Chapter 4: The Aphrodite

Donna was confused, emotional and distressed as she jogged along the dusty Pinahori road. Her hair was heaped high on her head and then pinned to her scalp and tucked into a pink, mesh baseball cap so that it bobbed as she ran: step after step, a regular rhythm. Here, she was alone with only the wildness of nature to console her, and so here, she tried to unscramble her thoughts and make sense of her feelings.

She was wearing a firm, bright bra that kept control of her breasts and a discreet backpack that contained emergency items: makeup, purse, a small bottle of water and a paperback book called "The Hare's Guide to Korpius" that she'd been given by Richard.

He'd warned that Derek intended to coerce her into running in the Hunt, and as a precaution he'd suggested that she read the book, although she was suspicious because it was Richard who'd been the most spiteful and who'd humiliated her down on the beach.

She kept running. The bra was sufficiently modest that nobody noticed that she was jogging along in her underwear. Below it, between it and her shorts, her midriff was exposed - as were her legs, for although she wore trainers to protect her feet, she wasn't wearing socks or stockings or tights.

Jesus.

What was she doing here on this road? What had possessed her?

Korpius was a quiet sedate Greek island, full of culture, tradition and history. It enjoyed transparent blue seas, bleached white beaches, craggy mountains and deep rugged gorges. Its people were friendly and helpful ... and yet she'd sucked Elizabeth's pussy on a public beach where she'd doubtless been observed by reverent Greek widows, pious old priests and impressionable children; and Elizabeth had returned the favor. How had that happened? Her? Elizabeth? Eating each other's pussies like exhibitionist porn queens in heat.

What strange repellent vomit had she returned to?

She kept running, step after step, pounding the Greek road, angry, confused, and although she tried not to admit it: excited – strangely turned on by what she'd just done.

She felt alive and pleased to be alone and apart from the others, for they would have accused and tormented her. Elizabeth would have done it without words: a look or a gesture, an inflection of the mouth. That's all it would have taken to remind Donna that she was a slut and a bitch. Derek and Richard would have done it more brashly. They'd have reminded her that while she might be a hairdresser back in the UK, here on Korpius she was simply a whore.

That was her role while she was playing the game.

Death Mode. It was more than a game.

"What kind of whore is shy about stripping?" they'd cry.

"I'm paying for the stupid bitch," Derek would add. "Eight hundred quid per day and she thinks she's on holiday! Doesn't she know that whores earn their living by having sex?"

They'd have laughed, and at this point she'd have felt the overwhelming urge to remind them that she wasn't really a whore, that she'd only previously had two lovers in her life, and never a woman. In return, they'd have reminded her that none of that mattered because this was Death Mode, and unless she found a way to win, she would soon be facing a real-life Dolcett experience.

Those were the rules.

That's when she remembered the lustful hunger with which Richard had gazed at her flesh as she and Lizzy had sucked on each other's pussies, and she shivered.

Donna shivered as she recalled Elizabeth's hot, darting tongue penetrating her sex. She remembered her friend licking her clit, flicking it and teasing it. She remembered Elizabeth biting on her super sensitive pussy lips with her teeth.

And then she remembered the jeering onlookers, all of them maneuvering and jostling for prime positions; each one of them sharing in Donna and Elizabeth's humiliation, witnessing it, partaking in it, and Donna could sense them. She felt their cruel lasciviousness and their animal urge to commit hard brutal rape. They were monsters and they wanted be part of the act. They wanted to pin Elizabeth and Donna to the sand and gangbang them because they were saying that the girls were nympho-lesbian sluts and they deserved all that they got. She heard their raucous comments and imagined their thoughts, and the worst of it was that their thoughts contained a measure of truth.

So here, on the dusty, hot dry Greek road Donna at last possessed sufficient solitude and peace and self-awareness to attempt an honest examination of what she'd done on Scala beach, and she kept running, happy for the opportunity to analyze her fears and give her frustrations an opportunity to heal.

She passed an elderly man who was riding a bicycle and two middle aged women who shuffled awkwardly in the opposite direction. 'Kali spera, ' one of the women waved, but Donna was mentally elsewhere, and she kept running, past fields of olives and lemons and walnuts, past flowers that scattered their sweet pure perfume onto the scorched dusty lane, past optimistic fragrances that were diametrically at odds with her mood.

She kept running – running - unaware of the chirping crickets and the peaceful village standing lazily in front of her, unaware of Scala's quaint harbor oscillating with its panorama of Mediterranean blue or its picturesque houses and villas, or its people preparing for the exertions of the evening. She didn't see the pair of lustful lovers who lay unperturbed in a vista of endless and long swaying grass, their clothing scattered about the field and their bronzed naked bodies entwined. Here were two Greeks who'd seized the moment without having to be beautiful or tall or elegant or well-endowed or rich. They were heaving and groaning in a frenzy of passion, hot, naked, sweaty, carnal and watched over by a carpet of weeping poppies and a meandering of green and blue butterflies.

Donna didn't see them, didn't hear them. In fact, the only sound in her head was the constant, repetitive chant of Elizabeth's avatar pleading with her to accompany her to Korpius. "Come with us, Dee," she kept begging as they crammed into the crowded 7:11 fast train from St Albans to Blackfriars. "Come with us. Dee, you have to come!"

The train was packed with commuters and Donna was unable to move. "Come with us!" Elizabeth begged. "Come with us!"

Donna was sandwiched between Elizabeth, an unknown woman and an equally unidentified man. They were touching. The other woman's hand was cupping Donna's ass while the good looking man was wearing a dark grey pin-stripe suit and he was staring into Donna's face and peering blankly beyond her: comatose, mentally elsewhere. She stared back into his eyes and yet neither gave indication of awareness of the other. He was in front of her. They were in contact. His semi-erect cock was pressed against Donna's belly and her impassioned tits were mashed against his chest, and the train's movements were brushing them together. It rubbed his cock against Donna's unprotected pubis and her sensitive nipples against his masculine frame. Despite the constant rhythmic stimulation, the man continued to ignore Donna and she ignored him, for this was the 7:11 to London and on the commuter trains you never acknowledged anyone you didn't know, whatever they did, especially someone of the opposite sex. That was the rule: unwritten, unspoken. The individuals rotated but the proximity didn't, and the rule kept you safe. Sometimes it was a man old enough to be your father and you could feel the aching and loneliness of his erection, sometimes it was an acned teenager who couldn't prevent himself from creaming his pants, and at other times a woman on the phone, discussing a discrepancy in a utility bill or accusing her husband of an affair with his secretary. Interesting stuff and the pages kept turning.

This wasn't the shy, ordinary, hairdresser Donna from Deptford. This was the other Donna; the avatar lost in her game, the game-playing Donna.

This was the whore. There was no way that this Donna had inhibitions while on the 7:11 from St Albans.

"Come with us, Dee. Come to Korpius."

It was the beginning. The train into Blackfriars. Donna looked expressionlessly into the eyes of the good looking man, and he stared back at her, and neither acknowledged the other, and slowly Donna brushed his cock with the palm of her hand, and began to finger its length. She worked with it from the scrotum to the tip, even as the train rubbed them together, and the barrier was crossed.

Elizabeth also had a man in front of her. He was bald, polite and clean shaven. His chin was perched inside her blouse where it rested on the rise of her tits. He could smell her, taste her. He could think of nothing else but her tits but Elizabeth pretended to ignore him, for it was rude to take notice of this kind of behavior on the 7:11 fast train to Blackfriars. There are rules that would never be broken.

"Derek has split with his girlfriend," Elizabeth murmured, pushing her big heavy bosom against the bald man's face. "Richard says that if he stays by himself, he'll mope. He needs a companion."

Donna was staring at her good looking guy and he was equally as focused on her. She imagined him naked here in the train, and her as well, while everyone else around them wore clothes and watched; all of them silent, passive voyeurs of her sex act. She imagined the silent tight-lipped commotion this was causing to commuting Londoners because none of them were speaking. They were pretending that they couldn't see and hadn't noticed that she was holding the man's cock. "Why's that?" Donna returned, playing with it gently. "Can't he find someone himself?"

"Apparently not. It was a bit of a spat. Richard says he's depressed."

Donna purred softly. It was a sweet rat-a-tat as she rubbed the top of the guy's knob with the tip of her finger, and it seemed that he liked it. She saw the first drop of sweat falling across his temple, down his cheek and along his chin where it hung for a moment. "You're not serious?"

"It's what he said."

"Jesus. So that sounds like it'll be a barrel of laughs!"

"So you'll come?"

The cock was beginning to react. It was moving, getting harder, firmer, proving that the man was enjoying the ride. "Lizzy! I can't! I don't even know the guy!"

"So meet him. Come round! Have drinks. You'll like him. He's cute!"

It was growing. Getting bigger. Thicker. Donna could feel it in the palm of her hand. It was like clay that she could pump, and she did so automatically, as she was used to doing on the train. "Lizzy. You shouldn't ask that. You're trying to pair me up. You know what I think about long term relationships, so stop it." She wriggled to make sure that the guy got a good feel of her tits for it was there that she was aching. Her teats. Her boobs. Her chest. Her pussy. She was absorbed, as was he. She was in her own special world. Private. Secluded. And she was controlling the guy's cock with her hand. She licked her lips teasingly, deliberately tormenting and goading him on. "What kind of girl do you think I am, Lizzy? I'm not cheap. I have to think of my reputation. Remember that I'm a high-class call-girl!"

"I know you're not cheap, Dee, and I know that you don't like to get emotionally involved: but Derek doesn't want to do cheap, either; and he's not after a relationship, and he's prepared to pay. So meet him, that's all I'm asking! For me!"

Donna squeezed her fingers round her punter's balls. They were hard. Tight. Explosive. "I don't care who the fuck the guy is!" she murmured, pursing her lips into the shape of a kiss. "It's like ... like they think I owe them something because they know what I did as a kid and they've seen one or two of my films! Well, I don't owe them anything!"

"What about eight hundred quid?"

"How much?"

"Derek said he would stretch..."

"Then, of course, that's different. If I get expenses on top then for sure I'll do it for that as long as he knows my rules ... I don't want him taking liberties..."

The guy's cock was hard. The force of the moving train meant that it was digging into Donna's crotch, stabbing her each time that the train lurched one way or the other, and yet the man's penis was in her control. It was her plaything, her toy, and she was making it big. She could mold it and turn it into whatever she wanted, and he was beginning to worry. He was thinking about his trousers and the mess he would create and what he would then say to his wife and the women at work. His cock was throbbing like a snake, like a firework about to explode.

Donna slipped open his fly and eased out the man's cock and wrapped it carefully in tissue.

"This isn't about the pair of you having a relationship, and it isn't about sex! I know it looks that way, but Derek's looking for intelligent female company – someone he can talk to and confide in while he's on holiday. Nothing more."

The guy was licking his lips and breathing excitedly.

"Shit – yeah - and the rest! Come on, Lizzy. Give me credit! He's a man and he's got a cock and I can assure you that he's seen every one of my old schoolgirl films. Trust me. That's why he's willing to pay!"

Donna could feel the aching of the other man's body. The urgency. The need. That he was frowning and that things were beginning to happen.

Elizabeth had likewise moved on. She'd unfastened the bald man's trousers, lowering them and his underpants sufficiently that she could get his cock under her dress where she was riding commando. She lifted herself onto the guy's cock, all the time keeping his face mashed into the hollow separating her breasts. "I've told them your limits, Dee, and they're happy to oblige. You won't even have to sleep with him, and you certainly won't have to see him after you come home." She maneuvered her guy's cock into her hole. "I give my word. Come on. Dee. It's eight hundred quid per day. It's a lot of money."

"And so what precisely does he want from me in return?"

"Nothing. Just your company. You're his escort. Nothing more. Come on Dee, for old time's sake!"

"His escort. Christ! We both know what that means! It begins with a straightforward bit of hokey-pokey, then onto a three-way, and before long they think they own you!"

Donna's guy whimpered. He gasped. He couldn't help himself. He was on the way. She gave him a couple of gentle squeezes and helped him over the edge. She did it without thinking, as a person does who manages cock for a living.

"I know it sounds too good to be true, but that's the deal they're proposing: no intimate relationship and no sex either. It's platonic, although, of course, what the two of you do at night is up to you, and if you want to negotiate a rate, then the sky's the limit."

"He said that we could negotiate a rate?"

Elizabeth nodded. "But you don't have to agree unless you want to."

He was cumming. Donna could feel his cock pulsing and the sharp crescendo of waves. She could see the agony and pleasure combined in his face, the bliss and utter humiliation combined. The guy doubtless had two kids as well as his wife – and how would he explain this to them if they ever found out?

And then came the wetness, the warmth, the stickiness. He couldn't move. Not an inch. The train was too full.

Donna shrugged and smiled coyly while still not acknowledging a thing. She wiped the wetness into her tissue and then slipped the tissue into her purse. "I'm not saying the money wouldn't be useful..." she sighed, pushing the guy's cock back into his pants and zipping him up. "A girl can always do with some extra dosh ... I just need you to make clear to him that I'm not going to sleep with him. I don't want him thinking that I'm some kind of prostitute."

"Dee? You are a prostitute!"

"No, Lizzy. There's a distinction. You have a woman who cooks meals and you have a Michelin chef. One's a prostitute and the other is me. It's a world of difference."

Elizabeth sighed. "Look, for what it's worth, there are two beds in the room. Richard's going to have a written agreement drawn up and Derek will sign it. Is that to your satisfaction?"

That final suggestion had placated Donna, although now, with hindsight, she realized that far too many ambiguities remained unspecified. With hindsight, it would have been easier if she'd been straight and open and not had the agreement steeped in ridiculous doubletalk. After all, what was so wrong with whoring? It was her job. Whoring was what women did.

Whoring had been going on since time immemorial and all women did it. It was just like cooking meals. You did it, whether for a job, a good husband, a stranger encountered by appointment on a train or eight hundred quid per day and a holiday. Whoring was a straightforward business transaction: transparent and without emotional entanglement, and this was what Donna particularly liked.

Whoring was what her mother had done and what she'd done since she'd been fourteen years of age. It's what she was presently doing on the train. It was impersonal. Despite all her protestations to the contrary, Donna was undoubtedly a low-end prostitute and not a Michelin chef.

Everyone understood what whoring was, whereas, what was happening here in Korpius with Derek and Richard was unknown territory.

The guy on the commuter train thanked her, gave her two high-value notes and made an appointment for two weeks time.

So as Donna reentered Scala, jogging blindly past the feminine-skin shops laden with lady-skin shirts and girl-butt pelts so adored by the men, down the uneven steps from the High Street to the central Square, she remained perplexed, anxious and entirely confused as to what it was she and Lizzy had done and shared on the beach, and how it affected their friendship and their future, because she couldn't remember it, not properly. It was vague, blurry, ill-fitting, like someone had planted the memory onto the pattern of her thoughts.

She glanced again at the poster publicizing the Hunt because it couldn't be missed. It was displayed in all of the shop windows, and despite Donna's eyes automatically twisting away from one copy of it, she found herself drawn to the same poster in the next shop, and then the next, and the next; and finally she saw a copy of it that was accompanied by a wad of application forms.

Donna gulped and found that despite all that had transpired during the past twenty four hours, the poor creature in the poster still clung precariously to the cliff by her nails, hanging there with her legs kicking and flailing, hoping that she could prevent the anonymous male hand from tearing her panties and stripping her naked.

The inevitability and hopelessness of the woman's situation was present in every one of the identical pictures, anguish that Donna felt much more keenly now that she could empathize with the girl. Her eyes had been opened regarding the Hunt, at least in part, and although it was undoubtedly a trick of the light or of the mind, it seemed that the woman's grasp on the rock face was more tenuous than before, and that her panties were lower.

Had there really been a naked ass cheek exposed before? Had the waistband of the panties been that low on the hip? Had the woman's muscles been so horribly tortured and her eyes so fearful and desperate?

Donna's empathy was palpable. "Oh my God, that could be me if Derek has his way," she trembled, catching her breath. "For him it's another part of the game: me, Donna Mitchell being stripped; hunted through the mountains and raped. Taken against my will by men I don't know – and how many of them will there be? For him, it's nothing. It's to be taken lightly, enjoyed, laughed about in the pub when we get home, but he doesn't know what it means to be a woman to be here on Korpius facing the prospect of Death Mode!"

She made some lame excuse and chided herself for her foolishness, for these thoughts were insane. Why was she concerned when she wasn't running in the Hunt? She hadn't agreed, and even if Derek teased and mocked her, even if he was angry and declared her unappreciative and a fraud, wasn't it better to be a yellow-titted coward than face the fate that would certainly await her in the mountains? There was more than one way at playing the game!

She took a deep breath and forced herself to smile, and then she made the supreme superhuman effort to appear normal, calm and unflustered, and she plucked one of the application forms out of the doorway of the nearby shop and glanced to examine it. After all, there was Elizabeth to think about so wasn't it better to know one's enemy?

The words "Girl Hunt" were printed at the top of the form along with the price of entry, five hundred euros, to be paid to the organizers in cash, bank transfer or by debit card prior to the Hunt. Below the monetary and contractual stuff, was space for Donna's name, address and next of kin. There was a section for specifying a power of attorney. There were questions about bequeathing first meat, and issues of consent. The form specified that a Hare was to provide four signed photographs of herself: one of them full frontal, naked, hands and arms at the side; another full rear, naked, hands and arms at the side; a third: full profile, naked, hands and arms at the side, breast and nipple fully visible; a fourth, head, shoulders and breasts, both nipples visible, passport style, naked. The word naked was double underlined in each of the four cases. According to the instructions, the Hare must pose with a neutral expression in the pictures. She must not have her face covered by such things as glasses, hair, hijab or hat. She must have her hands and arms at her sides – this last bit repeated - and not be hiding her nakedness; and the pictures must not be excessively dark or blurred. A man of eighteen years of age or older must sign and date the back of each photograph to confirm the likeness.

At the bottom of the form there was an instruction, hand written: "Bridge, 8.00am, August 12. Bring Swimsuit. Two Pieces."

There was a final reminder. "No Cancellations Permitted At Any Time. Running is injurious to your health. No under sixteens. No pregnant runners except with doctor's signature. Also note Please: All Girls Registered in the Hunt will be Hunted to the full limit of Korpian law and once captured will belong to Hounds and Hares, Death Mode Inc, a limited company registered by incorporation in Korpius, Greece, to be disposed of as the company sees fit."

The instructions were sufficiently hard-hitting to put the matter to rest. It was absolutely decided that Donna wasn't going to take part in the Hunt. Any thought of posing for those naked pictures was too painful to contemplate, resurrecting as it did the painful memories of what she called "her Mafiosa Moment".

Even so, she read the words over and over, full of trepidation and without understanding as to why her chest was feeling so tight and her heart was thumping so fast. After all, she'd stopped jogging several minutes previously and there was no way that she was she going to do take part in this Neanderthal pantomime! As she thought about this, an image flashed through her mind of her father asking her to stand in front of a plain white curtain that he'd draped against a patterned wall. Donna was wearing her mother's makeup: lots of it and it made her look funny, foolish, like a clown. A slut. Her hair was tied back severely in a bun and although they'd been sized to fit her, she was wearing strange adult clothes that she was unaccustomed to wearing.

Another teenage girl was sitting opposite on a cold metal chair wearing a tee-shirt and shorts. The girl's name was Kelly, and while she was the same physical age as Donna, she was far more experienced. She was chewing gun and looking bored and wanting to go home.

And then Donna's father asked Donna to dance ... not a walz or a polka or even a tango, but something else. Kelly was going to do it as well, he said. Kelly also worked for the Mafiosa. She'd done it before and she knew the rules ... Occasionally Kelly helped by telling Donna when she was going too fast. "Slow down, Dee. You're taking your clothes off too quickly. Slow down. You're going like a train."

Donna hadn't had any choice but to perform as her father directed - no option - and that was the terrible thing. Whenever she'd dared to protest, he'd ratcheted up the pressure until she'd been forced to comply and do as he ordered. Sometimes he beat her. She'd be naked and Kelly and Kelly's mum would hold her so she couldn't protect herself while he did it, and he'd film the beating. Kelly's mum would make suggestions as to where on Donna's body he should hit and how hard and how often so as to cause the maximum pain, and then she'd bind Donna's arms and sit and suck on a lit cigarette and watch and listen to Donna's screams and her pleading for mercy.

Nowhere was out of bounds. They usually liked to go for her tits and her pussy, and there was never any debate about whether it was decent and proper for him to torture her this way. He explained that he was following the orders of the Mafiosa and that if Donna didn't do as he asked, they'd come back and they'd thrash her to within an inch of her life and teach her a lesson. Donna learned early on that all roads led to the Mafiosa and to her acceding to her father's iron will.

Refusal meant pain. Refusal meant indignity, and acquiescence wasn't much better. Sometimes Donna liked to imagine that she was okay with the whippings and that they were turned her on and excited her ... sometimes she imagined that if her father hit her hard enough and in the most sensitive and terrible places then he could make her cum ... If she imagined this hard enough and for long enough she found that she could make the pain easier to endure.

She lifted herself from this tangent and reflected that since her father wasn't here on the island she could relax. For these two weeks, she was on hire to Derek. She'd given Derek's money to her father for him to give to the Mafiosa because all her money went to them, and they returned a stipend for Donna to live on.

Now that they'd been paid, Donna could relax and decide for herself what to do, where to go, what to think, and that meant she wasn't going to take part in the Hunt. There weren't going to be any nude pictures. No one was twisting her arm. No one was compelling her. No one was forcing her to go into the purpose built photo booth at the back of the Travel Emporium and have four naked pictures taken at ten Euros apiece by some weird, middle-aged man of seedy, mildly repulsive appearance - a man who would humor her by telling her how pretty she looked but who would then keep copies of the pictures for his private collection. No one was insisting that Donna give her pictures to Derek and humiliate herself by undressing and standing in front of him so that he could confirm her likeness and bust size and sign his name on the reverse, making sure that he did so in black ink to avoid ruining the affirmation.

She was free.

Indeed, there was no reason for Donna to do anything except breathe easy and return the form to the dispenser where she'd found it and forget that she'd ever seen it at all. Why was she worried? To run in the Hunt was insanity; madness. Let Elizabeth and the others involve themselves if they wanted. Let them run if that's what excited them, but calm, rational Donna understood the folly and stupidity of the Hunt. She appreciated that lucid, balanced women didn't involve themselves because there were plenty of better, cleverer, and wiser things that a young woman could do with her life than run round Greek mountains determined to get a six feet Jessica skewer stuck up her pussy.

In view of which - Donna asked herself skittishly, blushing and beginning to panic and unable to escape the thought of the length and girth and shape of the skewer - why was she furtively hiding the form in her purse instead of discarding it? Why was she thinking of completing it?

Why was she taking the chance?

She edged round Scala Square, feeling sweaty, hot, awkward and annoyed at herself for having taken the form in the first place and yet despite her gaucheness and embarrassment, she was imagining the scene in the poster, the hapless consternation of the woman as she clung helplessly to the rock face while her clothes were pulled from her body. Donna imagined the indignity and the vulnerability of the woman, the debilitating sense of discomfort and the looming certainty that this was her end; and she gulped and struggled to breathe because the idea was impossible, awful and cruel.

She stumbled out of the Square and along the long sweeping crescent that formed the harbor, mindlessly clutching the application form and occasionally glancing at its contents like it was a fatal poison that she'd been predestined to drink. "Girl Hunt" she read there on the form, and then at the bottom: "Bring Swimsuit. Two pieces."

So which should she take? Which would she wear? She had three bikinis in her suitcase, but these had been selected in England as beachwear, not for running around Greek mountains, for there were straps that would slip, cups that would dislodge.

The logical choice would be to wear the sports bra that she was wearing now, but if she did that, what would she wear below? Her bikinis had been chosen with a sun tan in mind. They were brief, with strings at the side that tied into bows that any man could unfasten.