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“Eyes down, whore,” said a different voice, from the other side of the crowd.
Standing in the queue with the other Kamnian girls, all of us nude and restrained the same way, I had almost forgotten that real people, free people, wore clothes and could do as they liked with their hands. Here with my feet on the verge of mounting a block, in front of all of the gorgeously dressed Vionians, it all suddenly rushed over me: the tension in my arms from having my hands bound behind my back seemed to flow together with the terrible shame of my nakedness.
The casual brutality of the masculine voices… the way they mocked me even as they commanded my obedience… they seemed to stir the deep, dark waters of my uncontrollably roiling emotions. To my horror, they brought back the unwelcome feelings, the wayward need between my thighs that I had never known I had, until the company agent had taught me his cruel lesson.
I stumbled up the step and onto the block, as if the nightmare-logic of the scene forbid me to do anything else. I nearly lost my balance as I reached the top, and I had to raise my face again to orient myself. I heard more chuckles, but I barely noticed them, because to my astonishment my eyes met the gaze of a nobleman who I knew, instantly, could only be Baron Gravamir.
The man who wants me. Who wants to own me. A man who likes a challenge, because…
The red of his robe matched the shade in my memory, but the color could only confirm what his dark eyes said—that he had decided to acquire me, if he could, so that he could bend me to his will.
He had short hair and a beard. Kamnian men didn’t grow facial hair. I wondered suddenly why. I even managed to distract myself from the humiliation and degradation of the moment by trying to decide whether the responsibility lay with the company’s manipulation of our DNA—in making Kamnian girls marketable had they somehow eliminated men’s facial hair, along with turning our hair blue?
Or had they done it on purpose, so that we would react to a Vionian baron with a beard the way I did now. Something about the neatly trimmed hair that covered the baron’s upper lip and chin made my tummy flip over, and my brow furrow.
So different. From a Kamnian… from a girl… He’s a man… a baron, a nobleman.
A lord… a master.
Heat surged in my face. I looked down, much more because of how Baron Gravamir’s handsome, serious face made me feel than because I feared the punisher.
“Thank you, captain. I have thirty. May I have thirty-one? You can all see in the program how attractive her backside is after a well-merited correction. Not to all tastes, perhaps, b?—”
“Forty-one,” said Baron Gravamir.
I didn’t really know how I could feel so utterly certain that his voice had spoken. I had only heard him say a very few words, when he and his mistress of concubines had watched the agent degrade me with his gloved hand. Perhaps it was only because the bid had come from the same general location in the crowd where I had, a moment before, found myself looking into his dark eyes.
I couldn’t help thinking, though, as the warmth in my cheeks seemed to spread through my whole body and my forehead creased, that he had somehow captured me, reserved me for himself. I remembered the way he had looked at me. In that brief moment, our gazes had met. A new surge of blood came to my cheeks, and worse, down below as I wondered if I had understood his expression—and if I had, what it meant.I will have you,his eyes had seemed to say.It will not be easy for you, and I have no desire that it should be. I will have you, nonetheless.
“My lord baron,” the auctioneer said, in a tone of surprise. “Captain? I have forty-one from Baron Gravamir. May I have forty-two?”
I bit my lip, not knowing in the slightest whether to feel some sort of happiness, or sheer terror.
He wants me.
“Forty-one, once,” the auctioneer said.
I closed my eyes to keep myself from looking up. I had no fear of the punisher now. I simply didn’t want to feel the way the baron’s face would make me feel. Except that I did, or I wouldn’t have had to close my eyes.
“Forty-one, twice.”
He will have me.
“Sold to Baron Gravamir. I wish you joy of all the whipping you’ll have to give her, my lord, and of course all the wetness that will follow in her sweet little quim.”
CHAPTER 14
Chalondra
I barely noticed the agent leading me away to the corral where the already-sold girls stood waiting. The terrible, vague images that had passed through my mind over the few moments I had spent atop the auction block crowded everything out: rough discipline aboard a starship… girlish fantasies of living in a palace, like those of the nobility on Vion Prime… Baron Gravamir holding a paddle like agent Delvik’s, looking at me as if he meant not to punish me but to devour me…
The agent thrust me into the corral. My eyes met those of the four girls who had stood before me on the block and learned who they would belong to, one after the other. All of them wore the same expression I knew must occupy my own face: blank incomprehension—the desperate pretense of ignorance about what had just happened to us, together with true ignorance of what would befall us now.
One of them spoke—Silverstar, I remembered, the one whose beauty had received such praise.
“Um,” she said, “I… I don’t know your real name…” She had focused her attention on the girl auctioned right before me. Darkeyes, the auctioneer had called her, named I could see for her deep brown irises.
Darkeyes’ brow furrowed deeply, and she bit her lip. “Halana,” she told Silverstar.
