Don't Settle

So you don't have to figure it out yourselves I'll admit straight out that I, Tom Collins (my parents had a sense of humor), am a strange dude. Perhaps the strangest aspect of my life is that I'm a jack of all trades, master of almost none. For example:

--I really got into Houdini-like magic such as getting out of handcuffs, straitjackets, underwater breath holding, etc. I was pretty good and as a teen actually gave some performances -- until I almost drown, which killed it for me.

--I trained to be an MMA fighter and won three matches against low level competition by perfecting a few select holds, kicks, and punches. Then I was matched against a mid-level fighter; that didn't come out so well, so I gave up MMA.

--I practiced Rogaining (an orienteering sport of long distance cross-country navigation, involving both route planning and navigation) and entered a few competitions. I did well in basic contests, but when I fell off a cliff (fortunately with no permanent damage) during a higher level event I quit that too.

--I developed a fascination for handguns. When I was 18 I acquired three using less than legal means and went to a shooting range and actually got quite proficient with all three as well as several more from other shooters at the range. My father (who's a prosecutor) found out about the three guns, confiscated them, and turned them into the police in a no questions asked surrender program.

My academic life was -- fortunately -- a little different than with the activities described above. While I gave up on French after two years in High School, and avoided social studies courses as best that I could, I was actually a star in math and science and diligently pursued those courses without interruption and ended up graduating cum laude from a good engineering school.

I never did have any trouble getting dates with good to great looking women; however, my love life took a bad turn not because I quit but because I was dumped. I had been unceremoniously dumped by my university long-term girlfriend Brittany a month before graduation. I don't even know if it was for another guy because she never explained it to me; she essentially told me "life isn't fair -- deal with it!" (At least she did it in person and not by text). It was really painful because I was convinced that she was the love of my life and I -- apparently naively -- thought that she felt the same way.

My eventual wife Melissa, and I, were both on the rebound when we met shortly after we graduated from college the same year. While Melissa was not entirely forthcoming about her situation from what she has related to me her scenario was similar to mine. She thought that Peter was the love of her life only to be told a few days before graduation (although apparently he was nicer about it than Brittany had been) that he was moving to Europe for a job and he was not inviting her along because there was no hope for a long term relationship.

The two damaged puppies that Melissa and I were when we met were apparently desperately trying to salvage our egos and dreams. We thought that our instant connection was true love and not something transitory that ultimately would lead us both to ask if we had "settled" instead of fulfilled our romantic yearnings. During our courtship there were a number of things about her that didn't strike me all that great (and I'm sure just as many about me to her), but I was able to excuse or rationalize them in my mind because I was so desperate for this relationship to work out. The sex with Melissa was good, though not on the same level as with Brittany even though I tried hard. It was not until four years after our wedding, when I went to psychologist Susan Fields that she put things in proper perspective giving me (too late) the advice that I should have had after Brittany but before Melissa:

"Tom, being able to compromise is the hallmark of a good relationship. However, if you are justifying or rationalizing many things about the person that you're in a relationship with," which was exactly my situation, "especially less than optimum sex, then you're settling for something that won't last. Or even if it does last past expectations, you'll never be happy. Many fear they will end up alone and so they stay with someone who doesn't ring their chimes. Don't make excuses. Make your exit and find someone who doesn't require you to rationalize."

It wasn't that Melissa and I were in any way nasty to each other, or treated each other badly. Except for the few months after we met but before we wed there just wasn't any spark. Even after five years of marriage we had had only three significant arguments, all about the same thing.

The arguments that Melissa and I had were over the attention being paid to, or by, other people, Harmon Major in Melissa's case, Colleen Fleming in mine.

Our first argument was when I thought that not only was Harmon paying too much attention to Melissa, but that she seemed to be eating it up. After an acrimonious confrontation we calmed down, and after a couple of subsequent encounters between Melissa and Harmon that were not as objectionable to me we seemed to be on an even keel.

The second argument was when Melissa though the same thing about me and Colleen that I thought about her and Harmon. Again, we calmed down after a few days and after a couple of subsequent encounters between Colleen and me were not as objectionable to Melissa things were OK.

The third argument was a repeat of the first two where we both expressed concerns at the same time, me about Harmon and her about Colleen. We resolved that more quickly and enthusiastically than the first two.

There was one major difference between how I looked at Harmon and how Melissa looked at Colleen. I thought that Harmon was a complete asshole and couldn't for the life of me figure out how any woman could be attracted to him because he was big, bellicose, and homely (from a male perspective, but it seemed that several women I know liked his looks), whereas Melissa liked Colleen; she was just challenged by her good looks (did I mention that Colleen was a babe?).

The third argument had been more than six months ago before the meat of my story.

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Melissa worked as the head computer librarian at the small private college in our city of residence. She almost never travelled on business.

I worked as an energy resources engineer; I had expertise with respect to all of oil, natural gas, coal, peat, wind, solar, tidal, hydro, and geothermal, although I wasn't an expert in any one of them. I made initial assessments for my employer, a large multi-national corporation called Enerzeet. Inc. I did preliminary evaluations in geographic areas (after studying all relevant physical data about them) and based upon my assessments Enerzeet sent in experts in the energy areas I had flagged. I was very successful in my job, at the time of this story never having been wrong in my initial assessments. I travelled on business more than I cared to but never for more than a week at a time.

I enjoyed the actual work I did for Enerzeet; much less enjoyable was the need to deal with the problematic and ultra-competitive personalities of some of my co-workers. Harmon Major also worked for Enerzeet but in accounting so at least I didn't normally have to interface with that asshole at work. There were plenty of other assholes, however. Perhaps the biggest asshole was Eric Magnum who likely would have run over his grandmother to advance his career, and unfortunately I did sometimes have to interface with Eric.

I was sent to do an assessment in Mindanao, the second largest island in the Philippines, defining a land area of about 94,630 square kilometers. Unfortunately, the asshole Magnum was running operations in the Far East at that time. I researched not only the normal physical aspects of the area, such as topography, satellite photos, wind speeds, ocean currents, river flow, average temperatures, and average solar insolation, but also the political climate. I was very concerned by the fact that there were Islamic terrorists (known as Abu Sayyaf) in the area who had been known to kidnap Westerners. Eric assured me that they would be no problem since they hadn't been active for a while in the area that I was travelling to and that he would hire private security to escort me. Even though I was apprehensive, I went along (primarily because I had to).

I found the private security that Eric had hired to be a little sketchy. The commander of the six man team did speak decent English, however, and seemed professional even if his men were rag-tag. The commander had the unusual name of Alab Albalorio, and he told me that he lived in Davao, the largest city on Mindanao.

I had only been doing my evaluations for about 48 hours when disaster struck. As I was taking solar insolation measurements we were approached by a group of half a dozen rough looking dudes with AK-47s, two of whom were a rare breed of Filipino men -- they had beards. The bearded leader and Alab talked; I didn't understand the language but I did understand the word "Magnum," which was used more than a few times. The two leaders exchanged handshakes, and my bodyguards simply left (with my equipment). In bad English the interlopers identified themselves as Abu Sayyaf and as if I hadn't already figured it out said that I was their hostage.

I walked with my captors through rain forest about six hours, with a few breaks, before we came to a compound with a ramshackle house and a couple of out-buildings. I was put in one of the out buildings and shackled. Fortunately my captors weren't the brightest people in the world and their search of me was half-assed. They had confiscated my wallet and cellphone but hadn't located the mini tool pouch that I kept in my left sock that had small tools that I needed to adjust and repair the finicky solar insolation measurement equipment that I used.

I realized that I could be killed at any time, and that I likely wouldn't be eating well and would gradually lose my strength, so I planned on gathering information for a couple of days, test remove my shackles using the tools in my mini pouch taking advantage of my teenage magician skills, and then make a break for it.

My plan got accelerated when around midnight my first night in captivity three of the terrorists opened up the hut door, pushed a woman in, and shackled her a few feet away from me. Once they left I started a conversation with the woman; I hadn't got a real good look at her in the modest light that the terrorists had used to see into the hut, but she was tall, blond, and obviously a Westerner.

"I'm Tom Collins; what's your name?" was my brilliant opening line once the terrorists had left.

"Monique; English you speak?" was her reply followed by "est-ce que tu parles fancais," which was about the extent of what I remembered from High School French, asking if I spoke French.

Her English was about as bad as my French, but with a strange combination of the two we were actually able to communicate enough to understand each other. She was from rural France but had been "discovered" by a Paris talent agent and had modelled (not fashion since she was too voluptuous for that, but cars, yachts, almost anything else besides clothes) in Paris for a few months. Her modelling career didn't take off, but she was discovered again by a Saudi sheik and she -- in hindsight -- foolishly fell for and married him. Once married his true ultra-controlling personality and swarminess came out and she had tried to leave the marriage by fleeing to several different countries, ending in the Philippines. She was convinced that her husband had her tracked down and was responsible for her capture by Abu Sayyaf.

We commiserated for about an hour and then fell asleep. I hadn't notified her that I could get out of our shackles but I did tell her that I thought that we could escape.

When I woke up to light streaming into our hut Monique was already awake. I got the first good look at her. HOLY SHIT! She was an even better looking version of Colleen Fleming, the woman my wife was jealous of and who I had suppressed hots for.

When we had been awake about an hour, two of the terrorists entered our hut and gave us a minimalist breakfast of some rice with a little overripe mango. The second of the terrorists was new to me, and I didn't like the way he was looking at Monique -- and she liked it even less.

After we ate I told Monique that we needed to get out sooner rather than later. I picked my leg shackles and was about to pick hers when we heard a noise. The nasty looking terrorist was back and it was obvious that he had evil plans for Monique as he pulled her up.

It was game time!

As the terrorist was walking out the door pushing Monique -- whose leg shackles he had undone -- in front of him I jumped up and put the chain of my wrist shackles around his neck like a garrote. I was much bigger and stronger than he was and by the time that he decided to go for his pistol rather than try to hold the chain off his neck it was too late. I shook him to be sure that he was dead, and then motioned Monique to come back into the hut.

We found the key to the shackles in his pocket, which made it easier to get our wrist shackles off, got a few Philippine pesos from his pockets and his pistol, and a sheathed knife from his belt. I looked the pistol over and was familiar with it. It was an M1911 pistol, commonly issued to soldiers in the Philippines who have handguns, and probably taken from a dead soldier. Although I never owned one I had used an M1911 pistol at the shooting range I frequented as an 18 year old. I moved the grip and thumb safeties to the active positions, told Monique that we had to deal with the terrorists in the ramshackle house since we had no chance of outrunning them if they quickly realized our escape, and she followed behind me.

Fortunately there were only four terrorists in the ramshackle house and all in the same room -- the rest were out, probably trying to kidnap other people or ambushing soldiers. I caught them completely by surprise and executed all of them with my purloined M1911 before they could fire their weapons.

Monique and I searched all of their belongings. We found two old, but serviceable, knapsacks, the American dollars, pesos, and credit cards that they had confiscated from Monique and I, our passports, the water filtration bottle they had taken from Monique, a compass, something akin to K-rations, a couple of dirty but sturdy blankets, and five pistols.

I disabled the AK-47s as best I could, as well as one of the pistols because I wasn't familiar with it and didn't know if I could handle it properly. I put small sticks in the barrel of each gun and then packed some mud in. I left the free end of the barrels clean so hopefully the terrorists wouldn't see what I had done and would fire the weapons and be killed or injured.

Fortunately the other four pistols I found were M1911s, and there was plenty of ammo for them. We couldn't find our cellphones.

I gave Monique the lighter backpack, one of the M1911s (which I gave her a quick course in) and a knife, and I took the heavier backpack which had three M1911s in it along with many rounds of ammunition, with the last M1911 in my belt.

With that we took off. The largest city, Davao, was south, the direction the remaining terrorists would expect was to go, so we headed north, deeper into the rainforest.

We really couldn't trust the native population since we had no idea who was sympathetic to Abu Sayyaf, or if there would be some sort of bounty on us, so we planned to lie low for quite some time. Also, Monique was scared to death that her husband had contacts and would now have her killed outright if we ran into the wrong person.

When we stopped for lunch the first day and we both took a bath in a nearby creek I got my first really good look at Monique -- earlier I had established that she was a larger version of Colleen, but she had no hesitation of bathing nude so now I got a REALLY good look.

Monique was -- for my tastes -- the best looking woman that I had ever seen. While her face wasn't classically beautiful it was very open, pretty, and pleasant, and her body could inspire poets and sculptors. She was 5 feet 11 inches tall (180cm) [just three inches short of my height of 6 feet 2 inches (188cm)], 143 pounds (65kg), with a perfect ass, sculptured thighs, a sleek waist, big hips, and big boobs. She caught me staring at her and smiled. In half French-half English ("Frenchlish") she asked if I hadn't seen a naked woman before. My response -- also in Frenchlish -- was "Not one half as beautiful as you are." She really liked that.

Monique and I quickly got accustomed to living off the land and finding locations to lay our blankets to avoid insects or other critters. We even more quickly got accustomed to living with each other. Although Monique likely didn't have the instant attraction to me that I had to her, after a few days it was apparent that she was almost as enamored with me as I was with her. She often referred to me as "mon hẻros" followed by a kiss on the cheek, inevitably causing me to blush. The sixth night into our escape things changed.

Monique made her intentions known when she ran her hands between my legs while washing off my back in a creek before we went to sleep that sixth night. She moved her blanket right next to mine and in my translation of her Frenchlish said "Don't you consider me attractive, Tom? You haven't tried to fuck me yet I am here at your mercy."

I stared into her eyes and replied "I don't want to fuck you; I want to make love to you; you're everything I want in a woman, brave, smart, fun, and sexy beyond compare. I don't want to blow my chance for a long-term relationship with you by coming on too strong."

"Tell you what; let's fuck now, then make love, and see how we go from there," she smiled at me.

In a second I turned from contemplative to energized. After planting a 30 second lip lock on her while mauling her massive mammaries I quickly went down on her. As I abused her clit, labia, and G-spot I couldn't really understand what she was screaming, but I know that I put her through three increasing-in-intensity orgasms before I did understand what she was screaming when she started saying "fuck me; fuck me now."

My needy cock was stiff as an iron bar as I shinnied up her body and fully penetrated her soaking wet, red, cozy, pussy in one stroke. As a first in my experience, she came again simply by the act of penetration alone, and twice more before I blasted what seemed like a liter of cum into her, rendering us both almost comatose. By the time that I extracted my wilting cock from her snug pussy any doubt that I had was gone -- I was head-over-heels in love, and in lust, with the goddess that went by the name "Monique."

After a half hour of hugging, "pillow" talk (sans the pillow), and kissing, Monique went down on me. Once my cock was to her liking she mounted me and bounced up and down while I manipulated the marvels on her chest. Our eyes were locked in an amorous gaze as we made love until passion simultaneously overcame us. I pulled her chest into mine, I bucked up while she pushed down, and soon we were debilitated by tsunami-like climaxes.

After that night we couldn't get enough of each other. Our passion was helped when we were able to trade one of our pistols for an only slightly used double hammock. It took a little getting used to the hammock, but once we did it allowed really exciting, novel, adventurous sex. We fucked, and made love, at least once a day each. Sometimes we were able to rent a room in a rickety country "hotel" where we destroyed more than one bed since they weren't constructed for people as large as we were.