Kaitlyn O'Connor (12 page)

* * * *

Between the sheer, mindless terror that had driven her into flight, the exhaustion from exerting herself almost beyond what her heart could take, and the blow that temporarily paralyzed her lungs, knocking the breath she
‟
d been struggling for from her, Loren blacked out.

When she swam toward consciousness again, it was to discover she was jouncing up and down on something hard enough it forced each attempt to suck a breath in out again in a grunt.

Darkness still crowded her vision, but a flicker of recognition went through her when she managed to lift her head high enough to look around.

The tight band across her thighs vanished abruptly and the pressure shifted to the spot between her shoulder blades and her ass. She felt herself falling and sucked in a sharp breath, her heart slamming painfully against her ribcage. Even as she stopped moving, jarred by the impact with a surface that was hard and yet yielding, Kael
‟
s face swam into view. She had a split second to register that and then felt the pressure of his mouth as it opened over hers.

54

A shockwave traveled through her. Rolling on its heels was heat as her mind assimilated the familiar taste and scent that filled her mouth and her lungs and reacted by flooding her blood stream with an intoxicating brew of natural, pleasurable drugs. An image of Kael filled her mind as she sank beneath the tide and felt the feverish play of his hands over her and the weight of his body settle on her.

“Mine,” he muttered drunkenly as he broke from her lips and pushed himself downward to suckle feverishly at first one breast and then the other, sending mind bending drugs through her on electric currents that seemed to sear a path from her breasts to her sex and set it on fire.

Moisture flooded her channel in response. The muscles quaked frantically for possession.

She had no clue of what his jerky movements were until she felt his loincloth fall away.

Before her mind had fully grasped what it was, he coiled around her and she felt a ball of flesh pressing against her cleft in the region of her sex. He tightened his hold on her, trying to impale her on the blunt object and it slipped to the mouth of her sex and found purchase in the yielding flesh.

Her heart began a frantic tattoo that was eight tenths anticipation and two tenths sheer panic as she assimilated the size of it and his intent. He grunted with effort, heaving against her mindlessly until he managed to wedge the head of his cock into the mouth of her sex. By that time her focus had shifted to eight tenths panic and two tenths stupidity as the pressure built to a burn and chased pleasure to the background. She sucked in a breath to protest, but he pounded it from her in inelegant grunts as he pursued his grim determination to sheathe the monster inside of her.

She was too panicked to realize he
‟
d succeeded until she felt the blunt head butt painfully against her womb. He seemed to realize he
‟
d gone as deep as he could at the same moment, however. Shuddering with pleasure, he arched his hips to withdraw and drove into her again, immediately setting a frenzied pace that banished the burn and the nearly unbearable tension and replaced it with electric jolts of pleasure. Her inner muscles rippled around the thick shaft, stroking the length lovingly as his flesh stroked hers from the mouth of her sex to her womb.

Her body leapt into a sheer, rapid climb toward climax without hesitation, racing toward the goal so fast she couldn
‟
t catch her breath. Pleasure exploded inside her like an atom bomb, white hot waves of ecstasy blasting through her and melting muscle and bone. His cock bucked inside her and began bathing her channel with his scalding seed, lifting her upward several more notches before the convulsions of her climax reached maximum expansion and began to collapse.

He drove deeper as his body expelled the last of his seed, uttering a choked sound, his grip tightening convulsively. There was something about the sound, though, that seemed out of place, a strain and tension that pierced the euphoria that had enveloped her. She managed to pry one eyelid up high enough to look up at him and discovered Balen had him in a headlock. His teeth gritted, his lips drawn back in a feral snarl, he was slowly but surely bending Kael upwards so that his back bowed.

Loren felt her jaw go slack with a mixture of confusion and disbelief.

Abruptly, Kael let go of her and locked his arms around Balen
‟
s head. Kael tumbled off of the bed with Balen, almost carrying her with him since his body was still engaged with hers. She sat up to gape at them as they slugged at each other and glanced around. She had a split second to register the fact that they were in the basement and there were men crowded at the door and then Dakaar blocked her view as he surged toward her, his face set purposefully.

55

Her eyes widened. Before her mind could interpret his intent, he grabbed her shoulders and bore her down on the mattress, covering her mouth in a feverish kiss even as he settled over her.

Still excruciatingly sensitive from Kael
‟
s feverish coupling, she might have protested if his assault hadn
‟
t been so frantic that she barely had time to register theonslaughtto her senses in one place before he
‟
d moved to the next.

He explored her mouth and then breasts and every patch of skin from her throat to her belly and surged over her, plugging his cock into the mouth of her sex and heaving to plow inside of her before she could even catch her breath. Her own moisture and Kael
‟
s deposit worked in his favor. Before Loren even knew what was happening, he was pounding into her feverishly. Dread flickered through her, but she didn
‟
t have a chance to decide whether she could climax again so soon or if she wanted to. The heated friction of his cock reignited the freshly extinguished fire in her belly and whipped it into a conflagration.

As impossible as she would
‟
ve thought it, he drove her to the summit faster than Kael had.

The muscles along her channel began quaking within moments, lifted her to full charge and exploded around and through her so hard it forced keen cries from her throat. She heard roars of fury from Kael and Balen that seemed almost louder echoes of Dakaar
‟
s growl of triumph as his semen erupted from his cock.

The sound jerked her head automatically in that direction even though she was too mindless to actually register the images her eyes recorded until much later. Kael and Balen had apparently discovered an audience outside their cell, however, and turned their fury from each other to the

„threat
‟
. The echo of their roars hadn
‟
t died when the gladiators scattered in a panic, mowing Lecur down and stomping him as they stampeded away in every direction.

Dakaar whipped his head around at the same time, drawn by the apparent threat. He surged into her a couple more times to eject the last of his seed and lifted away from her to meet Kael as he whirled and stalked toward him. He didn
‟
t have time to launch himself from the bed however.

Kael
‟
s fist caught him solidly in the face and pitched him into the wall. He rebounded, scrambled over her and leapt at Kael, stepping on her leg in the process.

Loren was in the grips of shock, however, and barely registered the weight before it was gone. Balen stared at Kael and Dakaar as they grappled for dominance and then zeroed in on her.

The instinct for flight jerked Loren from the bed the instant she realized he had her in sights, but she was so weak from climaxing twice in such quick succession that her body didn
‟
t even seem like it was attached to her mind. She
‟
d barely managed to scramble out of the bed before he caught her.

Dismay filled her as she went down beneath him and felt his cock pounding against the bruised flesh around the mouth of her sex, but he
‟
d thoroughly pinned her by that time and pried his way inside of her by sheer dent of determination. It was as wild a ride as the first two and ended almost as explosively and as quickly.

Dazed, Loren couldn
‟
t figure out why Balen kept pumping even after he
‟
d managed to spill his seed until she finally pried her eyelids up and discovered Lecur was standing over him, pounding on his back with the rod he
‟
d beat her with.

Kael seized it abruptly mid swing and bent it into a loop. “You touch Lau-ren wid dis ting again, I shove it up your ass!” he growled threateningly through his teeth.

For several moments, it almost seemed that threat hung in the air, freezing everyone within the cell and then a transformation seemed to take place. The fury on Kael
‟
s face slowly faded and, just as slowly, he relaxed his grip on the rod. Balen lifted away from her, stared down at her 56

with an expression she found impossible to interpret, and then got off of her. The shock on Lecur
‟
s face gave way to wary anger and Dakaar released the man he was holding by the neck.

Lecur turned toward her and narrowed his eyes at her as if she was to blame for everything that had happened. “Get up, you stupid
dyrk!
Go to your cell!”

Fear erupted inside of her. She glanced at the Hirachi and then struggled to get up. Lecur didn
‟
t wait. He grabbed her by one arm and hauled her to her feet. Kael, Dakaar, and Balen tensed all over and for several unnerving moments, she thought they would attack Lecur.

Apparently Lecur thought so, too. He wrapped a meaty arm around her throat and dragged her out the door with surprising speed for him, slamming the door, made of thick bars as her cell door was, and locking it with a shaking hand.

She caught a glimpse of Kael
‟
s face as he rushed to the door, gripped the bars in white knuckled fists, and watched Lecur haul her away. “Don
‟
t…!” she gasped, begging him not to do more for fear of what might happen to him.

To her relief, Lecur merely shoved her into her cell and locked the door. He stared at her through the bars a moment and finally limped away, the first she realized he
‟
d been injured.

Her knees wobbled and threatened to give out under her. Turning away, she staggered to her bed and collapsed weakly into it, too stunned for a very long time even to think.

57

Loren had never seen the place where the men honed their fighting skills—the practice field.

She supposed it shouldn
‟
t have come as any great surprise to discover that Lecur simply used the coliseum, but it did.

Then again, she wasn
‟
t in any state of mind to have any particular interest in the discovery.

Everyone who was able to get up and walk after the riot had been ordered to the coliseum to witness the punishment of the slaves who
‟
d „caused the riot
‟—
the Hirachi.

Loren felt like she was going to throw up when she saw them chained to posts in the field.

She was surprised she, Karen, and Shara weren
‟
t chained with them since Lecur had very vocally blamed them for the entire disaster.

And it
had
been a disaster. There was no getting around that. What would ordinarily have been a daylong event of contests as one round after another was fought and the winners moved to the next challenger, had become a rout before the first contest was concluded.

Actually, to be more precise, the first contest had ended abruptly and erupted into a melee as the Hirachi, as Lecur put it, went berserk. Even Lecur, who
‟
d raged and ranted and stomped furiously around the basement, glaring at everyone through the cell bars and threatening them, hadn
‟
t wanted to acknowledge the fact that less than a dozen Hirachi had waded through and mown down the other forty odd seasoned gladiators as if they were children.

It hadn
‟
t, clearly, appeased him that there hadn
‟
t been any demands for refunds due to the shortened fighting exhibition. The patrons had been too bowled over by the awesome destructive powers of the Hirachi to do more than gawk at the massacre unfolding before their very eyes until it had apparently dawned on them that they might be next to feel the wrath of the Hirachi.

They
‟
d stampeded out of the coliseum then, creating even more havoc.

According to Lecur in one his rants, at least a dozen patrons had been trampled to death.

She supposed Lecur
might
have been appeased about the money if not for the fact that nearly a quarter of the gladiators had been so badly injured that they would never fight again. None of them had walked away from the field uninjured—except the Hirachi themselves—and even those who
‟
d managed to get back to Lecur
‟
s dungeon on their own steam were injured enough Lecur wasn
‟
t going to be able to put on another exhibition for at least a month.

Lecur had been trampled himself, besides having the cage collapse on top of him, and he was still hobbling around with great effort.

The slimy fucking bastard!

Loren was sorry he
‟
d lived through it, although she shuddered to think what might
‟
ve happened to the Hirachi if he had died. Probably worse than what was about to happen.

She thought he might have been inclined to put them to death anyway if not for the fact that he
‟
d lost so many gladiators.

He was terrified of the Hirachi now regardless of his attempts to hide it and despite the 58

control collars they still wore that ultimately put their lives in his hands.

Apparently, though, he didn
‟
t actually control them.

Loren felt certain that he would have used the collars to contain the riot if he
‟
d been able to.

Of course, he
‟
d been in shock. They all had, but he
‟
d also been in fear of his life and she thought that would
‟
ve „reminded
‟
him and he would
‟
ve used it if he could have.

That could only mean that the devise that controlled the collars must be in his private quarters, Loren was sure, although she didn
‟
t know what she could do with the knowledge.

Lecur drew her from her thoughts by announcing the punishment—twenty lashes each.

Loren
‟
s belly clenched when she saw that the men sent to meat it out were carrying thin metal rods like the one Lecur had used on her. It was thin enough and flexible enough to cut like a green switch from a tree, and yet made of some sort of metal like steel. It wasn
‟
t likely to break.

She almost felt like she could feel every blow herself. There was dead silence in the coliseum except for the twang of the rods as they cut the air and the thuds as they were lain against the bare Hirachi backs with all the force the wielder could muster. Bile climbed into her throat. She clenched her hands together, curling her fingers into claws.

The distance would
‟
ve been far too much for her to see the faces of the men and identify them except for the fact that Lecur had seen to it that the witnesses could see the faces of the men on the same huge screens that had displayed her when she
‟
d been sold. They endured in teeth gritted silence, their faces taut in their efforts to prevent any show of the pain she knew they had to be feeling.

It was worse because she knew from firsthand experience what the rod felt like. There were still red welts on her back where Lecur had hit her and, except for the first, he hadn
‟
t managed to land a solid blow after that.

The men were chained and couldn
‟
t avoid the blows or even yield with them because of the posts. She swallowed convulsively against the sickness and felt tears well in her eyes when blood began to ooze from the cuts the rods tore across the backs. She couldn
‟
t stand it anymore! She couldn
‟
t! “Stop!” she said hoarsely. “Stop!”

Karen, seated beside her, grabbed her when she would
‟
ve jumped to her feet, clamping a hand over her mouth. “Sit still, damn it!”

Loren clawed her hand away. “They
‟
re going to kill them!” she gasped wildly.

“For god
‟
s sake
think
, Loren! You don
‟
t know what Lecur will do to them if he realizes it matters to you! He didn
‟
t mind using you to get to them. He won
‟
t mind using them to control you!”

Loren stared at her blankly as that slowly sank in. Struggling for breath, she squeezed her eyes closed to shut out the sight she couldn
‟
t bear. The image had been burned into her mind, though, and she couldn
‟
t shake it.

Surprise flickered through her when Karen gathered her in her arms and hugged her, but she clung to her, comforted as much by the discovery that Karen was fighting her own tears as she was by the offer. She didn
‟
t think she would
‟
ve wanted the embrace if Karen hadn
‟
t been as upset as she was.

Shara leaned against her back, curling her arms around her waist in commiseration and Loren felt her own sorrow and need for comfort.

She supposed, a little wildly, that the three of them were purely insane to be weeping over 59

the very men who
‟
d scared all of them half to death not two days earlier and fucked them until they still couldn
‟
t walk without limping. She wasn
‟
t certain her hip joints or her poor abused pussy was ever going to be the same again, but she not only knew none of them had wanted or intended to hurt her, there was no dismissing the fact that they
‟
d
still
managed to give her pleasure regardless of how roughly they
‟
d taken their own.

She felt weak with relief when the beatings finally stopped and the Hirachi were released from the poles. A couple of them swayed dizzily and staggered slightly and then regained their balance. Holding themselves proudly erect, they stalked past Lecur as if he wasn
‟
t there.

Kael was in the lead. As Loren stared at him she realized abruptly that she hadn
‟
t done him justice in her mind—any of them. As attractive as she
‟
d found them, she
‟
d still labeled them in her mind as alien savages—because of the tattoos, she supposed, because they
‟
d looked so

„right
‟
in the loincloths that she
‟
d assumed that they must be a backwards race—maybe even because of the difficulty they had expressing themselves.

They really were magnificent warriors, though, more like kings than mere men. What a stupid, bigoted, asshole she
‟
d been not to see from the first that they were superior in absolutely every way to anything she
‟
d ever encountered before! She
‟
d never thought of herself before as having any sort of arrogance or bigotry, and certainly not as anyone suffering from a superiority complex! And yet she
‟
d „steeled
‟
herself to „let
‟
them touch her!

She thought for several moments that she was going to burst into tears of pure shame when she
‟
d only just mastered the urge inspired by pity for their pain!

She managed to refrain as the realization sank into her that they expected her to be as brave and strong as they were. She remembered the way Dakaar had looked at her when she
‟
d told him fight hard and told her she was like a Hirachi woman. She
‟
d been mildly insulted at the time even though she
‟
d realized he considered it a compliment. She realized abruptly, though, that they couldn
‟
t have anything but contempt for a weakling, not as noble and strong as they were!

She knew they would still try to protect her and shield her from harm because that was their way, but she wouldn
‟
t have their admiration and she desperately wanted that.

She wanted to rush to them and try to soothe the pain so bad when they were returned to the basement dungeon that the taste of copper filled her mouth but, naturally, she wasn
‟
t allowed to.

She caught no more than a glimpse of them as she was prodded past their cell and down the corridor to her own.

It was the fear that they
‟
d hear her and know it was her that was weeping that kept the tears locked in her chest when she dropped onto her bed, but without the freedom to give vent to her emotions it was a long, long time before the painful tightness finally eased.