Release: Davlova: Book One (10 page)

There were two things he expected no matter what: that I obey, and that I let him think I enjoyed it.

The second item wasn’t as difficult as I’d expected. I was sometimes embarrassed at how readily I responded to him. Once, he stripped me bare and pushed me face first against the cold, hard glass of the window. He took me there, standing, as if daring his neighbors to see. Another time, he had them dress me in a simple gown of pure white silk. They placed a bridal wreath upon my hair. That night, he kissed me and caressed me as if I really were his bride, undressing me with something that bordered on reverence. He took me into the bed, embraced me under the covers, cuddled against my back as we lay on our sides, then he stroked me gently as he took me from behind. It was slow and sweet and completely divine.

“I love the sounds you make,” he whispered. “The way you sigh. I can always tell when I hit that glorious spot deep inside you.” He angled himself just right, pushing in to touch it again, and I whimpered at the thrill it sent coursing through me. “Come for me, pretty whore. I want to hear you sigh.”

I couldn’t help but enjoy my work that night.

Still, I wasn’t sure why I was there. He hadn’t taken me out in public again. Despite Anzhéla’s hopes for pillow talk, he never spoke to me other than to tell me what to do. Even on the night when he treated me like a lover instead of his whore, he didn’t talk when we were done. He nuzzled my neck and held me close. He let me sleep for a while in his arms before shaking me awake and sending me home. But nothing more.

I began to feel ridiculous. I never bothered to meet with Anzhéla because I had nothing to report. The man was too careful. Too reserved. The few times I tried to make conversation, I was told either by words or by a hand across my face that I’d overstepped my bounds. I tried once to speak to the driver, but he ignored me completely, as if he couldn’t hear my words at all. I never saw anybody but the butler in Donato’s house. He hadn’t spoken to me since that night when I’d tried to ask questions and he’d warned me to stop. I’d tried to ask him questions one other time, and, like the driver, he’d completely ignored me. I hadn’t dared try a third time, for fear he’d report me to Donato. And yet, what was the point of being the man’s whore if I couldn’t give Anzhéla information?

The next time I was taken to Donato’s, the butler met me at the door as always, but when he turned to lead me upstairs, I waved him off. “I know the way.”

He looked troubled—torn between doing his duty and accepting a chance to be lazy.

“Don’t worry,” I assured him, and headed for the stairs before he could change his mind.

I went up them to the third floor, where the bedroom was. Not Donato’s actual bedroom, I’d come to realize, but the room reserved specifically for his nights with me. I took my time though, stopping to look more carefully at the paintings. There were no names, but each was signed, and I made mental note of the marks in the corner of each. I hoped some of the other doors along the hall would be open, allowing me a glimpse of the rest of the household, but it wasn’t to be. I found nothing. No errant scrap of paper left on a sideboard. The only sound was the ever-present music coming from someplace downstairs, but the rooms I crept past were absolutely silent. No hushed conversation seeped to me in the hallway.

I sighed in dismay. Did I dare open one of the doors to those rooms?

No. I knew what Anzhéla would say to me. The same thing she always said.
Don’t rush. Bide your time. Gain his trust.

She was probably right. Besides, I had no idea when he’d come to me. Sometimes he showed up immediately. Sometimes I waited several hours. It would never do to have him find me still in the hallway.

Once in the room, I took an ildenaaf and lay back on the bed to wait. Tonight, they had dressed me simply in soft suede pants, leather boots, and a plain white shirt. Not even silk this time. I had a jacket that was long and tailored, but not ornate. My hair was tied back, and I wore no kohl around my eyes. I almost looked like myself, if myself had ever had clean clothes that actually fit.

I couldn’t help but wonder what Donato planned for this visit. Would I be beaten and humiliated, or treated like a prince?

As always, I stood when he came into the room. Immediately, I could tell it wouldn’t be unpleasant. He smiled warmly at me, as if I were a friend. He stepped up to take my hands in his.

“Even dressed like a commoner, you’re stunning.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He put one hand behind my waist and pulled me closer to him. He played his lips over my jaw. I sensed that he wanted me to act like a lover this time, rather than a submissive whore, so I put my arms around his neck and tilted my head back to grant him easier access. I shivered in earnest as my erection pushed against his thigh.

He squeezed my buttock and growled softly into my ear, “You please me, little whore. I think I’m growing fond of you.”

“I hope so,” I said. I allowed my groin to push harder against him. “It pleases me to please you.”

He chuckled against my neck. “You’re so good at anticipating my needs. What if I told you that I wanted you groveling on your knees?”

“Then I would grovel.”

“Yes, and you’d do it well, no doubt.”

“Shall I show you?”

I let go of him and started to kneel, but he stopped me. “Not tonight.” He kissed me again, and this time he reached down to caress my cock with his hand. “Tonight I want to hear the way you sigh when you come.”

I moaned, without having to fake it. I found myself pushing harder toward his hand. “Yes, sir.”

“Such a sweet little whore. I have something special in mind for tonight.”

“I look forward to it, sir.”

He let me go and went to open the door. He ushered in...

A boy.

Instantly, my arousal began to grow sour. This lad couldn’t have been more than fourteen. His body still had the sweet, androgynous look of early puberty. His skin was golden. His blond hair hung in loose curls about his face. His eyes were huge, and some strange color that, from where I stood, looked almost white. Empty. Not fearful, as I might have expected, but vacant.

This wasn’t his first time.

“Whore,” Donato said to me, “meet my slave. He’s going to be our entertainment for tonight.”

Slave.

My mouth went dry. I would have run if I’d had anywhere to go, but Donato was between me and the door. I broke out in a cold sweat.

The boy watched me with haunted eyes. He wore nothing but a length of white cloth over his right shoulder, belted around his waist to cover his groin. There was a heartbreaking resignation to his expression that I’d seen many times in the trenches. I found myself wondering what horrors he’d been through, and how many of them were because of Donato.

Should I try to play along? It wasn’t as if this were unheard of. Kids were sold on the street at younger ages than this. I’d seen wretches half his age turning tricks. Still, it was wrong. I wanted nothing to do with it. The ildenaaf kept me hard, but my arousal was gone. I had to fight to keep from vomiting on the floor.

Donato used his hand on the boy’s back to guide him my direction. They stopped in front of me. Up close, his eyes were a bit less disconcerting. It was his irises that made them strange. They were the palest blue I’d ever seen—so pale they seemed almost white—except for the outside rim, which was deep indigo, as if somebody had outlined them with ink but had forgotten to color in the rest. This one was from Deliphine. There was no doubt in my mind.

“What’s the matter, little whore?” Donato asked. “Don’t you like my slave?”

He was teasing. Testing me, somehow.

I swallowed hard and said, “Sir, he’s only a boy.”

Donato threw back his head and laughed. The boy didn’t, but there was a slight change in his eyes. A tiny glimmer of surprise.

Donato leaned down to kiss the boy’s neck from behind. He had a long way to lean. The boy was at least a foot shorter than him. “Do you hear that, sweet slave? He believes the lie.”

The boy didn’t react to Donato’s touch. If anything, his eyes lost focus and he seemed to drift farther away.

“Slave,” Donato said, his voice firmer now, “tell my whore the truth.”

The boy’s wandering gaze returned reluctantly to my face. When he spoke, his voice was the soft, unchanged near-soprano of youth. “I’m not as young as I look,” he said. “Not even close.”

“How old are you?”

He blinked and frowned at me. “I don’t know. Seventeen? Nineteen? Twenty, maybe. It’s hard to say for sure.”

Looking at his eyes, I might have believed he was three times that age. There was no hint of innocence left there. But the rest of him told a different story. How could that be? Unless...

But no. That was absurd.

Donato smiled at me as if he knew my thoughts. He stood up to his full height again, watching me over the boy’s head. With his right hand, he reached out and casually pushed the strip of cloth from the slave’s shoulder.

Tattoos. Not the tattoos of a house slave, which were simple marks in the common tongue, done just below the collarbone. This boy had two vertical lines of spidery blue symbols running from his right nipple to the midway down his abdomen. They appeared to be the same language as the tattoos the aristocrats wore on their cheeks. I’d heard of tattoos like these, but I’d never seen them.

“The Dollhouse?” I asked.

The smile Donato gave me told me I’d done well. “Indeed,” he said, looking smug. “Made to my exact specifications. Genetically engineered, trained through extreme response conditioning, and neural-implanted. He’s worth a small fortune.”

Genetic engineering and response conditioning. That was what set the Dollhouse apart from the neural surgeons of the Guild. But until now, I’d thought the Dollhouse was little more than a myth. I tore my gaze away from the tattoos to look again at the boy’s face. He’d retreated again. His gaze was focused on something very far away.

“Go ahead,” Donato said to me. “Undress him the rest of the way. See what he has under that drape.”

I heard his words, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t make myself do it. I imagined undoing the boy’s belt, letting the fabric fall. But whatever happened after that, I was horrified of it.

“Whore!” Donato snapped, and I jumped. “Don’t make me tell you again! This is a gift, and it displeases me to have it unappreciated.”

I took a deep breath. I reached out with shaking hands. I fumbled a lot. The loop that had covered the boy’s shoulder now lay over the front of his belt, hindering me, and my fingers seemed determined to betray me. Finally, the clasp came free. The white cover fell to the floor.

Underneath, he was bare. That didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me was the size of what hung between his legs. He was completely hairless and, even flaccid, he was almost obscenely large.

I tore my eyes away from the boy’s cock to look up at Donato.

“As I told you,” Donato said, “genetically engineered. I told them to make him look young, but to give him a big, fat piece of meat. They did well, didn’t they?”

I swallowed hard and said, “Yes, sir.”

“Would you like to be fucked by that impressive cock?”

I hoped the fear and disgust I felt wasn’t visible. “If that is your command, sir.”

His smile waned. I wasn’t playing my part. He wanted me to be pleased, and grateful, but I couldn’t bring myself to embrace this perversity. “Touch it,” he ordered.

I stepped closer to the boy. I reached out and cupped his heavy package in my hand.

He didn’t jump at my touch, but his eyes came back from wherever he’d been. He looked directly at me. His cock remained soft and pliant. His flesh was warm. His lips parted. He made the softest sigh, and to my near disgust, my body began to react. My cock had been hard all along due to the ildenaaf, but something about the feel of him in my palm, the weight of him, the look in his blue eyes—suddenly my heart was pounding for a new reason.

“Good,” Donato said. “Good little whore. See how much fun my slave can be?”

I closed my eyes. I tried to ignore the warmth of him in my hand. “Yes, sir.”

“You haven’t even seen the best part. Watch.”

I obeyed. I opened my eyes and focused on the boy, still holding his cock in the palm of my hand. Donato reached up and grabbed a handful of the boy’s hair. He yanked, hard enough that the slave’s head was wrenched backward. The boy screamed in pain, and I backed quickly away despite myself.

But in the very next second, his scream softened. It melted. It turned into a long, low keen of pleasure. I looked down, between his legs, and saw that he was no longer completely flaccid.

Donato pulled harder, and this time, the boy nearly sang—a long, languid, whimpering cry that spoke of nothing but pleasure and longing. His cock bobbed wildly, completely hard now and arching in front of his hips, too heavy to stick up straight.

“This,” Donato said, his voice thick with lust. He pulled again, and the boy made that near-euphoric sound again. “This is what I paid for. Neural manipulation and response conditioning. The more I hurt him, the more he screams for me to do it again.” He pulled one last time, so hard that the boy fell backward. He lay panting on the floor.