The Bid

by Jacquelyn Frank

  “Stop it! Don’t tease me if you won’t let me have you! You bastard! Don’t!”

  He ignored the tantrum, scooping her from the floor effortlessly and moving to the bed where he laid her across its middle. She sobbed in real pain, her limbs moving in constant, restless sensuality, her hands caressing her own skin as it howled for stimulation of any kind. The image gave him a jolt of inspiration, and he carefully stretched out beside her on the bed, making sure not to touch her. He reached for her hand and took hold, even that simple contact making her gasp and jerk. Unable to help the impulse, his lips touched the tears running down her temple.

  “Shh, Hanna…” he soothed softly. “I will help you.”

  Jhon drew her hand down her torso, guiding her straight down the center of her body. He could only hope her physiology was similar to what he was familiar with as he brought her fingers to rest on the baby soft skin of her pubic mound. She grew no hair, the entire area smooth and perfect. He backed his center finger along hers and together they eased past her outer labia.

  He had to bite back a groan, his brain screaming curses at him, when he felt how hot and how awesomely wet with readiness she was from the stim. It made little difference that it hadn’t been produced by his own skill, except to his conscience. It made the sensations no less divine, no less tempting. Her thighs instinctively fell wide open, and his torture was completed when his sensitive sense of smell drew in the appetizing perfume of her sex. Vejhon turned his face into the bedding as he bit down on the inside of his lip, forcing himself to ignore the pounding pulse of his highly interested cock, and coaxing her to finish what he had so cruelly started.

  Hanna touched the clit at the top of her kitty and she gasped out hard at the feedback it sent through her hyperstimulated body. Nerves screeched with relief and then yowled for more. More! More touch, more scent…more Vejhon. But then she felt him drawing away and she jerked to grab for him, to pull him back to her.

  “No. No,” he whispered, turning against her ear as his voice ground out the word as though passing it between millstones. “Touch yourself, Hanna. Give yourself relief.”

  “You!” It was a protest and a demand all at once.

  “I…” He swallowed noisily and closed his eyes as he threw himself on his sword. “I want to watch,” he rasped, barely hearing himself over the chorus of his heart and his breath. He hadn’t meant to be any part of it, but he was just realizing that she was no good at taking for herself without somehow giving in return. It was a painful way to learn how increasingly mistaken he had been about her, but he grimly accepted the punishment he deserved. “Show me. Show me how you come, honey.”

  She opened her eyes and turned to seek his. He watched tears roll out of them and into her hairline and prayed she accepted his offer. He was only a man, after all, and he was reaching his limits as he watched her wriggle in need beside him. She nodded just once, but it was enough to free him. He got up from the bed because he knew he couldn’t be lying beside her as she reached orgasm. He’d never survive it with his honor and conscience intact. He’d end up using her to the hilt and beyond, and he couldn’t even begin to imagine the consequences for them both if he did. He moved to retrieve a chair from nearby and settled it just offside of her spread thighs. This way, he could focus on her face and not on her sex, which was splayed like an offering before him.

  Gods, if you get me through this, I swear I will try to be a better man, he prayed. He had to have become one already, to a degree. Gods knew, before he’d been through this ordeal of debasement, he never would have thought twice about taking advantage of a woman who was, for all intents and purposes, in heat. He would have been happy to oblige her and damn the consequences to her feelings. Now he was forced to wonder about the brothels he’d attended over the years both on and off his home planet. How many of those women had been, in essence, slaves? How many had used stims and other drugs to get them through their nightly encounters? He’d never cared to ask the question before. It had never made such a difference to him before.

  But now he had to focus on the present and let the past take care of itself. Now he knew what the answer to the question was and here and now he had to struggle with himself to make all of the right choices. Ignorance was one thing, but purposefulness something entirely different.

  He wasn’t a stranger to watching a woman bring herself to climax. The unfamiliar part would come later; when he denied himself the pleasure of showing her he could use her body to top her own performance.

  “Tell me,” she begged him softly from the bed. “Tell me what you want and I’ll do it. I’ll do anything.”

  Jhon sat back in the chair and decided he must have been an evil bastard at some point in a previous incarnation. Maybe he had beaten old women and stewed babies and pups for supper. Whatever it was, it had to be truly and purely malevolent, and this was payback. What else could account for the past few months of his life? Not to mention the next minutes to come.

  For want of a better word, he thought with a grimace.

  “Just touch yourself. Everywhere it feels good. I want to watch you feel good.”

  She didn’t do him the favor of closing her eyes. Instead she fixated on him, holding his gaze steadily as she did as instructed. Her free hand drifted lightly by the fingertips down her throat and then up the slope of a firmly rounded breast. Jhon knew the feel of her skin now, so it was all too easy to imagine what she was feeling as she did this. What he didn’t know was how those thick, gorgeous nipples would feel. Unique, he thought as her nails flicked over one. Satisfying. On the tongue, against his palm. Heat flushed his face and neck, and he knew it was visible because she smiled for the first time since she had entered this crisis. The smile was too damn self-satisfied and wicked for his peace of mind. She’d grin like an idiot and shout from mountaintops if she could just feel how hard he was right then. He already had a moist stain of pre-cum saturating the thin fabric of his pants, and he was strangling within their confines.

  Her opposite hand wasn’t being coy either. She hadn’t waited even a second before sliding her fingers down along the wet slit it was nestled in. She was so primed that she gasped the instant she touched herself. Her lashes fluttered as a tense sort of bliss skipped over her features. Had he thought she had the features of an innocent? No. This was a siren, sex and temptation etched into every sweeping curve and underlying bone. The true intensity was in her unwavering eyes as she held onto him, seeking approval, guidance…response.

  He hardly disappointed. Watching her breasts bounce lightly as she reached for herself, hearing her breath catch and her fingers slide through juicy flesh, it was absolutely incredible, and he knew his expression said so. Her lips parted to accommodate her breathing and the low moan she exhaled. That starkly pink tongue popped out and reminded him of the all-too-brief taste she had taken of him. His cock throbbed angrily, demanding release from its prison and release from its hell.

  “You have nice long fingers,” he heard himself saying. “They should reach pretty far inside of you.”

  Hanna couldn’t breathe as the suggestion danced through her already sparkling brain. She had to focus on him or she was certain she would blow apart like dust and cease to exist. Her heart was tapping in rapid staccato, working too hard to manage the stimulant that was Vejhon as well as the one in her bloodstream. Other than that, it was all about her own touch on her own body and the way it screamed over her crying nerves. It didn’t take much to bring her to the edge. All it took was his last instruction and her desire to obey it. She slipped first one…then two fingers into her vaginal opening, her nails sharply arousing as they tripped over her second clit. Everything went a shade of gray as the pleasure rode through her, and when it cleared he was still there and watching her more intently than ever.

  “You need to touch yourself, too,” she said, demanding rather than requesting. She watched as he clutched his hand around the arm of the chair briefly, the other running over his mouth. His mout
h that tasted like heat, a touch of salt, and something just out of range of definition, she recalled.

  “I thought this was about what I wanted,” he said, his voice catching hoarsely.

  “It is what you want,” she breathed. “I can see it in your mind. I can see your body begging for it.” Her gaze dropped to his lap and her proof positive of that.

  He shook his head mutely. She didn’t know what that meant exactly, but she didn’t like it. Hanna quickly dropped her legs and stood up. Jhon jerked in his seat and watched her warily as she stood in front of him. Then she slowly sank to her knees, her limber joints setting them wide apart as she sat back on her heels and feet. She cocked her head in silent challenge and shifted the rules of the battlefield as she sat like that, barely a couple of feet away from him, and held up two fingers, both of which were glistening with the dew of her own body. Snaring his eyes yet again, she slowly drew her fingers across her lips, as if she were painting them with herself. She paused only to lick them clean right before she set one finger against her tongue and closed her mouth around it, sucking it deep within.

  Apparently, Jhon wasn’t meant to be a better man. He wasn’t even meant to survive this ordeal, he was convinced of it. His heart felt like it was going to rip out of his own chest, and his erect phallus was ten seconds from sliding into his palm.

  Wrong. Five seconds. That was exactly how long it took for that fit, nimble body to bend back over her heels, her back arcing until her hair pooled into a pillow for her shoulders right before they touched the floor. She now lay kneeled back, her thighs wide apart and her pelvis upthrust against the hill her heels made under her backside. This afforded Vejhon the view he had tried to avoid, only much closer and in a much more provocative and subservient position. She topped off this acrobatic taunt with the return of her fingers to her pussy.

  “Here kitty, kitty,” she teased in a throaty, singsong voice meant to be the total temptation it was.

  “Bad kitty, kitty,” he growled dangerously back at her. But he was a lost cause and he knew it. He didn’t even take offense when she laughed as his engorged cock sprang eagerly into his waiting palm once he’d allowed it freedom.

  In the long run it might be the better choice. It would greatly reduce the chances of what could happen next after he watched her do this. As he encircled himself, he tried to think how long it had been since he had done this. He dismissed the question as unimportant next to the vision of the black-haired beauty finger-fucking herself into rising excitement, her other hand coasting from breast to breast, pulling and pinching each nipple so hard that after a while Jhon and Hanna both began to gasp for breath in time to each tug. His palm and fingers had become lubricated by his own fluids after his first stroke, so every single one after that was a sensory wash that felt like nails scratching down his back in ecstasy.

  Again their eyes locked, only this time they could both read the coming crisis building in each other’s gaze. She was on stim overload so she was far ahead of him, but she wasn’t above using any trick in her book.

  “When you come,” Hanna breathed, “I want you to come on me. I want you on my skin, Vejhon Mach. I want to see you burst all over me.”

  “Oh dear gods,” he gasped, the hearing of her proposal driving him out of his mind with pleasure. “Are you—?”

  “Yes! I’m sure!” She cried out the affirmation like anger, only it was compounded ecstasy climbing through her like up-surging waves. Jhon watched, sliding forward to the edge of his seat, as she blushed with increasingly darkening shades of lavender. She gasped hard for every breath, her thigh muscles clenched tight enough to show him perfection of definition. She was vibrating with the tension of the coming explosion and he was doing a fair imitation himself.

  Jhon saw her orgasm like the ephemeral possession of a wild animal. She arched up, hips seeking and fingers swirling and she screamed like an untamed thing, the pitch like the cry of a cat. Here, kitty, kitty. It was his last coherent thought as he dropped to a kneel between her knees, his own orgasm an internal match to her primal scream. It felt as though the other day had never happened. As though he hadn’t had release in years. He wouldn’t close his eyes for all the freedom in the worlds at that moment as he watched himself ejaculate in great staccato bursts across her belly and breasts. He ground his teeth together to hold back his own primal cry, releasing it in low, masculine grunts of pleasure personified instead.

  If that weren’t enough to drive a man insane, she ran her free hand up her wet body and spread his essence into her skin and onto her lips and tongue. The sight kept him coming far longer than was natural for him, but long enough to hear her chase her first climax with a second. This one was painful for her, her body raw and oversensitive, the stim playing its angry tricks. She cried out, jerking her hand away from herself as if she’d been burned. Vejhon sat back hard on his heels, shaking head to toe as droplets from his sweat-drenched hair skipped onto and down his body.

  For a long time, the only sound was of their labored breathing.

  8

  Najir stood on the other side of the wall, looking down on Hanna and the man with her.

  When he had returned from the yards to find Hanna missing, he had instantly known she was with him and had felt a full-blown fright unlike anything he’d known in his life. He had run all the way to Vejhon’s room and, disregarding any thought of privacy, he had not even hesitated to go to the viewing room. He’d activated every portal, racing down the corridor in a frantic search for her. He hadn’t seen them beside the bed at first because it hadn’t occurred to him to look along the floor. Now he did see them and he stood frozen as he watched the unbelievable tableau playing out before him.

  Hanna had always been indescribably gorgeous in the throes of orgasm. It felt like such a waste to turn her back to you sometimes, where you couldn’t watch her face as easily, but sometimes it was so worth it….

  He understood. Despite the agony screaming through him on a distant level he was in too much shock to access, he couldn’t possibly blame Vejhon for the act of coming across Hanna’s pretty skin and body. He knew what it felt like, knew what it looked like…he just knew.

  And now he knew what it looked like from a whole new perspective. He laughed a little, the sound tremulous at best as he laid a hand against the wall and closed his eyes. Strange, how he still had the taste of terror in his mouth. It seemed so obscene now.

  How had she done it? How had she taken Jhon from plotting their deaths to this in just a matter of hours? Oh, if anyone could, it was Hanna, he made no mistake about that. But he had expected time. Just a little time to prepare for it. A day. Maybe two. And he had never wanted to see it.

  He had only himself to blame. Anyone knew Hanna could take care of herself. Who did he think he was, trying to play her protector? The reality was, she protected him. Without her…

  Without her.

  He was without her.

  But nothing else would change. He had sworn it. And he never, ever broke his word. He just wished he’d promised not to break the bastard’s neck as well, because if Mach so much as bruised Hanna’s feelings, Najir was going to be in a hell of a mess.

  And then Hanna made a pitiful mewling sound that struck through both men with a horrible sense of impending trouble. Vejhon forced himself to attentiveness, leaning over her to see her face. She rolled onto her side, her back to Najir, her hair sliding away from her shoulders.

  Najir bolted, running for the other room.

  Jhon caught Hanna before she made it to her side and rolled her back, scooping her into his arms just as her skin drained of color until even her lips looked pale.

  Hanna screamed as he clutched her tightly to his chest and rose to his feet. She tried to shove him away from touching her, the overload of feedback from the stim like torture of a whole new variety, but Jhon resisted without realizing the harm it was doing.

  “Let her go!”

  Jhon stumbled at the unexpected voice resonating
with fury at his back. He jerked to look at Najir as the other man closed on them with purpose blazing in his dark eyes.

  “I’m not trying to hurt her!” Jhon barked, too impatient to explain his goal was to help. Why waste time speaking of it when action was so desperately needed?

  “I know that, fool! If you were, you’d be unconscious by now.” Najir crossed past Jhon and jumped down into the tub. It immediately began to fill with its remarkable speed as Najir looked to Jhon. “You gave her a stimulant?” he demanded to know.

  “It was an accident….”

  “I’m not placing blame! I’m trying to tell you, you can’t touch her now. The stimulant is a nightmare after orgasm when given in two doses. Even the simplest of touches—”

  “I didn’t give her two doses! It wouldn’t have been an accident then if I had, now would it?” Regardless of the argument, Jhon responded when Najir beckoned to him to hand Hanna into the tub. He passed her to the other man and watched as he sank to his knees with her, settling her into the water.

  “Then this doesn’t make sense.” Najir cast about for an explanation as Vejhon dropped down into the bath as well. “One dose shouldn’t do this. Hush, Hanna, hush,” the slave soothed softly. Jhon watched him stretch her out and immediately understood what he was doing. Keeping his touch limited to her ankles, and Najir keeping his only on her shoulders, they kept her almost entirely submerged except her face. Like a sensory deprivation tank. Their voices dropped to whispers.

  “An overdose?” Jhon suggested.

  Najir looked up at him. “How would that happen?”

  Jhon heard the suspicion in the other man’s voice and hardly blamed him. Coming into the room because his mistress was screaming must have aged him a millennium. “How the hell would I know? It’s her damn ring.” Jhon saw her flinch at his raised voice and he instantly regretted his temper. “Shh, Hanna, it’s okay….”