The Hunter's Pet (3 page)

“Get in, or I’ll put you in.”

A little shrug was her only response. She was not going to do as she was told, not for anything, but her naked frame was so distracting he didn’t much mind. If she wanted to be difficult, he could deal with that. Wrapping his arms around her naughty naked body, he picked her up and tried to put her in the bath, but she clung to him so tightly he would have had to go in with her.

“It’s just warm water, nothing to be afraid of.” He tried coaxing her off, but she clung to his body armor with the strength of a monkey in a tree. Many years of climbing had strengthened her fingers to a point where they could easily sustain her body weight as long as she had a good hold. She further strengthened her resistance by wrapping her legs around his waist.

“Well, aren’t you affectionate,” he teased.

She responded by snapping at his nose, just barely missing the flesh. The act earned her a warning pat.

“Now you settle down, my girl,” he said. “This isn’t going to hurt you one bit.”

“I don’t care. I’m not going in.”

* * *

Glaring up at her captor, Sarah knew that she did not have anything to fear from a shallow tub of warm water. It was the principle of the thing. She had to retain control over something, and her carefully crafted coating from the world outside the city was the one thing she wanted to keep. Once that was washed away, there would be nothing left.

William slapped her bare bottom, getting her attention. “You’re going in one way or another,” he said, a tingling that was not entirely unpleasant accompanying his words. His little pats and love taps did not cause any pain, but they did cause strange feelings, both emotional and physical, to course through her body and mind.

“I’m not going in,” she said, grasping his collar as if it were the only thing between her and death.

“Are you scared of it? It’s just a little water. It’s warm.”

“I’m not scared of anything,” she replied boldly.

His eyes twinkled. “I think you are scared,” he said. “I think you’re worried that once we wash all that dirt away you’re going to be too pretty to be wild.”

“Stupid,” she said bluntly, hiding the little flash of pleasure she got from hearing him say that she was pretty. He was handsome, of course. He must have known that. Sarah wasn’t sure if she was attractive or not. She had not seen many other women her age. She could have been the plainest thing he had ever set eyes on. His honeyed words could have been nothing more than a manipulation, and yet she still felt happiness at hearing the compliment that was probably not a compliment at all.

Thoroughly unsure of how to handle herself, Sarah allowed William to slowly unwrap her fingers from his attire and to lower her into the waiting water.

Once she accepted its inevitability, the bath was nice. Sarah had faint vestigial memories of the last bath she’d had, decades earlier. The scent of the soap brought back memories of being tended to by her mother, washed and wrapped in a warm towel.

“I can wash myself,” she said as he picked up a bar of soap with clear intent.

“All the same,” he said patiently. “I’m going to stay with you.” Kneeling next to the tub, he lathered the washcloth and ran it over her shoulders. Thick streaks of dirt went cascading down her back and into the water as he worked the cloth over her skin in a slow massage that felt so wonderful, she quite forgot to hate him.

“We’re going to have to change the water out once or twice, I think. You’re filthy.”

It felt so nice to be washed that for a few minutes she set aside her animosity and let the hunter do his work. His touch was tender and careful and he spared no part of her from the attentions of his cloth. From under her arms to beneath her breasts he touched every part of her. She sensed no lechery in his attentions, but there was an undeniable intimacy to the whole affair. The soft sensation of the cloth moving against her body, rubbing away aches and pains she hadn’t known were there left her almost as soft and mushy as the cloth itself.

The spell was somewhat broken when William pushed a button to let the water drain away, but it was nice when fresh water flowed down the tub walls and covered her all over again. Sarah watched with no small measure of wonder; somewhere in the back of her mind she had always remembered how things were in the city, but it was so long since she’d seen most of them that she’d thought them figments of her imagination. This was real though, crystal clear fresh water clear of any animal droppings or earthy silt and warm to the touch, cascading down around her toes and filling the tub up around her.

William rubbed soap into a fresh washcloth and handed it to her with a simple instruction. “Clean the parts of yourself you’d rather I not touch.”

She smirked. He was scared of what her mother had called her ‘privates.’ But there were no such things as privates in the wild. Privates were public and she would not have minded had he washed her there.

Suddenly, the temptation of holding a sodden wet soapy cloth in her hand was too much. She did not push it down between her thighs, but instead launched it toward his face. The sound it made as it delivered its watery load was very satisfying, as was the way rivulets of soapy liquid trickled down over his neck and body armor, which he had still not taken off.

“Brat,” he said as water ran down over his stubble and dripped onto the floor. He wiped his face off with one hand. The other caught the cloth before it too could fall and returned it to the water. She watched him, waiting for retaliation. But there didn’t seem to be any. After washing it out again, he pushed the wet soapy cloth between her legs and proceeded to clean her vulva with a firm but gentle touch.

The sensation was very pleasant. Instinct made her hips grind forward against the cloth, and when that slipped away, against his fingers.

“This bath is not for your pleasure,” he chided her gently. His words meant little however, for he did not move his hand away. He kept it there between her thighs and rubbed as she wriggled her hips forward. There was no way to obtain real satisfaction there in that slippery surface, but a little reward went a long way toward alleviating the stress she’d been under since her capture.

“Have you taken a mate before?” The question was asked as his fingertips made swirling motions around the entrance of her body.

“No,” she said softly. She was struggling with the impulse to mate with this man. He was strong and he was in control and as much as her rational mind hated what he’d done, her animal instinct was running completely contrary. She grasped at his arm, wanting him deeper, wanting him to push inside her.

“Then I am the first to do this.” He let his fingertip drift inside her, pressing her sensitive inner lips aside as he penetrated her body. The digit slid in an inch, and swirled more. “No hymen,” he murmured. “Is that because you’ve been playing with yourself? Or because no hymen can stand up to the lifestyle of an active wildling for long?”

Sarah shrugged. She had never penetrated herself, she had only rubbed the bud that sat north of her opening. The tingling sensations resulting from a good strumming there had contented her for many years, but with William’s finger tenderly swirling inside her lips, she realized she may have been depriving herself of a much more satisfying kind of pleasure.

“There is so much to teach you,” William said, brushing his thumb against her clit.

Sarah soon realized that arousal dulled her capacity for rebellion, made her soft, perhaps even pliant in his hands. It was dangerous.

Pushing his hand away took all of her willpower, but she did it. He did not offer any resistance, he even smiled as he slid his hand out from between her thighs. William was maddeningly calm and his patience seemed endless. No matter what she did, he took it in stride. Probably because he did not think of her as anything resembling an equal. No doubt being angry at her would be like being angry at one of the many pieces of furniture in his home.

Baring her teeth, she snarled.

He chuckled and ran the cloth down her back and all the way to her bottom, where he wasted no time soaping and cleaning between her cheeks. Her resulting protest was ignored.

“You know what happens if you bite,” he said, casually rubbing the cloth across her bottom hole. “I warn you too, a spanking hurts a lot worse on a wet behind.”

“Your punishments mean nothing to me,” Sarah replied, squirming as the soft soapy cloth made gentle circles at her tight bottom hole. The sensation produced was quite unexpected, an arousal that came from being stimulated in a very different way.

“Mm-hmm.” William drew his hand away, leaving her bereft of the stimulation. He let the cloth drift through the water and moved away. “I think you’re clean enough now,” he said, picking up a great soft length of fabric. “Get out and dry yourself off.”

“I don’t want to get out.”

“So contrary,” he chuckled, setting the towel down near the bath. “Get out when you’re ready, then.”

He left her soaking in the bath, giving her the first privacy she’d had since her capture. Her immediate impulse was to try to climb out the small frosted window, but she knew very well that there were many layers of danger beyond that point. She was also intrigued by her surroundings. She had left civilization so long ago that she’d forgotten what most things were. The toilet was for making water and passing motions; she could remember that much because it was the one thing her mother had often lamented not having out in the wilds. There was comfort to be had in the city, comfort and convenience, but it came at a price. Freedom.

Swishing her fingers through the water, Sarah watched the ripples of light reflecting off the pristine white bottom of the bath. There wasn’t anything the city dwellers didn’t harness for their own ends, not heat or water or light. They were masters of the world, but they were cut off from it. She did not know if she could tolerate such an alien existence.

As the water grew cold, Sarah decided to get out. She left the bathroom and began wandering through the house, liking the way the soft floor coverings absorbed the water still running off her naked body.

“Hey!” William exclaimed as she came upon him. “What about drying yourself off?”

“I’ll dry soon,” she said, ignoring him.

“No, you’ll get your naked bottom back to the bathroom and dry off there before you soak the carpet.”

“Soak the what?”

He looped an arm around her wet waist and picked her up, swatting her backside as he carried her back to the bathroom. He had been right. Spankings did sting more on a wet bottom.

“You have to dry off with a towel when you’re wet,” he explained, tossing the length of fabric about her shoulders, then working it over her entire body bit by bit, absorbing each and every last droplet of water as he went. He even went so far as to dab the green curls over her mound.

“Right,” he said. “Now you can go.”

“Where?”

“Good question. Do you want to see your room?”

“My room?”

“A place you can go to sleep, or when you want to be alone.”

She looked at him as if he were insane. “I come from the wilds,” she said, her voice melodic even when filled with derision. “What use do I have for a room when the world is my room? I am not one of you cowards who hides behind shields of fire and walls of rock.”

“In the wild you had your cave,” he reminded her. “A room is simply a different kind of cave.”

Begrudgingly, Sarah inwardly admitted that the city itself was really only a series of caves, a human nest of a kind, like a termite mound. That didn’t mean she liked it. There were too many people, taking up too much space, needing too many things.

“Here,” he said, leading her into a room that seemed no different from any of the others except for what it contained. “This is yours.”

There was a big soft puffy object that Sarah stared at for a long moment before realizing that it must be a bed. In the wild she had usually slept in a tree, away from predators. Her reed hammock had been perfectly comfortable. Aside from the bed, there was not much in the room. A window let in purple-tinged light beyond which the city could be seen in all its strange glory.

“I’ll let you get settled in. Call out if you need anything. If you get hungry, anything.”

He left the room, shutting the door behind him. Sarah looked around. The room was too large. Too unnatural. She didn’t like it at all. She was on the verge of panic when she spotted another door. Opening it, she found a smaller room inside the room, one with a single metal branch running across the top of it. There was a large brown fur tossed over the branch. She pulled that down, along with one of the soft things from the bed, pillows, her mother had called them, and pushed them both into the little corner of the space. It was a comfortable little bed, almost as comfortable as one of her little forest nooks, except this one did not have the sun gently filtering through cracks in the rock, nor did it store the heat from the day and radiate it into the surrounding space.

Chapter Two

William went looking for Sarah not long later and found her seemingly absent. Certain that she had not escaped, he started looking for her. There were not many hiding places in the room. When he did not find her under the bed he looked in the closet, where he discovered her curled up on a fur coat, fast asleep. She looked peaceful and content although she was curled up in a position that would have left most city dwellers working out cricks and cramps for days on end.

“Sarah.” He said her name softly. She stirred briefly, then came to full awareness. These wild ones, they did not have the luxury of slowly waking up when they were disturbed. He made sure to keep his distance, in case she lashed out reflexively.

“What?” She sat cross-legged and scowled at him.

“Time to eat. Come on,” he beckoned. “I think you’ll like this.”

She had to be hungry. He could hear her stomach growling as she followed him out to the kitchen.

“There is no food here,” she said, sounding disappointed until he opened the refrigerator. There, before her astonished eyes was all manner of food—fruits and vegetables, meats and eggs. There was more food there than she had ever seen in her life.