“I am going to fill you, Annie. You must swallow hard.”
The cock was swelling in her mouth. Drawing a deep breath, Merritt impaled herself, taking him to the hilt. His hairy, ripened testicles pulsed against her chin. Wantonly, she rubbed her tits, the rock hard nipples tight against the legs of his trousers. He hadn’t even bothered to take them down. He was fucking her mouth through the hole in his fly. She felt so weak in comparison to him, like he was her superior in some tangible way.
Petrok threw back his head, his pelvis rigid against her. The moment of truth, she thought. The semen came like a spray, like a river. Again and again she made room, gulping down the warm deposits. He was letting loose with a low, guttural cry, exercising his manhood in the fullest way. What greater pleasure could there be for a male of the species than to completely subjugate the female, to reduce her utterly to an object of his satisfaction?
“Annie,” he blubbered, dissolving in the final squirts. And for a split second she felt the thrill and terror of thinking that he really was her boyfriend. Was this what the Italian girl felt when her man’s hand first crashed upon her skin and stayed there, the look in his eyes telling her he was staking claim, laying dominion to her body?
“Clean off my stiff cock with your tongue,” commanded Petrok.
Merritt shuddered. A tiny line of drool ran from the corner of her mouth as she applied herself. Her jaw was slack. A delicious weakness pervaded her body. She wanted more, much more. If only Petrok were still intact. Then he could throw her down to the floor and make her open her legs. He’d fill her with that stiff cock and make her come over and over again. It would be her first time and she wouldn’t care. She’d be taken on the cold tile floor. Like one of Belok’s slaves whose bodies were his literal and absolute property.
She pictured the little English redhead. What had she been made to do after her master had come in her mouth? She would have cleaned him, of course, but after that? Would she go back to the dungeon, to lay in chains on the damp stones, in the darkness, the eyes of rats upon her, the straw her only covering? How grateful would such a girl be to continue to lie instead upon cushions, to even see the light of day? Happily would she suck and spread for even the lowest of his soldiers, even for his male slaves. Yes, there was no end to the possibilities, to the mind-blowing delight and cruelty.
“Annie, that is enough,” he offered, more softly now as she continued to lick and lap and serve, his balls in her mouth, his prick pressing the cartilage of her nose.
He made her rise to her feet and then wrapped her in a thick towel. “You are cold, let me warm you.”
Merritt could not keep herself upright. She had no balance without her hands and she was as weak as a kitten. Petrok had to catch her and scoop her up in his strong arms. Though barely into his second decade, he had a man’s broad shoulders and a man’s ability to comfort. He was a natural at dominating, and she could almost succumb to the role of Annie, if it were not for the fact that she already had a life. One that did not include being the man’s play toy.”
“Petrok, put me down, I must get ready to go to the Institute.”
“Pretty Annie,” he whispered, eyes faraway.
“Petrok, enough. I’m not a doll. I’m a grown woman.”
He set her down. She could see the little pout in his lip and at once she despised him for his weakness. If he’d intended to stake a claim with the two males already ahead of him in line, he would have had to show a lot more maxi.
Good grief, had she said two? Was she thinking of Belok as a real man?
“I hope you have a very nice day,” said Petrok, fitting the tiny key in the lock of the cuffs. “I shall never forget our time together.”
Merritt ignored his sudden kindness. The last thing she could afford now was to fall in love. “I will want breakfast. Coffee, toast, no butter. And one egg. Over easy. Can you remember?”
He bowed stiffly. “Yes, ma'am.”
“Good. And please phone me if anyone comes to fetch me from the Institute. I will come down as quickly as I can, though they may have to wait for me.”
He bowed once more, clicking his heels smartly like Ladislak. “Your wish is my command.”
If there was any irony in his voice over the command stuff, she missed it. He was way too young, she concluded, sorting through clothes for the right outfit. She needed someone older. Like her father. Or Simon. When she thought of Belok, she laughed.
“Seven hundred years,” she said out loud, selecting a pink silk blouse and black skirt. “Now there would be one whopper of an age difference.”
Chapter Five
The limousine wound its way through the narrow, cobblestone streets of Vistya, Zuravia’s crowning jewel and seat of her governance, past and present. Named for a woman who Simon said could have been her twin, though not a single picture had survived her death in the seven centuries ago. Vistya. The very same name the ghost had called her in the middle of the night. A ghost answering to the name of Belok, who somehow had influenced her thousands of miles away to go against every grain in her practical character and buy handcuffs with which to bind herself under his orders.
Just a few of the mysteries, Merritt mused, in a land brimming with them.
If only she could trust her mind to ponder all the things it needed to. As it was, she was fighting feelings, irrational impulses telling her to be not a scholar but a woman. A female, ready to catch the eye of every passing male, to attract their attention with the curves of her body, the turn of her hip, the pout of her lips, the scent of her skin.
These were dangerous feelings and potentially destructive. Who knew what a man, or men, might do reading such signals? What was it exactly she was begging for anyway, in her subconscious, against her higher will? Did she want to be chained to another bed, open and hot to any and all takers? Put over the lap of some brute or bullied in another interrogation room, taunted with tales of female abuse till she creamed in her panties like a traitorous little slut?
Lady Vistya, she intoned, following the formula of age-old entreaty. Help me. Keep me safe from my enemies.
And, she added for good measure, from myself.
Whoever it is I turn out to be.
Merritt redirected herself for the moment to sightseeing. They were in the old district now, the portion originally built during Belok’s reign. A half dozen major fires had raged through in the centuries since then along with floods and the tide of too many wars to count. For the simple working people, the descendants of the peasants, their troubles dated to the death of the Dark Prince. In his day, Zuravia was a power in its own right, and there was no nation that did not give the prince his due. Though his reign was short, he had done much to balance the might of East and West, allowing for the eventual rise of many stable nations out of areas that had once been battle zones or outposts for faraway potentates.
Belok had made enemies, to be sure, but he also amassed friends. When he heard of a certain noble cheating his serfs out of their portion of the crops, Belok had marched on the man’s castle and laid siege. Upon surrender, the guilty party was stripped of rank and all his wealth. Naked, tethered by the neck to the prince’s horse, he was marched out to meet the offended serfs. They were allowed to kick and spit at him to their hearts content and then, afterwards, to assume power over him as slave to the village.
It was a rare act of mercy on Belok’s part to let the greedy baron live. More often than not his enemies were impaled or burnt alive. As it was, the baron’s family was dealt with harshly and both the man’s wife and his two adult daughters were given to the male serfs to be raped. Afterwards, Belok allowed them to choose one amongst the three to receive recompense for the rapes, whilst the other two would receive nothing.
The mother insisted upon being the one to receive the reward, since she was oldest and had given birth to the daughters. Belok smiled upon the woman. “I had thought as much,” he nodded, whereupon he had the mother impaled and gave the daughters a hundred
ducats of gold apiece.
“Behold the reward of greed,” he told them by way of a lesson.
As in all of Belok’s lessons, what it taught most fundamentally was fear. Blind terror and obedience to his dread person and his dread laws. Still, there was in his regime, according to the annals, virtually no crime and little in the way of fraud or deception. So total was his power that at the beginning of his reign he had had a golden goblet placed unguarded in the middle of the main square of the city filled with precious stones. The day of his death, the chalice was removed, intact, not a jewel missing.
It was no wonder there was a faction even now looking for a return to such a pristine notion of law and order operating under a brutal dictator. Merritt thought of the colonel, and how vehement he had become, losing his cool and pounding the table as he warned her of the danger. She was not so much a fool as to think that she, a mere academic, might not become a pawn in such a high stakes game of politics.
For now, she watched the faces in the windows, the wash hung on the line, strung between centuries old streets, winding narrow ways, the tall stone buildings once home to cobblers and black smiths, wood workers and stitchers of whole cloth. It was odd she’d never seen a picture of the Institute. All she really knew was the enthusiasm of Dr. Karisvan, his exuberant e-mails and impassioned accounts of his people’s history. He’d courted Merritt for months, having seen her most recent journal article on the social fabric of Zuravia during Belok’s rule. He thought her a genius and had promised her access to records and artifacts unknown to the rest of the world.
Her appetite had been whetted. Against the advice of her colleagues, especially Lena, she’d agreed to spend her sabbatical here, cataloguing and reviewing the Institute’s rare collection. It was to have been a dry, intellectual endeavor, but now she feared it was opening channels to her emotions as well, not to mention her loins.
The limo driver, a man just three feet tall with a beaming smile and adorable blue eyes, was working hard to negotiate the hairpin turns. More than once she thought the vehicle would get stuck in the narrow streets, which were made for horses and carts not autos. But each time he squeaked through onto the next challenge. When at last they reached a main thoroughfare, Merritt was surprised to see looming ahead a massive structure of steel and stone like a walled fortress surrounding a dismal compound.
This was hardly the academic-looking campus she’d expected.
When the limo failed to turn before the main gate, Merritt leaned forward. “Have we made a wrong turn?” she inquired of Piko, the nickname her driver had given her by way of introduction in the hotel lobby.
“No, ma’am,” he answered, his high-pitched voice full of solemnity. “We’ve arrived at the Institute.”
“But this looks more like a prison.”
The uniformed guard at the gate gave the car a looking over and peered into the back seat where Merritt was sitting. Feeling slightly uncomfortable under his gaze, she tugged at the hem of her skirt.
“Oh, it was a prison,” Piko replied, easing the car through in response to the guard’s stiff wave. “Years ago when the Soviets were here. This was the Central Prison. A very bad place, ma’am, I promise you.”
Merritt felt the blood drain from her face. “Did you say the Central Prison?”
“People were tortured here,” he swung the car hard to the left, passing under rows of rusty barbed wire strung like Christmas lights between two unoccupied guardhouses. “A sad part of our history. They say it was very hard on the women.”
Merritt looked compulsively out the rear window. The gate had been shut, the heavy woven steel frame rolled back across the opening. For all intents and purposes, she was trapped here just like the females Ladislak had told her about. The ones transported in trucks, their clothes torn off, their bodies abused. Piko drove them into the main courtyard, stopping in front of a stone entranceway leading, Merritt could only assume, to the inner recesses of the prison. There was a portcullis raised, and beyond this, nothing but darkness.
Piko ran round to open the door for her. Merritt’s head was down, between her knees. She was dizzy and sick to her stomach, thinking about the poor girls, how they’d been forced from the truck nude, under thousands of lust-filled, criminal eyes.
“Ma’am, are you all right? Can I help you with anything?”
“Of course you can’t, you diminutive imbecile,” snapped a female voice, crisp and cold. “You’re of no use to anyone, yourself included.”
“Ileana.” Piko’s gossamer voice filled with sudden dread. “I didn’t hear you coming.”
“No? Well perhaps you’ll hear better if I box your ears. Now run along to the armory, the halberds need polishing.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.” With that he was off, like a nervous little rabbit or gerbil.
“I am Ileana,” the woman extended her black gloved hand to a wide-eyed and suddenly alert Merritt. “I work here with Dr. Karisvan.”
Merritt took Ileana's hand, allowing the woman to help her out. Ileana was several inches taller than her, the effect of her height multiplied by the spike heeled black boots. The handshake was feminine enough, but the slender, three-inch nail fingers sent little jolts of electricity through Merritt’s body. Ileana’s hair was black as a raven’s wing, and she wore it in a topknot. Her long legs were covered in black leather pants and boots. She wore a white blouse with loose sleeves and a leather vest. She was slender, but there was a sinewy strength about her, a coiled power like that of a cat. Merritt thought her beautiful with her black eyes and high cheekbones, but there was a cruelty about the jaw that made her uneasy.
The rapier at her waist did little to reassure on that score.
“I trust you’ve had an interesting journey so far?” Ileana’s eyebrow was up and she wasn’t letting go of Merritt’s hand. From the tone, Merritt had the distinct impression the woman already knew something of what had happened to her.
Merritt forced a smile. “Just the usual. Getting acclimated to the time change and all.”
“The time change, yes, of course,” she replied coolly.
Unless the professor missed her guest, she was being trifled with like a tiny mouse in the clutches of a cat. “I should like to meet Dr. Karisvan. I’ve been waiting so long, you understand.”
The woman’s lips curled, bloodless. “Not as long as we’ve been waiting for you, my dear. Won’t you follow me?”
This last remark sent a definite chill down Merritt’s spine. Silently, she fell in behind the tall, stately beauty, her buttocks insolently but subtly swaying as she walked through the archway. Merritt felt instant claustrophobia as she left behind the sun and sky. The jagged stone corridor was rather like a storm drain, semi-circular with small, caged bulbs on the ceiling, and shadows that hung heavy in the air.
“We have found this facility to be ideally suited for our needs,” Ileana explained, punching a code into a box beside a windowless steel door midway down. “The climate can be controlled perfectly, and there is no concern for security. The relics, you understand must be protected at all costs.”
Relics. Like the colonel’s coin that transported the holder back in time?
“Of course.” Merritt’s heart quickened as the door gave way, creaking loudly. It was in her mind still a prison, a place where human beings were abused and humiliated, and how anyone could forget that was beyond her.
The door opened into a cellblock, huge and empty, framed with steel and iron and leftover misery
“This was the women’s section,” Ileana pointed to the long rows of bars rising on both sides of them, two stories high with a narrow connecting catwalk of rusted iron. “The girls were often housed four or five to a cell. They were kept in irons, their only clothing a short smock and a bandana for their hair. Shoes were a privilege. Most of them went barefoot, and there was no underwear allowed under any circumstances.”
Merritt fought to keep her objectivity. The very idea of a population of female
s, deprived of the most basic human rights, even of decent clothing was more than she could bear. It enraged her and yet she had to know more.
“The girls were often violated, were they not?”
Ileana’s ravenous smile crept up the sides of her chiseled cheekbones. “You see the cell bars?” she gestured overhead. “At any given time you would have seen three, maybe four girls chained to the outside of them, facing front or back, naked and spread eagled for the use of anyone passing by. The guards, the trustees, even some of the male prisoners. They were also available for the whip or cane.”
Merritt felt the mounting heat between her legs, familiar yet deeply troubling. “As punishment, I assume?”
“Sometimes. Then again, the guards often did these things just because they could. Things were not so liberal under the communists.”
Merritt noted the nostalgic tone, the sense of loss, not unlike what she’d heard in Colonel Ladislak’s voice.
“We can be thankful we live in more enlightened times,” Merritt said pointedly.
“Enlightenment, yes.” Ileana eyed her, the gaze making her squirm. “Come,” she took her hand. “I will show you something else before we met Dr. Karisvan.”
She felt like a school child being led conspiratorially. There was no mistaking, however, the commanding presence of the woman, the way she was pulling Merritt without regard for her wishes. “Here,” she stopped in front of a tiny rectangular door about three feet high. “Behind this was special detention.”
Merritt shook her head. “I don’t see how anyone could get in or out.”
Ileana bent and opened the latch. “Go inside, you’ll see everything you need to.”
She laughed, concealing her terror as she looked into the pitch black hole. “I couldn’t possibly fit.”
“On all fours. That is how it’s done.”
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