Shared by the Barbarians (5 page)

“Are you ready to come now?” Pag asked.

Come
. That was what the general had said.
She made me come before I wanted to.
Is that what Pag meant? That climax that Jalinda could feel herself building toward, a sort of release on the other side of which lay the end of this terrible, delightful tension that filled her sinews?

She shook her head.

“Then I must punish you,” he said gravely. “I have a switch here, from the rack of straps and whips the general keeps. Switches make no sound when they strike a girl’s bottom.”

The shaking of her head became violent.
No, please. Not when the general turned my bottom into a mess of welts just a few hours ago.

“I do not want to have to switch you, Jalinda, but I can tell that you understand what I am saying, and I know that you will be far happier with me and my brothers than you could ever be otherwise. I have also a cloth here, of the sort that the Trestrimar use to keep women silent.”

His right hand left her bottom, and Jalinda almost wailed for its return. She could hardly understand what was happening inside her mind and heart, but she did know that to have a man’s big hand there seemed to make everything terrible seem alright for the moment.

Then the hand returned, though, but… it felt to Jalinda as if it were covered in something. The cloth he had mentioned?

“When a man of the Trestrimar punishes a girl,” he said gravely, “and he wishes her to understand her natural duty to submit to him, he soaks the cloth of silence in her cunt’s wetness, so that as she has her punishment she can taste her need for his cock.”

Now Jalinda began again to shake her head, as wildly as she could, but Pag held her firmly, opened her mouth with ease, and put the shameful cloth inside. She tasted it.
Oh, no.
She tasted it, and it tasted like the wicked, intoxicating scent that had seemed to lie heavy in the air of the banqueting hall as Pag and his brothers fucked the girls over the bench.

“Will you come quietly with me?” Pag asked again. Jalinda, her eyes wide, shook her head.

Now he held the switch, a bunch of twigs about two feet long, in his right hand. He held it up for her to see.

“Will you come quietly with me?”

Jalinda felt her face become a mask of fear and woe. How could she bear it? Much more slowly, tasting, yes, her need on the cloth that gagged her, she shook her head.

Pag’s face wore a sad expression. He kept looking into her eyes as he raised the switch over her bottom. He brought it down sharply.

The pain exploded in her already-well-disciplined bottom-cheeks. Jalinda had hoped somewhere in the back of her mind that maybe it wouldn’t hurt very much, and maybe she could endure it. After Pag had fondled her, she had even hoped it might feel good.

But the agony built and built as Pag struck again, and Jalinda could only scream silently into the gag.

She could rouse the majordomo, couldn’t she? She could get up and run away, even if she still had the terrible cloth in her mouth. The general slept only a room away. Pag would be disgraced, executed maybe—but didn’t he deserve that?

The switch came down again. Jalinda’s whole body seemed to be in flames.

But she didn’t want to rouse the majordomo, and she didn’t want to belong to the general. Maybe the best she could hope for was a quick death when he caught her, but Pag had done something to her heart that she could no longer deny. Something in the way he proceeded so firmly and resolutely, but also so carefully, to her punishment made it all come clear.

“Will you come quietly with me?” he asked yet again, after he had struck her three terrible blows with the switch.

Jalinda nodded.

Chapter Six

On board the
Pride of the Trestrimar
, Kar waited in the pilot’s seat and Hed in the co-pilot’s.

“Any trouble?” Kar called back, into the passenger compartment, once Pag had secured the hatch.

Pag looked at Jalinda, standing wrapped only in the sleeping fur that he supposed could now be docked from their pay, along with the assessed value of the stunningly beautiful girl General Kroban had chosen for himself. She looked back at him out of her bewitching green eyes with an anxious, confused air, as if interested and worried to see what he would say. Pag could get used to having Jalinda care that much about his opinion; he had ensured it for the moment with the discipline he had given her, and now he must proceed to earn it with his care for her.

“Well,” he called back, his eyes still fixed on hers, “I had to put the cloth of silence in her mouth and switch her backside to get her to see reason.” The flight from the general’s palace had been easy: there were no guards anywhere on Vion, of course, because imperial order was kept through constant surveillance, and the whole household, including those who tended the train station under the palace, had drunk itself into a stupor.

“Oho!” Kar said, laughing.

“I thought you said she would come with us freely,” Hed said, frowning.

Jalinda took a step back at Hed’s words, as if frightened at the mere sound of them. Pag sighed inwardly. Hed could have that effect on girls, and he didn’t mind having it. As a man of the Trestrimar, he didn’t have to put up with any nonsense from anyone, least of all a pretty girl. Whether he wanted to fuck a girl or not, he believed in keeping her in line, and he made sure she knew it. Hed didn’t want there to exist any confusion about whether he would discipline the women over whom he had responsibility, just as the law of the Trestrimar laid down.

“She did, Hed. She just had to have the situation explained to her. Jalinda, please tell Hed and Kar that you have decided to leave with us and to marry us as cunt-brothers.”

Pag watched her face turn red at that. He alone of his brothers understood a little of the way girls on worlds like Vion and Sherdon were raised when it came to what sorts of words people used in polite society, but he saw no reason to obscure his meaning now: Jalinda must understand that her fate had placed her on the path of marriage according to the law of the Trestrimar. Her young cunt would soon be deflowered by Pag’s cock, since he held seniority among his brothers, and then he would share that cunt first with Hed and then with Kar.

“Yes,” she said softly, looking through the door to the cockpit.

“Why?” Hed demanded.

Jalinda’s chin quivered. “Because it’s… better than being with the general.”

“Fair enough,” Kar said. “Let’s see the cunt. It’s time for the betrothal, no?” He looked at Pag expectantly.

Jalinda, too, looked wildly at Pag. “What does he mean?” she said, her eyes wide in alarm.

“We’ll have the betrothal once we get to Zulin,” Pag said to Kar. Hed nodded. “These Vionians are so overconfident that there’s no security at all, and they have disabled themselves with their wine, but Jalinda will be missed soon, and when we and the
Pride
are missed as well and they check their surveillance vids, it won’t take them too long to figure out what happened. Start the takeoff. I’ll get Jalinda strapped into her acceleration couch.”

“What’s the betrothal?” Jalinda said

Kar answered. “It’s when you offer your cunt to us, sweetling.”

“And your mouth and rump,” Hed added.

“We don’t fuck them right then,” Kar continued. “But we get to take a good look, and we make you look at our cocks, and kiss them, and then we mark you with our seed.”

She looked at Pag again, obviously hoping he would tell her that Kar had made it up, as a joke.

“It is the law of the Trestrimar,” he said simply. “As I said, we will have the betrothal as soon as we get to Zulin. You must make up your mind to show us your cunt like a good girl, so that we mark you thoroughly, for that makes the powers smile upon a marriage, and grant good fortune. Come, lie down on the couch behind you. We will take off in a few moments.”

Fastening the soft straps over Jalinda’s naked body, as she winced at the pressure even of the couch’s soft padding upon her poor whipped bottom, distracted him more than he would have liked to admit, especially since he had become very hard at the thought of the betrothal. He resisted the temptation to kiss her sweet little pink nipples, though, and command the pleasure between her thighs to keep her thinking of her need for cock and contented himself with smiling down into her face.

She looked up at him, the anxiety obvious in her eyes. “When will you…?”

“When will we fuck you?” Pag guessed, and Jalinda nodded. “After we are married, by custom. The Trestrimar fuck whatever girl they wish, if she does not belong to another man of the Trestrimar, but when they take a bride it is usual only to have her mouth before the wedding, and to begin to train her bottom. Then, when they are married in the sight of all the Trestrimar, the men tie the bride to the bench of discipline and fuck her cunt as many times as they like. Because I am eldest, I will take your maidenhead and spurt inside you first. Then Hed will fuck you, then Kar. After the wedding night, though, we will take turns with you, night by night. But every thirtieth night will be a three-cock night for you.”

Jalinda seemed to have begun to breathe very hard. Pag wondered if his words alone had excited her, somehow, or if the arrangement, which seemed so natural to Pag, frightened her. “What’s that?” she whispered.

The engines underneath them roared to life, shaking the
Pride
with an intense rumble. “Takeoff in one minute,” Kar called back. “Strap yourself down, Pag.”

“I think you can figure out what a three-cock night is, Jalinda,” he said, as he turned to climb into the well-padded confines of the other acceleration couch, and gave her an encouraging smile. “Girls who have to please three men at once have trouble being good girls at first, because they often find the sensations too overwhelming to relax and enjoy them, and it can be embarrassing to have three men exploring every part of your body and using you as they like, but you will get used to it as soon as you understand that you must not refuse your husbands.”

The shaking and the noise increased. Pag lay in his couch strapped down, and looked across at Jalinda, wishing he could soothe away the fearful expression on her face. But he knew he must make the outlines of her new life as clear to her as he could.

“We will train you,” he said over the engine noise. “You will have our hardness in your mouth very often from now on, before the wedding. We will need to relax, as we try to evade the Vionians, and a man of the Trestrimar always relaxes inside a girl. Sucking our cocks will teach you to be a good girl, as you learn how much you need a man’s firm hand.”

* * *

They reached Zulin after three hyperspace jumps to confuse the Vionian pursuers—who, they knew after the second jump into the Rekan system, had raised the alarm.

“Know this,” came the message broadcast on the hyperspace comm-link. “The Vionian imperial command seeks the ship
Pride of the Trestrimar
and the brothers Pag, Hed, and Kar of the Trestrimar, along with a girl of Sherdon. A reward of one billion credits is offered for their capture or proof of their deaths.”

Kar laughed. “Almost makes me want to turn myself in,” he said.

“Hush, Kar,” Hed grunted. “We need no bad luck.”

“Will they catch us?” Jalinda asked.

The rockets had long since given way to the nearly silent ion impellers that kept them moving through outer space, when they weren’t using the gravitium-drive to jump across the galaxy.

“No,” Pag answered. “We’re going to refit the
Pride
here on Zulin and give her a new name. We’ll resupply our gravitium and triple jump to Mara.”

“What does
triple jump
mean?” she asked.

Kar said, “It means that no one can track you from where you start to where you end up, unless they know exactly where each jump is headed.”

“It means a fortune in gravitium,” Hed grunted. “And what we just did means that our mercenary days are over. We’ll be hiding on Mara for the rest of our lives. The more reason for you to obey your soon-to-be husbands, girl, and not put up a fuss when we know what’s best for you.”

Pag watched Jalinda’s face crumple and go red. She looked at him and in her eyes he could see anger mingle with fear at showing any resistance. She had seemed truly curious and lively, just a moment before, and now Hed had ruined it.

“Hed,” he said in a tone of warning. “I am eldest. We need no money on Mara, and the Trestrimar will be glad of our return.”

Kar said, somewhat to Pag’s surprise because his youngest brother rarely displayed much consideration, “Hed, you need to apologize to our bride. She didn’t ask to have Pag steal her, did she?”

“Hush, Kar,” Hed said. “Jalinda needs to understand how things will be, with me as her husband. You may treat her with softness if you like, but I went along with this plan because Pag is eldest and because the girl is pretty and I know I will enjoy disciplining her and fucking her all night long, the way I like to have my girls, every third day. I will not pretend that I don’t regret that I have a bride I must share with both of you, and I will not conceal from her how firm I will be with her during her first nights with me, so that she can learn to enjoy my cock as I plan on enjoying everything she will obediently offer me.”

“Hed,” Kar said, shaking his head, “I think that may be the longest speech you’ve ever given. Jalinda, you’re turning our brother into a sage!”

“Hush, Kar,” it was Pag’s turn to say. He looked over at Jalinda, whose face had gone from the angry expression to a more apprehensive one, as if Hed’s words had actually helped her, in their bluntness. Pag often found the same thing about his usually taciturn middle brother: when Hed spoke, his frank, honest way of expressing his pragmatic—often even pessimistic—view of the situation seemed to reassure one that Hed would take charge and ensure that nothing worse happened than the realistic scenario he had just laid out.

“Jalinda,” Pag said across the narrow space between the acceleration couches, “my brothers and I had planned to fight for the Vionians on one more campaign, and then go home to Mara. We had hoped to bring more gifts, I suppose, for our family and our tribe, but instead we will bring you, and you will be a good girl and give us strong children.”