The Bid (5 page)

It had to be the stim, he argued with himself, shaking sweat out of his eyes, the ends of his hair flicking around the crown of his head. It was stronger than those of his world. That had to be why. There was no way in hell otherwise that he would so ferociously crave what she was giving him. Yet, even as he blamed the drugs, a sinister whisper in his subconscious was trying to make him admit there was more to it than that.

“Some will even drop to their knees and take a taste of you,” she whispered in a vivid purr. She licked her dark lips absently as she rubbed her thumb over the purpled head of his erection. She probably didn’t even realize she’d done it, but watching the contrast of her blush-pink tongue licking wetly over deep violet red was like touching a flame to fumes for Vejhon. It became horrifyingly easy for him to imagine her mouth opening over his cock and the stroke of her tongue as she swallowed him down. All the while, in reality, she was flicking her thumb over him, swirling it in a deadly imitation of that very act, until he felt the hard twinge of readiness tightening his balls.

He swore nastily in her face, cursing her and his own fate. His own weakness. Still, she stroked him down his length and up again, her fingers milking pre-cum from him and slicking up the stroke she handled him with until he began to vibrate with the tremors of nerves screaming for release.

“Your seller no doubt let you be toyed with for some time to prove endurance. And then, he proudly announces that you are so fertile your ejaculate could populate a planet! Right before he injects you a second time.”

Her artful hand instantly released his penis as the opposite palm slapped against his chest and, as promised, her ring spurred another injection into his bloodstream. “Now,” she breathed, “your body is overwhelmed with the aphrodisiac you’ve been fed. It disconnects your mind from your body, removing all of your will from the equation, overriding any resistance. There is nothing you can do but feel. Feel the burning of your body, the pump of blood into your already engorged cock.” She stepped aside, making certain she did not touch him anymore. “No one has to touch you. No stroke is necessary. Nothing can stop the release that is boiling up out of your control.”

But he was clearly going to try his best, Hanna noted. His entire body was coated in sweat, a shuddering of resistance trembling through every flexed muscle he could force under his command. His efforts truly were futile, but she had known he would fight. She wanted him to fight with everything he had. This way, he would really know what might have awaited him had Najir not attended that sale.

“As you are nothing but a slave, you could be laid out and tethered just as you are now,” she mused, allowing her rousing sexuality to filter strongly into her voice now. It was the pure beauty of the man before her and the outstanding ferocity he used to fight that stirred her, though, not his helplessness and defeat. “In your present state a woman could climb on top of you and ride you until she is ready for the climax she is manipulating from you. Or better yet, if a man had liked you…” She trailed off meaningfully, her stare hard on him as he shot daggers through her heart from his eyes. The arteries on his thick neck were distended with effort, and anticipatory fluid dripped down the length of his glistening phallus. “Or perhaps you prefer men anyway,” she said with a shrug of a shoulder, even though she knew full well it was women who aroused him. He had looked at her body enough times and in enough ways since she entered the room to assure her of that. “Of course, in that case a man might ride you, or you might find yourself on your hands and knees preparing to—”

“Shut up, you sick bitch!”

He roared the insulting command just as his body burst the confines of his control. Orgasm ripped through him like razor wire, tearing him apart from pride to penis. He came so hard that his semen jetted across the floor several feet, long viscous streams at first and then harsh spitting globs as his glands tried to obey the irrational demands of the stimulant he’d been fed. Vejhon’s vocal outrage as he climaxed growled off the high ceilings of the room, and then came the inevitable low groans of agonizing pain as his cock tried to spit out fluids that were no longer available. It stood out from his body, still rock hard and jerking torturously, remnants of cum dripping from the open slit at the head.

Had he not been tied hand and foot, he would have fallen to his knees by now. None could stand up under this kind of painful bodily betrayal. Even Hanna could not remain stoic, giving herself away by biting her lip and curling her brows in sympathy. When it finally ended for him, he gasped hard for breath, pulling his head up and catching her in the compassionate expression for a second before she recovered herself. He was bleeding at every single manacle point, a testament to how he’d fought against himself. His failure, she knew, was utter humiliation for a man of his type.

It had been the same for Najir. He had been the first rare bird she had found captured, and now she had another. Najir had found another. He had looked at this man and seen himself all those years ago. Seen him as Hanna had seen Najir the day he had been auctioned off like a prized thoroughbred pet. What she had described to Jhon had been what she had seen Najir suffer through that day. Hand after hand touching and stroking him, mouth after mouth sucking at him and licking him. Some seeing how far they dared to go in public. Only, Najir had not been in stasis. He had been awake and aware as the stimulant and a dozen men and women buyers raped him of his will and control. Then the flesh peddler had injected the second stimulant and the crowd had delighted in the ferocious explosion of his ejaculation and his outcry of anger that accompanied it. Hanna knew her neighbors, her fellow nobles, and she knew that some of them thrived on that kind of pain from others…that terrible kind of suffering.

She was not one of them.

N
ajir watched through the transparent wall as Hanna quietly went about dampening a towel and cleaning the floor herself. He knew she would never allow a servant to come into that room to witness any part of what she was being forced to do. Just as he knew she wouldn’t touch Jhon just then, even to clean his body or wounds, because the stimulant that had ravaged him would make him scream if he were touched too soon.

Najir’s handler at his auction had not been so thoughtful.

The memory made the muscles between his shoulders bunch and tense and he fought off the chill it left behind. Najir knew why Hanna must take the new male through these paces, because he understood Vejhon about as well as he did himself. Oh, there were sure to be differences between them, and in truth he was hoping there were broad differences in their makeup, but the inured basics of pride and denial were very much the same. He realized that a wall of pure fury had been blocking all reason and logic in the warrior’s mind. The betrayal of his freedom would have kept him balking, deaf to all attempts to gain his trust. Hanna had been forced to inject him harshly into reality, and Najir understood that better than anyone.

He watched Hanna replace the hateful ring in its box. Jhon was fully occupied with catching his breath and coping with the relief that was coming as the stim wore off. There was no longer room for anger within him after such an ordeal. Najir knew his Hanna would take no pleasure in Vejhon’s defeat. When she spoke, though her voice seemed steady to her captive, Najir—who knew her so well—heard the sadness underlying her tone.

“This is what you would have known every single day, as often in the day as your owner pleased, had you been bought by another. I haven’t the heart to play evil to the extreme of the Baron who nearly walked away with you before Najir intervened and bought you out from under him. The Baron’s predilections are…monstrous. Few survive his ideas of intimacy.” She took a deep breath, sighing soft and long on her exhale. “Sleep. Eat. Bathe. And think over everything you have learned today, my proud one.”

She turned on her heel and left the room. A moment after the outer door closed tight behind her, a second pneumatic hiss let her into the private observation room where Najir stood. Their eyes met and an instant expression of compassion rippled across her features. She must have seen something in his features that revealed the pain he’d felt when reliving his past experiences through Vejhon. She hurried up to him, enfolding him in her soft, reassuring embrace, drawing his head down to her graceful shoulder.

“Shh, dearest,” she soothed him, her magical calming fingers stroking through his hair. “It is over now.”

“He will hate you now. As I hated everything after that.”

“But he is just as sharp as you. I can feel it in him. It is part of his beautiful power. He will slowly put the clues together as his emotions ebb from their high of hatred.” She nuzzled Najir’s cheek and he felt her smile. “He won’t understand what comes next. He will be baffled at first, but it will all come eventually.”

Hanna released him so she could turn back to the wall looking into the room. Vejhon would never know he was being observed through solid stone. No one but Hanna and Najir had the code to activate the technology it used, or to get into the private room itself. Hanna moved to the control panel set into the stone and her fingers quickly tapped out a command. Inside the room, the metal bands binding Jhon to the stone wall sprang open and, finding himself suddenly and unexpectedly released, he fell forward onto his knees and hands.

Hanna had no desire to watch what would follow, so she deactivated the viewing wall. It was as though she and Najir had suddenly been sealed off alone together in the long room. The dismal little place had been built by an unsavory relative long ago, so he could spy on his guests and whomever else he wanted to in a measure of comfort. It ran the entire length of the back wall to the large suite, with several portals available for best viewing perspective. Back then it had been kept in great comfort with many amenities close at hand, including lounges set before each window so one could recline as they took in their sport.

Now the old, age-worn lounges were all that was left, the walls and floors stripped bare of everything else. The environmental systems kept dust away, but the room still echoed of neglect. Hanna had not used it before or since the first week of Najir’s residence in her home, all those years ago.

The room had darkened considerably as the light from the other room was cut off from them. Najir felt Hanna touch him through the material of his shirt, her fingertips stroking over his pectoral muscle as she sidled up close to him. His heartbeat jumped up in speed as her lush figure snuggled up along his side and her mouth reached to brush his neck.

“Weren’t you holding a thought for me?” she asked, her whisper sultry sweet against his skin.

Najir smiled into the dimness above her head.

“Tart,” he taunted her. “You’re just horny because you got a good feel of that impressive cock of his.”

“So?” she asked, shamelessly shrugging a shoulder. “Are you telling me you didn’t get hard just watching me stroke that impressive cock?”

She had him there, and she knew it. Unlike Vejhon, Najir knew her intimate touch had been meant as a lesson and not a violation. Watching her bestow her caresses had triggered a flurry of sensory memory and longing. Hanna followed up her speculation with a foray of fingertips down along the front of his pants, easily encountering his quickly developing erection. She chuckled wickedly when he snapped his tongue at her in a silent scold for her audacious manipulations.

“You are shameless and insatiable,” he accused in a growl against her ear that sent shivers of delight down her body.

“And horny,” she reminded him huskily. “My pussy is soaked just from the feel of him.”

“Not because he came so hard for you?”

“No!” She jerked back harshly, seeking his dark eyes with an expression of disbelief. “Do you honestly think I would get any pleasure from degrading another human being like that?”

“No. Of course not,” he soothed her gently, his fingers reaching to smooth the creases of fury from her forehead. “I don’t know why I said that.”

“And he didn’t come for me,” she continued bitterly. “He ejaculated because a drug forced it on him. It could’ve been anyone in that room.”

“Shh, I know. I know,” he said, his regret and sorrow radiating through the gentle touch of his hands. “I’m sorry, Hanna. It just touched so close to my memories. I must have gone through every single emotion he was feeling, right along with him. It was like stepping back in time and…I-I’m still not thinking clearly.”

“I knew you shouldn’t watch,” she whispered painfully, turning away from him to press her forehead against the cold stone they could no longer see through. “I don’t know why I let you talk me into it.”

“Because you didn’t want to do it alone, Hanna. You borrowed from me to make your point, bringing him in to that experience you and I shared so long ago. It was key in bringing us together, and it is crucial to keeping all of us safe. Now, he will forever be part of a terrible knowledge, but he will need it if he is to join us on our journey into the future. I don’t think I would ever have trusted him otherwise.”

“Neither would I, Najir.” She picked up the tail of her hair, toying with the end of it in a familiar nervous habit she had. She brushed the thick bottom of it back and forth over her palm a dozen times or more as she thought. “I feel evil,” she confessed suddenly.

“No! Never!”

“Well, selfish then! To do this just because we need him so badly…”

“Stop!” he commanded her harshly. “That is not the reason why and you need to remember that. At least, not the only reason why. Yes, he is perfect for us. The first in a decade to come along who could come this much closer to perfect. But you were right when you told him what would have become of him had you not intervened.”

“Had
you
not,” she corrected.

“Had
we
not, then,” he acquiesced. “Had we not intervened he would be in Majum’s household this very instant, Hanna, being mauled and raped and worse.”

“So much worse,” she murmured.

“Yes. This is all a means to an end. Remember that. You have never quailed when handling unpleasant tasks before, so why this time?”

She turned to look up into his eyes, her hands reaching to grasp his wide shoulders. “Because I see so much of you in him. I saw your pain and fury from that night all over again.”

“And you will show him the way away from it just as you did me, my Lady,” he whispered softly to her as he brought his lips to her soft cheek. “You will show him how easy it is to love you. You will teach him all the reasons why you’ve earned my undying loyalty and commitment. And one day, I have no doubt, you will even make him come for you, harder and with far more pleasure than any stimulant ever could manage.”

That made her chuckle softly, her body relaxing as his hands gathered her against him. She felt his large palms sliding down her back and cupping over her bottom briefly as he hugged her tightly to his huge frame. The embrace brought her pelvis to pelvis with him, reminding her instantly of the uncomfortable dissatisfaction of both their unfulfilled bodies. She had been running on an excited high ever since Najir had hurried in and told her of his discovery. She had turned him away then, knowing she would need that frustrated energy to take her through the next few hours…including the interlude she had just left. But as much as she would love to avail herself of Najir’s sexual prowess, she knew that this part of their relationship had drawn to a definitive close the moment he had bought Vejhon for her…and he knew it, too.

“So tell me, my Lady,” he murmured softly into her ear. “What is your next move with our new companion?” Najir continued to cuddle her close, already knowing that, while sex must no longer be a part of their life together, they both refused to change their other intimacies in any other way.

“Mmm…to let him get used to his new limited freedom for a while. Let him digest and deduct from what he has seen and learned.”

“Let him get comfortable before dropping the next bomb on him?”

“No. Not too comfortable.” She hesitated a moment. “I think I will send you in to him as well.”

That made Najir go still for several long beats. “Really?” he questioned her. “You think that’s wise?”

“Are you questioning your Master, you naughty slave?” she asked, her pretty blue eyes sparkling with the tease. “I think I shall have to punish you for that.”

“Mmm, promises promises,” he taunted her. Tempted her. “I only meant…” Najir broke off. “He resents me. He holds me in contempt for what he perceives as my relinquishing all of my independence to you. He sees his nightmare version of his future when he looks at me.”

“Ahh, but you and I know better,” she observed.

“We definitely do. But it will take a lot of time before he comes to understand that.”

“Trust me, dearest.” She hugged him with all of her strength.

“Always, my Lady,” he breathed. “Always.”