And yet they are gone.
My eyes water as he growls and squeezes my neck more. “Say it, my possession, my Za’aka.”
“I… can’t… remember…” I squeak.
He growls, I mewl.
“Do you want to be punished again?” he asks, a sinister but playful tone in his voice. Punishment takes on many forms—he possesses an array of diabolical tools and enjoys tying me up in contorted positions while administering arousing punishments and then, like Rysethk, leaving me to twist and suffer with no release until my begging is deemed sufficient for him.
“My… my heart is…” I stumble with the English translation. The words are there in my mind, but I cannot find them. He fiddles with my clit, touching me more slowly, making my body quiver uncontrollably.
His finger stops moving and I feel a terrifying energy pulse inside of him. He seems to want to believe that these proclamations are simply part of his sexual games, and he goes to great lengths to feign indifference, and even pleasure, when I fail him in some way and he gets to ‘discipline’ me.
But beneath that facade, I can feel his need. It’s very serious, very dangerous, very potent. It can only be quenched when I do what he wants, say what he wants.
It comes to me in a flash.
“Akha… na, na… akhana sar slorim,”I whimper.
This makes his cock pulse with pleasure.
“Say it again,” he growls. His fingers move rapidly again on my clit. My body begins to tremble, out of my control. I shake almost as much as if I have hypothermia just before I come, the pleasure is so intense.
I close my eyes, and picture Rysethk.
When I speak, the words are sufficiently convincing. “Akhana sar slorim,” I breathe. “Akhana sar slorim.”
He twists my face toward his and kisses me brutally, like he wants to eat me. As he does, he makes me come with his rhythmic fingers.
My screams are swallowed in his mouth, and my ass squeezes the implement until it feels like it has grown in size.
I’m still screaming, feeling only the brutal wave of ecstasy that my orgasm brings me, when he makes himself come.
* * *
I wait until he’s asleep, and for many minutes afterward, with my heart pounding. I’m also exhausted, and it’s all I can do to fight the urge to just fall into the stupor that his lovemaking brings out in me. I drank a great deal of water, and I did it while he watched; if he stirs before I leave, I plan to say I needed to pee.
Other than that, it’s a crap plan. Trasmea has told me enough about the city of Zastra, far along the shore I have seen from the high windows of the glass bridge between the fortress and the dungeon where Rysethk trained me, but it’s like pulling teeth on a lion. I don’t really know where her loyalties lie, so it isn’t like I could just ask her.
And I have only had what feels like three, possibly four days—with Zethki lavishing his sexual attentions on me constantly, there is no way of knowing exactly—to hatch this plan. I’m not even certain that I want to do it, not even now as I slip painstakingly from his arms, moving in tiny increments so that he doesn’t wake.
But this is a mind game, and I swore to myself I would never give in to it. My chance is now, and I cannot wait longer, because I feel my own resolve weakening. I don’t know how long Zethki’s obsession with me will last, if he will change his mind and give me to his men in a breeding ceremony, if, if, if. All I know is that my will is weakening, and I have to leave before I lose it completely.
The cape is in the vast closet where he leaves his robes. I have seen it and checked on it day after day. I know how to get to the part of the fortress where my old quarters are, because I have gone there to retrieve things—under the pretext of wanting a certain robe, a ruse that thankfully worked. Zeth is a monster, but if I ask him for things at the right moment, after he comes and is glowing from the act, then he grants me anything I wish.
I take the robe, and one of his, which is enormous on me, but far better suited to the crisp night than the transparent wisps of fabric I wear, when I do wear clothing. I steal a knife, more for the gold, and I take the jeweled plug from the bed… it’s surely worth something.
As I creep toward the door, fear grips me suddenly and my body is paralyzed, cold. I close my eyes. I have a moment of doubt, so profound that I almost give up.
I won’t get caught, I tell myself.
I have no choice.
My heart beats so ferociously in my chest that I fear it’s loud enough to wake him as I slip through the door. It’s a door to servants’ passages, at least I hope. The handmaids that attend to me appear through this passage, so surely it is.
It’s dark and cool when I enter, and thankfully silent.
I take a deep breath, pushing the door closed behind me.
