At the top of the curving staircase they came to the second floor where Ren had been brought the last time. But they were at the other end of the long hall that Ren had only glimpsed twice. The two grooms leading the group opened the second door. They all walked into a large bedroom with a huge bed splashed in pale lavender and white spreads and pillows. It stood in the center of the entirely white room. White carpet, white curtains, white walls and white coffered ceiling. It was like walking into a world of froth and snow. The bed was like the pale, flowering centerpiece.
The scent was fresh like just cut fruit, apple and pear, as if the room had been newly set up and thoroughly cleaned, the carpet wet-vacuumed, the linens air-dried and everything sprayed down with that soft, fruity fragrance.
Ren’s stomach grumbled and he realized they were missing dinner.
The bed had a headboard, white-cushioned, and dripping from its upper corners were sparkly, gold chains that ended with lambs-wool lined white leather cuffs. More gold chains and cuffs were draped across the bed’s foot as well. For the ankles.
Ren shut his eyes a moment. He did not want to think about having sex with Zanti when he was so angry. But for Master he would do anything, of course. Besides, he had a long-term agenda. He wanted to eventually meet the guy. And he was determined to do it if he had to seduce his way through the entire harem, the grooms, and even Niko himself.
He opened his eyes and glanced to his left. Zanti stood flanked by two grooms, his head back, staring with a frozen, bored look at the ceiling. Distant and often pissed. That was Zanti.
The room was well-lit, but the curtains drawn, their filmy, layered materials like ghosts upon ghosts looking on, blocking the outside dusk.
For about thirty seconds they all waited. The stillness overtook the room, and the mind, even for that short amount of time. Was Master even around?
Finally a breathy sound moved about the room. The speakers had been turned on.
“Welcome, Zanti. Welcome, Ren.”
Were they supposed to respond? Zanti could not. Or would not. Ren had no idea what to do. At least this time he wasn’t wearing a mask. Or a cock cage.
“You may proceed.” Master’s voice rang out, slightly mechanical as always, low-toned and melodic.
Ren turned to see if the grooms could make sense of the order. One was already moving toward the bed, lifting one of the wrist-cuffs. The other flanking Zanti said to him, “You. Move to the bed and sit so your wrist can be cuffed.”
Ren’s grooms stood back, waiting.
Zanti whirled away from his groom like a haughty child and marched toward the bed, head held high. He did not sit as instructed. Instead, he lifted his wrist toward the other groom, palm up.
The groom reached up with the cuff and Zanti’s hand shot up. He acted as if he was going to hit the groom, but he didn’t. His hand waved in the air. He jiggled his pretty rump and stepped back.
The other groom said. “Cooperate.”
Zanti had his lower lip caught between his white teeth, as if holding back a grin. He was playing with the grooms, teasing them, Ren realized.
The second groom behind Zanti said curtly, “Sit!”
Zanti turned toward him, made his body curve as if flaunting his beauty while at the same time goading the groom.
Ren wanted to protest right then. How could anything ever work with Zanti? But of course they were going to chain him so he would stay put. Ren didn’t like the idea of it, but okay, it might be necessary. But why Zanti if he didn’t want to be there? He could not imagine, now that he knew about Zanti’s past, touching him as he was chained to the bed.
“Master?” Ren asked to the room at large. “Please. May I ask you why?”
The groom nearest Ren threatened him with the tube. “You will be silent and follow Master’s orders. No questions!”
Ren stiffened, eyes on the bed.
Zanti tossed his pretty head, his hair settling around him like liquid. And that aura of his, so dark and grim. Coal-red scars sliced it open here and there. The edges were jagged as if it wasn’t made of light but of thin slices of onyx stone, broken. His streamlined body, so slim and burnished the goldest shade of brown ever seen, undulated to tease and taunt. It was as if he wasn’t human, and not just in appearance, but in spirit. In his heart. And after what Cam had told him Zanti had been through, how could he be human any longer? No, he’d been transformed. But to what?
A pang of empathy, or maybe it was pity, strummed lightly inside Ren’s stomach. Mixed with his dislike of Zanti, it only irritated him.
Zanti played the grooms well. He lightly dodged each man as they tried to grasp him. He did not run or attack or show any alarm. He just played. This went on for some time.
Finally, a groom said, voice raised in frustration, “You will sit or you’ll get the tube!” He held up the shocker device.
Zanti backed up, light on his feet, bouncing on his toes. A fairy child grown adult in a human world.
The groom, clearly frustrated, lunged.
Zanti’s aura abruptly went white. His mouth opened. His eyes rolled up. Maybe he was going to faint, but the groom kept coming forward, and now the tube emitted an orange light that hissed.
Ren saw Zanti change, but the grooms did not. All they saw was the spoiled, brat boy acting like he owned the mansion and all of them as well.
Maybe Ren did not want to be up here with Zanti, but suddenly he didn’t like to see the groom threaten a broken boy with pain even if he deserved it. He didn’t think. He just reacted. They were only a few feet away.
Ren found himself leaping in front of the groom with the tube. “Stop!” That was how he found himself between Zanti and the groom.
The groom looked livid.
Ren was confused. A part of him, still smarting from the fight, wanted to see Zanti punished. But the other part had seen the black aura for too long, the damaged boy. That was the part that acted without thought, on auto-pilot.
Zanti reached out and touched Ren on the shoulder. Then he pushed Ren, not hard but not gently, and shook his head back and forth.
But Ren stood his ground, until the groom lowered the tube.
In that moment, as Ren turned to see if his other grooms were moving to get him back in line, he saw Zanti jump onto the bed with a smug smile, ass first, body bouncing, and hold out his arms like a sacrificial god.
The groom with the tube stuck the instrument in his belt, walked around Ren and fastened the cuffs about Zanti’s wrists. He turned to the ankles. Zanti teased him some more, pulling his feet away, but his glittering, brat gaze, as if it was all a joke on them, never left his face.
Now Zanti sat on the bed, back against the pillowed headboard, wrists and ankles cuffed, looking again like the prince who owned the place. The chains did not strain. He was as comfortable-looking as a trained dog on a leash. Only Zanti wasn’t trained. Or so Cam said.
The omniscient breath went around the room again. “Forty-five. Six. Eleven. Nineteen. Leave.”
Ren watched the dismissed grooms line up and exit the room. Numbers. They were numbers. Ren could not help himself. He looked up at the ceiling as if that was where Master, the mystery man, might be. “They don’t have names?”
A rush like a breeze. Maybe a slight crackle. Zanti was staring at Ren with cool detachment, but the smirk was gone.
Through the speakers, the voice. “Those are their names.”
“Numbers,” Ren said quietly. He wasn’t trying to argue. Was he? He was mostly annoyed and, worse, trying not to fume at now being alone in the room, upstairs, with Zanti.
Ren stood very still, looking everywhere but at the bed. Yet he could not help but see Zanti. The man’s aura was no longer the shocking white it flashed to when Zanti reacted to the threat of the tube. Nor was it back to black. It grayed about him in a jagged halo. Gray, to Ren’s mind, meant a person was unsure, conflicted or confused.
Master did not speak. They waited. Ren shifted his weight from foot to foot,
his braids slithering about his shoulders. The silver dangles of his collar were cool against his chest. Zanti sat still as a sculpture.
Minutes passed.
Able to take it no longer, Ren said to the room, “Are there orders?”
The answer came quick. Surround-sound. “Do as you wish.” There was a sound like a snick and the silence of the room deepened. The speakers had been turned off.
What did that mean? They were here to put on a show. But they had not been specifically told how. Or what to do.
Do as you wish.
What if what he wished was to do nothing?
But that would not impress Master.
“This is ridiculous,” Ren said to no one. He crossed his arms in front of him. He turned away from the bed. Chains clinked.
Ren refused to turn to see if Zanti was moving. His stomach rumbled again. This was the dinner hour. They had nothing. There was a bathroom off to the left, door open. It would have water and that would be it.
Was this a test to see who could outwait whom the longest?
Ren hung his head. Chewed his lip. It was hard to know how fast or slow time passed in the harem, let alone here in this white room.
Ren turned to the bed again with his brow furrowed, eyes half-closed. Zanti reclined amid lavender and white, a trapped nixie-thing, his demeanor showing no frustration at all now. His aura was still gray. He looked completely relaxed, perfect in line and form, skin unblemished, stomach lean and flat, hips narrow. His cock was flaccid and pink against slightly darker, perfectly round balls. Beauty made of hate. Beauty without a soul. No colors zipped about his skin. Nothing Ren could see yet, anyway. Zanti stared straight ahead as if looking at something no one but Zanti could see.
There were no scars on him at all. Cam had been right. Zanti’s scars were internal. You could not see them. But you could feel them in his looks, his behavior, his lack of a voice.
“You’re at my mercy now,” Ren said coolly.
All Zanti did was blink.
“Why did you attack me? I’ve done nothing to you. You’re the one who hurt me. Why do you hate me?”
Zanti’s brows furrowed slightly. His aura did not change.
“If Master thinks this is some way for me to take revenge upon you, he’s wrong. I won’t.” Why did he say that? To let Zanti know that he could but didn’t want to? Maybe.
“I don’t want to touch you want me to,” Ren said.
Zanti blinked and stared. Sometimes the chains gave a little rattle. The speakers in the room remained silent.
“You hurt me,” Ren said. His teeth were gritted now as he spoke. “Intentionally. I am a stranger here. Unsure. You knew that. You made me feel even more unwelcome. But okay. Maybe you had your reasons. I know more now than I did before. Cam told me quite a bit about your history.”
Zanti’s head tilted but he did not look at Ren. He did not smirk or scowl or hide a smile. But his eyes flashed. Not a glitter like usual, but something else.
Ren was conflicted. He didn’t want to think about what all Zanti had gone through in his short life. But he did. He couldn’t imagine the terror, the horror. Pain. Waiting for death which would be preferable to anything else. But Zanti had not been rewarded with death. His stay in Mister X’s dungeon had been longest. He’d had to live. That was the torture.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Ren said softly.
Zanti hissed and turned his head away.
“I won’t do anything. I won’t touch you. Master said to do as we wish. I don’t wish to touch someone who doesn’t want to be touched.”
Zanti tilted his head all the way back and gave out a long, hard sigh, almost a moan.
Ren realized he was looking over Zanti’s head now to a point in his aura where a sort of heart-shaped red mass formed. It had an inner glow and two white spots on it like distant stars. It was not bright red like lust or pleasure, but like a burn on skin that might never heal. A weird anomaly. It glared like Zanti often did, those two white stars within the redness like eyes. The shape hovered in his aura like a misplaced thing, a monster caught in a net.
He couldn’t imagine what Zanti had been through. But why take it out on him?
Zanti did not like that Ren had made him come. Ren figured that out easily. If he didn’t want to feel, why not leave him alone? And yet here Master had put him, with Zanti, and then gave the order: Do as you wish.
Still confused, Ren decided to sit. But not on the bed. Instead, he lowered himself to the floor, the carpet soft against his backside. He crossed his legs and leaned against the side of the bed.
For a while, he worried a hangnail on his thumb. He listened to Zanti not moving on the bed. He rubbed the balls of his feet on the plush rug.
“I suppose I’ll just sit here for awhile. You can’t get mad at me for that, can you?” Ren asked.
More time passed. Ren had his hands clasped in his lap and realized, as he looked down, they were trembling. Nerves, of course. The unknown always made him wary. He could do as he wished. Master’s orders.
“I don’t know what to do. So. I guess I’ll just mumble to myself. Although I don’t mind the quiet.”
He waited. When he heard no movement from the bed, he continued. “I read auras around people and on their bodies. I can see where and how to touch others for maximum pleasure, which is an asset as a slave. Except with you, I guess. You’re hard to read. Your aura is usually very black. Black is all colors at once, you know.”
Still no response from the bed.
Ren took another deep breath. “Why did you kick me in the pool?” He thought about his question. “Do you hate me because I made you feel?”
He heard a hiss from above. He stayed still, not looking. He didn’t want to see that red monster in the aura again.
“If I had known you were going to respond badly, I would have changed my course that night during the play. I would have touched inexpertly. I would have worked hard to cause no response in you. I can do that, you know. I can touch you opposite of what the colors of your aura show me. I can see where you don’t want touch and deplete arousal. I just never thought of doing that before now.”
The covers of the bed shifted.
Ren wanted to peek but remained still. He concentrated on breathing for a long time.
Finally, he said, “I don’t want there to be bad energy between us. I don’t. I want you do know that. If you want to fight me, fine. But I won’t fight back. Okay?”
Nothing.
Quite tired now, Ren wondered if he could get up, pound on the door and alert a groom. Maybe they’d let them go back to the atrium and have a late dinner.
But he didn’t do that. Certainly Master was watching or they wouldn’t still be in this room.
Ren closed his eyes and a doze came over him.
He woke with a start. He glanced about him. How much time had passed? The room, still white on white, still warm, hadn’t changed. He could tell only by the slight darkening of the curtains where they covered the rectangle of the window that it was full dark out.
Ren glanced over the side of the bed and saw Zanti on his side facing away from him, his arm at an angle where the cuff pulled the chain taut. He couldn’t tell if he was sleeping or not.
A growl erupted. Ren’s stomach. He was hungry and thirsty. He could do something about the thirst, at least. He got up and went into the bathroom. He used the facilities and then cupped his hands under the sink faucet and drank the cool water.
The bathroom was also white, with white towels and white tile and a short, white rug. He was careful to make everything stay right and clean, using one of the towels to wipe up the water drops he’d spilled on the countertop. He folded the towel neatly and put it back in place.
Zanti was staring at him as Ren came back into the room. His aura was gray. Not content but not angry. The red monster was gone.
Ren started to look away, but then thought Zanti also might be thirsty, or have to pee. He approached the bed.
Zanti’s eyes moved, tracking his every move.
Ren reached out to Zanti’s wrist to undo the cuff. Zanti pulled back an inch, then stopped.
Ren shrugged. “It’s fine. I just thought you might have to pee.”
Zanti frowned, took a breath and held out his arm. Ren undid the cuff, then walked to the foot of the bed and undid the anklets. Lastly, he unfastened the second wrist cuff.
Ren said, “Go ahead and attack me if you want. I told you I won’t fight you.”
Zanti ignored him, scooted off the bed and walked casually into the bathroom. Ren heard the toilet flush, the sink turn on, the water flow and splash.
When Zanti came out, he leaned against the doorframe, scanning the area, gaze locking onto the door.
Quietly, Ren said, “Yeah. I’m hungry, too.”
As if someone had been listening all along, the door opened and two grooms walked in. Forty-five? Six? Ren did not know who was who. The grooms motioned to them and Ren and Zanti followed them into the hall. They all moved down the corridor toward the main staircase, the one that led to the atrium. The grooms no longer packed the shocking tubes. There were no chains, no masks, nothing to deal with. Without a word, they escorted the two slaves to the entrance to the harem, opened the door and ushered them in.
The room was dimmed. It was nighttime. Some of the men were already in bed. Others were watching TV or dozing on the couches.
Cam jumped up from one of the couches and ran to Zanti. He had a new, unbroken tablet in his hand. Li Po, Calder and Jaxon approached Ren.
“What happened?” asked Li Po.
“Were you punished?” asked Calder.
Cam looked from Zanti to Ren. “Is he okay?”
Ren nodded, dismissing the fact that Cam did not ask if Ren himself was okay. “Nothing happened. Master only talked for a moment. Then we were locked in a room. That’s it.”
Air hissed from Cam’s mouth in relief. “Are you hungry?”
Zanti turned to look at the kitchen area, his dark eyes widening.
Cam said, “Yeah, thought so. We saved you some dinner.”
“We did,” Li Po said to Ren. “Full plates.”
They all went to the kitchen table and sat. Cam took plates from an oven. Zanti and Ren ate silently. This was the first time since the day Ren had arrived at the harem that Zanti ate at the table. Fried chicken and mashed potatoes, still hot. They also had bowls of fresh-chopped fruit.
The Slave Harem: A Kingdom of Slaves Book Page 17
