Jon Reskind - The abducted wife

Josh slid his buttocks against the chair, causing it to sway slightly, as though in pleased anticipation of a good fight. His eyes swept over to Silas who grinned back to him in dumb encouragement at him sitting in front of the girl. In an attempt to show off his powers in front of Silas, Josh spread his palm over Jane's knees and moved it slowly up her thighs until it rested just below the hem of her dress, his fingers hooked firmly in the tanned warm flesh as though he were testing a piece of meat. "One little swig ain't going to hurt her," he chuckled and looked brazenly in the direction of the covered vee between her long smoothly curving legs. "Less she's been swillin' it all afternoon."

"She ain't been drinkin' nothin'," Buck protested.

"I really can't drink it," Jane spoke for the first time, restraining the almost overwhelming repugnance that made her want to pull away from Josh's hand and at the same time looking at him with a pleading expression that wouldn't offend him. The upsetting scene was making her terribly nervous, and in a way, she was dying for another drink to take off that edge, but she sensed the wisdom inherent in Buck's protests. He wouldn't have put himself up against Josh like this if he wasn't sure that more of the strong moonshine would push her beyond her limits. "Alcohol has always made me sick," she begged softly.

"I think I'm getting a little fed up," Josh said suddenly, his former exuberance evaporating in a single instant and a horrible violent fury crossing his face. "I don't know what took ya this afternoon and I don't understand what's goin' on now. All I know is I wanta have some fun and I ain't lettin' no love-sick farm boy mess up my party. We's gonna drink now and I pose the first toast to Buck's bein' in love."

Jane swayed back and almost fell off the couch from the suddenness of Josh's huge roar of laughter at his own remark sweeping through the room. The whole shack seemed to reverberate with his scorn and Silas' delight in Buck's embarrassed look. Buck lifted his bottle and for a moment Jane thought he would hurl it across the room, but instead he slowly lifted it to his mouth, gulping frequently and deeply, and when he set the bottle back on the table his face was masked with stony indifference. "It don't make no difference to me what you do with the dumb little bitch. You want a slab of stinko female flesh beneath you, go ahead."

"Now that's more like it," Josh beamed as his good mood returned. "That's what I like to hear. That's my boy, Buck, actin' like a man. C'mon over here, Buck, and pull up a chair."

Jane watched like a doomed creature as her former ally grinned and stood up, dragging his seat across the chair to the couch. Then Silas hurried over to the edge of the couch and her stomach sank with dread as she found herself surrounded by the three men, cornered like a trapped animal. The men began passing the bottle between them and it moved through their hands for several rounds until she hoped that in their desire for the strong white moonshine they had forgotten about making her drunk. But still Josh's hands continued to fondle and pinch at her legs that she forced to lie limp at the edge of the bed. For a moment she thought he had almost lost interest in her, but the increasing pressure and more frequent touches of his hands on her defenseless flesh told her otherwise.

"Would ya care t'imbibe," asked Josh, and raised the bottle in his fist that went entirely around it up to her face. "Buck reminded me we ain't got no glasses. But a lady like you ain't above indulgin' like the rest of us."

She felt Josh's hand increasing its grip on her thigh and she tried edging her leg that was beginning to hurt away from him but he wouldn't let it budge. "I-I don't drink. I told you, I can't stand the taste of alcohol," she protested, looking toward Buck for some sign that he might protect her. But his hard-chiseled features gave no indication of his inner feelings, and she sensed that she could do nothing but attempt to ward off Josh herself.

"Look," he commanded, the red hairs of his heavy mustache bristling. "Ya take and ya drink it nice, or we get Silas here to do some persuading."

A long shrill whine erupted from Silas' throat, and the idiot leaned forward, running his hands rhythmically up and down his knees and staring at Jane with the same obscene slow-witted arrogance she had witnessed in him that afternoon. At the same time Josh's hand dug more insistently into her leg sending tiny pulses of pain down her softly trembling thigh. There was nothing she could do now – all her resources had been exhausted with Buck's surrender to Josh's vicious jibes and prodding – and she bowed her head in limp assent, suppressing the flow of tears brimming her eyes.

"I-I g-guess I have no choice," she murmured and held out her hands to receive the bottle.

Evening came with a slow kindling of sunset pastels and a burst of deep orange on the jagged horizon. Buck had made a fire in the fireplace, and the three men and the girl continued drinking. Each gulp Josh made Jane take pushed her farther and farther from her iron resolve to remain clear-headed and sober, and she found herself slipping into a dizzy glazed-eyed state that she tried to fight off by concentrating on her need to escape; but it was of no use. As time went on she almost forgot Josh's hands that roamed without her protest over the most intimate parts of her young body. Josh remained on a level plateau of intoxication. He drank and yet he seemed to get no drunker although the salacious glances that lit on her creamily tanned close-set breasts and her barely covered thighs became increasingly lewd as the evening progressed.

The second bottle of moonshine finished, Josh sent Silas outside to the stone building for another.

"You been keeping up with us men-folks real well," Josh said, and lumbered up from his chair, his full height astounding Jane as his head almost touched the ceiling. "Now you seen what ol' Peggy done last night. She's a good'n, but not half as pretty as you," he squeezed her thigh as though they were intimate lovers. "Well – I was wonderin' if ya'd go for puttin' on a similar performance?"

Buck hitched up his belt unconsciously in anger. Then he turned, his face flashing, and moved across the room and sat down at the table.

"I-I didn't see anything last night, I've told you," Jane whispered, looking desperately across the room at Buck, hoping that he might change his mind and come to her defense. "I came here because I was lost – I-I was hungry."

"Lord girl, I heard enough a' your fibs to last til hell freezes over," Josh reddened, releasing his grip from her aching thigh for a moment. "Ya been here for a day, and ya gotta earn your keep. First I wants ya to unbutton that dress, slow-like so's me n' Buck can enjoy them big titties of yours poppin' out."

"No!" she screamed, a sudden willfulness returning to her consciousness through the haze of whisky. "I've had enough. Just let me out of here!"

Josh leered down at her with a cruel hardened expression that exuded a fierce criminality and a perversity she had seen in newspaper photographs of rapists and desperate killers. "If ya want it that way," he said and pulled down hard on the flanges of his mustache. "I'll have t'oblige Silas to do the job for ya."

The image of the obscene drooling idiot running his hands across her body once again was too much to bear, but Jane fought within herself for an interminable moment against giving in to the brutally licentious blackmail. Then, slowly, as though she were being directed through an unconscious impulse not of her own choosing, she stood up, weaving slightly from the alcohol, in front of Josh and Buck and ran her hands across the smooth flatness of her fearfully quivering belly. Her long blonde hair spilled over the tips of her upturned breasts and she brushed it aside carelessly and began unbuttoning the torn front of her dress.