The Slave Palace: Wulf and Locke (Kingdom of Slaves Book 1)

by Wendy Rathbone

  “Hmm. Interesting.” Locke made a noise as if taking a long, deep breath. “You are not what matters, you say. That is a statement you make that you believe in. Correct?”

  “Of course.” Wulf nodded numbly.

  “What if I told you it was false. What if I could make you see that you matter a lot.”

  “As a pleasure slave?” Wulf let out a hiss of disgust.

  “Yes. Because as a pleasure slave you hold the power of want and desire over another.”

  “But I have no recourse to say yes or no, so I have no power,” Wulf replied. This conversation was laughable.

  “Oh, but with the right master, you most certainly do.”

  Wulf’s brow creased. His head began to ache more than the residual effects of the shock at breakfast.

  He didn’t want to ask. But what could Locke mean by “the right master?”

  As if reading his question straight from his mind, Locke said, “You will learn things here just as you learned how to use a weapon in your training to be a good soldier. Think of this as yet one more tool for your arsenal, the ability to seduce, to give pleasure, and to receive it as well to complete the wholeness of your being.”

  “Ridiculous,” Wulf said. Allowing himself to be raped was a tool?

  “Not ridiculous. An art. A trade. A technique. People have won wars with just one kiss,” Locke said.

  Wulf wanted to laugh. Instead, he forced small breaths in and out of his nose and mouth. His cock had betrayed him, but he could not see that as power. Not yet. Maybe never. To him, it was a weakness.

  “I want you to do something for me.”

  “You are asking?” Now Wulf looked up, his hair flying back.

  His neck felt hot and now coolness descended there where his skin was bared. He had felt hot ever since he came into the alcove. But somewhere air filtered through to where Locke was standing and Wulf was sitting, fluttering against his skin.

  “I am telling you what I want,” Locke replied. “And the sooner you do it, the easier it will be for you to get along here. To exist here.”

  “With you,” Wulf added.

  “Yes. With me. I do own you.”

  Wulf had never, for one moment, forgotten that fact.

  “I want you to look closely at everything in this training room. Everything. From the people and classes, to the videos on the upper walls and the activities of the people in the other alcoves.”

  “Why do you want me to look at that?” Wulf asked. “It’s humiliating to me. It does not help me in my situation.”

  “When you look, when you see closely what is happening around you, and how what might be a mystery to you works, how it is prepared for, how it is done, what happens to the person, the body, the mind… then your fears will diminish. It is no different from breathing, eating. Learning to walk. Or learning to fight.”

  “It is not like fighting!”

  “No?” Locke questioned. “To learn of pleasure is a great reward. That is why this Palace exists.”

  “And what of—“ Wulf stopped. He was going to say love. It was a word he knew only in relation to familial love, which he had not known, or loyalty to a cause. He’d never experienced any other kind of love. He’d never fallen in love. In fact, he wasn’t sure he even believed in that sort of thing. Locke might be his “type” but what did that have to do with love?

  “What of?” Locke prompted.

  Wulf shook his head.

  “I will answer any question you have to the best of my ability.”

  “Your rank says your ability is the best.”

  “It is. But I am also human. I don’t know everything.”

  “No?” Wulf countered not without some sarcasm.

  “No.”

  Wulf hung his head.

  “What was it you wanted to ask?” Locke said.

  He hesitated. He could not deny his frustration. But Locke seemed so smug. Casual. And Wulf, a mere slave, wanted to dare himself. Wanted to ask what maybe no slave should ever ask.

  “Do you teach about love here?”

  “Ah, now that is a great question. And very important. Possibly the most important question you could ever ask me.”

  Wulf saw the smile curve the corners of Locke’s pink lips, how it plumped the cheeks and made the skin look smooth and taut all at once transforming the harder edged planes of his face to a thing of beauty.

  He must not think these things! Must not!

  To Wulf’s further humiliation, his face and then his whole body began to heat. He wished he could take back his words right now. It didn’t help him in his blushing dilemma when Locke’s voice washed over him, using that word—love.

  “Yes, we teach about love here. There are endless novels, essays and poems on the subject. Paintings, sculptures, plays, songs. It’s endless. The answer is yes. And yes. We teach it. We teach it because everything we do from the moment we take our first breaths as infants until the day we die should be about it, for any way of life without some love—everything from work to play—is a crime to us. And maybe—maybe one day, you will understand this.”

  “What makes you think I don’t?”

  Locke gave him a smile Wulf could only describe as enigmatic. “Because you are so young.”

  “I am twenty-three.”

  “As I said.”

  “You must also assume it is because I am from Rille, a country that was enemy to your country. Because we are not as… as promiscuous as you are in this country, you must assume--”

  “No,” said Locke, interrupting. His eyebrows scrunched together. “I attempt to not make assumptions that are so generalized. But I am not perfect. If you think I have made assumptions about you, I apologize.”

  It did occur to Wulf that he was making his own assumptions. But he was the slave, not the master. He had no choices. He felt a bit justified in being a hypocrite.

  “This is your first day,” Locke continued. “There is so much that will be strange to you, perhaps even frightening.”

  “Humiliating—“ Wulf put in.

  “Perhaps. But if you are unsure about your future, and all that is around you, it can produce great anxiety.”

  Wulf let out a hard breath, making a sound of protest. But of course Locke was correct. Anxiety. Depression. Anger. How could he not have them all? He was a prisoner of war. Now a slave. That would never change.

  For solitary moments, and maybe during sleep, he might escape the notion of what he was, and erase the bars those labels drew in his mind, but escape was not an option. Ever. Not as long as he had no assets—or clothing of his own. Not as long as he had the shock-collar.

  “Now,” Locke said, still standing with his hands clasped, his posture straight and tall. “You will begin your sex lessons here today. Lie back.”

  “What?” Wulf tossed his head back, feeling his hair scrape the skin of his naked back. When he tilted his face up, he scented an odor of sweetness on the air, like baking cookies.

  “Do as I say, please.”

  “Or you’ll shock me with the collar?”

  Locke did not answer. He leaned down and fiddled with something at the end of the bed which Wulf could not see.

  Wulf did not move.

  At last, Wulf heard a click. The bed vibrated a bit. His body jerked in surprise, but it was nothing to be afraid of. He watched as a small platform rose up, and on it was a flat, thin screen, wide as the bed.

  A computer? A television?

  Locke came around to the side of it and touched the screen a few times. Visuals appeared.

  “Am I to watch a movie?”

  “Yes,” said Locke. “And when you are done there will be a test.”

  Wulf wanted to laugh. In fact, he felt his mouth open, and the corners of his lips quirked up.

  Locke said, “You may relax as you watch. Lean against the pillows. I also give you permission to enjoy yourself, if you’d like.”

  “What?”

  “You may masturbate. I will allow it
.”

  “You will allow—?” He gulped.

  “You will watch the entire film. You will not leave this alcove. Your collar’s leash may not be attached to anything, but if you attempt to leave this area, I will see. I will engage the collar.”

  Wulf shook his head. “Lovely. Thank you for this opportunity to self-pleasure myself while I watch pornography.” He drew out the words to further lace them with his sarcasm.

  As if he did not notice Wulf’s tone, Locke simply said, “You’re welcome.”

  “You will be watching me.” Wulf did not phrase it as a question.

  “Of course. I will not lie to you. There are cameras everywhere in the Palace. Nothing is not seen.”

  After Locke spoke, he turned away from Wulf and moved beyond the right wall of the alcove, leaving Wulf’s sight.

  For a moment, Wulf had the urge to get up, to follow him. He had been alone in his rooms all night, but this was different. Though he had minor privacy in the alcove, this was still a public area. A training room where masters and slaves passed through at all hours. He could even hear them coming and going, and the muffled gasps and laughter from the class still taking place at the far end of the hall.

  Next door, more grunts and moans and thumps wafted on the air. The alcove walls were too thin to muffle anything.

  Wulf looked down at the bed. Fluffy pillows—ivory, and lavender—decorated the red bed. Some were square throw pillows; others were long, tube-shaped, soft body-pillows. They could be stacked or spread out, arranged any way he pleased.

  The video began to play, soft music lulling from its mechanized structure.

  Wulf’s eyes were drawn to it as if he had no control. For that was what light screens—computers, TVs, phones—were like. Hypnotic. He’d been away from that sort of thing in his warrior training except for educational purposes, or purposes of communication. Rille’s computers and phones were not accessible to any Internet services. They were programmed only with that which his government deemed proper and necessary for them to see.

  Wulf had seen pornography anyway, of course. Once or twice in his life. There were always hackers in one group or another. Always boys—and even some girls—who loved to be upstarts, to disobey, to keep secret stashes of taboo movies or books. Every country in the world had a black market.

  But he had not lingered if friends showed him forbidden material. Wulf had always been too nervous about repercussions. His country was known for its violence, even against its own peoples. Not that they didn’t deserve what was coming to them—or so he was told.

  The music began as a prelude. The visuals on the movie began, with a soft narrative, male voice explaining what the movie promised.

  First the voice, almost like Locke’s but not quite as dulcet, addressed the viewer directly.

  “Find a comfortable place. Relax your body. Open yourself to a world of pleasures. This film will instruct not only your mind in technique and pleasure-giving, but teach the body as well. Give yourself permission to respond. To react. This is part of your lesson in the art of love-making, erotic sex, and pleasure into the realm of ecstasy.”

  Wulf did not want to relax or respond. Locke had said cameras were everywhere. That he was watched. He said, aloud, looking up at random areas of the ceiling and walls, “I thought you were the Eminent Master. I thought you were the teacher, not a machine. If you teach through videos, why do you masters even exist?” He almost spat the last word.

  There was no response, of course.

  The movie began with an almost anatomical description of males and females.

  Aloud, Wulf said, “I understand general anatomy.”

  He could not help but be offended. He most certainly did not need a lesson on the fact that males had penises and females had vaginas. It was an insult.

  But the film did not delay, or linger on simplistic matters. That introductory part took less than a minute.

  The film then began to show, as if in glorified celebration, how men and women existed to procreate with one another, but pleasure in and of itself was not defined by procreation. Thus, any pairing was acceptable, any grouping from two or more a lovely thing, and it was a slave’s purpose to understand that any and all aspects of lovemaking might be expected of them, and they were to show no prejudice toward any of them.

  Well, that was ridiculous. How could Wulf ever accept things he was disgusted by?

  The film started off showing the most ordinary of couplings, explaining them in great detail. Males with females. How their anatomy worked together.

  Wulf was bored. He had not moved from his seat on the side of the bed. Had not touched a pillow or adjusted his legs. But even though male/female sex was not his true, deep fantasy, he could not help but be affected.

  His body tensed. He felt little darts of electricity in his abdomen. And he noted that his mind was drawn to the men in the film, their firm bodies, their erect cocks.

  The film showed women together. The explanations became a monotone to him.

  But when men were shown with men, kissing, touching, he wanted to look away.

  He glanced up to the ceiling again, trying to discern where any cameras might be.

  The muscles in his back began to flutter and ache from sitting in one position so long. He lifted a knee as if to fold his leg underneath himself upon the bed for more comfort, then pushed it back off the bed, the sole of his foot hitting cool tile again.

  He took a deep breath as the two male models on the screen kissed. The narrator talked about the art of kissing and foreplay. Not everything was about the actual act of fucking.

  “I don’t want to watch this,” Wulf said glumly.

  But his eye was drawn. The two men were beautiful, one blond, one brunet, sporting similar colorings and race to himself and Locke.

  Wulf closed his eyes. The electric flurries in his stomach sent trickles of sensation to his balls. His cock elongated against his will.

  Wulf drew his legs up and flopped onto the bed, cushioned by the pillows on his side, facing the counter and sink, not looking at the TV at all.

  But the voice on the TV droned on with words such as “lips” and “tongue” and “sucking” and “arousal.” It talked of more than sex, using words like “intimacy” as well. And “communication,” “chemistry,” “connection.”

  There were harder words, too, words Wulf did not care about or understand about how the brain functioned when in arousal, and how the mind formed associations and connections which the body acted out.

  “Because of its damp warmth and muscle strength,” the voice said, “the tongue is able to create erogenous zones on parts of the body one might never think of as erotic. Placing the tongue on the glans of the penis creates great pleasure in most…”

  Wulf’s head shot up. He had seen the heterosexual coupling include oral sex, but toned it out. No details had invaded his mind. But the men together pressed onto his brain. He did not want to look at the screen and watch one beautiful model orally stimulate the other beautiful model.

  But it was as if he had no will! His eyes sought the screen.

  The narrator’s voice went into his mind like a bell awakening him from slumber. The words meant nothing on their own. However, combined with the beauty of the images on the screen, Wulf’s cock became fully erect.

  A man sucking another man’s cock: Wulf hardly ever allowed himself to think of it, for his body always—always!—betrayed him, and he liked control over himself.

  No, he could not imagine it. Which was why the lessons at the far end of the training hall on fellatio had made him squirm. And why he’d panicked when Locke had made the simple suggestion that he could join in that class.

  His cock filled. There were cameras everywhere, though he could not see them. Locke would know. Locke would know his deepest, darkest secret that this act turned him on. That this act made him a true slave. To body. To mind. To the sin of uncontrollable, forbidden sexual bliss.

  Wulf groane
d. “Fuck you,” he said aloud.

  His eyes darted back and forth from the sink to the screen, watching the teasing tongue on the erect penis, the way the lips pressed the head of the swollen organ, how they sucked the flesh slowly, as if it were a delicacy to be savored. How the mouth moved all the way down on the cock. The model’s cheeks hollowed as he began to suck and move slowly up the shaft, then down.

  Wulf could not breathe. This was why he did not look at pornography. He detested this out-of-control feeling. He wanted to hone his body as a tool, not see it perform anything against his will. If his body did not do as he commanded, he considered it a mistake on his part. A failure.

  Now, he watched the movie and leaned back against the soft pillows. His hand pushed his cock down until he could trap it between his thighs. He would ensnare his cock, trap it, bind it into submission.

  Back home, he had a device he used for such times. Everyone called it a petal. All boys had one from an early age. If things were out of hand “down there” you simply wrapped your penis in the soft sheath of the petal. A chain attached to the top was brought backward between the legs, pulling the offending member down and back against the testicles. The chain could be adjusted to hook tightly to side loops in Rilleian underwear. It made things easy, contained, not embarrassing.

  He had no petal. In fact, the country of Avilan had probably never heard of them, unless they used them in kinky escapades for orgasm denial on purpose for furthering pleasure and not to deny it as the sin it was.

  Wulf clamped his thighs tight, but his cock was too tumescent now, beginning to throb, and had a mind of its own. It popped out into the sweet-scented air. He would have to use his hands to hold it back.

  He had trained himself from a very young age not to touch himself. It was considered by his culture a sin. But now there was no petal. Only the brutal and naked grip of a hand.

  He hated himself right now. He hated everyone and everything. But he could not stop his reality. The video continued to play. There was nothing to be done but grasp himself and push down, push his erection between his legs, clamp his thighs, and hold his hand there.

  The insides of his thighs were damp. His palm sweated. Everything was too slippery. And far too bright, the lights, the TV screen flickering, the frustration behind his eyes making them ache.