Hers To Cherish (Verdantia Book 3)

by Knight, Patricia A.

  Steffania slumped. Could she do that? But what choice did she have? She couldn’t endure another forty minutes of her current predicament. She straightened and slowly nodded. Tears welled. A blink sent a drop cascading down.

  Ram straightened from his chair and walked to the bed. When he turned, he held a slender anal plug and nipple clamps. Tucked under his arm was a tube of lubricant. As he had done before, he played with her breasts until her nipples pulsed with feeling and then he clamped them.

  Steffania couldn’t restrain her soft whimpers of distress. She could deal with the pain. The insidious carnal stimulation that skipped alongside like a conjoined twin concerned her more. For the past few days, Ram had pushed her repeatedly to the heights of arousal – without release. Her state now was such that a whispered breath on her clit would trip her into a forbidden orgasm. Her tears flowed faster.

  “Lean over. Spread yourself.”

  With a shuddering groan, she complied. Ram’s fingers spread slick lubricant over the already tingling flesh surrounding her anus. An electric sensation speared through her as he inserted a well-lubed finger gently into her tight rear opening. He worked his finger slowly back and forth, loosening the tight clenching of her muscles, relaxing the tissue. As he did, Steffania moaned at the fearful pleasure. The effort not to rock into him, to deepen the insertion and scratch the insane itch from the nano-bots, sent her into convulsive shivers. Finally, the hard, blunt probe of the anal plug slipped inside. Taking his time, Ram rocked it further and further into her until the flared base rested against her buttocks. Steffania bit her lip almost bloody in the attempt to confine her whispered gratification and pleas for more.

  “Stand upright,” he ordered.

  As she did so, Steffania almost howled with the swamping arousal that clawed at her self-control – the téad de ghrásta ropes binding her, the ever-present, under-skin crawling sensation as the little bots scurried randomly around her labia, the devastating throb of the nipple clamps and now the fullness in her rectum. A sobbing moan escaped before she could prevent it. “Please,” she begged in a whisper. “I can’t.”

  Ram stopped in front of her. His dispassionate eyes raked her from head to toe. “My requirements remain the same. Silence. Hands on your thighs. Feet wide spread. Hold your position.”

  With despair, her tear-filled glance locked on Ramsey briefly and then she looked away, unwilling to let him read the defeat in her eyes. Ram’s firm hand tipped her face back up to him and he pressed a searching, gentle kiss on her mouth. “Do this for me, vixen,” he murmured against her lips.

  “Yes, Dominus,” Steffania whispered. And she did. In silence, she offered him her suffering. I do this for you. Ramsey’s eyes held hers the entire time. He never looked away.

  He didn’t make her wait a second longer than her ten-minute sentence. With broad sweeps of the amber solution, he quieted the insane tickling of the nano-bots and then removed the nipple clamps.

  “You may relax your position. You may speak,” he said.

  Steffania gasped out a fervent, “Thank you,” and brought her legs together. Once again, her thighs were slick with her body’s moisture. She rolled her shoulders in relief and gently pressed her tortured nipples, unable to stand even the slightest soothing movement, though it were even so gentle as a delicate swirl of air.

  “Bend over. Spread your cheeks.”

  She bent and held herself open for him, hissing at the crazy pleasure the slow glide of the anal toy produced as Ram removed it from her body.

  “Straighten and stay there.”

  Ram tossed the plug onto the bed then pulled her shaking body tightly to him, rubbing her shoulders and nuzzling soft kisses into the crook of her neck. His lean, hard body pressed warmth against her entire length. His engorged shaft slanted across the small of her back. Its heat radiated through the synth-leather of his pants. With quick movements, he stripped her of the téad de ghrásta until irregular loops of red cording lay at her feet.

  “You did well, vixen,” he murmured between kisses to her neck and shoulders.

  Steffania didn’t know why those three words, “you did well,” set off such a firestorm in her heart. But the wetness that had trickled down her cheeks for the past fifteen minutes became a flood and body-jerking sobs replaced her tense trembling.

  Ram turned her into him, holding her firmly. Steffania burrowed into his hard chest and wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug until she got herself under control. With a broad hand around the nape of her neck and his thumb under her jaw, he lifted her face to his. Steffania couldn’t mistake the approval on his face. “You give me vast pleasure, sweetheart.”

  “Thank you.”

  A final, convulsive shudder ran through Steffania and, to her immense surprise, Ram leaned down and picked her up in his arms. He placed her in the middle of the great bed and sent the black satchel, clamps, sex toys, lubricants, all of it, crashing to the floor with a broad sweep of his arm. Stripping his pants with equal disregard, he lay down between her legs, propping himself up on his elbows. His gaze wandered over her face as if he saw her for the first time and she felt his hands tracing the heavy gold collar embracing her neck. “The exquisite Steffania Rickard,” Ram murmured and leaned down and kissed her.

  His lips and tongue gentled and seduced with a grace that made Steffania think of a lover, not a powerful dominus controlling his slaaf. Rolling to his side and taking her with him, Ram caressed and stroked the length of her body, igniting her glowing arousal, increasing the aching want between her legs. Ram pressed her to her back. His gentle hand slid down her abdomen and a thick finger ran between her swollen folds, then slipped into her narrow channel. With a low moan, Steffania rose into his hand, seeking more sensation. It felt beyond good. Please don’t let him stop. She must have whispered it aloud.

  “Yes, I know, sweetheart,” Ram said. He moved between her legs and slid his hard cock along her hot slit, finding the entrance to her molten core. “Find your pleasure, vixen.”

  His initial plunge into her, stretching and filling her aching, greedy pussy, almost sent her over, but Steffania fought back the climax that threatened to explode with every fiber in her.

  “Not yet,” she whimpered. “Not yet.”

  With slow surges and even slower withdrawals, Ram’s rhythm set the match to a bonfire he had laid for the last few days. Far too soon, the conflagration hit critical mass and with cries of, “No! No!” Steffania screamed her ecstasy into the room, arching underneath him in an agony of rapture she no longer had the strength to deny. Ramsey groaned low and clamped a hand viciously into her buttock cheek. He surged forward, driving himself deep within her and held himself implanted. An eternal moment of silence ensued. Submerged in the deep bedding, trapped underneath his collapsed weight, Steffania mumbled, “God, that was good, Ramsey.”

  She felt the prod of his cock still hilted within her when his low rumble of laughter answered her.

  “We’re not through, vixen.”

  It was either terribly late or terribly early before Ram finally let them sleep. After the third explosive orgasm, Steffania could honestly say she was no longer a participant. In the seconds before sleep claimed her, she realized one thing with certainty. Heartache loomed at the end of this mission. Leaving this man would be amazingly painful. Ramsey DeKieran totally ‘got’ her – and he totally got her off. And somewhere in all the morass of her emotions, she had given him more than her occasional obedience.

  Chapter Nine

  Veacon Narr stood observing the “quiet room” with his head scientist, Dr. Tain Nissler. He laughed to himself at his play on words. Yes, the good doctor definitely works on heads. The white, sterile space contained five rows of twelve oblong, stainless-steel, “clam-shells” big enough to contain a person. Each cerebral probe capsule contained a whimpering, writhing, keening victim. Multi-strand wires led from the needles inserted under the skin of a victim’s head to holographic monitors while the rest of their body
lay strapped down, spread-eagled and nude.

  The holographs of nightmare scenarios flickered like bad movies at the head of each box. All the victims in the nightmares were women – beautiful, beautiful women. Silence cloaked the room but for an occasion thump from one of the coffin-like containers. Occasionally a capsule rocked slightly from the turbulent movement within.

  “I am extremely pleased with your work to create the ideal slaaf, Dr. Nissler. I think you and your staff have almost perfected the procedure.”

  “Thank you, Dominus Narr.” The wiry, nervous man grimaced and slipped his ever-present datapad underneath his arm. “Initially, we lost some product due to the overzealous application of the cerebral probes, but I hope the units our ‘quiet room’ produces now more than cover your early losses.” The doctor stretched his neck in the tight collar of his starched white medical coat and shifted from foot to foot. The man’s patent unease in his presence amused Narr.

  “You got that other issue resolved?” Narr’s eyes returned to scanning the “quiet room”. “The spy in our midst?”

  The doctor cleared his throat. ““Yes, yes, that…ah...technician will no longer be a problem.” Nissler cleared his throat once more.

  Narr’s gaze remained on the CP apparatus. “Purely out of curiosity, what did you do with the man? Will I be required to hide a body?”

  “Ah, no...no. We didn’t kill him.”

  Irregular thumps shook a CP bed toward the corner of the room and Narr’s gaze fell to the doctor’s. A smile crept across his face and he chuckled. “Is that our man?”

  Nissler ran one hand through his hair and then scrubbed his face. “It seemed tidier than killing him.” Nissler’s gaze caught Narr’s. “When the program finishes running, he won’t be able to feed himself, much less remember his own name. He’ll be effectively neutralized – no threat to us.”

  Narr nodded his head in approval. Using CP machines to alter or affect behavior carried a death sentence imposed by GAPS, the Galactic Agency for the Protection of Sentients. But who was going to tell them? Certainly not his lovely slaaf, nor their purchasers. Owning a CP-altered sentient carried a mandatory sentence of ten years hard labor on the outer-rim mining asteroids.

  “Do we have all sixty CP shells filled?” Narr said.

  “Yes, Dominus, all the machines are in use.”

  “Are you having fun with the latest delivery, Dr. Nissler?”

  Narr stopped to watch a holographic picture at the head of one stainless-steel bed. Tens of large snake-like tentacles protruded from a lovely blonde’s vagina, nipples, eyes and temples. Bulges of skin rippled and then tentacles sprouted from her abdomen. The holographic woman’s mouth contorted in hysterical screams of terror before a tentacle sprouted from it, too. Narr shivered in revulsion and then opened the viewing door on the top of the stainless-steel bullet. The woman within was the same as the holograph’s victim, but the living woman within stared in glazed horror at nothing, her mouth drawn back in a silent rictus of terror.

  “Umm? Oh, yes, yes. Something new every day.” Nissler joined Veacon. He examined the hologram, flipped a few pages on his datapad and jotted down some notes. “Interesting variation on the fear of penetration, don’t you think? One of my assistants suggested this after reviewing the woman’s personality graph. Devilish mind, that young man.”

  Narr shuddered. “Yes. How much longer before she is ready? I would like to have at least half of Strom Kella’s order available before the games are over.” Narr looked expectantly at his head scientist.

  The man tapped a pen against his pursed lips. “I would think after this feed, we will have stripped her mind down to the id. We can build it back up again quickly – usual stuff – restore the ego to the preconscious, conscious and unconscious mind, re-establish personality. Although, I do have to caution you on this particular unit. She might be somewhat...fragile.”

  Narr raised an eyebrow. “How is that?”

  “Another Verdantian woman, one of their aristocrats. Their minds resist our probes and conditioning. They enter a mental state that has proved difficult to crack without leaving them vegetative. I fear we may have pushed the limit with this unit. We have noted that this intensive a mind-strip often results in total disintegration of the personality within a year.”

  Narr laughed. “Doesn’t matter. After a year with Kella, they are useless anyway. Makes the man one of my best customers so I’m not complaining.” Narr shrugged. “I’m really here for Alessa. Please tell me you have made her more ‘amenable’ to my will.”

  Nissler hemmed and hawed nervously. “Within the parameters that you gave me, we did what we could. You will have to tell me if we succeeded or not. You said you didn’t want to wipe her and...you know…”

  “Yes, yes, she’s a tough Verdantian. I don’t want you to mind-wipe her with your machines. I just want her more – vulnerable.” Narr’s smile was unpleasant. “I want the pleasure of shaping her personally to my will. Using a machine lacks the same challenge as doing it hands-on, so to speak.” Narr chuckled, then walked down to the third silver coffin from the end. “How did she respond to sensory deprivation?”

  The scientist perked up. “Quite well. In addition to the sensory deprivation, we suffocated and revived her randomly – never long enough to create brain damage, of course. Her anxiety levels escalated beautifully.”

  Nissler put down his datapad and fussed with the control panel. With a pneumatic hiss, the clamshell opened to reveal a lovely, black-haired woman bound into place. Sensation-depriving monitors sealed her eyes, ears, nose and mouth. A breathing tube led to a portal on the outside of the stainless steel bullet and her chest rose and fell in shallow, anxious pants. A feeding tube with a white liquid ran into her nose. Catheters for bodily waste ran to collection recyclers.

  Disconnecting all the tubes and wires took Nissler some time. Narr drummed his fingers impatiently on the stainless lid. This time she will break. In some perverse way, he almost hoped she wouldn’t. The Verdantian woman had been his only challenge for the last year or so.

  Finally, Nissler removed the eye coverings and the woman opened her blue eyes. Narr smiled in satisfaction. It was like looking into a drowning soul trembling on the verge of dissolution. “Hello, Alessa. Time to pop you out of your box. What do you have to say, my sweet slaaf?”

  ~ ~ ~

  Ram lay wakeful in a rare introspective mood. Early morning light filtered into the bedroom and illuminated the ivory skin of a sleeping Captain Steffania Rickard. Her long lashes fanned out onto porcelain cheeks. Her glorious breasts rose and fell regularly with the quiet breaths that passed through her lush, barely-parted lips. Flame-red hair surrounded her well-honed body in silky, disordered clouds. A firmly muscled thigh and trim calf lay elegantly outstretched where the bedding had slipped away from her lower body. She was a most unlikely soldier, and he simply could not get enough of her. The gods knew he had tried last night.

  Ram couldn’t afford regrets and considered second-guessing a waste of time. His life had been brutal and he had become brutal to survive it. But in this one instance, if he had to do it again, he would have insisted several galaxies separate Steffania Rickard and the twisted sadists populating Vxloncia. She awoke a protective streak in him wider than the Gamma star system. How did you do that, Captain? I could hate you for it.

  She was a contradiction – fiercely independent, a skilled fighter, and yet... His memory supplied her luminous brown eyes filled with erotic pain as she stood before him a few hours past. She had surrendered herself, offered her most vulnerable desires with the unspoken plea not to abuse her trust. Evidently, a particle of decency remained in the cynical, black void that passed for his soul, for he had discovered within himself a curious unwillingness to violate her trust.

  Steffania stirred him on a subliminal, elemental level – male to female, dominant to submissive. He had always understood that the passive yielding of a ‘Pansy’ failed to arouse him. The surrender of the
strong, the bending of the knee from the soul of a warrior – that lit all the fires within him, especially when they came packaged like Steffania Rickard.

  Ram studied Steffania’s face and confronted his thoughts with stark, unflinching honesty. He respected her. Hell’s breath. Worse – he had feelings for her. With a disgruntled snort, he lay back and closed his eyes. He wished they had come together at another time, in another place. For the first time in fifteen years, he wanted a woman for more than just temporary gratification.

  What the fuck are you doing, DeKieran? No second-guessing. Remember who you are.

  For her own safety, Steffania needed to be on the Estella Racha returning to Verdantia – captain’s bars or no captain’s bars – and Ram disagreed with her fear that her early return would mean the loss of her rank. DeTano would never strip her of rank, regardless of the outcome of this mission. Her pride would suffer and that was all. The only one who would take the fall should this mission not succeed was Ramsey Melborn DeKieran. Doral DeLorion had made that quite clear. With a groan, he sat, swung his legs over the bed and walked into the bathroom. His thoughts turned in his mind as he relieved himself. He knew what he would do. I really am a selfish bastard. Well, one of them would be happy.

  When he returned to the bedroom, Steffania blinked at him through drowsy lids.

  “Take care of your needs then come back to bed.” Ram lay back and watched as she nodded and staggered sleepily into the bathroom.

  Several minutes later, she rejoined him in the bed with a question on her face.

  “Lie back,” he said in answer.

  Rolling on top of her, Ram tried, one more time, to fuck her out of his system. He drew it out until both of them trembled on the edge, until her pants of, “Please, Ramsey, please,” became frantic whispers of, “Now, damn you, now!”

  Steffania muffled her sobbing cries of completion against his chest. Hilted deep in the tight grip of her pussy, his cock twitched with every fluttering, velvet contraction. Ram finally allowed the message battering his self-control to penetrate his brain. He ground his teeth together with a primal growl as he followed her over, emptying his aching balls into the hot welcome of her.