. 06: Captured

When Fiona came down to the shore, Andrew was sitting on a rock, hidden in the deep shade of an oak tree; she did not see him. And he, in turn, did not move, but sat quietly, watching.

She stood for a moment at the edge of the quiet tide, silhouetted against the bright reflection of the moon in the almost unrippled water; then turned back towards him, so that for a moment he thought he might have betrayed himself. She walked up the beach above the strand line, stood for a moment, shrugged, laid down her heavy bag, and let her jacket slide down her arms onto the dry sand. She lifted her nightdress over her head, and was naked. She bent, and slipped off the sandals she was wearing. She walked back down to the sea.

Andrew watched until she had waded out into the water and begun to swim. Then he slipped down the back of his rock and set a match to the tinder of the little fire he'd built behind it. He tended it for a few minutes until it was well alight. When he stepped out onto the beach, her head was a distant dot far out in the dazzle of the moonlight; he could not tell whether she was facing shore, or away.

He swiftly scooped up her bag and clothing, and took them behind the rock to his fire. Then he took off his brogues, socks, jacket and shirt, and, rather gingerly in bare feet, climbed back onto the rock.

The dot on the water was nearer in now, clearly returning. He waited until she had found her feet in the shallows, and walked down the beach to meet her. She ran into his arms.

"Should you not rather flee your Corsair, Fiona?" asked Andrew, after ruthlessly kissing her. "I had some thought of hunting you down."

"Oh! Oh yes, I should..." Fiona struggled in his arms, but he did not release her. Instead, he took her braid more firmly in his hand.

"It is too late now, Fiona. You are captured."

"Oh! Oh..." She looked at him with wide, dazed eyes. "Oh, Rhubarb."

Still holding her braid firmly, he knelt, and sucked her left breast into his mouth, tasting the salt of the ocean. He ran the fingers of his free hand through the folds of her vulvae, and found them slick.

"Rhubarb!" she whispered.

He stood again, lifting those fingers to his lips to taste her, and then holding them to hers so she too might taste.

He turned her, so that she was facing out over the moonlit loch, and pushed her forcefully, first to her knees, then to hands and knees. Kneeling behind her, he opened his trousers, took out his erection, and, pulling firmly on her braid, forced it into her.

"Oh, Corsair."

He rode her slowly at first, remaining still himself and rocking her against him by pulling on her braid. Quickly she learned what he wanted of her, and thrust herself back at him at the rhythm he set.

"Corsair... Corsair... Corsair..."

He built the rhythm faster, harder, his balls slapping against her wet clitoris with a squishy smack.

"Corsair! Corsair! Corsair!"

He let go her braid, and, grabbing her pelvis firmly in both hands, raised the speed again. Her voice broke into moaning sobs. His breath came harsh and fast. At last he pulled clear of her, and, with a strangled cry, let his seed flood and splatter across her back.

Gasping, he knelt back upon his own heels, pulling her back into his lap by her braid, pressing her semen-smeared back against his chest. Still gasping, he gripped her right breast firmly in his left hand, and, letting go the braid, parted her legs roughly with his right.

Then, with two fingers, he started to rub where, before, only she had ever rubbed. Where, before, she had not dreamed that anyone but herself might ever rub. No words came to her, only little whimpers of urgency and need. She hung slack on the arm that held her breast, all her being concentrated in that small piece of skin and flesh beneath his fingertips. She wanted to call his name. She wanted to urge him on. But she had no words, and, in a very short time, there was no need.

She shuddered, hard, clamping her thighs closed to still his hand. She started to weep in earnest.

He held her.

After a few moments, he pulled his hand free of her thighs, and started to stroke her hair.

"Are you not cold, my concubine?"

She laid her head back against his shoulder, smelling the ammoniac tang of semen, feeling its stickiness between them.

"Concubine," she breathed. "Slave girl. Possession."

He laughed, softly. "Are you not cold?"

"What?" she asked. "No. Well. Probably... It is of no moment. I am possessed; and it is only in being possessed that I realise how deeply I have desired to be possessed."

He smiled, behind her, where she could not see; yet she heard it in his voice. "I had no idea that I desired to possess, but I find that I do. And, if you are my possession, I must take care of you. So whether you will it or no, you must get warm, and dry. Up you get."

She stood, and turned to watch as he too stood, pulling up and fastening his trousers.

"Do you want to wash?" he asked.

"And lose the scent of your seed on me?" she answered. "No, I do not. Not yet. I collect the prophylactics are gone?"

"They are," he said, "and the chemist in Lochgilphead would not sell me more. But the draper sold me a towel and some blankets, and I have a fire. Come."

He held out a hand, and led her up the beach.

"My clothes are gone," she said.

"Of course. I had thought to hunt you, remember?"

"Oh, yes." She shuddered. "We must do that."

"We must, but not tonight. You have goosebumps!"

He led her round the rock, and found, to his relief, the fire was well alight and the little hollow warm. He wrapped her in a rough new towel, and held her close, untying the ribbon at the end of her braid and carefully opening out the tucks in it. She shuddered, burying her face into his bare chest.

Soon her hair was loose, and he started to comb it with his bare fingers.

"There's a brush in my bag," she said.

"And in mine. But we can leave that till the morning, yes? I want to get you dry. Then we should sleep."

She pulled her head back, and looked up at him, her expression unreadable in the shadow of the tree.

"Together?"

"Of course together, how else?"

She slumped against him, wrapping her arms around him, starting to weep again. He held her, firmly, until the sobs eased. Then he unwrapped the towel from her, and, kneeling her on the spread blankets, towelled out her hair until it was no more than damp.

He took off his trousers and underpants, lay down, pulled her down, pulled the blankets over them.

Of course, somehow, without either of them really planning it, she found herself on her back with him between her legs.

Of course, somehow, without either of them really planning it, she found him thrusting smoothly and powerfully into her depths.

"Oh, my master," she said, "oh emperor of my loins, oh violator of my womb, I beg you: do not pull out of me this time."

He stilled. Looming over her in the dark, the light of the fire flickering across his face, he said "you may fall pregnant."

"Yes," she said.

"Miss Campbell," he said, taking another long, powerful, deliberate stroke deep within her, "this afternoon, I formally asked your mother for her permission to ask for your hand."

"Oh, possessor of my heart, thief of my maidenhead, I had guessed it."

"But here in Scotland, you do not need her permission."

"Yes, my master," she said, tilting her pelvis to take him deeper, "I know."

"Miss Campbell," he said, picking up an easy rhythm, "will you marry me?"

"I hope to, Commander Smith. But I will not promise, not yet; nor will I allow you to promise. Take me. Use me, carelessly, at your pleasure, with no binding between us, no this for that, no quid pro quo, no promise, no contract. Let us have no thought for consequences."

He stilled again. "Are you sure?" he asked.

"Rhubarb," she said; and she said nothing more but "rhubarb", until, replete and semen-filled, she slept, curled within the hollow of his sleeping form.

-----

The morning sun penetrated early into their little glade. Fiona, waking, looked down on her... lover? Her possessor? Her master?

His face looked softer, younger, in sleep; she wondered to what degree coition softened him as she knew it did her. His neatly trimmed beard... she wanted to touch it, to feel its softness, yet feared to wake him.

She breathed the air, and smelt, over the faint tang of wood ash, over the rich fungal smell of the forest floor, over the iodine tang of the sea, the smell of semen; the smell of his emissions, and hers. She smiled. She could not help it.

She eased the blankets back, carefully, gently, exposing more of his muscled length, until a tiny shrunken bud in a nest of hair appeared. How could this be the scepter that governed her soul, the battering ram which breached her gates and broke down her citadel? And yet, before she even touched, it stirred. She leaned close to examine it, and it mysteriously, silently, lengthened and filled. Tentatively, with her tongue, she tasted it, and its head emerged from the suddenly stretched foreskin like a flower bursting from its bud.

Silent, shocked, she stared as it stiffened and stood, straining for something unseen...

She, afterwards, did not think she had intended to straddle him. She, afterwards, did not think she had intended to sink onto that strong shaft, sliding it smoothly, slowly, into her softness. She stared down, spellbound, at where his groin merged with hers.

And then, embarrassed, guilty, she moved quickly to lift herself, and was stilled by his hand. A sleepy eye met hers.

"My master, I am sorry! I forgot myself!"

His two hands gripped her waist, pulling her back down until she was again filled, impaled, penetrated.

"Rhubarb," he said, his voice sounding both amused and commanding. Commanding what? He started to lift her, and she knew.

She lifted herself almost until she lost him, and then lowered herself again until she grounded on his groin.

"Like this?" she asked, anxiously.

"Rhubarb!" he said.

What did he mean? What did 'rhubarb' mean? Continue? Stop? Faster? Slower? What? Wide eyed, searching his face desperately for clues, she raised again, and lowered. A flicker of a smile; a hint of a nod. More confidently, she did it again, and again.

'Rhubarb' meant what she meant by it.

'Rhubarb' meant, every permission is granted.

'Rhubarb' meant, don't think, do.

'Rhubarb' meant, don't ask, take.

'Rhubarb' meant, what feels good, is good.

And it did feel good, and she did continue to do it; but the knowledge grew in her that this wasn't what she wanted.

Embedding him deeply, she lay forward on him. She had a speech in her mind. 'Master,' she should say, 'this is not for my pleasure, but yours.' 'Conqueror,' she should say, 'this is not a relationship of equals.' 'Emperor,' she should say, 'order me to do anything, even this; use me in any way, even this way. But let it be at your will, not my will.'

She said "rhubarb," and he knew what she meant.

-----

The little car bounced tacketa-tacketa-tacketa along the track. Miss Fiona Cambell, in her jacket, in her strap sandles, in borrowed motoring goggles, with a scarf concealing her face, and with a rug across her knees, sat in the passenger seat, alongside Commander Smith, who drove. No-one but he could know that those things she'd enumerated were quite all she wore, but she knew that he knew it, and that was what mattered.

They had swum, naked, of course, together, to get clean; and then, of course, they had had coition once more. They had cooked bacon, eggs, haggis and mushrooms in a skillet over the little camp fire, and eaten them with potato scones. They had dressed; save that he'd forbidden her anything below the waist, something which at once horrified and delighted her. They'd tidied the glade and packed their things.

And they'd driven, in three short hours, further than a good horse could ride in a day. Far out across the glittering sea, flecked with a few sails and smeared with the smoke of fewer steamships, the high Paps of Jura were fading behind them; far ahead, the low grey coast of Ireland was emerging from the haze. They were almost at Muadale -- far enough, Fiona thought, that she would no longer be recognised if seen by most people.

A track opened up on their left, no different from a dozen others they'd passed, save this one looked even less used, and led up towards a pinewood on a high shoulder. Andrew turned the little car, engaged a lower gear, and they drove on - where, probably, no car had ever gone before. The coast, and the farmland, quicly dropped behind. The noises of the car masked the sounds of the wood, and a faint taint of petrol exhaust overlaid its scents. But its sights were all around her.

Amdrew's hand fell back to her knee, where it had been for much of the journey. She glanced at him, and he grinned at her, mischievously. He pulled the rug away from her, exposing her naked legs. Appalled, amused, her mouth agape, she gazed at him. He grinned back, and continued to drive.

Fiona's head was filled with conflicting, whirling thoughts. If she were to be seen - if a half naked woman were to be seen in a car with a man - she couldn't be recognised, of course, with the goggles and the scarf - but it would be talked about, and the fact that such a car had visited her father's home would be talked about, and the fact that she was missing from home might well be talked about and - and yet she felt strangely free, strangely powerful. She allowed her legs to settle further apart. And when Andrew's hand next left the wheel to settle, this time, in her groin, she shifted in her seat to allow his fingers to find her most secret place.

-----

High on the hillside, deep among the pines, the road ended in an abandoned quarry. The little car stopped, and its passengers got down. They embraced for a little, and then, after a brief, laughing tussle, the man removed the woman's jacket, leaving her naked but for the scarf which still masked her face. He took the rug, and a bag from the trunk of the car, and led the way up though the pines to a little patch of heather with wide views over the western sea; to Cara, beneath them, and Gigha, to the north, and Islay out west beyond. He spread the rug; she stretched out on it, her limbs exposed to the toasting sun, while he gathered sticks, built a little fire, filled a kettle, and prepared a luncheon of bread and cheese and ham.

She sat up; they kissed; they ate; they drank tea without milk; they talked and laughed. And suddenly she sat up straighter, at attention.

"I shall count to two hundred," he said. "Then I shall hunt you. If you hear me whistling or talking, it means I have seen someone else and you should at all counts stay hid. If you hear a brief sound of the car horn, you should return to the car. Is that clear?"

"My possessor, I am so utterly yours to command."

Naked, she slipped into the trees.

-----

It wasn't, of course, that she didn't want to be caught. She did want to be caught; she did, eagerly, desire to feel the sliding, pounding thrust of his maleness deep within her. But she knew, somewhere, instinctively, that the harder she made her capture, the harder would come his response. And she wanted it hard.

She used her first count of two hundred to run, climbing rapidly though the trees. When she had run two hundred steps she looked back, and could not see him. She slowed her pace, but kept steadily east, the sea behind her, the sun on her right shoulder. Every fifty paces she stopped, and looked back. Each pause was longer. Had she outstripped him entirely?

She stood, brazen, flagrant, naked, her back to a tree, watching down the slope, looking for movement among the trunks. A jay called high in the branches above her. A wren trilled. Further down slope, a woodpecker was hammering; and all around was the faint drone of bees. The sun did not catch her here, but the air was still surprisingly warm. Also, although it had pleased him to see her lying naked in the sunlight, she did not want her skin to burn.