Buying His Mate (11 page)

Mr. Lourcy put out his hand and stroked her cheek with the backs of his knuckles. Gretchen gave a little whimper. “Don’t worry, my dear,” he said. “The question doesn’t have a correct answer, because so many people over the years defined the marital roles so differently. I only want to know what you think, and have heard, about it.”

Gretchen compressed her lips and gave a little nod. She tried to smile bravely, but she feared that the expression emerged onto her face as a grimace. Mr. Lourcy, still smiling at her, moved his hand to her hair, which the assistants in the orientation center—relict girls who had done their two years’ service—had gathered into a loose ponytail sort of style that they had called a chignon, though Gretchen had of course never heard the word before. In the enclosure, if you kept your hair long, it was in a tight, efficient ponytail or it was down over your shoulders.

Her master’s hand, she realized with a jolt of recognition not entirely to her liking, felt
good
. Only her mother had ever touched her gently, that way, before. Yes, when he had rubbed her bottom after the spanking in the orientation center, it had awakened memories of the first spanking, back on Earth, and even more memories of the way he had touched her between her legs on the shuttle, but Gretchen would call that
pleasure
rather than
goodness
. Mr. Lourcy’s big, masculine hand—his
firm
hand, which had spanked her now twice—stroking her hair felt
good:
comforting, loving. It seemed the gestural equivalent of him saying ‘good girl,’ that phrase she found she had begun to long for above every other sound.

Chapter Thirteen

Martin looked down into Gretchen’s eyes as he stroked her hair.
Oh, if only she’ll understand,
he thought. The way she responded to his touch thrilled him; to know that he could calm his girl’s fears with the small motions of his hand, just as he could, when he needed to, use the same hand to correct her misbehavior, made him think great happiness awaited them, if they could only understand one another.

“Well,” Gretchen said uncertainly. “I suppose a wife was just a married woman, wasn’t she?” She raised her eyebrows adorably, as if to see what Martin thought.

He chuckled. “Yes, but, my dear, that avoids the question.” He broadened his smile, to show her that he felt no displeasure about it. “What did a wife do? How did her husband treat her?”

Gretchen pursed her lips, and her eyes went up and to the side as she considered the question. “That depends?” she finally said, looking at him again.

“On what?” Martin asked, nodding to encourage her.

“On… the time period, and the husband?”

“And the place?”

Gretchen nodded.

“Alright, then, tell me some of the things a wife had to do, in some of the times and places and with some of the husbands.”

Now it seemed like she might have begun to understand what must appear to her very strange questions. She almost certainly thought—and the orientation had been designed to reinforce the idea—that old-fashioned and outmoded notions of marriage lay very far from the mind of every Athenian. A sharp look of suspicion crossed her face, as if she suddenly saw that Martin intended to change the rules.

The orientation told the relict girls that for two years they would exist as well-cared-for pussies, attached to well-cared-for bodies that also happened to have mouths to suck cocks and go down on other pussies as well as backsides to be played with and penetrated when an elite pleased. They learned that their health would be constantly monitored via a tiny implant behind their ear, and that they would have weekly visits back to the orientation center to make sure they were not being mistreated—though of course corporal punishment to the point of making marks that would last several days was specifically allowed and regulated, between the girl’s waist and her knees, and, with different regulations, upon her breasts. The relict girls learned in orientation, in sum, that their elite masters and mistresses valued them very highly, but only as objects for use in the pursuit of pleasure and of procreation: thus the law provided and thus the Athenians practiced in their literally superior way, high above the Earth upon which they had lately deigned to place enclosures for the purpose as much of taking concubines as of rebuilding civilization.

“Well,” Gretchen said slowly, her eyes a little narrowed now, “what was the old vow?
To be my wedded wife… to…
”

“
To have and to hold, from this day forward,
” Martin said, a little stunned that Gretchen remembered any of it. “Do you remember what the wife vowed?”

“Um,
to love and honor and obey?
”

“Well, the husband vowed the love and honor part, but for a lot of the history of marriage, whether in a place that used those vows or in a place that didn’t, but had a similar patriarchal culture, the wife was expected to obey her husband, and he was expected to guide her, and to teach her—to bring out the best in her, and in return she served him and pleased him the way he taught her to do.”

Now Gretchen’s eyes had gone very wide, as if she heard a fervor in Martin’s tone that he had hoped to keep out of it, in order not to frighten her.

“But that’s all gone, now,” she whispered. “Isn’t it?”

Martin spoke very softly. “Legally, yes. Three Athenian men were exiled to Earth, two years ago, for trying to bring that way of life back, with their relict girls.”

“Did they… did their, um, wives go with them?” Gretchen seemed fascinated despite herself.

“No,” Martin said. “Their wives were auctioned again, for a one-year service. Their children, whom they had kept hidden, were sent to live with the other children in the nursery. The council wanted to make an example of them, because several councilors were worried that the Taking might be bringing back notions of cohabitation that would destabilize Athenian society.”

“Were they right?” Gretchen asked softly, fixing him with a steady gaze from her blue eyes. Martin almost wished he hadn’t had her put on the lingerie yet, so distractingly alluring did she look, kneeling at his feet in her virginal white lace bra and panties.

“Yes,” Martin said. “Though the exile made it clear that the way those three men went about it was foolish. They wanted to start a little society of their own in one of the abandoned residence sections. There are several of those, because of the population decline on Athena. They thought they could appeal to liberty and property, but equality, solidarity and law trumped that play. The foundation of the Enclosure Act is the way it balances the five principles. Those three men tried to skew its purpose, and they needed to be disciplined.”

“And you, sir?” Gretchen’s shoulders rose with a deep breath, as if she knew she had come to the true question. Her little breasts looked so lovely in the lace that Martin almost moved his hand down to play with them, simply because he could.

“I have a different idea for how you might be my wife.”

A sharp breath from his relict girl, her nostrils flaring a little. “How?” she whispered.

“Would you like to be my wife?” The question, at last: perhaps the strangest marriage proposal in the history of the human race.

Gretchen bit her lower lip and nodded. “Yes.”

“Will you promise to keep our marriage secret?”

Her brows knit. “I… yes. Because… because you’re my master.”

“Yes,” Martin said, relieved that it seemed simple to her, despite having no illusions that she would have an easy time actually keeping it secret. “And I will still be your master. A husband is the master of his wife, in my view of marriage.”

He saw Gretchen swallow very visibly. Could it be that the thought fired her blood the way it fired his?

“I promise,” he said slowly and softly, “to love you and to cherish you, and to honor you from this day forward, until we are parted by circumstances we cannot control. I take you as my wedded wife.”

Gretchen trembled, and her breathing seemed quick and shallow. “What should I say?” she asked.

“Repeat after me,” Martin said. She nodded. “I, Gretchen, give myself to you, Martin, as my wedded husband.”

“I, Gretchen, give myself to you, Martin, as my wedded husband.”

“I promise to love you, to honor you, and to obey you, from this day forward, until we are parted by circumstances we cannot control.”

Gretchen pursed her lips as if already worrying about what those circumstances might be. Her brow clouded a little, but then she said, “I promise to love you, to honor you, and to obey you, from this day forward, until we are parted by circumstances we cannot control.”

“Stand up, now, wife,” Martin said. Gretchen obeyed, and he spread his thighs and put out his hands to her. She took his hands, and he could not imagine anything that might move him more than the sight of his wife’s little hands in his big ones as he pulled her closer, until she stood between his legs, almost up against him, with her little face just a bit higher than his.

He moved her hands to his shoulders, running his eyes up and down the thrilling sight of his sweet girl in her lacy underwear, loving the exciting view the tiny panties gave him of a hint of her maiden pussy. He looked into her face and saw her blushing uncertainty as she seemed to understand that the way her new master, her new husband, looked at her had lust at its foundation.

With his left hand he cradled the back of her head, and drew her face gently to his, so that he could kiss his wife for the first time.

“Oh,” Gretchen murmured, just before their lips met, and then, “oh,” again, after Martin had kissed her tenderly, but also so as to command that her mouth open to his, and that she yield herself to him in the kiss as she had yielded in her words.

Martin moved his right hand to her little bottom and began to caress her there, holding the little cheeks and squeezing them gently, parting them and running his middle finger along the little lacy strip that covered his girl’s charms so very inadequately.

“Oh, sir,” Gretchen sighed.

Now Martin used that same middle finger to work his way inside her panties, and, as he kissed her mouth again, to claim her pussy and her anus with his touch. He took his left hand from her hair, and, moving Gretchen gently backward just a little, put his fingers boldly inside the lacy bra, so that her could play with her strawberry nipples and make her sigh again.

“It’s almost time for the lesson table,” he said softly.

“Yes, sir,” Gretchen breathed.

“Do you want to know what I’ll teach you?” he asked teasingly.

“Oh, yes, sir.”

“I’m going to teach you how to cry out when I make your pussy feel pleasure.” He looked up at her; she had closed her eyes, and he did not think he could ever get enough of the sight of her helpless, enforced pleasure as he had his way with her between her legs and inside the lacy bra.

“Yes, sir,” she said dreamily.

“Go get on the table, Gretchen,” he said. “Face up, to begin with.”

He turned her around, reluctantly withdrawing his hands from her charms. The air had grown fragrant with her arousal, and the fingers of his right hand were very slippery with his girl’s excitement. He gave her a soft swat on her delightfully prim little bottom, so beautifully ornamented with lace. She cried out with a little forlorn, “Ah,” moved away toward the table, and started to climb onto it.

The idea of using a massage table as Gretchen’s ‘lesson’ table had come to him one day while he was having a massage himself, at work, from a relict girl who had trained in the art. The feeling of care and dominance he had gotten from the massage had made his mind wander to fantasies of what he might do to a girl if he had her atop the table, and what he might have her do to him when he lay there, relaxed and ready for pleasure.

Before the night was over, he hoped, they would have had several different lessons upon the table, but he knew exactly how he wanted to awaken the girl he had dared to make his wife, and to arouse her so thoroughly that she begged him to make a woman of her.

Now Gretchen lay there on her back, in nothing but the lacy white lingerie he had had made for her, looking at him with wide eyes. He could tell her whole body was tense, and though he was no masseur, he thought he had learned enough from having a few massages himself that he could help her relax, and begin to arouse her at the same time.

From a drawer he took a bottle of massage oil he had put there, and poured some into his left hand. He put the bottle down and cupped the oil in both hands, blowing on it to warm it. Gretchen’s eyes never left his, but he thought he could see that his careful motions had begun to reassure her.

“I’m going to massage you, now,” he said. “Sometime soon, you’ll learn to massage me, as well. Do you know what massage is?”

Gretchen shook her head. Martin smiled and stepped closer to the table, looming over her face. “I think you’ll like this lesson,” he said, and began to rub her shoulders very gently.

Chapter Fourteen

Nothing had ever felt so wonderful, and because she knew it would lead into sensations even more intensely pleasurable, as she felt the tension seem to evaporate from her limbs, Gretchen seemed to experience her master’s—her husband’s—hands on her body as a preparation for their pleasure that really did teach her a lesson she needed to learn. What was that lesson? Could it be as simple, and yet profound, as the truth that his hands belonged wherever he put them, above all when he put them on Gretchen herself?

He began with her shoulders, adding oiling to his hands and then her body with the silky stuff that came from the bottle, always warming it a little in his hands before he rubbed it on. He hadn’t massaged her shoulders and arms for two minutes, she thought, before she wanted to beg him to touch her more intimately: to lay claim to the breasts that he had already touched, while he was kissing her, whose nipples now tingled, even ached for the return of his fingers, this time anointed with the lovely oil.