Broddock-Black 05 - Force of Nature Read online

  In those first terrifying moments, she silently swore vengeance, wanting these men to pay dearly for what they were doing to her, an incoherent rage filling her brain. But in the next choking breath she understood that her survival depended on compromise or perhaps capitulation—for only a few hours, she reflected hopefully. And with that thought in mind, she swallowed again.

  “She’s looking good enough to lick now, Hughie,” Langley crowed. “Look at all that fine whiskey running into her crotch . . . and over those big tits. Make her stand up. I want to see that cunt up close.”

  “Up, bitch,” Hugh ordered, jerking on her hair, forcing her to rise. “Didn’t you hear Langley? He wants to see your cunt up close.” He kicked her feet apart so her thighs were spread wide, pulled her arms behind her back with a vicious twist and held her wrists captive.

  “I like that pose, Hughie, with those tits jutting out like that.” Picking up a gold-handled letter opener from a nearby table, he balanced it for a moment on his palm as he moved toward them. “Such great big tits,” he murmured, coming to rest before Jo, running the chased gold hilt around one of her breasts, lifting the weight of her breast slightly with the flat of the handle, as though gauging its size.

  Jo trembled, the blade nearly touching her breast, the man’s intentions unclear.

  “Don’t worry, my sweet. I wouldn’t hurt such a succulent body. We have better uses for you,” Langley drawled. Leaning forward slightly, he slid the hilt down her stomach, slipped it between her spread legs, traced her cleft with one light stroke and then without warning, rammed the metal hilt guard deep into her vagina.

  She gasped, frozen in fear, the opener blade only a hair’s breadth from her pubis, the filigreed guard her only protection.

  “That’s a smart little bitch.” Langley surveyed her with a faint smile. “That blade could do damage.”

  Terrified, she stood motionless, scarcely daring to breathe.

  “There’s no need for me to hold her now,” Hugh said with a grin, releasing his grip. “Looks like I have time for another drink.” Walking to the table, he picked up a whiskey bottle and put it to his mouth.

  “That’s what I call a nice showy piece of ass,” Langley murmured, taking a step back to survey her. “She’d fetch a prime price in the slave markets of Marrakech, now, wouldn’t she? Nice, big tits”—he slapped them lightly, set them quivering, but she stifled her startled response, afraid to move. “And such a high, flaunting mound, just made to lure cock,” he added, lightly, stroking her pubic hair for a moment before he slid his fingers downward to trace the verge of her labia encircling the hilt. “Ah, she’s getting wet, just like a well-behaved submissive little slave should.” He held up his glistening fingers. “She’s going to be a tantalizing little sultana for our entertainment, gentlemen. I’m guessing, she’ll be able to last for hours.”

  His words sent a chill through her, but any utterance, any agitation could be dangerous with the blade so near.

  Sliding his wet fingers up her stomach, Langley ran his palms over her hips. “Fine, strong hips . . . just made for fucking,” he whispered. “You like to fuck, don’t you? All Flynn’s women like to fuck.” Stepping back, he slowly circled her, pinching her buttocks. “And a beautiful ass, smooth and round, perfect for taking the strap.” Walking around to face her again, he took her nipples between his fingers and rolled them gently. “You’ll like the strap, my sweet. Here, on these plump titties”—he pinched the crests so hard she almost cried out—“and between your legs on your wet little cunt and on your silky bottom when you don’t please us quickly enough. You must please us . . . you know that, don’t you?” His grip on her nipples tightened. “Answer me.”

  Bile rose in her throat, but she had no choice. She nodded. “Say yes; I want to hear you.” And he compressed the soft tissue so cruelly, she choked out the word. “I knew you could talk,” he said with a wicked grin. “You just need a little encouragement—like this.” He stretched the tips painfully. “Is that making you hot? Tell me.”

  She shut her eyes and gave him the required answer.

  “She’s going to be such fun,” Hugh exclaimed with glee. “She likes to resist. It makes everything so much more interesting, doesn’t it?” The exhilaration in his voice was alarming and for a shaky, tremulous moment, Jo wasn’t sure she had the necessary courage to endure.

  “She’s going to be a delicious little charmer,” Langley agreed. “Disobedient enough to require frequent spankings and chastisement and a bit of disciplining like this. See how long I can make these enormous nipples,” he said, softly pulling on them until she moaned in pain. “Come, Nigel, come closer. You can’t see from so far away. Look, I’ll do it again . .. and I can lift them. Is that high enough?” he playfully inquired, hoisting her heavy breasts upward by her nipples until she cried out.

  “I’ll watch from here,” Nigel answered, his gaze on Jo’s quivering, shuddering breasts as Langley released them.

  “Maybe he’ll get closer later,” Hugh jibed. “When his cock is stiff enough to make him forget Hazard Black. We’ll tie her up for you, Nigel, then she won’t hurt you. Bring her here, Langley,” he ordered, setting his whiskey bottle down, moving to the billiard table. “And careful taking that handle out. We’re going to need that cunt in good condition.”

  It wasn’t often Hugh had an opportunity to exercise his depravities free of scandal. The brothels frowned on rough play; they didn’t like their merchandise damaged. But here in the wilds, surrounded by his hired guns, he was exempt from social censure.

  “We’ll teach you a little obedience now,” Hugh cheerfully said at Jo’s approach, her hands held firmly behind her by Langley. Picking up the coil of rope, Hugh slid the rough hemp back and forth, over and around her breasts, the coarse hemp leaving raw scratches on her fragile skin. Every time she cringed or flinched, he smiled. “Bitches need to be disciplined, made to know who’s in charge,” he whispered with an evil smile.

  The fat Englishman’s nasty smile seemed to hover for an instant like a fiendish apparition before her eyes, the image adrift and unstable. Blinking, she tried to clear her vision.

  But perhaps she should have been grateful for the liquor. A few moments later as she was deposited none too gently on the billiard table, the shock to her senses was dulled. And when her wrists and ankles were roughly tied, her pain was lessened by the alcohol coursing through her blood.

  Although anesthetized by whiskey, she groaned just enough to excite Hugh or he’d tied the knots tightly enough to elicit that utterance from her. But not satisfied, his cruelty requiring added gratification, he exerted extra traction on the ropes tying Jo to the table, stretching her arms and legs wider. “There,” he said with a smile as she whimpered and sobbed in pain. “Perfect.”

  Brutally bound and tethered, she existed in drifting consciousness, aware at times of conversations and sights and pain, at other times inert and torpid. Perhaps her brain wasn’t functioning properly with all the liquor, she understood in those moments of lucidity, or perhaps her inability to concentrate had to do with her drowsiness . .. she mused, drifting off a second later.

  However, at one point, she was roused by an explosive shout that she heard very clearly indeed. “You’re a bloody coward, Nigel!” Hugh raged. “Here, I’m offering you goddamned first chance with the cunt and you’re refusing! I don’t want to hear you whine or complain later, dammit!” Nigel was the one who had questioned her father’s presence, wasn’t he—that was it—and now he was declining to participate. Although what he was going to participate in escaped her, she hazily thought, shutting her eyes again, her mind floating away, the name Nigel strumming in her ears.

  “Then, she’s all yours, Hughie,” Langley generously conceded. “She was your brilliant idea anyway.”

  Hugh squinted down the table. “Don’t tell me the bitch passed out.” Leaning forward, he picked up a billiard cue and turned it so the leather-bound grip was directed at Jo’s exposed vulva.r />
  “Gentlemen, on our stage tonight we have a gratifying exhibition of hot, dripping wet cunt, impaled with a good eight inches or more of a stiff hard billiard cue. And as you can see, gentlemen, this bitch’s copious love juices are sufficient to service a fucking army.”

  “And we’re the current army,” Hugh added with a chuckle. “Not that she’s completely been put through her paces, my man. She hasn’t taken the billiard balls yet. We have to stretch that cunt a little more for the main event.” Lining up two balls, he reached out, jerked the sodden billiard cue from her vagina and swung it toward Nigel. “Want a sniff at least, ye of faint heart?”

  “Thank you, no.” Always uncomfortable with Hugh’s brutality to women, Nigel kept his distance as he often had in the past. He and Hugh didn’t agree on the pleasures of sex.

  Hugh shrugged and flipped the cue around. “Your loss, Nigel. Here goes, ball one.” Lining up the cue tip and the ivory ball, Hugh shot the ball straight at Jo’s glistening vulva. As the ball struck her damp flesh, it stuck with a soft splat. “That ball needs a little help there, Langley,” Hugh brusquely noted. “Shove the goddamned thing in.”

  “My pleasure,” Langley drawled, stretching across Jo’s thigh, gently parting her drenched labia and easing the ball in. “That’s a damned tight fit, Hughie. An absolute beauty of a fit. Let’s just leave it there for a minute while we have another drink and admire how willingly her cunt accepts even something that large.”

  As they passed the whiskey bottle back and forth, Jo’s already stimulated and whetted senses were feverishly quickening. Her sleek flesh was stretched taut around the billiard ball, the cool ivory sphere securely lodged, her engorged tissue pulsing around it, a glowing heat beginning to infuse her body, rippling upward through her vagina in a tantalizing, illusive pulsing that disturbed her torpid languor. She tried to move, reaching for the strangely insistent, inexplicable delight.

  A hard knock on the door echoed through the room.

  But the restless urgency bringing her awake, altering her breathing, burning through her body required all her concentration. She took no notice of the intrusive sound.

  Nigel nodded toward the door. “We have visitors.”

  “Not now, we don’t have visitors,” Hugh said, firmly, striding to the table. “I’m about to mount this wet cunt. Look at her, she’s on fire.”

  As she drifted in and out of consciousness, an eddying frenzy was swirling inside her: carnal urges, powerful lust, a rapt feverish wanting, all converging where the hard surface of the billiard ball met her pulsing flesh, where the solid ivory pressed firmly against her clitoris.

  As Hugh began climbing up on the table, some primal sense of survival wakened her and she stiffened and tried to rear back at the sight of the fat man grunting and struggling to reach her.

  The rapping at the door had intensified and she heard it for the first time, the frantic tattoo echoing faintly in her beclouded brain.

  “Someone should answer that,” Nigel said, sober enough to understand that their caller’s persistence had significance but not quite sober enough to move.

  “Fuck no,” Hugh growled, finally managing to heave his corpulence up on the table. “Go away!” he shouted.

  “It’s urgent, Smith says!” a voice shouted back.

  “It better be urgent,” Langley muttered. “Stay there, Hugh,” he added with a casual wave. “I’ll be right back.” And turning from the table, he slowly walked toward the door. Opening it a moment later, he listened to the servant and then slammed the door shut. “The machine guns have been spiked,” he said, so inebriated his voice registered no concern.

  “Bloody bastards,” Hugh declared, irritably, sitting down on the table. “They weren’t supposed to be here until this afternoon.”

  “It is afternoon,” Nigel pointed out with a sweep of his hand toward the clock on the wall.

  “Hell and damnation, their timing could have been better. I’m about to fuck this hot bitch,” Hugh resentfully muttered.

  Langley was making his way back, his stride erratic. “Is it too late to call off this meeting?”

  “Shit, yes,” Hugh grumbled, his gaze shifting to the clock. “You’re going to have to wait for my cock, bitch. Hell, maybe you can watch Flynn swinging from a rope while I fuck you.” Jo heard Flynn’s name and galvanized by the sound, her brain came transiently to life, Hugh’s sentence replaying itself to her horror. With every shred of will she could dredge up, she tried to concentrate, to bring the world into focus, understanding how critical clear thinking was to that moment.

  Nigel gazed at his friend with an incredulous look. “Are you mad, Hugh? You heard the guns are useless!”

  “We still have plenty of firepower without them. And we have the cunt Flynn was sleeping with. That’ll make him squirm,” Hugh said with a wicked chuckle. “Get Smith!” he shouted, enthralled with the amusing possibilities in his newest drunken fantasy.

  The sound of running feet and the slamming of a door gave evidence that his orders had been heard. Smith arrived almost immediately; he must have been waiting nearby for instructions.

  Smith averted his eyes from the woman on the billiard table, conscious of the peril in being party to such a gross outrage. Frank had filled him in on the Englishmen’s latest stupidity; he didn’t move from the doorway.

  “What the hell is going on?” Hugh inquired, curtly, sitting like a squat potentate on the table. “Wasn’t anyone watching the guns? What the fuck did we hire you for?”

  Smith thought that he’d never seen a sorrier bunch of so-called men in his life. Not only did they have to tie up a woman to get sex, but they were stupid enough to pick the woman most likely to send them to their graves. “They came early,” he said, his voice level. “No one saw them, no one heard them. They’re like shadows, you know that. And Flynn’s here now for your parley, along with Hazard Black, his son, and a couple hundred men. This might be a good time to reconsider your plans.”

  “Thank you for the update, Smith,” Hugh said with the insufferable insolence that had made the English aristocrat loathed in much of the world. “But I’m not concerned with changing my plans. No red man or yellow devil can hold a candle to an Englishman. The British Empire covers the globe, Smith. And there’s a reason for that. An Englishman can’t be defeated.”

  “God Almighty, Hugh, you should be a politician,” Nigel said, sourly. “And you don’t shoot any too straight if you recall. So I wouldn’t get too damned righteous about undefeated Englishmen or someone might put a bullet through your fat arse.”

  Hugh turned a venomous gaze on Nigel. “You’ve been dragging your feet from the beginning. Someone might think you’ve got a yellow streak down your back.”

  “Fine. You lead the attack on Flynn and Hazard then. I’d like to see that fucking sight.”

  “That’s why we’ve hired mercenaries.” Hugh lifted his numerous chins, looked down his bulbous nose and glowered at Nigel. “They’re paid to shoot straight. We don’t have to. Boyden might have been thickheaded enough to put himself in the middle of things, but I have no intention of leading any damned charge.”

  “I’m relieved,” Nigel murmured. “There won’t be any need to send another coffin back to England.”

  “Come, Smith,” Hugh commanded, heaving himself off the table and dropping heavily to the floor. “Let’s go and parley with these curs. I think you’ll find I have a very good hand to play even without the Maxim guns.” He turned to Nigel. “And if you have the courage, come along.”

  “Ah’m cornin’,” Langley said, his words half-slurred. “Wanna see that yellow devil Flynn checkmated.”

  “Watch and learn, my friends,” Hugh asserted, arrogantly, moving toward the door. “An earl’s son knows how to deal with the rabble. Put them in their place, Father always said, and keep them in their place with an iron heel.”

  As he reached the door of the billiard room, Langley in his wake, Hugh turned around. “Got the guts, Nigel? Or w
ill you follow the boot-licking path of your grandfather. He knew how to make money, but he didn’t know the first thing about honor.”

  “Fuck you, Mortimer. My grandfather knew as much about honor as your drunken forebears.”

  “If that’s the case,” Hugh retorted, waving his hand toward the hallway. “Here’s your chance to show me your nerve.”

  Go, go, Jo silently urged, as if understanding with some sixth sense amidst the flurry of incomprehensible words and phrases flowing around her that they might be leaving. If she had enough time, perhaps she could free herself from her bonds. With supreme effort, she forced her mind to focus on that single thought. Freedom.

  “Screw you, Mortimer. I’ll show you nerve.” Nigel stalked toward the door without a backward glance.

  As the men moved down the corridor, the sound of their voices receding, Jo caught a glimpse of Frank in the blur of her vision, saw the door slowly shut.

  Turning her head from side to side, she tried to concentrate. Was she alone .. . did she want to be alone—yes, yes .. . she had to be alone to escape. Listen, look .. . yes, the room was quiet. Everyone was gone. Twisting her body, looking upward to survey her bonds, she felt the billiard ball slip out and exhaled in relief from the violent, extreme, goading pressure. Now to see if she could free herself.

  Chapter 27

  Flynn, Hazard and Trey with a large contingent of men were waiting at the Sun River ford when the Empire Cattle Company troop rode into view.

  “None of them ride much,” Hazard noted, observing the three Englishmen in the lead.

  Flynn nodded in their direction. “Or do much of anything.” “Except make trouble.” Trey lounged in the saddle, his silvery eyes alert.