The Warlord's Pet Read online

  “Get in, pet,” he said kindly.

  Celeste did not see the point in fighting a bath. She very much wanted one, though she would have rather had some privacy given the intimate nature of the ablutions she needed to perform. His cock had sheathed itself deep in her vagina, he had toyed with her lower lips, and yet she did not want him to watch her wash herself there. Strange.

  As it turned out, he was not intending on watching her wash. Once Celeste had sunk into the bath, taking a moment to allow her hot bottom to adjust to the temperature of the water, he remained outside still naked and holding a washcloth lathered with sweet-smelling soap. He began to rub it over her body, washing her with gentle but firm strokes.

  “I could wash myself,” she said as the hot cloth descended over her right breast, propelled by his strong, agile fingers that cupped the curve of her soft skin. The texture of the cloth passing over her nipple sent a bolt of excitement down between her sensitive thighs, where her aching pussy started to respond all over again.

  “You could,” Alistair agreed. “But part of being a pet is being looked after.”

  Her look of surprise made him laugh.

  “You don’t believe me, pet?”

  “I don’t believe you are looking after me, no,” she said with a frown. “You have imprisoned me, used my body, you have a cage waiting for me… that is not the way one looks after a lady.”

  “No, it’s the way one looks after a pet,” he said, looking deep into her eyes with his unsettling gaze, which seemed to go to the very core of her. “A pet needs to be well fucked, and then to have her sex well cleaned, down to the smallest fold and crevice.”

  Slowly the washcloth descended between her thighs, his hand making her legs spread to allow him to gently rub the soapy cloth over her cum-covered mound. She let out a little moan and the water rippled as her hips swayed back and forth. She was very tender and sensitive where his cock had plunged deep inside her. Alistair was much larger than any man she had ever coupled with before, and much more demanding. He had left her satisfied, but with an ongoing ache between her thighs that was ignited into something more intense when the soapy cloth smoothed over her lower lips. She let out a little hissing sound as he approached the entrance of her body, and was surprised when Alistair made a noise of sympathy in return.

  “I was too rough with you,” he said. “You are so soft, so tender…”

  There was something mesmerizing about his touch, the tone in his voice, something that soothed Celeste deep inside herself. The warm water had gone a long way to making her muscles slowly soften, but it was his presence and calming voice that made the tight knot of anxiety in the very core of her start to transform.

  He washed her with a tenderness that was in stark contrast to the earlier way he had spoken to her and handled her, being careful not to cause her any discomfort as he abandoned the washcloth and used his fingers and a gentle lotion to wash the folds of her labia and even the hard little nub of her clit, which emerged with the stimulation.

  “Lie back,” he murmured, wrapping one arm behind her shoulders. She put her weight back against his forearm and found herself floating in the relatively deep bath. Alistair kept washing her, but now his hand was lower, his fingertips dipping between her cheeks to find the tight hole of her anus. Her eyes, which had begun to close, flew open as she felt him touch her right there at the very center of the little ring, the lotion letting his finger slide around the crinkled soft skin with a slow motion that was very stimulating.

  “Relax,” he said in soothing tones as she instinctively clenched against possible intrusion. He did not seem inclined to press inside her there, but still the feeling of having his finger so close to such a sensitive, personal, private little spot was a challenge. Even when he was gentle, Alistair seemed intent on pushing the limits of what she thought she could bear.

  “This is how it is when a pet behaves herself,” he said. “It feels good to be taken care of, doesn’t it?”

  She began to squirm, which only served to make his finger press harder against her bottom hole and make her feel her naked, wet vulnerability more strongly than ever. Alistair chuckled as she blushed and averted her eyes from his blue and brown gaze.

  “You don’t know how to be taken care of, do you. Your father has made you take care of him your whole life, I’ll bet. Poor pet.”

  “You don’t know anything about my life,” she said, disgruntled as his finger pressed more firmly still against her clenched anus.

  “I know more than you think,” Alistair informed her. “It’s my business to know what I need to know about the men who can be dangerous to me—and those they use as pawns, like you, pet.”

  “I am not a man,” Celeste said. “But I can be dangerous too.”

  “Oh, I am sure you can, pet,” he said with a smirk that might have been patronizing or genuine. Either way, his finger was still at her bottom hole and she was still squirming in the water like a fish tiring of fighting a hook.

  She felt her bottom begin to open a little, another involuntary physical surrender that caught her by surprise. His finger sank a short way into her bottom, not even to the first knuckle, but it was enough to prove his silent point. Her body obeyed his.

  “Look at me, pet,” he ordered, crooking his finger inside her.

  She looked at him, a hot blush covering her face as she reluctantly met his eyes and saw her undoing yet again in his gaze.

  “There isn’t a part of you that isn’t mine,” he said, emphasizing his point with a slow twirling motion of his finger. “I think you feel that already. Soon you’ll know what that means.”

  She found herself lost in his gaze, looking into his eyes as he toyed and teased her bottom. He had an expression of fresh desire on his face and she thought for a moment that he might press deeper, take her in a new and infinitely more embarrassing way. Instead, she received unexpected mercy.

  “You have had a long day,” he said. “You need some rest.”

  He lifted her out of the bath, dried her off gently with a towel. She was not allowed to do a thing for herself; it was Alistair who ensured that every part of her was nicely dry, from under her arms to the undersides of her breast, the crevice of her bottom, even her toes.

  “Come, pet,” he said, crooking his finger at her in an order and gesture that was starting to become very familiar to her. She followed him from the bathroom, across the bedroom to the cage, where he stopped, swung the door open, and gestured to the interior. “In the cage, pet.”

  Celeste looked at him with a sense of betrayal. He had said that he would do this, but after their erotic encounter she had hoped he would soften toward her and forgive her. Men were supposed to be putty in the hands of the women they had sex with. It had certainly been true in every instance she had ever experienced. The warmth of the bath, both the external warming of her skin and the internal warming of her heart were cooling rapidly.

  He was waiting, but still she hadn’t moved. “Do you really expect me to just go in there?”

  “I can put you in,” he said. “But it will be easier for you if you do it.”

  Celeste felt herself begin to well up with tears, but fought them back. Looking weak in front of this man was a mistake. Her father had been right. He was a warlord with a warlord’s sensibilities. He didn’t have a kind bone in his body. This was all about controlling and humiliating her further.

  She clamped her lips together, crossed her arms over her chest, and stood in stoic silence. She would not participate in her undoing, at least, not more than she already had. Alistair had seduced her, but she would not submit to him.

  After a moment or two of her silent protest, Alistair scooped her up and put her inside the cage in a smooth, remarkably gentle fashion. She turned around and glared at him as he closed the door behind her and slid latches into place, leaving her naked and confined.

  “I’ve taken you,” he told her. “But remember, your father left you. He didn’t fight for you. He
didn’t risk a hair on his head for you. He left you to live or die by my will. Of all the fates that could have befallen you, this cage is a kind one.”

  With that, he dropped the silk curtain over the cage, and left Celeste to her confinement.

  Chapter Three

  Alistair left Celeste to settle for a few minutes. With any luck she would take a nap while he did the next thing he had to do: contact her father and determine where they stood. The governor had been strangely silent since his retreat. He had expected a flurry of messages demanding Celeste’s return as soon as the ship was out of chase distance, but official channels had remained silent.

  He was on his way to the communications room to initiate first contact when a rumble passed through the floor, followed by the sound of a loud explosion from somewhere deep in the building. Alarms started blaring, emergency lighting went into effect, and all the systems and soldiers went into containment mode.

  Alistair followed the activity, taking updates from those he encountered along the way. It was quickly apparent that there had been a detonation in the cells. Upon arriving in the cell block, he found several of his soldiers surrounding a cell with the door blown open. It was the same one Celeste had been held in, and it was soon apparent that it was no coincidence. The ornate dress she had been wearing was now nothing but a mangled frame of buckled and twisted material.

  “The dress was rigged with explosives, sir,” a soldier reported to him. “It must have been detonated remotely.”

  Frowning, Alistair said little. The explosion had not done much damage aside from to the cell door, but it was quite obvious that it had been aimed at Celeste. Alistair had seen many terrible things in his time. War brought with it many horrific acts, but this one was so refined, so carefully and exquisitely planned he could barely believe it. The facts spoke for themselves; the governor had used his daughter as a weapon, not in the way some men used beautiful women as a means of distraction, but as an incendiary device. Alistair felt sick to the pit of his stomach as he considered what the scene would have been if he had not stripped her of the dress.

  “Get me the governor. Now,” he growled, striding into the comms room.

  To his surprise, the governor accepted his call. He was still aboard his cruiser, Alistair could tell by the ornate chair in which the man was ensconced. It did not make him look impressive. It made him look very small, outshone by a grand chair.

  “You’re alive,” the governor said flatly. “I assume my daughter is not. There will be consequences for this. Celeste was well loved and her death will be avenged. The might of the System will come down upon you…”

  “Celeste is fine, actually,” Alistair said, interrupting the man’s tirade with no small measure of pleasure. “Fortunately, she was not in the dress when it was detonated.”

  The governor’s face grew red with fury. “How dare you defile my daughter!”

  “Defile her?” Alistair cocked his head to the side and gave the man a cold smile. “Perhaps. At least I have not harmed her. Did she know you had charges planted in her skirts?”

  “She did not need to know. It was a safety precaution.”

  A safety precaution. Alistair had no words for the man, who he now knew to be completely mad. He had quite literally been willing to sacrifice Celeste as a pawn. Her life meant less to him than his honor, reputation, and political power.

  Alistair felt a rush of pity for the woman caged in his rooms. How strong she must have been to have survived a life with this man. How close she must have come to disaster many times before. It was obvious now that the outcome of the meeting was no accident. The governor had not come to Vector Prime to ask for troops to attend his birthday party. He had come to start a war, and he had hoped to gather support by sacrificing Celeste.

  “Well, have no fear, governor,” Alistair said. “She is very safe with me now.”

  “I would rather see Celeste dead than in your hands,” the man fumed. “I will be sending armies against you, warlord. I will lay complete waste to Vector Prime. When I am done, it will be a dead, smoldering rock, do you understand me? You are directly responsible for the death of every creature on your planet. You are…”

  Alistair did not hear the rest of the tirade. He shut the communication off, a shudder of deep disgust passing through his body. He had never cared for the governor, but now the feeling of general disrespect had been replaced with a deep and abiding loathing for a man who would sacrifice his own offspring for his ego.

  “She deserves better than you,” he informed the dark screen. “And she’s going to get it.”

  Chapter Four

  Being caged did not feel like a kind fate to Celeste. She hated being locked up. She was a child of the stars. As long as she could remember she had traveled in wide open spaces, exploring the planets her father took her to largely unfettered. He had paid little mind to her in her youth; it was not until she came of age and her beauty turned out to be of some use that he had insisted she attend the stuffy ceremonies and boring meetings she had been subjected to over the past months.

  Though she was locked up and unable to go anywhere, she found that her mind kept running here and there; it was difficult to keep a consistent train of thought. Her loins were still aching, though not in a terribly painful way, rather in a well-used, satisfied sort of way. The thought that Alistair would come back and use her yet again both intimidated and excited her. He had made so free with the most tender parts of her body that she could not quite shake the feeling that perhaps she was already coming to belong to him. The collar around her neck was testament to that, a soft but persistent reminder she could not rid herself of no matter how much she pulled at it or tried to manipulate it.

  Giving up on the collar, she tried the cage itself. The bars were spaced almost wide enough for her to squeeze through, but not quite. She tried to squirm through them once or twice, but it soon became apparent that the most she could hope for was getting her head stuck in them, and that was an indignity she was determined to spare herself.

  In addition to the pillows and such, there were also several soft draped cloths, possibly intended for use as sheets. She wrapped one around her body in the fashion of a dress. It felt good to be clothed again. Alistair had stripped her of many things, the least of which was clothing, but having some manner of dress back still made her feel better.

  Escape was essential, but as much as she inspected her prison, she could not see a way out of it. There was a small partitioned area in the rear of the cage, which provided a minimal amount of privacy for a small ionic toilet and tap. She would have water and the ability to relieve herself. Her initial happiness at discovering that soon gave way to the realization that it meant she could be caged for days on end, fed through the bars, without any need to release her.

  It was clear that Alistair had not been playing when he had called her pet. The setup of the cage showed some real thought had gone into making sure she was contained after the fashion of some cosseted bird, or perhaps a naughty canine that couldn’t be trusted not to chew slippers if left on its own.

  She tried fiddling with the latches on the outside of the door, but they didn’t respond to her poking and prodding. Eventually she was forced to abandon her attempts. She slipped down onto the cushioned floor and curled up among the blankets and pillows provided for her to sleep on. Securely contained in the corner of Alistair’s private chambers, she found the first tendrils of self-pity beginning to wrap around her heart.

  This wasn’t fair. Her father had abandoned her and Alistair had used her until her pussy was tender and aching and left her locked up alone. One of those men had sworn to protect her, the other was a lawless warlord whose treatment had been relatively restrained, all things considered.

  She wanted to hate Alistair, but the logic that had marked her life for so long told her that he was the one who had saved her life. When it had come down to instinct, Alistair had risked his life to protect hers while her father had fled. Celeste
didn’t know how to explain that.

  Would her father’s forces come for her? She hoped so, but she was no longer certain. Her father had not so much as looked over his shoulder as he had run for safety. Her last memory of him was the soles of his boots disappearing around the corner as she laid under the heavy, sheltering bulk of the warlord.

  Was Alistair not as bad as he seemed? Would being his pet perhaps not be the worst thing that had ever happened to her? She pushed both thoughts out of her head almost as quickly as she’d had them. It was important she stay calm and not start believing what the warlord told her. She was not his pet. The cage and the collar and her relative nudity all made her feel very much like one, but it was an illusion designed to break her down, shame her, and ultimately make a mockery of her. She could imagine how he would parade her about, the governor’s daughter brought quite literally to heel… she could just imagine the conversations people would have about her if any images or video were to be shared of her captive like this, collar around her neck, naked with the marks of the warlord’s displeasure still quite visible in the red hue of her bottom cheeks.

  Burying her face in the pillows, she tried to hide from the situation. Perhaps, if she closed her eyes very tight, she might be able to find some way to feel like a free woman again. Maybe she could find a way to ignore the sting in her bottom, the tenderness of her lower lips, the aching of her inner walls that had gripped his cock so eagerly…

  Now she was starting to arouse herself. She let out a little curse as she realized Alistair’s treatment had captured her mind almost as effectively as her body. She tossed the pillow covering her head away and stretched out.

  If she truly emptied her mind of thoughts as much as possible, she felt comfortable and light and cool. The dress she had worn to the meeting had been heavier than usual for some reason; it had weighed her down in both body and spirit. She was actually very glad to be rid of it.