Reagan Hawk (2 page)

“
Take leave while I am there,” Raider said to his men. “Tell the others they can as well. Have them drink and fuck their fill, then be ready for me in two weeks’ time.”

“
What of your needs?” Ewan demanded, his mouth downturned, his posture rigid. The jovial mood among the crew ended quickly. “Going to see to those as well?”

“
Oh shit,” said Galwin before he and Baton moved towards the back of the flight deck, growing quiet. They busied themselves with work that had already been done. Raider knew it was to give him and Ewan alone time.

Raider shifted uncomfortably in the captain
’s chair. He wasn’t one to back down from anything, but in this moment he felt guilt deep into his soul. He couldn’t give Ewan what he sought. Raider wanted more. He craved women like the air he breathed. He could not give them up and he strongly suspected that Ewan couldn’t either. That what had happened between them, while certainly pleasing, was not something that would fulfill them for the remainder of their lives. “I require things too. My cock is heavy with the need for release.”

“
And you will find a whore to ease the pain?” asked Ewan, his jaw hard and his mouth pinched. Contempt rolled off him in waves.

“
If time permits, yes.”

Ewan jerked as if he
’d been burned. “I see.”

“
Ewan.”

He put a hand up. “
No. If this is to be the way of it, then so be it.”

Raider disliked arguing with Ewan. He knew it was Ewan
’s nature to lash out in anger first and think harder upon things later. Knowing and accepting it were two different things. Raider was a thinker. In fact he was inclined to overthink just about everything he did. And he wasn’t known to fly off the handle in fits of rage. He tended to keep a level head about him and find humor in most things.

Life h
ad placed him in a privileged circumstance that should have been ideal. Born to nobles. A lord of his own lands. Yet life had thrown him a loop. His parents had been murdered by someone they trusted all because that person wanted more money, more power, more lands. Raider had sworn vengeance that day, not just against his parents’ murderer, but against all who allowed power to corrupt them.

Two months later on Planet Emperius Romanius (Emprom)

The arena was filled to capacity. Hot, sweaty bodies pressed in tight to one another, using every space available. The sun was at its highest, as was the heat of the day. Emprom had very few cold days—just a one-month cycle—then back to the oppressive heat. Beads of sweat trickled down the back of Lucia’s neck. She wiped them away and was thankful she wasn’t in the section with the cheaper seats. The arena owners packed the people in that section to the point it almost burst. Already the section she was in, reserved for the wealthy, was crammed beyond norms. She was pressed shoulder to shoulder with those near her.

The people of Emprom were hungry for blood, for death, and it was clear by the numbers who showed for the games. The day
’s events at the arena were a blending of sex acts and fight games, in which men would battle to the death. Sex was the only thing that rivaled the gladiator games. Not much else drew crowds such as the ones in the arena.

She stroked her exposed throat and swallowed hard. Lucia di
sliked the shows and the games but she didn’t have much say on the matter of attending or not. Her ownership note was held by a man who had three slaves in one of the main acts. If Lucia dared to speak out against the behavior, she would face punishment or death. Born into servitude, she knew better than to voice her thoughts on any matter unless directly asked, and then she would simply tell them what they wanted to hear.

Not the truth.

Never the truth.

She
’d seen slaves punished to death for the truth.

As
next-in-line to be the dominus’s head concubine, she was required to attend all public appearances he made so he could show off his bounty and wealth—show how beautiful his women were. Lucia knew she was attractive. Many had commented on the fact over the course of her life, but her beauty had been both a blessing and a curse. It had assured her a place as a concubine-in-waiting, but that was in truth a double-edged sword. Dominus—the master—was a cruel man. A sexual sadist. Her hate of him knew no bounds, yet soon enough she’d be expected to lie with him, expected to receive him into her body.

She trembled at the thought.

The dominus’s current head concubine, Fannu, sat to Lucia’s left, keeping herself between Dominus and Lucia. Fannu lived in fear of the day he would announce he was replacing Fannu as head concubine and taking another—Lucia. As Emprom custom went, once Lucia was head concubine, Fannu had no place within the house. She would be sold as a house slave to another house or simply killed, her body tossed away. Lucia strongly suspected Fannu feared losing her rank, title and position of power almost as much as her life.

Stifling a shudder, Lucia cast a downwards glance at the dominus. He was repulsive. He ate far too much and moved far too little
. Once, long ago, he might have had a full head of hair, but not now. Now his hair had been reduced to two tiny patches on both sides of his huge head. It was more attractive than the hair between his legs. She’d caught enough glimpses of his pathetic cock and unmaintained pubic hair that she knew without a doubt how overgrown he was.

He leaned to his right, lifting himself slightly, and broke wind for all to hear around them. Fannu kept a fake smile pressed to her face as she continued to stroke his cock.
The smell of rotting eggs floated to Lucia, and she lifted her pale yellow stola and used it to cover her mouth and nose. Nausea rose and she swayed, doing her best to keep from coughing and making an even bigger scene.

He was disgusting and she loathed th
e very breaths he took.

The current act in the center of the arena was one where a gladiator warrior used a whip to remove the coverings on two slave girls. Lucia had seen acts similar to this one before. Large, alpha male men dressed in nothing but loincl
oths, showing the scars upon their bodies, slashed at the young women’s clothing, shredding them without actually harming the women. The males would then demand the females service them, sucking their cocks, putting fingers in their asses, allowing them to fuck their breasts before they took turns driving their hard, impressive cocks into them.

She
’d spoken once to several of the slave women used in various acts, asking how they could stand such treatment. She’d been shocked to learn the women involved craved it—wanted the attention they received from the crowds, wanted the pain sometimes associated with the acts, and wanted the glory of being sex goddesses in the eyes of the people, regardless of their station.

Lucia pressed a hand to her stomach. She could
n’t imagine holding such a point of view. Yes, she craved sex, wanting a man as virile as the gladiators before her to give her pleasure, to fill her body fully. But that wasn’t to be. It was her unfortunate destiny to be with the dominus. A man who repulsed her.

The dominus
’s cock was hardly impressive. He liked to demand she watch as he fucked Fannu or one of the servant girls. He was cruel and twisted, his sex acts painful, and sometimes they left a servant girl disfigured or worse, dead. She’d seen him tie a rope around one servant girl’s neck, drawing it tighter and tighter while he fucked her. She stopped breathing and stopped clawing at the rope during the act, her body going limp. Dominus continued fucking her, harder than he had before, as if the thought of her being dead hardened his cock more.

No one stopped him, yet all whispered about his deviant ways. He had too much money and too much power for anyone to dare stand up to him.

Lucia knew her time would come sooner rather than later. Dominus had hinted that he was starting preparations for a feast at which he would claim her virginity for all to see before making her his head concubine. More and more each day she considered running away, even though she would be tracked and found. Then she would be raped by Dominus and his men before being nailed to a cross to die a slow death before the whole population of the city. He had done such a thing to others who had wronged him, female or male.

Lucia looked up to the stars above. In the distance she could see the lights from spaceships passing by. She
’d never been off Emprom and would never leave unless Dominus deemed it so. Lucia had the ability to read and do her sums and greatly enjoyed poetry and tales of old. Since her arrival at the House of Ahenobarbus she had not been permitted to read of other worlds or anything, be it poetry or not. She missed being able to lose herself in a tale and forget her reality.

Ahenobarbus disliked his slaves b
eing educated. She understood why. It gave them notions of more. She had longings and dreams of being somewhere else, some
one
else. Occasionally she would manage to sneak glimpses at written words and she savored each encounter.

Dominus had taken Fannu off
world several times. That was the only perk Lucia could see to being with Dominus. She yearned to see other worlds, to experience other cultures and to travel among the stars. Mostly, she yearned for freedom. Something she would never be granted. It would take her two lifetimes to pay off her note of ownership. A note she had come to owe when she was just a babe, still on her mother’s tit.

Her mother, a free woman, had fucked a male slave
—a gladiator warrior—and was left with a child quickening within her. A child she wanted nothing to do with because of the shame it brought upon her family. Her mother had gifted her to the same house Lucia’s father was owned by. She had been raised there until the age of thirteen, when her father died in the arena. Then she had been sold to the highest bidder, her beauty fetching much coin. Coin that belonged to the House of Courtesans. They had taken her in and schooled her in many areas, including what a man wanted in the bedroom. Her virginity had been left intact only because it would bring a higher price on the auction block. When she was nineteen she was sold to Dominus. For four summers she had lived in the Fannu’s shadow because Fannu deemed it so. As head concubine Fannu was one step shy of being wife to the dominus. As wife she would be on equal footing with him within the house walls. In public she would be a step under him, as all wives on Emprom were. For now Fannu was viewed as second-in-command in the house. And she was feared equally as much as the dominus. Lucia often feared her more.

The servants of the House of Ahenobarbus whispered behind Lucia
’s back, wondering how it was she’d managed to escape Dominus’s clutches for so long. They knew the ways of Emprom’s high society. They knew it was improper for a dominus to take his concubine-in-waiting before the head concubine’s five-year term was done, but they also knew Ahenobarbus. He was cruel and often threw caution to the wind with rules and superstitions. But in the case of wanting a son to carry on his name, he stayed the course. He would not risk angering the gods by poking his prick into her until Fannu’s five-year period was complete. As of yet, even with six head concubines’ times having come and gone, he had not produced a true heir—male or female, though a girl child would not be prized. None were on Emprom. So far, the only females he’d managed to get with child were servant girls, yet since the offspring would not be considered legitimate heirs,  none had been permitted to go to term.

Fannu ran her ha
nd up the dominus’s plump thigh and under his wrap. She blatantly stroked his cock at the sight of the slave girls being whipped. Marks were appearing on the slave girl’s flesh. Fannu got off on pain. She enjoyed the cruelty the master inflicted upon others and often would force the male slaves to have their way with the female ones within the walls of her home.

Lucia detested her. Hated everything about her. And the hate was returned. Fannu
’s jealousy of Lucia was well known through the household. The sight of blood welling on the female slaves was too much for Lucia. She tried to look away.

Fannu caught her face with her free hand. “
Watch.”

Lucia obeyed, watching as the gladiator stopped whipping the women and beckoned one of them closer. The woman went to
her knees and released the gladiator’s large, ruddy cock from his loincloth. She licked his shaft and then took the end into her mouth. It was impossible to see the gladiator’s facial expression since the helmet he wore blocked his face from view, but it was easy to see the crowd enjoyed the show. They went wild.

“
Cover her face in cum!” someone yelled.

There was a roar that blocked out any one voice for a moment.

“Make her drink you down!” another shouted.

“
Bring out the beast!”

She tensed. The beast mean
t one of three possible things. Either the arena operators would indeed bring out a beast and have the woman suck from its cock, or they would force the beast’s cock inside the woman. Injury often resulted. Another coming of the beast was in the form of a male gladiator entering the arena wearing the head of a beast and nothing else. He would fuck the women, spilling his seed in them, while all around firmly believed the gods possessed him, seeking relief through his cock.