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Philip murmured his next words just as the cameraman said, “Ten seconds. Places.”
“I’m going to buy you, no matter how much it costs me.”
I gave a soft cry as his hands tightened their grip for a moment. At the same time he planted a kiss on my bare neck that brought another tingle down where to my dismay I had begun to ache for more.
Then he stepped back and away. I felt bereft, needy, and terrified all at once. I looked down at my mark, knowing how red my face must be but feeling again the detachment that came from the strange twist of fate that had brought me here: the public relations secretary turned into the subject of this lewd, degrading broadcast announcing her world’s complete subjugation.
“In five, four, three…” the cameraman said.
CHAPTER27
Sara
I lifted my eyes to see the punishment horse, and I fixed the awful thing with a defiant glare. For a moment I felt again Philip’s arms around me, heard the words that should have made me curse him and his whole fucking federation.
He meant to buy me. Topurchaseme… acquire me… Every fiber of my egalitarian being rebelled, except, it seemed, those most basic fibers—the ones in my actual body.
I put aside the warmth the thought actually brought, the true effect on me of the idea of my guardian meant to buy me for his own use. I pretended it didn’t make my heart soar even as my clit tingled withhisgovernor’s control. I kept the defiant expression on my face as I looked ahead of me at the high bench with its leather straps.
Then I started to walk toward the place where he would train me, where he would do to me exactly as he chose.
I realized that really the punishment horse resembled a bench only superficially—at least if one thought of a bench as a place to sit. None of the three upholstered surfaces—the high one in the middle and the lower ones on either side—represented a place where a person might comfortably put their backside for an extended period. The three meter supports had narrow tops, covered in padded leather. The lower ones would receive my knees and elbows, the upper one my torso.
For the first time I allowed myself fully to picture it, to picture the other girl—the Sara Granzofar who needed such shameful things so badly—in position on the punishment horse. Her wrists and ankles were strapped down in the cuffs, her waist restrained in the stout belt that ran across the top support. Her bottom, above parted knees, rose to meet her guardian’s eyes… his cane… his hard cock.
I felt my scornful expression waver, my brow furling as yet again, down below, the governor made itself known. I kept walking.
There were more marks, near the horse—for me and for Philip. The glare of the lights, amplified by the reflectors, brought a welcome warmth to my bare flesh even as I felt the illumination show me to the viewing audience even more nakedly. I swallowed hard as I reached the tape and I turned to match its orientation, so that I faced one of the cameras on the other side of the horse, lengthwise to me now so that in order to mount it I need only take one further step forward. From the corner of my eye I saw Phillip move by me and take his place, again behind me and to my left.
The prince had led Viola to a place in front of another camera, and I saw that a sumptuous armchair stood nearby, doubtless for him. I frowned a little as I wondered what lay in store next for Viola, but the thought of her and of her treachery strengthened my resolve; I found it in me to raise my chin and look straight at the camera on the other side of the horse, my defiance—I hoped—plain on my face once again.
The prince spoke, straight to the camera.
“I hope you enjoyed that lovely little scene of how Sara’s training began,” he said genially.
Viola stood to his right, her eyes on the carpet. I felt something unexpected, then: a sense of superiority over my former president. She couldn’t look at the camera, could she? I planned to defy these people as hard as I could, despite the troubling feelings I had, it seemed, developed for Major Philip Harrow. Viola, it seemed, couldn’t face up to what she had done.
“Come here, Viola,” said His Royal Highness.
My scorn for the woman who had betrayed me changed to compassion, then, at least mostly. Perhaps her weakness in front of the camera had resulted from the prince having told her what he planned to do, or perhaps she had sensed it without knowing for certain—or maybe she really didn’t have the strength of will I did.
The way the Magisterian royal spoke to her, though… like a naughty pupil about to receive her just reward… the way he reached out to take her by the upper arm, and drew her toward him, to stand in front of him… the way he put his left hand on her shoulder and his right on her hip, displaying her as his new possession to the galactic audience…
I kept my face steady, but to do so I had to fight not against my own shame and fear but my pity for Viola. I at least had the excuse of coercion, but she had betrayed me and gotten for it a humiliation even worse—it seemed to me then, anyway—than my own.
“I want Viola here with me,” the prince said to the camera. “Righthere, when I tell her a secret—and I reveal a little surprise to all you folks out there, my Artemisian friends. You can already see at the bottom of your screen, I know, how aroused Sara is getting.”
My lips parted, and I gasped through them. I couldn’t hold my expression: all I could do was keep myself from crying out, or from turning around to look at Philip. I felt my brow furrow, felt the tears start, and I knew from my PR instincts that the director had just cut to a close-up of me as I reacted.
The prince chuckled. “Sara didn’t know that until just now. And Viola doesn’t know that we took advantage of one of the clauses in our treaty to have a drone install a sensor between her legs, too. Not a governor like Sara’s, because that would be invasive. The sensor between the former president’s vagina and her anus is a noninvasive surveillance device as allowed by clause 54(c) of the treaty Viola here signed in the early hours this morning.”
The close-up had, I knew, shifted to Viola’s face. I had more trouble accessing my sympathy after hearing that the audience could see a numerical readout of my humiliating sexual needs, but I still felt some pity for the woman, who had started to try to run away, to get off the improvised set here in what had been until today her living room. The prince held her fast.
“No, Viola,” he said to her, though in a tone theatrically adjusted to play well to the camera. “Be a good girl for me, please, or I’ll have to spank you again.” He raised his eyes to the lens. “It’s a clause of the treaty that Viola here is only to be hand-spanked—not paddled and whipped the way Sara is, as Viola’s, and your, representative in sexual service to a Magisterian master.”
Viola made a sound deep in her throat, a low sob that seemed all the more wrenching because of how suppressed it sounded—as if it embodied all her years of refusing the submissive needs the Magisterians had exposed so effortlessly. I felt another surge of compassion, but I also had to work to control my face to keep my brow from furrowing. The thought that I wouldn’t mind seeing the woman who had betrayed me getting another bare-bottom spanking had come inexorably into my mind. The governor made me tingle again, down between my thighs, and my eyes narrowed with the effort of keeping my expression impassive; knowing that the galactic audience had just seen some number that quantified my wanton need just made everything that much worse.
Or…I drew a deep breath through my nose as my mind unexpectedly turned the situation around, as if the early stages of Philip’s training had begun to take hold.Or it makes everything just that much better. For… for my training… for my master, who will benefit from my training as his submissive fuck toy.
