Date: 2011-06-24 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Adult; Fantasy; Erotica; Romance; Paranormal; Science Fiction
Description: Belle Walker lives in a strict society where women are treated as property, sold to the highest bidder soon after their eighteenth birthday. But the auction isn’t the only danger. Though she’s never seen them, she knows monsters live outside the city. These creatures have allowed the humans a small area to inhabit with the promise to leave them in peace as long as they never cross the boundary. On the day Belle is sold, one of the monsters breaks that promise and enters the city, intent on having her as his own. This book is intended for an adult audience and contains master/slave, multiple pa
Publisher: Burlesque Press

The Auction

Kitty Thomas

Kindle Edition

Copyright © 2011 Kitty Thomas
all rights reserved.

Kindle Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Publisher's Note:

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Contact burlesquepress@gmail.com

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the following people in no particular order:

Robin for cover art.

Natasha for copyedits and developmental edits.

Jackie, Cari, Annabel, Claudia, Jamie, Michelle, and Cara for beta reading.

Tiffany for reading and blurbing.

M for believing in me.

Also, if I’ve left anyone out, please let me know. I lost my list for this, so if I’ve left you out, email me and I’ll add you to the list.

Disclaimer

This is a work of fiction, and the author does not endorse or condone any behavior done to another human being without their consent.

Warning: This book contains sexual situations of dubious consent, master/slave, multiple partners, girl on girl, alien sex, and oral play.

I never worried too much about the auction. It was what happened to other girls. The ones who didn’t have someone with pockets deep enough to set them free.

The city officials didn’t care what happened afterward. You could keep the woman you bought, or give her away or sell her or set her free. As long as enough wealth had been redistributed back into the city’s coffers, that was all they cared about.

I wasn’t particularly rich, but I was wise enough to make friends with those who were. My parents had died out there, that place that was outside the city and forbidden. Supposedly they were killed by the monsters.

By the time I was sixteen I was giving Stephen Thurman—among others—blow jobs behind the learning center. He was part of the richest family in the city and three years my senior. I’d hedged my bets with others but focused most of my attention on him. He was the only one who had his own money and wouldn’t be dependent on a loan from his father. He’d promised to buy me and then let me go.

I’d made it my primary occupation since the death of my parents to be as surly and disagreeable as possible. I think in the back of my mind I believed this would make me an undesirable on the auction block. Stephen could buy me quickly for little money, and then it would be over. Life would return to normal.

Thinking back, it’s amazing the lengths I was willing to go to to orchestrate my freedom and avoid enslavement. But really I’d been a slave even before the auction. The thing I had most tried to prevent, I’d lived it for two years to stay in Stephen’s good graces.

The day I was sold was a bright, warm day. I stood with ten other girls who’d just turned eighteen. We were fair, thin—but not too thin, with long hair in curled ringlets. We wore a ring of local purple flowers in our hair and white gowns like ancient virgins about to be tossed into a volcano.

A deep and ominous drum sounded in the distance as we were marched around the side of the hill to the platform at the very edge of the city. The local officials called us a batch, as if we were sweet cakes or a grouping of widgets. Sweet young women all in a row. Wind them up and set them to do your bidding.

As the procession continued, we moved in a somber line; no one tried to run. I wondered if the temptation screamed in their minds as it did mine. The officials didn’t chain us because there was no point. There was only one civilized place on the whole planet, and we were living in it. Outside the city, you were as good as dead. The monsters lived out there. So if the city said: “Slavery, yes, we like it!”, you nodded and smiled and then lowered your head like a good girl.

When our people left the source planet over a century ago, they brought with them our past in hundreds of dusty rectangular chunks called books. I was told these books were history but they felt like fiction.

Even so, I read as much as I could about everything from our past before the relocation: plants, animals, technology, culture. Much of the technology they spoke of, we’d somehow lost. Perhaps we didn’t have enough people whose minds were turned toward invention on our ship. There had been a time deep in our history when we’d used computerized books, but now we were relegated to scrolls.

The auction was ridiculous and demeaning, but it wasn’t far removed from photographs I’d seen of what were called debutante balls on Earth. At those functions, the women had been in white gowns, with an escort on their arm. They’d been on display and presented to society, and no one had thought it odd or offensive.

The first girl was led up to the center block and spun in a slow circle. Her name was Lizbeth, the richest and snottiest girl in the city. I secretly hoped she’d end up enslaved to some strangely rich ruffian, living in a cave out in the wild somewhere—not that our people lived that far from the protection of the city. Of course that wouldn’t happen. Her boyfriend had been loaned money, and he would be buying her today.

He’d tease her for the next twenty or thirty years about how he owned her. But he wouldn’t really, not if her father had anything to say about it. In her case, it was merely ceremonial.

The whole affair is surprisingly civilized. We aren’t beaten, or thrown down naked, or prodded like cattle. There is hardly an air of sexuality to the proceedings at all, as if it escapes these people’s minds that if you really own someone’s body, you’ll probably use it for more than just keeping house. But no one talks about that because it’s not polite and clean and civil. And we all want to be polite and clean and civil. It’s necessary to survive here.

When someone is bought by a stranger and becomes a true slave, everyone looks the other way and talks about the punch and pie they’ll be consuming after the ceremony with those who were only fake bought. We know to close our eyes as the girl is led away to whatever part of the city he lives in, and we will pretend she never existed in the first place. At least publicly. Should one of us later pass her on the street, we’ll avert our eyes.

I looked back to the center block upon which Lizbeth stood. Fast phrases tumbled from the auctioneer’s mouth as he drove the price higher and higher. I could almost see his eyes lighting with greed over what the city could buy when the next transport ship landed. The city officials had had their eyes on computerized books forever.

Lizbeth’s father was becoming irritated by how much money he was losing as others kept driving the price up. Finally, all bidders but the boyfriend dropped off, and that was that. On the source planet they used to have these ceremonies called weddings. Just like the debutante balls, they would wear white gowns. In older times there was something called a dowry for weddings. Money always exchanging hands for women. And yet nobody ever questioned it or thought it odd.

So I guessed Lizbeth was married now. Because I knew she wasn’t enslaved. Just looking at her radiant face staring down from the platform with a kind of imperial majesty, I knew which one of them was the real boot licker. And from the little jeers in the crowd and friends elbowing the boyfriend in the ribs, everybody else knew it, too.

That was when my name was called: “Annabelle Walker.”

I grimaced at the recitation of my full name. Really? They had to go there. Call me Anna or call me Belle, but never tread the dark and unholy path of blending them together. I stepped out from the line and went to stand on the center block.

The man running the auction smiled at me. Smiled.

Was I the only sane person here who found this all disturbing and wrong? Perhaps what was disturbing and wrong were the secret fantasies I’d entertained of being bought. Not by Stephen, but by someone else. Someone I didn’t know. He would stare at me and I would look back at him, and in that gaze, his purpose for me would be obscenely revealed as the wetness dripped down my thighs.

Looking out at the sea of people overwhelmed me, and I felt light-headed for a moment. The auctioneer grabbed my elbow to steady me. There were no women among the bidders. Auctions weren’t an appropriate place for women, except for that one time in your life when they were.

I let out a breath when I saw Stephen positioned toward the front. The shrewd look in his eyes and the smirk that played about his lips caused me to suck that breath back in. That was the moment I knew he had every intention of paying for me, but none of letting me go. I looked away from his face, my eyes traveling down to his riding boots, gleaming in the sun.

I’m sure I looked submissive and demure with my eyes cast down like that, but nobody was fooled. I’d made too big of a show of being a complete undesirable. Then the bidding started, or it was supposed to start. There was a long stretch of silence, and I looked up suddenly at Stephen, begging him with imploring eyes to say something, even though I didn’t really wish to belong to him.

I had no idea what happened if nobody bought a girl. Was she just free to go? That couldn’t be it, because if it was then people would just not bid altogether. No, if I wasn’t bought then something awful would happen.

Finally, Stephen raised his hand, accepting the opening bid, and I let out a breath.

“That’s lucky for you,” the auctioneer whispered. “If no bidder came forward, you’d belong to the city. And believe me, you don’t want that.”

“Do I hear any more?” He directed the question to the men standing below. A few chuckled. And one shouted out, “Nah . . . that one has too much attitude for me. Nice piece of ass, though. Maybe Stephen will let us watch.”

My face flamed as a couple of snickers erupted from the row of girls standing behind me, including the one who didn’t have someone who could afford to buy her. Even she felt as if she were in a position to mock and giggle.

As the auctioneer was about to slam the gavel down, a voice rose from the back, doubling the price. I couldn’t get a good look at the man because he was shrouded in a dark cloak. His voice sounded like boots crunching on gravel: hard-edged, dangerous, accented. Accented from where? Was he from another planet? From a transport ship? One wasn’t due here for another year.

Visions of being taken from my home planet and belonging to some ship’s captain caused a shiver to run through me. I couldn’t ascertain if the shiver was excitement or fear. Maybe a bit of both. Though I didn’t really want to go with the stranger. Of course not.

With every second that crept by, my agitation grew. Stephen looked to be in a state of indecision. Please don’t abandon me to him. Please. Who was this stranger, and why did he want me? I wasn’t unattractive, but I also wasn’t the prettiest, at least not in my opinion. I also had a reputation for being difficult, little better than a criminal. Probably the only reason the city hadn’t classed me as such was a vain attempt to get some coin out of me first.

Stephen raised the bid, but not by much. Immediately the man at the back countered. People started whispering, murmurs with question marks on the end. I couldn’t hear the questions, but I could make a few guesses.

The stranger seemed as if he could bid all day. He hadn’t hesitated for a moment when Stephen had raised the bid.

Despite all odds, Stephen countered, but the price was upped by the other man. Stephen shook his head at me. All I could think was: I suffered through all those blow jobs for nothing. And then following directly on the end of that thought was: At least I won’t have to do it again. Not with him.

“Sold!” The auctioneer seemed practically giddy. No one had expected me to go for so much.

The crowd parted for the stranger as if he were royalty. As he got closer, his size became more apparent. He wasn’t one of us. Not human. He was one of the monsters, those who were here before we colonized, who had let us live for the amusement value we brought them more than anything else. My pulse thundered in my head, the urge to run seeping into the muscles of my legs. Escape scenarios tumbled through my brain.

The monsters never came to these things. Though we were only able to fortify the city with small, weak fences that could never keep out a monster who could fly, they had promised to stay away as long as we never ventured forth from the one small area they’d granted us use of. Up until today, they’d kept that promise.

He stopped at the front of the crowd and tossed a leather bag with gold coins on the block at my feet.

“Count it if you like,” he said. His accent was thick, his mouth not used to forming words like ours, probably because of the sharp and pointy teeth these creatures were said to have. Another shiver went through me, and the tension in my body spiked higher.

Since the attention was now on him, and his identity—at least his species—had been identified, he tossed the cloak to the ground, his need for subterfuge over. A collective gasp went up from the crowd. I felt myself go unsteady again and reached for the auctioneer’s arm.

The monster stood at about seven feet with dark red skin, the color of dragons. His face and body, for the most part, were like a man. Arms, legs, feet, hands . . . claws. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, so I could see his musculature looked the same as most males I’d encountered. Though he was perhaps more defined than they were. I was afraid to know what was hidden by his pants. My imagination ran wild with gruesome speculation. Maybe some kind of barbed cock like a lion?

All things considered, he wasn’t ugly. He wasn’t what I was used to, but his appearance was strangely and dangerously compelling. When he looked up at me, his eyes glowed an eerie orange like the fire I was beginning to believe he breathed. He smiled a secret smile. His teeth were sharp enough to end me with a single snap of his jaw.

Despite all my fear, wetness dripped between my thighs. The fantasy of the stranger, though playing out differently, was coming to life. And something in my brain responded sexually to him, whether I wanted it to or not.

The spell was broken when the auctioneer spoke. “Why? What interest could you possibly have in a . . .”

“The females of my kind are dying off. We have . . . needs. Be glad I paid you. I could have just taken someone. I’m showing you respect by paying. If I’m pleased with my purchase, I may send more of my kind here for future auctions.”

No one was giggling anymore. I could practically feel the women at my back, standing stiff as statues, in hopes that this creature wouldn’t turn his interest toward them.

Every man in the crowd was probably thinking about me bent over a stool somewhere while this beast had his way with me. I wasn’t sure if the idea repulsed them or turned them on. I wasn’t sure if it repulsed me, but though it scared me, I knew it turned me on.

They wouldn’t fight for my virtue because it wasn’t worth a war. We’d all coexisted peacefully until now. More or less. And I had proven to be nothing but trouble.

If it had been Lizbeth, they would have charged him with sticks and flaming torches. After all, he didn’t have an army with him. He was alone. They simply found me not worth the effort to fight for. Well, fuck them.

A moment later there was a rippling along his spine. I could only see the edges of this change as it moved into his shoulders. Then he had wings, like a dragon.

He moved to the edge of the platform, his hand outstretched, palm up, as if he were trying to appear nonthreatening. “Annabelle.”

He spoke my full name, tasting it in his mouth. From him, it sounded like both a blessing and a curse, a sunny afternoon and a devastating windstorm at once.

If it had been one of the other girls, she would have put her quivering little hand into his, her eyes going all watery, her flushed breasts heaving underneath the simple white gown. He would have scooped her up in his arms and flown away. The city would have talked about it for years, embellishing the tale more each time it was told. To some, it would have been a horror story, to others, an unlikely romance, and to still others, a story for a quick wank before bed.

But it wasn’t one of those other girls. It was me.

My little rebellions had become so much a part of me that I couldn’t give in. I quickly scanned the area around me. The path of least resistance was through the line of girls still waiting to be sold. How would I survive outside the city?

Run now. Think later.

I ran straight for the girls as if they were bowling pins and I were the ball. But the platform wasn’t a smooth lane and I wasn’t a ball. It was a many-splintered wooden thing that seemed about ready to collapse. In fact, I was sure if too many people got on it, that it would, which was why I was running the full length of it, hoping enough of the men would follow me like some dumb, horny herd and bring it crashing down.

The girls scattered, and I jumped off the back of the platform. The shock of the hard ground shot up through my legs. Then I ran. There was no crash, because no one was following—only the monster.

I ran across the field, scrambled over the fence, and left the city’s official boundaries. I was out there, the place where no one was supposed to go or explore. Off in the distance, maybe a mile away, was a rocky mountainside. If I could get to that, I would be able to hide in nooks and crannies too small for the massive beast.

Even if I managed that, however, there was still the matter of food, and staying warm, and general survival and loneliness and . . .

My mind shut off the constant whirring of everything below the current issue of running. The situation suddenly felt even more ominous; the sun was no longer on me. At first I thought a cloud had covered it, but it wasn’t a cloud. The creature was flying over me, his massive wingspan causing a dark shadow to fall. No matter how fast I moved, I couldn’t get out of his shadow.

Then there was a roar, and I was on the ground. I clawed at the dirt, trying to get away from him as his hands gripped my waist, holding on hard. His wings were still out, making him appear even larger and more terrifying. His breath came hard, and somehow I knew it wasn’t from fatigue, but excitement from the hunt.

I stopped struggling because it was pointless. If he didn’t kill me, I would find a way out. No way was I going to live with this monster, assuming, of course, that I lived.

Then he broke the silence between us. “I knew I picked the right one.”

Those words started a faint tremble that moved along my arms and into the rest of my body. What did that mean?

“I can’t go with you,” I said. My voice managed to sound less hysterical than I’d expected.

“You’re already with me. We already left.”

Semantics.

He was warm, warmer than people. I didn’t know what his species’ core body temperature was, but getting cold wasn’t going to be an issue with him. I squeezed my eyes shut to block out the images that suddenly assailed me. It was wrong on so many levels—I couldn’t count that high.

He removed one of his hands from around my waist. Without thinking, my fingers moved to trace over the fleshy part of my hip, to feel the indentations left by his claws. It had been a hard enough grip to leave a mark, but not hard enough to break skin.

“How do you speak my language so well?” I asked.

He made a sound that may have been a chuckle but sounded like a growl. “Your people have been here a century. We’ve allowed your civilization and even aided its formation and growth. You think we can’t pick up on your rather crude speech patterns? You are our experiment and our entertainment. We are your gods. Of course we can speak your language.”

I was offended that he thought he was smarter than me or better than me. Than us. These creatures lived in caves. Of course we were smarter and better than them. It wasn’t even a question.

“What do you intend to do with me?”

In answer, he allowed his claw to trace lightly around one of my breasts, then he rolled me to my back, keeping me there with one hand, while the other traced downward, stopping just above my pubic bone. A whoosh of air escaped my lips in a sigh that should have been a scream.

“I think you know the answer. And don’t bother telling me how disgusted you are. My kind has a better sense of smell than yours. I could scent your need on the air when our eyes met.”

That didn’t mean I actually wanted to be naked with him or do any of the myriad things we would do once I was. I tried again not to think about what might be in his pants.

His gaze traveled the length of my body. “You’re filthy.”

“You really know how to turn a girl on,” I quipped. Being a smartass for two more minutes was easier than admitting defeat. And if I gave in to the screeching fear howling in my head, I wouldn’t have the mental cognition to form a new plan to escape him.

The growl happened again. “You shouldn’t roll in the dirt so much. We’re going to stand, and you aren’t going to fight me or run again. Do you understand?”

My eyes met his. “I will fight you, and I will run. And unless you kill me, some day I will escape. Count on it.”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure whether I find you stupid or endearing.”

I didn’t bother resisting when he picked me up because I didn’t have the energy left, and the field was too open. I needed to wait until there were places to hide where he couldn’t reach me. A moment later, we were airborne. A few minutes after that, we were at an opening in the side of the mountain that I’d been running toward. The irony that I’d been running headlong at his dwelling almost made me laugh.

The inside of his dwelling felt like a place someone could live in comfort. It was more technologically advanced than I’d expected, and it made me wonder how such creatures could manipulate technology with those claws. As if in answer to my question, his claws retracted, which admittedly made his fingers look a little odd. I tried not to stare. Those large, strange hands were going to be on me, and weird-looking or not, I’d rather they be on me without the claws engaged. His wings also went back to their resting place. When he turned, I almost couldn’t tell he had wings.

With the wings and claws put away, I could pretend he was just a larger-than-average man. No monsters. No dragons. Just a trick of the light.

Another creature stepped out from a different part of the cave. Whereas the one who had bought me had dark red, almost brown, skin and a black mane of hair, this one had blond hair with skin of greenish blue. His eyes were red instead of orange.

He leaned casually against the carved-out doorway. “Why didn’t you buy two?”

Having another woman with me would be comforting, and I felt both guilty and excited over the prospect.

“This was the only one who appeared to have enough fight in her to remain interesting. And she ran, which complicated things.” The other one’s eyes twinkled at that. “I’ll visit the next auction in three months if you like.”

“No, I’ll go. I don’t need you to pick my mate for me.” He pushed off the wall and moved toward me. I tried to back away, but the red one blocked my retreat.

I must have been in some kind of shock, because it had just occurred to me that they were speaking my language. They had their own, and yet they’d been speaking so I could understand them. A moment later, they were clicking and hissing and gesturing in their language. It was so alien from anything I’d ever heard or seen that I knew even if they made the attempt to teach me, I’d never learn it. Maybe they were smarter. The machines and buttons and strange technology seemed to indicate as much.

The greenish-blue dragon took my arm and led me toward the door he’d entered through. I turned to the red one, but he’d already left. I could hear his wings in the wind.

I tried to pull away, suddenly feeling on display. “What’s going on?” There was panic in my voice. It wasn’t as if I felt safe with the other dragon, but I’d had a few more minutes to get used to him.

“He’s loaning you to me while he gets food.”

He pushed me through a narrow area that opened out into a den-like, circular room. It was a bedroom—his bedroom. The bed was a large, round, elevated platform upon which a soft, thick cushion of the same size rested. Several blankets were rolled up and tied with cords on the floor.

I felt my stomach drop. If the other one was out getting food and I was being loaned for that period of time, I was about to have all my questions about dragon genitalia answered. But not without a fight. My energy and determination returned now that I had a new and different adversary. When he turned away, I ran from the bedroom, through the narrow hall, and back into the main living area. There was another doorway that I guessed led to the other guy’s bedroom. I ignored it in favor of the main entrance.

The mouth of the cave stood open with no door. I stepped out and went into a free fall, the wind zipping past and burning my face as I plummeted to what was almost certain to be my own death. A moment later an arm hooked around me and we flew back to the dragon lair.

When we were safely inside, he said, “Now you see why I’m not concerned with you running. Go ahead, run. Fling yourself off the edge of the cliff if you like. He’ll just go buy another one. Either come with me back to my quarters, or stay out here and await punishment.”

He disappeared down the hallway, and I made a face in his direction. I didn’t like the sound of punishment, but I wasn’t going to voluntarily go in there with him, either. I knew what he intended to do with me, and though neither of them were grotesque––in a strange way, they were hot––I couldn’t bring myself to obey even though I knew it would be the smart thing.

I should be in there seducing him, taking the one type of power I still possessed instead of resisting and having to play the game at a disadvantage. But I couldn’t bring myself to. Blow jobs with normal human men behind the learning center had been one thing. This was so far outside my experience that I felt like a virgin again.

Why couldn’t he drag me, kicking and screaming, chasing me down and tackling me like the red one had?

Instead of following him, I crawled back over to the entrance and looked down. It was high, but there were landings along the way. But how to get down in one piece? And then where? These creatures—or at least their kind—had killed my parents and others who had strayed outside the protected boundaries of the city. I had no illusions they wouldn’t do the same to me when they got bored. I was probably a food group to them.

“He is not as patient as I am. Better to take your chances with me.”

I turned from my position scoping out exit strategies to find the blue one standing a few feet away. I swallowed convulsively. He’d removed his pants, and now he stood naked. In a lot of ways, he was like people. In other ways, very different. He was broader, had more developed muscles, and was a color that didn’t occur in my kind, but he wasn’t horrific. I ignored the tightening of my stomach. There was no way I was going to allow myself to be physically attracted to someone who was such an unnatural color. Or that had wings. And claws. Not to mention the teeth he was letting show for my benefit. I conveniently ignored the fact that I’d had a similar reaction to the red one while on the auction block.

Finally, I allowed my eyes to go where I hadn’t let them travel yet. It was no stranger than any of the many cocks I’d had before. There were no barbs. Thank God. But size was an issue. Some of the guys I’d grown up around had crassly referred to their member as their pole. Such a description was laughable and a testament to how over-inflated their egos were. But the dragon, yes, he could get away with such a descriptor, and no woman would giggle at him. More likely she’d run screaming.

My gaze traveled back to his face to see the sharp teeth fully displayed in a smile. I wasn’t sure if the smile was menace or garden-variety male pride, but I wished like hell I’d better blended with the other girls at the auction and avoided this fate altogether.

He extended a hand. “Come.”

I shook my head. “I can’t.”

His eyes held mine captive. “I need to be inside you,” he said softly.

The space between my legs throbbed to life. Certain phrases tripped my switch, and that phrase was one of them, even from an alien being, apparently. The idea of him needing to be inside me. As if I were some kind of sustenance for him.

I backed away, careful of the cave entrance. If I fell again, I wasn’t sure he’d waste the energy to come swooping to my rescue. I found myself pressed against the wall in the kitchen. He didn’t move closer. The idea of punishment had already left my mind.

Until the red one came back.

He entered the cave and put a sack of food on the table. I didn’t know if he’d stolen it from our people or if they had an entire civilization that saw to food preparation as well. I’d expected him to fly in and throw a carcass in the middle of the floor. He looked between me and the blue one. And then the hisses and clicks and gesturing started again. It got heated as growls were thrown into the mix.

Finally the red one turned his gaze on me. He growled and moved forward, gripping my wrist hard and leading me down the unexplored hallway toward his den. The anger radiating off him was so terrifying I wanted nothing more than to be back with the blue one again.

When we reached the room, he flung me to the ground and advanced. “Why didn’t you go with my brother?” His voice came out a snarl.

What was I supposed to say to that? I just looked at the ground

“Answer me!”

His shout pissed me off and suddenly the intensity of my anger matched his own. “What do you mean why didn’t I go with him? Why didn’t I just go and rip off my clothes and throw myself at the strange alien guy with wings and a cock too big for me? Because I’m not crazy?”

“It’s not too big for you. I know you can take it.”

I put my hands over my ears and squeezed my eyes shut because something in his voice was turning me on, and I knew that wasn’t the appropriate response. These were monsters that were going to kill me.

He moved toward me and I scrambled away. “Stay away from me. You killed my parents.”

He raised a brow. “I’ve killed no one.”

“Then another of your kind did.”

“And what would my kind want with your kind, other than the reason you’ve been brought here?”

“Food?” My voice was small and unsure when I said it because it seemed they weren’t hurting for food, and I really didn’t know his culture well enough to judge. Being offensive and racist wouldn’t win me any mercy.

He laughed that terrible laugh. “I don’t think so. Your kind would be far too gamey for our taste. If your parents were killed in the wild by a creature, it was probably the mambose. They fly, but they’re smaller than us. They hunt in packs and have no intelligence to speak of. They’re common animals, little better than your kind. But they only attack when people are alone. They won’t go into cities.”

I opened and shut my mouth several times like a fish. I desperately wanted to verbally spar, but he was sitting in a chair now, his claws out and clicking in an impatient manner on the table beside him. It was the eeriest sound I’d ever heard, even more than the clicks they used as part of their language.

“Undress.”

I stood frozen, unable to look away from the open doorway. There wasn’t a single door that closed inside their dwelling, so the urge to flee, no matter how stupid, was strong.

“Go ahead. See how much worse it gets for you.” He stood then, as if prepared to run me down if necessary.

“Please . . .” I said, the tears streaming down my face.

He just stared at me, like I was a curiosity. Like he’d never seen tears before. Maybe his kind didn’t have tear ducts. When you really thought about it, crying was a rather bizarre thing for any creature to be capable of. What purpose did it serve other than revealing too much?

He moved a few steps closer to me, until he was right inside my personal space. His claws receded with a little snick that made me jump. But his eyes hadn’t moved from my face where the tears were sliding down. The pad of his thumb swiped the moisture off my cheek. He looked at it a moment, curious, then licked his thumb.

“Salty. What do you call this?”

“Tears.”

“Tears,” he repeated as if it was a word that hadn’t made it into his language lessons.

“I thought you said you knew about my kind. You know the language. How can you not know about crying?”

“We lurked near men, mostly. Men don’t do this. Is it a response only women can do?”

“Men can do it. They just usually don’t.”

He seemed to consider that for a moment. “What makes it happen?”

“Fear. Sadness. Some people cry when they’re angry.” The strangeness of the situation had caused my crying to stop. I felt like an experiment, like he might start making notes, which would be better than any of the alternatives.

“Why did you stop? I want to see more of these tears. I like them.”

I didn’t know what to think or say to that. Everything just kind of stopped, my brain too overloaded with fear and the sense of bizarreness to do or process anything else. Then he spoke again.

“Why are you still dressed?”

Take control of the situation, Belle. Don’t wait for everything to come to you. If you seduce him, you still have the power. The self-delusional mental talk got my hands moving to the straps of the dress. I managed to still the shaking enough to let them fall off my shoulders, and then the dress fell in a whoosh.

He tilted his head to the side, perplexed by the slip I wore, as if he didn’t expect more than one layer of clothing—nor could he determine the purpose of such. Sure they were smarter than us. If they couldn’t grasp layers and tears, my money was on my own species’ intelligence.

“Take off the rest,” he said, his eyes drinking me in, greedy to see what a human female looked like fully bare.

When the slip joined the dress on the floor, he walked several circles around me, touching and poking and prodding. Fascinated. I tried to stop the flutter in my stomach at the way he looked at me. I’d never been looked at so intensely before. Not by any man. Not even while Stephen Thurman had been coming in my mouth.

“Go lie on your stomach on the bed.” He must have seen the fear in my eyes, because he added: “I’m not going to fuck you. I’m going to punish you. My brother will fuck you first. That is our way. We share our mates.”

The situation moved into sharper focus. I was to be the plaything of two alien beings much bigger and badder than me, trapped in their mountainside cave. Would they fuck me together or just separately? Were both of them that big? Were their tastes exotic? Weird? What exactly would I be subjected to here?

A single tear rolled down my cheek, and he smiled.

“Please don’t hurt me.”

“You should have thought about that before you disobeyed.”

I’d expected him to hit me, but instead, he held me down on the bed, and then his claw was pressed against my back. I cried out at the burning sensation as my skin broke apart.

“Please, stop, you’re killing me.”

“Don’t be so dramatic. I am not killing you.”

He’d arranged me so that my feet were planted on the floor, with my upper body draped over the bed, exactly the position one might expect to be in for rear entry sex or perhaps a spanking. He kept clawing methodically as I lay there and sobbed.

The more I cried, the more he seemed to like it. His erection pressed against my ass, as he spelled out words. It was my language. To try to control the pain, I focused on deciphering the message. When he was finished, what I came up with was: Bad Slut.

The words, even more than the pain, made me cry harder. I didn’t know why. He hauled me up to stand and turned me to face him. His tongue darted out. I was taken aback by the fact that it was forked, like a snake, but thicker. Before I could ponder yet another difference between us, he was licking the tears off my face while he held me in something like a lover’s embrace.

He stopped for a moment and pulled back to look in my eyes. “I love the sound and smell and taste. You will make more tears for me.” It wasn’t a request.

The idea that I might not be able to please him and stay safe because he’d always be trying to make me cry more upset me enough to cause the tears to start flowing again. He gave me a nod of approval and a smile that might have been comforting if not for the pointy teeth that came with it. Then he went back to lapping up the tears he’d caused.

Inexplicably, I found myself responding to the gesture. It was so animal and primal and oddly comforting. My legs fell open as I unconsciously pressed my mound against his thigh, rubbing against him, trying to soothe the strange ache that had started in response to the power he held over me.

“Stop. You will go to my brother now.” He pointed at the door, his tone and posture regal. I could do nothing but obey him. I was too afraid he’d start slicing my skin up again. The pain had receded a little. I think I was in shock. I couldn’t believe he’d marked me like that for such a small rebellion. He’d said he wanted a mate. Was this how these creatures treated their mates? If it was, no wonder the females of their kind were dying off. Who could survive their brutality?

I felt a little woozy walking down the hallway to the other room. I stumbled in the doorway, gripping the edge of the wall to stay upright. The brother sat on his bed, looking to be reading something off a computerized screen. He got up quickly when he saw me. I tried to cover myself from his gaze. Despite the fact that I was bleeding, the first thought on my mind was to protect my modesty from at least one of them, however futile and stupid the effort.

He made a sound that was probably a curse in his language, then lifted and carried me to his bed. He laid me down in much the same way his brother had and I struggled a little, the tears working their way down my face again.

He appeared equally baffled by the concept of tears, but though he seemed to find it odd, he didn’t ask questions. His focus was on my back.

“Why aren’t you healing?” he asked.

“What?” It was the strangest thing he could have said.

“You’re bleeding. I don’t understand.”

“H-he cut me, with his claws.” What did he mean why was I bleeding?

“I know what he did. It’s a common punishment for our kind. What I don’t understand is, why hasn’t it started to heal yet? You shouldn’t still be bleeding.”

In his world maybe. In my world, slicing skin like that made you bleed for a while, and I was losing too much. My eyes started to drift closed, and a panic went through my head, a warning that closing my eyes may result in them never opening again. He seemed to sense the danger as well because he shook me.

“How do I stop this?”

I could hear the fear in his voice, that maybe humans were so fragile nothing could stop the bleeding once it started.

He got panicked then. “He can’t lose you. I can’t let him lose you. How do I stop this?”

“Pressure. Need . . . something to soak up the blood, and pressure.” My eyes had closed by this point, and I could feel the slow drift coming. Then blankets were being pressed against my back.

“How long will it take?” He was frantic.

“I don’t know, no one has ever sliced my back with claws before.” I couldn’t believe I could manage a sarcastic sentence. The situation couldn’t be that bad. Could it? I looked over to find the red one standing in the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest, observing the scene before him as if he hadn’t created it.

The clicking and hissing and growling started as they argued in their language. Then the red one disappeared down the hallway. He returned a few moments later with a cup of some type of fruit juice. There was a thin tube in the cup; I’d never seen one before. He put the little tube in my mouth.

“Drink. It may help.” It did help once I managed to figure out the drinking out of a tube concept. The juice was unfamiliar to me, but sweet and cold. The dizziness receded. Maybe I hadn’t lost too much blood. Maybe I just lost too much on an empty stomach. I’d been too anxious before the auction to eat.

“I didn’t know you didn’t heal,” the red one said.

“I heal,” I said, exasperated by their inability to grasp variant healing times. His study of humans had been cursory at best.

He gave me a look that indicated this was another point in his column for the superior species award. I rolled my eyes and dropped my head back down on the bed. I felt a strange safety in knowing that neither of them seemed to want me dead. I knew it would always say bad slut on my back, but it was hard to get too worked up about the scarring at the moment. At least I wouldn’t be able to see it every day.

They spoke again in their language, and then the red one left.

“He went to get bandages. He’s sorry he wounded you, but he said he will still punish you. He’ll just have to do it without breaking your skin in future.”

Oh, that was comforting.

The blue one got on the bed and pulled me into his arms, his hand stroking my hair like a pet.

“What’s your name?” I asked, becoming increasingly disturbed by thinking of them as the red one and the blue one.

He froze at my question and didn’t respond.

I tried again. “What do I call you?”

“Our kind believes names have power. We do not share that information with others. Especially not outsiders. You will call me Sir, and you will call my brother Master, because you’re his.”

Master returned with bandages and left. He didn’t even look at me. It was as if he didn’t want me. Like I was too fragile for him. Well, fuck him. What kind of psycho cuts people up like that? I didn’t ask for this.

“How long will it take you to heal?” Sir asked as he carefully applied and taped down the bandages. A part of me wanted to ask: “Why? So he can do it again?” But his voice was so kind and gentle that I kept my retort to myself. Still, I couldn’t process his kindness completely because it still seemed like he planned to rape me. As did Master. I silently vowed I would escape this place, somehow, once I was able.

“I don’t know. A week or two, maybe?”

He looked at me aghast. “They’ll be open that long? You’ll bleed that long?”

“No, it’ll scab over by tonight, probably. But it could still break open. It’ll still be sore for awhile.” The bleeding had already slowed a lot. Probably only a little bit was creeping through the gauze.

“Oh.”

After I was bandaged, he cradled me in his arms. So far, this one hadn’t hurt me and had rescued me from death and tended to my wounds. So I felt safe enough to ask the question that had been on my mind for the past hour.

“Sir?”

“Hmmm?”

“If I belong to Master, why does he share me with you? Why do you get to have me first?” I somehow managed to get the sentence out without breaking down into hysterics.

“The females of our kind are dying off because of a low birth and survival rate of the gender. They’re considerably weaker than the males.”

He stroked my hair as he continued. “Our kind has always shared mates because it causes all the males in the family to become strongly attached to all the females, encouraging us to equally protect them all. If we don’t know who offspring belongs to, we treat them all as our own. It allows our kind to go on. It’s also about respect. We share what brings us pleasure with the other males in our family. It’s just our way.”

The answer made sense in a weird way, but now I had a new fear which I should have thought of before. “Will I become pregnant?”

“I have no idea. As far as I know you’re the first human my kind has taken. Most likely, no. But it is always possible.”

“How many females of your kind are left?”

“Not enough to go around. Those who are left are mated. We’re hoping they produce more female offspring to balance our numbers again.”

His fingers began trailing lightly over my breasts. It was so subtle at first that I wondered if he was just absently petting and wasn’t aware of where he was touching me. But then he started pinching my nipples to make them erect, and I knew he knew exactly what he was doing.

I sighed. Where was I going to go? The idea of Master punishing me again when I still had such fresh marks on my flesh was unthinkable. And Sir was so gentle, it would be less awful with him. Or it could be, if I didn’t fight him.

It occurred to me that Sir wasn’t a sadist. This was just how his kind were. Maybe the females of their species had been okay with it. Maybe they didn’t fight biology so strongly like human women did.

A few minutes passed and Sir’s hand moved down a little, stroking over my belly. “Are you going to be a good girl for me?” he asked.

“Yes, Sir.” I would go along with what they wanted, and when my back was better, I’d find a way out.

I gasped when his fingers moved lower, stroking my sex, pulling back the folds of skin. It was as if he were inspecting me, making a mental comparison to what his kind looked like. I felt so exposed, like an animal being documented while mating. In spite of that, I was wet. Not a blazing furnace of need or anything, but wet enough.

He picked me up and stood me on the floor, leaning me over the bed. I tensed when he positioned his cock at my entrance.

“What is your name?” he asked, obviously comfortable taking the power he wouldn’t relinquish when I’d asked the same question.

I almost laughed. It seemed so ludicrous at this moment to be having this introduction. “Annabelle, but people call me Belle.”

“Belle,” the word sounded sweet, innocuous on his tongue. Nothing at all like when Master had said Annabelle at the auction. A shiver passed through me as I remembered Master’s eyes boring into mine as he’d spoken my name reverently, like an oath, yet also commanding.

None of that swirling confusion existed in Sir’s pronouncement of the shorter form of address. I wasn’t sure why. I hated my full name, so it was a mystery to me why Master made it sound like something wonderful.

Sir groaned as he pushed his way inside me. I bit down on my lip to stifle what might have been a cry. I didn’t want him to know he was hurting me because I didn’t want him to feel bad. I know that sounds stupid but he didn’t seem to have a need to be savage with me, and in some weird way I felt I was protecting him. He didn’t compute as the bad guy in my brain. He wasn’t the one who’d bought and taken me. And I’d seen in his eyes how terribly lonely he was. I wanted to ease that feeling.

He was just so large. And that wasn’t the only issue. Inside me, he burned. The body temperature difference came into sharper focus as he fucked me. The heat wasn’t more than I could handle, but it was deeply uncomfortable.

It wasn’t a long and drawn out ordeal. Nor was it particularly brutal. I didn’t come, but then I hadn’t expected to. It wasn’t exactly consensual. But it also didn’t feel as degrading as the voluntary blow jobs I’d given behind the learning center to avoid a fate like this. I shut that thought out because it was so unexpected and shameful I couldn’t dwell on it for too long.

With Sir, it was strangely gentle, but not erotic. He came with a little growl, and then put his pants on and carried me to Master’s room.

“She’s yours now,” he said.

“Thank you, brother. You know you’ll be seeing her again.”

“She’s a sweet thing. Be careful with her.”

Master nodded and Sir made his exit. It was clear that what Sir had just done had been ceremonial more than anything. Yes, he’d been horny, and he’d gotten off, but it seemed to be more a part of their tradition than lust or anger or any of the other emotions that could be associated with sex. Maybe that was why, even though it hurt, it didn’t make me feel particularly violated.

Master turned toward me and my heart started to beat faster in my chest. I wanted to run, scream, cry. But I just stayed on the ground where Sir had placed me.

The look in his eyes terrified me. I’ve never been scared of another person or situation as much as I was scared of this powerful being towering over me. Even knowing he didn’t seem to want to genuinely damage me wasn’t enough to calm the frantic pace of my breath.

I felt that if he touched me, I’d die. And then the thought crawled into my brain that if he didn’t touch me, I’d die. The feelings were completely contradictory, but equally true.

“Come, Annabelle. Crawl to me.”

A very wrong part of me wanted to obey him like a sexual puppet. That part didn’t want to question, such was the carnal, dominant power that flowed out of him. But another part of me couldn’t. No matter how much one side of me wanted to submit, the side of me that was still in control was determined to fight. To the death, if necessary.

I glared up at him. “Fuck you. Take me back to my people.”

“You mean the people who didn’t fight for you? Didn’t even try to stop me from taking you? Those people? The ones who love and care for you so much they’d stay silent with their eyes on the ground while a monster took you away to be his concubine? Those people? Yes, why don’t I take you back to those people? What do you imagine would happen then?”

I shrugged, the tears gathering in my eyes.

“Yes, cry those pretty tears for me.”

“I hate you.”

“I imagine that you do. But you didn’t answer my question. What would happen to you if you went back? Where would you go, what would you do?”

I didn’t have the answer to that, but it didn’t stop me wanting to escape him.

“That’s what I thought. Now crawl.”

“No. Fuck you.”

He moved across the floor toward me so fast I lost my breath. I scrambled back until I was against the wall. I was starkly aware of my nudity and the way his eyes greedily took in the flesh on display. My bandaged back pressed against the stone wall, and I winced as the pain flared back to life.

“There is an easy way and a hard way, Annabelle. Which do you prefer?”

He was wrong. There was no easy way. Just giving in to him would be as hard as fighting him. Even though Sir had already made use of my body, it still hadn’t fully clicked in my brain that this was my life now.

Master sat on the ground and reached for me. Automatically, my fists shot out and made contact with his chest. It was like beating on a large hunk of steel. It was so pointless, but still I did it. My actions didn’t bother him a bit. In fact, they seemed to amuse him.

It wasn’t hard for him to shift my body and hold me so I couldn’t fight. I cried out at the pain as my injured back pressed against him. He shifted me in his arms. My chest was heaving as I tried to catch my breath.

Then his claws came out, and I resumed the fight.

“You will want to be very very still,” he said, his voice quiet and calm. The struggle had left me out of breath, panting for oxygen, but not him. He wasn’t even fazed.

I froze as one of the claws moved closer. It trailed lightly up my inner thigh, almost tickling me.

“Address me properly, now,” he said.

“Master, please.” Proper address was such a small thing in light of this new threat. I couldn’t think about rebelling as he tightly held me, with his claw at the entrance of such delicate flesh. “W-what are you doing?”

“If you don’t move, not an inch, it won’t cut you. I have to use pressure to break skin, and no matter what you think, I’m not that evil. If you get hurt here, it will be your own fault, so be still.”

Intellectually, I knew he was right. His claws didn’t seem primarily meant for cutting, but for gripping onto rocks and such, for climbing. Despite what he’d done to my back earlier.

“Spread your legs, little slut.” His tone wasn’t cruel when he said it, more amused than anything. That amusement was starting an odd reaction in my body, such that I almost wished his tone had been crueler, so I wouldn’t have to deal with the confusion churning through me.

My legs fell open, and he eased the claw inside me. He was right, it didn’t cut me, didn’t hurt, but it was so scary I thought I’d combust from the fear. I could barely breathe. I couldn’t think. Then he eased back and thrust in hard.

I screamed, expecting pain, but there was none. He’d retracted the claw before pushing further in, and now his finger worked inside me. The fear and desperation had set up an inexplicable sexual hunger.

“Good girl,” he said, as I coated his finger with my arousal.

What he’d just done could have been a strange form of trust-building exercise, a general mind fuck, or a display of dominance. Possibly all three.

I didn’t understand what was going on with me. If I was to be attracted to one of them, it should have been Sir, the kind one. But he didn’t spark that thing in my belly, that mad and ravenous need like Master did. Master completely unmade me with only a look.

He leaned forward. “Kiss me,” he said.

I didn’t think, I just opened my lips and joined with his, accepting his tongue as it moved into my mouth, thrilled by the strangeness of that tongue. In the back of my mind, I kept telling myself I was going to run away, this was just for now—what I had to do to stay safe and alive so I could escape. I pushed his admonishment about my people and how they had behaved to the furthest recesses of my mind. I refused to accept it into my reality. The only thing that mattered was getting home. And, of course, the orgasm he was wringing from my hungry pussy.

I came then, bucking against his fingers. When the spasms stopped, he moved away from me and stood. “Wait here.”

He left, and I heard him talking to his brother down the hall in their language. All I knew was that the discussion was intense. He returned several minutes later. I hadn’t moved from where he’d left me sprawled. I had only turned onto my side to keep from pressing against the marks on my back.

He crossed his arms over his chest, and then sat beside me and spread my legs. I closed my eyes while he inspected me as Sir had, only this time it seemed his purpose was different.

“He says he may have torn you a bit, but I don’t see any damage. Your opening is very small.”

I blushed. Stephen and the others I’d been with had always remarked that I was very tight. In fact, it had taken several of them getting together to exchange stories to convince themselves I hadn’t been a virgin when each of them had first penetrated me. Much to their chagrin.

Then Master said the words that started a kind of mindless, groping terror inside me. “I’m a bit larger than my brother.”

That pronouncement got me moving away from him again. But before I could make much progress, his large hands had stilled me.

“Shhhh, Annabelle. Do you think I would willingly harm my mate?”

“Yes. I do.” He was insane. It didn’t matter that my stupid body wanted him. He was a lunatic, and I had to get away. “How can you even ask that after what you did to my back?”

“I didn’t know your kind healed differently. It wasn’t meant to scar or damage.”

That was the closest thing to an apology I was getting.

He was silent for a few minutes, then he said, “I hope someday you’ll understand our ways. I know your kind isn’t the same. But you want to be mastered by me, I can smell it on you. If you didn’t, how do you explain how hot and wet you got in my hands?”

I looked away from him. I didn’t want to think about that, about how I wanted to crawl into his lap and beg him to start fingering me again. How I wanted his mouth on me, my mouth on him. The thoughts spinning through my mind were sick abominations, the products of some psychological damage I’d probably never grasp the source of.

I lay there shaking, wondering what was next, wondering how I’d ever take him inside me if he was larger than Sir, berating myself for still wanting him the most when Sir was the gentle one.

He shook his head and smiled. “Beneath that fire and rebellion, you are so sweet, Annabelle. My brother is right about that.” He was quiet for several minutes, breaking the stillness only to give me instruction. “You will not wear clothing here. I want to be able to look at what’s mine. You will never shield yourself from me or my brother. You will always be available for either of us to use however we please. Do you understand?”

I wanted to say, I understand you’re a monster. But the words refused to climb out of my throat. I was too afraid of just how badly he could hurt me if I kept fighting him. It wasn’t in my nature to give in, but I had to. For the sake of common sense, if nothing else. I may not have been very obedient or submissive by nature, but I also wasn’t stupid.

“Annabelle? I don’t wish to punish you again tonight.”

“Yes, Master.” It was almost a sigh of resignation. He ran a tight ship, and he wasn’t about to let me challenge him in even the smallest way.

On some level, it was easier this way. If I knew he wouldn’t let me get away with much, I wouldn’t feel the need to fight as much, which would get me hurt less. And I needed to fully heal if I wanted to get out of here. I’d need to be strong.

After that, he brought me food. Like the juice, it was strange and different, richer than I was used to, the flavors subtler and more multi-layered. They had a whole food culture outside what we were able to get and prepare in the city.

Soon, darkness fell. I tensed, worrying that he’d fuck and injure me, but it didn’t happen. It was so strange, the idea that I was his mate, and yet it was only his brother who had been inside me so far.

He unrolled several blankets that sat next to his bed and made a little nest on the floor.

“Lie down. It’s time for sleep.”

I was too tired to protest sleeping on the floor, and to be truthful, not sleeping in the bed with him felt safer, like perhaps I could really sleep and get through the night unmolested. I curled up on the blankets as he settled in his bed above me. Then he let his wings come out and draped one of them over the nest of fabric.

I can’t describe what I felt in that moment. I shouldn’t have felt safe or protected. Not after the day I’d had. Not after what he’d done to my back with his claws, or the threat that existed in his mere presence. But I did. His wing draped over me was so peaceful and settling, that although I still had plans to escape, a tiny piece of me broke off and attached itself firmly to him.

***

The next day, Master left the cave again. I was alone with Sir, and although I’d been hiding out in Master’s cave, not wanting to face the awkward humiliation of walking around naked in front of the other one, I eventually got too hungry and had to venture out.

Sir was seated on a couch in the main living area, again reading something on a computerized screen. He didn’t look up when I walked past him into the kitchen. There were some leftovers from the night before that had been kept in a cold box. I took them out and then stared at the machines meant for cooking, not sure how they worked. It was different from what we had in the city.

I jumped when Sir’s arms came around me, and he kissed the side of my neck. I could feel his erection pressing through his pants, and something inside me said it wasn’t just ceremony and loneliness this time. He’d decided he wanted me, specifically.

“Do you need help heating food, Belle?” His hand casually moved between my legs, stroking the flesh on display.

“Yes, Sir.”

He released me and took the container of food from my hands. My face heated, and the arousal that had been absent yesterday flared to life. He didn’t act like he noticed, but I knew he could smell it.

He put the container in a metal box mounted on the wall and pressed about ten different buttons. The box whirred to life and a couple of seconds later, it buzzed. Sir opened the box and handed me the container of food, then went back to the couch to look at the computerized screen again.

I stared at the container in my hands until finally I had to set it down on the table. It was too hot to hold. How could food get that hot that fast? It was like magic. We didn’t have anything like that in the city.

When I’d finished eating, I found the place dirty dishes were supposed to go and tried to slip past Sir back into the bedroom where I could be alone. But he wasn’t having any of that.

“Belle?” He’d caught me in mid-tiptoe like I thought I was sneaky.

“Yes, Sir?”

“Come lie down on my lap while I read.”

I edged over to him and did what he asked, even more conscious of my nudity than I’d been a few minutes before in the kitchen. He positioned me so that I was lying on my back—which hurt a little still, but I didn’t say anything. He arranged me so my legs splayed, open and vulnerable to his touch or gaze. Then he started to pet me, his hand stroking over my breasts, across my belly, between my thighs.

About twenty minutes into this, Master appeared in the cave entrance with a cloth bag, whose contents were a mystery. I started to close my legs and pull away. I knew Master had said they were both free to touch me whenever they wanted, but I still felt like I was doing something wrong by lying there and letting someone else stroke me.

“Annabelle,” Master said, his tone warning, “open.”

I didn’t have to ask what he meant, and my thighs fell back open. I burned and squirmed under his gaze. There was a certain level of stimulation involved in being bare to the gaze of others, of being touched in places you’d always felt were private and only open by invitation. But Master’s presence in the room took me from mild excitement to a throbbing, wet mess. I knew Sir had spotted the difference, because his finger was rubbing directly against my slit.

But he showed no signs of being offended that he wasn’t the one who called forth that strong reaction. He was still reading his screen, pressing buttons every few minutes with his free hand. I assumed whatever he was reading kept shifting to something else when he pressed a button. It made me think about how much technology we’d lost.

Sir’s finger pressed inside my opening, dragging the moisture out of me, and then stroking over my excited clit.

“You will come for my brother like a good slut, do you understand?”

“Yes, Master.” The order had made me even more aroused, and Sir just laughed and shook his head, still engrossed in whatever he was reading.

I was working for it now, moving my hips up to meet his fingers like some filthy whore, grinding, squirming because there was something so wrongly erotic about Master insisting I get off with Sir, while Sir seemed more interested in a book he was reading. I’d given myself over to the wildness. I guess it was my new way of fighting back. Becoming determined to enjoy myself so they couldn’t break me to the point where I couldn’t escape later. If I reveled in it, I remained in control. At least in my own mind, even if nowhere else.

“Do you think my mate will be this horny?” Sir asked as I let out a moan.

I looked over to Master, who shrugged. “It’s hard to say, but I know you’ll find the right one.” He turned his attention back to me. “Now, Annabelle, don’t dawdle. I need you relaxed and sated for what we’re about to do.”

My eyes shifted to the mystery bag, and my fear rose from my belly up into my throat, lodging there, a painful little lump. He moved closer, dropping the bag, which fell open to reveal something large and phallic-shaped. Oh dear.

He loomed, his shadow spreading over me like something that was separately alive and sentient, something that might want to do wicked things with my body. Something I might invite inside. “Come, now,” he snarled.

A moment later I was in the midst of the most shattering orgasm of my life. He laughed, amused. I knew I was being loud, rubbing myself harder and harder against Sir’s hand. I could feel my face growing hotter at the humiliation of Master being so entertained by my orgasm, but I couldn’t stop until it had run its course. Until it would actually be painful to keep going.

“Such a mess you’ve made. Lick his fingers clean.”

I didn’t wait for Sir to bring his hand to my mouth. I was so lost in the carnal haze that I gripped his wrist and brought it to my mouth, sucking his fingers until I couldn’t taste myself anymore.

My body was still humming as Master scooped me up and carried me to his room. He left and returned a few moments later with the cloth bag. I sprawled on my belly on the floor, feeling like a liquid heap of nerves and nothing more. I watched him from the ground as he took the phallic object and tools out of the bag. Then he set to work putting something together.

When he was finished, the object had been firmly affixed to the chair beside the table, obscenely protruding upward and at a slight angle.

He snapped his fingers and pointed at the floor. I crawled to him, my trepidation over our next activity growing. When I reached the chair, I noted that the phallus was a cold metal, smaller at the top then gradually widening.

“When you can take all of this comfortably, you’ll be able to take me,” he said.

I think I audibly swallowed.

I was still wet from earlier, and though this new scenario terrified me a little, it also aroused me almost to the point of madness. I refused to analyze that too deeply.

He lifted me from the floor and arranged my thighs so that I straddled the metal, then he pushed on my shoulders as I slowly sank down onto it.

The gentle flare and smoothness of the object, coupled with my own extreme arousal, made it easier for me to take in more than I ordinarily would be able to, but I still wasn’t taking it all. It wasn’t that it was too long, merely that it was too wide.

Master turned a dial and the temperature of the metal started to rise.

I let out a plaintive mewl. “It burns.”

He pressed his fingers against the base. “It’s my body temperature. It’s only that your skin is so delicate. It’s not going to hurt you.” That’s what he’d said about his claws in my back.

He freed his cock from his pants and made me hold it in my hand to prove he was telling me the truth. It was hot, but like a hot beverage when it became easy to drink in gulps, not as extreme as it seemed.

“You’ll get used to it.”

Then he positioned his cock at my mouth. And that part of me that couldn’t quite make myself go along with the game plan reared its ugly head again.

I shook my head, my mouth squeezed shut. I was smarter than to say anything, because he probably would have shoved himself down my throat if I had.

His claw flicked out and my eyes widened. He trailed it in a threatening manner over my throat and down to my shoulder, then pressed down enough to break skin, but not enough to do what he’d done to my back.

“Open. I won’t make you take it all, just what you can handle.” While the claw of one hand pressed against my shoulder and a thin trickle of blood ran down, his other hand, claws safely retracted, stroked my hair and face in a soothing gesture. Something in the dangerous mixture of kindness and threat made me hornier.

My mouth fell open and he took another step toward me. “Lean forward and lick. Worship it.”

My tongue laved his skin. He’d been truthful. He was larger than his brother. The mercy displayed by not just plunging in and taking and ripping made me overcome with an aroused kind of gratitude, and a bit more of me surrendered to him.

Without being told, I pressed my hands on the arms of the chair and used it to raise and lower myself on the metal phallus, my mouth never leaving his cock as I licked, sucked, and kissed.

At first when I raised myself, he seemed prepared to punish me, but when he saw that I was riding the object he’d forced inside me, he said, “That’s my good little slut. Fuck it.”

He reached down and turned another dial. I was afraid it was going to grow hotter—I’d just gotten used to its current temperature, almost craving the burn now—but the new dial made the object hum to life, vibrating inside me. I jumped, not expecting the new sensations.

“I reward effort,” he said. “Always remember that.”

I whimpered, lost for a moment in the taste and scent and mere presence of him. He pulled back from me, his hand jerking his cock, going at a faster rhythm than he could manage inside my mouth without genuinely hurting me. That kindness made me cry a little.

He smiled at the tears, as if I’d cried them just to please him more. And in some dark, secret corner of my mind, I wondered if I had.

“Leave your mouth open.” A minute later, I was swallowing, taking his cum down my throat like I’d been born for it. I was still fucking myself on the metal, a second orgasm rising within me. When he finished, he turned the phallus off and pulled me off it before I could have my own pleasure. I cried out and begged and pleaded, my body now so hungry for release, I’d do anything.

He just laughed. “Such a greedy little slut. Be a good girl and I’ll let you come later. And I want you in that chair, riding that metal every day, getting your cunt ready for me. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Considering our disparate sizes, I won’t use your ass, and neither will my brother. Thank me for that kindness.”

“Thank you, Master.”

Relief.

***

For the next several days, he made me masturbate for him. It quickly became apparent the orgasm was a means to an end. He wanted me wet and relaxed so I could take the metal phallus deeper. Each day he made me straddle the chair, each time pushing me farther down on it, as my walls stretched and expanded, preparing me for his use.

There were other methods he could have used to slowly stretch me. He could have had my pussy much sooner than he actually took it. But he wanted me to fear and crave his cock in equal measure. He wanted to drag the anticipation out to torment me further. It called a strange sort of respect out of me that made me want to kneel or straddle the metal phallus anytime he was near.

Every time I felt that fullness inside me, he taught me how to please him more with my mouth. I got better at it every day, until he could finally finish with my lips wrapped around his cock.

I was hungry for release then, for him to be inside me, but the single daily orgasm to help me onto the phallus was all he’d allow me. I couldn’t believe how desperate I was for more. As he came, a little dribbled out of my mouth and onto the ground. I wasn’t quick enough to stop it. His instructions about swallowing had been very clear.

He jerked me up off the chair and threw me down on the bed so fast I couldn’t think. A moment later, a leather strap was in his hand and it was falling across my ass and thighs.

“Master, please. I’m sorry, please!” I instinctively reached back as if I could protect myself from the blows with my hands.

“If your hand gets in the way it will only be worse. Do you need me to tie you up or can you control yourself?”

The idea of being bound, helpless on the bed, laid out before him while he punished me with the strap was both terrifying and oddly arousing. I wanted him to do it. I wanted him to take one of the cords from around a blanket and bind my wrists together, but I couldn’t say it. It was too shameful.

He seemed to see something in my eyes anyway, and I was spared the indignity of begging for something so wrong. He got the cord.

When I was properly restrained, he went back to strapping me. I was crying so hard, begging, pleading, feeling myself growing hotter and wetter. With his power, he easily could have killed me or seriously done me harm, but he didn’t lose control. He wasn’t angry. He was simply teaching me with the tool I would most deeply respect. From that point on, when I even saw the strap I would go to my knees before him to accept my punishment.

The tears were too much for him. He gripped my legs and pulled me to the edge of the bed. Then his cock was inside me, riding me as I bucked against him. The orgasm shot through me so hard, I thought it would rip me in two. He came, then slumped forward, his lips pressing against the side of my throat in a strange bit of tenderness.

Afterward, he bathed me, his fingers tracing over the scars he’d left on my back with his claws that first day.

“It’s not true, what it says on your back.”

“I know,” I said.

“Good.”

After that, he let me come more frequently, and Sir started using me again. Between the two of them I was wrung out by the end of each day. Most of the time, the idea of escape sat as background noise on the edges of my mind. I was kept in a constant erotically buzzed state, so desperate to please them both, to come, to be used by them, I would have forgotten my own name had they not used it regularly when speaking to me.

They’d started both using me at once, one of them inside my pussy, the other in my mouth. Sometimes one of them would fuck me while the other held me up. The day Master introduced nipple clamps was one such day. Sir stood behind me, holding me in his arms as the clamps bit into the tender, hardened flesh. Oh, how it had hurt when they went on! I had no idea how bad it would be when they came off.

Master used a vibrating toy against my clit as he fucked me. Right at the point of my orgasm, he said, “Now,” and Sir removed the clamps, holding me firmly in his arms as I thrashed and screamed, tears sliding down my face as the pain from the blood flowing back to my nipples pulled me in one direction and unrelenting orgasm pulled me in the other.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t shut my mind off. I was wet, throbbing. I’d rubbed myself to orgasm five times already and still couldn’t sleep. I was too restless.

I got up from my blankets next to Master’s bed. It was late and he slept soundly. I crept down the hall to find Sir asleep as well. I had to get away from this place. I couldn’t let them keep turning me into what they were turning me into. Sleeping on the floor like an animal and finding some part of me wanting to be there? It was obscene. Not to mention all the other things I’d enjoyed in their care.

Of everything, it seemed sleeping on the floor was what snapped me out of their thrall. I had too much time alone at night to think.

What was worse was that I was falling for them, becoming strangely addicted to the way they touched me and made my body hum to life. I didn’t understand any of the things going on inside of me; I just needed to make it stop.

I could lie and say I was afraid for my safety, afraid Master would forget I was only human and harm me beyond repair, but I wasn’t. I was afraid of another type of death. The death of ego. I couldn’t turn into that girl. No matter how dangerous it was, I had to break free and go back home.

I had no intention of finding a man back in the city. I didn’t want to have to explain the words scarred into my back, but being alone felt preferable to staying and being nothing but his. I’d said I would run, that I would escape. The injury had slowed me down, but no more. I didn’t have that excuse to tie me there any longer.

I held my breath as I slipped into Sir’s room and, one by one, took the rolled-up blankets. Then I took the blankets from Master’s room. I dug quietly through drawers until I found the white dress I’d been wearing the day of the auction. I slipped the fabric over my head and went to the opening in the cave. It felt weird to wear clothes. Wrong somehow.

On our planet, the stars are so close you feel as though you can touch them. On a clear night, they light up the sky almost as bright as day. It was plenty of light for my escape.

There were twelve blankets and cords in all, six from each room. I’d learned why so many: they were for a mate to make a nest to sleep on. I didn’t understand why they didn’t sleep snuggled with their mate, why the lines of power were so severely drawn. All I knew was that I couldn’t be a substitute. I wasn’t that way. Was I? I was afraid to know the answer, afraid that if I stayed even one more day I’d learn something about myself I didn’t want to know.

I tried not to think of the fantasies and thoughts before the auction or how my body so naturally responded to Master’s and Sir’s dominance. I didn’t want to think that Master was right when he said he’d picked the right one. I didn’t want to be the right one.

I tied the ends of the blankets together, making sure they were secure. Then I tied the cords around the places where blankets met each other to make it even stronger. The first drop-off was the highest; I was sure of it. Once I got down the first little bit, I should have enough rocks to hold onto and shorter landings to make my way down. After that, it was only a few miles back into the city.

I took the final length of cord and tied one end around a piece of heavy furniture that would more than support my weight without budging, and I tied the other end around the end of the long blanket rope I’d created.

Climbing down was tougher than I’d thought it would be. Blankets didn’t make for the best anchor, and the wind kept blowing me from side to side, but I made it down. In some ways, it was almost too easy. At the end of the rope, there was about four feet more to the first landing. I jumped.

Beyond that, it was climbing and jumping. A few rocks to hold onto, then a little drop of maybe three feet. All the way to the ground. When I reached the bottom, I looked up at the cave, a tight, painful feeling in my chest. Was that grief? Was I sad to be leaving them?

If I was sad to go, it only made leaving that much more important. If I wanted to be free, this was my last opportunity. I started walking back to the city, hardly able to believe that soon
I’d be back. I wasn’t sure where I’d go; I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I refused to think about what Master had said, because if I did, I would have stayed. And I couldn’t do that.

When I got to the city, who would take me in? The idea of staying with Stephen made me want to vomit. He’d be only too glad to have me. He’d look at the words on my back and laugh and then use me until he grew bored.

Maybe I could find a job somewhere. There weren’t actually a lot of jobs for women, but maybe.

The closer I got to civilization, the more impossible the situation seemed. A part of me wanted to go back to Master and Sir, but I couldn’t. Getting down the side of the mountain was one thing. Climbing back up again wasn’t an option. I’d fall to my death.

What would happen when Master and Sir got up? Would they come after me? Would they demand I be returned? Of course they would. Why was I running? What was I running to? Who was I running from?

Myself. Of course it was me. No matter where I went, I’d never escape who I was or what I wanted. And what I wanted right now was to be snuggled in my blankets on the floor of Master’s cave with his wing draped over me, the safest I’d ever felt.

Was I willing to be miserable in the city just so I could hold onto some illusion of a woman I pretended to be, but wasn’t? It seemed so silly and vain. And for what? The approval of my peers? Those people who hadn’t spoken up or tried to stop it when I’d been bought and taken away?

I kept walking toward the city, finding the idea of arriving less and less appealing. As I walked, I thought about Lizbeth and her boyfriend. Could she be happy with a man she so easily could manipulate and control? Had she picked him because he was weak and she was scared of something inside herself, too? Or was she not like me at all?

I was so lost in thought that I didn’t realize at first I was being hunted. Once I did, it was too late. A pack of mambose surrounded me. They looked a little like a type of animal that had once lived on the source planet, called a monkey except they had sharp claws, fangs, and small, leathery wings. Their ears pointed straight up, and they had thick, long fur. But they were about the same size.

There were ten of them circling me, blocking off my escape, making strange hissing and howling noises. Their arms stretched out toward me, claws extending, waiting to rip into my flesh. The last thing I remembered was my own sharp screams as they tore into me, and then it was like the lights of the stars had gone out. Stillness. Nothingness.

I hadn’t expected to open my eyes again. When I did, I was in Master’s room, bandaged up like a mummy. The look of concern on his face was immediately replaced by a type of anger that made me almost wish the mambose had killed me.

He straddled me, his hand wrapped around my throat, his claws out but not puncturing flesh. I was struck with the fear that he’d saved me just so he could finish me off himself.

“Why did you run from me?” he snarled. “You could have been killed.”

“I was afraid.”

“Of me?”

Was that guilt in his eyes? Was he even capable of guilt? He hadn’t acted like he felt the slightest bit guilty about anything he’d done.

I made an attempt at shaking my head, but finally gave up on that and opted for words. “No. Of me.”

The tears streamed down my face. I couldn’t stop them. For the first time they didn’t seem to turn him on.

“Are you unhappy here with me?” he asked.

“No.”

He stared at me a long time, then released my throat and moved toward the door. “I’ll let you rest. I won’t punish you this time, but if you ever run from me again, I’ll put more scars on your back. Do you understand me?”

My voice was shaky when I said, “Yes, Master.” I hated seeing the disappointment on his face more than anything.

I guessed the only reason he wasn’t punishing me was that I was too injured, and by the time I was healed, his anger would have already run out. At least I hoped that was the case. He started to leave, but my voice stopped him. I needed to know.

“Which one of you came for me?”

“I did.”

I’d somehow already known this, but I needed to hear it, to be sure. I wish I could have seen him swoop down like an avenging angel, claws out, ripping and tearing at the mambose, then scooping me up and bringing me home to tend to my wounds. I wanted that memory to be able to tell someone. Maybe when Sir got his mate.

A few hours later, Sir came in. He observed me from the doorway. “Belle? Are you all right?”

I felt weak, but nodded.

He came in and sat beside me on Master’s bed. He reached out to brush a strand of hair off my face. “He wouldn’t let me near you, just kept yelling about what he needed me to bring to take care of you. I’ve never seen him that way.”

Sir’s words warmed me. Master wasn’t the type to whisper endearments or say I love you. But I think I knew. If I hadn’t before, I did now. The fact that I was tucked in his bed was statement enough. Though I knew once I healed, I’d be back on the floor again in the nest of blankets.

I was fine with that.

I never told Master I was sorry for running or scaring him. I probably should have, but it was pointless to lie about it. I’d needed to do it, to realize there was nothing for me in that city that hadn’t cared for me anyway, that it was too unsafe outside the city alone, and that here was where I needed to be.

A few weeks later things had returned to normal. Master was even stricter with me than before, as if he needed to constantly remind me not to run, that leaving him would be worse than staying. Or maybe it was that each punishment for a minor infraction was really punishment for running in the first place, and he was just looking for excuses because he’d never let it go.

Despite this, I found myself glad Master had bought me that day. I cringed thinking if it had been Stephen. Though Stephen’s sexual tastes were far from exotic, he would have made me feel dirty and used, like an amusement, a plaything. I never felt that way with Master.

I was Sir’s plaything, but I was something more to Master.

A few months passed and a new addition was brought to the house. Another girl, this one for Sir. She was a redhead and scared, sweet. Someone I’d known in the city.

When she was brought to the cave, I had this irrational fear that though she was meant for Sir, Master would find her more appealing than me. She hadn’t fought anybody or tried to run away. She was more naturally obedient, something their kind seemed to like. She just quietly cried.

Sir had gone to the city to the auction to buy her. Master stood behind me, his arms wrapped around me when they arrived in the cave, maybe as reassurance that I wasn’t being replaced as the new amusement. He bent close to my ear and whispered. “Ironic, given what I know about your kind, that the redhead isn’t the fighter.”

When she saw me, she gasped in recognition, the shock stopping her tears for a moment. “Belle?”

I tried to smile to reassure her. If she wasn’t going to steal Master’s attentions, the idea of another girl there, especially someone as sweet as Lily, was nice. I liked it. I imagined us taking care of the cave together. Being with one of my kind who would understand the things they couldn’t was comforting.

I knew Master would have her first due to their kind’s familial habit of sharing women and the tradition of giving first dibs to those who weren’t the mate. The order had always seemed a little backwards to me, but it wasn’t my culture, and Master was fond of reminding me how far superior his race was to my own.

A little while later, I paced in Sir’s room, knowing what Master was doing with Lily in the other room. Part of me was upset for her. Them taking me bothered me less than them taking her. She was so sensitive and fragile. I could see how she’d be a good match for Sir. He’d be gentle with her, and she wouldn’t challenge his dominance. But I was scared for her with Master.

I also harbored the lingering fear that he would have her and decide he wanted her more than he wanted me. Even though she would still be Sir’s mate, I was afraid of being cast aside and living on the fringes.

Sir came in the room. “Belle. He wants you in there.”

“Why?” I would have never questioned Master, but with Sir, sometimes it was still difficult. I respected him, but he didn’t compel my absolute obedience in the way Master did. And he wasn’t the type to punish for everything.

“He wants you to watch.”

There were several reasons I didn’t want to do that, but I couldn’t refuse an order from my mate, so I went.

When I entered Master’s room, Lily was cowering beside the bed, her white gown and slip on the ground beside her. She was shaking. Master stood over her, naked, with his arms crossed over his chest. I unconsciously licked my lips. I wondered if this was how I’d looked with him when he’d first taken me. Though I felt bad for Lily, the eroticism of the scene before me still reached inside me and flipped something.

“Annabelle.” he said, not turning around.

I wasn’t sure if he’d smelled me or heard me. His kind had much better senses all the way around than mine did.

“Yes, Master?”

“Speak with Lily. Explain things to her.”

I was surprised by the request. But then it made sense. He loved his brother, and though they shared females, he would never want to damage Sir’s mate beyond repair. I understood now why he’d wanted me. Someone who could handle this. Who could handle him. I could tell he wasn’t at all sure about Sir’s choice or how she would fit in here.

“Will you leave us alone a minute?”

He nodded and both he and Sir went to another part of the cave. I knelt beside Lily and took her in my arms. She was sobbing.

“Hey,” I said.

Just the sound of my voice was enough to make her stop crying. I hoped she was like me, that somewhere inside her lurked the same needs I had, and that once she got over her fears of being harmed, she’d be okay. The city had trained its women to be subservient, after all. Lily was nothing if not the shining beacon of their success in that area. She was just frightened, unsure what her fate would be or how bad things would get.

“How can you live like this?” she whispered. “Aren’t you afraid of them?”

“No. Not anymore. Besides, my mate is the scary one. Yours is more laid back.”

“M-mine is the blue one?”

“Yes,” I said, smiling over the fact that she was thinking of them in the same terms I had before I had titles to address them by.

“Then why is the other one . . .”

“It’s just how they are. They aren’t a very monogamous type. Sharing with each other is just what they do. I don’t think Master will be as rough with you as he is with me. He wouldn’t disrespect Sir that way.”

I sat and held her for a long time, stroking her hair. “I’m glad you’re here, Lily. It’s sometimes lonely without a friend.”

She was quiet for several minutes then she said. “There’s no way out?”

“I tried and failed. I almost died.”

She turned then, her eyes wide. “Did they . . .?”

“Oh, no. It was wild animals. Master saved me.” Later I would tell her the whole story, along with my fantasy version of Master coming to my rescue, the part I’d been unconscious for and could never really know. But right now I had to get her through this.

She looked shocked, as if she couldn’t believe there was a merciful bone in Master’s body.

“Will you do something for me, Lily?”

“What?”

“Don’t fight them. Just submit. I don’t want to watch you be punished, and whatever we think about it, this is how their kind operates. I think you can be happy with Sir. You suit each other. He’s kind. He’ll take care of you. I’m sorry that you’re scared, but I’m glad you’re here with me.” I squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back.

Sir walked in and Lily put her head against my shoulder, making him disappear from her visual field, still not prepared to deal with any of this. He held a glass of something in his hand.

“Get her to drink this. It’ll relax her.”

I raised an eyebrow. He was trying to make it easier. He couldn’t stand to see her suffer even a little bit. I admired and loved him for that, but he never would have been firm enough for me. For Lily, he was perfect. Once she acclimated, she’d never disobey. I couldn’t imagine her ever getting punished for anything. Not like me.

He left and Lily sat up again, eyeing the glass warily. “What is it?”

I sniffed at the beverage. “I’m not sure. Probably something that grows in the area. Something mind-altering if I had to guess.”

She scooted away. “They’re drugging me?”

“Your mate is trying to relax you. He doesn’t want to traumatize you.”

“Are they going to hurt me?”

“I highly doubt it.”

“Are you going to stay with me while he . . .” she trailed off.

“Yes.”

For some reason that settled her. We were very different. It wouldn’t have settled me. I would have wanted the privacy, for whatever happened to happen without an audience. Lily took another long look at me, then gulped the drink down. “I don’t trust them, but I trust you,” she said.

Suddenly, jealousy was the furthest thing from my mind. I just wanted Lily to be okay. A few minutes later, she was flitting and dancing around the room like a drunk, giggling.

Sir and Master returned.

“Will she remember this, after?” I asked.

“Yes,” Sir said. “And I’ll need you to help her deal with it if she’s upset. I hope she won’t be. The drug just lowers inhibitions, increases arousal. We call it the primal nectar. It reduces one to their most natural state, free from fear.”

I hoped she’d be okay, too. When she came down from the primal state back into the over-thinking state, I hoped she’d let everything go and let herself fall backwards. Maybe that’s not the best way to go in life. There isn’t always someone to catch you. But there would be someone to catch Lily, if she could just make her brain cooperate the first few times. I knew Master would know how to play her body to make her respond to him. And with what was now swirling around in her system, it made the job that much easier.

Master caught Lily mid-twirl and led her to the bed. She was still giggling when he slipped his hand between her thighs, remarking on how wet and lovely she was. The compliment elicited a low moan from her, this sweet girl suddenly reduced to a wanton slut as she writhed in his arms, her sex franticly grinding against his hand. It was fascinating to watch.

Then he worked a phallus inside her that he’d coated with a thick, clear gel. He went through several sizes of sex toys, stretching her slowly so she’d be able to take him. Each time he went a size bigger, she begged for more, for it to be him.

Finally, it was his cock inside her. My eyes were riveted to him, watching as his body pistoned in and out of her. With whatever they’d given her to drink, she’d completely surrendered, giving herself up to him, her body open and loose and accepting. It was the most erotic thing I’d ever seen. I suddenly wanted to be able to capture the image forever so I could pull it out and look at it later when no one was around to see me. I wondered if I looked like that, spread beneath him, so lost, an exquisite expression of pleasure and pain painted across my features.

Sir’s hands moved to my breasts, rubbing and tweaking as he watched his brother take his mate. I looked back at him and saw a strange sort of hunger in his eyes. I turned back to watch Master with Lily, and I could almost understand what Sir must have felt. Sharing your mate with someone else was to them like sharing food might be to humans. Something you did with those you loved because you loved them and wanted them to have good things, wanted them to enjoy the same things you enjoyed, to share the experience.

I suddenly wasn’t worried about my place in the household anymore. Watching Master touching Lily, fucking her, bringing her to orgasm, made me throb. It was pushing submissive buttons I hadn’t even realized I had, and strangely I felt like I belonged to him even more because he was using someone else and making me watch while he enjoyed a warm, wet hole that wasn’t mine.

Master turned toward me and smiled. It was as if we shared a secret. I couldn’t tell you what the secret was because there were no words that went with it. It was more of a feeling that passed between us. Sir’s fingers moved between my legs, probing inside me, causing me to buck against him, whimpering and begging him to push in deeper, harder.

“You like watching your mate fuck your friend, don’t you?” Something in Sir’s voice had gone wild, primal. He’d never been like this before, and this new edge excited me.

“Yes, Sir,” I whispered.

“So do I.”

Lily came then, her sighs and moans so sweet I wanted to slip inside her skin just to know what she was feeling. And I equally wanted her to slip inside mine so she could get a taste of her mate’s touch.

I was on the edge of orgasm when Master said, “No, Annabelle. Don’t come.”

Sir released me and I lost my balance. I broke my fall with my hands, but just stayed there on the floor of the cave, hungry, panting, watching Master—Sir forgotten at my back.

Lily was draped across the bed, Master’s spendings dripping out of her and down her thigh.

“Annabelle.”

“Yes, Master.” I tore my eyes from Lily.

“Clean her up, little slut.” His voice was warm when he said it. It was his endearment for me that shouldn’t have been so endearing.

I could have played dumb. I could have gone to get a washcloth and basin of water, but I knew that wasn’t what he meant. I knew exactly how his filthy mind operated. I wasn’t sexually attracted to women, but this wasn’t about Lily. It was about Master, about licking his cum off another woman’s body for his amusement. The thought excited me so much, I wondered for a moment if they’d slipped me some of what Lily had been given. Or maybe I’d just drank her emotions as they’d flooded the room, surrounding me so that the only thing I could breathe was her arousal and excited energy.

I crawled slowly over, a little smirk on my face.

He just laughed and shook his head. “I knew I picked the right one.” It had become our little joke now, and with those words I knew he’d finally forgiven me for running away, that he knew I’d never do it again.

My tongue trailed languidly over Lily’s thigh, and I moaned at the taste of him mingled with her and the softness of her skin as she lay there trembling. When I was finished, I looked up at him, hoping he’d use me next because I was about to explode from waiting, and he seemed ready to go again.

He nodded his approval, but he wasn’t quite ready for my pleasure. “Make her come again. I want to watch her climax on your tongue.”

I was too far gone to care about my own orientation. I could see how hard Master was and how much he wanted to watch his mate pleasure another woman. Lily moaned again, her back arching, hips thrusting obscenely upward as I lapped at her pussy. Her clit was so swollen and engorged from all the stimulation she’d already had, that it was quick work to make her come again. I was pretty sure she wasn’t into women either, but her body still responded eagerly as I explored her.

Afterward, as she lay there, I threaded my fingers through hers and squeezed her hand. She squeezed back. Then Sir scooped her up and carried her off to his room to make use of her himself.

As soon as he’d left, Master was on me, his mouth on mine, his tongue tangling with mine as if fighting for a dominance he knew I’d never challenge. “I love the taste of her on your mouth,” he growled in my ear, and somehow I knew we’d be doing all that again in the future.

I whimpered, and everything in me became so fluid and responsive that I couldn’t seem to hold myself up under my own weight, so when he released my mouth, I went back to the ground, where I could steady myself more easily. And because all I could bring myself to do when I saw him was kneel.

“Make tears for me, Annabelle. I want to see them.”

I looked up at him, and the tears flowed down my face. It wasn’t hard to cry on command. I was overwhelmed with too much that I couldn’t name or describe. If I’d been asked to explain what I was feeling, I would have stared blankly, unable to even class it. But tears were all he asked for, and tears, I could do.

He picked me up and laid me out across his bed like an offering, like a virgin to be sacrificed. I thought of the white dress tucked away in the drawer and Lily’s lying on the floor next to us, of how we were like a sacrifice to these creatures. I wondered why I didn’t feel like I’d lost anything. Didn’t sacrifice mean you lost something?

He leaned over me, his tongue flicking out in that threatening, predatory way, as if he were a snake sniffing his prey. He lapped up the tears and demanded more, which I gave him. He slid inside me then, so hard and engorged that I wasn’t sure if the burn was him tearing me or the normal burn from his body heat. Either way, I absorbed the pleasure-pain with a profane sort of gratitude, my hips arching up to meet his rough thrusts.

“She’s my toy, as you are Sir’s toy. But you are mine.” The word mine sent a bolt of desire straight to my pussy, sending me into an orgasm that had me shuddering helplessly against him.

I liked the idea of Lily being his toy. Of me being Sir’s toy, but of both of us having something deeper as well. Everyone knowing their place in the hierarchy. No one abandoned or discarded. A family unit.

“Master?”

“Yes, Annabelle?”

“Why didn’t you give me the drink Sir gave Lily? When you first brought me here, I mean.”

“I didn’t want to.” The answer was dark and wrapped around me like I’d fallen again in his shadow.

“Can I have it sometime . . . just to see what it’s like?”

He smiled. “Sometime, perhaps.”

***

That night I woke to a whisper from out in the hallway. “Belle.”

I looked up to see Lily motioning for me to join her. The herbs had worn off. She was wearing my slip because hers was still on Master’s floor along with her dress. Master was in a deep sleep, so I crawled out of the nest of blankets.

“You’re not supposed to be wearing that,” I whispered when I joined her in the hallway, knowing that the nudity rule was in effect for both of us. I immediately felt bad for saying it. She looked like she could break apart at any moment. “Did he hurt you?” I didn’t really think Sir would ever hurt her, which was why I felt I had to talk with Lily. If she fought him, I wasn’t sure he could bring himself to punish her, not like Master did me. Then he’d be so unhappy. And so would she. I wanted this crazy fucked-up thing to work with all of us.

“No, but . . .”

I knew what she was feeling, what she was struggling with.

“I can’t believe I . . . that I let them . . . both of them . . . and then you . . .” She worried her lower lip with her teeth, her eyes wide and brimming with unshed tears.

I could see her blush even in the semi-darkness. She looked away and then whispered, “We have to get away.”

Standing so close to Master’s door for this conversation was going to get my ass strapped if he woke up. I took her hand and led her to the kitchen where I made us both tea. My nudity didn’t faze me anymore, but Lily was trying not to look, as if she didn’t want to shame me and thought I needed the privacy. I didn’t, but the thought was so sweet I wanted to hug her.

“Lily, what do you really want?”

“What do you mean?” The look of almost-guilt on her face—as if she’d been caught doing something naughty—made the discussion a mere formality. She just needed someone to back her up and tell her she was okay, that it was really all right to just let go, to fall backward.

“Sir said that herb he gave you just lowers inhibitions. It brings out the primal self. That’s you . . . underneath the artifice.”

“No . . . that can’t be me.”

“Why not?”

“It’s dirty.”

“According to who? I don’t think you’re dirty. They don’t think you’re dirty. Let’s just be. Okay?”

She sipped the hot tea and seemed to be turning it over in her mind. It seemed an exciting and untamed idea, as if she hadn’t considered the option of just accepting the situation, that she had the choice to not fight. I could see how much she wanted to surrender and give in, but how a part of her still railed against it all.

“Do you think badly of me?” I asked her.

“Of course not! I mean, it’s not your fault they . . . You couldn’t help . . . ”

I rested my hand on hers. “Exactly. So let’s just be for awhile. Just flow with it. See what happens. We’ll take care of each other.”

“But if it gets bad . . .”

“We’ll run away,” I said.

She nodded, her face relaxing. Lily finished her tea and set it on the counter, then went back to Sir’s room, peeling the white sheath off on her way. I picked up the slip and folded it as I went back to Master’s room. Neither of us were going anywhere.

About the Author

Kitty Thomas writes dark literary erotica. Her stories explore the psychology of ownership. This work is fiction and meant for an adult audience. The author does not endorse or condone any of the behavior carried out by characters in her stories.

Inspiration for Kitty’s work comes from many sources including Story of O, Nine and a Half Weeks, and the work of Claudia D. Christian.

For updates on new releases, please subscribe to Kitty's newsletter via the contact form at her site: www.kittythomas.com