The Hostage Bargain Page 4

  “I’m sorry, but that’s how it would have to be,” Odin said, looking grimly at Thor.

  Thor put a heavy, warm hand on my thigh, and I sucked in a breath. “Do you understand why we have to make the ultimate punishment so harsh?”

  It was weird and surreal and I sort of didn’t get it. “Are you making this up as you go along?”

  “That’s not the sort of question we like to hear,” Thor said.

  I tried not to grin, but it was all so crazy and hot. I could see no reason not to go along with the whole thing, aside from the fact that, somewhere back In Baylortown, Wisconsin, my sisters were probably worried out of their minds about me, crying, and I could get the guys to let me out and be reunited with them by nightfall.

  Except I wanted this more. Did I have no heart?

  “Fuck,” Zeus said, shifting lanes. I couldn’t tell whether his commentary regarded the road or our conversation.

  Gravely, Thor said, “We don’t want to take away your name, Isis, but if we have to, we will. And you’ll be Melinda again.”

  Thor scooted closer. “What do you think about the rules, Isis? Will you abide by them?”

  I looked up at Zeus’s eyes in the rearview mirror. They were fixed on the road. What did he think about this?

  “Did Thor just ask you a question?” Odin said.

  My mouth was quite dry. Would I abide? I knew nothing beyond very regular sex, and a bit of cartoon porn. They would laugh about the cartoon porn. I resolved never to tell them about the cartoon porn. I wanted Isis to be worldly.

  “What’s the etcetera? You said tie you up, etcetera.” The pulse in my ears amplified, the way it used to when I’d start down the ski slope. I was starting down a ski slope into a wildly hunky unknown.

  “The etcetera is mutually decided as we go along,” Odin said.

  Thor looked at me new, like he’d just realized something. “You’re into it.”

  I wasn’t clear on what the it was, and I didn’t care. “Yes,” I breathed.

  “Wow, Sherlock,” Odin said. “Your brilliance is blinding. Did you just figure that out?”

  “We’re into it,” Thor said. “Come here.” He pulled me onto his lap, and I happily settled in. I felt my sex throbbing, wanted his hands there. Would we have sex now? It would be so outrageous.

  “Say yes,” Thor said, drawing his fingers over my sensitive nipples, which were somehow more sensitive through the fabric.

  “Yes,” I said, trembling practically out of my skin. “I’m in.”

  Something passed between Zeus and Odin—Zeus had given assent of some kind, with just his eyes. Or did I only imagine it?

  “I am going to have to ask you to do something for me,” Thor whispered in my ear. “For us. It just must be done.”

  We had exited the freeway now and were racing down a two-lane highway, heading south along the tracks. I melted backwards into Thor’s lap, excited, and quite frankly, scared. I dropped my hands to touch the sides of his thighs, relished the solidity of his muscles, remembering how he’d leapt over the teller counter. What would he ask? I hoped it wasn’t to suck all their cocks in succession. Even Isis wouldn’t be into that, just on its own, at least without a saucy role-play context developed for it.

  Odin was facing forward. Had he adjusted the mirror?

  Thor ran his hands down my waist to my bare legs and then reversed direction, sliding upward, dragging his fingers heavily along my thighs, taking my skirt with it.

  Slowly.

  My skin felt impossibly sensitive under his touch. I breathed heavily as his steely cock pressed against my ass, my core rich and warm and yearning. It had been so long since I’d had sex. I imagined discarding my panties, turning, pressing down on him, right there in the back seat, being watched. I had never done such a thing in my life. At least not watched.

  Isis was so into it.

  Up, up he went. Oh, god, he was going to touch me!

  “Please,” I breathed. “Please do.” And hurry, I thought.

  “You have to learn patience, Isis,” he whispered, continuing up my thighs, hands heavy and rough in their excruciatingly slow march to rob me of my skirt. Eventually he had it bunched up around my waist like a belt with too much fabric. It was slightly demeaning, in a way that I quite liked. He hooked his thumbs under the elastic on my panties and snapped. “Off.”

  “Right here?” I said.

  “Off.”

  I swallowed hard, liking that he’d simply ordered me that way. Probably best Melinda didn’t think too hard about it. I shimmied my panties off, down to my ankles where they got caught on my high-heeled shoes.

  “Assistance,” Thor said, wrapping his arms around my chest and pulling me back to him.

  Odin twisted around in his seat and reached back, taking one of my ankles, starting to dislodge my panties from my shoe while staring into my eyes. Thor played with my nipples, tugging them slightly outward.

  Being touched by two men at once was beyond anything I’d ever imagined. And then watched, presumably, by a third? It was a lust circuit overload. My whole body trembled with excitement, every nerve ending madly exposed, overly sensitive.

  Odin dislodged my panties—I couldn’t see how because I couldn’t seem to look away from his gaze, but there were yanks and possibly a rip involved. Odin didn’t care about panties, and I didn’t much care at this point, either. Then he simply turned back to watch the road. Unless he could see me in the mirror.

  “Go ahead. You know what you want to do.”

  “I want to do a lot of things,” I whispered huskily.

  “A hint, then.” He took his hands from my breasts and grabbed my thighs from the insides, pulling my legs up and over his, so that they were positioned over the outsides of his legs. Then he spread his legs, which spread my legs even more. I felt completely wanton, completely exposed to the front seat. He kissed my ear and returned his hands to my breasts. “Show us how you do it.”

  I felt powerfully embarrassed to touch myself in front of these three guys, yet thrilled.

  I took a breath and brought my hands down to my pussy tentatively, like it was somebody else’s, and stroked a finger through. Thor exhaled sharply on my ear, a gust of heat that tickled deliciously. “That’s the idea,” Thor said. “Again.”

  He put his hands into my shirt and took hold of my breasts, rubbing his thumbs over my sensitized nipples. I groaned and stroked again through my silky folds and we both heaved hot breaths—there was a way in which it felt more intimate than having sex—me so exposed, so visible, my legs held apart by his legs.

  And I was, of course, extremely wet. They would see that, too. I closed my eyes, concentrated on the feeling—Thor’s hands on my breasts, my own on the folds of my sex, my every move revealed to my new bandit gang. I got into a little rhythm, stroking myself as Thor played lightly with my nipples; sometimes he rolled them between his fingers like little beads, other times he tugged at them. Every new thing he did sent pleasure clear through me.

  I shut my eyes, blissing out, as a random scene from my cartoon porn travels came to me—an elfin cartoon girl tied up in the forest being ravished by roguish Robin Hood types, one fondling her breast, the other licking her sex, and other watching. It was almost like that was really happening. And I would have an orgasm in front of them. While they watched!

  But as soon as I thought that, some of the heat went out of me. What if I didn’t come? Would they get bored of me? My orgasm is a very shy thing, easy to spook. Now it was spooked. I opened my eyes. “I might be getting stage fright,” I whispered.

  Odin turned with a dark gleam in his eyes. “Apparently I will have to do everything for this one.” He took off his glasses and he bent his fingers backwards, one after another, as though to limber them up.

  I widened my eyes. What was he going to do? Why take off his glasses and limber up his fingers?

  His smile was evil. “Don’t you fucking stop now,” he said.

  I hadn’t reali
zed I’d stopped touching myself. “What are you going to do?”

  “You’d disobey already?” he asked.

  “No.” I started again.

  “No, what?”

  “No…Odin,” I said.

  “Good girl,” he said.

  Good girl. I wanted him to order me around some more and say things like that. The way he looked at me, I knew he knew; the sheer weight and penetration of his gaze made the butterflies in my belly go crazy. I was so exposed to him, and to Thor’s warm breath heating my ear, my sensitive nipples pebbling under his clever fingers as I showed them secret things about how I touched myself.

  And most of all Zeus, silent, observing everything.

  I rubbed my finger over my sensitive bud, slowly, lazily.

  My head felt light. My body was no longer mine; these guys were pulling me into a fabulous forbidden realm.

  And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  Again, Odin smiled his evil smile at me...or was he smiling at Thor?

  Thor shifted me forward on his lap. I felt his hand on the small of my back. He pushed it down under my bunched skirt, down to squeeze and maul my ass cheek, then on down, nearing my vagina.

  I panted, suddenly wanting—needing—him in me, his finger, his cock. I wanted to fuck, to be fucked. Fear and yearning spiraled in my mind.

  Odin removed one of my shoes and brought my foot up near to his mouth, forcing me to raise my leg and bend my knee, giving Thor better access. Odin’s breath was warm on my toes and a little bit ticklish.

  Just then I felt a slick finger probe at my asshole. I gasped.

  At that exact moment, Odin bit the fleshy tip of my little toe—just bit into it.

  I cried out as I careened over the edge. “Oh my god,” I said, losing myself in the sting of Odin’s bite, and Thor’s fingers, and my fingers, and an explosion of an orgasm. “Fuck!” I said, throbbing with exquisite waves of feeling from my eyelids to my toes.

  “Ride it, baby,” Thor breathed, slowing the motion on my nipple, caressing my ass cheek. I was so gone—my mind, my senses. Shattered apart. “Ride it.” He slowed his hands, held me tight.

  I lolled on his lap for a spell, panting, coming back to myself. “Oh my God,” I said.

  “And now we know,” Odin said.

  “Know what?” I breathed as Thor caressed my belly.

  Odin put his glasses back on. “Things, Isis. We now know certain things.”

  “Like what?”

  With one last devilish smile, Odin turned back to sit properly in his seat. “This will work.” He shifted his gaze to Zeus, who continued to drive, all stern silence. Unsaid things seemed to pass between them.

  What had he been planning to do beyond bite my toe? You didn’t need to flex your knuckles to bite a girl’s toe. It came to me that he might not ever have intended to do anything at all beyond what he did. It came to me that Odin was the mindfucker of the group.

  “That was hot,” Thor whispered. “Thank you.”

  “Well I…yes,” I agreed. Were we done now? I pulled off his lap feeling totally weird. I straightened my skirt. So I had just masturbated in front of them all. “What about you?”

  “I want to take you so bad, I can’t think straight,” Thor panted.

  “But we’re in a van.” Odin twisted around. “You didn’t think we were going to just make you blow us all here in the van, did you?” He handed my panties and bra back to me, looking amused. “And we’d hardly beat off in front of a total stranger. That would be uncouth, don’t you think?”

  I widened my eyes. Of course it was just what I’d done. “Shut up.” I grabbed them from his hand. I put my panties back on, and then my bra, back on under my shirt—no easy feat.

  “Our needs are more complex than just jacking off,” Odin said, putting his smarty-pants glasses back on.

  Thor touched my hair. “We can wait,” he said. “We don’t want to freak you out or…abuse your generosity.”

  “Yes we do,” Odin said. “That is exactly what we want to do, and that’s exactly what she wants. That is how the god pack works.”

  The god pack?

  Thor threw an arm around my shoulders and glared at Odin. “Odin’s fucking around.”

  “You will love the way we abuse your generosity,” Odin said.

  I caught Zeus’s eyes in the mirror. Gaze grave, he said, “One week, and nobody does anything they don’t want to, and then you go home while you still have plausible deniability. Got it?”

  Nobody said anything more.

  We sped through corn country.

  It had been a wet, hot August and the crops stood high and thick, like short green walls, blurring by. Judging from the angle of the sun, it was dinnertime.

  The mood of sex was still thick in the van, and I thought how frustrated these guys must be. My body still thrummed with energy; I couldn’t let go of that crazy moment when Thor was lewdly fondling me, and Odin bit my toe. I badly wanted more of that.

  Zeus said we’d stop for the night eventually. When? What would happen? I had this feeling like the whole road trip was foreplay.

  Zeus said, “I saw a sign for a filling station coming up. Area’s looking okay to me. Anyone see anything?”

  “Come here.” Thor pulled me against him, pointed at the sky. “I’m looking for cameras,” he said. “Look at the tops of the poles and anything on the wires. Describe what you see.”

  I nestled back into him. I could do that now. I was the girlfriend. We were the god pack. It was weird they’d kept using their god names. Did they use their god names 24/7?

  I described what I saw, shocked at how little I knew about the poles and webs of wires and boxes and barrels that had existed above my head for 25 years. Thor told me the names and functions for various shapes and things to watch out for, and I struggled not to wriggle in delight as his hands roamed possessively over me, or get too roamy on him. Apparently there would be no sex in the van.

  “Always know where the eyes and cameras are. It’s something you’ll develop,” he said.

  Zeus grumbled. A warning of some kind.

  That is how the god pack works, Odin had said. What did he mean? Had some other woman come before me? And if so, what had happened to her?

  The three of them discussed the surroundings and various technological and geographical features of the area we’d traveled over in a way that impressed me. This filling station bit had turned the three of them from sex maniacs to all business, with a single-mindedness and a kind of discipline that felt almost military. They’d all straightened up and put their businessman clothes back on. Except me, I was still slutty central. I asked for my jacket.

  It’ll be good to have another pair of eyes.” Thor handed me my jacket. “Being aware will be one of your jobs.”

  Again I got that sense of a ghost. A girl whose job it had been to observe things. I recalled, just then, the stutter of attention on me when I’d taken a god name. Did the last girl have a god name? What had happened to her?

  “What are those green bell things?” I asked.

  “Those are ceramic spacers. We’ll have to do a whole tutorial on phone poles with you,” Thor said. “That will be one of the few non-dirty tutorials you’ll receive.”

  Shivers rained over my skin.

  Apparently they were satisfied with this terrain, because Zeus pulled into a run-down filling station whose concrete walls had vertical brown stripes near the top, showing the path of leakage from the metal roof. Junker cars crowded the edges of the lot and a lonely pump stood out in front. “Anyone need to pee?”

  The guys pulled their suits back on and we went in. A boy stood behind a counter surrounded by cigarette displays. Zeus slapped down two twenties. “Forty for gas, and we’ll take both flavors of bathroom keys.”

  Odin and I took our women and men keys and walked around the side of the station together. “Welcome to the glamorous life. You always get tons of high security with the good bathrooms,” he said when we
were outside. “Those fucking modern gas stations are like fucking airport security zones. We hate them.”

  I went into the bathroom with Odin’s words ringing in my head. Fucking gairport security zones. I wanted to find out where he was from. I wanted to find out everything.

  The bathroom wasn’t so bad. I peed and cleaned up and finally got up the guts to look at my hair in the mirror. It was completely crooked, but when I shoved it behind my ears, it wasn’t all that crooked. But still, it needed work. I had always wanted to get it cut short, like a boy’s hair. And maybe I could dye it pink. Isis would like pink hair.

  When I came out, the van was on the other side of the station at the air pump. The side of it no longer said Romano’s Catering; it said Marcomm Technologies in fat italic letters with two blue underlines. Odin loitered at the back of the van, partly concealing Thor, who was changing license plates. My bandits, like a bad-boy pit crew.

  Soon we were back on the road, with Zeus driving again, and me in the back with Thor. I felt like I was moving far away from reality, from my troubles. I liked it.

  Odin threw us each a small bag of Doritos.

  “Ranch,” I said, my mouth watering. “Thanks.” I was ravenous.

  “We can’t stop until Chicago. But we’ll stay somewhere nice,” Thor said with a little smile.

  “Is that where you’re from?”

  “A few ground rules,” Zeus said suddenly. “Don’t ever ask us where we’re from or how we got into this, and you can never know our names. Don’t try to get that information, understand?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “We took a leap of faith to trust you,” he continued, “and as you can imagine, it’s not something we would have done normally, just pick up a stranger. But you were in a position to help us and you came through, and that means something. We’ll hold up our end of the agreement by taking down another of your boss’s banks. Right afterward, we’ll send you home with a plausible story that I don’t want to have to work on right now. And we’ll send your cut of the money to you somehow. And if you deviate from the story we develop for you or the rules for the money we set, we’ll hunt you down and kill you.”