Sold

by Renard, Loki

  “There’s always a tyrant in times like these,” Mattias says. “And now a new one will rise.”

  “Maybe he’ll be better than the old one?”

  “Tyrants never are. Come, girl. Time to meet your new masters.”

  “No man is the master of me,” I say, wiping my hands on a napkin.

  I can feel them giving one another looks again. They think I am silly and naive. I think they have forgotten what makes them men. Whatever implant has stolen their virility has also made them complacent. I’ll show them what someone who still knows what freedom is can do.

  “Get me a dress,” I say. It’s not a request. It’s an order.

  “No clothes for you,” Mattias repeats.

  “Get me a dress. Now.” I put as much steel into my tone as I can muster. These men are my servants. They bathe me, feed me, dress me. They will do as I say. They will learn to obey...

  “Ow!” I gasp as Mattias’ hand meets my bottom hard enough to lift me onto my toes. “What the hell! You fucking tax inspecting, speeding ticket...”

  I use all my worst words, but they do nothing. He stands over me, so damn tall I have to crane my neck to give him the dirty look he deserves.

  “I will take you over my knee and I will spank your ass red,” he threatens. “And you will go and meet your masters with your rear flaming with the evidence of what a misbehaved little girl you are. Is that what you want?”

  His words make my face blush as crimson as the hand print he left on my rear. It irks me that he does not take me any more seriously after seeing what I did yesterday.

  “Aren’t you afraid of me, Mattias? Aren’t you scared of what I’ll do to you if you don’t obey me? Maybe I’ll find something else to cut...”

  I was trying to be a bad-ass as I hissed the words, but when I see the change in his expression from stern to thunderous, the realization of what a huge mistake I have made comes rushing over me.

  I make a dash for it before he grabs me, and just manage to avoid his grasp by dashing under the table. I have to use my lack of height to my advantage now, scrambling out the other side as these two angry giants chase me around the elegant room.

  Elias cuts me off on one side, blocks my escape route so Mattias can lean down, grab me by the ankle and pull me out, squirming and screaming as I go over his lap.

  “Don’t. You. Ever. Threaten. Me,” Mattias thunders, his hard hand catching both my cheeks with every single slap.

  I shriek and wail, the pain more intense for the shame of knowing I shouldn’t have said what I said. Mattias gives me the spanking he’s been threatening to give me since we met. He whips my ass with his hand, his palm catching my cheeks over and over with hard slaps that make my rear jiggle and burn.

  Nothing I say matters now. I squeal apologies, promises not to say anything like that again, but the spanking goes on, a hot painful punishment I have to endure to the bitter end.

  “You are just a wild little girl,” Mattias growls. “But there are worse things than even you can imagine in this world. Killing one man does not change your position. It does not frighten us. It does not. You are my charge, little girl. You will do as I say. You will wear what I say you can wear, you will eat when I tell you to eat. You will sleep, bathe, speak, live according to my rules. Understand?”

  “Yesss!”

  How can I do anything other than understand with him whipping my bottom so painfully I can’t help drumming my toes against the fine carpet beneath us.

  Worse than the pain of the spanking though, is the way I can feel his disappointment in me. I hear it in his voice, and it sinks through me, a heavy guilt.

  I don’t know why I respond this way to this man, but it leaves me in tears, sobbing for his forgiveness while he punishes my sore bottom.

  “I don’t want any further attitude out of you today,” he says, pausing to palm my incandescent ass. “If you are told to do something, you do it. Without argument, or back talk. Understand?”

  “Yes, Daddy,” I sob.

  “Good girl.” His voice changes. Becomes softer, more forgiving. He rubs my bottom and my back, but he keeps me in place so I can’t bounce up and begin the process of forgetting this humiliation. He keeps it fresh for me, shows me with his actions that I truly am the one who must obey him, not the other way around.

  “Okay,” he says at last. “Time to go see your masters.”

  I sniffle as he lets me up. I don’t want them to see me like this, feeling so small, my face stained with tears, my bottom bright red and stinging. But I have no choice. Mattias and Elias each take a hand of mine and lead me out of the private rooms we have been staying in, to another place where I will have my naked audience with the men who own me.

  Chapter Seven

  “What happened to her?” Tore asks the question as Mattias and Elias bring my altogether naked form to them in the place of their choosing. It was a library once, I think. Now the shelves have all been pushed to the sides, and a large table stands at the center, covered in what looks like a map.

  They were speaking amongst themselves when we arrived. It looked like a serious conversation. Something about land, territory, and order. When I come into the room, not a single one of them seems to care about the map anymore. They all turn to me. Look at me. I feel their hunger emanating from them in waves of masculine desire.

  I am naked, a lamb brought before wolves, and there is nothing I can do to escape my fate.

  Tore is the first one to notice the condition of my rear. He walks around us, looks at my ass, and then looks at me, his blue eyes piercing my soul. I squirm, and just barely resist the urge to hide behind Elias.

  “She needed a lesson in manners. She got one.”

  My face flares into heat. Oh, my god, why is he telling them?

  “Brat.” Silver winks at me.

  I make a little groaning sound and lower my gaze. There are nine pairs of eyes on me. Nine men judging me, seeing my shame. Nine men who hold my fate in their hands, and my flesh at their disposal.

  “She has a lot to learn,” Tattoo Face says. “She will learn more today. We have been working out what to do with you, girl.”

  He’s not wearing a shirt. Neither are Pharaoh, Gladiator, or Tore. The other three seem to have managed to fully dress themselves, but there’s something deliberate about the semi-nudity.

  I think about making a crack about them being in a dance troupe in order to alleviate the nervousness charging through my system, but my eyes are too busy ranging over four perfect male torsos, muscular and fit and rippling.

  “Good to know not one of you thinks I’m capable of working out what to do with myself.” I aim for sass, but my voice is a little too hoarse to truly pull it off.

  “Oh, we know that,” Cowboy drawls. “What you do is cause chaos and occasionally kill a guy. We’re going to keep that to a minimum.”

  “You are beautiful,” Pharaoh says. The compliment catches me off-guard.

  “But you are trouble,” Silver adds. I smirk at him. He smirks back. There is something more than a little chaotic about him too. I can sense, out of all the men who came to buy me, he is the one I might have been willing to be sold to.

  “Me, Tore, Pharaoh, and Gladiator are going to start training you today,” Keanau says, using the names I picked out for them in a way that almost makes me smile.

  “And what are Silver, Cowboy, and Zen going to do?”

  That question goes unanswered.

  “Come with us.”

  I hesitate, and suddenly, it isn’t Mattias holding my hand. It’s me holding his, my fingers clenching tighter around his big palm for security.

  “Go,” he says, gently peeling my digits off. “They won’t hurt you, unless you need it.”

  “What does that mean?” I half-hiss, half-whimper the question.

  “It means go and be a good girl.” Mattias swats me lightly toward the group of four massive men waiting for me.

  I take a step and stop. Yesterday, I
felt big, riding the wave of cockiness that comes from dispatching one of the most powerful men in the world.

  But now I feel small.

  They seem so much bigger than me. Bigger than I could have imagined as they come toward me, four men to claim me.

  “I want Mattias and Elias to come too!” I don’t know why I say that. Maybe because they’re fast becoming the human equivalent of security blankets.

  “No,” Keanau says firmly. “You will come with us. Now.”

  I am scared. These are big, frightening men, and I know what will happen when I am alone with them will change me forever. There is no way I am going with them of my own free will. There is no way I can overcome the girlish fear of this much male flesh, let alone the feeling that I am in deep, deep trouble.

  Pharaoh takes the matter of obedience out of the equation. He scoops me up over his shoulder and he carries me out of the library, and into a big bedroom a few doors away.

  “Mattias!” I call out, but he does not come. I hear male chuckling as I am drawn away to what must surely be the ravaging that has been coming for a long time. After all I have been through, the market, the sheriff, in the end, this was always coming. My resistance has only managed to get me as far as a man I could not avoid, hurt, or kill.

  The bed is huge and expansive and... round. I am confused by it enough that when Pharaoh puts me dead in the middle of it, on my knees. The others stand around the bed, forcing me to turn to look at them when they speak.

  It is Tore who begins laying down the law. His ice blue eyes lock on me. I instinctively want to look at the muscular wall of male flesh, but I can’t, because this big Norse beast demands I give him all of my attention.

  “Do you know why we chose the four of us to have you first?”

  “Drew straws?”

  My attempt at flippancy falls flat.

  “We are the four most equipped to tame a mouthy little girl and show her how to be a woman. You are unbroken, Trissa. You are wild and you are untamed. And that will not do. When we are done with you, you will know how to behave.”

  I bite my lower lip.

  “First of all, you will call each of us sir,” Tattoo Face says.

  “Nope.”

  There’s no amusement in any of their faces at my bold defiance.

  “Second of all, you will know us by our names. I am Keanau, this is Tore, as you know. The man you called Gladiator is Alexios, and the one you called Pharaoh is Mark.”

  “Pharaoh is a better name,” I argue smartly. I know I should be quiet. I know I should agree to whatever they say. My butt is still stinging from when Mattias spanked me, but there is something inside me that just won’t let me quietly agree to them and their terms. I have to fight.

  They shoot looks at one another.

  “Anyone object now?” Tore asks the question of the others. Apparently they had some discussion about what to do with me. Apparently, I’ve managed to make whatever Tore suggested palatable to them.

  “No. Go ahead,” Keanau sighs, making a gesture with his big meaty hand.

  Tore sits down on the bed, reaches for me, and takes me by the back of the head, his fingers curling in my long blonde hair. He slowly, but firmly pulls me toward him, and then over his hard lap.

  “Your spirit is impressive,” he tells me. “But your mouth isn’t. I want respect out of you, Trissa. I want obedience. I know you don’t know how to behave yet, but you will learn tonight. How much that hurts is up to you.”

  Held over his thighs, I want to squirm and curse at him, but there’s a warning in being held like this. My ass is vulnerable. I try to be good, quiet, but that is too little, far too late.

  Tore’s hand glides across my upturned cheeks, then slips away and returns with a sharp slap.

  “Ow! Please! Ow! I already got spanked!”

  “But the lesson obviously didn’t take,” Tore says. “This is for the attitude.”

  “I’m not giving you attitude!”

  “Yes, you are,” he says, rubbing my bottom once, before slapping it hard again. The sound is like a gunshot echoing around the room, and my plaintive cry afterward sounds pitiful. “I want to hear you calling me sir. I want to hear you thanking me for this spanking.”

  “Why the fuck would I... ow!”

  Tore releases a barrage of hard, heavy slaps that make me scream out with shock and sudden pain.

  The slaps Mattias gave me before are nothing compared to this. This hurts. This is pain searing through my bottom and finding every nerve in my body. I scream and writhe and wail. I kick and I squirm, but his arm is strong enough to hold me in place and make me take every single one of those vicious swats.

  “Stop it! Stop it now!”

  “I’ll stop when you call me sir.”

  “You’re a fucking asshole, sir!”

  That does not go down well at all. The spanking intensifies, finds my upper thighs. I am spanked from leg to bottom and my kicking and squirming and swearing does nothing to stop him.

  This is a battle of wills, but it is a battle I have no chance of winning. I am battling my own threshold for pain. Tore could do this forever, I am sure, so all I am doing is making it hurt me worse before it stops.

  “Please, sir! Stop!”

  I scream the words. It stops.

  It stops, and I burst into tears, because his stopping has done absolutely nothing to stop the pain. That sears on even in the absence of the spanking, my thighs and ass burning and tingling.

  Strong arms wrap around me, pull me up against Tore’s chest. He cradles me, one arm underneath my knees, one around my back and he holds me close, murmuring soft, comforting words to me.

  “It’s over now, Trissa,” he murmurs. “It’s done, little girl. You learned your lesson, didn’t you.”

  I don’t know if I’ve learned anything. I am tearful and sobbing, and I am afraid. But I still bury my head into the crook of his neck and I let him comfort me, those same hands that whipped me into screaming whimpers now helping to soothe the sting away.

  It takes long minutes for my tears to abate. When they do, I find myself cowering in the arms of yet another strange man in a long line of strange men who have laid claim to me only by merit of the fact they are men.

  “It hurts,” I whimper.

  “I know,” Tore says. “It hurts more than it had to, but remember this, so it doesn’t have to hurt again.”

  So all I have to do is whatever they say, and it won’t hurt. But I don’t want to. I don’t want to be obedient. I don’t want to submit to this. I wasn’t raised to submit.

  He eases me back from his body so he can look down into my shameful, tear-filled eyes. I can’t meet his. Can’t look at him. Can’t stand to see what he did to me, written on his face.

  I bow my head and hide myself from him, and from the others. I can feel their eyes on me, looking at me as I cower. I hate this. I hate how it hurts. I hate how small I feel. I am cracked, beginning to break. If I can’t get control of myself, I might fall apart completely.

  This is terrifying. Men are frightening. When I was alone, I used to imagine what being with one would be like. I never considered it would be like this. I never understood how much more powerful they are, how demanding they can be. I never knew how the muscles I used to hunt, to survive, would suddenly feel so inadequate and weak in comparison to theirs. There is no fighting Tore, or any of the others. Pulling, kicking, twisting, none of it worked. He is so much stronger than I am, to the point I may as well not fight at all.

  “Did I do too much?” I hear Tore whisper the question to one of the others.

  “She’s okay. She’s not hurt. She’s probably never been disciplined before, wild little thing.”

  Pharaoh plucks me off Tore’s lap. His large hands slip beneath my arms and he holds me up before him in all my red-bottomed, naked shame.

  “That hurt, didn’t it.” It’s a flat statement, but I answer it like a question.

  “Yes,” I whisper.


  “It will hurt again if you behave that way again. But it does not have to hurt. We are not here to make you feel bad. We are all going to feel very, very good.”

  He is painfully handsome. There is a symmetry to his features, a regal elegance that makes me tingle low in my belly, even in this miserable state. His eyes are beautiful, they glow with an amber hue that leaves me weak with something like desire—but how can I feel arousal after that humiliating punishment?

  Alexios and Keanau nod in agreement as Pharaoh lays me down, face first on the bed. I offer no resistance. The sting and the ache remind me of what happens when I disobey, and I am done with inflicting pain on myself through rebellion today.

  I feel four pairs of large hands begin to rub me, running up my thighs, over my bottom, finding my back and my shoulders. Each of them has a different part of me and slowly, surprisingly, it starts to feel better.

  My muscles start to relax. My mind starts to wander, not to any particular thought, but to a comfortable state of relaxation, where it doesn’t matter that I have been punished. All that matters is that I feel better now.

  “Spread your legs, Trissa.”

  I let my thighs part, and I let their big hands slide over the sensitive inner skin. I let myself feel good. They’re going to make me come. I know it. I can feel their intentions in the way their fingers move with constant reference to my sex.

  I won’t resist pleasure, but my orgasm is no guarantee of anything. The sheriff made me come before I killed him, and if these men treat me badly, they will not be any safer.

  I should want to kill Tore. But I don’t. And that confuses me too. He hurt me. I should want his blood. But instead, I am lying there, purring like a kitten as I am massaged by these big, brutal men who will oversee my deflowering.

  Which one of them will take me first? Who will claim the prize between my legs? I know it matters to them. And I know I will not be the one to choose.

  “Better?”

  “Mmm,” I let out a little moan.

  Being held by Mattias was the first comforting contact I’d had in years. And this is even more intense.

  A big hand slides over my sore bottom, thick fingers brushing lightly between my thighs.