Sitting in the very comfortable chair was painful in various ways, but it didn’t take long to discover that my mind wasn’t paying attention to the pain. I still felt horribly defeated and crushingly shamed, but there was a very small core of anger beginning to glow under those feelings, the heat of it starting to burn upward and outward. I’d been hurt so badly that the thought of having to face the same agony again made me immediately and automatically ill, but the core of anger was refusing to be affected by any part of that. It was growling with the insistence that no one had the right to treat me the way those people were treating me, and seemed to be demanding that I do something to make them stop. If I hadn’t been so confused and upset I might have laughed at the idea, the completely outrageous idea that I could make them all stop what they were doing to me, but I had the impression the anger inside would have ignored the laughter. It seemed to believe I could do something other than just sit helplessly by, and therefore refused to stop heating up and spreading.
The dinner turned out to be a rather long one, and I would have had to have been dead not to notice that Jer-Mar was purposely dragging it out. The other men seemed to be used to following his lead, and when he ordered another bottle of wine and then sat back to discuss how he intended decorating his new-level apartment, some of his cronies looked faintly surprised but none of them objected. A few of the women around the table had been allowed a taste of the first bottle of wine, but not all of them and none got a second taste. I remembered then what I’d been told about diet restrictions, and the anger inside me took that, too, as fuel.
By the time the mighty Prime finally decided he’d made me wait long enough, the small core of anger in me had grown to triple its original size. The entire back of me felt as though I’d suffered a low-intensity burn, and the tightened chain between my legs had become more than painful. That chain was probably supposed to have added to the raging need I’d been made to feel, but it had done a more effective job on my anger. I remembered thinking I’d never before needed a man so much, but during the time everyone else was eating my mind had apparently been working, and now I seemed to recall an episode when I’d been forced to feel the same way. I couldn’t bring any of the details back, but I was convinced there had been such a time; I’d feared the people who had done that to me, but somewhere deep inside I’d also been furious.
“And now, my friends, I believe I’m in the mood for some entertainment,” that fatuous voice came, accompanied by his rising from the chair next to me. “Come along, sweet thing, and we’ll learn exactly how eager you are to please Jer-Mar.”
This time he waited for me to get to my feet rather than simply moving off, and once I was standing he took my hand and led the way to the center of the dining room. Since I’d been expecting him to show me to his apartment I didn’t understand what was happening, not until he picked me up and then went to one knee to put me flat on the carpeting.
“No, no, my pretty little thing, I don’t want you up again,” he said as I tried to struggle back to my feet, his left fist closing painfully in my hair. “Those in charge of you may have punished you for being a bad little girl, but I haven’t given you all of my punishment yet. I remember what caused your misbehavior; you’ll remember what you earned with it.”
He gestured to one of his now-laughing friends and the man came to take over holding my hair, which freed both of Jer-Mar’s hands. The crony’s fist was almost as tight as his leader’s had been, and although I knew I shouldn’t be struggling, I couldn’t seem to help myself. More and more faces were -starting to join those already circled around where I’d been put on the carpeting, and all of them were laughing. They knew what that-man-was going to do to me and I couldn’t stand the thought of being humiliated like that.
“You do indeed have a sweet, eager body, little thing,” Jer-Mar said as he used both hands to slide the robe up on me, his crouching to one side letting him avoid the kicking of my legs. “We’re all going to see every bit of it and more, and then you’re going to please me. And you do need very much to be pleasing, don’t you?”
He took both of my nipples between his fingers then, squeezing them harder and harder, but not so hard that the pain was a distraction. The people watching laughed at my moan, a reaction I wouldn’t have had without that “help” I’d been given, and I couldn’t keep from closing my eyes in shame. My hands went from trying to push the fist from my hair to beating blindly at the man touching me like that, but apparently that was exactly what he’d been waiting for. His fingers were gone before my wildly swinging hands could reach any part of him, and suddenly there was a body forcing itself between my frantically kicking legs.
“Are you blushing, my precious?” Jer-Mar asked with real amusement in his voice, his elbows keeping my knees to either side of his body. “How sweet to see modesty in a little thing like you, and also how touching. Well, will you look at this. What do we have here?”
Just as though he didn’t know what it was, his hands went to the chain that was now so easily in his reach. I choked when he touched me and tried to get away, but his free hand got a grip on my thigh and then he went on investigating his “find.” It didn’t take long before he had me screaming, but the laughter of the crowd almost drowned me out. Half of the laughter seemed to be vicious delight, maybe even more than half, but part of it felt like desperation to fit in, and knee-weakening relief that it was someone other than them who was being treated like that. It came to me in a vague flash that I was not only frantic but wild enough to imagine strange reactions around me, and then Jer-Mar grew bored with toying with his little “thing.” His fingers detached the chain from the front of the girdle, left me for a moment to presumably see to his own preparation, and then he was thrusting inside me.
I knew how terribly bad off I was, how desperately I needed the attentions of any man, and for that reason was surprised when Jer-Mar’s heavy stroking didn’t drive me deeper into helpless response. After a couple of minutes my mind began to clear, and that was when I noticed I wasn’t doing anything more .than accepting what was being done to me. I wasn’t moaning with delight, or begging him not to stop, or frantic to give him anything and everything. What I felt most strongly was pain in my back, a good part of that due to the fact that Jer-Mar didn’t seem to know better than to rest so much of his weight on me. Like an inexperienced boy he was too wrapped up in working off his excitement, hips pounding and eyes closed in self-centered pleasure. He paid no attention to the woman he used, and might just as well have been using a woman-shaped doll.
By the time he spasmed with release, I was back to being filled with almost nothing but fury. I was so humiliated by what he had done to me that I wanted to scream with the rage of it, and the fact that he hadn’t satisfied me only added to the rest of it. Those fools who were standing all around were still laughing, just as though they had the right to look down on me, but I knew better than that. They didn’t have the right, none of them did, and some how, some way, I would prove it.
“And so the sweet little hatchling has been given her first ride,” Jer-Mar said as he lifted himself off me, using one hand to see to his clothing before rising the rest of the way. “I never realized how stimulating public punishment could be, and regret now that I didn’t try it sooner. I’ll certainly have to try it again, though, and possibly even with the same mount. You may now apologize again, little thing, and thank me for having honored you in a way you didn’t really deserve.”
He stood there looking down at me with a superior sneer, accepting the chuckling and backslaps from his friends as nothing more than his due, watching as I turned to my right side on’ the carpeting and then sat up. He was probably hoping he’d hurt me, definitely expecting me to be devastated, but he hadn’t hurt me in the least, and all I felt was mad.