Breaking Brandi (7 page)

Regardless, she found it impossible to
envision the life he’d suggested.

Basically, she supposed after a little
thought, it would be pretty much like being his wife.

She wouldn’t be an equal. She would be a
slave and that meant she didn’t have any choices and she couldn’t
leave and he made all of the decisions and she had to live with
it—and might get her ass beat if she argued.

Not that she was daring enough to try
that!

Anyway, when it came right down to it, did
men ever
really
consider women their equals? She doubted it,
but then there were laws back home that prevented them from, or at
least gave them pause, when it came to doing
anything
they
pleased.

Ulrick wouldn’t be bound by anything as far
as she could see except, maybe, a little pity or some softness
toward her and she was going to have to try to convince him to feel
those things whether she believed it could be done or not. Because
she didn’t see anything but, possibly, affection of some sort as
being protection from harm—as giving her hope of a future that
wasn’t a pure misery to her.

Ulrick would take care of her, protect her
from harm and hopefully not harm her himself if she could make
herself important to his comfort in some way.

Like sex.

At this point, try though she might, she
simply couldn’t see anything else she had to work with. And at
that, she really hadn’t been able to use it—because the priests
wanted first dibs on her ass!

Unfortunately, she didn’t see that she could
do anything at all about that beyond enduring and dreading the
next.

And she
did
dread it.

So far, she hadn’t actually been hurt in the
sense that she’d been made to feel real pain or been physically
damaged, but that was just so far—which made her realize that part
of her fear stemmed from distrust, the anxiety that they might
decide to give her pain rather than pleasure.

And they made her completely helpless. If
they decided to cut her into little pieces she wouldn’t be able to
do anything about it.

She shuddered at the thought and quickly
pushed it to the back of her mind.

There was no sense in looking for things to
terrorize herself with! She was traumatized enough as it was that
she was the next thing to blubbering moron!

When it came right down to it, though, the
pleasure itself was agonizing—exhausting. They’d made her feel
things she didn’t know her body was capable of feeling! She’d never
in her life had more than one climax at the time.

Truthfully, she was beginning to think she’d
never in her life actually experienced
a
climax!

She certainly hadn’t experienced anything
like
they
made her feel!

Naturally enough that directed her thoughts
toward the last thing she wanted to think about, but she realized
that even though she’d told herself they just weren’t interested in
how she felt about it one way or another, she didn’t think it could
possibly be accidental that they
forced
her to have one
climax after another—each more powerful and devastating than the
last.

It was the climaxes that were the ultimate
goal, she decided. She expended energy when she came—a great deal
of it. In some twisted way, they must think they were gathering it
or that when they forced her to climax, she was giving to their
god.

That didn’t make a lot of sense to her, but
nothing else that had occurred to her made any sense at all.

Unless, of course, it was just some garbage
the priests had made up?

Well, she supposed whoever had concocted the
religion had made it up, but the question was, was it something
they actually believed? Or were the priests playing on the
ignorance of others, and possibly their fear, and simply enjoying
themselves?

She recalled then that they’d had a slack
look on their faces and a glazed look in their eyes that seemed to
indicate they were seriously ‘in’ to their religion. But of course,
they could’ve drunk something that produced that Zen-like effect so
she didn’t think she could totally rule out any of her
conjectures.

After all, it was pretty common on Earth to
get stoned and or stinking drunk and then having sex—no religious
beliefs involved in that!

* * * *

Those thoughts occupied her until they
stopped to rest mid-day. When they’d refreshed themselves, Ulrick
sprawled beneath the shade of a tree, watching her through drowsy,
heavy lidded eyes as she removed the food from the pack and tore
off a portion for each of them. She pretended to concentrate on her
own meal, but she couldn’t help but notice that his gaze moved over
her body hungrily and she made no attempt to block his view. When
she’d finished, she stretched, and finally lay down on the grass on
her back, dropping her arms onto the grass on either side of her
head.

She didn’t bother lying to herself that she
wasn’t trying to entice him.

She just wasn’t certain, herself, what the
plan was.

She supposed she just mostly wanted to see
if she appealed to him enough that she might be able to use that
appeal.

She’d begun to drowse when she felt his
presence beside her. Lazily, she opened her eyes and looked at him.
His gaze locked with hers, his face taut. Catching her thighs, he
parted them, kneeling between her legs and leaning forward over her
to suckle her breasts.

Her breath caught in her throat as she felt
the heat of his mouth enfold the tight bud that tipped her breast,
felt sharp desire flood through her, but she remained perfectly
still, allowing him to do as he pleased.

He was breathing heavily when he abandoned
her breasts after a few moments and moved down. Cupping her
buttocks, he lifted her hips to his mouth and dipped his tongue
into her cleft, parting the flesh with his tongue, licking her,
delving deeply and running his tongue along that most sensitive
flesh. Almost tentative at first, her scent seemed to drive him
into a sort of madness. He moved his mouth over her hungrily,
sucking and licking her until she felt the first tremors of her
climax gripping her. Her gasps and moans spurred him on and he
continued to suckle the bud of her clit until she was screaming his
name, begging him to stop. He moved over her then, wedging the head
of his cock into the quaking mouth of her channel.

Despite the fact that she was still caught
in the throes of passion, felt soaked with her body’s natural
lubrication, she discovered that her perception of his cock as
mammoth hadn’t been off by a hair’s breadth. He caught her
shoulders to keep her from escaping impalement on his massive lance
and pretty much pried her over it. He hit bottom and tried to drive
deeper still.

Giving up after a moment—thankfully—he
withdrew slightly and thrust a second time.

He’d caught his rhythm by the third and set
a pounding pace that lifted her off the ground with each thrust and
threatened to split her in two.

She supposed it was a good thing that she’d
been put through her paces sexually. She didn’t think she could’ve
handled it before, let alone actually enjoyed it.

She was almost as stunned and surprised as
he was that she did. Abruptly, another climax caught her. As her
passage began to spasm around his turgid flesh, he growled, jerked
and slammed into her hard, grinding into her as his seed flooded
her passage.

He collapsed over her, gasping for breath—at
least partly supporting his weight, she supposed, or he would’ve
flattened her like a pancake. Even as she felt her body float
downward toward the mellow warmth of her afterglow, however, he
pulled away from her. Grasping her, he rolled her onto her belly,
lifted her hips until she was on her knees and then thrust into her
again. She groaned, feeling her body surge upward instantly as he
rammed into her with almost painful thrusts, burying himself so
deeply inside her she felt as if she would split, then pulling
slightly away and hammering into her again. Her body quaked,
spasmed, exploded with ecstasy. The convulsing muscles dragged him
over the edge with her and he cried out hoarsely, surging into her
as his seed bathed her passage once more.

When he pulled away at last, he lay back on
the grass, gasping for breath. Brandi wanted nothing so much as to
drift into oblivion, but she thought this might be an opportunity
to reach him and she didn’t want to miss her chance.

Rolling toward him, she lightly trailed her
fingers over the powerful, bulging muscles of his chest and
arms.

“That was … amazing,” she murmured.

He opened his eyes and slanted a narrow,
assessing look at her.

Brandi paused, staring back at him
uneasily.

Without another word, he sat up. After
staring into the distance for several moments, he rose, urged her
up by tugging at the chain that was still threaded through her
nipples and clit, and then headed back toward the beast he’d left
grazing.

Brandi struggled with the urge to weep—not
because she’d failed but because she realized that she’d
underestimated his intelligence and she might have screwed up any
chance to appeal to his tender side—assuming he had one.

Chapter Five

They reached the edge of the forest before
nightfall. Brandi saw a wide plane lying before them. Rising up
from it in the gathering mists of evening was the dark shape of yet
another temple.

Instantly, her belly clenched in dread
anticipation. She didn’t know if it would have been worse if she
hadn’t known what she would face here, or not, but knowing made her
heart pound painfully in her chest.

Despite that, her body burgeoned with
anticipation. Until only a few days ago, she hadn’t really known
carnal pleasure at all—even though she certainly wasn’t a virgin
and had considered herself fairly experienced—but the rituals of
the priests had enslaved her body to the pleasures of the flesh and
no matter how much her mind shied from it, her body welcomed the
possession of her body in carnal torment.

She glanced up at Ulrick uneasily. “They
will be expecting us?”

“Yes.”

His voice was grim. She could sense, she
believed, reluctance in him to give up possession of ‘his’ slave,
even briefly, and yet she didn’t think he dared disobey the demands
of the priests.

So where did that leave her?

She frowned at the thought.

Ulrick was certainly no coward—unless he’d
just made up his ‘history’—and she realized she totally believed
because she had no problem imagining him engaged in mortal
combat.

And there were certainly enough scars to
prove he’d sustained injuries in the past that had to have been
life threatening.

Of course, those could have been sustained
in a number of ways, but … everything about Ulrick seemed to bear
up his statement. He might not be fearless, but he not only looked
like someone accustomed to defending their life with deadly force,
he acted like someone used to that sort of life.

Maybe it was just her imagination—or her
attempts to use a ruler she was used to—but it seemed to her that
the diamond hard control he had over his emotions arose from
spending most of his life trying to stay alive.

Of course, he wasn’t human and maybe there
were no emotions to control, but she thought he
did
feel
things. He just knew how to control his reactions.

So, if she accepted that Ulrick wasn’t a
coward, she had to also accept that the people who worshipped Nhewa
were a seriously dangerous group. She couldn’t imagine Ulrick
concerning himself with following rules
they
had lain down
unless that was the case.

And who knew how common the belief system
was? Or how zealous the followers? He might have a lot more to
worry about than just evading the temples and the priests that
occupied them. It was possible that pretty much everybody on the
planet followed this religion—zealously enough that they might be
willing to risk their own life to kill anyone that didn’t believe
and follow the dictates of the god, Nhewa. Or to inform to the
priests.

She shuddered to think what they might do if
anybody crossed them.

So she should just resign herself to the
status quo? Forget any possibility of avoiding this part of her new
life?

She thought she was definitely ‘stuck’ as
far as the temple sacrifices went. She was going to have to
consider that she had two separate problems—the religion/sacrifice
issue, and the master issue. She couldn’t do anything about the
temple visits, she realized, so she definitely needed to try to
accept what she couldn’t change and to focus on Ulrick, on the one
individual who would ultimately be responsible for her continued
well being.

After a moment Ulrick seemed to come to some
decision.

Not a decision that had even briefly crossed
Brandi’s mind, but one she realized later that
did
indicate
she hadn’t been wrong about his growing sense of possessiveness—a
tool that at least gave her some leverage.

Looping the reins of the beast around the
saddle horn, Ulrick grasped her, turning her to face him and
drawing her legs over his so that she sat astride his lap. He bent
her backwards over one arm then and fastened his mouth over the
peak of one breast, raking is teeth over the distended tip almost
painfully. When it began to throb with the rush of blood into the
swollen flesh, he sucked it into his mouth, tugging on it with his
mouth and tongue until Brandi was gasping dizzily. Releasing it
just as she was beginning to get really wound up, he moved to its
twin, raking that nipple with his teeth before he pulled it into
his mouth. As he sucked her, he reached between her legs, parting
the flesh of her sex and thrusting a finger deeply inside of her,
spreading the creamy moisture that had gathered there.