Trin watched, horrified and fascinated. Though there was no sound, she could almost hear her own frightened moans.
“My nightmare!” she exclaimed. “The gas is what caused it—it was awful.”
“Fucking bad one, too,” Thrace growled from behind her. “Had a hell of a time getting you back to sleep. Do you…” He cleared his throat. “Do you remember what it was about now?”
“No…” Trin frowned. Stop it! Let him go! The words echoed in her mind along with a quick flash of someone—someone she knew?—being tied up and hurt. But then the image was gone as quickly as it had come. “No,” she repeated. “I don’t—it’s still a blank. I only know it was bad.”
“Probably better you don’t remember then,” he growled.
“Probably.” She shivered. “I don’t understand though—you can tell I barely got a whiff of the gas while you got a lot of it. But I was the one who had the nightmare. Why was that?”
“Simple—it wasn’t your nightmare,” Lady Tam-tam said. She nodded at Thrace. “It was his. Or else a bad memory turned into a nightmare.”
“But how did I get his nightmare or memory or whatever?” Trin demanded. She nodded at Thrace and noticed that the big Havoc was looking distinctly uncomfortable but he didn’t say anything.
“You’d had the white gas—the Truth gas earlier.” Lady Tam-tam sounded bored, as though this didn’t interest her at all. “And you were sleeping closely connected to him—naked in his arms. The skin-to-skin contact allowed his nightmare or past trauma to jump to you and you became the one who manifested it. However…” She sat up and stared at Trin sharply. “That isn’t what I brought you here to see. This is.”
She pushed some more buttons and once more the images on the screen blurred to static. In a moment they stopped and Trin was faced with the scene of herself lying at the end of the bed while Thrace knelt between her legs and kissed and licked her pussy.
“Goddess of Judgment,” she whispered, feeling as though she might faint. Somehow seeing what they had done together on the screen made the act she’d committed all the more real. She felt faint as she watched the big Havoc thrust two thick fingers deep inside her while he licked and sucked her clit. The sight filled her with shame but even worse, it filled her with desire. She could feel the tips of her breasts tingling and the area between her thighs where he had so lately licked and kissed her was throbbing and swollen with need.
“See? Very nice. Especially for your first time.” Lady Tam-tam turned to her, a small smile playing around her lips. “Oh yes, my dear Lady Trin—I know your true story. I got it all out of lady Malroth right after first meal. I know that you’re really from Zetta Prime and your Havoc is a slave of convenience in order to help you do business on Yonnie Six—not really a love-slave as you claimed.”
“Untrue,” Thrace interrupted in a deep growl. “That may have been the case when my lady first bought me but I am hers now, body and soul. I care for her deeply though, as a true daughter of Zetta Prime, she cannot return my emotions.”
“Is this so?” Lady Tam-tam frowned at Trin.
Trin drew herself up, embarrassment and rage warring within her. Rage won.
“Not that it’s any of your business,” she said icily. “But yes.”
Lady Tam-tam made a motion with one finger. “Go on.”
Trin clenched her hands into fists, trying to hold on to her temper.
“I bought Thrace to act as a prop so that I could make trade agreements with the mistresses of Yonnie Six,” she said. “Then he saved my life and I was going to set him free but he wouldn’t let me. He insisted on staying with me until I had earned back his slave price—fifty thousand credits.” For some reason the price echoed in her head, bothering her. But she didn’t have time to think why.
“Fifty thousand credits?” Lady Tam-tam raised an eyebrow. “My, that’s much too much to pay for a single slave.”
“It is,” Trin confessed. “But the slaver who was selling him had accused me to the security Crangs—because I punched him when he wouldn’t stop using the collar on Thrace. It was either pay his price or wind up on the auction block myself.” She cleared her throat. “Also, he was going to kill Thrace right in front of me. I paid the price to save both of us—I had no choice.”
“So…you paid that ridiculous price, doubtless using up your pitiful savings, and putting yourself in the red,” Lady Tam-tam said. “And now, according to Lady Malroth, you have a bundle of Jaxite crystals you want to unload in order to get into the black again.”
“Something like that,” Trin said coolly. “We don’t all live on a natural deposit of Dream Gas, my lady. I have to make a living somehow. However, as we have clearly failed here, Thrace and I will be happy to leave.” She gave a small, frosty bow and started to withdraw.
“Wait.” Lady Tam-tam frowned at her. “Don’t go, Lady Trin. I have…a proposition for you.”
* * * * *
“What is it?” Thrace stepped forward, putting himself between Trin and their hostess. He didn’t like the greedy gleam in Lady Tam-tam’s eyes, or the fact that she knew all their secrets.
“I wasn’t speaking to you, slave.” Lady Tam-tam frowned. “However, my proposition does concern you so you may listen respectfully.”
“I’m all ears,” Thrace growled. He fell back a pace but stayed close to Trin, making sure she knew he was there if she needed him.
“As I said earlier, I know that you are really from Zetta Prime—that benighted planet where they have no use for males at all,” Lady Tam-tam said, addressing Trin. “And so I assume that what I saw just now in your suite was the first ever time you had allowed a male to taste you and penetrate you sexually.”
“He…he never really penetrated me. Not with his shaft.” Trin’s voice shook and her creamy cheeks were flushed but she kept her chin high, staring down the older female fearlessly.
“I know that,” Lady Tam-tam snapped. “But am I correct in my assumption?”
“Yes,” Trin admitted with obvious reluctance. “Though I don’t see how that’s relevant here.”
“It’s relevant because I love firsts, my dear,” Lady Tam-tam exclaimed. “The first kiss…the first embrace…the first flush of love and trust that allowed you to surrender to him and let him open you with the phallus…Firsts are tremendously exciting.”
“As well as embarrassing,” Trin muttered, frowning.
“You shouldn’t be embarrassed to let yourself fall in love,” Lady Tam-tam said earnestly. “Or to express that love in a physical way. So— am I correct in assuming that you have never been penetrated by a male’s shaft?”
“Of course not!” Trin exclaimed. “That would be blasphemy—a slap in the face of the Goddess of Judgment!”
“Oh please! That silly Goddess of Judgment all you Daughters of Zetta are so fearful of.” Lady Tam-tam made a shooing gesture with one hand, as though Trin’s deeply held beliefs were simply ridiculous.
“There’s a reason we fear her,” Trin said quietly. “She is quick to anger when her laws are broken…and she almost never forgives.”
“Very well then, enough about that,” Lady Tam-tam said. “Am I also correct in assuming you have never penetrated a male with a phallus—such as the ones I gave out for all to wear tonight?”
Trin flushed again. “No. I…I have never done such a thing. Nor do I wish to.”
“But you must, my dear.” Lady Tam-tam’s eyes had taken on that greedy sparkle again. “You must either allow your slave to penetrate you and come deep in your pussy, or you must penetrate him with the heart’s blood phallus and cause him to spill his seed that way.”
Thrace felt sick.
“The Hell she will!” he growled, glaring at the older female. “Why would my mistress agree to either of those options? One is strictly against her beliefs and the other is…”
“Something I swore I would never do.” Trin looked up at him, her dark eyes troubled. “Thrace and I have discussed this already. Despite any…feelings that have grown within us as we played our parts, neither of us wishes to be penetrated by the other—it’s not going to happen.”