The Hunter's Pet (7 page)

“Sarah.”

Her eyes blinked open. She looked down at him with an expression of pure shock. “You… how…”

“I told you,” he said, looking up into the tree. “You’re mine. I’ll always be able to find you now. As long as you wear that collar.”

Her expression crumpled into dismay. He felt a pang of guilt, sympathy for the wildling who wanted nothing other than to be left to her streams and her sky.

“Please,” she said, wrapping her arms around the branch. “Release me. Find another pet. There are hundreds of wild people. Some probably even want to be caught.”

“Sorry,” he said. “But you’re mine, and it’s time to go home.”

“No!” Her shriek was angry. Climbing quickly, she ascended to higher reaches. “I am not going back to the city. I refuse!”

He could have followed up into the tree and dragged her down, but that wasn’t the point of the exercise. The point was to take her out and bring her home willingly, as far-fetched as that seemed in the moment.

“You picked a poor tree for this little stand,” he pointed out. “Sort of isolated up there, aren’t you.”

“Shut up!” She clung to the branch and bared her teeth at him. Out there in the forest she behaved like an animal, giving rein to aggressive impulses without thought. He would have to curb that tendency too. There was a lot to fix, but he had time. There could be no rushing the process.

“Come on down,” he said. “We’ll go home, get some food.”

“I am not hungry.”

She was lying. Running gave her no time to eat or hunt and he had ensured her breakfast that morning was small. She would be terribly hungry. Letting his pet keep her distance, William pulled out a box that contained a sandwich. He began eating it, knowing that she would be able to scent the food.

“You are a bastard,” she growled from on high.

“If you’re hungry, all you have to do is come down and have some.”

There was a growl and then a silence in which he enjoyed his sandwich. The sun continued its sedate pace toward the horizon, sending a red glow across the tips of the forest trees. William finished half the sandwich, then held the other half up.

“Last chance,” he said. “Come on down and get something to eat.”

She didn’t move, so he finished the sandwich. “I guess that means you’ll have to wait until we get home to eat.”

“That is not my home.”

“It is now.”

There was another long silence, then a scuffling in the branches told him that he’d prevailed. She was coming down—and not to run again, but so that he could take her home.

“Good girl,” he praised, handing her a small wrapped piece of chocolate. She took it, looked at it, and he saw the struggle on her face as she tried to decide whether to eat it or throw it in his face. Hunger won. She unwrapped the chocolate and ate it angrily.

William turned toward home, not checking to see if she was following but trusting that she would.

It was nightfall before they reached the gate. She could have slipped into the shadows at any time and disappeared, but when they activated the sensors and illumination flooded their faces, she was still there.

“Enter, citizens.”

They stepped through the doors and into the decontamination chamber. As the misting spray settled over their bodies, Sarah shot him a grim look as if to say ‘why do you put me through this?’

“You did well today,” William reassured her. “There’s reward in that for you.”

His words did not have much of a positive effect. The reward had been the wilds themselves. Now that she was back in the fold, he was going to have to find another source of reward. He had a few ideas.

* * *

“Take your clothes off,” William said as they walked through the front door of his home. He had already shed his armor. Sarah obeyed, thinking he wanted her armor as well. She shed it all, the armor, her underclothing, a little bit of literal naked defiance for the man who controlled her.

She was surprised when William pulled her close and began kissing her. His hand slid over her bottom and between her thighs. She gasped as it moved across her sensitive skin and pressed against the apex of her legs, the warm strength of his fingers claiming her body.

“Feels good, doesn’t it?” The words were murmured in her ear as his hand slid back and forth against her lips, petting her softly. Each stroke brought fresh pleasure, a warm, soft sensation that both soothed and excited. She rode her hips forward, wanting more pressure. She was rewarded when William let his fingertips trace across the moist seam where her lips met.

“More,” she moaned huskily.

He kissed her, his mouth covering hers possessively. Their tongues twisted and entwined like tendrils of a vine joining their bodies. One hand stayed between her legs, the other slid up her back and around her waist, pulling her close.

“There’s always more,” he promised. “For you and me, there will always be more.”

He was so large, so strong and yet his touch was tender and practiced. He knew precisely how and where to touch her, each and every part of his body tuned to the task of pleasuring her. Sarah’s resistance, feeble enough to begin with, melted away completely. She kissed him back with urgency, her natural impulse to mate coming to the fore. Thrusting her hips forward, she invited him in, wanting his fingers inside her, his cock inside her, his hardness filling her, his seed in her womb. It was a powerful drive, one that eclipsed all others. Panting against his mouth, she tore at his shirt. It ripped open, revealing an abundance of golden curling hair covering the hard slab of his chest muscle.

William cupped her bottom and pulled her up, letting her legs spread around him. A zipper was lowered and his bare rampant cock pressed up against her pussy, then stabbed up inside her, giving relief like nothing else. Lifting her up, William pushed her against the wall of the vestibule and fucked her there, plunging his cock into her quivering pussy over and over while she clung onto his shoulders. He was a wicked force of nature, taking her with passion and lust that completely overwhelmed her.

“Is this a good enough incentive for you to come in when I ask you to?” He panted the question, his cock sliding in and out of her pussy with every word. “Are you going to be my good little wild pet and not run away anymore?”

Sarah could not cobble together the words, but she moaned her agreement as he pounded into her, fucking her harder and faster. Apparently unsatisfied with the lack of a verbal response, he pulled out and slapped the length of his cock against her pussy lips. It was not a punishment, but it was a tease. She stood there with her legs spread, taking hot slaps of his rod and wishing it was inside her.

“Yes!” she promised. “I’ll be good.”

“Good.” He wrapped an arm around her waist and took her down to the floor, flipping her so she was on her hands and knees. Her bottom received a stinging slap and then he was back inside her, pushing his cock deep inside her bare pussy until they both came in a hard, fast crescendo that left her whimpering obedience against the soft carpet.

Chapter Four

The next day, Sarah noticed something different about the house. “The purple…” she pointed toward the windows.

“I turned the force fields off,” he said. “Because I trust you not to leave the house without me.”

“I can’t ever go into the city alone?” Sarah didn’t think that was very fair. There were all sorts of people wandering around the city all the time. Why shouldn’t she be one of them?

“You’re a pet,” William said. “And the other citizens will treat you as such. I doubt you will take kindly to that, and I do not want to have to pick you up from the kennels.”

“Kennels?”

“Where strays are taken.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Don’t worry about that. Just promise me you won’t go out without me.”

“I wonder what the city is like at dawn,” she said, changing the subject. She had every intention of going out without William. Going out with him would mean behaving herself like a good little pet. That was not what she had in mind. What she had in mind involved exploring the city a great deal more intimately than William would probably have liked. She would not stick to the highways and byways and markets and whatever else they might have in the manner of public spaces. She wanted to see how citizens lived inside their homes. Were they all like William’s?

A shadow fell over her and two strong fingers slipped below her chin, lifting her head toward his so that their gazes met.

“If you betray my trust in this, not only will I put the force fields back in place, I will lash your bottom until the idea of walking seems unpleasant.”

He was using his serious voice and his serious face. A double dose of serious.

“I understand,” she said softly. It seemed to mollify him. She did understand. She understood that if he caught her out of the house without him, there would be trouble. But there were many ways to sneak out of the house without being noticed now that the many balconies and windows were unshielded. If she were to put her mind to it, he need never know that she was out.

“Sarah…” There was warning in his tone. “I can see you plotting, girl.”

“Oh, you have a machine that lets you read my thoughts?”

“I don’t need a machine,” he said, his cheek dimpling as he smiled wryly at her. “You don’t hide your thoughts very well. Every one of them is written on your face.”

“Just because I’m not some emotionless, expressionless citizen doesn’t mean I’m planning something.”

“Mhm. Just you mind that warning.” He tapped her gently on the nose. “I have some ministry work to do today, so I’ll be in my office. You can amuse yourself in the holochamber, or practice reading.”

Neither option appealed to Sarah overly, but she did not protest. She had a different agenda. An agenda that involved skipping out the nearest window and exploring the city from which she had been so strictly forbidden.

She picked up a book and pretended to read. None of the symbols made any sense to her, for she had not paid any attention to any of the lessons William had given. Reading seemed to her to be a complete waste of time. Why would anyone want to decrypt the thoughts of another person through small dark marks? Small mouth noises were troublesome enough.

William went off to do his work. She did not leave immediately, for she knew that it would take some time for him to fully immerse himself in his descriptions of the natural flora and fauna that he ‘discovered’ with every trip to the wilds. The people of the city seemed entranced by descriptions of the world that lay directly outside their gates, but they had no apparent desire to experience them firsthand.

Unlike a city dweller, Sarah only saw value in personal experience. If you did not see it with your own eyes, taste it with your own tongue, then it was of little value being told about a thing. In her weeks of captivity she had grown increasingly curious about the city itself. The aerial view provided by the transporters had given her an idea of the general layout of the place. It truly was like a nest of some kind, all tiny passages feeding onto larger walkways and pod-like structures in between.

A quiet settled over the house and she knew that he must be engrossed in his work. She could sense his concentration several rooms over. He would stay that way for at least an hour, she imagined from past experience. That meant she had an hour to explore the city—and perhaps find a way out of it.

Creeping toward the window, Sarah looked over her shoulder. There was no sound, no creaking of a chair, which would have indicated that he’d sensed something wrong. A little pang of some emotion she couldn’t quite place shot through her stomach, but she ignored it and slipped out of the window onto the ledge beyond. She was free, in a manner of speaking. The air outside the house was still, unnaturally so. The dome prevented any real air currents from entering the city space. What little breeze there was brought with it an unpleasant scent. She couldn’t place the smell at first, but it quickly became very obvious. Farts. The entire place smelled of farts, thanks to the many hundreds of people going about their day in a big impermeable dome.

There had to be some kind of venting system somewhere, or they would have all succumbed to the posterior gasses a long time ago. Looking around, Sarah noticed that there were little grates dotted through the upper portion of the wall. They were closed at that moment, but she imagined they could be opened if the flatus became overwhelming. It could potentially allow radiation in, but no doubt there was some kind of technology to keep it out. These people had an answer for everything, including things that didn’t need answers.

She sat for a time, getting her bearings and making sense of the place. It was not at all like the forested wilds. It had a strict order to it, a grid-like system that occasionally deviated into curves and triangles, but soon returned to straight lines. She would have no trouble navigating it, especially as William’s house had the benefit of being elevated above much of the city. There were other homes located nearby, providing a series of white domed stairs down toward the central city. Of course, no citizen in their right mind would have taken their life in their hands by leaping from roof to roof, but Sarah had no such misgivings. She hurled herself from the ledge and flew through space in a crouched position, landing on a nearby roof on both hands and feet. It was easier to absorb the shock of landing with four limbs rather than two.

She looked back over her shoulder and saw the window from whence she had come still empty. William had not noticed her leaving. She had gotten away with it! Quite thrilled with herself, Sarah bounded from rooftop to rooftop, taking the path of least resistance and letting gravity do most of the work. If there was one thing she was good at, it was moving through uneven terrain with alacrity. After several dozen such jumps, she found herself overlooking the very heart of the city. People were everywhere, going to and fro in the brightly colored robes that they seemed to so admire. There were ornate garments with flowing trains and large shoulders and more fabric than Sarah had seen in her life. If they had needed to flee a predator, they would have become instant meals. But the city people did not dress to survive, they dressed to impress one another.