Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 68525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
“Get up there, Wetquim,” I heard a voice from the stands say. Startled, I looked up, searching, fruitlessly, for a face into which I could stare with the defiance that had suddenly risen in me.
“Eyes down, whore,” said a different voice, from the other side of the crowd.
Standing in the queue with the other Kamnian girls, all of us nude and restrained the same way, I had almost forgotten that real people, free people, wore clothes and could do as they liked with their hands. Here with my feet on the verge of mounting a block, in front of all of the gorgeously dressed Vionians, it all suddenly rushed over me: the tension in my arms from having my hands bound behind my back seemed to flow together with the terrible shame of my nakedness.
The casual brutality of the masculine voices… the way they mocked me even as they commanded my obedience… they seemed to stir the deep, dark waters of my uncontrollably roiling emotions. To my horror, they brought back the unwelcome feelings, the wayward need between my thighs that I had never known I had, until the company agent had taught me his cruel lesson.
I stumbled up the step and onto the block, as if the nightmare-logic of the scene forbid me to do anything else. I nearly lost my balance as I reached the top, and I had to raise my face again to orient myself. I heard more chuckles, but I barely noticed them, because to my astonishment my eyes met the gaze of a nobleman who I knew, instantly, could only be Baron Gravamir.
The man who wants me. Who wants to own me. A man who likes a challenge, because…
The red of his robe matched the shade in my memory, but the color could only confirm what his dark eyes said—that he had decided to acquire me, if he could, so that he could bend me to his will.
He had short hair and a beard. Kamnian men didn’t grow facial hair. I wondered suddenly why. I even managed to distract myself from the humiliation and degradation of the moment by trying to decide whether the responsibility lay with the company’s manipulation of our DNA—in making Kamnian girls marketable had they somehow eliminated men’s facial hair, along with turning our hair blue?
Or had they done it on purpose, so that we would react to a Vionian baron with a beard the way I did now. Something about the neatly trimmed hair that covered the baron’s upper lip and chin made my tummy flip over, and my brow furrow.
So different. From a Kamnian… from a girl… He’s a man… a baron, a nobleman.
A lord… a master.
Heat surged in my face. I looked down, much more because of how Baron Gravamir’s handsome, serious face made me feel than because I feared the punisher.
“Thank you, captain. I have thirty. May I have thirty-one? You can all see in the program how attractive her backside is after a well-merited correction. Not to all tastes, perhaps, b—”
“Forty-one,” said Baron Gravamir.
I didn’t really know how I could feel so utterly certain that his voice had spoken. I had only heard him say a very few words, when he and his mistress of concubines had watched the agent degrade me with his gloved hand. Perhaps it was only because the bid had come from the same general location in the crowd where I had, a moment before, found myself looking into his dark eyes.
I couldn’t help thinking, though, as the warmth in my cheeks seemed to spread through my whole body and my forehead creased, that he had somehow captured me, reserved me for himself. I remembered the way he had looked at me. In that brief moment, our gazes had met. A new surge of blood came to my cheeks, and worse, down below as I wondered if I had understood his expression—and if I had, what it meant. I will have you, his eyes had seemed to say. It will not be easy for you, and I have no desire that it should be. I will have you, nonetheless.
“My lord baron,” the auctioneer said, in a tone of surprise. “Captain? I have forty-one from Baron Gravamir. May I have forty-two?”
I bit my lip, not knowing in the slightest whether to feel some sort of happiness, or sheer terror.
He wants me.
“Forty-one, once,” the auctioneer said.
I closed my eyes to keep myself from looking up. I had no fear of the punisher now. I simply didn’t want to feel the way the baron’s face would make me feel. Except that I did, or I wouldn’t have had to close my eyes.
“Forty-one, twice.”
He will have me.
“Sold to Baron Gravamir. I wish you joy of all the whipping you’ll have to give her, my lord, and of course all the wetness that will follow in her sweet little quim.”