“Give her something else to gripe about, more like.” The Chief grinned at her again and waved his pipe. “Get your clothes off then, Ann. Let’s have a look at you before you join my girls. And you better have a good strong back ’cause you’re gonna need it.”
“Wha… what did you say?”
“He said strip,” the brute who called himself Drake said. “I already reminded you once you aren’t a Freewoman any more. Do you think you’re allowed to go around wearing clothes?”
Pam made a grab for the door handle but Drake’s hand against the door stopped her opening it.
“Looks like she’ll need help, Chief.”
She dropped her shoes when his iron grip on the back of her neck forced her forwards until her right cheek was hard against the desktop, from where she caught a sideways glimpse of the Chief moving around behind her.
“No, you can’t,” Pam cried. “You’ve no right to be mauling me. Let me go, damn you!” She felt the hem of her jacket lifted and hands loosening the button at the back of her skirt’s waistband. “I said no,” she almost screamed. “Oh, God, let me go!” When her attempt to prise the hand from her neck failed she tried levering herself up from the desk but it proved equally futile. She flailed her arms uselessly as the Chief fumbled with her skirt. It was too tight for her to kick out effectively.
“What the hell’s this?” He yanked at the skirt’s waist. “Well, I never saw anything fasten like that before.” His distraction was brief. He dragged Pam’s skirt down over her hips and let it fall. She lashed out a foot but it tangled in the material pooled around her ankles. “What the…? I never saw that before either.”
Pam wriggled frantically as his fingers hooked in the waistband of her pantyhose and pulled them down to join her skirt, leaving nothing but her skimpy pale-blue panties to cover her most intimate place. Her protests grew louder and more frantic and terror gripped her as powerfully as the hand at her neck. They were going to…. No, she would not even think the word! But it did not make the fear twisting her gut any easier to bear. Her head spun and only her long habit of control helped her stave off her rising panic.
“Loan me your rod, Chief,” Drake said and Pam felt a sudden jerk at her hips followed by the sound of elastic snapping and cotton tearing as he ripped off her briefs. Her vision misty with unshed tears, she only half-saw the Chief reach across his desk, and what he picked up was only a blur. A second later a fiery streak of pain scorched the soft skin of her buttocks.
“Oow! Agh! Oh, God, you hit me! How dare you? I’ll….”
Drake dealt her another swift, stinging stroke, jerked her upright and turned her to face him. “I’ve had enough of you.” His dark-brown eyes stared deep into Pam’s blue ones. “That’s two strokes. I don’t suppose a spoiled brat like you has felt the rod before. Well, I’ll strap you down properly and give you a dozen more if you don’t start behaving yourself. Unless that’s what you’re angling for. Is that it? Can’t you wait? Are you trying to get me to thrash you?”
Pam gave an emphatic shake of her head.
“Okay, then get the rest of your clothes off. I’ve more important duties than dealing with stowaways.” He let her go and Pam backed quickly away, only to take a hasty step forward as the smarting tracks across her bottom met the wall. Drake raised the long stick, as thick as her forefinger, and pressed it against the bare, soft skin on the fronts of her thighs. She saw his jaw lift along with an impatient eyebrow, sucked in a deep breath and began unbuttoning her jacket. Frightened and horribly embarrassed, she let it and her white blouse join her pantyhose on the floor. The Chief had her skirt and was toying with its zipper.
“Hey, that’s real clever! The teeth mesh into each other when you pull it up and separate again when you pull it down. Must be a one off. I never saw anything like it.” His enquiring look at Pam changed to blatant appraisal as he saw her standing in nothing but her bra. In the act of unfastening it she stopped and dropped both hands to cover the trimmed, light-brown triangle of her pubic hair, as the heat of embarrassment on her cheeks flamed higher.
“No one told you to stop,” Drake said, and tapped the stick on her thighs hard enough to sting.
“You son of a….” She cut herself short as he raised the rod. “Oh, don’t!” Pam freed the last hook on the bra. With a gulp she slid the garment free of her breasts. Afraid he would hit her again if she tried to hide her nakedness she forced her hands to her sides, fingers clenched tight.
“Stand straight,” Drake said, and she squared her shoulders and cringed inwardly as the posture thrust her breasts out. She flickered a glance at each man and then stared fixedly at the floor as her heart pounded, and she waited in dread for their assaults to begin.
“Nice tits,” the Chief observed. “I like them bigger but her nipples are cute. She’s got a fine set of muscles too by the look of things. Not overdeveloped but enough to give her a helluva figure. Turn around, Ann, let’s see your ass.”
Bitterly humiliated, Pam turned. Her bottom buzzed painfully from the rod’s impacts. She had no wish to provoke any more.
The Chief chuckled throatily. “Now that’s an ass, Rafael. Firm as a Georgia peach and just as juicy, I’ll bet. What do you say?”
“I expect it’ll be popular with the passengers once we introduce her. But she had better have learned to do as she’s told by then.” He tapped the rod on Pam’s smarting bottom. “Turn around. What do you say? Are you going to behave yourself?”
Angry at the way they were discussing her, but still horribly afraid, she faced them, fought the need to cover herself with her arms and, unable to hide her resentment, answered with a surly ‘Yes’.
“Say ‘Sir’,” Drake said. “Put your hands on your head.”
Pam saw his gaze drop to her breasts as the movement lifted the two firm mounds and made their rosy points tilt further upwards. He slid the rod over her skin from her belly to indent the round underside of her left tit.
“Well?”
Her head was still spinning and her heart thumping madly. Pam took several seconds to understand. “Yes, Sir,” she said at last, hating him for forcing the respectful word from her when all she felt was contempt. Yet she feared him.
“She seems unusual for one of That Kind,” the Chief said. “More often than not they’re panting hot and begging for it by now. You don’t think she’s crazy, do you?”
Pam stared at him as another of her fears resurfaced. Was he right? What other explanation was there? It had to be a hallucination. She had been on an airplane above the Atlantic. She had to be there still. Then she remembered the blackness.
“Not crazy. Just regretting her impulsiveness, I’d say,” Drake replied.
“Oh, please!” Pam blurted. “Please, if only you’d listen for a minute I can explain.”
The pressure of the rod against her breast increased, lifting it higher.
“You’ve done enough explaining,” Drake said. “You can start doing some obeying instead. I’ll leave her to you, Alex. I’ll come back in an hour.”
The Chief grinned. “Think she’ll last that long? Half of them are crying and begging to go home in the first ten minutes.” He gave Pam a crooked smile. “But she’s a strong one, I think. She might see it through.”
It dawned on Pam they were not going to sexually assault her, but she had heard enough to fear whatever it was they intended almost as much. She felt no relief when Drake laid the rod on the desk and opened the door.
“Come on then, Ann,” the Chief said, taking her arm in a grip as tight as Drake’s. “I’ll introduce you to my Zulu girls. They’re the finest in the Empire Star Line. In fact, I’d lay money they’re the finest in the world.”
The din of massive machinery assailed Pam again as he led her down the steps to the enormous room with its dim lights and swirling clouds of steam. It hammered her brain as well as her eardrums, denying her any chance of coherent thought. Once again only her practised self-control kept her fear and confusion
at bay and stopped her collapsing into a gibbering wreck. She looked back on impulse. Drake stood watching her from the head of the steps. He met her eye, and her awareness of her nudity intensified. Horribly, humiliatingly vulnerable and utterly helpless, she looked away and tried to steel herself for whatever awaited her.
In the intense heat and humidity, Pam was streaming with sweat before they even reached the big, black steel box at the end of the biggest dome that was the source of the flickering orange glow she had seen earlier. A heavily muscled man, stripped to the waist, watched their approach and Pam shrank from the look he was giving her. White teeth shone in his grimy face as he grinned and pulled a lever on the huge box. The orange light flared to yellow and the indistinct figures in its shadow were instantly illuminated by a fiery glare. Pam would have turned and fled but for the insistent tug of the Chief’s hand on her arm. Painfully reluctant, she let herself be led to the group of nude, brown-skinned girls labouring in the harsh yellow light. Flames belched from four open doors at the end of the steel box, licking out until they were almost singeing their gleaming, sweat-streaked bodies. It was an enormous furnace and the girls were feeding it, hurling shovelfuls of coal into the dazzling heart of its fire.
“Oh, my God!” Pam’s words were lost amid the din of machinery and the furnace’s fearsome roar. She turned from the flames and saw two men with their faces and naked torsos blackened by coal dust looking at her with lustful expressions. The Chief’s grip on her arm turned her back and he thrust a long-handled shovel into her hands and leaned close.
“Okay, get going.” He pointed to a big bunker of coal that faced the furnace.
“Are you crazy?” She looked from his face to the shovel, let the tool fall and shook her head.
The Chief nodded to someone behind her. A line of searing fire tore across Pam’s shoulder blades. She looked around with a cry and saw both the men behind grinning at her. One of them was coiling a long, thin lash between his hands. The other held an identical whip. Shocked, Pam shuddered at the stinging trail the lash had scored into her skin, and she grabbed the shovel.
“That’s better,” the Chief yelled above the noise. “And no slacking or you’ll get more.” He pointed to the bunker.
Desperately hoping that it was all a nightmare from which she would soon awaken, Pam dug out a shovelful of coal and turned to the fiery heat of the furnace.
Chapter Two
Sweat stung Pam’s eyes. It ran in rivers over her naked body, making irregular patterns in the coating of coal dust caked to her skin. It dripped from her brow, the end of her nose, her chin and elbows, the tips of her breasts, and even from the soaked and matted triangle of hair at the apex of her thighs.
For the first few minutes she had thought that she could cope and all the hours spent working out to her exercise video were going to pay off. Drake plainly thought she was too weak to keep going. She was determined to prove him wrong. Her confidence had lasted only until every muscle had begun to ache and then to burn, when the shovel in her hands and each load of coal she flung into the furnace had seemed to double in weight. But the moment she had paused for a breather one of the overseers had lashed his stinging whip across her back, not as viciously as the first time but painfully enough to immediately get her moving again.
Pam had learned the hard way that the only time she or any of the other stokers were allowed a pause was when the four steel doors of the furnace were closed. For perhaps a minute they would stay that way while the man who controlled them watched the pointer of a dial. The second the pointer began to fall he would open the doors and Pam and the African girls with whom she was toiling would begin stoking the fire again. If any of them were tardy a fiery flick of the whip quickly set them in motion. Only during those brief rest periods could they drink from the big water buckets near the bunker. Pam had had a raging thirst even before she had begun. Whenever the chance arose she drank, ignoring her blackened hands as she scooped the water into her dry mouth and washed the clogging coal dust from her throat. Her thirst returned the moment she started shovelling again, the fierce heat and the effort of feeding the furnace sapping her strength, while her sweat streamed down.
Still she struggled on, mostly because to stop was to invite the cruel licking of the whip on her back or buttocks, but also because she was not used to failure and hated to admit the hard, physical work was too much for her. If she had had strength to spare she would have marvelled at the Zulu girls’ stamina. She knew little about the tribe except that it had a reputation for courage and endurance. Pam could believe it. There were eight girls, two to each of the furnace doors. They worked twice as fast as she did and felt the lash on their naked, gleaming bodies just as often, yet the two labouring beside her still found time to jostle her and spill the coal from her shovel, and from their broad grins thought it was a huge joke.
The bite of the whip that curled wickedly around her right buttock and the front of her thigh told Pam she was flagging and she hurried to fling her load of coal into the fire, struggled to get out of the way of one of the black girls doing the same and turned back to the bunker. Surely the hour was long over. She gave a weary but resentful glance at the man who was recoiling his lash. His gaze roved over her bare, sweat-run body and Pam still had the energy to shiver in shame and humiliation. She looked away from his lustful grin but not quickly enough to avoid seeing the bulge in the front of his grubby trousers. Her belly turned over. If it meant nothing to them to treat her as cruelly as this they would certainly not hesitate to…. Once again she refused to think the word, but the threat of sexual assault heightened her fear and further sapped her dwindling strength.
As she stooped and dug her shovel into the coal, a lash scorched the width of her back and the whip’s knotted tip curled around and bit hard into the soft swell of her right breast. Pam gave a cry that no one else heard and fresh tears sprang into her eyes. Her head was swimming and aching. Her lungs felt as if they were on fire and every muscle screamed. It was all she could do to lift the shovel with trembling arms and hurl its load towards the furnace door. Half fell short and through the haze before her gritty eyes Pam saw the white flash of teeth as one of the Zulu girls laughed at her. Too far gone to feel the rage the mockery would usually have provoked, she staggered as she turned from the flaring heat. Her knees were close to buckling.
A firm grip on her shoulder stopped her puny effort to thrust her shovel into the coal heaped in the bunker. Blinking away sweat and tears she saw the Chief. He motioned to her, and almost too tired to feel relieved that her ordeal was finished she tottered after him. How she made it up the stairs she did not know; perhaps only because Drake was standing at their head and she wanted to show him she could do it.
*
She had courage, Drake admitted, as the girl stumbled into the office ahead of him, and strength and stamina too. Not many stowaways managed the full hour of backbreaking toil he had put her through. He took her by the shoulders and turned her with her back to the wall. She sagged against it.
“Stand straight,” he told her. When she did not, he pulled her upright. Blinking sweat from her eyes, she swayed, managed to lock her knees and stood with shoulders sagging. Alex Riley handed him a grubby towel and he wiped the coal dust and the girl’s sweat from his hand.
“Give her her due, she stuck it out to the end,” the Chief said. “But that was nothing, Ann. My Zulu girls do six hours at a stretch around the clock, so don’t go feeling proud of yourself for managing one.”
“I don’t know how you can work at all in that heat,” Drake said.
“That’s why I’m the chief engineer and you’re not.”
“And glad of it. I’d better tidy her up before we go.”
Ann’s half-closed eyes widened when he rubbed the towel over her breasts, wiping away the worst of the sweat and grime. She was breathing hard and shaking from reaction. She was firm-muscled too, and prettily curved and her pointed nipples felt hard and resilient against his pa
lms. Her gaze lifted to his and a flicker of what might have been surprise crossed her dirty face before her head lolled once more.
She was a strange one, but then they all were. To some extent he could understand what drove them to it, but it had to run deeper than their obvious desire. Some would call it a need. They were usually ready to throw themselves at the feet of the first man they saw and beg to be used, but this one had not, nor shown any of the hysteria that sometimes quickly replaced the lust when a girl realised exactly what she had got herself into. Ann groaned as his rubbing reached her belly and he felt it twitch under his hand. Excitement or just pain? Her eyelids fluttered briefly when he towelled the little prominence of her mons and revealed its neat crown of light-brown hair beneath the coal dust, before moving on to her thighs. The smell of her sweat was strong and mingled with another scent, more piquant and stimulating, but maybe that was just the result of her labours too. Drake stepped back.
“Look, her nipples are hard,” Chief Riley said. “Maybe she’s not so different from the usual sort.”
“She had better not be, for her sake,” Drake replied. “And it’s no more than you’d expect from one of That Kind. I hope you’ve decided to be sensible from now on, girl.”
Ann did not reply. She almost fell as he grasped her hips with both hands and turned her. Resting her forehead against the wall, she let her arms dangle, whimpering occasionally as he rubbed the towel over her wealed back and buttocks.
“She’s not too badly marked,” he said. “She must have done a pretty good job.”
“Not bad for a first time,” the Chief allowed.
“Maybe I should assign her as one of your regular stokers,” Drake said dryly.
Riley laughed. “I’d find better things for her to do than shovelling coal. I told the boys to go easy on her considering everything else she’s got coming.”
Pam-Ann Page 2
