Bargaining for survival Pt. 01

Please note: this story, like all my stories, is written for the particular kinks in my wife's delicious mind, and won't be for everyone. If you're used to genuinely non-consensual stories it's on the tamer side, but please take a look at the story tags before reading further to decide if it's for you. I hope you enjoy!

----

It's just a mirage. Don't trust it.

After 29 days at sea, Scarlett had perfected the art of self-talk. Day after day she had experienced the crushing disappointment of seeing a smudge on the horizon that she believed to be land or a larger vessel than her own makeshift raft, only to be devastated when the smudge disappeared without trace.

Scarlett didn't deal well with disappointment.

So it took far longer than it should have done for her to believe what was in front of her eyes. Exhausted, dehydrated and emaciated, when she did finally recognise the island for what it was, the overwhelming sense of relief caused her whole body to start shaking.

Scarlett sat down on her raft, hugged herself and shut her eyes tight.

Please, please, please. Don't let me be dreaming.

She opened her eyes.

The island was still there.

Scarlett might not like disappointment, but she had resilience in spades. Her body and brain clicked into action. She trimmed the sails, grasped the rudder and directed her raft towards the island that was very gradually growing on the horizon.

Seeing an end to her odyssey, in her excitement she allowed herself to swallow the last few dribbles of harvested rainwater.

That excitement gradually ebbed to impatience as she realised how slowly the raft was moving.

She was proud of the craft she had constructed with her friends; it was made from materials that they had scavenged in the few days warning they had had before the UK had become uninhabitable, yet the craft had survived almost a month at sea.

All the same, the raft was not designed to move anywhere fast, and Scarlett was desperate for a reprieve from the midday heat. There was little she could do except point the rudder towards the island and will it closer in her mind.

---

As the sun dipped lower in the sky, Scarlett looked up for perhaps the hundredth time at the island. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, she had inched closer over the afternoon. Finally, she was able to start making our details.

When she first saw the sturdy wall that rose out of the waters surrounding the island, her heart had sunk. Yet, as the day wore on, she realised that this island fortress could be just what she was looking for; a respite from the ocean and, more importantly, from the lawlessness that had taken over once everyone had fled dry land.

The walls looked impregnable. If she could only negotiate her way inside, she might be able to stay for a while, and perhaps even start to imagine what life might be like in the new future awaiting all of them.

Scarlett didn't have much to offer by way of negotiation, though. She and her friends had had so little time to adapt once the warnings went out, and all their time and effort had focused on escaping the city then building the raft and stocking it with as much food and water as they could. They had been thinking of survival in terms of days, not weeks, months or years. Of course, they had bartered quite a bit of their food for a handgun and bow and arrows, but the handgun had stopped functioning soon after Scarlett had been forced to leave dry land without her friends - she guessed because of the salt water.

Now, though, she wished that she had something of value to offer in order to entice the islanders to open the huge gates that she could see ahead of her. She thought back fondly to the fig tree that her husband Jeff had tended at their home, wishing that she had thought to bring it with her (although how she would have rationed water for both it and her over the past month was another question).

Almost as soon as the thought crossed her mind it was replaced by a deep aching need for Jeff. He had been away in the Lake District when the warnings came out, and inevitably the mobile networks had been utterly jammed right up to the point where her phone battery had died. She had no idea whether he was alive, and if so where in the world he was currently.

Scarlett forced herself to snap out of her concern for Jeff, and her laments about her lack of bargaining power. She had a bigger problem to deal with. About an hour ago, another smudge had appeared on the horizon behind her. Swiftly, the smudge had formed itself into a sleek-looking sailing boat that was heading straight for her.

Or at least, appeared to be heading straight for her. Whoever was sailing the boat could, of course, have had the same idea as her, and be aiming for the island. She couldn't yet know, but she didn't really want to find out. Over the past 29 days, Scarlett had had few encounters with other vessels, none of them pleasant. In fact, just yesterday she had killed a man who had tried to board her raft without permission.

That the man was now floating in the Atlantic somewhere gave her little pleasure, especially as he was floating with her one remaining arrow through his heart. Killing him had left her with a bow but no arrows. In other words, she was defenceless.

So no, she wasn't going to give the approaching boat the benefit of the doubt.

---

Once she was within shouting distance of the gates, she saw a man emerge atop the wall. Her breath caught at the sight. He was bare-chested, bronzed and clearly very powerful. He effortlessly held a longbow in one hand, with a quiver full of arrows slung over his back. It appeared that whoever lived behind these walls had the same issues with salt water and modern weaponry.

"What is your business with Newdawn island, stranger?"

"I am seeking refuge, and perhaps a place to start building a new life." Scarlett worked hard to keep the note of pleading from her voice. She sensed that it would be dangerous to show weakness in front of this man.

"And what can you offer the Newdawn community in exchange for the burden of accommodating yet another..." (here, the man paused and looked Scarlett up and down with unmistakable disdain) "...stray?"

Scarlett's stomach dropped. She knew she could offer little. Her provisions were exhausted, her raft falling apart. All she had to offer was herself.

She had been taking sewing lessons before all this had kicked off, but had only got as far as sewing a pencil case. Still, he didn't need to know how rudimentary her skills were.

"I can sew!" she shouted up with an authority that was only skin deep.

The derisive guffaw from the archer was dispiriting, to say the least.

"Ha! You think we need needlecraft? Wench, this is the end of the world as we know it. Did you think to pack your needle and thread? No? Thought not."

"But I can repair your clothes for you?" This time Scarlett couldn't keep the pleading uncertainty from her wavering shout. She cursed herself for betraying her desperation.

By way of answer the archer shook his head slowly as he climbed the rest of the steps to the top of the wall. Scarlett's breath rushed from her body in an utterly unexpected moan as his lean, bronzed torso gave way to a thick, meaty cock. He was entirely naked other than his quiver of arrows. The man climbed slowly, and Scarlett couldn't tear her eyes away from his groin as his cock came into view. More and more of it came into view.

Holy shit. It's huge. Scarlett thought to herself. Pre-apocalypse, she and Jeff had learnt every inch of each others' bodies, and how to give each other pleasure. Jeff's openness about all things sexual had worn off on Scarlett, and had awakened a voracious sexual appetite. She had been used to 5-10 orgasms every couple of days from Jeff's magical fingers and talented cock.

To go from that to no sexual activity of any kind for almost a month had left Scarlett's body craving release. The stress of the solo journey had meant that this need for cock had buried itself beneath her survival instinct, but the sight in front of her had thrust those desires to the surface once more.

Her body reacted instinctively and with no way for her to control it. Even as Scarlett's conscious mind focused wholeheartedly on the perilous negotiation that she was in the midst of, her body betrayed her with a rush of pure lust that almost made her lose balance. Cursing her bodily responses, Scarlett swallowed hard to get hold of herself and concentrated on what the man was shouting to her.

"As you can see, we have given up wearing clothes. With no way to wash them, the salt water made them unusable in less than a week. We have a small store of remaining clothes, mostly women's, but those are kept for the purposes of bartering for things that are of more use to us."

Scarlett had to admit to herself that he was right. Her clothes were in tatters, and she kept wearing them only to protect from the searing sun. Her skin was particularly sensitive to sunburn, and she had had to work tirelessly to protect herself whilst on the raft. It was for that reason she had continued to wear anything, along with the recognition that the sight of her naked body would have a powerful effect on any other floating survivors, just as the archer's was on her.

Jeff's incessant adulation of her body over the four years they had been married had awoken Scarlett's realisation that her body was smokin' hot. From her beautiful deep green/brown eyes surrounded by long, curving eyelashes downwards, she was a goddess. Her lithe neck met a supple yet smooth back and perfectly proportioned breasts, with huge, very responsive nipples that often poked straight through her bras and tops to signal her arousal.

From the other end, her beautiful feet met long, stunning legs that ended in the most perfect ass (even she caught herself admiring it in the mirror in idle moments, or at least she had until the world had gone mad). Her neatly trimmed pubic hair allowed her delicious pussy to be prominently on display whenever she was naked; a pussy that seemed to gush with wetness at the slightest provocation (to Jeff's eternal delight).

Although she missed Jeff's admiring comments, she had internalised enough of his adulation to recogise that she was hot property, and therefore in the Mad Max-esque environment she found herself in, had to keep her body hidden as much as she could.

This had been increasingly hard to maintain, though, as her clothes had snagged on exposed nails, or worn through because of the constant shuffling around on her raft. Her remaining rags were hardly modest.

And the archer had clearly noticed. With utter horror, Scarlett watched as the cock that had so recently taken her breath away started to swell and rise away from the man's thigh. She was transfixed by its thickening and lengthening and, subconciously but fatally, allowed the recently re-awakened sexual voracity a modicum of control for a brief instant.

No words passsed between Scarlett and the archer as his cock hardened to a truly impressive sight, but her brief lack of control betrayed her as the archer smiled knowingly at where she had directed her gaze.

Cursing her own weakness, she very deliberately returned her eyes to his. Too late.

"There is something you have that is valuable to Newdawn," the archer called down from the wall. "The question is whether it is valuable enough to permit you entrance."

"Turn around, remove your shorts and underwear, and bend over so I can inspect you."

A cold wave of horror washed over Scarlett, quickly replaced by blind rage.

"You want me to do WHAT?!" she spat. "You sick fuck."

Scarlett had feared this ever since setting out alone from the beach at home. The laws and customs that she had grown up with and taken for granted, imperfect though they were, relied on a functioning society to be maintained. All that had been lost as the warnings flashed across every phone and computer screen.

A part of Scarlett had known that raw physical power would step in to fill the void, and that as a woman she was vulnerable to the brute strength of unscrupulous men. A part of her had known that she wasn't powerful enough to protect herself forever, and she had been dimly conscious that she would need to bargain for protection at some point.

But she had not allowed herself to think further ahead than that, especially not whilst she had had a quiver full of arrows to dissuade any such unscrupulous men.

To be faced now with such a stark display of her powerlessness and the archer's power shocked and enraged her. After her initial outburst she found herself speechless, staring at the archer (Look at his face. His face dammit!) incredulously, waiting and hoping that he would crack a grin and admit it was a practical joke.

Of course, it wasn't.

"Fine, you have made your choice. Goodbye". The archer stepped down from the top of the wall and disappeared from sight.

Scarlett looked around in panic. The other boat had been driven from her mind by the consecutive impact of her recent wave of cock-lust and her even stronger wave out outrage. So it was with mounting unease that she saw that the boat was only a few tens of metres from her and closing fast.

Perhaps the skipper is more trustworthy? As soon as Scarlett thought this she realised she was clutching at straws; when had she last met anyone trustworthy? Desperation had brought out everyone's selfishness.

As the two craft docked on one another her fears grew. Two men emerged from behind the makeshift cabin and tied a rope between the bow of their craft and the side of hers. Any lingering hope that their intentions were good were dashed when one man leapt onto her raft and tackled her, pushing her to the ground.

Scarlett kicked out, connecting with his shin. She was momentarily heartened by a grunt of pain. But the man was far heavier than her and used his bodyweight to crush the breath from her body. Holding her down, he swiftly bound her wrists and ankles and lifted her bodily back onto his craft.

During this time the second man had been preparing an apparatus on the foredeck of their sailing boat. As Scarlett glimpsed the apparatus, she saw clearly that she was not the first victim to fall prey to these animals.

On the deck there was a makeshift mattress made of old plastic sacking. The men had repurposed several of the sailing ropes to form restraints that they tied around her ankles and pulled viciously to drag her legs apart.

Another rope was tied to her bound wrists and pulled towards the masts so that she was held spreadeagled on the deck, utterly helpless.

"Let me go you fucking pricks!" She shouted. "This is sick! How can you live with yourselves?!"

The men avoided her eyes but grimly continued their preparations. As one of the men advanced on her with a knife she tried to shrink away, but felt the ropes cutting into her wrists and ankles, leaving raw skin in their wake.

"Please. Don't do this. Please! I'm begging you!"

Ignoring her increasingly terrified cries, the man with the knife swiftly cut away the remaining scraps of fabric that she was calling clothes, leaving her body utterly exposed.

Both men removed their own shorts, revealing rigid cocks. As one man knelt down between her legs, the other roughly pushed her head to one side so that she was inches from the head of his cock.

Scarlett had never been so terrified. She was utterly helpless and utterly at the mercy of the two would-be rapists preparing to violate her body.

In a last act of defiance, she lunged forward and snapped her jaws, trying to bite the cock that was inches from her face. Just in time, her assailant spotted what she was doing and yanked painfully on the ropes holding her arms, pulling her head back in the process. She bit empty air.

The man slapped her face and grabbed her hair, pushing her head towards the head of his cock. At the same instant, Scarlett felt the other man's cock pressing at her pussy. Cursing the wave of sexual appetite that had hit her not ten minutes before as she realised that her pussy was still lubricated from that earlier arousal.

Just as she felt her pussy lips parting unwillingly for the head of her rapist's cock, she heard a deep thunk once, then twice.

Miraculously, both cocks dropped away from her holes and the two rapists crashed to the deck around her, arrows sticking through their chests. Looking up, relief crashed over Scarlett in waves as she saw the archer once more at the top of the wall, bow in hand.

----

The gates opened and the archer emerged on a small vessel, rowed by two further members of the Newdawn community. Scarlett's emotions at the sight of the group were deeply conflicted. She remained utterly outraged that the archer had demanded her complete abasement in order to gain entry to the community. As he came closer the waves of disdain emanating from him were matched by those from her. Yet she couldn't deny that the actions he had taken were the only thing that had stood between her and a brutal rape.

So what? she asked herself bitterly. I should be GRATEFUL? Fuck that!

What Scarlett told herself that she wanted was a return to a world in which men's actions were governed by accepted social rules, with consequences for stepping outside those rules. If anyone expected her to be grateful for anything less than this, they had another thing coming.

So as the boat tied up next to the one Scarlett was on, she stared at the archer with an intensity of disgust that discombobulated him. Still, there was a question that she couldn't resist asking:

"How did you know to return to the top of the wall just when you did to shoot my attackers?" She hated the tone of supplication in her voice as she asked this.

In answer, the archer pointed upwards at a speck in the painfully bright sky. Scarlett had spotted this earlier, but had assumed it was a soaring seabird.

"We salvaged a drone in the early days of building Newdawn. Many in the community resent the use of fuel to run the generator when it needs charging. But it has paid for itself tenfold in our ability to see beyond the horizon, both for defence and salvage."

"We were watching the attack on you." (Here, the archer indicated a small video screen hanging from the strap of his quiver) "There was a disagreement over whether we should save you."

"It got violent."

"I won."

Scarlett shuddered at the coldness in the archer's voice as he spoke. This was a deeply dangerous man. But he fought for me. He fought to rescue me. She shut down the thought almost as soon as it entered her mind. She couldn't afford to weaken her defences against such a predator.

"I thought I would give you the opportunity to reconsider our offer," he said softly but with an unmistakeable resolve in his tone. "This is the final time we will make this offer. You don't need reminding of the alternative."

Scarlett seethed against her restraints. Any confusion over her emotions towards the archer evaporated. She even felt able to ignore the wonderful sight of his semi-engorged pendulus cock swinging between his legs as he swung onto her boat. But she forced herself to think clearly, and accepted that she had no choice.

"Fine. You win."

The edge of the archer's mouth turned up in a hint of a smile as he released Scarlett from her bonds. Rubbing her wrists and ankles gingerly, she saw the raw skin and realised that she badly needed some sort of antiseptic cream; even the most innocuous infection could kill now that antibiotics were a relic of recent history.

But first she needed access to Newdawn.

"I see clothes are no longer an issue," he grinned wolfishly. "Turn around."