The Taste of a Slave
Having shaken the orc riders, the caravan ran the highway for a good while. Unlike a car, a horse hasn't much of a full sprint in it—but the one mercy was that the wolves the orcs rode had even less. Built to run prey down over a short burst, the wolves were superb at a dash and at tearing across bad ground, and hopeless at any distance that asked for staying power.
Once the orcs had been left behind, the party reached Ohara, halfway along the road to Drail: a waystation grown up around an oasis on the grassland. It was less a city than a travelers' rest. Merchants bound for Drail kept gathering there and lingering, though, and in the natural way of things eateries and inns put down roots, and a market opened where those same merchants bought and sold along the road. Where merchants gathered, the mercenaries they'd brought gathered too, and thanks to that the bandit packs that worked the grassland never tried their luck against the place.
A mercenary they'd gotten friendly with on the way made a point of acknowledging them.
"No need to worry about this place."
I answered with one arm cocked on the driver's-side window frame, putting on a lordly air even as I let my speech go plain.
"Something different about it?"
"It's boiling over with merchants and mercenaries who've piled in, that's what. Grassland orcs can be as nasty as they like—they still won't even think about hitting a place like this."
"Hey! Shut this bastard's mouth!"
"Hey! Who took the muzzle off Hans?! Huh!"
"There he goes again. You shut your mouth!"
So the man's name was Hans. Decent-looking enough, and apparently born to put his foot in it.
While I was turning that over, the sun sank beyond the grassland and the moon came up. A night out here was cold enough to bite, but it had one virtue: a feast of stars opened overhead. The first time I'd looked up, I'd stood there stunned by a sky packed edge to edge with stars and the Milky Way. I was no different now. Little by little the stars unfurled across the far side of the dark and found their way into my eyes, and beneath a sky staining steadily black I could see, far off, a stretch of land crowded with orange light. A solitary glow sitting on the wilderness. We had reached Ohara.
A long crescent of lake lay at the center of it—the oasis called Ohara, this place's emblem, its pride, and its lifeline. The caravan drew up close by. For having fought beside them, we were given the best of the ground the merchants had claimed.
The caravan's people hurried to tally the damage. The wounded were treated on the spot, or else taken to the physician inside Ohara, and a few of them got fires going and started on the evening meal. I set the slaves to pitching tents and lighting our own fire. We kindled it in the middle, hung a pot, and laid out a kitchen; off to one side went the tent where the slaves would sleep, and opposite it the tent where I would. Inside mine I spread an air mattress and a thick soft blanket, and once I'd brought in a kerosene heater and lit it, the place warmed through in no time.
A man used to civilization doesn't easily forget the good of it. Raising your standard of living is hard. Dropping back down from a standard you've already tasted is harder still.
To match it, I threw up a rough windbreak beside the tent and installed a latrine for my own use, and next to that a water tank and a portable shower. I sent the slaves to draw from the oasis, boiled the water in the pot, and had them fill the shower tank. I didn't stint on firewood. We'd be wanting charcoal anyway, so I set four braziers on the ground and boiled water in bulk. When the makeshift shower was full I went in and washed myself clean—and not only me. The slaves took their turns as well. Hygiene mattered, and it mattered twice over for the sick.
Supper, too, I meant to give them hot. Tonight's special treat was ramen. I packed a great pot with the noodles and, while it boiled, dumped in rice that was only half cooked. The result looked a fair bit like dog slop. For filling a belly, though, nothing beat it. I ladled out bowl after bowl of steaming ramen porridge and fed them, and as their stomachs filled their faces brightened. A few of them, tension finally gone, were already nodding off. Fair enough. They'd just walked away from a brush with death; of course the tightness would leave them. Tonight we'd sleep deep.
I was sending the slaves into their tent to rest when the caravan wagons off to the side caught my eye. Mercenaries and caravan hands. What were they doing at this hour? They'd come in a crowd and were making for the wagon where the slaves were locked up. One look at which wagon it was, and I knew what they were after.
Those bastards. The women.
The men opened the iron bars, went in, and led the female slaves out. Somebody once said that once you've come through a near-death scrape, lust comes up. The urge to breed just rises on its own.
And in that instant— Ah. Me too.
My eyes went to the two slaves waiting to go into the tent. One was blonde. The other was a red-haired catfolk, pretty-faced, the wound across her back still closing. The blonde had no outward injury; what she had instead was consumption of the lungs. The medicine had quieted the coughing a great deal, at least.
Hm. More to the point, were there other sicknesses in her? I worried at it a moment and then found a compromise I could live with. Right. So long as I don't put it in, it ought to be fine.
I called the blonde into my tent. Not long since her wash, by the look of it—her hair was still wet, and she hadn't dried herself properly, so the clothes clung, faintly damp, to her body. Hm. I can do as I please. She's my slave.
"Sit on the bed over there."
She'd been watching my face for a cue. Now she went to the air mattress and sat, meek as anything. The dealer had told me she'd been some rich man's sex slave. Her looks were a little better than ordinary, and that was about the size of it. If the man had truly been rich and she'd truly been expensive, he'd have called a priest and had her healed. Still. This was something. The thought that I had a slave in the same room—no, the same tent—sent a sudden heat through me.
I got up, went to her, and sat. One deep breath. Then I reached out. The upper body first. This was a world that barely had a notion of underwear, so most of them went without a stitch beneath. On top of that the cloth was a little wet and stuck to her, and her figure came through it whole. I hooked one arm around her shoulder and pulled her in, and with the other hand I took hold of her breast.
Soft.
A generous weight of it, the real thing, giving under my palm exactly as it was. The thought that I was touching a strange woman's breast swelled the front of my trousers until the cloth strained. God. This thing's about to split. I shucked the shirt and trousers I still had on and flung them aside, then took the blonde from behind again and worked her breasts in both hands, kneading the swollen flesh as hard as I liked, crushing it out of shape. It must have hurt a little. She winced and let out a thin sound.
"Hn—!"
That only fired me hotter, and for a second I wanted to push my tongue past her lips. But no. Trading spit was more than I cared for. Tonight was skin on skin, and nothing past it. I'd have to spend myself some other way. One hand kept working her breast while the other caught her hand and drew it over. A small, smooth hand. A former sex slave who'd never done labor, and her skin was good for it. Lucky me. I guided the hand I'd pulled down into my underwear.
She took the situation as a matter of course. I was the one who swallowed air, caught off guard by a strange woman's hand closing around me.
"Hup—!"
I held her hand there, wrapped it around my cock, and started it moving up and down. Riding the pleasure as it climbed, I gave the slave her order.
"Keep going."
She turned one hand back and stroked me while both of mine stayed busy, fondling the soft give of her breasts. Ah. I was worked up before I knew it, and a groan got out of me. I stripped the clothes off her upper body without much care and seized the bare breasts, rubbing them raw. The higher the excitement climbed, the worse the thirst got. In the end I couldn't stand it. I dropped my mouth and bit into that soft flesh, sucking at it—wet, greedy pulls, one after another—mouthing the breast, licking it, teasing the stiff nipple with the tip of my tongue.
All the while the blonde kept at her work in earnest, holding my cock and stroking without a pause. Slick from the fluid already leaking at the head, it slid in her grip and made a wet sound with every pass. Under that soft hand it swelled until it was a breath from bursting. The heat had climbed all the way into my skull, and I couldn't hold it any longer. I laid her back on the mattress and climbed up over her chest.
"Mouth. Open your mouth."
She opened it. I lifted my hips and set the head against her lips.
"Harder. More. Faster."
She must have understood. Her fist tightened and she worked me quicker still, the slick sound of it coming faster. Under me lay a blonde woman with her mouth open, waiting to take it. Above her, shoving my cock at that mouth and toying with her, the filthy thrill of it drove the need to finish even harder.
Then it hit. A crackling current of pleasure slammed into the back of my head.
"Ngh—!"
The dam I'd been holding gave way all at once, and everything in me poured out along my cock. A white spurt leapt from the tip and flooded into the blonde's open mouth. My body shook and the aim went crooked; the same white mess striped her upper lip and the cheekbone above it.
"Hah—! Hah—!"
Spent to the last of it, I shifted off to the side and sat. The slave who'd taken my cum lying down pushed herself up and knelt. She looked at me with the helpless face of someone who didn't know what she was meant to do with a mouthful of it.
Hm.
"Open your mouth."
She opened it. I could see the mess pooled around her tongue. Heh.
"Swallow it."
The blonde closed her mouth, winced around the eyes for a moment, and swallowed. A small gulp. The taste must have been rank; her face tightened briefly, and then she was quick to put the obedient look back on.
I glanced down at myself, gone soft and slack. Hm. Surely using her mouth wouldn't pass a sickness on. I turned it over for a moment and decided.
"This time we'll try it with your mouth. Open up and suck this. Careful your teeth don't touch."
I pressed the blonde's head down as she came to me and fed my cock into her open mouth, making her tongue and lips work at it with care.
"Ohh. That's good. Just like that. You're good at this. Mine. Mmm. Good. Just like that."