So, if she accepted that Ulrick wasn’t a coward, she had to also accept that the people who worshipped Nhewa were a seriously dangerous group. She couldn’t imagine Ulrick concerning himself with following rules they had lain down unless that was the case.
And who knew how common the belief system was? Or how zealous the followers? He might have a lot more to worry about than just evading the temples and the priests that occupied them. It was possible that pretty much everybody on the planet followed this religion—zealously enough that they might be willing to risk their own life to kill anyone that didn’t believe and follow the dictates of the god, Nhewa. Or to inform to the priests.
She shuddered to think what they might do if anybody crossed them.
So she should just resign herself to the status quo? Forget any possibility of avoiding this part of her new life?
She thought she was definitely ‘stuck’ as far as the temple sacrifices went. She was going to have to consider that she had two separate problems—the religion/sacrifice issue, and the master issue. She couldn’t do anything about the temple visits, she realized, so she definitely needed to try to accept what she couldn’t change and to focus on Ulrick, on the one individual who would ultimately be responsible for her continued well being.
After a moment Ulrick seemed to come to some decision.
Not a decision that had even briefly crossed Brandi’s mind, but one she realized later that did indicate she hadn’t been wrong about his growing sense of possessiveness—a tool that at least gave her some leverage.
Looping the reins of the beast around the saddle horn, Ulrick grasped her, turning her to face him and drawing her legs over his so that she sat astride his lap. He bent her backwards over one arm then and fastened his mouth over the peak of one breast, raking is teeth over the distended tip almost painfully. When it began to throb with the rush of blood into the swollen flesh, he sucked it into his mouth, tugging on it with his mouth and tongue until Brandi was gasping dizzily. Releasing it just as she was beginning to get really wound up, he moved to its twin, raking that nipple with his teeth before he pulled it into his mouth. As he sucked her, he reached between her legs, parting the flesh of her sex and thrusting a finger deeply inside of her, spreading the creamy moisture that had gathered there.
She saw when he released her nipple that he’d pulled his cock from his loincloth. It stood stiffly erect, pulsing. Grasping her around the waist, he lifted her up and speared her flesh with his hardened member, bearing down on her until he’d forced his cock past the resistant flesh of her passage and buried himself to the root inside of her.
Grasping her manacled wrists, he looped her arms around his neck and wrapped one arm around her hips, pulling her tightly against his belly, shifting slightly and grinding into her and drawing a low moan from her throat. Taking the reins once more, he kicked the beast into a gallop.
The bounding motion of the beast beneath them bounced Brandi upward so that his turgid cock slipped almost completely from her body, then slammed her down against him, impaling her on his cock, before bouncing her upward again. Despite the painful depth of his possession and the brutal pace with which his hard flesh was rammed repeatedly into her body, heat flashed through her with his first ramming thrust, soaking her passage so that her body slipped more easily over his erection. It spiraled upward rapidly, until she was gasping and shaking with impending orgasm.
Her belly clenched around him as the muscles began to convulse with release. The continuous, rapid pounding of his cock drove her to the edge of darkness, forcing her body to convulse on and on in release without cease or even a lessening. She was near to weeping when she felt his cock jerk inside of her and begin to spasm as he found his own release.
When his own body had ceased to convulse with his climax, he slowed the beast and finally brought it to a stop. Quivering, only dimly aware of her surroundings, Brandi gasped as his spent flesh finally slipped from hers and she slumped against him, resting her forehead on his chest as she fought to catch her breath.
Her breathing had barely returned to normal when he grasped her hips and lifted her and she felt his hardened cock probing her once more, thrusting deeply inside of her as he pulled her tightly against him again. Wearily, she lifted her head to look at him, feeling her passage clench around him as he urged the beast forward once more into a fast walk that moved her gently along his turgid length, then a jog that began to jounce her a little harder, and finally a gallop.
By the time he’d urged the beast into a gallop, her body was already high on the scale to completion. Within moments, the ramming motions of his cock inside her set off another wave of bliss.
His body climbed slower toward completion the second time. Hers convulsed in blinding rapture until she blacked out for many moments. Slowly awareness began to drift back into her mind. Still, she lay limply against him, completely spent, unable to lift her head for some time. When she finally managed to pull away and look around, she discovered that they’d reached the outskirts of the tiny village that dwelt in the shadow of the Temple. She stiffened, trying to move away.
His arm tightened, holding her against him. “You are mine,” he growled into her ear.
As she looked up at him in surprise, she felt his cock harden inside of her again. He set the beast to a trot. The animal’s gait jogged her up and down on his cock in a quick, hard rhythm that stirred the ashes of her passion. Aware that the curious were glancing at them as they passed, she tried to hold the sensations at bay, but they quickly overwhelmed her, driving her upward toward her peak. She bit down on his shoulder to keep from crying out as her body began to convulse once more in spasms of pleasure.
She was hardly aware of the cessation of movement until Ulrick lifted her arms from around his neck and loosened his grip on her, allowing her to slide from him. She looked around then and discovered he’d reined the beast to a halt at the foot of the temple steps.
Without a word, he adjusted his clothing and climbed down, dragging her off with him and settling her on her feet. When he’d tossed the reins to a waiting priest, he led her up to the piazza. They were halfway up the stairs before the priests began to pound the gong to call the worshippers of Nhewa.
She saw when she reached the piazza that the priests who waited looked both worried and confused. Ulrick ignored them, passing the chain he used to lead her to the High Priest and stepping to one side.
Collecting himself after a moment, the High Priest began the ritual of display.
Brandi was still so dazed from their coupling she merely stumbled after them as they led her across the piazza. Finally, almost with a sense of relief, she saw that they had turned to enter the temple.
Brandi had thought she knew what to expect. She found that she was wrong. Instead of taking her to the bathing chamber, they took her to a small chamber, empty save for a narrow cot, a pitcher of water, and a chamber pot for her needs, and locked her inside.
At first, she was too exhausted from her coupling with Ulrick and the hard, multiple orgasms he’d driven her to to be greatly disturbed by the difference in her reception at this temple to what she’d come to expect. Bathing herself, she drank a little of the water and collapsed on the narrow bunk, falling asleep almost instantly.
She was awakened sometime later by a scraping noise. When she sat up, she saw that a tray of food had been set inside the door. Hungry from days of travel, little food, and the expenditure of energy in fear and the pleasure that had been wrung from her body again and again, she retrieved the tray, sat on the bed, and ate.
She began to wonder why she’d been placed in the chamber, whether it was because she had arrived before they were ready to perform the ritual or if it was because they had been in no doubt that Ulrick had sampled before them.
Slowly, fear began to creep inside of her as the thought took hold that that was exactly the case and that her ‘pilgrimage’ would be cut short, that she would be told they’d displeased the god, Nhewa—or
she had—and they would ‘sacrifice’ her to appease him.
Maybe Ulrick, too, but she didn’t have a lot of empathy reserved for him when he’d gotten her into this mess!
Of course, most of her thoughts were nothing more than fear inspired speculation. She didn’t have a clue of how things ‘worked’ here beyond the fact that they had a damned temple erected, from what she’d seen, in or near virtually every tiny hamlet and no more than two days’ ride apart.
And she was expected to ‘give’ at every single damned one!
Maybe Ulrick wasn’t supposed to sample in between?
She thought that notion probably wasn’t just her imagination given the way the priests had acted upon their arrival when Ulrick had made no attempt to hide the fact that he’d made use of her. In fact, had made such a display that it was almost as if he wanted them to know rather than just that he was indifferent as to whether they found out or not.
He’d provoked them, she thought angrily!
And she was the one they were going to punish!
She thought for several moments that she was going to puke from the emotions roiling in her belly.
She’d finally begun to make some headway, she thought, with Ulrick! He at least seemed to have reached a point where he desired her enough to begin to let down his guard, but what little power that might give her over him, if any, would be of no use to her if the priests demanded her in sacrifice to appease their angry god. She stood no chance of escaping if that was the case.
It occurred to her after a while that she hadn’t even tried the door to see if it was locked. She knew it must be, but she moved to it and tried it anyway. Without much surprise, but with a great deal of disappointment, she found that it was.
“Damn it!”
Moving away from the door, she began to pace once more, glancing now and then at the tray. Finally, she settled to watching the door, deciding when it opened, if only one priest stood there, she would see if she could catch him off guard and escape.
She would’ve felt better for her chances if she were closer to the outer door to the temple, but she realized fairly quickly that her chances were virtually nil any way she looked at it. As long as she had felt that she had some chance of coaxing Ulrick into lowering his guard, she had thought patience the wisest course. Any attempt to escape would put him on guard and make another attempt useless. She had to wait until the most opportune moment. Then maybe she would have a chance of escaping and … she could figure out the rest after she got away, if she got away.
Despite her fear, or perhaps because of it, exhaustion finally got the better of her once she’d stopped pacing the room and settled to watch the door, but it was the sound of the door opening that woke her. She surged to her feet at once, swaying slightly with the grogginess of sleep. Two priests entered. Ignoring the tray, they seized her and dragged her from the room, down the long corridor that led to the bathing chamber.
She had already learned that trying to fight them was useless and yet she could not command herself not to—possibly because she couldn’t rid herself of the fear that this time would be horribly different. She struggled as they forced her down on a stone bench beside the pool. They held her, anointing her body with oils and scraping her skin until she throbbed all over. When they had bathed her, they led her from the pool and dried her.
As they left the chamber, they turned and followed the steps downward to the offering room. Below, she could hear the priests chanting and an almost hissing noise as they shuffled their feet across the stone floor. Brandi’s dread grew with each step. As relieved as she was that it seemed that they would perform the offering anyway, she feared what she would have to face in the chamber. It might have frightened her less if the ritual had been exactly the same each time, but each time it differed except that the priests, she knew by now, would whip themselves into a frenzy of carnality and that they would wring pleasure from her until they’d sapped her of all strength.
As in the other temples, she saw that a stone altar stood in the center of the chamber. Instead of leading her to it, however, she was seized by the two priests who had walked beside her as they descended the stairs. Dragging her beyond the altar, they forced her down on the stone floor in the center of a circle made up of different colored stones. The stone was cold beneath her and she began to shiver as they knelt and removed the manacles that bound her wrists together.
Each man took one of her arms and pulled it straight out from her body, manacling her directly to the stone floor. They moved down her then. A third man approached, carrying a wedge shaped stone, and knelt beside her hips. The two who were binding her for the offering lifted her hips. The wedge was pushed beneath her buttocks. When she was lowered once more, she realized that it had curled her hips upward. Catching her legs then, they bent them at the knees and spread her legs wide, chaining her ankles to the floor.
She lay staring up at the ceiling, shivering from dread and the cold, trying not to think what they planned to do, listening to her heart hammering in her ears and the breath rasping from her chest in frightened gasps.
The High Priest came to stand between her legs. He lifted his arms to chant.
The priests dropped their robes and advanced toward the circle where she had been chained. When they reached the outer ring of the circle, they began to chant and dance in a circle around her, writhing, moving their arms sinuously. After a time, the chanting began to sound more like the hissing of serpents than voices. As she watched, they knelt to the floor and then lay upon their bellies, moving around her with the sinuous, undulating movements of serpents, resembling huge snakes.
Their bizarre behavior threw her into complete confusion. Just as she’d begun to think she understood—to a degree—what their religion was all about, they thoroughly befuddled her again.
The god Nhewa was the god of all things that walked and crawled on this horrible planet, she guessed?
Maybe.
Did it really have to make sense? It was a religion. It was nonsense from beginning to end, superstition perpetuated by someone who wanted to benefit from the power it gave them and the fear it engendered in everyone they subjugated.
One moved toward her, dragging her reluctant attention back to the proceedings as he undulated around her, flicking his tongue over her breast until her nipple grew turgid, standing erect. He bit down on it, drawing a gasp from her. She relaxed fractionally when she felt no more than a twinge of pain, but even as he moved away again she wondered if the next bite would actually hurt, or the one after that. She knew once it began that it would continue much the same and feared once the fever was fully upon them that they would begin to bear down on her harder each time, biting her in truth rather than merely simulating a bite.
Goosebumps erupted all over her at the thought.
As he left, another approached her from the other side, flicking his tongue over belly, nipping her flesh before he moved on. Both fear and heat surged inside her as another approached her, flicked his tongue over her other nipple and then, lightly, bit down on her, raking his teeth along the distended tip before he released it and moved away. Within moments, she felt them all over her, felt the flicking of their tongues over her skin, felt the sting of their teeth nipping her. Sometimes it bordered on pain, occasionally one bit her hard enough to draw a gasp from her, but she began to relax as pleasure began to far outweigh the discomfort and even the harder nips with sharp teeth sent heat spiraling into her belly.
She closed her eyes, but that only seemed to focus her mind more surely on the sensations flooding her. Her head began to swim as the drugging euphoria of bliss sucked her down.
Despite the clouding of her mind, she tensed as she felt the heated flick of a tongue along one thigh. The licking moved lower, traced her nether lips and the seam where they met. After a moment, the tongue parted her nether lips, flicking along her cleft. Gasping, she pushed backward with her legs, moving away from the touch.
To her relief, instead o
f following her, he moved away.
Her relief was short lived. A moment later, the high priest knelt over her. Straddling her belly, he dragged her hips to the edge of the offering stone once more until it bit into her buttocks and her legs strained against the counter pull of the manacles around her ankles. Tightening his knees around her, he pinned her so that she couldn’t move. As a tongue flicked along her thigh once more, he caught the fleshly lips of her sex and pulled them wide, stretching her so that the mouth of her sex opened.
She felt the flicking tongue move along the tender flesh of her cleft, sending sharp stabs of pleasure through her belly. Moving up her cleft, the hot tongue flicked the tiny, exquisitely sensitive bud of her clit, until heated desire had her belly clenching and unclenching. She gasped when he nipped her, sending a sizzling shaft of arousal through her. He didn’t linger. Once he’d bitten her, he moved downward again and she felt the tongue thrust inside of her. It seemed to swell, to lengthen, undulating through her passage. As it began to slowly withdraw, the high priest’s hold shifted, spreading her body’s opening wider so that the tongue plunged more deeply inside her, curling against the walls of her passage, stroking her.
She shook, tried to twist away and discovered she couldn’t. The thrusting continued until she was gasping hoarsely, her body trembling.
As he moved away, the high priest shifted once more. Bending his head, he opened his mouth over her exposed flesh and sucked and licked her clit almost savagely, punishing her for her attempts to escape the invasive tongue until she was gasping shrilly.
She was trembling on the brink of release when he lifted his head. She shuddered at the abrupt cessation of stimulation, feeling a shiver skate through her as her body began to cool. Moments passed. While she struggled to catch her breath, the priests began to nip and lick at her breasts and belly once more, her arms, her neck.
Her flesh quivered as she felt the skate of a hot tongue along her thigh. As the tortuous sensations neared her sex, the high priest caught her nether lips, pulling them wide and offering the exquisitely sensitive inner flesh for the delectation of the worshippers of Nhewa.
Alien Slavers II: Breaking Brandi Page 6