Changed Girl: The Stranger

[Varian P]

Grassroots Discussion: Varian P 8/22/04

Hi everyone. Pure gave me the go-ahead to post this today. Just to introduce myself, I’m fairly new to Literotica, and to writing erotic fiction, for that matter, and I’m here to beg and plead for a bit of input on my novice effort.

I’ve been posting sequential chapters from a full-length novel I’ve written, and before I post the next chapter I’d love any feedback you may feel inspired to offer, and specifically I’d like to know your thoughts on any of the following:

1) What is your impression of Vaughn as a character? Of Devan as a character?
2) Does the characters’ budding (if somewhat demented and conflicted) mutual attraction seem believable? If not, what detracts from it?
3) Is the story pulling you along, making you want to find out what will happen between these characters? Or is it all too drawn out? Am I boring the pants off you instead of having a more pleasant effect?
4) I’m doing a lot of hinting at things that will be revealed in later chapters. Is it intriguing? Frustrating? Confusing?
5) Is it all a bit too maudlin? Things do lighten up later in the story, but are the characters wallowing too much in their melodrama in this segment?
6) And of course I mustn’t omit this important question:
Is the sex workin’ for ya?

This chapter is quite long, so if you’re not up to reading the whole thing, I’d be thrilled with a critique on part—there’s a good stopping point at the 2/3 mark. Alternatively, I’m putting the two juicier sexual scenes in blue text, and if you just want to give feedback on those, that’s fine too.

Perhaps I should warn that this chapter depicts non-consensual encounters.

Thanks!

Varian

Context:
This is the third chapter in this story. The earlier chapters (less than 1 Literotica page each, if anyone feels compelled to read from the beginning) are here:
http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=157669
http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=158298
Oops-the third chapter’s not up yet. See synopsis below.

From the previous chapters we know the following:

Devan, the heroine, has run from someone, and has been wandering lost in the woods for days. What has happened to her has been left vague, but it’s (surprise!) something sexual. Now, we're not talking brutality and rape here, but dear Devan is a tender young thing and she is, nonetheless, quite shaken up. In the most recent chapter she has stumbled upon an unoccupied cabin where she has holed up to recuperate…



Changed Girl Ch. 04: The Stranger


She felt as though she was being watched.

Toward evening, as sunlight had left the windows and abandoned her to growing dimness, she had lit the fire. When the blaze got going she sat cross-legged on the floor before the hearth, reaching out to feel the warmth with her hands, seeking the heat on her face, comforted by the dancing light. She wished there were curtains to pull over the windows, but she tried to push the feeling of being watched, of being so lit while someone could be just outside, cloaked in darkness, out of her mind.

Huddled there in her blanket, as the flaring and waning flame moved before her eyes, in her mind different images consumed her. Images and sensations from her time with him interspersed and merged with those from her dreams in the woods. His hands on her. His mouth on her. Her terror. Her longing. His tenderness and his brutality. The gentleness of his caress as he had taken the tears from her cheeks with his fingertips, the teasing lightness of those same fingertips as they had glided between her parted thighs, the heart-rending, aching closeness she had felt with him inside of her, the irrefutable fear of being in his power, the pain of his violation.

Shaking, she longed to cease this stoking of her fear. She needed something to think about, something other than this wearing anxiety, other than him. She thought of reading. Already during her convalescence there she had read two novels borrowed from the stranger’s library—The Master and Margarita—a beloved favorite, and Zola’s Therese Raquin. She stood and went to the bookshelf. She could just make out the titles on the spines.

Crime and Punishment.

She had read it before. Though she didn’t think it consciously the idea of being put in the position of the criminal appealed to her. She took her novel back with her to her spot in front of the fire, and read for hours, occasionally adding a piece of wood to the blaze.

Roskolnikov was just about to commit his brutal crime when she gave in to the distraction of her growing thirst. Emerging from her blanket cocoon she carried her empty water glass into the kitchen and turned on the tap. As she watched the turbulent rise of water in her glass, as she turned the tap off, something stirred and warned her. A sudden chill breeze. She turned.

The water glass slipped from her hands, crashing and cracking in the sink.

He was there, in the open doorway, pointing a gun at her.

“Hands up!” he said, loudly but without shouting.

He’s caught me.

But a vague realization that this was not him.

“Put your fucking hands up.”

There was a tone of disgusted loathing in his voice.

He was still in the doorway off the back porch. Looking at him she could see the front door to her right. She might, she thought, be able to make it to the door, open it, and get away before he could catch her. It did not occur to her that he might shoot her. She lunged toward the front door, clutching frantically at the deadbolt as it came within reach. It was in her hand, turning, but before she could open the door even a single, hopeful inch she felt him cage her with his arms. She was trapped between his body and the door. She froze there as he leaned into her, shrinking the cage, not touching her, but enveloping her in his heat and his smell. He whispered, his mouth so near her ear she felt his warm breath,

“You may have entered that easily, as you pleased. But you’ll leave when I choose.”

She turned her head to look over her shoulder at the man with the hot, moist, loathing voice. It wasn’t him. She ducked under his arm and ran for the back door he had left open. She was through. She kept running straight, jumping off the porch, hitting the ground, still running, socks soaking up the mud and rain.

He slammed his gun down on the counter and tore after her. He saw that he would catch her before she could reach the woods. She, putting everything into running as fast as she possibly could, heard him behind her. Closer. Closer. She strained harder, pleading with fate, pleading with her body to run fast enough to stay beyond his reach. He gained, reached out, and caught the back of her shirt in his fist, and yanked backward, pulling her off her feet. Instinctively she swung backward, hoping to hit him in the face, hoping he would lose his grip. He caught her arm in one strong hand, and grabbing her other arm with his other hand, holding her from behind he pinned her forearms to her abdomen as he wrestled her down onto her knees.

This one’s not like him. No talk, no games. He’s going to do it right here, in the mud and rain. Right now.

He was huge. She felt immaterial, weightless, formless. Her legs, bent beneath both their weight, pinned between his legs, her arms tied to her beneath his arms. He was on her, panting. She could feel him, hard, pressing into her backside. She did not cry. She did not scream.

He felt her, small, frozen, trembling beneath him. He realized that he could just fuck her, there in the mud and rain. Humiliate her. Hurt her.

That’s what she deserves.

As he held her pinned he imagined sliding her pants down, exposing her bottom, imagined her twitching helplessly as he palmed and spread her, touching the delicate flesh between, envisioned her struggling as he unbuckled his belt and opened his fly so he could pull out the erection brought on by their struggle…

Disgusted by his impulse he grabbed her by the elbows and, standing, pulled her up with him, wrenching her elbows behind her back. More violently than he had to he pushed her ahead of him, marching her back to the cabin.

As they went through the door he grabbed the gun he had left on the counter, then with his other hand shoved her away from him. He turned, locked the back door behind him, and turned back to her. He looked her over, top to bottom, his stoic face betrayed by a mouth turned down with condescending hatred. His gaze stopped to rest on her mud-soaked shins and feet.

“Take off those socks.”

After a moment of fear-induced paralysis she complied. Standing face-to-face with him her eyes confirmed what she had sensed with her body as he had caged her against the door, as he had pinned her down out in the mud. He was terribly large. Well over six feet, broad and strong. Whatever he wanted with her, he did not need a gun.

Not taking his eyes off her, using his feet, he pried his shoes off.

“And those pants.”

Almost limp with sapping fear she pulled down the sopping, muddied sweat pants, revealing the stranger’s boxers.

The man with the gun looked at her, exasperated.

“Where are your clothes?”

She had trouble finding her voice. When she spoke her words came out on a quavering little wheeze.

“In the garbage.”

“What garbage?”

“In the bathroom.”

“Go get them.”

She turned and began walking toward the bathroom. He followed her, gun hanging at his side. She went into the bathroom, stooped and pulled out the wad of clothes she had discarded two nights before.

“Forget it, put them back,” he said when he saw the state they were in.

She did as he told her.

“Come on,” he said, backing away from the bathroom door, “into the bedroom.”

That phrase, into the bedroom, sent a fresh wave of terror crashing over her, knocking the wind out of her. She came out of the bathroom and turned to enter the little bedroom. She thought hopefully of the gun hidden in the folds of the sleeping bag.

“Not that one.”

Her hope crushed she halted, changed course, and entered the stranger’s bedroom. The man with the gun began opening dresser drawers, pulling out t-shirts and sweatpants.

“Okay, back into the bathroom.”

He followed her as she walked back.

“Get in the shower.”

She complied. He pulled the shower curtain across, putting its vaguely opaque beige barrier between them.

“Take off everything you’re wearing. Start with the sweatshirt. Take it off, and hand it to me.”

When she pulled off the sweatshirt the t-shirt half came off with it. Frantically she pulled it down, even as she chided herself it was futile, knowing he would make her strip naked. At the same time in her irrational terror she was expecting him to shoot her, over and over, through the shower curtain, at any second. She handed the sweatshirt to him, sticking her arm out past the shower curtain.

“Are you wearing another shirt?”

She did not answer.

“Hand it to me.”

She peeled off the pointlessly rescued t-shirt and passed it to him.

“Now the boxers.”

She pulled them down and stepped out of them. Now that she was undressed she waited for him to fling back the shower curtain, to stare at her standing there in that tub, naked, cold, terrified. Numbly shaking she put her hand, holding the boxers, through the curtain, and felt them pulled from her grasp.

“And your bra.”

She was silent.

“Hand me your bra.”

Palpable malevolence in his quiet voice.

“I’m not wearing one.”

She said it as quietly, as quickly, as tonelessly as possible, keeping herself from him as much as she could. She would not cry. She would not cry. A moment later the dry t-shirt and sweats the man had taken from the dresser appeared through the opening in the curtain. Tentatively, she took them, then put them on.

“Are you dressed?”

When she did not answer he slowly pulled back the curtain. While she had been in the shower, he had stripped off his wet clothes and put on the other t-shirt and sweats. His wet clothes and hers lay in a heap on the floor.

“Okay, come on out.”

He backed out of the bathroom, always watching her, gun by his side.

As she reached the doorway he said,

“Into the living room.”

Then, indicating the sofa,

“Sit down.”

She sat. With his eyes on her she was conscious that she was wearing no bra under the thin t-shirt, that she was wearing nothing under the sweatpants. She felt vulnerable. Exposed. He went into the kitchen. His eyes off her for a moment, she thought of running for the door again, or for the gun hidden away in the little bedroom. From the kitchen he looked back at her. She had not moved. He took a tumbler down from a cupboard, and a bottle down from another, and half filled the glass. He walked back to the living room, sat in the armchair that was by the sofa, and took a drink.

Trembling slightly, he spoke with a strained voice.

“Now, tell me what you’re doing in my house.”

Her brain tripped.

His house.

She stared at him. His bulk. His gun. His hate.

His house.

“I asked you a fucking question.”

His voice quavering. Louder.

“Your house?” she responded, lamely, barely audibly.

“Yes. My fucking house. What are you doing here?”

Of course. How could she have failed to guess? It made sense. Much more sense than that there would be another one like him here in the same backwoods chunk of Washington...

For the first time she noticed. Mercury irises. Luminous. Toxic.

“Well…”

It was his house. He was not some serial killer rapist, he was just a guy who was pissed off, and understandably so, to find some girl squatting in his house. But her fear would not abate completely under his seething stare. It was a look that went beyond the anger of a large man who has found that a small girl has broken into his house.

“I was lost in the woods,” she stammered, “and I saw this place. I’d been in the woods for days, I was freezing and hungry. No one was home. Here. I broke in. I’m sorry.”

He looked at her skeptically. Under his scrutinizing gaze she barely believed her own story.

“You were just lost in the woods, and just stumbled upon this place?”

“Yes.”

And what were you doing in the woods?”

Because the truth was impossible she lied.

“I was camping with some friends, and I went for a walk, I got lost, I couldn’t find our campground, I just kept getting more and more lost, and I ended up here.”

“What campground?”

“I don’t remember the name of it.”

“I see.” He sounded utterly bored, as if her every utterance emerged from her mouth just as he expected it, perfectly predictable in tone and content. “Where are you from?”

“Seattle.”

“Alright. How did you get to the campground?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t driving. I wasn’t paying attention. I’m terrible with directions.”

“Clearly.”

He stared at her for a long time, whittling away the matchstick of composure she was clutching.

“What’s your name?”

“Devan Astor.”

Devanastor. Disaster. Devastator. Devastate her.

He kept her in an agony of suspense, withholding judgment. He sat there, sipping his drink, eyeing her distrustfully. Then he stood up, walked over to the wood bin, and threw two more logs onto the fire. She watched him. His body seemed to belong there, in that forest, among the great trees and boulders. It looked like it could crush her. He returned to his seat, leaned toward her and asked in a confidential tone,

“Do you know who I am?”

Startled by his change in demeanor she pressed back, back, trying to disappear into the cushions of the sofa.

“No.”

“You didn’t come here, somehow, looking for souvenirs, or hoping to see me, maybe get a photo, maybe catch me in some juicy situation?”

She just stared, her mind not tracking. Then, through the sounding alarm, prodding familiarity. His face…and now that it was on this track, her mind went back to the letters in the desk—maybe the name was familiar, too.

“Well, I’ll have a look around, and if I find anything missing, or if I find a camera of yours stashed away, you and I will have another talk.”

“There’s no camera. And I didn’t take anything,” she said, thinking of souvenir-like things.

Then she remembered the pack filled with provisions. And the gun. He would find them.

“I mean, I didn’t mean to steal from you. I just wanted to get home somehow, to hike out of here. I packed some supplies.”

“Supplies?”

“I found a pack in your closet, I filled it with food and stuff. I was going to leave in the morning.”

“Leave? To go where?”

“To try to find my way to a town or something.”

“Show me. Get the bag.”

She stood and walked back toward the little bedroom. He followed her, drink in one hand, gun in the other. She went to the corner where she had left the pack. She stared down at it, considering the gun tucked away deep in the rolled folds of the sleeping bag. What would she do if she grabbed it? Shoot him? Force him to put his gun down? Tie him up? If this was really his house and she shot him, she would have murdered him. More likely, he would see her pull the gun out from the bag and shoot her. She set the sleeping bag on the floor and lifted the pack.

“Bring it out here.”

They returned to their seats in the living room.

“Open it up.”

She uncinched the pack and began pulling out the supplies she’s stashed inside: cans of food, clothes, matches, knives. He raised the gun and pointed it at her face.

“Put those down.”

She set the two knives, the big one and the little one, on the floor between them. She sat back up, then stayed still. He stooped, grabbed the knives, then took them into the kitchen, stashing them in a drawer. He went back to his seat, then, keeping the gun on her, reached over and pulled the pack away from her. He pulled out the remaining supplies and the books she had packed: A Light in August and The Stranger.

He looked at her consideringly, then laughed a low growling laugh.

“You can’t ‘hike’ out of here.

“What do you mean? How’d you get here?”

“Helicopter.”

She was incredulous.

“What do you mean, a helicopter? I didn’t hear a helicopter.”

“No. I was dropped off about three miles west of here. The topography makes it impossible to drive in or to hike, at least without repelling gear. That’s why I built here.”

He’d finished in the tone of a summation, as if he had offered an irrefutable proof against the legitimacy of her story. But it was her turn to be skeptical. His talk of helicopters and his fear of her being there to spy on him and steal souvenirs seemed like megalomaniacal fantasy. She remembered, though, that going over a waterfall had been part of her journey to this place. Perhaps what he was saying was true.

“Who are you?”

Her question, whispered so softly, in a voice that seemed laden with fear, struck him as sincere. Still suspicious, he answered, “Vaughn Doe.”

“Vaughn Doe?”

It was the name she had seen on the envelopes, but she still did not know who he was. He smiled, sarcastically, as if he were indulging her in a duplicitous game.

“Yes, Vaughn Doe. Lead singer of Halcyon.”

“Oh.”

She was trying to access her memories of the few music videos she had seen in the last couple of years. She had heard their music, but had only a hazy image of the lead singer to recall. The man with the gun stood, went to a trunk by the bookshelf, opened it, and pulled out a CD case. He came back and held it out to her. She took it and examined it. There was the man with the gun, standing next to three other guys in predictable album cover choreography. His huge frame, his dark hair, his strange, light-filled, mirror-like irises.

“So that’s you. You really thought I broke in here like some kind of insane groupie.”

“I still do.”

He was looking at her like he might be trying to incinerate her with his strangely glinting eyes. Burn her up like a loathsome insect under a magnifying glass. His hateful stare and the chill air were pricking her flesh, raising goose bumps on her bare forearms and down her neck and back. Under his eyes she felt naked. She wanted desperately to cross her arms over her chest, cover her breasts that felt so exposed under nothing but his thin t-shirt. So aware of them she felt he had to be aware of them, too. But, determined not to draw his attention to her discomfort, to her awareness of her vulnerability, she rubbed her hands up and down her arms, trying to chafe off the cold of the air and his stare.

“What about the pack? Why would I steal your backpack, sleeping bag, and twenty pounds of canned goods, and nothing else?”

“Maybe you put that together so you could give me the hiker lost in the woods sob story.”

A malicious look came over his face.

“Maybe,” he pushed her knees apart and leaned in until his face was just an inch from hers, “you thought you’d get a shag with a rock star out of your poor, lost little girl drama.”

His heat settled on her skin, his hot breath caressed her lips. Her legs locked open by his fierce prying. His jaw flexed and she felt he might be a man about to rape her or some other animal after her throat. He might bolt her down, a mastiff on raw meat. Possibly it was some pulverizing machine about to grind over her. She had turned white. Her eyes welled with tears that did not spill. She was shaking.

Seeing her terror he recoiled from her.

“Or maybe I’ve lost my mind,” he said, barely audibly.

He stood.

“You’re cold.”

He said it awkwardly, absentmindedly, as if other words had been taking shape in his mouth. He stalked away to his bedroom and came back with a sweatshirt. He held it out to her, and warily she reached out to take it from him.

“I’m sorry. Look, I know I’m acting like a maniac, but you broke into my house. It’s impossible for me to buy this implausible story of yours. I can’t trust you. But I don’t want to hurt you.” Then, as much to himself as to her, “I’m not going to hurt you.” After a long silence he added, “You really can’t hike out. Not only would you not be able to get anywhere, it’s dangerous in the woods—bears, wolves, cougars. You can stay here.”

He pulled the clip out of his gun and emptied it of shells.

“I’m going to put this away, so you can stop being terrified of me, and because I just don’t feel comfortable walking around with a loaded gun. But I promise, if you try to fuck with me in any way, I’m capable of killing you with my bare hands.”

This line, which smacked of trite male bravado and which would have made her laugh two weeks earlier, now filled her with real fear. He stood up, went to the kitchen and refilled his drink.

“Want one?” he called to her.

When she did not reply he looked her way and she shook her head “no.” But then she realized how thirsty she was.

“May I have a glass of water?”

“Of course.”

His annoyance at such a request after she had been making herself at home there for days was manifest in the tone of his voice.

“You know where everything is, I suppose.”

He sounded as though he were speaking through clenched teeth.

She went into the kitchen and got herself a glass from the cupboard. As she turned to fill it from the tap she saw the broken glass she had dropped when she had seen him at the door. Vaughn finished pouring his drink, and was walking toward the freezer to get some ice when he stopped suddenly. A vague cold fear crept over him. He set his glass on the counter.

“Devan...”

“What?”

“Devan, what happened to your back?”

It had been hurting her, but so had a dozen other parts of her body.

“I don’t know. I mean, I scraped in when I was in the river. Why?”

“Take off the sweatshirt.”

She was confused. At those words she forgot they were talking about something that had happened to her back. All she processed was that he was telling her to take off something she was wearing—telling her to undress.

“You’re bleeding. I’ll show you. Wait, just hold still. Let me do it.”

She stepped back, startled. She trembled with renewed fear as, calmly, he took her hands as they were clutching the zipper, and drew them gently down to her sides. He unzipped the shirt, then pulled it carefully down over her shoulders and off her arms. He held it up before her. A vivid red had seeped through the thick white fabric. She was surprised. He was alarmed and a little queasy. He was afraid he had done something to her.

“Come on, let’s have a look at it,” he said, taking her to the dining table.

He sat her down on one of the wooden chairs, then disappeared into the bathroom. He came back with a first aid box and a washcloth. He went to the kitchen and took a large bowl from a cupboard, and filled it with warm water. Taking a chair and pulling up behind her, he lifted the back of the tee. She flinched, then froze, promising herself again and again that he was helping her. He pulled the hem of the shirt up, peering under the fabric. The wound was high up between her shoulder blades. It looked bad. Blood was oozing over the already caked-on blood.

“I can’t get to it like this. I need to take your shirt off so I can see what’s going on. Here, bend your arms at the elbows”

“What?”

“I can pull the sleeves over your arms like that, so you don’t move the muscles around your back too much.”

She said nothing, but crossed her arms defensively across her chest. Upon seeing that she was hurt he had put all thought of their antagonism from his mind, but she was drowning in a new deluge of fear.

“Devan?”

She was silent.

“Devan, come on, we need to get this washed up and bandaged. Hopefully you don’t need stitches.”

In a quavering voice she answered.

“I don’t want you to take my shirt off.”

He touched her shoulder. She was strangely rigid. Her fear surprised and confused him. He sat quietly for a moment, thinking.

“Alright, I have an idea.”

He dashed down the hall and came back with a large pair of scissors. He showed her.

“How about if I cut the shirt up the back, so I can see? Would that be OK?”

She gravely nodded her assent. He moved back behind her with the scissors, and starting at the bottom of the shirt, began cutting up the middle, until he cut through the ribbed collar. Setting the scissors down he pulled the two flaps of cotton cloth to the side, exposing her narrow back and the bloody wound.

“I’m just going to wash the wound first, so I can see how bad it is.”

He dipped the washcloth into the bowl of water, and very gently began to wash her back. At first he worked around the wound, cleaning the undamaged skin, repeatedly rinsing the washcloth in the bowl, then bringing the warm cloth back to her. Then, carefully, he applied the cloth to the wound itself, just pressing it there and lifting it, trying not to hurt her. She was only dimly aware of the pain. She was more acutely aware that she was so precariously covered, that one move from this man who had been threatening her just a short time earlier could leave her exposed.

But he was diligently and carefully applying the washcloth, turning the water in the bowl a darker and darker shade of red. Then he opened the metal tool box filled with first aid supplies. He pulled out a big roll of gauze, cut off a strip, and balled it up. Onto the gauze he poured peroxide.

“I’m afraid this is going to hurt.”

Determinedly pressed it to the wound. She caught her breath, and felt the blood rush to her face.

“It’s pretty deep, but I’m going to try just taping it—hopefully that will work. We should check it a couple times a day to see if it’s closing up, and to make sure it doesn’t get infected.”

He bandaged her up, then told her to sit tight while he went and got something. He came back with another t-shirt and another zip-up sweatshirt. There appeared to be an endless supply of such garments. He pulled his chair around in front of her, and sat down. She was still clutching the front of her shirt, her arms convulsively tight against her chest. She did not want to look at his face, and she stared into a space somewhere to the left of his head.

“I know,” he began, softly and slowly, “that I frightened you. I know that I was rough with you, and maybe it’s even my fault you were bleeding like that. And I know I was cruel. I was a little insane, and I was punishing you for things that weren’t your fault. I’m sorry. I know it’s hard for you to trust me now, after that. But you have to trust me a little, so I can help you look after that wound. Okay?”

She looked at him without saying anything.

“Look, I have an idea,” he said, holding up the fresh t-shirt. “You should probably have stitches, but I don’t know how to do that, and I don’t have anything to do it with anyway. I’ve taped you up back there, but I’m afraid if you move your arms too much it’ll just open up again. So how about this—I’ll cut this clean tee up the back too, the way I did with the one you’re wearing. That way you can take off the old one and put this one on without moving your arms so much. Then you can put on the zip-up, and zip up, and you’re covered. What do you think?”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

Her tone was one of defeat more than agreement.

He cut a slit up the back of the fresh tee, then spread it out, slit side up in her lap, with the collar at her knees. He stood and walked around behind her, and sat down.

“Alright, first we need to take the old one off. Just put your hands down by your sides, and I’ll slide it off. Okay?”

Not wanting to, she did it, knowing that anything he wanted to do to her he could probably do no matter what. This minor act of compliance was inconsequential. Delicately, he took the fabric at her shoulders in his hands and pulled it down her arms and over her hands. With a deliberate effort not to panic now that she was sitting there naked from the waist up in front of him, she slid her hands into the armholes of the fresh tee. He reached down from behind her and slid the new shirt up her arms and onto her shoulders.

“Put your arms down straight, just a little behind you, and I’ll help you get the sweatshirt on.”

She put her arms back, and he helped her, as if he were helping a date into a coat after dinner.

“I’m sorry for ruining so many of your clothes,” she said sadly, feeling a wave of shame for her distrust.

“That doesn’t matter.”

Her injury, her fear, her vulnerability had, for the moment, wiped away all the anger he had felt upon finding her in his house. Sickening guilt had risen in its place. Vaughn retrieved the drink he had left on the kitchen counter, went to his bedroom, closed and locked the door.


In his room Vaughn assaulted his second glass of whiskey.

The situation was impossible.

The third one. The third!

He did not know why he had not killed her. Shot her through the window the moment he had seen her and taken out his gun.

After, once she had seen him, it was her fear that confused him. Kept his fists off her. Kept his bullets out of her.

He thought back over the way she had run, her terror screaming truth. How he had caught her, forced her to the ground. The way it had felt to hold her down, under him, her tiny strength struggling against his, both of them breathing hard from exertion, from the adrenaline of fear.

He felt his prick stiffening.

Suppressing his feelings of repugnance he urged on his erection with thoughts of how he had felt, his hard cock pressed to her bottom, knowing she was powerless against him. Thinking of what he might have done, he shoved down the waist of his pants and began stroking himself.

In his mind they were out there, in the mud. The rain pelting and soaking and chilling him, shrinking the world, Darker. Closer. Just damp humming and a merging of disjointed rhythmic panting.

She had come to hurt him. To destroy the last remaining shreds of a life torn apart by those who had come for him before her. With all the rage which they had earned, which he had suppressed, denied for over a year, he would punish her.

Hate burned at his core, melting pity, swelling and rising up to burn away reason and erupting, spilling, liquefying flesh. He was lava, hot and heavy and searing and seeping into all her gaps and crevices and openings, razor-edged rock trapping and torturing her limbs, raking her skin. Her most desperate struggle a mere throb, a tiny warm pulse beneath his drowning force. Soon his heat would rend her—body and spirit—to nothing.

Those little pulses throbbed now and again as his fingertips clawed down softening flesh until they hooked over thick gray stretchy cotton. He pulled her sweats down to her knees, then pulled down the boxers. His boxers.

The little pulses swelled and quickened as his hard heat widened her gaps, seared hidden softer hotter flesh, filled dark recesses. Her screams were incinerated as they hit the air, never sounding. Her tears evaporated as they emerged from tiny tear duct orifices, never spilling. She was drowning under him, her lungs filling with his obliterating heat roiling over her from above, rent and torn by his cold hardness from below. The incinerating hate voided his core, filling and obliterating her.

He destroyed her, tearing apart, boiling her down to nearly nothing. What was left of her when he was done the rain washed away, stirring her memory into deep running rivers of mud.

He came back to himself. He was a man again. In his room again. Taking off his t-shirt and using it to clean up the mess he had shot onto his stomach and chest. His rage sated he was immediately overwhelmed with melancholy shame and self-loathing.

What am I, a fucking rapist now?

He had not had a twinge of sexual feeling in months, and the first thing to get his cock hard had been the feeling of a girl struggling to get out of his violent grip. The first fantasy he had jacked off to was that of raping some girl who had done nothing to him. He thought he might puke. He tried to burn away his nausea with three big gulps of whiskey. Then, knowing hours of insomnia were in store for him, he set the empty glass on the night stand and went to bed.


After he had retreated to his room she sat there on the sofa, trembling and tired of trembling. When was the last day she had lived without being horribly frightened? A week ago? Longer? She was exhausted with fear. She sat there, watching the fire, wondering what to do. The pack lay at her feet, disemboweled. She could pack it back up, grab the gun from inside the sleeping bag in the little bedroom, and run. Get away from the schizoid man who was a paranoid misogynist one moment and a gentle nurse the next, and take her chances with the wilderness. She wondered if he was out there, looking for her. If Vaughn was telling the truth, if there was really no way to hike out, would she die out there in the forest? Die of exposure, of starvation? If she injured herself, would the wild animals come, drawn by the smell of blood, and eat her alive? With the gun she could defend herself.

Or kill herself.

Or she could stay. She could stay and hope that this man’s violence had been a product of his own fear of an intruder. A fear she could understand. He had said he did not want to hurt her. That he would not hurt her.

It was difficult to believe him. A week earlier it would have been different. But now, after all that had happened to her, she could not quite convince herself that this new man would leave her alone. She had felt him, hard against her, when he had tackled her out in the muddy field. He had hesitated—she knew it—fighting an urge to take a different course, to do something other than take her inside for an interrogation.

But he had not done that other thing. If he had wanted to hurt her he could have done so already. But he had not. And he had not made her his prisoner. She had been the other one’s prisoner. But this man had left her there in the living room, free to leave. And there was the gun. If he tried to come for her in the night, there was the gun.

Reluctant, unsure, she decided to stay. She went into the little bedroom and closed the door. It had no lock. She stoked up a fire in the wood burning stove, then plunged her hand into the bowels of the sleeping bag and pulled out the handgun. She double-checked to be certain it was loaded and that the safety was on, then put it under her pillow. She climbed into bed and pulled the covers up under her chin. Turning onto her side she burrowed her hand under the pillow until she could just sense the cold metal of the gun against her fingertips. Laying that way, she eventually fell asleep.


When he awoke the next morning, when he remembered there was a strange woman sleeping in the next room, a bilious mixture of rage, resentment, and remorse rose in Vaughn’s throat. This cabin in the woods had become his one place of refuge, and here was some strange girl, just like them for all he knew, destroying his privacy, his solitude, his fleeting and cherished feeling of security.

But then, she had seemed so fragile, sort of broken, and so frightened of him. He had grown so used to being a human commodity, pawed and tracked, he had nearly forgotten that he was a big, intimidating man who could frighten a woman. With a gun. He remembered his masturbation fantasy of the night before and felt a clammy fist of shame squeezing his stomach.

He got out of bed and put on the a clean shirt and pants before going to the bathroom to brush the morning-after whiskey taste out of his mouth and take a leak. Heading toward the kitchen, he found her sitting at the dining table, reading Crime and Punishment. She looked up from her book to his stare. A dark shadow of beard stubble made his face seem paler. He was haggard and disheveled, looking at once more frightening and more fragile than he had the night before.

“I borrowed this from you,” she said apologetically, indicating the book. “I hope you don’t mind.”

She wished she could evaporate from his sight.

“No. Just don’t get any ideas about the axe I’ve got outside.”

With an effort he smiled, trying for a reassuring look. Unsure what to make of his questionably comic reference to the novel she was reading and his uncomfortable smile, she tried to joke back.

“I’ve no idea what you mean—I’m just here on a little errand. I’ve brought the silver cigarette case I promised you.”

His smile took on a tinge of sincerity.

“Would you like some breakfast?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

She forced a calm tone.

“I brought a bunch of groceries in with me,” he said, walking to the front door. “I set my pack down out here when I noticed the fire going inside, and I just forgot about it. Luckily it’s cold enough these days, I doubt anything spoiled.”

He was making a conscious effort to talk, to put her and himself at ease. He leaned out the door and grabbed an enormous pack. He unloaded cartons of milk, eggs, cheese and vegetables into the refrigerator, and added more canned goods to the vast collection already in the cupboard, along with sacks of flour, salt and sugar.

“What would you like? An omelet? Cereal?”

“Cereal sounds perfect.”

He poured a bowl of cereal, doused it with milk, and brought it to Devan.

“I’ll grab you a spoon. Would you like some juice?”

“Sure. Thank you.”

Vaughn made himself an omelet while she ate her cereal. He took a chair across the table from her when his food was ready.

“The chopper will be back for me in three weeks. If you can stand me for that long, we’ll just hike to the pickup point that morning, and you’ll be back in Seattle that afternoon.”

“Three weeks?”

Fresh despair at the thought of being trapped there with him for so long.

“People will think I’m dead.”

“You haven’t heard any search party activity?”

“No.”

She answered quietly, bowing her head. Of course no one would be searching for her this far down river. Or in this forest at all. Who knew where she was? Only him. She felt her hand trembling as she took a drink of juice.

“Are you cold?”

“A little.”

He went to the fireplace and got a fire going, then went into the kitchen. He came back with two big lovely peaches.

“Have one. They won’t stay fresh for long.”

“Thanks.”

The fruit was firm and fragrant. She took a bite, pleased by the sweet tartness.

“So, what do you do? Back in the real world, in Seattle?”

“I’m a student. I study literature at the university.”

“Ah, yes, Dostoyevsky.”

“That’s right, I’m in the Dostoyevsky department. All crime, punishment, epilepsy and tuberculosis, all the time.”

Like him she was struggling to be conversational, hoping to put him at ease. She was still very frightened of him, not trusting his congeniality this morning after his roughness the night before.

“Fascinating. I majored in Miller. All parasites, alcoholism, and STDs, all the time.”

“Well, they’re only offering that as a grad program now.”

They were both smiling the watered-down smiles of the disillusioned. As he looked at her he could not quite resolve the person she appeared to be with the person she had to be, to be there in his cabin. She felt him scrutinizing her, trying to solve her riddle, as he bit into the peach he had been holding distractedly as they talked. As he ate it, his teeth tearing the delicate skin and sinking into the tender flesh, the golden juices wetting his lips, Devan was dismayed to feel herself flush. The image of him committing that terribly intimate act had forced itself into her mind. She could almost feel his mouth on her. She had the feeling that Vaughn was deliberately being suggestive as he devoured his morsel of fruit. Flushed and nervous she got up from the table. He saw, but did not understand her sudden discomfort.

“I’ll wash up if you’re finished.”

She took his plate, then went to the sink with their dishes. When she had finished she returned to the table and picked up her book, thinking of returning to the comforting isolation of the little bedroom.

“How’s your back?”

His question forced her to stop, to face him. The pit of the peach he had devoured lay on the table, tiny remnants of tender flesh clinging to the woody pit.

“It’s sore, but I think it’s alright.”

“Let me have a look.”

In that moment she could not bear the thought of allowing him to touch her, yet she could not find the strength or the reason to say no. Stoically she submitted, unzipping her sweatshirt, allowing him to pull it down off her shoulders and to examine her back through the bisected t-shirt. His hands were warm. His touch was gentle. Panic choked her.

She tried hard to keep her breathing even, quiet, not to let him guess how much she feared him, how painful it was to let him touch her. She barely felt his fingertips grazing her shoulder blades as he parted the t-shirt to expose the dressed wound. She felt his warm breath on the back of her neck and she effortfully suppressed a shudder.

“It looks good—I think the tape’s holding. I should change the bandage, though.”

He stood and grabbed the first aid kit from the kitchen counter, where he had left it the night before. Resuming his place behind her he peeled the tape from her back, removing the old dressing. Then she felt the cold wet sting of gauze soaked with antiseptic pressing and lifting and pressing against her wound.

As he cleaned the ghastly gash and prepared a fresh dressing he forgot himself now and then, absorbed by the sight of the wispy little hairs at the back of her neck that had escaped from the rubber bands holding the rest of her tresses prisoner in two neat pigtails, the way those wayward wisps quivered in the soft breeze of his breath, the way that breath altered the smooth topography of her pale neck and back, raising delicate goose bumps. The way the cut fabric of the rent shirt was curling and fraying, seemingly wanting to curl and curl until her whole back was bare, fray and fray until every last little crinkly thread had abandoned her, baring her back, her shoulders, her arms, and more. Her hidden collarbones. Her breasts. Her belly. His hands, dutifully tending their work on her back, were just inches, just a single second, from the hot, soft flesh still hidden in the gapping, willing, yielding largeness of his enormous tee.

He finished gauzing and taping and gently tugged the t-shirt closed over her back, then pulled the sweatshirt back up on her shoulders as she pulled the zipper up to her throat.

“You’re all set.”

“Thanks.”

He disappeared into his room and closed the door. He was careful to be perfectly quiet.


Under a tenuous truce they passed their day. If he caught her watching him he immediately suspected her of mentally recording his activities for illicit purposes—private or public. When she noticed his maleficent eyes on her she felt a flood of fear rush her veins, feeling her vulnerability, trapped there with this moody stranger in the remote isolation of his cabin. In reality, both were doing their best to keep quietly to themselves, each watching the other only when they sensed they were being watched.

For her, that first long day, and for days after, every second in his presence felt like a moment of infinite peril. When she sat before him and let him touch her as he tended to her injury her body went rigid, and with every passing second she waited with dread to feel him pull her against him, the memory of his body pressed to hers the day before giving vivid solidity to her imagination. Each time she went into her little bedroom she feared she would hear his heavy tread behind her, feel him pushing her into the room. Each time she emerged she feared finding him there, in the hall, just outside her door, ready to take hold of her, push her against the hallway wall. Tear his clothes from her body, press himself to her, force her down onto the floor.

She tortured herself endlessly with thoughts of him taking hold of her somewhere, holding her against the wall by her throat, staring at her with a look of immense self-satisfaction in the knowledge of his absolute power over her, of her utter helplessness alone with him there in his cabin. Her look of fear, the trembling of her body, the panicked tempo of her breath would make him smile cruelly as he took the zipper of her sweatshirt between his thumb and forefinger. He would watch her face contort with terrible fear as he began slowly pulling the zipper down. Then, still holding her by the throat with one hand, with the other he would slowly, calmly strip off first the sweatshirt, then the t-shirt that had been cut up the back. His huge fist clenched over the severed collar, it would give her up as he pulled it toward him and down, sliding it easily off her arms…

She could not even imagine fighting him. Every thought of defending herself led, involuntarily, painfully, to thoughts of his brutal retribution. Her pathetic efforts to hit him or push him away met with a rain of terrible, violent blows. If she thought of hiding a knife on her person, which she might use to fend off an attack, the image of him snatching it away from her, then using it on her, slashing her face and body, forced itself into her mind. If she pulled the gun on him, she was sure, he would turn the tables and terrorize her, holding the gun on her as he forced himself on her, made her touch him.

She suffered, choking in this atmosphere of unfamiliar vulnerability. Never in her life had she felt this way—weak, powerless, utterly hostage to the will and whims of another. But Conrad had made sure that she knew she could not fight him. That she could not defy him. And now that she was here, with this other man, she still felt defenseless.

There was something else tormenting her. Something she could not understand. In spite of her anguished vulnerability, her fear of Vaughn was tinged with a different feeling. A peculiar longing—incomprehensible, yet undeniable.

This stranger in the woods was a curious package of contradictions. His powerful body incongruous with his calm and surprising grace of movement and his deep, resonant voice which, except for his moments of fury when they had first encountered one another, was always low and soft. The sharp intensity of his eyes and the rigidity of his strong jaw and hard face went starkly against his tendency to quiet introspection through the days and evenings.

And never in her young life had she been so insistently and disruptively aware of a man’s physical presence. Of his body. As much as she dreaded his attention, his touch, whenever she was close enough to sense his heat she could not resist imagining pressing herself up against him. And in everything he did, his every movement, there was an alluring sensuality. When they were close she would watch his hands, with their long, graceful fingers, watching him turn the pages of a book, or kneading dough for a loaf of bread, or deftly maneuvering over his guitar, and without wanting to or meaning to she would imagine him touching her—an innocent caress of her arm, a delicate stroke as the back of softly curved fingers surfed the curl of her throat, less innocent touches elsewhere.


When she went to bed that night she lay awake, thinking about this strange man. He was so different from that other, yet he aroused the same fear. And similar feelings that were…not fear. The memory of his strange eyes, always coldly flashing, sometimes like liquid pools of mercury, sometimes like metal disks rough and faceted with shards of graphite, seemed to prick her skin with countless tiny stingers, making her itch and burn. She had caught him looking at her, watching her, many times. Usually he did not even look away when she met his gaze. She could never fathom what he was thinking as he stared.

She thought of his body, so tall, and broad, and hard-looking. And his face. When he was calm, reading something or playing his guitar, he looked somehow…Homeric. She laughed at herself, at the triteness of likening a man to a Greek god. But with his powerful form, his abundant dark hair, his rather prominent nose and angular jaw, he invited the comparison. Yet the similarity was even more apt in his embodiment of both a fierce physicality and a brooding calm. The thought of his size, his strength, made her stomach clench with a little ticklish spasm. She found herself powerfully aroused when she considered once again that, though he was being kind to her now, he could overpower her at any moment he liked, do anything to her.

She lay in bed, considering touching herself. The idea seemed strange to her. Leaving her hands at rest, folded over her ribs, she squeezed her thighs together and released. A warm pulse of pleasure answered from between her legs. She raised her knees and parted them wide, considering the feeling of openness, of vulnerability it gave her, even alone in her room, under her covers. She stretched her arms back, over her head, arching her back, thinking about her breasts sticking forward, her bottom sticking back, the taut feeling of her stomach as she extended her torso. She flattened her back and brought her hands down to her stomach. It was warm, rhythmically rising and falling.

Trying to submerge herself in the still waters of the now, to drown out all thoughts of Conrad and what he had made her do, she lifted one hand and held it above her sex. Very slowly she lowered it. With the lightest imaginable touch she let her fingers drift in random motions over the thin cotton fabric of Vaughn’s shorts, sensing with her fingers the delicate rising and falling landscape of her hip bones, the little hill of her mound, the shallow basin of her belly. Reaching further down she gently cupped her hand between her legs, pressed her palm and fingers against herself, pulled slowly forward, pushed gently back.

It still amazed her, the intensity of the sensation she could arouse from her body. Her very lightest caress, the one she could feel with her sex but not with her hand, stirred a delicious yearning ache. She was not yet open to herself there, her most delicate, sensitive places were still hidden from her wandering fingers as they teased her mound and lips through her shorts, gliding further and further back, down between her thighs, past her sex, sliding lightly down along the valley where the firm, plump spheres of her ass met, then back up, pressing a little more intensely, gently rubbing her still hidden clit between her fingers and her pubic bone.

She had not touched them, but she felt her nipples stiffening, tingling vaguely as if asking for her attention. She stilled her hand for a moment where it lay at her sex. Laying still and quiet she focused her attention on her breasts, imagining how they looked at this moment as she lay on her back. Their roundness gently softened against her prone body, but her areolas still rising above, bearing her nipples up. With her two hands she took the hem of her t-shirt between thumbs and forefingers, and tugged down just a little, dragging the fabric against the tips of her breasts, feeling the subtle caress of the cotton. Just that was something. She slid her palms up her belly and gently cupped her breasts, feeling their soft warmth filling and overfilling her hands. With two index fingers, then, she traced circles around that raised, constricted flesh and felt that deliciously irritating little pulling sensation from her stiffening nipples down through her belly to her sex. She went on, gently teasing herself, letting her fingertips brush lightly against those sensitive protrusions, then, almost forgetting how strange it was to be doing this, all alone in the dark under the covers, she pinched her nipples, feeling those tugging strings running through her body constrict suddenly, and with each little pulsing squeeze at her tits she felt her sex cry out in response.

She was throbbing, down there, between her legs. She wanted it, wanted to get herself off, spreading her legs and rubbing her aching secret flesh. She forgot her self-consciousness. With her left hand she lifted the waistband of Vaughn’s boxers away from her tummy, and her right hand took the invitation. Her bare skin was hot and smooth and eager for her fingertips. Tracing delicate circles, spiraling out then in before gliding down to the very first hint of her slit, then back along that crevice to the little bit of moisture awaiting her, taking it up, opening herself, seeking that tiny place of enormous feeling. She was thinking of Vaughn.

In her mind they were in the living room, she on the sofa, he standing by the fire, the inevitable glass of whiskey in his hand. He was looking at her intently, not looking away when she noticed, challenged his stare. Feeling embarrassed and a little frightened, she got up from the sofa. Attempting an air of nonchalance, she went to the dining table to pick up a book she had been reading. Vaughn came up behind her, pressing himself against her, gently pinning her between his body and the table. The fear his strength elicited in her was exciting. She was helpless to resist as he pushed her forward, bending her over the table before him. Through her sweats she felt his hand on her bottom, slowly working his fingers between her cheeks, rubbing her suggestively. Then the feel of his hands spreading her, his hips pressing eagerly against her bottom, his hard length nestling between her cheeks, slow suggestive grinding.

“Please, not like this.”

Her voice trilled with fearful desperation.

In her fantasy the idea of being taken that way terrified her. As she lay in bed, touching herself, imagining the encounter, the threat of it ignited an electric charge in her groin. In her imagination he relented to her plea. He lifted her back into a standing position, then turned her around to face him. She struggled as he tried to touch her breasts, but he pinned her hands behind her back, then gripping both her wrists in one of his large hands, he reached up under her shirt and, pressing his palm to her, drew it slowly up along the sensitive skin of her stomach, over her ribs, to the soft curve of her breast. He stopped, taking a moment to enjoy her look of helpless submission to his caress. Then he took her breast gently in his hand, making her feel the pleasure of his touch as he teased her nipple to hardness with his fingertips. He released her wrists and, undeterred by her efforts to stop him, he lifted her shirt above her breasts, tying it tight in a knot so it would not slip down and hide her from his gaze. The stretchy cotton fabric, pulled tight in that knot, pressed in against the full soft flesh, making her nipples jut out just a little more, forcing them to turn slightly upwards. Holding her arms down at her sides he bent and took a nipple in his mouth, licking it rigid, pulling it between his lips over and over with little pulsing sucks that made her quiver with unwilling excitement.

He stood back for a moment, looking her over, taking pleasure in how hard he had made her nipples, knowing she was trembling with arousal as much as fear. She watched as he undid his jeans, pushing them down low on his hips, revealing his hard cock. Then he pushed her back on the table, and pulled her sweats and underwear down and off.

As he stood, he brought his shoulders up under her knees, holding her legs to him. He stared down at her for a moment with those silvery eyes, taking in her look of nervous anticipation. She could not see, but felt him pressing his smooth hardness to her soft wetness, sliding against her, up, opening her to him and to the cool night air, up, nudging against her most sensitive little spot, teasing out her startled moan. He smiled, amused by her reluctant arousal. He rubbed himself against her that way a little longer, and she felt herself softening, beginning to tremble, felt some of her fear and reluctance melting under a swelling wave of needful yearning.

With a knowing smirk he slid his hardness down and she felt it threatening her virginity, promising pain and pleasure. Her aching body was desperate for it but she was afraid—afraid of him, afraid of the pain. Then she caught her breath as she felt him blunt and hard sinking slowly into her, his thickness pressing her open little by little until she felt him filling her and felt his hips pressed firmly to her bottom. He stayed like that, deep inside her, holding her legs with his thickly muscled arms, the backs of her calves and thighs pressed to his belly and chest, and pulsed in little movements with his hips, making her shudder to feel the thick length of him twitching within. She whimpered a little. Another little smirk cracked his look of intent arousal.

The little pulses of his hips went on, gaining in momentum, and the twitching of him deep within her turned to hot friction. Her breathing burst out in rapid gusts. He was fucking her. God, she was being fucked. His hips jolted faster, harder. She felt a twinge of painful embarrassment at the way her breasts were shuddering as he moved against her. She crossed her arms over her chest, but he leaned forward, pressing her wrists to the table next to her shoulders, forcing her to raise her hips to him. In this position his rapid thrusts seemed to plunge even deeper inside of her and, flushed with a potent mixture of embarrassment and arousal she writhed and moaned.

As he fucked her he released one of her wrists and brought his hand down to her pussy, laying his palm flat on her mound, pulling the soft skin there taut as he drew his hand slightly upward. She squirmed and, unable to stop herself, let out a little gasp as he moved his thumb down, onto her clit, stroking it lightly as he slowed his fucking, drawing out, out, out, letting her feel momentarily empty where he had been before plunging slowly back in. The way he was touching her clit, so softly, teasingly, was excruciatingly pleasurable. All her exhales were soft moans now.

Her excitement thrilled him, but he kept his hips in check, pumping into her rhythmically, teasingly as he worked her into a writhing frenzy with his caresses. Then, knowing she would not be able to hold out against the combination of his gentle touch on her tender little button and his hard length bowing in and out through her resonant depths he shifted tempo, moving from his gentle adagio to an exhilarating allegro, giving her a flurry of deep staccato notes. And as he went lower, deeper, fuller, her voice flew up the scale in perfect opposition, rising higher and higher in pitch but always small, quiet, a tiny accent until, at last, with a high, crying moan she came and in her moment of abandon he let his own orgasm burst from him.

She had brought on her fantasy climax in sync with the orgasm she had given herself. She lay there, feeling her vagina’s ebbing throbs pulse against the hand that cupped her. It felt strange, those muscles convulsing involuntarily around her finger, against the heel of her palm, as if they were being shocked by electrodes in a laboratory.

She wondered why it was that all her life she had never had normal sexual fantasies, but always imagined some kind of coercion. She’d always felt a little ashamed about this, as if there were something wrong with her. She did not, of course, actually want to be raped. She had been genuinely terrified of Vaughn that first day, not like in her fantasy. If he had raped her, it would have decimated her. Yet the idea of the threat, of the irrepressible longing of a man too strong to be fought off was irresistibly arousing to her.


On the evening of the third day of their uneasy cohabitation Devan was curled up on the sofa, perennially reading. Vaughn was sitting at the dining table, watching her. Contemplating her. He believed still that she had come to his cabin on purpose, seeking him. She was playing her game very coolly, he thought. She did not flirt. She did not ask him about himself. He was galled to think that she was winning. His every waking and dreaming thought was consumed by her.

Still he could not understand why, after months of physical and even mental celibacy he found himself terribly, darkly aroused now, with her there. Every night when he went to bed, every morning when he awoke, he found himself masturbating furiously to thoughts he always loathed and repudiated the moment after his orgasmic spasms subsided. Even during the day he would become suddenly unbearably aroused and have to retreat to his room to silence, momentarily, the irrefutable demands of his body. And then he would come out of his room and find her, looking at once innocent and somehow disturbed, inevitably devouring the pretty prose of a book from his shelf. Like him she seemed to prefer the Russians.

As she sat, at the dining table, on the sofa, or curled up on the floor by the hearth, he would gaze at her, sensing that she sensed his eyes on her though she rarely met his gaze, and his mind would drag her into the dark, unexplored recesses of his imagination.

He was not, by nature, a violent man. Or predatory. Or misogynistic. As a teenager he had not been one of those boys who try to get girls to do more than they wanted. If he ever sensed reluctance in a woman his own interest flagged. Even after fame brought hordes of horny groupies back stage in search of him, he had always steered clear of the ones who seemed too young, too high, too drunk. All his life he had been very, very wary of hurting anyone.

And now it seemed that hurting her was all he thought about.

He thought it was the thing that had happened to him, and the way he had found her there in his house, that he suspected her of coming after him like those others had.

That, and her strangeness. Her quiet vulnerability, with something else lurking there.

Those things were part of it. What it really was, though, the thing that stoked his cruel passion from those quiet embers of resentment and curiosity, was their isolation there at the cabin. Only his subconscious had grasped that there, deep in the woods at his secret hideaway, he was free of the laws and mores of society. That there, miles and miles from anyone, she was utterly at his mercy. And it was this power, felt but not consciously acknowledged, that fueled an endless stream of fantasies that aroused and disgusted him.

Seeing her before him, small, frightened, he would imagine what it would be like to simply take her. Not in the sense of the romance novel—the bodice-ripper. When he thought of taking her, he thought of taking her from herself and making her his--a thing for his use. There, away from the world he was in danger of forgetting that she belonged to herself.

He imagined going to her where she sat, on the floor in the radiant heat of the fire, her legs bent beneath her, her head resting on her palm, her elbow resting on the hearth. Striding to her. Standing over her. And, as she looked up, kneeling down by her and, without a word, without even thinking to set aside the novel in her hand, pushing her back, onto the floor, calmly stripping off her clothes—his sweats, his boxers. Pushing her legs apart, pushing in, pumping, slow or fast, to the end. Perhaps she would be silent. Perhaps he would forget that she was there, that there was more to it than his cock and how it felt. That was one.

Another one. He might go to her, kneel down there before her, and with his hand turn her face from her novel. Make her look at him. Make her see, in looking at him, what he was thinking. He did not think she would really say no, or cry. But he liked to imagine it. Her mouth shaping the no. Her head swiveling left and right on her neck in slow motion. Her face cold and gray and streaked with tears of no. He would not be rough. Taking off her clothes would be like peeling a thick-skinned fruit to be eaten. Simple. Necessary. Mundane. If he held her close and tight as he fucked her it would be similar to that convulsive, involuntary close tightness of his fist around his prick.

These were just ephemera. Phantoms which barely glanced the surface of his consciousness.

The fantasies were more elaborate. More concrete. And more damning, because they were the products of his conscious mind.

Even now his damned conscious mind was projecting a reel of these sinister images.

His mistrust fed his fantasy. He imagined going out, into the woods.

She watches as he puts on his shoes, opens the door, closes it behind him. She moves to the window, watching him cross the clearing before he disappears behind the shadowy screen of trees. Seizing her opportunity, the one she has been nervously awaiting, she scurries to his room. He has closed the door, but there is no lock, and she is undeterred by his silent request for privacy. She throws the door open and charges in, anxious to complete her mission before his return.

She is not like the others, after all. She is a freelance journalist, just starting out, desperate for a good story, to make a name for herself. She knows the rumors about him—the speculation about why the band had canceled a whole tour the year before at the last minute, his much-publicized divorce, all the talk of his sudden change in demeanor, his reclusiveness, the buzz about his secret hideaway in the woods. She has come to find the evidence behind those rumors. She has come for information. Not for him. That is why she acts the way she does, shrinking from him when he is close.

In a methodical frenzy she begins her hunt. Seeking proof. Letters. Photographs. She opens the drawers in his nightstand and dresser, looking under his shirts and boxers, riffling through old magazines and stacks of irrelevant scribblings—jottings of music and lyrics. She looks under the bed, but there is nothing there but bluish gray dust bunnies. She goes to the closet, pushing through jackets and jeans and scrambling over shoes and piled dirty clothes, and there, in the back, she finds what she is looking for.

His journal.

Too excited to wait she opens it then and there, flipping through the pages, scanning his scrawl, seeing that there, in her hands, his mystery is undone. The secrets that half-destroyed his life, ending his marriage, changing him from an affable outgoing guy into a taciturn recluse, fraying the solid bonds he had shared with the others in the band, eroding the joy he had once found in being a part of all that.

She knows. She knows, and she will take it all back with her. Publish all the ugly details. Then they will all know. Then the rest of what remains of his life will be over.

It is at this moment, as she stands before his disemboweled closet, his secret confession in her hand, that he steps into the doorway. Something has told him to return silently, to see what she has been doing in his absence. And this is how he finds her.

She is still unaware of him, still reading the words never meant to be read. Silently he comes forward, silently pushes the door to. Then, his eyes on her, he leans back and the door closes with a snap of the latch—a small sound that rings like a shot to destroy their separate tense silences.

The sound turns her from her reading, and by the time she has faced him every trace of color has left her skin. Had she been caught just sneaking into his room she would have been merely startled and embarrassed, but she understands that the gravity of what she has read means she is in danger. She does not try to make excuses. She does not try to rush past him. She is silent. She is still. Grave with justified terror.

He steps toward her and takes his journal from her hands. His eyes move over the page she has been reading, and as he sees his words, as he is confronted with the vivid detail of what she knows about him, he thinks he will kill her. With frightening calm he closes the book and sets it on the dresser before turning back to her. Though no particular expression alters his features she sees the depth of his hate for her, and in that moment her fear is greater than any fear she has ever felt.

A length of rope materializes in his hand. His fist brutally clutches and squeezes the coils. Suddenly he has caught her wrist in his other hand. She looks. From the iron grip of his huge hand on her small wrist, to his other hand, loops of rope hanging down. She understands that he will tie her up and her maxed-out terror doubles and doubles again, crushing her, collapsing her lungs. She starts crying and struggling frantically to pull her arm free of his monstrous fist, but the desperate motions of her entire body cannot even force his arm to move the least bit.

He drags her to the bed, throws her down and straddles her. Pinned under him she sobs in helpless terror as he ties her wrists together, the rope rubbing and burning her skin as she struggles. He lashes her bound wrists to the headboard then begins on her ankles, tying first one, then the other to opposite corner posts at the foot of the bed. He looks at her. She is hysterical and does not seem to even see him. He goes out and shuts the door, leaving her alone to imagine what he will do to her.

When he returns three hours later she is calm. She has convinced herself that this was her punishment—just a trick, terrifying her. But then he shows her the knife. A thick-handled hunting knife with a gleaming and jagged blade. He climbs up on the bed, kneeling between her splayed, bound legs as she cracks and falls apart. She thinks he is going to cut her. Torture her. He knew she would think that. Her terror gives him no thrill.

He reaches down and grabs the waistband of her sweats and with a sudden stab and jerk of the knife he splits them up the front, snapping the drawstring in two as if it were a strand of limp spaghetti. Now that he is stripping her, not stabbing her, she returns to her senses, only crying. He rips the blade down one pant leg, then the other, then gripping the fabric in his fist he tears the rent sweats from her body in one violent movement.

He watches her. Crying. Hyperventilating. Still futilely struggling against her bonds. Her wrists and ankles are red and welted where they are being chaffed by the rope. He looks from her tear-smeared face to her crotch, invitingly exposed between her naked parted thighs. Her cunt visible in surprising detail through her panties which have ridden up, pressing themselves into her creases, revealing in mesmerizing relief the hills of her mound and labia, the valley of her slit. The pale cheeks of her bottom left uncovered. The sight of that soft flesh makes his cock rock hard. He wants to stroke himself, but he doesn’t want her to see. Her eyes on him are a violation. Like the diary.

He goes to the top dresser drawer and gets a handkerchief, folds it, and sits on the edge of the bed. As he presses the fabric to her face and lifts her head to tie the blindfold she speaks for the first time, her voice trilling desperation, smeared and blurred with tears.

“Please, Mr. Doe, please don’t do this. I’m sorry I came in here. I know I violated your privacy. I’m sorry. Please. Please don’t hurt me.”

He finishes tying the knot, making the blindfold tight, then stands and gets another handkerchief from the drawer. This he ties over her mouth, gagging her. He watches as the folds of fabric sink between her lips as he tightens the gag, forcing it between her teeth. He notes the change in the sound of her squeals and sobs.

He stands once more and looks down on her. Bound. Gagged, Blindfolded. She cannot move. She cannot see. She cannot speak. He can do anything to her, and the feeling of absolute power is a thrill beyond anything he has ever felt. His dick is aching, throbbing painfully and insistently, urging him to do something.

He wants to go slow, to savor this incredible feeling of omnipotence.

He wants her naked. He wants to strip her. But he is so enjoying the way her panties are showing her to him that he starts with the t-shirt. She squirms and struggles with renewed desperation as he straddles her hips. He sets the knife down, laying it next to her on the mattress, and puts his hands on her breasts. He just cups them gently, taking in her reaction at feeling his hands on her. There is no muffled scream coming through the gag. She knows there is no point. She just stiffens involuntarily beneath him, tensing against the ropes.

Slowly, softly, he caresses her breasts. Full firm flesh yielding to his palms and fingers. God he’s hard. He has not even touched her nipples yet, but they rise up and poke at the thin cotton, pointing upward from the circle of his curved thumb and forefinger. He pinches them gently and he hears a muffled whimper tangling up in the folds of the gag. He likes that whimper and feels his cock flexing against the tight barrier of his pants as he pulses his fingers closed again, she whimpers again, as he tugs, gently, teasingly.

He started out wanting to scare her. Even hurt her. But her reluctant arousal turns him about seventy degrees. He knows first-hand that her pleasure will punish her. And wanting to punish her, he will please her.

He slides his hands up inside her shirt, feeling her hot skin under his palms, feeling the frantic rise and fall of her belly and ribs with each panicked breath. He cups her tits again, gently squeezing them as he rubs her ever-hardening nipples with his thumbs, feeling her writhing beneath him, squirming defiantly as he excites her body.

He takes the knife from the bed and slits open first one sleeve, then the other before slicing through the ribbed collar of the tee. Then, setting the knife aside, clutching the rent collar in his two fists, he moves his hands apart in a sudden, violent motion. The threads screech in chorus, three bursts as the shirt tears open, uncovering breasts, revealing belly, then torn completely in two, the rip down the front jaggedly mirroring the neat and careful cut up the back of the tee. Each hand grabs a fistful of fabric and rips it away from her body, leaving her torso naked.

He just sits over her, still and silent, letting her feel his eyes caressing her body. Pale skin. Nipples dark as cherries and hard as pits. Triceps and abs flexing futilely, her full breasts swaying slightly with her body’s struggle.

He is enjoying the pain of his anxious cock.

He is not going to stroke it.

He is going to fuck her.

But he is still taking his time.

He gets off of her, shoving her thighs apart and kneeling between them. She begins her struggle anew, squirming and thrashing violently but ineffectually in her bonds as he grasps her thighs and hoists them over his, spreading her wide and lifting her ass off the bed. Two quick swipes with the knife and her panties are off. He buries his fingers in her fur and his thumb in her cunt, fucking her a little before smearing some of her copious juices up and down her slit, rubbing her clit, forward and back, then round and round in circles before plunging into her soft yielding wetness once more. Her breathing has altered from tense, fear-filled anticipation to fervent denial of sensation. She is trying to pant through his pleasure, like panting through the pain of childbirth.

His cock is swollen to bursting with impotence-inspired fury and omnipotence-inspired lust. Kneeling between her splayed thighs he takes his hands off her. He is still and quiet, letting her wonder. Then he undoes his jeans, knowing she can hear the dry scratchy sound of the zipper being dragged open, knowing she knows what this means.

He shoves his shorts and jeans down to his thighs and his cock is aimed at her like a spear. He contemplates this image—her deep pink, wet and open after his fingering, his paler pink, hard and seeking, seeming to stretch toward her inviting slippery warmth. So close. One small movement and he will be inside her. And he will never be the same. Forever and ever, he will have done this thing.

He plunges into her.

Not suddenly. Not violently. But with a quiet, calm slowness that forces her to feel everything. The moment that the tip of him moves and settles against her, just at her opening. Knowing he is about to enter her, and that with her legs bound and splayed wide, with her arms tied over her head, she can do nothing but lie there as he drives his hard cock deep inside her undefended pussy. Through the gag he hears the softened sharpness of her gasping intake of breath. Then quivery panicky panting as she waits, knowing it is coming. Her nipples are pointing at the ceiling with enthusiasm that mimics that of his cock.

Oh yeah, he thinks, I am going to love the sound she’ll make when I sink in to the hilt. I’m going to fucking love watching those tits shudder with the jolt of my hips against her. And that juicy little cunt of hers quivering around my prick when I make her cum…

Slowly he lets the head of his prick push in, just the tiniest bit, wanting her to want it to go quicker. Knowing her body’s excitement is loathsome to her, knowing she wants it to be done quickly so she won’t have to suffer her pleasure. He sinks in, just the littlest bit deeper, watching her body tense more and more with each bit of progress. Then, with a sudden forceful thrust he gives her the rest, his cock driving up into her deepest depth, his groin crushing against her, forcing that sucked in gasp of hers back out in a gag-smothered whimper that makes his rigid cock twitch in a new surge of arousal.

Still filling her fully, pressed up against and in her so hard he might be trying to launch his hips up inside her, he teases her clit with his thumb, feeling her freeze once more in her effort not to feel. This he does terribly gently, with cruel skill. Then, softly, he pushes her lips together there at the beginning of her slit, slowly rolling and kneading her sensitive clit in those warm moist folds. Then, knowing her nerves are sparking, he leaves off what he is doing with his hands, using them for support instead, and begins pounding that throbbing, swollen, wet cunt with his cock, feeling and hearing his balls smacking her bottom, her tits rolling like waves that never crash, swelling up and riding shoreward, over and over and over, never breaking.

He lowers himself onto her, letting her feel his heat, his sweat, his body all over her—pressing against the tender flesh of her inner thighs, his belly on her belly, his chest flattening her tits and rubbing her stiff nipples, his rough stubble chafing her delicate cheek between the blindfold and the gag, his panting fucking breath bursting rhythmically in her ear. His pubis grinding over hers, rubbing her aching little clit with every thrust of his cock into her embracing cunt.

He whispers his pain, his ecstasy, his degradation, his exultation into her ear as he fucks her. When she tries to pull away, straining with her neck to preserve this tiny freedom, he sinks his fingers into her hair, closes his fist, and brings her ear back to his lips.

He is going to cum soon.

But not before he has wrung a humiliating orgasm from her.

He slows his thrusts, staving off his own climax. Writhing slowly against her puffy pussy, still clutching her hair in one fist, his lips still brushing her ear as he torments her with a flowing stream of cruel words, he reaches beneath her with his free hand, grasping a handful of ass, squeezing it, kneading it, spreading her, letting go, grabbing that sumptuous handful again, pumping, pumping, fucking, whispering, clutching, writhing.

Then he wriggles his middle finger between her two plump cheeks. He feels her clench, desperately trying to bar access, but her cunt juices have streamed down, slick sliding over perineum and anus, greasing up that luscious cleft. His finger squeezes between those firm flexing muscles, lubed and clenching him in a violent embrace.

His fingertip finds her anus and rubs it in tiny motions, massaging it with her own oil, teasing it with the miniscule motions permitted by her flexed ass. The hiddenness of this second hole, only just accessible behind her, underneath her, beyond the barrier of her strong flexing muscles, is a delicious challenge, an exquisite contrast to the inviting openness of her cunt between her bound legs spread so wide. His dick and balls feel ready to explode.

He wants to hear her.

He lets go the fistful of her hair and yanks the gag from her mouth. Her lips are red and swollen. Delicious. Almost kissable. He reclaims her tresses with his fist and whispers.

“You want it to be over. You want me to finish.”

He lets her feel a few more pulses of his hips driving his cock into her womb, lets her feel his finger wiggling between her cheeks, the tip brushing over her anus. A desperate little moan bubbles up from between those parted, swollen, flushed lips.

“I’m not going to finish until my finger is in that tight little bottom of yours.”

Three brutal thrusts shake three resonant breaths from her.

“Ask for it.”

He goes on rubbing her back there, spreading her gradually, forcefully with his other fingers, tapping and rubbing and gently prodding those million nerves ringing that tight little pucker. He lets go her hair and cups his palm over her breast, squeezing it up through the shrinking “c” of his hand, rubbing his thumb over the nipple that has jutted skyward with the rising swell of her tit.

“Ask for it.”

He mouths her ear, and after his breath is cold on her wet lobe. He is panting huskily with each eager thrust, aching to hear her voice.

“If you stay quiet, I’ll keep on like this forever. I’ll fuck you and fuck you until we’re both dead. Ask for it. Ask for my finger.”

He knows she will. To end it. Her whisper comes, almost indecipherable.

“Please.”

“Please what?”

Her mouth twists in a sob as she moans, “Give me your finger.”

“Tell me to put my finger up your ass.”

She says it. He is still teasing that hole, knowing the sensation there is magnifying everything rubbing and fucking and bumping her cunt.

“You want my finger in your bottom?”

“Yes.”

“Beg me.”

Her words ride out on successive waves of sobs and moans.

“Please. Please finger my bottom.”

He pushes his finger in, just an inch.

“You want more of it, don’t you?”

His fucking is an ultimatum.

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

“Please give it to me. Put your finger up my ass.”

“All of it?”

“Give me all of it. I want your whole finger in my bottom.”

He is humping her in tiny tense thrusts, sliding up against her clit again and again and again and as she talks she can’t breath through it, resist it, any longer. The length of his finger slides in, gliding against her inner walls, filling her ass with a thrilling, frightening, pleasing pressure. Her breathing alters, her body tenses and he knows she is going to cum soon.

“You like that finger in your ass?”

“Yes.”

She sounds sincere and her voice breaks on the word.

“Now,” he says, “beg me to fuck your ass.”

She begs him. There is real desperation in her voice.

“Please Mr. Doe. Please fuck my ass.”

“You need it.”

“Please, Mr. Doe. I need you to fuck my ass.”

He slides his finger out against the clinging grip of her, stirring nerve after nerve after on his way out, pumping gently into her pussy with his prick all during that slow descent of his finger. Then his fingertip glides up and down her slippery crack once more, getting wetter and slicker before it forces her open again, fills her again, makes her moan again. He is on her, in her ass, in her cunt, taunting her nipples, filling her ears with whispers and her mouth with moans and her nose with the scent of his body and their fucking. Her flesh is quivering and no longer hers it is his because he is controlling it and she can’t and she will cum soon and he knows as he rides her and quivers her and fingers her bottom.

“Now say ‘fuck me.’”

“Fuck me.”

“Louder. Fuck me.”

“Fuck me.”

“Fuck me!”

“Fuck me!”

Their voices are two facing mirrors reflecting an infinite series of fuck me’s as he feels her finally give up and surrender and shudder beneath his writhing body, pulsing and spasming around his cock and his finger and she is cumming and having won he gives up resisting and moaning he cums and she feels him flex over her and hears his climax ride out on a surging moan and a dying breath.

She is dying of shame but comforts herself with the thought, the promise she promises herself, that he will untie her now. That it is over.

But it isn’t. She feels him lifting himself off of her, but no hands at the ropes on her wrists and ankles. She leaves a scream unformed in her throat as he tightens the gag anew between her lips. Then she hears the rhythmic thump of his feet traversing the floor between the bed and the door and then the door closes with unendurable finality.

 

[Pure]

Note to all:
This is, as of Sun Aug 22, the 'official' current story for discussion, as designated by me, pure.

 

[BlackShanglan]

A reply ...

Dear Varian -

I have emailed you an RTF with loads of in-text comments and observations, which I hope are of some use to you. In order to demonstrate that I have, in fact, fulfilled my duty in commenting, I will just post a couple of paragraphs of summary from the end here

Shanglan



Wow! I am steaming at the end of this. The sex scenes are positively sizzling, very intense and extremely rewarding. I could read them by themselves over and over. I love the multiple perspectives on fantasy, power, and imagination. They are superb and give this a dense, multi-layered, fascinating perspective.

The comments I made on voice and POV I think will sound familiar, so I won’t belabor them – only to say that in many places you do an excellent job with this. I think it’s more a matter of being consistent than of learning to do it at all. Obviously you can do it and in many places you do; there are just some difficulties keeping that level of engagement all the way through.

On the whole I loved it, especially the fascinating interplays of power, vocalization, thought and fantasy. Intensely interesting!

Shanglan

 

[Lying Eyes]

I read the long section you posted and I have to admit it is extremely well written.

1) What is your impression of Vaughn as a character? Of Devan as a character?

Vaughn- Loner, disalusioned, repressed feelings of anger and lust, suspicous, private

Devan- insecure, both repelled and attracted to being controled

2) Does the characters' budding (if somewhat demented and conflicted) mutual attraction seem believable? If not, what detracts from it?

It does seem a believable relationship to me, for a literotica story that is...

3) Is the story pulling you along, making you want to find out what will happen between these characters? Or is it all too drawn out? Am I boring the pants off you instead of having a more pleasant effect?

It does pull me along and I was glad you didn't rush to the sex scene early in when Vaughn confronts Devan. And I do love the twist that he at first seems like an intruder and then you reveal that it is his house and she was the real intruder. Though since I hadn't read the previous chapters I assumed it was her place so the twist was amplified in my mind. Though I do say it did seem a bit drawn out, too much mental fantasies in the characters heads and not any real sex scenes. I wouldn't call it boring at all but if the other chapters are short then this chapter might contrast too much with the feel of the other chapters.

4) I'm doing a lot of hinting at things that will be revealed in later chapters. Is it intriguing? Frustrating? Confusing?

Not frustrating, or confusing but I think I missed some of the hints so it didn't jump out at me as something out of place.

5) Is it all a bit too maudlin? Things do lighten up later in the story, but are the characters wallowing too much in their melodrama in this segment?

I liked the way you went with this segment. I don't think their is anything wrong with the melodrama you infused in this section. Just wonder if this segment of the puzzle fits in the whole picture? I can't say since I haven't read every chapter.

6) And of course I mustn't omit this important question: Is the sex workin' for ya?

Yes, I found it arousing. And I don't like that I did since non-consent stories are not the type I want to be aroused by since I find the genre a bit disturbing.


On a differet note Vaughn left all his groceries outside overnight near the wilderness. In reality the food would have likely been ripped away by racoons or any other animal. The smell of food would of brought animals near to the cabin. I would be worried that bears would be prowling the area not that the food went bad.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Jeez. You know, I hate to criticise this because it was so very well-written, but, God! It’s so loooonnng! And it seems like it goes so slow. Despite the obvious and painstaking care that went into it, I got very bored and antsy with their meeting in the cabin. It’s obvious that something romantic is going to happen between them. Can’t we just get to it without having to read about every glance and expression on their faces?

First of all, I can’t praise the writing enough. Very professional, very polished. I myself have a little problem with those little one- and two word paragraph type things. It starts to border of the over-stylized to me, but I realize that’s a popular device these days. But beyond that, this must be one of the most well-written pieces I’ve seen on Lit.

Having said that, I have to say that I was worn out and bored before the blue part even started. (I haven’t read that yet, so I can’t comment on the sex. I’ll try and read that after I’ve gathered some strength.) I’ll restrict my comments to the part I read, which went up to where he dressed the wounds on her back, and that’s where I lost patience, so let me take that as an example for a second.

It was while I was reading that section that it struck me: okay, these people are going to have sex. He’s going to turn out to be a Tortured Artist Fighting His Own Devils and they’re going to fall in love. Now why is this taking so damned long? For the dressing her back scene: couldn’t you just have said that he took her in the bathroom or wherever and tenderly dressed her back? You’ve already established the tone of their relationship, so I don’t understand the reason for showing us every move they make. It’s like staring real hard at a picture in which nothing is happening. I think that’s the major fault in this piece.

I haven’t read the previous two chapters, so I don’t know what his story is, but he comes off as terribly melodramatic and almost a caricature. The whole thing is written at a pretty high emotional pitch, which also tired me out. Maybe he’s got his reasons for being the way he is, but I thought it would have been nice if maybe he’d discovered her in the cabin and acted like a human being would have: “Huh? Who are you? What are you doing here?” and been as concerned as he was surprised, instead of going for a gun and chasing her down and tackling her, dragging her back to his cabin and making her strip, which I didn’t understand. I mean, valuing your privacy is one thing, but coming across like the Terminator seemed way out of line to me. I thought the guy was a jerk and I found nothing in his behavior that
might change my opinion of him or make me feel any empathy for him. What? He's afraid groupies are going to hunt him down and beg to fuck him? I'm supposed to sympathize with him for that? He just comes off awfully heavy on the testosterone. I didn't like him at all.

Devan to me was a woman in peril, and I should confess at this point that, although I write a lot of BDSM, I really don’t like reading about women being in fear for their physical safety. In my stuff, the women always end up eager participants in the sex, even in my non-consent, and though they might be in fear for their virtue, they're never in fear for their physical well-being. So women-in-danger is one one of my least favorite themes. That may have a lot to do with my discomfort with this piece and my sense that things were dragging. But I can’t help but feel that his anger and mistrust and her fear and dismay were dragged out for far too long, unless that’s the point of the piece. I know there are porn sites that feature pictures of women in peril, and maybe this story is supposed to be a graphic version of that kind of thing.

So, considering that I didn’t like the guy, and I didn’t care for the situation she was in, maybe I shouldn’t be commenting on this one at all. I’ll post this anyhow, in case it might be of some use to you.

---dr.M.

 

[Varian P]

Thanks, Shanglan

Your feedback, as always, was insightful, concrete, and promises to be immensely helpful as I get back to editing this chapter. Should anyone question you having fulfilled your duty, let them know that the lucite trophy I'll be presenting to you for your good service is at the engraver's.

Much appreciated!

-Varian

 

[Varian P]

And thank you, too, Lying Eyes

I'm grateful for all your feedback.

I found it arousing. And I don't like that I did since non-consent stories are not the type I want to be aroused by since I find the genre a bit disturbing.

So very glad to hear it, since I confess that, ultimately, I'm going for more in this story than the titilation of non-consensual encounters. Rather, I'm trying (with my admittedly limited abilities) to explore the inescapable fact that we're all aroused by things we don't want to find arousing. This, in fact, is a central theme of this novel. So, a big thanks for confessing your conflicted feelings.

On a differet note Vaughn left all his groceries outside overnight near the wilderness. In reality the food would have likely been ripped away by racoons or any other animal. The smell of food would of brought animals near to the cabin. I would be worried that bears would be prowling the area not that the food went bad.

Now this is what I call useful feedback. Can you tell I don't go camping very often? But now a hazy memory of bear lockers in the Sequoias is coming back to me. I'm opening my word document and fixing this right now!

Thanks so much.

-Varian

 

[Varian P]

Thank you kindly, dr.M.

Thanks for you kind praise of my writing, and thanks too for the vigorous beating—I probably deserved it.

So, it would seem that you fall into the category of the reader having his pants bored off, when I’d so hoped everyone would be stripping in ecstatic arousal. Perhaps this is the way to judge whether the story itself—the plot and the characters—are good enough to make this a compelling read, without the sex, and your vote seems to be a resounding, ‘not!’ This is good to know.

The whole thing is written at a pretty high emotional pitch, which also tired me out.

Yes, I was afraid the maudlin melodrama might be a bit thick.

Maybe he’s got his reasons for being the way he is, but I thought it would have been nice if maybe he’d discovered her in the cabin and acted like a human being.

Oh dear, poor Vaughn! He’s been through so much and he doesn’t even rate as a human being! I’ll have to do better than that. This is just what I wanted to know. I am doing a little danger dance, trying to build tension and hint that there is something awful in his past making him act like a total nut job, but your reaction suggests I’ve mishandled this. I’ll give long thought to fixing this problem.

In my stuff, the women always end up eager participants in the sex, even in my non-consent, and though they might be in fear for their virtue, they're never in fear for their physical well-being.

Again, I’m doing that precarious dance, and a lot of the tension I’d hoped would come through here arises from misunderstanding. Devan is not what Vaughn thinks she is, and Vaughn, though angry and irrational, is not a horrible, violent person, as Devan fears he is. But, I grant you, I’m exploiting the situation, where she seems to be in physical peril, for its potential to arouse. Of course that’s not everyone’s hot button (thankfully).

So, considering that I didn’t like the guy, and I didn’t care for the situation she was in, maybe I shouldn’t be commenting on this one at all. I’ll post this anyhow, in case it might be of some use to you.

I’m very glad you did post. Your feedback will be in my mind as I rewrite.

Gratefully,

Varian

 

[Varian P]

One comment dr.M. made in his critique has been coming back to me, and I feel compelled (compelled! I have no will of my own here!) to respond.

I thought the guy was a jerk and I found nothing in his behavior that might change my opinion of him or make me feel any empathy for him. What? He's afraid groupies are going to hunt him down and beg to fuck him? I'm supposed to sympathize with him for that?

Well, yes.

Well, perhaps no sympathy is required for the begging, but it might be warranted for the hunting down, and for anything that went beyond begging to non-consensual.

Granted, my fluffy little piece of erotica features a rock star (now I wish I could shake the image of the D12 video showing Eminem drowning under a cascade of panties and bras thrown by groupies) and is firmly rooted in fantasyland. But I think it’s easy to be dismissive of the idea that a man could be afraid of sexual assault. If the roles of the characters were reversed, and she was the famous person who found a strange man had broken into her house, would the gun and the fear seem unreasonable?

This is something that fascinates me about fantasy versus reality. What man out there (stereotype alert!) doesn’t fantasize about having hordes of groupies following them around, or at least showing up on a regular basis at opportune moments, begging to be fucked. And our notion of that as every man’s fantasy is, I would argue, an aspect of our culture which creates an environment in which men who are, actually, raped, have little chance of being taken seriously.

This isn’t meant as a rebuttal to the critique, but rather as a musing on what to me is an interesting topic for consideration.

-Varian

 

[BlackShanglan]

This is something that fascinates me about fantasy versus reality. What man out there (stereotype alert!) doesn’t fantasize about having hordes of groupies following them around, or at least showing up on a regular basis at opportune moments, begging to be fucked. And our notion of that as every man’s fantasy is, I would argue, an aspect of our culture which creates an environment in which men who are, actually, raped, have little chance of being taken seriously.

I agree. It feeds into other issues as well - men who are, for instance, victims of domestic assualt. Perceptions of the male as the aggressor both stem from and inform the analysis of his role in sexual and domestic situations. It's hard to escape from. Personally, I enjoyed the way that you toyed with that perception by making Vaughn angry at the sudden invasion of his home, which I think was fairly well characterized as a place in which he felt particularly safe - and which he valued for that reason. She's invaded his place of retreat; he's suspicious. Works for me.

Possibly the groupie-wave or groupie obsessive could be likened to the male version of the undeniable recurrence of semi-consensual acts in female-authored texts. The idea of an irresistable excess of sexual gratification appears at a distance to be attractive, but in reality it's probably not very comforting. Several male entertainers have found that it's really quite frightening to come home and find a strange woman rummaging through your personal goods. I seem to recall David Letterman had one bad enough that she was put away; didn't Cruise as well?

Shanglan

 

[Black Tulip]

Varian,

Oh my, oh my.

I don't know where to start with this one. I'll give my impression first and see if I can answer your questions as well, afterwards.

There is not much I have to say about the way you write. I did read the first two chapters before this one and all of it is interesting enough to keep me with you.
The length of the chapters is very unbalanced though. Any particular reason for that?

But: it is starting to irritate me a bit that I still know zilch about what happened to Devan to make her so scared. You don't have to give it all, but a bit more by now would have been nice. If it's that traumatic there have to be images in her head besides fear of being ... again.

Another thing that was raising my hackles a bit was that so far all the sex was in the mind, dreaming or fantasising about it. I liked the scenes in the first two chapters and what I read of them in this part was hot enough, but it was starting to get a bit of a trick.
(Um, yes, I did skip a bit because of the length.)

As for the two characters, I can go along with both having dark secrets, and I think the idea of letting them get closer despite what's going on in their minds, is an intriguing one.

My main complaint is that this story is trying to be two things. In my opinion it could be a terrific horror story/suspense/thriller if you shift the focus away from the sex.
If on the other hand, you want to write an erotic novel, I think you should cut back on the suspense factor. It takes way too long before there is some hot stuff.

See my problem?
The sex is hot enough as far as I'm concerned. I like reading non-consent and the only thing bothering me a bit is her enormous fear. I do not quite see how you can get aroused when you are in fear of your life.
The suspense is good too.
The combination of the two make for a problem. For me, they do not mix well.

As for your questions:

1) What is your impression of Vaughn as a character? Of Devan as a character?

Devan is interesting because you hint that there has been a profound change. Makes me curious, what happened to make her insecure and frightened. More so than Vaughn, but that could be a female thing. LOL

2) Does the characters’ budding (if somewhat demented and conflicted) mutual attraction seem believable? If not, what detracts from it?

As I said, I think it's an intriguing part of the story.

3) Is the story pulling you along, making you want to find out what will happen between these characters? Or is it all too drawn out? Am I boring the pants off you instead of having a more pleasant effect?

I think I have already answered that one.

4) I’m doing a lot of hinting at things that will be revealed in later chapters. Is it intriguing? Frustrating? Confusing?

I did not so much notice the hinting. I wanted to know it bit more about what went on before.

5) Is it all a bit too maudlin? Things do lighten up later in the story, but are the characters wallowing too much in their melodrama in this segment?

Not to me, if you want to make it a thriller you are well on your way.

6) And of course I mustn’t omit this important question:
Is the sex workin’ for ya?

Yes, it is.

I hope some of this is of any help to you. As always, it's merely the opinion of one reader.



And I will keep an eye out for next chapters, because I am curious to find out what happened, dammit.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

What I said about his troubles with women wanting to fuck him was mostly tongue is cheek. I know he has serious privacy issues, and they’re more involved than just keeping women away with a whip and a chair. Still, though, it doesn’t change the way I feel about him.

Now, I didn’t read the previous chapters, but I thought you’d told us in the intro that Devan had just been violently raped by some Conrad in the woods and, having escaped from him, she’d holed up in Vaughn’s cabin. She’d been raped and beaten, from what I understand, and so I would assume that her face is somewhat bruised or cut up as well. Or do I have that wrong?

Doe comes across to me almost as an adolescent he-man fantasy. He helicopters into his Fortress of Solitude, he tells her he can kill her with his bare hands. I almost expect him to go out and split firewood with his bare hands. That’s one reason I don’t like him. I just don’t like that kind of super-macho guy.

Second, I don’t understand why you'd pull a gun on a woman you find hurt and hiding in your cabin. Maybe he doesn’t know who’s in there at first, and I guess he’s in the habit of carrying a pistol around with him in the woods, and he pulls that out as he enters the cabin. Fair enough. But then--my reaction at least—would be, “Who are you? How’d you get in here? Here, you’re hurt. Let’s have a look at you. I can kick you out later.”

But now that I’ve read farther, about her going through his closet, I’m wondering if I really do know what’s going on. Apparently she’s not a rape victim at all?

I don’t know.

I make a distinction though between physical peril and sexual threat. I think they deal in two altogether different types of tension. You can have tremendous sexual tension between two people who are having drinks together without a shred of physical peril, or you can have physical danger that dwarfs any sort of sexual tension and renders it irrelevant. Slasher movies fall into this latter category for me. They try to blur sexual tension into physical danger, but they never work for me. The violence is always physical, not sexual. I happen to hate slasher movies. I find them sick and gratuitously cruel.

I keep on getting slasher vibes from this story though, and I think that’s why it makes me uneasy. This could very well be just the effect you're looking for, though. You said you were trying to develop the erotic potential in an otherwise unpleasant situation. It just might be too unpleasant for me, who hates to see women, kids, or animals in danger.

When he ties her up and pulls out the knife, though, I don’t get a bondage thrill. I’m frightened for her and I don’t want to look. He’s not a BDSM kind of guy. He’s enraged, which is the one emotion you cannot have in BDSM. He wants to fuck her in order to hurt her. That’s not the kind of sex I enjoy sharing.

It’s funny, but I just finished a story involving a knife-scene as well. In my story, a BDSM relationship already exists between the two people and so there’s never any question in her mind of being injured. The knife is scary, but it’s more symbolic of the length he’s willing to go to to have her sexually than it is a physical threat. Cutting her clothes off her is very erotic and symbolic, but for me it only works sexually if I can be sure that he’s suddenly not going to turn and slash her with it. If there's any hint of antipathy between them, the knife stops being a sexual symbol and becomes something else,

Come to think of it, the last Earth Day contest had a story by Green_Gem involving a female reporter who broke into a reclusive writer’s home and was then raped at knifepoint. That entire rape never bothered me as much as this one did, probably because she immediately started getting excited, and because we knew he’d never use the knife on her..

---dr.M.

 

[Varian P]

Merci!

Another very helpful review--thank you, Black Tulip.

But: it is starting to irritate me a bit that I still know zilch about what happened to Devan to make her so scared.

You're not the first to say this, so I'm giving a good deal of thought now to how I might let the reader in on a clearer notion of what's happened to dear Devan.

Another thing that was raising my hackles a bit was that so far all the sex was in the mind...

Hmmm. Again you're not the first with this complaint. I'll have to think this over. I quite like the tension between their desires and their real interactions. I also enjoy the slow unfolding of their relationship (ok, maybe it's too slow), and the fantasies give everyone a little sex break now and again between all the tedium of, yawn, character and plot development.

As for the two characters, I can go along with both having dark secrets, and I think the idea of letting them get closer despite what's going on in their minds, is an intriguing one.

Thanks--that's encouraging.

The sex is hot enough as far as I'm concerned. I like reading non-consent and the only thing bothering me a bit is her enormous fear. I do not quite see how you can get aroused when you are in fear of your life.

Well, I'm glad you think the sex is hot. I'm beginning to see, from your comments and others', that I've made Vaughn too scary, and Devan too scared, for her arousal to be believable, and perhaps for the reader to enjoy the sexual tension and the sex.

The suspense is good too.

Thanks!

I hope some of this is of any help to you.

Very helpful indeed--thanks so much for taking the time to read so much and respond so thoughtfully!

And I will keep an eye out for next chapters, because I am curious to find out what happened, dammit.

I'm very glad to hear that I've managed to hook your interest. I promise you, the next chapter is much more on the erotic side, and the thriller chiller aspect will be on the wane (for a while).

-Varian

 

[Lying Eyes]

I'm shocked that dr.M didn't notice it was a fantasy in the man's head. Usually dr.M is the most keen observer here and can dissect a story better then anyone. The way I saw it was he couldn't admit to wanting to rape her so he created a fantasy where his conscious would be free to punish her and do what he wanted. If it hadn't been a fantasy in the character's head then I probably would of bolted especialy since a knife was involved and the female character was crying and hysterical. Definatly not my type of story!!! But since its in the characters imagination I can digest it, if it wasn't I would of been queasy reading it.

you wrote...

...knife on her person, which she might use to fend off an attack, the image of him snatching it away from her, then using it on her, slashing her face and body, forced itself into her mind.

I actually found this part early on in the story pretty disturbing and was hoping you didn't go that way. This might of caused dr. M to skim the story and not fully get into it. I repeat if a real sex scene not an imaginary scene involving a knife and a crying woman was involved I would of gotten angry and left the story in disgust. But I'm not the usual reader of non-consent stories. Having a weapon used and a helpless crying woman hysterical in fear would of crossed the line for what I consider aceptable to read. That's why I dared not read he other chapters since I assumed she was cut up and violently raped before she got to the cabin in this chapter.

Looking at the ending I think you should of added a extra paragraph where he is out of his fantasy. Maybe shaking his head trying to throw out the thoughts that aroused and disturbed him. Or maybe him slamming his palm on his head and saying to himself, "Oh God! What the fuck am I thinking?" Somehing at the end to show that he isn't a total jerk and is conflicted by these thoughts and feelings.

 

[Varian P]

What I said about his troubles with women wanting to fuck him was mostly tongue is cheek.

Aha! You fell right into my trap, leaving a witty little off-the-cuff remark which I then exploit shamelessly for my own devious purposes!

Now, I didn’t read the previous chapters, but I thought you’d told us in the intro that Devan had just been violently raped...She’d been raped and beaten, from what I understand, and so I would assume that her face is somewhat bruised or cut up as well. Or do I have that wrong?

Oh dear! Wrong, yes, but after asking you to wade through that endless morass of text, how could I ever blame you?

I alluded (attempting to be mysterious by undoubtedly only succeeding in being confusing) to the fact that something had been done to her.

This is a spoiler, but Devan has not been raped, nor has she been beaten. She is rather scraped up after days in the woods, but she's not limping about with a black eye and a split lip or anything like that.

Doe comes across to me almost as an adolescent he-man fantasy. He helicopters into his Fortress of Solitude...I almost expect him to go out and split firewood with his bare hands...

Laugh! And I thought I wasn't cut out to write for Hollywood. You've inspired me with new hope, dr. M.!

That’s one reason I don’t like him. I just don’t like that kind of super-macho guy.

Ew. I don't blame you. I guess I may have set myself a task far beyond my meager skills as a writer, which was, in part, to show how when you meet people, especially under certain (extreme, highly improbable, overly dramatic) circumstances, they may come across one way when really they are very different. Since I'm all about the spoilers at this moment I'll just say that Vaughn will, eventually, emerge as a compassionate, deeply feeling and rather gentle guy.

But now that I’ve read farther, about her going through his closet, I’m wondering if I really do know what’s going on. Apparently she’s not a rape victim at all?

Well, again I may have failed in clarity. That's a fantasy sequence--he doesn't really find Devan going through his things, and she's not a reporter--that's just something he imagines as a possible reason for her being there, and this rationalization allows him to have such a dark fantasy.

I make a distinction though between physical peril and sexual threat. I think they deal in two altogether different types of tension. You can have tremendous sexual tension between two people who are having drinks together without a shred of physical peril, or you can have physical danger that dwarfs any sort of sexual tension and renders it irrelevant.

I'll agree to a point, and then I'll hijack your comments and, once again, ruthlessly exploit you to further my own agenda.

I am absolutely in accord with your statement that there is a difference between physical peril and sexual tension. And certainly someone can be very sexually dominant without being violent.

But sexual threat, well, that depends on what you mean by threat. If you mean threat of rape, then in my opinion that is a form of violence, even if the victim is not physically injured. If one were offered a choice (stretch of imagination required here) between being punched hard in the face and being literally raped, probably most people would choose the black eye or broken nose. Offered the choice between rape and death, well, that would depend on the victim's value system. In many cultures past and present, to have been raped is such an erosion of a person's worth, many people have chosen death, given the option.

Boy, amI tired after running so far and fast with that one. Whew!

Slasher movies fall into this latter category for me. They try to blur sexual tension into physical danger, but they never work for me. The violence is always physical, not sexual. I happen to hate slasher movies. I find them sick and gratuitously cruel.

I'm in perfect agreement with you here, good doctor. I don't care at all for slasher movies, and if that is the flavor you're getting from this, I've butchered my baby with a hatchet.

It just might be too unpleasant for me, who hates to see women, kids, or animals in danger.

And men! Don't forget the poor, fragile men!

When he ties her up and pulls out the knife, though, I don’t get a bondage thrill. I’m frightened for her and I don’t want to look. He’s not a BDSM kind of guy. He’s enraged, which is the one emotion you cannot have in BDSM. He wants to fuck her in order to hurt her. That’s not the kind of sex I enjoy sharing.

Whew! Wanna pick me up at 8:00, then?

Once again, I must apologize for tricking, deceiving, and leading astray. The whole tied to the bed at the point of the knife bit is his fantasy, and one he feels very guilty about.

I have this nice guy (no, really) have such a dark, violent fantasy because, as I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm fascinated by the notion that all of us (tell me it isn't just me!) have fantasies we're uncomfortable with. Vaughn thinks about things he would never do, he gets aroused by images that, on a rational level, repulse him. Anyone who's ever seen a rape portrayed in a movie and felt aroused can, I think, relate to this feeling of guilty excitement, but knows too that they are not going to go out and rape anybody.

Cutting her clothes off her is very erotic and symbolic...

I rather thought so.

but for me it only works sexually if I can be sure that he’s suddenly not going to turn and slash her with it.

I see your point. Of course, as the author, I know he's not going to cut her, but it seems I've not done enough to ensure the reader knows. I was really just going for a moment of extreme fear when she first sees the knife, and then a certain amount of relief as she realizes he is "only" using the knife to cut her clothes off.

I greatly appreciate all of your comments--both as useful feedback for gauging how the story is perceived, and also as wonderful incitements to discussion. So again, dr.M., thanks!

-Varian

 

[Varian P]

I'm shocked that dr.M didn't notice it was a fantasy in the man's head. Usually dr.M is the most keen observer here and can dissect a story better then anyone.

Well, after all I did use the excessively-long-story-tranquilizer-gun on him.

Looking at the ending I think you should of added a extra paragraph where he is out of his fantasy. Maybe shaking his head trying to throw out the thoughts that aroused and disturbed him. Or maybe him slamming his palm on his head and saying to himself, "Oh God! What the fuck am I thinking?" Somehing at the end to show that he isn't a total jerk and is conflicted by these thoughts and feelings.

Excellent suggestion--I did that with the first, more abstract fantasy he had, and I agree with you, a similar demonstration of his remorse and guilt is needed here.

Cheers!

 

[MLyons]

Hi Varian,

Work's been a killer this last couple weeks. I apologize for being so slow to respond.

I've been thinking a lot about this one. I read all 4 chapters, because I think commenting on only one chapter by stepping into the middle of it has limited use, although it can be very useful in other ways. The real reason I wanted to read it all, though, is that I'm predisposed to liking this tale. This is my kinda story...

I've skimmed the other comments, but not read them fully and they kind of... further delayed my response here since I find my reactions not in complete harmony with much of the rest of the group. I thought perhaps my thoughts about the story were incorrect, but after some more thought I'm going to post a few of them anyway. You're welcome to ignore them afterall. If you're interested in more (and I do have many more), I'm available via PM. If you're not interested after wading through all the drivel I spout here, I completely understand.

I'll start by reiterating that the story (at least these four chapters) is very much in line with what I most enjoy reading. I loved the situation. I loved the imagery. I love the exploration of juxtaposing arousal with revulsion / humiliation. I love the sense of story, and the sex (especially the final scene in the last chapter, imagined though it is) is HOT. No no, that's understating it. The last scene in the fourth chapter is PERVERTEDLY hot--simply outstanding stuff--and gave me chills (in a good way... ).

You have a great gift for imagery, and for setting the stage as it were, especially in the first couple chapters.

Here is just one example from chapter 1 that I especially liked:

"She scrambled down the steep bank, over the sand to the stony ground just next to the river, then, bracing herself for a shock, stepped determinedly into the chill water. Eager to meet this visitor, the river pushed through the accommodating seams of her boots, seeping into the weave of her socks, sheathing her feet and ankles in its squishy coolness. She gaped a deep breath and turned downriver."

That is fresh and excellent description. The words not only give us some very nice images of her getting into the water, but it does it with those tiny secondary symbols and emphasis that paints that picture of her intense situation. In fact, the first chapter, up to the first sexual encounter, was outstanding in this regard. It's good writing that washes the reader into the living dream you are trying to create. Somehow though, once the sex started, I was taken out of it. I really had to think about this a lot.

"Still on his knees he took hold of her ankles, and with gentle pressure directed her to take a wider stance. He put his arms between her knees, pushing them forward with his elbows, forcing them to bend. She leaned back against the tree as her hips dropped slightly. She felt his shoulders pushing her thighs open as his hands rose beneath her hips, supporting her. She felt deliciously vulnerable, spread before his face, supported by him. Then she felt a sensation between her legs at once almost imperceptible and thrillingly unbearable. It was as if he had her very nerves under his touch, rather than her body. He was kissing her, lightly licking her, tenderly sucking her. She could not be quiet, she could not be still. She writhed, cried out with unknown pleasure. It was too much, she wanted him to stop. It would kill her. Her cries grew louder, more desperate as she felt with every jolt of sensation that she would melt away, that her being would shatter into a jillion microscopic particles. But just before she would have cum, he stopped.

He stood. Reaching down for the back of one of her knees, he raised it to his hip. His outer thigh pressed against the inner thigh of her other leg. Reaching down, he took the base of his cock in his free hand, and pressed himself against her opening. Her throbbing pussy, left aching by his kisses, thrilled at his renewed touch, contact with this different part of him. He began to enter her, she felt him sliding into her, at first just pressing at the mouth of her vagina, then inside, deeper and deeper as the full length of him filled her. As the final inch of him penetrated, his body pressed against her, and his pressure against her clit made her gasp with agonizing pleasure."

This is very detailed. It's very specific. It's all the things about a sex scene that even the biggest stroke hound would want to see, but at the same time, it's so strangely distant. It's as if I'm seeing the action in all it's minute motions, but I'm seeing it through a pair of binoculars 100 feet away. I just don't feel a connection to or between the characters here. I've racked my brain trying to figure out what it is about this that makes me feel this way and I still haven't figured it out. It could be the lack of dialogue, but certainly dialogue isn't absolutely necessary to make a good sex scene. It could be that the details you're choosing to show us are somehow the wrong ones in conveying the interplay between their two minds. It could be that the emphasis within those details is off. You tell us things like "She felt deliciously vulnerable" but given the context of what she's just been through (running through the woods, hurting, cold, and scared) I have no idea what that line could possibly mean. I have no idea WHAT she could be thinking, and therefore I practically have to ignore the statement altogether. I really wished I'd known somehow, that it was dream before it began. I know what you were going for in the mystery and disorientation of it, but it just ended up annoying me until I knew it was dream--then after I learned the truth of it at the beginning of the second chapter, I was just annoyed that it happened at all. Her plight in the woods was just so damn compelling that the inexplicable sex in the middle of it, rather than ADDING tension, simply robbed me of it.

What you're attempting to do here is extraordinarily tricky, and you're coming DAMN close to the mark, but it's not quite there. I admire you for trying to do it--this is how really great stories get written. Please forgive my presumptuousness here. I thought I'd try an experiment of my own:

Having now read all four chapters (and of course not knowing what happens--but very much wanting to, believe me), here's my "writerly" interpretation of the events of the first chapter. Devan is running away from something. My impression is that Devan is running as much away from HERSELF as she is the man or men she has left behind in a cabin. Something has scared her. SOmething she's done. Something she liked and didn't want to like. My impression is that Devan MUST get away from that environment because she doesn't like what she's seen in herself, and even hates and blames the men who brought it out in her. This is a powerful concept, and I love this. Now, she's running in the woods. She's hiding her tracks. She's wading through the river to avoid being caught. She comes upon the river bank and makes a bed of leaves, at once to warm her and to hide her. She's shivering. She's frightened, and she so very tired. She has no idea where she is and she hasn't eaten. Somehow she falls asleep. She has a dream. Does she dream of what has frightened her? No. She dreams of her savior, who also happens to be her tormentor, who has come to be with her in this unnaturally frightening setting, and then to fuck her. I have NO idea if I have anywhere near the right impressions about what has happened to her. And I'm very reticent to continue with this thought experiment because I simply don't know what you have in mind, and it's not appropriate of me to speculate like this... but my thought would be, PLEASE don't give me--the reader--any break yet. If she's going to dream, don't let it be a comforting one! It takes away all that you have built up in the beginning of the chapter! Let it be a dream about what frightens her. Let it be the dream she has in Chapter 2. She's been found! And she's going to be fucked. Then let her wake up, un-comforted and to make matters even more horrible for her, aroused--prompting her to continue her dash away from the dreaded man and the cabin she escaped from.

Obviously there are more complex things going on here with regard to Conrad, and another side to the story. I'm all for it, but we HAVE to feel her desperation. If you're going to trick us into thinking a dream is real, PLEASE make it Conrad The Evil finding her and fucking her, rather than Conrad the Nice. It would make for a much craftier deception, and you wouldn't lose any of the high tension momentum you've built up in the story to that point. In fact, you could heighten it. Let Conrad the Nice be the more obvious dream that comes later. This story is developing into a whirlwind of fantasy, and living inside the character's heads, and although that is very very difficult to get just right, I think a first step is letting the environment influence the dreams, by that I mean, if Devan is scared, don't take that away from her in her dream. If she's starting to feel like she's in more control, let her feel comforted in her dreams. This is not only more realistic to how we really dream in stressful situations, but you could draw stronger parallels to the fantasy world and the real world that make visceral connections in ways you probably haven't even thought of yet. Use that strange connection to help you tell your story about revulsion and arousal.

Now that I've totally just given you the most useless and unactionable feedback you could ever hope for, let me try to be more concrete with some more mundane things.

Some of what happens simply doesn't make sense to me. I appreciate your idea about having Vaughn feel threatened by this girl. To tell you the truth, I knew that Vaughn was the owner of the cabin the minute he appeared. I think it's a fresh take that Vaughn might feel threatened by rabid groupies, especially by one who's violated his personal things, etc. However, I still don't think his reactions are quite right. Let me go through my thought process again:

Here is this girl, she's in his cabin, she's in his clothes. He assumes it's just another of those fucking reporters, or groupies who wants to be close to him. She's done what the others before have done, broken in, taken his things, rifled through his belongings, etc. only this time it's in his cabin where he was supposed to be able to be alone. What would he do? To me, pulling out his gun and telling her to put her hands up is plausible, depending on his background, etc, but I'll be damned if he's not going to be feeling some fear. He's pointing a gun at another person. If he's not a hardened criminal, or a former cop, this guy isn't going to be pulling a gun on a simple girl without feeling a wave of terror running through his body because of what he's doing. He doesn't know what else to do. She tries to get away, but instead of letting her, he doesn't know what to think, he tries to stop her. He won't let these damn people get away with this anymore. He's not thinking. He pins her to the door. She slips out away from him and runs out the back door. He chases her, and tackles her. He feels her under him. It's a sudden and surprising sense of incredible power--sexual power, and because it also coincides with her genuine, and extreme fear of him his feelings disurb him terribly and he backs off, but instead of just letting her go fend for herself--trusting that she'll get out the same way she came in, he's going to grab her by the arms and lead her inside--in effect to imprison her. He takes her inside keeps watch while she changes her clothes behind a shower curtain, sits her down, and then GOES AND GETS A DRINK before deciding what to do with her.

I just can't imagine this happening like this. I think (and I'll say this until the cows come home: this is JUST ME--it's not my story!) it would be much more interesting if he's conflicted about this whole encounter, not just his feelings of sexual dominance while she's under him. This guy is a rock star, he's not a kidnapper. He wants to sit and read his sophisticated books in peace and quiet, he's not a reitred cop from the Baltimore, inner city beat. He brings her in, not out of malice and hatred, but out of concern for her. That emotion doesn't have to undermine your exploration of power and arousal through revulsion, it doesn't even have to undermine his anger toward her for violating his life, but if he's really the decent guy that I THINK he's going to be, you have to give him that humanity from the very start. Devan doesn't have to know this yet. In fact, it's better if she doesn't, but the READER has to have a hint of it if you're really going to get into both of these characters' heads.

Then there's the question of the cut on her back, and how it's kind of a here again, gone again thing. The cut bothers me, because I know it must be painful for the poor girl, and I have a hard time understanding why she feels arousal if she has pain like that. It's brought to our attention when it serves the story, and forgotten about when the sex starts, and I wish that wasn't the case. I'm not sure what you can do about it, since it's obviously an important element in the story.

There are a few more specific instances I could bring up, but I'll let you decide yourself whether you want to hear any more.

One more major thing that I think needs a lot of work is the dialogue. It's very stilted. In some cases it's too wordy and obviously expository, in some cases they are the wrong words for these characters. I have a hard time believing alot of it, and because of that the dialogue really took me out of the story sometimes.

This story is a real balancing act, and balancing act stories (when done well) tend to be my very favorites. Really good fiction attempts to tell us something that can not be conveyed succinctly in any other way than the way the fiction tells it to us. That means that every word of the story, every action of the characters comes together in a juxtaposition of events and themes that explore ideas that are at once both universal to us, and unique to that story. Someone trying to summarize what the story said is simply stuck saying, "you have to read the story." This could be that kind of story, and it's off to a fantastic start, but like I said, it's a real balancing act to get it right--to make the characters' actions match their thoughts and backgrounds, and at the same time explore deeper themes while you do it. Very very tricky.

My humble recommendations to you are, first, go with your gut. Don't let someone else (especially me) tell you what they want the story to be about. Second, don't wimp out. If arousal through revulsion is part of your theme, DO IT. Don't apologize for it. Don't pussy out on it. Do it. Go with your gut of course, if you feel you've gone to far, then scale back on it. But if what you've written gives you chills and others tell you to scale back because they aren't comfortable, I say to hell with 'em. Consider it a sign of success that you've reached into their psyche with your visceral imagry.

I don't know where this story is going, but I can't wait to find out. I say that as a pure reader. I will be keeping up on this tale, whether you'd like to solicit my more specific comments or not. PM me if you want me to torture you some more. I dearly hope this has been at least partially useful.

 

[MLyons]

Now having actually read all the other comments, I did want to add that I never thought Devan was in any physical danger with Vaughn. If I thought so I would have said that in my initial comments. I, like Dr. M, would have become very uneasy if I felt that he was actually going to use the knife on her. I didn't get that feeling. I would have been very surprised if he did, in fact...

Regardless though, that's a content issue, not an issue of style. However, I think a little revisitation of the early handling of Vaugn's character would go a long way to making doubly sure that readers don't feel what Dr. M. felt, if that's important to you.

 

[Black Tulip]

After reading what MLyons had to offer, I want to add something.

His suggestion about switching dreams had me going YESSSS. I know it's your story, but I think it's an excellent suggestion to keep the suspense going.

Just trying to be helpful.

 

[Varian P]

After reading what MLyons had to offer, I want to add something...His suggestion about switching dreams had me going YESSSS. I know it's your story, but I think it's an excellent suggestion to keep the suspense going. Just trying to be helpful.

MLyons had me going YESSSS to that and more. A most detailed insightful review!

It's very helpful, knowing that suggestion struck you, too, as a good one--thanks for taking the time to tell me.

-Varian

 

[Varian P]

Thanks, everyone

As my week in the forum spotlight comes to a close I wanted to say that I'm very grateful to all of you who took the time to read through my lengthy chapter and write with your comments, helping me see where I'm succeeding and where I'm going astray. I think, thanks to you, I'll be able to make this chapter much better.

-Varian

 

[BlackShanglan]

MLyons had me going YESSSS to that and more.

Damn. What does he do to get *that* reaction? Is this a review of erotic prose, or an erotic review of prose?

Shanglan

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Just a word on that sex scene/dream that MLyons mentioned that felt so distant to him, because I think I maybe can shed some light on this.

I’ve come across this in my own writings and in other stories: a sex scene that’s extremely graphic and visual and yet is bewilderingly lacking in erotic heat, and in my opinion it’s usually due to a lack of emotional give-and-take between the characters. Even a rape involves an emotinal relationship, but here the sex seems be more concerned with what their gonads are doing than with the characters themselves, and so it comes off as strangely cold and clinical.

I noticed that in the excerpt he posted, there’s very little description of her emotional state aside from her physical sensations. There’s no mention of what she would probably be feeling, which would be very complex: revulsion, fear, excitement, horror at her own excitement, her attempt to fight off these feelings. The guy comes across as no more than a pair of lips and a cock, and without telling us her inner state, much of the richness of the sex is lost, and so it comes off as physical and ultimately superficial: gonad sex rather than people sex.

This is still a very well-written scene, but I think the real focus of action here is in her head, not her body, and so we feel cheated.

---dr.M.

 

[Varian P]

Just a word on that sex scene/dream that MLyons mentioned ...I think I maybe can shed some light on this...

Thanks once again for some helpful advice.

This was one of the first sex scenes I ever wrote--in fact, thinking about it now, I think it was the very first. I'd like to think I've improved, and this tells me that I need to look back over everything with a more careful eye rather than just scanning for spelling errors. You and MLyons were dead on with your critiques and, I think, with your suggestions for how to fix the trouble.

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts.

-Varian

 

[Varian P]

Originally posted by Varian P:
MLyons had me going YESSSS to that and more.

Originally posted by BlackShanglan:
Damn. What does he do to get *that* reaction?

I think it's the kind praise when I've been good, and the good stropping when I've been bad. Don't fret--you've had me going YESSSS many times.

Originally posted by BlackShanglan:
Is this a review of erotic prose, or an erotic review of prose?

At times it's a fine, fine line.