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Act VI
Steven feels the leather straps quickly undone and then strong arms lift him from the chair. He tries to walk with them, to obey their silent command to move to another room, but he is completely unable. His legs shake beneath him and he is half dragged from the torture room and out into the hallway. The feel of the cooler air is a shock to his whole body and he whimpers beneath the hood. He feels his skin erupting in gooseflesh and within a few moments he is shivering.
Finally they pause and there is the soft jingle of keys and then the heavy metallic sound of a lock being opened. He is dragged through the doorway and dropped heavily onto a narrow bed. His arms are quickly pulled over his head and cuffed there, a blanket is thrown over his cold body, and then there is the thud of the door being closed and locked behind them.
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The Lady leaves the dungeon and heads down the long concrete hallway. Near the end she turns and presses the button next to the elevator. As she stands listening to the soft hum of the machinery beyond the heavy double doors she finds herself thinking of the new boy. He was everything she had asked for. Tall. Fair. Muscular without being bulky. And ever so sensitive. He had been a joy to play with tonight.
There was a soft bell announcing the arrival of the elevator and she was distracted for a moment as she stepped through the open doors. Two of her guards were inside. She imagined they were either going home for the night or headed outside to check the grounds. She didn't really care either way. Managing them wasn't really her concern anyhow.
On the ride upstairs her mind wandered back to the boy. Abducting a slave from Earth was risky business. The Terrans had funny views of slavery, believing that all of their kind deserved the right to manage their own destiny even if that destiny was war, famine, starvation, disease, or any one of countless other dismal fates. At least slaves had homes and were cared for. And at least on her home world of Nakrad there were few incidents of violent crime committed. The outrages of rape, incest, and child abuse had been eradicated among her culture a millennia ago. She didn't believe that Akasha had it too far wrong in "Queen of the Damned" when she surmised that eliminating males would eliminate much if not all pain and suffering in a given world. The only difference between her plans and theirs were that they simply enslaved males rather than killing them outright.
The elevator stopped at last on the top floor. She punched in the pass code that would allow the doors to open and stepped out into her private quarters. It was a large penthouse apartment with spacious living room, lovely foyer, three full bedrooms in addition to the large master bedroom, four bathrooms, a complete kitchen, a well stocked library, her office, and a beautiful balcony that had been decorated with potted plants and expensive patio furniture. It was all quite lovely and expensive. She had worked for months with a decorator to make everything just as she pleased. If she had to spend time on Earth she might as well be comfortable.
The Lady walked through the ivory tiled foyer and headed for her bedroom. Inside she collapsed on the deep blue velvet covers. She suddenly felt exhausted. A session like that always left her feeling completely drained, and for a moment she regretted the fate of this slave. She would have liked to keep him rather than ship him off to the auction houses back home.
She groggily pulled off her boots, throwing them across the floor, then slid the soft leather of her pants down over her hips and kicked them off as well. She tugged the cotton T-shirt up over her head along with her bra and deposited them with the rest of her clothing. Finally she moved to the head of the bed, wrapping her arms around one of the soft feather pillows and heaving a deep sigh before falling asleep.
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Steven lay in bed trying desperately to fall asleep. The hood was hot and unbearably humid. He had dozed off several times but always woke frightened and choking as the cord in the hood dug into his throat through the heavy silk. He had tried to turn over but to no avail as the metal holding his wrists over his head dug into his skin. The blanket, which had been so warm and comforting at first, had become too hot to bear as well, and in his attempts to kick it onto the floor it had become entangled around his legs. His body hurt, too. His nipples throbbed with each beat of his heart and the insides of his thighs burned where she had struck him. He whimpered softly in despair.
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The next morning dawned gray and cold. It wasn't that the Lady hadn't seen snow before. It was just that she hated it. She hated the wet snow and the slippery ice. She hated the endless despair the colorless sky seemed to force into her very soul. She didn't understand how anyone could actually enjoy this season.
She crawled unwillingly out of her warm bed, slipped into a soft, velvet robe and walked to the kitchen. Blessedly someone had thought to make coffee this morning. She didn't really like the bitter dark liquid, but had discovered that with the right amount of cream and sugary flavored syrup it could be made bearable.
She touched a button on the intercom and instructed the guards to bring the new slave to her quarters around 10. That would give her time to take a proper bath and dress.
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Steven felt as though he had only been asleep for a moment when the guards entered his room and pulled him up out of the bed. He felt dizzy and weak and hoped it was more from his sleepless night and not from anything that bitch had done to him.
He was forced into a tiled stall that he guessed was a shower and his body was roughly hosed down with icy water. Then he was drug back into the room and dried just as roughly. A moment later he was forced into the hall with the guards. It seemed they walked forever before he was allowed to stop on a lightly carpeted surface. Then there was the familiar queasy feeling of an elevator rising beneath his feet. As the car stopped one of the guards roughly took hold of his neck and whispered into his ear, "Better be good boy. Yer about to meet the Lady. Face to face."
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