"What is it?" I asked, all full of innocence.
"Where did she go?"
"Who?"
"Adelen."
"Why do you think I know anything about her?"
"Because I was watching you when you carefully tipped over the water jug just as Kinin was looking around for her. And, by the way, he already knew something was wrong and your little stunt didn't stop him from figuring it out. He and most of the other men are out there right now, tracking her, and they will have her back within the hour, unless…" He didn't finish and I couldn't stand it.
"Unless what?"
"We weren't exaggerating when we talked about the animals. This is a dangerous area and there are many predators out there who would think a small female would make a very tasty breakfast. Some of them are not animals, either. Some of them are men who have no morals. She will be lucky if all that happens is that we catch her."
I paled. "Samial, I swear, I tried to talk her out of it. I couldn't. Please find her."
"We'll find her, that I promise. And then I will deal with you." He glowered into my frightened eyes before he pivoted on his heel and stomped away.
They found her. And just in time. It wasn't the locator on the collar that led them straight to her; it was her screams. When they arrived, I learned later, she was fending off a large creature with long sharp teeth and claws whose name I couldn't pronounce, who had already raked her arms and legs with long gashes. They told us she had lost a lot of blood, and they took her straight to the hospital where she would remain for some time, but she would be okay eventually. We were all shaken, perhaps me most of all, and I was feeling very guilty that I hadn't done more to stop her.
When Samial found me again I turned on him. "How could you allow that – thing – to get her? I thought this place was supposed to be perfect! She almost died! Why do you let those kinds of animals exist?"
He gazed at me with cool eyes. "Leina, a world where people are supreme and their safety is more important than diversity is a world that starts to look like yours."
It had been a long time since any predators roamed my home.
"This place is perfect," he continued, "but it's also more dangerous, and that's something you all need to learn. Now, there is another lesson you need to learn."
I looked up at him and gulped. With a smooth easy move he grabbed me around the waist and lifted me up, carrying me at his side as he walked over to a bench. He laid me across one broad leg; my head and hands hung down on one side, and my legs on the other, and he moved his second leg to pin my thighs down. I was well and truly trapped, and I knew an audience was gathering.
"You knew she was going to leave, and you did nothing," he accused as he lifted the tunic to expose my bare bottom and the purple and red lines from yesterday.
"I didn't know she was in danger!" I protested from my upside-down position.
A sharp smack landed on my skin and I screeched.
"Don't be stupid, Leina. You were given that information days ago. Did you not take it seriously?"
He was using my own words against me. "I tried to talk her out of it!" Another smack landed and this one hurt even more. I struggled in vain to get loose.
"Did you notify one of us that she had gone?"
"I couldn't tell on her!" This smack landed on a thigh and felt like fire. I threw my hand up to rub the spot and found it and the other one quickly pinned to the small of my back.
"So you thought that leaving her to be attacked by wild animals would be better than one of us finding her?"
"I didn't realize she was in that much danger! I'd never do that on purpose, I promise! Please believe me!" He began peppering my ass and thighs with short sharp spanks and I struggled and screeched and tried to get away from the smacks. But escape was impossible and eventually I went limp, no longer fighting him. I felt so bad that I hadn't tried to stop her and she was in the hospital and maybe scarred for life. Now I was crying for sadness, not because of the pain.
"I'm sorry," I squeaked out. "So sorry." The hand above me stilled. I continued to cry quietly over his leg, the tears rolling up my forehead toward the floor in my upside-down position. I felt him rub my sore butt cheeks in a soft circle that soothed the burn, and then he let go of my hands and turned me over to sit up in his lap just like that day back on the ship after he had spanked me for the first time.
His hand stroked my hair while I continued crying.
"How-how-how bad," I hiccuped, "will her marks be?" I didn't know the right word for it.
"Marks? You mean scars? She won't have any. Why would she have scars?"
I looked up, confused. "But you said she was hurt badly."
"She was, but she'll be treated in the hospital. When she leaves the injuries will be fully healed."
I gaped at him. "Not even a scar?"
He shook his head. "Leina, it's easy to forget how advanced we are when we spend most of our time in towns where life is simple, but our medicine is able to heal severe injuries and leave no evidence of them. We can even regenerate limbs or organs if we need to, though thankfully Adelen won't need that. The only thing we can't do is bring someone back from the dead, which is where she would have been even five minutes later."
"But she doesn't have any money to pay for that kind of treatment."
He was silent for a minute. "Leina, everyone has the right to receive care when they are hurt. Money has nothing to do with it."
I had a flashback to my mother as she lay in the street after she had been shot. The sound of the gunfire had made me dive for cover at first, but when I crept to the window and looked down to see her laying in front of our home, I screamed and tore down the stairs. I cradled her in my arms as the blood spilled from her stomach, begging anyone to call for help, but the neighbors knew not to bother. Even if the emergency crews had shown up, once they found out that I couldn't hand over the money to pay for treating her first they wouldn't have done anything.
I was glad it was different here.
Chapter 10 – Samiel's Confession
Joran still pursued me with a single-mindedness that was flattering sometimes and annoying other times. It was still Samial I was seeing in my mind as Joran took his pleasure, but Samial never made a move towards me. Every time I maneuvered to get him alone he escaped before I could talk to him. He was friendly and talkative and kind, and the times he seemed to show he cared, like after he spanked me, just confused me. I felt a great sadness at the knowledge that come the end of this cursed Tour, he would go his way and I would go mine and I wouldn't ever see him again, and I would never know the reason he rejected me.
I don't know why I continued to say yes to Joran. Maybe I was desperate for the only thing that resembled love. As the Tour went on and we came closer to the end, the need to escape the rest of the punishments became less important than the fact that I would be bound to him for at least several years if he was able to get me pregnant. And yet, I said yes every time he approached. If I were honest maybe it was because I was hoping I could goad Samial into jealously stepping in, before it was too late.
And for better, or for worse, the little stick stayed white.
Things came to a head after the next stop on the Tour. This stop had involved some kind of root that was carved to look like a penis and shoved without ceremony into our back entrances, a place most of us had never explored. The burn that it created felt like we were being roasted from the inside, and if that weren't enough, they paddled us hard at the same time. The paddling caused us to tense up, of course, and the resulting squeeze intensified the burn of the root. It was a miserable morning.
The odd thing that happened, though, was how we reacted after we were finally released. I found myself needing to fuck something – anything – as urgently as possible after we were escorted to the building we were sleeping in, and I wasn't the only one. I'd never felt a need quite like this and it must have been the root that caused it. I spotted Joran and yanked him away from whatever he wa
s doing to a spot behind some bushes where I shoved him down and fumbled to release his pants. He grinned up at me.
"I see the root has worked its magic."
"Shut up and help me." I was frantic. As soon as he sprang free, already erect, I lifted myself up and over, and sank down to the bottom. It hurt like hell when his dick hit my cervix, but it seemed to sooth the itch that was driving me mad. This time I was the one doing all the work and I bounced up and down on him as fast as I could, making grunting noises and rubbing my clit at the same time. When I came, it was the most powerful orgasm I'd had to date, and I collapsed with a shriek onto his stomach. It must have been enough for him, too, because his roar almost matched mine as he came at the same time. I fell onto my side on the grass, gasping.
Joran made a chuckle next to me. "I'll bet Samial couldn't have made you come that hard. He wouldn't have been able to get it up fast enough and he'd probably want to talk to you first," he said mockingly.
My eyes widened as I sat up to look at him, and something snapped. Over the last few weeks, I'd learned a number of colorful phrases, and now I pulled a select few up from memory.
"You whore-sucking, mother-fucking, son-of-a-bitch! You aren't, and never will be, half the male he is! I can't believe I wasted my time with you!" I grabbed the end of his shirt, wiped his cum from my legs, and stood up. I seriously considered kicking him as he lay there but thought better of it and stomped off instead, looking for the showers.
Later, my tender skin freshly scalded from the heat of the shower that in my anger I hadn't been careful to check, and dressed in my shift once more, I curled up under a tree and tried to let go of my anger. I truly regretted all the time I'd spent with Joran, and kicked myself at the thought that I might have to live with him if I was pregnant. I was a fool and my mother would have shaken her head at me. I was so desperate that I'd made some really bad decisions. All I could hope for now was that this last time with Joran hadn't been the one that got me knocked up.
A noise made me look up. Samial stood over me with an expression somewhere between sadness and anger. He started to say something, but shook his head and turned to walk away.
"What's your problem?" I asked, tired of games. He kept walking, so I jumped up. "Samial! Stop walking away from me!"
He turned back to me. "What do you see in him?" His voice was low and controlled.
"See? I see a way out of this Tour! That's all I see! He's a means to an end!" And then it dawned on me. "You are jealous! Oh, fuck, you're so jealous you're almost green! You know I don't really want Joran. You know I've always wanted you!"
He said nothing, staring silently off into a distance.
"Dammit, Samial, tell me! Tell me something that would explain why you came along on this Tour if not to find a mate? Tell me why you'll be my friend, and comfort me when I'm sad, and teach me your language and your culture, but you won't fuck me, and you get mad when I fuck someone else? Give me a reason that makes sense!"
"There are things I haven't told you. Things about me, and about you, that you deserve to know." He paused, a look of pain drawing across his face, and then reached out his hand to me. After a moment, I placed my small one in his large one. He sat down on the grass and tugged me down next to him.
"I was married. Her name was Seranay. I loved her for many years and when she agreed to be my wife it seemed that the future couldn't possibly be as bleak for us as it seemed to all the others. We'd been married for three years when she became pregnant with twins. Two boys, of course. I don't know if it was realizing that she could never have a daughter, or something gone awry in her hormones, but she became very depressed very quickly. She hid it well, and no one realized how bad it was, until she killed herself and the babies when she was about halfway through. I've never forgiven myself for missing the signs. For not helping her. For being so stupid that I lost not only my wife, but my children."
My eyes filled with tears and I put my other hand on top of his. "I'm so sorry." He squeezed my hand in response.
There was still a question to be answered, though. "What does this have to do with me?"
He turned to me and I could read guilt all over his face. "One of the tests we did back in the recruitment center was to see if you released an egg when we gave you the injection. That means you could bear children for us. You released three at once."
I tried to understand what he was saying. "That's good, right?"
"Leina, it means you could conceive triplets. Three girls. We've never had someone like that come along before. I could have the daughters Seranay always wanted."
He paused and I waited, knowing there was more.
"I couldn't take the chance that you'd decide not to come. So I told you that you'd been selected, and I sent you in early and made arrangements for you to be forgotten so you wouldn't hear the rest of everything until we were underway. By then I hoped and prayed you'd agree to stay." He got the words out in a rush.
I yanked my hands away and stared at him in horror. "You manipulated me? You decided that you wanted me so badly that you would lie to me so I'd come along and be your breeding mare to replace your dead children and wife? What did you plan to do with me after I'd given you these three kids? Turn me out into the wild to fend for myself?"
"No, Leina, it isn't like that. After you have three kids – even if they're all at once – you can stay, or go anywhere you want and you’ll be supported –"
"If I survive the pregnancy. Three of your huge babies? Has anyone carried three before and survived?"
He wouldn't meet my eyes. "There have been some twins, and the pregnancies were hard. Very hard. But no one has died! And you're bigger than most of the females of your race…" He looked up at me as though asking for understanding.
He found none. "You used me. You're planning to risk my life to get the kids your dead wife wanted. You are a bastard, you know?" I got up to my feet, wincing with pain. He reached up to take my arm but I moved away too fast.
"Leina, that's why I haven't had sex with you, because I feel so bad about what I did. It was wrong, really wrong, but please, I want you for you, not for the children you can bear. I'd take you as my mate even if you couldn't have any children at all. Please."
The pain was written all over his face, but I was too angry to pay attention to it. I walked away.
Chapter 11 – Attempted Murder
An hour after Samial's revelation I was on my cot, trying to read but finding my anger making it even harder than usual. A shadow fell across the book. Without looking up, I said, "You just don't learn, do you? I don't want to have anything to do with you any more, Samial."
"Then perhaps I still have a chance," Joran's gruff voice held a mocking tone.
I looked up – way up – and saw that from this angle he seemed even hairier than normal – now there was hair on his face, too. I shivered in revulsion.
"Go away, Joran. I'm not in the mood now, and I won't ever be again. We're done."
His expression darkened. "You'd reject me and give up a chance to leave the Tour?" he asked, almost with disbelief.
"None of you males would make decent fathers anyway. I'd rather take the last two punishments and then go to the breeding home than spend any more time with you."
"You are rejecting me." His voice held malice that I was too angry to notice.
"Yes, Joran, I am rejecting you. You and every male here. Take your hairy, ugly face and go away."
He was silent for a moment. "I think you may regret your decision." He wheeled around and walked away.
I didn't think much more about what his threat meant until the next punishment day. We lined up with resignation, wondering what kind of hell this town had planned for us. We had come to understand as we moved from town to town that our outward cries of pain mirrored the pain they felt inside themselves for their wrecked futures. We all felt regret, and by now I was more than ready to help them repopulate as penance. That didn't mean I was looking forward to the punishment.
But I understood the need for it. These people didn't deserve what we'd done to them, and if this was a way of moving forward, then so be it. We'd survive.
As we ascended the stage there was the circle of poles we'd grown used to seeing. This time we were placed with our backs to the poles before our arms were lifted high and we were stretched tight. Our legs were pulled apart and fastened, meaning whatever was about to happen was going to happen between our legs, too. Once more, I pushed down the nausea.
The town council chairman gave the usual speech about the sins of our people and the need for forgiveness on all sides. Then Linal reached into a bucket and picked up something that looked like thin branches with leaves. He approached Aliya, tethered next to me, and she whimpered with fear. He spoke some words to her quietly, brushed his hand against her cheek, and she nodded. By now I knew he regretted what he was about to do, but knew he had to do it anyway. He pulled his arm back and whipped the branches just underneath her breasts. The impact was not very hard, so I waited to see what was going to happen next. He swung the branches at her again, landing on her stomach. Large red splotches began to show where the first blow had been. She began to gasp and wiggle as much as she could. By the time the third blow hit below the second, on her pubic area, she was moaning. Now her breasts were covered with red splotches. Whatever was on those branches obviously left behind some kind of painful poison.
Linal worked his way down her front, covering every square inch of her pale skin to her knees. By now she was crying and struggling as red welts covered her. Finally he stepped back, changed the angle of his arm, and drove the branches straight up between her legs, driving the poison deep into her folds. A moment later her screams reached an even higher pitch.
I hated the punishments that were doled out one woman at a time. It was so much harder to listen to each woman's pain, knowing it would be mine eventually, than it was for all of us to suffer at the same time. Now all I could hope for was to be next in line and get it over with. Instead, Joran picked a new branch up and approached the woman on the other side of Aliya. Great. That meant that I was last.
Twist (A BDSM & Romantic Erotica Boxed Set) Page 9
