Martin ignored the phone. Perhaps he didn't even hear it. He placed a hand on Lily's belly, the tip of one finger resting in her navel. Her flesh was impossibly sensitive, and his touch caused shock waves of sensation. She jerked convulsively, swearing and yelling at him, but the hand stayed defiantly where it was, while the mobile rang on, insistent as a crying baby.

“Shit, that bloody phone," one of the others said. Martin walked over to the discarded dress and took the mobile from the pocket.

“Give that to me now!" Lily told him. Martin looked down at the phone, and it stopped ringing, as if cowed into silence.

“It was somebody called Paul. He's left a message."

“Let me tell you about him," Lily snarled. "He's big and he's got a very nasty temper. You don't want him finding out about this. So let me go now and we'll forget it happened." She hoped she sounded convincing; Paul really wasn't a fighter, it was his gentleness that was part of the attraction.

“Let's hear what this hard man's got to say." Martin pressed buttons and Paul's voice filled the room.

“Lily, on your way home can you pick up some cottage cheese from the supermarket. I'm making a lasagne. But we'll have starters as soon as you get in, 'cause I want you and I can't wait! Love you lots!"

The boys all laughed. The one kneeling on her right had slyly shifted his grip, so that his hand rested near the top of her inner thigh, but that seemed no greater an outrage than that they should hear what her man said to her. She struggled again, though she knew it would only emphasise how completely she had been caught.

“Ahhh, he loves her lots," said Steve, the blond youth.

“Sort of weird when you think about it," the one called Ralph said. "I mean, he's waiting for her, he thinks he's going to..they're going to... and we've got her."

“That's right," Martin said. "We've got her."

He was trying to sound casual but there was a tremor of excitement in his voice. Carelessly, he threw the phone down. He stared at her, and she saw herself as if through his eyes. There was nothing unhealthy about the paleness of her body; it was the skin colour for blue eyes and copper hair, a startling contrast now to a face blushing crimson. He walked back to her, and took the scissors from his pocket. Taking great care not to touch her skin with the blades, he cut through the shoulder straps of her brassiere, so that now it was only the back strap that kept it in place. He put a hand to the clip at the back. “Kiss me, or I'll undo it."

She didn't, but neither did she draw back as he put his lips on hers. Insubstantial as her underwear was, it was suddenly vital that she kept it on. His free hand moved over her back, hips, bottom, as he slowly ground his crotch against her. He smelled of soap and water and of his youth and sex. There was a hot, salty taste to his mouth. She wished his breath stank, or something, so there could be physical repulsion to match her hatred, but her body's responses were far more complex than the simple loathing that her mind demanded.

He stopped at last, and she glanced down, affronted yet fascinated by the hard bulge that was distending the front of his pants. Her acquiescence in the kiss had been useless - he unfastened the strap anyway, and she yelled in exasperation as the brassiere tumbled away like a flag lowered in surrender, and her breasts spilled into his hands. He cupped and weighed them, his gentleness in itself a kind of taunting, a demonstration of power. She snarled at him in a fury now beyond words, but still her nipples grew hard, seeming to point at him accusingly. He tugged her panties down, and other willing hands finished the job, pulling them over her feet and away, consigning them to memory with her phone and uniform and freedom.

Martin gasped and stepped away from her, almost falling in his rush to strip himself. He was lithe, more than a boy, though as yet his frame held only the promise, the blueprint, of the magnificent young brute he would become. The erect penis seemed to exist in its own right, a separate creature, predatory, its tip like an unblinking, slitted eye. Lily knew what must happen, and her rage was a transforming thing: she was no longer a sturdy, busty peasant girl, but a pale goddess whose eyes might strike with blue lightning bolts against these upstart mortals who had dared to capture her. But there was no punishment for their sacrilege, no divine lightning, not even when Martin took hold of her and eased himself into her, not savagely, but insistently. She wanted it to hurt, this outrage should be agony: but as a person who is grief-stricken must at last still feel hunger or thirst, so her body registered pleasure, though it was light years from orgasm when he came, one hand on her bottom, pulling her against him ever more tightly. She glared at him in defiance, but he hardly saw her, dizzy with a joy he had never comprehended.

Finally he stopped moving, and slowly, reluctantly, withdrew and let go of her. She braced herself for the horror of gang rape, but instead, as Martin dressed himself, his words came in a rush as fervent as sex itself.

“You're not going home. You like our grounds so much, you can stay here - in my bed. We're taking you there now. You belong to me. There's nothing you can do about it."