Captive [malexmale]

Prologue

Prologue

I'm gonna die.

I swallowed hard at the sound of people whispering around me in some strange foreign language. The voices of men, women, and children crying and laughing from somewhere further away. Hot sand burned my feet, and the coarse rope used to bind my wrists to the wooden post behind me chafed my sensitive skin. The rough blindfold clung to my head, pulled my hair, and scratched at my already sunburnt cheeks.

I felt tremor after tremor wrack my body as I pressed myself tight against the post, as if the post could save me from the natives that had swarmed me like a pack of piranha. Tears threatened to spill down my face, but I didn't dare let them fall, didn't dare show weakness toward my captors.

Maybe they wouldn't kill me, I tried to reassure myself. Maybe they were just curious peoples. Maybe I really was trapped on some sick reality television show where, any moment, they would remove the blindfold and laugh mockingly at me on international television.

Yeah, and Orlando Bloom is just going to show up and rescue you with Johnny Depp. Keep dreaming, nutcase, they're gonna eat you and wear your bones to sacrificial rituals to some prehistoric god... or gorilla.

I'm going insane. The intense heat and humidity were causing my brains to turn to mush.

I'm going to die.

The thought kept racing around my brain no matter how much I tried to choke it back. A lump was swelling in my throat and I clenched my teeth, squeezing my eyes shut behind the blindfold, urging myself to calm down, to think positively, but what the hell? I couldn't.

Everything smelled like spices, sand, ocean, and something fruity and sweet. All I heard were foreign whispers, hissing, the trees around me rustling in the hot wind that caused the sand to dance around my bruised ankles. I could only taste those bitter mushrooms and sand. All I felt was hot and sweaty and sunburnt, and most of all, exposed. I knew I was in some kind of clearing, and I was only wearing the loose white shirt I'd been thrown overboard in. It stuck to my sunburnt skin. And the only thing I saw was the darkness of the blindfold.

And then it happened.

Silence.

Complete and utter silence. Even the wind seemed to be commanded by a new presence. I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck rising, my body instantly reacting in fear as I strained to hear what was happening. All I heard were quiet footsteps, the soft jingling of primitive jewelry, the sound of people moving away from the footsteps.

I felt a shadow fall upon me.

The hot nearness of a hand reaching for the blindfold.

I'm gonna die!