Pam-Ann

by Lindsey Brooks

  “This is about your father and what the companies did to him,” Traske accused.

  “Maybe it was,” Rafael said, and his dark gaze did not waver from Pam’s. “Now it’s about doing what’s right for someone I care about very much.” His lips formed the ghost of a smile.

  Pam’s belly fluttered. He had compromised his duty for her sake and sacrificed his career at the same time. She was right. He was a better man than Rick. He was a man she could….

  “I won’t let you kill us all.” Traske lunged.

  Drake released the wheel, sidestepped and let the Commodore rush past him. Eve moved like lightning and somehow Traske was sprawled on the deck and staring up into the muzzle of her pistol.

  “You took the lady’s money,” Drake said. “You’ll take the consequences too.”

  “Rafael, how did you know…?” Persephone began.

  “You said yourself Milly will do anything to please me.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I know you’re not doing it for me, but thank you just the same.”

  “I don’t know who you are but I finally figured out who you’re not. It explains why you changed so much. When I discovered we were way off course and you were on the bridge it wasn’t too hard to guess what you were up to. I’d already figured out why you might be anxious to leave.”

  “I can’t be a slave,” the blonde said. “I couldn’t stand it after being so rich.” Hope and joy shone in her eyes. “And now I don’t have to.”

  “Pity, I think you have the makings of a good slave, and you certainly deserve it. But I’d like to have the real Persephone back where she belongs. I hope everything works out the way you want it to.” A thin smile played over Rafael’s lips and he looked at Pam as he took the helm again. “For both of you. Now, let’s find that thing and get you on your way.”

  “No need,” Pam said hoarsely. “It’s found us.” The blackness was swelling ominously. She forced herself to swallow and was glad Persephone still held her hand, even if the blonde’s was shaking. Pam dragged her gaze away and looked back. Rafael gripped the wheel, white-knuckled and with grim determination etched into his face. He met her eye and gave a short nod. “Good luck, sweetheart. I wish….” His crooked smile stabbed her heart. “I won’t forget you. I could never do that.”

  “Rafael, I’m not….”

  “Do you trust me?”

  Pam looked deep into his eyes. “Yes,” she said breathlessly.

  “Then believe I’m doing what’s best for you.” He nodded, his smile still showing the regret she was suddenly feeling too. He looked beyond her, through the window. Pam turned away with tears prickling her eyes.

  “It’s growing,” Eve said. “God, it hurts to look at it.” Her forgotten pistol no longer pointed at Traske.

  “You’ll kill us all, Drake,” he said. “You damned fool, you’ll kill us all!”

  “Then you’ll die a rich man. It’s time you learned about trust, Commodore, and maybe love too, the way I have.”

  Just as it had the first time, the blackness blotted out the sky. There was no jarring as there had been on the plane, only a gentle vibration that prickled over Pam’s skin and made the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Only then did she realise she was naked and feel again the throb of breasts and buttocks. Some people in her world were in for a big surprise.

  “Soon now,” she said, heart pounding. Beside her Persephone sucked in a ragged breath.

  “Oh, God, let it work! Let us find ourselves on a strato-jet instead of this airship.”

  “Strato-jet?” The mad fluttering in Pam’s belly increased.

  “Oh, I never thought I would ever long so much to see Croydon Airport again in all my life,” the blonde said, voice quavering.

  “Croydon?” Pam’s anxiousness was no longer only about the blackness. “But they haven’t used Croydon since World War Two.”

  “World War what?” Persephone asked distractedly, gaze fixed on the black phenomenon hovering ominously beyond the window.

  “Oh my God!” Pam said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Persephone, if there’s one time I think I need your Venus Dust, this is it,” Pam said hoarsely, head spinning with the awed realisation that the blonde was not from her world at all but another one entirely.

  Persephone gave a nervous giggle. “Oh, that. It’s just black pepper and baking soda. I give it to all my new girls. It never fails, but the effect is all in the mind. Oh, shit, here it comes!”

  The blackness was engulfing the nose of the airship almost too fast for the eye to follow. It would fill the bridge in seconds. Pam tore her gaze from the impossible darkness, her hand from Persephone’s, rushed to Rafael and flung her arms around him.

  “I don’t want to go. I want to stay with….” Her skin shivered hot and cold at the same time. Darkness surrounded her. She closed her eyes and waited with her heart in her mouth for the smothering breathlessness, the heaviness and weightlessness she had felt the first time. An arm encircled her waist and pulled her tightly against a hard-muscled body.

  Long, desperate, despairing seconds passed. It had been her all along. The emotions, the longings, the indescribable pleasure and pain, and yes, the love she had felt, had all been real. Only the Venus Dust had been false. And she had given it all up to return to the barren emptiness of her own world, with its aimless flying from one destination to another, its lonely nights in bland hotel rooms, its friendlessness and lovelessness and emptiness.

  “Are you okay?”

  Pam opened her eyes and looked into a familiar face. It smiled at her. Her breasts were aching from hugging someone so tightly.

  “C… Captain Todd?”

  He laughed softly. “We’ve had this conversation before, sweetheart.”

  She felt the wool of a frockcoat under her hands and its brass buttons pressing into her flesh. “Rafael! It is you!” Heedless of her pain she hugged him even tighter, her heart swelling with joy. “Oh, thank God! But why am I still here?”

  He eased himself from her grasp and brushed his lips over hers. “I’ve no idea, but no one could be happier about it than I am.”

  “Except me,” Pam said, and tears brimmed her eyelids.

  “Mister Talbot, take the wheel.” Rafael offered a hand to Traske who had risen to his knees. “We need to talk,” he said, and the Commodore nodded and let him help him to his feet.

  “Mister Drake.” Eve nodded towards the trembling figure that stood staring out of the window at where the blackness had been.

  “Persephone?” Drake asked.

  The girl turned, staring wide-eyed around the bridge and at the people watching her. Her lower lip was trembling. She looked identical to Persephone, except that she was naked but for a tiny, semi-circular piece of leather suspended from a thong around her hips.

  “Persephone?” Drake repeated uncertainly. The girl hurried to kneel at his feet and bowed her head.

  “My Lord, wh… what’s happened? Where are we?”

  *

  “So the patents for the Spanish and Austrian Empires are in place, which only leaves the Russians,” Alex Riley, formerly chief engineer of the Empire’s Triumph said. “I’ve got men working on it but you know the Czarist bureaucracy moves slowly, and takes cash to keep its wheels turning.” He held his glass out to one of the slave girls he had brought with him. “More ice, Sue.”

  As the girl went to the cocktail bar, Pam watched her bottom wiggle and felt a twinge of envy. It was striped red from a recent caning. Rafael had not caned her for over a week and then it had only been a half-dozen and not very hard. With distinctly mixed feelings, from her kneeling position beside him she glanced up at the man who made her call him ‘Master’, but he was looking at Riley.

  “I really appreciate you putting my name on those patent applications along with your own, Alex,” Rafael said. “It couldn’t have come at a better time.”

  “Hey, it was only right,” Riley replied, accepting his
drink from the slave. “If it wasn’t for your girl, there wouldn’t have been anything to patent and we wouldn’t be on the verge of making millions.”

  Pam felt a glow of pride and satisfaction. She liked being thought of as Rafael’s girl. A pang pricked her heart. She was less happy about being his slave girl.

  “But you said we’ve already made over five million dollars, and it hasn’t even been three months.”

  Riley grinned. “That’s only the beginning. I’ve got factory owners breaking down the doors of the New York office, begging for a piece of the action. And we owe it all to Pam and her skirt. The world can’t get enough zippers.” He raised his glass in her direction.

  Rafael smiled at her. “Here’s to Pam then,” he said, and raised his own glass. As far as most people were concerned he had changed her name when he had bought her.

  Despite the enormous mansion on the Southern Californian coast that Rafael had let her choose, and all the other luxuries, Pam still had trouble believing something as simple and mundane as a zipper could have made it all happen. Yet all she need do was look out from the vast lounge to the patio and swimming pool, and the gardens and estate beyond, to know that it was true.

  She had been worried for Rafael after the blackness had gone, and for herself too, afraid he would be arrested and that the Company might not let him buy her, but Traske had calmed down once his fear had passed. There had been no mutiny charges. The Empire’s Triumph had not been damaged, nor any of the crew or passengers hurt, except maybe Persephone. No one could be certain about that, but Pam was sure the blonde mistress was alive and… somewhere. In the last moments before the blackness had engulfed them, Pam had understood that Persephone, or Kathy Martin as she had formerly been, had never lived in the same world that she herself had been plucked from. Perhaps that helped explain the young woman’s wanton lust and needless cruelty. After talking to the identical-looking girl who had appeared on the airship’s bridge in Persephone’s place, Pam was also sure the blonde had not returned to Kathy Martin’s world.

  Those who had been on the bridge had agreed to say nothing about what had happened, and even after promising two million dollars to Talbot for his silence Traske had still had thirteen million reasons for wanting as few enquiries as possible to be made into his conduct, or into anyone else’s. They had kept their story simple. The airship had been driven off the normal route by strong crosswinds, just as had really happened on their outward trip. While correcting their course they had encountered the black phenomenon. No one at the Company had been surprised that the Commodore had given in to Persephone’s strange request for a private tour of the bridge. They all knew she frequently misused the influence her large shareholding in the Empire Star Line gave her. The new Persephone, who was no more the real one than her predecessor had been, had proved completely passive. Dressed in the old Persephone’s clothes she had accompanied Drake, Eve and the slave girls when they had disembarked in London, kept silent and done as she was told. The board of enquiry that had looked into the incident had not even bothered to call her, a mere woman, as a witness.

  Rafael had been right. The companies could not cover it up. The furore that had accompanied the stories the passengers had told the press after they had landed had spurred the enquiry to the speedy conclusion that, though there was no evidence the phenomenon was a danger to airships or people, it should be avoided by both. They had imposed a two hundred mile exclusion zone in the skies around the area where it had been encountered. Other than that, flights were continuing much as before and people were still booking passage on the Trans-Atlantic airships, despite the lurid and exaggerated accounts of what had happened, which continued to appear in some of the newspapers.

  Rafael seemed satisfied with the outcome. His father’s health had improved and the older Drake was now gaining fame and a certain notoriety by giving interviews to the press and popular public lectures about his own encounter with the phenomenon, much to the chagrin of the companies who were eager to have the affair forgotten as quickly as possible. With that objective clearly in mind, the directors of the Empire Star Line had not enquired too closely into the actions of Traske or his first lieutenant, and had willingly accepted the Commodore’s resignation after the board of enquiry had published its recommendations. Traske had immediately cashed Persephone’s cheque and unobtrusively left by sea for Australia.

  Rafael had also resigned, though he had not known then that he was soon to be a rich man. Even with his future uncertain, he had not hesitated to spend a considerable sum of money buying Pam.

  “Pam!” Rafael said sharply, jolting her from her reverie.

  “Excuse me, M… Master.” It was one of those times the word seemed to stick in her throat.

  “I was telling Alex about your latest idea. Stand up and show him.”

  She looked up self-consciously. Pam had a feeling she would never get used to being semi-naked most of the time. She still felt that strange mixture of absurd pride and gut-shrinking humiliation when she was bare-breasted in public, being led on her leash by her handsome Master. But Riley was different from the people she saw on the street or in stores and restaurants. He had been there in the beginning, helping strip her and discovering the zipper on her skirt. And Rafael had had to tell him the truth about where she and the zipper had come from. He had accepted it surprisingly calmly, but he now knew as well as Rafael did that women in her world were not chattels and did not expect to be treated as such. The knowledge increased her embarrassment as Pam got to her feet.

  “May I call the others?” she asked and, when Rafael nodded assent, summoned them. Daisy and Persephone entered the room, dressed in the same way that Pam was. She lined up with the two girls. Embarrassed, but also rather pleased, she watched Riley lean forward in his chair with obvious interest.

  “I see.” He licked his lips. “It does a similar job to a corset but with a lot less material.”

  “And in a very interesting way,” Rafael said, with a grin for Pam.

  “Take your loincloths off so I can see better,” Riley instructed.

  Rafael’s gaze met Pam’s and he gave a thin smile and a challenging quirk of one eyebrow. She ignored her belly’s fluttering. She dared not embarrass her Master by hesitating, let alone refusing to obey. That might get her the sort of punishment she most definitely did not want, though she had had precious little of any kind since the day Rafael had bought her. He had certainly not neglected her in other ways. She spent every night in his bed, but, apart from a few light punishments when she had deliberately overstepped the mark to provoke him, he had not beaten her the way she had expected him to. It was puzzling. At times, it was also intensely frustrating.

  Along with Daisy and Persephone, Pam let her covering fall and tried not to look at the pink tip of her clit peeping out from its folds. It was so often that way, that it felt almost normal now, like the constant background tingle of excitement and arousal in her sex and belly and brain. As the feeling grew, Pam avoided looking at Rafael but she knew he was staring as avidly as Riley at her latest ‘invention’.

  The engineer had the girls walk to the open doors to the patio and then return. He got up and eyed each of them in turn, Pam in white satin, Daisy in red and Persephone in black, with high-heels and silk stockings to match. There was no nylon in Pam’s new world.

  Riley grinned. “I can see the appeal,” he said, and his bulging trousers confirmed the statement.

  “Women like them too,” Pam said, forgetting to ask permission to speak. Her glance at him showed Rafael did not mind. He was relaxed about that except in company. “They make them feel… stimulated.” She giggled and looked away.

  “And they look very stimulating too,” Rafael said.

  Pam’s pussy prickled.

  “I know you,” Riley said to Daisy. “You were on the Empire’s Triumph.”

  “Yes, Master,” Daisy answered. Pam had had no difficulty persuading Rafael to buy her when the money from the zippe
r sales had begun to arrive.

  “And I remember Persephone, of course,” the engineer continued. “Your new life’s pretty different from the old one, eh? I hope you’re enjoying what you’ve got yourself into.” He was unaware she was not the girl he had known. The fewer who knew, the better.

  “Yes, Master!” The girl had been painfully meek to begin with. Only when it had dawned on her that she was not going to be flogged for looking up when someone spoke to her, or having to ask a question about the many things she did not understand, had she begun to come out of her shell. Pam had not yet managed to get much information out of her about where she came from but she was slowly gaining her confidence. She had discovered that the girl had been the lowest of the low in the slave hierarchy she had tried to describe. Pam already had plenty of reasons to be grateful the blackness had unaccountably taken Persephone and left her. The girl’s story had given her another.

  “What are you doing, Alex?” the most important reason asked.

  “I need to get on the telegraph to New York,” Riley said, scribbling in a small notebook he had taken from his pocket. “I’ll need to take those back with me so we can make patterns. What do you call them?”

  “It’s a garter belt,” Pam said, and he scribbled again.

  “And it isn’t going anywhere and neither are you,” Rafael added. “Don’t you have something else to take care of first?” He nodded at the tented front of the man’s pants. “You came here for a rest. Up to now all you’ve done is talk business, and you’ve never stopped working since the day you left the Company. You said yourself you’re a wealthy man. It’s time to relax and enjoy it.”

  Pam hid her smile by rubbing a finger on the tip of her nose. She was still getting used to Rafael’s new attitude. He had left the stern disciplinarian devoted to nothing but duty behind on the Empire’s Triumph. She was not complaining, since it meant they were frequently in one another’s company, but she did miss the discipline at times. At others she felt frustratingly confused, and that was not a feeling she could ever get used to.