Seer

by Raven Dark

  “The caste system disappears.” Hawk nodded his understanding.

  “Yes. I’m not sure when it happened exactly. But I’d guess about a month after we were taken, the only time we heard the word slave was from a Dreg. The women stopped calling us master or sir.”

  “It felt wrong to correct them.” Striker stood long enough to put another log on the fire. He glanced at the woman with the missing eye who now wore a bandage over it. The skin around the bandage looked less red and puffy than it had last night. She smiled warmly at him. Dark, wavy hair, the same as his but longer, fell to her shoulders. Her good eye was the same bright blue as his. They must be related.

  I looked back to Striker as he continued.

  “We didn’t want our mothers, our daughters and...mates… and our sisters…seeing us as no better than the fucking monsters who held us.”

  It didn’t go unnoticed by me that he hesitated on the word mate. What did a man call a woman who shared his bed if he couldn’t call her a slave?

  Wife, my mind answered, thinking of Steel’s promise to marry me, but marriage was illegal. No one would ever use such a dangerous word with ease.

  Except Steel.

  Oh, Maker, please let him be okay.

  Hearing these people talk, seeing them behave and look at each other as equals, felt so strange, like seeing people from some far and distant land, some unknown place untouched by the laws that had wiped away the Old World. I felt as if I were glimpsing into a mirror of the past.

  “So, what does this mean for you, now that you are free again?” Crash asked Utar’s group at large, scraping the bottom of his bowl with his spoon. “It’s—”

  Doc put a hand out, cutting him off when he moved to get up and grab himself more stew. “Stay there, kid. You heard the General.” Doc nodded to me.

  “I told you to stay off that damn leg.” Sheriff unwound the leash from his fist and nudged me, but it wasn’t necessary; I was already getting up to serve Crash.

  When I handed Crash his bowl and another mug full of moonshine, the others held out their bowls, waiting for more. Crash I didn’t mind serving. It was easier to wait on him when I saw him struggling to move around. Besides, he wasn’t milking the situation. Unlike the others who looked at me with dancing eyes and crooked grins.

  How badly I wanted to look around and snap at them, ask them mockingly if they wanted anything else. More tobacco in T-Man’s pipe, perhaps, or a foot massage for Pretty Boy who sat rubbing one foot. But all I had to do was take one glance at Sheriff’s sardonic smile, at the belt around his waist, and all the fire went out of me.

  “Kid?” Doc prompted Crash after I’d returned to Sheriff, shaking his head with a smile. “You were saying?”

  “Huh? Oh. Well, I just mean, now that you’re free, what will happen? It’ll be hard to go back to the way things were. And I don’t just mean because you’re not in cages anymore. Will you…” He cleared his throat and suddenly seemed to have trouble looking at Utar, at the women with him.

  “You mean will we go back to being slave and master.” Striker’s sister’s voice held a twinge of loss. Her remaining eye turned on Utar.

  Utar shrugged with a sigh. “We haven’t thought that far ahead, Crash. In public, we’ll have to. We may have changed, but the law hasn’t. But in private…” He trailed off and shook his head. “It’s impossible to know what the new normal will be or how we’ll deal with it until we’re there.”

  While we finished eating, the group talked, no one making any move to hurry. A sense of belonging wrapped itself around me, not unlike the kinship I felt with the men of the Dark Legion when we were back in the Grotto.

  Utar and his people might have had an altered view of gender roles that now resembled those of the Old World, but I couldn’t help feeling relaxed, sitting at my master’s feet. The thought bothered me. Especially when Sheriff leaned down, slid his arms around my neck, and nuzzled my cheek with his. His lips brushed my ear, unmistakably possessive.

  The lethargy of a good meal and the warmth of his body seeped in until I felt sleepy. I laid my head on his knee, enjoying the safety that surrounded me, not just from him but from all of them.

  The pleasant moment with my men wouldn’t last, though. Penance still waited for me, and I still had no idea what Sheriff had planned. He said nothing while his fingers worked along my nape, and that made it all the worse. I didn’t let his current tenderness fool me. He wouldn’t go easy on me when the time came.

  Slowly, as the conversations wound down, Utar’s people began to depart, going to wash up or sleep. Utar was the last to leave, and I saw Marna come out of their tree before they strolled into the hollow with their arms around each other, her head on his shoulder.

  Before they disappeared into the shadows of the tree, she lifted her head and their mouths mated slowly, both giving and taking.

  Had she had a harem once? It occurred to me she likely had, considering how rare one-on-one relationships were. Perhaps her other men had been among those the Dregs had killed. Sadness for her, for them, pulled at me. Seeing Utar treat her so much like I imagined men treated their wives in the Old World made me think of Steel, and my stomach clenched.

  Not that we could ever marry, but if we were to do so, Steel would probably treat me more like what Hawk called an Old Lady, and that thought made my core clenched with need of him, while my heart ached just to feel his arms around me.

  “All right, time to get down to business, sweetheart.”

  Sheriff’s voice yanked me back into the moment, and I looked up at him as he squeezed the back of my nape with his hot palm. His hand slid around to my chin, pulling my head back just enough to maintain control.

  My heart sped up, filling my chest with a new kind of tightness. I tensed against him, looking into his eyes. Into his upside down grin.

  What would he do to me?

  “Stand up.”

  The command gave me nothing, but it carried the promise of retribution that had been coming since we’d left the Dreg camp.

  I stood, and he followed suit.

  “Is...is it time, Master?” My voice trembled, praying he wouldn’t drag this out and make me wait.

  The others chuckled around me.

  “Soon.” He pinched my jaw lightly between his fingers. “First, we need a bath.” He took my leashed hand, his palm almost burning my skin. “I want you nice and clean before you pay your dues.”

  Goose bumps danced across my arms. He wouldn’t make this easy, would he?

  Chapter 3

  A New Duty

  Sheriff led me to an obscenely large tree near the edge of the camp. His, I knew, since it had a trunk larger than the one used as Steel’s infirmary.

  The center of the hollow had been set up as his sleeping quarters. Thick furs laid out for a large bed and torches that cast the darkened space in low light gave the simple hollow a look of decadence that reminded me of some barbarian king’s bedchamber. Was this to be my punishment, a night alone with him, submitting to his savage desires?

  But we didn’t stay.

  Silent, Sheriff grabbed a bucket with shampoos and soaps, along with a couple of large towels from the top of a food crate in a corner. He handed me the bucket and towels. Then, tugging on the leash that still encircled my wrist, he led me out of the tree and beyond the edge of the camp, away from the others.

  He didn’t seem to care that I couldn’t see well in the dark. The thick tree canopy cut out most of the moonlight, and the campfire burned at least ten feet from his tree. Without a word, Sheriff led me through the woods as if I were livestock. All the while, my thoughts spun with questions.

  A riot of emotions clenched my gut, too many to process. Anger over the way he’d been with me that last day in the Grotto, expecting me to give him my heart and soul while he gave nothing of himself. Guilt at my disobedience of him in the Dreg camp, and more guilt over being glad that Utar and his people were safe, when I knew they were only safe because of my dis
obedience. Sadness over Steel and knowing that I was the one who’d brought all of this onto the Legion. And on top of all of that, a layer of trepidation at what he might do, hopelessness so thick it nearly choked.

  Steel always teased me that I asked far too many questions. Normally, he was right, and being with Sheriff wasn’t usually enough to shut them down. But sometimes, as with now, the General wore unapproachability the way Hawk wore stoicism, like a dark cloak. In moments like this, it wasn’t a stretch to say the man frightened me in a way my other masters didn’t. The trouble was, I didn’t trust myself to speak, and any questions I asked now would only reveal emotions I knew he’d toy with.

  We walked through the forest for what must have been only minutes, but it felt like an hour. Where was he taking me?

  We stopped at the edge of a cliff. At the bottom spread a large pond. The trees were sparse around the pond, the canopy opening up to allow rays of moonlight to play on the water like gleaming silverfish. Stone steps led down to the pond, ones someone must have carved out of the rockface. A gorgeous place that reminded me a little of the Grotto and made me miss that first night Sheriff had taken me to the well. When he had seemed almost...loving.

  “How…” I cleared my throat when my voice came out too high. “How did you know about this place? It’s beautiful.” A safe question he couldn’t turn to his advantage.

  “Pretty Boy found it on his scouting trip earlier.”

  Sheriff stopped on the bottom step at the edge of the pond and took the towels and bucket from me, hanging them from the branch of a tree.

  “Strip.”

  I snapped my gaze up to his at the command. He’d given the order without any of the playfulness he’d shown me at the camp. I searched his face, but if I was hoping for any hint of emotion there, I found nothing comforting.

  Oh, those indigo eyes weren’t devoid of emotion, not like Hawk could be when he chose. Hunger burned there, so fierce it made his eyes look like blue fire. A slight curve to the corners of his mouth might have hinted at casualness, but I wasn’t fooling myself. Otherwise, his expression was the picture of control, giving me nothing.

  Again, it would have been easier if he were angry. Then I would have known what to expect. With the way he watched me, arms crossed and making no move to undress himself, he reminded me of a conqueror, a leather-clad king who would have looked no less majestic if he’d been sitting on his motorbike instead of a throne.

  Head down and unable to look at him, I started undoing the laces on my halter top with shaking fingers.

  “Don’t play coy with your master. Hurry it up, I want to see what belongs to me.”

  I dropped my shoulders and closed my eyes, trying to steady my breathing. To quiet the hammer of my heart before I let the sleeveless top drop to the ground and met his stare.

  Sheriff’s gaze raked over the plump mounds of my breasts, up over my throat and the curve of my shoulders. I froze in place under the raw hunger in that look. My nipples instantly peaked, their hardening having nothing to do with the cool night air. His eyes fixated on them, watching the traitorous buds respond to him.

  “Are you going to remove the rest of your clothes, or do I have to tear them off you?”

  The threat should have scared me, and on some level it did, but my core also clenched at the thought of him savagely tearing every stitch from my body, baring me for his use.

  I shimmied out of the tight-fitting leather skirt and pulled off the knee-high boots, the clothes Pretty Boy and Diamond had dressed me in to make me look like a Dreg woman last night. Sheriff drank in every movement as I slid my panties from hips and down my legs.

  “Give me those.” He held out his hand when I moved to add the panties to the pile of clothes.

  Suppressing a sigh, I handed them over. He tossed them away, and they disappeared into a copse of trees behind him. Cherry had given me those, and I had a feeling, like so many of the other pairs she’d given me, I’d never see them again.

  “Come here.”

  Nerves held my feet in place. Sheriff pulled me to him with a predatory slowness, but instead of crushing me to him like I expected, he held me at a distance, a half a step from him.

  Where he could look over every inch of me.

  That fierce gaze found my sex, roving over it with intense possession that went straight to my clit. With everything that had gone on, I hadn’t shaved between my legs in days, but he didn’t seem bothered by the dusting of lavender hair there, the same color as the hair on my head when it wasn’t dyed.

  After a thorough perusal, Sheriff closed all but the last inch of space between us. “So fucking beautiful. My perfect Little Spy,” he growled.

  If it was possible, my nipples turned even harder, aching almost painfully for his touch, begging to be sucked.

  He lifted one hand, ignoring my breasts and trailing one long finger down the scar that ran between them. Self-consciousness made it nearly impossible not to cover my chest with my arms. I’d nearly forgotten about that ugly scar, the only reminder of Madi’san, the Violet who’d tried to kill him weeks ago.

  I hated that scar, and more so now, knowing that, for a reason I still couldn’t fathom, he loved it. His finger traced the puckered flesh, possessive.

  “You always have to be such a fucking hero, don’t you?”

  “No, Master.” My voice trembled at the menace with which he managed to fill those words. “I’m not a hero at all.”

  “No?” His fingers slid slowly around my chin, cupping it with a gentleness that felt mocking. “Have you forgotten why you’re in this situation, slave?”

  I closed my eyes again, trying to regain my fragile composure. “No, Master.”

  “You nearly got yourself killed rescuing me. And you tossed my orders aside to rescue Utar and his Rebels. You leap in without any thought for the consequences or for your own safety.”

  “I had to, Master.”

  He shook his head. “The women in the Grotto. My men. Ivek, and now Utar’s men—everyone who meets you thinks you’re the fucking Maker come. Damien taught you to be the perfect slave, and yet somehow you’d rather play savior.”

  “I’m sorry, Master.” I meant it, and not just because Steel might never wake up. I hated that I’d let Sheriff down, hated that I’d been given a chance to prove myself worthy of the Legion and instead, I’d destroyed his trust in me. I destroyed all their trust.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Yes, I am. Master—”

  He gripped my hair, pulling my head back until I had nowhere to look but up into his burning gaze. “No. You’re not. But you will be.”

  The threat in those words made up for the absence of roughness in his grip, letting me know his wrath was still coming. He wasn’t being gentle with me now, but rather controlled, leaving me waiting on tenterhooks for whatever he had planned.

  It took all my strength to say nothing, to meet the savagery of his stare. He peered intently into my eyes. Whatever he saw there must have satisfied him, because he released me.

  “Into the water. Fill the bucket and then come back to me.”

  What was he up to? Did he intend to carry out my punishment here? Or was this just as he said earlier, a bath, and the punishment would come later?

  Willing my movements to be unafraid, I took the bucket from the tree branch, set the toiletries in the bucket aside, and went to the water’s edge, filling the pail. Ripples lapped at my bare feet, making me shiver. When I turned to go back to Sheriff, I saw him laying one of the towels across a large rock a few feet from the water. He’d set the toiletries beside him, including a washcloth he’d draped over one of the shampoo bottles.

  “Put the bucket down and come here.”

  At his side, I set the bucket down, looked up at his cool face, waiting for his next command.

  “Undress me.”

  For a moment, all I could do was stare at him. Such an order I’d have expected from Damien, or perhaps a man like Ivek, but not Sheri
ff, and not from anyone in any MC. Until I’d been taken by the Dark Legion, much of what I knew of the lifestyle was from stories I’d heard or read, but I did know, in every club, the men had a strict rule. A woman never, ever, touched a man’s clothes, and especially not his cut.

  Strange, but his letting me undress him filled me with fascination. I felt at once like the slave to a king, and yet closer to him than I ever had. That made no sense, but there it was.

  Hands shaking once more, I stepped in behind him and slipped the cut from his shoulders. The leather felt smooth and well-worn, warm to the touch from the heat of his body. He nodded for me to hang it on a branch, and I obeyed before I went around to his front.

  Sheriff sat on the rock long enough for me to kneel and untie his boots, to take them and his socks off one at a time and set them aside. Then he stood up again. Why did the next step make me so nervous?

  If my hands had been trembling before, my fingers turned to jelly as I unhooked the star-shaped gold buckle of his belt. That infernal belt. Would that be my punishment, more swats across my backside? I lifted my eyes to his face before I could stop myself. The quirk of his brow made me wish I hadn’t.

  I unzipped his pants, awkwardly slipping them down. It didn’t surprise me that he hadn’t worn underwear. His cock sprang free, long and thick and already hard. I pulled his pants down to his ankles, almost causing his cock to brush my cheek.

  Sheriff stepped out of his pants. With him naked, I reached for the bucket, but he took my arm, stopping me.

  “Take these off first.” He held out his hands, each of his fingers decked with rings, precious stones and silver shaped into skulls gleaming in the moonlight. I removed them slowly, one at a time, careful not to let the jagged spikes on some of them scrape my hands. His fingers looked almost strange without the jewels, naked, the absence of the rings leaving tan lines on his skin. I walked over to the branch and put the rings into the inside pocket of haircut.

  By the time I returned to him, he’d seated himself on the rock again, on the towel he’d laid there. Hands on his knees, he’d leaned his head back. I cocked my head, thinking he was gazing at the stars until I saw his eyes were closed.