Blonde Bait

Tied that way, I found the least uncomfortable position was to lie sideways. Not that comfort was at the top of my mind. But it did minimize the pressure on my knees and elbows.

I had been trapped in this position since two masked men carried me from the hotel room on the fifth floor. I was sure there were cameras on the elevator, which they used to carry me down. I could not see with my eyes duct taped, so I was not sure if it was the service elevator or the regular elevator. These guys were not too bright. Could they not have used the stairs to avoid detection? Or perhaps they had overpowered and tied up the security personnel, maybe even killed them, although it was difficult to see why that was necessary. Or my captors could simply have bribed them. After all, as you know, bribery was not exactly a rare thing in China.

This position they had bound me was professional, something they could not have learned watching television or the movies. They ordered me to kneel, face against the wall, with my wrists crossed behind. I heard someone rip out some electrical cord. I tilted my head and saw from the corner of my eye it was a white telephone cord, the part that connected the telephone to the wall.

Bad news, telephone cords were tough, made to withstand at least 140 pounds of pressure. I knew that for a fact because I once used a telephone cord to escape from the third floor balcony of a man I had just killed. I remembered he was 300 pounds of pure fat. I sat on him and gave him the best sex of his life before strangling him with my bare hands. Seeing the life ooze out of that child rapist, second by second, face blue, body twitching, eyes humbled by the realization of death at the hands of a woman, it was worth letting his filthy fingers and tongue wander every inch of my body. Not to mention the $100,000 paid by an anonymous philanthropist.

As I was saying, they ripped out the telephone cord, thin enough to slice through my skin and draw blood, but strong enough to secure my wrists behind. The knot on my wrists gave me no doubt this was not their first rodeo. As long as the free end was in a closed fist or tied to a fixed object like a hook, the more I would struggle, the tighter it would have felt.

While one man held the free end of the cord, the other gripped and pulled both my ankles. His grip on one of my ankles was not that tight. Perhaps he thought he was simply dealing with a bitch. I could have easily freed one leg and kicked him hard in the face, hard enough to knock him out. With one man out, I could have pushed back against the surprised second man, spun around and kneed him in the crotch. When he bent over, my knee could have met his open face, breaking the nose and drawing blood. Even if he was still conscious after that, his grip on the cord would loosen. I would have been able to move my tied wrists to the front and untangle the knot with my teeth. It would have taken just five seconds, which was my average during training.

I could also have screamed at the top of my voice. The hotel walls were thin and surely somebody would have called 9-1-1. They did not point a gun at me or press a knife against my almost naked body, clad only in a black bra and G-string that slid behind my muscled crack.

But I did not do anything like that. Instead of using weapons on me, they had a gun pointed at Adam's temple. He was on the other side of the king sized bed, too far away for any possible action to save him. His lips had been duct taped. I could see his jaw movements behind the tape. His muffled and shaky voice said he was sorry.

It was really not his fault. There was nothing he could have done. In my shower, I had heard the metallic door bell and the faint voice of room service. What a sweet man, I thought. How could Adam have known that I was a big believer in breakfast? Compliments of the hotel, I heard. The thick carpet made it hard to know that two men had entered. Eager to see what was for breakfast, I stepped out of the glass shower and used the hotel dryer on my blonde hair. I enjoyed the tingle on my shoulders as the static charged ends of my hair touched them. The sound of the dryer drawn out the activity outside my locked bathroom door.

I turned the cups of the bra to my back and wrap the back strap around me, with the back hooks in front of my navel. After I hooked the catch, one hook at a time, I twisted the bra around, pulled it up to cover my baseball sized racks, then slipped my arms through the straps. If I wore it like most girls do, arms through the straps first, front cups to my breasts, I could never properly secure the bra hooks behind me. I had to always do it this way.

By the time I maneuvered to put on my tight push-up bra, the steam on the mirror had cleared. I adjusted the bra and squeezed my breasts together, happy the tight bra had made me one size bigger and created a sizeable cleavage, the light from the shower lamp casting a satisfying shadow.

In contrast to the bra, the matching black G-string was a breeze to put on. I slid it up my thighs and pulled hard on the side strings until they rode above my hip bones. I turned ninety degrees to check that the Y shape was imprinted on my butt. I pulled on my sides harder until the base of the Y disappeared into my ass. Later, I had planned to put on low-riding denim shorts, wearing it in such a way the top part of the Y would be visible. I hoped Adam liked the slutty look.

When I stepped out of the shower room, I saw rightaway that they had Adam. At that point, I was not sure whether he or I was the target. Both men were with him and it was only when I emerged that one of them approached. He was unarmed, cocksure that we were a romantic couple and he could make me submit as long as a gun was pointed at Adam. I wondered how the kidnappers could be so sure.

Where did I stop? Oh yes, they had my wrists already secured behind my back, on my knees. My legs were pulled, my knees scraping against the carpet. I was forced to my stomach, ordered to press my face down. I felt my stronger right leg folded at the knees, the right ankle forced into the back of my left knee. Then the left leg was forced back until it trapped my right ankle. My left ankle was forced back some more until it hooked against my tied wrists. When he let go of my left ankle, the tension of the wedged right ankle caused the entire left leg to spring forth, pulling my bound arms backwards and twisting the shoulder sockets. My own body was made to torture itself.

Secured that way, the man with the gun approached. Open your whore mouth, I was ordered. The gun was jammed inside, jerked side to side and clattered on my teeth. Wider, he ordered. He had the other hand twisted inside my hair. I could no longer see Adam. He must be scared shitless, I thought. Both men were with me, the only gun in my mouth and he could have attempted something had he been trained. Alas, I was the only trained agent in the room and I have been expertly and uniquely shackled.

More pressure was to be applied to my joints and muscles, which were beginning to quiver. My left ankle was tied to the wrists, the cord looping around my toes for extra security. Another telephone cord was removed, this time from the bathroom. Damn, why did anyone need two phones in one hotel room? The second cord was used to tie my elbows together.

Finally, they duct taped my mouth and then my eyes.

Blinded, gagged and shackled, I was carried by the armpits and dumped into the trunk. Judging by the quiet but bold hum of the engine, I guessed I must be in the trunk of a BMW. I landed on my back, my own weight crushing wrists and ankles, the restraints biting. Recovering from the shock, I slowly rotated to my left, my bare shoulders scraping against plastic and metal.

I remained calm, breathing deeply through my nose. I tried to arch my back to make it easier to breathe. Taking a deep breath, I strained my toned muscle groups on my thighs, calves, shoulders and arms. The combined effort resulted in barely any movement, marginally improving my lung position. Giving up, I decided to save my energy for what was to come.

Ten minutes later, my left shoulder and upper arm had gone to sleep. I had to burn scarce resources to flip to my stomach, then to the right. Just as I was twisting inside the tight confines of the trunk, the car negotiated a few tight turns, my head and knees alternately hitting the sides. Worse, my bare back caught something sharp, breaking the skin. I felt a stream of warm fluid diagonally crossing my back. The throbbing emanating from the shoulder blade left no doubt the cut had drawn blood.

I blocked out everything and focused on her options. Very soon, my situation would either stay the same or get worse. The bad news was that my cover had been blown. At the very least, they knew I was not the business executive I claimed to be, in Hong Kong for a two year assignment.

The cover had been carefully set up following the usual procedures. My business cards, bilingual in English and Chinese, had stated my position as the Director of Operations for a manufacturing company based in Florida. With a degree in engineering, I knew enough about factories to converse effortlessly with the men and women in business seminars and hotel bars. I drove to work between eight to eight-thirty five days a week, fighting through the rush hour traffic and diving into the cross harbor tunnel from Kowloon to Hong Kong.

Like every Hong Kong resident during the rush hour, I would park my car in a basement parking lot. And like every business person, I would be glued to the cell phone while walking from the car to the elevator. But unlike everyone else, the elevator, which was hidden behind a utility door, took me down instead of up.

Once in the windowless office deep below the streets of Hong Kong, I hid my blonde hair, covered it with a jet black wig, removed the business suit, slipped into jeans and T-shirt, and replaced my heels with Nike sneakers. The transformation was completed by removing all makeup and wearing brown contact lens, my face hidden behind a baseball cap. Emerging from the cargo area at the back of the office building, I pushed a cart carrying soft drinks through the narrow and muggy streets of the business district, the morning sun in my eyes.

Each day, around noon, the sun directly overhead, Steve Wong and his lunch companions would emerge from his office near the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai, waiting a few seconds at the sidewalk for his limo. Each day, I would adjust the baseball cap, snapping digital pictures with the tiny hidden camera, instantly uploading them to a server in Delray Beach, Florida. Within minutes, face recognition software would compare the lunch companions with records stored in giant databases around the world. By 1:00 p.m., a report would be printed, waiting for me in the secured office.

Not a man to waste time, Wong used his lunch hour strategically. He lunched with all the movers and shakers of Hong Kong, including major politicians, powerful heads of the banking and finance establishment, chief executives of property corporations and shipping companies. Wong himself ran the fifth largest cellphone network in Hong Kong. But everyone knew he had a more powerful position. Wong was also the undisputed dragon head of one of the major triads in Hong Kong. It was rumored, but never proven, that the Wong triad was involved in extortion, drugs, gambling, and prostitution, the Big Four staples of all the triads in Hong Kong.

If the triad had simply been involved in the Big Four, there would be no reason for the agency to be involved. But email surveillance had revealed that the Wong triad could be involved in money laundering for known terrorist groups. I was picked for this mission because my Mandarin and Cantonese were at a native level, having been brought up by missionary parents in China's Guangdong province until eighteen. Thereafter, I had attended the Georgia Institute of Technology, graduating second in my engineering class. The agency did not take long to decide to send me. They simply did not have anyone else with my experience and background.

After merely three weeks on the streets of Hong Kong, I had singlehandedly collected more intelligence on Wong then any intelligence outfit anywhere in the world ever had. Analysts back in Florida were connecting the dots, putting the jigsaw puzzle together. The supporting team members were excited. They could feel a breakthrough about to happen.

On the Wednesday of the fourth week, I was stuck in traffic inside the cross harbor tunnel. When I braked for the fifteenth time inside the short tunnel, I heard the screeching sound of tires behind, ending with a bump on my fender. The man behind, dressed in a well-tailored suit with a navy blue shirt, hurried to my window, apologizing profusely. He was Chinese but had an American accent.

"I'm sorry Ma'am. Are you hurt?" He must have known the fender bender would not even cause a scrap.

I pushed the button that lowered the window. "No problem. Let's just forget it."

"Don't you want to take my insurance information?"

"I said forget it," beginning to raise my voice. "I am late for work. Would you please step away from my car?"

"At least let me apologize by buying dinner."

I looked at him a few seconds longer than socially acceptable, noticing for the first time he was quite attractive, biceps trapped in a navy blue shirt, wavy dark hair sheltered the ears, eyebrows thick, almost meeting in the middle.

"Are you hitting on me?" My head tilted sideways, my right hand brushing my hair behind the ear, half smiling.

"I think so," he raised his eyebrows and smiled in a guilty way, as if he was caught in a forbidden act.

"Here's my card. Call me on my personal cell." I wrote my Hong Kong cell phone number at the back of the card. The number would go directly to me, not to the agency in the States.

He called as soon as I reached the office. We agreed to meet that very night. We had dinner. Adam Chan was polite, intelligent, and funny. His business card stated he was the Director of Information Technology in one of the major real estate firms. Born in California, he had moved to Hong Kong, initially for one year, to search for his roots. Seven years later, he was still there, enjoying the career opportunities available in an economy growing at four times the pace of the United States.

The agency's policy was not against the socialization of agents with civilians, even if they turned romantic, as long as it did not affect the quality of an agent's work. Adam Chan's story checked out. His employer, ST Real Estate, specialized in building and managing shopping malls in China. It was a fast growing firm with a reputation of hiring the best with generous financial packages. The firm was also politically well-connected to local, state and federal politicians throughout China, a necessity to operate successfully in the Chinese business world.

We saw each other every night that week. We were moving too fast. I could feel something was not right. Nevertheless, after the third dinner date, I spent the night in Adam's luxury apartment in Kowloon, overlooking the Hong Kong harbor. With floor to ceiling windows, the gorgeous skyline of Hong Kong blinked its lights on the silk bed sheet of the king-sized bed as we hungrily devoured each other. We had anticipated this moment since the fender bender, as soon as we locked eyes on each other. We were healthy, athletic and fit, consuming each other again and again, giving and receiving, bodies merging into one, the sheets soaking wet, until we were both out of oxygen, collapsing into each other's arms. We slept for a couple of hours before we had to get up and go to our demanding jobs.

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I felt the shift to lower gears, then a complete stop.

"Passport please," the officer said in Cantonese. The voice was just loud enough to be heard above the loud music pumping through the six speakers of the BMW. I considered but dismissed the idea of screaming for help.

There were no plurals in Cantonese, so it was difficult to figure out from the word "passport" whether there was just the driver, or several men I had to contend with. Although two men dumped me in the trunk, I heard only the sound of one slammed door. Still, it was possible for two or three men to get in through a single door. But the driver would have to slide over from the front passenger seat, which would be odd. Or the passenger would have to slide over from the driver's seat, which would be even odder.

Five minutes later, I heard the same request for passport, but this time in Mandarin. I was being taken from Hong Kong to Guangdong in Mainland China, precisely what I had expected. Hong Kong was urban and congested. But Guangdong was rural, with plenty of remote places, ideal for prolonged interrogation or torture. As an undercover agent, I knew and accepted the risks of torture or even death. And as a female agent, I also accepted the brutal reality of rape, even gang rape.

I shifted from side to side nine more times, using it to keep track of time. One and one half hours had passed. I would be 100 miles or so inside Hong Kong border, deep inside China. The driver could have gone North, East, West, or some combination of the three. It was impossible to know exactly where I was. The roar of the engine told me the BMW had picked up speed after the border, with barely any traffic this time of the night.

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We made love again on the final night, not in his apartment, but in Harbor Grand Kowloon hotel. Located to the East of the touristy Tsim Sha Tsui district, the hotel was famous for its spectacular views of the eastern part of the Hong Kong skyline. Although the room on the fifth floor of the hotel, with a view to die for, we did not bother to open the blinds. As soon as we stumbled into the room, we wasted no time peeling off each other's clothing, hands pawing like cats.

My jacket fell first to the thick carpet, then his jacket. We stood facing each other. He ripped open my blouse, scattering the buttons in a semi-circle, one of them rolling under the bed. I paused a second before doing the same with his shirt, ripping it off with so much force two of the buttons were split in halves. He spun me around. I let him pin my hands behind as he removed my blouse. I giggled as if I was in high school. It looked like you had plenty of practice, I whispered hot air in his ear.

He relaxed. Mistake. I backed up, grabbed his arm, bent forward, and flipped him over. He landed on the bed. I was on top of him in no time, his pants down to his knees before he could react. I gripped his left arm and bent it backwards until it was between his shoulder blades. He cried out before I let go and allowed him to flip me over.

He fumbled, struggling to unhook the back of my bra. Frustrated, he slid the straps off my shoulders, then down my elbows. I moved my hands to help, laughing, tossing my hair playfully at his eyes. He cussed, throwing the bra across the room as soon as he separated it from me. Next he worked on the zipper on the side of my narrow skirt. I wiggled side to side to let him pull it to my ankles, laughing so hard I coughed.

When he finally removed my panties, he squeezed it into a ball and held it in front of my face. I stuck out my tongue, licking it twice before he pushed it into my mouth. It was not my favorite thing, but I understood the fantasy. Like most men, he liked the controlling feeling of making his woman swallow whatever he chose to put inside her mouth.

Keep your mouth open for me, he ordered. I put my hands high up, pushing against the head board. He kept pushing my panties deeper until I choked. He crawled on top of me until his knees straddle my face, his cock resting on my nose.