Son of White Bull



Book 2 - Son of White Bull

Book 2 - Son of White Bull 1

1. Rewards 2

2. Escape 2

3. Abandoned 4

4. Back-torque 5

5. River crossing 7

6. Arrived 8

7. Re-united 8

8. Reincarnation 9

9. Awareness dawns 12

10. Renegades 18

11. Pain of defiance 19

12. Pain of longing 22

13. Raw nature 25

14. Breaking point 27

15. Sold 30

16. Up for auction 32

17. Hard-face 35

18. Bought 39

19. Shamefully displayed 39

20. Recognition 41

21. Travelling torture 41

22. Back home 45

23. …… The end 47

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Rewards

My god, he has a body to die for. Jane had to admit it, lying watching him asleep. His finely muscled body was framed against the light at the mouth of the cave. The light of the new day played over his skin, defined and cut by powerful shoulders and arms. Like a statue in the museum. She felt herself getting moist at the thought, - just as she had with him on their first night.

 

 

There had been no pursuit. They had not been chased down by White Bull’s warriors through the night. But they still wouldn’t believe it. Panting from their run through the undergrowth, Tarzan had found the hide-away in the cave high up the cliff face. Exhausted Jane had thrown herself on the floor of the cave.

 

Tarzan had positioned himself at the mouth of the cave and, panting hard, had tried to listen out through the beat of his pounding heart, for signs of pursuit. Unbelieving, his eyes searched, his ears pricked. But the tribe didn’t come for them.

 

When he joined her, she had thrown her arms around his shoulders, clinging on to him. Desperate tears of relief burst out of her. He held her close, comforted her, his lips kissing her head, smelling her hair.

 

 

Their lips had joined. The rest was natural. Two tortured souls, deprived of human comfort, safe for now, clinging desperately to a human being. The sex, the first time, had been wild. Full of abandon, bursting with unbridled passion. Mouths, lips, hands everywhere in a frenzy of emotions. One goal in mind. Two souls, mindlessly affirming life with their bodies, exuberant that they were alive, free, safe. Full of hope, for now, in a future.

 

 

Still, days later, they lived in fear of pursuit. He’d found a cave, high up, difficult to assault. Safe from a mass attack. Now he sat there, asleep but upright, on guard. His beautiful strong body framed against the sky. His muscled chest rose and fell gently in his sleep. Only a few days ago, the life was being crushed out of it. Now his strong legs stretched out relaxed; before they had been knotted in desperate straining battle with implacable opponents who planned to kill him.

 

And out of sight his dick. That dick which had pleasured her since that first wild night. What a switchback of emotions that thing had caused her. Before, when they’d first captured him, she had nearly died of embarrassment. She had been forced to suck him to full arousal. A stranger. In public, before the jeering crowds. Then it had been cruelly burnt and tortured to punish her. My God, how he had suffered because of her.

 

Then she’d seen him punched in the balls by that monster. Not once, several times. Blood-curdling screams silencing the forest. Thank God, no lasting damage. She could attest to that. No one had had to worry. No sooner had their hot skin make contact, it was obvious. That first night it sprang to life and got her going. His lovemaking, after the first wild assault, later had been tender, slow, kind. Such a contrast from the brutalising pounding she had endured under the mass of White Bull’s hips. Tarzan had aroused her in a way she had not known since the shipwreck. True, he was a fumbling and naïve lover. She’d known plenty better. But that night her own gratitude for the rescue, her need to reward him for the suffering he had endured for her, the indescribable relief at escaping White Bull’s brutal hold – all these feelings clashed into one wild sensation with the pleasure of him sliding inside her. She hit heights of incredible emotions.

Escape

In his sleep, Tarzan heaved a deep sigh. Jane lay there watching. The strong chestnut mounds of his chest rose high, shaped firm against the lit of the sky behind. His tight waist caved in. Her lips licked at the sight of the muscles there stretching and quivering. His head leant back, his neck stretched. The neck strangled in the fight, on which she had since planted a thousand kisses. She watched entranced as he moaned in his sleep.

Mesmerised by his body, she watched as the breath slowly expired, enjoyed the play of light on his muscles as the firm torso returned to normal. A hand shifted and disappeared between his thighs. She smiled. Was he dreaming of her?

So where did it go from here?

Here she was, living in the jungle with a man she barely knew, with whom she could not communicate. Still at risk from White Bull’s war parties. She needed this handsome muscular brute to keep her safe. But had she fled from one man’s slavery to become another’s prisoner?

True, by contrast, he had a handsome rugged face. His body aroused the strongest animal emotions in her. She felt warm just lying there looking at him. His lovemaking was as tender and giving as White Bull’s had been brutal and dehumanising.

But he was a savage. He lived in the jungle like an animal. All she wanted was to get back to civilisation. And to leave this nightmare behind. Forget about every horrendous experience she had undergone since her boat had shipwrecked. Slavery. Rape. The brutality against him. Get back to normal. Shops, hot water, normality. Away from here. She’d never intended finishing up in the African jungle. She’d been ship-wrecked. She just had to get back. Away from him if need be. Just away.

Even before her capture by White Bull’s raiding party, she had been aware of his fawning over her. She had been terrified on their first meeting on the beach. But he had won her over with his gentleness. He had clearly been in awe of her. His eyes roamed all over her. He had examined with his eyes every crevice of her body without shyness or reticence. Eating her up with desire. But except for one tentative shy touch of his hand on her breast, he had never laid a hand on her. With his eyes and body, he had worshipped her like an idol.

But he was a savage. Now, many days after their flight from slavery, they could still barely communicate except with their bodies. And that, too, was becoming tiring. For a woman of the world, his naïve lovemaking was fumbling and lacked experience. It was routine, repetitive. True, he was spontaneous. He would take her when the mood arose, often, unexpected, take her by surprise, making her laugh. Sudden but tender. He was strong, could take her against her will if he wanted. But no. Tender, loving, devoted was all he ever was.

But she always needed more than spontaneity to keep her interest. In Manhattan, she’d expect variety. excitement. When a guy got his kit off, she expected a few surprises in his bag of tricks. But what Tarzan knew, he’d learned from animals. Barely the basics.

He stirred in his sleep, turning slightly towards her. She watched the play of his chest muscles as he shifted. The deepening of the shadows in the muscles of his stomach, the halo of light glowing around his powerful shoulders. She felt that glow down between her thighs again. My god, his body could move her. But there were lots of good strong bodies out there. Plenty to choose from. She’d found once herself, staring up at the clouds, as he moved lovingly within her. Distracted. Somewhere else in her thoughts. Not lost in the wonder of her emotions.

OK, if she had to be trapped in an impenetrable forest with a strange man, he was far from the worst choice. He was good-looking, his body fuelled her inexplicably with desire. He was clearly fascinated with her. He would do anything for her. He’d proved that. Indeed, he’d suffered agonies for her.

OK, she decided. All things considered, things were not too bad. She would play him like a faithful puppy. She’d get him to lead her out of this place, back to a town, transport, away from this hell. Yes, inevitably, away from him.

Yes. She could get him to do that. She could get him to do anything. He’d proved that.

And hell, she might as well have some fun on the way.

( ( ( ( ( (

Abandoned

Suddenly the pain became too much. Jaw clenched hard, eyes screwed up tight at the grinding ache, Tarzan sucked air in hard between his back teeth. He’d let down his guard. His sense of loss had overwhelmed him. He had been distracted. They had captured him. And now he was paying for his distraction. Painfully paying for it. The only questions: How much could he take? How long?

He’d spent days moping for her. The answer seemed obvious but Tarzan did not want to admit it. He spent days combing the beach, the beach where he had found his goddess unconscious on the sand. Thrown up on the beach after her boat had been shipwrecked. His heart still ached at the memory of her lying unconscious on the shoreline, the surf still lapping over her in the thin white shift. He had been smitten from that first moment. A beautiful white woman, long blond hair in a sodden cotton shift which hid nothing.

He had not wanted to admit it to himself. Day after day he wandered in a daze down to “their” beach, looking for her, searching for answers. That’s why he had let his guard down. And that was why he was paying for it now. Distracted. Bewitched by his loss of her. Till disaster struck.

They had spent days together in fun after they had fled. For Tarzan, life had never glowed so warm. He had about him all that he wanted, a woman to whom he was devoted. Forgotten the days of misery down in the mines. Forgotten in his happiness the torture at the stake. The crushing near-defeat in White Bull’s clutches. Forgotten, in a haze of pleasure, desire and sheer joy, the torment of the other slaves still suffering deep under the earth. He ought to be doing something about Mtala in slavery under the ground. But he had her and his world was complete.

She had let him know that there was something wrong. She had to see a doctor, get to a hospital. Tarzan panicked and wanted to take her that same day. She kissed him and smiled. The next day would do. They had spent another night in vigorous lovemaking – till his loins had ached.

Outside the hospital, Jane indicated, this was personal, women’s needs, he should leave. Tarzan called in at the police station in the town. He learned White Bull’s reign of terror had collapsed. Rival tribal leaders had broken up his hold on the tribe. A new Council of Elders had taken control. Some natives had fled into the forests and disappeared. His reign was over.

Tarzan asked about the slaves down the mines. But the authorities were not interested. They didn’t have the resources. Life was quiet. The White Bull issue was buried.

The sun was setting and Tarzan was still sitting on the grass outside the hospital waiting for Jane. He went inside. But no one had seen her. No white woman had reported in. Tarzan spent the evening with increasing anxiety looking for her in the town. He searched till after darkness. No one had seen a beautiful white woman with long blond hair.

Tarzan started his search before dawn the next morning. Tried the police again. No attack on a white female had been reported. Eventually, he tracked down one person who had seen her talking to a truck driver. But otherwise, no one. For a whole day, he searched and enquired. She had disappeared.

Tarzan had returned to his forest. He did not want to admit to himself that she had left him. Without a word. He wanted to believe she had been abducted. But, in truth, what other explanation was there? Deep down in his mind, he knew she had left him. She had tricked him. She’d run away. His heart was broken. He’d loved her, trusted her. Expected to build a nest with her. Give her babies.

His mind had been overwhelmed with the sense of loss. Deep in his chest, he’d felt a stabbing in his heart. He’d been pre-occupied, his mind elsewhere. His guard had been down. He’d been taken prisoner. He grunted loudly, the pain of his bonds knifed him in his shoulders. He gave a shudder, his twisted back racked with pain. He had been diverted with thoughts of her. Out of his mind with grief. And then he had been captured. Here he was tied and trussed up. Prisoner. Attackers unknown.

Every day, he had returned to the beach. He had recalled her, standing on the spot where he had found her. Seen her as clearly as if it was only yesterday, his first sight of her. In a sodden transparent shift, unconscious on the beach, every curve through the wet dress awakening powerful emotions. Surprised him with an irrepressible tingle to his loins. Every day since he’d lost her, he had sat on “their” beach all the day. Waiting, expecting, hoping she would return to him. Lost in thoughts of their moments together, their couplings here on the beach. He had sat there, lost in thoughts. Hoping she’d come back here to the place she would know he would be.

Until one day he was returning to their cave, the cave where they had loved, tumbled around uninhibited in laughter and desire. Lost in his thoughts of her, he walked unseeingly back to their “home”. Down the forest trail, his loins swelling at the memory of him moving tenderly inside her.

Then the nets fell on top of him.

Back-torque

He’d been distracted. His thoughts full of the mystery of the woman he loved. Out of the blue, a net fell on his head and wrapped itself round him down to his waist. His hands went up to fend it off. They were entangled in the ropes when they next one enveloped him. A second later a body ploughed hard into him, knocking him to the ground. Over and over they rolled, wrapping him up in the nets.

 

Tarzan reached for his knife. His arms were trapped about his chest, unable to move. More bodies thudded onto him on the ground. He kicked out, made contact, knocking an attacker flying. Another landed a fist at his head, stunning him for a moment. Another landed on his knees pinning him down.

 

Armless, Tarzan bucked and writhed to throw off the attack. Others fell out the trees. He kicked out wildly, squirmed and buckled. His feet lashed out when he felt ropes being looped around his feet. But they were too many to stop them. The rope bit tight into his ankles.

 

The attack over, on the ground Tarzan lay panting entangled in the nets. He fought with the nets. But his arms were trapped. Through the tangle of ropes over his face, he made out five of them. He shouted out at them. What did they want? No reply.

 

He struggled to rise. A foot in his face squashed him back down. He lay on the ground, his head, panting chest and arms wrapped in a tangle of nets, his feet bound at the ankles. Two of them leant over him to untangle the mass of nets to release him. Tarzan tensed to grab at a chance of escape, in his head his hand flashing to his knife. Over and over they rolled him to release the nets. But before he felt the tightness of the bonds giving, a spear was pricking against his neck. He was lying face-down, the spear was pinning his face to the earth. One move and the spear would penetrate his neck.

 

Another touch of metal at the back of his thigh. A move of his leg and they’d wound him in the thigh, he’d be unable to run. He’d never escape with a gash in his thigh. Better to wait his next chance. Hands reached into the nets and took his knife, using it to cut away the tangles. Tarzan was free of the nets but pinned by the spears to the earth. Weaponless. Escape denied.

 

Roughly his hands were pulled out from under him and hauled round his back. The spear on his thigh pressed harder. Ropes were looped around each wrist, binding his arms behind him, hands resting on his back

 

An order was barked and footsteps ran off. Still the spears pinned him to the earth. Still he listened, senses alert. Watching and searching for his chance. He tried to lift his head but the spear in his neck pressed him back down. A prod in his thigh made him twitch as the blade dug in, just piercing skin.

 

After a chopping and crashing in the trees, the footsteps returned. His feet were lifted up in the air bending the leg at the knee. Tarzan felt his bound legs pushed apart, a branch sliding between his legs. Then his arms were lifted up his back. Forced high up his back. The pole was pushed between his forearms and slid forwards.

 

The spears were gone. Tarzan strained to lift his head and saw in his face a native kneeling down. Focussed, unsmiling. Holding a sapling in his hands. From the feel at this wrists and ankles, this sapling travelled the length of him and another native was holding it up by his feet.

 

With a straining grunt, the two natives stood and lifted to pole with Tarzan hanging beneath. Instantly, the strain on his shoulders dragged out a groan. His arms were twisted up in his back and forced an sharp intake of breath when his chest left the ground. The back-strained arms took his weight and wrenched hard at his shoulder joints. Struggling to heave up his weight, the warriors dropped him with a jolt onto their shoulders. Tarzan’s back-pulled arms yanked hard on his shoulder joints. Tarzan could not suppress a sharp cry. They jiggled with the pole that was digging hard into their shoulders. A tear of pain leapt to his eye. He bit on his upper lip. His face grimaced as he attuned to the unnatural twist. His arms that were pulled up high behind, the shoulder joints twisted unnaturally backwards. Backwards and upwards.

 

 

It started almost instantly. His chest left the ground and it hurt. A taut ripping hurt. Everything stretched the wrong way. Too far. A tearing ache that clamped his teeth tight together, screwed up his face.

 

They stepped forward and he swayed from the pole. Ache turned to pain. Rope dug against his ankles, The bonds bit like sharp teeth into his wrists. His torso swung from side to side, alternative shoulder joints taking a stabbing. From hurt to ache to pain. Intensely growing pain that would turn into agony. Seemingly unending agony.

 

He’d been taken captive before. This restraint was planned as torture. Back-hanging from his wrists, it was massively painful even at rest. When they started walking and him swaying, every second became agony.

 

The ache in his back grew in intensity. His feet tied to the pole whipped his spine into a severe backwards arch. His lower back was arced back well beyond the extremities. His backbone soon screamed in agony from the backwards twist. With every step they took, stabbing pain shuddered down his spine. A disabling numbness cramped his backbone, froze his butt. Every move paralysed him with a pain that seeped the length of him.

 

Who were these people? His face twisted in a spasm, clenching jaws to suppress whimpers of pain. What did they want with him? His eyes screwed tight to contain the agony. Squeezed together in a crippling, disabling pain.

 

 

The natives walked in satisfied silence. They had got their prize. Their leader would be pleased with them. Reward them. Frequent irrepressible moans dropped off the captive. They had got everything twisted against nature. His thighs, stretched backwards and upwards by the feet, were pulled down by the weight of his body and strained beyond endurance. They could hear the ache was incredible. The pain continuous. Not a moment’s let-up.

 

And the pain would just grow and grow. Every second the strain would turn into an agonised stab as the apeman swung from the pole. Every movement they made was ripping pain out of muscle and joints. Wrists, arms, shoulder, joints – all seized in outbursts of pain. Back, butt, thighs, legs - gripped in a paralysis of agony.

 

Their leader had become embittered, hard to please. It would be good to please.

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River crossing

The river was running high. By mid-stream, Tarzan’s chest was dragging in the water. They had been walking him for hours now, deeper into the forest. From the numbness in his fingers and the rope-burn on his wrists, down his cramped forearms and the twisted elbows, the pain was unbearable. Tarzan’s face throbbed with the tension of constantly grimacing at the pain. His head thudded with the ache of tensing the muscles of his face. His jaw ached from clenching his teeth. The skin around his eyes and across his forehead were painfully tight from screwing up his face. The joints at his back-pulled shoulders screamed with the enduring back-stretch. With every jerk, he feared they would dislocate. He sniffled constantly and his eyes watered as he struggled to contain his groans of pain. Cope with the paralysing ache.

 

Suddenly he was under. Without warning, he was plunged into the muddy stream. In surprise he gasped in water, filling his lungs, swallowed muddy water into his guts. A pole carrier had lost his footing. Tarzan was writhing around wildly underwater. Trapped on the pole, unable to help himself. His lungs burned with the muddy water. He started to cough. He gasped in air. And filled his lungs with water.

 

They pulled him clear of the river. A roar for life and air mixed with his spluttering and choking. Water poured from his retching mouth, streamed out his nose. Tarzan coughed up water from his insides. Violently he gagged, helplessly hanging down only just above the water level.

 

They managed the crossing with him spluttering and retching. At the other side, the bank was steep. Wet feet slithered on the slick clay. The pole carriers struggled up the river bank. The others helped, yanked on the branch, swinging their captive violently on the pole. Arrows of pain gored at his shoulder joints.

 

A carrier slipped in the mud. The captive crashed onto the slimy clay. His backbone jarred. He let out sharp cries as they man-handled the pole clumsily around. He was dropped again, his chest rammed hard into the river bank. He cried out. He swore at his captors. Cursed them, coughing, his stomach still wrenching uncontrollably. The gouging into his shoulder shrieked, the straining of his over-stretched thighs screamed for release.

 

Ignoring their prisoner’s curses, laughing and straining, the natives struggled to man-handle the tortured captive up the bank on his front. Their straining efforts mixed with his curses of pain. His chest scraped up the slimy earth. They jerked the pole, yanking him, bouncing him slowly up the bank with difficulty. Each jolt stabbed him in the shoulders. Every jerk punched pain into his back. Every tug on the pole ripped out a cry. On top of the bank, they dropped him, leant on their knees at their efforts, got their breath back. A nervous laughter at their risky escapade. A dicey moment with their precious cargo.

 

They’d dropped the captive on his side, gagging on the ground. Mud streaked his face and chest. He twisted in pain, contorted in his bonds. A kick in his gut emptied his stomach. Coughing. Heaving. Retching. Broken gasping. He grimaced in disgust as he tried to lift his face out of his own vomit.

 

In a language he did not understand, one of them bent down, wiped his muddy fingers on Tarzan’s exposed arse. He gave it a slap and laughed. The others enjoyed the remark. The tension lifted. Another cracked a joke and jammed a callous foot into his ribs. He spluttered, they laughed. Tarzan retched water up from his stomach.

 

Tarzan grimaced and bit down on the pain. A sharp moan. They’d lifted him to their shoulders and the walk of agony had started again.

 

Going where? How damn long?

( ( ( ( ( (

Arrived

At last! With satisfaction, they dropped the captive on the ground. The pole carriers were relieved to be free of him. The pole with him strung underneath had been digging into their shoulders painfully for hours. They groaned as they stretched and rubbed their aching inflamed shoulder muscles.

They heard him grunt. Tarzan’s chest hit the earth with a thud, the wind knocked out of him. He tensed and gasped out involuntarily when his back-stretched arms fell naturally on to his back. Jolts of pain racked his shoulders, spasmed down his arms. At the same time he moaned with relief and groaned at the pain. Cramps dragged a hiss out of him, his jaw clenched hard together, breath sucked noisily in through his back teeth..

His legs dropped. A jarring shudder punched him the length of his backbone. After-shocks stabbed him in the brain. His bones and muscles had been locked in the unnatural back-kink for hours. They were now twisting in a paroxysm of cramps. Lying at rest, his thighs no longer stretched painfully back, an agonising disabling numbness crept into every crevice of his being.

He lay trying to re-gain control over his breathing. Fighting with the intense pain he felt. If he were released now, if he landed a punch in a fight for freedom, his over-stretched shoulder joint would probably dislocate, he realised. At best, the recoil of a hard punch would be cripplingly painful for him. This had been no random capture, he reckoned. He was curious who had taken him captive or why. But the whole venture had been carefully planned. He’d been disabled. He hadn’t just fallen into the hands of slavers who had got lucky.

He struggled to shift the pole that was pressing his head down on the earth. He’d just managed to wriggle his head free. lift it. He saw a pair of feet in front of his face. Large black feet a few paces before his eyes. And, looking up ignoring the pain, a pair of thick powerful legs.

His face was crushed down again by the foot. On an order, the pole was being pulled out from between his ankles and wrists. A foot rolled Tarzan over to his back, his hands trapped under him.

Curious, Tarzan squinted up over a sturdy pair of thighs. Upside-down a face stared into his. Tarzan strained into the light to make out his captor’s features. The face was framed against the sun. He could make nothing out. A big heavy frame. Who was it that had engineered his capture? Who had planned his tortured journey?

On another order, his bound feet were grabbed and Tarzan was pulled away on his back by his legs, his trapped arms scraping over the rough earth. It was only after they had hauled him to his feet that Tarzan had another chance to identify who had planned his capture. He had to keep peering between the natives’ heads as they were binding him in place, struggling to keep him upright on bound feet. With surprise, Tarzan recognised the face. During his painful journey he had been trying to work out who it might be. Now the pieces fell into place. The deformity explained his capture. No lucky break. No chance catch. A deliberate act of seizure. They’d come hunting for him. The face gave him away. Tarzan felt his stomach knot. The deformity gave away the motive. Retaliation.

---------------

Re-united

He stood watching his captive being bound into position. He glowered with satisfaction, arms crossed over his broad chest. Quickly his men had the apeman upright, struggling to balance himself on his bound feet. The branch was passed between his back and tied arms, lifting his chest outwards. The branch was forced up into the shoulders, emphasising the muscle power. He felt a glow of satisfaction at the wince in the captive’s face when the power of the chest was pushed forward, straining again the strength in the shoulders.

He could have beaten that famed body. He could have crushed that renowned determination to win. His eyes travelled over the trapped torso, the mind playing over again the punishment he would have brought down on the apeman if the fight had gone his way. If the apeman’s dark powers had not intervened. The apeman deserved the pain and punishment he longed now to give, that he had planned and schemed for. Punishment for the harm the apeman had brought down on his own village and people.

Instinctively his hand went to his head, broken and mutilated by this vermin in their fight. An uneven fight. When the apeman had called down his demons to help. An eternal reminder, sitting under his very eyes. A permanent humiliating reminder of what this slave, now bound before him, had wreaked on him and his people.

Tomorrow again was the festival of the moon Tomorrow they would appease the goddess. She had been angered at her last appearance. Tarzan had stolen away from her. She had wrought a massive punishment on his people for the insult. This apeman slave had given the insult. But his people had suffered the punishment. Tomorrow she would receive him back, her promised gift and tribute. And then her bounty would flow, her favours would rain good fortune down on his people again.

Tarzan glared angrily back at his captor. He understood his capture now. From the moment when the first net had fallen on his head, every move had been carefully contrived. Not for one second had he had the chance to fight himself free. He had been bound hand and foot for every moment since capture. His transportation here had made escape impossible. Worse, - he had been crippled into aching weakness by the journey. If he managed to get himself free, he was so incapacitated that fighting was near impossible. If he threw a punch, his weakened shoulder might break. Everything since his capture had been planned for this encounter deep in the forest.

Now Tarzan knew who had master-minded his capture. Now it all made sense. Tarzan’s experience in combat had taught him to be wary of this one. The knot in his stomach tightened. Too late.

And the other warriors had learned to be wary of Tarzan, they were taking no chances with him either. They had kept him incapacitated since they had first wrapped him in the nets. And now he was really weakened, probably physically unable to fight his way out when the chance came.

If it ever came. The planning had been perfect down to the slightest detail. They were keeping him tightly restraint. Bound every single second since the first net fell. Tarzan had been biding his time watching for the slightest mistake. So he could seize his advantage, no matter how small. He’d doubted there’d be a second chance. He was still waiting for the first chance to appear.

He remembered his suspicion when the two had met in combat. Was this the one Mtala had told him about? The stocky young warrior who had led the torture on the night Mtala was captured. He had taken no part in the rapes. But Tarzan recalled vividly feeling the shudder of fear that passed through Mtala when he told the story. He took no part in the rapes but he watched on coldly, dispassionately. He fed on their cries of suffering. He drank in deep on their cries of burning agony. He thrived on cruelty.

There could be only one motive for Tarzan’s capture. Vengeance. Cruel vicious vengeance.

---------------

Reincarnation

Tarzan watched the stocky young fighter closely while the others roped the branch up his back to the trees on either side. Tarzan had defeated him in combat before White Bull, shown him up before the whole village. Now he stood by a tree stump opposite and stared back at Tarzan. Tarzan had fled with Jane and left this fighter bound and helpless on the ground, blood from his smashed nose dripping down his chest.

Since, he had had his head shaven, making it look even bigger, rounder. Emphasising the smashed-in nose in his disfigured face even more. Making him look more menacing.

Around them, Tarzan took in the makeshift campsite. A temporary shelter thrown up here deep in the forest, away from trails and routes. Makeshift, ramshackle. A contrast to the detailed planning that had gone into his capture. As if only one thing had mattered. His capture.

Trapped between the two trees, Tarzan watched. His captor took a bowl and daubed his chest. White paint. This stocky young fighter was daubing his chest to look like White Bull.

He was claiming the mantle of White Bull. He was transforming himself into his successor. A make-over for Tarzan. For his hopeless captive with the branch digging into his shoulders, watching the re-birth. Performing before him the transformation. The reincarnation of the foe the apeman had murdered.

Tarzan tested his restraints. The branch up his back was pulled by ropes high into his shoulders, forcing his chest forward. Keeping up the strain and stress in his anguished shoulder joints. He pulled down his body to test the ropes thrown over the branches of the tree. They held firm. They planned to keep him. To hurt him. To take revenge. He could move, twist and turn. But with his feet firmly bound, his wrists tied behind his back, this branch, tied high up in his shoulder joints, - the restraints would hold him captive. They’d learned their lesson. They were giving him no chance of escape. They’d lost him once before. He was staying their prisoner now, - until they had done with him. Prisoner of the man he had beaten and deformed, humiliated before his own people.

The stocky fighter, paint daubed over his chest, had come over and was chest to chest with Tarzan. He was impatient to start. They stood eyeball-to-eyeball. Tarzan felt the menace exuding from him. The one who thrived on cruelty. He did nothing to intimidate. His stare was intimidating enough. It secreted out of every pore. Tarzan stared back, suppressing his instinct to swallow, face set to show no fear. He was shorter but Tarzan remembered well the power which that muscled body could muster behind a punch. He remembered that the short body belied the power it could unleash.

The fighter glared at his captive and shot out a curse. During his captivity in the mines, Tarzan had not mastered their language. But he did not need words to understand the cold menace that underlined the curse. The tightness of the face was enough, the words spat out with venom spoke volumes. The finger pointing at his nose conveyed pure hatred.

A hand lashed out and grabbed Tarzan’s head at the back. Twisted in the hair, yanked. Cold threats splattered violently into Tarzan’s face. Suddenly a hand slapped Tarzan across the cheek. The force yanked Tarzan’s head off to the side, snapping it against the forearm holding his hair. Another slap bit into his cheek. Biting, stinging, smarting. The sting brought a tear to Tarzan’s eyes. Another vicious slap and Tarzan began to feel his head reeling. His face burning. Smarting an angry red.

Trapped against the forearm, his cheek took the full force of another powerful slap, the sting setting fire to his face. Again. And again. Fury-powered slaps punctuated the verbal tirade. Weeks of pent-up anger fuelled each blow. Rhythmic slaps bit into Tarzan’s cheek. His vision blurred.

The slaps stopped. But the tirade still spat venom into Tarzan’s face. He blinked to clear his sight, blinked through the tears of pain. His eyes were riveted on the hand, waiting, anticipating for the next smarting slap. He sniffed hard to clear a running nose.

He saw the hand move to attack, he flinched. Tarzan steeled his jaw and braced for the slap. Instinctively, his eyes shut against the coming sting.

His guts imploded. The power of the punch into his unprepared stomach doubled Tarzan forward. His face fell hard on to his attacker’s shoulder. His lungs emptied over the attacker’s back. His guts reeled with the force of the unexpected blow. Instantly his head was yanked back upright by the hair. Another devastating slap had his head reeling, his guts still coughing and spluttering. Tarzan felt himself collapsing forward, his knees crumbling, swaying painfully from his shoulders on the branch.

The warrior was impatient with pent-up rage. He yanked the gasping captive’s head upwards by the hair. Pulled the body upright by the scalp. And thundered a fist into Tarzan’s balls. A second violent explosion detonated through Tarzan’s body. An agonised cry silenced the monkeys in the forest, sent the birds flying into the air.

He was repeating White Bull’s torture at the stake. Without White Bull’s devastating power. But still agonisingly painful. Punch. Punch. Repeated without the finesse, without the patience. Not letting each blow achieve its full impact. Rapidly alternating between gut and balls, the fighter smashed his fists furiously., mindlessly, into his captive.

So furious the speed of the fist, so intense the pain in his balls, Tarzan had not recovered before the next punch thudded into his guts. His knees crumbled under the attack. The hand clawed in his scalp to hold Tarzan upright against the shuddering of his body. His feet bound together, his legs crumbling. A punch cutting short the cry of pain. The next cut off the retch of agony. Fire burned in his balls. Pain shuddered his torso. Torture fired his being.

The young warrior sat back on his tree stump watching the slave cough and splutter. Intense pain, air burning in his empty chest. The warrior was satisfied. He felt better. Calmer now. Some of his savage fury released. For now. He breathed slower. He’d felt a power surge within him at having control at last over his famed prisoner. Him handing out cruel punishment. His prisoner aching at his pain.

He could not share his father’s regard for the apeman. White Bull had told his son of his hopes for the apeman’s sacrifice. How he would implore the goddess to imbue his own warriors with the fighting soul of the apeman. Take the apeman’s heart and inflame his fighters with Tarzan’s blood. How he wished no more than to see his own son, flooded with the apeman’s unbeatable tenacity, laying their enemies low. Tarzan and his son united at their core.

His own plans for the apeman were different. His sacrifice would placate the goddess. She would smile down on them again. But the apeman would be destroyed. His defiant haughty spirit crushed, annihilated. In punishment for the destruction he had wrought. The son yearned to see the look of abject terror on the apeman’s face as he felt the knife carving up his hammering stomach. He longed for shrieks of horror to pound on his ears as his hand reached in, grabbed hold of the apeman’s heart and yanked it out. Hot in his hand, still beating.

But before then, his very being hungered to see when the slow realisation dawned that the apeman was to meet his end. A slow agonising voyage of discovery. Every step on the way a tortured exploration into his body, unearthing every crevice could pain could reside.

His eyes never left his prisoner. He was still snivelling and grimacing with the pain in his guts, suffering from the burning in his balls. Aching and groaning from the revenge attack White Bull’s own son had handed out. For the first time the apeman was experiencing the verdict. The sentence - death. The means - torture. Calm now, the son coated his face white, anointing himself with the paint of White Bull. Transforming himself. Taking on his mantle. Reincarnating his glorious father.

---------------

Awareness dawns

Tarzan recovered slowly. The pain of the attack had been devastating, the speed and viciousness taking him by surprise. He panted hard and deep. Aching. Slowly regaining his wind. His guts were on fire. His balls inflamed with the agony. The flames licking at his guts, consuming his thighs. His eyes watered with the pain.

Slowly he was regaining control over his punished body. As he watched warily his attacker on the tree stump, a small suspicion grew in his mind. His brain fought the burning in his crutch to put together the facts. A cold fluttering started in the pit of his stomach as the thought developed. He frowned at the idea, observed more closely his captor. The broad chest. The heavy frame. The massively powerful shoulders. Thick-set, muscular. Mighty legs. The shaven head covered in white. Could it be? Only the height was wrong.

Tarzan stared hard at the powerful chest, daubed white. He tried to imagine those thick arms wrapped around his own chest squeezing the life out of him. The protruding stomach muscles pounding into Tarzan’s ribs. The thick white neck and bulging shoulders knotted, powerfully crushing their victim. He stared. The flutter in his stomach grew into a tremor in his mind.

Who would White Bull have chosen to fight in his honour? Who would have gained most honour from defeating Tarzan in combat? It would have been natural to have chosen one of his own. A friend? Family? A son?

The more Tarzan looked through pain-blurred eyes and the more his captor disappeared under a coating of white paint, the more Tarzan thought he saw the similarity. A resemblance with White Bull himself. A chilled wind buffeted the pit of his stomach. Was it possible? Was his captor White Bull’s son? The chill spread out and shivered down his thighs, doused the flames in his guts. Had he fallen into the hands of White Bull’s own son?

The fighter stood while his men daubed the white on his back. He stood, hands on hips, scowling at his captive, yet with a deep glow of satisfaction in his soul. His captive stood there opposite. Strong. Muscled. Powerful. A mean fighter. But trapped, in bonds. In his power.

As a slave, the apeman had been troublesome. What dark powers had he used to win victory in combat? Unarmed. Against their two best fighter. But won he had – and left him with a permanent deformity in his face. He scowled. A permanent reminder to his people. That White Bull’s own son had been ingloriously defeated by an unarmed slave. One exhausted from weeks of labour, weakened by lack of food. This enfeebled slave had defeated White Bull’s own son and left him humiliated and deformed.

What evil forces had he summoned up to rob them of White Bull. Their idol. Their All. His father. Their world had revolved around their chief. He was a life-force. Look at him, the fighter thought. Even now, he stands there defiant, insolently flexing his strong body, testing his bonds. Summoning up his evil forces to help once again.

Even as the son lay bound and defeated in the dirt, his nose smashed in, the slave had snapped his father’s neck. There before him. Under his eyes. His proud and celebrated father, his neck ingloriously broken. Since his black powers had murdered his father, his people’s fortunes had disintegrated. White Bull’s rivals had marched in and taken over. They had seized the mines. The Council of Elders had purged the village of White Bull’s ways, hunted down his helpers. Torn down the altar to their goddess.

Out-numbered, he had had to flee with his men deep into the forest. In exile from their own people. Banished from their own families. To think, White Bull’s own son skulking in the shadows, running for his life pursued by the paid henchmen of the Council. Shying away from the displeasure of the goddess they had failed.

And this slave was to blame. At last, captive once again, helpless before him. This apeman had brought down a terrible disaster on his village. His people were practically enslaved by their new masters. And all the fault of this vermin before him. This stinking flesh that had defiled the sacrifice to the moon and wreaked such havoc on his village. Murderer of his own father.

This slave had robbed him of his own natural inheritance, to take over the mantle of White Bull and lead his people. This carrion had wreaked devastation. But now he – White Bull’s remaining son, - to be worthy of his father’s memory, he would exact his revenge on that defiance. Exact payment for his people’s suffering. Tomorrow was again the festival of the moon. The goddess would appear to them once again. And tomorrow she would receive her due.

When she received his still beating heart, she would pour her blessings down on his people. To achieve that was his sacred duty.

Once again, she would smile down on them, on White Bull’s own son. She would smile down on his venture, help him save his people. He would lead them and restore them once more to their good fortune. That was his destiny.

By good planning, there was a night and a day before the goddess appeared. A night and a day when this vermin would learn the meaning of regret. Learn to repent for the damage he had wreaked on them. Learn and pay.

In the name of his father, this murderous filth would pay for the cowardly death of White Bull. He would cry out in vain for the evil powers he had summoned to murder White Bull. His screams of pain would be futile in calling down the black forces that had wrenched White Bull from his son and his people. The slave would pay with every crevice of his tough body.

That was his sacred duty as a son.

The village had marvelled at White Bull’s power over the slave. They had watched in awe when White Bull had his manhood coated white with the sign of the goddess. Without laying a hand on the slave, White Bull had reduced him to a writhing, agonised wreck. He had suffered in torment, he had sweated and ached under White Bull’s powers, his energy drained out of him. Under the goddess’s sign, White Bull had made him cry out in pain, beg for mercy.

May he earn the same distinction! May he honour his father’s name!

Through her whiteness, the goddess had infused White Bull with superior power. Now he, too, stood here coated in her mark. That slave had suffered when White Bull had coated him with the goddess’s whiteness. And he would suffer again. The agonies he had suffered travelling here, hanging from the pole, were but a start. They would return and consume him again. Hour after hour, the vermin would cry out his pain on deaf ears. Scream in vain to demons to come to his assistance. His screams would silence the birds, his shrieks would match the apes’.

Until he squealed like a stuck pig when the knife opened up his still living breast. Until the goddess received his beating heart.

A deepening chill was filling Tarzan’s stomach. He had fallen into the hands of White Bull’s own son. Was captive of a fierce young warrior whose youthful arrogance had been smashed with the breaking of his nose. Publicly. Before his father and friends. He was held captive, escape impossible, by a fierce warrior he had permanently disfigured?

Worse. The thought struck him like thunder. Tarzan had broken the neck of White Bull there before his own son? Had he been lying watching, injured, bound? Had he had to look on impotent, unable to help? Had he lain there incapacitated as he heard his own father’s neck break with a sharp snap? The snap ringing in his ears, the neck cracking right before his eyes? What a motive for revenge!

Tarzan swallowed on a dry mouth. The son had planned his capture with meticulous detail. He had thought everything through. Made sure there was no chance of escape. He had planned this long and hard.

His plans went further. No doubt of it. Revenge for the death of his father. Days spent in vengeful planning. To rip out every delicious moment of torturous satisfaction.

Mtala’s words rang piercing in his ears. He thrived on cruelty. Instinct powered another attempt at escape, fuelled by an icy awareness of his dire predicament. His body tested his bonds again in desperation. It twisted round to pull at the ropes that tied the branch to the trees. They bound it inescapably in place. The feet were still firmly tied together. He tried to force his hands high up his back. Stood on tiptoe to see if he could lift his arms over the branch to free them. His strained joints fought back and grated in the shoulder. His face winced at the pain. Winced at the hopelessness. No escape. He could not lift them high enough. There was no hope of release.

His situation was bleak. Dire. His only hope was to pray for luck. He was trapped. At their mercy. Would luck come his way? How? When? Before they had him too weak?

He felt again the power of those punches. The disabling sting of the slaps. He would have to take what they gave. Had no choice. He could only wait. Last out. Pray for one little mistake. Hope for luck. If ever it came.

---------------

The longed-for day dawned.

White Bull crawled out of the hovel next morning. The day had arrived. At last!

The early morning sun split his head in two. The headache speared him between the eyes. He had rewarded his men the last night. He’d let them loose on Tarzan while he looked on. Their reward for the apeman’s capture. They deserved it. They’d hunted him down. Netted him and brought the apeman back to him. He was happy for now to watch his prisoner suffer. Content to relish the promise the new day would bring.

His men, too, had reason to hate. To this captive, they owed their miserable existence. With the murder of White Bull, it had all gone wrong. The apeman’s murder had seen their world fall apart. They’d been forced to flee, leaving possessions, cattle, family behind. To live a life in hiding, cowering in fear of capture, punishment, death.

The hunt for Tarzan had given them hope, salvation White Bull’s plans had given them something to live for. Planning his capture had given them faith. The punishment they had handed out last night had been fuelled by that hatred. His grunts of pain. His writhing under their fists. His twisted cries as knotted vines lashed into him. He deserved it all. It had been too long coming.

The son squinted over through the pain in his eyes at the collapsed prisoner. Hanging upright from the pole, his powerful chest thrust forward but flattened by the strain of sleeping upright, hanging down. Last night had been his men’s celebration. Today was his. A whole day before the goddess appeared to claim their offering. A whole day when the source of his hatred would know the meaning of the word victim. A day when those protruding stomach muscles would scream out their pain. He had planned for weeks the torments to which Tarzan’s chest would have to submit if ever he got his hands on the slave. A list of punishments that would keep the apeman tottering on the fine line between pain and agony. And today that day had dawned.

Through a thudding in his head, he recalled with a warm glow last night’s sounds of his men’s attack. How Tarzan’s response had changed from defiance to pain. It had started simply, humiliatingly simply. His man had come forward and slapped Tarzan in the face. A slap in the face. A tribute to White Bull’s own earlier slapping of the apeman.

A look a defiance flashed into Tarzan’s eyes. They eyeballed each other. Tarzan did not flinch when the same cheek got the second slap. And again. Anger flared in the apeman’s eyes. Anger that told what he would have done if he had been free. A further slap and Tarzan gritted his teeth to contain his fury.

The attacker had gripped his free hand in the back of Tarzan’s skull and yanked his head back by the hair. The hard slap smacked into the fully exposed cheek. The skin was reddening. Again and again. A simple humiliating slap on the face, the scalp held in an iron grip to prevent any defence.

The first twitches of pain in the face encouraged the attack. Harder and faster into stinging flesh the palm slapped. Tarzan started to wince, hiss. Pain stung like a viper’s bite. The flesh was flaring red. Tears sprang to his eyes. A sharp intake of breath. The head shuddered. The pain bit like sharp fangs deep into the captive’s neck. He tried to blink his eyes clear. But the continuous sting of the slapping kept them watered. He tried to flinch but the stinging target was held tight. His whimpering grew with every biting blow louder and higher. Tarzan hurt.

His men had learned well from White Bull. He had taught them from his experiences in the fight against the apeman. Tarzan was not a god, not a myth. Hit him and he felt it. Land a punch again and again and he hurt. Keep up the attack and hurt turned into pain. He had turned the legend into a man. A man that felt hurt. A man who felt pain. A man who knew to fear defeat.

Later, they had beaten at the tough muscled torso repeatedly. At first, the captive tried steeling himself and, grunting, absorb each blow. White Bull had eagerly watched from his tree stump coated in his sacred white paint. An attacker whacked his club into the captive’s ribs. Repeatedly. Slowly. Deliberately. Soon his chest muscles were covered in sweat, his ribs glowing red.

The captive tightened muscles to fend off an attack when the punch turned to his stomach. And in time, his grunts turned louder as the muscle weakened. Music to their ears.

Another warrior chose the right moment. He turned his club round and rammed it head first into the bruised stomach flesh. With a sharp cry from the captive, he penetrated the defences and Tarzan collapsed forward, his knees giving way. Wind was rammed out of his throat. An unstoppable bellow of pain. Again and again, the club rammed home that night. With every thud a cry flew up into the sky.

His men had attached themselves to the rising star. Their future was with White Bull’s son. When the goddess blessed his venture, they would gather her strength and re-gain their lost fortunes. They vied with each other to win his favour, to show they were worthy of his attention, to prove their loyalty. They chose this moment to win his favour, to settle scores with the hated apeman. They kept him suffering long into the night. They kept him bawling with pain to win approval. White Bull had watched, glowing with fulfilment, revelling in the punishment. Greedily drinking to their success.

He had perched on the tree stump, attentive, rapt. He had quenched his thirst on the beer. His thirst for suffering. He had fed his craving on the slave’s anguish. A slap of bamboo into his heaving chest. The thud of a fist into a weakened gut. The apeman’s delicious hiss when a thick knotted vine licked at his waist. He had raised the gourd and drunk on the pain.

A pain-forced grunt. A strangled cry. A vicious knee to the balls. His thirst for the apeman’s suffering was unquenchable. Hurt twisted the apeman on his ropes. Pain doubled him over. A club onto red-blotched ribs threw him backwards. He grunted. He groaned. White Bull fed on the mouth-watering cruelty. He moaned. He bellowed. Into the night he spewed his pain. His torment fuelled White Bull’s craving. His cries fed his need. A hunger that knew no end.

The punishment had lasted long and hard, alcohol feeding his need for revenge. The cries of the apeman rang in his head. He raised the gourd and drank deep. The slave twisted in pain, violently spinning before his eyes. He toasted the torment. Tomorrow would be his. The goddess would re-appear to them later. Then he would offer up to her the sacrifice. A victim he had brought unwilling and struggling, shouting and fighting, brought to her in tribute. Crying out in fear. Knowing his last moments had come.

If she accepted, White Bull would slice up this hated body. Rip open that muscled stomach with his bare hands. Claw his way inside to seize the heart. Offer it up, still beating. A new future would be his. His father would rise again. His name again ringing terror through the heart of the jungle.

Until then, until the sacrifice, Tarzan was his.

---------------

From fantasy to reality

That morning, over the pounding in his head, retching at the churning in his belly, White Bull gloated at the sight of the hapless prisoner, collapsed, asleep for now, in his bonds. The ribs turning blue from a night of punishment. The stretched stomach at rest, muscles blotched red and purple from the hammering he’d taken.

Soon with the first few blows from his own fists, Tarzan would be hissing in pain. In no time, punches landing on tortured flesh would ignite in welcome cries. The overnight stiffness, the bruising, the weakened muscle - all would work with White Bull to make this day one that he would remember for ever.

They had barely touched the apeman’s back last night. Virgin flesh reserved for him. The hiss of leather through the air. The jerk of muscle as pain inflamed. The grunt as a fist thudded onto helpless bones. The day promised utmost fulfilment.

White Bull did not even remember the beatings stopping the night before. He did not remember the captive’s final bawl of pain. The drinking to celebrate the apeman’s capture, the gourds of beer downed to celebrate the apeman’s trial by torture, his cries of pain and the grunts - all had fused into one as his head spun.

White Bull did not remember collapsing into his drunken stupor in his hovel. But he would remember today. He would remember every moment of Tarzan’s final day for ever.

Squinting painfully into the blinding sunlight of morning searing through the trees, the sight of the apeman’s red-blotched body flooded White Bull with desire. A need to start. Need to hear the first frightened cry. The apeman was slumped on the frame. Collapsed. Exhausted. The thrill of hearing the slave’s first shocked cry when a fist in the gut woke him from his sleep. Today it was to be White Bull’s son exacting payment for the death of his father, for his people’s suffering and his own deformity.

By the end of the day, the apeman would wish for a speedy death. A knife slicing open his guts would be an answer to his prayers. But before, White Bull would take the object of his hatred through a galaxy of suffering. A hundred times that day, he would cry out, plead for mercy, beg for it to end.

White Bull would give him rest. When it became too much , White Bull would permit moments when he brought the apeman off the mountain peak of intolerable agony. Let him recover. Gain his breath. Win back hope that he might survive. Momentarily. Only to be driven insanely back to his peak of suffering. White Bull’s pinnacle of ecstasy.

Time and again, he’d played over in his mind the look on Tarzan’s face when he stood over the groaning captive with his knife in hand. Would the apeman welcome the blade plunging into his stomach to end his suffering? Or would his drive to survive and live on overcome his desire for an end to his suffering. One quick slice of the knife – and it’s over.

White Bull had played over that longed-for moment many times. He had no plans to end the apeman quickly. The knife would carve a path lightly into the bruised and beautifully battered muscles of the stomach. The knife would play with his flesh, repeatedly cutting trickles of blood into the torso. The pounding muscles of the stomach no more than animal meat. Shallow slicing cuts onto the surface of protruding muscle.

The realisation would dawn on the victim that this was not the longed-for end. Not fast, merciful. The blade scraping into open wounds, scouring into nerves, sending signals of agony to the head, inflaming the body. By the goddess, he would scream. By the light of the moon, he would bleed. Slowly, alert, every moment aware. Facing a slow death with dread and anticipation as the blade played through open screaming wounds.

Till White Bull could resist it no more. Till his fingers could feel their way into an wide-open wound and rip him open with his own bare hands. Nails clawing into bleeding flesh. White Bull imagined the screams of horror he would drag from the pit of his enemy’s soul. Nothing in the apeman’s life would have prepared him for this nightmare of this day.

White Bull stumbled over to the slumbering apeman. His own head was splitting. But no mind. The pleasure of punishment would drive away his pain. Something instinctive at the back of his mind alerted him that something was not quite right. Warned him of risk, whispered in his ear of danger. But his head was pounding. He couldn’t think straight. He looked at his finely muscled victim hanging in blissful ignorance asleep. He was itching to pound him into shocked wakefulness. Burning to hear the first cry under his fists. Eager for the retribution to begin.

Maybe his father had been right. The apeman was magnificent to look at. White Bull had been right about his resolve and spirit. But it would be a day to remember to see that magnificence destroyed. Of course, things didn’t feel quite right. His head thumped. His stomach churned. But the first shocked cry from the slave would make things better. The pain in his head would be dispelled with the pain in the apeman’s gut. His screams massaging away the pain of the thump in the head. When he heard the apeman’s first cry of pain. White Bull was bursting for his day of reckoning to begin.

Tarzan cried out in surprise when a hard fist in his battered stomach wrenched him out of his fitful sleep. His body pivoted forwards, his neck cracked. White Bull stood there, hands on hips, proudly mocking him. The prisoner blinking the shock from his eyes. Sleep-deprived. Bruise-stiffened body awakened again to the pain from last night’s beatings. White Bull grabbed the captive’s hair by his forehead and forced the prisoner’s eyes into his.

Shit, but the louse refused to look into his eyes.. The apeman still dared defiance. No, that was good. A challenge. The slave would soon learn. Master and dog. The dog might gaze passed him for now, looking over White Bull’s shoulder. Defiant, refusing to show his fear. But he would learn. He would know fear.

With a yank, White Bull pulled on the hair, forcing the face into his. But still the eyes looked over White Bull’s shoulder. The crack of a twig behind.

At last, white Bull thought. His men had been woken by the apeman’s cry. Come to watch. Come to watch White Bull’s finest hour. White Bull glanced round. Behind him, a dozen armed warriors. Threatening spears outstretched towards his back.

---------------

Renegades

It was laughable. He had captured the slave to take the most deadly of revenge on him. Now, here they stood, hands bound together above their heads, down in the earth at the bottom of a shaft. Victorious captor and a louse of a slave, both now captive, roped together. Both prisoner of the Council, tied against each other, chest to chest, face-to face. And White Bull could feel the apeman’s warm piss trickling down his leg. Such intimacy had not been part of his plan. Angrily he stomped his heel onto the slave’s bare foot.

The Council’s warriors had already rounded up White Bull’s men before he emerged with his headache from the hovel. On the orders of the Council of Elders, they had rounded up the renegades and brought them back to face punishment. Tarzan too had been dragged along.

White Bull’s men had been consigned immediately to the salt mines to live out their lives. They’d joined the slaves Tarzan had left behind down under the earth. White Bull’s men were already sweating and groaning in the overpowering heat of their new slavery. But the son’s fate was still to be decided by the Council.

Chest to chest with his enemy, White Bull persisted in his contempt for the apeman, rage still burning in his gut. Truculently, he blamed Tarzan for their capture. Somehow, in the night, after his beatings, he had called down his black spirits and betrayed their whereabouts to the Council. His men had been taken, enslaved. On the brink of their sacrificing the slave to the goddess. Regaining the favour of the goddess of the moon, her approval snatched away when just beyond his grasp. In another fit of pique, White Bull lashed out at Tarzan, kicking him, defiantly trying to knee him in the balls. The frustration of his capture gnawed away at him. His irritation at the black powers of this apeman knew no bounds. Petulantly, he butted Tarzan in the chin.

Tarzan retaliated. All day, the two had squared off, jabbing and jibing at each other. They had no language in common. They had little movement. Only kicks and shoves to express their hatred.

There was a deep irony here. Only recently, Tarzan had been brutally beaten for pleasure by this man’s men. He had been expecting vicious and violent torture from the man roped against his chest.

Laughable really. Both were now captive. To Tarzan, White Bull’s truculence was pitiable. Both were helplessly bound together. So intimately bound together that Tarzan had just had to release is bladder down their fronts.

Their fate hung together as much as their bodies. Both were on the same side. Prisoners. Bound for punishment. They needed each other, needed support from each other. But White Bull’s hatred burned just as intensely. He was moved by the need for retribution, for reprisals. Tarzan hissed as White Bull’s heel stomped on his foot.

For himself, Tarzan expected to be sent back down the mines. To return to the life of drudgery from which he escaped. Back to those he had so negligently forgotten when he was bewitched by Jane. Jane he had suffered for. Jane he had longed for. Jane who had deserted him. Jane who had bewitched him into forgetting himself.

He surmised he was being kept prisoner in the shaft to await punishment for his escape. And then to be returned to a life of drudgery. But he guessed their plans for White Bull might be more gruelling. Tarzan was no longer the problem for White Bull. The threat came from the men up on the surface, the men who had captured them and lowered them down into the pit to await punishment.

They’d spent a night sleeping against each other. White Bull’s head slumped against Tarzan’s beaten chest, Tarzan’s head leaning on top of White Bull’s coated head. Both captive, they’d used and needed each other to get through the night.

White Bull awoke. . He came round and found his nose nuzzling in the hair of the apeman’s armpit. Anger welled up instantly.. He whipped his head away. The apeman stirred but slept on. The musk of his sweat pervaded White Bull’s nostrils. He shook his head in disgust. Such intimacy with this loathsome worm. Overnight, the picture had fallen into place for him. The apeman had tricked him again. Even deep in the forest he had called out to his demons for help. He had beguiled White Bull into a false sense of security. The apeman had let himself suffer under the fists of his men. He had let them beat him, whip him. He had writhed in his pain, Cried out. His torso in anguished torment. A trick!

His suffering had lured White Bull into a belief that his dreams were coming true. He had forgotten himself. He had watched, his craving for the apeman’s suffering feeding off his cries. He wanted more, he craved for more and more. He drank in the suffering. He’d raised the gourd to his lips and drunk on the torment. His instinct had blurred. He’d let down his guard. His senses dulled. He’d had no inkling of the captive’s trick. The apeman had sacrificed himself. Given himself to be beaten and suffer so that White Bull’s enemies could be lured into the forest by his agonised cries. The demons had followed his signal. They had led the hunters into their lair. There they had undoubtedly lain in wait while he quenched his thirst for the suffering of his captive, gulping greedily on the beer. Till they pounced.

He cursed his own crass stupidity. His father would never had made such a mistake. Fury welled up at the apeman. Just when success with almost within his grasp, the apeman had tricked him. Now prisoner of his father’s enemies.

In anger at his capture, in frustration that the apeman had fooled him, with irritation that the apeman had eluded the punishment he deserved, White Bull raised a leg and jabbed a deadening knee into the sleeping apeman’s thigh.

With a pained grunt, Tarzan jolted awake. White Bull was still playing petulant games. Like an infant whose favourite toy had been taken away. Tarzan retaliated, cracking his elbow into his attacker’s skull.

White Bull looked away, trying to ignore this intimacy with the cur pressed against his chest, the piss cooling down his front. Watch your back, apeman, thought White Bull. Whatever it takes, whatever the cost, you are mine. Wherever we meet, sweating down the mines in slavery, wherever the possibility comes, my first chance will be your last. Your last moment will be my finest hour.

Tarzan sensed a coldness in the body pressed against him. As if the touch of their bare flesh against each other had become insufferable, a poison that seeped through their skin. A tangible iciness exuded from White Bull, a distance, a menace.

White Bull made to himself a sacred vow. In the name of my revered father, this I swear. With my own bare hands, this slave will meet his end. By my father’s death, this I vow. At my hand, Tarzan, you will die.

---------------

Pain of defiance

Their punishment of White Bull had been barbaric. Tarzan had watched with horror. Horror struck that people could be so moved to such vicious cold-hearted cruelty? White Bull gave out another helpless howl as the metal rod lashed again into his broken body.

An icy reality had dawned on Tarzan. He too awaiting punishment. It would be his turn next.

The Council had reached a decision. White Bull to be sold into slavery. Taken far from the land, exiled, the threat removed. To live a life in the chains of slavery. To be sold for money, to be used for the good of the tribe. To fund their next raids and conquests.

Tarzan, too. He had encouraged rebellion. He had urged the conquered tribes to resist, to organise, to fight back. When enslaved, he had even fought himself free, had murdered one of their own and absconded with a prize white female slave. The other tribes would learn their champion had been re-captured, punished and sold into slavery. Without him, their feeble irksome resistance would evaporate. Reason dictated that Tarzan should disappear. Reason dictated his public punishment.

Decision reached, they ordered the prisoners to be brought up from the pit. Both would pay for opposition with the pain and degradation of slavery. But first, the tribe would see justice. Their punishment would spread the word that the Council brooked no rebellion, no opposition. Let that word go forth sealed with their torment.

White Bull and Tarzan had been brought to the temple, their fate unspoken, unknown. White Bull, the defiant renegade, to receive the punishment dictated by tradition. Tarzan - a more valuable commodity, a premium prize to the slavers. He had to be fittingly punished. An alternative had been found.

They had taken White Bull first. He pulled and tested test the ropes securing him. But they knew their task. He was firmly bound just by the wrists. Arms out-stretched to the sides. Plenty of movement. But denied hope of escape.

A warrior came before White Bull, sank to his knees and bowed his head to the ground before the priestess. She knew how to pick her followers. Everyone young, handsome and strong. Yet he showed no sign of headstrong reaction as she was stripped out of her robe. She stood in a mind-blowing nakedness before them. Tarzan felt a tingle of wonder. Licked at his top lip. He had seldom seen a woman that could arouse him so instantly. But her warrior displayed no reaction. Only veneration to the incredible woman he revered.

The priestess knelt facing White Bull, contemplating the captive. White Bull could not fail to be moved by the sight of the incredible naked beauty perusing him with such intensity. The necklaces emphasised the glory of her nakedness. The amulets covering nothing. He felt himself stir.

A light hum went up from the priestess. A chant. Still she gazed at White Bull, but unseeing as she descended into a trance.

Humming, a beautiful melodious voice, the priestess bent down and lifted two-handed the rod before her. She raised it above her shoulders in front. Her nipples swayed tauntingly before White Bull’s eyes. He could not avert his eyes. The metal caught the flames of the fire, glowing red and gold in the light of the flames. Light flickered seductively on her naked breasts before his eyes.

On her bidding, the warrior took the rod, rose and crossed to stand behind White Bull. Waiting. Twisting, White Bull looked over his shoulder to see the warrior raise the rod backhanded over his shoulder. He too waited. He tensed.

The chanting stopped. The signal. White Bull glanced back at the priestess to see her arms raised at him in supplication, her firm jutting breasts glowing for him in the light of the fire.

The last sight - a hard protruding nipple as pain clamped tight his eyes. A whoosh of air briefly presaged the pain. Across his shoulder blades, the metal rod smashed into White Bull’s flesh. His back contracted with pain.

The return blow bit into his lower back. Rhythmically and without a break, the warrior lent his full weight and power into smacking the rod into his victim’s back.

White Bull danced in rhythm, - sometimes twisting trying to evade a blow, often propelled forwards by the force of the pain. Without halting to draw breath, the attacker watched the back of the renegade writhe as it rose in red angry welts. When no part of the back was unmarked, the beating continued. Flesh already red and inflamed was punished again The skin was cross-hatched with angry stripes on rippling muscle, a pattern of agony the texture of fire.

At first, White Bull had panted like a dog, eager to not succumb to the pain. He bit into his lip, crushed his nails into the palm of his hands. Determined to thwart their desire for his cries. A furnace of pain roared across his back. Each blow that landed inflamed the fiery agony through every nerve of his body. He would take the punishment with manly strength. To honour his father’s name. To defy his father’s usurpers.

With time, it became too much. At first, a grunt as the rod beat at his kidneys. A hiss as it caught a bruised rib. A cry of shocked surprise as the rod smashed into a battered shoulder. Gradually every blow forced a grunt of pain, a cry of surprise, a yell of pain.

In places, pulverised flesh was beginning to split. The captive was calling out and snorting his pain. There was not a part of the back that was not whip-marked and swathed with pain. Here and there the sweat-sodden skin split beneath the metal rod as it cut into flesh. Blood filled up the tiny cuts and overflowed in trickles down the white-painted back. Dribbled down the ridges of welts and collected in small pools when they could find no escape.

The prisoner faltered. His legs sagged. Every blow bounced the body around with no resistance. The beatings slowed and came to a halt. The laboured breath of the exhausted assailant mingled with the deep hoarse rasping of his victim.

White Bull suddenly shrieked with pain. His head shot back, his knees straightened, his back arched. The warrior was raking the sharp end of the metal rod through open wounds. Digging, scratching, raking. Every muscle of the victim contracted. Every nerve screamed. White Bull’s arms quivered. His spine arced backwards, muscles knotted into ridges and valleys of agonised flesh. White Bull’s body convulsed abruptly, twisting and writhing around on the ropes. Strangled noises rose from his throat as if choking on the pain. He erupted with a roar spewing his agony into the air.

Exhausted, White Bull had slumped hanging from the bonds. His knees had given in. His head swam. The strain from hanging re-kindled the fire in his back. White Bull was in too much pain to faint and not in enough pain to die.

Slowly White Bull’s head began to clear from the storm raging. He suffered under her watching eye. Every movement was agony. Every breath shot stabbing pains through his chest. He looked down on the kneeling priestess. No longer an object that could arouse him. Her glorious nakedness promised only torture and despair.

Before the Council stepped a second warrior. Like the first, strong and handsome. He too reverentially took the rod and positioned himself. This time in front. Waiting for her permission.

White Bull was struggling to recover from his earlier beating. His back was on fire. Now, blow upon blow thudded into his chest. Each squirm off the blow re-awakened the pains in his back as he writhed and twisted to evade the blows. From the first thud, pains stabbed through his chest, shooting pangs across his torso, flaring agony in his back. When he contorted to deflect the hit, his tortured back sliced agony into his guts. Scythed through his bowels. The rod slid down and crashed across his ribs. The thud of metal forced a cry of shock.

Already exhausted from torture, the victim was giving in to a vicious mindless beating. Hits across his battered abs doubled him up, the breath forced out of his chest in a deep hoarse groan. His ribs threatening to crack, pain roared over his body and seared through his brain. The agony was intense, he could no longer think. Could only feel. Through the roar of pain in his head, he scarcely heard his own howls as the rod continuously thudded into his chest.

Blackness dealt him a crushing blow.

Eyes turned to Tarzan. His turn.

---------------

Pain of longing

Tarzan had watched the barbaric cruelty against White Bull. Horror, awe and trepidation stuck in his throat. Now, White Bull hung there from his bonds, out cold, his back and chest, beaten, lacerated. Broken.

It was his turn next. The eyes of the Council turned to Tarzan. He could barely ready himself for such pain and punishment.

They had gathered around. Instead of being roped from the overhead beam, Tarzan had been stretched out on his back on an altar. Arms firmly bound out to the side, his feet spread apart, pinned down at the other end of the raised altar. A rope loosely tied kept him from raising his chest and head too far. Tarzan was too valuable a commodity to be damaged like the whipped scum hanging unconscious on the other side. Other punishment was needed to punish the apeman rebel. His sale price was sacrosanct.

Silence descended. Tarzan raised his head and saw the leader of the council bring the priestess down the temple towards the altar. Slowly the leader helped the priestess remove her homespun robe. With a silent gasp, Tarzan took in the awesome woman now she was up close beside him. Unashamed in her nakedness. Tarzan could not help losing himself in the sight of this stunning women. He swallowed lightly. She oozed charisma, power, raw sex. The bells and amulets covered little. Tarzan found himself drowning in the beauty and sexual power of this woman before him.

The leader of the Council offered the priestess the sacrificial prize. Her breasts rose high and her waist narrowed as she raised her arms high above his strung-out torso. Surveying his perfect body trapped, restrained, powerful.

Tarzan came out of his reverie. He was still in danger. At risk. Leaning over, Tarzan pulled on the bonds with all his might. Out of the corner of his eye, watching the glorious womanhood with her hands poised above his waist. Wary. Nervous.

Tarzan lay waiting, muscle-hard with tension, his eyes shut with effort as chest and arms strained hard on his bonds. In vain.

He twitched at her touch. Both her hands rested side-by-side on his panting stomach. Tarzan looked up and saw the priestess staring straight ahead, unseeing, in a trance. His eyes fixed on her magnificent breasts, strayed over the strong dark nipples. His crutch tingled. Slowly her hands parted, one sliding gently exploring over his chest. Oiled by the tension-slickness covering his muscled chest, the hand felt its way up over his ridged stomach. Lingered on the smooth mound of chest muscle. A finger circled, tickled at a nipple. A nail flicked at the nub gently to arouse it further to life. He felt sparks ignite in his crutch. Sliding through the oil of his arousal, the finger slicked up his throat. They rested, felt the pounding of excitement in his blood. Tarzan swallowed hard, took in deep controlling breaths as the power of her touch moved him. Round his oiled jaw line, the finger glided and over to his mouth. Two fingers rested on his lips, gently revolving, caressing. They flicked over his lower lip, opened up his mouth to her. Tarzan responded. He opened his lips and the fingers entered his mouth. Unsure of what was happening, why he was doing it, Tarzan began to suckle gently on the fingers, first pulling back until his lips caressed the nails and then sucking down on the fingers and taking them slowly and deeply into his mouth.

A deep gentle moan rose from the priestess. Tarzan saw that her head was back, her breasts rising high as she breathed deeply. He suckled at the fingers gently, with growing passion. The nubs on the end of her firm breasts seemed to grow and harden before his eyes. Her hips slid forward. Tarzan could feel her arousal matching his.

Her right hand had stopped at his navel. Her fingers there circled gently around powerful muscles, sensing the strength. Now the hand began to move down over his loincloth. Without thinking, Tarzan pushed gently upwards with his hips, eager, receiving, pressing his growing hardness towards the searching hand. With louder moans, her hand softened as she shaped her hand around him. She was offering. No man could deny the force that held Tarzan in its hand. With longer deeper moans Tarzan responded.

Deep-throating on her fingers, taking the tips deep down his throat, Tarzan’s mind raced with confusion. Full of rapidly conflicting sensations. Coy at being used before an audience; primevally responding to her sex and her moves. Still wary. Assuming that these could be his last minutes, his last moment with a woman. Hoping that pleasuring her might gain him reprieve.

In a trance looking ahead, unseeing, her hand continued to play over the loincloth, caressing, gently stroking, tantalisingly slow. Stretching him, giving the bulge in the leather what it most wanted. Tarzan’s chest rose and fell with the swelling emotion. Mighty sighs to keep himself under control. The urge to drive upwards into her hand was taking him over.

His eyes closed, Tarzan gave in to the sexual pleasure that was flooding into his crutch. He heaved in deeply. His back arched in desire. Tarzan responded to the unstoppable urge to drive upwards, lifting his hips against her hand, straining his thighs, sucking deeper on the fingers down his throat. Lost in a world of sensation he had rarely known. And might never know again.

She watched him squirm under her touch. Saw how his chest rose with yearning, muscles tightening as his back arced lasciviously. Her hands moved him. Her finger shot ripples of longing coursing through his flesh. He gave in to her, responded to her, rushed headlong into a world of emotion.

With mounting passion, he felt her glide on top of him in a moment. Above him she towered. Her hands uplifted sweeping the raven-black hair over her shoulders. She exuded power. The power of her body. She knew the power she exercised over men. Felt the heat of his response beneath her.

With one tug her covering was gone. Tarzan’s eyes shot to the revelation. She was ready, glistening, Ready for him. Waiting. He breathed in deep at the thought. Her fingers worked at the knot of his loincloth. Almost playfully, a long lingering promise of what he had to come. He wetted his lips in anticipation. Tarzan gazed up at her open-eyed. She was raw sex. Animal-like he responded. The back of her hand lingered over the trapped thrust under his covering. He felt the burning through the leather. Slowly she eased the loincloth off. She set him free.

Rising to her knees, she toyed with the aching cock head, handless, lightly touching her opening against him till the juices flowed. Tarzan watched. His heart in his mouth. Blinking rapidly in elation and anticipation. He twitched and twisted, drove upwards as best he could, bursting onwards to be inside of her. His head was pounding, sweat had broken out over his face. Her beauty, her sensuality, her power held him in her grip.

Tarzan glanced over the mounds of his chest. His cock was thrust straight up between her thighs. Close. But not close enough. Like an arm seeking to draw her womanhood down to him. He watched, open-eyed with hope and expectation, as she lowered her opening down to him. He scarcely dared breathe. His eyes fixed solely on their point of their contact, when their two bushes of hair would conjoin. He swallowed. In anticipation of her lips meeting his head. He licked his lips.

She lowered herself tantalisingly slowly. She watched him closely, leaning forward, the tension of eagerness tight across a taut chest, muscles in his stomach panting with hope. His eyes were lost, fixed on her opening. She took in the powerful body lost in manly desire, full of certainty, his whole being recklessly following one goal. She had his soul in her grip, he had given himself up wholly to closing the small gap between them. Lost, heedlessly pursuing his aim.

The build-up rushed heat to his balls. The sweat breaking out on his chest glistened in the lights. He moaned. Nearly there. The gap closing. He breathed a deep sigh. His mighty chest rose. She rolled her supple hips, nibbling at the tip of his cock head with the lips glinting between her thighs. A light moan escaped him. He felt the lips of her womanhood slide around him, swallow his head and squeeze on it. He blinked rapidly. His breathing deepened. Blood quickened. Yes!

Instinctively, Tarzan thrust upwards to meet. He entered her, twitched, moaned. She responded, squeezed, rolled on him. Tarzan gave a light gasp as he felt his cock rim squeezed and nibbled just inside of her. His body was shaken by short rapid pants. Again he thrust up to be further inside her.

She was gone. Risen up out of reach on her sleek velvet thighs. He glanced down his body. She was teasing him. Just out of reach. His hips thrust up again. In vain. A hair’s breath away she lingered above him. Head thrown back, lost in a trance of ecstasy. Hands playing wildly in her hair. Her breasts raised high. Kneeling just above him. Just out of reach. He arched his hips to the limit in hope. His cock head kissed her lips and again she was gone.

She had glided forward as if on air. Her breasts swept over his chest, offering themselves up to him. He watched them sway, felt a fresh tingle in his loins, wetted his lips. His face rose to met them. His lips closed on a hard nipple. His lips nibbled on it, his tongue licked, lubricated, lasciviously. A further rush of excitement raced to flush his throbbing crutch. His cock ached with desire. He kissed at the nipple, suckled, heard her moan above him.

Her backside rested hot on his abdomen. Her breasts rose away from him. He continued mouthing at the hard nipple, rising to follow her. His nose nuzzled into a soft inviting breast. He lifted his shoulders to follow the rising breast. Swallowed. Sighed deeply. Till the rope round his neck arrested his rise. A groan replaced her breasts on his lips as they moved out of reach.

For time and a day, it seemed she held him tantalisingly, deliciously, at the point of eruption. Repeatedly on the brink. His need to burst forth and release his seed gripped him totally. Moans of frustration slipped from him as his need was denied. So close. Again and again. So teasingly close. Moans of disappointment seeped from his mouth as he prayed for her to release his seed.

Tarzan’s vision was suddenly razor-sharp again. She was above his cock head. His eyes fixed on the drops of moisture glistening on the hairs of her womanhood. He swallowed hard. He breathed deeply to bring himself back under control. Watching in confused exhilaration as she lowered herself on to him.

She made contact. She enclosed him. She squeezed on him. Tarzan fought to control the rising emotions trembling down his whole frame. He bit on his lips to suppress a moan. Further she lowered. Squeezed. Tightened on him. Slipped over his rim. He uttered a reluctant whimper. He was being driven mad with lust. Inside, she was massaging up and down on his sensitive flesh. Sent tremors racing through his body. She flushed shivers through his mind. He gulped. He breathed in deep. Again he moaned lightly.

Further she lowered herself down on him, squeezing him tight. Tarzan blinked rapidly. Repeatedly. His chest rose with his involuntary deep breaths. He was out of control. He thrust up hard. Thrust deep inside of her. She moaned. He thrust again. Her head fell back. Her throat shone with her perspiration. She breasts trembled in eagerness as a whimper escaped her lips.

She let him take her, thrusting his hips upwards. Long, slow, hard. Rhythmically, she rose up with him, tightly, deliciously, enclosing his upward plunge. With a moan, she lowered herself, stretching him further. They moaned together.

Their bushes of hair met. Her lips tightened hard on his root. Up and down on his hips she rode, her breasts rising and falling rhythmically before his awe-struck eyes.

Her hips rolled on him. Round and round, squeezing. Flashes of ecstasy sparked in his loins. Tremors quivered in his thighs. A soft cry burst from his chest.

With long, slow, deep thrusts he filled her. With slow swaying clinches she ignited him. Stunned, he marvelled at the ecstasy in her upturned face. Her fingers travelled up to her mouth. Her tongue licked long and passionately on them, taking them deep into her mouth. He twitched with excitement when her fingers rolled over her dark hard nipple swaying at the end of a breast. Squeezed it tight, hissed at the delicious pain. Long and slow she rode his impassioned deep thrusts. Tarzan threw his head back and groaned.

He cried out. Cursed. Damn. She was gone again. . Out of reach. His cock gleamed alone with her lubrication. Throbbed and ached with demand. But she was again out of reach. He was losing himself. She had him in her grip. He had given himself into her control. His need had robbed him of control. Just one act of release! That’s all he needed. Then he’d have himself back. Then Tarzan would be back under control. Just one blissful act of release!

---------------

Raw nature

A sharp cry caught his attention. White Bull had come round. Pulling himself upright, pain had sliced through his brutally whipped back as he moved.

Tarzan caught himself. Animal-alert. White Bull she had had viciously whipped. Yet Tarzan she was making love to. Did it make sense. Why? Why was he not punished? Was this it? Taunted by a sexually powerful woman? His instincts clashed. His animal instincts flared. Danger signals flashed. His human instincts pressed on for fulfilment. Release. Desperately grasping out for satisfaction, to seize completion, climax. Then he’d face the consequences.

Suddenly his heart missed a beat. She had enveloped her. She had sunk down low on to him, had squeezed on him all the way down. Had stretched the skin fully down the shaft. They were fully coupled. Tarzan gave a gasp. Unable to contain his excitement.

Automatically, he responded. Slowly, rhythmically, tentatively at first, he rose inside of her, lifting her on his hips. Each time rising higher, each time opening her up more fully. The glow in her face begin to grow, spread down her neck. Her was taking her. He was in control. With his slow lifts he was transforming her face, transfixing her supple body. The heat grew from their point of touch and smoothed out glowing up from their loins, spreading warmth over their stomachs.

Gently but strongly pushing, he lifted her to the limit of his bonds and lowered his hips back to the altar feeling her every bit of the fall. She held herself at the top, coaxing his descending shaft between her muscles inside. Staying high, she held the dome of his cock captive, squeezed it tight, rolled her hips on it. Tarzan let out a gasp, blinked open-eyed at the sensations pulsating through him. Squeezing tightly, she lowered herself slowly, seductively, down him, coating him unhurried with hot moist tissue. The skin of his shaft stretched deliciously back to its limit. A whine of passion drifted from his throat. His loins were full to bursting, ached with longing. His chest filled with need till it seemed his throat would choke with desire. He could hardly breathe.

A fusion of mighty elemental forces. His brute masculine strength. Her female sexual urge. A need to take and possess. An unstoppable drive to procreate. Mighty life forces clashing. Fusing. Conjoining. An irresistible surge for completeness. Raw. Vital. Elemental. Nature in raw strength.

Tarzan’s eyes glazed over. A huge sigh rose off his lips. He stretched his head back on the altar. Surrendered to the sensations surging through his torso. Mouth open for deep gasping breaths. His body had never known such crushing sensations. Mighty staccato inwards gasps of air fought for control as they rose and she fell squeezing on him, taking him to ever higher levels of emotions. His eyes closed as the most powerful of sensations swallowed him whole. Blood rushed down his body, filled his loins, emptied his head. He was floating on air. Up above the clouds, rising like a bird on a pocket of warm air. Rocking and swaying, in harmony with nature. Soaring on the breeze, wafted high against an azure sky. He was in heaven.

The change was like plunging into a icy pool. Or the shock of a slap into a sleeping face. She was gone. Confused, disoriented, Tarzan snapped open his eyes. He looked down the length of him. Between her straddling thighs, he rose up strong and bold. A mighty tree thrusting up to her light.

She’d risen high above him again. Head back, back arched, firm breast lifting rhythmically above him, her fingers inside. Coaxing herself, loving herself. A delicious moan of deep ecstatic pleasure escaped her moist lips. The nubs of her breast, full, hard, bulging, beckoned, invited his touch, welcomed nips off his lips.

In vain. Tarzan groaned in repeated frustration. His shaft, like an out-stretched hand, reached up for her, fingers desperately straining up to pull her down on to him. Too far. He thrust up hard with his hips. Out of reach. Again he strained, mad with need. Powerful thigh muscles pushed him to their limit, crowned, peaked with effort. But not high enough.

Sweating with effort and frustration, Tarzan could only watch his futile cock struggling to reach her. Straining, reaching, deep veined, every tissue struggling in the effort to close the gaping divide. He sawed his head from side to side. A long tortured moan welled up from the depths of his loins.

His cock was frustration incarnate. Stiff like an animal bone bleached in the sun. Thrusting upwards to her light. Full of ache. He was trapped. Like an animal ensnared by its leg. Biting through its own leg in a drive for freedom. Desperation personified. Gnawing at its own trapped leg. It was as if sharp incisors nibbled into the flesh of his shaft. Biting, ripping away at tissue, A trapped animal stripping the leg through to the bone. Teeth crunching agonisingly into its own bone. Back teeth chomping down. Powerful jaws crushing. Sending tremors of ultimate pain shuddering into him, his whole torso quivering in agony. Whines of pain. Hissing through his teeth, head rolling itself from side-to-side, round and round, moved by pain, frustration, despair.

His arms hauled on the ropes that ensnared him. He asserted his full strength against his bonds. Shoulder muscles bunched , the mounds on his chest peaked. A roar of frustrated pain powered the effort to break free. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He gave up, thrashed about uncontrollably. Just one hand free. That was all he needed. Just one hand down to his boner. One hard yank on it and he’d be free. Rough cords ate into his wrists. The sensations pulsating through his body screamed only of pain. Pain born of desperation. Pain, pure pain.

He looked down over the sweat-drenched mounds of his chest. Her, rolling on her fingers, eyes glazed over. Beneath his thrusting screaming shaft. Bulging with desire. Throbbing with need. Reaching up to take her. In vain. His chest was crushed tight with frustrated lust. His thighs ached in futility at the need to reach up and draw her down in to him. His cock ached to have her.

Her breasts were swaying seductively before his eyes. A firm fluid rise and fall that taunted his tortured gaze. She opened her knees, spread her thighs and picked up speed with her excitement. Her fingers probed, pleasuring her more insistently before him. Her hand seemed to thrust deeper under his gaze. His throat was full, choked on the need to be there. The other hand cupped a breast strongly, squeezing seductively her velvet flesh above his very nose. A finger flicked repeatedly backwards and forwards over the nub. He groaned, ached. A finger nail scratched the nipple to full bursting arousal . Her face aglow, radiant with expectation. Him below, sweating in tortured desperation.

Head back, raven-black hair swaying down her back, her eyes heavy-lidded with mounting sexual urges, her face transfixed by the ecstacy of his torture. He clenched hard on his teeth with his ache. Her rhythm above him seductively increased, her hips rocked wildly forward into her hand. She felt the heat of his suffering below. Louder, longer, her moans. Till she cried out. Froze. Caught in a flash of light. Her back, neck breasts stretched, aglow. A long pleasured moan.

Slowly, glowing, radiant, her body folded into itself. Like a leopard, bathing in the sun, she stretched out languorously on his chest and purred. She purred on the chest of a tortured Tarzan. His body in flames. His loins were on fire. His every crevice was bursting with need. He felt fit to explode with lust and longing. His shaft aimed futile into the air at a target denied. Bursting, needing, screaming. His head felt ready to explode, ripped apart by overwhelming emotions. And on his chest, his sweating aching chest, heaving for breath, aching with lust, she purred. Her hot breath wafting over a bulging nipple. Inflaming his screaming sensations. Crying out for a touch. One touch that would open the flood gates, breach the barrier, bring him release.

Every bit of him ached. With longing. With need. With raw lust. Full to the brim. Overflowing with desire. Bursting for release.

---------------

Breaking point

He sensed a change in her posture. She had lain exhausted, purring, her face in the sweat of his chest. His breathing still came heavy and tortured, lifting her on his rising chest. He looked down but could not see beyond her raven black hair spread out on his shoulders and chest. But further down, he could feel the burning longing in his loins still begging for release. Perhaps no longer so intense. But it still painfully ached.

Then he felt it. Her hand on his nipple just before her eyes. And then a scratch. Again a fingernail grazed scratchily over his hard bursting nub. He caught his breath. Lay stock still, waiting, expectant, hoping. Barely daring to breathe. Hoping for a chance. Languorously the nail grazed back and forth over the meaty nub. Sparks flashed to his swollen cock.

Jane had found out with surprise the effect of playing with his nipples. A direct link between hard demanding nubs and his balls. The scratching nail sent rushes of blood from every part of his body, seething up his shaft to collect swelling at the tip of his cock.

Her tongue was licking up the sweat in the valley between the powerful mounds of his chest. The rough texture sent tingles through his skin. He stretched his head back to let her tongue lathe up his neck. Felt his pulse throbbing against the slick tongue.

Fingers squeezed down on a nipple. Tight. Hard. He gave a slight gasp. His chest rose under her as he heaved a sigh. He took in a quick breath at her tongue on his solid nub. A surge crackled into his loins. Tight lips nibbled on the nub. He blinked hard, his breathing quickened. He moaned lightly. His head went back, chest lifting, his eyes searching the ceiling above. In his mind, he saw the bulging throb of his cock. Towering upwards, searching in unquenched lust, seeking out a touch.

His hopes lifted. Yes, she needed more. Needed him. Coming back for him again. This time, he hoped. This time another chance. If he played her right.

She had risen upright before him. He watched mesmerised at her tongue licking the salt of his sweat off her lips. Barely breathing. Hoping she would take him. Needing her to take him. He wanted her touch. He needed her touch. Just one touch and he would burst into climax. Everything in his body drove onwards to that one end. Obsessive. Mindless. Nothing else mattered. The need in his loins was bursting again. A huge sigh of breath fought to keep the need under control. His cockhead screamed out in torture for contact.

She had settled back on his abdomen. She looked down at the superb torso below. He did not move her. She was surrounded by strong handsome acolytes. She had her pick of magnificent bodies. She chose them for their beauty, she rejected them when they failed to please. She would have them fighting over her to sharpen their hunger. It was not pleasure that she sought from this slave beneath.

Tarzan could feel his cock thrust upright behind her back, touching. Tarzan could feel the heat of his flesh radiating out, reflecting off her back. He pushed up. He could feel her heat, secreting intensively from her opening, spreading out over his eager crutch. He watched. Tense. Suddenly hopeful.

White Bull eased his back, hoping to halt the agony. Curious, he saw the priestess mounted on a naked Tarzan, noticed with envy his thrusting cock jammed up her backside. Unbelieving, he watched them. Her stunningly beautiful. Unbelievably cruel. He watched her rise on her knees, slide her hands up the inside of her thighs and slide her fingers inside. Glistening with her slickness, her fingers rolled over Tarzan’s heaving chest, rubbing her juice over his meaty nipples. Tarzan’s head went back, his chest rose with a great sigh. He moaned.

She slid back down his abdomen, his throbbing desire pushed hard and upright behind her backside. Her fingers played with his nipples. Shocks ignited at the tip of his shaft. His cock burned against the flesh at her crack. Tarzan, in desperation, tried to lift her with his hips, hoping to rub his glistening cock head against her velvet backside. She leaned back, extending him further. Pushing back on his stiff aching, throbbingly upright cock. Leant back further. Pushed him back beyond the zone of comfort. His teeth clenched. She slipped further down against him, bent him further. Her breasts, uplifted, glistened in the torches.

Tarzan hissed in through his back teeth. It felt as she was about to tear off his unbending rock-hard cock. Further she leaned back. Tarzan folded his body to ease the strain, lifted his chest. Again she slid further, bending back the tensile flesh to breaking point. Tarzan hissed in fear of the damage she would cause, lifted his head higher to bend his body, to ease the strain on his breaking shaft. At the root it threatened to snap. He uttered a weak fearful growl. His lift was stopped by the rope across his throat. He felt it digging into his windpipe. Still he needed to bend forward, to lean his throat into the rope, to avoid the injury. He felt the choke, felt blood pounding in his ears. Still further she leaned back. He thrust his windpipe against the rope, cutting off his breathing. His head started to swirl. A sexual high raged through his mind. Powerful urges swept over the whole body. He was desperate to save his endangered manhood. Yet the sensations overwhelmed. Choking noises gurgled up in his throat. His vision swam. A tear filled the corner of an eye. Light-headedness weighed down on him. He felt a raw lust taking him, drawing him into blackness.

Taking a grip, for relief he risked lowering his head, arched back his neck to ease his throat. Instantly, she responded. She lowered her magnificent breasts towards him. Her nubs hard and engorged swelling temptingly before his eyes. Fingers twirled at his nipple. Sparks of lust jolted in his cock. His trapped straining cock head gave a powerful twitch.

Groaning, he glanced down to see the hard nub of her breast trail up his chest like a finger. It felt like his head was on fire. A fresh rush of blood flushed to his bursting loins.

Up over the tense muscles of his lifted chest, her tongue licked at his sweat. Blood flooded into his shaft, jammed upright, bent perilously backwards, hazardously throbbing against her hot skin. Its root at his balls seemed at breaking point, his crutch screamed for release.

Her teeth nibbled at a nipple. He murmured at the pleasure and the pain. Trapped between ecstasy and fear. Her tongue was on his neck, her lips nuzzled at the throbbing vein. He gave a rasping gasp. A choking intake of breath.

Cat-like she flattened her back, purring in ecstasy. Their stomachs met. He felt as if they burst into flame. Her move pushed her backside further down him and stretched his trapped straining shaft even further back. In fright, he lifted her up on his struggling chest. He struggled with his fear. A plea for mercy threatening to rise in his throat. He drove his throat hard up against the strangling rope rather than risk being ripped apart at the root.

His pounding cock slipped between the widened crack of her buttocks. The heat rose. She clenched the muscles of her backside around him and squeezed on the aching immovable shaft. Again she squeezed and stroked his throbbing organ. He whined in fear and lust.

Again he pressed against the rope to ease the threat of tearing off his shaft, deliciously trapped up against her hot velvet skin. Again in groaning desperation, he crushed his windpipe into the strangling rope. He was strangling himself to death. Still he preferred the rope choking him, cutting into his throat.

The Council watched. His body, taut with tension, back lifted off the altar, quivered with strain. Sinews and muscles racked with fear and desperation. His stomach shivered like jelly-fish in the sea. His torso shimmering like liquid bronze.

Was this what they planned for him? To garrotte himself. Cut off the air to his head. Tarzan’s head spun. He could not think straight. White Bull was still alive. Did they plan less for Tarzan? Was this to be his end?

Caught between a torn-off cock or strangulation. He gambled. He had to believe they did not want him dead. More than death he feared his manhood sacrificed on the altar of this temptress. Did they want him mutilated? Why torture him like this? Why different from White Bull? They could have whipped him too? His head swam.

Confused. Bewildered. Blurring. Mind in a fog. Unmanned or strangled. His choice. He couldn’t think straight. He shook his head to clear it. Instinct took over. He chose. He leant forward to relieve his shaft. He strangled his throat. Gagged raspings escape his choking throat. He garrotted his windpipe against the rope. His eyes popped wide-open. His mouth gaped. He went giddy. His throat gurgled tortuously. He felt nauseous. Tarzan gagged for breath under this seductress. This woman of torment.

Still, her beauty rolled erotically against him, her opening glistening invitingly before his eyes. The crack of her backside massaging his breaking shaft.

Again she’d risen upright, her priceless breasts swaying deliciously before him. Her rise eased him further backwards. He whined sharply. His throat burned into the rope. His eyes rolling in their sockets. Mouth locked open dying for breath. Hovering between strangling and being ripped apart.

Her face was lost in the ecstasy of his suffering. His torment powered her arousal. Toying with him, keeping him rock-hard. Torturing him with the power of her body. Unsatiated manhood, bursting, at its peak, masculine perfection, futile in its fullness. Despairingly denied his need to come. His manhood threatened. Terror lining his tortured face. Indecision slicing him open. His shaft at breaking point. Gagging. Gurgling. She flushed towards climax at the sight of him strangling beneath.

The apeman’s head was twisted back. Face etched with shock, horror, agony. A choice. His manhood to be ripped apart. Or a strangling death. Ragged gurgling from the throat. Stomach quivering with effort. Body and mind racked with indecision.

A murmur of approval hovered through the Council. What a performance! The apeman had passed out.

---------------

Sold

The bodies beneath him held their hands up in protection as Tarzan hurtled down on top of them. The hold on the ship was already open. Wrists bound behind, when shoved forward Tarzan could do nothing to break his fall. From the deck, he had spotted the floor down below, covered with young enslaved men. Then the slaver’s hand had pushed him out into the air, to fall down on top of them. Breaking his fall on the bodies below.

Tarzan and White Bull had been escorted down to the coast. Wrists tied to elbows high up the back, a noose from White Bull’s neck reaching back to Tarzan’s behind, to prevent their escape, Tarzan had followed the lacerated and blue-beaten back of his captor down to the boat. Tarzan’s neck-burn stung red-raw. He had expected his own back too to have been sliced open with wounds. Like White Bull’s before him, caked with the black of dried blood. Some wounds still raw, seeping, throbbing. He saw twinges and shudders of pain in White Bull’s frame as they walked. Shockwaves of pain re-ignited by their steps. But not a groan seeped from the stubborn warrior in front.

The slavers’ boat was waiting when they arrived at the beach. A loud altercation between the natives and the slavers ensured over the state of White Bull. His value had been ruined because of the beating, they argued. He was useless, no value at all. When a slaver beat against an open wound on his shoulder, White Bull turned round angrily and growled. The slaver slammed his elbow into the back of White Bull’s skull, setting his head ringing. Slaves had to learn their position in life.

Tarzan, however, was the prize. He stood angry but powerless while they wrangled over the price for him. A premium would be earned on the apeman. But again the slavers haggled. Look at that red-raw rope mark at his neck. The apeman was flawed. The tribesmen would have none of it. Tarzan was worth a fortune. He watched as dollars changed hands. His life reduced to pieces of paper.

The slavers waded the two of them out to the craft, little more than a fishing boat. They were still defenceless, their arms still bound up their backs. They were waist-high in the waves when a cry from White Bull behind made Tarzan turned. Waves were washing up his back bathing salt water into his open wounds. He cried out. His face was contorting in agony as the salt ate into open flesh. His whole trapped body squirmed. He hesitated to evade another wave. Tried to jump it. A slaver’s hand caught him and forced White Bull’s skull underwater. The salt water would cleanse the open wounds. White Bull surfaced hissing, roaring, groaning in agony, tears mixed with salt-water streaking down his twisted face. A rifle butt into his throat forced him pitilessly towards the boat.

The other slaves down in the hold protested when Tarzan fell crashing down on top of them. Hands bound behind, he could only hurtle onto the masses of half-naked bodies below. Cries of pain and anger greeted him as he smashed onto the mass of stinking manhood below. The smell was overwhelming. The smell of unwashed bodies, reeking of anxiety and fear. Roughly, they shoved him off.

Cries rang out again. They saw White Bull, his arms also helplessly bound up his back, thudding down on top of Tarzan from the deck. Tarzan cried out when White Bull’s knees crashed into his back. Cries of resentment, shouts of protest welcomed the pair as they were brusquely pushed aside. Both struggled unsteadily to their feet. White Bull truculently kicked out at Tarzan’s leg crashing him back down onto the grumbling slaves. Protesting fists flew in at the defenceless Tarzan as he tried to find a footing to stand.

The slaves were cramped together. White Bull used his bulk and forced his way for a place on the floor in-between. His elbows jammed into faces to make him room. The engines had started up. Heading them out to open sea. The air hung with the stink of urine and the smell of sweat in a confined space. The boat rolled, juddered as it hit the waves. Men unused to the rolling pitch of the sea threw up. Every neighbour became a victim. The stench of vomit over-powered the nostrils. The need to gag was unstoppable.

Tarzan looked around the cramped wretched heap of humanity about him. For their sweating squalid journey, the slaves were crowded tightly together, tired, thirsty, hungry.

There were moments when this beautiful land deeply saddened Tarzan. He recalled with bitter irony the response at the police post. He had called there when Jane was supposedly getting treatment at the hospital.

The White Bull problem was dead and gone, he was told. Yet here he was surrounded by fit young men, the pride of their villages, imprisoned, sold into slavery. Tarzan had raised the question of Mtala and the others. Still labouring underground in inhuman conditions, enslaved against their will, inhumanely worked to death, their lives cruelly forfeit if they fell behind. For them, White Bull’s slavery was still an issue. No resources, he’d been told. Over-stretched. No manpower to act. Tarzan gave a snort of derision. Or an officer on-the-take. Looking the other way. Filling his pockets with the slavers’ dollars.

The boat hit a wave hard. The whole hull shuddered, throwing the men onto each other. The boat rolled hard over. A chorus of frightened groans arose from the stinking heap. Near Tarzan a man groaned, his stomach emptied. Others nearby cried out in helpless disgust.

For these young men, White Bull and slavery was still an issue. This wretched mass had been given up into slavery. Some like Tarzan and White Bull, captured. Sold. Robbed of their liberty, stripped of their rights against their will. Their future – a life where their strength and muscle power was sold to the highest bidder. Others sold into slavery by their families. To clear an insurmountable debt. Sold so their families could endure another year in their poverty. Strong young men, in their prime, sold for the survival of their own. The shameful slavery of poverty. There were times when Tarzan felt a deep shame for this continent. Slavery even today was an issue.

Tarzan recalled also the happiness in this land. The smiling faces that greeted him in villages. The irrepressible giggles of little girls. Fathers who left and worked long, lonely and hard in distant towns to send money back home. Young girls who hauled buckets of water over a barren land from distant wells back to their drought-stricken village. Children who raced for miles at dawn to sit in a ramshackle schoolroom, eager to learn.

Africa was a land of strange and violent contrasts. A land where often the many were kept in suffering by a greedy few.

Someone had helpfully untied Tarzan’s ropes. Blood had rushed in cramps down his arms. But free of the rope, he was still in bonds. They were all in bondage, chains binding their lives to uncaring masters. Money had changed hands. They were owned. Freedom, escape, hope – all denied. Every effort would be made to keep them captive and without hope. Until each muscular body had turned in a profit.

Slavery for this pitiful cargo was an issue. Cramped tight behind him, a terrified captive – barely more than a boy – retched on an empty stomach. He collapsed heaving over Tarzan’s shoulder, his empty stomach cramping painfully. His breath stinking of acid and bile filled their air. Tarzan turned his head away trying not to gag on the stench, feeling his own innards heave.

Tarzan’s eyes caught White Bull glowering at him. Still, that silly petulance, still the childish tantrums. White Bull held his stare till the boat smashed into another wave, sending them all crashing on top of each other.

Up above them through the open hatch a glorious blue sky. The cries of sea birds. An African sky, redolent of the salt, wafted by fresh sea breezes. High above a gull shrieked, calling out for food. Free as a bird, soaring high on pockets of air. The slavers, laughing, kindly threw up titbits. Watching them swoop and catch the food. Admiring, applauding, laughing at their success. The birds free to come and go as they pleased.

Down here below, hot, airless, stifling. Stinking of vomit and urine. Cramped sweaty bodies crushed on top of each other, breathing in human squalor. Wretched, suffering. Hopelessness in every heart. Taken against their will. Chattels. Assets. To make a handful of slavers richer, their lives got intolerably poorer. The avaricious handful feeding off the lives of the poor and miserable. Making difficult lives pitiful. Officials looking away, bought. Immunity secured. An official’s poor pay packet fattened by the slavers’ dollars. Justice an irrelevance.

The boat ploughed on smashing into waves. The captives groaned in their misery. Their stomach’s lurched. Tarzan felt a blanket of desolation settle over the wretched stinking heap of men. A thick stifling blanket of oppression. Groaning in their despair. Retching up their stomachs with their grief. Bringing Tarzan and its sordid cargo closer to a life in chains.

---------------

Up for auction

A white man for sale was a rarity. Having the apeman up for auction was a unique attraction. The airwaves burned white-hot as the slavers broadcast the sensation. Not for a long time had their regular clients fallen over themselves for places at an auction.

For many Tarzan was an object of resentment. They were enthusiastic buyers of slaves, - for personal use or for business. Plenty had had reason to resent the interference of the apeman. Or to fear his appearing on the scene at an awkward moment. There were plenty who resented this self-styled fighter for humanity. This self-appointed champion of justice in the jungle. Plenty only too anxious to see him brought down.

And then there was added motivation. For them, his glorious physique brought that extra sizzle of excitement. Inside burned a need to see his defeat in a manner fitting for that muscular arrogance. Tied up, defenceless, vulnerable. Available. A flame burned away at their guts. A fire that would only be quenched by seeing him broken, taken.

Many came who had no intention to buy. The thought of Tarzan, hopeless on display, brought them in droves. Through the heat and the dust they came, eager for the sight. A living legend up for sale. Captured. Defenceless. Tarzan to be taunted. Humiliated. Broken. And then sold into a glorious degradation of slavery.

The auction would start at sunset. And from mid-afternoon, the buyers were already eagerly crowding about. To touch, to feel, to test. When the temperatures were more comfortable for the customers, the slaves were brought out for display. To be examined close-up. Assessed. Tried and probed. A long line of stakes, between each pair, one young man tied – strong, fit, healthy, suited for hard labour.

Like the rest, Tarzan stood with his arms defencelessly roped outwards at shoulder height. In the middle of the line, glaring at the on-lookers. To protect customers, the slaves’ legs had also been roped out sidewards. Totally helpless. Totally defenceless.

And then their clothes were cut away. Completely vulnerable. The slaves’ minimal cover lying in a crumpled heap at their feet.

Buyers paraded up and down the line, viewing, assessing every appealing specimen that caught their eye. Feeling flesh, gripping tissue, squeezing muscle. Groping. Fingering. Checking a slave would suit their purpose.

From the end of the line, almost ignored for his injuries, White Bull observed the activity in the middle. The biggest crowd gathered in curiosity around Tarzan. He was the spotlight for the day. Some came back to him time and again. Some stayed there enjoying the show, sipping their drinks. Some just watched in curiosity; some took part, proving their mettle to their friends, impatiently queuing up to test out the living legend. All chuckled at the taunting.

Helpless to do anything, Tarzan could just growl his protests. He spat back in anger when one slapped him hard in the face. And then he grinned smugly back at the apeman. Tarzan grunted helplessly angry when a dealer got his man to thump him in the stomach. For fun. Because he could. Because Tarzan couldn’t stop it. The sensation that was welling up inside him was outrage. Outrage at their taunting. Outrage at being defenceless. Outrage at his own weakness to retaliate. A finger ran up his bare arse crack. Laughter rang around when, in disgust, the squirming cheeks instinctively squeezed together, trapping the probing finger inside.

The punches didn’t hurt. The disgrace did.

Tarzan glared and glowered. He protested. But they laughed in his face. He could do nothing to resist a customer pulling back his foreskin and squeezing hard on his balls. His objection only provoked a chuckle from his on-lookers. Encouraged by his protest, a customer took a leather thong from his pocket. He walked up to the slave and waved the thong jauntily above his head. The excited spectators shouted encouragement at the sight. Knowing. Sniggering with anticipation.

Not too carefully, he tied the thong round the slave’s ball sack. A howl of approval went up when Tarzan winced, the cord biting into tender flesh. Mocking laughter. Applause greeted the grinning customer as he yanked harder on the thong to tie the knot tight. Tarzan grimaced, grunted. Cries of encouragement from the on-lookers. The customer bound the thong round and round. Nipping the helpless flinching captive . Again and again. Stretched the balls further and further away from the shaft. Trapped tightly in their diminishing sack. And the apeman could only grit his teeth at the pinching pain. Glower with the shame.

The final knot was yanked tight. Tarzan jerked, a sharp intake of breath. Fists in the crowd punched the air. Tarzan glared his anger back at the hollering crowd. But their eyes were fixed on his growing hardness. Pointing, taunting. Open mouthed. Eyes opening in wonder. To witness Tarzan’s shame and degradation! They couldn’t believe their luck.

The tormentor was greeted back by his friends with raucous slaps on the shoulder at his audacity. Tarzan realised his mistake. He vowed to hide his anger and embarrassment. Keep it to himself. It was only encouraging them. Tarzan tried to ignore the swelling and hardening. But their mockery and the focus of their eyes could only see it grow. Despite himself, a rush of blood was filling his loins.

He shut his eyes against the shame. He leant his head backwards to evade their eyes. He suppressed a whimper, crushed a growl when another knelt down before him. He pulled his hips back defensively when the attacker drew the skin on his hard shaft fully back to expose the throbbing head. Tarzan buried his pride deep in his mind. He shook his head not wanting to see. Then he gasped in shock and tried to pull away. A wet tongue ran the length of the hard flesh. Shock from a tingle of hot pleasure sizzled sharply up his shaft. Despite himself, he shouted a futile protest.

He gasped open-eyed when a slick mouth swallowed his head. He fought to suppress his fury, his despair at his own defencelessness. Tarzan gulped in astonishment, confused, ashamed, as he was being swallowed whole. Lips pressed tight down on him. Stretching him. He growled in futile anger.

A friction of excitement crackled when his bulging head scraped over a rough palate. He blinked in disbelief at the rush of blood to his loins. His face burned in embarrassment as the bursting cock head was swallowed and squeezed down a tight throat. Despite himself, Tarzan gasped in deep.

He squirmed in disgust at the nose nuzzling seductively in his pubic hair. The throat tingling him wildly as it massaged his ensnared cockhead. His breathing deepened. Unwillingly, he panted hard. The tight muscles of his stomach pounded above the sucking mouth. His blood quickened. His heart beat faster. His face flushed. Reluctantly his excitement grew.

The on-lookers sniggered at the sight of those muscles pounding in and out in his taut stomach. The apeman felt need. He couldn’t escape it. His eyes were rolling reluctantly with desire. His torso stretched itself up. His stomach was tightening. His body was demanding a response.

Some licked at their lips in anticipation. Pleased he was not giving in. Struggling with himself. They watched him fight against temptation. He would not give up easily what they were forcing him out of him. His head was grappling with the fight. Mind locked in combat in his body. Self-worth versus degradation. Tested. Challenged. Struggling to resist.

Then, involuntarily, his hips gave a sudden twitch forward. The crowd cheered. Impulsively, again they thrust. He grunted. The mouth pulled rapidly away, its job done. The tormentor withdrew. He’d pulled the apeman’s strings. Leaving him with a throbbing unfinished erection. Tarzan’s wasted erection jutting hopelessly inflamed at the crowd. Slick with saliva. Tarzan thrust needlily into the air. The apeman groaned out loud. The attacker had got the apeman to rise to his bidding. He’d done the job. The crowd yelled their appreciation, applauded in gratitude, slapped him on the back.

A whine gagged and suppressed in his throat, Tarzan glowered after tormentors as they passed him by, pointing, laughing. In search of other slaves to torment. He writhed and twisted, squirmed to control his frustration. Face grimacing, fighting to get back control. Tarzan was left pulsating and throbbing. A welter of conflicting emotions battered through him. Frustrated. Unsatiated. Abused. Needing. Angry. Ashamed.

Tarzan fought with the cacophony of conflicting emotions that threatened to overwhelm him.

Physically he had nothing to be ashamed of. But he was parading a thrusting erection, tightly bound against his will, on show against his will. His eyes avoided his thick engorged manhood. Not the love tool with which Jane had played and pleasured him. Not the loving erection into which he had poured all his feelings for her. Feelings that had over-powered him, to which he had willingly succumbed.

Here, now, someone had taken it and bound it round and round, nipping it tight with leather. Because he could. Because Tarzan could not prevent it. Someone has sucked on it and swallowed it. Because Tarzan could do nothing about it. Someone had forced him to need to come. Against his will. Left him bursting with insistent need. In public. He could do nothing against it. His cock was thick, bloated with blood. Lined with grotesque bulging veins. Anger-filled flesh. Gross. Ugly even. On public show. A repulsive symbol of his powerlessness and his humiliation. An object of derision. Freed, Tarzan would take on all of them and teach them the lesson of their lives. But he couldn’t. He fought back a sense of desolation born of frustrated powerlessness. His anger threatened to tip over into feelings of growling despair. They had reduced him to a freak show.

For the first time since his enslavement, an explosion of resistance detonated in his mind and spirit. He thrashed wildly against his bonds. His body shook from side to side. His hips bucked backwards and forwards. A bellow of anger erupted. Yet he was helpless and defenceless. A thing. An object. Meat in a market. For others to ogle at, guffaw at. To touch and abuse. An object of scorn, subject of their derision. Ignominiously put up for sale. He fought back his moans of anger and despair and battled with his bonds instead.

---------------

Hard-face

One buyer stood in the background and watched. He paid no attention to the other slaves up for auction. His focus was solely the apeman.

Tarzan continued to glower at customers as they passed by, their eyes swallowing him whole, their attention divided between his writhing muscle and his bound thrusting cock. He defied them with his glares. But nothing could take away from him the sensation of helplessness, this anger and frustration at his own vulnerability. Wishing he could break free to teach them a lesson. Nothing could suppress his shame that they could do with him whatever they wanted. His fury that he could not defend himself. His seething at this degradation.

The lone observer came forward as the sun went low in the sky. He came up close, stood chest-to-chest with Tarzan. The next joker, thought Tarzan, half-mocking, steeling himself. Their eyes locked on each other. Silent . Cold black eyes. Both caught in a long unswerving stare. A hard face that revealed nothing. No sign of emotion, no thought. The eyes did the work.

Tarzan didn’t know what the white man held in his fingers. But instinctively, he pulled back as it was extended towards his chest.

He gasped in shock when the tool gripped onto him. It was as if sharp piranha teeth had bitten into his nipple. He gave a sharp intake of breath. His eyes watered instantly. A sudden rush of blood flooded towards his bursting loins. Tarzan clenched his teeth and breathed in sharply.

Hard-face took a step back and waited. His eyes were locked on the apeman’s face. Confused, tight-lipped, Tarzan returned his stare. He frowned. Uncertain what it meant.

Hard-face waited impassively. Observing closely. Looking for the first sign. Then he caught it. A twitch. A quick frown in the forehead. A slight jerk of the cheek. The apeman looked down at the clamp. He frowned. His mouth gave a quick twist. He twitched his shoulders, flexed the pec. A quick wince of the mouth, a slight jerk in the throat. He was feeling the bite.

Tarzan looked down at the clip protruding off his nipple. The biting teeth were beginning to hurt. He could feel an ache growing from the clip, spreading over his skin. He scowled at the pain. Instinctively he fletched his front teeth together. He swore to himself. Damn, it hurt. He crunched his lips tight together.

He was giving short sharp grunts from his throat. His teeth fletched, his eyes tightened. The grunting quickened, the hurt grew. He kept shooting a look at the clip, uncertain why it hurt so much, not believing it hurt so much.

With a big inward heave of air, Tarzan fought to get himself under control. He took in big deep breaths, the clamp rising and falling strongly with the noisy breathing. Tarzan’s front teeth were clamped together, fighting to beat the pain.

Hard-face was back, another clip in his hand. Tarzan grunted in protest, watching anxiously as the other hand approaching his other nipple. The pain of the first clamp on the end seemed to rise in crescendo to welcome a fellow torturer. The nipple hurt like fury. The chest around seemed to smoulder. His cock was responding to the pain.

Tarzan tried to withdraw from the approaching hand. But he could only recoil so far. His forehead furrowed, waiting for another razor-sharp bite. Tarzan looked down at his free nipple over his sweat-sparkled chest. The gap between clamp and nipple closing. The clamp glinting in the setting sun. Tarzan glistening with the sweat of anticipation. Anticipation of a flesh-nipping bite. The jagged metal teeth gaping wide. Glinting evilly. A metal jaw lined with glinting serrated spikes that would snap on tight. Nearing slowly. Tarzan tried to back away from the fearful bite of the sharpened jaw. Neck rigid with tension. Chest taut with pulling away. Barely breathing.

A sharp hiss escaped Tarzan when the metal teeth snapped tight round the nipple. Panting hard and snorting fast through his nose, teeth clenched. Tarzan looked down at the clamps snapping hard at his chest. The pain was unbelievable. He sucked in heavily through front clenched teeth. Hard, heavy. To dispel the pain.

His face twisted as the tooth bites surged into a gnawing ache that was chewing at his chest. An aching groan was stifled in his throat. Pain was powering blood through his veins. Blood was rushing to his bloated crutch. An tight unstoppable hardening. The inevitable upward thrust. Not understanding the source of the pain, a deep serrated growl was building in Tarzan’s throat. A ragged growl broken by rapid panting in his chest.

Hard-face, inscrutable as ever, felt a glow of satisfaction. His eyes were locked on the apeman’s when a tear escaped. Tarzan’s jaw clenched biting on the pain. He gasped, he sniffed. And blinked rapidly. Saw-sharp teeth snatched at his nipples. He panted hard through his torment. Rapid short bursts of breath pumped out of his body by pain.

Tarzan gasped with relief. Hard-face had removed the first clamp. The pain in the body abated amazingly. The first clamp had bitten in deep and hard. As if its teeth had gnawed their way into Tarzan’s soul, had been destroying his tenacity. The niggling ache had diminished. A sense of elation flooded Tarzan’s head. His breathing came long and deep. Edge with a tinge of an elated moan.

Tarzan looked down at his freed nipple. The punishing clip had gone. The nub lay there, crushed, deflated, withdrawn, beaten. The flesh around was pock-marked with anger-red tooth-bites. Tarzan’s breathing came slowly back to normal, relief giving voice by his slow heavy pants.

Hard-face’s fingers gripped the free nipple. Tarzan protested feebly. Then he hissed out loud. Beneath his eyes, he watched the tortured nipple being crushed between finger and thumb. Tarzan gave a sharp grunt at the stabbing pain. Squeezed, crushed, mauled. Pain sprang to Tarzan’s eyes. He squeezed them tight against the vicious stabbing hurt.

Hard-face extended a finger. A long sharp nail scratched at the sore tooth-marks around the nub. Scratching, scraping, over and over, giving the punishing tooth bites new life. Tarzan’s head rolled from side-to-side, sharp grunts crackling painfully in his throat.

He yelled. A sharp pained intake of breath. The nub was caught between finger nails. Nails dug into the tooth marks, scoring deep into the engorged burning nub. Tarzan cursed, his eyes watered. Then he yelped. The finger nail was scraping up and down the side of his nub, scratching over and over again at the red sore tooth bites. Pain rushed down into his loins.

Open-mouthed Tarzan panted hard and fast into the pain. His face tight, eyes clamped open in pained disbelief. His upper chest and arms were taut with tension, muscles tight, unmoving. Then his head rolled back, rapid breathy whines shooting up at the evening sky, his shoulder muscles twisting and rippling in the sinking sun.

Relief, the mauling fingers were gone! Tarzan fought to regain control. His eyes again shot down to his free nipple. Still stinging, still stabbing. He felt a flood of sensations rushing down through his body. A deluge of pain-induced arousal smacked into his loins flooding them. He felt a flood mercilessly destroying everything in its path. Surging inexorable up to his cock-head.

He thought he would explode. Like a mighty volcano about to erupt. The pressure from the seething lava flow irresistible. An inexorable force building in the dome under the volcano, pushing, pressing, It had to blow Split open the mountain sides. Rip itself apart. Savagely spew its fiery load at the world.

Tarzan’s head had gone back. Open-mouthed, pained strangled groans erupted. He was about to blow. His loins just had to erupt. He felt he was about to split apart.

Tarzan screamed. The pain was instant. The agony intense. His eyes shot open, down to the free nipple. Glinting maliciously at him, a clip stood proud off his nipple. Gripping tightly, malicious jaws had clamped down hard on the end. The meaty engorged nub was crushed agonisingly in the cramping jaws of the clamp. The pain was indescribable. The teeth had dug deep into flesh, burrowed themselves out of sight. Gripping mercilessly tight, pitilessly painful. A long strangled whine flowed out of Tarzan’s unbelieving gaping mouth.

It was as if soldier ants were burrowing under his skin, breaking surface at both nipples, crawling over his chest. Pincers gnashing at his flesh, jaws grinding at his skin. He looked down. Just two clips on his chest, each barely a small finger in length. Yet the pain was unbelievable. Their weakening power frightening.

The ache was rapidly growing in intensity. The stinging hurt crawled relentlessly over his neck and up over his face. As if the poison of the ants’ stings inflamed his throat, an angry rash burning up his jaw, over his cheeks. Stinging. Smarting. The march of pain was swallowing up his torso. His stomach muscle tightened to ward it off. Tarzan clasped his fists tight together, nails dug into his palm to kill the pain. His mouth twisted and convulsed, mouth now wide open, now jaw clenched. The soldier ants nipped and gnawed their path through his body. Eyes now bulging, now screwed tight together. His head tossed stiffly from side to side. Taut. Rigid. It seemed the ants were biting a venomous path through his brain.

He squirmed and shook to free himself. He thought his body was swarming with soldier ants. From navel to neck, he was alive with malicious biting insects. Every cell of his skin, every pore a target for their evil sharp pincers. Stabbing, nipping, cutting. Not one bit of him felt free from their sharp stinging claws. He groaned in desperation. His head rolled from side to side. His torso squirmed. His shoulders writhed.

Suddenly he could take no more. He roared out in frustration and pain. By-passers stopped in amazement. The apeman was shaken by an unseen force. Shouting out. Rocking fiercely from side to side, rock-solid arms pinned out, chest tensed. Bellowed at the earth in tortured frustration, nagging ache, biting pain. His torso violently thrown from one side to the other. Thighs quivering, he uttered an long unvoiced ragged cry, his head swishing about uncontrollably from side to side.

Panting deeply, Tarzan slumped exhausted from his bonds, his face lined with stress. His guts constricted with fear that the ants were winning. The squirming swarms beating him. Defeat took on voice in a pained whine. Still Hard-face stood impassively watching, only a few steps away. Watching him grimace, feeding off his pain. The apeman’s chest rising and falling to his noisy laboured breathing, stomach pulled in taut. Tarzan screwed his eyes up tight. Pain seized him again and stretched his throat backwards.

The agonising hurt persisted. Needles of fire tore through his nipples, consumed this chest, racked down his legs. They were stripping his body of strength. Weakening. Incapacitating him. His thighs trembled and shook. The stinging biting pain held him in its grip from head to knee.

A sudden short cry. Strangled in a pain-constricted throat. The teeth had taken on life of their own. The jaws tightened. Bit down. Like the needle-sharp teeth of a piranha, they clamped tighter on the nub, fearful of losing its prey. They bit hard. The needles sank deep into pain-racked flesh. Tarzan rose up on his toes. He tensed. His groan scraped out of a tight throat. He twisted left. Powerful thighs twitched, first one leg then the other. Muscles knotting, sinews tightening. His neck twisted up at the darkening sky. He hauled on the chain to cut the shackles into his wrists. Any other source of pain. Just not the piranha bite hanging off his engorged nipple.

He hissed in air noisily through his clenched teeth. His stomach caved in tight, the muscles standing out like carved on stone. Through twisting shoulders, arching back, convulsing thighs, muscles bulged under taut flesh. His face contorted rapidly, mouth tensely opening and shutting, twisting, convulsing. He arched his chest forward, twisted his back. Somewhere in his body there had to be one place where the agony had not reached.

It started like a whine. The sound built slowly, a continuous moan ripped through by judders of pain. It welled up from the depths of his being, scythed by aching sobs shuddering up his throat. The march of the hurt had consumed his whole body. The ants pincers had infected his every cell with venom. Flesh quivered stinging but helpless, muscles feeble, his head in a whirl of pained confusion. How had this come about? With what venom had the ant-like march over his body infected his muscles, robbed him of strength? What power was invested in those clamps to weaken? He called out again as the piranha bit down hard, hissing through pain-clenched teeth. His head fell hanging, his knees trembling, attacked by an aching, grinding hurt that was eating him alive. Stinging ants crawled all over his skin, piranha jaws buried deep in his chest. Pain and anguish had drained his face of life. He groaned loudly. He groaned an agony of deep despair.

After a long fixed stare, Hard-face turned away without a word or backwards glance. Leaving Tarzan the object of others’ marvelling looks. The lord of the jungle. The myth, the icon. Reduced to helpless writhing agony by a clamp on each chest.

A nagging continuous ache burnt at the points of his hard chest. Tarzan blinked furiously, piteously, through aching eyes at the clips. Not understanding. Panting heavily in exhaustion at the pain. He ached with the indignity of his uncontrolled suffering on display. A suffering beyond his understanding. Beyond his control. An indignity that overwhelmed him with despair. Fear welled up inside. Broken by torture. Fear at this disgrace. Fear at his own helplessness. Sweat poured. A sweat of shame.

The word had passed down the line of staked-out slaves. The on-lookers rushed back to see the sight of the suffering apeman. Crowds gathered and watched. As if in slow-motion, their eyes played over his contorted face, lost to the world, totally consumed in his own anguish. His shoulders lifted, his stomach collapsed, strong muscles there flowed like liquid. His body twisted, mighty shoulders knotted, taut, tensed, struggling with the torment seizing him. In the setting sun, the oil-slickened skin shone like liquid gold. Flowing, sinuous, curvaceous. Arms bulged, pulling at his bonds, forearms striated, biceps locked frozen, shoulders swollen with effort. A golden statue. An anguish and torment had Tarzan mysteriously in their grip. The on-lookers watched in silent satisfaction. They stood in amazement at him squirming. Tarzan’s engorged erection, shamefully on display, against his will. Bloated, flushed red with his tortured blood, pressed flat against his stomach.

---------------

Bought

(Flashforward 1 )

“It’s been along time, Tarzan. A long time coming”.

Tarzan squinted into the glare at the figure silhouetted against the sun. The figure seemed to fill the open door of the truck. Tall, big shoulders, narrow waist. But Tarzan couldn’t make out the features. Unthinking he shifted to see better, forgetting his journey through hell. He hissed in pain at the pole still jabbing agonisingly up into his crutch.

“It’s been a long time. 5 years. 5 years in the coming. 5 years since we parted”, said the grim voice back-lit by the harsh glare.

Tarzan’s new owner gave a chuckle redolent with malevolence.

“But it will be all the better for the wait”.

---------------

Shamefully displayed

Tarzan had been up first for sale before his journey through hell began. The slavers had brought him first to the rostrum, fearing buyers would hold back in the hope they might be able to bid for him.

The spectators sat up, interested. This was the moment they had been waiting for. History in the making almost. This was what they had travelled through the dust and the heat for. An icon brought down.

Tarzan had primed himself. He was determined not to show his anger or defeat. A deep sense of indignation ate away at his heart. He would not give them that they had reduced him to that.

The leg shackles were so short to prevent trouble that he had to shuffle into the auction. Floodlights lit up the rostrum at the end. He entered from the back of the audience, a spotlight highlighting him as he walked. He had to waddle through them in short hobbling steps down the centre aisle. Humiliating little steps. Even his walking at the dictate of the slavers.

Every face turned and watched him traipsing between them, down the aisle. Faces turned up at him in curiosity. Naked. Bound. Hobbled. A chain collar round the neck. Clipped to it at the back the wrist shackles. He looked straight ahead so as not to see the smirks on their faces. He closed his ears so as not to hear their sniggers. The living legend reduced to this. Shuffling. Shackled. Stripped of his dignity. Stripped of his clothing. Stripped of his freedom.

His arms were raised, his wrists shackled to the collar behind the neck. His muscularity exposed to the glare of the spectators. His masculinity enslaved. Step by step, he hobbled up the steps to the rostrum. Into the full glare of the floodlights. The sheen of his body sparkling magnificent before the spectators. He stared tight-lipped out beyond the watchers while the leg shackles were clamped in place to prevent escape. He felt eyes all over him. He held his head erect. They had his body for now. They’d not get his mind. They would not belittle him, he was determined. His arms were chained up behind his neck, gazes roamed over him, fully exposed. Tall and erect he proudly held his torso, the tight narrow waist, strong broad shoulders – arousing admiration in some, envy in others. He heard whispered comment. He felt his manhood ignominiously under scrutiny. Nothing to be ashamed of there. But here an object for prying eyes, normally famously hidden from view under his loincloth. He caught a laugh. Heard a couple snigger. Fought not to seek out the guilty parties with his eyes. Fought to look with dignity over their heads.

He staggered slightly when the space under his feet moved, looked down in surprise,. The floor had started to revolve. Surprised he tried to move but couldn’t. The leg shackles were clamped onto a turntable. Somewhere someone sniggered at his surprise. Slowly he revolved on the rostrum before the inspection of the bidders. Slowly he turned before their prying eyes, exposing every angle of his strong naked body. Arms raised. Biceps bunched. Powerful chest lifted high, muscle mounds flattened. His broad back emphasised. His tight butt, his exposed crutch revolving under inspection. Quality control. From the front, from the side, from the back.

He’d never had any reason to be ashamed of his body. He’d lain naked at night. He’d swum naked in the sea. But to be revolving on a stage, for display. For scrutiny. For sale. Demeaned. An object for voyeurs. It was another act of intense shame. He fought against his growing sense of self-hate for allowing this to happen. Shame and anger gnawed away at him.

He was being disempowered. They had come for miles, come in droves, to see him stripped of his freedom. The legend. The walking legend. A symbol of ultimate freedom. He’d been free to wander the forest. Free as a bird. Now bound, stripped of every human right and dignity. Disempowered. Someone else’s possession. A chattel. He fought against the anger in his gut. He struggled with the gnawing despair in his throat. Not for one moment in the six days since capture by White Bull had there been a single chance of escape. A chance to regain his freedom. Not one moment for hope.

Determined, Tarzan set his face. Dignified. Impassive. Jaw set tight. Face inscrutable. Eyes scanning over the heads of the crowd. The spectators sat forward in rapt attention. All seats were occupied, some standing for a better view. This was to be a moment to remember.

Slavery had gone underground. But not disappeared. A rich man’s interest. Who else could afford to keep a human being as a toy, a plaything, to be used at will for amusement.

Or a businessman’s asset. When business dictated the need for workers who would never talk or be seen again. Silent and dispensable.

But tonight was a crowning glory for these select enthusiasts of slavery. The crowning moment for their secretive trade. This was the ultimate toy. Tarzan, captive. Naked and exposed. His dignity stripped away like his loincloth. The very thought gave some watching an excited tingle in their pants. He stood there, magnificent in his muscularity, sweating under the lights. Proud in his strong masculinity. Powerful, shimmering like a gilded statue. But this was his end. They knew it. He knew it. An end in shame and ignominy.

Some who had tormented him that afternoon had wished that cameras were allowed. To be caught on camera sucking him off. His throbbing erection! His ball sack roped and swollen, his shaft frustrated and jutting upwards! Brutishly engorged and bloated. Flat against his stomach! Against his will. The lord of the jungle! What a buzz! What footage to share with your friends!

But even more, they wanted to catch this moment on film, his ultimate humiliation. Revolving like chattel on display. Powerless. Helpless, humiliated, the icon revolving naked before them. The dual tone of his body arousing admiration and comment. One part paler where hidden by his loincloth, the rest golden brown from the sun. The contrast emphasised his glorious shameful nudity.

An object exhibited for the rich. Something to be bought. The apeman! An article to be purchased. Owned. Not a living legend. Not an icon. A thing. An object about to be possessed by his betters. The slave master’s ultimate prize.

But cameras were not allowed. So they leant forward in rapt silence. Eyes wide open in rapt attention. Every sense alert to take away the memory. Not to miss a single moment when an icon passed out of history into personal slavery. The ultimate shaming of a legend. Degradation. Humiliation. Mortification.

“Sold!”

A gasp had gone up when the reserve price was announced. Three times what anyone expected to pay. It was over that fast. No one would bid against that exorbitant sum. Someone wanted Tarzan. Wanted him badly. And was willing to pay anything to get their hands on him.

Disappointed protests of “Unfair”, “Shame!” floated in the air. It was over too fast. They were ignored by the auctioneer. They had their price, were more than content. The apeman had turned a tidy profit. The auctioneer gave a final nod to a man in the audience.

Tarzan realised he had been bought. Another man’s property. His fame to disappear. As if he had truly died. Never to be heard of again. Oblivion. Like a sun-bleached carcase in the desert. Tarzan noticed the man with the hard face stand up. He left without looking back. The one who had tortured his chest. Snapped on the cruel biting jaws. Reduced Tarzan to such shameful weakness.

---------------

Recognition

(Flashforward 2)

The figure had shifted against the door of the truck. Tarzan’s eyes struggled to focus against the dark background.

“You’ve cost me dear in the past, Tarzan. Very dear”, said the accented voice. “Again, today, I paid a heavy price. A pile of dollars to bring us together”.

The tone growled.

“And I mean to get every cent back”.

Van Buren. That voice, that accent. Tarzan squinted into the glare to recognise van Buren standing against the side of the truck. Gloating. How had he got out? Last thing he’d heard he’d gone to the jail. How was he here now? How had he managed to get his hands on Tarzan! The reason why Tarzan chose not to ask.

“Yes, every cent. Every cent you’ll pay me back. And there’s no time like the present”.

Van Buren held out his hand. The stick touched the metal pole on which Tarzan and the two others had been perched for their journey.

All three screeched.

---------------

Travelling torture

Two of them had sat on the earth in the holding cage after their auction, waiting to be transported away. Tarzan’s new companion opposite was a strikingly handsome man, tall, youthfully muscled. Not long into manhood. He talked and talked. In a language Tarzan did not understand. Nervous, talkative, desperate for companionship. Tarzan could not understand a word. But he recognised a man whose fear had unleashed his tongue, who chatted fast and furious to contain his fright.

Tarzan hunkered down beside him. He put his arm round the shaking shoulder. He smiled into the quivering brown eyes. With a strong voice to substitute for language, Tarzan re-assured him. They’d beat this. They’d get out of this. They’d look out for each other.

White Bull was thrust in the cage. Like them, the only attire a blue medallion hanging from his neck. The same buyer. It seemed they could not get away from each other. White Bull glared at his former captive and gave a snort of satisfaction. Throughout the night he thanked his lucky stars. Tarzan had not eluded him. The goddess still favoured him. A chance still to keep his vow to his father. His murderer would die at these hands.

At dawn, they’d been taken out to a truck, rifles at the ready. Still naked, wrists bound together in front. The doors of the enclosed truck were waiting open. Tarzan was shoved up first. Into the darkness inside, he peered and made out some kind of seat bolted in the middle of the truck. A kind of prism made of metal poles. He hesitated, not understanding. But a rifle in his back had Tarzan throw his leg high over the top and sit astride the top metal rail. The cold metal pole reached his naked crutch and he had to stretch his toes to touch the ground.

Hard-face who had tortured his nipples stood in the doorway, impassively watching every move, rifle in hand. Tarzan’s bound hands were now lifted and tied loosely above his head to the rope hanging down from the roof. Alert, Tarzan watched every move of the men. Escape was not possible now. But he watched for any slip-up that might offer a chance. Waiting for that elusive bit of luck.

On either side, the men now grabbed his ankles and pulled back his legs, bending them at the knee, his feet lifted off the ground. All his weight was taken by his crutch bearing down on the metal rail he rode. They pulled his legs backwards and outwards. Ropes secured his ankles to the poles at the side of the frame. Tarzan grunted to himself, the pole dug in. He pulled on the rope for relief, stretched his legs for lift. But when tired, he would have to settle back down. Ride the rail again.

The handsome young man was shoved forward astride the pole until his stomach was crushed against Tarzan’s bare backside. His arms were lifted and his wrists roped on to Tarzan’s. His fright-slick chest stuck to Tarzan’s back. When his ankles were tied up and back, he gave a slight whine of uncertainty and fear. His legs spooned tightly into the back to Tarzan’s knees. As Tarzan had said, they’d stick together, look after each other!

The two of them shifted and shuffled. To adjust to the close sweaty proximity and to adjust to the discomfort. The rail dug into their bones in their crutches. Grunting they felt the pain grow bit by bit.

White Bull hesitated at the sight the two of them roped together. But a stab with a rifle in the back soon had him mounted on the rail in front of Tarzan. A rifle prodding him in the chest, he was shuffled back till his backside rubbed up against his former captive’s crutch. His hands too were roped above him to Tarzan’s hands pulling his back tight up into Tarzan’s chest. When the guards pulled on his ankles and his feet were splayed out sidewards, White Bull grunted and resisted. A rifle barrel jabbed into his neck cracked his head against Tarzan’s chin. Heads and arms mingled, fought for space. Feet bound up, White Bull shifted. He pulled on Tarzan’s wrists, rising on his knees, causing the others to groan and protest in their own discomfort. The three were riding the same rail, bound to the same rope, squeezed tight together. A move from one hurt the others.

Satisfied, the guards held water up to their mouths and let the captives drink as much as they wanted. Left-over water was welcomingly poured over the hopeless captives’ heads. Cooling water dripped off their faces, trickled down chests and backs. With a final look to check, the guards jumped down from the truck and slammed the doors shut. The rasp of a bolt firmly locked the men in.

In the airless blackness, the temperature soared. All roped to Tarzan’s hands, they were thrust chest against back onto each other. Sweat broke out over their bodies in the hot oppressive truck. Drops of sweat dripped off a chin and trickled down the back of Tarzan’s neck. They could see nothing. They felt each other wriggling and squirming for comfort. The press of White Bull’s back against Tarzan’s chest made the sweat flow. When White Bull pulled upwards to relieve the digging into his crutch, they separated with a noisy sticky slurp. And a groan of discomfort from the others. Backs, chests, stomachs, crutches glued against each other with an oozing slick of hot sweat.

And continuously, the metal pole between their legs dug in naggingly hard into their bones. A tight fist pressing up, digging in. An incessant force as their bodies bore down on the rail. Until the gnawing ache became unbearable and one of them lifted himself and shifted for some relief. A relief that became torture to the others. They groaned at each other, cursing in anger, calling for consideration. But no one cared. It was every man for himself.

The truck engine started up. The engine juddered the rail against their crutches. They grunted and gasped at the new discomfort. Sucked in hard through pursed lips. Tarzan tried to lift. But his legs were trapped by the weight of White Bull’s meaty thighs locked down on top of his own. He had to exert precious strength in his legs to lift them both.

The truck rolled forward over rough ground. The driver grinned to his companion as he heard the shocked cries of the men. The rocking truck sending fresh tremors of pain up into their crutches, the unforgiving rail grinding at the thin flesh between butt and balls. He imagined them gritting their teeth hard, tension engraved into their faces, pain locked in the throat. A grating ache burning into their balls.

The driver picked up speed. They had a long journey ahead.

The pain digging into their sensitive crutch flesh quickly became insufferable. Legs trembled as the ache behind their balls spread over the whole of their bodies. It seeped from the buttocks and cramped their legs. Sharp nails of pain dug deep into their thighs pressed tightly up against each other. Bone beneath the thin layer of crutch flesh ground and grated on the rail. The ache ground at their teeth. Deep in their abdomens pain seared as if pressed against glowing embers that their sweat could not extinguish. Deep inside, an intense nagging ache spread up from their balls gnashing at their guts in tight excruciating cramps.

Speeding down the highway, the pain clawing at every bit of tissue forced out spontaneous hisses of pain, involuntary moans of distress when it got too much. A jolt over a pothole had them crying out. Bodies banged uncaring against each other. Crutches bounced on the rail. Lightening bolts crackled up from their balls. Tears of pain mingled with the sweat. Foreheads lolled forwards onto the shoulders in front. Each victim clenched his jaw, bit his teeth together, wondering if they could take any more.

On and on, the truck rolled, through the mounting heat of the day.

Since his capture by White Bull’s men, Tarzan’s body had been dealt a torrent of punishments. That back-hanging off the pole on the way to the camp had been unbearable. Every second he’d feared a shoulder would dislocate. Knowing his weight would rip the other arm agonisingly out of its socket.

He’d watched in horror White Bull’s lashing. The fear in his throat telling him he was next in line. He’d throttled himself unconscious. Trapped in a torment. Risking death by choking rather than life with his manhood ripped off.

But this was indescribable. Locked in blackness inside the truck, no sense of time or space. Other bodies stinking in their sweat thudding against him. He cried out sharp. The truck had rumbled into a hole in the road. Like a punch with a club, the pole had rammed itself hard into the space between balls and butt. A jarring solid thump that sent tears to his eyes. This small piece of manflesh was being beaten and pummelled, for ever it seemed. Down there in the pained blackness, his crutch must be black with bruising by now. The bone beneath cruelly bruised and battered. A metal pole juddered, jammed and rammed into his crutch. It felt red-raw. Continuous scraping across metal must have flayed off the skin. He felt liquid trickle down his thighs. Was it sweat or blood? Every movement – by him or the others – scraped at flayed flesh. Searing pain scorched through nerves in his legs, set his teeth on edge.

Over a smooth highway, the men clung against each other, agony sizzling like a branding iron in their balls. Spontaneously, they sharply sucked in air through tight clenched teeth. Deep sob-like gasps flooded the blackness of the truck. Endlessly they suffered. A black hole of torment speeding along the empty road.

The truck braked hard. Hard gasps of breath from the men as they were rocked uncontrollably forwards crushing their balls beneath. A river had burst its banks, debris strewn over the road. Slowly the truck edged forward, wheels jarring over branches, sliding off rocks. The truck rolled and shuddered.

One man’s yell cut off the next. One jolt of pain was snapped off by a punch from the pole. Sharp grunts stabbed at the air. The men rolled around unbalanced off the rope, flayed crutches scraping, bruised bone crunching. Long gasping yelps strangled in their pain-constricted throats. Lightening bolts crackled down their legs. Long uncontrolled whimpers were drowned by the truck motor.

The driver shifted gear to climb over a branch. With laboured engine noise, the engine mounted the small trunk. With a sudden jar the back wheels hit the ground and the truck was free. The rail rammed itself like a devastating punch up into their backsides. The men’s bodies tightened, twisted, necks cracked. Teeth bit down on the pain of the rail punching at bruised bone, heads flew, tears sprang to their eyes.. Like a spear, pain rammed itself up the length of their backbones. They pulled against each other, squirming, writhing, seeking the elusive point where it did not hurt. A lament of anguish. A chorus of torment.

The truck picked up speed. In the back, heavy tortured breathing. Laboured panting,. Each inward breath rasped in the throat, each outward gasp spiked with gasping sobs. Twisted soul-music up from their guts, for them alone to hear. Drowned by the noise of the motor. To accompany their journey through hell. An unutterable voyage into misery.

Towards noon, the truck slowed and turned off the highway towards their destination. Only another 30 miles to go. Over the noise of the engine, the drivers had heard only the loudest of the men’s cries. The captives had been in mounting agony since departure just after dawn. Nearly there now. Nearly time for the apeman’s surprise.

Hard-face gestured to the driver over the noise of the engine. The driver looked back at him confused. Again, Hard-face made a motion like turning the wheel. He should turn off the tarmac, head onto the rough ground. The driver frowned, not understanding. Hard-face made another gesture, his fists held out in front. Vibrating them up and down, gestured with his thumb towards the slaves behind. The driver grinned and nodded. The suspension on this old truck was not up to much. That’d make sure the apeman was harmless, incapable, when they arrived. Ready for the boss when they opened up the truck. The boss would like that. And the boss could be very generous when he was pleased.

He slowed the truck so they could hear the slaves’ surprise. The engine was quieter. They bounced off the tarmac followed by sharp jolt over a rut. A sharp unison of pain from behind cracked their air. Grinning to himself, the driver heard them over the motor. The next bounce jammed the pole hard up into their agonised crutches. A cacophony of voices. A sudden shrill cry. A deep snorted grunt. A short choked shriek. The driver smirked at Hard-face. Which sound was the apeman he wondered? The driver changed down badly, gears crunching, the truck jarred. A chorus of strangled pain. Dissonant cries, strangled groans. The roll of the truck had the slaves swinging from painfully sore wrists, burning and scraping on the pole against raw-flayed balls and buttocks. Jolts rammed jarring punches into their bruised bones.

Bouncing and jolting, the men cried out uncontrollably. The metal rail punched agony up into their balls. Cries of pain were wrenched out of their inflamed crutches. The driver aimed for a pothole. Cries of surprise change to screams of pain when the pole rammed up into battered bones. They bounced and jolted uncontrollably against each other. The truck rolled. Every jerk inflamed an agony endured already for an eternity. Tears ran down pain-twisted faces. A sharp crushed scream. The driver laughed with his companion. The truck deliberately rocked and rolled, jolting through ruts in the rough ground alongside the black-topped road.

---------------

Back home

He couldn’t contain himself. Van Buren’s men had only opened up one back gate of the truck for him. He jumped up, impatient for the sight. Sounds of pained panting, voiced agonised groans floated out into the sun. His nose wrinkled at the stink of human sweat, pain and suffering. Fresh air filled the airless torture chamber. Sunlight flooded in to reveal the three new slaves blinded by the blistering light.

Straightaway his eyes flashed to the apeman. In agonised exhaustion, his head slumped over the man in front, sweat-matted hair covering over his face. Hanging down from up-stretched arms, strong shoulder muscles straining with the weight of his collapsed body. Back muscles etched by the agony of the journey, collapsed with dehydration and pain. The apeman who had ruined his life was back.

“It’s been a long time coming, Tarzan” he said. “I hope you enjoyed the trip”.

Tarzan reacted agonisingly slowly. He lifted his head with pained slowness. He squinted into the harsh glare towards the voice back-lit in the open truck door. Tall, broad-shouldered, a body that seemed to block out the light. A stick in his hand framed against the glare. Dazzled by the light, Tarzan’s head shifted, squinting for a better view, his face squirmed with the pain of moving, the embers flaring in his raw-scraped balls.

He stood in front of their torture rail and looked Tarzan in the face over the other pain-racked slave. Five years later. But his hatred for the apeman burned with the same intensity.

Recognition slammed into Tarzan so hard he gasped. An unwelcome memory. Starring into the shelter of van Buren’s own shadow, Tarzan recognised the face. Into the turmoil of his pain-fogged mind there seared a flash of recognition.

Tarzan frowned. But surely he was in prison?

“Confused, apeman? Surely you know why you’re here? Why I bought you. If not, you’re about to find out”.

The shaven head that was collapsed back against Tarzan’s chest lifted and scowled at van Buren. Naked like Tarzan. A broad chest covered by welts. A trouble-maker. Good, the Afrikaner thought, another one deserving to have the fight shocked out of him.

“Yes, apeman, I’ve bought you. I own you. You’re mine. To use. Or abuse. Wherever, whenever, however I feel”.

He spoke Swahili to Tarzan. A chilling finger of understanding touched the apeman in the balls. A chill that for now numbed the raging fire down there. Van Buren owned him. Not by the laws of any nation. But by the perverted rules of slavery to which van Buren subscribed, Tarzan was his.

“And there’s no time like the present”.

Van Buren held out the stick in his hand. The end touched the metal rail on which the three slaves had been perched.

The three jolted in unison and screeched in agony.

Van Buren watched the face of his former captor spasm in splendid agony. His uplifted arms pulled tight on the rope, every muscle beautifully carved like in stone. His pain mouth-wateringly erotic. His mouth was locked wide open in a glorious convulsed scream, his eyes about to pop out of their sockets. Van Buren held the trigger on the cattle prod pressed against the metal pole. The three men were writhing in scintillating convulsions. Thrashing heedlessly against Tarzan. Arms smashing into each other’s faces. Hysterical screams. Torsos, arms, legs smacking into each other. Tarzan reduced to mindless suffering. No awareness of anything other than bolts of naked pain jarring, jolting, crushing.

He released the current. The bodies collapsed over each other with long loud groans. A hissing like angry snakes rose from the crumpled mass. Sucking air into tortured chests. Tarzan gave a shudder, residual after-shocks trembling through his back-locked thighs. His face convulsed, tremors pulsating in his pain-taut jaw. A long rasping chorus of suffering hung off the rope.

He squeezed the trigger again. Tarzan’s shoulders spasmed. Stunningly powerful thighs bunched and knotted. He rose up in an exquisite spasm. His knees straightened rigid. Delicious agony sliced with a knife its scrawl over the apeman’s rugged face. Broken strangled cries erupted from the group. Frozen. Locked in pain. Again van Buren squeezed the trigger. And again. As if it were a craving he could not satiate. Fascinated he watched his apeman dance a dance of delectable agony.

It was like the flash when lightening hit a tree. The flash exploded at his tortured balls. Tarzan yelped at the shock. Jerked frenetically upwards by a violent force. Devastating pain erupted like a volcanic surge. His balls were on fire. Up through his sore innards, heat scorched, flesh seared, fire consumed. He bawled. Down through his thighs, tremors shook viciously, in his legs pain erupted.

The others bashed and crashed into him. Wave after wave of pain buffeted through his paralysed torso, agony locked into every crevice of his being.

The sizzling stopped. White Bull threw his head back in recoil, cracking his head into Tarzan’s chin. Tarzan collapsed forward over him in exhaustion. The pain from cracking heads did nothing to cover the searing agony that raged in their tortured crutches. The residual pain so intense,. On fire, the embers consuming Tarzan’s innards. Flames flaring up, burning at his balls. The forehead of the lad behind had smashed onto Tarzan’s shoulder, spittle from his inert mouth drooling down Tarzan’s back. His guts were strangled by knots of fear. His balls stung as if ripped off by a monstrous hand. Moans and dry sobs of agony dripped into Tarzan’s ear. They sat crumpled together. Bound together by rope, destiny and savagery. Sweating together in their anguish. Broken Sobs. Groaning.

Van Buren’s eyes were only for Tarzan. He was collapsed over the black in front. His sculpted shoulders heaved rapidly, his tortured body hungered for breath. His chiselled back pounded up and down, exhaustion seeking new life through laboured gasps. Grating groans expelled with every breath. Sweat-soaked hair glued to his pain-bowed neck.

This was what he had paid for. A delectable moment. A high price, van Buren knew. It would be worth it. Years of anger had been burning inside of him. But Tarzan had come home. It was five years since Tarzan had delivered him and his ivory smuggling business into the hands of the authorities. An Afrikaner in a black man’s jail. Van Buren had lost count of the number of times he had been viciously raped in the first week. Revenge rape. Gang-raped. Repeatedly attacked after lock-up in brutal racist revenge.

He could look after himself. He had always managed to look after himself. In the prison, he had scratched and bitten, clawed and mauled his way to making himself feared. Then van Buren’s lawyer had smuggled in money from outside, had bought him security from guards on-the-take. Eventually he had bought himself escape. Immunity. Returning to re-build the business empire Tarzan had all but destroyed. All the time, promising himself that if ever the opportunity arose, …..!

And this was it. The price had been high. But he’d make it worth it. Worth every cent.

He looked over at his apeman naked on the frame. Head slumped down with exhaustion, chin resting on the black collapsed against his chest. The magnificent torso was shattered, utterly drained. Stripped, for now, of its famed strength by pain. The result of van Buren’s handiwork. And this was only the start. There’d be more. Much much more. The apeman repeatedly smashed, deliciously beaten, brought cringing to his knees. But the apeman, he knew, would not give in. He’d fight on, resisting, defying. A constantly renewable source of feverish amusement to his new master. Van Buren knew Tarzan. He’d never give in. Van Buren was counting on it.

Tarzan’s face lifted. Eyes screwed tight shut, jaw taut, gritted teeth on edge as another tremor of pain trembled through his body. The shoulders tightened, muscles taut with suffering pulled on the rope. Suffering that was erotic in intensity. Another delicious groan. The face grimaced. The body shuddered by another delightful tremor. A glorious hiss through pain-clenched teeth.

Eyes glared back at van Buren. Eyes set in a face that, for now, could take no more. Exquisite exhaustion carved into the mouth. Forehead wonderfully lined with pain beyond endurance. Van Buren would let him rest. Then Tarzan, he knew, would come back for more. Like a lamb to the slaughter. He’d keep this prize pet permanently balanced between periods of scintillating torture and brief pauses of exhausted rest.

Already, those brown eyes were glowering, again filling with loathing, defiance. Tarzan seethed with another groan of pain. The boy behind had pulled on the rope for comfort. Tarzan’s mouth opened wide as pain shot through him. Teeth clamped together to bite it back down. Sucked in air through clenched jaw. His head back, neck strained. An erotic show of tortured muscle. A long rasping groan. Van Buren felt a warmth in his pants. Tarzan’s sculpted chest pounded with deep groaning pants for air. Life-restoring, pain-relieving air. Just what van Buren wanted. Quick recovery. Tarzan coming back for more.

They glared at each other. If looks could kill!….Those handsome brown eyes drilled hatred into van Buren. Yes! That’s just what he had bought, an inexhaustible plaything. And not just any plaything. He had bought the ultimate plaything. A Tarzan. A toy he’d not tire of. He had bought a limitless challenge. A never-ending opportunity to test that stubborn doggedness.

Tarzan would be his own worst enemy. Van Buren would challenge him, challenge to the full Tarzan’s determination to fight back. And the fool would keep running back for more. In denial. Refuse to be beaten, decline to give in. And he wanted the apeman to fight back. He needed him to fight back.

A boundless source of amusement. Van Buren would keep Tarzan tottering between unbearable hours of torture and short breaks of futile hope. Leave him tiny glimmerings of hope in the belief he could cope. That he might one day make a break for freedom. And he’d keep taking on more. Keep on coming back for more. Exquisite. World without end.

He couldn’t stop himself. It was just too good a chance. Just one more time. To see his apeman dance his dance of agony. He gave a final squeeze of the trigger. Van Buren felt a rush to his crutch at the power in his hands. A rush of blood at the control. He could make his new toy scream. Have his new toy dance. Pierced by agony shattering through every shrieking muscle.

Tarzan felt his entire universe explode into a flaming sheet of unbearable pain. A wave of searing hot lava slammed through his body. He could not hear his own shrieks. He could see nothing but a red explosion of agony. Around him, the others victims convulsed violently. Tarzan’s own body pounded uncontrollably up and down, crashing down mercilessly onto the pole. The pain too intense for him to muffle his screams.

Van Buren thought this would be Tarzan’s worst nightmare. That he promised himself. Tarzan’s ultimate nightmare.

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…… The end

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