Buying His Mate (15 page)

“Well, there’s a lot of sex,” Beth said matter-of-factly.

Gretchen giggled. “How much?”

“We have three-hour shifts. The first few days, while my mistress was training me, I was only with her, though other club members came to watch her train me. I’m still in training, of course, as you can see from my harness, but I’m reserved by a club member named Mr. Jones, now. He’s the one who told me I have to wear my harness all day all this week.”

“Why?” Yes, Beth heard the different note again.
Envy,
she thought,
unless I’m completely mistaken.

“He says my ass is too tight, and I have to learn to open it wider for him.” Beth looked closely at Gretchen; she had turned a little pink in the bright light of the sun reflected by the light-gathering mirrors and turned onto the always-sunny park. “Have you had anal?”

Gretchen nodded, swallowing.

“Did you like it?”

The pink spread further across Gretchen’s cheeks. She looked at the green grass in the middle of the park and nodded again. “But…”

Beth felt her brow furrow, suddenly understanding that something seriously troubled Gretchen, far beyond the little indignities and the sexual realities of life as a relict girl aboard Athena.

“What?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

Gretchen looked at her. “Well, he only did it once, the first night. It hurt, but… I loved the way it felt. That night he seemed so masterful, and it scared me, but I knew it was the right way for him to have me, and I could tell I gave him pleasure, but then afterward he seemed, I don’t know, different, and he hasn’t done any of the, you know, other stuff, since then.”

“Other stuff?”

Gretchen’s face turned crimson. “You know, like they do at the club, I think? Bottoms and mouths? And…” her voice fell to a whisper, “…spanking.”

“He hasn’t?” Beth heard the astonishment in her own voice. She had had so much of the
other stuff
by this time that it seemed very strange to hear that another relict girl’s life didn’t include as much of it. “He’s punished you, though?”

Gretchen shook her head. “I even didn’t make dinner on time, once, to see what would happen,” she said. “It almost seemed like he was going to punish me, but then he calmed down and told me to go to my room, and he would make dinner. He seemed so disappointed in me that I didn’t want to try anything like that again.”

“And when he… has you?”

To Beth’s surprise, she saw a tear roll down Gretchen’s cheek. “He comes to my bedroom every night, but it’s not like it was the first night. He asks me if I’m awake, and then if I want to make love, and it’s like—”

Beth had the sense that Gretchen was keeping some secret about her master, because she suddenly cut off her words in mid-sentence. She couldn’t puzzle out for the life of her what the secret might be, though.

“Like what?”

“Like old books and things,” Gretchen admitted, with apparent reluctance. “Do you remember what we heard in orientation about marriage?”

“You mean the way men and women used to live together and raise their children in houses and things?” The concept still seemed so strange to Beth. One of the things she did during the days now was learning to read, and apparently she would read someday soon about all sorts of strange things from the old days. She had already watched a lot of vids, but they were mostly about the kinds of things the members of the Maenad Club were interested in—not only sex, but also Athenian art and music. Mr. Jones was a very popular musician, so he had her watching his various vids.

Gretchen nodded. “Well, in some of the books I read, they called it
making love
when husbands and wives did it.”

Beth frowned in puzzlement. “You mean
fucking?
Really?
Making love?
” She giggled.

Gretchen smiled, but she didn’t seem to find it very funny. “It’s not bad, really. He’s very gentle with me, and he makes sure I… you know, come.”

“Well, that’s good,” Beth snorted. “Mr. Jones says I may only come when I’ve been very good.”

“What does that mean?” Now the fascination in Gretchen’s voice became unmistakable.

“Oh, it’s usually if I take his cock all the way to the back of my throat. Does your master use your mouth? Is that part of
making love?
”

Gretchen shook her head. “Once I asked him if I could kiss his cock, and suck it the way I did in the Hall of Taking, but he said no. And it’s so strange, because he said that first night that he would make me, but then he didn’t.”

It was Beth’s turn to shake her head. “And… babies?” she asked.

“Not yet,” Gretchen replied. “But Mr. Lourcy must want one, or he wouldn’t come to my room, would he? Oh, Beth—I’m just so confused. It’s all so different from the way it seemed.”

Beth suddenly had an idea. “Do you want to come to the club, to talk to my mistress?” she asked. “She’s really smart about this stuff.”

Hope seemed to light up Gretchen’s eyes, but she said, “I’d better not. I don’t have permission. I’ll ask Mr. Lourcy tonight.”

Beth looked steadily at her. “You know he’ll say no, don’t you? I mean, I’m not sure what his problem is, but I’m pretty sure he won’t let you come to the club. What if you just came?”

“He’d punish me.”

“Exactly.”

Again Gretchen turned pink. Her eyes seemed to wander down Beth’s body to where the belt and straps of her harness enclosed her waist and thighs, leaving her pussy exposed, so that Mr. Jones could fuck her with the harness still on, if he wanted to—as he often did want to. Gretchen’s mouth compressed into a tight line as she looked back into Beth’s eyes, and finally she nodded.

* * *

When they arrived at the club, Beth took Gretchen in through the girls’ door, at the back of the big former storage area. It looked ordinary, though Gretchen probably hadn’t seen so many relict girls in one place since their orientation sessions. Most of the girls, too, she hadn’t met before, since the club girls tended to keep to themselves in public, and their schedules were strange.

Of the three hundred or so relict girls on Athena, Beth already knew almost a hundred, because the club girls remained close even after their service there had ended. She guessed that Gretchen might know twenty, from her classes and from going to the market for Mr. Lourcy.

Eighteen of those hundred were the current club girls, and Beth introduced Gretchen to several of them, in the common room that had many of the same features as the entertainment room in the enclosure back on Earth, where Beth and Gretchen had met only a month before, though of course it seemed like forever.

The club had just opened, and A shift was on duty. Beth belonged to B shift, because Mr. Jones liked to compose in the evening and come in to enjoy Beth after that. When Mr. Jones wasn’t in the club, Beth had to fulfil the normal girls’ duties of serving drinks and light meals to the members. As a reserved girl, other members were permitted to touch her as they liked, but not to punish her or to fuck her.

She explained all this to Gretchen as breezily as she could. “Most girls are reserved for their first month,” she said, as she walked Gretchen to the observation room behind the wall of the main rooms, where view screens showed everything going on in the club. Ms. Feld was absorbed in conversation with one of the male members at the far end, while two elite staff members, Mr. Andrews and Ms. Dobbs, watched the monitors, where not much was happening yet.

“Mr. Jones likes to punish me and fuck me in a private room first, right when he comes in. He flogs me, mostly—that’s much nicer than it sounds, but he likes to make sure I always have marks on my bottom and he likes to make me cry, so it can go on for a while. Then I usually have to suck his cock to get it hard, and he’ll fuck me for a little while, but he won’t come. He takes me out into the club, then, and shows me off.”

“How?” Gretchen whispered.

“Well, sometimes I have to crawl around the restaurant and please other members with my mouth, and sometimes he takes me to the performance room and whips me there or fucks me on the stage while other members watch and cheer and things. It’s fun—he’s very creative.

“After my reserved period is over, I’ll be doing regular service, like Rana there.” She pointed to a view screen where the only current action was taking place, in a room called the princess room. Rana, a lovely nineteen-year-old with olive skin and dark hair, clutched a teddy bear to her chest while a member named Ms. Higgins gave her a bare-bottom spanking over her lap, as she sat on a high-backed wooden chair. The tears ran down Rana’s face, but the sound was muted so the sound of the hard slaps to her backside and the sobs Ms. Higgins won from her could not be heard.

“What do you think she did?” Gretchen asked in a thick voice.

“Oh, nothing,” Beth replied. “Ms. Higgins just like to spank the girls before she fucks them. There, look—she’s told Rana to get the strap-on.” On the screen, the tearful, naked Rana got up and went to the box on the dresser of the room that had been done up as an old-fashioned bedroom, they told Beth who had never seen one. She opened the box and took out the strap-on dildo. Meanwhile, Ms. Higgins had stripped her clothing off to reveal a fit forty-year-old body. Rana turned around and Ms. Higgins pointed to the carpet.

Rana knelt and began to help the elite woman into the strap-on harness. Beth turned to see that Gretchen’s eyes had grown as wide as saucers. Beth laughed, “Oh, you get used to it,” she said. “Ms. Feld loves to have girls that way, so I got a lot of it my first few days.”

At the sound of her name, Ms. Feld turned and saw Beth and Gretchen. “Sweet Beth!” she called. “What have we here?” She came toward them. “Gretchen, isn’t it? So nice to see you. How are you getting on?”

Gretchen seemed terribly confused, as if she had not expected to be received so kindly. “F-fine, Ms. Feld,” she said.

Beth saw her mistress look very closely at Gretchen, and watched her brow furrow in concern. Over the past weeks, she had developed feelings for Ms. Feld she had never expected to have: admiration, even astonishment at her mistress’ capabilities and sensitivities. Now, watching Ms. Feld notice that something troubled Gretchen, and seeing that her mistress wanted to help her friend, Beth realized that truly she loved Ms. Feld. It seemed a very strange thing to feel about a person who had wrung from her body every possible pleasure and then sold the exclusive right to master her to a man Beth had never seen.

When her mistress brought her to the little room where Mr. Jones had introduced Beth to his special ways with a relict girl—the flogger above all, which Beth loved even when he made her cry out under it—she had been well prepared. Perhaps that was where the love came from: everything Ms. Feld did seemed to be intended to prepare Beth, and help her understand what her new life meant. Beth only hoped she might do the same for Gretchen.

Chapter Eighteen

Gretchen could tell that Ms. Feld sensed that something about her life with Mr. Lourcy had gone wrong. Her memory of the elite woman didn’t reassure her very much—Gretchen still remembered feeling like Ms. Feld were looking straight through her skin and into her heart and mind. But she could tell that Beth had found a sort of happiness with her mistress here in this strange club, and she felt a kind of desperation to tell someone in authority about her worries where her master were concerned; someone who might have help to give.

“I brought her here to see what the club is like, ma’am,” Beth said. “She… I think she needs more, um, discipline.”

Gretchen felt herself turning red. “No!” she protested, but she felt herself starting to cry, and she knew her protestations only confirmed how very right Beth was.

What a bizarre turn of events had befallen her, Gretchen saw now, standing in the Maenad Club without permission. The very name of which, when she’d first heard it spoken in orientation, had made her shiver, even though she hadn’t known what it meant. Something about the way Ms. Trainor said, “And a few of you will be club girls for two years—or maenads, as the owners of the Maenad Club like to call them,” had made it clear that those girls’ lives would be different, even before she had gone on to say very matter-of-factly, “You will be trained to give pleasure, and you will often be punished by club members in a sexual way. Your health will be strictly monitored, and when your service is done you will receive a very generous bonus to help you get started as after-service relicts.”

After-service
. Right now, Gretchen couldn’t help but look forward to the end of her service with Mr. Lourcy, though she knew—at least if things continued as they had been until now—that it would involve, even if she were lucky and could muster the courage to assert her freedom, a terrible scene in which she might have to threaten to turn him in for trying to cohabit with her.

My husband. His wife.
How had it happened that the thing that seemed so delicious had become so sad and anxious in the course of that single night? Gretchen cast her mind back there, as she tried to gather her wits before Beth and Ms. Feld, and wondered for the thousandth time what her master’s—her husband’s—brilliant mind contained with regard to the girl he had bought and paid for, and brought to Athena to be his own, to bear his children and to give him pleasure.

For the first hour, when she had put on the lacy bra and panties, and seen the hunger in his eyes, when she had knelt before him and learned about husbands and wives, as her master saw the matter—when, above all, he had laid her out upon the lesson table and awakened her body to submissive pleasures she had never imagined and then taken her back to her room and deflowered her—everything seemed perfect with a sort of perfection that defied description even now.

Yes,
she would honor and obey him, and cohabit with him: to be his and to see him look at her that way—to feel his big hands upon her little body, forcing her to pleasures untold, and to feel his hardness claiming her womb—seemed everything Gretchen could wish for now that she had come here to Athena, where Martin and the other elites ruled a world full of joys and comforts that seemed simply magical when compared with those of Earth. She would be Mrs. Lourcy, in secret, and together they would raise a family who would continue the good work of the Enclosure Act, until, back on Earth, they could restore the things that had been lost in the collapse.