INDENTURED
Though he’d heard of Teletus, even met
more than a few citizens of the Awakened Territories’ largest city, Vam Rexen
was seeing its walls now for the first time as the rivership he’d chartered out
of the small port hamlet of Jort’s Ferry creaked through a lazy westward bend
in the Thassa river. Even from this distance, the city’s massive walls dwarfed
the small combined Port Authority and trading post which lay just outside them,
continuing upland from the river for kilometers at least before distance and
morning haze obscured them.
Late autumn had already begun to turn
the tree-lined drives and surrounding hills from deep emerald to shades of
gold, rust and blood. Vam cinched his fur cloak a little more tightly around
himself as he watched the water and woodland through his window; it had also
put a firm nip into the breezes off the river, and his stateroom was no less
drafty than anywhere else on this antiquated old boat. He briefly considered
returning to his pallet, piled thick with furs, until his stomach complained
again, bitterly, that it wanted filling.
A mercenary never traveled without dry
rations, but he was holding out -- he wanted a hot breakfast. And the
slip of paper resting in the thick vellum envelope in the cargo pocket on the
right thigh of his charcoal-grey trousers -- if the position being offered was
legitimate, he’d have coin enough to eat like a king whenever he pleased.
At the very least, the letter from the
Head of his company’s training house, attached to another from the Captain of
the Guard at House White, should give him leverage enough to put the cost of a
morning meal at the foot of the Treasurer of his prospective new employer. If
the job fell through, he’d at least have a free meal and a city full of new
opportunity to his benefit.
Adjusting his thick leather
double-wrapped belt to more comfortably seat his short sword on his hip, he
stepped out of his stateroom and down a short flight of stairs to the aft main
deck. As he feared, the morning air off the river was biting indeed. The
Captain of the Flying Bat met him with a perpetual scowl, his nose and
cheeks reddened raw by decades of such weather, his hair a wild white mop
beneath his trifoil hat. It billowed in a rhythm to match his ankle-length, midnight
blue captain’s coat. “Morning!” he bellowed over the creak and lash of the
sails, the rush of water against the boat’s lacquered and sealed hull.
“Captain Rutherford.” Vam nodded. “I see
we’re nearing port.”
“Ye see well, boy! Aye, that we are!” Rutherford
produced a thick wooden pipe from the pocket of his coat, a small, rough cotton
pouch from the other. From the pouch, he pinched a sizeable amount of leafy
brown tobacco, which he tamped into the pipe and lit -- all of this in the
space of a breath.
“Never been here before!” Vam still had
to raise his voice to the border of shouting to be heard over the noise of the
boat. “What can you tell me about Teletus?”
Rutherford drew deep on the fragrant
smoke from the pipe, stared out at the city for a moment, then fixed ancient
blue eyes on Vam. “Just watch your step in there, boy! Things ain’t hardly ever
what they appear to be! Good bet you’ll need that --” he pointed to the sword
at Vam’s hip, “--more than once. And the once I guarantee ye!”
That didn’t please the young mercenary.
Killing for money was one thing, having to do it without getting paid rankled
him. “Why’s that?” he asked.
“The Awakened walk and talk like us,
boy!” Rutherford answered. “They build up fortresses and palaces like us! But
don’t let that fool ye into believin’ they think like us! The only law
ye’ll find in those walls be the same law of any animals, talkin’ or not!”
Vam stared at him, clearly not taking
his meaning.
“Dominance!” Rutherford explained. “Rule
by strength! Or cunning, but usually both! Ye keep your eye sharp and your hand
swift, boy!”
“Port callin’, Cap’n!” the First Mate, a
wire of a man named Gallerty, called back from the foredeck. Sure enough, they
were now within archer’s distance of the moorings.
“Stations then, all ye reekin’ bastards!
Ye’ll earn your portions or I’ll beat yester-eve’s outta ye!” Rutherford
shouted affectionately to his small crew, and lumbered off for the foredeck to
oversee landing operations without preamble.
“Thank you, Captain!” Vam called after
him, then turned back to his stateroom to secure his gear for leave-taking.
Stepping off the boat with his meager
bedroll strapped over one shoulder and the huge, shapeless gray mass of a
duffel strapped over the other, he made his way to the Dockmaster’s Office
where he was greeted by a dwarfish, pudgy man whose porcine features were near
the midpoint of human and Awakened pig.
“You the Dockmaster?” Vam asked, looking
the man over.
“I’m that.” the man’s voice was no
clearer than his face as to his lineage, lying somewhere between a growl and a
squeal. “And since ye know my callin’, what be yours?”
“I’m Vam Rexen,” the mercenary answered,
looking over the small, comfortably untidy office. “I was told to expect a
letter when I got here.”
“No letter.” the man replied instantly.
Vam’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t even
look.”
“No need,” the Dockmaster pointed into a
small anteroom without looking. “Ye got no letter. Ye do got a livin’
courier waitin’ on ye. In there.”
At that moment, possibly the largest
woman Vam had ever laid eyes on ducked beneath the doorframe separating the
Dockmaster’s Office from the anteroom in which she’d been sitting. A vixen, her
ruby fur matched by a wild mane of crimson ringlets, her thickly muscled limbs
were bare, thin strips of black iron and leather strategically covering the
only soft places on her otherwise huge, hard body.
“You’re Vam Rexen of the Black Talon
mercenaries?” her voice was soft and low, but powerful enough to wash over,
around and through him like a warm wave. He could see that even under the
room’s seven foot vaulted ceiling, she still stood slightly hunched.
“I am.” he replied evenly, determined
not to show that he was even slightly fazed by her size or her proportions.
“Then show me the letters.” Her tone was
firm, authoritative -- decidedly not what one would expect of a lowly
courier, no matter how impressive her size and physique. Nevertheless, he
wasn’t about to argue. He pulled the envelope from his thigh pocket again,
handing it over. Her long, thick fingers capped with dagger-like black nails
folded around his as she took it from him, then read it over.
After a moment she returned the
envelope, apparently satisfied that he was, in fact, who he claimed to be. “I’m
Talis Vorran, Captain of the Guard of the House of White. Come with me.” She
brushed past him gently, leading him out into the bright morning light where
she finally straightened to her full height of 7’2”. She wore no weapons, he
noted briefly, then reflected that at such immense size, she likely needed
none.
They approached a two-story building
whose exterior proclaimed its age and whose hanging, crudely painted wooden
placard proclaimed it The Keh’ra Lina Inn. Inside, the Innkeeper, an elderly
wolf who introduced himself as Gage, accepted a promissory note from Captain
Vorran drawn on the House of White’s Treasury and handed Vam the key to a room
on the Inn’s second story.
Vorran handed him a larger, thickly
stuffed envelope produced by the Innkeeper. “This is a brief dossier of the
notables of the House. You’ll also find inside maps of Teletus and its
outposts, trade posts and brief overviews of our allies and enemies within and
without the city. Spend the next three days learning it all. Travel the
streets, get to know the street vendors and market merchants.” She reached into
a small satchel slung from her hip, digging out three rather large oblong gold
coins. “One gold tarsk per day should make you a friend to the merchants, but
use sense in your spending. Say nothing of your job.” She smiled faintly.
“After all, until I approve you, you have no job to speak of yet.”
He nodded, turning the thick, heavy
envelope over in his hands to examine the Royal Seal stamped in wax upon its
back.
“Be well, boy.” she said as she stepped
back. “I’ll be back for you in three days. Be well, Gage, old friend.” With
that, she was gone.
Vam and the Innkeeper watched her
depart. “Wouldn’t you like to take that to the furs, boy.” the wolf mused.
“She’d flatten either or both of us to
paste.” Vam observed amiably.
“More than likely,” the wolf agreed.
“Still...” his unspoken thought, it’d be worth it. was met with a nod.
Vam didn’t accomplish quite as much
studying as he’d intended, thanks to the Keh’ra Lina’s maid and cook, a
delicious, long-legged kitten whose name was Toria but whom the innkeeper
gruffly but affectionately addressed as, “slut.” Vam looked up at her one
evening as she rode him and asked, “Toria, do vixens normally grow to over
seven feet tall?”
Unperturbed by the mention of another
woman, she slowed her pace atop him, blinking down with her luminous amber
eyes. “Sometimes, but not often. The Awakening changed many things in our
bloodlines. You don’t know this?”
Vam shook his head, enjoying the relaxed
pace in their lovemaking for a change. Normally, he would return to his room,
find her there nude and ready for him, then simply bend her over the bed or be
tackled to the floor by her. Their activity would on average be better
described as mindless, lust-fueled rutting rather than anything as gentle or
even affectionate as lovemaking.
“Speaking, High Thought, our bodies
coming to be likened to those of your kind,” she explained, increasing the
force and pace of her movements on him again, “all of the Awakened bloodlines
have these things. But some of us --” abruptly, her inner walls closed on his
cock like a clamp, squeezing so hard he gritted his teeth, “--have gifts beyond
these things.” She grinned down at him with a dangerous but not-entirely-threatening
look.
He tilted his head, never having guessed
at her strength.
“I’ve been very gentle with you,
my beautiful monkey.” she winked, and began to move again, her short but
sharpened nails gripping his shoulders as she leaned forward, her golden brown
hair falling around them as she placed her mouth to his neck, a needful,
growling moan escaping her lips as she placed her sharp teeth to his skin, gave
him the lightest of love bites.
As promised, Captain Vorran stepped
through the front door of the Keh’ra Lina at precisely 11:27 AM, three days
after she had stepped out. She was dressed more formally, though no less
revealingly. But the strips of white leather and golden armor that barely
covered her this time were the High Dress armor of the House of White, or so he
would learn much later.
“Good morning,” she found him at the
breakfast table with the innkeeper and his maid; they had made a first-name
basis between them and shared fresh eggs, sausage and some sort of, to her
sensitive nose, foul smelling cheese.
Vam smiled up at her, then winced. She
sighed down at the small feline woman; she supposed there was no point in
mentioning that she had no interest in the small human herself, though it was
painfully obvious that the kitten did. “Finish your breakfast, boy. It’s time
for your evaluation. Gage, thank you for keeping him out of trouble.”
“Toria’s work, that.” the wolf continued
to assault his breakfast.
“Well, then.”
Vam had his gear and his goodbyes
gathered a short while later. He and the formidable Captain Vorran rode in easy
silence in a large rickshaw drawn by a pair of nude horsewomen whose chestnut
bodies and long brown hair only accentuated the massive, powerful muscles of
their hindquarters and legs.
After perhaps twenty minutes ride which
lead them out of the bustle of the city proper and up a long, winding causeway
that snaked into the foothills north of the city, they reached high granite
walls topped with sharp, curved iron barbs behind which sat a thick curtain of
stringed razorwire.
Vorran stepped from the rickshaw, which
rose noticeably as her tremendous weight was lifted from its suspension. “Thank
you, Eris.” She handed the nearer horsewoman a golden tarsk coin. “Thank you,
Shala.” she handed out another to the other woman. “Your service is exemplary,
as always.”
“Thank you, Mistress.” both women bowed
their heads in deference.
As they walked a path of smooth
pavestones toward the three-meter high, four-meter wide doors to the palatial
estate sprawling before them, Vam asked, “Those women...?”
“Slaves.” Vorran answered
matter-of-factly.
Vam blinked, taken slightly aback. The
giantess looked down at him, studying his reaction. “You don’t approve?”
He shrugged. In point of fact, he didn’t
-- like all humans of the 22nd century, he had grown up believing that slavery
in any form was an affront to the dignity of living things. But he’d be damned
if he’d be a black sheep his first day on the job. It had no bearing on his
profession, anyway. “Yours?” he asked, curiosity getting the better of him.
“No.” she answered, apparently satisfied
with his professionalism. “Eris and Shala are property of the House of White.
They’re unrestricted, by the way,” she cast another look down at him; testing
him again. “Of course, slaves or not, you’d do well to be sure they take a
liking to you before you try anything with them. I weigh a little over 150
kilos, and you must be a hundred or so yourself. Either one of them could have
brought us here alone. Imagine what those legs could do to a little human like
you if angered.”
“I’ll be careful.” he assured her,
though the thought did send a faint shudder through him.
“You studied the dossier as I
instructed?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” she reached out and swung one of
the wide, heavy doors open for him, ushered him inside. “Your evaluation will
be conducted by the Lady of the House herself. She insisted. I have other
matters to attend to, but I’m sure I’ll be with you again soon.” She walked him
through a cavernous Greeting Hall, its marble floor and walls echoing their
footsteps back to them through draperies of thick, soft purple satin.
He could scarcely refrain from goggling
about him like a dumb tourist at the opulence of his surroundings. Panels of
deeply polished blood-red wood backed statuary of women of immense height and
musculature, nude and glaringly anatomically correct.
“This is the Hall of the Huntresses.”
she provided as they continued. “You no doubt recall from the dossier that the
House of White is a matriarchy, yes?” She gazed at him askance; clearly, his
surprise betrayed the fact that he had only skimmed the dossier and missed this
particularly notable fact.
“Uh... yes.” he bluffed.
“Mhm.” the sound was disapproving; had
he not been busy trying to hide the deep crimson blush of embarrassment, he
might have noted a peculiar smirk cross her face. After a moment or two more,
they reached a slightly more mortally-proportioned door inlaid with ivory and
gold, a brass knocker beside it.
Vorran
took the knocker between thumb and index finger, rapping gently a few
times. The door opened, and Vam’s eyes widened. Perhaps the most beautiful
Awakened woman he had ever set eyes on stood before them.
She was, compared to the Captain of the
Guard, a tiny woman. 5’6” to Vam’s 6’ -- hard to tell her weight, but he
imagined perhaps 130 pounds of very healthy curves, her long legs, wide
hips and slim waist shrouded in layers of sheer purple silk, a bodice of the
same material encasing her C-cup breasts but leaving her midriff and arms bare.
Her eyes were a vibrant, deep jade set
in a delicate face. Her coat of fine snow-white fur shone in the sunlight that
filtered in through a crystal-glass window near them, the sunlight gleaming in
the long coils of honey-blonde hair which she had carefully arranged “up”, a
few strands left loose to tickle her cheeks, the back of her neck, his
imagination.
“Is this him?” she asked Vorran, who
nodded. “Yes, my Lady. The human you sent for.”
“Good.” she turned her eyes fully on
Vam. “I am Esmerelle White, and this House is mine. Tell me, do you know of the
war between my House and that of the Surnan Echelon?” And so the test had
already begun.
He nodded. The Echelon of the House of
Surna, essentially a rogue band of deposed nobles and their loyal guardsmen, in
addition to several batteries of mercenary companies, all that the Echelon’s
dwindling wealth could purchase them, had set their sights on the House of
White, to whose existence they objected on a number of levels, not least among
which were the fact that the House of White had underbid them for construction
and security contracts with the municipal government, and another reason not
disclosed in the dossier. Very likely its matriarchal structure was that other
reason.
He recited as much to Esmerelle, who
watched him imperiously throughout, laughing delightedly at his deduction.
“He’s intelligent enough,” she noted to Vorran, who nodded. “Good retention,
too. He’s at least adequate, mentally.”
Vam looked from woman to giantess and
back, and suddenly had the very distinct and very uncomfortable sensation of
being weighed not as a prospective retainer but rather as something else. It
was only compounded when Esmerelle stepped forward, ordering, “Stand still,
boy.”
She reached out, brushing slim,
long-fingered hands over his cheek, around the back of his head, running her
fingers through his hair, over his scalp, then around to touch the soft pads of
her fingers to his lips, nodding. “Open your mouth.” she ordered.
Confused, he complied. She leaned
forward, peering into his mouth, examining his teeth. She nodded and reached
down to unfasten his sword belt. “You won’t need this.” she slipped the belt
from the very confused and increasingly apprehensive man’s waist, silently
handing it over to Captain of the Guard.
“I don’t understand,” he looked first at
his sword belt, which the tall, heavily-muscled woman next to him slung easily
over her shoulder where it looked more like a dagger.
“You arrived late,” Esmerelle waved a
hand breezily. “The war is settled. The Echelon’s women now serve in my Guards,
the men now serve their women as comfort slaves. Those who refused now feed my
gardens.”
A very definite sinking feeling settled
in the pit of Vam’s stomach. “I don’t understand.” he frowned. “Do you use men
as guards or soldiers at all?”
“Oh, we use men.” she assured him. “I
use men. But I do not arm my men. That would be foolish.” To the struck look in
Vam’s blue eyes, she only laughed. “All the property in my house belongs to me,
boy. And in my house, men are property.” she stepped forward, resting her hand
flat on his chest. “Kneel, boy, and submit to me.”
He shook his head. “Interesting offer,
but no. Sorry for your trouble, but --”
“That was not an offer, boy.” she
stepped back, her features clouding with anger. “And it was not a request!”
He’d had enough of this -- he hadn’t
come here expecting to see slaves. He sure as hell hadn’t come here to be
one! He knew there was no way in hell he was getting his weapon back from the
towering guardswoman. Screw it, he thought bitterly, I’ll get
another.
He turned to bolt for the front doors,
but found his way blocked. Five women, each as tall as he was, each as
barely-dressed as their Captain, ringed them in a loose half circle. Each
loosened her sword belt, their sidearms hitting the floor at their feet with
soft thumps. Behind him, Esmerelle spoke, and he could hear the smile in her
voice.
“Take him.”
They closed on him slowly, steadily. He
put up his hands. For human women, they would have been tall, athletic. But as
his fighting instincts turned over and awoke in the primitive part of his
brain, they ceased to register to him as women, only as hostiles.
Mercenary fighting was not the stuff of
wild, wide swings and flying tackles. And as good as these women might be, the
analytical side of his combat training deduced that half of their effectiveness
was reputation and most if not all of the other half distraction.
Each of them was beautiful. Long, toned
limbs. Slim waists. Magnificent bodies. Gorgeous faces. Long hair. These women
won through charisma and possibly, where that failed, intimidation.
The nearest, a feline who looked like
she might have been the inn maiden’s bigger sister, feinted at him with a
deadly swipe of her taloned paw. Had it connected, he realized with clinical
alarm that a caved skull would be a possibility; at the very least, a
concussion would be a certainty.
Rather than lunging backward, however,
he dropped and rolled forward, snaking both his legs around one of hers,
the momentum slamming her forward leg into the rearward, the leverage of his
legs slamming to the floor forcing her to follow.
He had felt rather than seen or heard
the rabbit closing from behind as the feline had occupied his line of sight. He
disengaged his legs from the feline, who struggled to sit up cradling the back
of her head. Before the rabbit behind him could lift a powerful leg into the
ready to kick at him, he rolled backward, thrusting hard with his hands to
drive both legs over his head, backward, his heels slamming together into her
knees, toppling her to the floor in agony.
He was on his feet again, scrambled for
a moment to regain his footing on the polished floor, and a savage kick glanced
off his chest, spinning him. Rather than flailing, he followed the momentum to
his side, rolled away centimeters out of reach of a tigress’s brutal stomp
where his head would have been crushed to blood, brain and bone-dust had he
been a millisecond slower.
He rose quickly, but not to his feet,
sensing her close pursuit by the sound and vibration of her footsteps. His arms
reached out as she came in hard and fast -- bracing his knees, he wrapped his
arms around her legs, then pulled his torso back as hard as he could, sending
her sprawling across the floor. She sat up snarling and holding her aching jaw.
The two women left uninjured circled him
warily now; another, more mortally proportioned vixen and a woman whose ink
black fur, delicately pointed ears and luminous yellow eyes marked her as a
panther.
They closed on him again, slowly,
circling -- he couldn’t track both hostiles at once. The vixen slipped behind
him -- but he didn’t need to see her. Circling with the panther still, he
stepped back suddenly, his elbow jetting backward to ram the woman in the
stomach as his knees flexed low. Straightening them and pressing backward
harder still, his fist flew up and back, connecting with her nose in a solid,
painful sound. Just as suddenly, he stepped forward, on the attack. The panther
girl, to her credit, was considerably faster, her forearm slipping around his
throat as she sidestepped, her long black hair a storm around her glaring amber
eyes as she roared, wrapping her other arm around his middle, her razor-sharp
teeth at his neck, her arms crushing the life out of him --
A sword tapped her forearm, and a voice
spoke up, silencing everything. “Cheya, you can let him go.” With a reluctant
growl, she did. “Take your sisters and go get cleaned up.”
The panther girl, Cheya, leaned close to
him again, her breasts flattening against his back as her hard muscled thigh
slid over his for a moment, “I hope they leave you unrestricted, man-boy,” she
hissed in his ear.
He looked up the blade that now sat at
his collar-bone. It was his blade. It was Captain Vorran who held it,
and in her hand it looked more like a dagger now than ever. “You’re going to do
as you’re told, boy.” she informed him. “Or you’re going to die here. Slowly
and, I promise you, more horribly than you can imagine. If I decide I can’t
trust you with our Lady, perhaps I’ll let Cheya have you.” She took the blade
away, then tossed it idly aside, licking her lips. “Or maybe I’ll have you
myself.” she stepped close to him, then into him, her massive body towering
over his. Either of her huge thighs alone was wider than he was, solid as
stone, his face even with her navel. She glared down at him over the twin orbs
of her breasts, her red hair gleaming in the morning sunlight.
Without another word, she reached
around, seized him by the back of his head and turned, flinging him through the
air to land in a heap at Esmerelle’s feet. She Lady of the house smirked down
at him as he groaned and pulled himself back to a sitting position.
“You will submit to me, boy.” she
assured him as though it meant nothing to her either way. “The only question
is: how far must I break your body before I break your will?” She looked up at
Vorran. “I have... business... with one of the ‘nobles’ of the Echelon. I want
this boy nude and bound in my chambers when I return.”
“Yes, my Lady.”
“Captain?”
“Yes, my Lady?”
“The girls may look, but they may not
touch... yet.” Esmerelle fixed the trembling mercenary with a gold glare. “If
it’s too much aggravation to break him symbolically, you may all enjoy doing it
literally.”
He hung there for what seemed like an
eternity. The morning sun slipped up and across the arch of the late autumn
sky. The lustrous curtains, tapestries and statuary of the wide, deep
bedchamber had long ago lost any sense of brief fascination that had flared in
him. Women had come to gawk at him -- chamber-girls, guardswomen, Huntresses.
Ah, Huntresses. Had he only known. He
felt a pang of self-incrimination for not having read the dossier more carefully,
then realized how stupid that was. It would absolutely have been left out, this
little detail that the House of White hunted and tricked men into enslavement
as work thralls, domestic servants, sexual toys, and... and... he tried to
remember what the panther girl Cheya had used as she had stood looking up at
him, an evil smile on her delicate, beautiful face, eyes so lovely yet so full
of complete indifference for whether he lived or died flickering as she’d used
the phrase, “sparring meat.”
Now he hung here manacled to this St.
Andrew’s Cross alone in the vast bedchamber. In point of fact, the “bedchamber”
was an entire suite of rooms. In another, farther off, he could hear the
sobbing and pleading of men. He couldn’t tell at this range if they were human
or Awakened, but it didn’t really matter. The panther girl was back there. A
periodic tortured groan or scream told
him quite clearly that he didn’t want to know what she was doing to them.
She dragged one out past him, a hapless
blond-haired human who was only 5’7” to her 6’1”, his slim body probably at
least 50 pounds lighter than her tightly muscled one.
“What are you doing with him?!” Vam
demanded, not expecting an answer.
He was startled when she stopped and
leered up at him briefly, “Practicing.” she purred, cinching her arm
tighter around the already gagging man’s throat, and dragged him away. Vam
never saw him again.
When the bedchamber door next opened, it
was dark but for candlelight maintained by a trio of giggling chambermaids who pointed
at his toned body, his large cock, and whispered amongst each other as their
Mistress swept quietly into the room.
“Kennel, girls.” she commanded, and
turned to examine him as they filed past with more hushed giggles. She stepped
up to him. “I like what I see, boy.” She slipped her bodice slowly from her
shoulders, gradually exposing her perfect breasts, the pink areolae and nipples
contrasted against her ice white fur. “Do you?” She turned a slow, full circle
before him, and even under the layers of sheer silk that made her full skirt a
dazzling mixture of blues, he could see she had a round, shapely ass, sculpted
long legs...
“Yes.” he admitted.
She stepped closer, pressing her breasts
against him, her green eyes wide and searching for a moment. Then she smiled.
“Well, that’s a bonus for you, my pet. You see...” she trailed a long-nailed
finger down his cheek, along his jaw, “It doesn’t really matter what you like
anymore, because --”
She drew back her hand and punched him
in the gut so fast and so hard it felt as if he’d been struck by lightning. “--
you belong to me, and I’ll do as I please with you.” her finger was at his jaw
again, tracing down the side of his neck. “Whether you like it or not.”
As he gasped hard to regain his breath,
she leaned forward, raising both hands to bracket his cheeks and hold his face
still, her lips sealing over his in a kiss that denied him the breath he fought
for. Her eyes closed, though his were still wide with pain and shock.
“Mmmmm...”
She broke the kiss after a moment, still
looking intently into his eyes as her hand resumed its leisurely course down
his body. When it reached his nipple, her fingers closed over it with brutal
pressure, forcing a scream out of him. “Ahhhhhh...” she breathed, releasing
some of the pressure so that he could hear her. “You know, my pet, I think I’m
falling in love with the sound of your screams.”
He trembled in the inescapable manacles.
“Please...” he heard the word fall from his lips but could not believe that he
had uttered it.
“No.” she responded instantly, harshly,
tightening her fingers on his nipple again until he screamed. She held the
pressure until he was out of breath and her head was thrown back, eyes closed
in pure joy, her long, blonde hair swaying over her back. She lowered her head
to fix him with a deadly serious stare, “You are the one who is to
please. I’m going to teach you your oath now, boy.”
She took a key from a pouch on the belt
that held her skirt shut, releasing his right wrist from the manacle that had
held it for so long. The skin was reddened and bruised from hours of struggle
against the raw, rough metal. She likewise released his right ankle, then
slammed her left fist into his right side, just under his arm. He threw his
head back and howled voicelessly, his entire body quaking.
While he was thus occupied, she released
his left wrist and ankle, and he collapsed to the floor. She took his chin in
her hand and hauled him to his feet. “Repeat after me, my pet: ‘She is
Mistress, I am slave.’”
When he hesitated, she reached down and
wrapped her fingers around his cock and scrotum, and began to squeeze. He
looked down at her arm, saw the hard cables of muscle there, and repeated
hoarsely, “She is Mistress, I am slave!” Again he found himself awash in disbelief
that he had uttered the words, but he felt the rapidly mounting pressure relax
somewhat. A tear rolled down his cheek.
“She is to command, I am to obey.”
He had never obeyed anyone in his life
who wasn’t paying him. And it was... another step... his mind reeled. He saw
and sensed her right hand coming up fast, and then something exploded behind
his eyes, and again as the world fell out from under him, tilted and his head
cracked against the thickly carpeted floor.
His vision clearly only barely before
she sat straddling his chest. The skirt was gone. He could smell the fragrance
of her arousal even as he felt the heat and moisture of it on his chest. He
tried to lift his arms, to push her off of him, but they were trapped at his
sides under her thighs. He felt the hard adductors press in on his arms, saw
her hand rise again -- as it did, the bicep flexed into a rock hard peak.
“She is to command!” he gasped out. “I
am to obey!”
“You’re learning, my pet.” she cooed,
then slid down his body to straddle him again, her hot pussy pressed against
his stomach. He could feel her hard, muscled ass so near his cock, felt tension
there, felt himself begin to rise for her against his will.
She continued, “She is to be pleased,
and I am to please.”
“She is to be pleased,” he answered
instantly, “And I am --”
She lowered her breasts over his face,
cutting him off. Deliberately keeping him from finishing the statement. Toying
with him. He began to struggle as his lungs began to burn from the lack of
fresh air. She took his wrists in her hands, pinning them over his head and
luxuriating in the increasingly frantic struggles of her victim. But no... not
yet. She would force his release, take from him what belonged to her, but he would
be forced to feel, see, hear, smell and taste it all, and know that he
had no choice.
She released him and he finished the
statement, “And I am to please...” tears flowed freely down his face. It was
close, she could see it in his eyes, he was breaking for her, and so easily, so
deliciously.
“And why is this?” she asked, almost
hoping he wouldn’t understand that this question, and his answer were part of
his submission. She wrapped one hand around his throat.
“Because...” he choked out. “Because...”
he wasn’t quite grasping it yet. With a triumphant, cruel smile, she raised her
other hand and rocked his face to one side with a teeth-rattling slap. He cried
out, and it subsided only slightly into body-racking sobs. “Because...”
Another slap bounced his skull off the
thick carpet and his sobs only increased in volume. She raised her hand again,
the look in her eyes warning, dangerous. “Because she is Mistress and I am
slave!” he wailed, and she lowered her hand, nearly cumming then and there,
instead choking him hard with both hands, not releasing her grip until she had
finished climaxing.
She was actually rather astonished and
well pleased to discover that he had survived, as he twitched, coughed and
sputtered back to consciousness. Rising from him, satisfied but not remotely
satiated, she dragged his unresisting body to her wide, expansive bed. Lifting
him over her shoulder, she threw him to the middle of the mattress, then jumped
on after him.
Taking his wrists in her strong hands,
she pivoted his body so that his feet were in the middle of the bed, his head
projecting off the side of the mattress. Swinging one leg over, she pulled his
hair until his lips were buried in her mound, then grabbed each of his wrists
in one hand again, closing her thighs around his skull.
“Eat, my pet.” she commanded as his eyes
flew open in arousal and fear. She emphasized, “Eat.” with a tremendous
but mercifully brief burst of pressure that had him seeing stars. Nonetheless,
he extended his tongue, exploring her lips, then finding its way in, as she
moaned again, her hips beginning to rock forward and back in time with his
ministrations.
It took him a moment to find her clit,
so tight she was, but when he did he instantly regretted it, as the jolt of
adrenaline-fueled pleasure it brought her caused her to loose a gutteral scream
of bliss and crush down on his skull with nightmare force. His vision blacked
again as his tongue, devoid of contrary instructions from his suddenly blood
starved brain, simply continued on mechanically, in and out, in and out, over
and in, in and out, out and over, over and in, tasting the flavor of her,
indescribable other than mostly sweet, slightly tart, very hot, very wet...
detached from any higher thought processes, the motions of his tongue could
only repeat this pattern, frantically, and she came again, harder, her cream
filling his mouth, his nose, his sinuses, as her thighs crushed in harder and
harder still...
He awoke a short while later, mystified
as to how he had not been drowned or decapitated. He lay on his back on the
bed. His face was still mostly coated in her cream, and another wetness he
couldn’t identify, a cold wetness. He could feel her moving over him, could
feel something moving on his cheek, then his lips, his forehead, his chin,
could feel her hair brushing over these places.
Her hands still held his wrists -- he
tried to struggle free, but it only elicited another moan from her. “You’re mine.”
she reiterated, squeezing his wrists in her fingers until a long, steady cry of
agony escaped him as he felt the bones of his forearm creaking in her grip.
This only stoked her growing fire hotter still.
She rocked back to stare into his eyes,
her thighs clenching at his hips now as she teased the head of his cock with
her still dripping lips. “What are you, boy?” her voice was low and
threatening.
“I’m...” he looked back with shocked
eyes full of pain and terror and tears. “I’m a slave...”
She lowered herself onto him further,
the walls of her cunt pulling his cock into her slowly but inexorably. She
leaned forward again, her lips brushing his, her eyes still wide open as she
tightened her respective grips on his wrists and his cock until he could do
nothing -- absolutely nothing -- but whimper and pain and... and... “Whose
slave are you?”
And final, irreversible submission.
“I’m... your slave...”
She began to move slowly, to ride him,
to take him deeper and deeper inside. There was no escape. There would be no
escape. Ever. “...Mistress...” he felt something inside him finally,
irrevocably break at the utterance of that word. He spurred her onward,
however.
Her movements atop him became frenzied,
triumphant, brutal. She leaned forward again, wrapping her arms around the back
of his head and burying his moaning face in her tits, grinding his nose and
mouth into her chest as her awesome cleavage swallowed his face. Her hips
rocked up, slammed down, the walls of her cunt clenching his cock in a painful
embrace -- up, harder, slam! Down, crushing harder, up, slam!
He was the man, but it was undeniably she
who was fucking him. She leaned up again, finally, mercifully allowing
him air but forcing it out of him in a cry of despair and agony as her cunt
crushed in on his trapped and abused cock in one last, prolonged burst of
agonizing power as she came so hard her entire body seized and went rigid in a
paroxysm of raw, electric sensation.
At the gradual release of pressure, his
balls seemed to coil into hard knots of pain and pleasure, and he, finally,
released his seed into her -- but it was not the moment of bliss and triumph he
had experienced with so many women before. His beaten manhood seemed almost to
be surrendering to her, giving her hot, gripping cunt what it had been
demanding.
She lay atop him for a moment, one hand
holding his face immobile as she licked his lips, her tongue invaded his mouth.
He lay still; she plundered. After a moment, she rose, her voice breathless,
her eyes gleaming with the light of victory. “Girls will be in soon to collect
you and take you to be cleaned, my pet.” she informed him, and without another
word or backward glance, left the room.
He lay there, stunned, exhausted and
bruised. He lay there for a very long time, staring at the ceiling, trying to
make sense of this. The things he had said, the things she had done. He lay
there, alone, and felt body and mind alike ache with wounds of the flesh and of
the spirit. At least the bites, the deep scratches in his shoulders -- how had
he gotten those? -- would heal. But that spring somewhere within him... that
lynchpin that secured his knowledge of who and what he was, of his place in the
world... that was broken.
It might never be fixed.
He looked up. No one had come for him.
It had been an hour -- he thought perhaps, in his reverie, he might even have
dozed. No one had come.
Maybe no one was coming. Maybe the girls
had gotten distracted, or busy with something else, or...
Or maybe, a familiar voice spoke
within him, the voice of who he had been when he walked through those front
doors, you should seize the god damn moment and get the fuck out of
here!
He
didn’t think twice. Bending for a moment to examine a bundle of familiar
colored cloth, he found his trousers, his shirt and his boots -- the socks were
gone, but as he slipped the trousers on, he didn’t give that a moment’s
consideration.
Leaving the warmly lit bedchambers, he
found the rest of the fortified palace darkened. He had no idea how long she’d
been gone -- it might’ve been hours or only minutes. He had no time to lose.
His training kicked in once more, the old instincts as comforting to him as a
warm, dry blanket on a cold, wet night -- which this certainly appeared to be,
if the hushed roar against the thick lead window-panes was any indication. He
cursed the absence of his cloak from his retrieved clothing and vowed he’d find
something -- anything -- to cover himself with on his way to the front
doors.
Retracing the path to those in the
darkness wasn’t easy -- but he managed, and even found his own cloak on a peg
near them. Things were looking up! He hadn’t been spotted, nor spotted anyone
else. A twinge rose in the back of his mind, but he was not so stupid as to
refuse to take yes for an answer.
He turned the large latch of the door
through which he and the giantess had entered earlier. It turned easily and
quietly -- he pushed at the door.
And pushed.
Pushed harder.
“Shit!” he swore under his
breath. It wasn’t locked -- he could feel it swing a few centimeters when he
shoved at it with all his strength, bracing his legs, leaning forward and
shoving with his shoulder for all he was worth. It was unlocked...
The problem was, it was plainly and
simply too damn heavy for him to move it. The thing must have weighed
between three and four hundred pounds, and he just didn’t have the muscle or
leverage to force it open, much less ease it open as if it weighed no more than
a feather, as the amazonian guard had.
Find another way out. his mind
observed after a moment, and he left the great main doors unhappily. Moving off
into a dark side passage, he could only hope that there was a smaller side door
-- for the chambermaids, perhaps. Christ, not every woman here could be
a super-strong Amazon, right? He found a door, let his fingers trace the seam
between it and the wall -- he couldn’t feel any air at all there, much less
cold air. He moved on.
A second door held some promise. Putting
his ear to it, he heard water. It had been raining against the windows, this
sounded right. He eased the door open --
-- and looked into angry but amused jade
eyes. The light of candles barely lit the room behind the door, where a broad,
deep tub seemed to ripple and shake across its top surface. A perfectly
coordinated drain within and unseen to him was matched to the pressure of a
fountain which issued a textured spray of water droplets. The droplets
dispersed across the surface of the water within the tub, creating the sight,
sound and sensation of rain.
“Aw... fuck.” he noted blandly. Plan
B! his mind supplied.
He stepped boldly into the room -- even
if the amazon bitch spotted him, no matter how many spotted him, they’d have to
let him go if he had their Lady hostage. He’d hate to have to break the woman’s
neck, but his training was dominant over his body now; if forced to, he
wouldn’t hesitate.
He took a brief instant to survey her
body. She stepped forward menacingly, and she shrank back a step, but the smile
on her face seemed almost playful. The towel draped around her didn’t cover
nearly what it might have before a stranger. He could see hard muscle beneath
the soaked fur, shoulders and biceps well defined, her abdominal muscles
highlighted by candlelight formed a small but hard six pack, an indent
following the curve of her hip. Her glutes were round and hard as she closed
the distance between them, the flex and flow of hard, defined muscle in each
thigh boldly pronounced.
He watched her come, half in wary
suspicion and half in simple awe at the beauty and power displayed before him.
He briefly considered abducting her, taking her with him, at least for a night.
He thought that maybe, just maybe he’d show this woman her place.
Her hand shot out in a blur of speed,
catching him by the throat. The towel she had wrapped around herself fell away,
exposing her body to him again, gloriously nude and still wet. In the
candlelight, her fine fur matted to her body, his eyes discerned the true shape
of the physique beneath the fur.
She was soft, but only where a woman
absolutely must be to be beautiful. The soft, round swell of her breast
contrasted against the hard, superbly defined plain of her bicep, a plain that
contracted to a hard, round ball as she hauled his face to within an inch of
hers, the solid, ridged muscles in her forearm standing out as her fingers
closed off his air flow.
“Do you know what I like about big,
strong slave boys?” she asked in a soft, sultry voice.
He couldn’t answer -- couldn’t even
gesture with his head or shrug his shoulders. The pain and panic were beyond
reflex actions -- this was worse. His body was seized with paralysis. In a
detached, curious thought, the only hope he held was that he wouldn’t wet
himself. Somehow, the realization that she could and very well might crush his
larynx did not occur to him; the potential embarrassment of soiling his pants
did.
“I like to break them.” she told him
matter-of-factly, and her other hand moved too fast for the eye to see,
crashing into his stomach with the force of a battle mace. He nearly blacked
out on his feet, but she held him up by the throat, continuing to throttle him.
His vision tunneled, his limbs losing sensation while his head felt like it
might at any moment pop like an overfed tick.
His stomach burned. For an
instant, he believed he could not experience a pain more searing, more
mind-blottingly, horrifically extreme, than that.
Until she hit him again. She released
her grip on his throat a fraction of a second before her fist impacted again,
in the same precise location, and he screamed an animal scream cut short by a
wave of bile that rushed up his throat and into his mouth. His hands barely
sealed over his mouth in time to stop it from flooding out onto the floor which
he now found caressing the left side of his body. Vertigo and nausea were all
he knew until her feet appeared in his dimmed, tear-blurred vision.
“I like to test my slaves.” her voice
was as light and airy as if she were thinking of going to the market for a new
dress. She reached down, seized a fistful of his hair and yanked him upright
again. He felt a jolt of burning as some of his hairs were yanked out by the
root in her savage motion.
Oh, no, oh no oh no
Her fingers released his bleeding scalp
as her other fist rocked his head back in a violent whiplash, the punch lifting
him clear of the floor and throwing him into the wall behind him. “I like to
test their obedience.” She hauled him, half-conscious, to his feet once again.
“And if they fail that --”
The backhanded punch impacted his jaw --
he felt something crunch a split-second before he bounced off the wall
and was slammed hard across the face by the floor again. “--I like to test
their ability to survive.” His mouth was an electric rage of pain. He felt
something roll across his tongue, and watched half of one of his molars fall
from his lips to bounce once in a forming pool of his own blood.
And that was when fear turned to anger.
He rose to his feet, bracing against the wall and then shoving himself away
from it to launch himself at her. He threw a short, sharp jab with his left
that caught her in the stomach -- something flashed through his mind that it
had felt wrong -- but his right hand dove in and nailed her cheek, staggering
her backward toward the tub.
He left no window of opportunity, his
fists continuing to fly, hammering at her, driving her slowly back further and
further still toward the tub. Then he realized something with a sinking,
detached feeling.
She was laughing at him.
Her slender, delicate foot rose up hard
to smash into his balls, lifting him off his feet with a breathless scream --
he would have fallen were it not for her strong hands catching him under his
arms. Her foot rose again with the speed and power of a locomotive, lifting him
clear of the floor again. And again. After another horrifying kick to his
balls, he hung limp and moaning in her grip.
He had never seen such a delicate
looking creature -- one so dainty and feminine, so pretty. Never in his wildest
imaginings could he conceived of such a beauty doing to any man what this
girl-Queen was doing to him now.
She dropped him unceremoniously back to
the floor, planting a foot squarely in the center of his chest and applying
pressure to pin him there, squirming and moaning in agony. Raising both arms,
she flexed them hard. The cords of steel cable muscle in her forearms jumped to
life, her perfectly-formed biceps rising to small, hard peaks as her abs moved
in the rhythm of her deep, quick breaths. She stared down at him with a smug,
almost contemptuous smirk.
“The nice thing about obedient
slaves,” she noted as she hauled him to his knees to stand before him with her
legs spread, “is that they’ll clean all this and be grateful. Because it
wasn’t any of them.” She scooted forward, bracing his face between her thighs
once more. She leaned over, crossing her ankles as she picked up the piece of
shattered tooth. She held it up for him to focus nearly lifeless eyes on.
“Shall I see how many of these I can crush out of those jaws of yours, my pet?”
A look of boredom crossed her face.
“I’ve already taken from you what I take from most of my toys. I wanted more,
and you were so expensive to acquire, but...” she shrugged. “I’ve never crushed
a man’s skull before. But I believe I could...” her thighs tightened, the
hamstrings bulging as she flexed them, compressing his jaw. She rolled her
thighs forward on his skull; as they flexed around his head, they seemed to
expand slightly, until his cheekbones and even temples were subjected to the
hot pressure of her steel limbs.
“Please!” he begged, “Please don’t!”
“But I want to,” she pouted in feigned
innocence, as if she were merely a little girl who wanted to play with a doll.
“I want to hear your bones crunch and see your brains spill out of your
flattened skull, silly human boy.”
“Oh, god!” he sobbed, pleading for his
life. “Please, please no!”
Her thighs tightened further still, and
he could hear his own pulse pounding in his ears. And then he heard something
else -- a sort of creaking, grinding sound... his arms lay limp and
useless at his sides. He couldn’t muster the strength to raise them, knew it
would be futile even if he could... his sobbing intensified, punctuated with
the screams of a dying animal whenever her thighs’ pressure on his skull
increased another notch. “It’s not what I wanted at first, but you don’t want
to be good...”
“Oh, god, please, ANYTHING, PLEASE!”
he screamed. “I’ll be good, i promise! I PROMISE! MISTRESS, PLEASE!”
She released her grip on him, holding
only tight enough now to keep him suspended there, his upturned face streaked
with blood and tears, his eyes painted dark red by blood vessels that had burst
within them, his mouth compressed into a grotesque rictus of agony and terror.
Blood seeped from his wrecked insides to stain the crotch of his trousers -- he
had indeed wet himself.
“It took a great deal of money and
influence to get you here.” she looked down at him with stern superiority. “But
I have thrown away more expensive toys than you before. Someone will be in to
clean you up and take you to the House Physician soon.” She released her grip
on him entirely and he fell defenseless to the floor of the baths.
She paused in the doorway, regarding him
coldly -- as one might look on a badly behaved horse or an ill-fitted garment.
“I’ll only discipline you that way once, my pet. Next time, you won’t leave my
grasp alive...” with that warning, she was gone.
He lay sobbing and broken on the floor.
He understood now. He was never going home. He would never be free. He was
nothing but a plaything to her, to be used, enjoyed, almost certainly one day
simply disposed of like a used apple core.
He was her property. She was Mistress, he was slave.