Part I:

Newk Yor City 2000

��is a thriller of vast scope. The action occurs in mid-November of the year 2000, shortly before the true end of the twentieth century. A disastrous accident at a commercial nuclear reactor in Long Island, NY combines with millennial apocalyptic paranoia to trap millions of people in a horrible evacuation bottleneck fleeing New York City. Pre-existing global tensions and a cataclysmic meltdown precipitate a crisis of unprecedented proportions on the East coast. Heroes, victims, villains, and the most innocent of bystanders struggle to survive the incredible physical, social, and political forces unleashed, and soon global destruction threatens. In the end however, the valor of a few ordinary people pushed to extremes is enough to make the difference.

CHAPTER 10: ��Apocalypse

�Sweet� Melyssa was highly pissed off. Angered in the extreme. That was the only reason she needed, at first. The bizarre scene that followed, full of strange intimations and future connotations, would be better understood later. But for the time being she was just overwhelmed with anger. Pure, unadulterated anger

Of course, there was a volatile stew of other emotions also churning inside her: a veritable witch�s brew of dark, primitive impulses surging forth from her ancient reptile brain. These were scary, exciting, and enraging all by turns, and she couldn�t have sorted them out right now, separated them one from another if she�d wanted to. And she definitely didn�t want to. None of them really mattered except the anger. Anger was her defense in this adversity, her protection and motivation all in one. It buried her despair, swamped her fear and anguish, masked her lesser-understood emotions and fuelled the desperation of her sudden violent struggles. Their nameless European captor had just left, taking their irreplaceable daughter with her, and now she and Kurt lay here alone, awaiting whatever summary cruelty their executioners had planned.

Melyssa had no doubt that death awaited them all, and her white-hot rage at Kurt for stupidly giving in and forcing their submission when they�d still had a fighting chance for life helped her now in this darkest hour. She had an almost pathological hatred of being bound -- a residue of the horrible teen-age experience that had cost her her little sister. Now, empowered by more than just her anger at Kurt and that renewed if decades-old specter of torture and death, she began wrestling furiously with her bonds.

Unlike her husband, who�d apparently lost his ability to think, she�d cleverly crossed her wrists in an x, rather than placing her hands palm to palm. That stratagem had given her both a sloppier tape job and a precious extra inch with which to work. As soon as the door to the utility room swung shut, and the sound of the chair being wedged under it confirmed their utter captivity � and privacy � Melyssa began stretching and scrunching and struggling to bring her taped hands under her butt, over her legs and around to the front of her body.

Thanks to her lucky lack of underwear, step one didn�t take long at all. Her soft cotton, elastic waist-banded sweat-shorts aided the process considerably, reducing skin friction by catching on her bound wrists and then slipping easily down her naked hips as she wriggled her also luckily slender butt through.� By the time she�d withdrawn her feet from the now empty, front-bound loop of her arms, the sweat-shorts had joined the tape wound around her ankles, leaving her bare-bottomed but considerably freer for the fact. Quickly Melyssa used her taped-up hands to rip away the gag, easing her ragged breathing. Then she immediately sat up and went to work on her legs.

The tape was wide and tough, wrapped redundantly and well, but intentionally or not Lady Kira had left an edge peeled up around back. �Lyssa only needed a thumbnail to get it started, then she was ripping it free, loop after loop after loop. Finally her feet were loose, and in a final spasm of revulsion she kicked off the shorts restraining her ankles as well, flinging them across the room rather than pulling them back up. Now why the hell did she do that?

As if she didn�t know.

�Lyssa went right back to work on her x-crossed hands, letting her gaze return to her currently deep-in-the-dog-house husband. Disgustingly, meekly submissive before, Kurt had taken her example and begun struggling with his bonds.

Despite the fact that they were both almost certain to die in here regardless of any frantic, last-ditch efforts to escape, he was finally attempting to free himself � still determined to do his part even though his weakness had already cost them everything. Unfortunately for him though, Melyssa had done an excellent job securing him, and all the twisting and writhing in the world wasn�t loosening his bonds in the least.

�Lyssa felt an odd surge of pride at the sight, an absurd, vengeful satisfaction that was totally at odds with the practical needs of the situation.

That was strange. After all, didn�t she want her husband to escape? Weren�t they on the same side here? Nevertheless the clarity of this feeling was undeniable, combining with the lucidity of great danger to key at last an insight into those deeper needs and desires � and a devilishly dark intention � that she�d so far been shying away from.

She hadn�t been able to accept it yet, but now, looking at her pathetically struggling husband, as bizarre and even unsettling as it was, Melyssa was finally forced admit the strange truth surging from her glands.

Anger, fear, and desperation weren�t the only things driving her mad rush to escape.

Despite their dire straits, despite (or maybe because of?) their capture, bondage, and the cruel theft of their only offspring, something about the current situation was also making her incredibly, uncontrollably, unbelievably horny. Weird, inappropriate, even scary as it was, she was suddenly squirming with sexual arousal, and her forebrain was starting to recognize an outrageous idea that might have been lurking back in her primitive past from the very beginning.

An exciting, insane, and totally perverse idea. How could she even be considering such a thing? It was a total mystery. Yet even before, sweating and terrified, desperate under the murdering bitch�s handgun, fearing for brave Lady Kira and indeed for all of their lives, the act of taping up and pushing over Kurt had given �Sweet� Melyssa an electric inner twinge.

Perhaps connected to their risqu� banter on the boat, their talk about the Queen�s dungeons (and the surpassingly extreme pleasures of sadomasochistic sex therein), putting her erring husband in well-deserved bondage had sent a hot surge of aggressively dominant physical arousal racing through her. The most recent of many since this whole adventure had begun, this had been the most potent by far -- at least until now.�

As before, circumstances had forced Melyssa to smother this inappropriate (if strangely compelling) sexual urge, and concentrating on their jeopardy she�d completed Kurt�s incapacitation in silent bitterness. But some fires doused only pretend to go out, smoldering in secret while they await the right moment to once again blaze forth. Now, liberated by anger and extremity and reliving that inner burning a billion-fold, Melyssa suddenly saw her previous discomfort with the admittedly savage urges recurring as puritan foolishness.

Really, how can any feeling be inappropriate, if the brain and body produce it? We feel what we feel -- do we not? -- for reasons we can�t possibly alter or stem.

Nor should we even try. Sometimes the body does what it does for its own reasons, obeying commands encoded into every single cell. Understand it or not, the hormonal storm flooding through her was a thing of power, an ancient genetic force that if accepted and embraced could reward her immeasurably.

The cool air of the room and the coarse, gritty floor on her naked lower body, the adrenaline immediacy of a life-threatening moment�the wild, frenetic Latin music, muffled by the walls but still soaring and crashing throughout the house, intricate melodies so passionate and fluid, power building in crescendo after endlessly climbing crescendo� the almost tangible aftermath of battle, even the elusive privacy they�d sought so long in vain and now had thrust upon them, all of these factors, combined with watching her foolish �King� Kurtis struggle frantically, helplessly to escape the implacable bonds she�d placed upon him were now stoking Angry Queen Melyssa�s much-too-long-repressed, no-longer-forbidden inner fire to a level as unprecedented as it was unreasonable.

Yet who needed reason, when action was so successful?

Her blessed little Princess-Knight Kira either hadn�t been able to or hadn�t wanted to tape her wrists very tightly, and now Queen Melyssa was making fast progress with her hands. Twisting her x-crossed arms rapidly back and forth and back and forth, she began ripping savaging at the loosening tape with her teeth.

This frenzied, rewarding exertion imbued her with an overwhelming sense of power, a primal thrill of impending triumph, and at last she pulled and twisted and ripped and tore and wrenched the tattered tape away from her sticky wrists. Her sudden freedom was intoxicating, invigorating, and in exultation at her escape something self-affirming and almost predatory leaped up inside her. Overcome by all the powerful feelings she�d just embraced, captured now not by bonds but by the demanding momentum of her still inexplicable emotional and hormonal transport, she spat the tape righteously to the floor and turned upon her struggling husband.

He still wriggled weakly on, looking vulnerable, pathetic, guilty. She needed no more encouragement than that. Rather than releasing Kurt from the imprisoning tape, and joining in a systematic yet ultimately fruitless attempt to batter down the door or walls, she instead brazenly ignored his mutely begging eyes and muffled, pleading voice. Driven by an insane need she could barely comprehend, she instead dove across their small cell to take ruthless sexual advantage of his bondage.

All of the relentlessly building carnal tension of their trip (the remarks, the jokes, the growing need forever denied), the dire global jeopardy everyone else instinctively felt (the almost cellular imperative that said �mate before death, mate before death, mate before death�), maybe even something else she wasn�t quite willing to face yet, �Sweet� Melyssa felt them all flooding her to the brim. An eager growl escaped her, and at last the seething cauldron of her emotions was overturned. And as in the containment, so in the release: her anger carrying the banner, perched on the crest of the wave within and leading the deluge that swept her from her senses.

Goddamn that stupid shithead Kurt, he deserved whatever he got for getting them into this predicament, fuck him anyway! Literally. Hopelessly locked in, with dead bodies outside the door and murderous enemies undoubtedly on the way, freed of the tape or not, they surely didn�t have long to live. She might as well make the most of the piddling remaining span of their marriage.� She pounced, landing astride Kurt�s bound legs, and without a word of explanation literally ripped his pants apart, sending the buttons flying and blessing his stylish lack of a zipper. Unmindful of this betrayal of adrenaline-aided strength, she plunged her hand through the fly of his boxers and yanked him already swelling out into the cool, dim air of the utility closet.

She caught his protesting, helplessly shaking head peripherally, and in response enclosed him tightly in her fist.

Having a hold of this piece of meat she�d long ago declared solely her own made Queen Melyssa instantly possessive, and she squeezed it brutally hard, tugging and pulling briskly as she did so. Kurt�s familiar healthy response belied his shaking head, and feeling him pulse and thicken and harden more rapidly than ever in her manipulating hand made the vengeful ruling monarch suddenly, uncontrollably savage. She began yanking on him viciously, as though trying to use her hormonally accentuated strength to unman him at the root. In seconds, despite Kurt�s rhythmic, bleating whines, she�d jerked him to the greatest state of tumescence she�d ever seen him achieve.

His head had stopped shaking by now, and �Lyssa at last tore her gaze away from the one-eyed object of her hunger to gauge the rest her captive man�s response. She smiled (a bit cruelly) at what she saw.

Kurt�s bearded cheeks were blushed a bright red, and his shy brown eyes were so glazed over he didn�t even seem to see her. Apparently, for all intents and purposes, he�d disappeared entirely down some deep inner abyss of helpless, compulsory arousal.

After all of her experience with developing school children, and several years of the most intimate marriage, �Lyssa understood her husband intuitively. She couldn�t actually get inside his head, of course, but in a time of heightened awareness like this she could perceive his inner state almost perfectly. This little retreat of his was a response to a confusion so fundamental that Kurtis couldn�t deal with it. Her attack � and his sheer helplessness before it -- targeted some of the most formative levels of the fragile boy-male psyche, both sexually exalting and deeply humiliating him simultaneously.

In short, his modern adult upper attic brain couldn�t handle the raw force of the driving needs raging up out of its primitive, childhood cellar.

Typical conflicted American male. Well, Kurt�s neurotic cortex could try to shirk awareness of those primal, emasculating lusts, but he had no control whatsoever over what his stubborn glands and gonads chose to do. His incredibly swollen size and angry red color belied his brain�s foolish resistance, and at last Melyssa could await her fulfillment no longer. She dropped Kurt long enough to tear off the shirt she still wore (watching him throb and bob in eager yearning at his abandonment), then she scootched her way up his supine body until her hands found his shoulders and her sex had met its match. Ignoring her husband�s still brain-vacated state, relishing the delicious combination of his red-hot hardness and utter bound humility, she immediately mounted him for what proved to be the quickest, roughest, most inconvenient but surpassingly transcendent sexual experience of her life.

At last she had a conduit for carrying away those negative emotions! Temporarily possessed by her raging libido, Melyssa Strauss quickly channeled all of her considerable inner darkness -- her fear, tension, anger, frustration, and all of the desperate, she-bear outrage she felt at losing her cub -- into a violent, almost vicious copulation. Looming over her bound husband in the close, dark, utility room, pinning him down on the corner pile of clothing, she proceeded to use her hapless man in thoughtless, brutal fashion. Digging her fingernails deep into his shoulders, bearing down with all her weight and force, she began maniacally riding his firmly restrained and supported body like it was her own personal fuck-object, an possibly animate but otherwise utterly inconsequential erotic exercise machine.

And holy shit, what a workout.

Not overly large, Melyssa�s breasts were exceptionally pointy, with a curvy, side-slung and upthrusting horny jut to them that she and Kurt always found exciting as hell to watch in action. Firm and yet springy, they were capped off by fat, angular red nipples almost arrogant in their huge, conical aureole and in the stiff, peggy length of their abruptly tapering tips. Now, bouncing and jouncing wildly with every beat of Melyssa�s accelerating rhythm, these erogenous monsters generated intense erotic energy.

Soon that unbearable electricity was concentrating in their tingling peaks, turning those always shapely points into hard, fleshy weapons that felt as sharp and deadly as arrowheads. Seeking to expend some of that surplus force, �Lyssa leaned forward and rubbed her burning tits in Kurt�s face, the stiff epitome and surrounding firm resilience of her highly aroused flesh roughly grinding itself into his taped jaws, bearded cheeks, and flushed, stunned, uncomprehending features. Then, because her uncontrollable need told her to, she drew back suddenly and slapped his undeserving face hard, again and again, stoking the fire of their runaway mutual passion.

Perverse or not, that strange arousal was unbelievable, climbing level by level, transforming them in ways they couldn�t predict or control by its mere existence.Unfortunately (for some), once gripped by such transcendent passions it�s impossible to ever forget them. Some individuals gladly squander the rest of their lives in vain, ever more arcane sexual pursuits, always seeking to recapture that once-in-a-lifetime brush with the sublime. And inevitably, always failing. Too much of any kind of ecstasy is undoubtedly dangerous to human beings.

Oh well. Neither Kurt nor Melyssa had particularly addictive personalities, and in any case it was too late now. The tits and slaps had brought Kurt�s eyes back -- shocked, overwhelmed, utterly blown away, but finally accepting this outrageously intense form of intercourse.

Gasping explosively through his nose, keening constantly into the tight tape gag, those quiet brown eyes now bulged with a mad mix of both fear and desire, and he�d finally stopped struggling with his bonds. Instead he now concentrated on arching his back, using his bound arms to lift the lowly pedestal of his hips up higher and higher, a throne for his exalted queen to deign to lower herself upon. And of course, at the pinnacle of that pedestal, piercing her to the core, was poor Kurt�s redemption, swelling and straining and pounding ever harder within her, as his laboring heart and over-stimulated glands forced more and more fluid into it.

Satisfied that they were at last on the same page, reluctantly releasing her anger for something more powerful and yet pure, Melyssa finally closed her eyes and let herself completely go. Humping and pumping away with a mindless, pneumatic vigor she rode on, her pace constantly accelerating, all coherent thought gone, unaware that she was now loosing a mounting series of terrifying, rhythmic grunting shrieks.

Worse than Monica Seles at the end of a three-setter, each panting inhalation sawed across her vocal cords, drawing a savage bark of escalating effort and need that sounded like the over-driven lust of some maddened, predatory animal, an insanely estrus swamp cat, perhaps. In any case, Melyssa was blissfully ignorant of this unladylike excess, even when those blind cries scaled up to ear-piercing, air-shivering, utterly exquisite orgasmic screams.

Totally lost in herself, �Lyssa was ecstatically climbing climax after climax like some kind of crazed mountaineer, leaping nimbly up some inner Himalayas from peak to peak to peak towards Everest. Then � true to her instinct � just as she was about to shatter the sky with this mind-defying ascension, Kurt�s own fiery contribution spurted wetly into her, launching her on her way through the stratosphere.

Melyssa was so high above it all that this delicious lick of extra fuel, this ultimate proof of Kurt�s complicity, seemed to totally slag her drives even as it rocketed her off into space. Her soaring brain went supernova, bursting in an unbearable flare of ecstasy, an electro-chemical conflagration that blazed like a billion birthing stars and only gradually sparkled and sputtered and fizzled out into a slow, fuzzy buzzing of stunned nerve endings. Then, like in a storybook swoon, gravity and love abruptly reclaimed her, and she plummeted back down into herself in a fit of wrenching, orgiastic shudders.

Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah. Both her own body and the wonderful one she straddled were now quivering in glorious aftermath, as if their tremendous simultaneous climax had been potent enough to move the earth itself. But then reality intruded, and suddenly, with a blink of shocked comprehension, they both realized that � holy shit � the earth actually was moving.

Blind to the orgasmic excesses of two simple bipeds, the entire continent they were on was suddenly shaking wildly, as if a capricious god had reached down and grabbed the rock like a rug, tugging on it for the amusement of watching the furniture topple.

Earthquakes were rarer than roast beef on the East Coast, rarer still in Florida, but the fact of this one was immediately undeniable. As Kurt and Melyssa clung to each other (or she to him, who was still lying bound and gagged beneath her) the rumbling and shaking all around them escalated, toppling items from shelves and beginning a crashing and breaking of glass from several other places in the house.

Shocked suddenly back to her senses, �Lyssa straddled her man and looked up, expecting the roof to cave in and kill them both even as Kurt wilted inside her and their hot, mingled fluids trickled down to wherever gravity intended to take them.

Fortunately Al�s cabin was solidly constructed, built to move with the tree and tides while remaining firmly together and rooted in the bedrock. The penultimate crash, when it came at the height of the hundred-and-seventy-second disturbance, was terrifying indeed but far less deadly than their fellow man had proved to be. A giant, splintering crack climbed to a crashing, smashing cacophony from above. �Lyssa screamed aloud as sound, dust, ceiling tiles, scraps of insulation and other, more substantial debris came raining down. Instinctively she leaned over her helpless husband, shielding him with her naked body, and waited for a heavy piece of timber to either break her back or skewer them both.

When neither happened, and the shaking rumble of the earth had at last subsided, Melyssa cautiously raised her head and looked around.

The small, windowless utility room was getting both air and light now, and she could immediately see why. One of the large, precarious dead limbs she�d pointed out to Kira had been shaken free of the tree, falling onto the roof of the house and caving in a portion of it. Through a snarl of limbs, shingles and rafters, �Lyssa could see the mighty canopy, and even a rare finger or two of sunlight peaking in.

Holy shit, they were saved. Unbe-fucking-lievable. For a long minute the wonder of this reprieve held her, and her heart swelled with unexpected hope and joy. Then the scale of the disaster just passed finally sunk in, and other worries quickly penetrated.

They had just been saved, but how many other people had suddenly died?

Kira, perhaps? Her mysterious European captor? Hundreds of thousands of more people trapped up north? Right now there was no way of knowing.

No way of knowing either what the hell that latest calamity actually was. Not until they got to a radio, at least. Looking back down into her husband�s eyes, Melyssa saw the same question mirrored there.

What the fuck could that have been? That damn nuke plant again? Divine justice? An earthquake? Explosion? Armageddon? Doom?

They�d never find out just sitting here.

CHAPTER 16:�� Acceptance

�� Dinner had finally wrapped up, a sumptuous if curious affair with the president, First Lady, Dave Woods, Melyssa, and Staff Sergeant O�Brien � the last included by Dave�s specific insistence.

The two ladies present had looked smashingly elegant, in a slinky dress and sober pants suit respectively, while the president�s tailored appearance was as flawless as the momentous press conference just past demanded. By contrast, Kurt and the others still wore the tattered, rumpled, effluent garments they�d donned three days ago prior to heading off innocently to work.

Both the clothes and men had seen some damage since then, but the president had insisted that no amount of finery could be more honorable or appropriate. Charming and considerate throughout, the leader of the free world had raised them all an eloquent toast, and remained with them for almost half the meal, before finally rushing back to resume his duties. It was then left to the First Lady and her crack staff to see them all properly drunk and stuffed, and eventually guided to comfortable rooms for the night.

�� A quick peek in at the brave Lady Kira had shown her to be fast asleep, a small, angelic smile curving her lips. A short walk down the hall, and then Kurt and Melyssa were installed, as promised, in the recently renovated Lincoln Bedroom.

Safe and sequestered together at last, Kurt was slipping out of the grimy remains of those original clothes, thinking about nothing but bathing his weary, wounded body, when he suddenly felt that weird, almost forgotten thrill once again kindle within him. Oh, no.

�� Oh yes. The shirt he�d just dropped had actually belonged to the man they�d killed at the Obeehachi schoolyard, and in whose remote home they�d spent the previous night. Kurt�s shirt had been wrecked by the load of birdshot he�d taken, and Queen Melyssa�s admittedly kinky version of home surgery.

That was reminiscent enough, but the belt he was now in the process of removing wasn�t really his either. It had belonged to his late brother Al, and the reason he was wearing it was because his tough khaki pants had also been destroyed, ripped apart at the crotch and bereft of every last button. Professor Kurtis Strauss, Ph.D., had just gone on global TV and to dinner with the President of the United States with his fly gaping open. Only the long, untucked tail of his T-shirt had spared the entire world the sight of his unpredictable woman�s handiwork.

Kurt�s head was buzzing with wine, slaughtering his inhibitions, and as he dropped Al�s belt and handled his torn trousers, that whole outrageous scene in the utility closet came flooding back in on him.

Memories he�d managed to avoid during the ensuing life-or-death struggle now came surging back into his awareness, touching off emotional and physiological responses that he found both weakening and exciting at the same time.

Beyond his ability to articulate or control, these feelings were deeply compelling, teasingly reminiscent of some elusive lost ecstasy, a buried or archetypal state or experience far more fundamental than just his earth-shaking orgasm of a few short days ago.� Kurt hadn�t understood it then and he didn�t understand the bizarre hormonal storm recurring now, but like an addict he suddenly craved it, eager to indulge and explore the fascinatingly extreme sensations his unbelievable wife had somehow uncovered for him. As he dropped his pants he began twitching uncontrollably, and before his swelling need could betray him any further he turned to the fiery source � and only known satiation � of these demanding, if perplexing, desires.

�Say, whatever happened to my �Sweet� Melyssa? Back there on the boat I thought you were kidding about the Queen�s Dungeon.�

�I thought I was.�

Melyssa was sitting on the huge, upraised four-poster bed, the most dominant yet by no means elegant of the room�s exquisite furnishings. Wearing a simple and yet stunningly classy Ralph Lauren wrap-around dress the First Lady had lent her from the White House� extensive collections, she was leaning back on her fists, long legs casually crossed. Chin up, she was both smiling and smoldering at him. Driven by his quickening arousal, Kurt pressed the issue.

�Well, then what the hell was all that back in the utility closet?�

�Oh. I think that�s called b and d, Kurtis. Bondage and domination. Female domination. Some prefer to call it fem-dom.� She grinned wickedly at him. �Whatever it was, it was pretty unbelievable.�

�I agree,� croaked Kurtis, past a suddenly dry mouth. He swallowed, then plunged ahead and made his confession. �I have to tell you, my �Lyssa, that was the best sex I�ve ever had in my entire life. By far. I�m talking miles, light-years, parsecs better than anything I have ever experienced. I don�t know what possessed you attack me like that, or why it was so goddamn arousing, but I was out of my freakin� mind back there.�

He shook his head in wonder.� �You are a fearsome specimen indeed, my lady queen, absolutely unbelievable to witness in action. You�re a hot, sexy, deadly femme fatale, and there�s this will-sapping sense of compulsion to being helpless and in your power that I don�t understand at all, but which is just impossible to resist � sexually speaking, I mean. So I just wanted you to know that like, if you ever wanted to try that kind of thing again, well, I might, like, well, be willing to go along with it.�

Kurt was red-faced and stammering by now, and Melyssa laughed delightedly, relishing his discomfiture.

Eyes twinkling, she smirked at him standing there, his pants collapsed around his ankles and his boxer shorts tenting up incrementally in a series of slow, rising pulses. Color started creeping into her cheeks, not embarrassment but evidence of her own healthily rising arousal. She chose her next words deliberately.

�Well, I do understand it, dear man. I understand everything now. And I guess I did promise you something special back there at the Coffey house, just before we went out for the final battle.� Something about a dip in the royal honey-pot, as I recall, and the ultimate, extended, King-ravishing of a lifetime.� Well, I suppose you�ve earned another taste of the mighty Queen�s authority. But you know my loyal, lowly little King, it still might be appropriate for you to beg me for it.�

What! Kurt�s jaw dropped, and once again his wife�s delighted laughter rang out. But then she bounced up off the bed and snapped upright, her entire languid posture transformed into blazing, righteous indignation.

�I said get down on your knees and beg me, knave! Beg for the honor of your exalted Queen�s vicious, delicious, oh-so-ambitious attentions!�

Kurt�s hammering heart actually skipped a beat, then started pounding away even louder than before. Confronted with the demon he�d successfully unleashed, he suddenly quailed a bit within.

Was this really such a good idea? Mistress Melyssa looked ready to take this ball and run with it. But of course it was too late to back out now, and as before a hot twinge of fear only enriched his excitement. Instead of just tenting out his boxers, he�d now managed to escape the fly completely, and was finishing the job of climbing rapidly erect. Melyssa maintained her demanding, regal regard, and suddenly, unbelievably, Kurt was hearing Star Trek in his head

�Resistance is futile!� hissed the Borg Queen from the movie First Contact, and just like that he was captured, ensnared by the excitement of this dark, compelling new sex game. Never a couple to let the physics grow stale, he and Melyssa had experimented extensively in the past. But imaginative as they were they�d never chanced upon an enhancing erotic fantasy as excitingly, primally intense as this one. He was literally weak in the knees here. Agreeing at once with the alien in his brain, Kurt let them collapse, dropping obediently into a position of shame-faced supplication.

�Please, my Queen, Mistress Melyssa, I beg you to use and abuse my helpless naked form to your heart�s delight. I exist only to serve you, to satisfy your voracious needs with my humble, unworthy flesh. �

Keeping his eyes properly down, watching himself pulse and jut and swell, Kurt listened for his wife�s reaction with bated breath. �Sweet� Melyssa drew out the silence an excruciating length, then spoke in a slow, musing tone.

�Didn�t I hear you call me �Goddess� before? And swear to serve, worship, obey and adore me throughout all eternity? I want to hear all that again.�

Her voice sharpened into a cutting edge, and she slashed at him with it. �Address me properly, knave! Then maybe I�ll consider your contemptible request.�

Wholly caught up now, Kurt obeyed his Goddess impeccably, forgetting his hallowed surroundings, his physically and emotionally exhausted state, banishing everything he�d seen and done and endured over the last few days in favor of the intense sexual ordeal approaching, and its desperately anticipated, all-too-necessary, unwanted-thought-effacing rewards.

Later he could try to put the past into some kind of rational perspective, a new and improved world-view that would somehow encompass the loss of his home and brothers, his recent weak or murderous acts, even his strangely evolving marital relations. But for now he was just going to go with the flow, allowing his amazingly strong and vital wife to take control and wring every last bit of ecstasy possible out of his sore, conflicted mind, body, and soul. Memories of grief, bloodshed and horror, along with guilt, regret, and tortured introspection, would have to wait until later.

Soon he was babbling away, endlessly repeating his groveling pleas and praise, swearing an eternity of abject servility in exchange for one surpassing night of torment and ecstasy at the hands of his glorious Goddess. Focused on her feet (and knowing how his �Lyssa loved a good foot rub) he promised to kiss and lick and suck and clean and massage every exalted inch and toe, growing ever more graphic in his descriptions, until at last Melyssa relented. Peremptorily she ordered to him shut up, strip, bathe, and present himself for use.

Kurt hustled into the bathroom, where he hurriedly, nervously, hornily bathed away the crud of the last three days.

Hot steam combined with the drugging haze of alcohol and hormones to pull him ever deeper into his chosen fantasy, and as he scrubbed himself he relived all those bizarre scenes that had unreeled so pornographically through his head the other day, after Melyssa had practically raped him. By the time he�d toweled dry and emerged, his muscular organ was as rigidly erect as an extra bone, number two-hundred-and-seven in the new anatomy. His Goddess was similarly prepared for him.

Dressed now only in a short, tightly-sashed and elegantly embroidered silk robe, �Lyssa�s chestnut hair was tied up and back with a long, matching white ribbon, revealing every curve of her beautiful face. She looked him deliberately up and down, then with a smile of wicked relish ordered him onto the room�s giant, elevated, eighteenth-century four-poster bed.

A lone pillow had been positioned dead center, and under Melyssa�s impatient instruction Kurt sat upon it, then lay back spread-eagled upon the mattress.

During his bath, heavy silk ropes he now recognized as the room�s drapery cords had been tied to the head posts. Immediately his Goddess seized his arms and bound the tasseled ends of these securely about his wrists. Then she jerked his legs together, and with the sash from her robe she wrapped them tightly from ankle to knee, immobilizing him in a posture of helpless crucifixion.

Feet pulled down and arms stretched wide, Kurt�s pillow-propped hips jutted at the sky. A smaller cushion was jammed beneath his head, and once his positioning had been perfected Queen Melyssa at last stepped back, contemplating the inviting sight of her helpless naked mate.

Kurt next expected to be blindfolded and gagged, but apparently his �Lyssa had better planned uses for his eyes and mouth. Thank the Goddess for that, because she suddenly once again smiled cruelly him, and with a vigorous snap of her shoulders and back she shrugged herself out of the now open silk robe, casting it dramatically aside.

Kurt caught his breath. He�d seen this body a billion times before, in every conceivable position, yet it never failed to reach inside him and stir his gonads with a sharp, hungry stick.

Naked his Goddess seemed impossibly tall, all long, straight lines and perfectly opposed curves. Elegant, stemmy white legs so slender and yet strong, the smoothly muscled stretch of her calves and thighs were a match for giraffe, gazelle or any hale young sapling of the northern forests.

Skin a shade lighter than the sweetest-grained sugar pine, she stood haughtily tall above him and posed a powerfully erotic figure, taunting him with her strength, her height, her absolute perfection of feminine form. Hips cocked, shoulders back, that dangerous chest thrust forward, the jaunty, sideways slope and insolently sharp, dark points of her impossibly firm breasts poked up and out like deadly horns of flesh.�

�I am the Goddess Uroboros,� she finally intoned, as her cruel, hungry smile melted into a look of such dark erotic promise that Kurt felt giddy just meeting her eyes. �Prepare for punishment and sacrifice, slave!� And after that chilling pronouncement, everything else occurred in an incredible blur.

Aided by the alcohol he�d consumed, Kurt soon found his surcease of thought and much, much more, as his brain and endocrine system quickly concentrated on pouring more and more potent hormonal stimulants into his overloaded bloodstream. The omnipotent Goddess above him reached out, and with yet another evil smile she drew a limber, thorny, impossibly long-stemmed rose from the giant vase full standing nearby on the ornately beveled bed table.

Kurt thought he also saw a magnum of Dom Perignon on ice over there, but apparently that was none of his affair. Melyssa knelt next to him, and first she used the velvety head of the flower to tease and tickle his pulsating genitals. Then, gripping it by the bottom of the stem, she began whipping him, lashing its wet, thorny, meter-long length viciously across his thighs, chest, stomach and hips.

Kurt gasped with an indescribable mixture of pain, excitement and arousal, and his Goddess needed no more encouragement than that. For an interminable amount of time measured out by moans, cries, slaps of flower on flesh and the colorful fluttering of shed petals, Melyssa loomed above his bound, writhing form and whipped him scratched, welted and more than a little bit bloody, until at last the entire vase full of American Beauty roses had disintegrated.

Of course, the entire time she interrogated him ruthlessly, driving with the skill of a psychiatrist and the unpity of an executioner at feelings and needs he only wanted to experience, not understand.

Why did he love this, being her thrall, what did it give him? What was the appeal of this, and this and this!? Worse yet, why did he really give away his gun back there? What did he hope or expect would happen next? And how did he feel, watching his worst enemy take her, use her, fuck her, and then be killed in the act?

Teasing, taunting, demanding, she whipped and humiliated him simultaneously, and soon the constant burning shame and pain had produced a high, floaty feeling Kurt recognized as a long distance runner�s endorphin rush. All of these conflicting chemicals stoked his compulsory arousal until he was nearly mad with it, thrashing against his bonds with his swollen member so burstingly large and hard and erect that he ached in his rigidity like a rotten tooth. This too his Goddess then tightly bound, dropping her makeshift whip and pulling the ribbon from her shining hair.

Not trusting her slave to withhold his issue, she tied a large silk bow about the base of his genitals, adorning them like a wedding present and trapping him in his unprecedentedly tumescent state � at least until she was damn good and done with him. Then, after forcing him to perform a wide variety of extensive and enthusiastic oral services, she at last began to caress, pull, pump, tug, tongue, fondle and fellate his captive sex organs, driving him further and further from his mind with every inventive trick at her disposal. Only when he was practically weeping with need did she at last relent. Panting with lust herself, Melyssa climbed on, straddling Kurt�s elevated hips, mounting his aching engorgement and then fucking his brains out for hours among the scattered, fragrant petals of over a dozen denuded roses.

For poor King Kurtis, this endless cycle quickly became the most delicious torment of all. Riding his body to climax after climax, the Goddess atop him still took every opportunity to taunt and tease and humiliate him during the slowly rocking lulls between. Twisting his nipples, slapping his face, she continued to hump and pump and interrogate him even as she regained her strength for yet another mad, escalating rush toward orgasm. This went on forever, it seemed, until finally, true to her threat back at the Coffey house, the impudent King was once again moaning and sobbing and begging incoherently for his release. Only then, at the greatest height of yet another bucking, screaming, endlessly extended apotheosis, did his supremely compassionate Goddess at last reach down, between her legs, and suddenly pull free the silk bow of his imprisoning ribbon.

Kurt�s explosion was galvanizing, exquisite, and instantaneous. The pleasure of released pressure was mind-blinding in its intensity, and he screamed as his shuddering love-gun shot what felt like quarts of semen deep into the seething clutch of his superior female�s slippery middle. Still, that heart-rending cry of ecstasy was lost in the banshee screeching of the terrifying woman writhing atop him, and for several long moments they wailed on in eerie unison, grinding their crotches together and sustaining the incredibly transcendent convulsion rippling through their shared neuromuscular link. Only then, when every last shudder was spent, did Kurt�s amazing Goddess at last collapse exhausted atop him.

Unfettered chestnut tresses draped his face, and to Kurt the scent was a pleasant lingering of shampoo strawberry. Gasping for breath, panting in moaning recovery, those silken strands fluttered against his parched lips.

Melyssa�s face was cupped in the hollow of his neck, and her own heavy breath was scalding on his shoulder. Utterly spent, Kurt lay there and reveled in those wonderful sensations and thought of nothing else in the entire infinite universe.

Just what the doctor had ordered.