Best Enjoyed Cold

CONTENT WARNING

Please read the content warning at the start of chapter one. This story is not for the faint-hearted. This is the second of nine chapters.

"When one woman strikes at the heart of another,

she seldom misses, and the wound is invariably fatal."

From 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses' (1782) by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, French Novelist

"Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves."

Confucius (551-479 BC) Chinese Philosopher<.em>

Chapter Two: Two out of three ain't bad

Day Five

It was well before dawn in America, when the envelope was delivered to the night guards at John Cumber's gatehouse. They even signed for it. To be fair to them, there had been so many comings and goings those past few days, they couldn't be blamed too much for not getting a better identity fix on just another delivery guy.

"White, medium height, stocky, moustache, maybe thirties?"

Well, their description should maybe narrow down the suspect list to five million or so adult males!

The date was Sunday, March 4th 2007. A sleepless John Cumber was drinking coffee brought to him by Catalina, a housemaid, flicking through newspapers and unopened mail aimlessly, when he came across the hand delivered envelope.

It appeared innocuous enough, a thin brown packet of the type used by companies worldwide. 'JOHN CUMBER, PRIVATE' was all that was handwritten on it, in big, black upper case letters.

It was when he opened it that his heart stopped. There was a single 10 x 8 inches glossy photograph. It was a photo of Susan's face. She had been crying and looked terrified. He cautiously turned it over to the other side.

Dear Mr. Cumber,

Welcome to hell.

If you want to see your bitch and brats again, then follow my instructions very closely. If you disobey me, even once, you will never see them again. Never. Full stop. No negotiation.

Clear? You will be able to accuse me of many things in the coming weeks, but being unclear is not one of them.

Now, I own a lot of Cumber Corporation stock. The first rule is that I do not want the share price to fall, whatever happens. On Friday they closed at 15 dollars and 5 cents. If the price closes below 15 dollars at any time during our future 'discussions', you will lose one family member for each day that happens. So, the fourth time it happens, game over.

I suggest you use that personal fortune of yours, if the share price ever needs propping up. Buy, buy buy! as the saying goes. That's all for now. By the way, Susan sends her love. We'll be in touch again soon.

Enjoy!

X

John read through the letter so many times he lost count. At least, forty. He weighed each consonant, every word, each nuance, every phrase; 'the coming weeks', 'the first rule', 'Susan sends her love', and the signature 'X'.

The bitter coffee reacted with the ulcerous bile in his gut as he clenched and unclenched his fists. If he could have traded every damned cent of his fortune to have the fucking Mr X who had sent him this letter in the room right now, he would have shaken on the deal in a second.

He kept the letter private for an hour. It somehow made him feel closer to his family, now that he at least knew something. But, at a quarter to seven, his sweaty palm picked up the phone and dialled Walt Furness.

*** *** ***

08.00 hrs

She glanced at her watch, coordinating the time.

Then she lifted the headphones from Susan Cumber's ears.

"Depressing stuff isn't it?"

The patrician eyes looked back at her sullenly. They were watery, like peridot stones, no longer so defiant. Not beaten yet, but certainly down taking a count on the canvas.

She placed her gloved finger under Susan's elegant chin.

"Chin up, Sue. Things can get a lot worse, you know. Now, have you thought about my little question? Got an answer for me yet?"

Susan's eyes dissolved into tears.

"I'll do it. Whatever you want." A pause. "Just don't touch my children."

The Chameleon smiled inside her mask.

"Sure. That's a deal." She replied in her most soothing, reassuring tone. "But if I'm to abide by it, then I want to be certain that you're one hundred per cent clear about your side of the agreement. You will be able to accuse me of many things, Sue darling, but being unclear is not one of them. Okay?"

Susan nodded, snivelling.

"You see, it won't just be a bit of fucking, Sue. It's the whole nine yards. You've got to do everything my boys want. No saying no. Whenever and whatever they want. Any of them."

The gorgeous, pampered creamy skin scrunched in a scowl. Funny how quick the worry lines are to appear once you inject a bit of stress into a cosseted life.

"Wh ... what do you m ... mean?"

"I mean if you say no to anybody, to anything, even just once, our deal is off and Lorna and Rachel will both reap the whirlwind."

"Okay, just don't involve them. Please. That's the deal."

The Chameleon nodded reassuringly.

"Sure. You're a good mommy Sue. But another thing, some of my boys ain't gonna be happy about sharing just one middle aged hole between all of them. Not when there's young booty about."

She put her hand between Susan's thighs and eased three fingers inside her. They slid into the wetness and the message was clear.

"You like giving head? Did you blow John sometimes?"

Susan screwed her eyes shut. She gave a tiny nod.

"Excellent. Good girl, Sue. A lot, or a little?"

Susan breathed in deeply and shook her head.

"Not often, huh? You swallow?"

There was a pause before a pitiful sob broke the silence.

"I want to know, Sue. Did you swallow John's pecker snot?"

Susan whispered eventually. "Once."

The Chameleon grinned inside her mask. It was just as she hoped.

"Once in twenty five years? Right at the start, I guess. Early days, huh? And I figure that means you didn't like that taster too much, right?"

Susan sobbed quietly, shaking her head.

"Don't cry, Sue. Heck, I don't much like the stuff either!"

She looked down at her three fingers, soiled with rape juice.

"I wonder if Lorna likes the taste. I reckon she must have already tried blowing Gene, don't you?"

Susan's eyes opened and she blinked back tears.

"Pl ... please ..."

"Let's change the subject. How about the asshole, Sue? I've got a few butthole addicts on my team. You occasionally let John in your backdoor?"

Susan simply stared at her. She shook her head from side to side.

"No? Not once? Oh fuck. My boys are gonna love that."

Susan squinted, her eyes clearly searching for mercy, but finding none.

"There are twenty of my boys in all, Sue. You've only met twelve of them so far. One of them is gay but the other nineteen are good, horny heterosexual brutes. Two-three-times-a-day guys. What's that? Fifty, sixty loads a day?"

She held up sticky fingers as if she was using them to count.

"And one final thing, you've got to be real enthusiastic. Maybe some guys like it when a woman just lies there, but mine will want to see some real gusto. Tongue-kissing, trash talk, raw enthusiasm. And you'll say yes to any kinky suggestions they have too. You got all that?"

Susan Cumber shut her green eyes again and her jaw line froze.

"Yes ... I understand."

"Well, that's settled then. I guess your baby girls are going to be real chuffed to be spared having to take their share of the loads." She chuckled at her own pun.

Susan's eyes blinked open fiercely.

"Now I get my say."

Stupid bitch. As if she had anything to negotiate with.

"What?"

"I want to see my children. I need to know they're safe.".

"Sure you can. But not just yet."

"Why not?"

"Because I fucking say so."

Susan paused, evidently gauging how far to push it.

"When?"

"A few days, if you keep up your side of the deal."

Susan's tearstained eyes studied her. The mask helped. Not only for scaring the shit out of them and for hiding her identity a while.

No, it helped when the Chameleon needed to lie as well.

"Okay." Susan capitulated. "Just don't touch any of them in the meantime".

*** *** ***

08.00 hrs

At exactly eight, Lorna Jackson Cumber, woke and screamed at the dreadful apparition.

Somebody had walked into her cell. The person was wearing a facemask. It was a dreadful blue-green rubber hood in the shape of a lizard's head, with eyeholes, nostrils and a mouth slit, like something out of an old horror movie.

She swallowed her screams and begged. "Please, nooooo!"

Everything ached. Her calves above all, but her feet, ankles, thighs, back, neck and arms throbbed with agonising pain from spending all night standing up.

"Please," she repeated, "whoever you are."

"Shut up, bitch."

It was a man's voice. Harsh, flat with no immediately distinguishable accent. It might have been American, Canadian, Australian, British, even a fluent English speaker from another country. The sound was somehow expressionless, hollow and ruthlessly professional.

His hands reached out and seized the cleavage of her wedding dress. With barely a pause, he tore the silk and lace creation off her shoulders and down the middle from her chest to her waist, and rent it asunder.

She screamed again. Despite her shock and fear - sick to her stomach - Lorna was awake enough, and clear headed enough, to know she was about to be raped. Guys didn't shred dresses if they took no for an answer. She wasn't a virgin. Not quite. She would rather have sex with somebody than die. But she couldn't just accept it.

His hands pulled and ripped every last piece from her body until she stood in just her matching white panties and bra. She couldn't fight him. She couldn't move. So she tried words.

"Look, Mister, it doesn't have to be this way. I ..."

She winced as her bra was brutally pulled away from her breasts until it tore the clasp at the back, the spaghetti hoops over her shoulders ripped and the whole thing fell away, leaving her topless.

Before she could compute that indignity, he did the same thing to her lace trimmed pants, ripping so that the delicate material exploded in his grip.

She stood naked. Shock, shame and dread coursed through her.

Finally, he paused, dropping the remaining shreds of her underwear, stepping back to admire her body.

She could see his ebony pupils moving in the eyeholes, appraising her. He looked up and down her body, lingering between her legs and on her breasts and face.

And then he started to unbuckle his belt.

"Please," she attempted one last time, "look, at least let me off this wall."

He didn't even undress properly. He just dropped his pants to his ankles. His body looked hard, older but without an ounce of fat, and there was a jagged purple scar that looked like an old bullet wound in his right hip. His penis was hard and purple too, jutting upwards towards her.

"No!" she howled, starting to cry, flexing her helpless fingers.

He hunkered down in front of her, so that his erection was the correct height between her spread thighs. She was bone dry but that didn't seem to concern him in the slightest.

He spat through the mouth flap onto his fingers and roughly manipulated her arid labia apart. She felt him wetting her inside and out, raising his hand to his mouth again to add a second dollop of saliva, smearing it into her.

Then he simply forced his penis up into her in a single thrust.

"Noooo ..." She gasped, incapable of finding the energy to scream.

She was helpless, unable to move more than an inch or two in any direction. Like a stuck butterfly. She had no choice but to stand there and take it, up against the wall.

About ten years before, at high school, Lorna's class had attended a lecture about date rape. The memory flooded back to her now, the sunshine streaming through the classroom windows, her teenage friends' morbidly fascinated faces, the homely woman who had come to give them the lecture, and the sexy male assistant who had provided them hints on self defence.

But this was something quite different.

She turned her face to the side, away from his rubber mask and tobacco breath, her wracking sobs and his manic thrusts making it difficult for her to breathe.

She knew behind her back she'd been known as Cocktease Cumber since high school. Boys had accused her of leading them on. It was only Gene -- dear, gentle Gene -- who hadn't simply expected her to open her legs just because he wanted sex.

At last, she felt a small amount of lubrication as her vagina produced some moisture in self defence. She didn't know whether to feel relief because it made the rape hurt less, or shame because her body had responded in some way. He was bigger than Gene, the only penis she had known up to then. He was discernibly thicker and longer and devoid of any care or finesse.

And then suddenly it was over. He groaned and humped without much apparent enjoyment and she felt him twitching in orgasm and then the hot savage wetness of his invasion of her insides.

He pulled out and took a step back. She she saw a big teardrop of semen still dangling from the tip of his penis.

"You bastard." She muttered, her defeat turning to anger.

He chuckled coldly behind his horrendous lizard mask. He picked up a shard of her wedding dress and used it crudely to wipe his groin, then tugged his pants back up. He stepped forward and cupped her cheek in his palm, gently but with menace.

"Get used to it, cum dump. Trust me, there's plenty more where that came from."

And his words were worse than the rape itself.

The sudden realisation of the inevitable. She had no idea where she was, where Gene, Mom, Ryan or Rachel were, or even what really had happened to them all; whether this man was just acting alone, or how many of them there were.

But what she did know was that she was now 'in play'; game on.

"Pl ... please," she turned her head to face him, "who are you? At least tell me that."

"Sure." He paused, checking his watch.

She waited helplessly while he ran his rough hand down her neck, between her breasts, over her belly, and finally between her legs, as if admiring the load he'd just dumped inside her. His pupils stared back through the eye slits.

"I'm the Chameleon."

*** *** ***

Day Five

It was later on Sunday morning when the first journalist called him.

"John?"

The guy was one of John Cumber's close contacts, a top financial reporter to whom he had given his private cell, somebody he could trust.

"Hi, Dan." He replied.

"John. I hate to do this to you. I know what you must be going through. But there's a rumour sweeping the chat rooms and streets that you're going to announce your resignation first thing tomorrow morning because of what's happened."

"Let me stop you there, Dan. That's baloney. I wouldn't let any fuckwits beat me. Sure I'm taking some time out, but resign? Hey, no way."

"Well that's just what I thought, John. But this rumour's got some traction. I'm also hearing that some funds are going to lighten their holdings tomorrow. There are a few big sell orders of Cumber stock being placed in Asia for opening tomorrow."

John exhaled, controlling his breathing, gripping the phone tight. A few days earlier the Dow had fallen 3.3% on one day and the markets were still jittery. That 415 point drop on February 27th had been triggered by a global sell-off of Chinese stocks.

"Dan, you gotta do something for me. The whole thing's baloney. I can't explain now but I think this must be some kind of scam linked to the kidnapping of my family. So, you can call back your own contacts and your fund manager friends and tell them all that, not only do I deny it, but I will never again deal with anybody who unloads Cumber stock at this time."

"Whoa, my friend. Cool it. I'm sure it won't be that bad. I'm just warning you something's out there. I'll make some calls but I can't promise anything."

"Okay, thanks, Dan. Keep in touch."

He punched the red phone icon with his thumb and stared out of the window.

Now things were starting to make some sense.

*** *** ***

16.30 hrs

In the large courtyard round the swimming pool, it was like a scene from a movie.

Most of the mercenaries had spent the day lounging on sun beds, listening to their music, drinking mint tea or coffee, reading magazines, tanning themselves. Yet even in the safety of this place, two guards were constantly on duty, scanning the sophisticated detection equipment, the skies and the horizon, for signs of unmanned drones or human activity.

They were a tough bunch, reputedly the best. Officially known in the Underworld as 'Squad 105'. An international team of men who had fought and killed side-by-side in many of the world's harshest places; in Eastern Europe, across Asia, throughout Africa, down Central and South America.

Of course, they had real names. And a plethora of valid passports from different countries. But each member of Squad 105 also had a codename. Amongst themselves, they knew each other as 'The Reptiles'.

Until then, 'embarrassment' to Susan Cumber would have been arriving at a charity dinner and finding another woman wearing the same designer dress. 'Shame' was one of your children not top scoring at school. She had led a charmed life.

But now, she was working the line of sun beds, like a beach bum at a seaside resort, fetching and carrying drinks, emptying ashtrays, doing whatever she was told. She was topless, naked but for a bikini bottom and little apron, scurrying hither and thither without a moment's respite.

Her skin was pink from the boiling hot sun. They'd given her some sun lotion for her face and body, except for her breasts and buttocks. They made her leave her most tender curves unprotected.

"Keep moving fast bitch , and they won't get burnt!"

But she could tell her breasts had already caught the sun. They were hot and sore to the touch.

Beads of perspiration sprouted like teardrops from her pores, running into her eyes, down her temples and into her cleavage. The cheap bikini was nylon, turquoise and too small. The fabric dug into her orifices.

When she nearly fainted, they gave her a salt tablet to swallow and a large glass of water. It was lukewarm but tasted like nectar.

As the hours passed, their demands had become more humiliating. She cringed with shame. The men wanted her to rub lotion on their backs, their chests, their feet, their faces. They were not wearing any masks and the thought troubled her.

If they didn't care about being identified, what did that mean?

The men were mostly chisel-featured with stubbly, unshaven jaws and cruel, vacant eyes. They had huge biceps, hard stomachs and honed bodies. Many had scars, or large tattoos. Some had deep suntans.

Three of them were Black, one was Indian, one Arab, one Oriental, the rest varying shades of Caucasian. She estimated their age range to be like hers, mostly in their forties, but several looked younger and one appeared to be in his sixties.

When she had started waitressing them, they were wearing swimming shorts, and a couple had khaki T-shirts too, with dark patches of sweat. Only one of them looked out of shape, a huge fat black man with a bald head and an enormous stomach that hung over his leather belt.

She winced at the realisation that he had probably been one of the men who had raped her yesterday. Susan liked to think of herself as a tolerant, modern woman. Not a racist. But she had been brought up in the South and to her the idea of African Americans and their black things was, quite literally, beyond the pale. She tried to push the awful thought from her mind.

"Come here."

She looked round and saw that one of the mercenaries had undressed. His tanned naked body glistened with oil but he had a white strip under his waistline where he had taken off his shorts.

He lay back down. He had a thick mass of pubic hair that joined up with a mat on his chest. She tried not to stare at his genitals.