Claimed Possession (The Machinery of Desire Book 2)
Page 8
“What a toilet.” He whistled and leaned out, a little.
Then Saw peed over the edge, noting the mix of sheets of age-tainted paper and fresh leaves to the side in a box – no doubt meant for number twos. If you fell in, no one was going to rescue a person. Though the plus would be that any waste products had been swallowed by this chasm from hell.
Destroyed city, Sassik had named this. Now he knew why, though how was another matter.
How long had he slept? His bladder and the blue-pink sky showing through the gigantic crack above, and the light shining in, said at least a half a day. Wait... He stretched his leg, peered at it. The pants leg had been cut away so he wore shorts to one side above the sutures.
His head hurt. On the right side behind his ear he found more sutures and a partly shaved area. His long black hair was lopsided courtesy of her. More stitches had been placed in smaller cuts all over his legs, his stomach. They looked far cleaner and more healed than they should. He couldn’t have been asleep two days?
His collar was gone too. Many celebrations were in order for that.
He still felt like crap, though much better than he had.
On the way back to the room, he discovered it was only one room in a mildly tilted hallway of similar doors – most of those doors were askew or fallen from their hinges, if they had hinges.
His door... Though he’d seen nothing plastic among Scav possessions, when he ran his palm over the blue surface, it resembled the smoothness of plastic. The Scavs used metal, timber, maybe bone, though he might have missed seeing other materials.
“Sir?” A woman carrying a tray of food had come up behind him – she held nothing hot – just fruit and some sort of fried cakes, smoked meats. Was she a slave? The caramel-colored leather collar seemed to say so.
“Thank you.” He took the tray. She didn’t seem surprised at his thanks, which actually did surprise him.
As she went to walk away, he caught her arm. If Ari needed to pee, this was worth exploiting. He searched among the words he’d been taught when he arrived on the swathe. “Can you bring a chamber pot? For the girl inside?” He indicated the room. “And some new clothes for me.”
“Of course, Sir.”
Being called sir by a slave was odd. He’d never been an officer. JI had done it, but that was different.
He opened the door, and the ease with which his muscles moved struck him yet again. What had the doctor done? “Tell me...” Ari was sitting and had already noticed him. He left the door ajar so he could hear when the other slave returned. “How long was I asleep? A day?”
Her mouth twisted, eyebrows danced. Just those minor things appealed.
Definitely minus a woman for too long.
“It’s not betraying anything to say. Nothing of you.” He studied her. She’d covered herself somewhat – kneeling with her arms scrunched in and her hands on her thighs so her nipples were hidden. The position squashed her breasts together, creating a wonderful cleavage. Her legs were together and only a hint of the pale triangle of her pubic hair showed.
Concealment. She wouldn’t know but her modesty gave him a lever – ammunition for the war ahead. This should be nothing to him, but it wasn’t. Fern, advancing his status so he could find out what to do to find her, so he could damn well survive here as more than the lowest of the low, those were priorities, not this Ari.
Hmmm. He inhaled, looked at her again, all the cute and sexy, girlie bits. Fun was good too.
He sat on the bed, placed the square tray with the food beside his thigh, on the rumpled brown bedding.
Someone, Sassik probably, had locked chain about her neck then fastened the free end to a metal peg. The peg was driven into the damn floor.
No skeletons, Sassik had said. So that was a plus for room décor here? Saw supposed that made driving stakes into the floor trivial. How often did they find skeletons? This seemed a city buried a long time ago. Maybe it’d been lost during that final war everyone talked about – the one the Mekkers had sort of won, but not, since they didn’t own any part of this world.
Driving their landships around and around without stopping, even if they had superior tech and weaponry, wasn’t what he called a victorious result.
He waited her out. Having to pee could drive a person nuts.
“You slept almost a day. I guess?” Ari said softly. “I haven’t seen the sun.”
What a polite voice. It seemed both of them had calmed.
“Thank you.” Those two words made her lift her head.
Surprise, I can be nice. Just not too often. Variety would make the bad parts seem worse, he surmised.
“You want food?” He indicated the tray.
“Yes,” she said slowly, forehead wrinkling.
Shuffling footsteps and a light knock sounded at the door.
“Enter.”
A female slave, a fair-haired one of perhaps twenty-five years, brought in the chamber pot and some clothes then left. The door made horrible noises as she dragged it properly shut. The walls here were bent out of shape. The place hadn’t fallen down though, not yet. Hopefully the Scavs knew their stuff.
After all he’d suffered to get to here, dying under a pile of rubble would be the greatest irony.
“And I need to –” she began.
“Pee. Yes.” A fresh headache was entering his skull with the subtlety of a lumberjack sawing at a tree. “We’re going to share this.” He nodded at the tray. “There’s a place through a door across the hallway out there next to this bloody huge ravine where you could pee, but you might fall in. I would hate that. So...instead you’re peeing in this.” He pointed at the pot on the floor.
Understanding dawned, and she blushed then went pale as he crooked his finger.
“I’d rather –”
“Now. If you don’t, you can do it where you sit, and you’ll get no food.” She must be bursting, because he’d been.
Then he sat back, leaning his hands on the mattress, and he waited.
That she didn’t say more, didn’t protest, testified that he had made inroads. She knew he meant this and knew words of disagreement would achieve zero.
Training was getting somewhere, and he’d barely begun.
Never trained a girl. Not like this.
He inhaled deeply through his nose, feeling the bedding crunch in under his fingers as he watched her dither, hesitate, consider his command.
You couldn’t do this on Earth. Train a girl like this. Not unless you wanted to be arrested.
He was beginning to see the benefits of the world of Aerthe.
The chamber pot was at his toes. Someone had removed his boots while he’d slept.
After one enormous huff of exasperation she crept forward on her knees. “I don’t know if I can...”
Oh the agony of indecision and the blush on her face. Awesome.
He sat up straight, resting his forearms on his thighs. “You can.”
Another sigh then she came forward again, crawling, face twisted in distaste at this act. She rearranged the chain at her neck then positioned herself above the pot, with her legs spread. A twirl of neat white pubic hair decorated the lowest point of her mound.
Most cute, he decided, smiling. He wasn’t into water sports, as it was termed, but making her do this? Yes. This he was into.
Upping the ante was next.
Which should he stick in her? Hand or foot? Hand, because his leg was too sore to lift. If he could’ve, he’d have shoved his dick in her mouth. One day, soon.
“Open your mouth.”
Distracted from her determination to stare at the floor and not him, she looked up. He waved his hand in a half circle. “This in your mouth or I kick the pot away and you get to lick up whatever is spilled.”
Jaw stiff, her words ground out, “Now that is just –”
He slapped her face, and she gasped, hands coming up in claws until she halted and lowered them. “Choose.”
She seethed a moment more, red-faced,
and he let her. Finally she opened her mouth and left it open.
“Tilt your head until I can see inside your mouth, and don’t bite me; you’ll get ten times worse.”
When the day came that he didn’t need to give warnings there’d be one huge fucking celebration. That day would come.
Once she’d angled her head upward, he slipped his forefinger in, over wet tongue and down until she began to gag. Then he went in and out, slow as a cock fucking a virgin cunt, and he made sure to smile at her. “Now you can pee.”
It must’ve been an entire minute before she managed to start, and he heard the tinkle in the pot.
When she was done, which took several tries, he moved closer to her, wrapped both hands about her neck and let his lips brush her eyebrow as he murmured, “Good girl.”
She shuddered and when he sat back, rage flared in her expression.
Ari sent him a dead flat stare.
He shook his head slowly, and she blinked, firmed her mouth then lowered her eyes. Reluctance permeated every fractional muscle movement.
But she had yielded. Perfect.
His erection – not so perfect. It had died at the touch of his finger to her tongue – as if he’d been hit by a goddamned cold shower. Fixable, he vowed. Even limp, he was dying to be able to fuck her properly. Was her effect waning? He could’ve sworn she’d even suppressed desire previously.
After he put the chamber pot outside the door, he checked a jug of water that’d been left in the room. It seemed good enough to drink or wash with. They didn’t have running water, of course. How did the Scavs function like this?
He stripped off his blood-stained, shredded clothes but left the new pants and shirt on the floor and wiped himself down, removing some of the blood. Now they were both naked.
He sat before her on the bed and glanced at his woeful dick. “This is intolerable.”
Fucking her was aim numero uno and yet, she stopped him getting it up? He knew how it was when he watched her. Her body attracted him far more than most. Her weird power just made everything harder...except for his cock.
“What’s intolerable, Sir?” Husky voice, her breasts swaying as she spoke, her tongue licking at her upper lip. She knew...she knew.
“You found a sir?” he mused, watching through lowered lids. What a sensual bitch she was. “Though I hear a tone that says I amuse you.”
He reached out and stroked her hair, trapping strands in his fingers when she tried to pull away.
“Don’t. Move.”
Though her body remained tense, she stilled. Good.
He tugged on the strand of hair. “I’m going to enjoy fucking with you and fucking you once we get past this, and we will get past it.” He let the knuckles of his hand drift down the side of her face until he reached her chin, which he cupped in his palm.
“Don’t forget your place. You’re chained to that floor by my decision. You’re naked by my order. You urinated before me with my fingers fucking your mouth, by my order. This little thing you do, it won’t defeat me for long.”
“You think,” she muttered.
Again, he slapped her cheek, if lightly. “No. I know. How far does that chain run?”
Saw stood. The chain was locked about her neck as well as at the stake and the locks had a cavity that resembled a keyhole. He found the key someone had left near the bed for him. A cross-shaped thing, it wasn’t one of those diabolical keys her uncle had used. He unlocked the chain from the stake to free more of its length then relocked it and sat on the bed again.
“Turn around so you face outwards and kneel between my legs. I’m going to feed us both, and you are going to eat.”
That would confuse her yet again. He didn’t give a flying fuck. Keeping her confused enticed him too.
He was beginning to see what attracted him to keeping her. Piece by piece, his subconscious was giving him the manifesto. Revenge sure. Fucking her, fucking with her head, owning her...more delicious revenge for all the shit this world had rained upon him. Unfair on her but who cared...and then there was control.
Ari embodied two big C words. Cunt and control.
He’d never realized what hid in the dark places in his mind. Things were crawling out. Bad things... He’d make them his bitch same as he was making her his little pet, his bitch, his ultimate fuck toy.
Only...once he had her there between his legs and being fed, eating what he gave her while he ate some of it too, she eventually rested her head on the inside of his leg. Tired? Overcome? Maybe she’d barely slept? That would be very likely. Whatever the reason, he found himself enjoying having her there.
For the first time in a long while, the rigid ache eased inside his chest. The invisible wounds from unending misery settled.
A cool wind swept from his mind the balled-up shreds of living despicably.
To push her away and crush this possibly involuntary and subconscious gesture of hers had been his first intention.
How bizarre that this, a woman resting her head on him, should feel wrong.
He looked down on her and at her hair playing over his skin, at his fingers putting morsels in her mouth and her chewing quietly without fuss. He’d not had a woman’s skin against him since forever. She floated a measure of serenity his way, the transferal skin to skin and all without any willpower on her part.
She’d tried to kill him only hours before. He’d wanted to kill her.
Saw put his hand on her shoulder and marveled at the drape of his fingers over that part of her, the bony knobs, the rounded muscle, the smooth skin. So unlike a man.
When the food was gone, he hauled her up and into bed with him, spooning. He ignored her gasps and wriggles, denouncing them with sharp commands.
“Be quiet. Shh. Relax.”
How long could she keep up this rejection of his male response? It was her femaleness that stirred him. Not forever, surely?
He planned to test a theory, if he could keep himself awake enough.
And so, clinging to the memory of what made his cock happy, he played with her – light kisses and bruising bites, nibbles of her flesh that made her utter little sounds, sounds he wanted to make her utter again and again, and his hands delving between her legs.
He spread her thighs while he wrapped her body against him with his arms and legs pinning her; he pulled her face around and kissed her mouth.
His thick fingers slid nicely down there, in that delicious groove, and she was growing wet no matter her transient protests. He returned to kissing her shoulder...and more biting. More not-quite finger-fucking.
Ari began to respond. Her mouth moved under his. Her ass pushed backward, though at first it was subtle.
Initially, he’d planned to make her fear him, wanted to hurt her, but this was a far more interesting way to conquer. When she squirmed against him and his fingers, when wetness smeared her thighs, his fingers, and between her legs, leaking from her increasingly swollen slit, when the small bump of her clit engorged, he stopped. He patted her ass.
Still, she transmitted those almost undetectable ripples that unmanned him. Could he get blue balls from dying to fuck her with a lethargic cock?
“How do you do it?” he asked, taking one last taste of her back. “Why do you? And don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about. Explain.”
Maybe it was because she couldn’t see his face but Ari began to talk, to talk normally, as if this was conversation about football or shopping or cake.
It was so novel not to hear anger or defiance. This alone made him smirk.
“I...don’t exactly know.” Her shoulders rolled as she shifted, but she didn’t try to move his hand from her pussy. “A man tried to rape me when I was young. I stabbed him, and he stopped. Since then...it happens.”
A sad tale. He was more awake than seconds before.
“You don’t control it?”
“No. I can tell it’s coming. That’s all.”
“You’re a virgin then? Unfucked?”
Damn. “Well?”
No answer came, so he wound his fingers into the chain at her neck and pulled her back. Then he waited. He felt the tension leave her as she gave in.
“I’m... Yes, that.”
“Yes, what. You can say it.” He shook the chain collar. “What are you?”
“A virgin. You can let me go. It pinches.”
He tsked. “That’s not a bad thing.” But he stroked between her legs, releasing the collar a little and kissing her back.
Then he unpeeled his fingers from the chain and left her as she was, a little breathless and horny, but with his hand snuggled between her thighs and resting on her cunt.
“Sleep. Unless you slept while I was unconscious?”
Though she grumbled, Ari finally said. “I’m tired. I couldn’t...before.”
As he’d thought.
She exhaled and as her shoulders relaxed he felt her shudder.
Eventually she did sleep. He could tell from the susurration of her breaths. Should he tie her hands? There was no weapon here for her, and he could take her down in seconds.
The SAS had taught him how to wake with a fair degree of accuracy, at the times he wanted, and he wanted to wake her so often it disturbed her. There had to be a fatigue point beyond which this power of hers broke.
Nothing lasted forever. Except maybe for star-shaped, solar-powered windows.
When he woke again, he started the game from square one. He played with her, forcing an arousal he could make no use of. Could he get her to the point of orgasm? He wanted to. He wouldn’t let her come though.
Maybe she couldn’t when a man diddled her?
If he had to he’d use his tongue, whatever it took.
The doctor interrupted them anyway, arriving to check him over. While his wounds were probed, he sat on the bed with Ari kneeling on the floor. The glacial yet immersive touch from this man reminded him of the feel of what Ari did, except this effect was isolated to the wound area.