Princess Slave Read online

  The blush that suffused her body only enhanced the way her hair matched her womanly parts, and it was all she could do not to begin wailing again as she had when she'd first discovered what he'd done to her. But now, to know that everyone who saw her – that every one of his people knew that he had made her scream last night

  She let them lead her back to the barrel bath to finish shampooing her hair. They dried her all over, including those long locks, not in the slow, familiar manner that Lilta had had, but quickly and effectively, as if they were afraid that the prince might return when she wasn't quite ready for him.

  Avette knew she'd never really be ready for him.

  And he proved it to her again that night. There seemed to be no end of depravities to which he would subject her.

  She had been alone since the women had left her, scrubbed and polished but still naked and chained. She hadn't been idle. She'd tried every entrance and exit to the room. The door she came in was locked, and when she – quietly, she'd thought – tried to turn the knob, an imposing male voice had asked, in her language, what she wanted.

  She had replied that she wanted to leave the room, but he had said she would have to secure the prince's approval for that. The man had no idea where the prince was or when he might return. The other door in the room led to a large, windowless closet where even more weapons were stored.

  All of the windows were barred, so next she tried to lift the swords on the walls and couldn't budge any of them even out of their display positions. The crossbow was her best bet – she was deadly accurate with it – but she had learned on a version of it that had been made for her by her eldest brother – smaller and lighter than what the Tonyeh men used, and this version was twice that size at least.

  There was going to be no escaping this room, until she could find some way of incapacitating her tormentor, or slipping by him when he opened the door, and that sounded unlikely even to her own mind. Eventually, though, she was sure that some opportunity would present itself; she just needed to keep herself alert and ready for when it did.

  She knew there would be no active rescue – that no one from her kingdom was going to come get her and that going home wasn't a viable option, either, lest it upset the delicate balance of power between the two realms. There was no jealous suitor to valiantly risk his life to bring her back, or even strike out on their own with. And if she managed to escape on her own, she had no idea what she would – or even could – do, with her well known face – and hair, apparently. If she made it to a distant land, she wouldn't just be a runaway slave; she would have been the Kohnzi prince's runaway-former-princess-slave. No one in their right mind would risk the Kohnzi wrath to help her.

  Aside from the two girls who had assisted her when she had first arrived, and who continued to do so now, she never saw anyone but him.

  Night after night, the prince presented himself to her late in the evening, after she'd spent a day in what passed for luxurious confinement in these parts, bored beyond endurance to the point where she was almost eager to see him – but not quite, especially when the reality of the indignities of belonging to him, of being a slave and eventual brood mare for his people – set in with a vengeance.

  He mustn't have been getting much in the way of sleep, because although it appeared he worked all day – he was always filthy when he arrived back at his room – he kept her up all night with his sensual demands. And they began with bathing him, which was a task at which she didn't balk, at first.

  Two servants followed him into the chamber each evening, carrying an even bigger version of the barrel casket than the one she used, and then proceeded to make several trips with large buckets full of steaming hot water. Even before they were gone, the prince had sloughed off his leathers till he was as naked as he was keeping her and dunked himself into the water with a loud, satisfied sigh.

  The first night he had done that, he had pointed imperiously towards a stack of cloths and primitive, unscented soap on the table near the tub, commanding, "Bathe me, slave."

  It was in Avette's mind to refuse him automatically, of course. Then, when she considered the condition of her bottom – which she couldn't much ignore – she realized that, in refusing over such a small thing, she was really only hurting herself.

  So she lathered up one of the cloths and started at the top of his head, washing his hair and thoroughly enjoying drowning him as she rinsed it. She paid close attention to his face, which was several shades darker than usual due to multiple layers of mud and she didn't really want to consider what else. His thick neck and broad shoulders were easy work, and he moved at her direction, even tying to anticipate what she wanted, which she quickly realized was, technically, what she was supposed to be doing for him as his slave – anticipating his needs.

  She let that disturbing thought go, washing down his arms to his fingertips, noticing the dirt there and scouring the room for something with which to remove it. Her gaze lit on a small, pocket dirk sticking out of his pants, and when she grabbed it and turned to go back to him, he was already out of the barrel and reaching for the dirk, his body poised and ready for her attack.

  Using the knife on him hadn't crossed her mind – it probably should have, but then she would have dismissed it anyway, because it was a weapon for a baby. The blade was barely three inches long, and considering his size and toughness, she severely doubted that it would even be able to penetrate his thick skin.

  "I was just going to clean under your fingernails," she said, by way of explanation, turning the blade away from him to give it to him handle first.

  He grunted, and did what she was going to do for him himself, then locked the dirk in a drawer of one his bureaus before returning to the bath.

  She reluctantly resumed her task, her efforts much less thorough. In fact, she pretty much didn't go much further than the top of his stomach, and he didn't seem to notice at first, but then he reached out and grabbed her hand to drag it to his ever rampant cock. "When you bathe me, you will bathe all of me, Avette."

  Trembling, she did as she was told, closing her eyes rather than gazing at the implement of her mortification, and making him chuckle at her modesty. She finished quickly and dried him when he stepped out of the tub, and before she was done – long before she wanted to be done – he had picked her up and dropped her onto the big bed. She tried to scramble out of his reach, then realized that, even with the size of the bed, she was never going to be out of the reach of those long, well-muscled arms.

  But she was on her hands and knees and could almost taste the freedom of the other side when a hand clamped around her ankle to pull her back to the edge of the bed, where sure impalement awaited. She twisted and turned and clawed at the fur bedcovers, trying to grab a hold of something that would stop – or even delay – her eventual defeat, but there was nothing.

  His hands clasped her hips as soon as they could and she knew her cause was lost. As he tugged her back to him, he growled, "Spread your legs, woman."

  Humiliation piled on top of humiliation. Not only had she been caught by him, but she was going to have to open herself for him, as if she was greedy for him. His command merely spurred her to continue her attempts at escape, until, with one tremendous pull he split her around him, filling her completely with one savage plunge. Avette had known how it was going to end – how it always ended - intellectually, but hadn't accepted it. So when her still nearly virginal entrance was forced to distend so quickly and violently around that intruder that would have been hard for even a more experienced woman to accept, an agonized – and not in a small part angry – cry flew from her lips for several seconds before she was able to swallow it back as he began to force his way inside her repeatedly.

  Stohsz reached down to wrap her hair around his arm, using it like a rein to control her, to force her to keep her head up, not giving her much leeway at all with which to absorb the power of his fierce thrusts. He knew she had a hard time submitting to his invasion at first, but he
also knew that her body quickly began to ease his way, until her passage became almost too slick.

  Besides, he firmly believed it should always be a challenge for her to submit to him. If it was easy for her, then it wasn't going to help her learn and accept that her place was right here, naked, captive and being fucked hard.

  His hips pistoned himself in and out of her as fast and as hard as he could as her heavy breasts swayed beneath her, the tips stimulated relentlessly by the soft fur beneath them.

  And when he had finally collapsed against her, he still held her fast, neck craned back by his hold on her hair. He withdrew long before he wanted to, but he knew what needed to be done. He reached over to where his pants were lying, fiddling with something for a short time, then straightening and, without a word, began to lather her behind with his stiff leather belt.

  The longer she was with him, the more often she was punished, the harder it became to keep her vow of silence, because her backside was never given the chance to recover from one punishment before the onset of another. And another. And another. The discipline didn't slack off one bit, but instead grew much more intense with each bout.

  This time, it wasn't just her rear and the backs of her legs, though. It wasn't just her breasts, either, although he did pay homage to them, too, once he'd bound her head to the bed by knotting her hair to it, stretching her arms over her head to incorporate them into how she was restrained. He didn't bother to tie her feet, because he rendered them useless by sitting astride her, his thighs alongside her hips, his long legs and sheer mass preventing her from so much as lifting either of her legs.

  And then he began to ruthlessly decorate those lovely breasts with the last six or so inches of thick, stiff leather of his belt. He was expert enough with it that nearly every blow landed over a nipple, that started out erect, from the stimulation of the bed furs, and, even when he dealt the final stroke, they were still standing proud, as if begging for their punishment.

  She had been able to keep silent for the thrashing of her bottom – barely. But when he began to set fire to her breasts, she knew she wasn't going to be able to hold back the tide of anguished cries, and, to her deep embarrassment and shame, after only the second terrifying correction to those tender mounds, she began to scream, and continued to do so after each stroke.

  When he stopped, he deliberately didn't give her any time to consider what he was doing. He switched directions, still straddling her, but now he moved a bit further down, lifting up just a bit to pry her legs apart and use his own to hold hers back and splayed widely open.

  Avette quickly realized what he intended, and screamed long and low as she saw him raise the hand in which the belt was held. "Nooooooooo!

  Chapter Five

  Several weeks had gone by since that horrible instance. But it was a milestone of epic proportions in Avette's mind, pushing her in a different direction – and one she would have sworn she would never consider.

  When he had finished with her, the woman who had sworn she wouldn't react in any way – especially not by screaming and begging and pleading – to anything he did to her had no voice left. She could not even croak.

  Her body stung and sizzled in ways and places she could barely recognize as her own, and, as far as she was concerned, it only got worse from there. The punishment was horrendous. Unbelievable. Incomprehensible. But what he did to her afterward was much worse for her conscience.

  He left her bound and stood to clean himself up a bit, then turned back to her. She was crying so hard she was hyperventilating, but when she saw him take a step towards her, her body stiffened, and he saw, for the first time, a look of fear in her eyes.

  And that was just what he had been aiming for. He wanted her to respect him for who he was – her Master. Nothing more, nothing less. Just as she was his slave, nothing more, nothing less than what he made her, or allowed her to be. He had kept her isolated to force her to confront her new rank – or rather the lack thereof – her lack of control, and her loss of power. He could make her comfortable or very uncomfortable, but everything about her life now stemmed from him and him alone.

  To drive his point home, he bound her legs back with straps behind her knees, stretched himself out on the bed, his head between her legs, and stared down at the gentle bits he had just scourged. They were hot and swollen and raw looking, and her sobs renewed and grew louder when his fingers touched her, softly but firmly, not letting her tears deter him in the least.

  And proving something to himself, and to her, when two fingers parted her inner lips to find gobs of moisture trapped there. He scooped some of it up on the tips and held it up to her. "Do you know what this means, Avette, my slave?"

  Although she was trying not to be, she was terrified that he might pick up the belt again and continue what he'd started. So she found herself much more eager to cooperate than she had ever been.

  She mouthed the words, "No, sir,", but since no sound came out, she ended up just shaking her head.

  "This is one of the sources of your pleasure – and your pain." he added. "This is where I take you with my cock, and the moisture you see is evidence of your own body preparing itself for me." He wiped them off on her lower belly. "If your body – not your mind, but your body – didn't enjoy what I did to it – even the punishments – this luscious cream wouldn't be here. You'd be dry as the Dushawni Desert." He pressed those fingers past her ravaged flesh and roughly up inside her, continuing to fuck her powerfully, as if this area hadn't been set afire just a few minutes ago. And, to her shame, her body responded automatically by trying to welcome him. She tried to lift her hips, although she couldn't really, considering the position he'd put her in. He looked up and saw that there were no more tears trailing down her face, but that her ripe, red, swollen breasts were heaving, the well-battered nipples never having lost their proud stance throughout it all. She was breathing heavily, but not from sobs.

  "I know you don't understand it. It's not necessary that you do. I do, as your Master. I can recognize the signs your body is giving me. You aren't just a scairn, Avette."

  She knew what he was going to say and wanted desperately to prevent him from doing so, but that wasn't a possibility.

  "You are chaisson."

  He could see her trying to deny it, trying to roll her head back and forth and unable to do so because she was held down too tightly.

  "No!" she mouthed, over and over. "No!"

  Even more so than not to have ended up here at all, or not to have lost her older sister, or her mother, Avette wished that she had never heard him use that word. It was one that transcended all of the realms in the world – it was the same word everywhere, one that was never uttered in polite company, but rather whispered, usually in back rooms, or alleys or places where the lowest of the low could pay for their depraved desires to be fulfilled.

  And the chainisson were the basest of them all.

  They were a class of people – nearly all women – who reveled in pain and humiliation. They were supposed to be shunned by all, but there were those who preferred doing that kind of entertainment, so they had established themselves on the fringes of all societies, on the lowest of the lowest rungs, usually in brothels. And, because of their scarcity, they could command a larger price than most. They weren't allowed to advertize their services, but word always got around, nevertheless.

  She wondered if he intended to sell her to one of those places, or expose her and then do so. Even to have the slightest rumor circulating about having that kind of tendency was enough to reduce even the highest born person to the lowest levels of every society.

  Realizing, belatedly, that what he had said might be interpreted as a threat, he reassured her. "I don't want you to worry about it, regardless, Avette. I will never give you up. I would kill any other man who touched you; I want you too badly for myself." Admitting that to her wasn't necessarily the smartest thing to do, but he wanted her to know that he was only prejudiced towards her. Selling her in
to sexual slavery never came into his mind, mostly because he intended to keep her in largely that manner here, with him. Why would he give such a jewel away?

  Like most of his comrades, though, he felt that less talking was always better, so he simply returned to what he had intended on doing before he had decided to reveal his discovery – and make his confession – to her.

  And what he did, unexpectedly, was to prove himself right to her. If, after all of what she had endured at his hands, at the end of his belt, she was still able to get all over shivers when he slid his fingers back into her, if nipples that had been viciously strapped could still peak achingly, making her wish he would pay them some attention despite their painful condition, and if she could sigh in ecstasy as his mouth covered her ravaged clit, his broad, flat tongue lying over it and pulsing slightly, moving just the tiniest of bits, but more than enough for her, then perhaps he was right.

  The thought made her swallow hard, at least until he was able to thoroughly distract her from it a few seconds later by granting her wish and reaching up to pluck at each of those stiffened buds in succession. But he didn't like the idea of her experiencing too much pure pleasure at any time, so his hold grew increasingly firmer, until he could feel her trying to arch away from his touch. Although that was always followed by another, more dramatic arch into his hands, that he didn't think she even realized she was doing but only served to support his theory.

  He kept her riding the razor's edge between real pain and true pleasure while he allowed his lips and tongue to go wild on her, saying, "Explode for me, Avette. Do it now or I'll get the belt," as he resumed thrusting his fingers within her.

  And she knew that was no casual threat.

  She did as he bade her as soon as he added a third finger, stretching her very wide for one so inexperienced, but then, he should have anticipated that she would enjoy that, as she so obviously did. She couldn't scream, and that was somehow almost even more erotic to him. She had surrendered even her lovely voice to him, and as he craved more and more from her, that unexpected aspect of her forced submission pleased him greatly.