Pam-Ann (34 page)

“I think maybe the door only
opens for certain people at certain times, when the world they’re
in and the world they should be in are linked.” Pam gave a
self-conscious laugh. “I know. It sounds fanciful even to me. I
said it was only a feeling, probably a crazy one.”

“Maybe not. You think it somehow
tunes in to those who should be somewhere else and transports them
there, the way it brought you here?”

“I… I guess I do,” she agreed,
and he understood that she was making a confession about herself at
the same time.

“Then it took
the original Persephone to a world that suited her better but made
a mistake with
the one it brought here in
her place.
One it returned to put right. And it didn’t take
you because…?”

“I belong here,” Pam said.

“Here with me, sweetheart,” he
corrected, “and that isn’t a theory. It’s a fact.” He began putting
on his pants.

Pam giggled. “Oh, Rafael!”

He looked up. “What?”

“You’re one of the men who gave
the world the
zipper,
and you’ve got
buttons on your trousers.”

* * * * *

“Are you ever going to learn to
behave yourself?” Drago asked.

“I don’t know, my lord,” Mala
replied.

He barked a laugh. “At least
you’re honest. You’ve become a saucy little thing since
I caught you wearing those strange clothes on the
flight back from New York
.”

Mala suppressed the urge for her
lips to turn up at the corners and lowered her head.

“No, look at me.” Drago pressed
the tip of his stiff, tightly braided buffalo-hide whip under her
chin.

She lifted her head and met his
eyes, arching her back to push her small, pointed breasts out, as
he would expect. His dark gaze held hers and her belly flipped. It
was eerie how they all looked so like the ones she knew and yet
were so completely different.

“Strip,” Drago said, and Mala
loosed the thong around her hips and let the scrap of soft leather
over her sex fall to the packed sand of the punishment ring. She
briefly eyed the score of concubines and slave girls kneeling
facing the whipping post and then looked again into Drago’s dark
and so familiar eyes.

“Thirty,” he pronounced, and
smiled thinly at the narrowing of her eyes. Her gut clenched. She
had not expected so many. “All right, saucy, twenty-five then. But
I want to see you on duty in the bath house first thing
tomorrow.”

A thrill of satisfaction joined
the fear that was making Mala’s belly flutter and her chest tight.
He wanted her. It was the first step.
In this
world she could only ever be a slave, but she was determined to be
Drago’s favourite slave.
The thrill reached lower as the
whip’s end smoothed up the inside of one slender thigh. Drago
laughed softly as he saw the
swollen pearl of her
clit
standing proud of all concealment at the apex of her
sex. Mala’s pussy quivered.

“Go,” he ordered.

She turned, suppressed the
shaking in her legs and forced herself to walk with measured steps
to the whipping post. The tall, broad-shouldered woman standing
beside it met her eye and smiled as she stepped onto the low
platform on which the post stood. Mala had spent half the previous
night with her fingers and tongue sunk deep between the harem
mistress’s thighs. The memory of it increased the tremors in her
sex as the woman ran the rope in the ring at the top of the post
through the leather cuffs on Mala’s wrists. She was called Anya
here, but everything else about her was identical to the person
Mala had known before, even the way her heavy breasts swayed as she
hauled on the rope until the slim girl’s arms were stretched high
and she was teetering on her toes with the hard wood of the post
pressing between her stiff-nippled tits. Anxiety deepening, she
glanced back at the faces of the watching girls and at Drago,
stripped to the waist and gripping the
tough,
inflexible length of the leather
between his big hands.

The butt-plug came next,
inserted dry as it always was for punishments, stinging and burning
its way through the tender tissues of Mala’s tight rear entrance.
The clamps hurt even more, screwed tight until they were biting
deep into the delicate softness of her outer labia. She hissed and
tried not to wriggle as Anya fed cords through the rings on the
clamps and tied them off on the far side of the post, stretching
her flesh wickedly even though she jammed her belly hard against
the smooth, sweat-stained wood.

“There, lover,” the overseer
said. “Mind you keep as still as you can. I don’t want to see your
sweet little pussy torn up as well as your bum.”

It was uncanny. Even her voice
and the expressions she used were the same.

The clouds
drifted clear of the sun and Mala felt its warmth bathe her
shoulders and the upper curves of her buttocks.
A fly buzzed
past, loud in the menacing silence.
She
fought to slow her rapid breaths and felt the sweat trickling down
her naked body. Her shoulders and calves were already aching. Her
belly felt tight but was twitching wildly and her heart hammered
beneath her ribs. Little, tickling contractions teased the length
of her sheath as she heard Drago’s heavy tread coming nearer.
Pressed hard against the post, her clitoris tingled.

Mala, once ordinary Kathy Martin
and then wealthy Persephone Peake, trembled. Everything she had
been so afraid would happen had happened. Everything she had tried
to escape by seeking out the blackness had only befallen her more
quickly because she had found it. And it was all far more exciting
and wonderful than she could ever have imagined. She loved it.

Drago’s footfalls stopped. She
sensed him close behind her, sensed him raise his arm. Her gut
churned and her sex tickled madly. The whip whistled as it cut the
air. A savage streak of torment blazed across her buttocks. The
fiery impact drove Mala against the post, forcing her pulsing bud
hard into the unyielding wood. Head spinning, she screamed and
climaxed.

* * * * *

Todd chewed his lower lip and
eyed the girl warily. Things were not going as he had planned. They
were going far better. He just wished he understood why.

Nothing had
felt right since they had passed through that black thing. Or had
it passed through them? He might never recover from the shock the
experience had caused him. Pamela’s behaviour since had been almost
as alarming. How she had changed her clothes when all the
while
he had had his arm around her he did
not even want to think about. When she had started removing those
same, strange-looking garments the moment things seemed to be
getting back to normal, he had known at once that not everyone had
come through the eerie encounter unscathed. Pamela Weston was one
of the most uptight, sexually frustrated, control freaks he had met
in a long time, yet the minute he had got her back into the
passenger cabin she had stripped to her bare skin and offered
herself to him. He had expected a fight, and to have to physically
subdue her. Instead, without a single word of protest, she had put
her hands behind her back so he could fasten her wrists into
leather cuffs and then lay down on the floor so he could do the
same to her ankles.

She was looking
at him with a hunger that would have been
unmistakable to any red-blooded, heterosexual male. Her pupils
were dilated, her breathing was fast and shallow, and the ripe
odour of her arousal was making Todd’s nostrils twitch. The scent
and sight and appealing helplessness of her nude body had given him
a raging hard-on.

“Will I be whipped soon,
Master?” Pamela asked, the first coherent words she had spoken
since before the darkness had engulfed the plane.

“God no!” Todd said. “No one’s
going to beat you as long as you do as you’re told.”

“But I stowed away. I have to be
whipped and… and made a slave. It’s the law.”

“What?” Swamped by sudden guilt
and unnerved by the pleading expression on her face, he looked
away. She had to be crazy. Her fear of that blackness must have
been too much for her. “I’m sorry,” Todd said, “but I couldn’t let
you reach New York. When the truth came out, my career would have
been over and my livelihood too. I couldn’t let you do that to me,
Pamela.”

“My name is
Ann, Master,” the girl said, wriggling a little while rubbing her
thighs together as much as her ankle cuffs allowed, “though I guess
you
can change that any time you want to.”
She seemed more excited than dismayed by her realisation. “I will
be used soon, won’t I? I’m sure I should be whipped too,
Master.”

“Master? What the hell is wrong
with you, and why do you keep talking about whipping?” Todd
demanded. He looked over his shoulder as the cockpit door opened
and Corrigan came down the passageway towards them.

“No more sign
of that black thing. Jesus, it nearly scared the life out of me!
We’ll land at Charlotte in an hour and a half. We won’t have any
trouble getting clearance for Mexico City, and the buyer will have
people standing by to meet us as soon as we touch down.” The
co-pilot looked at the girl’s quivering body and raised an eyebrow
when she gave
a little, gasping moan.
“There’s a well-padded crate in the cargo bay all
ready for her. You’ll need to make sure she’s
securely gagged and inside before we’re on the ground.” He leaned
closer. “Hell, she stinks of wet pussy! And why is she
shaking?”

“I….” Todd swallowed with
difficulty, grimacing as he looked up at his fellow
conspirator.

“I need to be fucked, Master,”
the girl said breathlessly.

A broad grin split Corrigan’s
face. “Then you’re in the right place.” He reached for his belt
buckle.

* * * * *

“You’re a good friend, Rafael
Drake, and a good man, too. Don’t you ever forget it.” Alex Riley
chuckled softly to himself as he sank down onto the bed, and then
slumped sideways as Rafael withdrew his supporting arm from around
his shoulders. He rolled onto his back, smiling benevolently up
into Rafael’s face.

The slave girl, Sue, began
loosening his shirt while the Zulu girl unbuttoned his pants and
pulled down the zipper. Riley reached out and stroked the fat
nipple at the peak of one of the brown-skinned girl’s big breasts,
then let his hand flop to the mattress.

“I’ve drunk too much,” he said,
slurring the words. “I can’t remember the last time I did
that.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Though Alex
was too far gone to see it, Rafael gave him an affectionate smile.
“You’re entitled to celebrate a little.”

Riley chuckled
again. “Yeah, we’re rich men now. Money doesn’t make you happy but
it sure makes being miserable a lot more comfortable. But you know
what makes
you
happy, my friend.”

“What’s that?”

As Sue eased one of his arms out
of his shirt Riley beamed at her in pleasure. “You’re beautiful,”
he said, blinked and looked fuzzily at Rafael. “The girl, of
course. The one we spent all those hours talking about. You’ve
found her, Rafael. You’ve found your perfect girl.”

“Oh, I know, Alex! Believe me, I
know.” With a surge of emotion rising in his chest he left Riley in
the gentle hands of his slave girls and hurried from the room.

* * * * *

A single lamp burned in the
lounge. Its bulb cast a glowing circle of light across the sofa and
the patch of floor where Pam knelt silently waiting.
She felt almost as bewildered as she had during her first
moments on the airship, and almost as afraid. First Rafael had
flogged her at her own request, then locked the necklace around her
throat instead of a collar, and at dinner he had made her sit at
the table and eat in the conventional way, while Riley’s slaves
knelt on the floor and Daisy and Persephone did the serving. What
did it mean? Was he trying to tell her something in some cryptic,
obscure way? Because if he was, it was not working, and she dearly
wished he would just come straight out and tell her what he
expected from her. Pam sucked in a long breath and summoned her
resolve. This time she would not be distracted, diverted or
deterred. This time she would have her answer. Her belly fluttered
as he entered the room.

“Alex is a happy drunk. His
girls have put him to bed.”

“He drank a lot more than you
did,” Pam said,
delaying the moment while she
gathered her determination. Her pulse quickened as Rafael took her
hand in his and drew her to her feet, her movements heightening the
buzzing of the welts he had imprinted on her skin
earlier.

“He works a lot harder than I
do. He should relax more. Besides, I have plans that include
keeping a
clear head.”
His
lazy smile made Pam’s heart skip and the reddened skin on her right
breast flared as his hand cupped its resilient flesh.

“Wait,” she said. “We have
to....” His lips pressing softly onto hers silenced her
protest.

“I’m sorry I kept you waiting,”
he said.

The apology startled her. “It’s
okay. It… it’s only been a few minutes.”

Rafael shook his head. “It’s
been far longer than that. It’s been too long. But tomorrow we’ll
put that right. We’ll go into town and I’ll fill out the papers to
give you your freedom.”

“Freedom?” Pam’s gut lurched at
the thought of being without Rafael. “But I… I love you. W… what am
I supposed to do if you make me free?”

He raised the back of her hand
to his lips and kissed it. “Well, I hoped you might consider
becoming my wife. I love you too, so I thought....”