CHAPTER I: BOUND TO TRAVEL
In all of my nightmare visions of what could happen on this wild vacation across the country with a near stranger, somehow this scenario had never crossed my mind. And yet, how had I missed it? It seemed obvious now. Here I was, alone on a one-lane desert road, two and a half miles from the nearest hotel, dragging along a heavy suitcase. The desert sun had begun to set, but the air was still heavy and hot. Dust and sand filled the insides of my socks and piled between my toes.
I pulled my phone out of my jeans, wishing I was wearing shorts, but not wanting to change on the side of the road. It was unlikely that a car would drive by, but what if a scorpion appeared? My cell phone reception displayed one bar. I was relieved to be close enough to somewhere to have any service. 200 feet back, there had been no reception at all.
Claire picked up the phone on the third ring. "Yeah?"
"Thank God you’re there."
"Is that any way to greet your one and only sister in the world?"
"Sorry, Claire, but this is serious."
"Did you blow all your money in Vegas?"
"I never even made it there. He…" And then I couldn’t help it. I started crying. Bawling, really. I had Claire in a panic before I could calm down enough to tell her anything more.
"My God, Claire, are you OK? Did he hurt you? I’ll kill him!"
"No, no, it’s nothing like that." The he in question was Derrick Simon, my boyfriend of three weeks. My ex-boyfriend, the one who had dumped me on the side of the road a hundred miles from our final destination, at the end of a four day journey of boredom and misery.
"So what is it?"
"Claire, it’s been horrible. I thought I was going to have the time of my life." I was a fresh college graduate ready to experience the road and let life sweep me away to some fantastical new reality. "But it’s been nothing but awful."
I regaled Claire with my tales of woe from the road. I told her about the putrid, stinking trash in the backseat of Derrick's tiny Geo Metro, and his awful taste in music. Derrick had had three CDs in the car: Cyndi Lauper, Megadeth, and some Wagnerian opera. At least his musical preferences were interesting, if atrocious. His personality was nothing more than exceptionally boring. We’d never spoken for more than the length of a meal at a time before. It turns out, I’d already heard everything he had to say about anything by the time we entered Ohio. By Kansas we were snippy with each other at travel plazas and fast food joints, and in Denver, we got into a huge fight over a parking space.
"He insists on paying tolls with exact change, even if he has to hold up the line to find it. Even if I’m driving. Not to mention, he snores."
As I listed my grievances, an engine’s hum grew closer. Soon a motorcycle rose over a hill in the road, heading this direction. The bike was a thick, black Harley with chrome accents wherever they would fit. Its rider wore simple black leather boots with jeans and a bomber jacket. Silver hair peaked out easily from under his helmet and flapped eagerly in the wind.
He smiled as he approached and gave a nod, before revving his engine and zooming off. My stomach hit my toes as his hog flew away. His grin burrowed into me and warmed my innards. I could see his handsome face if I closed my eyes – serene but jovial, knowing something about the world no one else did, and laughing at his luck. His eyes were green, though I had no idea how I could possibly know that in the brief glimpse I got before he was gone.
"Tess? Tess? You dropped off. Are you there?"
"Yeah, I'm here." My eyes and mind followed the speck of a man flying away.
"So the trip sucks. Happens to the best of us. What are you going to do now?"
I shook my head clear. "That’s the thing. Claire, I can’t let Mom know this trip went bust. I’ll never hear the end of it."
"No kidding. I’m 26 and she's still on me. If I don’t get promoted to supervisor soon, I think she’s going to come down to the restaurant herself to talk with the manager."
"Problem is, I don’t have any money to get home on my own." That stopped Claire’s rant about mom and dad in its tracks. "Derrick promised to pay for the trip, but he kept borrowing money for gas. He said he'd pay me back in Vegas." I had quickly blown through my minimalist savings account.
"Oh," said Claire after a moment's pause. "That would be a problem."
"No kidding. But it’s sort of why I called. I hate to ask, but, do you have any cash?"
Claire let out a long slow exhale of breath that said, "If about eight things go right … maybe."
Claire had access to funds, at the best of times. Both she and her husband worked, but they had three kids and two cars, and neither pulled in an exorbitant salary. If anything unexpected came up, they might not have enough money for rent, much less a cross-country plane ticket.
"Why don’t you just go to the police?" Claire asked. "You haven’t done anything wrong."
"And the first thing they’ll do is tell me to call my parents. And then they’ll go in the back room and laugh at me while I do. No thanks."
"Well, let me check with Ron," Claire offered. Ron was Claire's husband. "We might be able to help you out, get you on a bus, at least. He’s working the late shift. Is there somewhere you can stay for the night?"
"There’s a Super 8 a few miles down the road, and just about enough money in my bank account to pay for it, I hope."
Derrick had left me back at the gas station, where a sign announced a hotel two and half miles down the road. Why the gas station was two and a half miles from the hotel in this tiny little stretch of land they called a town, I couldn’t tell you.
"So, what happened?" Claire asked. "I mean, what put it over the edge?"
"It was crazy, Claire. He flipped out at me and stopped making sense about halfway through. I think it was because I put 85 octane gas in the car. What a weird guy. What a weird state. Have you ever even heard of 85 octane? He said fill it with regular, so I did. Next thing I knew, he was throwing my bag out of the trunk and pulling away."
"Poor thing." Claire’s sympathy was genuine, if distracted. I could hear the beginnings of a three-way fight between my nieces and my nephew in the background.
"The damn bag’s heavy too!" I added. Derrick had insisted on getting heavy-duty bags with two locks each and a fireproof material that weighed 20 pounds. Worse, it had no wheels. "Five thousand years after the wheel was invented, and we have to get luggage that hasn’t adapted yet."
A child’s scream in the background blared through the phone, followed quickly by another.
"Look," said Claire. "I gotta go."
"I figured."
"Sorry, hon. It’ll all work out. Call me in the morning, after I talk to Ron, and hopefully we can get you back here. For now, enjoy the free continental breakfast."
As I put my phone back into my pocket, I heard an engine rev behind me. I looked back to see the Harley returning with its attractive owner racing down the road. I smiled in his direction, and brought up the fingers of my free hand in a weak wave, but he drove on by without a sign, intent on the road before him.
I put down my bag, flexed my sore fingers, watching them turn from white to red as the blood rushed into them. I picked the bag back up half-heartedly in my other hand, and continued plodding along. The sign at the overpass for I-15 announced that the hotel was another 1.8 miles down the way – or up, I should say, since the road grew steeper by the inch. It wasn’t right. On television, the desert looked flat.
I dropped my bag at the overpass. It was heavy and I was winded and dehydrated, not to mention hot and hungry. The traffic on the highway was sparse, but existent. I considered hitching a ride. I remembered horror stories from my childhood about people who hitchhiked, but how many of them were just that – stories? As long as I was careful, I would be OK. I was a woman of the new millennium, with a college education and a sharp mind. Besides, I’d also heard stories of people dying in the desert, and those didn’t sound very pleasant either.
I’d just made up my mind to follow the entrance ramp onto the highway when a giant, fancy RV drove up behind me, looking more like a modern bus than a motorhome. It was grey with black waves, and kicked up large dust clouds as it smoothly coasted onto the shoulder of the road. It stopped about ten feet behind me and there, behind the windshield, was the man from the Harley, his eyes gleaming with knowledge and pleasure. Sure enough, the RV towed the shining bike behind it.
The man hopped out of his rig and strode over to me casually. He still wore his boots and blue jeans, but had removed his jacket, revealing a tight white t-shirt beneath. His helmet was gone as well. The hair on the top of his head was a few inches long and distinctly silver, not grey. And his eyes were green! His face was world-worn, but not weary, and when he grinned, he exposed a hint of a dimple on his left cheek.
Then his face broke into a broad smile, softening his square jaw. When I said he was handsome earlier, I was wrong. The man was downright hot. I don’t know how he did it, but he exuded the sex and raw power of a man half his age. He was older than my father, and yet I wanted him to fuck me then and there. Instead, I giggled awkwardly as I greeted him.
"Hi there," I half-whispered.
"Hey," he nodded as he approached, putting out his hand. "The name’s Fox."
"I’m Tess." We shook, his rough hand encompassing mine.
"You need a lift?"
"You know?" surprising myself more than him, "I think I do."
"Where to?" Fox stood only about two feet away from me with his hands on his hips in a wide stance.
"The … uh … Motel 8 down the street?" I sounded ridiculous, even to myself. He raised one eyebrow and furrowed the other, in a measured look of disbelief. Fox was six inches taller than me, and his glower made me feel even smaller. My heart beat quickly as I spoke, "Or, um, Washington, D.C., if you’re going that way."
Fox jerked his head towards the passenger’s seat in the RV. "Well, I’m on my way to Tennessee myself. Why don’t you hop in, Miss Tess, and we’ll see whether it’s the Motel 8 or towards the nation’s capitol we head to."
He loaded my bag, opened the passenger’s side door, and even held out his hand to help me step up into the vehicle. The air inside was cool.
"You’re quite the gentleman," I remarked.
Fox laughed out loud. "Well, see about that sweetie, won’t we now?"
"Well, you’re one up on my ex." I launched into the tale of my miserable journey west, as comfortable as if Fox were Claire. I told him about Derrick’s awful fascination with Roy Rogers rest stops, and about the fight over whether the graham crackers we bought in West Virginia were stale when we opened them in Oklahoma.
"Did he hurt you?" Fox interrupted.
"Not at all. He barely touched me.” The next words tumbled out of my mouth before I was aware of them. “I wish he had hurt me.” The words surprised me, but they were true. “I mean, not, like killed me or anything, but, you know, I wouldn’t have minded if he’d roughed me up a bit. I mean, at least it would have been … interesting."
Fox looked over at me. "Surely you don’t mean that."
My mouth stood open before I spoke. This time, I knew what I was saying. "Yes, yes, I do. In fact, I’ve been curious about, um, sadomasochism for a while now. Ever since I was little."
I recognized how ridiculous this was – perhaps even monumentally stupid – telling a stranger about my deepest sexual fantasies. But Fox’s presence was calming, and I could tell he wanted to hear more, even as his eyes returned to the road.
"I’ve dreamed of being bound and beaten, teased and tortured, used and abused." After days pent up with Derrick, it felt amazing to say whatever I wanted. "I want someone to tie my wrists to my ankles, fuck me for hours, and leave me to dry."
Fox snorted.
"Oh my god! Did I just say that?"
"You sure did, Miss Tess."
I could feel my cheeks heating up. Fox had pulled that out of me. I don’t know how, but he had me telling him things I’d never told anyone, things I wasn’t sure I’d told myself. My heart didn’t know whether to beat faster with excitement or fear, so it did both, pounding twice as hard.
After a slight turn right in the road, the Motel 8 sign came into view, just behind a billboard for Vegas. I hissed at the mention of Sin City, the dreaded destination for my miserable trip west.
The RV pulled onto the road’s shoulder, in front of the motel. Fox took his time setting the vehicle into park, adjusting his seat belt, and finally turning off the engine.
"Well, here we are, Miss Tess. What’ll it be? Are you getting out?"
The light from the Super 8 sign turned my skin a sickly yellow. "Well, I don’t have any money for gas…"
Fox laughed aloud. "I didn’t think you did, sweet thing. Here’s how it works." His grin gave a hint that he had done before, but his eyes bore into me as if I were the only being in the world besides him. He interrupted his own thought to ask, "Were you serious about that kinky stuff you said before?"
Everything I had ever learned told me to say no. It said I should get out of the RV right then and check into the Motel 8. But I really didn’t want to. I didn’t want to leave Fox now. I wanted to see where he was going with this.
"I guess so.”
"Good. That will be useful. I will drive you home on the condition that you do everything I say. But I warn you, it won’t all be ropes and whips. You will cook for me and clean for me, and best of all, entertain me. Until we get to the East Coast, I will own you. And when we arrive, should you wish, I will drive you not only to Tennessee, but right up to your door in D.C. What do you say, Miss Tess?"
I thought about Claire and Ron. They probably didn’t have the money. Tomorrow morning, I’d be out the cost of a hotel room and I’d still be stuck 100 miles outside of Vegas. The decision was clear. After all, I had gone west for adventure, right?
"Are you going to rape me?"
Fox stopped, rubbing his hand on his stubbly chin.
"No," he answered deliberately.
"Can I change my mind later?"
Fox chuckled. He continually knew something I didn’t. "You may leave at any time you wish." There was something wrong with that statement; it was too easy. There would be a catch. "I can’t promise you Vegas, but I’ll surely give you a run for your money. Or," Fox nodded towards the cement motel with the flickering vacancy sign, "You could stay there. Your choice, Miss Tess."
I looked Fox over once more. He was older than my father, perhaps, but certainly younger than my grandfather. Outlines of muscles framed his white t-shirt, and his forearms were tanned and well-defined. He wore a tiny diamond stud earring in his left ear, adding one more twinkle to the shine of his face. And if I breathed in deeply enough, I could smell the traces of a musky perfume mixed with the scent of a day’s sweat. I wanted to stay.
"I’d love to, Fox."
"From now on, you will call me Sir." His tone was matter-of-fact, without a hint of reprimand, but if I forgot in the future, I suspected he would not be as indifferent.
"Yes, Sir. I would love to accompany you."
"Good," Fox’s body relaxed. "I was hoping you would stay. You really are a sexy little thing, aren't you? You sure you’re legal?"
"Yes, Sir, I graduated from college three weeks ago."
"And what are you doing now that you’ve graduated, Miss Tess?"
"I have no idea."
Fox laughed again, a chuckle that rose in a slow crescendo into a loud laugh before fading back into isolated snickers, each one hitting into the pit of my stomach, and lower, into the heart of my clit. It seemed he was going to take advantage of me in every way he could short of raping me, and I couldn’t have been more aroused. My cunt pulsed as he drove in silence into a sunset quickly fading to dusk.
Fox navigated his way onto I-15 East and around an ancient pick-up truck in the right lane. The engine jumped into high gear without much of a fuss and soon we were the only vehicle in sight. The occasional car or truck passed in the other direction, but for vast stretches, it was us and the desert. It was nearly dark before Fox spoke again.
"Hungry?" he asked.
"Famished."
"Don’t exaggerate, girlie. There are some energy bars in the glove compartment. Give me a Berry Blast. Unwrap one end, but leave the rest in the foil."
My stomach growled as I opened the glove compartment, nearly a dozen shining bars of protein and nourishment. Derrick had stopped for lunch before 11 a.m., "to beat the rush". I tugged on the lip of the wrapper, and the scent of berries in the air was sickeningly sweet and alluring. Resisting my urge to stuff the whole bar in my mouth, I handed it over.
I waited for his word to take one for myself, but he was too invested in eating his own to notice me. At least that’s what I thought until I caught him glance over my way. The malicious joy in his eyes was unmistakable. He knew I was hungry, and what’s more, he enjoyed it.
What he didn’t know – or perhaps he did – was how wet it was making me, to wait for his command like a trained dog. Fox had finished his energy bar and crumpled the wrapper into his pocket before I realized that maybe I was not waiting after all. It might be that he had no intention of feeding me at the moment, and was just asking about my hunger out of curiosity. Reluctantly, I closed the glove compartment.
"Good girl," said Fox, once the door clicked into place. "Assume nothing. You may have an energy bar. You may even choose the flavor."
"Thank you, Sir." I savored the chewy Almond and Cranberry Parade, dry as it was, filled with moments of sweetness and thin, smooth slices of nut. It was surprisingly filling.
Having eaten a bit, Fox relaxed and opened conversation. "Have you ever been to Tennessee?"
I shook my head. "I’ve been to Virginia a few times, out to the mountains." My family had rented a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains, back when I was 9. "I loved all the green."
"If you ain’t seen Tennessee, you ain’t seen green!" Fox waxed on about his cabin in the woods, surrounded by hills of the most luscious, verdant foliage he’d ever encountered, and with grass so bright and pure even Crayola couldn’t imitate it.
"It sounds lovely."
Fox asked about D.C., and I told him about the residential neighborhood where I’d grown up, filled with row after endless row of box houses arranged along numbered streets that stretched out from the center of the city into the neighboring states. I told him about my voyages up the Northeast Corridor for college to exotic Baltimore, where I lived in earshot of the Amtrak station and fell asleep most nights wishing I were going somewhere, anywhere. Fox listened with interest and asked more about my life: boring. My education: also boring. And my love life? Minimal, at best.
"Well, you’re certainly going somewhere now. Take off your shirt."
"Excuse me?" I heard his words again in my head and processed his command, but not until I had already asked.
"Take off your shirt." His words were as casual as his directions for opening his Berry Blast bar, and just as clear.
"But what if someone…" I felt the RV jerk to an abrupt stop on the shoulder of the road. Fox pounded the brakes so hard that his wheels screeched to a stop. I was still fumbling with my tank top when I heard the unmistakable slice of steel being unsheathed. Fox briefly displayed a short knife with a glimmering blade and an ornate, pewter base.
I froze when he held the broad side of the blade along my neck. The hair on the nape of my neck stood on end, and a shiver spread down my shoulders. I twitched involuntarily, and hoped I wouldn’t again, for fear I would nick myself.
"I will tell you one more time." Fox’s voice hadn’t changed in tone, but the cold blade stressed his conviction. "Take off your shirt. I do not like to have to threaten."
He removed the knife from my throat. I hastily removed my tank top. The night air was cold on my skin and my breasts filled with goose bumps. Fox pulled my shirt from my hand, rolled open his window, and tossed it out. He put away his knife, pulled back onto the highway and breathed to himself for a few minutes before speaking again. When he did speak, his words were calm and steady, as if nothing had happen. Fox was a terrifying unknown.
"There is a black bag behind my seat. Bring it up here." I found the leather duffle bag easily, and with some effort, heaved it into the front seat without knocking my ride and tormentor in the head.
"In the small zipper on the side is a pair of cuffs. Pull them out."
The cuffs were thick leather, and each was fitted with a heavy chrome o-ring and carabineer clip. The cuffs felt solid and weighty in my hands, and my fingers rubbed along the inside to find soft, padded silk. I oohed aloud, stroking the fabric.
"They are very nice, aren’t they? Treat them well. One on each wrist please, and you may put the bag away for now."
Fox watched the dark road as he spoke, but when I stretched over to put his bag back behind his seat, his fingers gave my nipple a tweak. It hurt, but not terribly, and it served to have me squirming in my seat for more while I awaited further directions. My wrists felt strange when I moved them, top-heavy from the metal fittings, and they rattled noisily with each shift.
"Hook yourself up to the headrest behind you." The carabineers were easy to attach to the metal rods holding the headrest to the passenger’s seat. Slack in the chains allowed me to move my arms to find a comfortable position, but they were still raised high, exposing the sensitive flesh from the tip of my armpit down to my tit, and forcing my breasts up and out.
Fox took a glance over. "You look good, all splayed out for me." He snickered, and my cold nipples grew even harder, until they were painfully tight. "Don’t you forget. You are mine until we hit the East Coast, and I like to secure my cargo tightly."
I whimpered, surprising myself, if not Fox, at the pleasure I took in my own humiliation.
"Good girl." He patted my head and brushed his rough fingers along my soft skin. Then he loaded a Johnny Cash CD into the stereo, turned up the volume, and drove in silence, without giving me another look or, it seemed, another thought. I would still be there at the end of his journey, and for now, there were more important things to pay attention to.
I felt small and submissive – possessed but protected, and hornier than I had been in ages. I twitched in my seat, clenching my cunt muscles fiercely, until I heard the chair itself squeaking. I stopped in embarrassment.
I watched the road and the endless mile markers until an exhausting day overtook me and I fell asleep, wearing only my jeans and my sneakers – still full of sand – my hands bound above me, in a stranger’s RV. I suppose you could say that I was bound to travel. |
