Gordburg

Chapter 1-1

CREATED BY JUTOH - PLEASE REGISTER TO REMOVE THIS LINE

Chapter 1

They came around a last corner on the trail and suddenly they weren’t in the forest any more. Ron came to a stop so abruptly that Elizabeth bumped into him.

“Will you look at that!” he exclaimed, stepping aside so that she could see. Elizabeth came up alongside him and peered down the wide street. She started to laugh.

“It looks like a set for an old Western!” she said. “They could shoot a movie here. Why did they do that?”

“I have no idea,” Ron answered, shaking his head. “Remember, I’ve never been here before.”

“Well, neither have I,” Elizabeth said. She smiled. He loved it when she smiled. “I like it. It feels kind of homey to me, being from West Texas and all. You mean to say that you never heard anything about this place?”

“No,” Ron replied. “Oh, I knew that there was such a place, but the Organization doesn’t encourage a lot of talk.” He put his arm around her, which wasn’t easy since she was wearing a backpack almost as bulky as his. “We could have come here by plane or car, you know,” he said.

She leaned against him with a contented sigh. “I know,” she murmured. “But I really liked being alone in the woods, just the two of us.” She held up her hand. “I think I still have some rope marks from last night.”

Ron peered closer. The marks were very, very faint, and barely noticeable on her soft, tan skin. He’d tied her pretty tightly last night for s*x. He could still picture her magnificent body lying tautly spread eagled on the bare ground, the muscles in her arms and her long, gorgeous legs standing out as she struggled with her bonds, writhing and grunting through her gag with the effort, her knowing how much it would inflame him. The image in his mind was so vivid that for a moment he lost track of where he really was.

“Ron?” Elizabeth asked quietly.

He shook himself back to the here-and-now, feeling the warmth of her body against his, the wonderful scent of her in his nostrils. They’d been three days on a trail that they could have covered in one long day of straight hiking if they hadn’t spent so much time off of the trail and not hiking. It was a good thing that they’d packed enough provisions.

“Nothing,” he said. “I just hope that they held our reservations.”

“Well, why wouldn’t they?” Elizabeth asked. “They knew we were coming, and you told them you couldn’t be sure when we’d arrive. I’d love to see the town and everything else here.”

“Well, we have to go to something called the ‘Land Office’ first, sign in, and get the keys to our bungalow. I’m not sure where that is, so let’s find someone we can ask,”

“Yes, Master,” Elizabeth agreed with an impish smile. He smiled back at her. He hadn’t told her that she had to call him that, but it always felt good when she did. She was a beautiful, mature woman, with dark eyes and tumbling, curling dark hair, tall and strong and intelligent and confident. She knew what she liked and she knew what she wanted, and most days he couldn’t quite believe his good fortune in finding her.

“Well, let’s go find it,” he said. “The sooner we get to our bungalow the sooner we can get cleaned up.”

They entered Gordburg walking side by side. The street was wide enough for a four-lane highway, but it seemed to be made of nothing more than sand. Ron saw tracks, mostly footprints with a few hoof prints thrown into the mix and some skinny wheel tracks that couldn’t have come from anything that used tires. He wondered just how far they’d taken the Wild West motif here. Surely they had to have indoor plumbing. After three days in the woods he was pretty sure that he was getting a little ripe. The stream that they’d last washed up in hadn’t been very wide or very deep, and the water had been a little too chilly for comfort. Elizabeth hadn’t complained, though. She’d even stayed patiently on all fours on the gravelly bank while he washed her voluptuous body. He’d taken more time than was really necessary, simply because he loved the feel of her flesh under his hands. Her light tan skin always felt like warm silk to his fingertips, and the cold water had an interesting effect on her n*****s. Even when she began shivering she’d never complained, only purred or moaned when he caressed her in a place or in a manner that she especially liked. She seemed to take as much pleasure in his touch as he did. That had started him thinking back to that long week back in the city where he had spent so much time and effort and imagination at the Office trying to break her down. Nothing had worked. She’d submitted easily to everything he did to her: The enforced nudity, the rough use of her body, the public display, the rigorous training, the occasional physical punishment and finally the anal s*x. She bent whichever way he pushed her, but she never broke. It wasn’t until her time was nearly up that he’d discovered that she desperately wanted all of that. She more than wanted it, she craved it, hungered for it, as long as he was the one forcing it on her, and only him.

The discovery had awed him. At first, though, he’d thought it was only a temporary infatuation. More than one woman had fixated on him after he’d taken them captive, broken them, and trained them, but it had never lasted. It couldn’t have lasted. The Organization had very strict rules about that, rules that he’d always followed. But that last night in the Office, holding Elizabeth in his arms and listening to her pour her heart out to him, he’d suddenly realized that he wanted her and he needed her as much as she seemed to need and want him. The rules be damned. He was not going to let this woman go, as he’d let go of so many other women over the years. He’d kissed her and told her so, and shortly afterwards had turned in his resignation. They had tried very hard to get him to change his mind. He was one of their best operatives, and they clearly didn’t want to lose him. When they’d finally believed he was utterly determined, a man had suggested to him that perhaps the rules didn’t need to be quite so absolute all the time and they should all take a while to think everything over.

That was how he’d come to be here with Elizabeth. Officially he was here on what amounted to a sabbatical, his ultimate standing in limbo for the moment. The Organization was paying for their trip here, unofficially, and they were free to stay for as long as they liked. He wasn’t sure what they had in mind, but it wasn’t something he was going to spend too much time worrying about. Elizabeth had jumped at the opportunity once she’d been told something about Gordburg, and now he was here with this tall, stunning female, his female, at his side.

Elizabeth took his arm as they climbed the few steps up to the raised wooden walkway. It seemed to run for the length of the street on both sides, and for most of its length it was shaded by porch roofs that jutted out from the buildings lining the street. The first few structures they passed by seemed to be residences of some sort, with shades drawn on the small windows. Then they came to a building that looked like an office, with one big window. Gold lettering on the window read: ‘F. Thurlow, Dentist’. He peered in as they passed by, but all he saw was a young woman sitting behind a big old wooden desk, leafing through a magazine and looking bored. She wasn’t wearing whites, so he guessed that she must be a receptionist.

They came to a three-story wooden structure that advertised itself as a saloon. It certainly looked like one, complete with swinging doors and the tinkling of a piano wafting out onto the street. They went to the doorway and looked in. The interior could have served as a convincing movie set, up to but not including the patrons. The bartender appeared to be dressed in period costume, but the rest of the people in there, all men, were wearing more modern clothing, mostly jeans and work shirts. There weren’t many of them this time of day. Four men were seated around a round wooden table playing poker, with another half dozen or so seated at other tables, eating, drinking or talking. One of them caught sight of Ron and Elizabeth standing there and forgot all about his companion who turned to look to see what had distracted him. He promptly forgot all about his companion in turn.

Ron could imagine why they were staring. He stood well over six feet tall, and in her hiking boots Elizabeth was just a tad over six feet herself. She was wearing snug jeans and a tight black t-shirt today. The swinging doors would block their view of her from the hips up, so all they would see would be those long, long legs and her face, with those high cheekbones, full lips and flashing eyes, framed in a tumbled mass of dark hair. He knew that those men were looking at her so intently that if they were asked to describe the tall, muscular black man standing next to her later they would probably be unable to. Hell, some of them probably wouldn’t even remember that he’d been there at all.

“Do you want to go in?” he asked. She looked up at him.

“Not right now,” she replied. “Unless you want to.”

He chuckled. “I think we can wait,” he said. “We still have to find the Land Office.”

They continued walking along the raised wooden sidewalks. Every so often there would be a gap that might be an alley or side street between buildings and they’d have to descend to the sandy street and climb up another set of steps on the other side. Elizabeth suddenly came to a dead stop as she spied something off to their left. Her eyes widened.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Look!” she exclaimed, pointing. He turned to look and found that they were opposite a very wide side street on the other side of the main thoroughfare. The side street might be wide, but it wasn’t very long. It ran for about half a city block and ended in front of a huge barnlike building sitting sideways to it. There was a set of big double doors standing open, but the distance was too great and the interior of the building too dim for him to make out any details. It was impossible not to make out the big, painted wooden sign that hung over the doors though. It read ‘Slave Market’ in lettering right out of a Western. He could see a couple of men standing just inside the doorway. They seemed to be engaged in a lively discussion. One of the men held the end of a rope in his hand. The other end was looped around the neck of a naked young woman who kept nervously shifting her weight from one foot to the other and looking around as if she was worried about how many people might see her like this. Her hands were tied behind her, or she’d surely be trying to cover herself with them. Elizabeth gripped his arm a little tighter and pressed herself against him so that he could feel the yielding warmth of her breast pressed against his biceps.

“Just look at that!” she said in a hushed voice. “I wonder what it’s like inside?”

“We could go and have a look,” Ron suggested.

“Oh, no!” she shook her head. “I’m all dirty and stinky and tired and my hair’s a mess! Let’s go and get settled in first, get all cleaned up, and then maybe have a hot meal. We can take a tour of that place later.”

“Nonsense,” he chuckled. “You look beautiful.” Her long hair was a bit tousled and tangled, but as far as he was concerned that only made her all the more attractive. As for the dirty and stinky part, he was sure that he had a better claim to the title than she did, but there was no doubt that she was probably tired. He knew that he was, and after living so much of her adult life in cities, the outdoor life had to be even more wearing on her, no matter how eagerly she’d returned to it with him.