CHAPTER 3
Jendra
A woman walked onto the stage, and my breath caught in my throat. She was naked, like Ms. Haspor and Glomana had been, like we all were. But there was something different about her presence—a confidence, a grace that made her nudity seem almost regal. Her short black hair gleamed under the stage lights, and her blue eyes surveyed us with what looked like understanding.
“Hello,” she said warmly. “As Alpha said, I am Sala, his wife. I’m here today to help you understand what it means to be a Magisterian woman.”
At Alpha’s gesture—it wasn’t quite a command, but there was authority in it that made my pulse quicken—Sala moved to the ambiguous piece of furniture at the center of the stage. Itwaslike a gynecologist’s chair, I realized as she raised two fixtures that I could now see were knee stirrups to either side of the thing’s lower part.
Sala settled onto the chair, facing us. With no apparent shame or hesitation, she raised her legs and spread them wide. I swallowed audibly as Alpha helped his wife guide her knees into the stirrups, holding her in that utterly exposed position.
I couldn’t look away, except for the quick flick of my eyes around the room to verify that none of us could avert our gaze. Sala’s dainty-looking pussy was completely visible, smooth and bare like Ms. Haspor’s and Glomana’s had been. Between her pale outer lips, her pink inner ones peeked out, their rosy pout illuminated by the bright stage lights.
We could even see a hint of the opening at the base of Sala’s labia, where, I knew from wellness class, Alpha must like to put his hard penis—and, as a Magisterian husband, I knew he must do that as often as he chose. And, below Sala’s pussy, even more embarrassingly, her anus was visible too. My forehead creased hard as I remembered the most mortifying moment of wellness class, when Ms. Haspor had told us, in a dispassionate voice, that most Magisterian men regularly penetrated their wives’ and concubines’ anuses.
“It’s an easy form of birth control,” Ms. Haspor had said, “like oral sex, but it also expresses a Magisterian woman’s sexual subservience of course, since it naturally isn’t as pleasurable for her as vaginal sex. For that reason it occasionally serves as a disciplinary practice as well.”
My face went very hot at the memory, and when Sala’s voice snapped me out of the reverie, the heat didn’t fade.
“As you can see, girls,” she explained, putting her hand between her thighs and stroking her private lips gently, as if petting a kitten, “like most Magisterian wives and concubines, I am required to keep my pussy smooth to show my submission tomy husband. It’s a daily reminder of my place, of my purpose.” Her voice was calm and educational, but the movement of her fingers, openly masturbating in front of a group of younger women, seemed to make a more urgent point.
Several of my classmates gasped. I felt my face burning, felt that warmth between my legs intensifying in a way that made me want to press my thighs together, but I forced myself to remain still. I felt certain that the sensors would detect any movement, any response.
“I want to tell you about my journey,” Sala continued. “I began my career on a Magisterian pleasure station. Do you know what that means?”
Silence greeted her question.
“It means that men paid a great deal of money to use me with their penises. Ms. Haspor, do your students know the wordfuckyet?”
I turned to see that our teacher had a little smile on her face. I thought I had heard the word from older girls, as a sort of interjection—a mild curse—but I had no idea why Sala would ask about it.
“Not as such, Sala,” Ms. Haspor replied. “Girls, the word is still considered vulgar in Hippolytan society, but it refers to the act of a man using a woman’s body with his hard penis. It’s an ancient way to speak of sexual intercourse.”
I didn’t know why, but something about this information seemed to set my whole body on fire. I thought about the diorama with the shameful marriage ceremony, about Hendrick the Elder and his wife’s rosy bottom. I couldn’t figure out how exactly my mind had reacted this way, but it suddenly seemedto me thatfuckmust be the perfect word for what a Magisterian man did with his rigid manhood when he decided to enjoy himself inside a woman he owned.
“Thank you, Ms. Haspor,” Sala said. “Girls, the men who came to the pleasure station paid to fuck my mouth, my pussy, and my bottom. I was there to give them pleasure, and I did so willingly, because that was the path I had chosen.”
The words overwhelmed my reason. Men had paid to use her. To put their penises in her. Tofuckher. She said it so matter-of-factly, as if she were describing any other profession.
“One day,” Sala went on, “three men, who were not really men, came to the station. Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. As you can see, they have the bodies of huge blue human men, but those bodies were manufactured in a cloning factory, to house the consciousness of beings from a group of energy entities called the Collective.”
I nodded along at this point, and I could see out of the corners of my eyes that my classmates were, too. We had learned about the Collective—the only genuinely alien life humans had ever encountered in their exploration of the galaxy. We had learned that there were a few cloned humans who belonged to the Collective, but we hadn’t heard anything about their arrival—and now, with a blush, I understood why.
Sala smiled then, and it transformed her face. “All three of the brothers are remarkable, and I and the other girls who served them at the pleasure station all felt privileged to serve them, as uncomfortable as it sometimes was. In a few moments, by the way, you’ll see the reason for that discomfort.”
Sala gave a little giggle. Her fingers moved a little quicker over her pussy, pressed on her clitoris’s wrinkly hood a little more firmly. I saw that her fingertips had begun to glisten a little in the light, and in the air, with a hot blush, I could smell a tangy sort of odor that reminded me of the dorm at night, when other girls had played with themselves after lights out.
I realized that my jaw had gone slightly slack, and my breathing sped up. The seat beneath me seemed much too warm. I pushed away the memory of the sensors in it; my mind had too much to cope with at the moment.
“For me,” Sala continued, “Alpha was different from the others. When he used me, when he fucked me, he looked into my eyes. He saw me, not just my body. And I… I fell in love with him. And somehow, miraculously, he fell in love with me too.”
“How long did it take?” Brequa asked, her voice barely above a whisper. “To fall in love? Did it happen the first time?”
“The first time he used me? No,” Sala laughed softly. “But by the second time he fucked me, I think I knew. By the third or fourth, he knew too. He bought out my contract and made me his wife.”
“Do you ever regret it?” Mabola asked, her analytical mind clearly working through the implications. “Your old life, your freedom to choose?”
Sala’s expression grew thoughtful. “I have more freedom now than I ever did on the pleasure station. Alpha values my counsel, my intelligence, my insights. Yes, I submit to him. Yes, I serve him with my body. But he cherishes me in return.”
