Victor or Vanquished of the Vees

I've categorized the following story as Exhibitionist & Voyeur, but you should know that the protagonist is mostly reluctant and feels humiliated as she finds herself in an increasingly vulnerable situation. There is unwanted touching, but it is always within the protagonist's power to make it stop. There is no physical forcing, but there are a couple of people who are manipulative and mean. If you're looking for explicit sex, this probably isn't the story for you. If none of that deters you, I hope you enjoy the story.

All characters are 18+

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When we set out to ride, I thought that just maybe, I'd landed in the perfect community for me.

There were 23 of us and we were doing my favorite thing in the world: mountain biking. I'd joined them for a few group rides. There was a broad range of ages and abilities in the group. I knew that I was among the best riders, if not THE best, but unlike when I'd been riding on the team in college, this felt like a community of friends so those of us at the front stopped and relaxed while the others caught up.

I'd discovered the group rides on the club website, which I sought out as soon as I moved to town for my new job.

It was late morning Saturday. The plan, like every Saturday, was to ride for a few hours and then end up at Simon's mid-afternoon for pizza and beer. Simon lived next to the park. He had a couple of house mates, they had a nice big place and he'd made a trail down from the main trail system that terminated right in his back yard.

Sherry, me and five guys took the lead and, after we'd done one big climb followed by a gnarly descent back to the lower trails, we stopped and waited for the others. About half of the others took the same route, just more slowly, and the other half took an easier route.

I was wearing my favorite riding jersey. The one I'd had custom made before graduation with my 2 best riding buddies from my college team. Their custom jerseys had read 'Slammin' Sam' and 'Pat the Brat'. Mine read 'Juicy Lucy.'

"Damn, girl, you haven't been lying, you've got some skills!" Martin said with obvious, grudging respect.

I grinned and took a bite out of a bar. I'd had no trouble keeping up with the lead group. I say that Martin's respect was grudging because I may have done a little bit of trash talking, pointing out that I was younger, faster on the climbs, faster on the descents, more stylish. I'm not the kind of person that likes to put other people down, I'm just awkward and have never been much good at having normal conversations with people. This group had been riding together for years, so there was a lot of good-natured teasing and trash talking between them. As the newbie to the group trash talking seemed an easy way to fit in.

"You around for the ride next Saturday?" Martin asked me.

"Sure," I said.

I was 22, fresh out of college, in a new town where I knew nobody and in a brand new job. Even though they were all older than me, I wanted them to like me.

"Well," Martin said, "I guess we'll get to see what you're really made of next weekend, when we do the Five Vees."

I was fairly sure the guys all liked me, but I didn't know if it was just because I'm a fit 22-year-old with a pretty face. I hadn't quite figured Sherry out yet. Being the best female rider, she was the alpha female and I sensed that she knew I was a better rider than her. I was also younger and prettier.

"You're not seriously going to tell her to compete in 'Victor or Vanquished of the Vees', are you?" Simon asked Martin. "Give her a break, dude. She's new and she's never even ridden it before."

"You've got to admit, she's got the stamina and the skills to be a contender," Martin said.

"What's 'Victor or Vanquished of the Vees?" I asked. I'd heard about the Five Vees trail. It was a notorious series of five technical climbs and descents that ran through the park. It was a big park and there were still lots of trails that I hadn't been on yet.

Sherry answered. "Every year around this time, we ride the Five Vees and the best riders compete to see who is the Victor and who is the Vanquished. Each rider that agrees to do the competition has a GPS watch and gets their time for each section on a GPS exercise tracking app. A few other club members leapfrog ahead and wait at the end of each climb and descent to collect times. There's five descents and five climbs, so 10 timed sections one after the other. We wait until all competitors finish each section, then start the next one with 30 seconds between each start to avoid too much passing. The person who finishes the most sections fastest wins and the person who finishes the most sections slowest loses."

"Victor or Vanquished!" Martin exclaimed. "The winner and loser get to be the feature photo on our website for the next year.

The picture on the club website currently had Simon holding a beer and Luke, who was the pudgiest looking of our lead group, standing in his boxers. Pudgy was relative. Luke was still fit and looked good in the photo, he was just pudgier than Simon. In the photo, they both had helmets on, but Luke had bare feet. They were both pretty dirty.

"So the loser has to strip to their underwear?" I asked, hoping desperately that they couldn't see me blushing.

"Not quite," Sherry explained. "Each time you have the slowest time on a section, you lose one piece of clothing. If the loser ends up completely naked, which happens every few years, they stand behind their bike for the website photo, it never shows any naughty bits. Sometimes 2 people end up naked or partially naked, but only one rider is ever declared the Victor and only one rider is declared the Vanquished, and they're the two that go in the photo."

"Have you ever done it?" I asked Sherry.

"Every year since I joined V-TRACS nine years ago," she replied proudly. V-TRACS was the acronym for the local cycling club. "I was thinking of skipping it this year. I'm 36 and I've had to ride into Simon's backyard with bare tits the last two times."

She watched my eyes go wide, smiled, then added, "it's time for a younger, perkier pair."

"You've got great tits, Sher!" Martin said enthusiastically, "and I was so hoping to finally get to see your bare ass this year."

"You've shown everyone your bare ass enough for the both of us!" Sherry shot back and everyone laughed.

"So how about it Juicy Lucy?" Luke asked. "We need at least one girl in the competition to keep everyone interested."

"If you sign on," Martin added, "I can guarantee that there will be a LOT of interest." This got everyone laughing again.

I'd discovered mountain biking in my last year of high school. I then spent my four years in college on the mountain biking team. We'd placed really well in several national cross-country competitions. I'm fit and I now have some serious biking skills. In high school, I was a plain Jane who neither wanted nor received much attention from boys. That changed by the end of my second year of college when I started to look fit, I made an effort to look pretty, and being 5'4" with B-cups meshed with the girl-power fun-bike-chick image that I wanted to project. That led to me finally losing my virginity, and three short, awkward relationships before I graduated.

I wasn't even comfortable referring to my private parts with common slang. I still preferred 'boobs' and 'bum' over 'tits' and 'ass'. I referred to my 'kitty' because it sounded less crass to me than 'pussy' for some reason. Being in public even in my underwear was completely foreign and scary to me. Being totally naked in public was not something I'd even contemplate. There was no way I'd take that kind of risk unless I knew that I couldn't lose.

"Who would I be competing against?" I asked, tentatively.

"That would be everyone you see here, minus Sher I guess, if she really doesn't want to do it again," Simon said. "Terence and Peter may join us."

I didn't know who Terence and Peter were. If I understood correctly, what I was being asked to do would involve me, the only girl, and 5-7 guys competing on the trails for clothes, with the risk of having to ride into Simon's back yard naked to a waiting crowd of enthusiastic V-TRACS members.

It felt lousy to say no. I was shy and had never been good at making social connections. I felt like I was starting to fit in with this group and saying yes would have boosted the self-image that I was working on. However, not having to get totally naked in front of people was a bigger priority. The very idea of it gave me a flash of fear-charged adrenaline. "I think I'll wait until next year," I said. "I haven't even ridden the Five Vees yet and you guys ride it all the time."

"Oh come on," Martin said, "after all that trash talk you've been throwing down? I think you need to step up. You were, like, vying for a spot on the Olympic team, weren't you?"

I blushed. I wasn't the youngest member of V-TRACS and I wasn't even the youngest one on the ride that day, but I was 8 years younger than Simon, who was the next youngest rider in the lead group and both Ed and Neil were in their mid forties. Martin was almost 40 and I think Luke was 37. I could do all the climbs as fast as any of them, just because I was fit, but my lack of familiarity with the trail would be a big disadvantage on the descents.

"You can ride the trail every day this week after you finish work," Sherry said to me, "you're a better rider than I've ever been and, whereas I've got a snapshot of the junk of every one of these drooling amateurs other than Simon, I've managed to protect my lady parts year after year."

I decided that Sherry was my new hero. I desperately wanted to say yes, but even if the risk was small, the consequences of losing were way too big. I knew that it was a BAD idea.

The rest of the riders had been arriving for a while and having their own conversations. We'd be setting off again soon.

"I have to ride the trail before I decide," I said.

"Ride it tomorrow and let us know," Simon said. "I want to send out an announcement of who'll be in the competition."

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"Don't do it unless you're really comfortable being naked," Laura said when we finished the Saturday ride and we were hanging out at Simon's. Laura was a good rider, but not as fast as the lead group. Everyone loved Laura.

They'd just finished explaining the rules. The rules for the Victor were simple. Win and you drink for free whenever you're out with V-TRACS members for one month. That was a pretty good incentive. I wasn't a big drinker, but I had big college debts to pay off, so I had almost no spending money.

The rules for the Vanquished were more complicated. The main thing was that, when you got the slowest time on a section, you lost a piece of clothing. The order of removal was shirt, shorts, bra (girls had to have one additional slowest time to be Completely Vanquished) and undies. To be Completely Vanquished, you had to have two more slowest times to lose your shoes (and socks) and your helmet (and any other armour, glasses and gloves). Because you needed shoes and a helmet to ride, you didn't have to give them up until you arrived in Simon's back yard. If you didn't lose everything, you could swap your helmet and/or shoes for underwear right away.

Sherry explained that she had lost three sections the previous year (and the year before that). She had consequently arrived in Simon's back yard topless but gave up her helmet right away to get her bra back. Last year, Luke had lost four sections, so he'd arrived in Simon's back yard butt naked, but he had still not lost his helmet so he was able to swap it for his boxers right away.

To make this possible, the riders doing the timing collected every piece of underwear as they were lost so that they were available for the swap as soon as the rider arrived in Simon's back yard. Shirts and shorts had to be hung in a tree to be collected by a sweep.

Anyone not Completely Vanquished could get dressed when the sweep arrived back.

Being Completely Vanquished meant that you'd had the slowest time on enough sections to lose all your clothes plus your shoes and your helmet. That amounted to losing five sections for a man or six sections for a woman.

After the Five Vees ride, there was traditionally a party at Simon's place. Being Completely Vanquished also meant that you didn't get your clothes back until Simon ended the party and told everyone to go home. And you'd have to serve beer to all the other competitors for the duration. Being Completely Vanquished meant being the only one naked serving drinks to the victors at a party that could last for hours.

"I agreed to compete my first year and I lost on five sections," Laura explained. "Sher was topless when she arrived last year, but she got to put on her bra right away. Luke lost more sections than her, so he was the Vanquished and got his picture on the website.

"When I lost," she continued, "I lost overall, so I was declared the Vanquished. I rode into the back yard wearing nothing but my shoes and my helmet. I can't begin to tell you how embarrassing it was to do the last two sections and arrive back here stark naked. Thank God I wasn't Completely Vanquished, so I was able to trade my shoes for my panties right away, but there was something like 40 V-TRACS members here watching and cheering as I arrived. There were tons of photos of me totally naked. Not many people had smartphones back then, like they do today. Still, I saw a few dozen photos and I'm sure I never saw all of them. Once I had my panties on, I had to pose with Ed for the Victor and Vanquished photo. I covered my boobs so the photo would be family-friendly, and I had to hang around wearing nothing but my panties for over half an hour until the sweep arrived so I could get dressed again."

"Wow," I said, feeling suddenly much less inclined to sign up.

"Yeah," Laura said. "It was just as embarrassing as it sounds. To make matters worse, it's usually a guy that loses. We always drink a lot of beer, so we girls invariably get a bit inappropriate with our hands."

"What?" I was taken aback, "you mean you grope the poor guy's naked body?"

"Well it's just pats and pinches on their bums and the guy doesn't generally mind that much," she explained. "The point is that, when I lost, they saw it as payback time. Even though I was wearing just my panties for only a half hour, a lot of guys made a point of patting or pinching my bum. That was fourteen years ago and mountain biking has become way more popular since then. There were about 200 V-TRACS members in total back then and now there are over a thousand, so I'd imagine that there'll be a lot more handsy dudes at the party ready to greet you if you lose."

That was it! I decided to say no.

Laura must have understood the expression on my face because she said, "It sounds really bad, but just because I stepped up to compete, I was such a hero after that even though I lost. When you're in the big competitions, winning is everything, but in a community like ours, it's all about what you say yes to. Only a hero can be the Victor or the Vanquished. I got a promotion at work and I eventually married Jeff who was also competing that year. It was intensely embarrassing, but it will always be one of the most amazing experiences of my life."

"You got a promotion?" I asked.

"Yeah. I think I just projected more confidence after that. And it didn't hurt that every guy in our office saw the pictures."

"They didn't see you as some kind of crazy exhibitionist or slut?"

Laura laughed. "God no. Competing meant that I had enough confidence in my skills to put something important on the line. Taking my clothes off wasn't in any way slutty. I did it because I was a good sport about losing. Everyone knew that I had good riding skills." She shrugged. "In our club, people are encouraged to reward good character even more than they reward good riding skills." She gave me a sly smile. "I also looked really good naked back then, maybe even better than you."

Dammit! Laura had just joined Sherry on my list of personal heroes and I was back on the fence about saying yes.

"When was the last time someone was Completely Vanquished?" I asked, meaning that they lost enough sections to have to stay naked and serve drinks to the victors for the duration of the party.

"Not for several years," Laura replied, "it happens pretty much exclusively to guys though, and mainly because they only have to lose five sections to be Completely Vanquished. As a girl, you'd have to lose six sections. Actually, I've been a member for fourteen years and my loss is the closest any girl has come to being Completely Vanquished that I know of."

That made sense. If you lost all the descents but were a good climber, you'd be Completely Vanquished as a guy, but like Laura, as a girl you'd still have your helmet left to trade in to get your panties back. It would work the same if you had great descending skills but lost all the climbs.

I was great at climbing and descending and I was as fit as I'd ever been in my life, so no worries there.

What was I afraid of?

Riding into Simon's back yard wearing nothing but my shoes and my bike helmet to be greeted by dozens of horny dudes with cameras. That's what I was afraid of.

I decided to do a test ride of the Five Vees trail and decide after that.

-----

I'll admit it, I jilled off a couple of times that night. I discovered that the cocktail of fear and exhibitionism rang my bell in a way that I hadn't anticipated.

I test rode the Five Vees trail the next day. I rode it clean in less than an hour and a half. With all the stops for timing, the competition would apparently take 3-4 hours.

It was a technical trail, but nothing I couldn't handle. There was no way that I was going to lose on any of the climbs and I was pretty sure that I could avoid being slowest on the descents. That's how I felt after riding it once so I knew that if I rode it a few evenings that week after work, I'd have no problem. Judging how much older my competition was, I think I even had a chance of being the Victor. Simon was the strongest rider. If it wasn't for him, I figured it would be pretty easy.

I agonized all afternoon about the decision. I went online and searched for pictures of naked people riding bikes. If a picture or two of me naked on a bike ended up on the net, I'd be in good company.

I knew that I'd be being a prude if I said no. I also knew that my college pals would be proud of me for taking the risk and, even if I lost, they'd think a couple of topless shots of me in a bike helmet would be a hoot!

I eventually decided that I was starting a new life in a new place and I had to decide what kind of person I was going to be. I had been a wallflower in high school and I had hated it. The mountain biking team in college was where I had found my stride and this club was where I was finding my people. Who was I going to be in my newfound community?

I sent a text to Simon saying, "Yes."

I jilled off a couple more times on Sunday night.

I was buzzing with energy when I got to the office the next morning. "Hey J.L.," Stewart said from his cubicle across the aisle. "Fun weekend?"

"Yeah, how about you Stew?"

The other paralegals in the office already called me J.L. because I had a photo on my desk of me and my 2 buddies in our custom jerseys. 'Juicy Lucy' was either not considered appropriate or it was just too long, but everyone knew what J.L. stood for.

I had barely sat down at my cubicle when my boss, Mr. Taylor called me into his office.

My new job was as a paralegal at a law firm that was pretty substantial, considering it was headquartered in a town with a population of 30,000. I had taken this job, because this was the only firm that had offered to hire me and because it was in the same state where my parents lived. The firm specialized in estates, property disputes and farm holdings, so our location made sense because we were well positioned to service a lot of predominantly rural counties.