“Master.” Akraz bowed deeply. “I will break her, I promise. She has already learned to fear me. Soon she will crawl at my feet and give me whatever information you ask for.”
“She does not look frightened to me,” commented the wizard. “Perhaps I should undertake her breaking myself. In my tower.”
Akraz’s lips thinned. “Whatever my lord thinks best is best. But if he will give his humble servant a chance…”
The wizard laughed. “Yes, I can see why you lust after her. But let us see how far you have come with her before I agree to give her to your keeping. Untie her. Command her to service you.”
“Here? Now?”
“Do not try my patience, Akraz.”
“Yes, Master.”
Akraz bent over Laya to untie her. His face, his fanged and deformed goblin face, was drawn and bloodless. Clearly, he did not know what she would do if he freed her and tried to command her before his dark master and all his men.
“Your choice, Laya,” he hissed in her ear. “Me—or him.”
Laya clenched her fists as the bindings fell away. She longed to spit in Akraz’s face. Yet for all that Akraz had betrayed her, she still feared Zathstragomal’s tower more. She sensed true evil in Zathstragomal, evil she had never been able to find in Akraz, no matter what the goblin claimed.
Akraz stepped back. He spread his legs and placed his hands on his hips.
“Stand up, elf wench,” he commanded.
Slowly, rubbing her wrists, Laya obeyed.
“Come to me.”
She went to stand before him. His face was that of a stranger, cruel, ugly, fanged. His voice, though, his voice had not changed. It was as deep and sexy as ever.
“Pull down the shoulders of your tunic,” he said. “Display your breasts to me.”
Her face burned. Acutely aware of the hoots and jeers of the assembled goblins, Laya pulled the straps of her tunic down one by one, baring her breasts. Casually, as if it meant nothing to him, Akraz reached out and fondled the pale globes. He rubbed each nipple until it hardened in his hand. The goblins howled their approval.
“Spread your legs and lift your tunic.”
Tears pricked her eyes. Too low for anyone else to hear, she whispered, “Please, no more, Akraz.”
Those horrid beady purple eyes of his flashed in anger. “Now!”
A tear escaped her cheek at the degradation of it all. Yet again, she obeyed, and lifted the torn hem of her skirt to reveal her private parts to Akraz and all the world.
His hands left her breasts and lowered to her sex. His fingers, so familiar to her now, spread her lips gently and began to toy with her. The small flicks against her clit began to build the unforgettable sensations. Oh but not here, not now. She could not show her wantonness before this lewd crowd. Yet she began to dance helplessly on the tips of his fingertips, shutting her eyes to close out everything but the feel of him.
His fingers plunged deep into her sheath, and she came in his hands. He steadied her with another squeeze of her breast.
Zathstragomal clapped sarcastically. “Wonderful display. I take it back. You seem to have mastered her quite thoroughly. But don’t stop now, Akraz. You haven’t yet forced her to pleasure you. Why not show us how your little whore can polish your staff with her tongue?”
Akraz stiffened. Laya hoped he would refuse. Instead, he only performed a hateful little bow and murmured, “As you wish, Master.”
“Wench,” ordered Akraz. “Crawl on your knees before me.”
Tears streaked Laya’s cheeks. “I can’t do this, Akraz.”
He knew it. It was the one act they had never done. Despite her strange longing to try it, she had never been able to take him into her mouth.
But this Akraz was not her Akraz. This Akraz was docile to a foul wizard and ruthless with her. This Akraz shoved her down by her shoulders and grabbed her head by her hair to push her face up against his groin.
“Unfasten my pants, wench,” he ordered. “With your teeth.”
She struggled to obey. His black leather pants laced up the crotch. It was a matter of tugging at the lacing with her teeth to loosen it. When she had the lacings loose, his erect cock bobbed free of its own accord.
By all the gods, he was huge.
“Lick me,” he said.
She darted her little pink tongue toward the throbbing red member. The soft licks from her tongue induced a tremendous growth spurt in the cock, engorging it.
“Harder.”
Laya made her strokes longer and stronger, starting from the where his staff emerged from his balls and a thatch of dark, coiling hair, up to the glistening head. She heard him stifle a moan.
“Take it in you mouth,” he said.
But there she balked. With a flush of pure panic, Laya scrambled away from Akraz, his all too tempting cock, her own roiling emotions. The crowd and the wizard no longer even mattered to her. She had forgotten their existence. All she knew was that she must run away from Akraz and what she wanted to do to him.
Goblins blocked her escape. Akraz caught her from behind and threw her roughly to the ground.
“What in the Thirteen Hells are you doing?” he said furiously.
Her impossible situation rushed back in on her. Laya stared bleakly at Akraz, accusing and apologizing in the same wordless look.
The horrid wizard, Zathstragomal, wheezed in what passed for laughter. “Well, well,” he sneered. “I spoke too soon. Your slave is defying you. How will you punish her, Akraz? We will want to see this as well.” Ugly pleasure shone in his face. “Even more, I think.”
The goblins in the crowd helpfully called out suggestions.
“Roast her alive!”
“Make her walk through a pit of scorpions!”
“Beat her with a hot iron!”
“Perhaps you should whip her,” suggested Zathstragomal. “With a rose bouquet.”
A rose bouquet? Laya puzzled. That sounded far to tame for the likes of Zathstragomal.
Nor did Akraz like the suggestion. Though he never openly defied his lord, he asked diffidently, “May I chose her punishment, Master?”
“Of course. I am eager to see what you come up with.”
“I intend to spank her,” said Akraz. “With my bare hand against her bare bottom.”
Zathstragomal shrugged, obviously disappointed, but he did not naysay the suggestion.
Laya, on the other hand, was mortified. She did not dare openly defy Akraz in front of the wizard again, but she felt herself already blushing when Akraz commanded her to him as he lowered himself onto one knee. He gestured crudely. Face aflame, Laya bent over his knee like a naughty child.
Akraz flipped aside her brief skirt. He adjusted her position, such that her buttocks were forced higher into the air and thus more vulnerable and more exhibited. Then his broad, flat hand slapped down to spank her flesh.
The simple slap stung so much more than she anticipated that Laya jerked in his arms. He gripped her decisively with his other arm, and spanked her again. Her bottom heated and quivered beneath his steady, stinging blows. Against her will, she began to wag her buttocks this way and that in a futile attempt to evade the slaps, but all she succeeded in doing was putting on a lewd display for the roaring crowd. The more she cried and blushed, the more they delighted in her humiliation.
Yet through it all, beneath the shame of the public spectacle, at some deep level, Laya felt safe, because it was Akraz, and no one else, who dominated her. She knew that he would find a way to keep her for his own, away from Zathstragomal’s clutches, away from the crowd of voices that eagerly asked for their own chance to violate her. She would endure this from him, she would endure this for him. Had anyone else tried to do to her what he had commanded, she would have chosen death first. But she had known that if she threw her life away on her pride, she must take Akraz with her too, for he would never let her die undefended.
She did not know how she knew these things. He had never spoken of devotion. Certainly, he had never mentioned love. Perhaps he did not even know what it meant. He had spoken only in the terms he had been raised with, the crude terms of enslavement and servitude and ownership. Perhaps it did not mean quite the same thing as what elves meant by love. Perhaps it was more primal, more carnal, more desperate. All she knew was that she belonged to him, and he knew it too. He would never let another man possess her.