He gave her permission again to sit in the thick window frame while he worked and watch the street below. She would exclaim softly when she saw some new-to-her alien being. She couldn’t get enough of the sights. He had to admit he enjoyed her delight.
In the evening, she sat at his feet. At first, he was tense, his frustrations bleeding over into their conversation, and she’d stop trying to talk to him after a sentence or two. But a few nights later he was in a talkative mood and told her more about the nirza, describing the trials each adolescent went through, though he left out the details of his own, and she didn’t ask.
It became a delightful nighttime ritual to bind Mena’s hands above her head, then kiss and nibble his way down her body, with extra time spent sucking and biting her nipples and clit. By the time he pulled his face away from her folds, swollen and hypersensitive to even a breath of air, she’d be sobbing and writhing with unfulfilled lust. He’d pull the covers up to her chin and roll away from her, pretending to fall asleep. Then he’d listen to her whimpers and soft pleas as she restlessly tried to rub her legs together to finish what he’d left undone. She couldn’t, of course, and she’d finally fall into an uneasy sleep, plagued by dreams at first but eventually calming down to quiet, deep sleep.
Sometimes, he’d roll back over to stare at her. Her face was softer, having lost the tension she carried all her waking hours. He knew he was responsible for that tension, but she was beginning to submit in her mind, not just her body, and he couldn’t let up the pressure for a while yet.
At night, in the moonlight, her skin glowed. Her dark brown hair tumbled loose around her head. He loved sliding his fingers through it, mindful of snags, and sometimes she’d smile in her sleep, a sight he liked very much and wanted to see more of.
A few evenings later he could see her working up the courage to ask something, and he suspected he knew what it was.
“Master, how are my people doing?”
He didn’t know how to answer her so he fell back on his old script.
“They used you and abandoned you to secure their own safety, and you want to know how they’re doing?”
“I’m still a human, and they’re the only ones left.”
He sighed. “They’re doing as well as could be expected. The storms will be starting up in another two weeks, and what your people brought won’t be strong enough, so I’m trying to arrange for much stronger shelters to be sent.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He waved away the thanks. “Wouldn’t do to let them settle then allow them to be wiped out.” No matter what Dirac Ortan had said.
Then she asked him the one question he didn’t want to answer. Her voice was appropriately soft and submissive, but his anger flared anyway.
“May I be allowed to visit them someday?”
He stood abruptly and stalked across the room, his relaxed mood gone.
“Go.” He pointed to the closet, a place she hadn’t been for a while. “In there. Do not argue with me!” he warned as she opened her mouth to protest. “And never ask that question again.”
Her eyes filled with tears, but she stood and made her way to the closet. To his surprise, she slammed the door shut before he could close it himself. He waved his hand over the lock, turned, and walked out the door.
The heat of the day was evaporating as the sun made its way to the horizon. In some windows, soft lights already glowed. At first he didn’t have a destination in mind, then found himself in front of the door to another senator’s apartment. Senator Nikos Abzik was not a close friend, though he was of the same political party as Mik’kal, but he had been awarded a slave by the Dirac as well, and Mik'kal reflected that all the senators who’d gotten slaves, and were now beholden to the Dirac, should really get to know each other better.
But that was not Mik'kal’s purpose now. The door opened and Nikos’ voice bade him enter into the cool darkness. Mik'kal stepped in and waited for a moment to let his vision adjust, then raised his eyebrows at the scene in front of him.
Nikos, sitting in a chair in the large main room, was being attended to by a naked human slave on her knees, her mouth wrapped around his cock. She pulled back at the sight of the guest, but Nikos’ hand, twined into her dark curly hair, pulled her firmly back down on his length, until her nose touched his stomach.
“Just a moment,” he said to Mik'kal. He did a slow count to twenty, by which time the slave was fighting his grip. He let go, and she pulled off, coughing and gasping, but never broke her kneel at his feet.
“My deepest apologies for welcoming you to my home like this, but we’re just finishing a punishment. Addy thought we were having a conversation and that I would welcome her opinion. I found a better use for her mouth.” He looked down at the slave, still breathing hard. “Addy, dear, go stand in the corner for now.”
Her gaze never left his cock as she replied, “Yes, Master” in a rough voice. She rose in one smooth motion and walked over to a corner. Mik'kal’s eyes widened at the sight of her buttocks and thighs covered with at least twenty cane stripes.
“That must have been some, um, conversation.”
“She can be quite creative with her verbal expressions. Anyhow, Mik'kal, what service may I offer you?”
Mik'kal bowed his head at the traditional greeting. Nikos waved him to a chair as he tucked himself back inside his trousers.
“A question. Has your slave ever expressed a desire to see her people again? I worry mine will never give me her complete submission if she sees other free humans. I told her to never ask me that question again.” Which sounded kind of harsh now that he thought about it.
Nikos nodded. “Addy has asked. Several times. At first, I punished her, for exactly that reason. But I’ve changed my mind. There is a bond and loyalty I don't think I could beat out of her that makes her long to see them, though I told her it may take may take many lunars, or even solars, before I would let her go.”
A small sob came from the corner.
“I guess I’m a harsh master.” Nikos grinned. “I assume your slave asked the same question?”
“She did. And since the humans are in my territory and I visit them so often myself, I wasn’t sure what the objective answer should be.”
“May I offer you some Naderi Spirits?”
Mik'kal accepted with pleasure. Addy served them, hesitant and jerky in her service, frequently eyeing Mik'kal. Nikos chuckled.
“You’re the first guest I’ve had. She’s not used to being naked around anyone else. I haven’t told her about the guests coming next week.” Addy gasped and nearly dropped the bottle in Mik'kal’s lap. Nikos apologized profusely and ordered Addy back to the corner as Mik’kal waved the apology away.
The spirits were excellent, and Mik’kal enjoyed talking with the man, who was curious about the human settlement. He kept the information neutral, not knowing the other senator well enough to perceive his biases, nor did he know how Nikos had voted. Nevertheless, he enjoyed the man’s company enough that he vowed to get to know him better. After a while, Nikos put his cup down and leaned forward.
“Mik’kal, I am younger and a less senior senator than you, so I would never imagine I could offer you advice. But perhaps a piece of information would be valuable. It took me a while to realize the reason I reacted so negatively to Addy’s request was that I was jealous. I was jealous of her loyalty to them, as I felt it was undeserved, and jealous of her longing to be part of her old life, instead of her new one, with me. I’m still jealous, really, but I understand it better now. Perhaps I might describe myself as less threatened than before.”
Mik’kal stared into his drink as he contemplated Nikos’ words. There was a truth in them that stunned him. Jealousy was exactly what Mik’kal was feeling. He wanted Mena’s world to revolve around him, and no one else. He reluctantly admitted he was worried she’d never accept him unless she broke all contact with her people. When a slave was brought to Kazir from another planet, integrating the
m into Kaziri culture was not very difficult. But Mena’s people weren’t on some far-away planet. They were here.
He wished they were far, far away.
“So, I’ve promised her she could visit them, but only after she embraces her identity as my slave and acknowledges her sole purpose now is to please my cock. Otherwise visiting them could be disastrous.”
“Perhaps we should foster competition between our slaves,” Mik’kal suggested. “The first one to embrace her submission gets to visit her people, and the other has to wait another solar.”
A plaintive wail rose from the corner. Nikos glanced in that direction and frowned..
Mik'kal grinned and rose. “I believe you have a little more discipline to administer. Thank you for your perspective, and your service.”
Nikos rose and bowed his head. “Indeed, I do. And it was a pleasure.”
As Mik'kal turned to the door, he heard Nikos order Addy to go get the paddle, and Addy’s protest. He smiled as he stepped out into the cool evening air. Now that he understood his reaction, he longed to get back to Mena, and tell her that he’d changed his mind.
28
Mik'kal
As soon as he got home and opened the closet, he got a call from a constituent. By the time he’d finished, he was exhausted. He turned around to see Mena already lying on the bed. As he crawled in next to her, latching onto her nipple, she merely grunted, staring at the ceiling. There were no whimpers or gasps as he folded her legs up and blew on her clit.
Her very dry clit, peeking out from very dry folds.
She closed her eyes, and he watched as a single tear escaped and rolled down her cheek onto the bed.
If a submissive has no power, the dominant must use his power to protect her, even from himself.
He’d thought about that statement a lot lately. His nirza had been more content with his dominance over her body than ever before, and it was time for Mik'kal to move beyond the animalistic side of his nature and show the other side of his nirza to her.
He replaced her legs carefully on the bed, knees closed. She looked at him, confusion crossing her face, but he didn’t answer her unspoken question. Rolling her to her side, he laid down behind her, pulling her close. She was stiff and still, but he played with her hair and stroked her cheek, and after a few minutes she relaxed. He started to tell her yes, he’d take her to see her people, and maybe not wait quite as long as Nikos was planning to wait with his slave. Before he got more than a few words out, he felt her slip into the regular breathing of a woman asleep. He’d forgotten to restrain her hands, but he wasn’t going to risk waking her to do it.
He would tell her in the morning. Oh, she’d be his slave forever; that wasn’t going to change, and he was going to be demanding and strict.
But maybe he could find a way for her to be happy, too.
A warble broke him out of a heavy dream. The room was dark, but the first edges of daylight could be seen out the window. He pulled stiffly away from Mena and her head turned, her eyes wide and concerned. He rolled out of bed, throwing on a tunic before going over to his work desk.
“Incoming communication from Wiasstan Observation Section,” a quiet voice informed him.
“On,” he ordered. The form of a man dressed in a uniform appeared.
“Senator, I regret waking you.”
“What service may I offer you, SubSec?”
“Senator, you asked me to keep you apprised if anything unusual in the weather happened, and it has. The first storm has risen almost two weeks early, out of nowhere, and it’s huge.”
“Where is its destination?” Mik'kal already knew what the man was going to say.
“Kalnų Sala.”
Mik'kal heard an intake of breath behind him, but he couldn’t worry about his human now.
“When?”
“The outer bands will start hitting about fifteenth hour. We estimate landfall at twentieth hour.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes, sir. It’s moving faster than we’ve ever seen a storm move before.”
Mik'kal let out a very uncharacteristic expletive. “Send every piece of data to me now.”
“Yes, sir.” The figure disappeared, but the screen of his datapad came alive with streams of information.
He scanned the it for anything useful, but it all came down to this: a huge storm was going to hit the human settlement in less than a day, and they were completely unprepared. He glanced back at Mena, now sitting up in bed with her knees pulled to her chin.
He connected to the maps held in his flyer, much more detailed than the ones on his datapad. He threw their images onto one wall and scanned the area surrounding the settlement. He’d been so focused on getting the shelters delivered to them he’d put off studying the maps, thinking he had plenty of time. Now he regretted the delay. There were almost five thousand people to move, countless pieces of irreplaceable equipment, and all their foodstocks. They were going to have to leave almost everything behind to get to safety in time.
The island was dotted with rock formations, and inside some of them were enormous caverns, easily big enough to shelter everyone. He spotted the closest one to the settlement, checked the depth it descended to, and made a quick calculation.
“Contact Captain Andrews,” he called out. A moment later a hologram of the sleepy, rumpled captain appeared.
“Goddamnit, I’ll never get used to someone just popping right into my room. Senator, I told you I’d be on that transport today. You don’t have to wake me up like my mommy—” He looked past Mik'kal and caught sight of Mena, and his eyes widened.
“Is that one of—”
“She is not the problem,” Mik'kal growled, stepping to put himself between his naked slave and the leering captain. “The storms that were not supposed to come for another two weeks have started. One of them is moving at record speed to your location.”
“How fast?” The captain began pulling on his uniform.
“It will start,”—he struggled to remember how humans told time and gave up—“sometime after your second meal, and the worst will hit about your third meal.”
The captain’s eyes bugged out. “Not giving us a lot of time to get things in order, are you?”
“I was alerted of it mere moments ago. I have no desire to see you harmed. Put anything portable and important on the shuttles and get both of them back up to the ship. You will not have time for them to make any return trips.”
The captain nodded. “I can assume my trip to the city has been postponed. Where do we go?”
Mik'kal sent the map data to the captain. “It’s about twenty micros by foot from your site.”
He saw the captain struggle to understand how long that was. He wasn’t sure of the conversion, either, damnit!
“A half an hour, sir,” came a quiet voice behind him. He flashed her a quick smile and turned back to the screen. “A half an hour, captain.”
The captain nodded. “I know this cavern. We haven’t explored it yet, but it is huge. It should work.”
“I’ll be there in two periods.” He looked back at Mena again.
“Three hours,” she whispered. He repeated the number to the captain and cut the connection. Something didn’t feel right. He couldn’t put his finger on it.
“Sir?” He looked down in surprise to see Mena at his elbow. “Please take me along? I can help—”
“Absolutely not, Mena! This is not the time.” He pulled out heavy clothes and boots. A moment later he was dressed and headed toward the door.
“Sir?”
“Mena!” He turned back in anger to see her holding out a large cup of steaming cassia berry juice.
“This should help you stay awake, sir,” she whispered.
With one hand he took the juice from her, and with the other he pulled her to him, kissing her tenderly on the forehead.
“I’m locking the door for safety, understand? No one comes in.”
“Yes, sir.”
“
And Mena? I’ll take you to see your people, I promise.”
The light that turned on in her eyes made him want to tell the rest of the world to fuck off, because he was never leaving her.
But first, he had a job to do. He stepped into the dark hallway and pulled the door closed. No one could override the lock. She’d be safe, even if it was a couple days.
His gut was trying to tell him something, and he couldn’t quite grasp it yet. He forced himself to relax on the way to the airfield, chanting the melodies to some old meditations he’d not used for relaxation since—
“Fuck!” He sat up so suddenly he spilled half the cassia juice.
The map had shown the cavern that would be the safest for the humans to take shelter in.
But the map was wrong.
The cavern they were being directed to was the cavern where he’d had his Trials. The one that sloped deep into the planet, exposing any who entered to the wildness of the planet’s nirza that they would know nothing about. They wouldn’t have any hint something was wrong until their passions were stirred to violence, which Mik'kal suspected would be much faster than anyone had thought.
There would be murder.
Lots of murder.
Murder on the scale the Dirac might approve of.
With a twist in his gut, Mik'kal recognized who had orchestrated the map ‘error’, and if his suspicions were correct, the Dirac probably knew Mik'kal was on his way to the island. Which meant despite the decades-old friendship, despite the fact Mik'kal had been picked last year to succeed the Dirac after he retired—Mik'kal was in the way. If he was right about the Dirac’s nirza, it didn’t matter who Mik'kal was.
The aircar arrived at the airfield. Mik'kal exited and stood, looking at the sleek and shiny flyer that was his one vanity, then turned to look at the flyer sitting next to it.
It had been shiny, long ago. Now it was pitted and dinged, cramped inside, didn’t have the latest equipment, and was no longer registered with the authorities. Which was why Mik'kal was going to take it.
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