Acquired Possession (The Machinery of Desire Book 1)

by Cari Silverwood

  “Number three cane, Nik.” Footsteps tapped, but not squeaky ones, as Nik found a cane from the wall and brought it over. Squeaky sounds, as Mako moved in. “Remember, slave, no moving.”

  Impersonal, this was impersonal, not anything to do with her, her real self.

  I am rock.

  “One.”

  The first strike landed across her lower thighs. She screeched at the sudden line of pain then swallowed to keep silent. He beat her to a count of fifteen, saying the numbers, walking the strikes up to her lower ass, and she was shaking by the end, her hands jammed at the floor, eyes screwed shut.

  Chapter 5

  “Done.”

  Mako raised his leg and planted his boot on her butt. Not too much pressure, just enough to let her feel the weight and maybe the grit on the sole, reminding her who had control. He laid the cane between her legs, vertical and pressing to one side of her labia. Then he listened to the catches in her shaky breathing. Deftly, he shifted the cane to the other side, settling it into the fold between pussy and thigh, leaving it there while she was pinned down. He said nothing, and that had to mess with her thoughts, make her wonder.

  She turned her head and opened that pretty mouth. “What...”

  “Shush. No talking.”

  After a while, he began to tap the cane from side to side, lightly hitting her inner thighs, her pussy. Not enough to hurt, and the pain from the other would be ebbing slowly. It took some time for her lips to swell, but that was when he began to tap directly over her slit. From the occasional flinch of her body beneath his boot, her clit was receiving some of the force.

  Good.

  A line of wetness welled and shone in the poor lighting. He kept going, the taps varying in force and placement. She said nothing further but turned her head away, as if ashamed he’d see something she preferred he didn’t.

  “Show me your face or I’ll strike you properly here.” He angled the cane and tapped at her clitoris.

  After a gasp and a single exhale, she let him see her face again.

  From studies conducted, humans had the same anatomy as Mekkers. Bipedal, with cunts and cocks, and the ability to bear young inside them. They were people. The two worlds were parallel in many aspects. And fucking, both had fucking. Maybe one day he’d get to try a human. One day when he was rich.

  This would keep him happy in the meantime.

  He leaned in and slipped a digit inside her and hooked her pussy upward, gave it a few yanks as if trying to lever her from the box, despite the weight of his boot doing the opposite.

  “Did you think I couldn’t do this?” he said quietly. “I can put my cane inside you and fuck you with it if I’m careful not to damage you...irretrievably. Anything goes except my cock. Now, you stayed still. That’s good. This is your reward.”

  He didn’t imagine she’d come easily but he played with her clit some more, with cane and fingers, waiting until she was at least aroused and her cunt squeezing in on his two fingers when he bothered to insert them, then he removed his boot from her back.

  “Cage.” With the cane he indicated the open cage.

  Her sullenness was obvious. Getting her turned on was not to her liking? Poor thing. He chuckled.

  Once she was in and kneeling, he retrieved a clamp with a small three foot chain from the wall hooks near Nik then returned to her and kneeled in front of the still open cage door. If he hit the wrong spot, she’d tell him.

  “Spread your legs.”

  Slowly, she obeyed. All this slowness. The next thing to correct. He reached between her legs, telling her to be still and found what seemed the hood of her clit then he applied the clamp.

  Her stoic face didn’t fool him. That clamp wasn’t an easy one to endure. When he stood, she looked up with some desperation in her eyes.

  “Want to ask me something?”

  She nodded.

  “Don’t.” His only other reply was to close and lock the door then wrap the loose end of the chain leading to the clit clamp around the door lock. “And don’t do anything to this. No moving it.”

  Chapter 6

  Fuck them all. Her new motto.

  She needed to pee already, and she had this thing clamped to her most delicate place and it was making her want to squirm. Asking to pee or to have the clamp removed would earn her punishment. It was a dilemma she was sure he was aware of. Mako stood there, watching her shift on her knees. The mattress was thin, but better than concrete or metal.

  She’d survive.

  “I can tell you’re not broken. I’ve seen it all. Seen the fighters break. Accept your fate. You’re a slave from now until you die. Officially your name is Slave Twelve of House Oren. Within house, you’ll be called Slave Twelve.”

  She wanted to say something potent. But...no. She had to be a mouse before she could be a lioness again.

  Her stinging ass reminded her of his cane. She closed her legs and crept forward on her knees to the very front, took hold of the bars. In her mouth she tasted blood. He’d made her bite herself.

  “Nik,” he drawled. “Take the clamp off her in a good amount of time. You know what we do.”

  “Sure.”

  They wanted her worried.

  She shut her eyes. Ignore the pain, the uncomfortable tightness. No irretrievable damage meant she’d be okay.

  I’m fine.

  Her gaze flicked back to Mako. Accept, be a slave, or what? Continue to be alive, be a person in her own right? Have thoughts, feelings of her own? Have choices. She would never give that up. She just needed weapons that would help her escape. The bulge in Mako’s pants drew her to an interesting conclusion. Too big to just be his limp-ass dick. She’d seen the cocks of the men here – they weren’t shy. The man had an erection.

  Deliberately, she shifted on her knees, letting her breasts sway. The light wasn’t wonderful, but she’d swear he followed the wiggle of her anatomy.

  He wanted her.

  His lack of facial tells meant nothing. His dick was talking.

  And he couldn’t fuck her, not really. All his talk was just that – talk.

  If he lost control, if he broke rules, what would that mean? It was a potential weakness.

  Remember this.

  “Nik. I almost forgot. Let her clean herself up after. No clothes, but dry her. You know not to fuck her, right?”

  “Putra.” Amusement was copious in Nik’s tone. The two must know each other well – more info, if useless. Thinking, gathering facts, it kept her brain working. “But of course. Her precious cunt will not be fucked.”

  “Good. No touching yourself after, slave. I will know.” Mako strolled away, leaving her throbbing. Leaving her feeling more alone than ever.

  No touching. As if.

  As if she would.

  Nonetheless the burn from the cane meant she couldn’t forget how he’d handled her, casually toyed with her, and the clamp pain punctuated every one of those memories.

  Where she gripped the bars, her fingers vibrated. Those vibrations stole up her arms and into her knees. This place never ceased to rattle, the engines to turn, and it was unnatural. How could it be so?

  Here she kneeled, unremarkable and lost. The lumbering weight of the structure above her, below her, and to the sides, the people hurrying, unaware of her existence...that slavery was so common. No one cared that she was locked in a cage. These things clotted into one ugly realization that laid waste to much of her as it travelled the long distance to her soul.

  She laid her forehead against the bars and shivered. How small she was in this city of moving metal.

  Unnatural. “So unnatural,” she whispered, holding the bars tighter until her fingers ached. If she held them for long enough, the shivers might go away, the throbbing might dissipate.

  No touching. That statement was like telling someone not to see the elephant in the room. Her clit felt the size of the damn elephant already.

  Okay, not that big, but big.

  She rocked on her kn
ees and squeezed her thighs together, only to feel the hardness of the metal and squeak before she finished the move.

  Ow. She hissed through her teeth, bowed her head into the bars.

  Fuck him. Fuck Mako. She knew where she’d put his cane if she had the chance. Where the sun don’t shine, even on Mekkers.

  Chapter 7

  Early in the morning, after she’d been freed from the cage, clothed, and fed, Mako took her out to meet the other slaves – all eleven of them. She was the twelfth, of course. He approved of the light, ivory-toned dress she’d been given. Though similar to what the others wore, on her it was perfect.

  Lifting the back of her dress to check on the bruises left by the cane made her jump, made the other slaves stare. Looking made him happy. He was the master here, not them.

  The lines left by the cane were blue. Already.

  Between her legs, the division of her ass beckoned. The scent of her, even freshly cleansed, said female.

  He’d walked away then – had given a few orders and walked. His fingers made cracking noises as he turned them into a fist.

  Nik and young, dark-haired Weln were competent and would introduce her to what came next.

  After breakfast would be the bloodletting. He kept going, boot heel following boot heel, pretending this was a normal day, heading for the prow of this, the royal vehicle. That was his place for thinking, meditating.

  It wasn’t that he dreaded seeing her blood taken, it was that he feared he’d like it too much.

  Men and women heading out for scout duty smacked his hand as he went past – a greeting. They wouldn’t expect him to join them in the debriefing room or the barracks, but they acknowledged his solidarity. He belonged, if distantly, ever since the massacre. When you were kicked from active duty, you lost honor, even when you’d been a hero.

  He still wasn’t sure whether he hated himself as much as he admired the results of his actions. When you killed, you regretted. How had he thought it right? How could he not have done precisely that? How did he live with it in his memory banks – the good, the bad, the rotten?

  Twenty-seven people. Five his, including Shay. Twenty-two theirs. They called him the death dealer. Others had killed as many; it was the circumstances that made him different. Murderer was more accurate. His anger and frustration stewed day by day in the background of his mind, until he was no longer sure where it began, when, or why.

  Cut that experience off like an unwanted limb? He could do it, avoid it, if he really wanted to – be like a mechling and one of little brain.

  Or remember and regret and think?

  He preferred thinking, even if it consumed him.

  Shopkeepers waved sticks of smoking speared lizards and meat as he passed by, and bowls of berries and other fruit. The smells of roasting tantalized, and he took a few pieces of food, smiling, nodding, handshaking.

  The floor echoed with his boots as he climbed the levels, avoiding the automatic elevators. The general repair level and look of the ship deteriorated the further he walked. Patches covered rusted holes; the paint became a uniform blandness in color for tedious stretches. Rubbish accumulated for longer before it was hauled away and recycled. Forgotten and decayed conduits and cables curled across the walls. People yelled and cursed, gathered in knots, arguing, trading stories. Some had the blueness of lip and fingers, indicating they had a deficiency of the H factor found in outsider blood and fluids.

  You paid to the Governance, you got your low-cost H, or you traded for it, or your employer supplied it as part of your pay. The army did that, and everyone rotated through army service, unless they’d been banned like he was. Some Mekkers’ bodies chewed through H as if it was water. Luck and genetics could make you the opposite too. He was average in need.

  Without it you dwindled, sickened, eventually died.

  A dose of H could make you fire up like an over-charged engine. Scouts had some before every mission. That burn when your recce patrol all dosed at the same moment, then you revved up your Sniker and shot out into the blue sky, the zomm as the repellor wash hit the ground, then you were flitting across the land, ten feet up, with your veins afire...incredible.

  He sniffed loudly, tucked away the past, and kept going, sped up the pace.

  The halls grew more crowded then less so...then silence reigned. Except for his boots.

  Maybe he should oil them.

  He went where few did, unless they intended to kill, punish, or be executed.

  The prow.

  The rich and influential lived in the mid layers. The dregs cuddled with the bottom of the ship where the screams, rumbles, and grindings of metal would fill their ears. The top levels and sides, being theoretically more vulnerable to an attack, were also considered lower-class residential areas. Some nonconformists lived by the sides, where they could see the world go past. That world was changing anyway. The Swathe aged. Their enemies were pitiful.

  Fatigue was more likely to bring down a ship than a Grounder or a Scav.

  He wondered if Basteer feared the ship failing and being trapped, wondered if he did have a way out planned – through his view windows. It was how he’d arrange things. Forever was how most thought of the Swathe. Scouts knew otherwise. If you’d been Outside, you knew.

  Nothing lasted forever. Everything died. Heresy, but true.

  When he unlocked the last door and shoulder-shoved it, the door banged into the wall and rang – metal on metal. Flakes of rust peeled from above, floated down, red and brown. Paint was lacking here, had done for years. He strolled to the very front of the frigid, twenty-yard-wide triangular space where a gap broached the hull and a vast wind poured in.

  The lawgiver who’d last been here had wound aside the wedge of glass that protected the hole. He pulled the correct lever and the wedge ground across. It was no longer perfect – there were six or seven starred holes from some high-impact weapon used during the ancient war, but the wind died to a sporadic whistle.

  The temperature in here was normally comfortable. The massive core engines that pushed the ship leaked a lot of heat that spread through the ducting.

  Once upon a time, there’d been a furnished room here – a command area even, some postulated. Now Command was stories below. Thick cables swung down and poked through the walls like beheaded snakes. Rotten timber, rust, and eroded glass pieces littered the floor.

  How long deserted? Centuries, some said.

  He tossed aside the partly chewed meat on a stick and went to the entry door and slammed it.

  He could hear himself think with the wind gone, the drop of each thought.

  What was he doing with this woman? Basteer was correct. He was interested. More than he should be. Couldn’t marry because he’d done wrong. Couldn’t fuck her, a slave, because Basteer forbade it – she was owned. Couldn’t fuck the others, who were Scavs, because that would be plain disgusting.

  And his dick was dying to get inside her, every time he saw that ass, which had been all of what, three times?

  Soon, they’d take blood from her. His cock grew an inch thinking of that. Powerful blood, though once filtered and extracted her blood would be even more potent.

  He stared ahead at the unblemished country – the trees, grass, and circling birds, ignoring the smell of the recently denuded iron spears to left, right, and slightly below. A bird swooped across, crying, teeth bared, as it snatched at some fluttering insect. Prey meet predator. He planted a boot on the corrugated metal stairs that led up to the peak of the glass wedge. Outside the glass, the main spear stuck out from the ship’s hull by several yards. The steps squealed at the pressure. They were here so the lawgivers could be steady while they placed the latest deaders and criminals.

  Here was where his thoughts cleared.

  The one place on this whole ship where he knew no one surveilled him.

  The one alone place.

  Unless he hid in a cupboard.

  Mako clasped his hands over his knee. A direct gust of wind thr
ough the small holes wrapped about him and ruffled his short hair. His clothes fluttered, as if they might tear from him, and he doubted his purpose.

  Was she here just to taunt him? The unobtainable always looked juicier.

  Chapter 8

  Bloodletting day. A few minutes ago, another group of slaves had left. As they shuffled under the sign over the door, she read, her lips moving – The Bloodletting Room. When they’d taught her how to speak it, the Mekker language had also filtered through as written words.

  The translation might be a bit wrong, but she understood what was about to happen. Hands were at her back, guiding her. Not the underlings – the two called Nik and Weln. These were the other slaves, who thought she needed reinforcing.

  They were right. They’d mostly avoided her even after Mako’s introduction. Perhaps they thought her trouble?

  Why should she give blood to help people who saw her as their slave?

  As with most things here, she had no choice.

  Five tables waited along the left wall, covered in white sheets, and she wondered if there was metal or padding beneath. Wondered how the overhead boxes with the metal-scaled tubing dangling from them figured in this.

  Undone black leather straps hung from each corner of the tables, their buckles silvered and square. Those...self-explanatory.

  Mechlings that resembled praying mantises waited by each bed. Their red-gemmed eyes sparkled. Pincers for hands. Sharp whines and clicks sounded as something spun on the boxes.

  Her throat moved in a compulsive swallow. The lights above seemed to dim in waves but that was likely her head playing tricks.

  Weekly, the slaves had said. Surely that would scar her veins. Someone to either side seized her wrists and pulled her forward – her skin burned there as she twisted to get free. Her steps were staccato; her lips moved again for she wondered if praying to some arbitrary Aerthe god was worthwhile.