Breaking Brandi (3 page)

Brandi sent him a startled look. “You speak
English?” she gasped.

His eyes narrowed. “You will have difficulty
eating if I must place de hood on you.”

Brandi gaped at him, caught between dimming
hopefulness, fear, and confusion.

She wasn’t allowed to speak to him?

Apparently not and she was hungry and beyond
that weak from lack of food and she needed to eat.

And she didn’t want the hood.

They’d done horrible things to her when
they’d put the hood on her.

She had holes in places she’d never wanted
holes!

It might not seem like a big deal to people
that went around piercing all sorts of places on their bodies, but
she
wasn’t in to that shit! To
her
it had been a very
big deal!

Her nipples and clit throbbed as if in
agreement.

She focused on eating the blob, which turned
out to be some sort of bread with what might have been meat and
cheese mixed into it. She didn’t know, naturally, but the taste was
close enough she was able to convince herself to eat it.

It was either surprisingly good or she was
desperately hungry because it not only appeased her gnawing
stomach, it gave her pleasure tasting it and the fullness it
provided was even more pleasurable.

Except for the part when she began to feel
like she might choke to death from lack of liquid.

Thankfully, her captor produced a flask and
gave it to her. She was too desperate by that time to consider what
might be in the flask—and, unfortunately, it wasn’t water. It was
some sort of fermented drink that made her cough and gag, but it
did seem to appease her thirst in spite of that.

She was insensibly cheered once he’d fed
her, felt more in control—enough so that she began to look around
with curiosity at the alien world, thinking she was seeing
something no human eyes had seen.

Except, she recalled abruptly, he’d spoken
English! How could he without being very familiar with humans?

It seemed to give the lie to the possibility
that the ship that had brought her and the other women had been a
onetime thing or even a first time thing.

Or was it merely a case of his having
memorized certain words, small portions of the language, from
something, maybe, that the frogs had provided?

Like learning just enough of any foreign
language to get by in another country?

She didn’t know and there didn’t seem much
likelihood of simply figuring it out. She had no pieces to the
puzzle beyond the one sentence/threat.

Dismissing it after a moment, she focused on
appeasing her curiosity about the strange world and enjoying the
comfort of a full stomach.

Unfortunately, by that time, it was fairly
difficult to appease her curiosity.

It had been almost dusk when they’d left the
slave market and then the village behind. Darkness began to settle
more and more heavily around them as they rode through alien
forest, following a trail barely wider than the beast they rode,
and Brandi’s uneasiness rose, keeping pace with the deepening
gloom.

She wasn’t accustomed to being in a rural
setting after dark—completely exposed to nature—and she certainly
had no clue of what might lurk in the darkness of this alien world.
The man-creature didn’t seem the least uneasy about it, but she
couldn’t imagine that he would have much to fear from anything. He
looked like he could crush bones without effort—tear most anything
limb from limb without breaking a sweat.

But would he protect her? He’d invested a
good bit of money in buying her—at least it had looked that way to
her—but did he value her enough to risk injury or death to prevent
her injury or death?

She wasn’t as convinced as she would’ve
liked to be—particularly since she was apparently too far beneath
him to be allowed to speak.

It was with relief that she spotted a very
large stone structure in the distance and realized, thought, they
must be headed toward it.

And yet the relief faded the closer they
came to the structure and doubts and fear crept in.

It didn’t actually look like a hotel or a
home of any kind. It looked … almost ominous in the deep gloom,
like some kind of ancient temple. And as little as she recalled
about the history she’d been taught in school, she did remember
ancient religions seemed to revolve around sacrifices.

Was she about to discover why she’d been
bought?

* * * *

The closer they came to the structure Brandi
had spotted, the more certain she was that it was a temple of some
sort. And the more convinced she was that it was a religious
structure the more certain she was that it couldn’t be their
destination.

She was wrong on the latter speculation. The
Tank headed straight for it and pulled the beast to a halt when
they reached it. Leaving her perched precariously in the saddle, he
took the reins and tied the beast at a hitching post and then
picked up the stick dangling from a rope beside a huge gong and
struck it.

The noise nearly unseated Brandi because the
beast tried to rear.

The Tank grasped the bridle, balled one
meaty fist up and slammed it against the side of the animal’s bony
skull.

The arm looked like a pile driver. Brandi
wasn’t surprised the animal stopped bouncing around. She
was
surprised it didn’t keel over.

When he’d calmed the beast, Tank moved to
her and removed her from the saddle, setting her on her feet on the
first of the multitude of stone steps that led up into the temple.
When Brandi followed the ‘waterfall’ upwards with her gaze, she
discovered that there were robed figures at the top—summoned no
doubt by the ‘door bell’ the Tank had rung.

Uneasiness slithered through her.

She realized she hadn’t seriously considered
the possibility that she might be used as a sacrifice even though
that thought had occurred to her as the most frightening
scenario—next to being eaten.

Otherwise she would’ve fought the Tank like
a tigress.

She doubted she could’ve escaped, but she
would’ve made a damned good attempt.

She supposed she’d been lulled into a false
sense of security by fact that she’d been taken by an advanced race
and the unthreatening manner the Tank had shown toward her. The
planet and its inhabitants
seemed
primitive by Earth
standards, but she figured they couldn’t be too primitive if they
were accustomed to trading with aliens from other worlds like the
frog people.

What did she know, though, she thought
abruptly? She was certainly no expert on alien culture—she wasn’t
even an expert on human cultures.

She was debating whether she should take her
chances in the wilds of the alien world and damn the flesh she
would lose in the fight for freedom when she felt the Tank unfasten
one manacle, pull her arms behind her and lock the manacle on her
wrist again.

Had he read her thoughts in her expression,
she wondered, abruptly feeling faint with terror? Or could he read
minds?

Or was it just because that bastard that had
sold her had told him she was a runaway slave? Maybe that she would
have to be beaten into submission?

The cloaked figures, she discovered when
Tank moved away, had descended the stairs. They surrounded her. One
on either side gripped her upper arms half carrying, half dragging
her up the stairs.

Belatedly, Brandi pulled against their hold,
but nothing she could do broke their grip or even seemed to loosen
it and when she abruptly dropped her weight in the hope that it
would catch them off guard and break their hold, they simply
dragged her, banging her shins on the sharp edges of the steps.

She would’ve screamed if she’d thought it
would do any good—if she’d been able to think straight and find her
voice. She was too mindless to even
try
to think of a way of
escape.

But it did occur to her that she might have
been better off not to play her hand at the inopportune time she
had. She might have been able to catch them off guard if she’d been
smart enough to bide her time.

Now they would be more watchful.

Apparently, they grew tired of dragging her
by the time they reached the platform at the top. Two other robed
figures caught her ankles and lifted her and they carried her
inside and down a corridor illuminated with flickering torches.
When they reached a wide stair, they began to descend.

By that time it had occurred to Brandi that
she might be better off if she simply pitched herself to the bottom
and ended ‘it’ as quickly as she could—but she didn’t have that
option either.

They carried her to a room that contained a
fairly large pool.

Drowning!

That was quite possibly one of the worst
ways to go in Brandi’s book.

She fought them like a tigress as they
carried her into the water.

They ignored her struggles and bathed
her.

She was starting to feel stupid by the time
they hauled her out again, but she quickly realized they weren’t
simply giving her a bath. This was a part of some sort of ritual.
They staked her down spread eagle on the floor, spread some sort of
aromatic oils all over her and then took knives and scraped the
hair off her entire body, leaving only the hair on her head.

She was too frightened to move during most
of the process, but when they reached her genitals, she began
trying to jerk her arms loose.

Her tormenter simply sat down on her belly,
pinning her hips to the hard stone floor, and continued.

When they were satisfied, they unlocked the
manacles and carried her into the pool again.

It occurred to Brandi that she hadn’t seen
the Tank since the robed priests had taken her and the priests
weren’t half his size or nearly as formidable.

She braced herself when they carried her out
of the pool again. The moment her feet touched the stone, she
launched herself forward.

Unfortunately, they were ready for her. They
let her and when she smacked into the stone hard enough to rattle
her brain, they pulled her arms behind her back and manacled them
tightly. A hood was placed over her head and secured tightly,
blinding her, then they simply picked her up like a log and carried
her from the room.

Instead of returning the way that they’d
come, the procession turned in the opposite direction as they left
the bath and Brandi felt the sensation of descending, although she
hadn’t noticed another set of stairs leading down when they’d taken
her to the pool room.

The air grew cooler as they descended,
whispering over her throbbing, heated skin and pebbling it until
shivers began to quake through her. When they reached the foot of
the stairs, Brandi thought they must have emerged at one end of a
large room from the way even the slightest sounds echoed. Torches
flickered in sconces around the stone walls. Even through the heavy
hood she could, faintly, detect their glow and she was chilled
enough that she could also detect the heat they gave off as she was
carried across the vast room and finally set on her feet, although
they didn’t release her. Instead, a hand settled on the back of her
head and pushed her forward until she felt something hard and cold
and slightly rounded pressing against her belly. The pressure
continued until she felt pressure against her ribs and knew she’d
been pushed down onto … something. A sloping table? It certainly
wasn’t level. As disoriented as she was from the hood, she could
feel enough pressure from blood pulsing in her temples to know that
much.

She tried not to think about the fact that
the support ended around her ribcage, below her breasts and what
that might mean.

Surely if they meant to behead her they
would have had her neck/throat against something, she thought a
little hysterically?

She jumped when she felt two hands grasp her
ankles. It was too late to try to clench her legs together by the
time she realized they were spreading them. She tried anyway, but
she couldn’t tell that she even managed to inconvenience them. They
locked her feet into something on either side and then shoved
upward until her knees bent and her legs were spread so wide that
she felt like they were going to tear the tendons in her groin.

She began to get an inkling that they might
have a different sort of sacrifice in mind than taking her head or
cutting her heart out.

She just hoped they weren’t really pissed
off when they discovered she was no virgin sacrifice!

That thought had barely flickered through
her mind when something was attached to each of her nipples.
Blinded, it took her many moments of frightened wondering before it
dawned on her that the objects felt like mouths. Well mostly. They
were hot, wet, contained something that felt like a tongue except
somewhat rougher, and almost immediately formed a suction that
seemed predicated on pulling her nipples off rather than giving her
any sort of pleasure.

Did they think they could …
extract
something from her breasts?

A jolt traveled all the way through her when
she felt something similar attached to her sex, cupping the
clit—all of the flesh exposed by the pinch of the garment she’d
been forced to wear-so that her clit was nestled deeply in the hold
of that rough tongue-like thing.

If possible, the suction was even harder
than that on her nipples, but if it wasn’t mouths attached to her
it was a damned close approximation—except for the roughness of the
tongue and the fact that the sucking was borderline
uncomfortable.

Unfortunately—embarrassingly—her body still
reacted to the stimulation. Warmth began to thread its way through
her and her rapid heartbeat switched from the pounding of alarm to
a manifestation of the excitement building inside of her.

Within moments, a mild quake erupted inside
of her—mild enough she thought they might not have noticed and she
was able to comfort herself with the thought that they probably
hadn’t.