The Sevarian Way (4 page)

“They would have to stay wet
all the time
?” queried
Suka
, though at that moment she could not imagine finding any problem with this requirement. She squirmed against Paul’s confident touch, trying to trick him into rubbing her clit properly.

“The people of
Sevarium
had ways,” said Paul, probing inside her with one finger, then two. “Lords, but you really are wet,
Suka
. I could take you here and now.”

“Is that what happens next?” she asked hopefully.

Paul chuckled softly. “Patience,” he chided, causing her to wriggle her hips
frustratedly
, pushing her bottom into the hard bulge in his trousers.

“First, according to the ritual, the master would invite each and every member of the congregation up, one by one, to inspect and admire his new bond subject. Imagine it,
Suka
. Here you would stand while I presented you, front and back, to all-comers. They were encouraged to feel you, to take a handful of your breasts, to check your cunt for wetness and your clit for fatness, to perhaps give your bum a good smack before standing down for the next person.”

“Oh my, wouldn’t that take
hours?
”

“Yes, I imagine so. There would be upwards of a thousand guests at these shindigs. Think of it,
Suka
.
Thousands of hands, feeling you up, fingering you, opening and examining you.
It makes you wet, doesn’t it? Well, wetter,” he amended, his fingers rotating easily inside
Suka’s
soaked passage. “And you weren’t allowed to come. Not unless the master permitted it. If you did, you would be shamed straight away and sent to the punishment suite.”

“The punishment suite?”

“We’ll have to see if we can find it later on.”

Eek! Must we?
thought
Suka
, but the idea excited her beyond belief. She needed just the tiniest flick of Paul’s thumb on her clit to bring her to spectacular orgasm. But he was not about to grant this favour and he took his fingers from her pussy to the accompaniment of her desperate protests.

“Once all that was done,” said Paul into her ear, bending low because she had slumped forward, chin on breastbone, sulking at not being allowed to come yet, “there was the ritual clothing.”

“Clothing?
You mean I have to get dressed again?”

“Not really. I wonder if…” He turned around and crouched before the altar, scrabbling around inside the silk drapes that hid the space beneath it. “Brilliant!” he crowed, emerging with a web of slender silver chain, exquisitely delicate and expertly crafted. “Subject links,” he said, holding up his discovery.

“What do they do?”

“Look.” He began to arrange them about
Suka’s
body, slipping them first over her shoulders,
then
letting them cross her breasts at the nipple, where a small clip midway along the linkage was conveniently placed. The clips, when attached to
Suka’s
nipples, were not painful, but they awoke a permanent throb, keeping the nubs hard and full. Once the two strands met at the base of
Suka’s
cleavage, they joined and passed down through her pussy lips and up the crack of her bottom until the end was fastened to the strip of chain across her shoulder blades.
Suka
shifted from foot to foot, instantly aware of a tingle transferring from the metal to her sex, keeping it stimulated as if by electricity or magic.

“Oh God.
This is how they get the constant horniness thing going,” she exclaimed, rubbing herself against Paul shamelessly now. “This is impossible. Oh, Sir, it’s unbearable. I will come!”

“You won’t. It won’t let you. It stimulates without ever tipping you into climax. Clever lot, weren’t they, the
Paladians
?” His grin was sadistically gleeful and she was sweating now, struggling to keep a tenuous grip on her mind.

“Genius…
es
,” she tried to say. “I feel like…I feel like I’m going to…oh God, please let me…”

“You would get used to it,” Paul said, unreassuringly. “But I think it took a week or so.”

“It’s
torture
.”
Suka
dropped to her knees, pushing the chain further between her lips, crushing it against her clit, but finding no real relief, whatever she did. “Please take it off!” Her voice broke into a wail of tension.

Paul lifted her from the floor. “I think the time is right,” he whispered in her ear. “I have to take you. No recriminations? No regrets?”

“I promise, seriously, I have to have you, Sir.”

“I won’t hurt you.”

“I don’t
care
about that! Please…just…”

He laid her flat on the padded altar,
then
swung his legs over to straddle her.

“This is the ceremonial mounting,” he informed her, though
Suka
was long past requiring any educational material.

“I get the picture. Just fuck me.”

“I’m not sure that’s the right attitude for a bond subject,
Suka
. I think we will be visiting the punishment suite later,” teased Paul, but he was kicking off his boots and freeing his cock from its long imprisonment, ready to indulge
Suka’s
desire.

He unclipped a connecting link from the base of
Suka’s
slave harness, immediately releasing her from the worst of the frustration, though her clit still throbbed and her pussy continued to drench the padded leather beneath it.

“This,” gritted Paul, lining up the tip of his cock with
Suka’s
cunt and bathing it in the wetness there, “is where I lay my claim on you. When my cock owns you, you become irrevocably mine. Put your arms above your head.”

She obeyed, although every instinct told her to grab his backside and force him inside her.

“Make me yours,” she whispered, and he took her at her word, impaling her swiftly and without ceremony on the thick curving rod of flesh that was now her master.

“A harsh master might insist on making you beg permission for your orgasm,” said Paul, holding
himself
in at the hilt, teeth gritted, every sinew strained. “But I won’t do that. You may come whenever you are ready.”

“Thanks.”
Suka’s
tone contained just a hint of
snark
, and she knew she was paying for that when Paul began subjecting her to a blistering, head-banging bout of fucking, showing no mercy, just the way she wanted it.

In between the starbursts of pure sensual stimulation,
Suka
found stray thoughts weaving through her consciousness.

Commander Paul is fucking me. I am lying underneath him, taking his cock, on an altar. I am his. He is good at this!
Very good at this.
Oh shit, am I in love? I want him to look at me, I want him to…

He looked at her and she convulsed, heart and soul, seeing in his eyes exactly what she sought.
Desperate, furious need, but also tenderness and a touch of bewilderment.
Events had overtaken them,
Suka
realised, both of them. She was not the only vulnerable one here, perhaps not even the
most
vulnerable.

He took her face in his cupped hands and kissed her through the strongest orgasm of her life, plundering her with his tongue as she twisted and kicked beneath him, accepting her helpless screams into his own throat.

Later, after his own powerful climax, filling her with his hot essence, he slumped on top of her, his face beside hers, damp and slippery. He was heavy—six-feet-two of solid muscle on
Suka’s
slight frame, and she gasped underneath him.

“Sorry,” he said, sounding far away from her. The altar was not wide and it was not possible to lie side by side. “Like this.” He manoeuvred her on top of him. She sighed and
untensed
as her sore bum unpeeled from the damp fabric and felt the breath of cool air. She burrowed into Paul’s arms, letting herself fall into satiated exhaustion. He held her so well. Never had she felt so protected, so cherished.
Just like it says in the vows.

“The audience would be all over each other now,” said Paul softly. “And it would be one long orgy for the rest of the day and night. Some masters and mistresses liked lending their bond subjects. Others preferred exclusive rights over them. Either way, you would be leaving this place sore and used up.”

“That’s how I feel already.”

“You’ve learned a lot today.”

“Thanks for…educating me.”

“Thanks for being so…intellectually curious. I would teach you again, any time.”

“I hope you will.”

Chapter Three

Paul lifted his head, peering down at
Suka’s
face where it lay, looking sidelong at him from his chest.

“I know the stone has this effect,” he said, “so the High Council would excuse us what’s just happened. They would understand we had no choice. Don’t worry about getting into any trouble.”

Suka
bit her lip, hesitating to speak her mind.

“No choice,” she said at last. “It was the stone that made us do it.”

“That’s what the High Council will know.”

“Is it true?”

“What do you mean?” Paul’s grip on her tightened and he frowned.

“Oh, nothing.”
She buried her face in the rumpled material of his uniform top, which he had not bothered to take off for the ceremony. Was he able to disconnect, just like that? View what had passed between them as an
occupational hazard
? She could hear his heart beating next to her ear, hammering away, but she thought perhaps it was just a sound recording, standing in for a vacancy down there.

Paul pulled at her tight braid. “Are you sulking?” he asked sternly.

“Of course not.”
She raised her head, chin up,
mouth
in a tight little line. “I am bloody starving, though. Should we eat an energy bar?”

“Good idea.” Paul held
Suka
carefully by the shoulders while he sat up and swung around, vacating the altar. “We should get out of here. Come on.”

The back entrance of the temple took them out to a garden, overgrown and untended, but still beautiful. They found a bench to sit on and took the energy bars from their waist packs, neither one of them speaking.

Suka
bit into the teeth-achingly sweet bar and chewed it silently, watching the birds that still inhabited the planet as if they hadn’t realised it was dead.

Now what? Am I supposed to go back to a formal professional footing with a man I just lay beneath, in the throes of orgasm? Does he really expect that to happen?

Her trousers, back up now, felt tacky and clingy, and a reminder of Commander Paul’s recent presence leaked out of her and stained the material at the crotch.

He spoke first, just as the silence was at its heaviest.

“Are you embarrassed?”

“Should I be?” she replied quickly.

“You know it wasn’t my intention to take advantage of you.”

“Do you feel guilty?”

“I suppose I do. I’ve gone well outside the boundaries of professionalism, let’s say.”

“And the stone made you do it. It wasn’t the stone that made you pick up that whip, though, was it?”

Paul turned, his eyes wide, flashing alarm signals at
Suka
, who shrank back instinctively.

“No, that was
you
, Ensign. Because if you’re suggesting otherwise—”

“I’m not,” she said quickly. She bit into the bar again, thinking about her next conversational move. “You’re just a plaything of the gods today, aren’t you? First your bad little ensign makes you do things, then the temple stone.
Poor Commander Paul.
It must be terrible, being so coerced all the time.”

Paul finished the final bite of his bar, scrunching up the biodegradable wrapper and discarding it in a neighbouring bush.

“You think I don’t want to take responsibility for all this?” he said. “I accept it,
Suka
. I accept full responsibility. When I chose you to come down here, I thought you could handle it. I made a bad call. It won’t happen again.”

Suka
felt as if he had kicked her in her already tender crotch. The almost-irresistible urge to scream
Fuck you!
swept
over her and she held her fists tightly clenched and counted to five while it passed.

“What exactly have I done that
was
so wrong?” she asked, fighting to keep her voice level.

“You’re taking everything personally,” said Paul. “You seem to be blaming me for all this. You’re disrespectful and sullen now. Why?”

Suka
turned her face away. “Because I made a mistake,” she muttered. “I thought you…”

She couldn’t finish the sentence.

Paul took a quick breath. “Thought
I
what?” he said, also looking away.

“Thought it meant something.
Hoped it meant something.”

He reached for her hand and took it, fidgeting with her fingers restlessly.

“You still think that? Now we’re outside the temple?”

“What should I think, Commander? We had intense, passionate sex. It felt like a real connection to me. You’re acting as if it was just a trick of the stone.”

Paul was quiet for a moment. The long fronds of the abandoned plants blew and shushed in the soft breezes.
Suka
tried to tune out, to just enjoy the feel of real weather and
unrecycled
air. Screw Paul and his ethical hang-ups.

“It doesn’t matter whether it was a trick of the stone or not,” he said quietly. “We can’t pursue this. You know that.”

“Because of intergalactic protocol?”

“Yes.
Of course because of intergalactic protocol.”

“Because it’s the rules.”

“
Suka
—”

“And the rules always rule.
Right up there before humanity, or common sense, or love.
Rules.”