He already held her body and parts of her mind, he knew, now if he could only capture her soul and she would never be able to leave him.
Stohsz realized she was bored and began to give her things to do about the room – small things like tidying up, changing the bed, and doing all of those domestic chores she had done her best to avoid throughout her life, and that he had told his house slaves to stop doing for her. He had been horrified to hear that she didn't know how to cook and arranged lessons for her from his mother, who knew what he liked to eat best. Eventually, after several months of her gradually assuming the duties her sister would have taken over immediately from his mother on their marriage, he took her out of his room for the first time since he'd brought her to the Kohnzi.
This time she was wearing a different, more ornate set of cuffs that nonetheless proclaimed her to be scairn. A short length of leather that was tied to his belt also leashed her to him. And just the sight of it – as she had since had many more encounters with it – was more than enough to make her eyes go round with fear, and – as much as she tried to deny and ignore it – her knees go weak with remembered ecstasy.
It took a bit of getting used to for Avette to adjust her smaller strides to his and make sure she remained three paces behind him, although he hadn't really allowed her that – the lead was too short. But she did the best she could to quietly show her resistance to her place, forcing him to reach back to tug her closer on occasion.
He was stopped frequently by friends and relations who, she could tell by their gawking stares, were much more interested in getting a good look at her than they were in talking to him. She was unfailingly, and uncharacteristically, shy and demure in front of them, keeping her eyes down and standing quietly as much behind him as she could, doing her best to eavesdrop unobtrusively. She knew she was to avoid looking freemen and women in the eye, which was fine with her, but she did her best to try to memorize their route and as many landmarks as she could as they made their way through town.
She was not introduced, and no one ever addressed her directly. They made their comments – which they stupidly assumed she couldn't understand – to him, commenting on everything about her from her hair color – which came mostly from the men – to the size of her bosom, and how he must be wearing himself out on her every night, especially since the deep color hadn't faded in the least.
The word she'd learned from the two slaves who had bathed her that first day in his room – gintahl – was used in nearly every conversation – as the men jealously ribbed him about his prowess and the women glared at her jealously or remarked cattily about how his talents were obviously being wasted on a scairn.
And, of course, he was wearing himself out, but he was also wearing her out, not that anyone paid any attention to that. The hardest part about it all was that all of them seemed to want to touch her. At first, she did her best to get away, ducking further behind him, but the first time she did that he spanked her right then and there, in the middle of the square, while everyone stood and watched. All normal traffic stopped while he bent her over a knee he'd raised by putting his foot on a convenient stair step and spanked her like a naughty child, lecturing her sternly the entire time about how a slave should behave, and how this was just a taste of what she was going to get when they got back to his room.
He made her apologize to his friends and stand in front of him, staring into his eyes, as both sexes groped her to their hearts' content.
Tears gathered and threatened, but she would not allow them to fall.
She didn't resist again. But he did make her assume the same position whenever anyone wanted to touch her, as if he always wanted her to remember that she submitted to him, and if he deemed that it was alright for someone else to molest her, then that was the end of it for her, and he expected her to submit gracefully.
This became a habit, as if he wanted to test her, and he began taking her out with him when he went about the town conducting his business – and even, eventually, training. He had reservations about her being around weapons; he knew of her prowess with a crossbow, although he didn't think she realized that he knew. But he kept a very close eye on her, and he liked challenging her submission as often as possible. Relentless repetition would only reinforce it, he believed.
And he never took his eyes off her. He never left her alone except when she was in that well-guarded room, otherwise, she was at his side. Having been told what he thought she was, as well as knowing that everyone could see how she had surrendered herself to him sexually, made her reluctant to try to enlist anyone's help. And although she did her best to keep her eye out for any and all opportunities to escape, she was coming to the realization that that wasn't necessarily the best plan, since she had no clothes, no money, and nowhere to go where she wouldn't be recognized and would just end up right back here.
She knew her body – despite the strict punishments he subjected her to, or, if she subscribed to his theory because of them – would be happier if she just came to grips with her current position, but her mind rebelled wildly against that idea. Her life now wasn't as bad as she had anticipated in some ways. His room was comfortable, and she ate good food, which he fed to her himself every morning and evening, with a small, light meal delivered mid-day that she had to actually eat herself. If it weren't for the astounding number of times she ended up over his lap or the end of the bed, or the back of a chair or his knee, her mind would have been much further along the path towards reconciling herself with her fate.
When she had thought of being his slave while refusing him in her father's palace, she had figured she would end up in a filthy cage being poked by sticks and never being clean or fed, but those concerns didn't pan out. Instead, she constantly had to confront the sure knowledge that he knew her body better than she did, despite the fact that she had owned it for much longer than he had. He had awakened things about her that she had never known, things she would have been just as happy had they remained buried, but that she was faced with every time she was with him, in one way or the other.
Despite the fact that he was a warrior prince from a warrior culture, Avette had noticed that he was rarely actually angry. Even when she had displeased him and he was punishing her, he was always very calm – that was somehow even worse. Perhaps he was able to get out his aggressions in his training, which she knew he – along with the other warriors – did incessantly, with live weapons. As a Kohnzi male, one was expected to maintain proficiency in all weapons and fighting methods at all times.
Tonight, though, he burst into the room with a roar, sending the solid wood door banging back against the wall, and reaching to slam it closed before storming over to a chest of drawers and sweeping his arm across it, sending all of his beard grooming equipment flying, some of it breaking against each other or the wall.
She wasn't sure what to do, whether it would be better to remain silent or to go to him. She wondered what had gotten him so upset, but didn't want that wrath turned on her. So she compromised and came to sit at the end of the bed, closer to him, but not within striking distance.
And he wasn't through with his temper tantrum, either. He knocked the dishes she had set out on the table for their dinner onto the floor, and even went so far as to lift a chair over his head, quite willing to smash it and everything else in the room, apparently, to bits.
Then he caught sight of her, sitting there calmly but very warily, and put it down. He wanted her respect, tinged with a bit of fear, as it applied to her behavior and relations between them. But he didn't want her thinking he was some rampaging bull who was unable or unwilling to control himself in a civilized setting.
He set the chair down, and her eyes were reduced to nearly their normal size. She hadn't said a word of rebuke, silently rising to clean the plates and things off the floor, but he stopped her, saying calmly, "No, it's my mess. I made it, I'll clean it up."
She was surprised and more pleased than she wanted to be at that.
When he finished, he lifted her off the end of the bed and sat down with her in his favorite big chair. It wasn't the most comfortable of seats, she'd found when she'd first tried it out, but it did smell of him, and she had found that immensely comforting – and annoying – during those longs days locked in here during the beginning of her captivity.
Avette relaxed on his lap, glad to be on it rather than over it for a change, her head on his shoulder, waiting for him to decide to talk to her about it, or not. She wasn't going to push.
It didn't take him long to come out with it as he began to stroke her breasts, looping her arm around his neck so that she had no choice but to press them against his face.
"My father says I must recognize you as my princess, regardless of the old traditions, that your father is adamant about it. His whole court is up in arms about how I've behaved towards you, and they're threatening to go to war over it," he murmured against that sensitive tip, which he absently and alternately suckled and nibbled.
Avette was amazed to hear it. She hadn't expected that her father would bother much about her at all once she was out from under his roof, which seemed to be the thing he desired most in the world while she was growing up and annoying him at every turn with her mischief and hoydenish ways. She bet her brothers were behind this, much more so than he.
Regardless, it was nice to know they still thought of her occasionally, although war was a bit drastic, really.
"What do you think?" Stohsz asked.
It was such a rarity that she was asked for her opinion that Avette wasn't sure whether she could still form one or not. "What would happen if you did?" she asked back, not really answering his question.
It was a sign of just how preoccupied and concerned he was with this topic that he hadn't picked up on the fact that she hadn't obeyed him immediately, as he expected her to. He wasn't one to let anything slip in regards to her. "It's never been done before, so no one's quite sure, except for a few things. Despite the spanking blades we all wear – they're mostly for show for every other woman in the kingdom but you – I wouldn't be allowed to punish you anymore. You'd have your own rooms and your own servants, become a Kohnzi Princess of my father's house, and although that doesn't mean quite the same that it did in your father's house because we live much more simply here, you would become the leader – with my mother, of course – of Kohnzi females, with all the rights and privileges."
He trailed off absently, and Avette rose to pour him a cool glass of honey wine from a bottle she kept in a small hole in the ground that kept it several degrees cooler than the air.
Stohsz smiled, realizing that she had come to anticipate his needs well. She returned to position herself exactly as he had placed her himself, with her arm around the back of his neck and her breasts offered up to him for whenever the urge struck.
A big hand swept down her arm and flank. "You would be clothed richly, and, within reason, have anything you desired, anything that it was within my power – or probably my father's, too – to grant you. I can see you wrapping him around your little finger just like you do me."
Avette snorted loudly, not caring in the least how unladylike it sounded. His mother was constantly faulting her for it, but she couldn't seem to stop.
Which is why she was very surprised at his next words. "My mother adores you. She thinks you're close to perfect for me, because you aren't submissive like all the others."
"How do you feel?" she asked, laying her forehead against his neck as he suckled.
With his mouth against her breast, he responded, "I would have you forever tied naked to my bed."
"You have, on occasion."
One week long occasion like that had happened near the end of her early isolation, when she was desperate to leave that room and had tried to demand that he take her out. Typical of him, he did to her the exact opposite of what she said she wanted, just because he could.
"Don't think I didn't notice that you didn't answer my question , my scairn." It had become almost a term of affection.
She blushed, still, knowing that she would soon be bellowing from his displeasure with her to the four corners of the town, crying, sobbing and begging him to stop, but knowing that he wouldn't. That was her safety, her surety in him – that she could trust him not to stop until he felt she had been chastised enough.
It was a heady, sensual thought that never failed to tighten the muscles of her lower stomach and produce copious amounts of the cream he seemed to prize so much.
"What does the opinion of a slave count, anyway, Master?"
He reached down to cup her bare pussy, one finger sliding up inside her knowingly. "Because, as your Master, I would have it."
Unable to believe what she was saying, and this time with the full knowledge of what it was that she was committing to, Avette leaned back to meet his eyes, whispering as she melted against him and on those bold fingers, "I submit to you, Stohsz of the Kohnzi, as your slave."
And that was all he needed to know.
Chapter Six
It didn't seem to matter how long she was with him – it had been over a year now – he always seemed to come up with new, ever more shameful things for her to do to him, or for him to do to her. And despite the fact that she recognized, intellectually, the truth of what he had named her – chaisson – pain lover – and that her body betrayed her every time he reached for her, no matter the depravity he subjected her to, in some ways, Avette knew she would never reconcile herself to that moniker. The stigma it carried was much too great to be overcome when applied to herself.
He had never mentioned it again, either. Even after he'd told his father, Kurszen, that he had no intentions of reneging on what he had said when he'd come to claim her at her father's palace, that rather than marrying her and making her his queen, he intended that she would remain his slave. His scairn, subject to his every whim and command, with no rank or social standing whatsoever. And, he'd added, much to the old man's consternation, if her father wanted to make war because of it, he would be more than happy to oblige him by wiping the Tonyeh people off the face of the planet.
And both fathers knew that was no idle threat. The Kohnzi lived to fight, and the Tonyeh, who were rich in both money and culture, but were best known for producing brides who were meek and submissive and masters of the household arts, would have no hopes of winning against them. Stohsz knew their threats were empty; there had been an uneasy – yet relatively stable – peace between the two for almost a hundred years, begun when the first princess bride had been given over to the Kohnzi, who had long admired the fair beauty of the Tonyeh women. They wouldn't risk the loss of so much money and prestige when they were inevitably defeated.
And as much as his father's mouth watered at the idea of getting a hold of all of that Tonyeh money, he was old and had little taste for war. Now, all he wanted was to see his line continued, although there didn't seem to be much progress there, either. According to his spies, for all his unnatural preoccupation with her, his son's little slave hadn't been so much as a minute late for her cycle since he'd brought her here. That didn't bode at all well for his legacy.
Well, Stohsz was going to have to learn how to live without his expensive little whore. Without their coffers expanding from the additional money they should have gained from her dowry, which her father – understandably – was withholding, considering the most unusual circumstances, they were going to need to raid, and soon.
A few months without his scairn would do him well, Kurszen thought. Help him remember that he had other duties in life and serve to make him hungrier for her when he returned. Kurszen could see a grandson in his future, hopefully by next summer.
At that moment, his scairn would have been just as happy to have done without him. She was in the midst of being chastised by him – but not in the usual way. Avette wasn't sure whether she hated it more when he chose more classical methods to get his point across to her – which was usually an atrocious spanking or lashing
with his horribly wide, stiff leather belt, which was bad enough, or when he got more innovative.
He had come home early this afternoon and had caught her trying to lift the huge crossbow off the wall. It wasn't sized for such a small frame as hers, and although Stohsz was thoroughly annoyed to have found that she was trying to arm herself, he was even more concerned that she might hurt herself in the process.
And when she confessed, under the pressure of a blistered red behind, that it wasn't her first attempt to remove the weapon from its home, he had put the thin, short, single tail whip he had been using back in its drawer. And he had used a firm hold on her hair to lift her out of the face down position she had been forced to assume on the bed and had put her, instead, into a standing position, with her hair anchored to a ring he'd had sunk into the bare floor.
Unlike her eye color, which, for a very long time after he'd taken her captive was a sorrowful deep velvet brown, but now, occasionally, would become a light, milky blue to reflect some modicum of happiness, Avette's glorious locks – varied only slightly in color – only such that he would notice. Between a blushed mauve and a deeper, darker pink, both of which matched her nipples and her little cunny perfectly, depending on what he was doing to her. Her mane had been thrown over her head and anchored to one of the several crude metal loops he'd had added around the room – floor and ceiling – since he'd brought her back with him. Her wrists were gathered behind her and hung well above the small of her back from the one hook in the ceiling that had always been there, as far as she knew, which had given her cause for concern when she'd first discovered it, and even more so since it had been used on her on several occasions.
Princess Slave Page 6