“I tried to work it out when I first came here,” Persephone said. “I don’t remember much of our own history, but I think things weren’t much different up to the French Revolution. I seem to remember there being a long war around that time.”
“The Napoleonic Wars,” Pam said, dredging up her own sketchy recollections. “It was a series of wars that lasted more than twenty years.”
“Well, no one here has ever heard of Napoleon. I guess he died or was killed, or was never born. And the revolution was over in a few years. The Austrians and British invaded France and, when they started winning, the revolutionaries went wild and slaughtered all the royals and aristocrats.” She rubbed her throat, looked at her cigarette and stubbed it out. “When the Austrians captured Paris they behaved the same with the revolutionaries, except they made slaves of the women. Pretty soon it spread to the part of France they occupied and then to the British part. They split the country up between them. Now some of it is in the British Empire and the rest in the Austrian.”
“But Tania and Milly aren’t French, or the other girls.”
“Of course not. The slave thing spread everywhere when the supply from France ran out. The whole world is run on slavery and steam. Nothing would work without them.”
“And no one ever tries to change it?”
“There’ve been a few women but they all soon end up as slaves themselves. Everyone is conservative here. They don’t like change. But at least there haven’t been any big wars since the French one.”
“No wars? For nearly two hundred years?” It was the only thing there that Pam would admit impressed her. Something more significant struck her. “You haven’t told Traske about the blackness, have you?”
“God, no! If he knew he wouldn’t go anywhere near it. It’s a legend among the airmen and they’re all a little afraid of it. A few claim to have seen it but the companies play it down in case it’s bad for business.”
Pam knew one who was not afraid. “Rafael has seen it, and so has his father.” When had he stopped being Drake in her mind and become Rafael?
“I know, but you mustn’t say anything to him. He can’t be bribed like Traske and he takes his duty seriously. He’d probably try to stop us.”
“Maybe not this time,” Pam said. Perhaps she ought to tell him, for his father’s sake if nothing else. Keeping it secret seemed somehow dishonest, as if she was betraying his trust. She scoffed at her foolishness. She owed him nothing. “I guess it’s safest to keep quiet,” Pam heard herself say. “But he’s bound to realise the ship’s off course sooner or later.”
“Traske will wait until the last possible moment and pick a time when he’s off duty. Even Rafael needs to sleep, and he has you on his mind. You have to do what you can to keep him focused on that and not our plan.”
Pam swallowed. “Our plan?”
“You want to get back as much as I do, don’t you?” The blonde gave her feline smile. “And I don’t think you’ll find it a hardship to fuck Rafael to help us do it.”
To Pam’s embarrassment Persephone was right on both counts, which was why her smarting sex managed a tickle when she remembered Rafael’s cock thrusting into it.
“Okay, I’ll do what I can,” she said.
“You’ve already done the most important thing by telling me where to look. Now we’ve got a real chance of getting out of here.”
“You really believe that?” It seemed to Pam the odds were still heavily against them.
“Yes.” The blonde’s eyes glistened with unshed tears. “I have to. The alternative is too horrible to think about. I’m the richest woman in the world. I don’t want to give up all that money, or the power either, but I can’t be just another slave girl!” She clasped Pam’s shoulder. “We will get away. All that black thing has to do is show up and we’ll be there ready for it, side by side, and before we know it we’ll be back where we belong.”
Pam flinched. “Ow! Watch my tits, for heaven’s sake.”
Persephone gave her some of her own salve. It was not the smart and throb of her breasts that kept Pam awake when she returned to the slave quarters. Since the first moment she had arrived she had wanted nothing but to escape this dreadful place. She was never likely to have a better chance. So why did the prospect of having her desperate hope fulfilled cause her far more doubt than it did excitement?
*
Daisy’s face was grim and streaked with tears when she returned to her place beside Pam at the saloon’s bar.
“God, Miss Peake’s in a real mood this trip! My tits are on fire.” She looked up from examining the vivid red blaze of welts on her big breasts to glance at the wall clock. “Thank heaven the shift’s nearly over and I’ll be able to get some cream on them soon.”
“I’ve got the good stuff,” Pam told her. “I’ll share it when we’re back in quarters.” Persephone seemed determined to make the most of the time she had left. She had used another girl after Pam had left her the night before, and had already had Daisy that day, though it was not yet mid-afternoon. The American girl’s belly fluttered. Her sleep had been restless, interrupted by the thought that had crept into her head every time she had tried to relax. She ought to tell Rafael about Persephone’s intentions. He was looking for the blackness too, to restore his father’s reputation and self-respect. He had a right to know and to see the truth of its existence first hand. But for that they only needed to get close to it. What if his duty to passengers and crew stopped them from getting close enough for her to be transported home? Trust her, he had said, but he was a man, and a man too much like Rick. She could not do it.
“Report to the First Lieutenant’s office,” the white-jacketed steward behind the bar told Pam when the relief shift arrived. With a regretful smile at Daisy she set off through the crew corridors, acutely aware of the tightening of the tips of her buzzing breasts and a tingle between her swollen sex lips. Pam hesitated at the door with her hand raised to knock. Was it only a week since she had first stood there? She had had so many incredible experiences in so short a time. She had known pain and pleasure, cruelty and kindness, and been racked by so many of the emotions she had thought were buried deep enough to never surface again. Pam swallowed hard and knocked.
Rafael stood looking out of the window. He turned and his smile started her belly melting.
“We’re making good time,” he said, eyeing the dark-red marks on her breasts. “Flying to London’s always quicker. The prevailing winds are with us. You won’t have to put up with Persephone for quite so long as on your last trip. I didn’t expect caning her would make any difference.” He moved around the desk and sat on its edge.
Pam straightened her back and winced as her breasts jiggled. “Yes, Sir.”
“No need to be so formal,” Rafael said. “Come closer.” He drew her between his knees the moment she came within reach. He bowed his head and softly kissed her lips and then the swells of each breast above her erect nipples. She shivered. He smiled and smoothed his thumbs over the hollows of her belly near her hips. “I can’t stop them using you on the voyage, sweetheart, but Persephone’s not the only one with influence at head office. I’m going to see this trip is your last. You’re going to be my slave girl in future… mine and no one else’s.
Pam’s gut lurched as his smile broadened to a grin. “No!” She backed away until her bruised bottom met the wall. “Oh God, no!”
Chapter Thirteen
“I don’t want to be a slave,” Pam said. “Not yours or anybody’s. I told you what my world is like. How could you think…?”
“We’re not in your world. We’re in mine.” Rafael’s grin had vanished. He rose to his feet. “I’ve never owned a slave before. I’ve never met one I wanted, not the way…. I thought you…. That is, I hoped….” The line of his jaw hardened and he looked at her with that expression that always sent a thrill of fear coursing through her and made her heart beat faster. He pointed to the floor at his feet. “Get back here.”
&nb
sp; Feeling hollow inside, Pam obeyed. She had made a stupid mistake. All she need have done was pretend she was pleased by what he had said. In a few hours or days it might not have mattered. But his words had shocked her so much she had spoken without thinking. Her gut churned. That was untrue. His words had not shocked her. What had, was her reaction to them. She had been pleased by what he had said. God, what had happened to her?
“I thought you were different,” he said. “I liked your courage and I thought you had begun to trust me.” He flinched as if she had slapped him. “And I trusted you. You told me you’re from a different world and I believed you. What am I supposed to believe now? That you want to spend your life serving passengers in any way they decide they want you? Maybe you want to go back to Persephone. Is that it? Has she turned you into one of her Sapphics?”
“No! Please, I didn’t mean…. You took me by surprise. Really I….” Pam faltered into silence. She had a pain in her chest like the one she had felt the day she had walked into her apartment and found Rick with her best friend. Images filled her mind, not of Rick but of Rafael. She would tell him the truth. She was pleased that he wanted her. Because she wanted him too! But that was madness. That was the Venus Dust. She opened her mouth but no words came.
“Be silent,” he warned, his voice a menacing growl, and she closed it again. “That way you looked at me. The way you responded when we….” He shook his head and his smile was a bitter twisting of his lips as he reached into the corner behind his desk.
“Oh, Lord, no!”
“I really thought you’d be pleased,” he said, as if she had not spoken, “or at least grateful. I was even fool enough to think it might be what you wanted. I guess I deserve it for letting you get to me.” He laid the hazel rod aside and began removing his frock coat. “Get your ass over the desk.”
“Please, you don’t understand,” Pam said, staring horrified at the hard, inflexible wood.
“You’ve told me that before. It may have been true then but I understand perfectly now. You forget that it’s not a slave girl’s place to refuse. I’m going to remind you why.” Tossing his coat aside he smacked his left hand onto the raw welts on her breasts.
“Ow! Ooh!” She clutched her tits and immediately regretted it as her pain increased.
“Desk,” he barked.
With a despairing sob she bent and his hand on her back pushed her further, flattening her flogged breasts to its unyielding surface.
“Grip the edge, and don’t let it go unless I say so.”
Heart racing, Pam curled her fingers over the wood. The weals the caning at the hotel had carved into her buttocks had barely faded and still ached. She winced as Rafael tapped the length of hazel on her rear cheeks. Their skin was stretched taut by her bent position. This was going to hurt.
“Legs closer together. Lift your ass more.”
“Please,” she said hoarsely, and a shiver ran through her at the commanding tone in his voice as she pressed her thighs tightly together. Pam heard the whoosh of displaced air and the heavy splat of the rod striking flesh. Pain exploded across her upturned buttocks. A second blow landed while she was still crying out from the first, its force rocking her body forwards and heightening the throb of her breasts. Their hurt was nothing compared to the blaze of her bottom and the wicked torment that flared deeper in their already bruised muscles. Pam tightened her grip, fighting the need to leap up and run from the hazel’s savage bite. God alone knew what Rafael would do if she disobeyed his order. His fury was greater than when he had caned Persephone. Why did it matter so much to him?
The thought ended with another fierce crack and the rod sinking hard and deep into her yielding flesh, stinging and thudding and vibrating through her innards. Pam had seen enough punishments to picture her buttocks indenting under the stiff wood and the sudden blossoming of scarlet on their pale skin as they bounced back to receive another stroke. Her sex tickled. Her tense, tight belly fluttered madly. More torment scorched her rear cheeks. More vibrations from the impacts sent tremors teasing through her unruly pussy. Pam remembered Rafael when he had flogged Persephone, his teeth unconsciously bared in snarling satisfaction, hard muscles rippling with each blow he had meted out while his rigid cock reared arrogant and unashamed before his belly.
Pam’s buttocks flamed again. She cried her pain and dew bathed her sex. What was she doing betraying herself? Rafael was just like Rick – selfish, unfeeling, uncompromising and cruel. The rod seared her and she squirmed and clung to the edge of the desk. Her knuckles were white. He was the man his world had made him. He would never be anything else, could never be anything else. Her breasts ached and her buttocks burned and stung and throbbed. And her pussy rippled wildly.
The hard, resilient wood smacked down again and in growing panic Pam heard a note of pleasure in her pained cry. The rod’s bite was agony. But it was nice agony. Desire as well as fear filled Pam’s belly, passion as well as pain clouded her mind. The vicious strokes, and even more her awareness of who was delivering them, were stripping away her civilised veneer, her long-nurtured self-control; all care for dignity and pride. Soon nothing would remain but her overwhelming arousal and the primeval need for its fulfilment. How may blows had she taken – fifteen, twenty? How many more could she take? She recoiled from the answer – as many as Rafael chose to give her as long as his marvellous cock filled her when it was done.
“No!” Pam let go her hold, dodged the downswing of the rod and dashed to the far side of the desk. “No, I won’t let you treat me this way. I’m not going to be flogged and fucked whenever it suits you.”
Rafael let the rod fall and shot out a long arm. The fire in her bottom flared as he dragged her close. “Yes you are, slave,” he said through clenched teeth. “I’ll buy you whether you want it or not. And I’ll flog and fuck you every day if it pleases me. I want you for my own and nothing’s going to stop me having you.” He unbuttoned his trousers.
Pam could not break the iron grip around her waist. She fought as he exposed his thick shaft and her sex defied her and quivered with a fierce urgency. “No, you bastard! I won’t be used like an object.”
He wrestled her backwards until the backs of her thighs met the desk. “You’ll be used any way I say. You’ll not deny me what you gave Persephone and that damned Count.”
“But you didn’t give me a choice.”
“And I’m not giving you one now, either.” Rafael pushed her down with her back to the desk and held her there with a hand on her belly. Pam wriggled and kicked. Dodging her flailing feet he stepped between her legs and more by accident than design his hard cock plunged into her dew-soaked sheath.
Pain and pleasure blossomed and became one. He was not like Rick. He was far, far better. Pam writhed in a tremendous orgasm. Rafael lifted her thighs, wrapping a forearm around each and thrusting hard into her spasming pussy. His belly slapping her savaged buttocks, every impact of his groin on her bruised labia and back and forth motion of her red-striped breasts were sheer torture. Yet his shaft set her sex rippling madly, quickening its contractions until it convulsed once more in a stunning climax. Another followed almost at once and then another until her mind was a whirl of impossible delight that stole her breath away and very nearly her senses too. She was drowning in pleasure and pain, torment and passion, the sensations mingling and joining into indescribable and overpowering ecstasy. And then Rafael came.
His wild, breathtaking thrusts drove Pam to such heights that her melting body and reeling brain could take no more. Consciousness slipped away, yet she was still climaxing when her vision cleared and she found herself looking into his face inches above hers. His rasping breath was hot on her cheeks and his hips were jerking in the final paroxysms of his climax. He did not kiss her or whisper tender words. Every nerve shrieked as he pulled Pam off the desk. She sank onto knees too weak to hold her upright. Rafael pointed his half-hard cock at her lips. It shone with Pam’s spilled juices and his come.
“
Clean it,” he said, breathing hard.
Trembling with reaction, her pussy shimmering in the aftermath of orgasm, Pam licked the come and her own ripeness from Rafael’s shaft. The effect was immediate and dramatic. The flesh began to swell. Pam felt an irresistible urge to take it into her mouth, to feel and taste its power, demanding, dominating. Her belly shrank and she cringed inwardly as she bobbed her head and revelled in the broad cock sliding between her lips. What had happened to the self-reliant, independent young woman she thought she had made of herself in the years since Rick? What was it about Rafael Drake that made her want to please him in every way imaginable and at the same time take such pleasure from doing it?
It was the Venus Dust. How could she have forgotten the awful, insidious drug with which Persephone seemed to have been constantly plying her? That was what had stolen away all logic and sense, all modesty, restraint and shame. The knowledge made no difference. With trembling contractions still running the length of her sheath Pam sucked Rafael’s cock eagerly. In far less time than she had imagined possible he gave a long, groaning sigh and a sudden lunge of his hips. Warm, salty fluid surged into her mouth. She let it pool at the back of her throat and continued drawing on his hard, twitching baton, revelling in its strength and potency. A glow of immense satisfaction filled her, even more intense than the throb and scorch of her ravaged body. Pam curled her fingers round the source of her pleasure, working them to urge the last drops of semen into a shiny pearl at its tip. Pursing her lips around it she drew the sticky fluid onto her tongue, savouring the flavour of Rafael’s strength, the essence of his manhood. With a shiver of delight she tilted her head back and swallowed.
Pam’s heart swelled with emotion, as if he had not just flogged her mercilessly and the pain, and the pleasure too, would not be scorching and flaring for hours to come. Her eyes filled with tears. The feelings were a sham. Her happiness faded and with it her passion. They were not real, only the creation of the chemicals pulsing through her bloodstream. She looked up and her pain was more than physical. Rafael had finished buttoning his trousers and was putting on his coat. His aloof, impersonal expression was on his face and a distant look in his eyes as he met her gaze. His lips twisted, more a grimace than a smile. He reached one hand towards her, then let it fall to his side.
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