He had chosen well. His gaze went over all of the possibilities and they fell on me. And he knew and I knew in that gaze who the real prisoner was. I thought even then that he must have had help, that someone must have researched and guided his choice. Surely he couldn't tell that about me just by looking over all the possibilities—that I was the weakest in the chain and what my weakness was and the extent of that weakness—and that he could exploit it as well as he did. I knew I was lost when I first saw him enter the room. I knew then what the outcome would be. The joke really was on him; he didn't need to do what he did to get what he wanted.

We were released for lunch, but as the others left the room, a clerk came over to me and told me I was needed briefly in a room down at the end of the corridor.

When I entered the room, there he was, sitting in a straight chair, still handcuffed. The man who let me in the room was burly brute of a man. Well over six foot and solid with muscle but also well padded with too much rich food, beer, and other forms of self-indulgence. He looked mean and unyielding, just as he should to be doing what he was doing.

But my eyes went immediately to the boy. No, not a boy. I had read the record; he was a man now, and that made his plight all the more hazardous. If he lost now, he wouldn't be free again for years. But he looked so vulnerable—or he certainly looked just as someone would who I would take as being vulnerable. Very young looking. Lithe, blond with curls hanging down in his eyes, and almost a girlish, shy sense about him. Hooded eyes that probably could tear easily and were, to me, at least, very sensual. I certainly took the look he gave me as a sensual one, and I wondered if that was natural and if it would be his undoing if he were to lose now. Certainly the curls would go, but how much of the manner he was showing me could be changed or at least hidden from the predators? My heart went out to him, as, involuntarily did other parts of my body. He was just the sort I had always fancied.

I wonder in hindsight if perhaps he wasn't that sort at all, but only was that sort now because he needed to be.

The eerie thing, really, is that not a word was spoken by him. He conducted the whole scene with his eyes and his gestures and his body.

The other man, the dark, foreboding one, motioned for me to sit in one of the straight chairs and then, when the young man lifted his wrists, the older man brought out a key and unlocked the cuffs.

Then the young man came over and knelt before me and looked up with those wounded deer eyes of his. I looked on, mesmerized, almost in shock, as he lifted his T-shirt off his torso. I could see bruises. He had been mistreated already. (I wondered later if he might have done that to himself. If so, it worked a charm on me.)

I heard more than saw the sound of the zipper of my trousers. My eyes were lost in the young man's imploring