by Raven Dark
When I opened my eyes, I knew Hawk was watching me. I could feel a pull from his amber eyes, even before I snuck a look at him. Next thing I knew, our gazes were locked.
The water covered my breasts, hiding my body, so his gaze confused me. If it wasn’t my nakedness causing him to look at me like that, what was it?
“There you two are. Been looking for you all over the fucking place.” Pretty Boy’s voice came from inside the tunnel at Hawk’s back. Hawk blinked and crossed his arms in his customary stance, once more the stoic guardian.
Pretty Boy joined Hawk on the top step to the pool and searched the water. When his blue eyes met mine, heat and embarrassment infused my veins. His lips turned up into a possessive smile that made my toes curl into the sand.
“There’s my princess. Come here and give your master a kiss.”
Kiss him, in front of Hawk? A mix of nervousness and arousal stirred in me, knowing Hawk would be watching.
I waded to the steps, walking up them, out of water. Under Pretty Boy’s blue-fire stare, my nipples turned hard as rocks. I held my head high, willing my movements to remain strong and unafraid.
“Fuck, Hawk. Look at her. You ever seen anything so beautiful?”
I glanced over at Hawk, standing by his friend. The dark-haired man’s eyes burned with lust. Quickly, I turned back to Pretty Boy. I placed my wet hands on my new master’s chest and reached up on tip-toe to kiss his lips.
The moment I pressed my body against his, Pretty Boy made a deep approving sound in his throat. His seized my butt cheeks and hauled me against him.
Not expecting his aggression, I squealed. He fisted my wet hair and tugged my face up until I had no choice to stare into his eyes.
“How long have you been here, Hawk? Did she have time to wash up?” The whole time he spoke, his gaze took in my eyes, my wet lashes, then fixated on what seemed to be his favorite part, my lips.
“Not long, brother. We pretty much just got here.” He almost sounded disappointed that he hadn’t had a chance to do more than watch me.
“Why don’t you check to see if she’s clean enough?” He nodded to me.
Hawk’s mouth turned down, but I couldn’t have said what he was thinking, especially when I swore I saw a flicker of amusement under the disapproval in his eyes. Did I want him to take what Pretty Boy was offering?
But he clasped his hands behind his back, as if to restrain himself and became like a statue, his face unreadable now. Never had a man looked as stoic and unreadable as him.
“Awe come on, Hawk.” Pretty Boy elbowed him. “You can’t be Mr. Discipline all the time. Live a little.”
A hint of a smile touched Hawk’s perfect lips. He prowled in behind me. “Don’t think this means I’ve forgiven you for bringing her here. I meant what I said, it’s still a mistake.”
I gasped when his hand reached between my legs.
“Sure, pal. Spread those legs for him, Princess. We have a big night ahead of us tonight. Hawk’s going to make sure you’re all nice and clean.”
Hawk chuckled behind me, but I only half registered it because Pretty Boy chose that moment to capture my mouth with his. His tongue plundered, thrusting against mine. My head swam. His teeth nipped the tip of my tongue hard enough that I whimpered.
I felt water splash onto my bottom, then pool into Hawk’s hand between my legs. In languid motions his fingers circled, exploring every crevice, applying fresh water every so often. The contrast of the heat of his touch and the cool of the water was too much. His fingers sped up until I was rocking into his touch. I mewled into Pretty Boy’s mouth as an orgasm hit me. He growled in response.
Pretty Boy released his hold on my hair. Hawk ran his fingers through the wet locks and his mouth left a hot trail on my shoulder.
“If I didn’t have to get back to work, you wouldn’t get out of here without me coming inside that perfect pussy of yours, Kitten.” His voice was low and soft in my ear, letting me know I belonged to him just as much as I did to Pretty Boy and Steel.
I wanted to be horrified, but my sex clenched. I gave Pretty Boy a confused look.
“Oh, didn’t we tell you, Princess? What’s mine and Steel’s is Hawk’s. It’s always been that way.”
Well, he had said last night that he, Steel, and anyone else they chose would own me. Apparently, that included Hawk.
Hawk went back up to the step where Pretty Boy stood and handed me the towel he’d given me before coming to the pool.
What had just happened? How had my body betrayed me again so easily? At the smirk on Pretty Boy’s face, my cheeks burned.
“I’ll take over now, Hawk. I’ll see you at the club tonight. Tell Hawk thank you, princess.”
I looked over his shoulder toward Hawk, who stopped at the mouth of the cave to look at me, his eyes expectant.
“Thank you, sir.”
“He’s your master every bit as much as me now. What do you say?”
I lowered my eyes, something dark and unpleasant unfurling in my belly Something deeper than the slash of dislike for Pretty Boy I felt right then. Three masters? This was wrong. There were men who shared a pleasure slave; in fact, with women being born one to every ten already rare births, one woman for up to four men was normal in most zones, but the rules and the number of men were usually clearly laid out at the start. How many more men would I call master by the end of the night? The week?
“Thank you, Master,” I said sullenly.
Amusement sparkled in Hawk’s eyes. He clapped Pretty Boy on the shoulder. “I’m looking forward to seeing how much of me that body of hers can take.”
He disappeared into the dim tunnel, leaving me alone with Pretty Boy.
Trepidation twisted my insides, too strong to ignore. I opened my mouth twice, only to close it both times.
“You want to say something, slave?” His tone dared me to challenge him.
I licked my lips. “How…how many men will have me?” Whatever his answer, I wouldn’t be able to prevent him from seeing it through.
Pretty Boy’s smirk was a wicked. “As many as we choose.”
When my throat worked, he ran the pad of his thumb over my bottom lip. He put his face so close to mine, I could feel the heat of his mouth on my skin.
“You should know, Hawk has some…peculiar needs. You’d do well to prepare yourself for a hell of a night when he chooses to fulfill them.”
My thoughts raced, my heart speeding up as I tried to imagine what Hawk might expect of me when the time came.
“Get dressed,” Pretty Boy ordered. A swat on my behind snapped me out of my thoughts. “I only have a short time before I have to get back to work.”
Once I was dressed, I used the towel to tie up my clothes and the hygiene bag into a bundle. Pretty Boy led me back through the tunnel Hawk had used and up one of the many walks that zigzagged toward the top of the cliff.
My thoughts were so caught up in what had just happened back at the pool that I almost fell twice. Did I want to even know what Hawk would do to me later?
Chapter 5
Bitter
A few minutes from the pool, Pretty Boy led me to another much smaller pool surrounded by a bed of the greenest grass I’d ever seen. Two men in standard leather cuts guarded the entranceway. I wondered what they were guarding, until we stepped further out onto the green.
A group of people were gathered around the pool, most kneeling in the grass over the side, scrubbing clothes on washboards.
My jaw dropped. Every one of them was female. Some were dressed in frocks like I wore, pastel-colored robes, or some other type of clothing that somehow marked them for slaves.
Women. I’d never seen so many females in one place before. I counted them out with my finger, eight in all, and the two I’d seen in the main clubhouse when I’d first got here weren’t even present. The women talked animatedly to each other while they worked and shared cups of detergent, filling the space with a delightful low hum of chatter.
&n
bsp; “Wow,” I blurted.
Every face lifted, heads turning to me.
The last thing I’d wanted to do was draw attention to myself, but one could hardly blame me for my shock. Since the end of the Old World, brought about by the Virus that nearly destroyed us, children of any kind were rare, carried to term fewer than one time in five. The Virus had wreaked havoc on reproduction, until parents seldom managed to conceive at all. Of those children that survived, only one out of ten were female. There were zones that had no women at all, forcing men to travel miles to find one, so for any area to own eight women was all but unheard of.
How many of the women here were stolen like me?
“Gretl, where’s Cherry?” Pretty Boy called, drawing my attention to him.
A tiny old woman with a lived-in face lifted her head, then nodded toward a cave entrance across the long stretch of grass behind her. “Cherry!” she yelled.
A young woman poked her head out of the entranceway. Her thick mane of dark red hair shone like a rusty-colored halo in the sunlight.
“Cherry, a new acquisition for you to show around,” Pretty Boy said.
Cherry wiped her hands on her apron and strode over to us, shielding her eyes from the sun. Her finely-plucked brows shot up when she looked me over, drawing attention to her stunning green eyes, as bright as any of the emeralds that twinkled in these caves.
“The Violet. This is the one you and Steel stole, isn’t it?”
“See that she learns how things are done here. I want her ready for the barbecue tonight. And see that she stays out of trouble.”
Cherry waved for me to join her with a nod at Pretty Boy’s her orders, her pretty pink lips pressed together in an unwelcoming line.
Her interaction with Pretty Boy confused me. She didn’t speak to him like an equal precisely, but she’d spoken more freely with him than a normal slave. There was something more at play here, but what was it?
Before I could follow Cherry, Pretty Boy trapped my chin between his thumb and fingers. “Behave yourself and don’t give Cherry a hard time.”
“Yes, Master.”
“Give me a kiss.”
I lifted my face, letting his mouth mate with mine. I couldn’t have explained why, but kissing him so openly in front of all the women made me painfully nervous. Perhaps he picked up on it, and that’s why he let the kiss linger before finally lifting his head. By the time he pulled back, every eye was on me again.
Pretty Boy grabbed my bundle from me. “I’ll drop this off in my room. Get gone.” He slapped my backside and departed.
When he was gone, I took one last look at the women and then followed Cherry across the grass toward the cave she’d come out of. Cherry looked like the only woman close to my age; the others looked like grandmothers.
“So, you’re the Violet.” Cherry said the name with a brittle edge.
Inwardly, I sighed. I was all too accustomed to this dislike.
“Don’t think you’ll be taking over here any time soon. Other clans think letting Violets take charge is par for the course, but that’s not how things work in the Grotto.”
Oh, Light. This wasn’t going well at all. I mulled over the best way to reply. If I showed I was cooperative and ready work…
“I’m looking forward to meeting everyone. Where do we go first?”
She gave a derisive laugh. “You’re one of those.”
“One of what?”
But she didn’t elaborate. Instead, she led me to the tunnel entrance she’d been standing by before. Two guards flanked the entrance.
“This is the slave quarters, where a lot of the slaves stay during off-time.” We walked down the long tunnel lit with the same torchlight as all the others I’d seen.
“Are the rumors true? Two of the guys have already claimed you as theirs?” she asked.
My stomach churned, hearing the false shock in her tone. I wasn’t about to make it worse by telling her that Hawk had also promised to claim me. Silent, I shrugged.
One of the torches on the tunnel wall had burned out and she used another to light it while she talked. “Typical. You’re here one day, and you’re already on your way to having a damn harem.”
At a loss for what to say, I just pressed my lips together and kept pace as she walked on. So far, she hadn’t said anything most slaves wouldn’t kill to say to a Violet, given the chance. The accusation in her voice when she spoke of the men shouldn’t have stung, but it did. Especially when she made it sound like I’d taken them as a badge of honor.
“In the morning, the domestic slaves, like the women you saw at the washing hole, are busy with their own personal chores, so you won’t be brought to us until noon or so. I’ll expect you to come ready to work and see you diving into your assigned tasks without my having to tell you.”
“What are—”
“When the men aren’t out on assignment, they’re working in the mines until dinner time, so you’ll help out around here until they come home.”
“The mines—?”
But she put up her hand. Her walk remained swift, enough that I was suddenly glad Damien had insisted I be put through so many exercises every day.
“You need something, you ask one of the senior slaves. Don’t touch things that don’t belong to you, don’t speak to the men without permission. Stay away from the main clubhouse until invited. The medical quarters, the storage areas, and the mines are off limits to slaves unless your master, or Sheriff, says otherwise. You get one warning. Failing that, you’ll be disciplined. Clear?”
I wanted to believe she’d have given the same speech to every other new slave who ended up here, but the reality was, Violets were often automatically mistrusted.
Head spinning, wishing I could somehow make this woman trust me, I settled for a nod. “I understand, Cherry. I won’t get in the way.”
She stopped, gave me a look of amusement, shook her head, and walked on.
Over the next few minutes, she showed me all the important rooms I’d be using while I was working here, including a bathing area, a shared dressing room, a sewing room, a cooking area, a common area for the slaves here, and two rooms where the chamber pots were kept. Functional and spacious, the rooms weren’t as opulent as those used by the men, but they were far from low-class. There was also a large series of rooms used by the women for sleeping, for those whose masters no longer desired them in bed.
Would I end up with a bedroom in this area in twenty or thirty years?
Cherry walked me back down the tunnel that led out to the laundry hole. “Might as well start getting those pampered little hands dirty now,” she said with a pointed glance at my well-manicured hands before she picked up a full basket of laundry and pushed it into my arms.
I adjusted easily to its weight, setting the basket on one hip, then waited to be led out to work.
She blinked at me as if I’d grown another head. “Wow. You Violets are something else.”
I suppressed a sigh and followed her out, trying desperately to work out what I kept doing wrong.
One thing was clear; Cherry hated me, and I had no idea what to do about it.
The rest of the day crawled by.
For the most part, no one said a word to me, for which I was grateful, if they were anything like Cherry. I’d have to figure out how to make the situation with her better, but I’d worry about that when I didn’t have so many other things to deal with. Besides, she seemed content to leave me alone if I stayed out of her way.
Like the other women in this part of the Grotto, I spent the day washing and hanging laundry to dry on the many outdoor lines, cleaning the common areas that weren’t out of bounds to slaves, mending, and doing some of the lighter yard work. A lot of the yard work that required machinery only the men were allowed to perform.
Most of the work was mindless, allowing me plenty of time to dwell on things I’d rather not think about. Hawk and his plans for me, what Pretty Boy and Steel might decide lay ahead of me that nigh
t, not to mention this barbeque that would be happening that night.
I’d heard about gatherings like road warriors had—giant parties where food roasted on spits, drink flowed freely, and women were passed around like fine wine. The parties sounded much wilder than anything men of Damien’s ilk would allow. I couldn’t decide if I was intrigued or frightened of what was coming.
By the time Cherry escorted me to the dressing room to prepare for the barbeque, the sun had started to sink below the high cliffs. In the distance, a whistle blew, one of those loud ones some zones used at quitting time.
“All right, the barbeque will start in about an hour,” Cherry called behind me as I took the last bed sheet off the clothing line. “We have an hour to get you ready. Come with me.”
I tossed the sheet into the basket and picked it up, hurrying across the grass to her. She pointed for me to set the basket down on a shelf near the cave entrance and led me through the maze of slave quarters until we reached the separate bathing area she’d shown me earlier.
“It’s nothing like the fancy, shmancy bathing area your men took you to earlier, is it?” She waved for me to strip and get in.
My men? I ignored the jibe and bathed quickly.
She wasn’t wrong about the size. Though still gorgeous, with two cascades of water spilling into the basin from cracks in the stone wall, it was smaller than the other, fitting four people comfortably.
Cherry stripped and joined me, walking down the four steps to the communal bath with a grace no amount of elite training would ever allow me. She was beautiful, with enviable, generous hips and plump breasts. A thatch of russet hair covered her center.