The Warlord's Pet Page 2

  Her hair was an outlandishly unnatural shade, but highly fashionable and in keeping with the steel blue shade of her outfit. She looked like a woman entirely out of place there in his austere cell that was made of nothing but rock and iron. Simple, solid materials.

  Vector Prime was not the largest colony in the system, but it was rich in base materials and ore trading supported the citizens who were willing to brave the dangers of the world to earn their coin. A full half of the male population were soldiers under Alistair’s command. The governor had been foolish to lose his temper with such a people. It could prove to be his undoing.

  Gazing at his prisoner, Alistair found his eyes drawn to the rise of her breasts, which were the only part of her exposed by the gown. He doubted they were as large as they appeared. She had been put together as the perfect distraction: pretty, alluring, and, something told him, probably dangerous. She had barely said a word in meeting him, but the look in her eyes was much more intelligent than the look in her father’s had been. She was patient there in that cell, not panicking, not wailing, not banging upon the door and begging for release. Just standing as comfortably as she could and… waiting.

  He would not have her wait any longer. Alistair opened the cell door and stepped into the little room. It was barely six feet by six feet and his head almost brushed the ceiling. He did not say anything at first, simply stood still as Celeste’s blue eyes turned upon him with a flash of calculation.

  She was a very pretty girl. If he had met her under other circumstances, Alistair might have been tempted to woo her. He could not forget where she had come from, however. Even the most brightly bejeweled snakes were still snakes. She was her father’s daughter and she seemed to have inherited several of his traits. He could not think of her as a damsel in distress. She was a bargaining chip, and she was there to be traded. It did not come naturally to Alistair to think of any woman in such a fashion, but his strategic mind told him that his possession of the woman who was now beginning to tear up as he looked at her in stern silence, was the key to victory.

  Alistair supposed, on second thought, that the governor abandoning his daughter made perfect sense. The man had always been a coward. He had risen to power by riding the coattails of those who were brave and thought it was necessary to fight. And when those men had perished in battle, he had been there to take over the seat of power. Alistair had no love or respect for the man, and now that he had the governor’s daughter in his possession, he would press his advantage.

  “Send me home, please,” she said, finding her voice and trying to be brave through obvious tears. “Your quarrel is not with me, General.”

  “Oh, no, pet,” he murmured softly. “You’re not going anywhere. I am sorry, but it was your father who introduced you to this game as a pawn and unfortunately, pawns are often sacrificed.”

  A tremor of fear ran through her. Alistair almost felt sorry for her as she clasped her hands together and began to plead with him. “One shuttle, I beg of you. I will ensure that it is returned and that you are compensated… I will talk to my father. I will have him pardon you. I have influence…”

  “Shhh,” he said. “You have nothing to offer that I cannot take for myself.”

  He watched her eyes widen with fear. She obviously understood the double meaning of his threat. Alistair had no intention of taking her against her will, but she did not know that. Nor did it suit him for her to know that at this point in the proceedings.

  “Remove that dress,” he ordered, pressing the advantage.

  She wrapped her arms around her tightly corseted bodice. “No!”

  Alistair did not ask twice. He reached for her arm, pulled her upright, and spun her about, ignoring her sounds of protest. The dress was quite ridiculous and obscured her almost completely. It was not so much fabricated as heavily engineered—complete with a quick release. Alistair located and pulled a wide gauge zipper hiding behind a flap of fabric in the back. The garment unfolded around her and fell to the floor like a piece of military equipment being deactivated. He was rather surprised at what he found underneath. She was well formed, with an ample bottom and thighs, generous breasts, and a clear pale skin that had obviously never been exposed to the glare of multiple suns.

  Her horror at being unclothed was palpable. She put one arm across her breasts and the other down between her thighs where a thatch of blond hair told him what her natural hair color was. The attempt at modesty only served to make one of the most appealing parts of her protrude—her bottom, which was round and rather firm and which drew his hand to cup one of her cheeks.

  Celeste gasped as she felt his hand make gentle contact with her skin, but she did not move away.

  “You are a prisoner,” he informed her, patting her rear gently. “Your father opened fire on my men. That was an act of war and will be treated as such.”

  “All he wanted were some troops at his birthday party!”

  “Indeed, and he was willing to destabilize a colony and kill brave men for that. Petty does not begin to describe your father, Celeste. He has no feeling or sense.”

  “Do not speak ill of my father,” she bristled.

  “He abandoned you here, not knowing whether you had been hit by bullets. Not knowing or caring what I have in store for you. Defending such a man shows a weakness of intellect. Is that what you are, Celeste? Stupid?”

  He could already see that she was not at all stupid. The way her eyes flashed at him, the way she tried first one technique, pleading, then another, scorn, told him that she had learned to become a nimble manipulator much like her father. He would not make the mistake of thinking she wasn’t dangerous just because of those tearful blue eyes.

  Alistair slapped her bottom, hard enough to leave a pink imprint of his palm on her skin. Her yowl seemed to be more outrage than pain. She clamped her lips tightly together in the aftermath, almost as if she was ashamed of having shown any reaction at all. There was no doubt that she had more than a touch of stoicism in her. He wanted very much to break through that exterior shell and reach a softer place where her secrets would be laid bare. Little could be learned from a closed book.

  “Answer me, girl.”

  “I am not stupid,” she said, retreating into haughtiness. “But you are if you think you can get away with this. My father will amass the armies of the other colonies and he will bring them here in numbers greater than you could ever hope to repel. Your only hope for any kind of mercy whatsoever is to release me now and ask me to beg your case for you.”

  “An interesting proposition,” Alistair said, finding himself admiring the girl for having the presence of mind to put together a coherent, if not quite true, argument. “But such an act on your father’s part would be bold, and he is not bold. The generals in charge of the other colonies are as tired of his tyranny as I am, and they have fought beside me. I have saved the lives of a good half of them. Who do you think they would turn on first? Your father? Or their brother in blood?” He slapped her other cheek and watched a light blush of pink appear on her skin. “Let me share a more likely scenario. I imprison you here for the rest of your life. Your father does not recover you because those who are willing to leave a woman behind are not likely to gather the courage to return for her. You live your life out in a cage, never seeing the light of day again.”

  He watched her respond to his words. There was fear in her eyes, but more than that, he saw hatred, a fiery passion that would be an utter waste to lock away. Alistair had no intention of doing a single thing he said, but he wanted her to think it was an option.

  “What good would that do you?” She spoke in bitter tones.

  “True,” he agreed. “If I am to provide for you, some good should come of it. I could make you my love slave,” he said, watching a slight blush rise to her cheeks. “But I think that is a fate too good for you.”

  “Too good for me? What have I done to deserve this much scorn?” She looked at him with honest outrage. Alistair realized that she
expected to be treated like a damsel in distress, or an innocent maiden. She was, in truth, neither.

  “You have accompanied and supported your father for years,” he said. “You have been an integral part of his strategy. He rarely makes an appearance without you, and you speak often on his behalf. Today you came in the hopes of, what? Distracting me? Perhaps seducing me? How many men have you fucked for your father’s ambitions, Celeste?”

  A feminine growl emerged from her throat as her upper lip curled into a snarl. “I am not a whore.”

  “That’s precisely what you are,” he replied. “You are a woman who allows her sexuality to be bartered in negotiations. How many times has your father implied that those who make deals favorable to him might have your hand in marriage? And how many times has he reneged on that deal because there is no point in selling once what can be sold many times?”

  She dropped her hands from her breasts and her mound and stood boldly before him, her nudity no longer hidden, but displayed with feminine fury. “I am not ashamed of my beauty, General Clark. If men are distracted by me and make poor decisions, that is not my fault.”

  He smirked darkly at her. What a little minx. Her earlier shame had likely been feigned. He would soon show her a way of life that would bring real blushes to her cheeks, not these coquettish displays of feminine modesty.

  “I know precisely what I intend to do with you. You will not be my love slave,” he said. “You will be my pet. You will wear nothing but my collar. You will sleep on the floor next to my bed. You will eat scraps from my hand. And every day you will beg me to fuck you.”

  “Ha!” She let out a laugh. “I would rather starve than eat any food that came from your hand. And I would sooner die than fuck you.”

  “Is that so?” He ran a fingertip gently over her breast and watched her nipple harden in response. “I can smell your need already, Celeste,” he growled. “You were wet the moment I touched you. And do you know why?”

  She shook her head grimly.

  “Every pet knows when she has met her master,” he drawled, enjoying himself thoroughly. “That’s why you’re already wet. You can’t help being what you are and soon you will beg me to fuck you. The longer it takes, the more you’ll suffer from desire. You can feel it now, can’t you? The moisture between your lips? A tingling in your clit? You’re already imagining what it would feel like to be touched by me… fucked by me…”

  He pulled the armored shirt off over his head, leaving his chest bare. Celeste’s eyes widened at the expanse of male flesh and muscle before her, so much so that he found himself wondering if she had ever been with a man before.

  She reached for her dress and he did not stop her at first, because he thought the motion was out of some desperation for modesty, and stripping her again would only reinforce his control over her. But Celeste was not reaching for her dress. She was reaching for a thin blade secreted in one of the many folds of the thing. She grabbed it by the handle, which was disguised as a flower and stem, and slashed it toward his chest.

  “Die!”

  He caught her wrist just as she made contact; she had been surprisingly swift in her motion and the blade had made contact, cutting deep enough to draw a trickle of blood from his pectoral muscle. Alistair squeezed her wrist hard in his fingers. The pressure was enough to make her cry out and drop the knife.

  “Well,” he said with a dark smile. “My pet has claws. You are braver than your coward father. But you will pay for that.”

  He sat on the bench and threw the flailing young woman across his lap. There was nothing gentle in his handling of her as he clamped his arm around her waist and began thrashing her bottom with the flat of his palm. He lectured her over the inevitable wails that rose from her lips as she was subjected to the first physical discipline she’d likely ever experienced.

  “Trying to kill me, and after I saved your life? That’s not very grateful.”

  “I will not be your slave!”

  “No, you will be my pet,” he said. “I believe I made that quite clear. You see, Celeste. You are no longer the daughter of the governor, or a woman of rank. You are my owned pet, my plaything. You will eat, sleep, and breathe my desires and little else…”

  “And you will sleep with one eye open if you think I will allow this…”

  He slapped her burning red bottom once more. “You will be caged when you are not being used until you learn to behave. This room will seem like a palace to you.” He leaned down and murmured in her ear, “I will take you out to fuck you and put you back dripping with my cum.”

  He punctuated his words with a flurry of hard slaps that made her pretty bottom glow.

  * * *

  He was saying filthy, carnal things and as much as Celeste wanted to rage at every word that came out of his mouth, her traitorous pussy was lubricating in response to his threats and the hot tingling of her ass.

  She had come to his territory as one of the highest status women in the System, and now she was being treated just like the other women who had become spoils of war and paraded around Vector Prime in their collars and their nudity. Pet. Even thinking the word made a tremor run through her stomach.

  Fear and arousal seemed to be entwined as she bucked and squirmed over his muscular thighs, his palm punishing her with hard, repetitive slaps that showed no signs of slowing or softening.

  She hated Alistair with every fiber of her being, and that hatred filled and excited her. She was surprised to find that there was a freedom in that hatred, a freedom to be whatever she wished to be. For years she had been forced to be appropriate and polite and appear in ways that advantaged her father and furthered his goals. No matter how uncomfortable or angry she’d been, she’d put on a smiling face and made polite conversation.

  The time for polite conversation was long over. It did not matter what Alistair thought of her. He was the enemy. The enemy whose hard, unyielding palm was still slapping her bottom so fast she barely registered each slap as a separate thing.

  She was free to curse his name, free to swear that she would do everything she could to bring death to him. She did both amply, saying words that had never been permitted to pass over her tongue before.

  “I hope you die being eaten ass first by a bear!”

  The barrage of slaps stopped for a moment, just long enough for Alistair to emit a hearty laugh, before they began again.

  “Vicious little thing,” he said. “I would never have thought the governor’s pretty daughter was capable of such malevolence.”

  His palm caught the underside of her cheeks, jolting her forward on his lap. The movement made her bare mound grind repeatedly against the hard surface of his armored trousers and made her clit pulse erotically. Somehow, in spite of the fact she had every reason to be terrified, or angry, Celeste was starting to enjoy her painful predicament.

  She knew it could have been a lot worse. She had tried to end his life. He would have been legally justified in ending hers, but that did not seem to be Alistair’s style. He did not have a reputation for cruelty or unnecessary taking of life—she was fortunate there. Many of the other generals would have been much more brutal than this one. Alistair was more dangerous though; his handling of her would be calculated to extract the ultimate embarrassment, she was sure of that.

  He continued to spank her, his palm branding her bottom over and over again, making her hips buck and her clit grind against the fiber of his armored pants. He stoked sensation inside her until she could stand it no more and the quivering of her arousal began to course through her body and become a quake that shook the muscles in her thighs and her stomach.

  She was going to orgasm. There was no stopping it, even as his palm thundered harder against her bottom and made her skin so hot and sore she could hardly stand it. The pain intensified her pleasure, until finally her hips bucked forward and she ground herself against his thigh with desperate humping motions.

  “Good pet,” he purred, keeping his palm in motion th
roughout the orgasm, aiming slaps and swats lower and lower until his fingertips made contact with her wet, swollen lower lips. She had thought she was at the peak of pleasure—but the moment he touched her there she felt a fresh bolt of pure ecstasy flash through her. The thick, hot tips of two of his fingers found the shamefully wet opening of her body and pressed forward, sliding inside her with a dominant, possessive touch.

  Celeste let out a cry as he penetrated her deeply, the walls of her pussy clenching hard against those probing fingers. The heat from her bottom seemed to have sunk through her flesh and somehow made her entire genital region so sensitive that the smallest touch brought with it extreme pleasure.

  Alistair began to pump his fingers in and out of her, urging her through her climax and immediately toward a second one. Celeste had never come twice in succession, but as he roughly plundered her pussy, she felt that next orgasm rising within her, drawn from different parts than the first. The first had been about her clit rubbing against him. Now it was not just her clit, but her eagerly clenching walls that propelled her to greater heights of pleasure. He twisted his fingers inside her, curling the tips so they rubbed against a little spot she had not known existed.

  “Oh… oh my… oh my God, what’s… oohhhh!” Celeste clutched at his leg, digging her fingernails in as a climax unlike any other ripped through her, making her pussy gush with the juices of her orgasm, soaking his thigh.

  “Never found that gland before, have you?” Alistair chuckled triumphantly above her, his palm rubbing her pussy lips in gentle, massaging circles. “I think you have a lot to learn about being a woman.”

  “I know how to be a woma… ooow!”

  He’d slapped her swollen lower lips lightly, making the sensitive skin sting.

  “You know very little, Celeste. You have hidden behind the fine dresses and your position as the governor’s daughter. Maybe you’ve had sex, but you’ve never been properly fucked.”

  She blushed furiously as she was held naked over his lap, unable to do anything more than squirm as he said things that went to the very core of her. How he knew so much about her, she didn’t know. The things he was saying were not things that were part of her public profile. They were shameful little secrets that had long been hidden.