Nothing Less

by Reese Gabriel

  Shayla’s run didn’t turn out as she hoped. It was all different nude, her legs chafing, her breasts flopping. Nothing to contain the round, fleshy mounds. Her feet bare, nothing to protect her from whatever might want to bite her toes. God, how would she sleep? What if something crawled up her—inside her even while she lay on the ground?

  Sweat collected on her sun-drenched flesh. She felt dirty, primitive, like some kind of animal. Did the Dragon exercise his slaves? she wondered. Were they made to run nude, to make their bodies more pleasing for the cocks that possessed them?

  Another lap and the sun was setting. It was growing subtly colder. Shayla saw shadows now, heard the roar of the ocean. For reasons she couldn’t explain, she was afraid. More than this, she felt lonely. That was something she’d banned from her adult life years ago; why was it coming back now?

  Damn that smug bastard and his nude dancing! She was as brave and tough as he was. How long had he said it would take to subdue her—twenty-four hours, wasn’t that it? He’d hinted at having some kind of bet about it, too. Which meant the Mawenesians would be back tomorrow. She could hold out that long. But what would happen when they arrived? Who would they arrest—her or him? If it really was a bet, she deserved a fighting chance.

  Full of determination, focusing on her plan and not her nudity—or his—she marched up to the Dragon. The sun was a pale sliver behind him. “Collison, snap out of it.”

  Powerful biceps unflexed as he turned to face her. Slowly, he opened his eyes, gray-blue, bringing them to bear with perfect equanimity. “Yes, Shayla?”

  The sound of his voice out of the shadows cut through her making her feel naked, not nude. Exposed, not natural. “I want to talk about your little ‘experiment.’” She debated as she confronted him whether to cross her arms or cover her delta. She opted for neither, putting her hands boldly on her hips.

  “Yes?” Blood coursed through her as he appraised her body, casually, incidentally.

  “You said you asked the Mawenesians for twenty-four hours. They are coming back, then?”

  “Yes.”

  She tried to keep her eyes away from his half-hard cock, brazenly hanging between smooth, round balls. “Fine. I want to make a wager with you then. If I resist you till tomorrow, you will agree to go back to the U.S. and face trial. You’ll offer no resistance.”

  “And if I win?”

  Shayla raised her chin feigning boldness. “Name your terms.”

  A snake-like smile whipped across his face, and in a flash it was gone. “You will be mine,” he said with soft ferocity. “To taunt and tease and own. To dispose of as I see fit. Your neck beneath my foot, prostrate in full witness of our rescuers. Your future at my whim.”

  She fought back a wave of hot, wet dread, sizzling excitement crackling in a sea of bottomless need. “That seems a bit dramatic,” she offered stiffly. “But, yes, I’ll agree.”

  The Black Dragon regarded her proffered hand. “I shall enjoy owning you,” he said simply, ignoring her attempt at a handshake.

  Stinging from his rejection, Shayla retracted her hand. It shouldn’t have bothered her, but for some reason it did. “It’s settled then,” she nodded. “You can have that half of the island, I’ll take this...”

  The Dragon swept her into his arms, silencing her with a kiss, hard and punishing. She wanted to resist him with bold, ironclad immunity, but what came out was weak, feminine contradiction. Squirming and mewling in protest, she nevertheless managed to press herself tight against him, branding his pectorals with milky breasts, teasing his scrotum with soft, pliant nether flesh.

  “No, don’t,” she vibrated from her lips to his, even as her arms slithered around his neck.

  He rejected the embrace, shoving her backward. Spurned, she looked up at him from the sand. His cock was not yet hard. Did he not desire her?

  “That is your half,” he corrected. “This is mine.”

  “Go!” he demanded as she opened her mouth to speak.

  Shayla bit her lip. Showing no effects of that searing kiss, stone-faced, his finger pointed away, toward the trees. He did not appear to want her.

  Shame exploded red and hot over her face and breasts. Crouching low in order to cover herself as best she could, she scampered away to her half of the island to cry.

  A short time later she came back to spy on him. The Dragon was a dancing

  silhouette by now. Magnificent and free, celebrating his manhood, his utter joy of life.

  He must not miss her at all, she thought. In fact, he seemed to have totally forgotten why the two of them were on the island, so lost was he in his own celebration.

  “I hate him,” she announced to the dusk. “I’m going to make a weapon and kill him.”

  Using a flat edged rock and a long stick, she made a spear. From behind the trees, she hurled it. The Dragon appeared oblivious, but at the last second he spun, positioning himself on one foot, arms in front of him. The spear was diverted, after grazing his left arm. The Dragon grinned at her as he squeezed the blood onto the beach, drop by drop.

  Shayla turned away in fury, her feet pounding against the rocks and sand until she was back in the ocean, as far away from the man as she could possibly get. Still, the words followed. She could hear them on the surf, and in the rippling breeze.

  You will be mine. To taunt and tease and own. To dispose of as I see fit. Your neck beneath my foot, prostrate in full witness of our rescuers. Your future at my whim.

  “Bullshit!” she shouted to the sky, which was nearly black by now.

  The endless vista seemed unmoved by her display. As was the ocean itself.

  A stronger weapon is what she needed. What about a blow dart of some kind, or a hatchet? She’d need poison for the dart gun, and something needle-like. Clawing in the sand, hunched over, she hoped against hope to find something usable in her declared war against evil.

  The something sharp was there, but it bit her back.

  Shayla leaped into the air. It had been a crab. Turning about, she felt eyes on her. Was it the Dragon coming after her? No, the eyes were small. Allowing her own pupils to adjust to the rapidly descending dark, she beheld her environs. Terror gripped her. The sand was alive, creeping slowly towards her. Shayla opened her mouth to scream but nothing came out. They were under her feet by now and surrounding her. Crabs, hundreds of them. They must have been waiting, she thought, waiting for the dark, just as the Dragon was waiting for her to give in to his lustful demands.

  First she ran into the wake, but remembering there were crabs, there, too, and maybe sharks, besides, she came back in. She ran zig zag, the tiny claws nipping at her heels at every turn. Twice she fell, which only made her more available to the scrabbling little demons.

  Screaming out his name, she ran back to him. The man was kneeling before a roaring fire, his palms joined together in an attitude of prayer.

  “C—crabs!” she exclaimed, pointing from whence she’d just come.

  He beheld her pathetic, shivering form. “You are on my half of the island,” he reminded her.

  “Collison,” she cried. “Have pity! They’re after me!”

  “No, Shayla.” He shook his head. “I have no room here for you.”

  Shayla regarded the pitch-black darkness over her shoulder. Every tree was like a black menace, shaking and swaying and taunting. She couldn’t go back there alone. She couldn’t! If she had to, she’d sleep with the man in order to be allowed to remain with him. “Are you sure I can’t stay with you?” she asked huskily, batting her eyelashes.

  He appeared to consider. “I don’t know. I can’t say as I’m sexually attracted to you.”

  She cupped her breasts beside the warm fire. He had to want her. He had to. “Please?” she wheedled, turning out her hip. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “Let me see your arse.”

  Shayla turned, offering him up a view of her shapely posterior.

  “Bend over and spread your cheeks. Display your cu
nt.”

  She did so eagerly, getting caught up in her own subterfuge. “You like?” she crooned.

  “No,” said the Dragon. “Actually, I’m not interested.”

  Instinctively, Shayla flew at him. He was fucking with her head and she intended to take it out on his hide. As near as she could tell, he never even moved from his position as she attacked. Either way, the next thing she knew, she was flying backwards onto the sand.

  Knocked onto her arse.

  “Go away, Shayla,” he said thinly as she flashed him a bewildered stare. “Before I have to punish you.”

  She swallowed hard, wondering what sort of punishment he had in mind. Remembering the hand, the one he’d threatened her with back at the auction, she opted not to test him.

  “If you come back, Shayla,” he called out, “for any reason, you must do so on your belly. I will no longer accept you standing before me.”

  Insecure, insolent bastard, she thought bitterly. It would be a cold day in hell before he’d see her crawling. “Shove it, Collison!” she shouted back.

  Anger soon gave way to emptiness. A sexual and psychological void. And beyond that was her fear of the crabs that were waiting for her. Her footsteps were heavy and they slowed as she returned, terror-filled, to her part of the island. She’d never make it a whole night on her own. He had no right to force her away like this. It was his duty as a man to protect her; to protect her from herself if nothing else.

  It wasn’t fair.

  She’d go back to him and force him to do right by her. But he’d told her she couldn’t come back unless she crawled. Her knees buckled beneath her. The sand bit at her knees. There might be crabs here, too, but she had no choice. He’d set terms and she had to agree to them. The sand scratched at her breasts and belly. Each millimeter was hard won. She was spitting sand, feeling it cloying between her legs. Living the humiliation with every slither of her naked body, she came to him in submission.

  It’s all temporary, she tried to tell herself. She’d pretend to give in till morning, then she’d make her move.

  Collison stopped her with his voice a dozen yards from her target. “Why have you come back, Shayla?” he called out imperiously.

  “I—want…” Her voice trailed off. What exactly did she want? Certainly not her freedom; she’d have slept with the crabs if that’s all she cared about. Was it sex she wanted, then? Something to fill the long night? Or was it more than that—something deeper?

  “I don’t want to be alone,” she said at last.

  “I won’t be used, Shayla.”

  “No. I—I won’t do that,” she promised.

  “Do not come to me in the guise of an equal,” he warned. “I will not accept it.”

  Inch by inch she slithered, his every word robbing her of her strength. Why had she come? Why did she continue even now?

  “Just love me,” she whispered, her face in the sand, her body prostrate, her fingers just grazing his bent knees. “Can you just love me? Just for tonight.”

  He took her by the hair, pulling her head back until she was forced to rest on her palms to equalize her weight. “No, Shayla. You know my terms. I take everything. Or nothing.”

  Lips trembling, her breasts depending helplessly, she opened her mouth for him, showing how she desired to touch his skin with her tongue. It was as if she’d found herself, as if every moment had led up to this one. All the fighting, the struggling, the years in the academy and the missions, the ceaseless trying to make it in a man’s world, and always feeling something missing—all of it was for this.

  You will be mine. To taunt and tease and own. To dispose of as I see fit. Your neck beneath my foot, prostrate in full witness of our rescuers. Your future at my whim.

  The words ate into her brain, filling and gnawing and possessing. In some ways she’d never been rid of him. Since the moment he’d touched her, years ago, she’d been branded. All this time, waiting to be claimed.

  “Lie down on your back, Shayla,” he spoke, with the mercy of a god. “If you are serious.”

  Yes. Oh, yes.

  “Until dawn,” he said then, laying himself across her, “you will not come.”

  Hours later—years later—as the sun rose over the island, a very different Shayla McKay lay in the Dragon’s arms. Different, and yet more deeply herself than she’d ever imagined. He’d possessed her in every way possible, laying her bare, ripping her open, emptying and filling her. Finally, she’d wept with need, dissolving into him as he gave her her release.

  And still she wanted more. It was like a drug she would never have enough of.

  From this moment forward, his word was law, his heartbeat, hers. It was she who fetched firewood to cook breakfast, she who gutted the fish he caught. So, too, she cleaned his intimate parts, serving him with her tongue and hands.

  Thus it was, at long last when the boat arrived from the main island, she had assumed her rightful place. The very place he had predicted for her all along.

  At his feet, prostrate, her neck beneath his heel, face down in the sand, nipples throbbing, cunt dripping, behind sore and twitching from multiple slaps of his hand. She heard, but did not see, the men approaching. They spoke busily in their native language, no doubt commenting on the miraculous change in her. The aloof, bitchy female agent reduced to subjected female. Captured slave.

  “Greetings, Chief Inspector,” said the Dragon, his voice reverberating above her. “You are right on time.”

  “Greetings to you, Great Teacher,” replied Yuan. “You have amazed us all.”

  “The girl was a natural slave,” he confessed. “I deserve no credit.”

  Yuan laughed. “You Americans never fail to amuse me.”

  “It is our honesty, Chief Inspector.”

  “Or is it your arrogant sense of destiny?” he speculated. “In any event, I trust you are ready to leave, then?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “Will the girl accompany you back to the hotel?”

  “No,” said the Dragon. “I have taken what I want from her. Let her serve others now. Take her as a gift.”

  “I have more than enough women, my friend.”

  “Then sell her to the nearest brothel.”

  “As you wish.”

  The foot was lifted from Shayla’s neck. Large hands clamped her arms and pulled her to her feet. The soldiers looked upon her with an equal measure of contempt and lust.

  “Forgive my rudeness,” remarked the Black Dragon. “Please, use the girl as you wish. It will be good practice for her new life.”

  Shayla felt a surge of desire, a strange, dark thrill at the prospect of that new life. She was a woman now, and she would feel as one. At some level, she should be upset about the Dragon’s giving her away, but she couldn’t find it in her heart to hate him any longer. She’d done so much of that already. It was time now to love. With the whole of her slave’s body and soul. Be it one man or a million, she would call them all master, each and every one.

  Chapter Ten

  Wendy’s Awakening

  You can call me a hypocrite if you like. To me, though, there’s a whole world of difference between what Wendy was doing on the internet before I put my foot down and what she does now to please me.

  But let me start back at the beginning. It all began when I came home early one night from the graveyard shift at the warehouse with the flu. It was about three a.m. when I opened the bedroom door and found my darling wife of eighteen months backed up to the computer camera, flashing her ass and rubbing her fingers up and down over her gushing wet pussy, all the while talking away about how bad she wanted to be fucked. It was some kind of chat room and on the other end there were men, scads of them, watching, listening, encouraging.

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. And to think my little choir girl of a bride had put off my frequent pleas to try a little bit of bondage, stating it was too kinky for her! Too kinky!? Who was she kidding, prostituting her hot little bod, oiled and tann
ed, her golden hair lustrous and enticing, nipples all erect and...well, you get the picture!

  “Johnny!” she gasped, eyes wide as saucers as she caught sight of me over her shoulder. “What are you doing home?”

  “I’m sick,” I grumbled, shutting down the infernal machine. “Do I need permission to walk into my own house now?”

  Wendy sidled up behind me, rubbing against me all sweet and innocent. “Baby, it’s not what it looks like.”

  Not what it looks like?! I had to laugh at that one. Exactly what did she think it did look like? Don’t you just love it how when people get caught red-handed at something and then say stupid stuff to get out of it? Maybe that fools people back east, but here in Texas, not much gets past us.

  “Let me explain, honey,” she persisted, trying to press herself to my chest.

  “I got eyes, sugar,” I said, holding her at bay with the palm of my hand. “And I got all the information I need, so how about you sit on that bed till I get back, you hear? And don’t bother putting any clothes on; it’s a little too late for that.”

  Wendy nodded, her mouth open, her eyes glazed. She’d never heard me be this firm before. A moment later, perched nervously on the edge of the bed my pretty, naked little wife asked in a very small voice what I was going to do.

  What was I gonna do? Now there was a helluva question.

  I had half a mind to throw the computer out the window and her ass out the door, but instead, I went right to the gym bag I had in the hall closet. The stuff I was looking for was there all right, exactly where I’d left it. It was real state-of-the-art equipment from a buddy in Houston who was into what he called the “scene”. I wish you could see the look on Wendy’s face when I dumped the contents next to her: coils of nylon rope, a ball gag, Velcro wrist and ankle cuffs and a genuine half-inch thick dog collar.

  Wendy shrank back on the bed. “J--Johnny, what is all that for?”

  I had to laugh. What did she think it was for? It was my intention to teach Wendy a lesson by giving her a night of discomfort to think about things; that’s what it was for. What I didn’t realize, though, was that I was about to institute a major lifestyle change for both of us, one that would change Wendy from a run-of-the-mill mate into a warm and willing submissive honey.