Freedom on Earth was nearly absolute. As long as a person's actions hurt no one, everybody was free to study, travel, marry, and work just as he wished. Society controlled itself not through laws, but through social censure. It was not against the law to have ten children. Someone just wouldn't, because it was unecological and to do so would cause ostracization. As another example, most products were available in the supply centers at no charge. There was no reason why someone could not go and take one thousand pounds of food in a day, if he wished. Again, he just wouldn't, simply because to do so would cause extreme comment and criticism from the peer group. Even work. People worked, not because they got paid, but because it was the right thing to do. If someone didn't, it would cause talk. But all in all, nothing on Earth happened without the person's consent. People were never forced, required, or coerced to do anything.
And so, as I thought about it, I realized what was most shocking to me was not what had done to me by the inhabitants of Gamma Rigel—you could argue that you could not expect better; they were barbarians, after all—but what had been done to me by the leaders on Earth. That completely without my consent I could be arbitrarily stripped of all my rights as an Earth Citizen, was actually far more heinous than what the residents of Gamma Rigel had done to me. It was so corrupt I could hardly fathom it.
Yet, I realized fatalistically, I had better get used to the idea. Here I was, sitting on the lap… the lap for heaven's sake… of a giant barbarian who had just bared my bottom and struck it until I screamed, and we were discussing exploding heads. I was clothed in a pair of trousers that could be parted to reveal my bottom or shaved sex at any moment. No matter how unreal it seemed, it was real, and the sooner I got used to that, the better.
But even here things weren't as they seemed, which further contributed to my overwhelming sense of disorientation. Were they really barbarians? After all, we were having a lucid conversation about how complicated technology functioned; plainly, he was well-educated, whatever that entailed in this society, and he spoke very well once you got past the accent. More stomach-churning, they had stopped my heart, performed complicated surgery on my eye and ear, and then revived me, apparently in a matter of minutes. I now sat in a room with sensor-operated doors and had taken a bath in tub, where the water temperature was controlled by touch-sensitive pad.
Then, I thought coldly of swords and horses and armor, and a school where young women were punished, whole groups at a time, then made to stand exposing their bare, reddened buttocks in a hallway. I thought of a nurse who had spread my bottom wide open and physician who had matter-of-factly penetrated my anus with a thick black rod… and discussed my reactions to it with all the emotion one would show on Earth for computer repair. And most of all I remembered a hard hand coming down on my bottom while I kicked and screamed and cried and begged. All of those things were not a show for the implants, I reminded myself grimly. Some had happened before anyone knew, or even suspected, who or what we were; some had happened after the implants were gone. The way women were treated on the planet was something out of a medieval horror story, and if all that wasn't barbaric, well, I surely couldn't think of another word.
"Ye with me, lass?" With his big hand, he pushed the hair away from the side of my face and tipped me up to look at him.
"Yes," I whispered. "It's just so much…" Suddenly, I realized I had not had a very crucial question answered. "How long was I… sick?"
"It's been three days since ye were brought here."
My mind went back to where the whole conversation had started. I couldn't believe, once I had the thought, that I hadn't pushed the question before now, but it was almost as if my mind was being so overloaded that it was forced to work in slow-motion. "So what happened to Christy?" I asked tiredly. "She is alive?
Rohan nodded. "Alive, aye. But I'll not be lying to ye, Jen. She's sore sick. They brought her back… her heart's beating and she's breathing, but she's not come out of it yet."
"Why not?"
"Because when they were taking her implants out, the one from her eye exploded."
"Why… how? I thought you said if the electrical activity in her brain was stopped, it couldn't…"
"That's what we thought, too. Maybe there was a tiny little cell that could store enough charge to blow it if it was tampered with. We don't know… and we don't know why yours didn't explode." He shrugged. "It was after it was out, so that's not what hurt her, but it happened just as the doc was carrying it away, and it killed him and one of the two Matrons tending her. It was a," his mouth pressed tight, "sorry sight, a verra sorry sight," he paused briefly, and the emotion was plain on his face, "and because of that it was way too long before we got another doc in there to start her up again." He shifted me on his lap, and looked down at his hands that were cradling my upper thighs. "I got no love for those that put ye here, Jen Marin, I'll tell you that for nothing. Doc Charles was one of our best surgeons. His loss is a sore blow to us.
"Will she recover?" Christy and I could hardly be called "friends"—in reality, I'd known her only a couple of days. But she was my one connection with… Earth, with… everything. The idea of losing my only contact with my "other" life was chilling.
He shrugged. "No one knows if… or when she'll be waking. And if she does, if her brain will be still… right."
My tears had dried, and I suddenly became even more conscious of my position… that I was still sitting on the barbarian's lap. "So what happens to me?" I asked, my voice very soft. I remembered something he said early in the conversation, that they needed me… us. "Didn't you say, before, that you needed us for something?" Suddenly I was aware that I had totally dropped the Lord from my questions, and he didn't seem to notice.
"It's a long, long story, lass, and…" He stopped and looked down at me thoughtfully. "Maybe it's best I just show ye."
Show me? But before I could even ask what he meant, I'd been gently but firmly set onto my feet, and the giant barbarian was striding out of the tiny room. I'd been so overwhelmed by our conversation that I'd forgotten my curiosity about where we were, but now, as I saw him stooping his dark head to pass through the door and then practically having to turn his massive shoulders sideways to navigate through the narrow hallway, questions again raced through my mind. Everything was clean, painted white and looked very new, but the whole place was proportioned all wrong for a race of giants. "Where are we?" I blurted.
He glanced back at me. "You must be saying the Lord to me, lass," he admonished mildly. "I'll be correcting you for it, should you forget again."
My mouth worked soundlessly and my stomach clenched with a painful stab. I knew exactly what he was threatening me with… another experience over his lap… an experience more painful than anything that had happened to me in my life, and more traumatic as well, if you eliminated the actual abandonment on Gamma Rigel. Yet, he was promising it in a casual tone hardly different than the rest of our conversation. My jaw tightened. Just because he was not stupid, I reminded myself, did not mean he was not a barbarian, regardless of what positive thoughts I had had earlier about his level of education. But I had no choice but to swallow his insults for now, I knew, and quietly, I repeated the question. "Where are we, Lord? I mean, this place…"
He chuckled, his earlier censure of me completely gone from his demeanor, and I realized again that physical "correcting" as he had termed it, was so much a part of his way of interacting with a woman, that he neither thought twice about uttering a threat, or carrying it out. "We're in a cave, of sorts, lass. About 300 meters under the ground. Some o' it is, well natural, I guess you could say, and some we carved out o' the rock." As he said this, we rounded a curve in the hall and saw another person for the first time, a Matron. She inclined her shrouded head politely, and murmured, "Lord," and I felt her curious eyes on me as we passed.
I felt a strange sense of confirmation at his words; I had sensed that the place was very confining and cave-like, even though it was warm and cl
ean. Still, 300 meters under the ground? Carved out of rock? The technology to "harness" such a cave would not have been easy to come by. Yet more mysteries, I realized.
I was having a hard time keeping up with Lord Rohan, in spite of the fact that his long stride was shortened by the confines of the white hallway. However, in the next moment it did not matter, for we came to a double door, metallic and shiny, that was closed. He touched a pad, and the doors slid open, revealing a small, domed chamber; I realized that although it looked different from its counterpart on Earth, we were in an elevator. Rohan pressed a pad, the doors whooshed shut behind us, and without warning, we were drawn upward. I could feel the rush in my stomach.
"I don't understand… What is this place?"
The elevator kept moving upward, and if the churning in my belly was any indication, we were traveling at a very swift pace. Rohan turned to me, his face still matter-of-fact, yet harder than it had been before. "I'm warning you once more, Jen Marin," he said quietly over the hum of the mechanisms. "I know you're not trained to it, and it's patient I'll be. But you'll be showing me the respect I'm due, or I'll be giving you a hard spanking. You're to go into the suite with my two sisters and Raisa, and they can't be seeing any sass from you. Now, I'll ask you once more, lass. Are ye understanding this?"
I put my head down slightly. "Yes, Lord." I muttered, hating him.
"Now as to your question. You'll be seeing… right about now." The elevator came to an abrupt, stomach shriveling stop, the doors slid open and my mouth dropped wide. Very cool, very damp air hit me like a blow; I felt myself almost recoiling from it. I was looking out from the pristine "moderness" of the elevator into what was definitely a cave, with huge stalactites and stalagmites and brilliant colors all around. But that was not why I gasped. I gasped because in the massive cavern in front of me was unmistakably, an equally enormous space craft.
Without realizing it, I had stumbled after Rohan out of the elevator. My eyes began taking in more details: my first, hysterical thought, that it was somehow the ship we had arrived on was completely dispelled. It was a different class craft—larger, for one thing. Also, the ship was damaged; in fact, one of the flight spurs was missing completely. I couldn't identify the exact type, but I suspected that was because it was an older craft. Numerous men, dressed similarly to Rohan, except with the additional of a heavy, jacket-like vest, were walking around the outside of the craft and disappearing within. There were, I noticed immediately, no women at all. I began shivering uncontrollably, and knew that only part of my reaction was due to cold.
"What do ye think, lass?"
"Where… where?" It was all I could think of, and he seemed to understand at once that my leaving off the sir was simply because I couldn't get it out.
"It crashed. About fifty years ago. My grandfather was Lord, then. They dragged it in here, sealed off the cave…" he made a motion with his hand, and my eyes followed where he indicated. I could see that the wall there, slightly up an incline from where we stood, had a huge section, perhaps as large as twenty meters square, that was plainly different from the rest of the walls. Apparently, what had been the natural opening had been sealed shut with some sort of fake rock. "…and they built the city around this to hide the activity."
I continued to glance around, fascinated in spite of myself. "So we're under the city?"
I heard a heavy sigh. "I warned ye, lass." I glanced up at him, momentarily confused, but I had only a millisecond's vision of his face, before he grasped me firmly and dragged me along to an area slightly away from the activity. His intentions were instantly plain. "Lord, Lord, Lord," I gasped out, but it was…
"Too late, lass." He laughed. "If your brains not reminding your mouth, your bottom can try the job." And with no further comment, he propped his leg up on a rock and jerked me over his thigh, so that my head and legs dangled down on either side helplessly, my breath forced from my lungs in a painful whoosh. The sound of his foot grinding into the stone grated in my ears. His huge thigh felt log-like under my belly. I heard myself squalling out, felt my legs churning, and my hands grasped air desperately, feeling as if I would simply keep going forward, right on over his leg, my face crashing horribly into the rock floor. But almost instantly, one of his huge hands found the back of my neck and held me balanced. I tried to jerk my head away, and found myself looking at the ship. I could see a few of the men (upside down, of course) glance in our direction. It was hard to tell from my position, but it seemed as if they looked only mildly curious… and vaguely amused.
Rohan flipped my tunic top over my back and the cool damp air brushed against my already partially bared skin a sensation made worse when he jerked apart the seam at the back of the trousers. I'd reflected earlier how the clothing seemed designed for this. I now understood how totally correct I'd been. "Open yerself for it, girl."
"What… no… what… stop…" Even as I gasped out the pleas, though, I knew what he wanted. An explicit vision came into my mind of the girls punished in the classroom, of how they had obediently parted open their legs before the Matron's strap had begun to fall. That had been the first time I understood what the men had meant by when they had said that we were not clean, for we had seen, to our utter horror, that every bit of private hair had been removed from the girls' lips, and as they had parted their legs, every detail of their opened sexes, the plump white outer lips, the spradled dusky inner lips, had been visible between their thighs. And my bottom was facing the men around the spacecraft… I would look just like that.
"No, stop no, I'm sorry, stop, Lord, please stop, I'll not forget again, please…" I was quickly becoming almost hysterical again. The sensation in my bottom from my last punishment had finally diminished to a vague warm itchy tenderness… and now he was going to correct me again.
His grip on my neck tightened. "Open your legs, girl. You'll be learning now how to take your spankings like a proper lass. And showing your little pussy is part of it."
"Why?" I screeched.
"Why?" Rohan laughed out loud. Staring at gray pebbles with my bottom already partially bared I could not share his humor. "Why? Because that's the way a lass takes a spanking."
"Why?" I howled out again, blood starting to pound in my ears.
"I'm not knowing why." I could hear actual bafflement in his voice. Suddenly, I could feel him stiffen, as if he realized to his horror that he was actually carrying on a conversation with his victim. "Now that's enough out o' you. Open 'em," his hand suddenly caught one thigh, then the other, with a smack that stung even through the material of my trousers, "or we can go on to the suite and I can be finding a linden that'll go a long way towards teaching you about how to take your spankings."
He waited, and as I again tried to shift my head, I became aware that it seemed like more men from near the ship were now watching. Discipline was a totally common occurrence; with a flash of insight, I suspected that what was attracting attention in this situation was that we were discussing it. Could I do what he was asking? I wasn't sure, but I thought that a linden was some sort of stick… apparently a favored punishment instrument, since it was threatened so often, and in my mind, I saw the poster that had hung in the infirmary, the one of "Brides Caught in Mischief." An unlucky bride in that illustration had been turned over a man's lap, her husband's presumably, and was being whipped with a small, limber looking stick. I remembered how brilliantly red and striped the girl's bare cheeks had been. If that was a linden, well, I wanted nothing of it. Hardly able to believe that I had the strength to do it, yet knowing I had no choice, I parted my thighs open. It was awkward, considering the position I was in… it made me feel even more off balance, but the hard hand around my neck held me firmly. I could actually feel the cool air against my shaved sex… could feel the delicate lips spradle open. The sensation of bare exposure was staggering. My hands waved back awkwardly.
In a flash, I understood my own desperate "Why?" perhaps better than Rohan did. Willingly opening my legs, exp
osing the most personal… and tender… surfaces of my body, not only to his eyes, but also, I supposed to his hand, signaled an acceptance of the punishment that literally took my breath away. Whoever had started this dreadful custom knew what he was doing… even if Rohan had never thought about it.
And then all cultural reflection left my mind and one horror was piled onto of another, for no sooner had I spread my quivering thighs then I felt his thick fingers at my high, offered sex, touching the velvet-smooth skin lightly, parting the lips slightly. He was, I realized, matter-of-factly checking the job that the Matron had done. I gasped and tried to jerk my bottom away from him, but he just countered that by tucking me against his body more firmly. In spite of myself, I felt myself shuddering. His touch was very much different from the Matron's. "Much much better now, isn't it lass?"
I was panting in outrage, literally beyond speech but before I could protest further, I felt his hand slip away, and felt myself adjusted firmly over his knee. He was so strong, I could feel him positioning me about as if I were no more than a tiny child. I knew that my weakened state from being ill did not help… but I had a sneaking suspicion that even fully healed, I would be no match for him whatsoever.
Then the first cracking whack fell. His hand had become no softer in the last hour… and my bottom was considerably more tender than at the beginning of my last punishment. Through the first few smacks I was aware of the workers surrounding the space craft and was grimly determined not to draw attention to the punishment. That resolve disintegrated, when, on the fourth or fifth smack his hand fell fully across the cleft in my bottom, and because of my spread out position, his palm fell directly on the tender skin between my exposed anus and parted sex. I screeched, with both pain and intense humiliation and before I knew it my howls and pleas were echoing in the cave, totally intermingled with the sounds of the cracks. But even my shrieks could not totally drown out the sound of … laughter. The men working around the ship were taking an entertainment break.
Betrayed (Hidden Worlds Book 1) Page 14
