the Viet Cong; they held him nearly a month, and tortured him for information. He didn't give them any; his citation says that when he escaped, he left four of them dead behind him, and killed six more getting into his own lines."

Aaron Mercer sighed, and when Lang jittered around with his knife, told him to put it away. "We don't have a month to waste. Just sit there and watch him, Lang. Watch him very closely, no matter how well you think he's tied, and no matter what else happens in this room Just keep your eyes on him."

"All right," Lang said, "but I know I can make him sign." He lit another cigarette and dropped the matchbook back on the end table.

Jill stared at it, at the matchbook that read Shorthorn Motel on its cover, and thought that the letters looked like the engraving on a tombstone.

Lang asked, "You going to hurt the bitch, instead?"

Aaron's smile was razor thin and just as sharp. "I intend to hurt them both, but perhaps Devlin will be pained more than his dear wife. Jojo-take off her clothing."

From the floor where he lay trussed, Steve said, "That won't make any difference; I know about Pittman screwing her, so what's a couple of more guys?"

Jill lowered her face and stared at her hands. She looked up again when Jojo stood over her. "Get up," he said, and she did.

Jojo took off her shirt and bra, popping buttons and snaps, he flicked a heavy fingernail against her nipples, and Jill clenched her teeth to keep from crying out. He hooked a thumb into her jeans and tore the zipper loose with one brutal jerk.

"Sit down and take off the boots," Jojo said, and Jill did it. Her flesh was cold, and for once, the nipples of her breasts did not rise to the occasion. When her boots were off, Jojo leaned to tear the jeans over her feet. He popped the elastic of her panties, and threw them away. Then he stepped back.

She glanced at Steve and saw him wince, saw the pain move swiftly across his eyes at the sight of her nudity exposed before these other men. She knew he did care, that it mattered very much to him, when anything was done to her, and Jill was glad. Steve was faking it, then; he was trying to hold them off by only pretending that he was still teed off at his wife for laying the banker.

If he could take it, she thought, then so could she. She could hang tough and not show pain or fear. She lifted one hand to her forehead and when Steve's eyes followed the motion, she used her fingers for cover to wink at him.

Now they were together, even though he was tied and helpless in a corner, and she was stripped naked on the couch.

Across the room near Steve, Lang sat down on a straight chair, straddling it, his hurt hand supported by the chair back, his left toying with the switchblade. The cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth, drifting slow eddies of smoke around his head, giving him the look of a nether world creature.

"Well, Jojo," Aaron said, "it's our turn to undress."

Jojo grunted, and worked at his clothes while Aaron was slower, more careful, with his slacks and shirt. Jill locked her teeth again when she saw the thickly furred body of Jojo exposed in all its animal ugliness-the sloping shoulders, slabbed chest, the muscle-covered ribs and a belly whose hair was so thick she couldn't see the skin beneath it.

And the penis!

Small and thin, jutting straight out from the forested crotch like some ludicrous caricature of a man's cock. It was tiny, and the testicles attached to its root were small. It was if Jojo's body had grown enormous and powerful at cost of developing his genitals.

A hysterical need to laugh worked within Jill's belly, but she dared not. Some inherent feminine instinct told her that if she laughed at Jojo's deformity, she might enrage him so much that Aaron Mercer might not be able to stop him from destroying her.

She looked at her husband, and Steve was looking at the book of motel matches on the end table. Was he trying to tell her something? Quickly, she glanced away, and saw that Aaron was now undressed, that his cock was hanging limply.

He said, "Turn her over the arm of the couch, Jojo. I believe that her husband will get a full view of the proceedings from there."

She moved before Jojo put a hand on her, draping herself over the end of the couch, hiking her buttocks into the air. Darting a swift look at the matchbook, she nodded. Then she felt Jojo's big paws upon her hips, sliding and fondling and she was afraid.

Aaron said, almost purring, his voice honeyed as she remembered it could turn, "Jojo has certain tastes. Since he is regrettably built a bit smaller than most men, he has to gratify his urges somewhat differently. My dear Jill, he may hurt you, but he'll hurt you more if you don't cooperate to the best of your ability. He's going to shove it right up your ass."

From his chair, Lang giggled, and the high-pitched trill of it was obscene. Jill braced her knees upon the couch cushion, and took a grip with both hands upon the arm of the furniture.

Her anus; they were going to assault her there. Jojo meant to cram his penis into her rectum, where nothing had ever been forced before, and even if his cock was small, he could bring her pain with it.

"Have you ever done it to her that way, Devlin?" Aaron asked, as Jojo began to rub down into her pubic mound with his thick fingers and to prod the head of his warm penis into the cleft of her ass.

Jill shut her eyes and hung on. If she tightened up, he'd rip right on into her anyway, so she tried her best to relax, to keep her muscles loose, even though shudders were starting to rack her body and her skin had a clammy feel to it.

Jojo made slavering noises behind her, and Jill knew the push of his glans into the rubbery ring of her anus. She shook again, and he pushed harder, stronger; the head of it worked into her, forced her flesh to stretch.

"Yeah-yeah-yeah!" Jojo said, and gave a surge of his pelvis. His cock slid on up into her tube, and she felt his hairy crotch come up tightly against her cheeks. Jojo's organ was buried into her body, shoved full-length, and Jill was thankful it wasn't any longer or any thicker.

But he made up for the lack of size when he pulled it back to the head and rammed it savagely home once more, making her head bobble and her breasts crush into the couch arm. Jill couldn't hold back the grunt that escaped her lips, but she choked off any other noises. She could take it, if Steve could. But she didn't want to look at him now, didn't want to see the anguish in his eyes.

Jojo pounded her again, and again, his groin slapping against the back of her thighs, his fingernails digging into the cheeks of her ass as he spread them for the hammering of his cock. Jill hung on, her head flopping with each brutal stroke, her rectum clenching upon the thing that was battering inside it.

"No reaction yet, Devlin?" Aaron's voice was unctuous, yet with an edge to it. "Then be sure you watch the rest of this act with your hot, lovely wife. I've wanted to put this thing into her mouth for a long time. I may even find out if she can choke on it, Devlin."

"You bastard," Steve gritted.

"See that he doesn't look away, Lang. If he does, you may stick him with the point of your knife, but just a little; I still need his signature."

Jill opened her eyes when Aaron dragged her face up by taking a grip on her hair. He said down to her, "You can eat this very well, Jill. Just imagine-two pricks in your body at the same time; how lucky can you get?"

But Steve somehow lurched to his feet just then, and roared something maddened, something unintelligible. Aaron whipped around to see, but Jojo kept pumping, pumping his organ into Jill's anus.

Lang moved his left hand, his knife hand, and Steve jerked back. He slid down the wall again, with scarlet at the corner of his mouth. Lang said over his shoulder, "I only stuck him a little."

"Are you ready to write your name?" Aaron asked, and when Steve didn't answer, turned back to Jill, holding his hand around his huge prick and moving the gleaming head of it slowly, inexorably, toward her lips.

She could see past the angle of Aaron's hip, and when she looked over at End table, the book of matches was no longer there.

Jojo said jerkily, "Better-hurry-boss; can't-hold-back much longer."

Her head bounced, but Aaron took it between his hands and held it still. Then he pushed the head of his monstrous cock into her lips, forcing them open, moving the spongy thing across her tongue and sliding it along the roof of her mouth.

"Can you see all right, Devlin? Your wife has a lovely mouth, a beautiful mouth. She's using her tongue on my cock now, Devlin; she's sucking in, man. Did she ever do that to you? Watch her lips, watch the way her tender ass is beginning to squirm while Jojo screws it."

Lang tittered, and Jill caught the pale movement of his face turned to the scene at the couch.

Jojo grunted, "I'm coming!"

His semen spurted into her tube, hot and sticky, and somehow more penetrating then anything released into her vagina could be.

Aaron shoved his penis far back into Jill's throat, and she gagged on its size, its throat-filling blockage.

Her distended eyes saw the flicker of fire, the spiral of smoke behind Steve. She bit down on Aaron's penis, bit hard and tigerishly upon that meaty rod that was threatening to strangle her, and she tore at it with her teeth as if she was a jungle cat making her kill.

Aaron screamed.

Lang's head snapped completely away from Steve and the burning curtains. Steve rolled into Lang's chair and toppled the man onto his back, and as Aaron dragged his mangled penis from Jill's mouth, the curtains burst wildly into full blaze.

Jill felt Jojo jerk away from her buttocks, and as Aaron struck viciously at her head, she rolled off the couch, and his fist only brushed her hair. Aaron was still screaming-little diminishing noises breaking from his twisted mouth as he cupped his genitals in one hand and chopped the other fist blindly at Jill.

She saw Lang trying to scramble up, saw Steve lunging his body at the slim man, using his weight like a battering ram. And it was Lang's turn to scream when his broken fingers were hit again.

But Jojo was the big danger to Steve, and Jill dodged Aaron again to leap for the bar across the room. Jojo stood uncertainly for a precious second, then plodded for Steve, naked and hairy, dangerous as any rabid ape.

Ducking behind the bar, Jill snatched at the shelves and found the pistol-found Steve's big .45 automatic. She brought it up with both hands, pulling the hammer back with a thumb and swinging the muzzle at Jojo.

But Steve came to his knees in time to butt Jojo savagely in the crotch. Jojo fell back a step, and another, bending low over the sudden agony in his groin. There was noise and smoke, and Lang scuttling around on the carpet, snatching for his dropped knife.

He found it, lifted himself with it glittering in his left hand. And Jill pulled the trigger of the .45. The thunderclap of the big pistol in the small room was like a major explosion. Plaster jumped from the wall, and Lang gibbered away, pawing for the couch and rolling over behind it. He left his knife on the rug.

Jill shot at Jojo then-or somewhere between Jojo and Aaron Mercer. The cannon blasted again, and glass shattered. Smoke filled the suite, and the drapes burned furiously.

"Jill! Jill!" Steve roared, and she couldn't see where Aaron ran to, couldn't find Jojo right away. So she stooped for the knife and used it to saw between Steve's wrists with her right hand; her left held the automatic, and its hammer was back.

When she cut away the ropes from her husband's feet, the hammer fell accidentally. The .45 bucked and blasted, and a fist-sized chunk of carpet leaped out of the floor.

"Jesus!" Steve said, and stood up to delicately take the pistol from her. "Grab your jeans-quick!"

Stumbling, holding her jeans and boots to her otherwise naked body, Jill plunged for the door. She spun around outside in time to see Jojo rushing from the bedroom, a weapon in his paw. Steve's .45 jumped, and plaster flew next to Jojo's head; he vanished again.

Jill yelled, "Steve-come on!"

He was with her, both of them hitting the truck seat at the same moment. The door of the motel unit was shut, but thick black smoke was pouring from beneath it and spilling from a broken window. Jill saw people's heads popping out of doors, saw men running from the office; then her head snapped back as Steve jerked the truck around and punched it out of the parking lot with tires screaming.

"You're going the wrong way!" she shouted hoarsely at him, but he kept the truck wheeling on through town, and when he skidded it into a dirt road that ran through the city dump, Jill realized what he was up to.

Not too many locals knew that the dirt road circled clear around Midway and came out on the country road behind the Rafter D ranch. Steve was throwing off pursuit, and for the first time, she thought that the police might be after them, too, that her husband was buying time.

She hung on then, because the road was rough and twisty, and Steve handled the pickup as if it were an armored vehicle, hurling it over bumps and fishtailing it around curves. When she could catch her breath again, they were bouncing over a cowtrail through the north forty of the ranch. They were home free-for the moment, and when they rolled to a stop at the house, she wondered what would happen next, thinking surely that Aaron Mercer and his hired thugs would give it up now.

Steve didn't think so. "Run on in the house," he said.