The Bid

by Jacquelyn Frank

  But she did not fear him.

  Hanna reached to touch him again, this time laying a gentle hand against his chest.

  “I am going to give you an opportunity, Jhon, to appreciate the difference between what you will find in this House and what you would have found in another. Unfortunately, this means I must play both roles, so that you may come to this understanding. But we will keep this between only you and me if you allow it. If you give me too much trouble, then I will have to include Najir, and I wish to save you that humiliation. Do you understand?”

  Hanna watched his jaw tighten until he had developed a furious tic in the muscle of his cheek. He was guaranteed to hate this. To hate her. At least at first. But it couldn’t be helped. He had been so gloriously powerful in his former life, and though he had been in captivity for months, he still clung to that former idea of himself. Hanna would happily cultivate his warrior half in the future, but first he must come to accept the truth of his situation.

  And while she disliked the idea of bludgeoning his proudly stubborn will, the end to her means made her heart race with excited anticipation. He was everything she needed, everything Najir had promised her he would be. She stood back to look him over once again, her amazed eyes still trying to accept the fabulous concept of the perfect treasure that he was. Najir was going to be vastly rewarded for this. Besides the perfection of his white platinum hair and those cat-green eyes, Vejhon was a masterpiece of flesh and muscle. His skin was tanned dark, especially above his waistline, no doubt because he had spent time working his body while shirtless in the sun of his homeworld. She could feel the strength in him radiating in great waves, thrumming into her like a sonic boom whenever his fury spiked. His energy was a flawless symphony, such utter perfection. Strength, stamina, will…and gorgeous looks besides.

  Oh yes. He was perfect.

  But he was defiant and wild as well, his stubbornness making him dense to the dangers around him in his new life. He saw her as a threat just because he felt his pride was at stake? There were worse dangers in this place and more precious commodities than pride that needed protecting.

  “Jhon, do you know what most women of this world buy a slave like you for?”

  “Clearly whatever you damn well please,” he snapped.

  “That’s true. However, you are special. You see”—she gave him a suggestive little smile as her fingers ran down over the well-defined muscles of his chest, heading to the rocklike hills of his taut stomach—“when you were up for bid on that auction stand, your best assets were put on display so everyone would be very certain of your value.” Hanna lightly scraped her nails past his navel, slowly stroking her way toward his pubic region. She didn’t need to look to know he was stimulated despite his will. His brief reaction to her earlier had notified her that he was attracted to her, regardless of his desire to be otherwise. But that wasn’t the way she wanted to manipulate him. It wasn’t the point she wanted to make.

  She drew back from him and returned to her chest of jeweled objects. She withdrew the ring she was looking for and held it up for him to see as she returned.

  “Female Masters of High Houses wear these everywhere. They never go anywhere without them.” She slid the ring with its gemstone of clear crystal facets onto her right ring finger. She turned the gem inward, so it was in line with her palm, and reached to touch her fingertips to his chest. “You were in stasis at the time, so I am going to show you what you were so blissfully unaware of, Vejhon, during that common little auction.”

  She pressed her palm against him and instantly the sting of injection burned through his muscles. This time he did roar with fury, bucking against his restraints, trying to force her touch away from him. All she did was lean back slightly, keeping away from his gnashing teeth. Then she simply stood back and watched as the stimulant flooded his system.

  Vejhon felt the sudden upsurge of adrenaline in his blood almost instantly, the feel of it very familiar to him as a warrior used to seeking its highs. He thought about using it to truly test the strength of his metal bonds, but he’d already injured himself, the tight manacles cutting up his skin and now chafing it raw whenever he moved. It was his own fault. He knew better than to fight metal, but she had pushed him too far beyond reason.

  Then, an abrupt heated sensation began to rush through his blood, fluttering along his skin like fast-flying birds skimming insects off of water. The heat quickly became a burn and he became very aware of where that burn was headed. It scorched down his body, down every sensitive nerve in his tissues until it felt like his entire pelvis was in an overdrive of sensation. He watched with a combination of horror and dismay as his penis began to flood with pulsing blood, the sensation perpetuating itself like the stroke of an artful hand as he grew more fully erect. There was nothing he could do. His body, in this respect, was completely out of his control. No thoughts, no amount of anger or disgusting imagery he tried to conjure in his mind could change what was happening to him.

  In no time at all he was heavily erect, his cock so hard it was fully parallel to the floor and aching with the fierce throb of his stimulant-laden blood. Humiliated and horrified by the drug she had administered, Vejhon wished an agonizing death on her with his savage eyes and his poisonous thoughts. Again, she seemed unaffected by his glare, but neither was she gloating over her triumphant puppeteering of his sex.

  Hanna stepped forward in a way that forced him to focus fully on her eyes. It was close enough that Jhon felt the fabric of her dress against the head of his distended phallus, the rubbing sensation of its silken texture sending feedback up along the shaft in a screaming message of pleasure. Vejhon tried to draw in air to breathe, but all commands to his brain fried under the massive drug-heightened wave of bliss.

  “Imagine yourself before a crowd of avaricious women and men,” she made certain to remind him, “and your handler is now going to prove how excellent a prospect you are for being put to stud on a planet where a superior percentage of the populace is infertile. He injects you with stimulants to display your fine equipment, and in your case, to show how easily the stim works on you even while in stasis.” Now she reached between them and slowly touched her soft fingertips to the sensitive skin and nerves along the length of his shaft. A sensation of pure electrocution bolted along every sensory pathway in his body, making him seize with the shocking pleasure, tense muscles distending even farther under the force he used to try and control his reaction.

  As though she was stroking a precious thing, she ran her fingers up and down the length of his swollen rod, locking him into being buffeted by sensations too outstanding to be real. She continued her narration. “‘Look, ladies and gentlemen,’ he says, ‘at the fine, thick cock I offer you. Hours of fun for yourself as a private concubine. Certainly fit to fill a room in your brothel where he will be in high demand as a whore. And for those who farm out studs, here is a tool ready to breed. No need to tame him if he proves too contrary; merely lash him down and let the stim do the work.’

  “‘Of course,’” she continued relentlessly, “‘he could make a wonderful house slave, where he could service any guests you invite to stay, both in and out of bed, once you have grown bored with him for yourself.’” Hanna knew how sensitive he had to be right then, and she took advantage of it by closing her fist slowly around him. She found herself distracted for an instant as she realized he was so thick that even her long fingers could not wrap fully closed around him. The realization made her a little bit breathless, and she had to force herself back on task. “Perhaps he had a few potential buyers come up to test the feel of the merchandise,” she speculated. “They do that often. Let them touch, stroke…feel for themselves the hardness and sensitivity of their prospective toy.”

  Vejhon was rasping for breath in a combination of fury, the hyper-stimulation of drugs, and her obliterating touch. Her stroke felt like a magical relief and torture all at once against his bursting flesh. Blood of the gods be damned, he had played with sexual
stims before…what man hadn’t? But never with a reaction so frenetic as what he felt under Hanna’s touch. Warm and soft, but sure and firm in a manner that did everything to make a conflagration out of already burning nerves. He hadn’t rushed to the crest of needing to orgasm so quickly in all of his life, not even when he’d been a hypersexed youth first trying to figure it all out.

  It had to be the stim, he argued with himself, shaking sweat out of his eyes, the ends of his hair flicking around the crown of his head. It was stronger than those of his world. That had to be why. There was no way in hell otherwise that he would so ferociously crave what she was giving him. Yet, even as he blamed the drugs, a sinister whisper in his subconscious was trying to make him admit there was more to it than that.

  “Some will even drop to their knees and take a taste of you,” she whispered in a vivid purr. She licked her dark lips absently as she rubbed her thumb over the purpled head of his erection. She probably didn’t even realize she’d done it, but watching the contrast of her blush-pink tongue licking wetly over deep violet red was like touching a flame to fumes for Vejhon. It became horrifyingly easy for him to imagine her mouth opening over his cock and the stroke of her tongue as she swallowed him down. All the while, in reality, she was flicking her thumb over him, swirling it in a deadly imitation of that very act, until he felt the hard twinge of readiness tightening his balls.

  He swore nastily in her face, cursing her and his own fate. His own weakness. Still, she stroked him down his length and up again, her fingers milking pre-cum from him and slicking up the stroke she handled him with until he began to vibrate with the tremors of nerves screaming for release.

  “Your seller no doubt let you be toyed with for some time to prove endurance. And then, he proudly announces that you are so fertile your ejaculate could populate a planet! Right before he injects you a second time.”

  Her artful hand instantly released his penis as the opposite palm slapped against his chest and, as promised, her ring spurred another injection into his bloodstream. “Now,” she breathed, “your body is overwhelmed with the aphrodisiac you’ve been fed. It disconnects your mind from your body, removing all of your will from the equation, overriding any resistance. There is nothing you can do but feel. Feel the burning of your body, the pump of blood into your already engorged cock.” She stepped aside, making certain she did not touch him anymore. “No one has to touch you. No stroke is necessary. Nothing can stop the release that is boiling up out of your control.”

  But he was clearly going to try his best, Hanna noted. His entire body was coated in sweat, a shuddering of resistance trembling through every flexed muscle he could force under his command. His efforts truly were futile, but she had known he would fight. She wanted him to fight with everything he had. This way, he would really know what might have awaited him had Najir not attended that sale.

  “As you are nothing but a slave, you could be laid out and tethered just as you are now,” she mused, allowing her rousing sexuality to filter strongly into her voice now. It was the pure beauty of the man before her and the outstanding ferocity he used to fight that stirred her, though, not his helplessness and defeat. “In your present state a woman could climb on top of you and ride you until she is ready for the climax she is manipulating from you. Or better yet, if a man had liked you…” She trailed off meaningfully, her stare hard on him as he shot daggers through her heart from his eyes. The arteries on his thick neck were distended with effort, and anticipatory fluid dripped down the length of his glistening phallus. “Or perhaps you prefer men anyway,” she said with a shrug of a shoulder, even though she knew full well it was women who aroused him. He had looked at her body enough times and in enough ways since she entered the room to assure her of that. “Of course, in that case a man might ride you, or you might find yourself on your hands and knees preparing to—”

  “Shut up, you sick bitch!”

  He roared the insulting command just as his body burst the confines of his control. Orgasm ripped through him like razor wire, tearing him apart from pride to penis. He came so hard that his semen jetted across the floor several feet, long viscous streams at first and then harsh spitting globs as his glands tried to obey the irrational demands of the stimulant he’d been fed. Vejhon’s vocal outrage as he climaxed growled off the high ceilings of the room, and then came the inevitable low groans of agonizing pain as his cock tried to spit out fluids that were no longer available. It stood out from his body, still rock hard and jerking torturously, remnants of cum dripping from the open slit at the head.

  Had he not been tied hand and foot, he would have fallen to his knees by now. None could stand up under this kind of painful bodily betrayal. Even Hanna could not remain stoic, giving herself away by biting her lip and curling her brows in sympathy. When it finally ended for him, he gasped hard for breath, pulling his head up and catching her in the compassionate expression for a second before she recovered herself. He was bleeding at every single manacle point, a testament to how he’d fought against himself. His failure, she knew, was utter humiliation for a man of his type.

  It had been the same for Najir. He had been the first rare bird she had found captured, and now she had another. Najir had found another. He had looked at this man and seen himself all those years ago. Seen him as Hanna had seen Najir the day he had been auctioned off like a prized thoroughbred pet. What she had described to Jhon had been what she had seen Najir suffer through that day. Hand after hand touching and stroking him, mouth after mouth sucking at him and licking him. Some seeing how far they dared to go in public. Only, Najir had not been in stasis. He had been awake and aware as the stimulant and a dozen men and women buyers raped him of his will and control. Then the flesh peddler had injected the second stimulant and the crowd had delighted in the ferocious explosion of his ejaculation and his outcry of anger that accompanied it. Hanna knew her neighbors, her fellow nobles, and she knew that some of them thrived on that kind of pain from others…that terrible kind of suffering.

  She was not one of them.

  4

  Najir watched through the transparent wall as Hanna quietly went about dampening a towel and cleaning the floor herself. He knew she would never allow a servant to come into that room to witness any part of what she was being forced to do. Just as he knew she wouldn’t touch Jhon just then, even to clean his body or wounds, because the stimulant that had ravaged him would make him scream if he were touched too soon.

  Najir’s handler at his auction had not been so thoughtful.

  The memory made the muscles between his shoulders bunch and tense and he fought off the chill it left behind. Najir knew why Hanna must take the new male through these paces, because he understood Vejhon about as well as he did himself. Oh, there were sure to be differences between them, and in truth he was hoping there were broad differences in their makeup, but the inured basics of pride and denial were very much the same. He realized that a wall of pure fury had been blocking all reason and logic in the warrior’s mind. The betrayal of his freedom would have kept him balking, deaf to all attempts to gain his trust. Hanna had been forced to inject him harshly into reality, and Najir understood that better than anyone.

  He watched Hanna replace the hateful ring in its box. Jhon was fully occupied with catching his breath and coping with the relief that was coming as the stim wore off. There was no longer room for anger within him after such an ordeal. Najir knew his Hanna would take no pleasure in Vejhon’s defeat. When she spoke, though her voice seemed steady to her captive, Najir—who knew her so well—heard the sadness underlying her tone.

  “This is what you would have known every single day, as often in the day as your owner pleased, had you been bought by another. I haven’t the heart to play evil to the extreme of the Baron who nearly walked away with you before Najir intervened and bought you out from under him. The Baron’s predilections are…monstrous. Few survive his ideas of intimacy.” She took a deep breath, sighing soft and long on her exh
ale. “Sleep. Eat. Bathe. And think over everything you have learned today, my proud one.”

  She turned on her heel and left the room. A moment after the outer door closed tight behind her, a second pneumatic hiss let her into the private observation room where Najir stood. Their eyes met and an instant expression of compassion rippled across her features. She must have seen something in his features that revealed the pain he’d felt when reliving his past experiences through Vejhon. She hurried up to him, enfolding him in her soft, reassuring embrace, drawing his head down to her graceful shoulder.

  “Shh, dearest,” she soothed him, her magical calming fingers stroking through his hair. “It is over now.”

  “He will hate you now. As I hated everything after that.”

  “But he is just as sharp as you. I can feel it in him. It is part of his beautiful power. He will slowly put the clues together as his emotions ebb from their high of hatred.” She nuzzled Najir’s cheek and he felt her smile. “He won’t understand what comes next. He will be baffled at first, but it will all come eventually.”

  Hanna released him so she could turn back to the wall looking into the room. Vejhon would never know he was being observed through solid stone. No one but Hanna and Najir had the code to activate the technology it used, or to get into the private room itself. Hanna moved to the control panel set into the stone and her fingers quickly tapped out a command. Inside the room, the metal bands binding Jhon to the stone wall sprang open and, finding himself suddenly and unexpectedly released, he fell forward onto his knees and hands.

  Hanna had no desire to watch what would follow, so she deactivated the viewing wall. It was as though she and Najir had suddenly been sealed off alone together in the long room. The dismal little place had been built by an unsavory relative long ago, so he could spy on his guests and whomever else he wanted to in a measure of comfort. It ran the entire length of the back wall to the large suite, with several portals available for best viewing perspective. Back then it had been kept in great comfort with many amenities close at hand, including lounges set before each window so one could recline as they took in their sport.