of it. I’ve been running cross-country most days, to get into training for this. My breath comes shallow and easy as I follow the path. It’s not so easy when I pick a random point at which to leave the trail, and plunge off downhill through the bracken. This is the Lake District and the ground is damp, and soft with moss underfoot, and almost never flat. I don’t have any plan except to keep moving. I slither down into a little valley, follow the stream a ways, then realise I’m leaving obvious footprints in the mud so jump the water and head up the bank opposite. The sunlight is yellow and low, shining in my eyes whenever I turn west. I wade through the undergrowth from one twisted, lichen-tufted oak to the next, my hands green where I’ve touched their bark. I’m soon lost in a broken landscape of hills and rocks and trees.
Twenty minutes later I’ve stopped to rest and catch my breath, out of obvious sight – or so I think – behind a big ferny boulder, when a brawny arm goes round me and a hand like a slab clamps over my mouth. I squeal in genuine shock – I really had no idea that anyone was close – but that palm muffles my voice. So I struggle. I’m allowed to struggle: that’s one of things I told Dane I wanted from this. But it does me no good, as the grip tightens until I can hardly breathe. I catch a glimpse of camo, but I’ve no idea who’s caught me. I thrash vainly, trying to wriggle free, but he pushes me into an almost doubled-over posture, my head locked under his arm, and hauls me at his side as he heads downhill again. My feet nearly skid from under me. My heart is banging against my breastbone.
He finds a spot he likes, under an overhang of rock, pulls me up against his chest and turns me to face him.
‘Now … suck my cock, Pussy,’ he orders, his words a little muffled through his mask. I manage a glimpse of his head, or what’s visible of it around the paintball goggles; it’s the blond guy. Karaoke star.
‘That’s not what you’re supposed to …’ I sputter.
He’s not looking down at me; his gaze constantly ranges the landscape behind me. He’s got his paint-gun braced in his right arm and facing out. ‘Don’t argue,’ he grunts, shoving me to my knees and rubbing my face against his crotch. ‘You can get me ready.’
The rough disdain makes my sex gush hot. I focus on what’s right in front of me, but I actually don’t think he needs much starting up. His erection is already apparent despite the broken camouflage pattern, mounding the fabric of his trousers. I pull at his fly, and when the buttons give his length jumps out in my face, already three-quarters hard. He smells hot and musky and alien, but I’ve no time to decide whether I want it before he pushes my mouth to his flesh, and I open to the thick smooth press of him.
‘Haaah …’ he exhales. He’s nudging at the back of my throat in seconds, filling my mouth. I make myself wet for him, sucking that big cock, suddenly unambiguously eager for it. But when I squint upwards I can see him watching out over my head, the gun muzzle swinging in a slow arc.
You know what? That irks me – that he can focus on standing guard against attackers, even while I’m mouthing his dick. I take it as a challenge. So I put it all out for him. I suck, I lick, I swirl my tongue over his glans in classic ice-cream style. I take him deep. I make hungry umh-umh porno noises as I bounce his thick rod to the back of my throat. And when I come up for air I make sure my hand is there, powering up and down his shaft instead. Dane says I give great oral, and I’m determined to prove him right.
Slowly, heartbeat by heartbeat, I win Karaoke’s attention. I feel it in the quiver of his thighs and the sudden seep of salt into my mouth. The gun quivers in the corner of my vision. His cock is like steel and his hips are jerking in time to my rhythm.
‘Haaaah,’ he groans, laying a hand on my hair to scoop me closer, deeper, tighter. A split second later I hear a huge crack just above my head and he recoils so hard that that his cock jerks from my lips.
I look up. There’s a great blue paint stain right in the centre of his chest.
‘Ahh – fuck!’ he cries, slamming his hand into the blue, his mouth twisting.
I lurch to my feet. He’s still got a hard-on like a flagpole, but he’s a dead man by the rules of paintball. I laugh like a hunted fox does: one harsh breath past bared teeth. And I run, like the fox.
As I barrel down the slope I hear someone come up on my right, feet pounding. He snatches at my sleeve and I spin, wrench myself out of my jacket and tumble away down the hillside, under the outflung arms of a bush and then out the other side into clear ground. I feel twigs scratching my legs and catching at my blouse buttons, popping them. I don’t care. I don’t miss the jacket, which was too hot anyway. I wish I could shed the skirt too; it’s so tight that it slows me down. So I claw it up my thighs and lengthen my stride.
But he catches me. He’s fast. He grabs my shoulder and our momentum whirls us in a circle before I fall into the moss, my breath crashing in my chest. I feel the seams of that cheap skirt give at last, splitting right up the back, just as his weight thumps into me from behind. His breath is harsh in my ear.
‘Not fast enough, Pussy!’ Then he sits back and hooks a hand in the waistband of my wrecked skirt to drag me onto hands and knees. I guess my ass is bared to him through the split, in all its tanned and rounded charm, because he adds, ‘Oh, yeah!’ before dropping his gun –
Idiot, I think.
– and slapping his open palm straight between my thighs, against my splayed pussy. It stings beautifully. I squeal. But I stop struggling. The shock is just too much, too luscious. It seems to set my core on fire, and it feels like I’m dripping burning petrol. I make a groaning noise as he lays claim to that wet and slides a couple of fingers deep into my cunt.
‘Oh, hell, yes, yes, yes,’ he mutters, scrabbling at his own clothes. I close my eyes to stop the world whirling around me. And the better to feel it, as he locates his stiff cock and feeds it to my sex, pushing it deep into me. Luckily, I’m so juicy that he encounters no resistance as he shoves his way into my depths, reshaping my insides about his hard length. Then he grabs my hips with his hands and thrusts into me like he’s firing a machine gun.
Two shots take him almost simultaneously while he’s trying so desperately to claim his prize. That hurts, I’d say, given the way he arches and stabs me. I wriggle out from his grasp as he falls away, yanks off his mask and throws it down as he curses in frustration. I glance round once out of sheer curiosity. It’s the guy with the thick sandy buzz-cut and the Sheriff-of-Nottingham beard. I don’t know his name. I don’t care.
I crawl away over the grass. My bare, upraised bottom must present one amazing target for sharpshooters and I’m frankly amazed that no one succumbs to temptation. But maybe everyone’s too busy – there are men running about between the trees, and paint pellets splatting off trunks, all around me now. I can hear the cries as they taunt each other. So I figure it’s time to make a break for it. After all, I’m not a legitimate target, not for the paint anyway.
I stand and start to run again, my legs protesting. I’ve made it almost over to the edge of the clearing when from behind a trunk a man in combats swings out, levelling his gun. I realise I’m going to slap straight into him, just as he reaches out with one hand and thrusts me aside. There’s a double crack as I trip over my feet and roll in the moss.
‘Shit!’
‘Trev, you bastard!’
Laughter, lots of laughter. I look up, bemused by the sudden change of mood. Six men are advancing across the clearing towards me and the guy at whose feet I sprawl. It’s Lewis, I realised belatedly, as he pulls off his mask. A palm-sized splat of blue paint covers the centre of his visor. I look round at the others. They’ve all slung their guns on their shoulders or carry them loosely at their sides. They’re all daubed in paint.
Total wipeout, I realise. Including Dane. I’m still trying to catch my breath as they gather round me.
‘What do we do?’ asks Nottingham, who has put his cock away but still sports a leering open fly. ‘Run again, until we have a winner?’
‘We already have