Breaking Brandi (13 page)

She knew she could not have been unconscious
more than a few moments, for when she became aware again, she felt
his tongue lathing her thighs. Slowly, he worked his way up her
body, over her belly and breasts and when he was satisfied, he
worked his way down again.

Apparently, he liked the taste of her cunt
best. He began lapping at it once more, lifting her hips off of the
bed to give himself better access. After a while, when Brandi had
begun to think she would die if he didn’t stop, and to pray for it,
he withdrew with obvious reluctance and allowed her to drift away
again.

Days, she knew, passed. She had little
conception of time when she spent almost every waking moment in a
haze of desire, but she knew that it must be days. She didn’t know
whether to be glad or sorry that Nhewa was, very obviously, far
more interested in tasting her than mounting her. Occasionally, he
would sprawl out on his back, tug her over to him with the chain
through her rings and command her to mount him and ride him until
he came. Sometimes, he would press her into the bed and pound his
huge cock into her until she thought he would split her in two.

Mostly, he was content to run his tongue
inside of her cunt and lap her until she was mindless.

Finally, however, he seemed to either reach
a point of satisfaction, or boredom, and summoned the priests to
return her to the cell where she’d been housed when she and Ulrich
were first brought to the temple.

Fear had been the constant companion of her
dreams when she did not sleep the sleep of the deeply
exhausted—which she had most of the time. Her waking hours had been
so filled with carnality that she’d had no mind for thought.

It wasn’t until the priests returned her to
the cell, though, that she was cognizant enough of her situation
for real terror to set in. She only vaguely recalled that Nhewa had
sent Ulrick away, but it jolted through her with absolute clarity
the instant she was escorted to a cell and locked in.

Because Nhewa had made certain that she
understood him when he’d dismissed Ulrich.

The message, she realized, had been meant
for her, too, not just Ulrich.

* * * *

It took all that Ulrick could do to call
upon the years he had spent in slavery and hide his true
feelings.

But the rage was there nonetheless.

He was a free man now! How dare Nhewa take
from him that which was rightfully his and dismiss him as if he was
of no consequence?

He would have his satisfaction. Nhewa was
the one who would learn a hard lesson.

Chapter Nine

By and large, Brandi was too exhausted from
the hours Nhewa spent entertaining himself with her/punishing her
to spare much time for thought. She was almost too exhausted to
eat, but thoughts flickered through her mind from time to time,
prodded into existence by some circumstance that brought Ulrich to
mind.

She didn’t know if he was still imprisoned
in the bowels of the temple or not.

She didn’t know if he was alive or dead.

She hadn’t forgotten Nhewa’s little speech,
she just wasn’t certain she could take it at face value. It
might’ve been nothing more than a lie to torment both of them, to
make Ulrich believe he would survive when he meant to kill him—to
make her believe she was alone and completely at his mercy—or lack
of it.

She didn’t know how much longer she was
going to be alive, whether the bastard would succeed in sucking the
life out of her or just get tired of toying with her and kill her
outright.

Mostly, she was too exhausted to care.

When she had lucid moments, she was still
afraid, but almost resigned.

She thought part of it was because she felt
hopeless without Ulrich. Whether he was dead or alive, he couldn’t
protect her anymore. She hadn’t realized just how completely she’d
pinned her hopes of survival on him until the priests had ripped
her away from him.

Or that she’d begun to look forward to his
‘promise’ with hope.

Until there wasn’t even a remote possibility
of that future he’d planned for them.

She was surprised by how sad that made her
on so many levels.

She supposed she’d developed a fondness for
Ulrich because she was so dependent on him, because he took care of
her and didn’t hurt her.

She’d thought he was handsome—awesomely
built!—so exotic in his alien-ness that that circumstance alone was
a turn on for her.

She didn’t suppose it should have been
exciting, but it was.

Or maybe it was because everything about him
seemed so very manly?

She hated that they’d scarred his back! It
was such a beautiful back before they marred it.

Of course, there had been scars already.

She supposed, now, that that might be how
he’d gotten those scars.

How very awful his life had been and he’d
had such modest wants for his future—and he hadn’t even managed to
get those.

It made her both angry and very sad to think
about that.

This religious sect didn’t even
belong
on the planet from what she’d been able to figure
out!

Of course, she supposed, since Earth had
different races, there could be different races and even different
species on the same world, but these creatures didn’t look like the
aliens she’d seen in the towns they’d pass through.

She supposed it would be difficult, under
the circumstances, to figure out who ‘belonged’ and who didn’t, but
that was what it seemed like to her. These aliens had come to this
world and taken over it with their stupid ‘religion’ and their
demands and practices and the natives had been cowed—or killed.

They certainly hadn’t done them any favors
that she could see, hadn’t allowed the inhabitants of the world to
benefit from their superior knowledge.

She tried to dismiss it from her mind as
pointless speculation, wasted energy and emotions, but despite her
exhaustion from Nhewa’s demands, and her earnest attempts to erase
Ulrich from her mind, he continued to visit her thoughts and dreams
even as days turned into weeks and the weeks into a month.

And then one night, he was simply there.

* * * *

Over time, Brandi had gotten into the habit
of simply pretending sleep when the priests came for her to take
her to Nhewa. Not that it did any good to fake sleep. They still
dragged her out of her bed and hauled her to Nhewa whenever he
commanded her presence.

But both resistance and argument were futile
and feigning sleep gave her the illusion of not buckling to them,
even though she couldn’t fight. It allowed her to salve her pride
at least a little.

Shock rippled through her, though, when she
aroused one night a little over a month after she and Ulrich had
been captured when the ‘priest’ climbed into her bed with her and
covered her mouth. Still laboring under the belief that it was one
of the priests—struggling with the shock/fear that Nhewa had grown
bored with her and handed her off to the others—it took many
moments for her brain to catch up to the fact that the man who’d
covered her mouth was huge, heavy, and acting like none of the
priests ever had.

“No talking,” he growled.

Brandi’s eyes popped open. “Ulrich!” she
gasped, feeling a thrill of excitement and happiness rush through
her.

Something flickered in his eyes—irritation,
she thought, but she grabbed him, trying to hold him tightly to
her, to hug him. She was so happy to see him, she struggled to
elude his hand and kiss him.

Uttering an irritated huff, he replaced his
hand with a gag and then hauled her out of the bed and across one
meaty shoulder.

That move briefly paralyzed her solar plexus
and she was mostly focused on trying to drag in a breath as he
strode toward the open door of her cell, glanced out of the opening
both ways and then almost seemed to melt into the dark shadows of
the corridor.

Which was when Brandi noticed for the first
time that the torches were out. There was a dim, flickering glow at
the end of the bisecting corridor Ulrich headed toward, which gave
off enough light to reveal two large, misshapen lumps on the
floor.

That seemed to be covered with priest
robes.

That realization sent a jolt through
her.

Oh my god! They were really going to be up
shit creak without a paddle when the priests discovered he’d
whacked two of their number.

Actually, a half dozen, she amended as they
traversed the temple and she saw crumpled lumps here and
there—around corners, just inside of doorways.

The guards.

They’d died so swiftly and silently they
hadn’t managed to alert anyone else.

The jog down the temple stairs across
Ulrich’s hard shoulder nearly made her pass out.

When they got to the bottom, he plunked her
down on a saddle, shook his finger in her face warningly, and then
collected the guak’s reigns and led it almost silently through the
village.

It took Brandi a little while to recover
sufficiently from her rescue and beat back her terror of being
caught to actually notice how quietly they were moving and to
wonder at it. When she did, she examined the beast and discovered
its hooves were tied up with some kind of fabric or leather to dull
the sounds they would ordinarily have made and everything on the
tack was also covered to muffle any sound.

Relief and pleasure filled her. Ulrich was
so smart!

Not that she’d ever doubted for a moment
that he was exactly what he’d claimed to be, but it was still
reassuring to see him in action—well sort of. The results of his
training, certainly.

When they’d cleared the village by a good
margin, Ulrich mounted the beast and pulled her snuggly between his
thighs.

“Try to hold on this time,” he growled a
split second before he kicked the guak and set it to a run.

Annoyance flickered through Brandi, but
she’d been prepared this time. She’d braced herself the moment he
gathered the reigns and leapt up on the beast’s back.

She dragged her gag off. “You didn’t warn me
you were going to change directions so abruptly last time,” she
muttered in a whisper.

He grunted a comment.

It sounded sarcastic to her, but she decided
to ignore it. Shifting around, she struggled to embrace him even
though her arms weren’t long enough to make the circuit, snuggling
her face against his chest thankfully. He was alive and they were
free!

Probably not for long, but it felt good to
be out of that place and better to know that Ulrich cared enough to
take her with him when he escaped!

Of course, she knew that was probably mostly
because he’d paid for her and considered that she belonged to him,
but she wasn’t going to allow that to dull her pleasure in being
rescued.

He tightened his hold on her. “I will not
allow you to fall,” he said gruffly.

He thought she was holding on because she
was afraid she was going to fall!

Brandi was torn between amusement,
irritation, and relief that he’d completely misunderstood why she’d
embraced him.

Shaking her head, she turned her face to his
chest and kissed the spot directly over his heart.

He stiffened.

In a number of places.

“We do not have time for that … now,” he
muttered.

With absolute sincerity.

Brandi rolled her eyes. More irritated than
amused at that point, she shifted around once more, putting her
back to him.

He shifted the reigns to one hand and
stroked her leg. “We may have time … later.”

Brandi popped his hand. “You are
such
a man!” she snapped. “I wasn’t offering to fuck! I was hugging you
to thank you for rescuing me!”

His chest began to shake. “There will be a
better way and more time to thank me later.”

Brandi ground her teeth. “Asshole,” she
muttered.

Her pique didn’t last long. Ulrich was
moving at a breakneck pace through the forest—in darkness. At some
point weariness began to overcome both her fear of getting caught
and her exhilaration at being free. She sank more and more heavily
against Ulrich and finally dozed off.

Almost immediately, or so it seemed to her,
Ulrich roused her by bringing the guak to a halt. She opened
burning eyes to discover it was still dark—although the area was
brightened considerably by a break in the trees that allowed the
light of the moons and stars to reach them.

They’d paused beside a creek, she saw.
Little more than a trickle of water ran through it.

The guak immediately began struggling to
reach it.

Brandi felt her own throat close with
need.

Ulrick slipped from the beast’s back,
carrying her with him. She nearly sprawled out when he let go of
her but managed to lock her knees. “We won’t be here long. Be
quick.”

Brandi stared at him blankly for several
moments before it dawned on her—because he dragged his dick out and
took a piss—that he was talking about rushing to find whatever
relief she could. Moving a little further from the stream, she
relieved herself and then hurried back to the stream to drink as
much water as she could trying to banish images of men and
creatures standing over the stream uphill from her urinating in the
water she was drinking.

It didn’t taste like urine, thankfully! It
was icy cold and seemed amazingly fresh.

Thank god it was too dark to see anything
that might be floating in the water!

By the time she made it back, Ulrich had
stripped the ‘booties’ from the guak’s hooves.

“He will be more surefooted when we begin to
climb,” Ulrich said, as if he’d read the question in her mind.

“Climb?” Brandi asked uneasily, vividly
recalling their last attempt to get over the mountain.

“Until we reach the top.”

She rolled her eyes. “And then we’ll go down
again?” she ventured dryly.