Bride of the Trogarians (4 page)

Nora was standing by the shuttle. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t shouting. She was just… staring.

The guards stopped when they reached her.

“Nora…”

“When they inserted the chip that allows me to breathe outside, they told me where I was going,” Nora replied. “I’m apparently being given to a scrapper. They go from place to place, scavenging parts from alien ships and bringing them back for auction.” Tears were welling in Nora’s brown eyes. “There will be no more perfumed pools. No more sweet cakes to refuse because I’m already too full from a good breakfast. Food is scarce for even families with children among scrappers. But I’ll be busy. The one I’m being given to has two half-wild children. He needs a mother for them since his wife died in a sandstorm. Apparently, she was well-loved, and I am not likely to be warmly received.”

Iris stepped forward. “Nora, I…”

The slap across her face silenced her.

“Don’t,” Nora said, her voice shaking now. “Don’t even try to explain or justify. You’ve ruined my life. I hope wherever they take you, whatever pain you feel, you think of me and these other women. And if you die, just know you were already dead to me.”

She turned away then, and a numb Iris was loaded on the shuttle.

Now, as the pain came over her in waves, she longed for the numbness to set back in. But it did not.

She did not feel as brave when the Trogarian who had punished her came back in. He carried a piece of wood holding what looked like a rough, misshapen piece of bread and a slab of meat. He didn’t speak as he put it down and walked to the back of the chair.

“I’m going to unbind you. Please do not try to run. You cannot get out of this camp. If you do, there are beasts that could open your bowels with one swipe of their claws, and crawling things with poison spines and venom. Death would be slow and painful.”

She wanted to tell him she deserved no less, that she didn’t care. But in truth, she had no more strength to bluster than she did to even move. She cried out when he picked her up, pulling her tender bottom away from the rough wood. He was gentle now as he sat Iris down on a floor cushion. Nearby, the tent panel parted and the Trogarian who had bound her for punishment entered.

“Lija made a garment for her,” he said, and held out what looked like a piece of animal hide. The other Trogarian took it, walked over and slipped it over Iris’ head. She sat woodenly as he pulled her arms through the holes. It was some sort of skin, and soft. The neckline came to a ‘v’ that showed the swell of her breasts. It was fitted perfectly at the waist; whoever this Lija was, Iris decided she had an eye for measurements. She looked down to note that it skimmed the tops of her thighs. When standing, it would probably just cover her sore bottom.

The two were crouching in front of her now. They were large and tanned, with broad shoulders and barrel chests that looked as if they’d been chiseled from warm stone. Odd markings adorned their skin. They both sported dark hair and dark beards. They could have passed for twins save for subtle differences; the man who’d punished her was probably three inches or so taller, and had shorter hair and a longer beard. The other was the opposite; he had a shorter beard and longer hair that was tied back in a ponytail. The latter also had gray eyes, where the former’s eyes were a dark chocolate brown.

“I am Zios, and this is my brother, Utak. And you are now our mate.”

“There’s a mistake.” Her voice sounded weary even to her own ears. “There are laws between TraoX39 and Earth. There’s a… a… contract.” She could tell by the way the brothers looked at one another that what she was saying meant nothing to them. Iris stopped, shaking her head. “Why am I even bothering?” she asked as if to herself. “Savages don’t understand laws or contracts.”

“Trogar has its own laws. We are independent of the alliance. Whatever rules you speak of do not apply to us. We are here on this planet strictly as hired protectors of the mountain pass.”

She stared, taken aback by how well-spoken he was. But then Iris remembered how things were on Earth before the boundaries between countries fell. She remembered stories of people being trapped in hostile foreign countries, and the futility of diplomatic efforts to retrieve them. Her heart sank at the parallels to her own situation.

“We are chieftains.” The one called Utak was speaking now. “This is our tribe. The women obey. They do not give orders. They do not disobey. The ones out there cook and clean. But you are the mate of the leaders, and so someone will cook and clean for you. But you will do as other mates do. When commanded, you will give your body to us. The needs of the Trogarian are strong. Spilling his seed increases his might. It is not merely for pleasure that we will take you, but by necessity. We have lost our mate, and our grief cooled our ardor. But it has returned now for you, and soon you will open to us.”

It was now that Iris noticed that despite their calm appearances, the leather kilts they wore each sported a definite—and very large tent—in the front.

Utak pivoted around to pick up the board holding the food. He pointed at it. “You will eat now.”

Iris’ heart was hammering. She’d never felt more trapped in her life, not even when she had her requests for a hearing rejected by Traoians who’d laughed in her face. Even then, she had wildly assumed she could just escape. But here, Iris realized it would take more than desperation to escape. It would take wits. The two Trogarians before her were visceral beings. Perhaps she could outsmart them.

“They lied to you,” she said hastily. “They did not honor you with a gift, but tricked you with a burden.”

“Explain.” The one called Zios narrowed his eyes.

You can do this.
Iris sought to remain calm.

“I can’t breed,” she said. “I’m too small.”

“You can,” Utak said. “The Crone saw it.”

“She’s mistaken,” Iris said with more certainty than she felt. “They determined it when I was being tested, but didn’t want to waste money transferring me back to Earth.” She looked from one to the other. “They said just the act of penetration would kill me.”

It was a desperate wild card. She knew they’d lost a mate, and hoped that she might play on their fears, or sympathy. She felt a flicker of hopefulness when Utak looked at Zios with something akin to doubt in his dark eyes.

“They’re probably laughing at how easy it was,” she said. “They’re probably saying it was easy to convince a couple of savages to take what they couldn’t use.”

Iris held her breath. Zios stood from where he’d been kneeling. His expression grew hard.

“I will not be lied to,” he said, and Iris felt her spark of hope grow. She’d appealed to his male pride. No male—human or Traoian or Trogarian—could bear being made a fool of. Now, if she could convince them to take her to an outpost, perhaps she could dress in robes or rags, make her way to where the scrappers lived, find Nora, and get them off the planet…

But then he reached down and pulled her to all fours.

“
We
will test,” he said. “Test and see.”

No! No! This wasn’t what was supposed to happen!
She let out an ‘oomph’ as one of the brothers pushed down between her shoulder blades, driving her face down into the cushions. Her ass was hiked up at an obscene angle, and she looked back to see Utak kneel behind her. Iris tried to move away, but his brother had taken hold of her hips and was holding them in a viselike grip as Utak pulled her legs apart so wide she felt herself spread to their gaze, felt the warm air of the tent caress her exposed inner labia and bottom hole.

Iris’ heart was hammering. She was not a virgin. She’d had three lovers on Earth before transport, although ‘lovers’ was an exaggeration. They were more like one-night stands. With the future so uncertain, and so many babies dying, the last thing she’d wanted was to fall in love and have it end in heartbreak. Her arrival on TraoX39 had involved intimate exams, some noninvasive scans that allowed her to look, wide-eyed, at a screen showing imagery of her internal female anatomy right down to the number of eggs her body had produced. Others were invasive—warm probes that expanded to determine her capacity to take penetration of a male appendage much larger than what a human man possessed. She’d been announced ‘capable,’ and she flushed now as she remembered her unwilling pleasure at the stretch she’d felt when the probe expanded.

She glanced back and whimpered. These Trogarians were bigger even than the Traoian males. And Utak was now performing a test of his own, pushing a large finger past her labial folds into her pussy. She whimpered again as he began to move it back and forth, and when she wriggled she felt the sting of his brother’s hand as it slapped her ass. Another finger joined the first. He was pumping both now, and a third finger was grazing her clit. Was this intentional? Somewhere in the back of her mind she found herself wondering if all females had pleasure buttons like humans.

She tried to wiggle away from that finger, but she found that she couldn’t. And even worse, she could feel those huge fingers sliding faster now—faster and easier—as they plumbed her lubricated passage. They were spreading apart, pushing against the walls of her pussy, testing the elasticity of her pleasure passage. And she was moaning. The finger on her clit was pressing rhythmically now, and there was no doubt that Utak knew what he was doing, that he was teasing her toward orgasm. Iris resisted, crying out for him to stop even as her body edged closer to the climax she so desperately sought to fight.

And then something worse happened. Just as she topped the summit of pleasure, but before she could careen down the other side, the huge fingers withdrew and she felt herself lifted not just up, but off the floor, held aloft and face-to-face with a very angry Zios.

“Yes,” he said. “We were lied to. But not by the Traoians.”

She wriggled in his grasp, her feet kicking helplessly above the floor. Zios’ eyes were locked on hers. “We do not tolerate lies.”

He pulled her to a nearby wooden bench, sat down, and pulled her across his knee. She felt his large hand roaming the smooth skin of her bare bottom. It squeezed first one springy cheek, then the other. She looked back just in time to see Zios shift, raise his arm, and bring that hand down again with a punishing
smack!
that resounded throughout the tent. The sting of it took her breath away. And unlike the matron’s punishments, these were not drawn out for effect. There was no waiting for the sting to set in. These were rapid-fire spanks that layered pain on top of pain, the humiliating over-the-knee position only adding to her sense of helplessness.

She struggled, and at one point edged forward. A flash of hope. If she could touch the ground she could pull away. But Zios pulled her back so easily that she realized she’d only moved because he’d let her, because moving forward stretched her further over his lap, allowing him to target her thighs. And then she was wailing anew as he spanked this untouched skin.

Iris had no idea how long she lay draped across his lap. She didn’t even remember when the spanking stopped, only the feel of his hand on her bottom again, stroking.

“No more lies,” he said. Then, as he lifted her: “Utak, fetch the harness.”

She craned her neck and saw the other Trogarian walk to a carved box and rummage through it to pull out a leather network of straps, and something else—a carved wooden phallus about four inches long, narrow at the point and wider at the base. There was a flange at the end, a disc, with a metal loop on top. Zios put her back down and hastily removed the garment he’d put on her. Iris felt herself pushed back into the position she’d been forced to assume earlier.

The phallus was pushed without preamble into her still-lubricated pussy and moved back and forth as she bit down on her lip to curb the determination of her body to climax. Then she felt the phallus withdrawn and the tip of it pushed against her bottom hole.

She cried out, trying to evade the pressure she felt. But the Trogarians were so big, so strong. One held her fast by the hips as the other pushed the phallus into her. She cried as the thing stretched her resisting bottom hole. The sting of the invasion took her breath away. She begged them to stop. They did not. She felt a pop as the widest portion of the phallus slipped inside and her bottom hole closed over the narrow neck just below the flange. She could imagine now what they must be seeing—the disc on the end, its ring protruding from it, held fast between her slightly spread bottom cheeks.

She looked back again, wanting but not wanting to see what would happen next. Utak was linking a strip of leather to the ring on the flange. When it was securely fastened, she was pushed to kneeling. Iris could feel the strap pulling up through her ass cheeks, applying slight pressure on the phallus. There was a ring at the top of that strap; she could feel it against her back. Two other straps came off of it and each ran over a shoulder. She looked down. Each ended in a clamp that… no… She looked up at Zios, heard the pathetic plea in her own voice as she begged for the mercy his dark eyes already told her would not be forthcoming. She screamed as the first clamp bit down on a tender nipple, then screamed again as the second followed. The tension on the straps pulled slightly up both on the plug and on her nipples. Straps at the side continued down to join to a ring just over her belly button. At the bottom of the ring was another strap attached to an oval piece of leather with an opening in the middle. This egg-shaped piece of leather was positioned directly over her labia, cupping and spreading them open. A final strap attached to the end of the oval-shaped spreader was attached to the ring on the phallus.

Zios lifted, her, and the pressure on her labia and breasts and ass increased. Iris knew better than to wriggle; any motion just increased the pull on her tender parts. She was moved to the cushion beside the pillar. The ring at the back was affixed to a leash.

The Trogarians stepped back and stared at her. There were no smirks, just a stern resolve as they viewed her where she knelt—filled, clamped, and obscenely spread. Her hands were free, but Iris knew better than to try to undo any part of the harness. If this was the punishment for lying, what would happen if she tried to avoid it?