Captive Weekend - Chapter 5
Here's a fifth sample from Captive Weekend, my debut Femdom erotic novel, now available in the Kindle store. The hunt begins!
Please enjoy this further sneak peek into my new novel, Captive weekend, which just released into the Kindle store. You can find links to the first four chapters below, as well as a link to the Amazon buy page.
Recovering from the demise of his marriage, committed submissive Gary Severson sets out to rekindle his faith in kink at a BDSM fantasy paintball weekend, where he will be hunted by dominant women. Through his inevitable capture and the recreational bondage, torture and enslavement that follow, Gary learns he may actually have been caught by love.
Links to previous chapters:
Chapter 1:
Chapter 2:
Chapter 3:
Chapter 4:
Here’s a link to it in the Kindle store.
5 – Into the Shadows
Gary and the men arrayed themselves on the imaginary starting line formed between two wooden stakes driven into the field about 100 feet apart.
Ever the ringleader, Mary stepped before the crowd and again called for attention. “Alright, this is it. When the horn blows, the boys will have a 10-minute head start. On the second horn, the people will be unleashed upon the prey.”
When she said prey, emphasizing that the women were going to retain their personhood, and the boys were not, a haughty chuckle blossomed among the Dominas. Some of the boys laughed too, their lungs convulsing with nervous tension. Gary laughed reflexively, by then wound so tight, he couldn’t think straight. His fingers squeezed the neck of his water bottle. His breathing went shallow. The safety goggles felt snug and unfamiliar, as if they were trapping his eyes.
“Remember, boys, even though the thrill for you may be in getting caught, for us it’s in the hunt. We want a spirited chase, so do give us some sport today. And of course, the two winning boys will receive the grand prize. I doubt that anyone needs me to restate just how grand it is.”
Gary certainly didn’t. Even here, raw nerves thrumming with anticipation, his pulse raced a little faster when he thought of what winning meant.
“Everybody on your marks.”
The collective bowstring of the line of men pulled taut. Gary took a final look at the women behind him, seeing their teeth in the morning light, glistening and hungry.
“Ready!”
Gary set his feet.
“Steady!”
Gary tensed in the instant before release. He leaned forward, feeling the soft, newly shaved flesh of his inner thigh brush against his shorts. His leg muscles flexed, and his underwear stretched, squeezing his cock against him.
Mary raised a brass fox hunting horn and blew. It wailed a plaintive tenor bleat, a quavering tone, unnaturally true, that seemed to vibrate the very flesh of his ear and reach into his heart, making it beat twice as fast.
“Go!”
He ran.
They all bolted at once, Gary dashing as fast as he possibly could, ears still ringing with the mournful cry of the horn. His mind was only able to contain the tiniest thought.
It’s happening!
He surged forward as if chased by the devil herself, legs pumping, arms chugging. Of course, the younger stallions left him in the dust, but Gary did fairly well against the rest of the field. Luckily, many of the guys, even some younger ones, weren’t in great shape. Quite a few were huffing before they made it halfway to the trees, unable to muster more than a prolonged trot. Gary cast a quick glance over his shoulder to see them falling behind.
His head whipped back around as he hit the tree line. He ducked under a bough and leapt over a trunk. The darkness of the woods washed over him like a cool river on a hot day, the shadows and greenery enfolding him into their secret places as if he were a rabbit diving into a warren. But even though his path seemed downward into darkness, his spirit began to soar. The adrenaline, the speed, the wind in his hair, his pounding heart was riding an updraft of euphoria into the sky. He was flying, dizzied, fearful, aloft.
At first, bounding and leaping through the thick woods, his momentum was a runaway train. It was only after a few minutes, when his chest grew tight and his legs began to burn, that he willed himself to stop and catch his breath and find his bearings.
He looked down at his feet while his breathing settled. Brown mud and green weeds, the carpet of the forest. A trail of ants moving in unison, a single organism in service to their queen.
All around he heard the footsteps, shouts and occasional panting of men crashing through the trees, moving in and away, but he hadn’t yet heard the second horn. He fought the urge to run further, forcing himself to concentrate. He didn’t want to run himself ragged before the hunters had even entered the woods.
Ever since he first read a description of the hunt, he’d been obsessively strategizing for this moment. He guessed that either by accident or design, the women would likely begin by fanning out in a line and sweeping through the woods from end to end. The safest place would be behind this line. The best way to get there would be to slip through when the women were distracted by capturing other men. Thus, the best course of action would be to find an easily captured man, watch him until he was caught, and then sneak past the dragnet.
The slow men were still behind him. He needed to wait for them to catch up.
Gary looked around to get the lay of the land, but the trees were thick here, and he couldn’t see far. The forest sloped up to his right, and he began to ascend, seeking a vantage point. Then he heard footsteps in the brush below. He ducked behind a tree as two men came into view, hurrying and winded.
One was in his late 50s, and one was younger, Gary guessed 30. The younger one, a pudgy, quiet man from the north, named Gerald, went to one knee, huffing and out of breath, while the older one, Colin, kept moving. The night before, Gerald had been too awestruck by the women to say much, but Gary found him sweet if rather dull. Gary considered shadowing Gerald, but the boy was standing still. Gary wanted someone on the move, whose footsteps would draw attention. Then Gary saw Colin circling below him. Colin was a pleasant, if awkward accountant from Brighton, the kind of man who was too smart to execute small talk. Though he looked like he was trying to move quickly, his pace was little more than a brisk walk.
Perfect.
Colin paused, looking back at Gerald, but then crept forward again, forcing Gary to move. Gary quietly left the cover of his tree and scampered ahead, deeper into the woods. Colin slowed to a walk as the brush thickened, so it was easy for Gary to stay in front of him. Gerald was just starting to move once more.
Far away, the second horn echoed. It took a couple of blasts before Gary’s brain registered what the sound meant, but then something clicked in him. His heart began to thump.
The hunt has begun. It’s really happening.
Everyone froze. Deep in the distance, they heard the women. First there was a high-pitched whooping, a battle cry, distant but rising, a challenge to all who would defy the Queen’s will. Then they heard the crashes and white noise bursts of tromping boots entering the Queen’s Wood. The whoops grew louder. Gary could just pick out a singsong yell of “Come out, come out wherever you are!” passing among the hunting parties. Then more whoops and whistles and more loud feet. They heard the feet getting closer, and suddenly Gerald began to run.
Colin dashed forward, and Gary had to run to stay ahead. Colin saw Gary and vectored in on him. Then Colin was closing on him, outpacing him. Gary realized in a flash that Colin had the same plan that he did, but Colin had been trying to use Gerald as his slow poke. A second realization followed: Colin thought Gary was a better slow poke to shadow. A third epiphany punched Gary in the gut. Colin was an actual runner, and a much faster runner than Gary.
Gary heard himself say, “Fuck.”
In the next instant, Colin streaked past him, and then Gary was alone. He looked around in vain, having also lost sight of Gerald. Though he couldn’t see Colin, he knew the man was likely nearby, watching and waiting.
Gary’s indignation over being another man’s bait surged through him, and he dashed back the way he had come, back toward the huntresses. He heard a woman whoop, and it now sounded much closer. A sense of fear, giddy and electric, the kind that surges through a 10-year-old in a haunted house, overwhelmed him. It transformed his spiteful backtrack into a panicked sprint. The world became indistinct as he dashed through the trees. In a few minutes, he had no sense of where he was anymore, or whether the hunters were ahead of him or behind.
He stopped to catch his breath, looking around for Colin, but he saw no sign of the accountant. He hoped he had lost him.
He spotted movement nearby and saw the crown of that leather peaked cap. For an instant, he was frozen in place, then quickly ducked behind a tree. The hat poked over the bushes as it prowled, like a shark’s fin appearing above the waves. And like a shark, the image again sunk its numberless teeth into his heart as memories of Erika flooded through him.
She insisted that no one touch her hat, and when they had started dating, she had teased him that her hat was better than he was. She had made him kneel and humiliate himself by begging the hat for ever more degrading things. “Can I lick you clean, Mr. Hat? Can I suck you off?” He found those sessions, which always ended in his being beaten and then licking her to orgasm, to be among his favorites. The image of her in the hat became his lodestone for those salad days. Then the hat migrated to a hatbox, and then to the back of the closet.
And he still didn’t know why. Everywhere he looked, either inward or outward, the question remained, a constant fire that burned low, but consumed nonetheless. Why?
By the time he was able to suppress these thoughts, he was reasonably sure the wearer of the hat had moved on. He rose slowly, uncertain of how high to stand now. Standing tall felt too visible, but the slightly hunched over “duck” that felt natural also struck him as self-evidently foolish. Was his head being three inches lower really going to spare him from anything?
As he debated this new question, he heard a footstep nearby and saw a streak of green fabric 50 feet away. He guessed it was another man, but he panicked and bolted just the same. He ran full speed without any idea where he was going. He dodged trees as if they were oncoming cars, and he was on the wrong side of the road.
He stopped again, holding a tree and panting. He heard someone move nearby and backed away. He stumbled down into a dry creek bed. Then he skulked along the winding path looking for a hole to hide in.
He heard a burst of shouting, now very close, women seeing prey, honing in.
His heart was jackhammering. He dashed away.
The trees were just vague green shapes. He ran from things he couldn’t see, in directions he didn’t understand, toward destinations he didn’t know. He stumbled into another muddy creek bed and lost his footing, dropping to one knee.
Then he caught himself again and stopped and willed himself to stay calm.
His breathing got shallow, and the blood pumping in his ears was the only sound.
Then, out of nowhere, he started to laugh. It was small at first, a burbling giggle of tension that tickled out of him. But it grew and grew, and despite his urge to be silent, he couldn’t make it stop. It was all so much fun: the woods, the chase, the fear. His cheeks began to ache from the smiling of it. The laugh rose towards a cackle, and he clamped his hands over his mouth, until finally it subsided. But there was still this sense of exhilaration welling up in him, coursing through and out of him, euphoric and free. Even after he fell silent, he felt like he might again burst into peals of laughter at any second. This is what unbroken people do: they feel joy and laughter. They feel these things not because they have received some momentary relief, some transitive dopamine hit, but simply because they are. They feel these things not in their becoming, but in their being.
He said to himself, “This is what it means to actually be me.”
He heard a twig snap.
A different laugh burst in the distance as if to answer his. But then it grew cacophonous and familiar, and his heart sank.
Agatha.
Fuck.
He froze, suddenly aware of how exposed he was in the creek bed. They were getting closer, and he knew if he ran now, he would be caught out. He crept along the bed, searching for some break to hide behind. He looked down, seeking patches of mud that would make for silent steps. He’d have to hope she wasn’t looking for footprints.
He heard the laugh again, nearer, getting nearer still.
She was talking to someone. The hunters all worked in pairs as a safety precaution for all parties. Everyone would be witnessed.
They were very close.
He saw a hollow in an old tree stump that held a deep shadow. He squatted into it and held his breath.
“And I says to her, ‘What’s the bloody point of that?’ And the little twat says to me, ‘It’s a bridesmaid dress,’” Agatha said, her voice going squeaky to mock the offending Maid of Honor.
Agatha’s companion, a waifish younger girl named Cammy gave a snort of laughter. “And what did you say to her?”
“I’ll tell you what I said. I said, ‘I know it’s a bridesmaid’s dress. Who’ll be bloody wearing the wee thing? Because it sure as fuck won’t fit me, it’s a bloody size four!’”
The two of them devolved into gales of laughter that Gary thought must have been audible in New Jersey, more than loud enough to conceal any sound of his breathing or shifting of his feet in the tree stump. He caught just a sliver of a glimpse of them as they passed. Cammy was in Army boots and cargo shorts with a camouflage bikini top that exposed her perfect 20-something midriff. She wore her long blonde hair in braids, topped by a red beret that made Gary think she was doing the Cammy character from the Street Fighter video game.
Agatha was wearing black leather boots with low soles, black nylon leggings and a tweed jacket that, when buttoned, collaborated with her shirt’s plunging neckline to push her ample breasts up into a sumptuous décolletage. Agatha had not one but two whips hanging on her belt, along with a set of leather manacles, all done in matching red and black leather. One whip was a truly savage-looking leather quirt that terrified him, but the second one, a wickedly short flogger made of a supple thin grain leather, scared Gary even more. It was the length of flogger that was usually reserved for striking penises. For a moment, the thought of a woman who had the wherewithal to acquire these toys feathered a raw nerve in his mind. The short flogger is not a casual length. The quirt was something only a skilled practitioner would seek out. Did the matched colors mean they were bespoke?
A giddy thrill flowered in him. Then Agatha laughed that loud, drunken sailor guffaw of hers, and the thrill died on the vine.
He waited several minutes to be sure they were far away and then decamped from his shadow and crept deeper into the Queen’s Wood.
Still want More Captive Weekend? Here’s a link to a page with everything about the book. All promos, samples and images, there’s even one or two secret exclusives. Enjoy!
