Chapter One

Jacqueline Raven crouched upon the cool tiled floor in the lounge of her temporary home, illuminated within the circle of light cast by an oil lamp. She was in a bungalow situated in the compound of the US Regional Coordination Centre outside the town of Maung Lo in the far north of Thailand. At the circumference the oil lamp lit the flat, hard faces of the ring of armed men who surrounded her and she trembled with dreadful apprehension as they fell back to make way for a man whose coarsely handsome features she recognised. General Bha Duong, once her would-be seducer, was now evidently her captor.

In the distance she could still hear the intermittent rattle of small arms fire and an occasional louder detonation, from where she guessed the main buildings must still be under attack and where her husband, Roger, must now be trapped.

The attackers had broken into the defended perimeter near the staff quarters by blowing a gap in the electrified fence under cover of darkness. The explosion had woken Jacqueline and Rachel who, with her own husband, shared the bungalow with the Ravens. The two women had run out into the tropical darkness, only to be caught in the rush of men who charged, yelling like demons, among the bungalows, firing into the flimsy wooden buildings and hurling grenades through doors and windows.

She had no idea what had become of Rachel in the wild confusion outside. She herself had been seized by a small group and hustled back inside the unscathed bungalow. They seemed to know what they were about, lighting her face with a small lamp once they were under cover, as if to check her identity. It was made brutally clear that they were her captors, not her rescuers. She had tried to get away from them, but they threw her face down on the floor, tying her wrists behind her with her own dressing gown sash and when in panic she began to scream for help, promptly gagged her, quickly and effectively, with a couple of turns of a stiff military belt between her jaws.

They had waited then, Jacqueline at their feet like a parcel awaiting collection, men coming and going. She hadn’t anticipated who the collector was to be. She decided that the US style uniforms of the attackers must signify an event long feared by the officers of the Centre, that the soldiers of the local government garrison had changed sides. The panicky uncertainty about the future of the world order had exacerbated purely local politics. Every new report of imminent global disruption spawned a new attempt to take advantage of disorder or jockey for position in some hoped-for new order. Jacqueline supposed that her captors intended her to be spared for some purpose, as a hostage perhaps. She hoped desperately that the Centre staff and the guards would be able to beat off the attack and come eventually to her rescue. There seemed little prospect of any coming from closer at hand, for comparative silence seemed to have descended in the immediate vicinity. The members of staff who had not been on duty like her husband, must have been either shot or taken prisoner too.

Then General Bha Duong had come to collect and Jacqueline’s captivity suddenly made sense and took on a new menace.

The General, his rank was not in any recognised army, was a frequent visitor to the Centre. His origins were mysterious, but he had seen service in counter insurgency work in several Asian countries. He was currently operating as the leader of a guerrilla band high up in the mountains where China, Laos and Burma all impinged upon Thailand in a sort of ‘no-man’s-land’. He worked closely with the Americans, supporting local separatist groups and passing agents and supplies over the trackless mountains to Chinese rebels, with information coming in the opposite direction.

As Jacqueline herself had good reason to know, the General had strong backing amongst some of the senior American officers. One of them had declared the General’s reports to be “the product of the coolest brain in South East Asia” and others spoke admiringly of his ability to arouse devotion from, and instil discipline into his mountain bandits.

When Jacqueline, an English girl married to an American Reserve officer, had first arrived at the mission in the early days of the world crisis, she had found General Bha Duong to be a figure of considerable interest to the small group of Mission wives and female staff. He was a man of some sophistication, who knew Paris and Washington as well as the cities of the East. Although now in his mid-fifties and showing the effects of dissipation, he still had considerable masculine presence and a suave charm, which he liked to exercise upon the women. There were in fact, intriguingly vague but persistent rumours that he held some secret power over them when he cared to exert it. He was supposed to have made numerous conquests amongst Mission and diplomatic wives, both in Maung Lo and in the capital.

Although there were arguments over the details, it seemed at least well established, that a secretary in the embassy, who had been his mistress, was so altered by the experience that she had to be sent home for psychiatric treatment; that she had given the slip to the officer escorting her to the airport and had never been seen again. Though the General denied any knowledge of her, the gossip among the women maintained that she had been spirited away into the mountains where his secret base was established. For her part Jacqueline thought the American women too naive, prone to ascribe the General’s amatory success to mystical oriental love techniques. She herself was inclined to suspect that the mystery was part of the attraction and the girl’s disappearance to have something to do with drugs, given that the mountains were also a known source of opium. Roger had revealed to Jacqueline his growing suspicion that the General had built up his own sources of opium and was using his contact with the Centre to remove the competition.

Jacqueline found the General’s supposed skill did not work upon her, but undeterred by her coolness he had persisted in his attentions. Jacqueline had obtained employment as a civilian cipher clerk in the Centre and had been taught to regard security with due solemnity.

Suspecting some hidden motive in the General’s persistence, she had confided in her husband and, at his suggestion, allowed Bha Duong to think his approaches might be rewarded, in the hope that he would reveal his true aim. Roger and she were total novices at this sort of thing, but they were fortunate, or else the General’s habitual success had made him careless, for Jacqueline detected him one evening at a cocktail party, in the act of spiking her drink. Roger and she reported the incident at once to their superiors, but to their annoyance the Ravens seemed to be regarded as a nuisance, so highly was the General’s ability regarded in some quarters.

“Dammit!” one officer had protested. “It’s like we had an American up there!” There was a clear feeling that Bha Duong had merely been trying to slip Jacqueline some kind of love potion, and that a threat to her virtue was something that might well be winked at. Since Bha Duong had discreetly removed himself back to his mountains, the matter went unresolved, the contents of the drink disposed of unanalysed and Jacqueline at least left unmolested. For the time being anyway.

Now the man had returned, apparently to claim her. She felt there could be little doubt now why the raiders had selected her so particularly. They were clearly acting on his command. The General intended to have his revenge upon her for the attempted entrapment. She looked up at his face, heavily shadowed by the lamplight, resembling the deeply carven image of a Chinese demon, looking down upon her with cruel amusement. It was she who was trapped now. She didn’t suppose she had any hope of a quick rescue either, for she remembered only too clearly the sight of her confused neighbours being shot down as they rushed from their homes.

Turning his head, the General spoke to his men without betraying any emotion that Jacqueline could recognise, but two of them immediately bent over her and abruptly whipped up her clothing; dressing gown and nightdress together over her head and shoulders. They held her steady despite her threshing, with her upper-half enveloped in the skirts but left nakedly exposed from the waist down.

“Let’s see what the long nosed bitch will offer us with this in her!” The General spoke in English this time. A hard hand smacked Jacqueline smartly upon one vulnerable bottom cheek; her squeal of fright and indignation muffled beneath the enveloping folds.

“Strip her completely!” she heard him say coolly.

Flustered but helpless, she was unable to prevent the tangle of garments being swiftly stripped from her, slashed ruthlessly with vicious looking knives until it left her still kneeling, stark naked and dishevelled at her captor’s feet. Face burning, she looked up to see Bha Duong holding a hypodermic needle to the light and was suddenly conscious that where the hand-imparted sting was fading from her bottom cheek, a sharp tingle had made itself felt instead. Jacqueline tried to wail a protest, but only incoherencies emerged from beneath her gag. Clearly some drug had been injected into her.

Was this the sort of thing Bha Duong had intended to give her in her drink? What would it do to her? Was it intended to facilitate her kidnap? Surely there were enough of them to carry her off without such aid. She squirmed a little in the men’s grasp and they laughed as if in pleasurable anticipation. Was she to be gang raped?

Pleasure, too, had enlivened the General’s face, suddenly close to her as a man held up the lamp between the two of them and the two men thrust her forward for his appraisal. His hand shot out to cup and enclose her breast, supporting its weight on his fingers, thumb expertly flicking the proud nipple. The other men laughed coarsely at something he said. He translated it for Jacqueline.

“Big tits go with big noses!” He bounced both breasts casually, grinning as Jacqueline gasped and reddened. She felt the nipples had somehow become tender and sensitive, making her catch her breath and giving her sharp relief when he allowed them to spill heavily back against her rib cage.

“Hairy creatures too!” the experimenter remarked generally. “My wife has a theory that they are barbarians of a lower species, much closer to the apes than us!” He stooped and reached downwards. His fingers might have tested there too but Jacqueline, sensing where his interest had shifted, reacted instinctively and he had to straighten smartly to evade her despairing kick. Any triumph she might have felt was short lived when she saw the expression on his face.

“Still frozen? Shall we warm you up a quicker way?” She saw he was unbuckling his belt and felt a sudden thrill of horrified anticipation. “You are going to make your mind up to be very obedient, aren’t you, Jacqueline?”

Jacqueline felt that she was helpless among all these men; she was certain that she could be made to do whatever they wished. The heavy leather belt slapped with a mighty meaty-sounding smack into Bha Duong’s palm. Somehow the prospect of being punished if she didn’t obey made the idea of her helplessness strangely exciting. She cried out in confusion as she was picked up and whirled about amid groping, grasping hands and then found that her position had been swiftly reversed. She was bent over, bottom out-thrust, head downwards, with Bha Duong and his menacing belt behind her, out of sight but not out of mind. He spat out another order and Jacqueline found her ankles gripped and held, her legs drawn apart and held open so that the General was free to probe as and where he wished.

She trembled in anticipation, conscious that she was the centre of attention among all these leering men. Her hair had become sweat-plastered to her cheeks and neck and she found herself very short of breath. A large male hand squeezed her bottom cheek and slid between her legs. She steeled herself to take it without resistance. Her mind revolved around what was to come and how helpless she was in the hands of all these men. Beaten if she didn’t submit. Her mind dwelt upon the sight and sound of the harsh leather of the belt, imagining how it would feel when brutally applied to her own softer flesh.

The thought of it made her skin tingle in anticipation. She wriggled expressively, the plaintive squealing sounds that emerged from her evoking coarse laughter from her captors. Such was her condition of helplessness that she felt no shame in making her submission clear.

“You react quickly, Jacqueline,” the General said, sounding amused and intrigued. “You three see how fast she progresses. Warm her up a little more!” At his word the lamp swung to illuminate the cushioned seat that filled the front window space and where three of the brutes, grizzled hard faced veterans, were settling themselves in a row, side by side. The red light beyond the window flickered eerily behind them as if they were a row of devils.

“They will give you a little help!” The men grinned delightedly, showing mouthfuls of gold teeth as Jacqueline was propelled towards them.

She had no clear idea of what she was supposed to do, but she was caught and drawn down across their laps by several hands, face upwards, hardly daring to resist. With quaking flesh she felt the masculine firmness of their thighs, the rough fabric of their uniforms brushing her nakedness. Strong male hands restrained her confused struggles. Black eyes glinting like hard wet pebbles in deeply shadowed cavities gloated over her; thin lips in hairless mouths pursed and chuckled in evil anticipation.

Not knowing what was coming nearly made her scream for something to be done merely to end her tension, before the three pairs of hands gradually turned from restraint to teasing, and from teasing to caressing. Ruthlessly insistent, they set to work upon her trembling flesh, playing with expert lascivious skill upon the young Englishwoman’s drug-enhanced vulnerability.

She was forced to react, Jacqueline told herself. She chewed upon her gag, wriggling and twisting upon their laps in her efforts to contain herself but only adding the rasp and brush of her body on their thighs to the total of sensations. Hands undid the gag and she cried aloud, ashamed of her easy capitulation but unable to deny it, for three shaven heads were now bent over her, the soft wet warmth of three mouths, three supple diving tongues, complementing the lascivious fingers. Not even fear could keep her frozen. She had expected brutal rape, perhaps to be given to the General’s men in contempt, but this vile sort of assault was more humiliating than either, for it was making her a collaborator. To her horror, she was unable to withstand it. Every inch of her naked body was being kissed, petted, stroked and caressed.

The fingers and tongues found zones of sensation she had never known existed, feelings she had never recognized. She was being forced to react and even to respond. She was in the clutches of experts. At some time her wrists had been freed but her captors brushed aside her feeble attempts at intervention and her efforts subsided into mere spasmodic clutching at arms or hands or ears. Under the unrelenting pressure of lust, Jacqueline’s mind seemed to have divided into two.

Deep down one part registered horror and revulsion at what was being done to her. The rest of her brain seemed inextricably involved with the sensations aroused in her body, concentrated upon the results, reacting to them with excitement. Confusion overwhelmed her. She had forgotten the pinprick of the hypodermic, and was bewildered by her own wild responses. The changing nature of her reactions was not lost upon her tormentors either.

Slowly but inevitably the lewd persistence was having visible effect, for despite Jacqueline’s erratic efforts to resume control, her body began to accept what her mind wanted to refuse. Her breath came in distinct gasps, her breasts heaving. Her body writhed almost languorously across the male thighs, legs spread wide, toes curled; her fingers clung to, rather than clawed, at her possessors. Tear-filled eyes she shut tight, unwilling to see what she wanted to deny, but by that act weakening all the more her will to resist. The General, who had been casually pacing back and forth beyond the arc of the light, signalled delighted encouragement and the three expert voluptuaries redoubled their efforts.

Slow fire seemed to have invaded Jacqueline’s belly, a throbbing glow that spread and intensified until it seemed to need only some spark to burst into consuming fire. Desire for that outburst now pervaded her mind, overwhelming all scruples. Each new caress she hoped would provide that crowning touch. But nothing came to relieve her. She spread herself, arching across the men’s laps like a victim on the rack with no more compulsion than the unremitting fondling gave. That portion of her mind which was still appalled by her reactions was by now incapable of restraining her or even holding back her tremulous cries. Suddenly hands, fingers, tongues, all left her.

Jacqueline’s eyes flew open. She was left gasping. Somewhere deep down she knew that she should be glad to be free, but she felt so empty, aching and deprived, that she cried out in protest, clinging to the hard male thighs which were all that remained to feed her excitement. Then she lost even that. She was decanted rudely from off the men’s laps onto the floor.

General Bha Duong swam into view as if in answer to her wails. Hands thrust her in that direction.

“Go! General, finish what you want!” The pressure of her desire allowed Jacqueline no time for reflection. With little mewling cries she gathered her shaky limbs beneath her, and crawled towards the shadowy male figure, back arched like an animal in pain, her mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. She needed him. He was hard and strong. She needed what a man could give! She blundered against his legs and clutched blindly. This man, any man!

The thick fingers of the renegade grabbed her by the hair, lifting her tear-wet face level with his crotch. She saw and identified what she needed with a desperate groan. She settled on her knees quivering with the intensity of her emotions as a naked penis, half stiffened, thick as a club, dangled before her eyes.

“You must work for what you want!” Bha Duong chided inexorably. “Get it up!” Terror and arousal alike had combined to prepare the young woman for this cue. With hardly a moment’s hesitation, consumed by her need, impelled to propitiate and to coax, she put her soft mouth to his half erected organ, encircled the rearing fleshy knob with her lips and began assiduously to tongue and suck him. The General hissed in triumph, his eyes slitted, enjoying this succulent form of revenge as he looked down upon his hapless captive, who had been reduced to the abject necessity of arousing him solely in order to effect her own rape.

Beyond the windows there now showed a vivid glare. In the distance the main buildings were evidently ablaze, their light creating weird leaping reflections on the walls of the lounge and playing tricks with the strained postures of the man and woman in the centre of the floor.

“I congratulate you!” Gripping Jacqueline tightly, the General gasped in elation, looking over her head at the row of three grinning men and then to those others who formed a lewdly admiring audience. “An excellent cock-sucker!” It was only with an effort that he dragged Jacqueline off him, leaving her panting and mewling in anxious propitiation. “Nearly as good as a professional!” he assured his clinging victim. His penis was in massive erection, glistening with her saliva from hairy root to purple tip.

“You shall have this now to put where you really want it!” He turned and, drawing Jacqueline with him, cast himself full length on the black leather couch that the Ravens used for a spare bed. “Come! Ride me! Good and hard eh!” He gestured to where his rampant cock rose stiffly from his loins and Jacqueline responded as if mesmerised. It stood like a knotted column. Her blue eyes were fixed glassily upon its rearing length, the lips that had created that tumescence still parted, her chin glistening with the same saliva. Her slim figure turned red gold by the distant fire light, she scrambled up on top of his prostrate form, responding more to the brutal lure of his erection than in obedience to his words. She straddled the man’s lap on all fours, shapely thighs splayed wide, soft belly hollowed so that her dark pubic tuft bulged as a furry pad between arching tendons. Teeth clenched upon her lower lip, she manoeuvred hastily, whimpering a little with the effort of keeping her desire in check. The General grinned at her eagerness. His great cock bounced like a live thing as she reached a hand to grasp it beneath her belly.

With distracted expression and sobbing breath Jacqueline lowered herself determinedly upon him, slim hand wedding-ringed, guiding the alien cock home between her straining thighs. Squealing a little, she got its fat knob firmly lodged with a little jiggle of her hips. Shuddering, she let herself go, allowing her own weight to sink her slowly inch by inch onto its shaft, lubricated for her by her own saliva. She took its full length into herself until she sank with a gasp of triumph, belly to belly, squatting on the General’s thighs, head tossed, body arched, firmly impaled.

Only for a few seconds did she find relief in being so solidly occupied. A brief squeal of ecstatic satisfaction died into a groan as the returning urgency of mind and body forced her on and impelled her into motion. Like a girl on a pony, rising and falling in the saddle, she obeyed the General’s original exhortation and began to ride her solid impalement, wailing and gasping, surging up and down, bolt upright, teeth gritted, hair flying and breasts bouncing.

The General’s followers were avid spectators of the show. Jacqueline was aware of them drawing closer but endeavoured to shut her mind to extraneous matters, losing herself in her own physical world. Beneath her surging body their commander lay as still as if lying in state, an iron will forcing Jacqueline to provide all the action, making herself a spectacle for their entertainment. In her frantic desire for sexual release she only worked harder, plunging up and down the long intrusion as if working a pump shaft, twisting and writhing her hips like a belly dancer in the effort to get ever more sensation.

“Ride it! Isn’t this what you wanted?” His voice goaded her, acting upon her confused mind like a whip to a mare, inciting her to wilder efforts. Her hair was plastered to her neck and cheeks and she was panting hard, breasts heaving. The General himself, showed signs of the effect she was having. His red-lit face distorted, with teeth showing, looked more devilish than ever “Just a bitch on heat!” he jeered and Jacqueline squealed without restraint as hard hands slapped and bounced her swinging breasts. Somehow, punishment seemed appropriate and served to distract her mind from the ever-deepening ache in her belly.

“Yes ... Yes ... I …” She groaned, hardly knowing what it was she was assenting to, acknowledging her shame at being the centre of attention for all these leering men, but finding that the shame only heightened the excitement. Her cries grew ever more frenzied and soon even the thought of being forced and punished became part of the stimulus which fuelled her lust. “I can’t … help it … can’t stop … it … Have to … do …it!”

How long she spent thus frantically impaled, she never could have told; enough that she was convinced that only in this way could she obtain the relief she needed. Excited almost beyond endurance, she rode her impalement as if her life depended upon it, uttering broken cries of lustful desire, becoming oblivious of all about her.