The stale air strangled Gio and made her heart kick into overdrive. The blackness inside the mask would’ve rattled her less if she knew she could breathe properly, if her eyelashes didn’t brush the insides and her hands weren’t trapped.
“We’re going out now.” Ryke removed the caps over her eyes and mouth.
Light...
Seeing had never been so sweet. Nor breathing. She took in her first piece of air no longer drawn in through holes. It tasted like life. Unbalanced, still processing this reprieve, she felt him unbuckle her wrists where they lay in the small of her back.
He led her through the opened door.
Free. And not free. The taste of herself reminded her of how he’d shoved his fingers inside and fucked with her tongue.
Any second, any small mistake of hers, and he might smother her sight and her mouth again.
After this, trusting him would be stupid. He might kill her even if she told him her secrets. If she told him nothing new...that too was an abysmal choice. His punishments had become more random.
Her mind fluttered. She hated the unknown. Facts, she needed those, and Ryke seemed to thrive on twisting her world from beneath her feet.
When she stumbled over some obstacle at floor level, unseen because the mask cut down her field of view, he grabbed her elbow.
“Careful. I don’t want you hurting yourself. You get hurt only if I do it to you.”
She ventured words. “You said you didn’t harm clients.”
“Maybe I lied.” Then he spun her into the wall fast and hard enough to make her breasts feel the thud through the suit. He grabbed a handful of ass cheek and squeezed then pressed himself to her and ground her into the wall. His erection was a hard rod riding into the split of her ass. “Yeah, maybe I did.”
Her cheek was mashed onto wall, her nose. “Wait. Wait.” She gulped and barely stopped herself blurting out a please.
“Are we outside the room?”
Shit. “Yes.”
“Then you don’t speak unless I ask you to. Stay.”
He stepped back and she heard him sort through a bag on the floor. Afraid to stir, she stayed, her palms on the wall, face sideways. What was he looking for?
“Ah.” Ryke spat then moved around behind her. He unzipped the suit crotch. Something hard pressed at her asshole. She squeezed shut her eyes. In spite of her whimpers and whispered protests that never quite became words, he wormed the thing into her, fraction by fraction, her nails scratching the wall as she strived to distract herself from what he was doing.
With a last slippery bump through the muscles there, it seated inside her.
“Done.” He rezipped the crotch and patted her butt.
This thing felt so strange, as if it pulsed and swelled and shrank.
Just her nerves adjusting. It must be. This was nothing. Mind over matter.
“It’s called an accuator. Are you behaving now?”
She nodded emphatically, wise in hindsight. What was an accuator?
“Then keep your mouth absolutely shut and let’s go.”
She followed him as carefully as she could, only faltering a little in a few places, where he anticipated and steadied her. Corridor and doors went past. A maze of places she glimpsed. The eye holes had raised rims, restricting what she could see. It was almost impossible to track their path.
Almost.
Did it matter? He would lead her back.
It might. Who knew how valuable might be a map to his lair? He was Batman with a bat cave and everyone knew Batman had enemies.
Another chink to add to her list.
They emerged into a wide corridor. It was a street of sorts in this landship. She knew them, had travelled in hoppers, had strolled with Drette on the rare occasions when he wished to bring her with him. Never had she done this naked but for a suit that showed every crevice on her body, while on a leash held by a man who cared so little for her safety or honor. The mask was all she had to hide behind. It would have to be enough.
Gio straightened. The press of the accuator made her feel as if every passerby would know what he’d thrust into her. She vowed not to shrink, to walk tall.
Not as tall as Ryke, though. He ambled slightly ahead, a monolith with mountains for shoulders. He was hooded, same as when she first met him in the blood-snack room, dark and brooding.
Brooding... She pictured him sitting on an egg. Humor was her best friend when her situation was this dire.
The man was armed – he had a gun and a knife, at least. Maybe there was a good reason for him wanting her to be silent. With her death sentence, anyone who discovered her identity might as well be her executioner.
“Keep focused, girl. Listen, feel, look. I don’t expect miracles this first time, but I expect you to try.”
She heard through holes in the mask. Only now, walking through crowds, did she know how muffled were those sounds.
Men ogled her and the mask became her one true barrier...well, Ryke also. She was glad he was there beside her. His doing, this situation, but without him those heated gazes would’ve turned into outright assault and rape. Humans riding a Mekker’s cock made them come better than anything, or so she’d heard. A man had supposedly died from the ecstasy.
When the leers and the muttering from a group of men scared her, she put her head down and walked closer to Ryke. The asshole himself did nothing to deter them. She might as well be being paraded naked.
“Keep to your work,” he said.
She frowned.
Detecting a Mekker who could do portal magic was unlikely. She didn’t know how Drette had made it happen. She’d been trying to recall how he’d seemed to be when he stood in front of her, creating a portal – the feel. There had been some difference but she’d lost it.
The bottom of her stomach swished heavily. She’d forgotten everything. With the beatings, the mind games, and the time that’d passed...
The knowledge Ryke sought from her was nonexistent. At the most she had a few small pieces of data. She wouldn’t give up hope though, it was all she had.
Shops went past to either side, people yelled their wares, their special prices, some shoved leaflets into Ryke’s hands that he let flutter to the floor once they’d passed. They walked through a market with grass underfoot, where the crowd was thick enough to make Ryke take her closer to him again, with the leash as short as a foot.
She bore no illusions. He was simply guarding his merchandise.
Once they reached an area close to the bow of the landship, she recognized landmarks – a theatre, a park with broad, glasslike panels letting in light from overhead. Those wouldn’t lead to the outside – she had worked that out long ago, when Drette brought her here. They channeled the sunlight from the top hull down reflective shafts. She was deep inside the ship and caught by not just Ryke. Some faction aimed to get her knowledge. To help the king? Perhaps.
Whoever it was, they had this King’s Own Lawgiver convinced. She wasn’t as certain. Maybe he was being played.
He found a café and wove between the front tables to find a table situated near the door leading into the interior of the business. Once he’d stretched out his long legs and crossed his ankles, Ryke sat and pointed to the floor next to his chair.
“Kneel. There.” He dragged a cushion from another chair and tossed it down.
Whatever.
Living here took you down a peg, then down another, then another. Soon she’d be content to live in the gutter sharing food with rats.
She kneeled, uncomfortable as the bulk of the accuator shifted, poking at her inside. He eyed her as if she’d done something inexplicable.
A waiter mechling came out, a white version a few feet high with high legs. A spider waiter. It whirred gently until he ordered a drink. Probably one made of blood and ground-up babies, or metal filings. The waiter mechling stalked away and disappeared inside.
Two men who had the look of soldiers ambled in from the right and stood watching the small crowd. There were barely six others at this café. The men on the landships of the swathes had to serve in the military but most she’d seen had relaxed back into civilian life. This pair displayed ultrashort haircuts on either side of their head. Both seemed intense in their observations and balanced in their stances, as if ready for combat at any second.
Civilian? Hell no.
Like Ryke, they wore coats with attached hoods, though theirs were loose at their backs. Beneath one coat, she glimpsed a holster.
“Attention, here.” Ryke snapped his fingers then reeled in the leash. She had to lean forward until she was looking up at him with his fist balled below her throat. “Have you found anything you need to report?”
Her heart turned up the volume.
He frightened her. The power he had over her, what he’d demonstrated again today, those two unmatched eyes inches from hers. Every detail in his irises, in the ragged run of the scars across his face, in the sureness with which his fingers twined the leash, sung to her of dominance.
“Speak.”
Below, her hands cupped her knees, flexing, unflexing.
Had she found anything? Like a decent and moral person? Hey now, that would be reportable.
She hated him scaring her. Anger bloomed. Don’t say it. “I only found more assholes.” Like you.
The added words were unspoken, but she knew he knew. That look descended on his eyes; a smile flicked into existence, and was gone. The look told her she was about to be sorry for being her.
Wait, wait. I shouldn’t have... She didn’t say it.
He tsked then picked his bag up from the ground to place it on the square table. “We’ll take a different route back home.” A small rectangular device was put on the table, clicking when it contacted. “But first, climb across my lap.” He patted it. “Lie there, and remember my rules.”
Don’t talk, don’t cry, don’t blink an eye. Nothing had been said about laps.
He waited.
She dug nails into knees and felt it through the hide. He crooked a finger and she climbed up, over his rock-solid body and lay there on her stomach.
“Thank you,” he whispered, from low down, next to her ear. “If you wish to stay alive, suffer whatever happens in silence. Obey.” Smiling, he clipped shut her mouth cover
Suffer?
He unzipped her at the crotch then deliberately pulled apart her thighs until she must be intimately on display. Tensing, but unwilling to prompt him to punish her, she stayed put. A breeze cooled her slit, until his palm slid into place. He began to alternate massaging her and wiggling the base of the accuator. That thing wouldn’t be lost up inside her, but it would be obvious to anyone who looked.
The two men arrived at their table.
Ryke put his other hand over the middle of her back, holding her down while still playing with her pussy, stirring her lips, sliding along that groove. Gathering her wetness by dipping his fingertip inside then sliding, again.
Intolerable, yet she had to suppress a heavy sigh. These men must be dangerous. When he stirred her clit, her attention swung back and forth. Men. Clit. Men. Fuck. She wanted to wriggle both away and toward his devious caresses.
“Sirs.” Ryke began, rumbling. His thick voice, the stir of his thighs under her belly, his cloying scent, and that hand weighing on her back, these filled some craving in her middle she’d not known she had. Whatever he intended had something to do with these two. “I’m a whore master and you’ve arrived at the right moment. You can have a free sample of my newest human slave? Not here of course. In the alley.”
A click sounded where Ryke had his hand on her. From the accuator in her ass, a mind-obliterating bliss erupted. She stiffened, arching uncontrollably, every muscle tensing as if he’d electrocuted her, toes and splayed hands scrabbling at the floor. The open-mouthed cry was hers but the spasm had her. Shaking, shaking, in an intense and forced orgasm.
Another click and she collapsed, moaning, panting, head pounding. She licked her lips to make sure they were hers. Her heartbeat trundled down from attack speed to merely twice as fast as it should be.
At least two of her fingers felt as if the nails had snapped. If he did that again...she feared a heart attack.
“Highest-setting accuator. In her asshole. You get the controls.”
Someone swore.
“Huh. Looks fun, but whoremaster or not, if she’s human, we need to see her hair.”
“Hey, Druig, you’re joking. Look at her!”
“Shhh.”
Ryke patted her back. “That’s an unusual fetish. I keep her masked to control her biting and spitting. Take my card afterward – I guarantee you’ll want it, and we have a deal. Hair will be sighted. I’ll remove the mask after you fuck her.”
“Just the ma –” began one of them.
“Deal! Shut up, Tre,” snapped the other. “Free, right?”
“Free,” Ryke said.
“I go first then.”
“What? It was my idea, Tre.”
“Shut it.”
Druig muttered a few swear words.
She’d swear Ryke had almost purred.
He rolled her from his lap to her hands and knees on the floor, then pulled her upright and led her through the chairs, from the café, and around a corner into a darker alley. By then she was thinking properly and her panting had slowed.
Why this? Because they were looking for her. And the offer of sex? A distraction. Which meant he wouldn’t follow through.
Surely?
“Down. On the ground, girl.” Ryke dragged at her leash until she folded. Grit on the alley floor dug into her palms and she thought she saw a dead thing off to the side. It certainly smelled that way.
“One of you can have the leash. She likes running. The other gets the accuator control. Want it?”
“Sure.”
She spotted the object being tossed through the air. The one named Tre caught it.
Ryke tugged at the crotch zip as if to be sure it was at the end of its run. “Be my guests. Come in her if you want. They don’t get pregnant or our diseases.”
She found she was trembling. Fear, or was it leftover nerves twitching? She bowed her head and tried to be ready to ignore anything that happened as one of them lowered himself behind her. And to be silent.
This was not happening.
A man smoothed his hands over her butt cheeks then thumbed open her pussy entrance, wide, until the stretch stung.
But it was.