Only Rannah’s out-thrust arm stopped the swinging rifle barrel aimed at the girl who had the temerity to question.
“You need to know nothing. Do as you’re told. Get in here.” Seething in frustration and fear Stacie obeyed. Seated on the wooden seat she heeded the injunction of the hostile eyes and placed her left wrist gingerly within the open metal cuff. Rannah snapped the bands tight upon her. “Now the other!”
Stacie throttled her protest. Surely one prisoned wrist made her impotent enough for their need! But she was scared. Resignedly she delivered her right hand into a similar bondage. The clicking of the ratchets as they locked her wrist sounded a death knell to hope. This was neither aid nor deliverance. Miserably she watched her fellow captives similarly rendered helpless. She and the stewardess were locked by both wrists, the other two girls by one wrist only. It sufficed. Salim climbed in with them. Rannah left, the van door closed. “Now for nice ride,” said Salim cheerfully.
The ride was far from nice. It was rough and without concern for the passengers, their prisoned wrists took the brunt of it, chafing against the unyielding metal as they braced themselves against the motion. Salim surveyed their distress benignly like a proud parent.
“Why do I have to have my wrists fastened?” the stewardess demanded of him irritably. “Can’t you unlock one?”
Salim was shocked. “Oh, most bad to unlock. Salim not have key.” He surveyed the situation pensively and came up with a shattering conclusion. “Is now most good, both your hands are fix. Salim can have fine look at tits.”
As nearly as was possible within the van there fell a shocked silence before Stacie broke it angrily. “Leave her alone. You touch us and I’ll report you.”
“This report?” Salim examined the word. “You mean you tell what I do.” He guffawed heartily. “Everybody much laugh, they not care.”
“Come near me and I’ll kick you where it hurts,” his victim threatened.
“Salim could tie nice feet.” He pointed to a coil of thin rope looped in the framework.
Stacie knew the chill of something more than fear. The boy’s very innocence told how far they were from their own world. Naiveté and brutality side by side were to be feared, reason would not touch them. Salim was lifting down the rope.
“No! Don’t tie my feet.” The stewardess sought frantically for inspiration and, finding none, capitulated. “Oh, go ahead!” she said disgustedly. “I don’t suppose it will kill me.” Nodding toward her neighbor she sought to cut her loss. “Let her do it, she’s got a free hand?”
“Very hot dog!” Salim was intrigued. “Right now, quick.” She, on whom had fallen the task of baring a girl’s breasts, found it more difficult than supposed. Her single wrist was rigidly held, and the uncertain motion of the vehicle added its own hazard, but she competently used the one hand vouchsafed her. “Dammit, with both your wrists fastened I’d have to tear too much,” she said regretfully. “We may need these clothes, they’re all we’ve got.” She bestowed a look of infinite distaste on their guide: “Look, kid, with one hand I can uncover one of mine without tearing anything. Will that do?”
The beaming youth was enjoying his power. He scrutinized the swelling bulge being offered for his delectation. “Much O.K. Please to show now.”
Stacie watched, sharing the shame, noting the tumescence of the Arab boy in his conquest. Even with a free hand the donor of a girl’s flesh found her task difficult. She twisted and squirmed, tugging constantly at her locked wrist in an instinctive need. She grinned sheepishly at her tense companions. “This is a helluva note,” she said bitterly. “I’ve never been helpless like this before. It’s twice as difficult as you’d think.”
But she achieved her purpose. Scarlet and awkward, she brought into view the curved loveliness Salim desired. The boy’s eyes glowed.
“Is not big tit,” he complained.
Circumstance had denied erotic stimulation, the nipple was half inverted. Its owner gave her companions a despairing and disgusted shrug and proceeded to apply friction. The pink bud of flesh responded handsomely. Salim’s eyes bulged at the phenomenon.
Having fulfilled her contract, the girl arranged her breast to give it full exposure, took away her hand and sat with flaming cheeks so that the concupiscent child of the desert might feast on his desire. The glances she exchanged with the other girls held a faint amusement: there was something pathetically absurd in her predicament.
But, of course, it did not end there. Salim sat next to the angry girl and used his hands in increasingly bold explorations that were obviously genuine in their curiosity as to the texture and nature of the firm flesh. Assiduously he plied his fingertip on the sacrificial nipple, but was unsuccessful in fostering further growth, it was already hard and sensitive. He was enraptured as with a glamorous toy. The girl sat staring fixedly at nothing.
From the female flesh, Salim graduated to the intricacies of the female garb, but found his desire for additional nudity frustrated by the captive hand. It was evident that had he possessed the key to the handcuff he would have used it, obviously he was hesitant to rip and tear.
Stacie could almost watch the inevitability of his thought.
She cringed as his eager gaze sought her own garments and those of the girl at her side. If one breast was vulnerable, surely there must be others! She fought down the impulse to kick at him as he approached. She did not want her feet tied, she was vulnerable enough. She knew the nature of what she wore could enable cunning fingers to untidily expose the twin cones by which the Arab youth was obsessed. Angrily she felt her nipples respond to the eroticism of the occasion. She averted her face from the wide brown eyes and the full sensuous lips so close to hers as the increasingly knowledgeable fingers tugged and pulled and found the tiny fastenings that had been the frail armour of her nakedness. Even her bra was gently unclipped, so that she soon found herself with the flimsy materials tucked back over her prisoned arms and behind her neck. The sanctity of her breasts was lost to her, they stood out fully naked, her nipples pert and impudent. She was furiously conscious that, with her wrists fastened as they were, her chest thrust out its double glories as though in pride. She sat, flushed and fuming, as the boy’s insatiable curiosity transferred itself to the girl who shared her bench.
It was absurd, ludicrous, shaming. Stacie knew she could laugh or weep, but beneath the surface there was fear. If a gawky boy could treat them thus, what might they expect from adults! Salim sat now like a pasha in his harem admiring the intimate attributes of his women. He had fondled and prodded to his heart’s content at the total of five female breasts that were the harvest of his lechery.
“Are not all alike?” he questioned.
“Think you’ve been short changed?” the stewardess asked bitterly.
“Ah, but tits grow if tickle! Is not so with breast?”
“If it was, you’d have mine as big as a melon the way you’ve been at it,” the last girl told him drily.
“Now that you’ve had a good look, can we get dressed again?” the first girl asked hopefully.
Their youthful guide waved away the request as palpably silly. “You not hurting,” he proclaimed. “Salim like to see such good tits. You stay quiet or I tie.” He motioned to the waiting rope.
Stacie loathed her dishabille. It seemed furtive and untidy, faintly obscene, yet she was helpless to correct it. She tried to adjust to the incredible: A few hours ago in the Hilton Hotel, now this! She wondered what her father would do if he could see her now. Certainly he would set forces in motion, but they would not be swift enough to cover his daughter’s breasts within this speeding van. Her impotence was infuriating, she could touch no part of herself. Her clothes were every which way, her naked breasts proclaimed themselves. All she could do was sit and bear the lively scrutiny of a pubescent urchin. Every instinct forbade her passivity, her arms constantly asserted themselves and were foiled. Never in her life had she known bonds or restraints. The plight of her hands now held unreality, looking along the length of her arms she beheld her metal encircled wrists as belonging to someone else, that she be handcuffed like a criminal in transit was incomprehensible. The shining steel tight-clasping her flesh was, in its modernity, as incongruous here in the desert as the automatic rifles and the jeeps.