by Eden Bradley
Destined to serve the desires of an entire city, all she wants is one man. Or maybe two…
Wasteland, Book 3
Born to the Temple, Nitara knows the Great Goddess’s plan for her: to bring life into what is left of an arid and wasted Earth. Since puberty she has been trained to arouse and titillate, to ensure the continuation of the human race.
As is the custom, the man captured for her is strong of blood, though considered little more than a wild animal. Yet when she looks into his eyes, she sees no primitive creature, but the man whose face and hands haunt her sensual dreams.
For Akaash, a hunter and warrior, it’s his shame that he will be sacrificed to a goddess he doesn’t believe in, for a people who are not his own, leaving behind his Wanderer clan—and his bonded lover, Dhatri. Locked in the bowels of the Temple, he has a month to ponder his fate, all while falling helplessly under the spell of the virgin temptress who will soon take his life.
With each tortuously erotic encounter, however, Akaash realizes that Nitara is as much a prisoner as he. If he can just get a message out to Dhatri, there may be a slim chance both of them can escape…
Warning: Sexual acts in a prison cell, by the sea, in the desert, on an altar, with every possible combination of dirty deeds between two men and one very lucky woman, and all of it hot enough to melt sand! And her panties. If she were wearing any.
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Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
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Wasteland: The Breeder
Copyright © 2010 by Eden bradley
ISBN: 978-1-60928-034-5
Edited by Bethany Morgan
Cover by Kanaxa
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: May 2010
www.samhainpublishing.com
The Breeder
Eden Bradley
Dedication
To my fellow Smutketeers: R.G. Alexander, Crystal Jordan and Lilli Feisty, for developing this world with me, for being their fabulously smutty selves, and for being my partners in crime, always.
Prologue
In 2012, the world came to a grinding halt as radiation hit from a massive solar storm. Crops died, animals perished, cities fell and humans became little more than beasts themselves. Under the threat of starvation, civility was reduced to mere memory. Only the strongest men survived, and physically weaker women and children wasted to nothingness.
More than a century later, humanity struggles in the desert Wasteland. The solar radiation rendered most women infertile, and the population dwindles more with each year that passes. Scattered up and down coasts, isolated cities eke out an existence from fishing, foraging and hunting for what little game is left. Outside the city walls, men face the threat of pirates and raiders.
Few women remain, divided into four classes—Whores, Breeders, Priestesses and Wanderers. They are as reviled as they are worshipped, a commodity any man must pay to touch. To touch a Whore, a man must sacrifice his riches. To touch a Breeder, a man must sacrifice his freedom. To touch a Priestess, a man must be chosen by the gods. And to touch a Wanderer may end up costing him his life.
There is only one rule in the Wasteland—survive.
Chapter One
The scent of burning sage hung heavy in the air, along with the tinkling of cymbals and a keen anticipation. The citizens of Kroy Wen filled the Temple of the Great Goddess—The Unnamed One. Hundreds of men gathered together in the vaulted caves that housed the Temple, pressing as close as the guards would allow.
Nitara watched, silent and filled with yearning, from behind the curtain which kept the novitiate Breeders hidden and separate from the men, for no Breeder was seen or touched by any man until the day of her Sacrifice. Today was such a day.
Seti, one of Nitara’s sister Breeders, walked down the center aisle of the vast Temple, the floors and walls impossibly smooth, the ceiling arching high overhead. No one knew how this place had been made, but it was said the Goddess had carved the Temple from the mountain herself, and polished it to reflect her own perfection.
Seti’s dark head was held high as she moved, her curved body clothed in the sleeveless red tunic of the Breeders, the cowl pulled over her head so that her face was shadowed, hidden from view. Her narrow waist was belted by a wide blue sash, signifying her transition into womanhood. The firelight of the torches gleamed in her hair, which fell to her waist in a soft curtain.
Cymbals clanged, the chanting of the Crone Priestess growing louder as Seti approached the altar, a high stone slab, which was draped in furs and linens. A eunuch stood guard at the head of the stone slab, his eyes on the citizens, most carefully not watching the young Breeder who moved slowly toward the altar, and the man who was bound there—naked, drugged, erect.
The Sacrifice.
Nitara’s heart beat faster as Seti stopped, bowed before the altar and lowered the cowl, the draped fabric falling to bare her stomach and the rise of her lush, round breasts. A cheer went up from the onlookers at Seti’s dark beauty, and Nitara saw a small smile light her friend’s face before she walked up the stone stairs of the altar. Seti climbed onto the stone slab, standing over the Sacrifice, one bare foot on either side of his body. Nitara saw the strain of his muscles, his skin sheened in sweat. He was a man of the Wanderer clans, as the Sacrifices always were. The men of those bands which wandered the Wasteland were hardy, survivors, and kept the blood of the children the Breeders bore to the earth strong.
The Sacrifice moaned as Seti untied her sash and laid it over his stomach, then pulled her tunic over her head. The crowd cheered, tension rising at the sight of her female figure, something which was denied them unless they were lucky enough to be chosen to breed in the monthly lotteries, to indulge the pleasures of the priestesses, or could afford the brothels, which the young Breeder girls knew of only by whispered rumor.
Seti’s body was ripe, her breasts and hips full, her skin a deep, lovely brown. Her nipples were hard, her sex shaved in preparation for the ritual. A dagger hung from a cord around her hips in its ceremonial sheath. The precious leather was inscribed with ancient images of the Great Goddess, the fertility symbols which had existed longer than anyone could remember, predating even the Burning Time, the punishment of the earth by the Angry Sun over a hundred years earlier.
Cymbals clanged, and the Crone’s chanting grew louder, faster. The Breeders watching from their curtained alcove joined in the chanting. Nitara said the words, warm and familiar on her tongue, without thinking of their meaning. She was too entranced watching Seti as she began to sway, her hands running over her naked flesh. Nitara’s sex ached, reminding her of her lessons with the High Priestess Xian, who had trained her in the sensual arts since Nitara was twelve, and which she would use very soon, in preparation for her own Sacrifice.
Soon…
Her pulse raced. It was not only the anticipation of doing her duty to the Goddess which excited her, but the prospect of being touched by a man for the first time. The sensation of a cock filling her, finally. She had waited her whole life for that moment. Witnessing Seti sacrifice h
er virginity to the Goddess was an exquisite kind of torture, her body heating, the heat pooling between her thighs.
She watched as Seti cupped her breasts, her fingers brushing the hard tips, then smoothing down over her hips, between her rounded thighs. Nitara let out a small sigh, and another as her Sister lowered herself over the hard cock of the Sacrifice. He groaned aloud, and Seti began to pump, raising and lowering her body. The crowd hushed, the chanting stopped. Even from where she sat, Nitara could hear the collective panting of Seti, her Sacrifice, and the watching citizens, all of them joined together in a quickly rising sexual frenzy.
Seti’s hand was working between her thighs, and the big hands of the Sacrifice, allowed just enough give within the binding ropes, went to her hips, his fingers digging into the soft brown flesh. Nitara couldn’t tear her gaze from his face, beautiful in his lustful agony. His eyes were tightly shut, his lips parted. He was trying to thrust up into Seti, and she ground down onto him. Soon her panting turned to cries of ecstasy. She threw her head back, shuddering as she came. His body tensed, and something in that moment hit Nitara like a hard kick of lust deep in her belly. She went damp, wanting. And as Seti continued to arch her hips over him, milking him of his seed, Nitara could hardly stand it, to watch and not to have it for herself. She was shivering. Needing.
Soon…
Seti’s motion slowed, and he groaned, his head falling to one side. She thrust once more, grinding onto him. Then, taking the dagger from its sheath, she raised it high over her head. The blade glinted in the torchlight, the flames reflecting red and orange on the polished metal as her lips moved in prayer, asking the Goddess for bounty, for a child. He looked up, his eyes fluttering open, his staring gaze on the curtain behind which Nitara stood with her Sisters. There was fear on his face, in his dark eyes, pure and frightening. Stark. And it was as though he could see her standing there, watching.
Nitara held her breath, her body filled with desire and a vague sense of panic she had never felt before, no matter how many times she had watched this same ritual. As she watched, Seti took a breath, and brought the dagger down, plunging it into the chest of the Sacrifice.
The crowd cheered. The Sacrifice made no noise as the blood spouted, splashing Seti’s naked body, pooling on the linens and the furs. His mouth widened in a grimace of pain, his eyes wide with grief. Seti pulled the knife from his quivering body, and still joined with him, used the point to trace the outline of the eight-pointed star tattooed in red just below her navel, leaving it marked in blood.
Nitara was shaking. She didn’t understand the sensations warring in her body, her mind. Her heart. This was the most sacred of rituals—the Sacrifice of a Breeder’s virginity to the Goddess, often resulting in a child, a gift to the scorched and barren earth. She should be joyous. But something in the face of the Wanderer…
She had seen his humanity.
How had she not recognized this before? Had she been so blinded by her duty to the Temple that she’d never realized the Wanderers, the men Sacrificed on the altar in the name of the Goddess, were more than animals who roamed the Wasteland, fierce and primitive and soulless?
It came to her that her own mother was likely a Wanderer now, if she still lived. Nitara hadn’t seen her since she was six years old, but that connection remained in her heart. Once a priestess, she had been caught in the arms of her lover, a Sun Guard of the Temple, in the city, and had been banished for the sin of unconsecrated sex. Nitara, chosen as a cherished Breeder from birth, suffered no consequences for her mother’s actions. But her twin brother, Nikkan, had been castrated, and had since served as a eunuch guard to the novitiate Breeders, the only men they had contact with until reaching the age of twenty, and the ritual of Sacrifice.
She brought her gaze once more to the altar, watched as Seti was helped down by the guards. The High Priestess Xian stepped forward and blessed Seti, praying over her and smearing the blood of the Sacrifice onto her forehead, her breasts, her belly. Nitara whispered the prayers with her priestess, but she did not feel the presence of the Goddess within her. She felt only a dull ache that had nothing to do with desire, but was instead a tight pain in her chest.
Her heart was a hammer, loud and fierce. Her very doubts frightened her. She barely took in the scene below as Seti was led, naked and covered in blood, back up the aisle in a small procession. Xian led with Seti behind her, followed by a pair of guards, then lastly the Crone, chanting in praise of the Goddess.
Nitara pressed one hand to her chest, trying to calm herself. She felt torn suddenly between sympathy for the Wanderer and the duty she owed to her Goddess. One she would surely pay, no matter her feelings.
She could not look at the dead man on the altar. She could not think of him any other way, suddenly. As an animal. A Wanderer. The Sacrifice.
She would have to calm down. To accept her fate and that of the man she would have to kill in little more than a month’s time.
Nitara floated in some lovely place, light, airy, warm. Not her sleeping rooms, nor the vast caverns of the Temple. Not the dark and womblike subterranean Sanctuary she had seen only once, when she’d reached maturity, and where she would someday spend her Taming Moon.
No, just light and air and the warmth of a body next to hers.
She turned into the hands reaching for her. Fingers stroked her skin—her belly, the undersides of her breasts. Her nipples peaked hard, aching, but it was nothing compared to the ache between her thighs.
“Please,” she breathed.
Palms smoothing over her thighs now, but the skin was rough. Not the hands of a priestess, but the rougher hands of a man.
Hands she had never felt.
She sighed, spread her thighs, pleading silently for what she desired. What she was born and bred for. Trained for. What she needed.
The fingers feathered over her sensitive flesh, down, down, over the insides of her thighs, so close to her sex, which was pulsing with desire.
“Please,” she said again, her voice a lost echo in the misty light.
Why should she have to beg? Any man of the cities would pay to have her. Would die to have her.
One man would, very soon.
A finger slipping into her damp cleft, over the hard nub of her clitoris. And she came, shattering, her body clenching in a pure, dazzling pleasure that left her panting, blinded. Smiling.
“Wake up, Nitara.” It was Leilin’s soft voice.
Nitara sighed, stretched, opened her eyes. “I’m sleepy, Sister.”
Leilin was her sister in truth, by birth, not only a sister Breeder of the Temple. She was much older than Nitara, retired now, having birthed twelve children. Now she helped care for the young novitiates, and for the Temple itself—cooking, making beautiful pottery from the clay brought in from the deserts, weaving fabric on the big looms in the rooms set high into the mountainside, where the light of the Sun shone most brightly.
“Lazy, Nitara,” Leilin scolded gently. “It is the day of your initiation. You must not leave Xian waiting.”
Nitara sat up, throwing back the sleeping furs and rose, naked, from her bed. Her heart was beating a hard rhythm again, as it had the day before during the Sacrifice, that strange combination of desire and doubt. “Of course not, Sister.”
She washed quickly in the clay bowl of precious water, drying her face on a small woven towel. Leilin helped her slip the red Breeder tunic over her head, smoothing the cloth over her rounded hips, then tying the white sash signifying purity.
“Let me help with your hair, Nitara. It looks as if you’ve been standing in a high wind rather than sleeping.” Leilin picked up the comb carved from precious shell and began the task of dragging it through her long hair. A Breeder never cut her hair, and Nitara’s reached nearly to her knees, long, waving strands of fine, light brown.
“No one can comb my hair the way you can,” Nitara sighed, enjoying the attention. Her body was buzzing from her lovely dream, but still held that edge of discomfort
she didn’t know how to identify. “Leilin, did you dream of men before your Sacrifice?”
“We all do. It is a sign from the Goddess that you are nearly ready. And after all, you will turn twenty in three day’s time. Go to Xian now, and may the Goddess bless you, Sister.”
Nitara kissed Leilin’s cheek, then turned and followed the corridors cut into the mountain, the flat sides polished smooth, the ancient green and white tiles blurring together at the edge of her vision in her haste. She was too excited to think as devoutly of the Goddess as she should on such an important day, a problem she had all too often. Excited and tense with anticipation, she picked up her bare feet, moving faster toward the Priestess Xian’s rooms. She paused in the doorway to catch her breath, nervous suddenly.
Xian had her back to her, still involved with her morning bath. The Priestess was naked, her lush figure all lovely curves, her skin a smooth expanse of faint gold. Her black hair hung like a sheaf to her waist. When she turned at the sound of Nitara’s entrance, she saw her unusual violet eyes, large and tilted at the corners, the irises edged in brilliant blue.
Nitara thought Xian the most beautiful of Priestesses. But of course, she was biased. Xian had been mother, sister, lover and friend to her.
“Nitara, there you are.”
Xian slipped into the robes of her station, a long, high-necked drape of simple, dark blue cloth. The front panel was sheer, exposing the length of her body from neck to toes, in honor of the sacred sexuality of the Goddess, of which the priestesses were an incarnation on Earth.
Nitara stepped into the room. “Good morning, Xian.” Moving closer, she took a necklace of twisted copper wires and bits of sun-glass from the Priestess’s dressing table and handed it to her.
“Good morning, Nitara.” Xian fastened the necklace around her throat. “We will go to the Crone this morning to receive your fertility mark.”