Hers To Cherish (Verdantia Book 3)

by Knight, Patricia A.

  Pansy struggled to compose herself. “He wants me to dose you with LasiCon.”

  Ram looked at her blankly.

  “It’s a drug that antagonizes dopamine D2 receptors,” Pansy explained.

  Ramsey shot an irritated look at Steffania. “I still know no more than I did. Do you know what the hell she is talking about?”

  Steffania wrinkled her nose and glanced at Pansy. “I think it’s an...anti-psychotic?”

  The little brunette nodded. “Yes. It creates bad side effects in normal people. You hallucinate. Your heart beats irregularly. You suffer dizzy spells. You’re easily confused.”

  “Nothing to kill you, just get you killed during combat,” Ram stated.

  Pansy nodded.

  “Why didn’t you just do as he asked?” Ram said bluntly.

  A long silence stretched and finally Pansy answered in the barest of whispers. “Because, Dominus DeKieran, you are a fraud.”

  Pansy’s response floored Steffania and sent her heart into overdrive. Had she and Ramsey been discovered? Ramsey shifted uneasily, his face a study in guarded concern.

  The tiny woman sniffled repeatedly, but looked Ramsey straight in the eyes.

  “Please, Dominus.” Pansy struggled to get the words out. Her hands fluttered in the air like crippled birds. “You’re not like the others. You see me as a person.” The woman faltered to a stop. “I don’t know how else to say it. You resemble no man of this world and please, please, I beg you, take me with you when you leave.”

  Apparently, Pansy had expended her entire storehouse of courage with that one statement. Her eyes dropped immediately and she curled into herself. Steffania allowed a slow exhale of relief and then choked on a laugh-turned-cough at Ramsey’s put upon look.

  “Sweetheart, I doubt you’ll find a true dominus on Vxloncia – only legally-sanctioned, misogynistic sadists. They are the frauds.” Gently disentangling himself from the violet-eyed slaaf, Ramsey stood and placed Pansy back into the chair.

  “What is the ‘quiet room’?” he repeated.

  Pansy curled tighter into a fetal position and wrapped her arms around herself. Her body vibrated with distress.

  “The monsters on this planet aren’t happy with simple slavery. There are no free women on Vxloncia, only slaaf so buried in fear they no longer remember who they really are—who they used to be. The dominae use machines to instill terror and strip your mind of the ability to resist.” Her voluminous purple eyes held Steffania’s and then returned to Ramsey. “Haven’t you wondered at the silent obedience? Haven’t you wondered at the acceptance by the Vxloncian women of the vile degradation and debasement forced on them by the men of this world?”

  Pansy’s quietly voiced despair stretched into silence. Ramsey knelt down by the woman and put a broad hand on her back. “Then why do you possess the courage to tell us this?”

  At that moment, Steffania disliked Ramsey for challenging Pansy but she buried the emotion. The same thought had occurred to her and the question begged an answer. Pansy lifted her head. “They wanted to preserve my medical skills so they did not rape my mind as thoroughly as they raped my body.” A grim smile twisted her lips. “It did them no good. I played dumb. They are convinced Narr’s med-techs ruined me. I can put on a very convincing act.” For a moment anger blazed from the violet eyes that regarded them. “I even fooled you.”

  Pansy unfolded and sat in the chair facing Ramsey and Steffania. She held her arms out in front of her. Tremors shook them uncontrollably. “Narr did something to my mind. This is what happens when I attempt to speak of certain things, and it worsens if I resist, if I continue speaking. But I will try.” Pansy put her hands back in her lap. “You ask about the ‘quiet room’.” A wave of convulsive shudders overwhelmed the tiny woman. Her breath came in rapid pants while unending tears rolled down her clenched jaws. Remorseful anger tore through Steffania at the obvious agony Pansy suffered from her effort to answer.

  Tear-flooded violet eyes found Ramsey. “Please hold me. It is better when you hold me. I need to feel your strength.”

  Silently, Ramsey picked her up and sat in the chair as he had before, engulfing her in his muscular arms. Pansy did her best to root through his chest and her arms wrapped him frantically. Her fingers dug into the skin of his back until small beads of blood formed under her fingernails. Steffania watched as one broke into a crimson drop that trickled down his golden skin. Ramsey never flinched, uttered a sound or shifted his protective embrace. Steffania met Ram’s eyes above the delicate woman’s head. The wrath blazing in them mirrored the rage uncoiling within her.

  “Veacon Narr violates galactic law in an egregious fashion. The ‘quiet room’ is a med-lab comprised of sixty cerebral probe beds. The lab is located in the sub-basement of the main residence. His chief scientist, Nissler, alters women’s minds to induce terror-based behavioral triggers. He makes them unnaturally subservient.”

  Steffania held Ramsey’s gaze. “That explains the security differential between the aboveground and belowground levels. The Galactic Agency for the Protection of Sentients would put Narr and Nissler to death for those crimes.”

  Pansy nodded, still drawn up into Ramsey as if she were trying to wear him as a blanket. “The last time I saw Alessa DeAlbero, Nissler was wiring her into a probe bed.”

  Pansy’s words, forced out between gut-wrenching gasps, wove a haunting passage of description that Steffania knew would beget nightmares. From the closed-down look on Ramsey’s face, Pansy’s words seared through his brain, too.

  Chapter Twelve

  Ram lay on his back and enjoyed the heat of the arena sand baking into his weary muscles. The stench of blood clogged his nostrils. He welcomed the opportunity to lie unmoving for a few seconds. The crowd’s roar of “Ram-sey, Ram-sey, Ram-sey,” drowned out the open-mouthed howl of the man flying through the air in attack. Ram planted his foot solidly in his opponent’s groin and launched him in a low arc over his prone body. His aggressor landed heavily, momentarily stunned. With a grunt, Ram flipped to his feet. A vicious kick to the opponent’s head rendered him unconscious. With a slash to each wrist tendon, Ram ensured this entrant would not pick up a weapon, or anything else, in the next six months. Though still alive, this fighter was out of the games. I’m sure the sponsors will whine that I didn’t kill him.

  Ram surveyed the arena, blinking sweat from his eyes. He held his sword in a loose grip and his arms hung relaxed from his shoulders. Dead or disabled fighters littered the oval surface. Two pairs still fought. He looked across the sand and nodded at the Khlossian. Tok grinned back. Three days of fighting to win this ridiculous spectacle were over and two more remained. Tomorrow, four fighters would face each other in the semi-finals...and then the finals. Win that, secure the vital invitation to Narr’s estates, and then their real mission began. Find and rescue Alessa DeAlbero. His thoughts regarding Ari DeTano and Doral DeLorion were best left unspoken. Couldn’t the bastards have found an easier way into Narr’s compound?

  He shifted the feather-light armatura that Pansy had procured for him and blessed her. Its weight was one-fifth of the steel Verdantian armor and the damn stuff did seem virtually impenetrable. He bore nasty purple and green bruises all over his torso that should have been deep slashes from a blade, penetrating stabs from a knife – would have been in his old armor. The shouts of his name from the crowd finally penetrated his awareness and he raised his arm in salute. The roar doubled as he walked slowly toward the tunnel out of the arena. Vid-cast reporters mobbed him immediately, shouting questions and holding vid-corders over their heads. Much to the displeasure of the commercial sponsors, he ignored all the vid-casters and shouldered through until he reached the entrance of the tunnel out of the stadium. Security restricted the area to combatants and their attendants. He had eyes for only one person.

  His red-haired vixen waited for him in the cool, silent darkness at the tunnel exit. He jerked himself up short. When did I start considering her my red-ha
ired vixen? He grunted to himself in disapproval. Stop that, DeKieran. She’s not yours and never will be. What did he have to offer Captain Steffania May Rickard – a temporary room in a brothel – a life always looking over one shoulder? He would never ask a woman he cared for to live like that. Until the Tetriarch signed his pardon, until he could establish some legitimacy, he had nothing to offer a woman such as her. But, he wondered, if perhaps, after? He smashed the rising hope ruthlessly. Don’t want. Don’t need. Don’t care. It is the only way to survive.

  Ram walked up until the tips of her generous breasts touched his filthy armor. Her eyes held strain.

  “Worried for me, Captain?” he murmured.

  Steffania dropped her eyes and turned her head aside, appropriately submissive in public. “Truthfully, yes. I thought that last feint by the Bromian fighter had you fooled.”

  Her concern warmed a cold place inside him. He angrily pushed back the thought and snorted. “I paid attention to your briefing last night.”

  Since realizing she would stay, Steffania had put aside any remnants of her old attitude and devoted all her efforts to furthering their mission. Always a good judge of assets, Ram understood quickly what a talented ally he had unwittingly brought with him. Steffania’s keen observation of the other fighters had been of great benefit. While he had encountered most of them in practice matches, everyone held something back in the preliminaries, disguised how they fought in some fashion. Her knowledgeable eyes had discerned flaws and vulnerabilities in the other fighters during actual combat. Each evening during their bath and dinner, his mind catalogued her running commentary. “This fighter favors this arm – that entrant always turns to the right – this one ducks low after a right-handed swing – and this one’s parry is weak and leaves him off-balance.”

  Steffania aided him as an equal during the daylight hours. But at night, her sweet submission to his dominant carnality filled the hours with a physical gratification unmatched in his thirty-two years. It would be hard to walk away from Steffania Rickard at the end of their mission – but walk away he must.

  Her gaze flashed up at him in a sensual taunt. She purred, “You paid attention to many parts of my body, DeKieran. I didn’t realize you also listened.”

  Ram grinned. “I can do several things at once. I’ll demonstrate again tonight.”

  Steffania raised her head, her retort dying on her lips. Beneath the grandstands, private nooks and alcoves honeycombed the catacombs leading to the arena floor. A choked, grunting moan filtered from a recess in the dappled shadow to her right. With a hyper-awareness that Steffania was beginning to take for granted, Ramsey stilled, his body moving with hers as she turned in the direction of the stilted groan. They both peered into the shadows intently. There. An oiled, ebony haunch pumped in short, vicious jerks, partially hidden by a wall.

  Ram’s large hands bracketed her waist, and he moved both of them into the darkness cast by a row of wide columns. Hidden in the silent blackness, surrounded by Ram’s muscled strength, her vista opened on a tableau of carnal viciousness.

  The oil-slicked body of a well-muscled combatant knelt stripped, submissive, forced in half at the waist, his shoulders smashed into the pavestones by the actions of the heavy male controlling him. His leather weapons’ harness had been re-purposed by the dominant. One thick strap bound the subordinate’s massive, straining arms behind his back, and another cruelly gagged him. The strap’s thick width forced his mouth open in a painful stretch. His shaggy blond head faced Steffania and Ram, his flattened cheek distorted by the stone floor, but he didn’t see them. His face screwed into a grimace, eyes closed, with drool forming a dark circle on the stone near the corner of his mouth.

  “Ungh...ungh...ungh.” The subordinate’s grunts and shudders jerked in counterpoint to a brutal impalement by a powerfully built, dark-skinned male working between the blond’s forcibly spread thighs.

  Steffania’s immediate thought was they witnessed a rape—until she noticed the wagging erection slapping the blond subordinate’s belly with every thrusting penetration of the dominant above him. She had heard them referred to as “the lovers.” It seemed the nickname was accurate. The fighters always fought as a team and had finished their match earlier. Steffania thought they had left the coliseum. Obviously, they had not left entirely.

  The sight of a glistening, meaty cock slamming into the fighter’s back passage, and then smoothly withdrawing mesmerized her. Memories of Ram’s play with the butt plug began an insidious tickle in her pussy that rapidly escalated. The fact that the lower man was bound and gagged spiked her burgeoning arousal.

  Slap. “Ungh.” Slap. “Ungh.” Slap. “Ungh.” The additional provocation of a smart strike of a broad male hand on the tensed, white buttocks of his partner pushed her into full-blown need.

  The subtle sound of well-oiled flesh meeting well-oiled flesh and the muffled, ecstatic groans of the man being well fucked barely rose above the outside noise of the arena.

  Steffania pulled air into her lungs at an increasing rate. Ram had left both of them aroused and wanting this morning – he because it made him “mean”. He refused her because it pleased him to keep her in need. The fire between her legs that had lain banked all day roared to life. Moisture flooded her inner sheath. She started, and then stifled a gasp at the hard pinch of her nipple. At the insistence of Ram’s insinuating knee, she spread her legs. His broad palm slipped under her “skirt” and then between her thighs. His thick finger slid into her folds, testing, seeking.

  {They arouse you.}

  Another hard pinch to her nipple. Her pussy wept, trickling around the now two fingers inserted in her. Her eyes could not leave the sight of the two men, still oblivious to the presence of her and Ramsey. She couldn’t explain her uncontrollable fascination with the act in front of her. Her inner sheath convulsed, once, around Ramsey’s fingers, the prelude to her impending orgasm.

  {Fuck!} Ram’s expletive rang through her mind as his hand slipped away, and she slumped in frustration. It seemed he would deny her again.

  {Bend over.}

  She folded in half, her head craned to observe, and braced her elbows on her knees. Ramsey shoved up the diaphanous nothing draping her lower body and ripped her excuse for panties off. Her eyes closed briefly, and she choked on an exhale. {Ramsey!}

  Ram fumbled with his pants and positioned himself. He forced her legs further apart, holding hers open with his.

  {Arch your back.}

  Slick arousal trickled toward her clit from her swollen inner flesh and she all but wagged her needy slit along Ramsey’s erection. And she watched. Across from her, powerful dark hands dented hardened white buttocks and a black, blood-engorged organ split the two pale moons in half.

  “Ungh...ungh...ungh . . .”

  {One sound from you, we stop.} His cock surged into her with painful suddenness.

  She nodded mutely. Everything in her wanted to beg, scream, sob her need—but the devil impaling her, stretching her impossibly with a hot, steel pike, demanded silence.

  {Brace yourself.}

  She extended her arm and steadied herself on the rough rock of the column.

  He slammed into her and though braced, she pitched forward. Ramsey arrested her progress with a crushing grip on her hips. I’ll have bruises tomorrow. The stretching penetration of her greedy pussy coincided with a hard, surging violation of the blond across from her. His aching “Ungh,” masked Steffania’s own muffled sob.

  {Silence, or I stop.}

  He would too, the bastard.

  {You know I will.}

  The gliding retreat of Ram’s iron-hard staff synchronized with the controlled withdrawal of the ebony-skinned male. The ecstatic moans of his partner, emphasized by the rhythmic jerking of the erection hanging beneath him, voiced what Steffania struggled to keep unspoken. She watched, consumed by helpless desperation as a thin, viscous line of pre-cum straggled from the tip of the blond’s cock. He suffers as I do. Ram’s silent la
ughter echoed through her mind.

  In spite of all her efforts to remain quiet she must have made some perceptible noise for the handsome, ebony face of the blond’s lover swung slowly to look at her and Ramsey. His chocolate brown eyes flared in amusement and a wide smile split his face when he noticed how they were engaged, then he turned back to his lover. The muscles in his forearms tensed as he tightened his grip on his kneeling submissive and thrust heavily into him.

  Again as the dark male speared into his lover, Ram stabbed into her. Vicious desire ate away at her self-discipline when it became apparent that Ramsey deliberately shadowed the movements of the couple they watched. As the dark-skinned male climbed silently to climax, so did Ramsey. As his blond partner groaned aloud with tortured denial, so Steffania screamed for mercy in her mind.

  With a silent wracking of toned muscle and a powerful clenching of his buttocks, the dark male arched back in noiseless extremis and spent into his blond lover. The begging grunts from his denied partner gained in urgency as he supported the draped weight of his now satisfied lover. The dark-skinned fighter pulled out with a soft sigh and freed his partner’s hands. The blond clutched at his desperate cock and with two jerks, jetted cum in arching streaks onto the cold stone. Ribs heaving, the blond undid his gag and then fell to his hands and knees in silence.

  Again, his eyes half-lidded with satiation, the dark-skinned male looked toward Ramsey and Steffania and nodded before collapsing against the wall next to his lover. He pulled the blond into his lap with rough affection before his eyes closed and his head lolled back against the stone.

  With a surge into her more powerful than any preceding it, Ram came. Each heavy jerk of his cock flooded her with a warmth that over-flowed her tight sheath and crept down her inner thigh. The edge of climax taunted her, just beyond grasp.

  {Ramsey, please!}

  He reached around her, found her ignored swollen bud and brought her climax down on her as if with the weight of an entire grandstand. She twisted on his cock in an uncontrolled dance of ecstasy, struggling not to cry out and then struggling to remain standing as her knees melted from beneath her. Ram pulled her up, slipping out of her in another warm flood. She felt his hands fumble behind him, perhaps dealing with his pants. He turned her to face him and pulled down the diaphanous material draping her hips.