by Sierra Dafoe
He studied her somberly, his eyes luminous and vulnerable with the unexpected renewal of hope. “May I ask you something, my lady?”
She brushed his long hair back from his smooth, high forehead. “What is it, Kantou?”
His eyes dropped modestly. “Was it… like that before, with the others?”
“There was only one other before you, Kantou. And no, it wasn’t like that.”
“I… I wanted so much to please you, and yet I barely even touched you…”
“You did,” Soleyla replied, stroking his hair. “You pleased me very much. There will be plenty of time to please me in other ways.” With a small, relieved sigh, he dropped his head back to her knee, like a weary traveler who’d found, at last, a haven.
That was how Merkun found them, when he scratched discreetly for admittance. He peered closely at Kantou, curled at her feet as if nestling in the refuge of her protection.
Soleyla smiled at Merkun -- it was hard not to like a man who so obviously cared about the slaves he trained and sold. “As you see, this one suits me well, Merkun.” She rose gracefully, unhooked her coin purse from her belt, and tossed it to him. “Take what you will for him.”
He smiled back, and gave a slight bow. “It is a pleasure doing business with you, Guardian Devarian.”
His smile froze at a small harsh noise from Kantou. Soleyla turned to see her new slave suddenly crouched by the chair, a look of stark terror on his face.
“Kantou, what is it?” She moved toward him, but he recoiled, staring at her, his eyes suddenly black with fear. “Kantou!”
Soleyla spun to Merkun, her fierce gaze demanding an explanation. Merkun was standing, his mouth half-open, his face pale.
“Stupid, stupid… My lady, I said your name.”
Soleyla stared at him. “And?”
The old man bowed his head. “The lady who first bought him, the lady who --”
“Beat him. Yes.” Soleyla cut him off impatiently. Behind her, she could hear Kantou’s panicked breathing.
She could gladly kill the woman who had reduced him to this.
Merkun paused. He looked down, his voice falling to a whisper. “You are not your mother, my lady. I’d hoped Kantou would see that.”
Soleyla’s eyes widened with sudden comprehension and her fury narrowed to a sharp, deadly point. Merkun held out the coin purse, his old face regretful. “I am sorry. I presumed too far.”
Soleyla stared at the coins in his hand, then looked at Kantou. He watched her like a wary, frightened animal. Enraged, she slapped the offered coins to the ground.
“You are right, Merkun. I’m not my mother. Leave us.” The old man hesitated. “Leave us!”
He bowed, withdrew. Soleyla turned back to Kantou, took a step toward him. He flinched. Softly, she spoke, her words firm and reassuring. “I told you, Kantou, no one will ever touch you again without my permission.”
Shadows flickered in his eyes. Soleyla saw hope there, but also doubt -- a doubt born of deep, remembered pain. She glanced around the small blue room, but there was nothing here that could help him -- or her. She sighed, gestured gently. “Come, Kantou.” Quivering, he followed her out of the tent.
As she came out into the bright sunshine of Porto, Soleyla felt her rage grow hard and adamant, remembering the tall, graceful woman who had walked beside her through this market, six years ago. She herself was now as tall, and equally graceful -- but so very different in every other way from the cool, amused woman who’d looked down at her, smiling.
Rachel Devarian had much to account for.
Soleyla glanced back at the man following her, silent and afraid. “Have you been through a portal before, Kantou?” He nodded cautiously, his face still pale with shock, and she studied him a moment, suddenly aware just how little she actually knew of him.
How much, for that matter, had she known of Danel? For almost six years he’d been her constant companion, there to soothe her tensions and give her pleasure. They’d talk, sometimes -- or rather she would, telling him about the training she was undergoing as a Guardian, and later about the raids and missions and skirmishes with the V’ranyii, her promotions, her frustrations, her ambitions. Danel would listen, those soft hazel eyes warm with interest, and rub her feet or her back. Later, after she’d said all she wanted, he would celebrate her triumphs or ease her frustrations with his tongue, his hands, his cock…
Had she ever truly known Danel? She’d never bothered to penetrate that calm, gentle surface -- he was a pleasure-slave, no more. There for her needs, her desires. She’d never bothered to wonder if he had desires of his own.
And now she’d never know.
It would be different with Kantou, she swore. He’d shown a touching willingness to please her, a willingness almost desperate in its emotional need. Soleyla’s anger flared again, but not at him. How could she blame him for that first, instinctive reaction? He’d shown nothing but a hunger to trust so deep it was almost overpowering -- until Merkun had blurted out her name.
He needed that, Soleyla realized. Having been so badly abused, something in Kantou desperately needed someone to trust. To belong to. Someone who could protect him, keep him safe. And the woman who’d offered him that had turned out to be Rachel Devarian’s daughter.
Soleyla smiled at the irony, but there was no laughter in her. Not with those bleak shadows in her Kantou’s eyes.
He stood silently, waiting for her orders, his gray eyes hidden again from her sight. Behind those stormy eyes lay a sharp intelligence, and an impressive self-control -- and both were contained in a body more perfect than any she’d seen. He was truly exceptional -- and now he was hers.
That knowledge brought a resurgence of heat to her loins, and she felt a slickness between her thighs. She remembered his hands, moving at her command over his huge, swollen cock, so much larger than Danel’s had been. She was impatient to discover what it would feel like inside her. Impatient to have him as he’d been before, placing himself so trustingly in her care, bending that self-discipline to her every whim.
She would have that again, she swore silently. So would he. He hungered for it as deeply as she did, she suspected. But it would take time to pierce his rigid, guarded surface, to open him to her again as he’d been before. Time to allow him to see that Soleyla Devarian was not like her mother.
As she led Kantou to a weaver’s stall to buy him raiment suitable for their destination, Soleyla smiled with a certain bitter amusement. It was ironic that the woman whose brutal abuse had created the need for that time was also the woman who’d guaranteed they would have it.
Time was the one thing they’d have no lack of, on Antoros.
Chapter Four
“Kantou, what are you doing?”
Kantou flinched at her words -- sharper than she’d meant them to be -- and almost dropped the delicate device he was holding.
Soleyla cursed inwardly. She hated it when he winced like that. For three solid weeks, they’d trekked through the trackless ridges of Antoros. Twenty-two days of solitude and silence, surrounded by jagged peaks that fell away unexpectedly to reveal vistas that left her breathless with their beauty -- and still he would cringe if she startled him, or spoke too harshly.
And she’d just done both.
Soleyla sighed. It was getting harder and harder to be patient with him, and not simply because his jumpiness was beginning to wear on her. The continual presence of an attractive male -- one she was determined not to touch until he was ready -- was a constant, and unique, irritant.
Never before had she known what it meant to be frustrated in this manner. Since the first stirrings of her libido, sex had been something she’d taken as much for granted as air or food. Now the only thing standing between her and that lovely, chiseled body was her determination to prove to him she was nothing like her prideful, vicious mother.
That determination, she had to admit, was wearing more and more thin with each day she spent watching Kantou’s long, musc
led legs as he climbed ahead of her through these rough, untamed mountains. Her gaze devoured him as he squatted over their nightly campfire, preparing her meals. At night, he lay mere paces from her, his beautiful, chiseled face relaxed in the peace of sleep. Soleyla herself lay wakeful, listening to the silence of that vast and empty planet and feeling frustration coursing through her, throbbing between her thighs.
And the sight of him, hunkered shirtless in the afternoon heat, had almost shattered her resolve. She had just returned, sweaty and coated with grime, from the peak of whatever this particular brown heap of rocks was called. When she strode back into the small hollow where she’d left him, a stab of clamorous desire had bolted straight through her sore, tired body, setting her nerves to tingling and her teeth on edge.
Gritting back her frustration, Soleyla dropped her empty pack and squatted beside him. “It’s all right, Kantou. But what are you doing with the tracker?”
As she looked closer, she saw he had the back casing off the instrument. If he’d dropped it in this sandy dirt… but he hadn’t. Damn thing was half-useless, anyway. Its range simply wasn’t up to this mountainous terrain, allowing them only occasional pings from the base camp, almost four hundred kilometers behind.
Commander Valda, a squarely built woman whose short silver hair clung to her head like a helmet, had turned down Soleyla’s request for a flitter. She’d been barrack-mates with Soleyla’s mother, years before, and Soleyla knew whose will the commander was enforcing.
The entire company knew full well where the command for the famous Captain Soleyla Devarian’s inclusion in the advance Antorean team had originated. Rank and file Guardians, with no family connections to keep them from such an unenviable posting, they’d stared when she’d arrived through the newly constructed portal -- with a pleasure-slave in tow, no less. Their dark, resentful expressions had made Soleyla just as glad to be assigned the menial, dirty -- but solitary -- task of planting markers for the geodetic relay.
She was, she had to admit, rather looking forward to exploring the vast southern forests and open plains of this wild, undeveloped planet. But Commander Valda had insisted that planting markers in the range just north of the base camp had priority, and the flitters -- so she claimed -- couldn’t handle the terrain.
It would have to be done -- Valda had practically smirked -- on foot.
Thus, Soleyla’s sigh as she sank down beside Kantou had as much to do with her very sore feet as it did with her sexual frustration. As if in apology for his instinctive reaction, Kantou held out the tracking device.
“I was trying to increase the range, my lady. I… I was very careful with it.”
Soleyla tried to tear her attention from those bronzed, muscled arms long enough to study the tracker. The contrast between the strength of his body and the nervous vulnerability in his smoky gray eyes was disconcerting.
He’s as strong as I am. The realization was a shock. Stronger, even.
But he was a man. A slave. For the first time, she wondered if the fact bothered him. Of course it doesn’t, Soleyla told herself firmly. Men were born to slavery just as women were born to rule and provide for them. That was the way it had always been.
Except once, she remembered suddenly, it hadn’t.
Soleyla pulled off a dusty boot, chasing away her disturbing ruminations. “Well, good,” she said, shaking the collected sand and pebbles out of it. “That’s good, Kantou.”
He smiled in relief, and she leaned over to peer at the adjustments he’d made to the wiring. “Where’d you learn to do that?”
He shrugged. “The technicians at the child-house used to let me help them. I liked learning how things worked.” Replacing the casing carefully, he set the tracker aside and knelt before her to remove her other boot.
Soleyla groaned in relief as he worked his strong, capable fingers over the instep of her arch. His touch had other effects on her as well. But if she reached for him, she knew he’d only flinch as he’d done repeatedly over the past few weeks. Flinch, and then steel himself to suffer her commands.
Watching him force himself into submissive readiness had effectively dampened her ardor. No, damn it, she would have him willing!
She cast about for ways to distract herself from what his fingers, pressing into the balls of her foot, were doing to her.
“Where was your child-house, Kantou? Porto?”
He shook his head. “Marbul.”
Marbul. A newer world of the League, wrested only thirty years previously from the V’ranyii. Soleyla tried to picture what it must have been like, growing up in one of the child-houses where male children were sent at birth. “You were there until you were what? Twelve?”
“That’s the customary age, yes. At twelve they assess us for talents and abilities. I was placed with the others destined for the pleasure-slave merchants.”
“Not the technicians?”
Again, he shook his head. His eyes were distant, as if watching something she could not see. Something which stirred in them a look of longing…
Soleyla gestured for the tracker and stood, feeling the warm, sandy dirt beneath her bare feet. He handed it to her, and she turned it on. The clear, strong ping of the signal was loud in the still mountain air.
She glanced down at him. Kantou dropped his gaze, reaching to retrieve her boots -- but not before she’d seen a quick gleam of satisfaction in his eyes.
A sudden question occurred to her. “Would you have preferred that, Kantou? To have been a work-slave for the technicians, rather than a pleasure-slave?”
The question was heresy. Kantou gave a quick, nervous glance around the rocky slope, even though they were obviously alone. They’d been alone for weeks. For the first time Soleyla understood just how deep his inhibitions, conditioned by centuries of custom -- and punishment -- ran.
“Kantou.”
“My lady?” His eyes had darkened to an inky charcoal precisely the color of Argulian storm clouds. Whatever thoughts he had were hidden effectively behind them.
“Answer me.”
His mouth dropped open. He stammered a moment, then looked away, shrugged. Answer enough. Soleyla studied his profile in the reddening light as he busied himself, cleaning the dust from her boots. He was so beautiful, her Kantou. The idea of him castrated, as all males not destined for the pleasure-markets were, was more than she could stand.
“Put those aside,” she commanded. He set them down, then came and knelt before her at her signal. Soleyla felt her desire reawaken at the sight of his bent head, the shining ash-brown hair falling like a veil over his face. The hard nub of her sex swelled, pulsing. It was all she could do to keep herself from reaching out, burying her hand in that shining hair, and pulling his mouth firmly against that throbbing point…
Raising her head, she looked away from him, fighting down her lust. From here, the mountain range curved northward, then south again in the distance, cupping in its stony grasp a great open plain which was bathed now in long purple shadows. The far mountains were black against a sky streaked with riotous color.
For a moment, she forgot everything else in that glorious view. Her frustrations, her aches, the scratchy dirt on her skin. It was a beautiful planet, a new planet, fresh, unspoiled. A place of possibilities. And why shouldn’t things be different, here on wild Antoros?
Soleyla smiled and looked down at Kantou. Gently, she tilted back his chin so that he looked up at her.
“You shall have both, Kantou. You have a mind, as well as a body. There’s no reason you shouldn’t learn whatever pleases you.”
“My lady?”
The quick, frightened hope that gleamed in his eyes was almost painful to see. Moved by the strength of that long-hidden desire, Soleyla nodded. She would give that, and more, to see him happy. Her voice was husky with an emotion she could find no name for as she said, “You are more to me than just a pleasure-slave, Kantou.”
He paled with the strength of his emotions, and closed his eyes. His he
ad dropped back, exposing the long arch of his strong neck, letting the thick, shiny hair fall free. An evening breeze stirred it, and Soleyla felt her throat go dry. He knelt before her in a state almost of rapture, eyes closed, his face radiant, so moved was he by what she had offered. The shadows of dusk played across his clear, perfect skin, his cheekbones, the wide, sensuous curve of his mouth…
She could not stop herself. She bent and kissed those full, tender lips.
Automatically, he stiffened, his eyes flying open. He almost jerked away from her touch before controlling himself with ruthless self-discipline.
Soleyla spun away. Rage and disappointment warred within her. Reaching for her boots, she stamped them on.
Kantou spoke behind her. “I’m sorry. It’s just…” His voice dropped to a tormented whisper. “You look so like her, my lady.”
She whipped around, stung by his words. Her hand raised to slap him. His eyes widened as he watched the blow coming.
She stopped it barely in time, clenched her fist shut, her nails digging into her palm. Horror and fury twisted together inside her.
Never, she’d promised. A promise she’d nearly broken.
Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to look at him -- and was shocked to see his hands at his waist, unbuckling his belt.
“Please, my lady…”
Her breath hissed through her teeth. Her eyes seemed trapped by those deft fingers, watching their every movement. Her throat ached with need.
“Kantou…” Her voice was almost a growl.
He raised a hand to her lips, stopped her protest. “You have been so patient with me. Please… do with me as you will.”
Heat pounded in her groin, the product of weeks of frustration. He stepped back from her and stood, naked to the waist, his eyes fixed modestly on the ground as he awaited her pleasure. She could feel her hands cramp with the desire to wrap themselves around that warm, smooth skin, slide along the firmness of his muscles, close around the swelling of his cock and squeeze…
