The trip was less than ten minutes, and James didn't talk to anyone the whole time. At last she was able to lean over and whisper to him that it was time to get off. She breathed a sigh of relief that he didn't insist that she go first and she was able to fall into place behind him, as they exited. She continued following him across the platform, then moved behind him in the lift to stand while they descended. He made no move to grab her hand again as they exited out onto the ground near the edge of a thick forest, and this disconcerted her.
"Sir? James?" She was tentative, unsure if she wanted him to say what was bothering him or not, but venturing a guess. "Do women sit in the seats where you come from?"
He nodded. "Yes. And often men stand."
Men stood while women sat?
"If there're open seats, no one stands. And everyone, woman or man, moves to give a pregnant woman, or someone for whom it's hard to stand, a seat. If a man tried to keep his seat and make a pregnant woman stand, he'd have a dozen other men in his face picking him up and tossing him out on his ass."
"Wow," she breathed. The thought made her head spin.
"Okay, let's take a walk, shall we?" He smiled as he offered his arm, and it brightened up his whole face. She felt her heart do a little flip-flop. They picked one of the dozen paths that led into the trees, and set off.
The trees were enormous, and she told him that each was several hundred years old. Their dark roots, the circumference often thicker than a man, lay above the ground. They spread out from the tree for many meters, covered with moss, and often crossed over each other. The result was a very lumpy ground. The path wound around these obstacles as much as possible, but several times James had to lift Lydia up and over a particularly large one. Each time his strong arms went around her waist she sent a silent thanks upward to the trees.
They walked without talking. The ferns that covered the open ground between the roots brushed against her bare ankles. The breeze whirled gently around them, and the birds chirping above were the only sound.
Lydia wanted desperately to discuss what had happened back in the Archives – both parts – but she had to wait until he brought it up. He seemed very lost in thoughts for a while.
"Lydia," he finally said, "we have to talk about... everything."
"Thank you, James, for not saying anything," she blurted out.
He stopped abruptly and turned to face her. "Would they really kill you, or were you just exaggerating?" His tone was almost demanding, almost accusatory, and she shrank back from him.
"Yes, sir, they would," she whispered. "It's been twelve years since they did it, but... they did it."
He turned away and walked a few feet. "How long have you been able to read Br'ini?"
She studied him for a few minutes. Up to this point she hadn't actually said 'I can read,' and she wondered if she could go back to just pretending she couldn't. Why should she trust him with a secret this big?
But it was too late. "A- a few months." She told him about the translation dictionary, and how she'd spent hours studying it every night. "I don't know why, except that it feels so good to use my mind for something. Sometimes I feel like my brain is shrinking. I've read every book and household manual Master owns. I help the cook with her kitchen budget. I help Frini plan the garden – figuring out the dimensions and the amount of soil and fertilizer. But mostly I clean, do errands, and serve Master."
"How are you going to spend the rest of your life pretending you can't read Br'ini?" he asked softly.
She was silent while she found the right words. "I've lain in bed many nights wondering the same thing, and convinced I should just throw that dictionary out. It keeps coming down to this – If I have to close up my mind for the rest of my life, then it's not worth living. If I get found out – well, that's that."
He picked her hand up again and held it tight.
"Master, it was my choice. It is what it is."
He took a deep breath and nodded.
"May I change the subject?" She really wanted to ask about that room.
"Of course!"
"Women used to learn and teach everything that men did, didn't they?" Her whole world had been turned upside down in the last few hours.
"I think so."
"Why is it hidden?"
He looked like he was choosing his words carefully. "When one group becomes more powerful than another, it's easier to keep that power if you take away any reminders of what was lost, like destroying books written by women. I would guess that there were women who saw it coming and created that room in an attempt to keep from losing everything."
"We should tell people about it!" Even as she said it, she knew it was a foolish idea.
"Lydia, if we tell anyone, your government will destroy everything."
"I know." There seemed to be no easy answers. "So now what?"
"For starters, I just want to enjoy the beauty of these woods with a pretty woman on my arm. The rest – we'll figure it out later."
She smiled. It would do, for now.
James stopped at a large horizontal root that ran alongside the path, about a meter and a half off the ground. He sat down and motioned to her, and she prepared to kneel in the ferns at his feet.
"No, Lydia, please come sit next to me."
Her eyes widened but she sat where he pointed.
"This is beautiful," was his only comment. She nodded.
He turned to her. "You are beautiful." Suddenly his lips were touching hers. It was a gently tentative touch, as though he was unsure how it would be received. She pulled back in surprise, blinking at him, not sure what to say. A heartbeat later she leaned back into the kiss, meeting his lips, imitating him, kissing him over and over. She wasn't sure what she was doing, but it felt wonderful and she wanted more. She gripped his arm; he put his hand behind her, capturing her head as he increased the pressure. She felt his tongue gently touch hers and while it was the strangest thing she'd ever done, she decided right then and there that she wanted to do it again and again. Her tongue met his and the kisses became more frantic. Her hands slid up to cup his face and he didn't object, and now each held the other in place.
Eventually they pulled apart by a mutual need to breathe. She stared at him with wide eyes.
"I like how you kiss." He moved a tendril of hair out of her face.
"Thank you, sir. I, um, wasn't sure if I was doing it right."
His brow wrinkled. "You haven't kissed before?" When she shook her head, he looked even more confused. "But, you've pleasured your master many times, right?"
"Yes, of course. But kissing – that's usually what masters do with their First Slaves. The ones they buy because of love. I'm just for sex and household service."
He stared at her and she didn't know what to say. He obviously was confused, but she wasn't sure why, exactly. Eventually he nodded and looked away into the distance. She suspected he wasn't really seeing what he was looking at. She took a huge leap and did something she'd never dare do with her master. She reached a hand out and gently stroked the bulge between his legs that was threatening to rip his pants.
He groaned softly and closed his eyes. "Don't."
His command lacked conviction, so she disobeyed and repeated the movement.
"Lydia." This time it was almost a pleading. "Please. It's not right. You're a slave, and that's not right. This whole thing isn't right. Fuck." He let his breath out but made no move to stop her.
She shook off the confusion that his statement gave her, and focused on the part she knew how to deal with. "James, sir, I like sex. A lot. I know some slaves don't and they have to be forced to serve, but not me." She rubbed a little harder. His sudden grip around her wrist stilled her movements. She looked up to see him looking down at her, his eyes glittering. She shivered.
"You like it when your master fucks you?" It almost came out as a growl.
She nodded, suddenly feeling very meek. "Yes, sir. And he's not always gentle." She wondered if he understood wha
t she was saying.
He slid off the tree, her wrist still caught in his grip. "Stand up." There was no question of obeying this tone of voice. The moment her feet hit the ground he spun her around to face the root, her wrist now twisted behind her back. He captured the other wrist and pulled it back to join the first. "Like this?" he hissed.
"Yes, sir. Exactly like this." It appeared he did understand.
With his other hand, he applied pressure between her shoulder blades, bending her forward until her chest rested on the root.
"If I let go of your wrists, can you keep them there?"
"Yes, sir." She had years of experience holding still while things were done to her. A sudden coolness on her backside signaled that he'd lifted her dress up and out of the way. She felt his warm hand as it touched and then caressed her round globes. She let out a sigh of contentment. A finger traced the edges of the strange V-shaped marks left by the whip. There was only a pleasant ache to his gentle touch, until she felt a fingernail trace a line. She let out a groan.
The finger stilled. "Does that hurt?"
The way that he was doing it? "A little, sir, and please do it some more?"
He chuckled and she felt his fingernail scrape the next one down, a little harder. She responded with another groan. The one after that caused her to stifle a cry. The fourth one felt like a knife on the sensitive skin and she didn't stifle that cry at all. It was that pleasure and pain together that she loved so much. He lay his hand on her skin and rubbed gently, and the sting faded away. She felt his hand slide down, felt the fingers move towards the cleft between her cheeks and waited and hoped for his next move.
She felt the pressure of his hands on the inside of her thighs and knew without asking what he needed. She slid her feet apart just wider than her shoulders. She was wet. Oh, so wet. The hand slid down between her legs and one finger dipped into the warm pool and she groaned as she felt him touch her inner folds, and her outer folds, then slide back up to that other hole that was so sensitive, leaving a trail of cool wetness as he went. He moved back down between her legs again, and this time the finger slipped up inside her and she let out a strangled cry of lust. But this wasn't where she wanted to be touched. She wanted to be touched in that place that would shoot her over the moon. But a slave never asked for that. It was his to do, or not do. His to give, or not.
Then it occurred to her lust-fogged brain that women on his planet could do whatever they wanted. Did that include sex? There was one way to find out, and she just had to cross her fingers she didn't spoil everything.
"Sir," she managed to get out in between the panting his touch was creating, "sir, on your planet, do the women ask to have an orgasm?"
"What?" The gyrations inside stopped, but he didn't withdraw.
"We, um, here, um, don't ever ask for orgasms. The master will either give one or not, but we don't ask."
She could almost feel his grin from behind. "Well, now, is that your back-handed way of begging for an orgasm without breaking any rules?"
"No, Master!" she protested, even as his fingers resumed their pumping in and out. "Ahh!" she screeched as he went in particularly deep. "All right, maybe!" she admitted.
This time she heard his deep rich laugh. I haven't made him mad! She sighed with relief.
"Yes, women ask for orgasms. Some even demand them."
She tried to turn her head to look at him in disbelief, but at that moment, he stuck a thumb in the crevice of her ass and gave a gentle push and all thoughts of women on other planets rushed out of her head.
Now he was pumping at least three fingers in and out of her wetness, alternating with his thumb, which was just barely breeching the entrance of her anus, but lighting up every nerve.
"If I had a slave, she'd be allowed to beg as much as she wanted. But I might not give her one, even then."
Did he just say it was okay for her to beg? She tried to form a coherent thought, then threw fifteen years of obedience training out the window. "Please, James, please, let me come! Please!"
"Not yet." She dared to let out a groan of frustration and yelped when his hand landed with a 'smack!' across her backside. A fire roared up inside her. This was the part of her life that made her forget all her problems. She could ride atop the waves of pain during an erotic spanking and arrive at the end limp but renewed. The more her master demanded her sexual submission, the happier she was. The more she was bound in real restraints, the less she struggled with the restraints of her life.
His hand withdrew and she almost let out another protest. She heard the rustling of fabric behind her. It's about time!
Suddenly he gripped her wrists, which were lying so obedient and still across her back. She felt something warm touch her slick folds and push them aside. He plunged into her depths, his cock so much bigger than she was used to that she felt split apart and filled at the same time. She let out little panting moans with each thrust and withdrawal. This was... incredible. Then, to her delight, she felt his other hand sneak around her waist and down between her legs in the front, and a finger sought and found her clit. She screeched and bucked at the touch, but his weight kept her pinned in place, just the way she liked it.
"Come any time you want to," he purred in her ear as he continued to thrust. He knew exactly what he was doing and inside of a minute, she was hurtling up and over the cliff. She screeched again, longer and louder, a tiny portion of her mind hoping that only the birds were near enough to hear. His thrusts kept the sensation going long past the time when it would have stopped on its own. Her legs were going to give way any minute.
Without warning, she felt him stiffen and groan, and suddenly he pulled out. She opened her eyes and turned her head to the side to see him spilling his cum onto the dirt as he groaned loudly.
"Master?" she asked in confusion. He ignored her for a moment as he stroked the final drops out. At last he opened his eyes, turning them on her.
"I didn't want to make a mess of you," he explained.
"Oh. Thank you. I would have been happy to receive you in my mouth." She looked at the few glistening drops on the end of his softening shaft. "May I?" She looked up at him.
He nodded slowly and she moved the few feet towards him, then sank down on her knees. Her tongue darted out and caught a single drop. It barely brushed the head of his cock, but it was enough to bring forth a strangled groan. She repeated the action with a little more firmness, rewarded by another groan and a "Fuck." One more time she bent forward, and took the whole head into her mouth, swirling her tongue around to catch every drop, and she saw his knees start to buckle and his hands fist at his side. She pulled off with a smile.
"Was that satisfactory, sir?" she asked.
"Yes. Oh, yes. You could say that." He reached down to help her up. "Oh, yeah." He tucked himself back in his pants, and picked off a dead leaf that had stuck to the front of her dress. "Thank you."
She beamed. "You're welcome, sir." He lifted her chin and bent forward as though to kiss her once more, when the spell was broken by the sound of a group of shrieking boys moving in their direction.
"I think it's time to go." He straightened up and held out his elbow, and she tucked her hand into the now-familiar crook of his arm, and they wandered back to the front of the park.
The Leather Shop
James was not interested in going back to the hotel or the archives today, and so by unspoken agreement they exited the el-tram one stop early to walk through the city. The late afternoon was pleasantly warm. Tiny pink and white leaves from the hundreds of flowering trees lining the sidewalks floated in the light breeze before settling on the ground at their feet to be stirred up as James and Lydia walked.
"This is a beautiful planet," he observed.
She nodded. "Even the rugged and rocky areas have a stark beauty, with the layers of tan rock and the dark redstone, mixed with layers of pink paeolate. Have you ever seen the pink flash as the sun sets?" He shook his head. "The conditions have to be just righ
t. As the sun disappears in the evening, the rays reflect off the paeolate dust floating around and the air turns pink all around you for just a second. It's amazing."
They walked through an open-air market. It was a strange sight to James, who was accustomed to choosing food from a rotating list of prepared dishes supplied by the food service he subscribed to, and arriving packaged and sanitized on his plate. Here, vegetables and fruits lay side-by-side with wheels of cheese and slabs of cured meat. Something that looked like a striped fish, half the size of a man, lay displayed on ice, and he could hear the woman in front of the stall bargaining with the owner. James smiled; some things never changed no matter how advanced civilization became. She declared that the fish was beginning to smell and he was cheating her, and he declared that the fish was fresh caught that morning and he had a family to feed. James caught a whiff of the fish on the breeze and silently wished the woman luck; that fish had definitely not been alive and swimming for a few days.
They passed an open-air store that James wasn't paying attention to, until another smell, more familiar and welcome, made him swivel his head. A large display of leather goods caught his attention. His eyes widened when he realized he was looking at beautifully crafted whips, floggers and straps of all different lengths and thicknesses. There were harnesses, and gags, and wrist and ankle cuffs. He breathed deep, the smell bringing back memories that made him smile. But leather wasn't all they sold. There were chains and ropes and clamps and plugs – everything a sadist like him could ever hope to own.
He glanced down to Lydia, whose eyes were wide as she took in the display.
"I want to stop in here for a moment. Don't worry; I'm not going to use anything I get here on you. You want to wait outside?"
He almost swore a look of disappointment flashed across her face. "If Master wishes," she said formally. He gave her a curious look before releasing her to stand at the door while he went in.
"Good afternoon, sir!" A man behind the counter called out a cheery greeting. "I can see you are a man who appreciates the qualities of the finest leather on Midros. Please take a look around and let me know if I can answer any questions."
Memories of Surrender (Midrosian Chronicles Book 1) Page 7