No one answered.
Wulf watched as the women were put into one line, the men in another. All appeared nervous but deflated. No one cried as he had expected. He was kept apart from both.
It only took about fifteen minutes before all the women had been filed out and came back in to the waiting area. Then the men left. There were more of them. That line up took over twenty minutes to complete.
When it was his turn to be escorted out, Wulf did not make it easy on his guards. Why should he? He had no thing left to lose.
The guards tugged and shoved him out the door and past an alcove. A black velvet curtain hung in front of the second door and he was pushed through it.
An outdoor garden of tables, patios, ivy and flowers surrounded him. Glass tinkled, and plates with silver cutlery shined. Here, he did not hear the traffic, only the gentle chirps of birds, and the sound of a fountain on the far end, beyond the tables and beside a white concrete path.
Upper class men and women sat at the tables, and waiters and waitresses stood nearby to bring them anything they needed.
Of course. These were the wealthy buyers.
Though he’d already been sold to the broker, it was at night and in a warehouse. He’d been clothed.
Here, he felt his nakedness both inside and out. He clenched down on the ball gag in his mouth until his teeth hurt.
Wulf struggled with his guards but to no avail. They pushed him forward and he was forced to climb two steps to the center of the stage.
He didn’t want to look at the people who were looking at him so he lifted his chin and tried to find a place to focus beyond the dining area, the patios and the fountain. Green lawn rose up past a footpath. A breath of fresh air.
He heard Parcival announce him. Heard him label him as dangerous. Well, he wasn’t a murderer, he was a warrior. And now he was a prisoner. A slave consigned to an early death. He simply wanted to get away.
When the properly coiffed and manicured people at the tables started to get up and form a line to examine him closer, his gaze dropped. A tremble began in his knees. The grip of his guards tightened.
He tried to ignore his own humiliation, but could not stop the shame that washed over him, heating his skin.
A man sitting at the table closest to the stage looked up at him as if he were seeing a monster. But, no, that wasn’t it. Wulf reassessed and decided he did not look at Wulf in disgust. No. He was rapt. His pink lips parted.
Wulf did not want to look at the man, but he was fascinating in two ways. One, he did not move to get up like the others to come examine him. And two, he had a composure about him that communicated complete and utter control. The man’s dark hair shone, swept back from his face with some kind of gel.
He probably had curls, because even as slick as it was, there were telltale curves and kinks. His eyes were the softest brown hue, and his chiseled face sported a healthy tan. This man took care of himself. This man was not just spoiled and pampered, he had a reason to comport himself with dignity and purpose.
Wulf chastised himself for his thoughts. What purpose did a man in this place at this hour have but to purchase pleasure slaves? How could he think anything about this man was dignified, or in any way decent?
Now hands were all over him. They grabbed, they poked, they squeezed. They hurt.
Wulf’s rage had already exploded too many times these past few days, but why should he contain himself? He had nothing.
Someone squeezed his cock. Someone pressed their palm against his balls. Hard. Harder. Pain shot through every part of him and Wulf cried out, unable to hold back.
He struggled against his chains, which pressed hard into his skin, and he pushed himself forward onto his toes. His handlers weren’t expecting him to lose his balance and come forward. But that was just what he did, body plunging off the low stage.
The environment around him spun.
The man at the front table jumped up just as Wulf fell, and caught him.
The fronts of Wulf’s arms, manacled at the wrists, caught the man at his chest. The man stroked his hand up Wulf’s bicep to his shoulder and held him.
“There now. These tiles are hard on the knees.”
For a moment. A quick moment. A brief embrace. No one else seemed to notice. But Wulf felt it. The steadying clasp of arms. The warm caress. And he sensed the tremble in that firm body, a heavy pulse, a heat, a patient curiosity.
“Got your balance?” the man asked calmly.
Wulf raised his head and looked him in the eye.
The man met his gaze, unflinching.
It was Wulf who looked away first. He heard the man say, “All right then.”
Strangely, the voice soothed him.
All of this happened in a matter of seconds before Wulf’s guards hauled him behind the stage and back to the waiting room.
He expected some sort of punishment. A reprimand at least.
Instead, Parcival came into the room and yelled at Wulf’s guards.
“If you let that happen again, you’re all fired! You were warned about him. If you can’t handle this job, I’ll get people who can.”
Wulf wanted to laugh. Or worse, scream.
Instead, he lowered his head and stared at the terracotta tile at his feet, teeth scraping at his gag, pretending he didn’t exist.
Chapter Five - Locke
The auction went by too slowly for Locke’s pleasure. The offerings were fairly tame. Boring, in fact. He barely paid attention as Malik ended up bidding on and winning six females of varying heights, hues and ages.
When the men returned one by one to the stage, Locke did his duty. Every male he wanted he won. Price was no object.
At last the guards brought out the One-Night Thrall. Wulf.
The man had one of those incredible physiques where the muscles, tight and toned, didn’t bunch up or look like pouches of gravel, but had developed smooth and rounded, the skin like silk flowing over them. His thigh muscles were wide but long, and they tapered up to a line just below the rounded buttocks, perfectly in tune with the hips, giving his ass a heart shape.
Locke preferred a slim, straight physique, not bodies topped by huge shoulders or attached to tree-trunk thighs.
This man had the perfect physique.
His nipples were small and brown, tight little nubs drawn out by the muscle but not too much. And that proud cock and balls. Sculpted in pale gold. Intact, not cut, which Locke liked, too. It meant the head of the penis would be all the more sensitive.
Even the man’s eyes, though frigid as the north wind, were fucking gorgeous. Add to that the fact that Wulf was labeled as dangerous, and Locke could not look away.
At Locke’s side, Malik gave a quick laugh. “You’re enamored. Quite smitten, I should think. I haven’t seen that in you in years.”
“I am not,” Locke retorted.
“You are. You’re completely enraptured by him. His behavior is quite appalling, but he is a beauty. I didn’t think you were so shallow.”
During training sessions of the past, Locke had had sex often. But he had not had a relationship with anyone in years, or sex in many months. His job took up all his time.
His last relationship had been with another trainer, and it had been all right at first, then completely unfulfilling. Maybe it was because he worked in the pleasure industry that most everyone had become boring to him. At least sexually. All the intellectuals he knew were merely friends.
“I’m not shallow, you ass, and I’m not enraptured. Where did you come up with that word anyway?”
“What? The word shallow?”
Locke smirked.
Malik leaned closer to him. “I have an idea.”
“Fuck you and your ideas.”
Malik said, “Oh but wait. Hear me out. You’re bored. I’m bored. Day to day everything’s the same, I train the slaves, they cry, they protest, they come—some quite nicely—and they go, most with a smile on their dazzled faces. But how about a challenge?”
Locke started to say no but Malik kept talking.
“I’ll bet you a month’s salary you can’t take this One-Night Thrall and tame him.”
“I don’t have the time to waste.”
“You would be training him on your off hours, of course. And I’ll give you, say, ten days. If you don’t tame him, I win the bet. And he can be sold off or put down, I don’t care. But you are the best trainer at the palace. And you look like you need a challenge to put a little light back into your eyes.”
“Fuck off.”
“Well? Does that mean you don’t want to take the bet?” Malik asked, eyes glimmering.
“You’re an ass. Have I told you that?” said Locke.
“Several times already just today.”
Beautiful and dangerous. Wulf was just the sort of project puzzle Locke might enjoy.
These days, everyone who came to the palace was too easy. The palace trainers and even the Eminent Masters who went to auctions like this one usually took the most beautiful and complacent untrained slaves. They guaranteed a good profit; after all, this was a business.
Locke didn’t believe he was as jaded as Malik, but life at the palace was pretty routine. Every slave was a challenge, some more than others. But this one? Wulf would be interesting to say the least.
“I’d need a month minimum with him,” Locke said. His heart rate increased at the simple prospect that he might take this bet.
“Are you saying you’re not up to the task? Ten days is the offer on the table.”
Locke did not have to consider it. This wasn’t about money. For either of them. It was simply what happened when people hit their mid-thirties. They started questioning everything about their lives up to that point.
He raised a hand and scratched at his chin to hide the fact that his body was doing crazy things. Arousal, yes, perhaps somewhat. But more, a knot began to form in his stomach. Within it swirled a mixture of dread and euphoric anticipation. As if he were about to visit the dentist and embark upon a long-awaited journey at the same time.
Grinning, Malik didn’t have to say another word, and he knew it.
Locke looked at him sideways and said, “Ten days.”
Malik let out a huge laugh, and waved the waiter over to bring Locke a fresh bottle of wine.
Locke ignored him. He looked up at the stage again. Wulf stood there looking like a lovely, forlorn beast. But also ready to take down anyone in his way if an opening presented itself.
For a moment it seemed there wasn’t enough air in the room. Then Locke found his voice.
“I’ll bid twenty for him.”
Parcival looked up from the side of the stage. “Twenty dollars? I expected to start the bidding low for a dangerous creature such as this. But the auction has not yet begun, sir—um—your Eminence.”
Locke didn’t want to draw this out. And besides, something about Wulf’s discomfort, and the fact that they were discussing his death in front of him, was beginning to annoy him. Slaves had no rights, but prolonging the often necessary tortures they must endure when a point had already been made was overkill.
“Twenty thousand, I meant. It just saves time if I offer it up front. I don’t think anyone else will challenge me.”
Gasps came from behind him, drowning out the splash of the fountain.
It was more than any single slave had gone for all afternoon. He glanced about at the tables and the people behind him.
Locke didn’t care if they thought he was reckless. Or even crazy. It was less than half of what he made in a month. He wouldn’t be using the Palace’s money. So who should care what he did?
“You understand that this man is not an investment on any future. You cannot get your investment back on a One-Night Thrall.”
“I am in Eminent Master of the Slave Palace. Of course I understand,” he snapped.
Parcival bowed his head and stepped back. “Done,” was all he said.
Chapter Six - Wulf
Wulf could not believe the stern handsome buyer at the front table purchased him for a near fortune. This was the same man who had kept him from falling off the stage less than an hour ago. A man who gripped him a little longer than he needed to after Wulf regained his balance. Not that he cared. He would be dead in a day or two anyway.
But he could not help but wonder. Why this man? Why had he paid so much money for a slave that could not return the investment?
Wulf knew he had a great body, a warrior’s body, but if that were the extent of it, why not allow the auction to begin and get him for a lower cash amount?
When his guards escorted him back to the waiting room, he was shoved in the line up of slaves destined for the Slave Palace.
But that couldn’t be right. As everyone in the world knew, the Slave Palace had a reputation for training and dealing in the best bred, strongest, most beautiful and complacent humans. Wulf was missing one of those components. He was anything but complacent. He’d been marked a dangerous.
The Slave Palace would never risk bringing him into their sanctum.
Yet the computers were checked. Doubled checked. He was stamped on the wrist and given a new neck band. His ball-gag was removed.
The guard holding Wulf’s gag glared at him. “No more mouthing off or this goes back in place, understand?”
Wulf swallowed the built-up saliva in his mouth, and nodded.
The slaves in Wulf’s line were also allowed lightweight shoes, but no clothing. Each one was given a clean white towel and instructed to use it folded under their buttocks for sitting.
Wulf boarded the Slave Palace bus outside the back doors where the fence blocked the city traffic. Again and again he read the words emblazoned on the side of the vehicle.
Slave Palace Transport.
He was going to the Slave Palace. It had to be a mistake. They didn’t deal in slaves who’d been labeled as he had been. But no one stopped him.
Of course he didn’t want to go to the Slave Palace, or any slave quarters in existence. He wanted to die. But it might have been worse. At least the man who bought him didn’t look like some sleazy sadist.
Wulf kept his mouth shut and boarded the bus. It was difficult with the manacles and chains, but he managed. He put his neatly folded towel on the seat beside a smaller male with spiked white hair, and sat.
The man turned to him, leaning away. “You’re the One-Night Thrall.”
Wulf did not reply.
Immediately submissive, the man said, “I’m sorry. There’s nowhere else to sit or I’d give you the whole seat.”
Wulf noticed the man was actually shaking. Wulf closed his eyes and pretended not to see him.
He heard the man sigh and felt the seat jerk as he leaned back. This man was afraid of him. Somehow, that made Wulf feel better.
Wulf kept looking at the clock on the driver’s dashboard. He had not seen a clock in days. He didn’t even know the date.
The trip ended after less than twenty minutes.
Right now it was four twenty-one p.m.
The Slave Palace loomed before him.
It looked like something out of a fairy tale with battlements between looming towers topped with pointed gold turrets. There was a guard wall and a heavy gate made of iron bars thick as Wulf’s arm.
Wulf tried to see beyond the gate, but too many uniformed guards stood in the way.
After a brief stop at the gate, it swung open for the van, which drove up a fancy tiled drive lined with rocks, grass, and large oaks.
Beautiful statues of naked men and women posed like gods on pedestals scattered across the lawns. More statues appeared closer together where the drive curved toward wide steps that led to two red double doors about twelve feet tall.
Wulf was the first to disembark, moving slowly down the steps of the van, his chains stretched tight. It was hard not to fall. His hands were chained to his waist and were no help for his balance. In one of his hands, he held his towel.
When he stood on fi
rm ground, four guards immediately surrounded him. He ignored them, glancing about.
The nearest statue, a beautiful bluish marble carving of a nude young man with one arm raised behind his head, caught Wulf’s attention. Magnificent in detail, Wulf had the urge to examine it closer—until it moved.
It wasn’t a sculpture at all. As he stared at it, he realized it was a real man painted in smooth, blue-speckled liquid that made his skin and hair look like marble. The shift in his pose had been slight, but Wulf had caught it. As he stared, he could see the man’s flat, hairless chest rise and fall with each breath he took.
Wulf turned his head to look beyond the van and across the drive to the other statues scattered about, some as far away as the outer walls, and realized they were all people, real people. The men and women were painted to look like white, blue or green marble. Some looked like weathered metal. All of them were living beings.
“What’s the matter, giant? Never seen a statue before?” asked one guard.
The others all chuckled.
“Hey!”
Wulf looked up at the new voice as all the other slaves from the van gathered behind him.
The double doors to the palace were open. A young man with short brown hair stood on the threshold wearing a white suit with tails. Underneath the jacket he had on a white vest and a shirt with the collar buttoned all the way to his neck. His hands clasped behind his back.
“New slaves are to be treated with utmost respect,” he said as if addressing the air.
The guards stood straighter, all amusement gone from their faces.
“Now,” said the man in the doorway. He looked down at the group flanking Wulf. “I would like to welcome you all to the Slave Palace. Do not be afraid. As long as you obey your masters and do everything you are told, you will know only luxury and pleasure for the rest of your lives. You have been chosen among many for this special privilege. For people such as yourselves, who have lost all inalienable rights to freedom for varying reasons, you could not have hoped for a better outcome than standing here among us right now. For this is a new era in your life, and if you embrace it well, it can bring you external benefit and internal peace the likes of which you have only dreamed. Some of you are criminals; some of you are prisoners of war. You have made past mistakes that cannot be righted, but none of you will be responsible for bad decisions ever again. Your every act will be dictated by your masters. You need not think any further than your master’s orders and will.”
The Slave Palace: Wulf and Locke (Kingdom of Slaves Book 1) Page 3
