12
O
f all his five trained slaves, Kartane liked Talia the best. With her supple dancer’s body and long red hair, she never failed to catch his eye or raise his temperature. She was a tease and a brat, yet when the flirtatious vixen trailed her fingers over his flesh, then sucked in a quick feminine breath as if in fear of her own audacity, his body thrummed its response.
So when Talia sometimes elbowed the other slaves and lorded it over them with an arrogance unbecoming in a slave, he let it pass.
Talia was a bitch, but she was the best of the lot.
An alluring female. But not Charlotte.
His mood curdled. He didn’t want to think of Charlotte. It was that stupid new slave’s fault for bringing her up, making him miss his ex again.
Kartane reclined to watch his five women rush here and there, cleaning and making the too-large conference room more hospitable for a Gorean gathering. Soon there would be a sixth, then a seventh woman . . . then more. His warrior friends would eventually bring their own to these gatherings. This place wasn’t quite a paga tavern, but it would have to do until the Gorean movement caught on.
He decided to test his slaves.
“Wine!” he demanded.
While the others stood staring vacantly, Talia leapt to serve, taking up a bottle of wine with calculated grace and pouring carefully. Amazing how she displayed her servility so beautifully. Kartane stepped back from himself to observe the two of them doing what they did best. A woman serving, and him ruling over her. Dominate and submit. Taking all her training and applying it to serve her master. As nature intended.
Talia approached, the red silk of her dress swaying with her slow, seductive movements. She knelt back on her heels, knees widely spread in the dictated position of the pleasure slave. Holding the goblet with both hands, she pressed it against her body, pushing inward against her belly beneath her navel. Then she raised it to her face, touching her lips to its side, kissing the goblet lovingly with her eyes closed.
Then she extended her arms, lifting it. “I offer you wine, Master.”
He took it with a small grunt of acknowledgment, watching her narrowly as she bowed her head and retreated with as much grace and decorum as she’d approached.
Such beauty and fire. Such a well-trained slave. Like Charlotte could’ve been.
He turned his sudden frown on the other women, who began to clean faster under his fierce scrutiny. “Finish preparing this place, then kneel facing the chairs where your masters for the evening will be seated. Nadu position,” he added, knowing that maintaining the shoulders-straight, chest-out, belly-in rigidity of the kneeling position for hours would be a form of punishment.
It was no more than they deserved, the stupid cows.
He still wanted Charlotte.
The realization annoyed him.
He shouldn’t want her. He had slaves like Talia, and soon he’d have Amethyst, and then many more.
But for all his women’s pleading looks and tears that seemed as right and appropriate as the sun rising in the morning, it didn’t replace what he’d almost had with Charlotte. Had he given her up too soon? Setting an enslaved woman free went against the Gorean code. Mostly because the code didn’t account for slaves
wanting
to go free, not after fully tasting the glory of being a slave, of being protected and treated in a way that satisfied their biological needs. After the initial shock of becoming a slave, most women adapted, even thrived. The normal ones did. The rest, well, they generally weren’t considered worth preserving. Biologically flawed, after all.
But Charlotte hadn’t been flawed.
She’d been the one to bring him into S and M. To pain and pleasure and dominance and submission. She had a slave’s heart. But she denied her own urges.
Because he’d loved her, because he’d been so remorseful and confused, he’d let her go.
Maybe he shouldn’t have.
Their bodies had sung together so well, once upon a time.
Kartane’s gaze went to the four red-clad slaves. They knelt in an orderly line, branded thighs well on display, each woman positioned before a still-empty chair. Talia hummed as she tidied the wine and glasses, the undisputed queen of the bunch. Charlotte easily rivaled her in beauty and grace.
The idea struck him suddenly: Why not reclaim what he’d so rashly set aside? Why not simply take what he wanted? First Amethyst.
Then Charlotte.
What more could there be?
Even as she asked herself the question, Charlotte’s mind presented the X-rated movie images: a savage Martin ravishing her, merciless, hurting her, bestial in her fantasy. So unlike Cory in every way that mattered. Martin’s hard, driving use of her—as she pleaded for mercy—would send her over the edge.
“Please,” she begged. She couldn’t tell him about something so depraved.
He stopped, removed his gloves. Opened yet another drawer. Withdrew yet another teasing instrument of pleasure and pain.
Would he ever be done toying with her? She was coming apart at the seams.
“Martin, please. I want you so much.”
With a sudden brutality that shocked her, he reached between her legs, grasped her clit, twisted it between two large, smooth fingers. “That’s ‘Doctor,’ to you. Say it.” His fingers moved in a key-turning movement. Back and forth.
She couldn’t speak, all her awareness focused on the shrieking nerve endings between his fingers. Pain. Pleasure. Intense pain. So much pleasure. “Doctor!” she gasped. She was going to come if he didn’t stop instantly.
For a miracle, he did. She panted, bereft and relieved both. “Jesus.”
“No, just ‘Doctor.’ ”
It startled laughter out of her.
“Impatient patient,” he chided with a smile. “Open your mouth.”
“I’d rather you gave me an
injection,
” she tried again suggestively.
“Open your mouth.” This time he didn’t smile.
She stared, rebellious, but complied. Expecting a tongue depressor, or possibly a thermometer, she frowned in consternation at the length of hard rubber he forced into her mouth.
The thing nudged against first one cheek, then the other. He pushed it in until she started to gag. Then he withdrew it completely. “Very good.” He held the spit-moistened thing up for both their appraisal.
The gag was almost penis shaped, except for how it tapered at the tip, and tapered again at the base.
She saw Martin reach for another container alongside the small blue one near them. As he stroked the object’s wet surface, she realized he was adding to its slick coating. His large fingers returned to the jug of Vaseline, then, as if as an afterthought, to the Vicks VapoRub.
“Incorporation of patient participation is generally a significant factor in the resolution of her complaint. But in this case, I think the opposite applies. I think your cooperation is contraindicated. Isn’t that so?”
She felt a pleasurable frisson of panic. She looked at him, then down at the thing. She hadn’t liked being gagged.
“Time to take your temperature,” he said briskly. He bent between her legs.
It wasn’t a gag.
He wormed one of his slick fingers into her ass.
“Hey! Oh! Not there! That’s not . . . I didn’t think . . . I can’t . . .” She tried to close her legs, but his hands pried them apart.
“Either say your safe word, or cooperate. Or fight me. I’d prefer you fight.” He waited a moment, then brought his thumbs into play again, rubbing her clit as he violated her ass. It felt more invasive than painful, but she couldn’t help struggling. His thumbs brought a sudden, intense pleasure as he stretched her.
Her face flamed with embarrassment at what he did to her. It was so degrading. How could it feel so good? She couldn’t let herself accept his probing touch. She fought, trying to squeeze her thighs closed, to roll away from him.
“Naughty.” He slapped her clit, making her yelp with surprise.
Then he pinned her arms to the table with such force she knew she’d have bruises. He replaced his intrusive finger with the blunt, moist head of the object at her opening.
It nudged, threatening and exciting. It felt cool, and wet, and totally unfamiliar. Most of all, it felt far too large for where it was intended.
“You can’t! You wouldn’t!” She began to struggle harder.
He wouldn’t dare. Would he?
“Are you ready to tell me your dirty secret? Or does this go in?”
She stared at him, fear and lust battling inside her. She heard the tremor in her voice. “Please. Martin, don’t . . .” Please don’t? Is that what she really meant? If it was, the proper word was “red” and she knew it. She panted, fearful yet rocked by lust. Tears rose to her eyes, unbidden. “Please, you can’t do this to me.”
Martin shook his head, mocking. “Wrong. In goes the thermometer!” He shoved the rubber dildo into her ass with a sadistic grin.
He pinned her as she made a galvanized motion of resistance at the outrage he inflicted on her.
He gave her a cheerful grin. “It’s easier to simply do as I ask. But I’m glad you don’t. You know why I’m glad, don’t you? Because I’m a sadist.” He paused, considering. “A fairer kind of sadist than you’ve known, I suspect.”
Charlotte barely heard him. The thrusting probe filled her rear, hard rubber stretching her inner walls to the point of pain. She twisted, trying to get away from it, to rid herself of the object.
He held her down. “No.”
She panted.
His grip remained firm. “How does it feel now?”
“How do you think? It feels . . .” But even as she tried to maintain her outrage, the sight of his amused smile and her own body’s responses undermined her.
It felt exciting. Forbidden. His calm dominance was a turn-on, too.
Martin wiggled it a little, twisted it back and forth. With each twist, his thumb brushed against her clit.
“Stop!”
He ignored her desperate plea. He worked it in farther. Suddenly, the largest section was inside her and she felt her sphincter clamp around the smaller, tapered part. “There,” he said with satisfaction.
She tried but couldn’t push it back out.
He’d succeeded in penetrating her. And in such a way! She barely knew him. She couldn’t understand how the deliberate obscenity of his action increased her attraction to him to a neardesperate level.
She looked at his stern look of concentration and wanted him with an aching need that shocked her more than the invasion of her body.
She shook her head, appalled at herself. Cory was right. She was just a demented sex slave. No wonder he hadn’t been able to satisfy her, even after she’d driven him to extremes. Nobody could.
Her mind whispered that she was wrong. Martin could.
Martin frowned, stood. Holding her body pinned with one strong arm, he quickly scooted to the head of the table, where he reached underneath. He brought out a long chain with padded forearm cuffs, which he enclosed around her arms, locking them behind her.
He walked to the sink, washed his hands in a leisurely manner. He spoke over his shoulder as he dried his hands. “You haven’t worn a plug before, have you?”
He crossed back to her, looked down at her. He tapped her legs. “Open.” When she didn’t, he trailed his fingers back down her body to the neat triangle of her mound. Then lower.
He wormed his hand between her sealed thighs, prying them apart. He moved his fingers in slow, sensuous circles around her clit, occasionally pushing the bottom of the plug. Each push was a jab to her insides that caused her to suck in her breath.
She hadn’t realized how it would feel. That there’d be the perverse connection between the nerve endings in her rear and the other erogenous zones. Especially with him working her with his fingers.
With her hands bound, there was no possibility of escape. He’d caught her. He could do anything he wanted with her.
The sinking pleasure made her moan.
“Tsk, tsk.” He seized her clit, twisted brutally, ignoring her shocked yell. “I asked you a question.”
She gasped. She tried frantically to gather her thoughts, but they danced away from her. He masterfully inflicted enough pain to make her straddle the fine line dividing pleasure from hurt. The idea of disappointing him seemed to hurt her almost as sharply as his cruel grasp, and that added to her pleasure, too.
Charlotte slid more deeply into the pleasant zone she’d felt earlier. Nerve endings all over her body tingled to exquisite life, even as her insides whirled pleasurably. Pulses of pleasure in between the pain brought her a sensation of floating. Of flying.
She looked at him with all the desire and submission offered up in her gaze. “I’m sorry, Doctor. What was your question?”