“I might be able to see if they are there, if you let me examine him.”
“Examine? I don’t trust you, girl. I’m not sure I should let you do this.”
“Her? No one can get inside mechlings let alone understand this one.” Sassik laughed again with a few hiccups. Was he on one of the drugs the Scavs loved? “If she could, it...he, this JI...is only a huge military mech that could squash us all.”
Sawyer snorted. “No one can get inside – so she’s lying. Why’d you think to fool me on this? Besides, I know JI better than you, girl.”
And how was that, Ari wondered? They’d barely met.
“So, who’s crazy?” Sawyer levered her head up with his hand at her throat, and she had to slap her arms out straight, palms down, to take some weight off her neck. “Yeah. You’re the last person I should trust.”
He seemed so angry, snarling even.
The last? That and his actions shattered the stillness after the storm.
Good. She knew where she stood. Alone, as always.
An odd sound made her smirk when she figured out what it was. The mech was talking to itself.
“I think your mech has descended into insanity anyway, Sawyer.” Oh how she could taunt him by name and by tone. “I wouldn’t question him for you now in any case.”
“No?’ His eyebrow rose. “Is this insolence, Sassik? You seem the expert. Should I beat her ass?”
“Definitely. I think I should judge this from closer.” She heard him rise.
“You do that.”
Sawyer sat forward, holding her to his lap, and she had to grab at the floor to stop herself sliding down headfirst. Then he raised his hand.
Saying, “Don’t you dare,” while glaring was probably unwise, but she did it anyway. The mean set to his face made her wonder how far she could go without tipping this man into something she’d regret.
Or rather, regret more than she already had.
His first blow shocked the breath from her lungs.
No one had ever spanked her. By the time he’d done ten or fifteen smacks, her butt was no doubt glowing, and her anger had risen.
She’d been trying to help, had put herself out there with a suggestion even in this embarrassing situation, and he’d spanked her. It grated on her sense of self so much she was incandescent. She started to fight, to claw at his legs, to kick.
He ended her rebellion by throwing her onto the gray sofa, clipping her wrist and ankle cuffs together, and fucking her.
He’d pried apart her butt cheeks, hoisted her up a little and his cock had pushed in and was halfway inside her before she figured it out. The invasion made her gasp.
It was the most shocking way to end an argument. Fucking her in front of the other two, again, was more humiliating than spanking.
“Don’t do anything except take this, little bitch.”
Then she felt him disconnect the ankle cuffs. He spread her legs far wider than they’d been able to go before, and drove all the way in, flattening her.
It silenced her and took the fight out of her, to her transient dismay. She liked this far too much, being shoved down and screwed without regard for anything she might say. That he’d spanked her at first had only made her pussy feel even more sensitive. Every fraction of his cock’s architecture, width, length, and hardness, registered as he speared in and out, slamming into her butt, crushing her to the sofa.
Blind, entranced by sensations, she was almost inhaling the surface of the sofa.
Why had she never known how good sex could be?
She didn’t come – he was too rough, too fast, too interested in his own pleasure maybe – or in subduing her with sex.
So close to orgasm but never there. But she didn’t care.
Gods, she didn’t care.
Afterward, she could only lie, eyes shut, reveling in simply everything about the act of sex. The pain of the small hurts at her entrance and inside her only reminded her of every devastating stroke.
So completely wrong. Of all the men on the world to be fucked by, it was a man who had nothing in his mind except to advance himself and to find his sister.
“Done,” he whispered to her ear. He’d squatted by the sofa and now he added a last bite to her already bruised neck, below the leather collar. “Good to know how to make you quiet.”
Anger leaked back into her sex-sodden brain. How dare he. To be able to make her feel so incredible and then to belittle with as casual a gesture as a few words...
Ugh.
“Good that we’re moving out in the morning. You’ve turned this room into a swamp of sex. Next time remind me to bring a woman, or I’ll have to make do with Sassik’s ass.”
“I will put a knife in your ass if you try this.”
Dayne cackled. “See how good a friend Sassik is?”
Sawyer didn’t exactly answer Dayne. “I’ll have to find my clothes before morning. Can’t remember hers, where they are. If I find them, I’ll wipe my dick on them. Fuck. She nearly kicked my balls. She can go naked until someone hands me something.”
“Outside! I cut them off her. Your head was worse than I thought!”
“I had a girl tied up and at my feet. Easy to forget.” Sawyer sat next to her head and laid a hand on her shoulder.
“Your balls? She kicked you there?” Sassik was amused and had shifted to sitting on the sofa nearby on the other side of Sawyer. “You need to beat her more.”
“I need to beat your whole fucking world more. I find a giant robot that saw my sister hurt badly, months ago, I guess, and he’s lost the data. And this homicidal, crazy girl tries to tell me she can retrieve it or fix him.”
Being accused of lying was the least of the bad things that had happened to her, yet it hurt with a fire she simply could not explain.
No, she could. She grimaced. She’d wanted his approval.
She kind of, sort of, maybe, respected him.
Why, her brain howled at her. She still hadn’t figured that part out when her eyes closed and fatigue shut down her anxieties. Still cuffed, left alone again while the men drank and discussed the nastiest of things – the worst sex they’d had, the worst fight, the many ways to kill on this world or that – and with the drink in her stomach and no food...she meandered into that still time before sleep claims you. She needed to pee. The last words she heard were of Sawyer laughing about her stabbing him with a fork.
Chapter 14
The holes in his forearm were gone. The last time he’d seen them they’d been raw punctures with blood and serum leaking out. The forks here had gargantuan tines. Ari wouldn’t have healed them, and yet she was the only candidate. He rubbed his thumb over the spot. Nothing, not even a scar.
In his hand was the end of the light chain leash he’d attached to her collar. He didn’t trust her. He doubted she trusted him, but since he had the good end of the leash, that didn’t worry him. Zarr was being generous and had provided him with a pack, with spare clothes, canteen, knives, various essentials, and a few changes of clothes for his slave.
His.
When he looked at her that tight thrill arose. She couldn’t look more appealing naked.
He’d given her a silk-like wraparound garment with a short skirt that left most of the midriff bare while the top molded to her breasts like amorous plastic wrap. The circles of her areolas were visible if disguised. Impractical, perhaps, if they did more than walk through corridors of tilted skyscrapers. He’d find out once they hit the open how much protection they’d need from the elements.
The lighting from doors at the end of this wide corridor flared brightly and blew out his vision so he could discern nothing until he stepped through the wide doors. This was the first of the two clearings they had to traverse to get to these waik crystals.
He was no longer sure why he was following Zarr. To climb another rung up the ladder of superiority in this world? For the slave girls? To get his footing and learn how to survive? All of those. None of them got him any close
r to Fern, unless this JI had info tucked away that he didn’t know he had. Single-handedly invading a swathe vessel would be a death-wish mission.
Maybe he should aim to find this Osta, he of the legendary search for the DRAC missiles – now there was a leader with a goal that meshed with his.
In the meantime, he flicked the chain. Ari followed. She had poise, even as the underdog, or underbitch was more like it – her white hair was tangled, yet she must’ve combed it with her fingers. The clothes he’d given her concealed most of the parts of her he’d despoiled. Those moccasin-type shoes fit her feet poorly. There was a slave master who Sassik said provided for slaves, so he’d try him for more gear.
This little expedition had a few hundred participants and they were fanning out across this irregular grassed area, warily.
Whatever predators might be here, he hadn’t been briefed on those.
He had no weapon except for two knives. He’d leave the recon to others.
“Kneel.” He splayed his fingers, pleased when she obeyed. A satisfaction he’d never lose perhaps – controlling people, women, could be addictive.
Two or three football fields would fit inside this place. Buildings, crumpled, overgrown buildings with their sides opened up, surrounded the clearing. They reminded him of enormous multi-layered cakes, cakes with trees and vines hanging off the tiers. At least this world had mostly green plants. Chlorophyll had crossed over too. And leaves, he’d have been miffed if no leaves were on the trees. The grass near him seemed to naturally stop growing about calf level.
Ari had picked a stalk and was playing with it.
“Fingers,” he muttered. Startled she looked up. “You have too many free fingers. I’m getting you mittens.”
The O of her mouth made his dick twitch.
Let’s see how good she was at shooting rockets when she had no fingers. Some woman in among this lot could sew him something to fit her.
He coiled the small chain links around his hand while he thought. They were going to make camp here for a day, and maybe he could get someone to show him how to use one of their guns.
Between the jagged teeth of the highest stories of these decrepit buildings, the sky peeked and the sun ventured in with shafts of yellowish pink. Forty stories high, he estimated. One of the towers had collapsed and slid, crushing some tiers, while others remained intact. People must’ve worked in these, maybe played, had families.
Families. Though he was surrounded by Scavs, some of them paired off, with many of the men and women no doubt fucking each other, he just couldn’t see this as real...even after being here and suffering so much for so long. The barbarism on Aerthe would fit into a Conan movie.
One day he’d wake in a hospital bed at home.
He shook his head. This had to be real.
If it wasn’t real...holding the chain that led to a slave girl became excusable.
He went to one knee before her and studied her face a while before he brushed away hair from over her ear. Strands softly glided over fingers.
Pouting, she stared back.
“If I blindfold you,” he mused. “You can’t stare like that. Or if I beat you like Sassik wants me to. Her stare softened, and she lowered her eyes. “Are you real, Ari?”
“Of course I am.”
“Yellow and green eyes...not sure that computes.”
Her mouth twitched at the corner, and defiance suffused her expression, that delicious defiance that was an integral part of her.
“Keep your hands down.” He leaned in, angled his head to kiss her, pressing into her soft lips, tasting her. She let him; he’d swear she opened her mouth wider.
What a pity she’d done her thing again, and his cock was asleep.
On impulse, he lifted her skirt and inserted his hand between her legs, felt her there. She wore no underwear, so there was nothing between his fingers or his palm and her. A line of moisture already marked where her labia met. His forefinger found it, squeezed along, parting her lips.
“I can’t do this to a girl on my world, without her consent. But you, you’re mine.”
“I –”
“Not a question. Be quiet.”
At the command, tension hardened her muscles and her thighs moved to close.
“Uh-uh. No.”
Curious, he locked his hand about her throat, thumbing her neck and slowly pushing her head back further and further while his hand worked at her below.
Was that small noise she made one of pleasure? He pushed past her pussy lips and along, found her hole, slid his finger tip around and around, working in a little more, a little deeper, until he was fully in. Her mouth moved, and he felt her swallow, then the thrum of a breathy moan traveled her throat beneath his grip.
“Doing this is illegal where I come from. Maybe I should stay here, in my dream.”
Not a question either, really. Desire simmered despite her machinations.
Clinically, he fucked her slowly. People wandered past, a few stayed to watch, most moved on. His dick stayed down, but he was fascinated by her arousal anyway. He stopped a few times, let her come down from the high of a building climax then did it again.
He needed to figure out other ways to get past what she did. The drinks last night had possibly helped, but that was distasteful to him. Was it selfish or altruistic to want to foil her with some more satisfying method? Who the fuck knew. Didn’t matter.
He screwed his finger in half circles, and her wetness overflowed against his knuckles. The sounds of pistoning in and out of her reached him, so he fingerfucked her a little more forcefully.
With fingers still up there, he said, somewhat philosophically, “I’m not sure you’re really real sometimes, girl, but I am going to fuck you later anyway. One way or the other.”
When he stood and left her bereft of his touch, she collapsed, putting a hand out to the ground to steady herself.
“You’ll wear her out!” Dayne clapped his back. “They’ve cleared the area. Shot one creature, a lilo, I believe.”
His brain flip-flopped and he tried to decipher that word while wiping his fingers on his pants. Sometimes the sounds converted into English not Mekker, and everyone here spoke Mekker in some form. He’d always wondered what’d happened to the other languages. There must’ve been more before their big war.
Like fuck here wasn’t fuck in English but he automatically translated it.
Lilo...lilo. Was not meant to be a blow-up mattress, for sure.
Snake! A snakelike creature. His brain had delivered.
“Big one?” he asked.
“As long as you and me if stuck together, I was told. They like the buildings more, seek out the littler critters. The lake has been cleared too. You can throw your girl in to clean her if you want.”
The lake was a long, dark stretch of water off to the left of the middle of the clearing. Originally a man-made thing, he was informed, but now fed by water flowing down off the tiers. They assured him it was only people-height deep, and that nothing in there could eat a person...nibble only maybe.
Weeds drifted on the surface, blowing across in the gentle breeze that’d sprung up. The scent of slight mold and crushed plants hung over the pool. Fifty yards across and a hundred long? A stone object poked up as if once there’d been a monument or some artwork decorating the scene.
Ari looked concerned, nibbling her lip, when he approached the edge. The lapping water tickled his toes.
“It looks dangerous.” She leaned over to look, though two yards back from where he stood.
“You’re worried?” He grinned. Her fear was his catnip, today.
She only frowned. Her mouth stayed shut.
Saw walked to her then peeled off his new clothes and dropped them in a heap. “Give me your wrists.” He clipped her cuffs together, unclipped her leash then added casually, “There’s no other source of water for cleansing. So...” So he picked her up and threw her in.
Her squeals ended as the water splashed up and close
d over her head. Seconds later he jumped in too.
Rescuing her was interesting since she squirmed more than any fish. The bottom squidged beneath his toes and he really wasn’t keen on seeing what sort of mud they had here. Not if it was centuries of whatever had flowed out of those tiers. The top few feet were clear though. Crystal clear. It looked drinkable, but he wasn’t testing that concept.
Ari spluttered and blinked. With her wrists cuffed, she was relying on him to keep her head above water. Balancing on the somewhat slippery and sloped bottom might be tricky with her hands cuffed. Water streamed off her face and hair, creating a white waterfall where her hair fell across the water, floating on the clean blackness.
She was beautiful. Saw frowned.
“Don’t wriggle so much,” he snapped. “I’ve got you. Use your sense. You’re my property. I told you I wasn’t killing you. Learn. I won’t harm you terribly or kill you. If anyone harms my property, and that includes you, I will be angry with them.”
At the small lecture, she calmed, stilled, lay in his arms with her forehead wrinkled in either worry or puzzlement.
“Believe me. Or else.”
She sniffed then turned her head and spat. Not ladylike. Probably deliberate.
He had an armful of rebellious female. “No spitting unless you ask permission.” He dunked her under again. Fun times.
Though she protested the spit had been to get rid of the taste in her mouth, neither of them believed it, as far as he could tell.
The sun was warm enough to dry her clothes out in situ so he let her keep wearing them. Breakfast was smoked meat, and fruit, and some dried biscuit, or maybe it was their sort of bread. Food was food. Once he saw that Sassik had eaten, he approached the man.
“Are you willing to show me how to use your weapons?” He nodded at the purple long gun Sassik rarely left by itself for long.
Which was how he ended up over to the far right of the clearing, in the shadow of a fractured statue of a whale or something with a tail that must have been huge. They aimed to shoot at objects up on the second tier. The mottled-gray long gun he’d been gifted was smaller than Sassik’s. Smaller barrel also. Nevertheless it had a good feel. Heavier than anything the SAS had used for small patrols. Even the big-bore sniper rifles were lighter than this.
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