 |
|||
|
|
CHAPTER 41: CLOSE ENOUGH TO CUT
Flashback
Master Cassender rarely let Mariah out of his sight, and he always kept her chained, to the house or to the wagon or sometimes to his own wrist.
He demanded little of her by way of duties. There was no hall master to complain that the cabin was musty, and Mariah made no effort to air it out. Master Cassender did his own cooking, such as it was -- often he would simply pour the contents of a jar into a bowl, or eat out of the jar itself.
He took care of Mariah, in much the same way as he took care of his horses. He saw to it that she ate, drank, exercised, and groomed herself. He flicked her with his whip to get her attention or to speed her along, but he was not brutal. He talked to her, with seeming indifference to whether she listened.
Each morning they would set out to the meadowlands that bordered the wall. Sometimes they stayed close to the cabin and walked. Other times they took the wagon farther away. Master Cassender would wander around, looking at plants or under them, occasionally digging them up and then replacing them.
He carried with him two notebooks that he wrote in constantly. Mariah came to understand that he was making lists, of plants and animals he saw. She never understood why.
One day he had sex with her in the back of the wagon. As always, he insisted that Mariah look at him when he was inside her. As always, he moved slowly, making sure she got her pleasure.
Just as she was about to come, he stilled. Mariah bit down a whimper, expelled a breath. Was she allowed to look away?
"What is it that cuts you when you dream?" Master Cassender asked her. "When you cry out in your sleep?"
What was this? Mariah closed her eyes.
"No," Master Cassender ordered. He covered her mouth and her nose with his hands. She opened her eyes and he let her breathe. "What cuts you?"
He must never know. Mariah wriggled, hoping to distract him. "Answer me," he said. "And then I'll fuck you until your eyes roll back in your head." Mariah was not sure if he was threatening her or making her a promise.
"I don't know, Master," Mariah said.
Still inside her, he turned them so they were on their sides, facing each other, and he reached down and touched the very top of her clitoris. "You do know," he said. "You have the same dream every night." He began to circle, lightly, lightly. "Tell me and I'll let you come." He tapped her and Mariah cried out, but it was not enough. "Tell me," he said again.
Mariah struggled to think. He tapped her again. "The stove," she grunted. "I dream I burn myself on it."
Master Cassender slid his finger up to her abdomen. "No," he said. "A burn is not a cut. Tell me." He thrust inside her. His finger moved back down. "The truth."
And then he moved his hand around to her backside, and his finger was sliding in and out of her with the same slow rhythm as his cock. "Tell me." He shifted so the shaft of his cock was on her slit, but he stopped pumping. Mariah whimpered. She could not think. Everything was sensation. "Tell me."
He would never let her come. If she held out, he would know she had a secret. Inside her, he bent his finger. She could not think of a lie. "Tell me."
"The wall," she said. "The barbed wire."
"Good girl." Master Cassender straightened his finger and rammed it into her ass, rammed his cock into her pussy. She exploded over him. He kept going, in front and in back, and she came again and again until the sensation was too much and she tried to wriggle away. "Good girl," Master Cassender said again, and released into her.
Present day
Animal let go of Rose's hand as he opened the sliding door to Gabriel's apartment. Gabriel and Mariah sat at the table crushing dried herbs into powder. Mariah scowled and scooted her chair back when they came in. Gabriel smiled benignly.
"Mind if we have breakfast here?" Animal asked. "My apartment still smells foul."
Gabriel nodded. "Do you want me to teach you to make . . ." But Rose was already walking to the kitchen area. Gabriel stood up abruptly. "Rose, your cuts . . ." He shot Animal a look of utter contempt. "They're infected." He reached for his medicine bag.
Animal was horrified to see the inflamed stripes on Rose's backside. He had retrieved the comfrey this morning, but Rose had distracted him. And then he had fucked her as she lay on her back. He shuddered. It would have hurt even if her wounds weren't infected.
Gabriel was saying to Rose, "Come into the other room with me. I'll get you fixed right up."
"No," Animal said. "I'll do it. Just tell me what to do." There was a note of desperation in his voice.
Gabriel barely spared him a glance. "You've had a day and a night to put salve on the wounds you made," he said. "You chose not to take care of her."
Animal backed up as if Gabriel had punched him in the gut. Somehow Rose was by his side. "Go on with Gabriel," he muttered to her. Rose hesitated, but when Animal wouldn't look at her she followed Gabriel into his bedroom.
His appetite lost, Animal plopped down into the armchair, put his feet on the footstool, and stared unseeingly at one of his paintings on the wall. He sighed and was surprised to hear an echoing sigh from across the room. He had forgotten Mariah was sitting at the table. The black eye he had given her had faded to an ugly packstun green. "Are you going to tell me what a bad person I am too?" he snapped at her.
Mariah blinked in surprise and lifted her chin. "Please forgive me, Master," she said in her most obnoxious obsequious tone. "This slave was not thinking of you at all, and begs that you do with her as you see fit."
Animal reddened. He took a breath and expelled it. "Okay, I deserved that," he said. "Just out of curiosity, what were you thinking of?"
Mariah pinched a bit of the herbs she had been crushing, sniffed them, and wrinkled her nose. She said in a normal voice, "I was remembering a pansy master I had once."
"Lucky you," Animal said sourly. "Did he whip you and let your wounds fester?"
Mariah shook her head. "He never touched me. Never even looked at me. He sat in an armchair all day and felt sorry for himself."
Animal grinned lopsidedly at the disdain in her voice. "What was his name?"
"Master Townsend."
"Really?" Animal raised his eyebrows. "Blond fellow, nasally voice, a few years older than me?"
Mariah nodded. "You know him?" When she had belonged to him Master Townsend hadn't spent much time with other humans.
"I haven't seen him in years, but we grew up down the hall from each other." Animal shuddered. "It was terrible what happened to him."
Mariah put down the herbs, confused. "What do you mean, Master?"
"You never heard?" Mariah shook her head. "When he was caught as a pervert?"
Mariah had heard humans use that word to insult one another, in much the same way that one might call another a pansy, or a changeling. She hadn't realized it had any real meaning.
Animal saw her blink. "He liked to . . . " He grimaced while he searched for words. "Role reversal, they call it. He would pretend that he was the slave and that his slaves owned him. He would have them order him around, and punish him."
Mariah shook her head. "That wouldn't be him, then. I told you, he barely even looked at me."
"This was a long time ago," Animal said. "His was the first public punishment I was old enough to be required to attend."
"He was punished?" Mariah felt disoriented, like the floor was tipping beneath her.
"Our hall mistress walked in on him. Nasty lady. He was convicted of miscegenation, and given a choice between being castrated or killing the two slaves he had been caught with." Animal's eyes were distant. "At first he elected to accept his punishment. But he was told that the slaves would be killed anyway, horribly, skinned alive, if he refused to hang them. So he kicked the bench out from under them, and kept his balls." He sighed heavily. "Town was never the same after."
"Neither were the slaves he killed, I imagine," Mariah said drily.
Animal gazed at Mariah. "Have you never regretted anything you've been forced to do?"
Mariah flushed. Taking that as a yes, Animal continued, "Then maybe you can find some pity in your heart for others who feel the same."
"Even if I were human, I wouldn't express my regrets by rotting in an armchair, staring at my dirty fingernails!" Mariah snapped.
"No." Animal smiled ruefully. "You would plot your escape." He ignored Mariah's sputter. "But it wouldn't undo whatever you've done." He suddenly understood better what Gabriel had told him yesterday about living every day to make up for past wrongs.
He stood up. "You're right. Rotting in an armchair does no good for anyone." He walked to the kitchen. "I believe Gabriel was going to teach me how to cook something easy before his attention was called elsewhere. Would you show me how to scramble eggs?"
Flashback
Master Cassender cuffed Mariah's wrists together, and chained her ankle to his own wrist. When Mariah realized that he was steering the horses to the wall, her heart began to pound. She fought to keep her eyes averted, to pretend indifference.
They drove onto a strip of hard clay fifty feet wide that separated the wall from the meadowland. "They spray the ground with poison every two years to keep anything from growing here," Master Cassender told her.
The horses crossed the strip until Master Cassender halted them reined them in a few feet from the wall. "Look at it," Master Cassender ordered her. Mariah forgot to count to ten. She looked. A swirling mass of barbed wire, twice as tall as she was. "Go as close as you like," Master Cassender said, "but don't touch it. If you actually cut yourself on it the rust can poison your blood."
"It would be worth in," Mariah thought. She climbed out of the wagon, Master Cassender following her. The wall towered above her. She turned her head to the right and then to the left. As far as she could see it was the same, impassable, unclimbable, surrounded by clay.
"A ladder," Mariah thought. If she could just find a ladder. But Master Cassender was looking at her. She turned away and climbed back into the wagon, her eyes down.
Present day
When Gabriel and Rose came out of Gabriel's bedroom a few minutes later, they both stopped short at the sight of Animal and Mariah in the kitchen, apparently cooking.
"Finish these, will you?" Animal asked Mariah. Without waiting for her response he returned to the living room. He and Gabriel started to speak at the same time. Animal held up his hand. "Me first," he said. He looked at Rose.
"I've apologized for whipping you yesterday, and I'll continue to regret it to the end of my days." Rose started to speak but Animal continued. "And now I'm sorry that I let your cuts get infected. I'm trying to do better, but I've got a lifetime of bad habit behind me and it's going to take some time. So I need your help. If you're in pain, or you need something, or you want something, I want you to tell me. Okay?"
Rose blushed. "Yes, Master."
Animal took a deep breath. "And right now I want you to tell me the truth: Do you understand that you can go to Gabriel whenever you want? That if you choose to be his and not mine, he will take you in? If I mistreat you, or just because you feel like it, you can always go to him. Even the Bearer will support you. You understand that?"
"Yes, Master," Rose said again.
Animal turned to Gabriel. "Do you believe her? That she knows she can go to you?"
Gabriel nodded. "I think so," he said.
"Good," Animal said. "Then stop rubbing it in my face." He didn't wait for Gabriel to respond. "And another thing: I like having sex with Rose and Rose says that she likes having sex with me. We're not going to fuck in front of you, out of respect, but we're going to fuck and that's our business, not yours." He barely stopped for a breath before continuing, "And I love her. She says that she loves me. That's our business too." He paused. "Okay?"
"Okay," said Gabriel mildly. "Anything else?"
Animal blinked in surprise, and expelled a breath. "No," he said. "That should do it." He took the plate of eggs Mariah was handing him, and sat down abruptly at the table. Rose joined him with a bowl of gruel. "That went well, don't you think?" he said.
Rose smiled, but she was looking over Animal's head at Gabriel. Did Mariah imagine it, or did Gabriel wink at Rose? She suspected suddenly that Animal was not the first person that morning who had told Gabriel to leave Rose and him alone.
|
|
|