Sold: A Dark Reverse Harem Romance Page 2

  Peace came on rivers of blood. Order arose out of chaos. Warlords emerged, twenty of them who, through brutality and raw viciousness, formed bands of warriors and took major cities for their own territories.

  The few healthy women remaining were captured and put to work spawning fresh generations. But still, female babies were a rarity. The gene editing agent had done its work too well. Instead of one female being born to every male born, there was only one female to every thousand males. A few legendary women were able to produce pure female lineages, and those women were worshipped.

  I am descended from Athena of California. She who bore twelve daughters. My line is a powerful one. My father told me that often. I was born to a daughter of Athena who managed to escape the compound she was held in. She did not survive bearing me, but I did. The sheriff did not take the time to discern my genetics when he captured me, and for that I am glad. If he knew, I am almost certain I would never see the light of day again.

  I was born wild. My mother fought to make me wild. And my father guarded me as long as he could. Now, I have foolishly given up some of that freedom for as little as three oranges.

  Mattias’ comment about me being a wild thing sobers me more than the slap did. It reminds me of all I have lost, and all I need to fight to regain.

  To get out of here, I need to understand who I am being held by. Who is Mattias? And why have I been given to him and Elias? It seems strange. Women are never allowed to be with men. Men can’t help themselves. But these ones seem to be able to.

  As the food starts to settle in my stomach, questions start to rise.

  “They call you the cut men, where’s your knives? Are you going to cut me? What are you going to cut?”

  “We are the ones who have been cut, child. Come.”

  “You’ve been cut?” I follow Mattias, asking him question after question. The house is not terribly large, but it is beautiful. Shining tile covers the floors, and the walls likewise seem to be made of rock of some kind. It could be cold and sterile, but carvings make it elegant, and the furniture is old and very fine.

  We used to scavenge bits and pieces from the broken world for the shack, but none of them were nearly as nice as these gleaming wooden chairs and tables that we pass by.

  Elias joins us, and I begin to question them both.

  “What did they cut? Did they cut your hair off?”

  A look passes between them, a smirking, long-suffering gaze.

  “Something else.”

  “Oh, my god, what?”

  They ignore the question as they lead me into a bathing chamber. In the past, I have showered when it rained, or wallowed in what remained of dried-up creeks. I have never seen such a fine tub as this. It is the width of the entire room, and it is filled with pristine, clear water.

  I rush forward, dip my face into the tub and start slurping at the water.

  “Alright. Enough of that,” Mattias rumbles, his large palm swatting my rear gently. “Don’t drink the bathwater. Take your underwear off and get in it.”

  “I’m dirty! I’ll make it filthy!”

  “That’s the point. We’ll wash you off and replace it with clean.”

  “But that’s such a waste!”

  The amount of water in this bath could keep a small settlement hydrated for a week. I can’t believe they want me to put my body in it. I’ll foul it instantly.

  “Get into the bath.”

  “No!”

  Mattias picks me up as if I weigh nothing and puts me into the water. Instantly, brown muck starts to curl off me and into the fresh, clean water.

  “No!” I try to get out. It takes both Elias and Mattias to keep me in there, thrashing and wriggling around until we are all covered in the now dirty bathwater.

  “Trissa, if you don’t settle down and take this bath nicely, I’m going to have to discipline you,” Mattias says, brushing water from his face.

  “I don’t want to!”

  “Get the strap, Elias.”

  “No!” I shout the word. The strap sounds bad. I am taking a real dislike to this Mattias. He is forceful and stern and everything he tells me to do runs completely contrary to my natural instincts.

  Elias does as he’s told. The strap is a foot-long length of leather with little grooves cut into it at one end. Mattias thanks him and lays it down near the bath where I can see it.

  “This will hurt if I have to use it on your bottom. So settle down and take your bath nicely.”

  I have no idea how to take a bath nicely. I know how to splash in a creek, or run around in the rain, but neither of those things needed to be done nicely.

  Mattias reaches into the water and eases my underwear down. It feels strange to be touched this way by a man, especially one who doesn’t grope or grasp or grab at me like the ones in the market did.

  I look at him, curious.

  “Why are you so different from the other men?”

  Elias shakes his head a little, and I wonder if the question is as wrong as drinking bathwater.

  “You know nothing of the world, do you, girl?”

  “I know a lot! I know how to catch lizards and gut their poison sacs out. I know how to start a fire that can burn all night long. I know how to get a parrot to give me my bra back. I know...”

  “I mean of the civilized world, you wild little thing,” Mattias sighs.

  “The civilized world, where men take women like they aren’t even people? That world?”

  “You are more fortunate than most,” he says. “You are worth a great deal. You will be sold to the highest bidder, the richest man. You may join one of the great harems, bear the offspring of the new kings...”

  “Ew, gross, no thanks.”

  He looks at me and shakes his head. “You are in dire need of thorough education.”

  “I am in dire need of escape.”

  “Shackles it shall be,” he declares, pulling a plug at the end of the bath. I watch dirty water swirl down the drain, forever lost. Such a waste.

  He fills the bath again, with me in it. I watch the pure, clear liquid flowing around my legs, fascinated. How do they do this? I can’t resist scooping some of it up into my mouth. It’s warm, but it’s so damn good. I haven’t tasted water this clear except for a few rare times.

  “Stop. Drinking. The. Water.” Mattias interrupts my joy.

  I splash it in his face. Droplets run down over his nose and his chin and his cheeks. The effect is comical, and I can’t help but snort in amusement.

  “Someone is getting spanked after her bath,” he says calmly.

  Those words make the lower part of my stomach clench. Spanked? With that leather strap? That’s probably going to hurt. I resolve to bite him if he tries to do that to me.

  When the bath is filled, he takes soap and begins to bathe me properly. His hands roam my body, spreading soap over my curves. It’s not an unpleasant feeling, though I’m not used to anyone else touching me. Since my father died, I’ve been living on my own in the shack he built in the mountains. It’s remote enough that nobody bothers me out there, if you don’t count wolves and the occasional wild cat.

  Mattias is stern and bossy, but his touch relaxes me. I find myself sinking down in the tub, letting him take my weight.

  “Good girl,” he praises, his hand slowly drifting up my inner thigh.

  I feel that clenching sensation again, this time lower still, between my legs. His hand slides away just before it reaches the apex. I am left wondering if he did that on purpose, before his hand slides under my hip and then down my leg and over again to trace the same path, this time all the way up to the core of me. He presses two fingers against my lower lips, a jolt of pure electricity running through me as our eyes meet.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Does it feel good?”

  It does feel good, but I don’t want to admit that. I am a captive of the sheriff. This man has me to get me ready for sale, whatever that means. This is obviously part of it. Making me feel... things.

  “No,” I say.

  “Oh, so this doesn’t feel good?” He makes his fingers move very gently in smooth circles over my lips. He moves them away just a little, making currents swirl over my sex. It doesn’t feel good. It feels incredible. I have touched myself before, of course. I have rubbed myself over most of the items in my cabin, but never gotten the courage to do any more. My father never truly explained the mechanics of what a man and a woman do, but I know it is to do with the region Mattias is touching.

  “Uhmmm...”

  “Tell me the truth, Trissa.”

  I bite my lower lip and stay quiet. His motion changes, from the gentle swirls to a long, slow rubbing motion that goes all the way from the golden down above my pubic bone to near my bottom hole. His touch and grip are firmer, more possessive. He is making me feel a way I have never felt before.

  With his other arm supporting me in the water, I lean back and let my legs spread. I want more. I want to feel everything I can feel. If I am to be captive, I want pleasure.

  “Good girl. Relax,” he murmurs. His voice is low and hypnotic as his fingers begin to spread my lower lips. I feel him tracing the fine folds of my pussy, I feel him trace the very tips of his fingers slipping up and around my clitoris. I feel him slide back down to the little hole I have never explored on my own—and I feel him begin to push against it.

  “Ow!” I gasp and tense.

  “Easy,” Mattias soothes. “Spread your legs. Relax.”

  I do as he says, but when he pushes again, it hurts again. A sharp, stretching pain that makes me close my legs and growl at him.

  “Alright,” he murmurs softly. “We won’t do that.”

  He goes back to tending to my outer lips, his fingers dragging lightly over my pussy until the pleasure returns, the warm, spiraling sensation that makes the lower parts of me get tighter and tingle and feel better and better until I am arching in his arms, my hips rising against his hand as he cajoles me toward an orgasm unlike any I have had before.

  In the end, his fingers are over my clit, moving in swift little strokes. I try to grasp at the water, but my fingers pass through it and in the end I am left clutching at his arm as if for dear life, panting open-mouthed as he strokes me to orgasm.

  “Good girl, let go. There’s a good girl. Let go for Daddy...”

  Daddy.

  The word is so wrong. But so right. It puts me over the edge as the pleasure reaches a crescendo and bursts over my body, sinking through every part of me.

  “Oh, my god. Oh, my god. Oh, my god,” I cry out as I come, shaking and shuddering in the bath.

  “Very good,” Mattias praises me, giving my pussy one last rub and pulling his hand away. “Ready to get dry now?”

  I can hardly bring myself to look at him as he helps me out of the bath and wraps me in a big fluffy towel. I’m not entirely certain what just happened. I have gone from a free woman to an item for sale in a matter of hours, and I just had my first orgasm with a man.

  Mattias dries me. I let him. Then he takes me through to a bedroom complete with a large, soft-looking bed.

  “You will not be given clothing today,” he says. “We will need access to your body during your training. Bend over so I can dry you off fully.”

  “I can dry myself.”

  His large hands settle on my shoulders, bend me forward, and then I feel a soft towel between my legs, rubbing over my lower lips and running all the way up to my bottom hole. He ignores my complaints and holds me firm while I squirm, taking control of me with a calm, easy practice that lets me know he’s done this many, many times before to many other girls. I wonder how many young women have climaxed on his fingers. And I wonder why I feel a pang of jealousy at imagining that.

  When I am thoroughly dry, he lets me up. I am pink and clean and satisfied in a way I have never been before.

  “Elias, can you take the towels, please.”

  Elias appears and sweeps them away, leaving me alone and naked with Mattias.

  What will he do to me now?

  He sits down on the edge of the bed and reaches for my hand. I let him take it, not realizing what his plan is for me. He draws me close to the side of his thigh, gives me a gentle tug and I pitch forward over his lap with a surprised gasp.

  “Now for that spanking I promised you,” he says in that firm, stern tone.

  “What?”

  “Girl, when you are sold, if you disobey a man the way you disobeyed me today, you will be punished far more thoroughly than this. Best you learn now over my knee.”

  His hand comes down on my ass. Hard. And then it comes down again. And again. The sting is not unbearable, but it is more pain than I want to bear and the more his hand lands, the more the pain builds.

  My father threatened to spank me a few times, but he never did. He doted on me. I have never been hurt by way of discipline before, and I don’t like it. The pain is seeping into my blood, making it run hot with energy I cannot control.

  My hips are rising, even though they should be sliding away. It’s as if I am arching myself into the slaps, taking them eagerly even though they hurt. I don’t recognize myself in this moment. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I don’t know why I am enjoying what should be nothing but humiliating pain.

  “You will obey my orders directly and swiftly,” Mattias lectures me. “You will not talk back, ask questions, or disobey. You will work your hardest to please me at every given moment.”

  “Well, that’s not happening,” I mutter.

  The spanking stops. Mattias lifts his voice. “Elias, I left that strap in the bathing chamber. Could you get it for me, please?”

  “No!”

  I try to get up, but he easily holds me down. Elias brings the strap to Mattias, and I feel the deceptively gentle touch of the leather over my heated cheeks as he lays it across my bottom, letting me feel the implement.

  “I know you are wild,” he says. “And I know you are not used to doing as you are told. But now, you must. There is too much at stake for you not to. Too much possible pain coming to you if you do not become obedient.”

  With that, he lifts the leather tongues away and brings them back down in a wicked slap that feels nothing like his hand did. His palm brought ache and sting. This strap delivers pure fire blazing across my skin.

  “Ow! Ow, goddammit!”

  He straps me sternly, keeping my body pressed down over his knees. This is embarrassing, and somewhat painful. Not as painful as the time I slipped down a gorge and impaled myself on a stick, but pretty painful.

  And that is how things go for several long, painful minutes. He straps me. I cry and writhe and try to escape, but he knows how to hold a girl down and punish her, and try as I might to get away, I can’t.

  The pain stops being even remotely pleasurable and turns to hurt. The terrible trauma of the day rushes in, the fright I suppressed when I suddenly found myself at the mercy of hundreds of men, and then the slight relief at being taken into custody.

  Mattias’ whip reminds me of all of it, of what could have happened to me, and of what still will. Somebody will own me. Somebody will breed me like farmers used to breed cattle. I am a beast now, an animal for use. This man who holds the leather is tanning my hide and taking my humanity with it.

  By the time he is done, I am sobbing. Not because it hurts, though it does. I am crying for all I have lost and all I will lose if I don’t manage to escape. I don’t want to be part of this world, where women are owned and bred. I want the wide spaces outside the walls. I want the home I grew up in, even though it is smaller than this fine bedroom I find myself trapped in now. I want my freedom.

  As I cry inconsolably, Mattias eases me off his lap and into the bed. The sheets are smooth and cool on my naked body and hot bottom. He draws just one of them over me, enough to give me a little modesty, and he rubs my back as I snivel pathetically in the bed that is so much more comfortable than mine, but isn’t mine.

  I should be running right now. I should be climbing the walls and testing the windows. I should be working on escape. I don’t, because I have no choice, because this compound is the most tightly guarded location in the state, because I have been taken so thoroughly captive, spanked so hard, made so miserable that I am too tired, too exhausted, and too confused to even begin to make an escape.

  Chapter Three

  I must have fallen asleep.

  When I wake up, there is just the merest hint of morning light coming in the barred window. I become alert immediately. I am alone.

  The misery of the night before is gone. I feel so much better with clean water and food in my belly, and with a full night of sleep to clear my head. Today, I escape.

  I still have no clothing, but the sheet can be wrapped and tied around me to make a sort of a sheath dress. I do that swiftly, and begin to sneak out of the house, making sure to walk on the balls of my feet so I don’t make so much as a sound. This is the stealthy motion I use when hunting, but it is equally as useful now.

  The door to my room isn’t locked. I roll my eyes to myself as I slip out of the room. They plan to keep me captive and they don’t even lock the door? So ridiculous.

  As I step into the hall, it occurs to me that the house is not truly made to contain those who really want to escape. I suppose most of the women they bring here are somewhat willing, or at least too scared to try to make it out of the compound and the city. Right now, I am ringed by tens of thousands of men, all of whom would take me if they could. This escape attempt is dangerous, but it has to be made. If I don’t get out now, it will only get more difficult with time. There are so many things here I could get used to. Clean water, all the food I can eat. I can’t allow myself to be tamed by these men, turned into happy breeding stock. I need to get out. Now. Before I become a traitor to myself.

  On my way toward the door, or a window that might open for me, voices make me stop in my tracks. I am outside the room where I dined last night. Inside, I hear the low rumble of Mattias and Elias talking. As I get closer, I realize they’re talking about me.

  “She is so innocent,” Mattias says. “It’s a pity what will happen to her. The word is already spreading. I hear they have a hundred bidders.”